I saw Maher at Constitution Hall DC before the pandemic. He was just okay. There was a good crowd, he may have sold out, but again this was before the pandemic and his open skepticism about vaccines and masks and his agnosticism on hydrochloroquine and ivermectin and the rest, is when I believe he lost many progressive fans. At one point he started hollering at an audience member for being on their phone, which was not funny and cringy.

The jokes were mostly anti-Trump (this was DC) but he was reading his jokes off of blue sheets on a music stand.

It was the epitome of mailing it in.

I agree with your assessment of “Club Random.”

Man is he a grouchy old man, broken record, Johnny One Note.

Not only does he talk too much, but he’s a horrible listener.

One of his handlers should force him to rewatch these episodes and work on his interview technique.

It’s embarrassing for someone who’s been on air as long as he has.

Brilliant guy; I could watch him be a guest any day (when he would do Larry King Live, it was gold) that’s when he’s at his best.

But I can understand why his traveling standup routine is not attracting audiences. The world has passed him by, which dovetails with his opinion of his politics: he hasn’t changed, the Democrats have. Well that applies to his comedic persona too.

-Emory Damron, Alexandria VA.

________________________________________

I’ve been a big fan of Bill Maher since I was a teenager in the mid 90s and that has only increased over time. I rarely miss an episode of Real Time and I regularly enjoy the podcast as well. You can chalk part of that up to my now being a middle aged Dad who doesn’t get out much on Fridays anymore but here’s the thing: for the first time since I was much younger, I went to see him perform at a theatre in Philly about a year ago and was disappointed. He didn’t suck, he wasn’t off his game… it was just that I already knew most of the material! And this was over a year after his last HBO special had aired. But it wasn’t just jokes and commentary from that special – it was from everything he does.

On the way home I was scratching my head…  it’s not like he’s a rising star attracting new, curious and unfamiliar crowds…so did he owe more “new” to us true loyal fans who paid and made the effort to get there? Was this somehow my fault and had I shown up with too much prior exposure to the performer? The audience (it was full or close to a full house, older crowd) was clearly enjoying it but they did not get raucous even at the best moments. Maybe that’s an age thing but I suspected many were having a similar experience to me. Long live Bill and everything he does, but I’m not in a hurry to catch him live again soon – even if he meant what he said about retiring from the road.

Matt Robertson

________________________________________

Most of the time Club Random is weird and uncomfortable. Almost no one gets high with him or even has a drink, maybe a beer. And he does make it about himself but the worst was with Cameron Crowe! Bill needed to show him how much he knew about music. His take on the Beatles was dead wrong but Cameron was a real pro and just let him talk through the entire show.

Ron Maiorino

________________________________________

He might think he’s a comedian, but to much of the world he’s a political pundit. That’s why he can’t fill seats – he’s spent three decades alienating half the potential audience.

Chris Beytes

________________________________________

You are correct.  I will watch clips of Bill Maher’s Real Time, but I’m not going out of my house to see him.

I think for a lot of folks he is too politically one-sided.  How many pro-left or pro-right comics fill up stadiums?  I don’t think too many.  Bill may criticize the left but he lets the audience know he is still firmly with one team. So when folks go out to a show they usually go with someone, and even if it is your long time spouse you may not share the same political views, so who wants to be uncomfortable for a couple of hours.

And he is not really that funny, so there’s that…

Thanks,

Edmund J. Kelly

________________________________________

My kids are 12 and 14 and could care less about what couch cushion has swallowed the remote. They don’t know that stress. All they care about is when their favorite Youtube creator is about to drop a new episode. So many choices out there.

-Brent Grunow

________________________________________

Bill Maher is funny and trenchant. And he’s 68 maybe he’s had enough of touring.

Hannah Gadsby is maybe quirky but she isn’t funny. Sorry.

Mitch Tenzer

________________________________________

Bill Maher is the one TV show I get excited for every week. Don’t like his podcast nearly as much. But I am a religious real time watcher. It’s the only appointment TV in my life.

Greg McLoughlin

________________________________________

Interesting thing about the Brady roast: when it went out live — not the version now up on Netflix — one could really see who killed and who was just ok, as opposed to the edited versions of the roasts we usually see that makes everyone’s set look equally great. For my money, Nikki Glaser was by far the standout. She killed. Her standup act distilled down to that couple of minutes was fabulous and harsh and cutting and everything you want from a roast. And she destroyed the men. No one did it better. I’m a fan of hers generally, she’s bawdy, smart and sexy and transgressive, and her delivery is usually top notch. I was generally happy for her and the reaction in the room and the huge zeitgeist’sbump she got from that command performance. It reminded me of that old definition of luck, it’s when preparation meets opportunity, and Ms. Glaser saw her moment and seized it. It was a beautiful thing.

P.S. but then I saw her new standup special on Max and it was dreck. Just terrible. Everything about it sucked and was the opposite of the lightning in a bottle thing she created at the roast. From the fake opening shot, to the weird dress and stupidly high heels (whomever was responsible for those atrocious choices should be flogged), to the ham fisted, bush league, pull up cutaways and bullsh*t sound editing “laughter enhancement, (I’d like to add whomever directed this steaming pile of sh*t to the flogging line up) to the unbelievably long, boring and icky gang bang ‘metaphor’ at the end. And damn none of it was sexy. Au contraire. I still can’t wrap my mind around the ying and the yang of both in one week.

Steve Jones

________________________________________

Brady roast was AWESOME. I grew up in foxboro, ma. Brady is a hero. They all were. Was great to see them all get down and dirty. One of the funniest things in a long time on tv.

Tim Lefebvre

________________________________________

I watch Bill Maher’s show on HBO pretty much every week but I saw him in Vegas a few years ago and he’s just not that funny.

He came off as arrogant but not funny at all.

Robert Pisaneschi

________________________________________

Bill Maher can’t sell out one show after three decades on TV yet Sebastian Maniscalco sold out five shows at MSG for September.  People will leave their homes if you’re funny! -t

Tony D’Amelio

________________________________________

Bill Maher used to be interesting and occasionally funny. Now he is neither.

Best wishes,
Adrian Day

________________________________________

“But people don’t want to leave their houses to see Bill live”.

No ….more like maybe people don’t want to pay to see or listen to blowhards.

Dante

________________________________________

Maher can’t sell tickets because he’s out of touch.  And he’s smug, too; so self-absorbed in his belief that he knows better than everyone that he is oblivious to how he’s become the kind of elitist he used to rail against.  He’s also the worst kind of moral equivocator; everything is either/or with him: If you support trans rights, then you don’t believe in biology.  All college students are indoctrinated fools.  Criticizing the policies of the Israeli government automatically makes you a supporter of Hamas.  If you wear a mask in public, you’re a hysterical hypochondriac.  It’s so tiresome, his constant both-sidesing of every issue like this, especially when both sides are obviously not the same.  One is complaining about pronouns.  The other tried to overthrow the government.  The two are not comparable.

 

But this is unsurprising, given that Maher’s mostly Boomer audience tends to see the world in black and white terms.  So you could say he’s just pandering to his audience.  But I say that with friends like this, what the hell do we need the Republicans for?

 

Take care,

Wes R. Benash

________________________________________

I think you’re missing something about Bill Maher’s drop in selling tickets:  he has become nasty and insufferable, especially since the pandemic. It’s no fun watching him anymore. Whereas his antipathy to Trump and his correct reading of the dangers of the Republican agenda and takeover have never been unwavering, his attacks on basically anything on the democratic side, anything progressive, diverse or “woke” and the especially cruel assessment of the campus protests have turned many of his fans against him. He gives a platform to many of the rightwing voices without challenging them and is dismissive of anyone’s opinion that doesn’t support his. Clearly, he was miserable during the pandemic, unable to go out and reach the crowds and adulation he clearly needs so much, but that has morphed into an unending attack on decisions that were made during the pandemic, decisions designed to protect vulnerable members of OUR society. While I am in agreement with his assessment of one’s responsibility for one’s own health, especially in terms of eating choices (I am myself a vegan) his attacks on overweight people are cruel and dismissive. Let’s not even get into his attacks on Muslims, a classic and terrible case of othering.

Who hurt him?

Bill Megalos
Venice

________________________________________

Bill Maher Is a complete crank and a pompous ass. Has-been.

And Bill Burr put him in his place.

Bill Seipel

________________________________________

I promote him. I watch him religiously. But he’s lost his base. He’s left, center and right. There’s no audience for that. I’m a big fan but I’m certainly not capable of giving him advice. Actually I’m afraid to.

By the way, the comedians, of which Bill isn’t as he’s a political commentator, that are selling out tell jokes. Not a fair comparison.

Today the “New York Times” said that the Luminate/”Billboard” chart was manipulated:

“Swift made ‘Tortured Poets’ available in four variants across physical formats, each with an extra track; these were also sold in special editions from Swift’s website with autographs and collectibles like magnets and engraved bookmarks. Eilish, who has complained about artists’ excessive marketing of physical media — saying in a recent Billboard interview that it was ‘wasteful’ to release ’40 different vinyl packages that have a different unique thing just to get you to keep buying more’ — put ‘Hit Me’ out in eight colored vinyl variants, as well as other formats like a CD decorated with paint ‘splattered by Billie.’ (Eilish defended her release plans by promoting an “eco-friendly” approach to manufacturing, saying her releases would use recycled materials.)

Even worse is the following:

“on the day that (Eilish’s) ‘Hit Me’ was released, Swift put out three digital-only editions of her album that included ‘first-draft phone memo’ tracks — while Eilish released a digital edition of her album that added isolated vocal tracks for each song.”

https://t.ly/nCKlp

So why isn’t there change, why isn’t there a correction, so we get a true, accurate chart, which would focus primarily on and give the most weight to streaming, where nearly all of the consumption takes place.

Because the labels don’t want this. The labels want to be able to manipulate the chart, for bragging rights, for future hype, talking about all the broken records. And Luminate/”Billboard” is beholden to the labels, so they’re afraid to impose any change.

But this is in the “New York Times,” isn’t sunlight the best disinfectant?

How many people do you think read the “New York Times,” never mind this article, never mind caring about this subject. Almost none.

And most of the public doesn’t even care who is number one, because they’re not listening to this music, if they’re listening to new music at all.

And all of the acts on the chart are trumped by Morgan Wallen, whose 2023 album “One Thing at a Time” is number three and whose 2021 album “Dangerous” is parked at number five, sans the shenanigans.

Yes, Morgan Wallen is bigger than Taylor Swift. But he’s a redneck pariah, so he doesn’t get the ink either Swift or Eilish do.

But this is a horse race almost no one is paying attention to. And that’s the big story here. One that is not covered not only by the “New York Times,” but in the Luminate/”Billboard” charts.

Let’s start with the “Times” itself. It is not comprehensive. The papers don’t even print sports scores, because they’re readily accessible elsewhere. If you’re getting all your news from the newspaper, you’ve got a very myopic view of society.

I went to lunch yesterday with an RFK, Jr. supporter. This guy was agitated about obesity, child health care issues. He supported RFK, Jr. because RFK, Jr. had a plan for this. Do you hear either Biden or Trump talking about childhood obesity, never mind Big Food and Big Pharma?

Well, conventional wisdom is they’re in the pocket of both, they can’t say anything negative. But whether that is true or false, many people believe the two major candidates are not speaking to the issues that are important to them.

But in the mainstream press it’s all binary. Trump or Biden, pick a side.

And they wonder why so much of the general public is alienated.

They keep telling us to care about that which we do not. Keep telling us it’s important. It’s like the media has detached from the public. Do they actually know anybody outside their bubble?

I’m not supporting RFK, Jr. for a whole host of reasons. But the person talking to me didn’t even care about vaccines, he cared about our food, children. What do you care about?

Chances are you live in a small bubble of people who care about what you do and feel isolated because no one else is concerned with what you are.

And then there’s the micro, the everyday living, i.e. paying the rent and putting food on the table. I don’t want to trot out economic numbers, I’ll just say when you keep reading about how much CEOs are making you become deflated. Are they really that much better, so skilled, or are they just in a club that keeps paying its cronies more and more?

And then you play the music of the hitmakers and it doesn’t resonate at all. You wonder if it’s you or them. Many people just disengage.

And then there are people who are passionate about music and insult you because you don’t feel the same way they do.

But you might be watching cornhole or pickle ball contests on YouTube. Activities that you can participate in, relate to. Cheaper and less time-consuming than golf. There are so many alternatives today, many of which didn’t even exist before. Or, if they did, you couldn’t bring all the acolytes together, which is easy to do online.

It’s hard not to disconnect. It’s not only Taylor Swift, but Joe Biden. You can’t say he’s old. It’s taboo. The Democrats will become draconian in their pushback. But that’s what your eyes say, can’t we have a discussion?

And why should I care about Taylor Swift and the records she’s breaking if I’m not listening to Taylor Swift. This is not the Beatles, never mind “The Godfather,’ a cultural tsunami that we all have to pay attention to, that affects us all.

But this analysis is nowhere. You keep being dunned with a mainstream you don’t care about.

We were inundated with news about movie grosses. But shooting for the fences with high concept films the studios excluded traditional moviegoers and then the superhero fans moved on and there was nothing left. Movie grosses are abysmal, and never coming back. And if you want soul fulfillment you get it at home, via your streaming service, which doesn’t hype a year in advance films that you don’t care about. Or books. They keep telling us what’s coming down the pike, telling us to get excited, not knowing that we wait for the wisdom of the crowd, we know if a movie is worth seeing the day it comes out, why should we get hyped in advance?

The presidential election isn’t until November, you want me to wring my hands over every nuance today? Give up my life because someone says democracy is on the line? I’ll vote in November, but stop bugging me.

And the MAGGOTS have lost the plot. It’s about Trump and nothing else. Would you hire an employee without looking at their CV? Would you just have blind faith?

And the liberals just say to be afraid of Trump. To get behind the nearly dead man who most of America can’t relate to. Got to give Trump credit for living in the modern world, he’s on social media, he understands the internet, it seems like Wi-Fi is blocked in Washington, D.C, how can you relate to these people?

And today everybody lies in court, and Marjorie Taylor Greene makes fun of people’s appearances. Everything that used to be taboo is now fair game. There’s no center.

So you retreat to your vertical, your interests, and ultimately tune out the mainstream story. The film studios are living the mainstream story to their detriment, as are the record labels. They’ve cut off huge swaths of the public yet believe the majority are still with them, when they’re not.

You might be a fan of Taylor Swift, or Billie Eilish, or live for Trump or Biden, kudos, live it up. Just don’t expect the rest of us to care. We are just as passionate about something else, but you won’t give it any attention, never mind respect.

We live in a Tower of Babel society and they keep telling us it’s otherwise.

They’re wrong.

Bill Maher can’t play arenas.

I’m not sure if you’re listening to Bill Maher’s “Club Random” podcast. Unfortunately Bill too often makes it about himself, when we’re mostly interested in what the guests have to say, but there are some good episodes. Like the recent one with Jerry Seinfeld. Who was aloof yet analytical, he doesn’t take himself too seriously, and when Bill was stunned that Jerry had a contrary opinion Seinfeld said he just likes to argue. I laughed at that. That’s east coast, that’s Jewish. Let’s lay all the issues out on the table and try to illuminate the situation and come to a conclusion. If everybody agrees there’s nothing learned.

So at one point in the conversation, Bill says he’s retiring from the road. BECAUSE HE CAN’T SELL ENOUGH TICKETS! Bill can’t play arenas like the big comics, he does not sell out everywhere he goes, why do it?

Now Bill has been on TV for three decades. First on Comedy Central and then on ABC four nights a week. And for the last two decades he’s been on HBO. “Real Time” is one of their flagship series, one of the only ones that has sustained.

But people don’t want to leave their houses to see Bill live.

Maybe they don’t realize he’s primarily a comedian. Then again, the same outlet that hosts his show, HBO, has aired a number of Bill’s comedy specials.

Maybe they don’t find Bill that funny. It’s subjective, but Bill thinks he’s one of the best out there, he’s said so multiple times.

But it’s not enough to bring the masses into the building. Bill plays theatres, and doesn’t always sell out.

But it’s even worse. At the end of every “Real Time,” Bill announces where he’ll be appearing next. I always thought this was a cheap shot, that fans would know to go to the show, but it turns out he needs the ad, he needs to tell people, otherwise how many people would show up at all?

Now it’s hard to reach the audience today. To let them know you’re even playing in their town.

But numerous comedians can sell out arenas. Interestingly, for most it’s not a sideline, but the main line. Sure, Chris Rock has worked in film and TV, but no one sees him as an actor. They see Chris as a comedian, and need to go to connect with him live.

This is not the way it used to be. If you were on TV at all it paid dividends. People fought to be on TV. Now it’s nearly meaningless.

Then again, this is not what the mainstream media tells us. They keep repeating the jokes from the previous evening’s late night shows. But the savviest of those on at the midnight hour know that it’s really not even about the show itself anymore, but creating viral moments. That are viewed on YouTube.

So you can appear on a late night TV show but… You’re going to reach almost no one, unless you’re featured in a moment that is clipped and goes viral, and that’s almost never the case with musicians. The shows all reach fewer than two million people nightly, that’s piss-poor in the YouTube world, and YouTube is all pull! If you’re watching, you’re probably a fan. How many people watching an act on late night TV are watching for that act? Very few.

Now in the old days, an appearance on TV translated into instant results. Sales. Of both recordings and tickets. But TV is the new terrestrial radio. Sure, it’s got the largest number of viewers/listeners in one place, but it’s far less than it used to be and the most active fans, the youth, are hardly participating at all.

But it’s easier to be on TV than to figure out how to truly reach the audience. No one knows how anymore. They keep trying the old methods to failing results.

If Bill Maher wants to work live, and it seems that he’s happy just doing his New Rules monologue at the end “Real Time,” he’d have to work more and change his act. He’d have to find a way to connect with the audience that he isn’t doing now. It would require something edgy, something that resonates, it might even require a personality transplant. Yes, Bill is talking down to you, you don’t feel like you’re in it with him, like you do with Hannah Gadsby, who is a gay woman on the autism spectrum, i.e. most people can’t identify with her on the surface, but at the core we’re all people, and she finds a way to connect.

TV is broad. Which is one reason late night talk shows have declined. We don’t want to sit through some celebrity bloviating to get to the musical act, we want the musical act immediately. And we’re certainly not going to tune in just to see an act we’re unfamiliar with.

Too many acts are playing to the Fortune 500. They’ve become brands, they’re not artists. Whereas the best comedians exist outside the law, they say the unsayable, they’re truth-sayers like musicians used to be way back when. Music is too often just entertainment, whereas standup is life itself.

We keep being hammered by the media on Taylor Swift setting records, but for the past two weeks there’s been much more spontaneous conversation in my world over the Tom Brady roast. It was live, on a wire, and you can debate ad infinitum whether lines were crossed.

Then again, the Brady roast was on Netflix, which keeps pushing the envelope.

You can tell everybody about it, they can even be aware of it, but that does not mean they’ll partake. I don’t think there’s anyone who is unaware of “Tortured Poets Department,” but did you listen to it? Were you driven to listen to it?

That’s the challenge.

How do you create work so interesting that those who were not previously interested now are.

It’s about being authentic, taking risk, not trying to hoover up every dollar, not telling us how great you are but just being great.

It’s a buzz in society, it’s bottom-up, not top-down.

Never before have so many been aware of something yet shrugged their shoulders. There are too many options. You can beat me over the head all you want, that doesn’t mean I’ll pay attention.

My attention is the most valuable thing to me. You’ve got to earn it.

And that’s very hard to do.

https://t.ly/rHlWw

This is not a book for those still at their first rodeo. But if you’re a boomer, or a Gen-X’er, and you can’t relate… Then you probably are not in touch with your inner life.

Life doesn’t work out the way you expect it to. Even if you try and jump through the ordained hoops. Never mind waking up and finding out you don’t want to jump through said hoops, that they don’t resonate with you. Life is an ongoing train of experiences. And the older you get, the more you reflect upon them, and then you ultimately realize they are set in amber, there is no next chapter.

Except when there is.

Get old enough and you’ll realize there are places you’ll never go, people you’ll never see again, that you’ll never be in contact with again. Then again, you never know when you’ll be surprised.

So there’s the one who got away. But sometimes you don’t realize they got away until long thereafter.

And they tell you to listen to your heart. But sometimes your heart is undeveloped, it only knows the short term, it is not as wise it ultimately becomes.

And then there are issues of morality and commitment.

Most people cannot commit, cannot follow through. This was driven home to me by Daniel Glass thirty years ago at the initial SBK Records convention. He said you needed a college degree to work at SBK. This confounded me, I was a college graduate, but many of the music business titans were not, why was this a requirement?

And Daniel told me it had nothing to do with what you learned, but finishing college demonstrated that you could complete things. This has stuck in my head forevermore. If you want someone for the long haul, who won’t jump off the ship when the seas are rough, a college degree is ultimately a demonstration of that character.

Kind of like the aphorism that half of the job is just showing up on time. You’d be surprised how many people cannot.

Which brings us to the ultimate commitment, marriage. Can you get divorced?

I once read a book that said the only reasons to get divorced were physical violence and drug abuse. Otherwise, the breakup would result in too many regrets.

The funny thing is it’s today’s college graduates who get married and stay married. Whereas those with less education are more prone to divorce, and have children out of wedlock.

But just because you did what you were told, is that the right thing for you? You wake up too far down the line and realize you’ve done things for others, your parents, your family, and your entire life has not resonated with you.

So there’s this tension. Between doing the right thing and not getting caught up in it to the point where you become lost and unhappy.

That’s what “Leaving” is about.

Well, much more than that. This is your one and only life. What resonates, what rewards? Work or personal relationships? Or are children primary.

And then out of the blue…

You’re surprised. Something happens that makes you question your whole life. Do you have the power to change, is change the right thing?

I’m skirting around the plot of “Leaving” because I want the experience of reading it to be fresh to you, for you to be surprised by the plot. First and foremost a book is about the story. As for the language…

That’s my only complaint with “Leaving.” It aspires to be literary fiction, and therefore there’s a bit too much description, but even worse words are employed that you absolutely will not know the meaning of. For all I know Roxana Robinson does, but I’ve got to believe she used a thesaurus. Ultimately, you just ride over the unknown terms, you get the gist, but I’m not sure who Robinson was trying to impress. Oh, that’s right, the arbiters of literary fiction, where the form often trumps the story.

But the essence of “Leaving” is the inner dialogue. That which will not leave your brain that you cannot share. We live in a society where you’re supposed to get over events instantly. Crawl from the wreckage into a brand new car. But that’s impossible, that’s denial. Personal bonds when broken leave streaks of memory and discontent, that you cannot get out of your mind no matter how hard you try. You may have moved on, be involved with someone else, but you cannot forget what happened with that previous person, questioning your behavior all the while.

Once again, if you’ve had your ups and downs, if you can look back at life and wonder, I highly recommend “Leaving.”

If you are not self-reflective…you’re just denying your feelings, and it’s not for you.