Episode 16: Tekurah McCullough goes to comedy shows

“I always loved comedy,” Tekurah says, since high school. Jake Johannsen was her first standup crush in the Bay Area.  

“When somebody makes me laugh, I become attracted to them,” she says. She and her friends would crowd into a car on a day off school to stand around the studio for a drive-time radio show with lots of standup comedy guests. Funny, yes, but intoxicating and attention-holding in a way that comedy albums and TV appearances and sitcoms don’t quite compare: “Live comedy is my thing,” she says. “As an introvert, I save up all my energy, go to the club, then go home.” 

That’s my superficial take of a deep discussion we have about humor here. You’ll dig it. 

Find out why she can’t watch Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (“my secret shame,” she says), why she sits in the front row, and why her podcast has “paw” in the title but isn’t about animals (I had to drop that last one in to promote her kick-ass work). 

 

WANT TO KNOW MORE? 

> Tekurah lived through one comedy boom of the 1980s. Boom. It came back, kids. Will it come back again after COVID-19? Dunno. Here’s how it hit hard in the UK. 

> Comics with troubling opinions, jokes and history? She had no trouble saying bye to following the work of comedian Louis C.K. after this. She tried Joe Rogan at a club (Bill Burr, whom Tekurah digs, talks to him here about COVID-19), but that didn’t work out. I couldn’t find Todd Glass’ politically incorrect joke (which, maybe, he doesn’t even perform anymore), so we’ll leave that out. 

> The Comedy Store, which Tekurah found, is in West Hollywood. She's right: A comic died by suicide next door during a strike. 

> Tekurah was weaned on public TV’s Comedy Tonight, hosted by Alex Bennett, who chats up Robin Williams and others on drive-time radio in San Francisco here  

> Patton Oswalt and Blaine Capatch did crazy stuff on Comedy Central (case in point, with the voice of Penn Jillette)  

> Rooster T. Feathers is where Tekurah saw Carlos Alazraqui (“one of the first comedians I saw live,” she says, and who did cartoons and played Garcia on Reno 911)  

> Tekurah digs Jimmy Pardo (“The man who saved me from listening to Adam Carolla,” she says, and his fans’ “misogynist” ideas about what women have to offer men, and vice versa). She also digs Maria Bamford, with a joke about religion that’s “so perfect.”