AVC: So now that you have a CD, it's likely that a lot of your audience will have heard it before coming to see you. Do you try to avoid doing bits from your record live?
MS: Yes, unless it's a city that I've never been to before. I'm not going to tell you how many CDs we've sold, but I know the amount. I think that it's doing well in terms of what the expectations were, but relative to what most records sell, I'm not worried that too many audience members are going to know it. That said, if I've been to a city a number of times, I try to do as much new material as possible. I try to do new material as much as possible all the time.
AVC: Part of your album talks about your teenage years, when you tried to be a poet. When did you outgrow that serious Beat phase and turn to comedy?
MS: Pretty much when I got to college, and I realized that there were other things. But my Beat phase started to shift toward the end of high school. Sophomore and junior year were my big Beat-poet years—although I guess The Cheshire Cat was my senior year. But it was college when I started doing comedy. I started to see the humor in it.
AVC: Before that, did you have an idea that you were funny?
MS: I thought I was funny, but I would say that growing up, my humor was appreciated, relatively speaking, the same way that it is now. Which is that a minority of people thought I was very funny.
AVC: Did your high school hip-hop/comedy group The Disposable Rappers start off serious?
MS: I was kind of in an experimental phase with The Disposable Rappers. This is boring to me, because it's true, but when I was a sophomore in high school, I visited my sister in college and saw an improv troupe, and that was a genuine moment for me. It was an actual "Aha!" moment. After I saw that, I said, "I want to do comedy." So The Disposable Rappers started doing improv in addition to rapping, and when I went to college, I very specifically went saying "I want to join a comedy group."
AVC: And how did what became The State get together? Was there an open audition, or did you meet one person at a time?
MS: I was in the School Of Arts And Sciences at NYU, and the only reason I mention that is that if I had been in a different dorm, I probably never would have met those guys. Joe Lo Truglio lived across the hall from me, and he was in the Tisch School, the film school. We met on the first day and bonded, and he had seen flyers for auditions for the NYU sketch group, The Sterile Yak. Which is a hilarious name. It's like a yak, but it's sterile.
Anyway, the flyer said, "Come watch our show, and then we'll have an informal meet-and-greet, and then there will be auditions." So I went and saw their show, and they were like Saturday Night Live in its first season. It was the biggest deal. It was packed, and they were cool and older, and they were campus celebrities. Then they had this informal meeting. Basically, it was an hour of them telling a bunch of freshmen how awesome they were, and how hard it would be to get into their group. Sitting in the audience, as freshmen, were me, Joe, Kerri [Kenney], Mike Black, Ben [Garant], and probably a few others. In The Sterile Yak was David Wain. He was, like, the Bill Murray of Sterile Yak, the hilarious crazy guy. They were sitting on tall stools, and they took turns telling the freshmen how difficult it would be to get in, but that it was worth the effort. I was very turned off, because I don't like being rejected, and they were basically saying, "You're going to be rejected."
At the end of the meeting, Todd Holoubek came in late. He was also in The Sterile Yak, and he announced that he was starting a second troupe, because in order to maintain their status as an NYU activity and receive money from the school, they had to take on more members. So they started a JV squad. To make a long story short, everyone that was in The State—which was then called The New Group—didn't even audition to be in The Sterile Yak, and I think the reason for most of us was that we didn't want to not get in a group. The primary reason that I auditioned for The New Group was that I had a better chance of getting in, because there was no group. [Laughs.] We all auditioned for The New Group, and at the first meeting was me, Joe, Mike Black, Ben, Ken Marino, Todd, Kerri, and then David left The Sterile Yak and joined us. Then Tom Lennon and Kevin Allison joined sophomore year, and Michael [Patrick] Jann joined senior year.
AVC: What made David leave The Sterile Yak and join you guys?
MS: Because we were better, and he knew it. We did our first show that fall, and I gotta say, we were pretty good. David saw that and said, "I'm in the wrong sketch group." The Sterile Yak did one or two more shows, and that was it.
AVC: You killed them off?
MS: Kind of. I like to be humble, but we were very good. Considering our age and lack of experience, that first show was funny. And the thing that was different about us than other groups, and probably a big reason why we were able to and have been able to continue to succeed is that we had a very intense work ethic, right from the beginning. There was a do-or-die attitude toward the work. It wasn't seen as a little "club." It was like, "This is your life." We would spend hours and hours rehearsing and endlessly rewriting. We took it very seriously right off the bat. And we were also extremely critical of each other, which was another thing that was unique. A lot of comedy ensembles have a hard time being critical of each other, because they don't want to hurt each other's feelings.
AVC: By turning up at things like SXSW and Sasquatch, collaborating with Craig Wedren of Shudder To Think, and so on, you've earned this indie-rock credibility, yet in your act you talk about how the music you actually like is stuff like Dave Matthews Band, Sheryl Crow, Train. So which one is the lie?
MS: Well, if I have indie-rock credibility, then I have indie-rock credibility, right? Is that a lie? I definitely like some of those artists that you just mentioned—although the only Train song I like is the one that I play in my act ["Drops Of Jupiter"]. Sheryl Crow has three or four songs that I like; also Dave Matthews Band. With those particular musicians, it's more that there are a few songs that I like rather than their entire body of work. There are a lot of indie bands that I like too. I'm not a snob about music. I'm listening to Grizzly Bear right now. I love Grizzly Bear. But I also really like Kate Nash, who's sort of like Lily Allen. And the other album that I've been listening to nonstop is the soundtrack to Sweeney Todd, because Johnny Depp is a very good singer, and I love the music. Does the fact that I like Stephen Sondheim and Broadway musicals make me a fake? I don't know. It's not for me to answer. Does the fact that I'm "the Billy Joel of comedy" mean that I don't have indie-rock credibility? It's not for me to answer. Do I like The Shins? Yeah. Do I like Bright Eyes? No, I don't. At all.
AVC: Why not?
MS: He takes himself too seriously. Do I like PJ Harvey? Yeah, I love PJ Harvey. Do I like Clap Your Hands Say Yeah? No, I don't. Do I like Cat Power? I love Cat Power.
AVC: In your act, you say all of your Cat Power tracks are actually Sheryl Crow songs.
MS: That's fiction. That's the lie. I also said that I have Journey stored under Sufjan Stevens, which is also a lie. Do I like John Mayer? I love John Mayer. Love John Mayer. John Mayer is someone whose entire body of work I like.
AVC: He's also an aspiring comedian. Would you ever want to tour with him?
MS: Absolutely. 100 percent. His phone number is on my phone, and he's waiting for me to call him to do something together. Why haven't I called him? I'm too intimidated. I'm star-struck. He's like a huge, giant rock star, and I've listened his albums thousands of times. Why wouldn't I be intimidated by him? It's very random who I would meet that would intimidate me, but he's definitely one of them. If I met Sean Penn, would I be intimidated?
AVC: Yes?
MS: No, I wouldn't be. He's too obvious. If I met Steve Martin, would I be intimidated?
AVC: I'll say "No."
MS: Very. I would be very intimidated.
AVC: I suck at this game.
MS: Terribly.
AVC: Speaking of music, can we ever expect to see The Doilies become a full-fledged band?
MS: I would like that. We haven't written a lot of stuff, but that is something I would like to do. We just haven't gotten around to it.
AVC: During this strike-imposed hiatus, maybe you could.
MS: That's a really good point. I'm working on some other things, though. I'm writing a memoir. I'm four pages in. I start with my first memory, which is kicking my uncle in the balls. I was four.
AVC: How'd he take it?
MS: Not well. He committed suicide. It's all starting to make sense now, right? You see the layers being peeled off the onion. My first memory was of me kicking him in the balls, and it did not go well. It was the first of many awkward life moments. You see the layers of meaning there, right? He ended up killing himself, and maybe I've thought about that too at some point. Maybe I have something to say about that later in the story. I'm building a patchwork quilt, see?
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