Behind the CCP: Dan Cummins

The 2008 season of Comedy Central Presents begins tonight with back-to-back half-hours from Stephen Lynch and Dan Cummins. I was at the Cummins taping (which airs at 10:30 p.m. tonight) and will be most interested to see how it edits — he didn’t go over completely well with the audience, started some jokes over, titled his jokes post-punchline. And he came out after the initial set to redo the title for his "domestic violence" joke, thanking standards and practices. Somewhere in my notes, I wrote, "Lazy eye? Stupid heat." Months later, I have no idea what that means. So now I’m extra curious to watch his half-hour. It was stupidly hot in August in New York City when they taped the CCPs. But I don’t think I’d write that down during his set. And here is a clip. From a different joke. Where people laughed. Hooray. Laughter. Cue the clip.

UPDATED: OK. Watching the special, I realized a few things. First, my handwriting is awful. It was "stupid heart," not "stupid heat," and it refers to one of Cummins’ closing bits. Second, you hear the audience differently live (or even more from the green room) than you do when producers and editors get finished with the broadcast, and also, for a half-hour on Comedy Central, you boil a set down to 20-22 minutes. Third, when Cummins redid his "domestic violence" joke, you can really see it in his face that he’s trying to let the viewers know he’s not cooperating.

After the jump, another clip interviewing Cummins about his set.

Sean L. McCarthy

Editor and publisher since 2007, when he was named New York's Funniest Reporter. Former newspaper reporter at the New York Daily News, Boston Herald and smaller dailies and community papers across America. Loves comedy so much he founded this site.

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