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UPCOMING APPEARANCES (virtual unless noted)
Contact Dan Hudak for booking (shows free for good causes).
Actual UPCOMING APPEARANCES after these two announcements…
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40 shows in ’24, from Manhattan to Malta to
Paris (France is the 9th country where I’ve spoken).
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In my long-ago stand-up act, I did a Public Service Announcement
warning about America’s 237th biggest killer, Cat-On-The-Back Disease.
Now, tragically, 50 years later, this terrible affliction is still spreading…
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Nov. 21 – CineStudio Paris (private event)
How Comedy Works for CineStudio Paris.
Dec. 2 — Levis JCC (Boca Raton)
Jewish Comedy and Musical Satire for the Levis JCC.
Is there a connection between comedy
and Jews? What are you, meshuga?
4-5:15 PM ET; tickets free for members / $10.
Dec. 15 — Nowhere Comedy Club
The Secret Life of Jokes for the Nowhere Comedy Club.
From Henny Youngman’s silly one-liners to the epically filthy
“The Aristocrats,” every joke ever told shows how comedy works.
5-6:15 PM PT; tickets $10 (Early Bird) – $45 (couples VIP).
Dec. 23 — Levis JCC (Boca Raton)
Comedy vs. The Apocalypse for the Levis JCC.
How laughter helps us cope with calamity,
manage misery and deal with doom.
4-5:30 PM ET; free for virtual members / $10.
Jan. 13 – San Francisco State University
Buster Keaton: Existential Slapstick
for San Francisco State University. He got laughs and gasps.
He was no philosopher but that doesn’t mean he had no philosophy –
a deep dive into The Great Stone Face. 1:30-3:30 PM PT; tickets $29.
Jan. 15 – Towson University
Comedy vs. the Apocalypse for Towson University.
How laughter helps us cope with calamity, manage misery
and deal with doom. 1-2 PM ET; tickets available Winter.
Jan. 29 – March 5 — Osher Online
The World of Musical Satire for Northwestern University’s
Osher National Resource Center. From “Yankee Doodle” to Crazy
Ex-Girlfriend, with stops at Randy Newman, Gilbert & Sullivan, the
Beatles, Monty Python, Weird Al, Spinal Tap, South Park and SNL.
Six Wednesdays; 6-7:30 PM CT. Listing starts 12/1; registration/
membership 12/15/24-1/3/25. Also available through
selected Oshers around the country.
March 1 – Raindance Film Festival
“Mastering Comedy” for the Raindance Film Festival.
The Rule of 3, Comedy vs. Logic, Timing, Physical
Humor, the Evil of Punchlines, Surprise! & more.
4-7:30 PM UK; tickets ~$35, depending on exchange rate.
March 13 – ClassiLearning
ALL ABOUT COMEDY: First of a three-part series for ClassiLearning.
BUSTER KEATON: Existential Slapstick
He got laughs and gasps. He was no philosopher but that doesn’t mean
he had no philosophy; a deep dive into The Great Stone Face.
4-5:15 PM ET; Tickets $12-$30.
March 20 – ClassiLearning
ALL ABOUT COMEDY: Second of a three-part series for ClassiLearning.
COMEDY vs. THE APOCALYPSE
How laughter helps us cope with calamity, manage misery and deal with doom.
4-5:15 PM ET; Tickets $12-$30.
March 27 – ClassiLearning
ALL ABOUT COMEDY: Last of a three-part series for ClassiLearning.
THE GREATEST SATIRICAL SONGS
Tom Lehrer, Randy Newman, Weird Al, Steve Martin, Amy Schumer,
Chuck Berry, Groucho Marx, “Saturday Night Live,”
“South Park,” Bo Burnham, Bugs Bunny.
4-5:15 PM ET; Tickets $12-$30.
April 1 – JCC Chicago
The History of Ha! for JCC Chicago.
Yucks from Ancient Greece to yesterday afternoon.
Details and tickets available Winter.
April 14 — Rochester College
The Shame of Satire for Rochester College.
Colbert, Kimmel, Meyers, Maher, Oliver; it’s the
Golden Age of political satire. But does it matter?
1-3 PM CT; tickets available 2025.
MAJOR PAST EVENTS (V=virtual viewers)
“How Comedy Works”: Sony Pictures, DreamWorks, Lucasfilm, Disney, Script University (V 100+); Austin Film
Festival, Writers Guild Foundation, Groundlings Theatre (all sold out)
“The Art and Craft of Comedy” (all-day version of above): Raindance Film Festival (London)
“The History of Ha!”: Smithsonian Institute, Lucasfilm (San Francisco)
“Buster Keaton: Existential Slapstick”: 92Y Roundtable (NYC)
“The Science of Ha!”: Summerfest (Fort Collins, Col.), Duke University, University of Chicago
“Ha! Aaah! The Painful Relationship Between Humor and Horror”: VIEW Conf. (Torino, Italy), Univer- sity of Massachusetts, Boston
“Comedy vs. The Apocalypse”: Dartmouth College, Vanderbilt University, McGill University; Bucknell
University, UCLA (V 100+); Denver University (V 230+)
“Jewish Musical Satire”: The Whizin Center (sold out); 92Y Roundtable (NYC)
“The World of Musical Satire” (course): UCLA, 92Y Roundtable, Osher Online (through Northwestern University)
“The Worlds of Comedy” (course): UCLA, Osher Online
“The Shame of Satire”: “The Ethics & Aesthetics of Comedy” (Bucknell University; conference)
“The Theology of Ha!”: U Mass Boston, Philosophical Research Society (Los Angeles)
“The Anthropology of Ha!”: Tufts University
“The Secret Life of Jokes”: Tufts University
“Pretty Naked People”: Vintage Theatre New Comedy Play Festival (Denver)
NEWS
In David’s first non-profit auction for many years, he (okay, one of his talks) was bought for $250 to benefit Grassroots Democrats HQ in Westwood, Cal. The previous winner, for NPR station KPCC in Pasadena, paid a record-breaking (David’s own record, but still) $340. The goal for next time: a price equal to that of a mid-level hooker. If you’re with a non-profit and interested, email here.
David made his 10th appearance at NY’s 92Y with “Buster Keaton: Existential Slapstick.” And he talks more Keaton for a special video edition of the “Then Is Now” podcast, available for $3 (but for you, $3) at their Patreon site; you can see it for free, albeit stripped-down and audio-only, here. He then joins “Then Is Now” for a look at his own, you should excuse the expression, career, with video!, here.
More video: Chris Esper has a two-part interview with David on “Hollywood Tales,” and David talks about screenwriting, and his career, for the London-based Collab Writers.
Pam Stack interviewed David for the podcast “Authors On The Air,” and Andrew Buckley did a two-parter (Episodes 3 and 4) for StoryCentric.
David’s spec sitcom “Doug & Cindy” is on The Stunt List, a site devoted to pilot scripts with unusual premises.
David’s on the Advisory Board of the National Coalition Against Censorship; please check them out and support their important work. Last year David helped with their annual awards dinner, hosted by Randy Rainbow, also featuring Larry Charles, Judy Blume, Judy Gold and Alonzo Bodden.
“Apocalypse” Zooms for UCLA, Bucknell, Tufts and Denver Universities drew triple-figure audiences. At Tufts, one viewer saw David perform in Boston 45 years ago; other shows had viewers from Germany, Sweden, France and Tierra del Fuego.
A request for “A Beginner’s Guide To Corruption” arrived in our U.S. offices from a student at the University of Rajshahi in Bangladesh. This increases the number of this book’s readers in Bangladesh to 1.
IN OTHER MISCH NEWS: Massage your operatic ears at our affiliated site: Emily Misch, Soprano; Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions finalist. Then check out her fun and funny quarantine concerts with bass William Meinert at Parea Series.
“Charming! Misch sings with vivid dramatic coloratura colors.” – Broadway World
“Wonderful performances, spiced with a soupçon of my DNA.” – David Misch
David’s song “Somerville” (now 51 years old and my entry into the biz of show) was featured on “The Dr. Dem-
ento Show” and is in rotation, along with its flip side (anyone here remember flip sides?) “Together At Last,” on
Boston Comedy Radio.
“Love Cycle: A Soap Operetta,” a TV show and 1/3 of a rock musical written with Peggy Sarlin and Bill Burnett, was in The New Yorker online (retweeted by Lin-Manuel Miranda). Find out more/hear the score/read the script here.
David spoke at the VIEW Conference in Torino, Italy, on Buster Keaton and humor and horror. For the gala ending luncheon, the speakers were treated to a 5-hour fest feast with 4 meat courses and 3 desserts, all (well, not the desserts) garnished with $4,000 worth of white truffles. When David said “I find the wild boar a bit salty,” he realized he was now officially part of the 1%.
On a field trip, our bus went through the town of Bra which was, four years ago, we were told, the birthplace of the slow food movement. Someone called out “And they’re still having breakfast.”
“The Greatest Satirical Songs” and its ingeniously-named sequel, “Greatest Satirical Songs: The Sequel,” drew over 300 at the Whizin Center and were go-to picks by the L.A. Times, L.A. Weekly and The LAist. The Jewish Journal enjoyed: “entertaining, insightful and hilarious” (I agree with only three of those); the Houston Chronicle says David’s “a true satire scholar.”
~~~ NOSTALGIA CORNER ~~~
David’s production script for “The Muppets Take Manhattan” is in the collection of the National Comedy Center; here’s page 1, with annotations of his amusingly unreadable scribbles.
“Duckman” got a new DVD release; The New York Times calls it “a television treasure,” WatchMojo calls it the #1 Criminally Underrated Animated TV Show, Den of Geek! says it’s “one of the greatest shows of all time,” Variety claims it’s “one of TV’s funniest programs,” CBR describes it as “the perfect balance of intelligent, emotional, and hilarious.” Fans include Tom Cruise and Steven Spielberg, and the old tongue-shaped urine-colored fowl had a cameo appearance on “Rick & Morty.”
Vulture named David’s “Clip Job” one of the best TV clip show parodies (small category, but still). WatchMojo’s clips include one of my fave lines; during an insane asylum group shower, a nurse chastizes a patient.
Meanwhile, fans on Reddit and Facebook are pushing for new episodes – Jason Alexander’s on board but one writer says he’ll do it only if we address current issues. Whereas I’ll do it for the money. The incredible gigantic Midas-level money. (But I’m not bitter.)
40 years later, the Semi-Legendary Lost Episode of “Police Squad!” – David’s “Testimony of Terror” – has a moment: see Slate (“Hilarious”), ScreenCrush (“Unbelievably funny”) and/or Vulture (“Marvel at how much care goes into making beautifully stupid jokes”).
Elsewhere on Vulture, David’s “Comedy’s Authentic Lies” checked Louis C.K. before the fact. Then, after that fact, Nathan Wilson analyzed my analysis in “Misch On Personas, Truth and Ethics.” I find the parts where he agrees with me to be perceptive, while the parts where he thinks I’m an idiot, disappointingly obtuse.
David’s “Callahan” (co-written with Ken Finkleman) is one of the (deservedly) obscure comedy pilots which get (undeserved) in-depth analysis on Jimmy Brown’s “Drop The Pilot,” a podcast hosted in Scotland and recorded in Texas. (Really.) David then joins Jimmy for analysis of the analysis. Proving that failure can be fun! (You can decide if the show worked on paper by reading the (lightly-annotated) shooting script.)
Jimmy and I enjoyed it so much that we did it again, this time with “Inner Tube,“ a mini-pilot I wrote for Jim Henson. If you care (or even if you don’t), here’s the original half-hour script, called “Me-TV.”
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Mark Miller interviewed David for HuffPost where, earlier, David explained why “Artificial Intelligence Is A Joke.”
Thanks to everyone in the reading of “Pretty Naked People,” a sold-out benefit for Santa Monica Playhouse, especially actors Andy Kindler, Paul Provenza (who also directed), Krizia Bajos and Laura Kightlinger.
RECENT MEDIA
Ian Fermaglich talks with David about his career on his podcast, “Ian Talks Comedy.”
See David at the Austin Film Festival here.
To promote “A Beginner’s Guide To Corruption,” David did an illustrated interview with Ed Robertson about Garry Marshall, Robin Williams and more, then endured a series of all-holds-barred interviews with himself in Script Magazine, Bookpleasures and FreshFiction.
David has a short piece in The American Bystander, a print-only(!) humor magazine featured in the New York Times, while “Henri Doupier: Man or Myth? Or Man?” is in the Sherman Oaks Review of Books.
If you’re interested in one of David’s VIEW Conference appearances, and you speak Italian, click here.
David’s talk in Ohio was covered by WFMJ; click here to see.
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PAPYRUS-BASED ENTERTAINMENT
“Funny: The Book / Everything You Always Wanted To
Know About Comedy” is available in print and interactive e-book,
and wherever fine (and, let’s be honest, also sucky) books are sold.
CLICK HERE TO BUY; for more info, click here.
Reviews the author totally didn’t pay for:
“Lives up to its title… brilliant.” – Aimee Levitt, Chicago Reader
“Really funny.” – Mark C. Miller, HuffPost
“Comedic gold.” – BookBub
“It takes a serious mind to analyze comedy. It takes a funny mind
to appreciate it. David Misch is of two minds.” – Jason Alexander
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Not to mention (and yet here we are mentioning) Mr.
Misch’s epic tome: “A Beginner’s Guide To Corruption.”
“David Misch is one funny motherfu**ker.” – Penn Jillette
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Also and additionally…
“Horrific Humor and the Moment of Droll Grimness in Cinema: Sidesplitting sLaughter” includes
David’s “Ha! Aaah! The Painful Relationship Between Humor and Horror.”
(“Laugh-out-loud” – Cinepunx; $90… but for you, 30% off) Click here for the beginning.
David’s essay “The F-Word” is in “Faith: Believers, Agnostics and Atheists Confront the Big Questions” (Simon & Schuster/Beyond Words). Click here for an excerpt in Realize Magazine.
David wrote the foreword for “The Films of Robin Williams: Critical Essays” (McFarland).
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During the controversy over New York City’s “Ground Zero Mosque,” David proposed a foolproof plan to terror-proof America in HuffPost.
Thanks to Jason Alexander, Ed Asner, Kristen Miller, Charles Shaughnessy, Phil Proctor and everyone else in the reading of David’s pilot “Doug and Cindy” at the Writers Guild of America, west.
During Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign he declared that Michigan trees are “the right height.” Here, with a heartfelt rebuttal, is a tree.
David talks to L.A. Weekly about the origins of April Fools Day.
David endures five minutes of brutal interrogation by FOX 25 (Dedham, Mass.).
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