Deep question.

Rome from Maryland has sent me one doozy of a question and, unike many of the queries I receive, this one is pretty serious. First to get this you must know that stand up comedy is a love of mine, I have been doing it on and off for years and dealing with a deep, sick, love/hate relationship with comedy and audiences. That said, on to the questions.

Rome asks this: "How'bout a battery of questions on the same subject? Why stand-up? I realize that it isn't the only thing you do but it's something you seem to like. You don't exactly come across as a "people person" so showing your wares to an audience is kind of odd when you think about it.

Who are your influences? I know, typical rock band shit but I find it to be even more important when it comes to comedy.

Who are your secondary influences? Writers, musicians, actors, and the like who brought you to the idea of performing in the first place.

What's your style? Steam of consciousness, joke telling, observational...

Is there an objective and if so what is it? What's a show like? Do you have a journey you're trying to take with the audience? Are you trying to piss them off or win them over?

I think that covers it."

Well if I may bare my soul to you all I will gladly answer this barrage of askings. A people person, I am most certainly not. I have always held firm that only five out of a hundred people are worth talking too and only one of those people is worth hanging around with and I think that is a liberal estimate. There have been several days in my life that I have considered giving up on civilization, hiking into the woods and writing a book about how much squirrels piss me off. That may sound like a joke, which it is but it is also something I have actually contemplated. It would be fun, in a strange way, to live in the woods for a few years, only leaving for supplies and constantly work out and maintain physical hygiene. That way the folks in that small backwoods, mountain town would have these strange stories about an incredibly buff, well groomed, mountain man that would appear once a year and say,"Hell of a workout today huh?", or "Pork bellies are up but I would steer clear of oranges" and then fade back into the mist. I believe that something like this would cause people to have to shake out the cobwebs that have grown in their heads and let a spark of thought flicker. To me there is no length too far to go for a good, deep thought provoking joke. That is part of why I do what I do. I try to get up in front of people and allow them access to my dementia. The disappointing part always falls when you know people aren't getting it. That was my biggest problem in San Diego. It is a college and military town and no one wants to hear about how horrible the government is or, they just want dick, fart and titty jokes. They don't want to think, thinking is scary. Well I am not Dane Cook, or Carlos Mencia, both of whom I thought were funny at first but then they fell from grace by not doing anything new or interesting. Which is what made them popular with the masses of brain dead college jocks and young Wall Street execs. That is why I have deep respect for Dave Chapelle, he realized that his show was just doing the same thing over and over. Recycling joke and stereotype observations, so he canned it. He could have beat that horse until it paid off in the hundreds of millions but he had a thing called pride. I respect that.

Influences are a different thing. I will break the major ones down for you. First, in my youth, there was always Abbot and Costello and the Marx Brothers . I grew up on their movies and watch them to this day. Now the general public likes Oliver and Hardy, or the Three Stooges more but I don't really care for them at all. Why? Because they didn't use words, they used slapstick, which, granted so did the A&C and the Marx Bros. but they also used words, puns and circular logic in some of the most beautiful ways. Abbot and Costello doing "Who's on first", or Groucho telling his story about his trip through Africa in Animal Crackers. "One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got into my pajamas I'll never know." That is my starting point. As I got older and found more daring stuff, Mel Brooks and George Carlin came onto my radar. I still watch Young Frankenstein, the original Producers (Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder version) and Blazing Saddles religiously and do not think I could ever get tired of anything Carlin has done, even that weird stuff from the seventies that wasn't really funny, is still good. Now, if you are intelligent and anti-social, you must put Bill Hicks on a pedestal as well. He was one of the best big minds of comedy and that is why he was not truly accepted by the masses. That is, until Dennis Leary took about half of his jokes after his death and tried to push them off as his own. I know there is no such thing as original thought but there is a thing called verbatim recitation and there is also evidence. To shorten this I will list more influences without too much explaining. Monty Python, The Young Ones (Adrian Edmonson and Rick Mayal, see also, Filthy Rich and Catflap, The Dangerous Brothers Present and Bottom to name a few). Richard Pryor, Jackie Mason, Rodney Dangerfield, Steve Martin, Tim Conway, Harvey Corman, Rowan and Martin, Bob and Doug Mackenzie, the list can go on. Currently Zach Galifinakus, Patton Oswalt, Dave Attel, Dylan Moran(Black Books) and The Upright Citizens Brigade to list a few.

What about other influences? Well CNN, FOX news and the government in general are always great ways to find humor, if you can avoid getting too pissed off to think once the rhetoric really kicks in. I have always found , people in general to be the best comic motivation, face it, people suck and they should be laughed at for it. I read a lot and writers like Terry Pratchett, Kurt Vonnegut, Robert Rankin and the folks who keep rewriting the bible to suit their belief system, are among my favorites.

Finally, my style. I don't really have one I guess. It is more like I go up with a few people inside my head and then one of them fights to the front and we see where that takes us. I have been off the comedy wagon again for a while but since I am in Minnesota again I feel it will soon be time to start getting up there and doing that voodoo. I have a comic theory, it goes like this, " I will speak, you will listen, if you don't laugh it's your fault, not mine". I know it is a pretty egotistical view point but you have to be pretty cocky to walk infront of people and bare your psyche to strangers.

I hope that answers your question, it's the best I could do.