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Living on an iceberg throws up lots of funny situations and challenges for Pancake, Nugget, Brinicle, Looph and Flutter who learn about life, friendship and have fun along the way
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ABC News
2 days ago
- ABC News
Comedian Maz Jobrani to ramp up Donald Trump jokes, after CBS cancels Stephen Colbert's Late Show
Iranian-American comedy veteran Maz Jobrani believes US President Donald Trump is trying to censor free speech in America, and he intends to hit back. With more jokes, that is. Jobrani's been a long-time guest of Stephen Colbert's top-rating The Late Show, which was axed by CBS last month. He believes the decision to end the show's three-decade run — which began with David Letterman in 1993 — was politically motivated. According to the network's parent company Paramount, Colbert's cancellation was "purely a financial decision", and the US president has denied he had anything to do with the popular show's cancellation. The axing came after Colbert criticised Paramount's controversial $US16 million legal settlement with Mr Trump over a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris. In the same week CBS announced Colbert's show would be cancelled, Paramount was in the final stages of a multi-billion-dollar merger with Skydance Media. In July, the deal was approved by the Trump administration. In Jobrani's mind, the axing of Colbert's show is no coincidence. "I love Colbert — I get my news from Colbert — he makes the news fun," he told ABC News in a Melbourne interview last month, after landing from Los Angeles for the start of his latest Australian tour. The tour across six Australian cities ended on Sunday, but Jobrani's been coming to Australia since 2008. He says Melbourne, as home of the annual International Comedy Festival, has "good comedy audiences". Colbert has vowed to continue speaking "unvarnished truth to power" and sharing "what I really think about Donald Trump". Jobrani, who also regularly speaks out against Trump in his comedy skits — most commonly against the administration's deportation policies — says he intends to do the same. "I thought Trump would maybe send the IRS out to audit them or something, just make their lives hard, because Trump unfortunately does not have a sense of humour, he doesn't know how to take a joke, which is what dictatorships usually are like." Since CBS announced the axing in June, there's been much talk in the US entertainment and media industry about how far the Trump administration might go in censoring free speech. Jobrani has united with some of the biggest names in entertainment and late-night television to show support for Colbert, and to fight for free speech. "The job of the comedian is to reveal the emperor has no clothes. I think we need to keep doing that — if we don't, we're going lose our democracy," he said. Jobrani has called on others in comedy and the wider entertainment and media industry to stand their ground. "I always say the whole point of America is, I can make fun of the president in America. I couldn't make fun of the president of Iran, that wouldn't work," he said. Jobrani's family left Iran for the US in 1978, when he was six years old. It was just a year before Iran's Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi fell to Islamist rulers, and his family, like many others at the time, made the decision to flee. In our interview he talks of how growing up as an Iranian in California at that time was a struggle. But he says it framed the backdrop to much of his comedy, which focuses on the weird and often hilarious events that occur as a child of immigrants. While his parents hoped the UC Berkeley graduate would become a doctor, lawyer, or engineer, he had other plans. And now he's among several Iranian-Americans showcasing Iranian culture on stages around the world, and making audiences laugh with Iranians, instead of at them. This was something Jobrani never envisaged back in November 1979 – when 52 Americans were taken hostage in the US Embassy in Tehran and held for 444 days. "For my entire life in America, I've had to explain Iran … I just try to find funny ways to explain to people what I'm feeling. Like I say, 'I wish I were Swedish' because if you're Swedish, you wouldn't have to explain anything, right? You just talk about IKEA, ABBA. "[Being Iranian] has been a challenge, but it also obviously is giving me plenty of material because I have been able to try and present people from Iran and other people from that part of the world, hopefully in a positive light versus what you see when they show us in the news." Jobrani's career took off in the post 9/11 era. He had first toured with other "brown comedians", including Ahmed Ahmed, Aron Kader and Sam Tripoli, on a show called the Arabian Nights, which was aimed at showcasing the voice of Muslim/Middle Eastern people a year before 9/11 happened. But as they toured under that name, they decided to change the title. At that time, then-US president George Bush had called Iran, Iraq, and North Korea an "Axis of Evil". So the trio settled on "Axis of Evil Comedy Tour" as the show's name. Since then, Jobrani has gained worldwide fame and in many ways paved the way for a new generation of comedians from Iranian backgrounds to make it to the world stage. On his Australian tour, Jobrani was joined by another rising star, Iranian-African American comedian Tehran Ghasri. "Comedy is part of the Iranian heritage," Ghasri tells ABC News. Jobrani says when he started out, being a comedian was frowned upon by the Iranian diaspora, including his parents. "I was of the generation where I should have been a doctor, lawyer, engineer, but I fell in love with comedy and performing at a young age," Jobrani explains. He says he was an anomaly when he first started. "Now 20-some-odd years later, there's Tehran and there's Max Amini, and there's Amir K … there's Melissa Shoshahi, and there's Peter the Persian, and there's Omid Djalili — and it really does make me happy to see all of these people in this business now. "Once the next generations realise, 'Oh, you can make a living doing other things' or you should live your life doing what makes you happy, they start doing it. "It's really something that's just great for our community … because until we're telling the stories, no-one's going to tell our stories the way we want to tell them. They're just going to keep making us the bad guy." In recent years Jobrani's played a prominent role in diaspora activism against the Islamic Republic, particularly in the aftermath of the #Women, Life, Freedom protests spurred by the death in custody of Mahsa Jina Amini. "I grew up in America, so I always say that I'm not in Iran, but Iran is in me. I feel an affinity towards the country of Iran. I feel an affinity towards the soccer team when they play," he said. Jobrani says the various waves of massive protests inside Iran, the recent Israel-Iran war, and people's suffering under Iran's regime is "heartbreaking". He points to the forced veiling of women, "discrimination against women, the discrimination against the LGBTQ community, the discrimination against religious minorities like the Baha'i's and others" as examples of that. "I do feel that I want to support the people of Iran, and I do pray and hope for a day where Iran can become a functioning part of the world." Jobrani fears Trump's America is becoming more like Iran's repressive regime. He says comedy can be a unifying force and a way to fight rising anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. "I think that there's people out there that are waiting to pounce" he said. "Hate and hatred, it's easier to go that way and I think that comedy can counter that. "Like when I do a show, I have people from all backgrounds, all religions in the room, we're laughing together and we're humanising each other. What war does is it dehumanises. "You get a room where you have a Palestinian, and you have a Jew, and you have a Muslim — people from different backgrounds and we're laughing together — then people realise, 'Oh, he's human. I'm human.'"
News.com.au
5 days ago
- News.com.au
Comics say AI fails to tickle funny bone as live stand up revives
'Bums on seats' may be the antidote to 'heads in screens', as experts and live comedy performers suggest AI and young lives lived online won't fit the bill when it comes to developing a child's all-important funny bone – they're going to need live human beings and literacy skills for that. With almost 60,000 students already registered in the Prime Minister's Spelling Bee, run by Kids News and with two weeks to go before the Years 3-8 school round closes, the ever-versatile comedian, presenter, director and author cites with pride the classroom shout-out one primary school teacher bestowed after reading his film review of ET, circa 1982. 'I still remember the feeling it gave me,' Helliar said. 'That may have inspired me to construct sentences and spell as correctly as possible.' After decades spent creating and performing stories across multiple mediums, Helliar said that 'spelling is the backbone'. 'When you're telling stories, the most important thing is your imagination … and if you can become a good speller early, it just gives you that confidence,' he said. The author of new children's book series Detective Galileo said that comedians with polished spelling skills can keep pace with their famously wide-ranging thoughts as they write new material. 'The more you can focus on the creative and storytelling parts (once) spelling becomes second nature, the better. I still sometimes have to think about 'there', 'their', 'they're',' Helliar laughed. As for AI, it just isn't funny – not yet, anyway – and Helliar thinks it's because a sense of humour 'is like your fingerprint: it's specific to you.' 'Your specific sense of humour is so entwined with who you are, it's kind of part of your DNA. We want to know there's a human experience behind the story,' he said. 'I did a gig last night, I'm doing another gig tonight, I'm travelling around … cities and regional places around Australia and you feel what a night of comedy does. 'There's something about going to a comedy room and laughing. There's a togetherness about it. I really feel it. The feedback we get … is, 'I really needed that'.' Leading social researcher Mark McCrindle agrees with Helliar that the future is face-to-face, despite rapidly advancing technology. 'I see it first-hand with the resurgence of the business conference and meetings market that has just come roaring back,' Mr McCrindle said. 'It's a timeless human need to gather, to connect. What's key to that is not the person on the Zoom, but the person in the room: standing up, giving their input, sharing thoughts. 'That requires some confidence, articulation and a little bit of experience. Spelling bees are excellent training for all of that and … we're seeing a resurgence of 'the human'.' Humans are masters of reinvention and a second career slaying as a breakout stand-up star can likely be traced to comedian Chris Ryan's early childhood in India, where she lived until the age of nine. Later graduating from ANU with Honours in English, Ryan was a journalist before answering comedy's call, but the mum of two most vividly recalls life-defining lessons in India. 'There were children who would have loved (to go) to school (and) children who went to school … dressed immaculately in primary school, because they knew it was an honour and a privilege to get an education,' Ryan said. 'It gave you a chance at life, better than what your parents had. 'So I have always been aware that to be able to read and write, and then as you get older, to be able to express yourself, is an enormous privilege. 'I've been able to read incredible books and poetry that have shown me what it means to express yourself and the various ways people have throughout time. There is no limit to what we can do if we only put pen to paper.' As for other lasting lessons in the power of wordplay and people, Ryan believes there is nothing as good as a live stand-up comedy show. 'A stand-up at the top of their game, delivering live a one-hour show they have crafted and remembered – literally 10,000 words – there's nothing like it,' she said. 'Fundamentally, it all starts with those very early years.' Detective Galileo, by, is out now. Chris Ryan's solo show is on at The Comedy Store in Sydney on August 23. Visit ABOUT THE BEE â—� The Prime Minister's Spelling Bee is a free, online competition for students in Years 3-8. â—� Students compete at their school in three levels: Green level for Years 3-4, Orange level for Years 5-6 and Red level for Years 7-8. â—� They get 30 randomly selected words from their competition level and have 25 seconds to type each answer. The students with the most correct words in the fastest time progress to finals. â—� Teachers can register their students until August 22, when the school round ends. â—� State and territory finals will be held September 1-5 and the national finals on September 10-11. â—� The national champion in each age group wins a trip to Canberra to meet the Prime Minister, an iPad, HarperCollins book pack and a $1000 voucher for their school.
News.com.au
6 days ago
- News.com.au
Senior Trump officials struggling to figure out how to deal with South Park mocking them
Top officials in the Trump administration can't quite figure out how to deal with the mockery they're copping from the notoriously ruthless comedy show South Park. President Donald Trump, Vice President J.D. Vance and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem have all been parodied, to quite brutal effect, across the two episodes that have aired so far in the long-running show's newest season. The wisest response might have been to ignore the show entirely, depriving it of oxygen. Instead the White House, Mr Vance and Ms Noem have flitted between at least three distinct and conflicting reactions, seemingly unable to settle on one. In episode one, Mr Trump was portrayed as an echo of the show's Saddam Hussein character, with a high-pitched voice, thin skin, tiny genitalia, and a tendency to threaten lawsuits against anyone who noticed said smallness. He was also in a romantic relationship with Satan, who in South Park's universe is actually quite a nice guy with an unfortunate tendency to fall for toxic boyfriends. The episode ended with an AI generated video of a naked Mr Trump walking through a desert, and yet another joke about his equipment. For whatever reason, Mr Trump's staff chose to engage with it. A spokeswoman for the White House, Taylor Rogers, argued the show had become irrelevant. 'Just like the creators of South Park, the left has no authentic or original content, which is why their popularity continues to hit record lows,' said Ms Rogers. 'This show hasn't been relevant for over 20 years and is hanging on by a thread, with uninspired ideas, in a desperate attempt for attention. 'President Trump has delivered on more promises in just six months than any other president in our country's history, and no fourth-rate show can derail President Trump's hot streak.' A few things made that stance less-than-viable. One: if South Park is so irrelevant, why is the media team for the President of the United States, the most powerful man on the planet, bothering to issue statements about it? There's a glaring contradiction at the heart of the message. Two: the show's creators, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, had just signed a new deal with Paramount, worth well over a billion dollars, to deliver 50 episodes. Hardly sounds like they're 'hanging by a thread'. Three: the show's ratings are strong. Roughly 430,000 Americans viewed the first episode when it aired on the Comedy Central network, and the figures rose to almost six million once viewers who streamed it on Paramount+ were added. We don't have the streaming figures for episode two yet, which aired after the White House's statement, but the initial cohort who watched it live almost doubled to 840,000. So yes. The 'South Park hasn't been relevant for 20 years' thing was never going to fly. Mr Parker and Mr Stone were asked about the White House's response during a Comic-Con panel, held between the two episodes. 'We're terribly sorry,' Mr Parker deadpanned. Anyone who failed to pick up on his sarcasm would have been corrected by the second episode, which shifted its focus to two targets: Mr Trump's crackdown on immigrants, and the influence of right-wing media grifters. Ms Noem, who as the Secretary for Homeland Security oversees America's immigration enforcement agency ICE, featured heavily. She led a couple of ICE raids, one on a Dora the Explorer concert and then another on Heaven, where she instructed agents to only arrest 'brown' angels. In a rather cruel extended dig at her cosmetic overhaul during the MAGA years – you can read a bit about it here, if you care about such things – Mr Parker and Mr Stone showed Ms Noem's face repeatedly drooping and falling off. And the character also kept shooting dogs, about half a dozen throughout the episode, perceiving them as mortal threats. That was a reference to the time the real Ms Noem shot her family's dog in a gravel pit after she grew tired of its behaviour. Yes, true story. It became a problem for her last year, when she was a contender to become Mr Trump's vice presidential nominee. The man who actually went on to become Vice President, Mr Vance, had a brief cameo towards the end of the episode, which took place at Mar-a-Lago. Mr Trump and a miniature Mr Vance were portrayed as parodies of characters from the TV series Fantasy Island. Little J.D. got kicked around a bit by Mr Trump, but the most insulting joke poking at his subservience to the President saw him offer to, ahem, prepare Satan for sex. I shan't get any more descriptive. Mr Vance and right-wing podcaster Charlie Kirk, who was mocked for considering himself a 'master debater' in the episode's B-plot (I'll leave you to interpret the pun), adopted the same approach in their response to the episode. 'Well, I've finally made it,' Mr Vance posted on social media, sharing the image of him above, and leaving it at that. Mr Kirk posted a clip of the character Eric Cartman parodying him. 'Not bad, Cartman,' he wrote, adding a couple of laughing emojis. He also changed his profile picture to a shot of Cartman dressed up like him. Not bad, Cartman 😂😂 — Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) August 7, 2025 About as harmless a reaction as you can offer, there, from Mr Vance and Mr Kirk. Ms Noem, however, was not quite so deft. She initially responded by slamming South Park for going after her looks. 'It's lazy to constantly make fun of women for how they look,' she told podcaster Glenn Beck, adding that only 'extremists' and 'liberals' (that means 'progressives' in the United States) 'do that'. Apparently Ms Noem has missed the many, many times Mr Trump has mocked women for their appearance. Many times. 'If they wanted to criticise my job, go ahead and do that, but clearly they can't. They just pick something petty like that,' Ms Noem said. You must acknowledge there is a kernel of a fair point in there, though South Park tends to mock the appearance of everyone, not just women, so it would probably be better to accuse it of being overly rude, rather than sexist. And as for the other part of the quote, the episode's plot involved a heap of implicit criticism of the way Ms Noem is doing her job. But Ms Noem claimed not to have watched it. Anyway, that response apparently didn't land quite as well as the Secretary had hoped, because a day later she reversed course and tried to copy Mr Vance and Mr Kirk. Ms Noem posted a screenshot of her South Park avatar with glowing red eyes – the same thing Joe Biden's staff used to do when they were trying to make 'Dark Brandon' happen – and changed her profile picture to it. — Secretary Kristi Noem (@Sec_Noem) August 8, 2025 The Department of Homeland Security reposted it, declaring in all-caps: 'THE DEPORTATIONS WILL CONTINUE.' Both posts included a link to ICE's online recruitment page. The incoherence of Ms Noem's response – first getting agnry, before doing a 180 and trying to own the joke – summed up the Trump officials' struggles rather nicely. They are genuinely unsure how to handle the situation. They could have just ignored it! But now it's too late for that. And you get the sense South Park is far from done mocking them.
