Laugh Lines: Conversations With Comedians

by Corey Andrew

  Corey: I’ve always wanted to see what a script for an improvised comedy looks like. What do they look like?

  Thomas: It’s so disappointing what that script looks like; it’s almost not worth looking at. It’s like, ‘We walk up to guy. Guy runs away. Guy is dressed like milkshake.’ People look at it and go, ‘What?’

  Corey: When you’re not filming the show, do you keep the moustache year-round?

  Thomas: Oh dear, goodness, no. I do keep it, but I keep it in a box, because it’s fake. That’s a thing that surprises people the most is that the moustache comes off. They are $100 a piece.

  Corey: Have you ever worn a real one before?

  Thomas: Here’s the weird thing, when we did ‘Viva Variety,’ also on Comedy Central, I had a real moustache, and people always thought it was fake. Always. People were like, ‘Your moustache is slipping off a little bit.’ ‘This is real.’ Now that I have a fake moustache, people always think it’s real. I don’t know how that worked out.

  Corey: No real grooming needed?

  Thomas: No, there’s a little bit of prep work. Some guy out in the San Fernando Valley, he’s like the Q of moustaches, to James Bond, you know?

  Corey: Are they real human hair?

  Thomas: Oh yeah, they’re the real deal.

  Corey: How much are moustache rides?

  Thomas: Well, the moustaches themselves are $100, so let’s see, if I can get 10 rides for 10 bucks each, I feel pretty good about it. Of course, there’s time and labor in moustache rides that people aren’t keeping track of.

  Corey: Have you been pulled over at all, or had any run-ins?

  Thomas: Not yet. I was pulled over once, and the guy didn’t realize I was Dangle until well, well into it—although I do now keep a couple of the DVDs in my glove compartment because cops go crazy for the show. Cops love it. The two people who love the show more than anyone in the world are chronic marijuana users and law enforcement, and those are our two best demographics.

  Corey: In the last season, what did you talk about with Kenny Rogers while you were in bed with him?

  Thomas: Oh my God, Kenny and I—he’s a real good sport. You can’t faze him I found out. It was real, real easy lying around in a bed with him. He’s the kind of dude you can go out and knock ’em dead with—‘The Gambler’ and ‘Coward of the County.’ Then you can go spoon with him, and either way, you feel like he’s only talking to you.

  Corey: This season you’re actually in prison. What kind of research did you do?

  Thomas: We filmed in a prison that had recently been closed. It doesn’t take very long being locked in a cell with Carlos Alazraqui and Cedric Yarbrough to get pretty stressed out. Particularly because Carlos is a voiceover artist, and he makes a lot of crazy cat and dog sounds to amuse himself. I would say three hours in a cell with Carlos, which is what I spent, is equivalent to doing six months.

  Corey: How do you think Dangle would do in prison?

  Thomas: He’s tough; he’s a survivor. He’s resourceful, and he likes hanging around with guys. He likes working out, and he likes being around guys who work out, and he likes an organized day, so I think he’d actually do quite well.

  Corey: I imagine your exercise regimen is pretty strict.

  Thomas: To keep in the shorts? It used to be. It used to involve a fair amount of red wine and three packs of Merits a day, but I just quit.

  Corey: A couple quick things on you writing the new ‘Herbie: The Love Bug.’ When you’re involved with something like this, do you get to ride in the car?

  Thomas: I stood next to the car a couple times, never got to ride in it. I also stood next to Lindsay Lohan as well, but I did not get to ride in her either.

  Corey: How do you have a G-rated movie with Lindsay Lohan?

  Thomas: I asked that question, too. When you see the film, call me, and let’s talk about how that movie got a G. Because there’s more intense T&A in that movie than almost any film that will come out this summer. I guarantee it.

  Paula Poundstone

  I met Paula Poundstone backstage before an AIDS benefit performance, and the two of us giggled over a couple glasses of wine.

  I had no idea that a couple years later, Paula would temporarily lose custody of her kids because of an incident of child endangerment when she was under the influence.

  But her humor has always been honest, even in the face of potential public embarrassment. She didn’t shy away from the incident during an interview with me. Quite the contrary, sticking with her trademark everyman (or everywoman) style, she told a humorous story of how she ended up with the world’s dumbest dog in a houseful of skittish cats.

  Corey: I notice you’ve stuck with the same style of dress for some time now: suspenders and a men’s tie. Are you hoping it becomes part of fashion?

  Paula: Don’t look for a lot of members of that support group. I don’t think you’re going to find a lot of people in that chat room. At home I don’t dress up because my whole life is nothing but wiping down surfaces with a damp cloth.

  Corey: What do you wear at home?

  Paula: I have for years stood in front of my T-shirt trunk selecting each day the shirt that was somehow going to be the one to make the day. Finally, I came up with a new system. I take two shirts. I put them on the top of the pile and those rotate. When one’s in the laundry, I wear the other. And you know what? No one has said a word.

  Corey: You’re coming to town to benefit a non-profit organization which assists people with AIDS who have no other means of support.

  Paula: My publicist called and asked me for a quote about the event. What am I gonna say, ‘I hate AIDS. Isn’t that awful?’ Anything I would say would pale in comparison to the issue itself. It’s great people are coming to participate. They called me up and said, ‘The doctor wants to speak for 10 minutes before you go on.’ Ten minutes about what? I hope he’s gonna talk about grieving and loss. That will be cheery. My biggest fear is that I have such a dark sense of humor. The odds of me saying the wrong thing are so great.

  Corey: You are finally writing a book, too?

  Paula: Slowly. It will be my life peppered with my perceptions. The way I could make the biggest impact financially in terms of writing a book would be for me to win the bet about how quickly it will be on the 50-percent-off table.

  Corey: You’re known for talking about Pop-Tarts—and cats. How is the cat population in the Poundstone household?

  Paula: When I used to come home to my apartment, long ago, I would put my stuff down and pet each cat in the order that they had arrived at my house. Now, I don’t remember the last time I pet a cat—and I’ve got nine of them. Most of the time I find them annoying. They’re in the way. They won’t stop throwing up.

  Corey: How do the cats and kids mix?

  Paula: One of the cats used to sleep on the baby’s back because there was nothing he could do about it. It was before he could roll over. But then they got a little bit older, and now they kind of have the drop on the cats. For the longest time the cats were just incensed. They hated the kids, and now they’ve finally figured out that I’m probably not going to pet them for the rest of their lifetime and if they want any kind of attention —which they do desperately —they’re gonna have to work something out with the kids.

  Corey: Do your fans bring Pop-Tarts to your shows?

  Paula: Yes, but they sometimes bring the wrong flavor. I like Brown Sugar and Cinnamon. I’m 40, and the pounds aren’t exactly dropping off at this point. I realize there’s a fat quotient happening, and I’m not going to risk that on the wrong flavor. My kids eat them, too. That was a big mistake. I never should have shared. There’s still some stuff that I eat that they don’t know what it is, and I don’t see anything wrong with that. I don’t like to share.

  Corey: You also seemed to think that flight attendants had something against you. Has that changed as you’ve expressed this on stage?

  Paula: Occasionally, if something happens on the plane, they
will come up and say, ‘Don’t talk about this in your act, OK?’ Maybe now that teeny little bit of recognition is saving me because they realize if they screw up, I will mark them publicly, and it’s true that I would.

  Corey: You are great at talking with the audience during the show. Is there anyone who has caught you off-guard?

  Paula: Once a couple sitting at a table next to the stage was making out. It became really distracting—not just to me but to the whole crowd. And I swear they were making loud, suckling noises. And they kept looking at the rest of us like they were in their honeymoon suite, and we crept in through the window.

  A few years passed and Paula and I caught up before a show at Westport Playhouse in St. Louis—theatre in the round. It was one of the first times I took my mother to a comedy show. This time, anyway, she didn’t bring up menopause, as she did when we met Roseanne Barr.

  Corey: How is the book coming along?

  Paula: It’s taking me forever. I think it’s because I’m writing it in real time, and that’s gonna make the process even longer. Honestly, grammar is not my strong point. I get carried away with commas.

  Corey: I know you have some issues with computers also. What do you do when your kids have homework assignments that have to be done on a computer?

  Paula: It’s horrible, and I’m bitter toward my children as a result. My poor kids, every time they come home with an assignment that has to be done on a computer, they know there’s going to be a big family scuffle, because I say things like, ‘You go back and tell Miss Talbot that we don’t do that here. Isn’t there a computer at your school? I thought I saw one. Do you, or do you not have recess? Every day, right? Just get your butt in a chair.’

  Corey: I’m sure you assist your kids in other non-computing ways, right?

  Paula: Surprisingly, I have not been contacted by Parenting magazine for anything. Probably they’ve been trying to reach me by e-mail.

  Corey: How are your cats?

  Paula: Everybody’s getting old. The oldest cat, Baloo, recently died, but it was definitely her time to go. She was ready. We have a vicious cat-eating dog now and she kept going over to him. He didn’t chase her anymore, because she was too old for chasing. He would just nibble her. He was really going to eat her right in front of my eyes. I think it was like an old animal going into the woods to die. ‘Look, the circle of life. You eat me, you live a little longer.’

  Corey: How did you end up with a cat-eating dog in a house full of cats?

  Paula: The honest truth is I was drunk in a pet store. Weeks after I got him, I ended up in my great, dramatic, humiliating story—rehab for 180 days for a 30-day program. A lady I didn’t even know took the dog for me for the whole six months. When I got out, I was in the front yard playing with the kids and she dropped off—what I’ve always likened to a drive-by shooting—the biggest, stupidest dog I’ve ever seen.

  I don’t have any way of proving it was the original dog, but under the circumstances, it seemed rude to ask.

  When I last interviewed comic Paula Poundstone, she was still less than computer-savvy.

  “It’s like climbing into something with a ladder and then kicking the ladder out from under you,” she said.

  Now, she’s a Facebook-ing fool and Tweeting like there’s no tomorrow.

  A couple of Poundstone’s one-liner Twitter posts:

  “As we walked by some ambulance drivers eating ‘to go’ at Jack in the Box, my son asked if they had a patient. That’d be some bad service.”

  “I’m getting a new MRI next week. It comes out on DVD in February and will be available for podcast soon.”

  The MRI is for her hurt back which is making her walk like a paper doll, she said, while strolling down the street with her 18-year-old daughter and new puppy, Ramona (after the precocious Beverly Cleary character).

  Poundstone’s stage act has not changed a lot in the last 30 years. She still dons a suit and tie, enjoys Diet Pepsi on stage and is folksy with the crowd. Must be why Garrison Keillor likes her so much.

  Corey: We’re brand-new Facebook friends!

  Paula: We are? Good.

  Corey: The last time I interviewed you, you were really not a very computer-friendly person.

  Paula: I’m still not, very. I’m actually writing a book; it has to do with what people think will make them happy. And people always tell me, ‘If you just knew how to do this stuff, oh, you’ll be amazed.’ … The reason I bought a laptop was because you can carry it down and street with you and ask people questions. For my money, the delete button is awfully close to return. I can’t believe in all these years of redesign and upgrading, no one has noticed that problem. So, yeah, it really wastes much more of my time than what it saves. It doesn’t balance out at all. Having said that, I’m really enjoying the Facebook, and I’m enjoying the Twitter thing. I have a nature that goes really well with the Twitter thing. When I first heard of it, I thought, ‘Oh jeez, who will do that?’ And the answer is me. Everyone criticizes how stupid it is, and I absolutely agree with and support it, and yet I really enjoy that form of stupidity.

  Corey: I also see you have been shooting and putting up your own videos on Facebook—while driving even.

  Paula: I do. No one has offered me a film contract and said, ‘You’re what Hollywood has been missing all these years.’ I enjoy it. It’s so silly and stupid. That’s really the beauty of it.

  Corey: Do you edit at all, or do you just upload it raw?

  Paula: Mostly, (it’s) just what I shoot. I did one of me playing charades of myself that I had to edit. I’ve been taking lessons at the Apple Store. I don’t know if they want other people to know that because I’m not one of their students they brag about as far as achievement. After the first three lessons what I could remember was where the Apple Store was. And by the way, by the next lesson I had forgotten that. I was always going down the wrong block. My drag and click—I think it’s the other way around—my click and drag is remedial. I can’t do it.

  Corey: Kids these days know so much more. Do your kids help you with that?

  Paula: No, I don’t really let them do any of that. A mother said to me the other day—we were comparing notes while our kids were at gymnastics—she said, ‘You know it’s so hard with kids these days. There’s so many things, Facebook and MySpace and Twitter and everything; it’s so hard.’ I said, ‘My kids don’t do any of that, so I guess it’s not so hard for mine.’

  Why would I let me kids do that? I don’t understand. Not only do they let them do it, but then they feel that the child is somehow at a disadvantage as a result of doing it. I haven’t figured that out yet. Here’s how I saved my children from that bad thing, I don’t let them. My kids don’t watch television; they’re not allowed. People say, ‘How do you do that?’ I go, ‘I don’t turn that thing on.’ One morning, several years ago, my son was hard to wake, so I turned on ‘Sesame Street’ hoping that if he heard it, he would leap up. He ran to his sister to tell her that there’s something on that thing. He had no idea that any time you turn that on, there’s something on it. … I don’t know if I’ve really screwed them up or freed their minds for more important things.

  Corey: We’ll see what happens.

  Paula: Yeah. (laughs) I gotta tell you something, some ominous clouds are gathering.

  (At this point, Poundstone paused the chat to correct her daughter’s walking.) My daughter walks funny. That’s all there is to it. I’m not sure there’s a disability; she just walks funny. She drags her feet and then she swings them around. It’s some sort of weird line dance as near as I can tell. ‘Honey, only do that with a group.’

  I swear to God, this is a direct quote from our conversation this morning. She just turned 18 and I said, ‘How do you feel about becoming an adult?’ She said, ‘You know there’s pros and there’s cons.’ ‘OK, let’s start with the pros.’ She told me about how you can make choices and you don’t have to go to school if you don’t want to. I said, ‘Yeah, absolutely. S
o, OK, what about the cons?’ The first thing she said was, ‘Well, if I murder someone, I would be tried as an adult.’ I said, ‘OK, now I’m afraid to sleep in the house with you.’

  Judd Apatow

  Judd Apatow may be better known as the producer/creator as such dirty-but-sweet flicks like “The 40-Year-Old Virgin” and “Superbad,” but I appreciate his woefully under-seen stuff, such as the short-lived TV series “Freaks and Geeks” and the Disney kid flick “Heavyweights.”

  Jason Anderson, my oldest friend, and I agree that “Heavyweights” is ridiculously quotable, and a must-see for fans of Ben Stiller and fans of movies about kids at a fat camp.

  Apatow also created a college show for Fox called “Undeclared,” which is on DVD and definitely worth a Netflix add. We chatted when the DVD was set to debut, and Apatow was about to make Steve Carrell the most famous, middle-aged virgin in the world.