Bob Powers

Happy Bob Powers Interview Day! 
That should make sense by the time you're done reading this interview with comedian Bob Powers.

Chief: So tell me a little about yourself, where you're from, and the like. What things were you into growing up?

Bob Powers: I'm from Upper Darby, PA, a suburb right on the border of West Philly. It was a good place to grow up. I was able to walk into the city pretty much. But I could still sleep safe in the suburban dwelling. Growing up I was into trying to get kids I thought were cool to stop calling me queer.

(Laughing) Jesus…

I guess I started writing early on. When I was a young teen I would try to write my own Monty Python type sketches, which were basically rip-offs of Monty Python. Later I wrote movie reviews for my school paper.

I tried to play sports but sucked and after a while I just stopped going to JV lacrosse practice and went to the mall to shoplift instead. Got caught. My mom still hates me for that.

They never forget a damn thing.

She really took it personally. It made me stop at least. I used to give out a lot of secret admirer letters to girls too.

Really? I always thought that would be a fun thing to do, I blame that directly on television.

Yeah. I was never very good at getting the girl, but I did a lot of writing the anonymous notes and dropping them in their lockers. They'd of course know immediately, because my handwriting was uniquely terrible. They'd confront me about it and I'd deny it, even if it looked like they might be interested. I was a scared kid.

That’s heartbreaking. Even when they might have felt the same...

The drama was appealing, thanks to television like you said. I got some girls! Shitloads! Well, two.

I know, my want to do it was based entirely around the idea that I could see them reading it and hear their thoughts. I thought about that for like 3 minutes before I realized that TV had actually made me insane for about 3 minutes.

So when did you end up moving to New York City? And what was your initial reaction to the comedy scene there?

I moved here when I started NYU when I was 18. That was in 1991. I didn't start doing comedy until 1996.

Also, to stack questions, how did you get from school newspaper to what your doing now? Compress time for me.
 
In college, I thought I wanted to be a filmmaker, then a playwright. I took a lot of play-writing classes and interned at PS 122 and the Wooster Group, neither of which are ideal places for a playwright to intern.

But I guess at PS 122 I started digging the solo performances. Soon I was writing monologues that I knew I wanted to perform, but I didn't have a clue where. I still had no idea what I wanted to do would ever be called "comedy." I knew they were funny, but as far as I knew if I was going to get onstage it would happen at a legitimate theater, not a comedy club

I loved comedy as a kid. Growing up I rented all of the Robin Williams, Billy Crystal, Bill Cosby, Bobcat Goldthwait specials and memorized them. But I never considered actually doing that.

Eventually, after going from theater to theater to see whether they were low-rent enough to let me get into some show, I found the Rev Jen's Anti-Slam at Collective Unconscious, which used to be on Ludlow. There are some condos where it used to be.

That room eventually became a comedy spot, but when I got there it seemed like a performance art scene where a lot of people were funny too. Perfect for the stuff I wanted to do. I probably showed up every week for the first two years.

I really made an ass of myself. I got naked onstage. I got bloody. I once had everyone in the audience come onstage and read from a list of flaws I'd written about myself. After each person read one of my flaws into the mic, they were required to spit in my face. I felt really bad going home that night.

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Jesus hell. Was that really good on paper?
Then half way through you start to reconsider?

I wrote a piece about the spit in the face bit and read it at how to kick people. It's posted on the other work section of GAP. It was funny in theory. And even in practice.

It’s funny in conversation even. Jesus, do you remember any of the flaws?

But though I might have hated myself, it's hard to hate yourself enough to let a bunch of strangers spit on you for eight minutes. The flaws, um… One was "Bob will often recite opinions he read in magazines as if they were his own opinion.

(Laughing) Shit… They're all in third person?

Yeah, since it was all to be read by the audience members. I just stood there while they read, then spat. There was a line of about twenty people. Most just spat soda on me, but some went with the real deal. When I look back on doing stuff like that, it was almost like I was giving thanks for finding a space to do this shit. And I wanted what I did every week to be remembered forever. It's been a very long time since I gave a shit like that.

Man, New York audiences. Just down for anything.
 
This was an open mic, and these were mostly other performers, mind you. So they were just happy to be invited onstage.

I once saw Jon Ames and the Mangina paying people to finger the Mangina on stage. There was a line. That was a good show.

(Laughs) I saw him and Patrick once, but never at a show where we were encouraged to touch.

It was something.

I love Ames, by the way. I've read him forever and I was so glad when he put up Oedipussy that I was finally able to see him perform after reading his stuff in the NYPress for so long,

The way that guy just puts his shit out there, just unbelievable. He's an inspiration. Just makes people feel totally normal in comparison.

And with all that, he can write a gentle (if gently perverted) book like Extra Man. That book was really touching. (Laughs) Touching!
 
He always had that sensibility, even when completely deranged in topic. So do you consider yourself a comedian or a humorist? Is there a difference? I've seen you do stand up and although admittedly, I was drunk, you made me cry I was laughing so hard. And your writing is damn funny, but not really a sketch or bit, per se.

Thanks. I'd say anyone who writes comedy more than performs it is a humorist. I call myself a writer really, occasionally a comedy writer, but then people assume I write for TV, which I don't. I perform standup very rarely these days.

That’s a shame.

Just trying to write more and more, get a second book sold. I was never all that comfortable or even successful as a standup. I think I can be a very funny comedian, but I'm very uneven. My solo shows would either make people go crazy or bore them to tears. And when I've had big chances with standup, big auditions, I've always blown them. I can pull off a great set, but I think I'm just more into writing.
From time to time, I can pull it off, I mean.

Well I'm glad you still perform, even rarely.

I'm so scared of a comic reading this and thinking, "He's not a comic!" If you're not going up every night, or trying to, as far as comics are concerned, you're out of the standup game. I kind of agree with that actually. I still love performing. And I'm glad I have How To Kick People where I can pretty much put up whatever I like.

Is it vicious like that? I guess the comic circles I used to know and watch were really tight and maybe only wanted to support each other, but I’m surprised to hear that the reaction would be like that. I guess it’s a competitive industry.

Not vicious. If comics don't already know you and dig you, they're not going to give you the benefit of the doubt usually. I react in the same way. But I actually have a huge circle of really supportive comic friends who I've known for around ten years now. And I'm always seeing new comics who I am instantly into. It's supportive, but everyone kind of starts by keeping you at arm's length. And of course, everyone is worried what the rest of the scene thinks of them. You have to prove yourself I guess.
 
That makes sense. I've been consistently blown away by the lower east side comedy scene. Just so much good shit getting put out there, I used to watch Tinkle every week, then Eating It at Luna lounge before it got knocked down for a condo. I grew up on Mr. Show and the like, so to actually see these guys fucking around live... it was insane for me.
 
Eating It at Luna… That was one of the places where I always used to...well...eat it. But yeah, the scene's huge right now, I agree. Yeah Eating It was always an event. For while it seemed like the whole scene came to a head at that one Monday night show. Now it's like there's nine “Eating It's” every night. That's a great thing
 
You want to list some for the readers?

Well shit. On Monday there's Liam's "Tell Your Friends" at Lolita Bar and Crash Test at UCB. Tuesday has Andres Dubouchet's "Giant Tuesday" which can often be the best show you've ever seen. Wednesday's got Eugene and Bobby at Invite Them Up, which is gargantuan. And of course the last Wednesday of every month you've got the incomparable How To Kick People starring Todd Levin and Bob Powers at Mo Pitkins on Avenue A for 8 dollars. Please come. I'm done.
 
So tell me about the site. How did www.girlsarepretty.com come about?
 
The idea came to me a long while back when a comic friend set up a shared Yahoo calendar where we could all post our shows and stuff so we could all go and keep track of who of us was where every week. This was maybe in ‘99.

I took it upon myself to vandalize the calendar by name every day "Fuck Somebody's Arm Day!" and whatnot. And in the body of the "yahoo appointment" I'd explain exactly how to fuck somebody's arm that day. I ended up filling up a whole month of the calendar before I started getting yelled at for ruining the whole project and I stopped.

I knew immediately that it would make a cool kind of page a day calendar, but how the hell do you do that. So I always had it as something I could do one day...if I ever learned how to bind paper and shape plastic to make page-a-day calendars.

Then blogging started, and I got divorced from my wife and had a lot of time on my hands, so I decided to put the idea into a blog to fill the time not spent rolling around on the carpet with anxiety. The first month or so of posts was pretty much ripped from that Yahoo calendar. Some of those made it into the book too.

Here we go, tell me about the book. Look how natural that happened. How long was the site up before the book started happening?

About 3 years. I started writing the proposal well after the three year mark. 

How different is it from the site that you needed to write a detailed proposal? Is there a lot of new stuff?

There's a hunk of new stuff. At least 50 pieces that have never been on the web or anywhere. I had to shop the thing around before someone bought. It wasn't like someone saw it online and approached me.

Ohhh, gotcha.

I started writing the proposal just to get an agent, but it ended up that an agent contacted me based on something I wrote for Flaunt Magazine which had nothing to do with the site. Luckily, I had a proposal already ready to send around so my agent didn't have time to get bored with me. The proposal was definitely necessary, in addition to the sample of course, and it helped me just to figure out exactly what the shape of the book would be for myself.

Tell us about the shape of the book, it’s not just a collected GAP (Girls are Pretty)? I like that anagram by the way, that fucking store should mean something.

It is pretty much a collected GAP. It's 365 days, a holiday and a story for every single one. Most of them are pulled from the site and edited or expanded. I just wasn't always sure that that's the way I would go with it. There've been times I've thought I should try to get them into a form where the days intersect in some way, or where I just blend them into a single narrative. But I love the way it's coming out. It's the purest and truest form it could be, and it feels so good to have a volume of work as thick as that in your hands. And yes, my little nickname for cock is "volume of work." I'm honestly proud that it's over 400 pages long. Does that mean I have no integrity if I'm just happy with how long the fucker is?

That has nothing to do with integrity, it's like, excuse me, taking a MASSIVE shit and being able to show it off to your family and new girlfriends. "Look, I made something. And it’s huge!"
 
EW! YOU'VE CROSSED THE LINE DAMMIT!

It was going to happen. So I formally apologize. So do people help you write the site? Is it solo or a team effort? Do you ever employ friends as writer drones?

No, it's all mine.

Really? Wow. How ahead do you try to be, and by saying that I mean, how many do you have in the backlog?

Maybe I should try to ask one of my friends to try it one week. That might be fun. I used to be really obsessive about it. I still am, but now I take off on weekends. But it was always a big deal for me that I never miss a day. For the first three years, maybe four, I never missed a day. If I were going to be away for a week, I'd post a week all at once ahead of time.

I’ve noticed that.

Lately, I only post Monday to Friday, and I try to get it all done over the weekend, so I can spend the weeknights working on shit that could actually pay me.

Understandably. So what pays you right now?

I'm dayjobbing it. I work for a big bank where I write research reports about suspected money launderers and whatnot. It can be fun. And heartbreaking

So do you have any real favorites on the nigh constant joy that is www.girlsarepretty.com? Anything stand out for you? That’s how I ignore/topple hearing about heartbreak.
 
Bob Powers: It changes with time. You'll find a lot of my favorites in January and February of the book when it comes out on December 26th available for preorder now on Amazon.

But one of the long-standing favorites was Gondola Ride Day, which actually never appeared on the site but on a special thing I did for www.themorningnews.org. I've performed that one a lot and it's one of my favorites to do at a reading. Another one is “19 Ways To Tell Cajun Chef To Go Fuck Himself”. Which was shrunk to 14 Ways for the book. My editor wanted me to ditch the Katrina references.

(Laughing) Too soon…

Bob Powers: One more, "When You Finally Get Up To Close The Drapes, You'll Realize That A Classroom Full of Children Has Been Watching You Cry For The Past Twenty Minutes Day!" That's a special one for me.

My favorite was the "Suck the Gay Outta me" Day.
 
Oh yeah, I remember that one. It was a joke that the suburban closet cases would say to their boy hookers.

That thing killed me. Is it in the book?

I was proud of that one. I don't think it made it into the book. It was one of the ones that my editor held up to me as evidence of me being kind of a terrible man.

He's right, but Christ was that ever funny.

Thanks. I remember I wanted to read that one when me and Todd went to Aspen, and I ran it by the producer of the show and the rest of the cast and everyone was just sort of disappointed in me.
 
(Laughing until a hacking cough got kind of disturbing) Shit....

I often want to run with the shocking stuff, and usually while it works on the site in my opinion, when people tell me its a bad idea they usually end up being right.

Meaning, when I want to read that stuff at a show or something, or put it into the book. Obviously it works on the site, but I'm not as intuitive as to how it will go over when I actually have to stand there and represent the stuff in person.

I don’t know, whenever a routine goes so horribly off color I usually start to really have faith in the comedian. Even if it bombs miserably. It just sets them apart in my head. How do you know if it does well on the site?

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That's just my own gut judgment. I'll know while I'm writing it if it's special of if it's just something that works enough for me to get on with my day. Sometimes people write me or link to it, which is cool. But the only way I know is if I love it before it's even finished.

That makes sense. Who are you into right now? Who is really god damn funny? Which you kind of already did, so just add people not shows.
 
Todd Levin over at Tremble.com is always hilarious. And not just because he runs my show with me. Or, I wouldn't run my show with him if I wasn't always looking forward to what he turned up with. Chris Regan has a site up that's already sold for a book called www.mythstory.net . He's one of the funniest writers out there. Also Julius Sharpe at www.newsasgossip.blogspot.com and Chris Deluca at www.what-sucks.blogspot.com . Both are required daily reading. And Amanda Melson, a comedian I live with and make love to, is hilarious. She wrote for the presently in development Next Greg Giraldo Pilot and her standup is hilarious. Basically, If you fail to print any of these, I'm fucked.

But while we're at it, non-web stuff includes Sam Lipsyte. George Saunders, of course. Um.

As a final question; tell me a quick story about a time that you thought you were going to be killed or a time that you pulled of some shit you'd love at least one more person to know about. It's random I know, but we we're all fuck ups at one point or another and everyone's got this story. Let's hear yours.
 
For me it's less times when I thought I'd be killed and more times when I thought I wouldn't be able to go on much longer. There was a time not long before I left LA to come back to New York when I just stopped sleeping completely and the slightest indirect remark could make me panic that everyone I know loathes me. But that's called an anxiety attack and isn't very rare. I took Ativan and got better.

I once broke my foot skateboarding and was commuting from a fourth floor walkup in Greenpoint to a $9 an hour Manhattan job every morning on crutches.

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Um, my HIV went away?
 
(Laughing) That’s it. That’s the one. You got it in three.

PRINT!

Absolutely. Bob, thank you very much.


Bob Power's book comes out on December 26th.   Pre-order it here!

Website

www.girlsarepretty.com

Photos

Lisa Whiteman, Maggie Lee

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