Shane Mauss often paints himself as “the dumb guy” – someone who doesn’t know a lot about sex and women, someone who likes to drink a bit too much. Someone who, let’s say, might be fooled by the future version of himself coming back after a sex change to fool him into having sex, just to gross his past self out.
You can already see, though, that Mauss’s mind works a little differently. Beneath the sarcasm and the somewhat flattened, Midwestern tone, there’s a nimble imagination, which is all over his first comedy album, Jokes to Make My Parents Proud.
The time-traveling bit is a prime example, based on something Mauss says he had heard about sex changes being more convincing and complete in the future. Mauss could have found an easy target for that premise in some gender-bending celebrity or bashing someone’s sexuality. But he turns the joke on himself, twice, with a time machine thrown in (time machines are a recurring subject on Jokes).
Mauss also has a great bit about wandering into a Best Buy when he was stoned on mushrooms. He thought it was the future. He wound up in the camcorders section. “So for about an hour,” he says, “I watched a movie about me watching a movie about me.”
At times, Mauss brings to mind Louis C.K. for his penchant for telling self-deprecating stories about his sex life (see the last few tracks and his story about trying anal sex with his girlfriend). He’s perfectly willing to show himself being led by his libido and inexperience in a situation where the joke is on him. And he knows how to pepper his stories with one-liners (“I already play with myself so much in the shower that now I get hard when it rains”).
And there’s also a withering wit at work. He talks about being from Wisconsin originally (he’s been honing his craft in Boston for the past six years), and people asking him if there’s a lot of cheese there. “You bet there is!” he says, gleefully. “I can go into a grocery store, get all the cheese I want!”
There’s also his bit about his accidentally leaving an electric blanket on all day, to the frustration of his girlfriend, who says he could have burned the house down. “We’ve been sleeping in a blanket that just randomly bursts into flames?” he says. “Can we go back to the blanket that doesn’t spontaneously combust?”
With the new album up for download on Amazon.com and iTunes (you can only get physical copies at his shows), a Comedy Central Presents coming up on Friday, and a thriving touring career, Mauss is leaving Boston at the end of the month. He’s taking a somewhat non-traditional path, spending some time in Australia before heading to Austin.
It has been fun to watch him develop the material on Jokes for the past few years in Boston, and I’m sure we’ll see a lot more of him, in Boston, on TV, and on the Web, in the future. Where Mauss will be reunited with his female self. Mauss’s future is a weird, funny place.
The Steamy Bohemians hosted their second Jerkus Circus at Club Oberon Friday, featuring favorites from The Human Floor (he is just as he sounds) and comedians Bethany Van Delft and Andy Ofiesh. They've been producing and hosting the Circus at various venues around Massachusetts for the past five years, bringing together musicians, comedians, burlesque troupes, and strange people for one big show.
I spoke with them before the post-show giddiness faded to talk about the Circus, past and future.
The Steamy Bohemians are back at Club Oberon tonight with the Jerkus Circus at 10:30PM. They're bringing with them the usual unusual bunch of freaks and performers (check their regular Facebook page for upcoming performances in Providence and Worcester). Here's the complete line-up from their Facebook event site:
Babes in Boinkland Best Burlesque by the Boston Phoenix '09 Led be the gorgeous and brilliant Sugar Dish (Slutcracker creator and producer)
Andy O'Fiesh (The Naked Comic) Yup, that's no flesh toned body suit! But you'll be laughing so hard you'll forget he's naked.
Bethany Van Delft Comedy Central's Funaticos, host of the Dress-up Show Boston/NYC
Mary Widow from Black Cat Burlesque. Hot like a mannequin with a great sense of humor.
Eliza Blaze Hottie Aerialist Extraordinaire!!!
The Human Floor Creepy sideshow acts of strength, daring, and pain tolerance
Alex the Jester Physical Comedian and Variety Performer. The World's Greatest Jester!
86 Years Young Mary Dolan Terrifically funny old gal from the Vaudeville years
UnAmerika's Sweetheart Karin Webb Beautiful, brilliant, hilarious performance artist. Must be seen to believed!
There are still a handful of tickets left to see Jeff Garlin at the Comedy Connection Wilbur Theatre tomorrow. But if you miss your chance to see him do his own show, there are three other places you can see him while he’s in town.
Garlin has a new memoir out, called My Footprint: Carrying the Weight of the World. He’ll be reading from it and signing books at the Borders in the Back Bay at 2PM on Saturday. He’ll also be performing with the Harvard improv troupe, the Immediate Gratification Players, at 11:30PM on Saturday. Not sure about the ticket situation, so click through to the link for more information. He’ll also be reading from the book and signing it Sunday at the Jewish Community Center in Newton on Sunday at 4PM as part of the Boston Jewish Book Fair.
Boston audience are used to seeing Giulia Rozzi telling personal stories onstage. She’s done at as an east coast producer for the show Mortified, and with her own show, Stripped Stories. She still helps out with Mortified, and does Stripped Stories once a month in New York City and occasionally tours with the show.
But tonight and tomorrow at Mottley’s, you’ll see her by herself, headlining the show. “My stand-up is personal, revealing,” she says. “I share stories about my family, my life, the only difference is you get me-all me-for 40 minutes.”
The Belmont native left for college in 1996, but started comedy at open mic nights at Nick’s Comedy Stop when she came home to visit. She started stand-up in earnest in 2001 when she was living in Los Angeles. She’s currently working on a one-woman show she says is about “marriage/love/divorce.”
The title of Jessica Delfino’s show, “Dirty Folk Rock,” may be a bit of an understatement. Even the titles of her songs (“My Pussy Is Magic,” “A Stranger’s Cock”) are NSFW, to say the least (sorry if you are reading this at work). She does mention in her bio that she has been denounced by the Catholic League, and if you visit the links from www.jessicadelfino.com, you can see why.
But the multi-talented Delfino has entertained audiences around the world, appearing at Montreal’s Just for Laughs Festival, the Edinburgh Fringe Fest, and the Dublin Comedy Festival. She can also tone it down enough to appear on Good Morning America and Fox News’s Red Eye show. She’ll be toning it down a bit tonight at the Cape Ann Community Cinema in Gloucester, as well.
I spoke with the singer, comedian, and filmmaker by e-mail about the show.
How did you hook up with the venue in Gloucester?
I was hitch hiking through Calcutta and this guy picked me up in his truck. He told me he had a friend who owned a place in Gloucester, MA and that I should play there. 6 months later, here we are.
Is the Gloucester show going to be multi-media? Are you planning on showing any of your videos or shorts?
Yes, I'll be showing some videos. I'll also playing a few different instruments including the guitar the electronic auto harp and the flying V ukulele. But not at the same time. The electronic autoharp by the way, is pretty amazing. It's like a keyboard from the future. You really have to see it to understand its magic.
The press release says this show will be toned down a bit from your normal shows. Is that at the request of the venue? What can people expect?
It is partially at the behest of the venue yes. Some people just don't understand the more outrageous stuff. But it is still dirty folk rock and I still expect to offend some people. Apologies, there are no refunds for people who expect to be offended but aren't.
Do your parents ever ask you why you have to sing about some of those things?
Parents often thank me for doing their job for them.
Do you still perform in the subway?
I do on occasion, but not as much as I used to. I got tired of getting less cards from say, record label execs and more cards from shady people who claimed to own a restaurant in Queens they'd love to have me play at on a Tuesday night.
Where did you get a flying V ukulele?
I got my flying V ukulele in Scotland at a regular old music store. The UK is so cool, there, flying V ukuleles are just a normal way of life.
How do international audiences react to what you do?
They seem to enjoy my work a lot. They let their kids come to my shows, they get all my jokes and laugh at them and they give me presents. I can even sing my songs there on the radio. We are friends.
Do you identify more with being a comedian, a musician, or a filmmaker? Or some combination of all of them?
This is such a tough one and I get this a lot. I went to art school and so I have this mentality that I can make money doing whatever creative thing I want to. But people really want a title. So I try to think of clever ones which combine -- twisted minstrel? Let's just say if it were charted pie style, it'd be a very eclectic and delicious pie.
Kyle Kinane comes to the Middlesex Lounge tonight with a building buzz. He has been Patton Oswalt’s regular opening act, cropping up frequently on Comedy Central and late night talk shows, and had a small role in the Adam Sandler/Judd Apatow movie Funny People. He also has a new CD out, called The Death of the Party, on A Special Thing’s label.
But if you ask Kinane, he’d really not talk about being a “rising star” or any of the other labels with which he’s currently being fit. “I'd rather not pay attention to that,” he says. “Seems that ‘buzz’ and ‘rising star’ usually lead to "what ever happened to?" a couple years later.” His album wasn’t his idea. A Special Thing approached him to do it, and, he says, “When AST asks you to do a CD, you say yes.”
And while Funny People is a nice resume builder, it hasn’t gotten him as much recognition as his opening slot for Oswalt, where Kinane has a better chance to show off his talent. “The only people that recognize me from my five seconds in Funny People are the ones I told to look for my five-second part in Funny People,” he says. “People look me up online from the gigs with Patton though. He's got to have one of the best fan-bases in comedy. They seem to hold comedy in the same ranks and respect as music.”
If you go to KyleKinan.com, you’ll see he’s labeled his Web site “The minimal efforts of Kyle Kinane,” and there’s little more than a show calendar and a list of random thoughts. He has a blog, called “I’m dead and it’s all my fault,” on which he mostly addresses more random thoughts to a mysterious person named Doug. The latest entry from last week – “There’s no such thing as a bad neighborhood when you’ve got a purple belt in taekwondo, Doug.” Kinane describes the (fictional?) Doug as, “the unfortunate friend of a man whose ambition is second only to his incompetence.”
It would be easy to mistake Kinane’s effortless, absurd everyman humor as a sort of slacker charm, as he tells stories of his crappy jobs and getting hassled on the street by the cops in Burbank for riding his bike too fast down a hill. But Kinane has worked hard on his craft. Before he left for L.A. in 2003, Kinane was part of a group of kids in Chicago trying to develop his own style. He says there was a “large contingency” of people who were pursuing comedy as a serious career option, “just going to every show we could with as much new material we could push out.”
Kinane credits his friends back home with shaping his sense of humor. “I'm in Chicago right now and went out with people I've known since junior high,” he says.” I laugh harder with them than watching any comedy program.” He credits his delivery, which is sometimes shouting and slurry, to “booze and the frustration of having to yell over crappy audiences.”
When asked what he’s working on now, he says, “Finding new ways to kill Doug's friend. The obligatory writing packages and the sort. Making sure the wings don't fall off of it all.”
Kinane comes to Boston by way of Dan Boulger and Sean Sullivan, both of whom are on the bill tonight (along with Tim McIntire and Rob Crean). He met Boulger at the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen in ’07 and Sullivan when the pair were taping Comedy Central’s Live at Gotham last year.
Kyle Kinane with Dan Boulger, Sean Sullivan, Tim McIntire, and Rob Crean at the Middlesex Lounge, 315 Mass Ave, Central Square. 7PM. $5. (617)868-6739. http://www.middlesexlounge.us/
There is little Kathleen Madigan hasn’t done in her roughly twenty years in comedy. She’s left her original profession (in her case, journalism), done the big move from St. Louis to L.A., toured the country, done every conceivable TV talk show, and even done reality television as a contestant on Last Comic Standing. Most recently, she’s played to the troops in Afghanistan, made the leap from clubs to theatres, and found herself on the set of the Dr. Phil show.
But unlike some for whom stand-up is a means to an end, the comedy is the thing for Madigan. It’s what sustains her. “[It’s] Just fun,” she told me, speaking by phone from Florida, where she was visiting family. “Just stupid fun. I mean, if I wasn’t onstage telling jokes I’d probably be just at a bar talking to somebody. It’s kind of the same, except somebody’s paying me.”
I spoke with Madigan about comedy, Dr. Phil, staying healthy, and a plethora of subjects ahead of her show this Friday at the Comedy Connection Wilbur Theatre. The vast majority of that conversation is included here.
I have to apologize, I’ve got kind of a cold and my brain’s kind of a big slug.
That’s okay. I just had one for three days, it’s finally going away. It was a killer.
How do you avoid stuff like that when you’re on tour?
Euuch. All these airplanes. You just keep going and getting more antibiotics and the doctor just stares at you like you’re crazy, but what are you gonna do? There’s no way to avoid it, unless you want to walk around like a crazy person with a mask on your face like Michael Jackson, which I just can’t bring myself to do.
Do you have a lot of interactions after shows with fans and such?
If I go out for a meet and greet. And I’m not a freak about germs, but you do think, man, I just shook, I don’t know, a hundred people or more’s hands. You can’t think about it too hard. You just have to go, oh well. I think I got this from a plane. I think planes are the worst because it’s just recycled air, so if there’s one person sick, it’s just bluh bluh bleah.
You were already touring a lot before Last Comic Standing, did that get you bigger venues?
You know, not bigger venues, but just more people… By the time I did Last Comic I had already been on the road, what? Twelve years, I guess. And I’d already done a bunch of Tonight Shows and Lettermans and Comedy Central stuff. But there’s a bunch of people who don’t watch all that stuff, they only watch prime time TV. They don’t stay up that late. So it’s like a whole different audience you pick up. It’s weird, because when I do daytime TV, whether it’s Bonnie Hunt or the Dr. Phil stuff, that’s a whole different group, two.
There’s three different groups of TV watchers, the late night, the prime time, and the daytime. And they don’t seem to criss-cross. You know, they have their time, and that’s that. So it helped me get new people who didn’t know who I was. And then the bigger venues have just come with time. I don’t really work any clubs any more except a couple of my favorites. And that’s usually when I want to work on something and do a bunch of shows in a row.
You’re also on VH1 and CNN – are all of these segmented audiences that don’t overlap?
Believe it or not, E! and VH1, that’s the gym crowd. They see me on there but they don’t even hear it. They just know they’ve seen me somewhere. And CNN people, they don’t seem to really go out.
I didn’t see the Dr. Phil show but I read about it on your site – how strange was it to be on a show with a guy who’s essentially a huge comic target?
Really strange. It was like I had taken percoset after a medical procedure. Because, like, they put me in the audience, and then I was onstage with him, and I was running around the audience asking them questions. He’s a huge comedy fan, though, and he listens to Sirius radio and they play me a lot. So that’s where he heard me, and then his son is friends with Ron White, who I’m also friends with. He wants to make the show, some days, a little lighter and a little less intense. Which is great. Me and Ron White and Jon Lovitz actually did it a couple of weeks ago, I guess. It was a two-parter, they aired the first part. The second part hasn’t aired. Where, you’re actually talking about the subject but in a lighter way. Not so heavy, PhD people with facts. They’re there, but we’re there to lighten it up a little bit. [There are videos linked from Madigan's site, including this one, but no embed codes.]
I was surprised. He has a great sense of humor, he laughs a lot, his wife is lovely. And as a comic, we do tend to be cynical, and I kept thinking, are they faking this? IS this real? [aside] I’m fine, dad, I got her. I’m holding one of my sister’s twins, who’s being very good right now. I will not be obnoxious and put you on the phone with her. “Say hi!” God, I hate that.
It was really strange, but he’s actually sincere. He’s not full of shit. And, I don’t know, I guess I just assumed that everybody on TV was kind of full of crap. I’ve seen him stay after the show and talk to people for like an hour. He could leave. HE could go home, and say, too bad, so sad, you signed up for the show, it is what it is, you knew what it was going to be, and I’m out. But he doesn’t. And I have no reason to lobby for the guy.
It just seems strange to hear he’s a comedy to think of how many times his name must come up when he’s listening to that [Sirius radio].
I don’t think he would mind. He’s actually like, all Texas, all the time. He understands if you’re making fun of him. He’s a good sport about it, put it that way. He doesn’t take himself so seriously. He would love it if someone did a skit making fun of him. He gets it.
He also has a sarcasm quotient that’s pretty high with you, Ron White, and Jon Lovitz.
Yeah, his tastes, the people he picks off of Sirius radio – he knows my CDs – it’s odd to me, he does have a pretty high cynicism, sarcasm meter, because there are comics that are way less cynical. Like if you took Bill Engvall, Engvall’s just nice. I mean, he’s funny, but he’s a nice guy. You know what I mean? There’s nothing cutting or edgy about Bill. I would think that he would lean towards that, but he goes for – I mean, out of the four Blue Collar guys, Ron is definitely the edgiest. And that’s his favorite.
Has the job of comedian changed a lot since you started? The Internet has exploded, there are a million more niche channels than there used to be.
Overall, the biggest change is, success is not going to come overnight. It’s not going to come with one television show like it used to. You used to go on Carson, and you figure, there’s only three channels, definitely a third of the country is watching you, usually two-thirds of the country. So the next morning, you would be famous. Two-thirds of the country would know your name if you’re Roseanne and you go on Johnny Carson the night before.
Now, there’s a hundred channels – five hundred channels – there’s a bazillion media outlets. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. It used to be a sprint to Carson, and then bam, you could headline Vegas. The whole thing just changed. My god, I’ve done the Tonight Show twelve, thirteen times, Letterman five, Conan two, the rest of them. I’ve done them all. It’s a build, it’s a slow build, and you just can’t quit.
I see too many comics who, they get frustrated and they quit. If somebody said, “What are you proud of?” it wouldn’t be any of the TV shows or any of the things that took a lot of work and perseverance, it’s that I haven’t quit. That’s the only thing that I’m really proud of, because there are many times where you have to rethink the whole thing and think, really, seriously, what the hell am I doing? Am I going to be some 50-year-old woman in some club called Bonkers? [laughs] Really? You have to assess it frequently and go, okay, okay, okay, can I keep doing this? Can I hang on?
And I see a lot of people who just fold, and they either go to writing or – because people want a normal life, they want a family, they want a house, they want all that. So they just say screw it and fold. And some of them shouldn’t quit. Some of the funnier ones go, that’s it, I’m out. And then some of the ones that suck keep going.
It seems like there’s got to be thousands of people who quit this job every year, if not every month.
Or they try it. Every single person in L.A., every waiter and waitress, go, “Oh, I do stand-up.” Oh, okay. Really? Do you really do stand-up? Or did you go to a coffeehouse and get up and say something. There’s a very big different.
Did you go straight from St. Louis to Los Angeles?
Yeah, but slowly. I did the Tonight Show and I did some other stuff out there, and then I got an apartment. It wasn’t like one day, I just packed up and moved. It was like, okay, I’ll get an apartment here, I’ll have some stuff here, and then I’ll just throw some stuff in my parents’ basement. It was kind of ramshackle for a few years. I was wherever I was. And then over time, it was like, okay, this is actually where I’m going to kind of live. Even now, I’ve got a guy out buying furniture for my townhouse because I’m not even there. I don’t even have time to go get furniture. So he’s going to get it and sending me pictures of it. And it’s like, okay, that looks great, leave it there. So it seems like I have a home.
Is that a good position to be in, or would you rather have a sitcom or something where you could settle down and be in the same place more often?
I don’t know. Lewis Black had a show on Comedy Central called The Root of All Evil for a couple of years, and he’s one of my best buddies, and he said will you perform on it but write some stuff as well, and write some stuff for him, and I said okay. So I was home for three months in a row and it was super strange. I was still going out on weekends and doing my gigs, but Monday through Friday I was home and had a job like I would go somewhere at ten o’clock in the morning and the same people would be there every day. It was fun, but it was only fun because I think we knew it was temporary. I don’t think I could sign up for that.
The one thing that we have that’s awesome is freedom. Right now I’m just in Florida with my family hanging out between gigs because I can. I’m really close to my family and they’re in Missouri most of the time. They say a sitcom’s thirteen weeks, but really it would be more. You have to be somewhere at a certain time every day. I don’t know, you just lose a lot of control. And that’s one of the other big things that changed. They’re not really giving comics sitcoms anymore.
They’re more ensemble pieces now.
I wouldn’t mind being a second banana on one of those. I wouldn’t mind. Like, David Spade’s had a nice career, as far as that stuff goes.
If you hadn’t left newspaper writing as a profession, where do you think you’d be right now?
I think I would have somehow become a flight attendant. And then I’d be that crabby, 40-something flight attendant that wants to kill everyone on the plane. And also probably addicted to some sort of pain medication from pushing that cart up and down an aisle.
Where you’re playing in Boston is a 1200-seat theatre. Is that the norm for you these days?
These days, it is the norm, between 800 and 1500, depending on where I am.
When you look at where your career is now, playing theatres and selling CDs and DVDs, are you where you want to be? Is there something you’d like to add to that?
No, I’m exactly where I want to be. I really try not to think past Friday. I’ve gotten really lucky with this train of thought. Stuff just comes up. You could have asked me a million things that you thought would happen. I never thought Dr. Phil would call my cell phone. Never. It wouldn’t have been within the range of things that could possibly happen.
If you’re looking through the club listing for a comedy show tonight, don’t skip the Boston Comedy Showcase at Club Oberon. You won’t find a stronger line-up in the city – Joe Wong (two Letterman appearances, Ellen), Corey Manning (Jamie Foxx’s Laffapalooza), Mehran (who hosts his own monthly shows at Mottley’s and Tommy’s), Lady Vain (NE Def Comedy Jam Showcase), Dan Crohn (who produced the Doug Stanhope show at the Hard Rock last year), and Shereen Kassam (SlumDog Comedy Tour).
Kassam co-produced the show, inspired by a conversation with a friend who had never been to a comedy show. “I immediately started bragging about the pool of amazing, talented comics we have in the Boston area and how many of them are blowing up and moving to NYC and LA,” she says. “I convinced him that he would not be disappointed if he checked out a local comedy show, and I was right.”
Kassam and co-producer Peter Norris wanted to find Boston comedians who had already broken or were on the verge, trying to capture an audience that might not think of coming out to a comedy show. “The goal is to give the audience such a great show that they will not only remember the night and the talent, but also fall in love with comedy and become faithful patrons to the comedy scene,” says Kassam.
The plan is to host a showcase like this every month at Oberon, as Kassam points out there are many more comedians she’d like to feature. She’d like to showcase the diversity of talent Boston has to offer, something exemplified by tonight’s roster. “The comedians on the line-up are smart, funny, and hit on real things/situations that they have encountered; each of these comics pushes against the boundaries in a witty, but bright manner,” says Kassam. “This show will encourage people to feel comfortable stepping outside of what they are used to.”
Martin Plant makes his U.S. debut with a high standard to meet. The U.K. comic points out on his MySpace page that, “I owe being able to do what I do to those who went before me, Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor, George Carlin, and many more, and Id be an asshole if I let them down.” Plant brings his one-man show, “Leading the Horses,” to Mottley’s Saturday, his first performance in the States. I caught up with him by e-mail to ask about the show, his U.S. tour, and his influences.
How did you put together the U.S. tour?
I started out with material I knew would work internationally, topics like: People, Drinking, Laws, Religion. Things that we all deal with everyday no matter where we are from on the planet, really. Then I took a few months and looked at American life, the things that you guys go through, and wrote solidly for about 3/4 months for the material. Then over the years I've gained fans across the US so I'm taking the tour to them really, playing the big cities and places they're from.
How did you know Mottley's?
I didn't know much of Mottley's to be honest, but when I was looking for a good club in Boston, the same name kept coming up, so I got in touch with Tim (McIntire) and he has been an utter champion, he was really passionate about putting on the show and has really been working hard to get the night all up and running, promotional stuff, etc. And I'm really happy he's doing to be doing a set on the night.
What are your expectations of American audiences? Is there a specific sense of humor you associate with the States?
I've been asked this a lot, and for the most part, funny is funny wherever you go. America is different in the way that humor differs on a nearly state by state basis, what works in New York, wont go down so well in Memphis. What's hilarious in Nebraska, different again in LA. I think that in America, like most places, it boils down to whether you want to hear alternative or mainstream comedy. Sort of the HBO vs Cable argument, you either want quite safe jokes and innuendos or you want to hear a comic take on riskier things and say the word "Fuck".
Have you gotten any advice from other UK comics about trying to tour and build an audience in the U.S.?
I've had some advice from a few friends who have made the jump over here and the constant theme simple seems to be "Be Funny!" also they told me to remember to drop the "Britishisms". It's odd, but words I've said near daily for 20 odd years means nothing or something different over here. I was out having some drinks over here with a few friends and as the night wore on I said "I'm pretty pissed, so I'm gonna go home" they were trying to understand what had upset me, and "Pissed" to me means drunk.
How is "Leading the Horses" different from a typical stand-up show? What makes it a one-man show?
In my mind, the show is different because I'm trying to make a point. I'm not doing Mother-in-Law and dick jokes, I'm hoping to use humor to show what I feel are some really messed up things about the world. The title comes from the old expression, "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink" and that's what this show is, my view on the world, presented in a funny way. You may agree, you may not, but hopefully you'll laugh a lot.
You mention that you are inspired by Carlin, Pryor, and Lenny Bruce, and "I'd be an asshole if I let them down." How do you know if you're living up to that?
It's all mental as far as that goes. The thing that links them all is that they all did material that was viewed as offensive and against what people knew as safe, but when you looked at it, they were all very cleverly showing people their own pre-dispositions and hang-ups. And in the case of Lenny Bruce, he died for other comics to have the right to free speech, and I compare myself by when I get some material that touches on a subject that people may flinch at, not running from it, but making it accessible and staying true to my own vision.
Other than Pryor, Carlin, and Bruce, what comedians influenced you?
Doug Stanhope should be far more well known that he is, he's probably the best stand up working today, but because of some of his topics, he doesn't get as much exposure as he should. Lee Evans had a lot of influence on me too as he was the first comedian I went to see live and it made me want to start doing comedy myself. Eddie Izzard deserves a lot of recognition too, he is a very intelligent and funny guy who was true to himself throughout his career.
Did you see a difference between American and English comics when you were starting out?
To be honest, the amount of US comics has increased a lot, but when I was starting out, there were only the really big names that made is across the pond, Carlin, Chris Rock, Jerry Seinfeld, etc. But they were always much more confrontational, whereas British comedy was always more analytical and self deprecating.
What made you pursue comedy seriously?
I started out doing acting, and I found that I always wanted the comedy roles, and I'd ad-lib certain bits and want to re-write them to make them funnier, and I soon realized I wanted the laughs more then I wanted to be acting. And I went to a stand up show with a friend who bet me I could do it too, so I called a local comedy club and it was there I knew this was wanted to do with my life. I did many years of working a full time job then going off to gig at night and sleeping on a couch or a floor, so once I earned enough to go full time, it seemed the natural progression.
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Shane Mauss often paints himself as “the dumb guy” – someone who doesn’t know a lot about sex and women, someone who likes to drink a bit too much. Someone who, let’s say, might be fooled by the future version of himself coming back after a sex change to fool him into having sex, just to gross his past self out. 
And there’s also a withering wit at work. He talks about being from Wisconsin originally (he’s been honing his craft in Boston for the past six years), and people asking him if there’s a lot of cheese there. “You bet there is!” he says, gleefully. “I can go into a grocery store, get all the cheese I want!” 
