The Point Radio: Michael Ian Black Is So Easy

Pop TV says it is THE EASIEST GAME SHOW EVER, and host Michael Ian Black lets us play to prove the point. Plus we talk comedy and guess what Michael’s dream job is? Then we celebrate a new season of El Rey’s LUCIA UNDERGROUND by spending time with wrestling superstar, Johnny Mundo.

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Transcript

The Point Radio. Hey, it's Mike Raub. Well, Michael Ian Black tells me it is the easiest game show ever. It is new on Pop TV, and I'm going to play it right here to prove The Point. Plus, Johnny Mundo, better known as John Morris,

that is along the dog, about the excitement of the second season of Flooja Underground on the L-Ray network, and life in the world of pro wrestling. Let's get to The Point. This is The Point.

The Point Radio. Get The Point Radio. So are you ready for the easiest game show ever? Comedian Michael Ian Black is the host of the new Pop TV series, and yes, it really is easy.

Here's why it's easy. All right. Twenty questions, all about pop culture, and there's only two possible answers, true or false. And in addition to that, Mike,

I will give contestants the opportunity to change their answers. How much easier could it get? The answer is zero, much easier. But you still have people who lose, right? Oh, yeah, constantly.

From another period to wet-hot American summer, Michael knows his way around comedy. So how did it all get started? I got into comedy in college. Some friends of mine and I started a sketch group called The State.

We ended up with our own show called The State on MTV, and then it's just been all comedy all the time since then. So what was his first stand-up gig like? The first time I feel like I really did stand-up, like as a stand-up comedian, was in front of 1,200 people at a college in Iowa,

and I had to do an hour of stand-up, really having never done stand-up before. And that's an unusual way to break into stand-up comedy. But that's what I did, and it went okay. It went well enough that I continued to do it. Michael's also a bestselling author, and it seems like it was a natural jump

from writing his own comedy material. Yeah, it was natural. It's something I'd always wanted to do and something I kind of dreamed about doing for a long time and didn't really know how to. So as you said, like I wrote a book of short comedic essays first.

Then I wrote a memoir, and I actually have a brand-new memoir that just came out now, like last week or two weeks ago, called Mabel Gazing. And it's something I really enjoy. I enjoy prose writing. So what's coming up next?

In terms of producing, at the moment I'm writing a television pilot. My book just came out, so I haven't started a new book yet. And I'm trying to produce something that I can't talk about yet because it's not public knowledge. But I'm hoping it will be a lot of fun. It's a great time for comedy.

What makes Michael laugh these days? You know, I love – I've been watching episodes of Key and Peele and Catching Up with them. And Amy Schumer's show really makes me laugh. And there's so many funny stand-up comedians out there right now. Camille Mangiani and her Hannibal Burris is really funny.

There's just so many. It's a great time for comedy right now. And as far as the one dream job he hasn't had yet? My dream right now, and you're going to think I'm lying but I'm not, is to actually do a daily radio talk show from my home.

That would be, to me, the perfect job. Just sit in my pajamas in my home, talk to interesting people all day, and then when I'm done, I'm still at home. Like I would never have to leave my house. That's my dream.

All right, so back to the easiest game show ever. I asked Michael to give me some sample questions. Let's see what I can do. I think you're going to do great. Since Caddyshack, Bill Murray and Chevy Chase have never appeared in a scene together.

Since Caddyshack. That is true. True. That is true. And I like the authority with which you said it.

Or the fact that my life is so bleak that I actually knew that. There you go. There's two sides to that coin. Here's another one. The first Air Jordans were released before LeBron James was born.

True or false? I'm going to have to guess that that would be true. That is false. That is unfortunately false. All right, here's the tiebreaker.

You're one for two. The creator of the Thymaster also created the mood ring. That is true. And I think that is that Suzanne Summers. Well, it is true.

And I can't tell you. I don't know who created it, but it is true. Well, Suzanne Summers notwithstanding, two out of three ain't bad. You'll find out exactly how well you do with the easiest game show ever. New episodes every Friday only on Pop TV.

DC's talking Rebirth and I smell a reboot coming. All that and more as we look at the latest in pop culture. Don't make surprise that Impractical Jokers is back for another season on True TV. Season five will return to the network on February 11th at the usual time, 10 o'clock Eastern. Stargate Atlantis is back at least in comic book form.

American Mythology Comics has announced a new ongoing series. JC Vaughn from Fox's 24 will be involved and the series will launch in April. Reed Pop has announced a new event to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Star Trek. The three-day convention will be held in New York City at the Javits Center right around in September, which of course will be the official date for 50 years for Star Trek.

By the way, New York is the home of the very first Star Trek convention that was held in January of 1972 at the Stadler Hotel in Manhattan. Rebirth is a word that's causing all the buzz when it's involved with DC Comics. It came from a rather curious tweet that was sent out by Danda Dio and Jim Lee a few days ago. According to our friends at Bleeding Cool, it involves DC renumbering their titles beginning with all number ones in June and bringing all the books more in line with the TV and movie properties that are out there.

Some books are also reported to go bi-weekly for this summer, but no official word on any of this yet from DC Comics. Our right network is bridging that gap between wrestling and comics with a first of four one-shots based on their Lucha Underground series. The comics will be released bi-weekly and will help bridge storylines between the two seasons. Second season of Lucha Underground began just a few days ago and you can hear our exclusive interview with Lucha Underground star Johnny Mundo coming up in a bit. Wow, 90s nostalgia, Kato Kaitlin is back. He's hosting a talk show with longtime friend Will Stump.

It's called Sports Haters and it's on FilmOn.com. It'll also air Saturday nights on The Dish Network. Move over Stretch Armstrong, there's another toy coming to Netflix. It's Mattel's American Doll, the hugely popular franchise. We'll get four live action specials to turn up on the streaming service sometime later this year. Live maybe the new buzzword when it comes to getting network ratings.

The Greece live production on Fox picked up some 12.18 million viewers, which was huge for that network. The best numbers they've had since the September season premiere of Empire. And it was also bigger than the NBC Wiz live production that came along in December. Meanwhile, on WGN America, The Outsiders was the most watched original series in their history. That first episode pulled in 1.75 million viewers.

In the WWE, you knew he was John Morrison. Now he's Johnny Mundo, star of El Rey's Lucha Underground. Heading into its second season on the network. I asked John exactly what sets this show apart from the other wrestling on TV. Lucha Underground is a combination, I would even call it an evolution of wrestling.

It's faster paced, harder hitting and more high flying than your traditional American style pro wrestling like TNA or WWE. The characters are larger than life and even further out there than any other wrestling in existence on TV today too. So it's a, I think it's just, you call it more extreme. To me, it's more interesting. It's faster paced.

And the stories are further out there. As far as we've got the characters, the dragon, we've got a character, Aerostar, that can blast off into space. And the way that the show is filmed allows that stories can be more multi layered and complicated than some of the other wrestling storylines. In the business, good guys are faces, bad guys are heels. Where does John fall on this?

Well, technically, I'm a, I'm a ruto, which means I'm a heel. I'm a bad guy. I started as a, I started off as a technical, aka face in a season one and turned halfway through the season when Alberto Petrone came to the gender ground and now he, now a bad guy. His love affair with the wrestling business started pretty early. Absolutely.

And I think everybody who ends up having a career in pro wrestling almost inevitably was a fan when they were a kid. And yeah, I grew up watching it. I would go to the Great Western Forum and watch WWE when they came to Los Angeles and watched it every weekend and go out in the front yard and put Boston crabs and camel clutches on my friends. Everyone in the neighborhood, we all watched it together. We'd go over and trade houses when WrestleMania and SummerSlam are on and watch the pay-per-views together too.

And so yeah, I grew up with it. John got started with the WWE reality show Tough Enough, and he still feels that was an incredibly lucky break. I couldn't have been more blessed to get in through Tough Enough. It was really – the best way to describe it is just the best opportunity in my life was to get on that show. I got to train with the best trainers in the business.

I got to get my foot in the door with WWE, and I wouldn't do anything differently. It's limited, the amount of opportunities that people get to get in through Tough Enough. And I know that it's – I wouldn't say it's certainly not any easier now. And with NXT, it's got its own set of challenges. And I don't know.

I like getting in through Tough Enough. I like the show Tough Enough. It's first iteration, seasons one, two, and three, a lot more than I like it now. NXT, I'm a fan of – I think NXT is among the best wrestling on television, maybe second only to Looch Underground. So many guys in the business have injuries, some which end their careers early.

How's that worked out for John so far? Yeah, everybody does. It's inevitable with wrestling. It's just the amount of impact that you're putting your body through over the course of years catches up with everybody. We describe it a lot of times as your bump card.

You've only got so many bumps in your bump card until it's punched all the way through. I've messed up both my knees. Torman CL had left knee scoped twice, right knee scoped once. And then the big one for me is 2011. I had a neck surgery to take out a piece of vertebrate, which was pinching my nerve.

And it bothers me every once in a while, but for the most part, I feel really healthy. And I'm really happy I took the time off when I did to fully recover. And I feel like I shouldn't feel this good compared to a lot of the other people that have wrestled for the amount of time that I have. Beyond the squared circle, John has other aspirations in show business. Well, this is similar to wrestling, but it would be writing, producing, and starring in action films.

Specifically, it would be action comedy if I could choose anything. The first – I was a film major in addition to getting into pro wrestling at University of California Davis. And the first project that I've done that for, finished, and had a private screening of a month ago. It's called Boom the Bounty Hunter. I wrote, produced, and starred in, putting the finishing touches on it now.

And I'm looking for distribution in the next steps, and I'm really excited for people to see it. It's cool. It's creatively fulfilling in a way that's similar but different to wrestling. And overall, if there's anything you could change about the wrestling business, what would it be? It would be the way that wrestlers are treated.

And as far as like health insurance and pension goes, there's a lot of wrestlers that spend their career taking bumps and entertaining people. And then when their career's over, a lot of times they're left with nothing. And if I could change anything, it would be to some way remedy that situation and make sure that there's not retired wrestlers out there with messed up backs and hurt knees. With no means of improving their quality of life. Catch the second season of Lucha Underground with new episodes every Wednesday on the El Rey Network.

That's it for now, but the next time we drop a podcast on you, we're going to bring along Chris Carter and David Dukovny to talk about this new season of X-Files. And as everybody's paying attention, plus actress Amy Hill will be along to talk about her many roles and exactly which of the ones were her favorites. All that and more easily found on websites like TrekTVNews.com, ComicMakes.com, PopCultureUpload.com, and in the iTunes podcast directory. Follow us on Twitter under PC upload and on Facebook under the Point Radio. See you back here real soon. Get the Point Radio.com!

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