Everyone loves an underdog. In some ways, nothing is more American than an underdog. Isn't that what this country was built on? The little guy triumphing over seemingly insurmountable odds? One such underdog is Mike Schmidt. No, not the former third baseman of the Philadelphia Phillies (though that is his nickname, for the obvious reasons). No, the Mike Schmidt I'm talking about is the voice behind the best comedy podcast available on iTunes right now, The 40-Year Old Boy. First, let's get something out of the way: there are an insane amount of great comedy podcasts right now. Comedy Death-Ray Radio, Jordan Jesse Go, Never Not Funny, Superego, Stop Podcasting Yourself, The Smartest Man in the World, WTF. The list goes on and on. All of these are hilarious shows you should be listening to. But the premier comic podcast is The 40-Year Old Boy.
The concept is deceptively simple: Schmidt, a stand-up comedian, does a weekly podcast in the kitchen of his producer, burlesque dancer/producer Lili Von Shtupp ("Lili Von Who?" "Von Shtupp." Sorry, can't help myself.). She will laugh boisterously at his self-described "pinwheeling around", he will riff on anything that comes to his mind, and that's the show each week. Simple, but The 40-Year Old Boy is always surprising. Each week, there are a few guarantees. We will hear Mike swear (yes, like most of the great comedy podcasts, this one's explicit, so suck it up, folks). We will hear Lili laugh. We will hear Mike and his friend/podcast artist Mex do fake commercials as bridges in between stories. But, oh, those stories.
The 40-Year Old Boy has been going on for two-plus years. The first two years' worth of shows are available on Mike's website, mikeschmidtcomedy.com, and I would highly urge you to consider buying one or both seasons, after giving a new episode a sample. The money may seem daunting, but the amount of entertainment, funny and caustic, outrageous and realistic, raw and surprisingly emotional, is worth it. What happens to Mike is simply an exaggerated version of your life or mine. I can say with all confidence that I've never wound up just hanging out in a neighbor's house due to some low-grade sneakiness, only to nearly be caught by the neighbor's mother during lunchtime. But Mike has, and his intricately detailed remembrance is not only vivid enough to put you right there with Schmidt's younger self, but it's these little things that end up causing the stories to pack a shocking punch.
Like all of us, Mike Schmidt has highs and lows. His lows, however, can sometimes include goading a douchebag to get into a fist fight....on the freeway. And his highs have included doing a stand-up routine specifically for Quentin Tarantino (who thought he was awesome, by the way). One of the best stories of the show is also one of the most powerful, the most heartbreaking. For those who don't know, Mike used to be one of the co-hosts on Never Not Funny, the fast-paced comic podcast hosted by Jimmy Pardo and Matt Belknap. Mike appeared on the first 60 episodes of the long-running show, but he and Pardo, previously road comics and great friends, had enough of a falling-out that they parted ways as amicably as possible. Fans of Never Not Funny know of the Pard-Cast-A-Thon, a 12-hour event on Black Friday where the comedian does a charity version of the show to raise money and awareness for children suffering from a cleft palate. Last year, Mike relayed in a layered, painful fashion his misbegotten attempt to essentially crash the Pard-Cast-A-Thon. He had good intentions, only wanting to be part of the crowd, and part of him how potentially bad the idea was.
It was hard to listen to, but it was also refreshing. I listen to a lot of podcasts (and, shameless plug, now am part of one, Entertained, which you can find at entertained.podbean.com) and very few feature hosts or guests as willing to cut themselves open and show you everything that can be shown...through audio. Mike Schmidt does this every week, and does so in the most entertaining way possible. He's never shy about his faults, nor is he shy about throwing critiques around to every topic imaginable. His Pard-Cast-A-Thon story was immensely sad, mostly because it was yet another time when all I wanted was for the underdog to triumph. At the end of this story, Mike didn't end up crashing the actual event, but got as close as he could before being warned off by a fellow comedian. What made the story so relatable, so real, is that we've all been there. We've all made decisions we know are bad, dumb, whatever; we make these decisions, and even in the moment, we know they're bad decisions. We've all wanted to be included, and we've all harbored resentment for no good reason (and acknowledged it as such). Schmidt is able to elucidate his feelings so eloquently, so rapidly, and so intelligently on a week-to-week basis that listening to The 40-Year Old Boy is tantamount to the podcast having a good reason to exist.
All of this said, I don't want to lose the main point. What's the main point? A) The 40-Year Old Boy is one of the best podcasts available. B) The 40-Year Old Boy is a wildly hilarious show. One week, he could tell the Pard-Cast-A-Thon story, and the next, he'll tell us all about his experience being a bouncer at an Insane Clown Posse concert (hint: it didn't go well). One week, we'll hear about his experience with Tarantino, and the next, he'll talk about getting his wife's former boss angry at him. Each week, there is but one promise: the 40-Year Old Boy will return with another bracing, brash, and brilliant tale full of insight, incisive wit, and intelligence. Give the show a listen; as I always say with great pieces of entertainment, you do yourself a disservice by not giving it a try.
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