Myq Kaplan back in Boston with Last Comic Standing tour

Myq Kaplan at the Wilbur tonight with LCS

When Myq Kaplan was the first comic called out in the Last Comic Standing finale in August, there was an immediate reaction around Boston and wherever the Boston comedy community reaches. People Twittered and posted on Facebook, saying that Myq deserved to win. Some (and I may have been among them) even decided there was no need to watch the rest of the show.

Kaplan is thankful for that, but he’s still happy to be touring with the top five contestants, which includes eventual winner Felipe Esparza, Roy Wood Jr., Tommy Johnagin, and Mike Destefano. The tour stops at the Wilbur tonight.

If you can’t get out to see Kaplan in person tonight, take a look at this animation of his savior as octopus bit. It won’t completely make up for not seeing Kaplan, but it will help you imagine a slightly more angular and evil looking Myq. Then take a look at a few thoughts from Myq on LCS.



What were your thoughts when they called you first in the finale?

Well, since there were two people whose name start with "Mike" as long as they weren't spelling out the announcements, my very first thought when I heard the first name was "I'm glad there are two Mikes."

When I heard my last name, I was initially disappointed, but also relieved that it was over. I mean, of course I would have loved to win, but given that only one person can, I'm in good company with every comedian that didn't win. I'm just thrilled that I made it as far as I did.

There was a pretty strong reaction from Boston fans that you were robbed. Have you had that discussion a lot with friends from the Boston comedy community? Or from comedian friends in general, for that matter?

A lot of people have told me that they were surprised I didn't win, which is very nice. My friends have obviously been very supportive, though most of my comedian friends know that comedy is subjective, contests can be arbitrary, and a public vote doesn't make everyone happy (that last part is not just specific to comedy). Some fans have written to me to tell me they're positive the thing was rigged, and I really appreciate the sentiment.

It's nice to know that my comedy made so many people feel as though I was objectively the best, to the point where they disregard the fact that there is no objective reality to it. Everyone in the top 5 is great, and we all have our die-hard fans who tell us we are the best, I'm sure. Which is part of what's cool about comedy. So, to everyone who thought I "should" have won, thank you very much.

Did you see a lot of familiar faces on Lowell and Worcester?

Several comedian friends came out to each of those shows. Boston comics Josh Gondelman, Jono Zalay, Peter Gross, and Sean Wilkinson were in Worcester, and Tom Morello drove me to the show in Lowell after I spent the day in Boston, having breakfast with Renata Tutko and watching Tony V in "The Town." (To name some of the other familiar faces I saw along the way.)

Has the show or the tour opened anything up for you in terms of career opportunities since last we spoke?

I forget what we last talked about, so the answer is maybe. The show has been great because it let millions of people watch me do comedy every week, so now I have a larger base of people who know who I am, some of whom care. And that's what it's about for me now, reaching the people who do, can, and will care. As far as any more career specifics, we'll see. Thanks for interviewing me.

Video: Chris Coxen comes home from England

If you've noticed a lack of character in the Boston scene for the past few months, that's because Chris Coxen has been gone, bringing Barry Tattle, Rips McCoxen, and his stable of unstables to England. Coxen reports that his characters went over well there, and he was fairly smitten with the scene.

He'll be at The Comedy Studio Friday and Saturday, and back at his usual Wednesday night gig at Mottley's Comedy Club.

I caught up with Coxen at his welcome home party. But since Coxen would never use such a pedestrian phrase, he called it his "Jazzy Persons Convention." He talks about England, and what would make him leave his Boston home for the U.K.

The BC Q&A: Jimmy Tingle, Harvard grad

Jimmy Tingle has held a bevy of titles in this town. The Cambridge native was a bartender at the old Ding Ho, where he eventually earned the title of stand-up comedian. He was a street performer who used to play his harmonica out in Harvard Square. He once did the “Andy Rooney spot” on 60 Minutes II. For five years, he was a theater owner and manager, running a space in Davis Square that hosted comedy, music, plays, and sometimes a talk show, which he hosted. You can also add faux presidential candidate, from the title of his last one-man show.

For the past year, Tingle dropped all of his other titles and picked up the title of student, earning his masters in public administration from the Kennedy School in Harvard. Tonight at Bull Run in Shirley, Tingle returns to performing again. He’ll likely be the same Jimmy audiences here have seen over the years, delivering his politically and socially minded material in his distinct, polished cadence and Boston accent. But he’s hoping to approach his comedy a bit differently, in accordance with his new degree.

I spoke with Tingle by phone from his Cambridge home earlier this week.

So what made you decide to go back to school?

Let’s see, why did I go back to school? I just wanted to do something different. Nick, I just felt like I wanted to get a tune-up. I just wanted to challenge myself with something else besides performing.

How did you settle on Harvard and public administration?

Well that’s where I live, I live in Cambridge. I’ve lived in the shadow of the Kennedy School my whole life. I’ve been studying, I’ve been familiar with the topic over the years. As you know, my act deals with a lot of this stuff all the time and keeping up with what’s going on in the world, and I just said, you know what? This would be a great place to go.

I kept running into people that went there. Friends of mine, colleagues. And I just thought it would be a really good thing to do. Intellectually, career-wise, on a personal level. That’s really what I wanted to do. I wanted to figure out new ways to think about the same subjects. New ways maybe to use my entertainment skills for something beyond entertainment. I had a lot of ideas. Once the theater closed I just wanted to do something different.

How did you mix with the student population there?

Oh, great. You know what? I had a ball. I just love the students. The people are great. They’re just smart. Down to earth. Really very committed to improving society in their various fields. The student population is so diverse. It’s everybody from military, and Navy SEALS and helicopter pilots to Green Beret types, special forces and national security types all the way to people who run non-profits in Afghanistan and Iraq and U.N. workers. You’ve got people from all over the world, you’ve got Israelis and Palestinians mixing for the first time sometimes. It was just beautiful. It was just a fantastic experience.

Was there anything that surprised you about it?

What surprised me the most was how important and how unique and how influential popular culture is in the world of – or can be – in the world of academia. When you step out of what you do, you realize the significance of what you do. That’s what my take away was. I said, wow, what I do is really different. Not everybody does this. Not everybody can do it. And it’s really unique and it’s really special. And I can do a lot of good with it.



Did you get recognized in class frequently? Were people surprised to look over and see you sitting next to them?

You know what? I thought I’d be going to like another country. I felt like no one’s going to know me. I get in there, many of the teachers had been to shows. All of the deans had been to the shows. I couldn’t believe it. They all knew me.

Was that awkward? “Hey! I’m a big fan! By the way, you got a D on your paper.”

No, but the staff, a lot of the people who worked there, you know, from the police department to security to the clerical workers, I just knew a lot of people. Harvard employs, you know, twenty-five thousand people. Well, I don’t know the exact number, but I think it’s one of the largest employers in the area. I know it’s one of the largest, I don’t know if it’s the largest. A lot of these people are local.

So many of these people have been to the shows over the years. Especially the professors and the deans and people like that had come to the shows. I was really surprised. Not so much the students, although some students had, the Americans had. So that was really surprising to me. Because I really wasn’t going there as a comedian, nor did I want to. I was never “on” during class. I was never trying to be funny. I was just there to listen and to learn and literally to try to get through the material, just like any other college course.

How long were you there?

It was a one-year program. So I started in July, we had started summer school in July of ’09, and we finished May 27 of 2010.

So what now that you have this? What’s the next step?

I don’t know, Nick. I’m really going to focus on these performances. I’m going to focus on using comedy, hopefully, for more than just entertainment value. I’m not sure how, but that’s kind of what I’m working on now.

Is there anything immediate that you can think of that your studying will change about your performance?

I think it’s opened me up to a better discipline of reading, writing. It’s broadened my perspective on how the world works. It broadens your perspective of how the country works, how the world works. Just the diversity of opinions and the diversity of mindsets. You get exposed to people from other countries who are there at the Kennedy School trying to improve water purification in Africa or bring electricity to parts of Asia, to reduce poverty in Latin America. And the challenges that they face are huge. We have our own challenges, but they’re not those types of challenges.

You have people who are there from Israel and Palestine. Their challenges are literally life and death, and their politics matter and change of policies matter to people in profound ways. The same with the African countries. It puts America and the world into perspective in a very real way that you don’t get from just newspapers. Although, just being familiar with all these different scenarios over the years by reading newspapers and paying attention to the news, then you start to put human faces on these situations. And that’s something you don’t get from newspapers – the human connection.

Is it going to be an adjustment going back to performing after having spent the last year mostly on studying and schoolwork?

I don’t think it’s going to be a big adjustment at all. It’s like getting a tune-up. It’s an intellectual tune-up. You know? Maybe not a comedic tune-up. But an intellectual one. And it’s a rest. A rest from performing. It’s a break from being onstage, it’s a break from saying what you think. I loved being in the audience. I loved being in the audience and being intellectually engaged and intellectually stimulated by people who are not trying to entertain me. It’s not entertainment. And I love that.

I just want to be exposed to more ideas. The biggest thing’s going to be how to maintain this intellectual stimulation and not just retreat back into the old patterns. I just need new challenged. Really, I went to school for a new challenge. I just had been performing for more than thirty years, I had run the theater, I had done national television, and I just said, I think I can do more. I think I can learn more. That’s really why I went back to school.

One of the challenges I think would be incorporating that intellectual vigor into something that can still appeal to a broad audience. I’d assume you don’t want to go up and cite case studies and things.

Yes I do, Nick. I want to cite some case studies. [Pause] No. I’m kidding. But you know what I do. It’s fascinating to me how well-received what I do is at Harvard. That was really surprising to me. In a good way. They really enjoyed my sense of humor when I did perform. I just did a couple of things. Or even the commencement speech, for example. It was just really well received. It’s unique. And it put what I do in perspective with the rest of society, and literally, the world.

What you do can reach people more immediately than what someone who’s studying in the same program as you are might.

Absolutely. I mean, the commencement address that I did at Harvard, they’d never seen anything like that.

Being more of a blue collar guy, was there a culture shock at Harvard?

Not for me, Nick. I was myself. And I think there was a great appreciation for people for who they are. I mean, a blue collar guy in America is the top one-tenth of one percent in the history of the world in terms of living standards. So you’re there with people from Rwanda who were there during the massacres. You’re there with people from the Congo who are fighting diseases that we eradicated a hundred years ago. So it’s not like you’re disadvantaged at all if you’re an American. In my opinion.

You’re dealing with people who grew up in South Africa where it was against the law to go to school if they were black, or in Latin America where there were the wars from the 70s and the 80s and the 90s, and people from Mexico who are politically connected who are literally under death threats from drug dealers. So to put the human face on all these different trends and all these different issues was just a very eye-opening experience.



I would think all of this would fuel speculation that you might try for a political campaign that’s a bit more serious than your last run for president.

If I were to run, it would be more serious than my last one. [laughs]

That’s kind of a cagey answer.

Yeah. [laughs]

Okay, maybe I should be more direct. Are you considering actually running for an office?

I’m not. I’m not. But when I went there, you can’t go there without that being one consideration. You know, after doing comedy for almost thirty years, I start to think, is this what I want to do for the rest of my life. And I think the Kennedy School, going there and being exposed to hardcore policy, hardcore political people, hardcore policy wonks, that’s what they do. Many of the people in there will be future senators, congressmen, mayors, presidents of countries.

President Calderon of Mexico came to do our class day speech. He was a Kennedy School student. We was a graduate of the Kennedy School. Bill O’Reilly on Fox News is a graduate of the Kennedy School. The head of the United Nations now, the secretary general of the United Nations is a Kennedy School graduate. That’s what they do. So you can’t be there without considering a career in politics. I didn’t go there because I said, I want to switch careers and go into politics. That’s something I might want to go into someday. I don’t know. I still don’t know. But I’m not getting signatures right now for a public office.

What about the question, is this what I want to do for the rest of my life? Did it confirm for you that you want to keep doing comedy?

I think that I want to bring it up a notch or two. I want to go to a different level with it. I definitely want to bring it to a more significant level, a level that is more challenging to me, personally. I need to stretch intellectually, continue to grow intellectually, creatively, professionally. That’s really what I want to do.

Comedy Studio - The Comic in Residence Interview

Every month, The Comedy Studio hosts a new "Comic in Residence," a comedian who plays the venue every day for a month. It's a program developed by Studio owner Rick Jenkins to help comedians develop their craft by getting onstage as much as possible.

Starting this month, we'll be interviewing the Studio's Comic in Residence at the beginning of each month, finding out how long they've been doing comedy and what they plan to do at the Studio. This month it's Tim Vargulish, a smart up and coming comic from Rhode Island and a regular on the Boston scene for the past couple of years.

When did you start doing comedy?

I started doing comedy four years ago.

How often have you played the Studio?

I've consistently played the studio about 1-2 times for the last two years.

What other clubs do you play?

I also play at Mottley's and Catch a Rising Star.



What local comedians have influenced you?

I'm not sure if any local comedians have influenced me. When I first started out I was influenced by David Cross and Patton Oswalt. There are tons of amazing local comedians that I look up to, Shane Mauss, Joe Wong, Sean Sullivan, Josh Gondelman, sorry but there's just way too many to name.

What's the average number of gigs you've played in a month before this?

Around twelve a month, give or take.

How will you approach your time -- work on new stuff, refine older stuff, or a mix of both?

On Sundays and Wednesdays I want to work on new material. Thursdays I want to work on a mix of new and old stuff. Fridays and Saturdays I want to use to just really perfect a seven-minute set.

What do you expect to have gotten out of the experience when the month is over?

I'm just hoping to have a great experience, performing every night with tons of incredibly funny people and improving my material as much as possible.

The BC Q&A: Tess Rafferty, Emerson grad and Soup writer

Forty-nine weeks a year for the past six years, Tess Rafferty has been a writer on The Soup, making fun of television for Joel McHale and company. You’ll sometimes see her on camera on the show, or sometimes on the Web as Grace Church FBI/CIA/SAG/AFTRA. But for a while, you haven’t been able to see her much in Boston. Tonight, you’ll get to see the Emerson grad back on her home turf, in Boston where she started comedy.

Rafferty’s first gig was at the Comedy Connection in the mid-nineties, which is where she met Frank Ahearn, whom tonight’s show at Tommy’s Comedy Lounge is benefiting. Ahearn had a massive stroke in December, and while he is recovering, he’s still not one hundred percent. So comedy friends like Rafferty, Gary Gulman, Steve Sweneey, Joe Wong, and others are pitching in to help out.

I spoke with Rafferty by phone from Los Angeles.

Do you get much time to go onstage, considering your day job and other obligations?

Not as much as you would in Boston. I get up a fair amount. I go up a couple of times a month out here still. There’s just not as much stage time out here anyway as there is in Boston. But it all evens out.

Do you consider yourself a writer first and a stand-up second or do they hold equal weight for you?

You know, I don’t really think of it like that, I guess. I do appear on camera on the show as well, and I do side projects, and I’m getting stand-up out there. So I don’t really think of it as any one thing. I think of it as, I kind of do it all, or it’s all part of the same thing that I do.

But there are different muscles you need to flex, doing stand-up, writing, and doing things like Grace Church.

It is different muscles, which is really what makes it fun. It’s fun to get your sea legs and get up and do stand-up again. It’s a completely different set of muscles than when you’re doing something on camera. Because stand-up’s so immediate. The first time you tape something that’s for television, you don’t have a live audience there. Film is even worse because you don’t have anyone there.



If I tape something for The Soup in the studio, there’s usually an audience there who’ll laugh. But if I’m taping something for Grace Church or another short film, there’s nobody there. You’re so used to that immediate response for stand-up, and it’s something that, if you make a joke on the set of a movie and it’s funny, you don’t get anything. It’s a very weird experience, especially for stand-ups. That laugh is what keeps them coming back.

A lot of comedians will say that instant gratification is what makes them prefer stand-up to anything else they do.

It’s the same reason why so many of them did so much coke in the 80s.

There’s that, as well. Is ‘The Soup’ like a giant opium den there, is that how the creative process works.

No. It is really funny because, you would hear the SNL stories and everything about, back in the heyday of comedy writing, there was coke everywhere. I wasn’t there, you just hear all the stories. And everyone on The Soup just really likes good wine. That’s our vice. We’ll pick a place for drinks, and it has to have good wine.



You’d hear stories about that in Boston, too. But you were at Emerson after all that had passed, correct?

I didn’t graduate from Emerson until the early 90s.

What was the scene like then? Were you doing stand-up or just studying it?

I did start doing stand-up there. It was an interesting scene. The boom had sort of passed for all of comedy. Boston has always been such an amazing comedy town, but, you know compared to the way it had been… You had to go out and find different venues. I was around when The Comedy Studio started. That’s kind of like my era. There wasn’t as much work in the clubs. Boston is a great place because they’re very loyal. The people who keep coming back want to see the headliners and the big guys and stuff.

So there’s not a lot of spots for as many new acts as there were. And a lot of the new acts were kind of… it was when alternative comedy was popular. People were trying to do different things, and so it didn’t really lend itself to the regular Friday night line-up at Nick’s, for example. I was doing more coffee shops, and The Comedy Studio. Those kind of venues. The Cantab. Different places where people would put up rooms and try to get people to come out.



It seems like at one point, you had people like Nick Di Paolo and Patrice Oneal at Nick’s, on that side of things, and you had clubs like, for a while, Catch A Rising Star and then The Comedy Studio providing different kinds of comedy, so you had a pretty diverse scene.

For me, I was after Catch, and Patrice and Nick had already moved down to New York. So it was a little bit later than that. But I always compared it to… when I was twenty-one and I was onstage somewhere in Boston – Boston gets so many people out to see comedy – I was onstage at 21 doing jokes about sex, and nobody wants to see me doing that. Because for most of the audience, I’m like their daughter’s friend who’s a bad influence.

I think it’s really hard, the more I do this, I think it’s really hard for a person who’s in college to really break through. And I think it’s amazing when college-age stand-ups do break through. Because the audience isn’t college-age, and I think there’s a disconnect with a lot of America. I mean, out in L.A., all they want to see a lot of times is youth. But I think for the rest of America, and the people going out to clubs and spending money, twenty-one year-old kids don’t have the money for a two-drink minimum and to pay for parking at Faneuil Hall.

That’s the story with sitcoms, too. The ones that are really successful are about the people who are in their 30s and more seasoned like the Roseannes, the Seinfelds, the Tim Allens.

Absolutely. Ray Romano, Ellen, Brett Butler. You don’t know who you are ‘til you’re that age. You don’t have a voice, you don’t have anything to say. Nothing’s happened to you. Well, things have happened to you, but nothing that the rest of the world can relate to. Or the rest of the country. It’s so limited, the things that I thought were funny, or the things that I had to talk about when I was first starting out. They’re no less real to you, but how many people can relate to the fact that your roommate stole your boyfriend or something. Or how many people want to hear it.



What did you study at Emerson?

I was a theatre major with an art history minor. I did some writing, I took some playwriting classes. I had an independent study my senior year in political theater. So I did some writing in that as well. But I wasn’t a writing major.

Did you study comedy there? I know there have been workshops and classes, and improv groups and such.

I studied comedy with this great teacher who’s name is Ron Jenkins. No relation to Rick. He has a degree from Harvard, a PhD from Harvard and a degree from clown college.

Right. He wrote Subversive Laughter.

Yes, absolutely. So he was a huge influence on me when I was at Emerson. So I took a comedy course with him. In a way, I was a late bloomer to comedy. I always really admired stand-ups, but I would be afraid to say I wanted to be a stand-up because I was always afraid that the way I saw the world wasn’t funny. But then I was doing theater at Emerson. And the roles for women in plays are by and large just atrocious. They’re just horrible. And I always say you’re playing someone’s mother, whore, maid, or wife. That’s all there is to do in these plays. And I just got so frustrated that I started writing my own stuff out of frustration.

If you go back far enough into the Greeks you can play all of those at once.

Right. Exactly. And still end up poking your eyes out. So that’s how I got into writing stuff for myself that became stand-up.

Was it something you were eager to try? Was it something you tried because you just needed the outlet?

I was doing sketch comedy, and the problem with sketch comedy is that you’ve got to organize five or six comics’ egos, and bring props. So that was kind of a nightmare. And I kind of had a thing that I was putting together and the right opportunity came, which was actually at the Comedy Connection. And a local comic at the time, Chris Maguire, who became my boyfriend later on, he said, we’re looking for new acts, do you want to audition? And I had something I could use. And it’s the same story every comic has. The first time, you kill. And then you never get those laughs again. There wouldn’t be a second time if you didn’t do well your first time.

But it was at the Comedy Connection, and Frank was the general manager at the time, and he’s always been such a supportive figure for myself and my life. It’s why I’m coming back Monday to do the show. I think of it as my home club. It’s where I started. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve played a lot of places, and I owe a lot to Rick Jenkins, as well. If Rick has a stroke, I’ll be back on the plane for Rick, as well.

He’ll be glad to hear that.

[laughs] Yeah, I know.

Go ahead and have the stroke, Tess says she’ll be here. We know you’ve been holding out.

[laughs] Like I said, I still have the tape, and I looked at it again a few years ago. And I was like, god, that was a good set. I haven’t gotten laughs like that since. The Comedy Connection was a really special place for me. Frank and the rest of the staff, they mean a lot to us.

Have you kept in touch since you’ve been in Los Angeles?

Absolutely. Frank would go out to Las Vegas a couple of times a year. Kevin Knox, who was another really good friend of ours, would play Vegas a couple of times a year. And this other friend of ours, the two of them would go out and play golf and eat at great restaurants every night. My boyfriend Chris and I, we would go out to see Kevin and Frank and Joe.

We’d spend a couple of nights out there a couple of times a year. So we saw them more socially, not just around the club. I always credit Frank with making me a food snob. I’d never been to Vegas before, and he started taking us to all these great restaurants. They knew a lot about wine. I always say we have Frank to thank for the fact that I’m the pretentious snob that I am.

John Tobin on Frank Ahearn and Tommy's Comedy Lounge

Monday night, Tommy’s Comedy Lounge will host its last gig of the summer, a second benefit for co-owner Frank Ahearn, who had a massive stroke in December. The first event last month was sold out, and featured enough great local comedians in the audience and hanging around outside to put on second simultaneous benefit. Ahearn was also speaking to people through Skype at the show.

Monday’s show includes Steve Sweeney, Gary Gulman, Joe Wong, Joe List, Chris Zito, Tess Rafferty (read my interview with her on FGH tomorrow), Paul Nardizzi, and Harrison Stebbins.

I spoke with Tommy’s co-owner John Tobin after the first benefit, before it was announced that Tommy’s was going on a summer hiatus, so Tobin and Ahearn could reassess the club and see how Ahearn is feeling later this fall. I wrote about the club in Friday’s Globe, quoting Tobin that the intention is to reopen the club, and that he would feel it was a failure if it didn’t open up again.

Here’s the video of that interview:

The BC Q&A: Bill Burr

Bill Burr says he’s happy. He should be. He’s got a new CD/DVD special, called Let It Go, coming out in August, he sold out two dates at the Comedy Connection Wilbur Theatre on Friday and added a third show for tonight, and he’s in the new Steve Carell/Tina Fey vehicle Date Night. He’s got his Monday Morning Podcast on which he gets to vent his spleen, had a short but successful tour o f the U.K., and he’s living in North Hollywood, a place he says he loves.

Not to worry, though. He’s not so happy that he’s lost his sarcastic edge. I spoke with him by phone last week about the new special, selling out his home town, and “Nature Boy” Ric Flair.

Coming from Boston and New York, was Los Angeles as big a change as the east coast versus west coast comedy bits would have you believe?

I lived out here for a little bit ten years ago. That was more of a culture shock because I wanted to live in New York at that time. But just, my career had taken me out here. And I ended up going back to New York. And I loved New York and everything. I stayed in New York just long enough where I still love the place and I didn’t get sick of it. It’s just one of those deals.

New York is awesome, but after a while, there’s something not natural about living with twenty floors above you and below you. You just feel crunched down after a while. You gotta get out of there. I like L.A., man. Even though the traffic is brutal, the people are a little flaky, there’s a lot more space out here. And I love the weather.

Do you still have anything like you had in New York, meeting the other comics at the Comedy Cellar?

Out here it’s the Comedy Store. The Comedy Store is the freak show. And I mean that in a good way. It’s a crazy place. I love it. The Improv is great for hanging out. The Laugh Factory. It just takes you a minute when you get out here to just sort of settle in and see who you’re going to hang out [with]. It’s like, moving to the other side of the country.

How tough are the crowds at the Comedy Store? I saw you there really working hard to win people over who seemed indifferent to every comic up there, including Dave Attell and Dov Davidov.

No, it can definitely be challenging. It’s not for the faint of heart. That’s kind of why I like it. I always end up in those comedy clubs where there’s a certain potion of comedians who just don’t work there because they think it’s too negative or too difficult or the crowds suck. I don’t know if it’s that Catholic upbringing where I have to punish myself, but I’ve always felt at home.

And I also saw the challenge of it. Oh, this is a tough room? Let me go in there and I gotta figure it out. The job that I have, there’s a lot of fear involved when you first start out and a lot of stuff you have to overcome. So I’ve always been of the mindset that, if you’re afraid of something, just jump in with both feet.

The rooms you were playing when you first started out in Boston had a similar reputation. Seems there were a lot of tough rooms here.

Oh yeah. Nick’s Comedy Stop was no joke. Back in the day, when they would paper that thing, and you had 400 people who thought they hit the lottery just because they got free tickets and couldn’t care less about the show? Kevin Knox used to go up there and slap them around, turn it into a show. And then you’d go up there and try to ride the wave that he crated.

Nick’s is celebrating 30 years this weekend with Don Gavin.

Wow. That’s unbelievable. I’m really happy that, even though it’s not the Nick’s that I knew, I’m really happy that it still exists. Most guys, the first place they started was either demolished or turned into a Forever 21, you know?

When did you get back from your tour of the U.K.?

It was really quick. It was like three one-nighters. I did London, Dublin, and Glasgow, Scotland. It was just awesome. An awesome, unbelievable experience, jus to go over there and see what worked. You know what reference worked and actually killed, and I didn’t have to change it over there? I made a reference to Ric Flair.

The wrestler Ric Flair?

Ric Flair is huge. I threw it out there just to see. It got this huge laugh. I was like, wow, I knew that guy was world famous, but that guy is famous famous. My girlfriend was over there, she was like, I can’t believe Ric Flair worked. I was like, yeah, he went to Japan I don’t know how many times. Those guys were travelling the world. It was awesome. I hope I meet him someday. I want to tell him that story, because he seems like just a great guy.

What’s the context for the reference?

I was talking about Tiger Woods, how they were trying to redo his public image. I was like, why are they doing that? He should just go out there and be the bad boy of golf. I said I’d go out there, I wouldn’t even be wearing a shirt. I’d go out there like Ric Flair. It goes on after that. People jus timmediately related to the joke. It got a huge laugh. Whereas other things, I talked about kickball in fourth grade and they didn’t know what that was so I had to switch that up. But Ric Flair is the man.

Was there a lot you had to change? I know people always fret about what might translate.

No, I tell stories about my life. I would think a guy like Dennis Miller would have a big problem. He has so many references to pop culture. I think it’s easier now with the Internet and YouTube, we’re becoming more like one whole nation. But they had something over there called – what the hell was it called? They had these two twins. Ah, Jesus, I can’t even remember their names. IT was like this American Idol thing, and there were these two kids who were really into Vanilla Ice, thought he was the shit, and they were twins, and they somehow combined their names. Whatever their names were, they took half of one name and half of the other and that’s the name that they went by. They’re sort of huge over there in Ireland.

Did you have time to write about what you discovered once you got there?

Ah, yeah, I made an ass of myself. I asked them in London if they had squirrels. I hadn’t seen any. Evidently, not only did they have them, they had red squirrels, and some idiot trying to impress women over there with his travels hundreds of years ago brought the gray ones that we have over here and they kicked the shit out of the red ones that they have, ‘cause they’re smaller squirrels. So now the red ones are protected. That’s what I learned during a show.

We’re even imperialistic in our animal husbandry.

Absolutely. Insurgent gray squirrels. If anybody deserves to be taken over, it’s England. A taste of their own medicine.

Especially by squirrels. That’s the first wave.

Exactly. You go subtle. You go subtle.

Once the red squirrels fall, you just push the rest of the country right over.

9/11. You just blame it on 9/11.

So you have the new CD and DVD coming out – when is that coming out?

We don’t have a release date yet. I’m guessing sometime in August is when it’s going to come out. And I’m also in that new hit movie, Date Night with Steve Carell and Tina Fey.

I saw that. I kept hoping you’d be the guy to kick down the door and shoot up the place in the end.

I did get to take Common down, though. You know?

Was that a fun shoot? They didn’t give you a lot to do as far as comedy.

Well, they were trying to do a thing where it was sort of serious, and the funniness mas more with Steve Carell and Tina Fey, and then those cops being dirty cops, they didn’t want them to be wacky dirty cops. That aspect of it was serious. So yeah, I had a couple of people say that. “I saw you, you were great, but you weren’t funny.” It’s the usual thing, “You’re a comedian, how come you didn’t have a lampshade on your head?” That’s not what the director wanted.

Would you want to do more stuff like that where you’re not necessarily in a comic role?

Dude, I would take anything that they want to give me. I’ve been taking all kinds of acting classes out here, and I really enjoy it. I’ve gotta tell you, comedy’s a lot harder. It’s like they say, it’s a lot harder than the dramatic stuff. I say that because, somebody might be messing up some drama stuff and it might take you a minute to figure it out, but when a joke bombs, it bombs, and everybody knows it.

It’s very hard in a dramatic thing, if the theater’s quiet and people are paying attention, it’s hard to tell, are they bored or are they actually riveted? Unless you turn the lights on and look at their faces. But if you’re watching a comedy, and it’s a packed theater and nobody’s laughing, it’s pretty obvious that it’s bombing.

It’s probably harder to diagnose comedy, as well. If there’s a problem with the delivery, you can’t necessarily just say, try it this way.

If you’re talking about testing it in front of an audience, for comedy, you have to do that. You have to see if stuff plays. That’s another thing, too. Me and two of my buddies, we wrote and shot a short film that we’re trying to get into short film festivals called Shooting Angles. I just saw the final copy of it, it looks great. So I’m hoping I’m going to get something out of that.

Is that the one you were talking about on the podcast?

Yeah. It came out really good. We did it for ten grand and shot it in three days. The acting in it is great, it’s really funny, and it looks awesome. I’m really, really proud of it, and I’m hoping it’s the first of many. It was me, Robert Kelly, and Joe DeRosa. We all came up with the story, Joe wrote it and directed it. We all produced the thing, put our money together. Lou Wallach came on board, from Comedy Central. We just got the final edit done, now we’re making copies, we’re trying to give it to everybody we can to move the careers along, as they say.

What’s the synopsis?

It’s one of those things I can’t tell you, because there’s a misdirection in the beginning that would give it away.

Are you going to do more with these characters, or do you want to do more short video in general?

I’m thinking it’s more the ideas. We’ve got another idea, something we’ve been kicking around. A couple of ideas, actually. There’s three of us, so we just sit there throwing out ideas. You throw an idea out there and it goes through the mulcher, and if it survives it, then we do it. And if not, we either try to add on to that idea or abandon it and move on to something else.

How would people keep tabs on that? Just listen to the podcast and watch your Web site?

And then Opie and Anthony. We had a lot of fun when we were shooting that. Jim Norton was joking around like he was upset he wasn’t asked to be in the film. And the reality was, we didn’t ask him because it was such a small part we didn’t want to insult him. It was classic Opie and Anthony, where they are somehow able to trash something and it actually ends up being positive and you get three days of great radio out of it. I know their listeners are aware of the movie. They did us a big favor by trashing us for not putting Jim in it.

Do you like doing the podcast? Is that something you’ve taken to?

Oh, yeah. I love doing it. And really, to be honest with you, it all came out of the idea to get my name out there and to hype my gigs, but another big part of it was, I remember when I had a day job and Mondays sucked. I hated going to work on Mondays. Actually, the reality was Tuesday was always more difficult than Monday, Monday I was such a zombie. I just figured give somebody something to look forward to on Mondays, if they enjoy it, just give somebody a laugh. People listen to it on their way to work, they listen to it in their cars, they listen to it when they work out, they download them. They listen to them on airplanes to get through flights.

It’s also one of those things where it’s a fun exercise for me a a comedian, where I get to talk about a lot of stuff I wouldn’t necessarily talk about onstage. A lot of topical stuff. I don’t waste my time too much with topical jokes, unless I’m building a new hour. Right now I’m putting together a new hour, so I need new jokes, so I’ll have more topical things.

But topical jokes, they’re almost like appetizers. It’s like, whatever, I’ll get some mozzarella sticks. It’s no big deal. But with the podcast, you don’t feel like you’re wasting your time on a comedy stage, where if you’re really putting together a great topical bit, by the time you’re going to do a special a year and a half later, you’re going to seem like a guy who hasn’t written any jokes.

So the material you’re working on now is different from the material you did last time you were in Boston?

Yeah. It’s pretty much all different. It’s gotta be. I haven’t been there sine February of last year. I’ve written a new hour since then. So it’s going to be all different.

Are you still trying to keep on track to do a special every year or year and a half?

No, no, it was every two years. I think I might wait three years this time. Hopefully I’ll have some major life changes. I got some brilliant advice one time where it was just like, if you don’t have anything to say, don’t say anything. In two years, if I feel I have something to say and I want to record it, I will. But I’m feeling like this next one’s going to be about three years.

Do you feel like you’re running out of things to say?

No. Christ, it’s not like I’m 70. No, I don’t feel like I’m running out of things to say, but it just feels like three years will be right for the next one. My life is really nice right now. It’s on an upswing. I’ll always have a new hour every year, but it’s like, I think two years is the quickest you can put it out and still have a memorable special.

Is it harder to write from a place of happiness?

Yeah, but when you have happiness, you have the fear of losing it. You just tap into that paranoia. It never ends. I just don’t ever feel, like when you said do you feel like you’re running out of things to say, it’s just like, Jesus, my problem is I can never shut up. I do a podcast where I babble for 50 minutes and I have no problem filling that 50 minutes. I don’t really repeat myself, either. It’s why I enjoy doing radio, it’s why I enjoy doing stand-up. Running my mouth is something I’m good at.

Does it mean more to you to have added more shows in Boston?

Well, considering most of the acts that come through town only do one night, those are big acts, the fact I was able to do two Fridays and one Thursday, that’s huge for me. It’s the stuff you dream about as a comedian. Man, what if I could do Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, a venue that big? That would be unbelievable. And just have a killer hour. And that’s what you need, too, man. You need a killer hour. That’s the perfect amount of time for people to see you. That’s the perfect amount of time where, if you do your job, they’ll leave wanting to come see you again.