The Bastard Spawn of JRE

Russia has invaded Ukraine. Inflation is going through the roof. Shortages are beckoning. The world is poised on the brink of catastrophe. So, I feel compelled to take up my pen and write about...

...LA comedians.

Alright, it is not the most important subject in the world. Perhaps it is even as escape from those subjects. But as a fan of comedy and podcasts, I cannot sit idly by and allow a scene of untalented, obnoxious, self-entitled overgrown teenagers run rampant. I can’t. I won’t.

Let’s talk about Brendan Schaub. Brendan Peter Schaub was an average heavyweight fighter in the UFC. Now, that is an impressive accomplishment. It takes a lot of courage to step into a cage and fight, and a lot of talent and dedication to do so in the UFC. Schaub might have been a somewhat loudmouthed, obnoxious performer but you have to sell your fights in combat sports. It’s business.

My problems with Schaub came later. He was friends with Joe Rogan. After Schaub’s fourth knockout loss, at the hands of Travis Browne, Rogan invited him onto his mega-popular podcast and deconstructed his martial arts career with devastating bluntness. You aren't good enough, he basically said, and you should quit. Schaub looked more stunned than when Browne had punched him in the face.

It was tough love, that is for sure. Rogan’s mistake was not playing down Schaub’s UFC potential, though, but talking up his skills as a podcaster and comedian. Through his regular exposure on The Joe Rogan Experience, and his partnership with the comedian Brian Callen, Schaub’s podcast The Fighter and the Kid was taking off. I don’t remember it being offensively bad at the time. As Schaub’s ego inflated, though, it became a monster.

The most important thing to know about Schaub as a podcaster and comedian is that he is neither articulate nor funny. His speech is the verbal equivalent of feeding random ingredients through a blender. His jokes are inexplicable when they are not lame. (Infamously, in his Showtime special You’d Be Surprised, he gave a comedy Chinese accent to an Asian-American UFC doctor who speaks like any other American. You’d Be Surprised currently has a 1.6/10 rating on IMDB. You can say comedy is subjective but given that Lizardman’s Constant suggests that even farting into the microphone for ten hours would earn you some positive responses, 1.6/10 looks pretty damn objective to me.)

Being untalented is not the worst sin. But if you have been handed a career by your talented, successful friends you should have some humility. Schaub has the humility of a mid-20th Century Latin American dictator – and none of the charisma or rhetorical skills.

He lies about people and avoids apologising. He (or someone who works with him) has critical videos deleted from the Internet. Now he is allegedly suing a small YouTuber for copyright infringement. Schaub always dismisses “the haters” as basement-dwelling virgins but if my own sub-reddit had turned into a 57,500 strong community dedicated to criticising my every move I would have to ask myself if there was something wrong with me. Sure, people can be hyper-critical online, and it can be an expression of their own insecurities, but there is a reason Bill Burr, or Dave Chappelle, or Joe Rogan himself have no such armies of detractors.

But I want to focus on more than Schaub here. The whole scene around Joe Rogan is a broadcasting and comedic travesty. I like Joe Rogan. He has various talents. He is charming and self-critical. He talks to lots of interesting guests. Too many of his friends, on the other hand, have no discernible talents, carry themselves as if they are hot shit and have utterly forgettable podcasts where they talk about nothing in particular with their equally dull and arrogant friends. Get three chairs, a wacky backdrop, a co-host who also appeared on The Joe Rogan Experience and you’re golden. You have a show!

You can have a podcast where you talk about nothing in particular in a relaxed, self-aware style. You can’t have a podcast where you talk about nothing in particular and then conduct yourself as if you’re some kind of giant of media. Almost none of these people broadcast because they have something to say, or because they have a fresh concept or dynamic. They broadcast because they have a big mortgage on a second home. It is the triumph of branding over content and I hate that with the heat of a deep fat fryer.

Somehow, podcasting became the crypto of entertainment. People saw it as a means of becoming rich and successful without really having to make or do anything. But crypto can at least be put towards the creation of something tangible. Most podcasts are dead air with theme music.