COMEDY BANG! BANG! THE PODCAST

The companion book to the zany comedy podcast.

Devotees will love the origin stories and comedy bits from the series’ beloved characters, and the collection’s creative structure may land the show some new fans as well. It’s impressive how effectively podcast host Aukerman and his gang of high-powered friends and contributors—Reggie Watts, Andy Samberg, Patton Oswalt, Bob Odenkirk, et al.—can tell a funny story. The comedy comes through sheet music, dating tips, park ranger logs, role-playing-game character synopses, lists of medical maladies, and a host of other hilariously oddball material. Samberg delivers the goods in the guise of a “Hollywood Facts” board game, where we get numerous zingers—e.g., “What did Robert De Niro say after filming his ‘you talkin’ to me?’ scene in Taxi Driver (1976)? ANSWER: ‘I doubt anyone will ever parody THAT!’ ” In “So You Want To Be an Inventor: A Note From Entrée PeeE Neur,” Saturday Night Live star Ego Nwodim provides advice for prospective inventors: “Anytime you come up with an invention, there will be haters….If you haven’t heard of something, it simply doesn’t exist.” Comedian Mike Hanford pretends that John Lennon is still alive and infuses a fake review of the Beatles’ greatest hits package, with loads of impossibilities like Geena Davis playing harmonica on “From Me to You,” or Lennon picking up a radiologist named Val on Madonna’s Ray of Light tour. It’s almost sentimental to think of Lennon living a more pedestrian rock star life rather than being murdered. Of course, the text quickly follows that section with crass jokes about fictional bobbleheads, so that warm feeling won’t last long. After all, this book is meant to be an extension of the Comedy Bang! Bang! world, so it purposefully stays within the orbit of that kind of humor.

Aukerman’s podcast companion broadens the proven Comedy Bang! Bang! formula but doesn’t dive much deeper.