Chris Rock on What Therapy Made Him Realize

0:01 Calaroga Media. Hi there, I'm Johnny Mac, Knicks fan and your host of Daily Comedy News. Comedian Liam Dalton, he's from Queens, and he posts a sketch every single day. Recently, he made this one that he calls John Starks Mullaney. You may recall John Starks from the New York Knicks, and if you're listening to me, you probably know who John Mullaney is. Now, what if we combine the two into John Starks Mullaney? Knicks humor ahead. Hey, I'm John Starks Mullaney and the Knicks are gonna take it all. The other day I was dunking on Michael Jordan. You know, the athlete. I feel bad that Horace Grant ended up on that poster. Poor guy's standing there with his goggles he can't even see straight. He was wearing goggles and he wasn't even in the pool.

0:49 If you're a grown man wearing goggles, you're either Michael Phelps in his prime or an older Jewish man at the YMCA. There's no in-between. Remember in the 94 finals where they cut live coverage of the game to show that OJ Chase didn't have that in my parlay? Imagine if that happened today. Some 19-year-old douche from Westchester would have made $ 18 million on Kaushi. People always talk about me going two for 18 in game seven, but look at the team I dragged to the finals. Just sweaty Patrick Ewing and a bunch of bar fighters? I spent half my time trying to get Charles Oakley to go to therapy. That man would have fought himself if he could. And by the way, what's with the seven game series? These NBA playoff rounds are longer than a Judd Apatow movie.

1:30 I think I got it in the first half, Judd. That's right. I went up against the greatest of all time, Michael Jordan. And it's still not as hard as trying to sell. A Kia Soul. Kia Soul, a boxy dumpster excuse for a car. Chris Rock, in his cover story with GQ, talked about therapy. He said, we do have this thing where everybody's like they brag about their therapy. Put it this way. My personal life wasn't what I wanted it to be. And I'll leave it at that. And that's my relationship with everybody. When he first started therapy, he said he went in there crying like a B-word. What the F is going on? Of therapy, Chris Rock says, it made me realize how insensitive a lot of my behavior was throughout the years. Mental illness and celebrity, it's a weird combination there because you think people are reacting a certain way because of celebrity, but it's this weird thing that you can't quantify. So I used to just blame everything on celebrity. It's like, oh, we're not connecting because I had a chronic unique-ism. I thought it was so unique. For him, the key was being honest. You have to tell the truth. You have to go into therapy, prepare to tell the worst part of yourself every week. You never come out. It's an ongoing thing. You know what I mean? You're always an alcoholic, so it's a combination of therapy and what I have, NVLD, nonverbal learning disorder. So I have a person that helps me with that, and I have another therapist. It's okay.

2:38 Chris Rock is 66 now. Looks great, but pretty soon we're going to be pondering 70-year-old Chris Rock, which is, I think, of 19-year-old Chris Rock. We are all getting old. Chris Pratt will receive the King of Comedy Award today. John, did you say Chris Pratt is going to win the King of Comedy Award? What is going on? Did you lose your mind? Did you eat too many M & Ms? Are you drinking too much Dr. Pepper like Nikki Glaser? No, no, no, no, no, no. Today. is the 2026 Kids' Choice Awards, and Chris Pratt has been tapped to receive the King of Comedy Award, because if you're a kid, who is the King of Comedy if not Chris Pratt? He will receive the Silver Blimp Statuette before facing Nickelodeon's iconic Slime. He also might take home an Orange Blimp Award as he's nominated for Favorite Male Animated Voice, for his role as Mario in the Super Mario Galaxy movie. Chris Pratt said, I'm incredibly honored to receive Nickelodeon's King of Comedy Award. I spent most of my childhood trying to make people laugh to get out of trouble. Now apparently you can win awards for it.

3:39 Pretty sweet deal. Comedy has always been a huge part of my life. Making people laugh is one of my favorite things in the world, especially kids. I'm grateful to Nickelodeon and CBS for this honor. And if I get slimed, just know I'll be sending them my dry cleaning bill. Boy, the Super Mario movie is in a tough category. The other nominees are Toy Story 5, Wednesday, Wicked for Good, the SpongeBob movie Search for SquarePants, K-Pop Demon Hunters, and Percy Jackson and the Olympians. You can watch the Kids' Choice Awards today on CBS if you're so inclined. Sheng Wang talked to the South China Morning Post, your home for comedy news, and talked about focusing on the small moments in life. Sheng Wang, one of my favorites, said, I think it's about being present and putting down the phone.

4:24 I think it's just being engaged with your life, especially during moments that don't feel like a moment. It's those in-between moments. I don't actively do this. I just think it's a general good practice to like to be bored, to stay off our phones to a certain extent, except listen to podcasts. You should listen to my podcast, then go get bored, where it's not always an immediate automatic response. So for the special, I don't do this intentionally, but basically I live life and I try to pay attention. A lot of those moments from all our lives are usually so small and fleeting that we don't pay attention to them. And we're experiencing them almost on autopilot, running on emotions. We're not really choosing anything. We're not making a choice there. And so I'm basically just collecting those moments. As for putting a set together, he said there might be a small touch of some discomfort or dissonance or awkwardness or absurdity or something. And I jot it down.

5:04 And sometimes it's clearly funny as it is. Sometimes I have to find it on stage as I share the moment with the audience. But it all starts with just being present and engaged with your life. I wanted to be a comedian. I wanted to be a poet. And I wanted to be a photographer. And for me, stand-up comedy embodies everything. Those other things as well. He talked about meeting Ali Wong in the early 2000s when they were both starting out. He said, basically, it was a much smaller scene in San Francisco. It was just a bunch of people trying to encourage each other to keep doing stand-up. And it was an emphasis on originality and writing. There was a vibe in SF at the time. We were just running around doing open mics, doing shows. And she did produce some shows. She booked me on some of her shows. We ended up moving to New York around the same time together. We were on the journey together. We were both Asian-Americans, children of immigrants. And I think we just connected on many levels immediately. We struggled together.

5:48 On Gossip Corner, Trevor Noah recently did some shows in Singapore. He was spotted playing pickleball. We're told he was at the Sports Arena, a pickleball court at the Singapore Expo. He played along local pickleball enthusiasts. And according to the Dynamic Universal Pickleball Ratings, the DUPRs, Noah was given a score of 3.92. Now, you may not be as expert as I am in pickleball ratings. I'll explain to you. That ranks him as an intermediate player. If he had scored a 4.0, that would rank him as an advanced player, but Trevor Noah, if you play him in pickleball, just understand, he's not messing around. He's a 3.92. At the New York Comedy Festival today at 4 o'clock, you will not find me at NBC 100 Presents The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins. I will not be at the panel featuring Tracy Morgan, Daniel Radcliffe, and others. Despite Tracy and I both being fans of the Knicks, only one of us is a fan of Tracy Morgan's comedy. I think the New York Comedy Festival is trying to get my attention.

6:47 There's a show at 6 o'clock at the top secret comedy club called The Brunettes, and I like brunettes. Totally unrelated to that, at 6.45 is El Showcito de Titi. T-I-T-I. We're told no translation needed at Titi's house. Everyone understands. Make your own joke. Daniel Sloss' show's called Bitter. He's at the Beacon at 7 o'clock. Jordan Klepper's S-word show, stuff show, you know the word, at 7 o'clock at Town Hall. But again, nothing amazing here. This is a Saturday night at the New York Comedy Festival. In the past, it'd be like some big, big star at Carnegie Hall or something. I don't know. I say the same thing every year. I just think New York is way too big for a comedy festival. Love the guys. They're all great to work with, but it just never seems to cut through to me. Coming up in Ashland on December 4th through the 6th, I love this, the Ashland Sarcasm Festival.

7:38 Aporna Nancherla and Beth Stelling are your headliners, but I really like some of the secondary shows, but we'll start with Friday, December 4th. Aporna Nancherla is your headliner. She was asked which aspect of Ashland's culture most urgently needs her brand of humor. She said, wellness as a concept has pretty much gone 180 degrees into unwellness at this point. Not to say I'd turn down a tincture, especially if you're buying. Now, Johnny Mac doesn't know what the word tincture is or if he even pronounced it right. Now, the rest of you are like, what are you, stupid? A tincture is typically an extract of plant or animal material dissolved in ethanol. Now, luckily, the second Google search is, what is tincture and what's it used for? Okay, a tincture is... is a concentrated liquid extract. I just told you that. The solvent extracts and preserves the active chemical compounds of the plant, resulting in a shelf-stable product, usually sold in small bottles with a dropper. What tinctures are used for? Primarily used for herbal medicine, wellness support, or cannabinoid administration. used to manage acute or chronic health issues.

8:38 This is way too deep for me. Why did you get into this, John? Get back to it. Okay. Saturday, Beth Stelling is your headliner. She admitted her timing hasn't always been ideal. She says, I usually talk about my painful experiences on stage too soon. Now, some of the other shows that interest me, I love this title on Friday night, Folk Mary Kill. Folk Mary Kill. I said folk. Mary Kill. explores love, sex, and mortality through music and improbable marital adventures. Then on Saturday, it's the all-female improv troupe with the wonderful title The Hamazons. They will present Sci-Fi, the B-movies at Resistance Wine Company, drawing inspiration from 1950s sci-fi. The trio will improvise a complete story involving futuristic worlds, extraterrestrial visitors, and Cold War-era anxieties. Then the festival closes Sunday evening with a fictional roast based on The Lord of the Rings. Comedians portraying Frodo, Gandalf, Sauron, Gollum, and other characters will take turns insulting each other. I love that.

9:37 And if you don't feel like really going too far, you can go over to Montclair, New Jersey, where you teach college classes. It is the Montclair Comedy Festival second annual. It kicks off tonight with two performances of Jaws, the very unauthorized musical. That could get me out of the house. Maybe, perhaps, but probably not. I don't like to leave the house. A comedic take on the shark thriller. The 3 p.m. performance will be family friendly at three o'clock you might get me out of the house and then next weekend your headliner is mike campbell at the mc hotel and that is your comedy news for today all right let me properly plug everything so i'm doing this thing is late night dead in the is late night dead feed Today, you will get the episode about Johnny Carson in that feed. However, in this feed, you don't have to do anything. You just sit right here and wait a couple hours, then noon today and tomorrow I'm dropping bonus episodes. So I'm doing this from memory, but I'm looking up here. Let me look up. Today is the 14th. I loaded these things a week ago. Okay, today in this feed at noon Eastern, you will get episode one of Is Late Night Dead? You'll get Late Night with David Letterman, the anti-talk show as a bonus episode. And if you're like, hey, that was pretty good, then you switch over to the other feed and then there'll be seven more episodes waiting for you. And if you're like, I'm not doing that, John, I'm just sitting right here. Okay, then at 3 a.m. tomorrow, you'll get the normal Sunday episode. Then at noon Eastern tomorrow, you'll get Is Late Night Dead? Episode two, Late Show with David Letterman, where we talk about 1230 David Letterman.

10:57 Then that point, you'll be like, Hey, this series is pretty good. I wish I could catch up. Then you go over to the Is Late Night Dead feed, and you listen all the way up through episodes eight and nine at that point. I actually have to record nine, but by the time you heard this, nine will be in the can. Trust me, I'll eventually do it. I just haven't done it when I'm recording this one. And that is your comedy news for today. All right, you got a lot to do, and I'll see you tomorrow. We're in a couple hours. I don't know. We'll be together soon. Bye.