Jimmy Pardo Celebrating 500 Episodes of Never Not Funny
Jimmy Pardo 500 Episodes Never Not Funny
This weekend Jimmy Pardo will celebrate a momentous 500th episode of his podcast, Never Not Funny with a live taping this Sunday, March 22, 2015 at the UCB on Franklin.
If you’re doing the math, you’ve figured out that Pardo has been podcasting for nine years. Pardo will be one of the very few podcasters who can say they’ve been around for nine years, because when he started Never Not Funny in October 2006, podcasting was in its infancy, and Pardo was one of the first comedic voices to jump into the medium.
“A lot of people want to say I was the first,” Pardo told us, “but there are certainly ones before me so what I’ve adopted…somebody was kind enough to call me a ‘podcasting pioneer.’ So that way I feel like I was one of the first, but I don’t feel like I’m lying by saying I was the first… if that makes sense.”
Pardo has never been one of those people who jump on every new technology first (he just joined Twitter last year), so being one of the first podcasters was somewhat of a surprise move. Back in 2005 Pardo had been doing a popular non-televised live talk show in Los Angeles at the UCB, and they would get lines around the theater. Fan and producer Matt Belknap had the idea of turning the talk show into a podcast.
“Matt came to me and said, what do you think about turning this into a podcast? And I knew a little bit about podcasting, cause Ricky Gervais had one. That was really the only reason I knew what that word even meant. I was between tv jobs. . .I was auditioning and banging around and working the clubs and stuff. And I was like, you know what? I wasn’t fast to get on Facebook, I wasn’t fast even to get on MySpace back in the day. I just joined Twitter last year that’s how far behind I am on Twitter, but I was first at podcasting! It was one of those things where, this was one time, where whether this works or not I don’t want to be six years from now with everybody raving about somebody’s podcast and me going, ‘why didn’t I do it when I had the chance!'”
Gervais had started his podcast in February of 2006, and there were a few other East Coast comedy podcasts that started around the same time, but there wasn’t anyone from the LA alt comedy scene doing a podcast, and so Matt and Jimmy dove in, and treated it like a radio show from the start. They brought in great guests like Graham Elwood, Scott Aukerman, Paul F. Tompkins, Mike Schmidt and Pat Francis, and many of his early guests went off to develop their own podcasts. Over the years Pardo has also encouraged a few famous actors to get some comedy exposure. Jon Hamm credits Jimmy with turning him on to comedy, and a lot of people discovered how funny Ty Burrell and Rich Sommer are thanks to Never Not Funny.
The 500th Episode celebration is going to be dedicated to the hard core fans of Never Not Funny, bringing back some friends of the show who helped get it off the ground in the early days– like Mike Schmidt and Pat Francis– and there will be a few other surprises, but the real focus here will be the podcast itself.
It promises to be a very special event, part of the very fabric of podcasting history. If you’re interested in the medium, or just a fan of the show, you’ll want to be at this very special event. Just don’t get your football advice from Pardo. He’s no highlander.
Get all the info on Never Not Funny via Pardcast.com and follow Jimmy on Twitter @JimmyPardo.
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