Jackie "Joke Man" Martling

A Hoof Hearted Joke Hunt

“Gentlemen, we are just going from one bizarre circumstance to the next..” - The Late Shift

The late 90’s were a wild and interesting time for me. The end of the innocence, in so many ways. I had no idea that my career as a blue collar manufacturing guy would be upended in a few years. No idea that I would finally graduate high school at 27. And I certainly had no idea what a podcast was.

What I did know was that a show came on the radio every morning that I simply could not live without. My job was 11pm-7am. I would jump in the car and turn it on. Many times I’d stop for a quick McMuffin for the drive home as I listened, and then would rush inside to get the stereo going.

It was like a whole other world had opened up for me. A second family even. And every morning was a family reunion, dysfunctional as it was. Howard. Robin. Fred. Jackie. Gary. When they laughed, I laughed. When they cried, I cried, and laughed. When they farted, I laughed. When they yelled, oh boy did I laugh.

Sometime in 1997, out of the clear blue sky, somebody made a movie about my second family. They were famous!!

That’s as close as I can find to an official clip that I can post here. But you get the point. This was a big time, studio movie. They had made it! We had made it! And it really did feel like a “we.” Every real fan of The Howard Stern Show felt like the show was speaking directly to them, that they were a part of the show.

It is very difficult to explain how huge the show was at that time. Hit movie. Hit soundtrack. Cable tv show. A member of the “Wack Pack,” Hank The Angry Drunken Dwarf, beat out a fresh-off-Titanic Leonard DiCaprio in People magazine’s Most Beautiful People poll. Don’t believe me? Ask the New York Times.

One of the key players of this cultural phenomenon was writer and comedian Jackie “Joke Man” Martling. Jackie was billed as Head Writer, crafting jokes and filtering material from the other writers before they seamlessly made it to the air through Howard.

But Jackie was also an on-air personality on the show, a position fraught with danger. If you are a key player on that show and you make it on the air, it usually doesn’t involve a lot of “attaboys.” You, and your life, are material for the show. A character. And Jackie was a great character.

If all you knew about Jackie Martling came from the on-air character, you would think that he is a huckster, a carnival barker, a drunk, a goofball. And you’d be right, at least a little. But you may also think that he was a selfish, cheapskate, curmudgeon, who placed his own interests over that of the show. And on that, you’d be wrong, at least a lot.

Jackie left the show in the early 2000s ostensibly over a dispute about pay. Yet like everything on the show, nothing is black and white. It is all shades of grey.

When I first heard that Jackie was releasing a documentary this year, on my birthday of all dates, I knew two things: I had to watch it and I had to interview him about it. Because I had always thought that Jackie got a bad rap on his decision to leave the show.

How do you put a dollar figure on being a part of the biggest cultural phenomenon on the planet? Something totally unique, completely incomparable? It was just an impossible position to be in. What peers do you have to go to for advice? This is a multi-million dollar, billion dollar enterprise, that I helped create in so many ways, how do you put a number on that? Well, Jackie put a number, they thought that number was too high, so he left.

Even as I thought these things, though, part of me was hoping that the documentary wasn’t going to be a complaint-fest, just shitting on the show, shitting on Howard. Because that wouldn’t be fair either.

Turns out, it wildly exceeded my expectations. Sure, the Stern Show stuff was covered, but I also got to know Jackie a lot better. His approach to jokes. His work pre-Howard and post-Howard. And his essential philosophy: make people laugh. Which is a pretty damn great philosophy if you ask me.

And this afternoon, in another one of those “holy shit” moments in my life, I got to interview Jackie. He filled in some of the lingering questions I had even after watching the movie. I got to hear that signature laugh that has filled me with joy for so many years. And this time it was just for me!

It was such a special moment for me. I hope you check out the podcast episode at the link below. It should be up on all platforms by tomorrow. But more than that, I hope you check out the documentary, on Amazon, or whatever streaming service you use. Find all things Jackie at Jokeland.com.

I can’t think of a better song for today’s episode than this one. It is Jackie up one side and down the other. F Jackie.