Dan and Jay's Comedy Hour. The Podcast. · Jason Klamm

Episode 312 – Welcome to Our Pobelisk with Barb Hardly

·1 hr 1 min·4 clips

Barb Hardley describes being the Late Show Christmas tree, then getting signed by The Decemberists.

1. Dan and Jay's Comedy Hour, Episode 312, centers on Barb Hardley and her comedy background around drag, sketch work, and TV references. 2. Dan and Jay host the episode, and Barb Hardley is the guest because she is a performer with years of sketch, drag, and TV production experience. 3. The episode asks how Barb built a comedy identity that includes a mustache, a wig, and a long list of sketch credits. 4. Barb says it takes about two and a half hours to do her makeup and another half hour to put on the rest of the look. 5. She says she watched an episode of I, Claudius and an episode of Angel while getting ready, because she had already done an Angel podcast earlier that day. 6. The hosts talk about how much work it takes to look like someone is wearing 'nothing at all' while actually wearing nine layers. 7. Barb jokes that she is a 'mustache queen,' and the conversation turns to how often she had a mustache in drag. 8. Dan brings up a tasteless music video from the hosts' past, and Barb worries about whether any homophobic lines might have survived from their teenage work. 9. Barb says she grew up with no friends and spent middle school watching NewsRadio, Mystery Science Theater 3000, John Henson on Talk Soup, Third Rock from the Sun, and Nick at Nite. 10. She says her first movie in eighth grade was an episode of Talk Soup where she played John Henson and filmed at Prospect Baptist Church in Loudon, Tennessee. 11. Barb compares that early work with Dan and Jay's old sketch videos and notes that they also made parody projects as kids. 12. She describes a college sketch show called Faux Show, which ran two episodes and a best of, and she says they tried to do it in an SNL-style three-camera format. 13. Barb says the show was built from friends who were willing to be on camera, not trained comedians or actors. 14. She then traces the line from college to UCB and Mod Night, saying the work kept going in New York after school. 15. Barb names Chris Kula, Liz Cackowski, Neil Casey, and Will Hines as teachers or collaborators who shaped her comedy path. 16. She tells a story about writing a sketch where Akon beats people at concerts and hearing that it would make a good Mad TV sketch. 17. Barb says a recommendation from Neil Casey helped her get off Mod Night after Chris Kelly had to leave because his mother died. 18. The episode keeps a loose, fast conversational tone, with Dan, Jay, and Barb constantly trading references, interruptions, and half-finished sentences. 19. Listeners who like sketch-comedy origin stories, drag performance, and late-night TV lore will get the most from this episode. 20. Listeners who want a tightly structured interview or a single-topic discussion may skip this one.

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