Things are winding down here in Pandemic land, so the Amazing Maskoroni has a couple of final tricks to pull!

Weird week for me.  The show is only 3 days a week now, and I got nothing in Tuesday and Thursday, but got 4 jokes in on Wednesday, so my average remains intact.
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The FBI joke punchline was a much wordier version of my punchline, "So, not jovial tourists?".  And the Texas power grid joke; I don't know what they was going on there.  The whole joke turns on the word "power" and it got altered.  The same premise and tag, but the logic that gets you there has been removed.  

So, the TMI: Daily summer season is 3 days a week, on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays for June, so check the TMI: Hollywood Facebook Page for details.  And here's my contributions for last week:

Comedy is so subjective and random.  I wouldn't get a joke in one day and the next I get 4 in.  Jokes I think are clever get passed by while a mediocre joke is in.  Basically, it was a good week for me, in total.  I know they used a number of my topics and set-ups, but the punchlines were totally different in tone and style.  Even the ones that made it in had some changes made: 

The FEMA joke was "sharpies and paper towels" and got changed to "sharpies and plastic maps."  The Texas joke reworked my "but masks" take a bit.  The muffin bit was a real re-wording of my punchline, but the punchline logic remained.   The Milli-Vanilli joke got altered a bit, but again, the premise was intact.  The 1/6 commission joke got a real workout to have the punchline come back on itself as opposed to my simple "They're ok with 4 recounts but not 1 investigation."  I was very happy my "Quid Pro Coop" line hit.  I liked that line a lot.  And I was proud of my "full contact" airline joke was well.  

TMI: Daily is going into summer hours after Memorial day, so check the TMI: Hollywood Facebook Page for days and times.  And here's my contributions for last week (the video is fine, the thumbnail got pulled from a dissolve frame):

A light week for me, all in all.

Frankly, I wasn't feeling it much this week.  I hit the usual places for news to mock, but much nothing was inspiring me.  And my tweets have been mostly lecture-y rather than funn-y.
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​I included the one joke as a example of some comedic re-writing.  Okay, so idiot Congressman comes out and says "For the most part the insurrection was peaceful.  Immediately, I thought of comparing it to the Titanic, "for the most part the cruise was great."  But when I submitted it I changed it to the Hindenburg, because my logic was its trip was just about finished, up until the last few minutes, it was fine.  TMI changed it back to Titanic.  Did I over think it?  I just found that an odd/interesting choice.  But mostly odd.

There are going to be changes to the show come summer, especially as things open up in L.A. and the troupe gets the theater up and running again.  But, until that time, TMI: Daily is on the TMI: Hollywood Facebook Page weeknights at 6pm on (Hollywood time), if you want to see the jokes that got away.  And here's my contributions for last week:

It was an odd week.  The show from May 10 dropped off the web.  No video, no audio from the podcast.  It just doesn't exist, I didn't see the show when it was webcast and I don't know if they used anything and no one has gotten back to me about what happened. We had Emma Lieberman and  Cameron Weir alternating the anchor chair for Tonya Harris, so each tried to make the spot their own with the jokes selected.
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Wednesday's show, I'm taking credit for the Chik-fa-A.  My punchline was simply "Thanks, Joe Biden," a throw back to the old "Thanks, Obama" trope.  It got re-worked into a much longer punchline that nonetheless references Joe Biden.  And, oddly, my Rock and Rock Hall of Fame tag went from "better luck next year" to a longer punchline about an office pool.   Got nothing in Thursday's show, and got one last joke in Friday.  
There may be changes to the show in the coming weeks, especially as things open up in L.A. and the troupe gets the theater up and running again.  But, until that time, TMI: Daily is on the TMI: Hollywood Facebook Page weeknights at 6pm on (Hollywood time), if you want to see the jokes that got away.  And here's my contributions for last week:

Had a solid week on TMI: Daily, Getting in several jokes this week.  Few tweaks.  So me reasonable editing but a good bunch of jokes with a wide range of topics.  Which is rewarding, considering everyone involved with the show is doing it all on spec.

There may be changes to the show in the coming weeks, especially as things open up in L.A. and the troupe gets the theater up and running again.  But, until that time, TMI: Daily is on the TMI: Hollywood Facebook Page weeknights at 6pm on (Hollywood time), if you want to see the jokes that got away.  And here's my contributions for last week:

I had a pretty solid week last week with a joke or two every night!  Some rewording, some slight twisting or expansion, but a lot used.  And a lot of premises used, too.  A hat tip to the gang especially; I submitted a joke about the QAnon Congresswoman Greene challenging congresswoman AOC to a debate.  I had made the joke, "I expected her to challenge AOC to an arm wrestling match."  TMI picked up the straight line and reworked it to "Wouldn't challenging her to a duel be more on brand?" Which is the prefect punchline for that set-up and those characters.

I'm proud that I'm able to more and more remove myself from the political arena and get back to some pop culture jokes, which don't get used much but I was worried about my ability to come up with jokes post-Trump.  And I've managed to channel a lot of that disgust toward many others in the GOP, so I'll be flexing that muscle for a while.  The group is taking off next week, although I'm still waiting to hear if they will be producing the monologues for the week.

Anyway, just to remind everyone, TMI: Daily is on the TMI: Hollywood Facebook Page weeknights at 6pm on (Hollywood time), if you want to see the jokes that got away.  And here's my contributions for last week:

A lot of venting this week.  It was a strong start to the week, with 2 jokes and one set up.  The spring break was used as-is.  The COVID vaccination joke, well, after telling us to cut down on the Trump jokes, they took my line "don't want the rich catching COVID from the landscapers" and turned it into a Trump joke.  I wrote a joke about Putin being selected the sexiest man alive and after coming up with 2 punchlines where I was desperate to avoid a "falling out of a window" gag, they went with a "falling out of a window" gag.  Then Thursday...Thursday.  I wrote a "Masked Singer" joke.  While I wrote they were changing the name to "The Double-Masked Singer" it got changed it to this "cast doesn't have to worry, since they are all masked."  To me, that was the obvious line, and one I feel we've used before.  Something about a furry convention, I think.  Anyway I wanted to avoid that, so I thought I'd reference the recent issue of "double masking."  They reworded the Pence book joke.  Then the MacGyver joke.  I mean, I wrote that the show was going to be cancelled unless he could get a paper clip, double A batteries and a roll of aluminum foil.  For some reason they decided they had to go straight on-the-nose by saying "unless they could MacGyver a way out" and a different list of items.  Why???  Comedy is so subjective.  And Friday, frankly similar set-ups were used; Prince Phillip's death, ancient Egyptian city discovered, but there was so much reworking the punchline to where despite some words being repeated or inferred (Meaghan Markel, Indiana Jones) they ended with a totally different punchline and intent.  But two jokes they used verbatim again, even though I felt they were my sillier, weaker lines.  Oh, well.

Anyway, just to remind everyone, TMI: Daily is on the TMI: Hollywood Facebook Page weeknights at 6pm on (Hollywood time), if you want to see the jokes that got away.  And here's my contributions for last week:

Rough week for me.  Only 3 jokes.  Granted it was a short week with no show on Good Friday, but Monday and Tuesday I got shut out.  I managed to spring back with one on Wednesday's show and 2 on Thursday's.  But many of the premises were my submissions where the punchline went in a totally different direction.  For example, there was a joke about a disease that effects bears so that they are unafraid of humans.  I wrote "So, be careful out there, Mr. Ranger!"  So that Yogi Bear reference gets changed into "It's call Yogi Bear-itis." Which, okay, but if you're going to make that joke, why not go for Yogi Berri-berri?  My other line was "It's called Colt-45," which in retrospect should have been "Cub-45."  Joke writing is not for the thin-skinned.

Anyway, just to remind everyone, TMI: Daily is on the TMI: Hollywood Facebook Page weeknights at 6pm on (Hollywood time).  And here's my contributions for last week:

 It was a pretty solid week for me on TMI.  I got many jokes in.  Of course there was some re-working of punchlines; the term "recorded" got changed to "TiVo" (because it's hipper?). My phrase, "We finally find voter fraud and this is it????" became a long winded explanation defining the GOP's actions about the fraud.   I was surprised to find "duh" got left as-is.   My line, "So he hasn’t even bothered to come up with new material during his down time?" which insinuates that Trump is on the level of a comedian got altered to actually using the term "comedian."  But the 18th was an odd day where a lot of my set-ups were used, but the punchlines were flipped around.  I am absolutely including them, as my structure and logic are there.  For instance, my line about the Texas electric bills being forgiven so that people didn't have to pay was  "But, make sure you don't forgive the politicians and businesses who allowed it all to happen in the first place" jumping off the term forgiven.  It got rewritten to "the business men who caused it won't pay either" playing off the word "pay" instead and inverting my warning to not forgive them to assuming they won't pay.  Different sides of the same coin, right? 

​The "Biden won the election" was reworded for some reason, but the exact same intent.  And the Brad Pit joke took my "HBO docu-series" punchline and made it a long, winding sentence to get to the same place and beat you over the head with it.  As for the 19th, they took one of my earlier joke punchlines ("another broken campaign promised" and recycled on a joke that very closely resembles a submission from 2 weeks ago.  The CDC set up was mine, verbatim, and the cow/seaweed joke.  The punchlines were totally different though.  The CDC went from "how kids away from school too long think 3 feet is twice as far as six" and the cow joke was simply silly, about getting the cows to the beach instead of some weird knock on LA lifestyles.  Is seaweed diets a thing in L.A.?  Anyway,  you'll have to go to the TMI: Hollywood FB page to hear those, as I didn't include them.  Then there was the talk radio joke.  I used the word "business" first and changed it to "racket" in the actual submission.  Then they changed it back to "business" and added the word recently.  Why?  It's fascinating to see these changes, big and small, happen.  All this time and I really don't think we've created a "voice" for Tonya, although once in a while I try to through in something off speed to see what she does with it.  But since I'm not in any writing rooms, I'm totally in the dark as to why it occurs.

Anyway, just to remind everyone, TMI: Daily is on the TMI: Hollywood Facebook Page weeknights at 6pm on (Hollywood time).  And here's my contributions for last week: