The BC Q&A: Dave Willis and Dana Snyder from Aqua Teen Hunger Force

For ten years, Aqua Teen Hunger Force has been a popular eleven-minute cartoon on the Cartoon Network’s popular Adult Swim programming block starring a giant box of fries (Frylock), milkshake (Master Shake), and wad of meat (Meatwad). Last night at the Comedy Conection Wilbur Theatre, it was a live show.

How it makes that leap is hard to explain, even for show creator and Meatwad voice Dave Willis, and voice of Master Shake Dana Snyder. But god love ‘em, they gave it their best show when I spoke with them last week.

They talked a bit about the history of the show, how they plan to bring it to life onstage, and the new Aqua Teen Hunger Force: Volume 7, out June 1, which includes an extra detailing how they found the guy who is currently playing Carl on the tour.

They also talked about the unavoidable subject in Boston – the marketing campaign gone wrong in 2007, when Light-Brite images of Mooninites, created by local artists to advertise the show, shut down parts of the city when they were mistaken for bombs. Dave and Dana spoke by phone from somewhere in a bar on a tour stop in Buffalo.

Thanks for taking the call.

DAVE: We’re in Buffalo. Dana is purchasing two giant foam chicken wing hats. You know the cheesehead hats? He just got two buffalo wing hats. He’s going to turn our entire bus into a rolling garage sale.

Have you been picking up stuff like that from different locations?

DAVE: Not much, not much. But occasionally. We have some people onstage tonight that might be forced to wear them. I’m afraid. And I’m afraid they don’t know about that just yet.

Well, this won’t come out in time to warn them, so you’re safe.

DANA: No, no. this won’t come out in time.

DAVE: That’s true. He’s not going to know until right before he gets onstage, so. But he eats fifty chicken wings in every audience, so wearing a hat won’t be anymore humiliating. Coated in suicide sauce.

So who’s in the cast of this show?

DAVE: Well, it’s Dana and myself, but we also have the young lad, Dave Long, Jr., who won the Carl look-alike contest –

DANA: Yeah.

DAVE: -- from our live-action episode and we decided to bring him on tour. Since he worked at a liquor store, he said, yeah, let me just check with my boss and see if he’ll hire me back after I give him the finger.

DANA: Let me just go shove my boss and I’ll be ready for the bus.

DAVE: Yeah, I told him on a Tuesday and he was on the bus by Thursday. It’s great. I think Carl has helped inform his life. I think it’s like the Green Lantern when he puts on that ring. As soon as he shaves his head bald, he becomes someone else. Someone more powerful.

DANA: He was attempting to drink two PBR tallboys in Columbus, Ohio last night screaming, “I am the real Carl!” at the top of his lungs. [Dave laughs] So it’s safe to say the glove is fitting him.

You’ve been a great, positive influence on him, then, you’re saying?

DAVE: Yeah.

And that’s chronicled on the new DVD, correct?

DAVE: Yes, that’s true. Our exhaustive, nationwide search for the real Carl.

Was it harder to find the one character who’s human than it might have been to find some of the other characters?

DANA: Well, it seemed clear right from the start that they wanted to get just the best lookalike as possible for Carl.

DAVE: We kind of approached it like, we’re going to have to cast him anyways. They’re going to have to find us. We’re going to have too much trouble finding them.

Can he act? Can he do what you need him to do onstage?

DAVE: He is a better actor than we are, than either one of us are. That’s the great bonus, that we actually have a guy that’s really good. Three hundred pounds, that doesn’t mind shaving his head bald and wearing a mustache.

DANA: Wearing nothing but his tighty-whities.

DAVE: Or a wifebeater just stained in wing sauce. And yet he can act as if he’s a member of the union. He’s incredible. He’s getting more and more coarse as each episode—each live show progresses. And it’s just working better and better.

How did you decide on the different voices for each character? Each character has a very specific cadence and timbre.

DAVE: We didn’t know what we were going to go – oh, wow. I’m looking at a picture of Burt Reynolds with the police chief of Buffalo. It’s framed on the wall of this place. It’s in a place of high honor.

DANA: Right beside the toilet.

DAVE: Yes. Entitled “Smokey and the Bandit,” engraved in brass. We didn’t know what we wanted for Shake. In fact, I was doing the rough voice of that in the room as Ignignokt, one of the Mooninites. That was the original Shake voice. But we were just casting a wide net, sort of seeing what we got from the description, “jerky.”

DANA: It was meant to be, at that point. You throw that word in.

DAVE: Dana was just a friend of an ex-girlfriend and we auditioned him very informally, but the cast is great.

DANA: I had to leave a message on their voicemail. That they then erased accidentally before they could play it for the boss.

What made you decide to tour with Aqua Teen Hunger Force?

DAVE: We did a couple of live things. We occasionally get asked to speak at a school or something.

DANA: Really just a Q&A, but we were just sort of like, even at those Q&As, we want to make it something more than just a Q&A, we want to make it more memorable. Then we flew down to Australia, they put us down in a convention down there, and we sort of worked up this opening song.

DAVE: Just to mix it up a bit, to make it not a boring, “Oh, how great are you?” – “What’s your favorite episode?” – “Oh, they’re all so good.”

DANA: To make it more like a show instead of this dry Q&A, which is what everybody does. But it all sort of came out of there. We started to book stuff, and then we were like, oh shit, we actually have to put a whole act together.

What does it look like? What’s the staging of it like?

DANA: Oh, spectacular. Have you seen Sunset Boulevard on Broadway?

No, I haven’t.

DANA: Did you see The Color Purple on Broadway?

No, but I did see the commercials.

DANA: Okay. Picture that, many of the sets…

DAVE: We built a special backdrop for it.

DANA: It’s not even a backdrop, it’s a frontdrop.

DAVE: We built it especially for this show out of duct tape and duvetyne.

DANA: You can clearly see that it says “ATHF” on it, and it’s being held up by unused microphone stands.

DAVE: No, we have puppets made by one of the guys from Jim Henson’s company.

DANA: Ex guys from Jim Henson’s company.

DAVE: Just because they have mental illness or problems doesn’t mean that they aren’t capable of making puppets just as good as the Henson company. Yeah, we had puppets made for the characters… I don’t know. It’s like the show. It’s an extension of the show in a lot of ways. We’ve never been the best animated show on television.

But still, how do you take a show that’s to absurd and fantastical visually and conceptually and make it into a stage show?

DAVE: Well, we’ve made it into an absurd variety show, basically. We’re doing some songs, we have some absurd audience participation, we have Carl’s regional beef, where he yells and tells you why your city sucks wherever he is. We have a Meatwad soundalike contest.

DANA: I basically take on my Shake persona onstage of berating people for not giving me the proper amount of respect and applause. And women for not throwing their room keys or underwear up.

So there’s no overall story arc, necessarily?

DANA: You’re not going to see a story up there, I’ll tell you that much.

DAVE: There’s an arc in there in that I think the humor is definitely informed by the show, and we’re sort of the arbiters of that. So if you like the humor of those shows, you’re going to enjoy – you’re not going to see characters, in full-length suits of the characters ice skating around with a whole story behind it.

DANA: It’s more the sensibility and the humor of the show.

DAVE: Yes.

What was the biggest challenge in porting it from animation to the stage?

DAVE: This, right now, explaining…

[Everyone laughs]

DANA: Trying to explain what the show is.

DAVE: It feels like when we read reviews of shows we’ve done, we’ve gotten great reviews. We just wish those reviews came before the shows than two days after.

DANA: So many people, they just don’t know what it is. And it’s hard to explain other than “it’s a variety show,” but people say, “How can you have a variety show about a cartoon?” It almost works the opposite. I’ve had some friends who have come to the other shows who have said, “I didn’t even ever watch Aqua Teen, but I thought the show was really funny. Then it turned out I had friends who were super big Aqua Teen fans who said, that was beyond what I wanted it to be. So it sort of works great.

DAVE: Even if you don’t know what Aqua Teen is, you’ll still enjoy it. And if you do like Aqua Teen, you’ll love it. And if you don’t like it, you’ll just be saying, oh, that fat guy in the flip-flops and the undershirt was very funny. But the Aqua Teen guy is like, “No, that’s Carl, you don’t understand, man.

Do you find you’re selling out a lot of places? That the Aqua Teen fans are showing up for the tour?

DAVE: I think people are mostly confused. I think everywhere we go, we get a few hundred strong, but I can see where people are like, I don’t even know what the hell this is, man, and it’s my Saturday night. But I assure you, it’s well worth your time.

I could see you getting a lot of rhetorical questions in interviews, like, “What the hell?”

DAVE: Yes. That’s a good one. What the hell? What the hell? What the hell, man?

Did the live action episode with T Pain and Jon Benjamin help with the planning of this?

DAVE: Not at all. They are so completely unrelated. The only thing it helped in was helping us find Dave Long, the real, live Carl. But other than that, they were just completely two totally different entities.

How will the Squidbillies make an appearance?

DANA: Granny comes out and she gives a cooking demonstration for her world-famous crusted red snapper, country style. Which she pulls out of the audience, she asks if there are any budding chefs with hot, big muscles who love to party.

Do any of the other characters make it in?

DANA: Not really. Granny’s really the only one.

DAVE: It depends on where you are, but not in Boston. I know in Charlotte, the voice of Early is going to be a big part of the show. But each show is going to have a different unique thing, and fingers crossed, I think there will be a couple of very unique things in the Boston show.

Would you consider doing an entire Squidbillies tour after this?

DAVE: I’d love to –

DANA: NO.

DAVE: -- Unknown Hinson is the lead voice of Early Cuyler, and the guy’s an incredible performer. His side gig is playing lead guitar for Billy Bob Thornton’s band. They guy’s incredible. I’d love to do like a traveling medicine show with those characters. You never know. People seem respond to them. When you make cartoons and you’re not out there in the public eye or doing a lot of shows, you really don’t have a good gage for how the show is being received.

Was episode 100 a big landmark for you?

DAVE: Yeah, it was. When we started, I didn’t know if we were even going to get to make more than one. I didn’t know if they were going to pull the plug before we finished one. So to have one hundred episodes, almost ten years later, is a nice little achievement.

And to have a franchise build on these characters.

DAVE: Yeah. I look forward to them putting together a ride at an Adult Swim water park – pi

DANA: Turnerland Music Park?

DAVE: -- thirty years from now my son leading a lawsuit to try to get some of the money.

DANA: After you’ve wasted your fortune away.

DAVE: Yeah. My fortune. Right.

What do you have planned next for the show?

DAVE: Well, Aqua Teen is no more. Now the show is called Aqua Unit Patrol Squad, and they’re going to be detectives, from now on, every episode. We’ve already written and recorded four episodes, and – boy, there’s some cackling ladies in this bar. We were staying inside because of the wind, but now it’s just cackling alcoholics. No, the characters are going to be detectives from now on. Every episode will be a crime they have to solve. A mystery.

So were you careful to avoid Mooninite imagery advertising in Boston?

DAVE: No we weren’t. We weren’t careful advertising in Boston, and we certainly weren’t careful advertising in Boston a few years ago, either. We’re the same reckless, not thought through…. I will say, though, that I’m hoping that we can show something special for the Boston crowds. That’s pretty much all I can say.

DANA: Just don’t even elaborate, Dave. You said it.

Do you still get feedback about that? Boston was the only city that had any problem.

DAVE: It’s odd that you would say that, because you live in Boston, because everyone else… but you’re not an idiot. They keep asking us about it, you know? I had to go through a media training course based on what happened in Boston. If we’d have worked on South Park, we’d have had an episode about it six days later. Turner, especially after that lawsuit, was like, you shut up about what happened there. That never happened, that city doesn’t exist.

I can tell you, there’s a fairly large contingent of people, at least that I knew, who were puzzled by the whole thing. I can see that at first, you didn’t know what it was, but once you realized what it was, why was it a problem?

DANA: It was a very puzzling situation to say the least.

DAVE: I can say that I didn’t even know about it until I heard people talking about it, and then I turned on the news. I didn’t even know those Light-Brite things existed. Now I own one. I keep it inside, I wouldn’t want anyone to say there was a bomb on my house.

DANA: Now it just looks like you have a bomb in your house.

DAVE: We didn’t even know that thing was happening. That was like a marketing arm of the company. I will say the one thing that angered me was that the media kept calling it a “hoax,” which implied that Turner not only put a device up there, but claimed that it was a bomb. I mean, that’s what a hoax infers. That was not at all the case, you know?

Were you ever in touch with the local artists who did the whole thing?

DAVE: No. And it was like a slow media day combined with this crazy thing, so we got non-stop press for a couple of days. And just when I thought it was starting to die down, these two guys start talking about 70s hairstyles. It was like, wow, you guys found a way to stretch it another thirty-six hours.

DANA: I read something about the main guy who did that in the local Boston paper about three weeks ago. He’s like a big performance artist or something now, a DJ. And that’s still referenced every time someone is describing them.

So the tour is almost over after this, right?

DAVE: Yeah, our last day is May the fifteenth. Atlanta, Georgia.

Do you think after this experience you might tour with Aqua Teen Hunger Force again?

DANA: In the world of show business, anything is possible. Just ask a fifty-five year old Sean Connery, after he said he would never play James Bond again. And then he was in Never Say Never Again.

DAVE: One of the worst James Bond movies. So I guess the answer is, yes we would tour again, but only if it could be really terrible.

The BC Q&A: Tom Cotter

Tom Cotter’s comedy career is officially old enough to drink this year. It was twenty-one years ago that Cotter first ventured into Boston to pursue a comedy career, where he met up with some of the city’s most celebrated comics (including Don Gavin and Steve Sweeney).

Since then, he's been on the Tonight Show, had a show spotlighting his marraige to comic Kerri Louise (who also has Boston roots), and from time to time appears on the Onion New Network.

He’s back at Dick’s Beantown Comedy Vault tonight, a place that Dick’s owner Dick Doherty says Cotter hasn’t headlined since 1991. I took the occasion to as Cotter a few questions about his history with Boston and his stand-up career.

When was the last time you played the Vault?

The last time I was at the Vault was when I was in the Boston Comedy Festival's comedy competition, (2004 perhaps?) It was a preliminary round of the competition, and that was the year I won the competition, so I have very fond feelings about the Vault.

Before that it was at least 15 years since I had been here.



Do you remember who was on the show with you?

The other folks that were on the show in 2004 were the other contestants. I know Tom Simmons, Daryl Lenox, and Teddy Bergeron, were there.

How often do you get back to Boston to play?

I don't get back to Boston as often as I would like, as I feel so at home here, and I love the whole comedy vibe.

What was your first experience with comedy when you moved to Boston?

My first comedy experience in Boston was twenty-one years ago when I drove up from Providence to audition for the Johnny Walker Comedy Contest. I was humiliated. I fled back to Rhode Island with my tail between my legs and knew that I had a very long way to go. It was extremely humbling, and it lit a bonfire under my ass.

What was it about this scene that made you want to become a comedian?

Seeing the talent level from Boston was terrifying and inspirational at the same time. When you see guys like Don Gavin, Steve Sweeney and Kevin Knox you say "I want to be that funny." I knew that Boston was a comedy Mecca, and I wanted in.

Do you and Kerri have any more comedy projects together in the works?

Kerri and I have a few irons in the fire. We are in talks with some networks (Gameshow Network and a few others). We have these webisodes called the Parent Loft that are put out by Oktane Media, and there are several more in the pipeline. There aren't many married comedy couples out there, so we get calls because we are somewhat of a novelty.



Anything else you're up to people should look out for?

Last week I filmed a Fathers Day special for Comedy Central that will air on the Comedy Central web site starting a week before fathers day and perhaps on the network also. I am doing some more stuff for the Onion this Monday.

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.

The BC Q&A: Billy Connolly

Billy Connolly’s last shows in Boston, in 2007, were a revelation for audiences that hadn’t had a chance to see him in years. Rambling, profane, and hilarious, Connolly has a winning confidence onstage, truly allowing himself to go wherever his brain will take him. Connolly’s confidence isn’t steeped in knowing what comes next, it’s about not knowing and pushing forward anyway.

Connolly’s charisma and inventiveness have made him a legend in he U.K., where he regularly tops “best comic” readers polls, even though he has lived in the States for nearly twenty years (he’s lived in New York since 2008, and lived in L.A. before that). He’s been a pirate in the Muppets version of Treasure Island, a zombie in Fido, and faithful servant to the Queen in Mrs. Brown. He’s also been an action star in both the original Boondock Saints and the recent sequel, and he’ll be a Lilliputian in a new version of Gulliver’s Travels. And he was almost Doctor Who once.

If that’s not enough Connolly for you, you can even get his voice on your GPS device. Or you can go see him Friday at the Shubert Theatre.

I spoke with Connolly by phone last week, a conversation that was itself rambling, profane, and hilarious.

I see the Boston dates are the only ones on your schedule.

Yeah, we’re going to start doing little sporadic raids into the country instead of doing tours all the time. The next one up is Chicago after that. It’s a terrible problem getting dates. It takes you a year and a half to set up a tour, you know? This way you can grab two nights here and three nights there.

So you don’t think you’ll do a standard sort of tour…
Oh, I will again, but they just take so long to prepare. Meanwhile, you’re sitting spinning your thumbs wondering what to do next.

It looks like you have plenty of movie roles to fill in the time.

Yeah, yeah, I’ve been very lucky that way. Aye. And I’ve been drawing for a while, and I’ve just got news that there’s a gallery in London interested in doing an exhibition of my drawings. So I’m very pleased with myself.

Is that something you think you’d release as a book?

I don’t know. Really, because I’ve never done anything like this before. I can’t draw. I’m just [doing] abstract and strange things. I couldn’t draw a cat or a mouse or a bicycle or anything like that.

It’s an interesting thing to pursue – if you say of yourself, “I can’t draw,” what do you get out of it?

Yeah… there’s just something lurking in your brain, you just let it drive your hand. It’s very strange – it’s very pleasant.

You’ve said that sometimes you forget what you do for a living and it’ll only come back to you once you’re onstage.

I do that very often.

Is it something you’ve learned to combat? It seems it came at you again in 2008.

Yeah, it’s a weird thing that I have to trust myself that it’s always there. You know? Because there’s no way to check up on it. And the more nervous you get, the less you remember. It’s a terrifying set of circumstances.

I remember, at Astoria [Theatre] once, the promoter was in the back of the car, and my roadie was beside me in the front. And we were driving up to the gate in Queensland, and I said to the roadie, “How do I start?” And he said, well, you usually say such and such. I said, “Oh yeah. What do I usually say after that?” And he told me. I went, “Yeah, yeah. What was the punchline?” And he told me and I went, “Oh, yeah, of course!” The gig was hugely successful, and I came off and he said, “My god,” he said, “I was terrified. I thought you were mentally ill, asking your driver. Was that for my benefit?” I said, “No, I was being absolutely serious.” As I get nervous, I forget everything.

You should have your driver or your roadie up onstage with you.

Oh, yeah. And I take notes and I never look at them, because they mean very little. It’s not like a diary. They’re just jottings, little dash jottings. So when you look at them, you get very, very little information. Or you get half a page of information, but you get on and talk for two hours. Half a page, a thing that says, “The army.” Thank you very much.

I remember we did a TV interview while you were here, and you pulled it out and read a few phrases and had no idea what the hell they meant.

[laughs] That’s right. I’ve got loads of those books. I actually like the books themselves, you know those wee notebooks you buy in bookshops, the wee black ones. Hemmingway used to use one. I forget what they’re called, but I’ve got loads of them tucked in pockets all over the place. They’re absolutely useless. To make anything of it you’d have to round all the notebooks up and put them together. My wife’ll publish them when I’m dead. I’ll do that for journalists. Sometimes I’ll just read out the list. I’ll take a list onstage and read out the stage, and it’s nothing like what I just did. I can’t explain it. I’ve never been able to explain it. It’s a kind of organic affair.

John Lennon said once that the Beatles would write lyrics just to see what the critics would make of them. Just to confuse tham and see how they would over-analyze them.

Oh, yeah. I remember. Because John, at the time, I was around at the time, and the Melody Maker, the weekly music newspaper, would come out on a Friday, but you could get it in London on a Thursday night around midnight, and John Lennon said, I love Thursday nights around midnight. I go down to Piccadilly and pick up a Melody Maker and see what my lyrics are about.

You should release some of those lists now to see what people make of them.

Yeah. Maybe we should make a poem of them, and a drawing. I don’t know.

It’d be a Lewis Carroll type of –

Oh, it’d be nothing as pretty as that. It’s a bit coarse. It’s kind of coarse, I think. But it’s good to look back. Sometimes I’ll read [something], my god. Sometimes you think you’re not moving along, you’ve been doing the same thing for a long time. Then you look at your lists, and you’re way beyond them. It’s kind of confusing. I’ve never really been in total control of it. And frankly, I don’t want to be. A lot of guys, you look at them and you can tell the stuff, they’ve written it. They didn’t think it up – well, they thought it up and wrote it down in a methodical way, and it’s got that written feel to it. I hate it when you’re watching a comedian and you think, he has said this a million times, these same lines.

I guess the trick is to write something and perform it as if you haven’t.

I’ve never written anything, it just happens. I’ve attempted to write it afterwards so as I might remember, but I’ve never gotten round to that either.

Do you get the feeling that what you’re doing is still rebellious, the way it was earlier on?

There’s a great deal of rebellion involved in it because there’s a great deal of rebellion in me. I’m still angry about everything, you know? I’m still angry about war, about politics, and the fact that we haven’t moved along as a species. I still get angry when I watch television and people are trying to justify being in Afghanistan and telling us it’s a corrupt regime. You’re sending your sons to defend a corrupt regime. That still makes me angry and rebellious.

How do joy and anger fit together?

If you’re relying on just the anger, you’re up a gum tree. You’ve had it. But then anger can become fun. It’s like, if you’re giving your children a lecture on how to behave and you fart in the middle of it, they won’t believe a word you say. It’s just one of those things. Everybody will fall about the room and nobody will give one shit about what you just said, no matter how important it was. Because comedy and vulgarity, like I deal in, is just like that. It takes its own stand.

You said something last time we spoke that’s stuck with me, about profanity not being cursing and not being swearing – it’s profanity or vulgarity, it’s not cursing or swearing.

A lot of people don’t know what language is, you know? To curse or swear you have to invoke gods. And I don’t. I don’t believe in them, so how can I invoke them? I’m neither cursing nor swearing. I’m merely being profane. And I don’t give a fuck what you think about it. If you don’t like it, go watch someone else. Go watch Jimmy Fallon and lose the fucking will to live.

Not a big fan?

Jesus. His next joke’ll be his first.

Were you surprised that Boondock Saints II finally got made?

No, I wasn’t. It had so much good will riding along for it from so many good people, you know? It just had to be done. And of course, it had that extraordinary drive by Duffy, by Troy Duffy. He’s just a driven man. If it didn’t happen, somebody would’ve got hurt. [laughs]

Is that kind of thing fun to play? The action roles?

It’s amazingly good to play, especially with a cast like that, where you’ve all done it before and you all know and like each other. And I can say with my hand on my heart there’s nobody in the movie I don’t like. I like them all and they all like me. We got on like a house on fire. And so we all met in Toronto to do the second one, it was like – well, I’ve never been to a school reunion, but I imagine that’s what they’re like. “Oh, good to see you! You look like you’ve lost weight.” All eating and laughing and getting on with it. And everybody was so together and knew their part so well.

Not only that, Troy had done amazing things. He had hired fans as extras. Dedicated fans who had been writing, and he said, “Do you want to be in it?” Shit, yeah. So they’d flown in from all over the place to be in it. Some of them had the actual tattoos and all that. So there was an extraordinary atmosphere about it. So they weren’t like regular extras. There was a different feel about the place.

That’s an unusual thing for a movie, would you say?

Yeah, well, often you’ll get extras that are kind of wooden. They’ve done it a million times and they’ve got kind of a ho-hum attitude to it. So even the extras were up to it. There was kind of a bright-eyed feel to it.

You’ve been named recently, yet again, Britain’s favorite comedian by AskJeeves.com and by Channel 4.

That’s right. I heard that last week. It means very little to me. You don’t even get a phone call. Do you know that? I get nothing. They don’t even phone me to tell me. If I want to know how I did I have to watch the program. Or people tell you in the street, “Oh, I see you’ve won.” “What? What have I won?”

But at the same time I’m… I’m a bit proud of it. Of course I am. But it’s also kind of a burden, and I do feel the weight of it. And it’s something that I never asked for. Like if you had to enter, I’d have never entered a competition like that. Because you can go to a bar and just see somebody being brilliant. He’s having a great night, he’s flying, he’s in the zone. And that night, he’s the best comedian in the world.

Do you get to see, in New York, there’s probably a lot more comedy that’s more accessible to you.

I tend not to. I sometimes go to Annabelle’s, but it’s very, very rare. And it’s usually to see someone I’ve no chance of stealing from.

Have you ever found yourself unwittingly –

Oh, many, many times. Because a year later it rumbles into your head and you think it’s your own.

Do people call you on it?

No, I’ve never been called on it, but it’s just dawned on me where I got it. Maybe I’ve been doing it two or three weeks and I’m like, shit! I remember where I got it now.

That’s got to be an immensely disappointing feeling.

Yeah. It is for a while, but there are so few things that are totally original. And this is the absolute truth, I can say this with my hand on my heart, and swear on my children’s lives, that I thought I’d said the most original thing ever. My wife was writing a book about me, and I’d said I don’t like going on holiday. I don’t like those kind of hotel holidays, because that’s my life – flying and going to hotels. And she said why don’t we go on a cruise? And I said, oh, you’re joking. And I swear this is true. I said to her, “It’s like jail with an option of drowning.” Right? It’s a prison with an option of drowning. And I thought it was really funny and so did she. And tra la la.

About a year later, I was reading something by Admiral Lord Nelson, and one of his guys had something almost identical. Fucking Lord Nelson! What was that, the 18th century, 19th century? Fucking hell! I didn’t know that was possible. Sometimes you think you’re being dead original and boom.

There’s also got to be some allowance for people who are outright stealing material. That’s not something I would think could be condoned.

Some people steal outright and it’s outrageous. It’s intellectual property, and it’s a crime. And I include people who tape you and stick it online. My material is none of their fucking business to do with what they wish. You can’t just take the workings of my brain and start putting them where you want to. That’s such an arrogance.

But there are other guys, and I won’t name names, who are often accused of stealing when they’re not stealers at all. They are comedy black holes, everything goes into their head and comes out a different shape. And I think you probably know who I’m talking about. He’s often accused of stealing, and he doesn’t. I don’t believe he’s ever stolen a word, consciously.

Some people, they just absorb it. They go to clubs all the time and perform all the time, and all the people they hear all go into their head and comes out as a mish-mash. I think that’s art itself. I think writers do that constantly. Novelists do it all the time.

Were you skeptical when you were asked to lend your voice to a satnav for Tom-Tom GPS?

Oh, I couldn’t wait. I couldn’t, because I had been doing a thing about it onstage. My Range Rover had a very posh woman [affects an upscale woman’s voice], “Talking like that, how do you do?” And she called roundabouts “traffic circles.” I was telling the audience about it, she goes, in a huff, if I take a wrong turn, she gives me the silent treatment. She won’t talk to me for half an hour. So I said, put me on, I’ll do one. And I did a spoof one onstage, you know. And I would say, “Turn right… I said right, ya prick.” And lo, out of the blue came the offer. John Cleese had done one.

Is the Gulliver’s Travels your in live action or animated?

It’s live. But it’s all green screen.

It’s interesting casting, making you a Lilliputian, considering your nickname is –
The Big Yin, yeah. Like the giant. What a nice guy.

The tallest Lilliputian.

[laughs] A giant dwarf. It was a kind of tiresome process, acting at a piece of plaster on a wall, or a mark or a laser dot on a wall. Talking to it. But it was made up by the fact that the cast were lovely and funny and everything, you know. And Jack’s such a lovely wee man to work with.

Do you think comedy audiences have changed much since you started?

Not as far as I can see. Although I don’t get as many hecklers as I used to, and I’m delighted to hear it. Earlier in my career, I used to get hecklers, shouting and bothering. They like to listen to what you’re going to say. They know you’re inventive and you’re going to build something. So I can only speak for myself, but I tend to get people who are there to see me because they like me. SO I can’t really judge on the broader audience the way a guy who does comedy clubs could tell you. He would be better to ask if the audiences are changing. Mine aren’t changing. They people who like me come to see me and we all have a great time.



Do you ever want to get back up on a club stage and do a smaller show?

No, I don’t, because I never did it. When I did the clubby stuff I was a folkie, I was a musician. I was in bands, and I was being funny between songs and stuff. And I have no desire to do that anymore. Although I did it Saturday with Steve Martin. We had a fantastic jam. Have you ever heard of a guy named Tony Trischka? He was there and Mark Johnson who invented this style called clawgrass. And a fiddler and a mandolin player, and a guitar and a bass player, out at Steve’s house. Oh, it was great.

Have you ever wanted to play music again?

Yes, I get the urge, but I don’t quite know what to do about it. I don’t want to be a musician again. I don’t want to be in bands. I don’t like the arena. I don’t want to go around to radio stations talking to fuckwits all my life. The music side of things is hell, talking to these music stations. These idiots who think they know what they’re talking about who couldn’t fucking play with themselves, you know?

What would it look like if you did it? It would be hard for you at this point to go onstage and just do a set of music without doing comedy.

I don’t know. I think I would be driven to make it funny. Well, Steve’s having a lovely time. Steve Martin’s out touring with a bluegrass band. And he manages perfectly. But I don’t know if I could. But over the years, I’ve been trying to work out a way of trying to put my banjo back in to my act. But I can’t find a place where I could stop talking and play. And I haven’t done that. As soon as I stop playing I start talking again.

Well maybe just bring it up with you, and whatever happens –

And just leave it on the floor or have it standing there, the way I used to. I don’t know. I really don’t know what to do about it. Then I start questioning why I’m doing it. Am I playing it just because I can, am I showing off? What am I doing here? What is the point? Should I write something funny for it or should I just play it nice. I don’t know what to do. I think too much about it. Sometimes you should stop thinking about it and do things.

Your childhood comes up often onstage. How do you find something new in topics you’ve covered to frequently?

It’s because they’re not huge chunks, really. Usually they’re just moments. They’re a story of a particular day or an event. The entire event I’m talking about didn’t take a day, and I’ve got 67 years worth.

I suppose if you tried to start at the beginning, all hell would break loose.

Bring on this huge, fat diary. “Then is was Tuesday, a rainy day if I remember. 1942.” [laughs]



Well, you are known for doing long stretches of material. You could probably beat your record for that pretty easily if you started out that way.

There’s a thing on YouTube, and if you look it up, it’s “Billy Connolly Wildebeest.” That was an ad-lib. On that night, I’ve only done it like three times, Wildebeest, and that night that’s on YouTube is I think the second time I ever did it. It was exactly the same as the first night, and it came in one piece. You might be amazed. It’s very long. Sometimes ad-libs come complete. Big Chunks.

Is there anything else you’re up to that I’ve missed?

Not at the moment, no. I’m having the time of my life just doing bugger all. Except I draw in the morning and I go for a cigar with my friends in the afternoon.

The BC Q&A: Myq Kaplan, CD release party at the Studio Saturday

It’s hard to get a straight answer out of Myq Kaplan. The former Boston comic, who moved to New York City in the summer of 2008, is a quick wit. And he jumps to misdirection and word play with a minimum of set-up, and has a knack for structure, which is evident in this e-mail interview.

More people will get to enjoy that wit this week, with the release of Kaplan’s debut national album, Vegan Mind Meld (he self-released his first album, Open Myq Night, recorded at Club Passim). He’ll celebrate the album tomorrow at the Comedy Studio. Also, tonight at 11:30PM, Comedy Central debut’s his half hour Comedy Central Presents special, adding to his Conan O’Brien and Live at Gotham TV credits.

I've heard a lot of the material on Vegan Mind Meld, but there are a lot of new tags for older material. Do you ever consider a joke "done”?

Short answer: Depends.
Medium answer: Not usually. Maybe I used to, but almost never anymore.
Long answer: Most of my jokes are created one step at a time, starting with an initial kernel of an idea, sometimes ending as a one-liner, but more often these days growing larger and larger, as tags and more ideas occur to me on stage or off. So, I might have thought some jokes WERE "done," but in performing them in different situations, sometimes they become UNdone (in the good way, not the falling apart way).
Sometimes, new experiences inform old ideas in a different light, and what was previously one short thought can lead into a longer one, or a story, or a multi-faceted something or other. In fact, I'll probably have an extra-long answer to this question long after it's too late.
(And I might edit out the phrase "multi-faceted something or other."
But feel free to leave this all for now. All part of the process.)

Did you get to preview the Comedy Central special much? Were you able to get everything in as you wanted it to be?

Short answer: Hopefully.
Medium answer: I have not previewed it.
Long answer: I have only seen the clips they put up on the website that everyone can see, and of those, I'm not sure which (if any) of them are actually IN the special or just being used for the web. That said, I was very happy with the taping, so I'll be happy as long as it's not 30 minutes of commercials.

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Myq Kaplan - Exclusive - Super Nice Video
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Boston has produced some fine comedians that work in a style similar to yours, in that quick, two or three lines style. Were you influenced by Don Gavin, Wendy Liebman, or any other local comics, stylistically?

Short answer: No.
Medium answer: Maybe.
Long answer: I love Don Gavin and Wendy Liebman, but I didn't know who they were when I started doing comedy. I've only seen Don Gavin live a handful of times, and I've only seen a few TV spots of Wendy's; I really appreciate what they do, and recognize that we have some stylistic things in common, but I believe that I gravitated towards what I do because it's what comes naturally to me. Obviously we are all influenced by everything around us (except for the hermit comedian, but no one knows who that is because I made him or her up...
or did I? If I did, why didn't I settle on one gender?), that can't be helped, but I mostly just aim to be influenced by myself. I enjoy the work of others, both those similar and those dissimilar to me. And thanks.

How was the transition from Boston to New York?

Short answer: Fine.
Medium answer: Difficult at first.
Long answer: Fine and difficult at first. Starting comedy in a new city can often be a challenge, just finding out what places there are to perform, where to see good shows, how to get on shows, who to talk to, getting to know people, becoming a part of the community, etc.
Starting in Boston was great, because it's a decent-sized city with a number of clubs, other venues for standup, and a very welcoming and encouraging and manageably-sized community of working comics of all experience levels. Starting over in New York was more complicated at first, because there are so many clubs (some I haven't even been to yet), so many shows and bookers and venues that come and go, so many communities within the world of New York comedy. I had help a bit, from a few sources: 1) comedians I knew from Boston who were now living in New York and could help direct my efforts a bit, 2) bookers and comedians who were at least somewhat responsive to the fact that I had one TV credit by that point, and 3) not much else. I looked up open mics on the internet, did a lot of trial and error, made a lot of phone calls, hung out at a lot of places, and I'm still in a place where I have to work to get on at some clubs, some shows, which is fine. I like the work. And it's gotten easier, with a few fortunate happenings, a few more credits, a few more comedians and bookers learning who I am (and caring/thinking positively of me). It was definitely a chore at first, getting situated, but I feel very lucky that things went my way relatively quickly.
Extra-long answer: see my autobiography.

What shows do you frequent in New York?

Short answer: None.
Medium answer: Honestly, unlike Boston, where I might perform at the same venue once a week or more, in New York, there are so many shows and places to perform, that I don't necessarily end up any one place "frequently."
Long answer: That said, the club I perform most at is Caroline's.
They've been the most generous with stagetime and support, and I can't be more grateful. Comix is another club that I love, and that I perform at as often as possible. In the non-club scene, UCB's Whiplash show is wonderful, as is Moonwork, and Thursday nights at Kabin, Tell Your Friends at Lolita Bar, Bowery Poetry Club, and many more that I'm probably rude to be forgetting. Sorry!

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Anyone on the bill with you Saturday at the Studio you're especially looking forward to seeing?

Short answer: Yes.
Medium answer: Just kidding.
Long answer: I always love performing at the Studio, no matter who is on the show. I believe I know almost everyone on the show and think very fondly of them.

Any other Boston shows coming up soon?

Short answer: Yes.
Medium answer: Is this joke/concept getting old?
Long answer: I believe I will be performing with Greg Fitzsimmons on his annual BU Alumni show at Boston University's graduation weekend on May 14, and I will be opening for Bo Burnham's DVD taping at the House of Blues on May 21. Looking forward to both of those with great anticipation. But not as much as this Saturday at the Studio, maybe.
CD release!

The BC Q&A: Sam Walters returns to Boston with King Hell at Great Scott

I first met Sam Walters shortly after I moved to Boston and started covering comedy in 1998. He was part of a comedy group that included The Walsh Brothers, Kyria Abrahams, Val Kappa, Ben Joplin, Dan Sulman, and Tim McIntire, a bunch of regulars at The Comedy Studio, trying to do something a little different, and generally succeeding.

Walters was always a musician, as well, and when he moved to New York City several years back, he turned his attention to music. His band, King Hell, is making a rare appearance tonight at Great Scott as part of Rob Potylo’s Quiet Desperation Presents the 32nd Annual WBCN Rock n Roll Rumble, hosted by Niki Luparelli and Shawn Sixx.

I spoke with him by Facebook about the show yesterday.

Do you perform comedy anymore, or are you strictly staying with music now?

I'm not doing stand-up at the moment--my long suffering liver would up and quit if I started attending both comedy AND rock shows--but there's plenty of comedy in King Hell. I've got a two-horned anvil now... Christ, I've become the Carrot Top of metal.

Do you still get out to see comedy?

Not too often, though we played the Jerkus Circus earlier this month in Worcester, which was phenomenal. The hosts, the Steamy Bohemians, were as hilarious and deplorable as I remembered them... which isn't too clearly. Man, stand-up was a boozy time. I remember coming out of the Comedy Studio one night and thinking, "Damn, I'm drunk AGAIN." Thanks Jenkins...

What's the difference in dynamics between fronting a band and doing stand-up?

Stand-up, for me, was an intellectual exercise in crowd seduction; "intellectual", in my case, consisted of high-brow dick jokes (a genius concept). I was trying to solve the riddle of the audience, poking and prodding them 'til something clicked. Fronting a rock band is much more of a one-sided physical display; the audience comes to you. Some comics can bridge that gap though, like Kevin Knox (may he rest in peace, though he's probably not resting, wherever he is). That guy was a rock star. Ask Brian Longwell about his night at the Kowloon with Kevin and these twin sisters who... um, ask Brian. Don't let him leave out the part about the snakes.



For the uninitiated, how would you describe King Hell?

We're like Parliament meets Metallica (though, mercifully, without a band member in diapers). We're a funk-fueled, old-school metal band chock fulla melodic hooks and bawdy humor that, according to a recent review, will make you break out in a maniacal grin and new dance called "the fist pumping booty shake". Call it Berzerk Du Soleil.

Anyone you're looking forward to seeing again in Boston?

Certainly not Tim McIntire. Now that he's vegan, he won't take me fishing. Otherwise, being a metal front man, I'm entitled to say, "I love you all!!!"

Micah Sherman with Second City in Boston

Micah Sherman made a strong impression during his short time in Boston as a improv performer with Improv Asylum and a stand-up comedian, often working with Myq Kaplan at The Comedy Studio. He has since moved to New York City, but makes it back to Boston frequently (and Bostonians can always see him on YouTube in short videos he makes with Boston ex-pats Dan Hirshon and Joe List at FunnyCakesComedy).

This week through May 9, he'll be performing with the Second City stage show One If By Land, Late If By T at the BCA, sponsored by Improv Asylum (click here for tickets and times). We spoke in some sort of odd conference room set up at the Second City after party last week.

Part One:


Part Two:

The BC Q&A: Rich Ceisler

Boston comedy veteran Rich Ceisler headlines Mottley’s Comedy Club tonight and tomorrow, and then heads out to Tommy’s Comedy Lounge on Monday to help an old friend. Ceisler says he is eager to play Mottley’s, a room he has never played, and is happy to help out Tommy’s co-owner Frank Ahearn, who suffered a stroke in December. The Tommy’s show will help him pay the bills as he recovers. Ceisler’s relationship with Ahearn stretches back to the latter’s time at the Comedy Connection more than fifteen years ago.

I spoke with Ceisler about Mottley's and Ahearn by phone earlier this week.

How long have you known Frank?

When did he start with the Connection? It’s got to be ten or fifteen years, something like that. I knew him because, originally Paul Barclay was with the Connection and he wa I think originally hired by Paul Barclay. Always was a great guy, and a great friend, an advocate for the comedy scene. He was just like another peer. It’s different for a manager to be a peer and not a managing authority. He was great friends with Kevin Knox and things like that. He’s just a regular guy. The community, we’re strong with helping each other.

Have you spoken with him since he started recovering?

I have not been able to, because unfortunately, I’ve been traveling. I’ve been speaking to people regularly who speak to him like Paul Barclay and Paula Murphy and there’s this Web site that gives updates on him. I haven’t been able to speak to him yet, but I will, obviously at the benefit. Hopefully he’ll be at the benefit. If not, I’ll go down to where he’s going through rehab afterwards.

What was your reaction when you heard he’d had the stroke?

I was shocked. I was shocked. I had seen him not too long ago, before the stroke. I went to visit him at the restaurant he was managing over in Quincy. Fireflies. I knew tha the was working like a bastard at Fireflies. He was really, I mean, managing, but getting his hands dirty, delivering plates to the tables, setting up, just working really hard. I’m sure the job was three times as hard as running the Connection. I knew his stress level was high, but I was shocked when I heard, you know?

When did you hear about this benefit?

Paula called, Paula Murphy. She called me and then she sent out an e-mail saying she’s going to do a series of them on these Monday nights – who’s available what nights? So I immediately looked at my schedule, I was on a cruise at the time and said, “This Monday, I’m available. So me and Tony and Jim Dunn were the first to respond, and Tom Cotter. And then later on I guess she added Dan Gavin, Steve Sweeney, and Patty Ross.

It’s a high-powered show with a lot of people on it. I can’t imagine we’ll get to do more than ten minutes apiece.



How many of these benefits do you wind up doing for local causes each year?

I’d say about twenty a year.

Do you think that Boston’s unusual in that respect, that so many comedians donate their time?

I don’t think so. I know with Ray Garvey, they were doing benefits in L.A. and Vegas and New York. I think the comedy community I unusual in that we support our own, because we don’t have unions and things like that. So I think just the comedy industry is unusual. I don’t think Boston is that unusual. I think it goes back to the fact that we don’t have a union, we don’t have group insurance unless somebody’s married to somebody with medical family benefits. It’s been hard. We don’t have pensions. I think the combination of that has made everybody support each other.

Are you looking forward to playing Mottley’s this weekend?

Yeah. I’ve never played it. I only walked in once, and I love the set-up of the room. I never even saw a show there, I just walked in before a show and thought, oh my god, if this room fills up, what a great space this is, you know. So I am looking forward to it. Looking for a host, I asked Tim to recommend a comic, and he said, well, what kind of comic. I said as long as they’re a smarter comic, not super high energy and not real dirty, that would go well with my style. He suggested Jon Rineman. I do a lot of stuff with timing, and I don’t work at the typical Boston frenetic pace.

Is there something about the room in particular –

Yeah, it’s intimate. Really, when I walked in, it looked like the perfect room. I’m really curious. Hopefully it’ll fill out. It was set up by a comic. That makes it much better.

What do you think about all the different clubs? I think you’ve worked at every club in that area now.

When I was at Cheers, they were getting a different type of crowd. They were getting more tourists because they’re in Faneuil Hall. I don’t know what Mottley’s draws, but I don’t think they get as many tourists. I think that draws a little bit more on people from Boston. I believe. That’s what I was told. Cheers, because of the name, probably gets more tourists. Which is not bad, it’s just a different kind of crowd. Dick’s, who the hell knows what they get down there. And Nick’s is the worst. Nick’s is the only one I don’t enjoy, because they get this crowd of people who are really waiting for the disco to start. They’re the worst comedy crowd there, I think. For my kind of stuff, anyway.

Do you think the different clubs are set up well?

Yeah. Dick Doherty’s place is small, but it’s small enough that you can do a real experimental, intimate set. And then Mottley’s looks like the perfect room. I really have good things to say about most of the little rooms.

Do you feel like, with all of these little clubs, the scene is healthier, less healthy…

Well, look, it’s not going to be healthy for our pockets. The 80s is gone, when we would make 150 bucks a show and run from show to show and make a good amount of money. Now, the scene is good as far as working out material, but it’s not a lucrative scene, I’ll say that off the bat. That’s why everyone’s trying to do what I’ve been doing for the past fifteen years, twenty years, and play the cruise ships, because the scene is not a lucrative scene. And it was, it used to be.

Are the cruise ships an idea place for comedy?

No. They’re just more lucrative. Some of them , they’re building comedy room s in some of them. They’re getting better. But they just pay better. Pure and simple economics. You can’t have a house and a family and have four hundred dollar weekends, and that’s your week.

The BC Q&A: Chris Zito is the new "Slash"

When I spoke with Chris Zito last January, he was ready to quit stand-up comedy and concentrate on his morning drive gig at WODS. He had done a similar dance before, when he was working at 104.5 XLO, and radio came first. Of course, Zito found it impossible to quit altogether, and picked up a gig here and there.

On April 6, Zito Twittered, “I have a job with slashes again. Comedian/Actor/Writer. Need jokes?” WODS was tweaking its format, and Zito was out. Which means Zito will be back onstage again this Friday at Dick’s Beantown Comedy Vault. I caught up with him again by e-mail to see what he has planned.

Since we spoke for the blog about your retirement a couple of years ago, you have done a gig here and there, correct?

Yes, I didn't stay away very long. The format at WODS was new to me and a little more restrictive than what I'd done in the past. The stand up offers so much freedom. I've been having fun on stage.

What keeps you coming back to stand-up?

As I mentioned, it's the freedom. That's always been the thing with stand up. No boss. No meetings. I'm producer, director, writer, and star. Can't point the fingers and can't really complain about anyone else. Besides, I know my way around the schedule C pretty well. I don't mind being self employed. Plus, I have no marketable skills other than cracking wise.

What reason did WODS give you for letting you go from the morning show with Karen Blake?

Just more music intensive. Since they dropped the Oldies moniker they've been focusing on the music. It's really difficult to develop a new music identity and a new morning show at the same time. It's no one's fault. My boss, Jay Beau Jones, and I are friends. Hopefully we'll have a chance to work together again.

Is anyone safe on the radio anymore?

Beats me. Commercial radio is almost unrecognizable to people who go back as far as I do. Let me check my Magic Eight Ball app..."my sources say no."

Do you think you’ll look for more radio work or move back to stand-up full time?

I'm not ruling anything out. I'm not finding a ton of stand up work right now. My prediction is, I'll fill up my calendar for the fall and winter, then get another radio gig in a few months, and have to suffer with being out every night and getting up at 3:30 again! Summers are slow, and most comics book months in advance. I'll catch up. I may go on the road again a little too. Who knows?

Make no mistake though, I love radio. It still seems like magic to me. Hopefully that's where I'll land.

You posted on your Twitter that you have a job with slashes again. Are you doing any writing and acting?

I've reached out to the casting agency's in town and gotten a warm welcome back. As for writing, I've lost my excuse not to write new material for my act. So...a few new jokes. And I'm approached occasionally to write jokes for other people or punch things up. Also, talking to a couple of people about speaking engagements. I don't really even know what that means, but a couple of guys have told me for awhile I'd be good at it. Really? If you say so.

A little bonus, here's Chris Zito on Two Drink Minimum from 1993.

Jokes.com
Chris Zito - Teenage Daughter
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Voting starts today for the National College Comedy Competition

The third edition of the National College Comedy Competition starts today, and at least four Boston area colleges -- Boston College, M.I.T., Emerson, and Tufts -- are competing. It’s an unusual competition, in that clips of the comics are posted on www.TBS.com, but the comics don’t compete as individuals. They compete as teams in brackets, March Madness style.

The first round of voting starts today and ends Monday. Teams will be cut down to a “Sweet Sixteen,” and another vote April 29-May 3 cuts it further to the “Elite Eight.” The “Final Four” will be determined by yet another online vote May 20-24.

The top four individual comedians, the ”MVP” of each team, will get the chance to perform with some bigger names at the TBS and Just For Laughs-sponsored Very Funny Festival in Chicago June 15-19. Rooftop comedy is sponsoring the Competition, as well.

Rooftop produced on-campus talent searches to find talent from different colleges and universities. The initial eight comics were chosen by audience votes, then narrowed to four by a combination of audience votes and the votes of professional judges. “Given the nature of college campus spirit, it makes for a much more robust competition to engage the entire school through a team competition rather than one individual at a particular school.,” says Jenn Stokes of Rooftop.

Although the winners won’t be on the televised shows, they may be featured on the TBS Web site. As someone who has covered comedy for years, I feel most comics are in a somewhat vulnerable point in their development in college, which makes a competition with possible national exposure a somewhat dicey proposition. Stokes disagrees. She says the NCCC “provides a platform to help promote their comedy, improve their craft and gain national exposure.”

The Boston area teams:

Boston College
• Julian Kiani
• John Scola
• Meg Show
• Michael Wolf

M.I.T.
• Michael Lin
• Jose Sepulveda
• Jason Strauss
• Morris Vanegas

Emerson College
• Keele Howard-Stone
• Daniel Rubinton
• Rachel Walls
• Blake Wexler

Tufts
• Brian Agler
• Ian Donovan
• Samuel McCauley
• Matthew Nazarian

Vegan comedy tonight at BU

What does vegan comedy sound like? If that question makes you curious, you can find your answers tonight at Boston University’s “Cracking Jokes, Not Yolks: A Vegan-Friendly Comedy Show.” The show is part of BU’s Earth Week 2010, and includes Tim McIntire, Rob Crean (of Anderson Comedy), and Sarah Heggan.

Turns out vegan comedy is pretty much like regular comedy, except it’s told by vegans, who often look like normal people. So it’s possibly meat-eaters have been watching vegan comedy for years without ever knowing it, laughing so hard they forget about hamburgers.

Here’s a taste:



The show starts at 7PM at BU Central, 775 Commonwealth Ave.