Joe Rogan: Mt. Rogan Erupts

by John Delery

Coming to a city near you, stand-up comic Joe Rogan headlines the Maxim/Bud Light Real Men of Comedy Tour. But before he hit the road, the former Fear Factor host hit Punchline Magazine… with theories and hard truths.

By John Delery

Like the inventive but usually defective electrical devices that his TV alter ego rigged on numerous episodes of NewsRadio in the 1990s, switch on comedian Joe Rogan…and he goes off.

“It’s not amazing to me that we’re in Iraq specifically,” he says, shifting thoughts and gears and revving the conversation from first into overdrive, “It’s amazing that human beings are still having wars, that we’re still blowing shit up. We have access to all this information, yet we’re still exactly how we were in the ’40s, the ’30s, the ’20s and pre that. It’s bizarre. We’re a strange organism, the human being. We’re the only one of the animals, so far as we know, that’s aware of how fucked up we are, but we don’t change anything.”

Do not mistake Rogan — now traveling with Charlie Murphy of Chappelle’s Show and former Last Comic Standing champion John Heffron as part of the Maxim/Bud Light Real Men of Comedy Tour — for some dour social scientist dissecting the madness inside an enormous petri dish. Consider him an alert social surgeon who stands onstage, opens up the world, and hoots at what he finds inside.

“If you look at the earth like a living organism,” he continues after recharging himself, “and who’s to say that it’s not, our definitions of life are very narrow. It’s very possible that there’s life all around us all the time, and we just don’t have the senses to detect it. So if we really are on this living organism and if you were flying over the mountains heading into LA and you saw all the mountains and the ocean, and it looks all beautiful and natural, and then you stumbled onto LA itself — that looks like cancer. It’s big, it’s brown, it stinks and it gets bigger every year. What the fuck is that? That’s not a growth?”

He may have acted dumb on TV, but Rogan is much brighter than dimmer-than-a-night-light Joe Garrelli, his NewsRadio character from 1995 to 1999. And he certainly thinks about more than how to gross out the nation, his function on Fear Factor, the how-low-can-people-go show on NBC that every week tested the tolerance of contestants’ digestive systems.

Rogan also speaks more thoughtfully than he did on The Man Show, the former satirical and hysterical male-chauvinist pigsty on Comedy Central. His theories about life tend to be more scatological than anthropological, but audiences understand his twisted-into-funny-shapes logic.

“I have a theory on human beings,” Rogan says. “We like to look at ourselves as if we’re something separate from animals, or overlord of all the other animals. But what we really are, if you look at the big picture, we’re like a very complicated form of bacteria. We’re no different than mold on a sandwich.”

Did he receive Sam Kinison’s corneas? After all, Rogan appears to observe the world though the same set of absurd eyes that Kinison once did.

“New Orleans,” he says, continuing his rant, “they’re rebuilding…again! Why? Get the fuck out of there. Isn’t it like below sea level? There’s not supposed to be a city there, you fuckin’ retards. Oh, but it’s always been there. Well, fuckin’ move it. Move it to somewhere above the ocean, you assholes. Why the fuck are you rebuilding in that same panhandle? You’re at the bottom of a toilet bowl, and there’s a river rushing to swallow you up again, you fuckin’ retards.”

Rogan, like all comedians, jokes to provoke laughter. But he also performs to purge his percolating mind. Once it starts, the geyser of disdain sprays everyone in its proximity.

“If you were an alien life-form coming here to view Earth,” he says with the eruptive force of Old Faithful, “you wouldn’t see individuals. You’d see a swarm of this one life-form that’s devouring this one organism, the earth. I mean we’re literally in a battle right now to see who gets to suck off the main vein of the planet. That’s what this is, this a war about oil, right? Doesn’t everybody kind of agree to that? Oil’s got something to do with it, for sure. Antiterrorism is the fuckin’ flag we’re waving, but most intelligent people believe that oil has something to do with it. Well, what’s that? That’s the blood of the earth, man. That’s how crazy we are. We have constructed our entire society on the blood of the earth. This is a very, very twisted world we live in.”

It’s a noxious environment for us everyday animals, but it’s a healthy one for stand-up comedians like Rogan.

“The dumber people are,” he says gratefully while finally decelerating, “the more there is to talk about.”

Form more information on Joe’s current tour, visit www.maximonline.com/realmenofcomedy. To see Joe’s tripped-out official Web site, visit www.joerogan.net.

Demetri Martin: These Are Jokes

by Dylan P. Gadino

It’s clear, if not from the name of his album alone then from the amazingly economical language in his bits, that Demetri Martin is a simple, unassuming man concerned with one thing: telling jokes.

He’s not one to work the crowd or to create segues after punch lines; and he hasn’t spent much time nailing down a dynamic stage persona. Rather, Martin is content delivering a stream of well-paced and meticulously constructed few-liners.

The large space at Chicago’s Lakeshore Theater (where These Are Jokes was recorded in February) and the size of the crowd (350 audience members, huge for a comedy show) afford Martin an excellent chance to air out in a way that would have been impeded in a more intimate club.

To that end, the 33-year-old Yale alumnus and sometimes Daily Show With Jon Stewart correspondent takes care to treat the crowd to a few novel flourishes. He lays most of his jokes on a bed of unobtrusive acoustic-guitar playing or a soft, crappy-sounding keyboard. During one cluster of jokes he calls “Personal Information Waltz,” Martin is joined onstage by Saturday Night Live cast member Will Forte, who weaves purposely over-the-top Christina Aguilera-esque soul singing between Martin’s saying things like, “I hang out in sports bars a lot. I’m not that into sports. I’m not really
a drinker either. But I love slapping five.” The combination finds the audience dying and Demetri himself laughing at Forte’s absurd performance.

Comic Leo Allen also hits the stage to narrate some of Demetri’s more visual jokes for the home listeners. Martin devotees have come to expect this sort of oddball accompaniment. (Consolation to those hardcore fans: there are plenty of illustrations, animation and other entertaining visual stimuli — old report cards? — on the accompanying DVD).

Though these devices do well to keep the audience tuned in, Martin is careful not to smother the art of the jokes themselves. He delivers each punch line evenly, at a measured volume and with little pitch change. So you’d be wise to keep your ears pricked at all times to catch a series like this: “This summer at a party, I learned that there’s a small but important difference between peeing in the pool and peeing into the pool — location, location, location. I remember when I really used to be into nostalgia. I saw a sign that said, ‘Watch for children.’ I was like, ‘That sounds like a fair trade — especially if they’re crappy kids.’”

Jokes is an excellent composite of Martin’s abilities. To say that the release of this album is just the beginning of what will undoubtedly be a long, diverse and well-respected career in comedy would be a major understatement.

Norm Macdonald: Odd Man Out

by Dylan P. Gadino

Saturday Night Live alum and stand-up comedy veteran Norm Macdonald is a man unfettered by Hollywood producers and sitcom stooges. He’s a man finally free to corrupt young minds in style. Come and get it, kids!






By Dylan P. Gadino

Having woken up minutes ago at his Los Angeles home, Norm Macdonald is, for the most part, still sleeping. Just to prove it, he speaks at a volume one would usually reserve for a mouth-to-ear discussion at a library. “I’m trying to get to the bottom of this Black Dahlia thing,” he says in what sounds like his trademark anti-pause cadence, like an old-fashioned desk clock being wound against its will. No doubt, he means the Scarlett Johansson/Josh Hartnett flick. “No… the case.” he says, a bit louder. “The movie only scratches the surface. There are too many unanswered questions.”

It’s safe to assume that Macdonald’s concern, even in his tired state, is smothering in a thick coat of sarcasm. Why he’s being jokey about a 1947 murder case in which a 22-year-old aspiring actress was sliced in half and left in a field is a strange thing; not strange because he’s being offensive, but because of its arbitrary nature.

This idea of poking fun at random topics for no reason and with no serious intent at all is a running theme on Macdonald’s new album, Ridiculous. On it, Norm turns away from stand-up to focus on the sketch— that volatile subsection of performed comedy that made the 42-year-old comic a household name during his tenure as the Weekend Update anchor on Saturday Night Live.

Though producers tried to convince him to release a traditional stand-up album, Norm wasn’t hearing it. “There seems to be such a preponderance of stand-up albums out there,” he says. “The market is saturated.” Furthermore, he explains, his stand-up material is simply better left off of CDs.

“I think my stand up is a little rough for an album,” he says. “It’s better for a night club and is definitely only for adults’ ears. I would never want children to hear some of it. It’s a little frightening.”

There are two strange things about this reasoning. The first is that now he is not – at all – being funny. He’s dead serious about keeping his stage act away from kids. No matter how much you try to urge a punch line out of what sounds like mock concern, he stands firm.

“If I see people under 18 in the club at one of my shows, I’ll switch my act completely,” says the father of 10-year-old son, Dylan. “I’ll just do all clean stuff. I don’t want to expose children to themes like death…especially death. There’s a lot of that in my stand-up.”

The second funny thing about his reasoning is that even by most liberal standards, Ridiculous is not any more for children than is his stand-up. In Norm’s defense, though, no one dies on the album; though one guy’s wife sets him on fire while he’s sleeping in a sketch called “Burning Bed” and another character promises to “swallow a bottle of barbiturates and have the final bath of my life” after losing a sports bet.

He’s quick to defend what seems to be a flimsy set of standards. “It’s more fun and it’s not very provocative,” he says of his album material. “It’s just a little wrong, ya know? It’s just in good clean fun. I would never do anything purposely provocative because I don’t like that kind of stuff. I don’t like shock value stuff or gross-out humor.”

It’s true. Despite seemingly scurrilous material, if you really picked apart his bits, you’d be hard pressed to find something he said as truly offensive. Unless you’re offended by words and concepts regardless of the context or the intent in which they’re used.

Case in point: In a three-part sketch about the world’s first two gay guys, the listener is treated to the sounds of Norm’s character abusing the ass of a character played by Will Ferrell, who incidentally sounds exactly like his Harry Caray impression. At the top of his lungs, Ferrell screams, “My ass is fire! My ass is fire! My ass is no more. It has been replaced by fire,” while an unaffected Macdonald – with an even tone – says things like,

“I like it. It’s nice, huh?”

Is it for kids? Not really. Will they be scarred after hearing it? Probably not. Is it offensive? No. There’s not enough substance. It’s just an excuse for Ferrell to yell absurd phrases.

And besides, Norm admits he wanted to put something out there a little wicked for the youth to get their hands on. When he was growing up he became attached to a lot of Cheech and Chong, Monty Python and Richard Pryor records. “All of us kids listened to them when we weren’t supposed to,” he says. “I wanted to make an album that was not for kids but actually was for kids.”

SITCOMS AND MOVIES AND PENGUINS, OH MY!
Though he was always a fan of comedy, especially Chevy Chase’s purposely bad impressions on Saturday Night Live, the Quebec City native never thought to grab a microphone and take to the stage. That is until he started attending a comedy club in Ottawa somewhat regularly and convinced himself that he could probably do better than the current crop of comics.

So at 24, he abandoned odd jobs like working at a logging camp and an oil field and made his way across Canada hitting any comedy club that would have him. He would eventually move to Los Angeles and scored a gig writing for Roseanne, where his boss – a former stand-up herself – favored stand-up comics over Hollywood geeks.

With a little help from good friend, Adam Sandler, Norm landed a writing gig at SNL; a year later he became, arguably, the most popular Weekend Update anchor of the show’s history. In what has become one of the comedy world’s most controversial decisions, NBC West Coast President Don Ohlmeyer stripped Macdonald of the anchor chair in early 1998, nearly four years into his run. “He told me he didn’t find me funny,” Macdonald said at the time. “If that’s true, then I don’t think there has to be any other reason.”

But insiders speculated Ohlmeyer’s close friendship with ex football star O.J. Simpson had something to do with it. Having been acquitted for the double murder of his ex wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman, Simpson was then in the middle of his civil trial; Norm was constantly pegging jokes on the show to the obviousness of Simpson’s guilt. The day after his demotion – he was allowed to perform in skits only – Macdonald appeared on The Howard Stern Show, saying that he hoped Ohlmeyer would “take up skiing real soon.”

No matter. Norm had garnered enough face time in the fake news chair to get some quick parts on Sandler’s Billy Madison, The Drew Carey Show and NewsRadio. By the time of his firing he had already begun work on voicing the main character (Lucky, the dog) on the Eddie Murphy flick Dr. Dolittle and the critically panned – but hilarious – Dirty Work.

Macdonald’s new level of celebrity pushed him into the mainstream when he landed a sitcom deal with ABC. The Norm Show, on which co-creator Macdonald played an ex hockey player arrested for tax evasion and sentenced to community service as a social worker, premiered in March of 1999 and ran until 2001. Two years later Fox picked up another Macdonald sitcom creation called A Minute with Stan Hooper; this one died after three months.

“That happens a lot with stand-ups,” says Macdonald. “Hollywood tells them, ‘You’re a great stand-up. You should be in a bad sitcom. You should be the worst actor of all time.’”

Macdonald’s sitcom misadventures clearly haven’t hurt his career. He’s attached to no less than five movies through 2007 (including Bob Saget’s Farce of the Penguins and the animated Christmas is Here Again) and has recently sold his new script, Court Appointed Attorney to Sony Pictures. “But sometimes studios buy stuff and never do anything with it,” he explains. “But this a fucking funny movie. I’ve been in some goddamn shit. But this one is funny.”

And if nothing comes of it, so what? Norm’s most at home on the stand-up stage anyway. “Stand-up is great because you could do whatever you want,” he says. “No one tells you what to do. With films and sitcoms there are always plenty of people who want to help. With any other form of art, that would be ludicrous. Like if Rembrandt were working on a painting and Leonardo DaVinci came by and said, ‘Hey I’ll do the yellow parts,’ it would become a bunch of shit.”

So true.

For more information on Norm Macdonald, visit www.comedycentral.com.

Jimmy Carr and Lucy Greeves: Only Joking: What’s so Funny about Making People Laugh?

by Dylan P. Gadino

Known to American audiences as the sarcastic British host of Comedy Central’s game show Distraction, Jimmy Carr — a man who takes great joy in seeing contestants urinate on command, getting body-slammed by wrestlers and having cinder blocks smashed on their chests — doesn’t seem the type of person who would write a heady textbook-style tome about the inner workings of humor. But with help from Lucy Greeves, his best friend since they met at Cambridge University, that’s exactly what the stand-up comic has done.

Fear not, Only Joking isn’t exactly a textbook. But it’s definitely not for the casual observer of comedy. In fact, this book gives obsessed comedy nerds more than enough justification to keep on obsessing. Throughout the books 288 pages, the authors do an excellent job of analyzing, among other things, the construction of a joke, the physiological and psychological responses to punch lines and to humor in general, the history of stand-up comedy and the philosophy of humor.

While the tone of the book is, for the most part, quite academic, Carr and Greeves’ wit pop up in parenthetical asides and one-line commentaries throughout. But really, it’s thoughtful passages like “laughing is so pleasurable that we go to great lengths to re-create that sensation of release in completely artificial circumstances, by telling jokes” that force you to take Only Joking, and comedy itself, seriously.

If you’re not down with waxing all smarty-pants on comedy, listen up: This books doubles as a coffee-table/on-the-potty book. There’s a quick joke at the bottom of each page and a series of longer jokes at the end of each chapter; everyone from Steven Wright to Jay Leno to Emo Philips is represented.

James P. Connolly: The Master Plan

by Noah Gardenswartz

With a smooth delivery emphasized by a voice that’s one part game-show announcer and one part movie-phone guy, James P. Connolly’s comedy is captivating.
On The Master Plan, the stand-up veteran of Comedy Central, HBO, VH1 and every major comedy festival in North America, loads his 48-minute set with unique commentary and observation. As his intonation and material indicates, Connolly’s self-confidence is unwavering, which helps keep control of the crowd and leaves it hanging on his every word.

At times, Connolly’s punch lines are predictable, but he uses that to his advantage. He’ll tell a seemingly conventional joke that suddenly catches you off guard, like on “Humble Origins,” a shtick that attacks cliches. As he’s spouting off one-liners that everyone and their mother knows, he begins to alter them in his own way, joking that “a friend in need is a blood-sucking leech” and “a penny saved…is a really crappy savings plan.”

Connolly succeeds most when he’s unapologetic about the arrogant persona he’s created. It affords him the opportunity to take chances like he does on “Thinking Man,” when he says, “I think I’ve found a way to end racism and prejudice. The first thing we need to do is get rid of all the different people.”

Plan is laced with intelligent humor, edgy opinions and even a good bit of crowd work. At the beginning of the performance, Connolly tells a woman in the audience that he has three words that will change her life: “Lower your standards.” Luckily, when it comes to this album, the listener doesn’t have to.

Steve Trevino: That’s How Daddy Does It

by Dylan P. Gadino

It’s not offensive that Steve Trevino calls women “fucking bitches” or spends more time than necessary time talking about how insane they are — by now, even casual stand-up fans are numb to crass put-downs. It’s more that there’s little art to the way in which Trevino does these things that makes his act offensive and ultimately not as funny as it could be.

When the Texas native jokes about women who scream “harder!” during sex, you start to realize that Trevino is a screamer himself. In lieu of well-constructed jokes or presenting unique views on traditional stand-up topics — the differences between men and women, the differences between different races, the size of black guys’ dicks — Trevino screams and curses his way through That’s how Daddy Does It.

No doubt some of Trevino’s X-rated tirades are funny, like when he compares the way in which rednecks and Mexicans — Trevino is the latter — get their kids’ attention in a crowd: Mexicans whistle; rednecks do the “hooty-hoo.” Tagging the punch line with his best Jeff Foxworthy voice, he says, “You heard the hooty-hoo, Son! Get your fingers out of your sister! It’s not your birthday!” It’s also funny when he talks about masturbating while in his teens — Dad was on to his tactics but Mom wasn’t: “She would say, “Stop blowing your nose in your socks! They’re all stuck together.”

But more times than not, Trevino, who’s currently the main opener for Comedy Central’s Mind of Mencia tour, simply describes things that are already funny without adding much to the equation. He’s like the friend who starts all his stories with, “Remember that time…” Sure, there’s a good chance you’ll end up laughing, but there’s nothing unique about the way he tells the story.

If nothing else, Trevino delivers an honest, perverted, profanity-laced set of material. Sometimes that’s good enough to get a few laughs.

Norm Macdonald: Ridiculous

by Dylan P. Gadino

In the past year, there’s been a great flux of comedic output: new cable shows, recently launched broadband shows and channels, live-performance CDs and stand-up- comedy-concert DVDs abound. So it’s no wonder that without regular appearances on late-night television or on a prime-time sitcom, Norm Macdonald may have slipped from the front of comedy fans’ collective mind.

But make no mistake: Macdonald hasn’t abandoned his roots, especially those of stand-up comedy, which he began planting 18 years ago in his native Quebec. He still performs consistently across the country and his comedy is as relevant as ever.

And although stand-up comedy is what would eventually lead Norm to a gig in front of the cameras of Saturday Night Live in 1994 (when he began anchoring “Weekend Update”), we all know that his sketch work is how he became a comedy star. And that’s exactly where Macdonald’s new album, Ridiculous picks up.

Much in the same vein of Adam Sandler’s first three sketch albums, Macdonald delivers an evenly entertaining and hilarious collection of skits, replete with recurring characters and plenty of familiar voices for those characters: Will Ferrell’s, Tim Meadows’, and Artie Lange’s to name a few.

Produced by Brooks Arthur (Sandler’s go-to album guy), Ridiculous finds Macdonald, in nearly 90 minutes of material, airing out the way he never could on SNL or in his movies or defunct sitcoms. The 42-year-old comic has the incredible ability to take potentially inflammatory comedy subjects and yank out the humor in such a man-childish way that it’s difficult to get offended. That’s not to say this is an album jammed with vanilla musings. It’s not.

Four of the 13 tracks on the album are extended gay jokes: one about an old country singer who comes out of hiding and then out of the closet; the other, in three parts, has Ferrell’s character — who for some odd reason, sounds like Will’s famous Harry Caray impression — as the world’s first bottom in a gay relationship. The latter bit is pretty much an excuse to have Ferrell scream absurd things at the top of his lungs; still, it’s funny.

SNL alum Molly Shannon makes an appearance on “Girls, Girls, Girls,” playing a schizophrenic patient to Norm’s psychiatrist character. The good doc takes an interest in Shannon’s personality named Leesha, who exclaims, “I just want to be fucked! I want his cock in my mouth, and I want to lick his ass.”

The album’s rounded out by a not-so-hidden track of Macdonald’s stand-up, an older bit he does about Star Search. The track is preceded by Norm in the studio disclaiming the bit as “lame” and “outdated.” Clearly, though, it’s just the comic covering his ass in case people hate it. But the bit is solid. And so is the rest of the album.

Eugene Mirman: The Strange Days of…

by Caroline Stanley

Rising from from a hip, close-knit scene in New York City, Russian-born Eugene Mirman is twisting traditional stand-up comedy into something incredibly odd. And no one’s safe… not robots, not Star Trek and certainly not Richard Dreyfuss.

 

By Caroline Stanley

It’s a humid Wednesday night in New York City, and hordes of hipsters are packed into the back room of RiFiFi, a so-rundown-it’s-chic bar in the East Village. In the middle of the fray stands Eugene Mirman, a 32-year-old comedian from Brooklyn who has been co-producing this weekly comedy show, Invite Them Up, for the past four years.

When his friend on stage, comedian Aziz Ansari launches into a story about hooking up while watching the Arnold Schwarzenegger flick Jingle All the Way, Mirman begins to laugh, and then bellows out, “You pussy!” Mirman acts like an excited kid who’s clowning around with a group of drama geeks in his parents’ basement. Part ringmaster, part heckling older brother, he emanates an electric energy that spills over into the audience each time he lets loose with a deep chuckle.

So what does it take to make Eugene Mirman laugh? “I definitely find things that are very sad also very funny,” he says. “Like when a relationship ends. It’s not that I don’t recognize the sadness — it’s just how I process everything — I see the pretty irony, and laugh. And then I cry. It’s just the way I see things.”

Maybe this way of viewing life is a product of his childhood as a Russian immigrant during the Cold War. “We were in this little suburban bubble and I was hated,” he says of growing up in Lexington, Massachusetts, just 20 minutes outside of Boston. “Kids would blame me for shooting down American planes. It was probably a lot like growing up a Middle Eastern immigrant today, but with less Googling involved. Maybe a traumatic childhood makes people look for the comedy in life. I’m sure for me, it helped. It was a defense mechanism, the way I coped with things.”

But Mirman experienced a popularity upswing once Nirvana broke, and “being weird became socially acceptable.” He even ran for senior-class president, under the slogan, “It’s not just a change, it’s a mutation!”

He did not win.

After graduating from high school, Mirman headed off to Hampshire College in Amherst (Which he’s called “a mild Vietnam War with Frisbee”), where he created his own major: comedy. But don’t assume it was easy. His final exam was a one-hour stand-up act that he wrote, performed, promoted and produced.
The summer after freshman year, he had his first stand-up gig at Catch A Rising Star in Cambridge. “No matter how much I try to block it out, I remember: It was July 28, 1992. Brian Kiley, who now writes for Conan O’Brien, was the host,” he says. “I was shaking and talking quickly and was incredibly nervous. I didn’t bomb, but I wasn’t really good either. I think in most cases, the first time you do stand up, you do well because you’re so excited and the audience is excited for you, too. I was so awkward and goofy and weird, but I had a lot of friends there, and they were really supportive.”

The second time? “I was horrible — that made me realize that you can’t just nervously hop up on stage and ramble, thinking people will laugh at you the whole time,” he says. “I discovered stand-up was going to take lots and lots of work.”

INDIE ROCK GOD

Over the next few years he put in the work by organizing and promoting his own shows in basements around campus. Performers included an unstable guy from the local half-way house, a crazy political activist wearing a potato sack and fellow students. The shows would later be held at a space on the 3rd floor of a Chinese restaurant in Boston.

Once he moved to New York in 2000, Mirman started Invite Them Up with his friend, comedian Bobby Tisdale. Both were looking for “a fun place to do new stuff, with the people who we think are funny, every week.” His friends, comedians Michael Showalter, Leo Allen and David Cross are still among the regulars. This casual night of comedy garnered national exposure when Comedy Central late last year released a three-disc album bearing the show’s name and showcasing a ton of Invite Them Up’s regular comics.

Mirman likes that the every-Wednesday show gives him a deadline for coming up with new material, and uses it as an opportunity to work out any kinks in his act. “If something doesn’t work, that’s fine; and if it does, it’s exciting because that’s new stuff I can tour with,” he says. “You learn to acknowledge when something fails and move on. Like last night, I tried something that didn’t go over with the audience, so I said, ‘Well, I probably shouldn’t use Richard Dreyfuss in a punch line.’ And I got a laugh. It takes you a while to figure out some jokes. But I certainly don’t have 4,000 jokes that I’ve saved over 29 years that I still tinker with. Or maybe I do. Muwahahaha.”

Odds are, if he does have a secret vault of jokes, more than a few of them are about robots. “I just love a good robot,” he explains. “A lot of the things I like to make fun of are the things I love. Science fiction. Aliens. Action thrillers. Star Trek and Star Wars. Obviously, I’m very cool.”

Cool or not, Mirman’s alternative brand of humor has struck a chord with the indie-music crowd, many who catch him opening for bands that range from Modest Mouse to the Shins. And this brings him to the East Coast leg of Patton Oswalt’s ever-charging, ever-rotating Comedians of Comedy tour, where he, Oswalt and Brian Posehn are playing venues usually reserved for the aforementioned rock outfits.

“It’s nice when someone comes up to me after a show and says this is the first time they’ve ever seen stand up,” he says. “They are surprised when they actually like it because the comedy clubs of the 80s and 90s made most kids assume that comedy was something that is kind of tacky or lame. People became jaded by the insincerity.”

Mirman’s stage show is anything but lame and if it’s tacky it’s done so purposely. If he’s not telling jokes with punch lines, then he’s reading letters— like the ones he wrote not to people but to nouns (Advertising and Arthritis to name a few) on his latest CD, En Garde, Society! Then, sometimes he fires up his laptop to deliver hilarious audio/visual presentations; on his debut album, 2004’s The Absurd Nightclub Comedy of Eugene Mirman, he plays a phone call he made to a creditor he owed $521 where he tries to buy back is debt.

Even when he’s dressed in an angel costume, doing a parody of an anti-drug campaign ad, Mirman comes across as nothing if not sincere, which might explain how he has become a poster boy for the New York City alternative comedy scene and reached a comfortable level of comedic success (he’s even writing a lifestyle book, due out in fall of 2007).

“My advice for people who are just starting out now is, do it for a decade, and then everything will be fine,” he laughs. “Most of the comedians who I really admire have done stand-up for at least 15 years. It’s like a muscle you have to develop. I feel much more comfortable on stage these days. I still have a few years to go before I’m completely confident.” That said, it would probably take a lot to throw him off while performing: “If I saw a bunch of naked people high-fiving in the audience. Or animals that could talk to one another. Maybe.”

Regardless of his confidence levels, after spending over a decade in front of the mic, Mirman feels pretty happy with where he’s at today. “I’m not doing the kind of comedy I’m doing because I want to break through jaded audiences’ hardened hearts. Your humor doesn’t have to seem important to be relevant. I don’t have to notice the most ironic thing about the war in Iraq. I do the things that I find funny, and I’m lucky enough that I have found enough of an audience that I can make a living doing it,” he says. “Now, if I had a family to support they’d be eating meals of Cup-a-Soup and old CDs.”

Not that he’s got any better ways to bring in coin. “The problem is, I have no real skills. If I were no longer performing I’d probably be a wacky entrepreneur, wandering around, hawking stuff on the streets. Like, ‘Folding PANTS! The pants that become shorts!’ Although there’s a chance I’d be able to find an audience for that, too.”
For more information, visit www.eugenemirman.com and the official MySpace Comedians of Comedy page.