Gabe Abelson

Gabe joined me to talk about growing up a block away from George Carlin and knowing his mother; doing stand up and later talking on the phone and meeting him; his early act; studying under Lee Strasberg at NYU; explosion in number of comedians; open mic nights; doing improv with Robin Williams; not getting bumped back in the day; writing for Bill Maher; becoming a faxer for David Letterman then head monologue writer; being the head monologue writer when the biggest news was Monica Lewinsky; how Dave constructs his monologue; writing for Tom Green; his famous Dave back from the quintuple bypass joke; 9/11 and things Letterman would not joke about after; George W. Bush jokes; moving to write for Craig Kilborn; writing for Tom Green and Jay Leno; do stand ups make better monologue writers?; writing with Snoop Dogg; 3 lines or less monologue jokes; Weekend Update; Instant Recall with WInk Martindale; performing mentalism on Behind Closed Gates; The Amazing Randi; critiques my Johnny Carson jokes I wrote at 17; today's lazy monologue writing; a joke I can't tell anymore; my late night packet mistakes; why some people teaching comedy and writing are scammers; performing stand up on TV; looking at the audience while performing; switching to mentalism; learning mentalism; does a demonstration of mentalism for me; how you have to limit choices to do mentalism correctly; odd phenomena; "fake" psychics