Kyle Kinane is a comedian who was the voice of Comedy Central for a decade. Kinane released his first album, Death of the Party, via AST Records, followed by a half-hour and two hours on Comedy Central, and another half-hour on Netflix. His most recent hour, Shocks & Struts, was released on YouTube in March 2023 via 800 Pound Gorilla Media. Kinane sat down with me while on tour to support the new special, where we reminisced about the 2007 HBO US Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, Kinane’s successes on the game show @midnight, as well as how he defines success in his life and career today.
Here’s the trailer from his latest special, available now on YouTube…
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This transcript has been edited and condensed only slightly for your convenience.
What do you think it says? First off, that you're allowed to remain on Twitter as Elon Musk with Jeff Bezos’s headshot? (Kinane since has changed his Twitter name and photo back to himself).
Part of me thought, ‘Oh man, I'm not big enough to be booted off’ like I'm still not famous enough for anyone to give a shit. But that's fun, too, because most 95% — 99% of interactions, my name still comes up. I just get people bitching about Elon Musk to me. Like ‘Buy my NFT! This is unacceptable.!’ ‘SpaceX is amazing!’ whatever. Alright, man, it was fun replying as him at first, but I'm like, this is just too much. I don't know. It's not good. The worse that place gets, the less interested I am. I'm fine to watch it topple.
You mentioned you hope this Writers Guild strike ends soon, just so the writers don't all go back to stand-up.
Yeah, I just was being a little bitch. That was a real Locals-only vibe I wanted to have on that. No. It's funny because like, I have a lot of friends that — obviously a lot of stand-ups get writing gigs. It's fun when you asked them, how's that gig? Then it's always the reluctant, ‘It’s good. No. It’s good.’ Because yeah, it gets you steady income but then they love stand-up. But you're so burnt out from writing stand-up all day for somebody else, to want to go out afterwards. Actually, I'm pretty excited to see people. Oh, I missed these guys. I miss all my friends. Like it'll be fun to see them. Yeah, I was just being bitchy on Twitter
You do have a playful tone on social media. You also love bitching about having to make TikToks of crowd work.
Oh yeah, and people think I hate all crowd work. No. I hate bad crowd work and the fact that people will perceive it to be this easy bounce towards a viral clip. And so everybody's putting out. Like I see clips. I'm like, I would delete this from my phone if I took this at a show. You put it online? There’s that mentality of like, just as long as there's content out there. I'm like, God, what a sea of shit we've created. Not like everything of mine is gold I put out there.
People have that mindset of get-rich-quick. Maybe I can skip all the steps.
Yeah, I mean if anything, I feel bad for the TikTok stars. Like alright, well, you have a lot of followers. How are you gonna monetize that? Well, we'll put you in a comedy club. But they're not stand-ups. They're TikTok folks. And then they go and sell hundreds of tickets and people get there and are like, oh, yeah, you had 10 minutes of material and now you're onstage for an hour. I don't even blame them. I blame the managers or whoever gets a hold of them, just puts them out there to make that quick percentage off of them before they burn out or realize that they're not stand-ups. Like you're saying, man, late-stage capitalism affects us all.
Yeah, how do you even operate as a stand-up in this environment? There was a brief moment in time where we all thought live stand-up would go away with the pandemic. So the fact that we're back…
Oh, yeah, we're far too up our own ass to let it die.
We met in Aspen in 2007, at the last HBO comedy festival.
My career went up like Elon’s last rocket on that one. Barely made it off the launchpad.
Since it has been over 16 years. Are you more surprised that you're still doing stand-up? Or are you more surprised that I'm still doing this, talking and writing about it?
I mean, I still love doing it. You still love being around it? Reporting? That's pretty cool.
I don't know that I have the same fervor for going out to clubs. But that's an aging thing.
Yeah, I mean, I go because I'm going to work. But that's why I like coming here and there’s all these people I haven't seen in forever. It just turns into 4 a.m. It really just Cinderellas into 4 a.m. so fast. And it’s not even even like I'm getting wasted, just you're sipping on drinks, all sudden, it's four. It's 4:30 And like God, I can't do this, Like, I woke up 20 minutes ago to do this 1 p.m. podcast.
You said your career didn't quite rocket at the HBO festival.
No, I didn't do well. I wasn't focused. I think I drank too much out of nerves before my set, because I thought that was part of my character or what have you. And I didn't know how to sell it under pressure. I didn't know how to look at a room of executives in a ski town. And I did not know how to relate to them with material about low self-esteem. I felt like a fraud or maybe I felt like they were frauds and I was like oh, now I'm a commercial product dancing for people. It's still a great opportunity, but I did not display an it factor for show business.
But at the same time, at that same festival, the name that I remember hearing about not doing well in Aspen was John Mulaney. That was the buzz I heard.
He was at that festival?
Yeah. That's how poorly he did, that you don't even remember he was there.
I hope he lands on his feet. I hope he recovered from it.
There were a lot of characters there that year.
Yeah, I don't remember Mulaney. I was there with TJ Miller and Michelle Buteau and Eric Andre. It was an opportunity. It was great. I just I get this, I project a lot. I'm looking at everybody who's talking to somebody like, Oh, who's that? Who are they talking to? I just bad attitude-d myself into a corner. Because I didn't know how to schmooze or just be social. I didn't know how to interact and be a part of a thing.
Were you still living in Chicago at that time or had you moved by then?
No, I was in LA for about three or four years. I've said it before, but it was kind of great because I bombed at that. And then I was like, Oh, well, I blew it. I guess I just do, instead of thinking like, what stand-up do I have to do that could be relatable? Because at the time you could still get maybe a sitcom based on your act or something. How is my act relatable and can be turned into a show? And then after that, I'm like, fuck call that. I guess I'm just gonna do stand-up and then that's when everything works. So it did help in a way that it got me on track. It helped inadvertently, because it put me on the track that got me here of like, well, you blew it with showbiz, and now I just do stand-up because I love doing stand-up.
You started out by describing your Aspen experience as unfocused, but in actuality you realized you were just focused on the wrong thing.
Yeah, be free buddy. Just talk about what you want to talk about. Don't worry about if it's marketable. It wasn't like I was doing some elusive avant garde material. I'm just like, I'm gonna stop being worried about who might be in the room or anything. There's some people in this room that are here to see a good comedy show. I would like to do comedy for them.
What was your Chicago experience like? If you had already left for LA a few years before Aspen, were you part of the first wave of Chicago stand-ups in the 2000s?
Yeah. 1999. Mike Bridenstine just wrote a book about those days. It was a bunch of people doing stand-up like nobody was gonna get famous. Everybody just wanted to be real good. There was some playing to the back of the room. But there was also, people were coming to shows like, you know, it's been talked about, like the open mic on Monday had 100-some people who were just audience members
The Lion’s Den.
Yeah, so you wanted to do good. And Mark Geary with the Lincoln Lodge put all this effort into these quirky little shows at the Lincoln Lodge and then he put production. You got there, you realized this was just a back room of a restaurant that you brought a stage and curtains and lights in every weekend. So you were like, I want to do good on this. Look at all the effort everybody else is putting in. I want to do good on the show. Now I don't even know how much, there's so much stage time there. Mark Geary’s got a brick and mortar Lincoln Lodge with like three or four stages inside of it. And yeah, that's just from everybody just wanted to be good. Not famous. Not you know, people moved to LA or New York who were like, stand up’s a reason for me to go up in front of people that can maybe help me make it in showbiz.
Did you pick LA over NYC because at that time, you still thought about the stand-up to sitcom route?
No, I picked LA because I grew up in Chicago, and if I was gonna move to pursue a stupid dream, I was gonna do it with palm trees. I’ve got what now is known as seasonal depression, which I did not realize. I was a big old bitch every winter. I was like, well, if my life is gonna suck, it's gonna suck close to the beach. That was it. That was strictly it. And I knew more people out there than here.
I'm on Episode 430 of my podcast. But I noticed you were on Episode 30 of Marc Maron’s WTF. You were one of the guinea pig because I went back and listened. It's a completely different format.
It was like morning radio. He's like, I'm gonna lead you into this bit that you do. I’m like this is weird, man. I think I featured for him in Atlanta and he was, I’ve got a podcast. Back when it was embarrassing. I have a podcast, if you want to do it, come over and I’ll have some food. So yeah, I went to his house and sat in his garage and it was like, I knew Marc Maron from festivals and like, old-school Marc Maron. Like I didn't meet him but like crossed paths when it was still partying Marc Maron. Like, I didn't interact with him but I was at the Chicago festival, I think, that got him sober. So it was one of the things where he said I'll do the thing and I'll lead you into the bit. I haven't listened to it. But I wonder if it's very obvious that it was the setup into a bit kind of format.
Does that mean that you were so early that there wasn't a real bump for you for doing WTF?
Yeah, it was a few years before he got Barack Obama on the show.
It was so early in podcasting. Just doing a podcast.
No, people didn't even know what they were.
It wasn’t like the Johnny Carson effect, where suddenly you’re booking dates.
I think it was early enough that like so what: I listen to it on a CD? How do I get these podcasts? I don't think I knew what they were as much as like, I don't even know where these go after we talk. I don't have an app. I don't know where they live. I don't know where a podcast goes. Somebody knows so I'll do it. But I don't know where they go.
I didn't start until 2015. A large part of that was feeling like I didn't know how to do it. In retrospect, it's remarkably easy.
I still don't know. Somebody puts them on the internet. I just talk. The fact that I figured out how to send an audio file to Dropbox, which I only know half of the time if it goes there. I still get emails like it's not up. Didn't go up. I'm like I sent it, it said it sent. I don't know.
You did your first record with A Special Thing, right?
Yeah, Death of the Party. 2010.
And how did that end up coming out with A Special Thing. Were you on those message boards?
That was the biggest bump back in those days. Back in the 2000s. At least in my opinion, it was because they had Death Ray. Before Comedy Bang Bang, it was called Comedy Death Ray. They did it at a place called M Bar, then they moved when UCB opened up in LA on Franklin. They would do it there. And so everybody, they would do recaps of the shows on those. A Special Thing was a message board word that sort of started as like a Tenacious D fan message board, but people would do these recaps the shows. Death Ray was still new so like it was like all the regulars like Paul F Tompkins and Chelsea Peretti and Zach Galifianakis and Sarah Silverman. So you’d get like one spot for a new person. But then after that would be the show See You Next Tuesday. And the people would stick around, there'll be a free show. So if you watch that people would stay around and that's where all the new ones like the newbies like me came in. And you wanted to like knock it out of the park because if you did, they’d chat you up on that message board. And that's what turned into a thing and then then A Special Thing Records. They were the ones, they're kind of helming the shows and everything. And they had started that label, but they only had a few people out. Yeah, Matt Belknap and Ryan McManemin. And so, when they're like, Hey, do you think you’d do a record with us? I was like, wow. Like that was like Sub Pop asking me to do a record. I’m like Yeah, absolutely. Which I now know SubPop also does comedy. But I mean in the sense of like, this awesome vetted indie label, cuz I was looking at like, who else they put records out by like, yeah, I would love to do that. That's, yes. Thank you. I think I quit my job and recorded that the week afterwards.
What was the job?
I was doing closed captioning with Matt Braunger. We did closed caption TV. And he got me the job. Yeah, it was you know, what, for a day job it wasn't bad. But I was like, fuck. Alright, I was so scared to quit a day job. I'm not like these people who are like it'll all work out. It all fall into place. No, I need to know how much money I'm making a week. I need to budget. I'm like, a real tight ass with money, so for me to quit my job was like, alright, well, I gotta record this album. I gotta go on the road immediately. And it was probably within a couple months of that. I was like featuring for Maron in Atlanta when I met him and did the podcast. So yeah.
I guess if you're gonna have another day job in comedy, being the voice of Comedy Central is a fun one to have.
Oh, yeah, that was a fun one. That was a fun 10 years.
How did that come about?
They just started asking like, do you want to come in and read these spots? Yeah. Watch this show. You want to come in next week and read these spots? All right. Yeah, I'll do it again.
How did it work? Did you come in like once a week?
Well, yeah, it was just slowly ramping up into more and more times, I'd come in and eventually I'm like, Is this my job? I had to ask. Am I putting Penn Jillette out of business right now and I'm sure he's alright with his Vegas show.
Right, he was a voice too!
Yeah, I think I kind of overlapped him. I got in as unceremoniously as I got out. Same thing happened like. All of a sudden 10 years in, I’d get less and less sessions booked in the studio.
Were you paid per session or were you on a contract?
I was monthly. I tried to get contracts. They were like no, we just don't do that. OK, because I'm big on like, I want to know how much I'm gonna get. I want to be able to rely on like, alright, for this year, I'm gonna make this. Which stand-up is not the best choice if you want to be paranoid about your income. But yeah, and then it's funny because it was David Gborie, who's the voice now. And he's my pal. But there were a couple of people who read some promos for Comedy Central. Alright! The more the merrier. Then he was like, hey, you still doing Comedy Central promos? I don't know, here and there. He's like, Yeah, cuz I'm doing a lot of ‘em. Hey, Dave's cool. But I was a little bit, like, you don’t say anything after 10 years?
They just ghosted you?
Pretty much until I started asking like, Hey, am I not doing this anymore? Like I had to ask them to give me a direct answer.
That’s so wild because you were one of their big talents. You put out multiple records and specials with them.
Yeah, Comedy Central was a thing for a while in my life, and it's not really a thing anymore anywhere.
Crazy since Paramount owns Comedy Central and could’ve easily put them on Paramount+
Well, it's wherever Comedy Dynamics wants to put them, because Comedy Dynamics bought up the rights to all of them.
I’ve got to talk to Brian Volk-Weiss.
Yeah, go talk to him. Contact him. I hope he's making some money for everybody's comedy specials because I know we aren't.
You could picket. Strike. Or I guess maybe you can’t?
No. Just write a new special. That's all I can do. Just keep doing this.
Hannibal Buress did that once, re-recorded one of his old albums.
Oh, did he re-record? I thought about doing that.
That was years before Taylor Swift.
Who originally did that? Was that John Fogerty?I believe that the band Love/Hate also may have done that only, because I went searching for — they’re a hair metal band from 80s — and I was like, these aren’t the same as the songs that I liked. And I think they must have like rerecorded because of that circumstance.
Hannibal also was the first to use Yondr pouches for cell phones.
Oh, yeah. Those I agree with. I don't have a problem with. Just from like the distraction level of like, alright, yeah, your phone’s away. Watch the show. What if my babysitter calls? Then go outside. Do what you did before you had a cell phone. Did you just cook meat over a flame in a cave before a cell phone? No, you lived. You’ll fucking live. You'll be fine.
It's so funny because going back to listen to that 2009 episode, that was on your mind then. It was just emerging where people had cell phones out while watching movies. And now it’s everywhere.
I don't go to the movies. I think maybe in part because I can't watch somebody's screen light up in the movie theater.
Yeah, you said that 14 years ago.
I still agree that that is rude. But I think that actually now more people realize that. And in the few times I do go to the movies. I think I went to a movie in Times Square once when I was here. I was just like, this is chaos.
How often do you see phones out when you’re onstage?
Not much anymore. I think the word’s got out, like, we all have these. They're not new. I'm not gonna freak out if I see it light up if you're just sitting there texting the whole time. Yeah, get fucked. But if somebody's like, oh, some bleep. Oh, OK, I'm not gonna get upset.
What if someone’s holding their phone up the whole time and you don’t know if it’s for a picture or video?
The video thing is like, all right. I think popular acknowledgement is like you don't do this in a club or even a club will have someone come by or somebody in the show be like, oh, you can't do that. I think my patience has grown to the point of like, oh, maybe they don't know and somebody will say something or I'll be like, Oh, please don't do that. Early on in stand-up, I would freak out if the slightest thing went wrong. I didn't have that playfulness with a crowd. What are we talking about over here? They’d say, I'm ordering a drink from the server. I'm sorry. I’m a little tightly wound. These jokes have to be said perfectly. It’s a long story. If it goes off track, I'm fucked. I don't have one-liners. I don't know what to tell you.
The teleprompter doesn't stop moving.
Yeah. If i don’t keep going, I get real scrambled.
When did you start growing a beard?
It was after those festivals. After, oh my god I’ve gotta shave and look this way. So 2007, back before beards were a thing. I was just like, ah, I'm just gonna look like a fucking psycho. I don't care. It was like really part of the outward like, I don't care. I'm gonna do comedy the way I want to do comedy. I'm going to look like this maniac.
I mean, it really has become part of your aesthetic. Your charm.
It’s every middle-aged comic with a warbly neck. You have one. I have one. Every dude with a weak jawline has one.
But the times where you shave, it's very dramatic.
Oh, I know. I have the internet. I’m made aware of it. And in not so polite ways.
When you were in Love, I asked myself, who is that?
And my ass was in that and people were more upset about seeing my face than seeing my ass.
No. I’m not making a value judgment.
Other people have. I'm saying other people have.
But it plays into your newest special — Shocks & Struts, from 800 Pound Gorilla Media — where you joke about the disparity between what you look like and how you actually are.
I guess. Well, I don't think I look like as much of a maniac anymore. Like a beard is commonplace. I think it's even probably falling out of fashion at this point. Which bit?
You look like you might be the type of person who wants to kidnap a Democratic governor?
Oh, yeah. Well, yeah, you gotta think that that was recorded last May of 22. Actually, I think I did that on May 5, a year ago. I recorded that a year ago. But yeah, it was every every picture of every dude with like sunglasses backwards on their head would like.
Like you might be an insurrectionist.
Yeah, well, that's the look. It's part of it. Dudes hiding tiny weak chins.
Part of the comedy is people might perceive you to be one thing, but then the words come out of your mouth are another.
Yeah, I've got tattoos and a beard, which is not punk rock affiliated anymore. It's not like, Oh, that guy's a Hot Water Music fan. Now, that guy's meeting out behind Burger King with the other truck buddies and sorting out how to get these politicians correct. You know? But this is the look I like. This is what I feel comfortable. Like the beard early on, is probably just a mask it’s probably just a way to like, Oh, I’m hiding my face. You know, early on, like, all right. I feel like I'm kind of doing jokes from behind a tree a little bit. And it also was something that was more eye-catching back then because I didn't look like other like, again, LA so everyone’s trying to look as handsome as they can, or whatever character they're trying to be. And I'm like, Well, I'm just gonna like not try and look like I want any of this. Which is ironic that that's the look that turned into like every doughy friend in a sitcom has that look now?
There was a period after The Hangover where everybody was casting for the next Galifianakis.
Yeah, some of that was definitely like a Galifianakis. It was also his one-liners and weird stuff and he's like a weird dude. His whole thing suited him…I’m not going to speak for him, but people are like, ‘You’re this one guy!’ And actually, I’m a lot of things. Like anybody that gets picked out for their one role that people recognize. And then I get recognized as being in The Hangover because I was in Asia, and everybody's like, Oh, like I was doing this show. This many people are not just like, amateur stand-up comedy fans. They’re like oh, no, they all think you’re Zach. Oh, well, I’ll take pictures with them. I don’t give a shit.
I don't know if it's the trendy thing to do now or it's just people are so fed up with trying to compete with the other algorithms. What was the calculus for you to put your new special on YouTube?
I just knew that's where it was gonna go. And nobody was gonna buy it. Netflix has their guys, as their bearded white guys of stand-up.
Even though you have a great half-hour there already.
Thanks, but wasn't enough for me to break through the threshold of Segura, Kreischer, Bargatze.
And Bargatze left for Amazon.
And that’s not a snipe at them by any means. Like, they have their guys filling that quota. And I know that and I'm not offended by that. But it's also like yeah, what am I gonna, go to them and shop all this stuff around? The label was like we're gonna shop around. I’m like it's gonna wind up on YouTube, let's just put it out now. While some of these jokes about pandemic and everything are still closer to being relevant. It was another six months of them shopping it around. Everybody's saying no to it, which I knew it was going to happen. But now it's just proven and I get to feel sad about it. And then it went to YouTube. So I'm like, OK, good. We're six months later, and it's doing exactly — we're doing what I wanted to do a half a year ago with it. But of course they need to shop it around. The label put up the money to tape they want to make the money back so I can't get mad at them for doing that. That's of course that's what they needed to do. So I'm like begrudgingly like all right, maybe you guys can cover your costs but I don't think it's gonna go anywhere but YouTube.
Did you have a big premiere event with the chat on YouTube?
Oh, I did do that. That was a suggestion. I was in Australia when it came out. It was 10am. I'm like, OK, here's my special everybody. A couple interactions in the comments section
Press super donate?
Dude. I honestly, every time something came out, I would like go to the woods or going to some place where my cell phone didn't work because I didn't want — because I knew I would obsessively start looking at comments. And I'm like, I don't want to know. Like let it debut and let me be like three days where I can't think about it. So I’d go camping or something.
Is that also why you moved to Oregon?
I moved there because the pandemic fucked up everybody's lives. Me and the missus had a chance to move up there. We went up there. So we'll see for how long I don't know, but I like it.
How does it feel to operate in this business without being in one of the power centers? You’re not even at the Comedy Mothership in Austin.
It’s because I don't care about the business anymore. Because I'm a traveling salesman. So if I live near a city where there's stage time and an airport, that's all my requirements are. I'm not trying to act. I'm not trying to write. If somebody wants me to be in something, like we wrote this part for you, Kyle, and you don't have to audition, I'll do that, but I'm not gonna drive around do an audition. At least not now. I'm not interested in any of that stuff. All I wanted to be was a stand-up and I got to be a stand-up and awesome. Portland got a bunch of shows. I mean, obviously not as much as like some other cities but a good amount. It's got a good amount of work regionally then if I go I want to do an hour. Try it out, drive around the Northwest, get it done at the airport and go, work the road.
Would you do a Tribble Run?
I don't even know where those are anymore.
I don't know either. I mean, coming out of Seattle in the 90s. I didn't do one myself. But I met Tribble at Bridgetown a long time ago.
For the uninitiated, notoriously nightmarish. All right. Well, it's 12 hours between towns.
Billings and Boise.
Yeah, gotcha booked in January. Braunger and I purposely did one of those a couple months ago. We're like, let's just go to the coldest place. Let's do a mini tour together.
Did you take that van (from Shocks & Struts)?
No, no, no fortunately. Well, we started in Sioux Falls during that like snowpocalypse thing a couple months ago, like the threatening blizzard. And we started there and there's a promoter. We're gonna drive with our buddy Sean Jordan. He's likeI ’ve got my mom's Prius will be fine. And then the blizzard hit like the night of the first show. The promoters are like, I would really hope that you do not take a Prius. He's like I have a leased Chevy Suburban. That's part of the production company. We woke up in the morning we're like, yeah, OK, we’ll jump in that Suburban. And it was terrifying. It was like white knuckle like whiteout condition blizzards and we went from Sioux Falls to Duluth to Fargo to Winnipeg in February during a blizzard. Who needs Tribble when you can make your own life hell? It was actually a lot of fun.
It's the kind of thing that true stand-up comedians would love, right? The chaos. The camradarie.
There was a novelty to it for us, still.
Because you’re not doing it all the time.
It's not like well, if I don’t get this $80, they're gonna shut my lights off. Like, oh, no, we could have bailed at any time. But fuck it. We're gonna go do it.
So I take it when you heard the news of CBS was going to reboot at Midnight, you didn't pack up the car and move back to LA?
I did hear something about that. Yeah, I mean, again, it'll be I don't know. Is it gonna be the same people? Is it gonna be the same thing? That show was great. I loved being on that show.
Here’s Kinane on an episode in the first week of the show in October 2013.
I know that the executive producer team is Spartina, Stephen Colbert’s studio.
OK. Honestly, I knew Bart Coleman
He was the booker.
And yeah, if you know, I’ll get booked out enough in advance.
But I don’t want to say you were the Paul Lynde of that show.
I’ll take Paul Lynde, sure. Why not?
Or the Nipsey Russell.
Sure! I liked it. I mean, I think (Ron) Funches and (Doug) Benson took the points seriously, but that show was great. And it was great for stand-ups. It was a great showcase to see stand-ups that you maybe didn't know about. And then you got to say like, Hey, I'm gonna be in this city this week. Like that did more for me than any late-night spots. No disrespect to the late-night spots. But people watched at Midnight to see stand up. I don't think people watch late-night to see the stand-up at the end. So I don't even know if people were watching through the end to see a late-night spot. But you tuned in to see three comics that you knew or didn't know to just make jokes for half hour, to do the thing that — not they're gonna act and like, I don't like their stand-up. But I thought I liked them because this sitcom — like, no, you're doing the thing that you want to do and showcase and then you could tell them this weekend I'm gonna be in this town that show’s great for that reason for that, and it was it was fun. I had a lot of fun. And if they were like, Hey, do you want to do it in two weeks? Yeah, I’ll book a flight. Yeah, I started out. I'm still West Coast. It's not that far. I’ve got a place to stay.
You heard the man, Stephen Colbert.
Yeah, let’s go.
To bring this around. We talked about how years earlier doing these festivals taught you about what you cared about when you didn't? What do you care about now? What matters to you?
Oh boy, wow. Big closer. What matters? Stand-up, I don't think it's entirely ageless. OK, the comedy I was doing in my 20s appealed other 20 years old and the comedy I'm doing my 30s was still like, party comedy appealing at 20 and 30 year olds. OK, well, now I'm 46. I can't keep trying to appeal to a 23-year-old because that looks fucked up. But I also need to retain people that remember what it was like to be 23 and then are now in their 30s and this now like so I guess, like relevance, like trying to maintain this idea of relevance in stand-up without turning into like the bitchy old guy. So like, trying to still be like, yeah, actually things are pretty cool. And I still like doing stuff and being alive. Things are different now! These kids with the peanut allergies, this kind of dog shit. You know, I don't wanna turn into that.
You say in your new special, let people like what they like.
Yeah, and I don't I mean, that's projection, too. I'm talking about projecting because I do I sit there and I'm like, This guy? No, I like watching comics grow as people and seeing it reflected in their act. And sometimes that's scary because oh, I build my audience on being this type of person and now I'm gonna go against those expectations to be this kind of person. Well, I hope I've built an audience based on expectations that I'm going to change and try and learn and grow hopefully. We’ll see.
It really worked for your podcast buddy, Marc Maron. He really grew into his curmudgeoness.
Yeah, but my man's been through some life.
You've had gout.
I still have it. It's an ongoing disease. I struggle with it every day. I don't. I got medicine. I'm fine. It's fine. Totally fine.
Everything's fine. Thanks for waking up to do this!