State Champ Radio Comedy Lists
‘The Running Man’ star proved a comedy natural and Marcello Hernandez killed with his Sebastian Maniscalco impression
11/17/2025
Pete Davidson appeared on Weekend Update to talk about the ferry he and Colin Jost bought, among other laugh riots.
11/10/2025
Trending on Billboard
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This star-studded sketch is a mini masterpiece that delivers on both a local and national level, and it’s all the better for not wearing its politics on its sleeve. Each of New York’s mayoral candidates — independent Andrew Cuomo (Teller), Democrat Zohran Mamdani (Youssef) and Republican Curtis Sliwa (Gillis) — as well as the city’s current mayor, Eric Adams (Patterson) get their own turn on the spit of this perceptive satire.
Cuomo: “I got us through Covid, and then, yada, yada, yada, honk-honk, squeeze-squeeze,” he says, a reference to the sexual harassment allegations that dog him.
Sliwa: “I’m the only candidate here who’s been dangled by my testicles off the Verrazano Bridge by a little-known gang called The Lords of Flatbush. I was also poured into the foundation of Giants Stadium and crawled my way out. And just on my way here, I was ejaculated upon at the great Stardust Diner by a Times Square Spider-Man.”
For anyone under 60, The Lords of Flatbush was a 1974 film about a motorcycle gang that starred Henry Winkler, Sylvester Stallone and Paul Jabara, and featured a scene that resembles the dangling described by Gillis. Sliwa, who is also the founder of the volunteer crime protection group, the Guardian Angels, was abducted and shot in a cab in 1992 after Gambino crime family boss John Gotti put a hit out on him, has, more recently claimed unverified threats against his life because of his refusal to drop out of the race.
Mamdani: “I’m ready to spend the next hour hearing my opponents pronounce my name in ways you couldn’t begin to imagine. And I know some of you out there are scared of the idea of a young, socialist Muslim mayor. So, allow me to put you at ease by smiling after every answer in a way that hurts my face.” (Youssef, who has one of the best high-beam smiles in show business, is the ideal man for the job.)
And in another response: “I want to be mayor so I can deliver a better New York. Free healthcare, affordable housing, free WiFi,” Youssef as Mamdani says. “As mayor, can I make that happen? I’m not sure yet. But together we’re going to find out… that the answer is no.”
The butchering of Mamdani’s name alone is pretty spectacular here: Gillis as Sliwa calls him “Zoltar Rob Zombie” and Patterson as Adams refers to him as “Zorgon Mamagrama.”
There are also plenty of inside jokes for New Yorkers, such as the debate sponsors: One is the Gristedes supermarket chain, which is owned by billionaire Republican John Catsimatidis, who was pressuring Sliwa to drop out of the race. Others include the latest bane of the city’s pedestrians: bike lanes. (“You want a new way to die? Step into a bike lane,” says Thompson as the debate moderator.)
There are so many jokes in this sketch — which lasts just over 9 minutes — that it bears repeated watching, and Johnson-as-Trump makes an appearance near the end as the answer to the question posed to the candidates: “What is the biggest problem you have to confront as mayor?” Promising to be “very hands on,” Trump motions to Cuomo and says, “This guy knows about hands on, right, Cuomo?”
Wait, there’s more! The sketch ends with Trump performing “The Music of the Night” from the Broadway hit, The Phantom of the Opera. And godd–n, Johnson can carry a tune.
Trending on Billboard
Fred Armisen has few equals when it comes to committing to the bit. Whether he’s playing Prince or gold-toothed Venezuelan timbales player Fericito on Saturday Night Live, Dave, Spyke or Bryce on Portlandia, or Uncle Fester on Wednesday, he inhabits his characters so completely that they can be uncomfortable to watch—especially when those characters lack any self-consciousness, are painfully naive, talentless or annoying. It’s a trick he brought to his public persona as well, especially his bits with Seth Meyers as the drummer of the 8G Band on Late Night, explaining that he was releasing his first fragrance (a suspiciously dark liquid that smelled like ink) or launching his own celebrity circus.
So when Armisen appeared on Netflix’s Everybody’s Live With John Mulaney last March and announced he was about to release an album of sound effects on the Drag City label, it was hard to tell if it was real, a joke, or an Andy Kaufman-esque bit that lived in the space between reality and comedy. Even Mulaney seemed uncertain. And when Armisen played a few sound effects, the straightforwardness of it all only fed the uncertainty.
Turns out, Armisen was not kidding — at least not joking about releasing an album of unadorned recordings of . . . sounds. Drag City released 100 Sound Effects in late September. As the Chicago label’s co-founder Dan Koretzky put it: “Fred proposed a sound effects record, and thinking he meant a tribute to The Jam, we were thrilled! When we realized it was a record of actual sound effects, we were overjoyed!” Koretzky was referring to Paul Weller-led band’s 1980 near-masterpiece Sound Affects, and the cover of Sound Effects pays homage to that album. It is also dedicated to the late producer and indie rock icon Steve Albini, who helped Armisen find L.A. recording studios for the project before he died last year.
100 Sound Effects actually contains a 101st bonus track — a throwback to the full flowering of the CD format in the 1990s and 2000s. The recordings range from seven seconds to one minute and 49 seconds. (A nine-track compilation on Spotify combines a number of effects by subject.) Comedian friends also feature on some of the tracks, including Tim Heidecker, Mary Lynn Rajskub (remember her in that torture procedural 24?) and his wife Riki Lindhome.
In interviews for the album, Armisen has said he hopes some of the recordings will actually be used by the entertainment industry. Licensing fees are a little unlikely, given the ready availability of royalty-free sound libraries. But Koretzky does not sound like someone concerned about how much the album sells or streams. Asked why his label would commit to an album with little commercial potential, he replied via email: “We may have different definitions of commercial success.”
Given Armisen’s commitment to the project and his craft, Billboard committed to listening to and ranking the tracks on 100 Sound Effects. That said, 101 entries do not follow. Some of the sound effects are slight variations on a theme, such as breaking glass, and, for the purpose of this article, are evaluated as a group.
Fred Armisen, “100 Sound Effects”
Courtesy Photo
Track 101: “Fred Walking to Control Room”
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