BeatRoute Magazine BC Edition February 2019

NICOLE BYER
COMEDIC QUEEN OF CAKES CHARMS CROWDS
BY RANDEE NEUMEYER
Nicole Byer is a busy person. Her Netflix special was
released last month as part of the series Comedians
of the World, she hosts the hit amateur baking show
Nailed It! (also on Netflix), and she stars in a hilarious
podcast asking the eternal question: Why Won’t You
Date Me?
Byer became a household name when she became
the host of Nailed It!, a show in which contestants
unsuccessfully try to recreate cakes from Pinterest.
“They just presented me with essentially a one-page
sheet on what they were trying to go for,” says Byer.
“‘We need you to teeter the line between calling out
what you see and not being too harsh.’ That seemed
like a fun challenge, and it just all fell together in a
really great way.”
Now she tours all over the United States performing
for a variety of different audiences.
“The best thing about touring is you learn how
to tell a divisive joke without being super divisive. I
learned how to tell Trump jokes on the road. I learned
that you can’t just be like, “He’s bad.’ Statistically,
someone in the audience voted for him, and he’s not
my cup of tea but also I’m not everyone’s cup of tea.
Learning how to tell jokes in a way that everyone can
laugh at is very useful.”
Byer’s stand up material is very honest, sharing
personal details about her life on a range of topics
from finding poop in an airline blanket to her dating
life.
“Sometimes things happen where I’m like, ‘This is
too bonkers not to share with people.’ The way people
talk on dating apps is insane, so when I talk about that
I feel like it’s pretty much universal that everyone’s like,
people are wild in these streets out here,” says Byer.
Along with performing stand up at the festival, she’ll
be doing a live taping of her podcast Why Won’t You
Date Me?, which started when she wanted to ask past
dates why they didn’t want a relationship with her.
Now she invites hilarious guests and they dive into
the world of dating and sex. Byer often has the guest
critique her Tinder profile, and reads comments sent
to her from questionable men.
“Audiences now know what kind of performer I am
before they get there, as opposed to ‘Oh, I’ll just see
a comedian. Who’s up this weekend?’ I have people
coming to see me, which is really awesome.”
Nicole Byer performs at The Rio on February 23.
The best-laid plans don’t always work out the way you
intend them to. My intention in interviewing veteran
comedian and podcaster Todd Glass was to talk about
how his podcast The Todd Glass Show influenced
his comedy, how and why he tours with a band, his
infamous love of comedy venues getting things just
right, and his Netflix special Act Happy. And to be fair,
we did have that discussion. But nearer the end of the
interview he went on a tangent, as he is prone to do,
and the result was a refreshing take on a topic that’s
been tread to death.
“I hear so many comedians be like ‘The walls are
getting smaller and smaller; you can’t say anything
anymore,’” says Glass. “You can always say pretty much
anything you want. 30 years ago if you talked about
not believing in God, just you not believing in it, just
your view, you couldn’t do that. I wish some comedians
would take a second from thinking about what they
can’t say anymore and instead think about what they
can say.”
It’s not as though he doesn’t understand the
motivation, but rather that he sees it as emphasizing
the wrong things. As Glass puts it, there are a lot more
things comedians can talk about than they used to
be able to: “I get it, sometimes you have to ignore the
outcry about ‘We didn’t like that joke!’ If we didn’t
ignore the collective pulse of a comedy club some
nights, we wouldn’t have good comedy. The audience
isn’t always right, but they aren’t always wrong either.
When you say you can’t say anything anymore, how
about sexuality? How about me? I want to say to all the
comedians who say you can’t say anything anymore,
how about the fact that I can mention that I am gay on
stage for two minutes? I talk about it and then move
on. It used to be that you could talk about it, but if you
did you had to talk about it for the whole hour because
they’ll never get over it. That’s a big deal! It’s a big
goddamn fucking big deal!”
This lack of understanding is sad to Glass – it’s as
though these comedians are aging out of comedy. “Once
you say ‘the kids today,’ you’re done being relevant in
comedy,” he says. “Fucking throw in the towel. Have you
no humility as a comedian? Do you not hear yourself?
You’re a grandpa, give it up!” With a positive attitude
like that, let’s hope Glass never grows up.
Catch Todd Glass live as part of JFL Northwest at the Rio
Theatre on February 20 or performing a live version of his
podcast, The Todd Glass Show, on February 21 at the Fox
Cabaret.
TODD GLASS
NOT WORRIED ABOUT THE KIDS RUINING COMEDY
BY GRAEME WIGGINS
PAUL F TOMPKINS
THE WAR ON THE SOUL OF COMEDY
BY JOSH SHEPPARD
The meaning of what comedy should stand for has never
been more questioned than at the present moment. Two
camps have been formed: those who view comedy as a tool to
criticize power, and those who view comedy as the vanguard
of free expression. Paul F Tompkins has found himself caught
in the middle of this heated debate.
‘’There’s a growing chasm between people who use comedy
as a tool to call out people who are powerful, and people
who use it as an aggressive tool to shut people up who they
consider to be whiny,” says Tompkins. “Things change, society
evolves, and you want to get hung up on a word that hurts
people’s feelings – that’s the hill you want to die on?”
Looking back at comedy of the past has always inspired
mixed feelings, as our heroes may one day lose their luster.
Should the past be viewed with present-day sensibilities or
should we judge the people by the standards of the times that
were presented before them? Comedian Norm Macdonald
recently defended the modernist writer Ernest Hemingway
who was labelled as an example of toxic masculinity, stating
that this form of criticism was “presentism at its worst.”
“Here’s the thing: as you grow up, some of the people you
viewed as heroes in your youth won’t necessarily stay your
heroes,” says Tompkins. “The thing that drives me crazy about
something like ‘presentism at its worst’ is like, you’re saying
this isn’t something worth talking about? Like there’s nothing
valid here at all? Just because someone lived a long time ago,
do they get an endless free pass? You can still like Hemingway’s
work, that’s fine, but it’s completely valid to discuss the life
that he lived especially as it affected the themes of his work.
That’s an intellectual pursuit and we could get something out
of it as a society.”
Spontaneity is one of the most important tools a comedian
has to display their wit. Tompkins even has a podcast,
SPONTANEANATION, that examines the subject deeply.
“The essence of spontaneity is being present and open –
you’re aware of what’s going on,” he says. “You’re aware of
what’s going on in the room right at the moment. You’re
feeling how everyone feels and you’re allowing things to enter
into that vibe.” The combination of that spontaneity and
his well thought out intellect should make his show one to
remember.
Paul F Tompkins and Mark Evan Jackson present A Two
Gentleman Improv Show at the Vogue Theatre on February 17.
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