I haven’t said much of anything lately. I haven’t been much of anything lately. See how that works?
When you think of the term “comedian” what names do you conjure? Eddie Murphy, Bill Cosby, Denis Leary, Jerry Seinfeld, Richard Pryor, Bill Hicks? I have been following the career of Mike Birbiglia for a while now and I think he’s poised to be the next name in serious comedy. I know that sounds like a contradiction, but what I mean by serious comedy is acts that are thoroughly rehearsed, structured, universal without being pandering, and enduring. A good set will often end with a “callback”, a reference to a joke from earlier in the set. The best sets will play out as one long narrative, often with detouring tangents, with a poignant conclusion. When I first heard Mike, he had good sets with great stories and an endearing uneasy delivery. His comedy was quirky, as he was a quirky guy. As he gained popularity after a few successful albums and television specials, he became enmeshed in the comedy circle, rubbing elbows with other comedians and doing what all accomplished comics do: bridge into television, film, and radio. He had several wildly successful segments on Ira Glass’s radio and television program “This American Life“. Through these appearances and with Glass’s help and support, Mike turned his humorous stories of his rather tragic sleep disorder into a film, which he wrote and directed, called “Sleepwalk With Me“, costarring Lauren Ambrose who is beautiful and beguiling, but I digress. The movie is charming and well-conceived, but has failed to reach a wide audience. As a fan of his comedy, I had heard a lot of the “jokes” beforehand, and they rang discordant when weaved into the film narrative. I don’t see this as a fault; just something I observed.
Birbiglia’s newest special, called “My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend” and produced by Netflix Comedy, is brilliant. It’s clear that he’s taken the structure of narrative needed for filmmaking and translated it to the stage for his latest set. His story is hilarious and often heartbreaking, as most brilliant, resonant comedy is, or should be. He tells us of his own shortcomings to hold a mirror to our fears, our imperfections. His narrative takes us on his personal journey, and has the advantage of his being a working comedian on the road, literally traveling through space and time while also trying to develop as a human being. His emotional highs and lows are scattered throughout the story, weaving levels of texture to the narrative, and ending the set with a physical callback to elicit delightful laughter after a sucker-punch of a climax. I genuinely believe that if he continues in this manner, his name could be one of those to materialize in your mind when you think of comedy.
Except that it’s such a damn peculiar name.
“Everyone gets [my last name] wrong. So I always have to spell it on the phone, like ‘B as in Boy, I R B again I G L I A’. I wish my last name were just Boy; I’d be like ‘It’s B as in Boy and then the rest of the word Boy’.” – Mike Birbiglia
So, speaking of jokes, I have this stupid one that I make a lot that always falls flat because it only makes sense inside my brain, where I rarely allow people to hang out. Oftentimes when I’m waiting to hear my name, perhaps announced as a winner of a drawing or a contest, I’ll hear someone else’s name called out and get sad, then soften the blow by deluding myself into thinking the person meant to read out my name but merely mispronounced it.
“And the winner is Stephanie!”
“No no; it’s pronounced ‘Eric’; I know the spelling is tricky.”
I’d never seen this played out more accurately or hilariously than the other day when I was at Taco Bell (don’t you fucking judge me). I ordered my food, poured myself a Dr. Pepper and sat at a table across the room, waiting to hear my number, 293. The restaurant was very busy; it was around 3pm on a Wednesday. The man behind the counter sets a tray down and screams “293!”, which upset me because there’s no need to scream right away. You’re supposed to call out the number in a clear voice once, then if the guest does not respond in a timely fashion, you are to assume that you were not heard and call it out louder. Don’t assume everyone’s an idiot or deaf and just shout the whole time. (My assumption is that he had a day full of idiots and had just resigned himself to treating everyone as such.) So I get up and start walking to the counter to get my food when I notice an elderly woman who was hovering dangerously close to the counter approach my tray and the staff member and say, incredulously, “But my number is 294!” Both the staff member and I looked at her queerly and said, at the same time, “Yeah, we know.” She looks at my tray of food and says, equally incredulously, “I didn’t order any of this.”
At this point, I can barely contain my laughter. This woman was living my joke, except it wasn’t a joke for her; she legitimately didn’t know how numbers, orders, or the world works. I sit in the corner and laugh my ass off, completely entertained by this. I can imagine her railing the manager later on the phone. “And then he called my number, which he got wrong, and it wasn’t even the right order! What kind of monkey-factory are you running, there?”
Additionally, I was in a Sports Authority yesterday (don’t ask) and as I was walking out, my eyes flitted briefly at the Fitting Rooms sign and read it in that moment as “Fighting Robots”. Yeah, I’m a nerd.
Boner Garage.
Eric McClanahan 