Jackie Kashian makes no bones about where she stands on people and politics. It’s the backbone of her comedic presence.
“I’m an Anarchic Socialist,” she says. “I don’t think anyone would be surprised to find out what my politics are. I am clearly a supporter of the common man.”
Kashian’s a nationally touring comic who has built an empire of sardonic, edgy comedy and thatched it with “The Dork Forest,” an hour long podcast that she has hosted for the past eight years.
Kashian also has her own half-hour special on Comedy Central, she was a semi-finalist on Last Comic Standing and has recorded “This American Life” with Ira Glass for NPR.
Her first time on stage was born from heckling the late Sam Kinison. In 1985, a very drunk Kashian heckled Kinison in Madison, Wisc. Just three weeks later she participated in her first open mike on the same stage. Now nearly 30 years later, she has crafted a comedic style that is witty, sassy, genuine and thoroughly entertaining.
She had me in stitches as we spoke about her own dorky obsessions, her love of standup and her upcoming shows at the Helium Comedy Club at the end of August.
I caught her via phone as she was preparing for “Joke Machine” with her friend and fellow comedian, Erin Foley, at a coffee shop in L.A., Calif.
Jackie Kashian: Joke Machine is when you run bits by people. You meet with a fellow comic and you run some premises by and then they punch it up and then they run some premises and then you punch it up. The only rule of Joke Machine is you can’t say, “That’s not funny.” There’s always something there.
Sue Zalokar: Critique is good. You hone lots of skills.
J.K.: And you get to practice your bits on somebody.
S.Z.: Is this your creation or is this a universal comedic tool, “Joke Machine?”
J.K.: We named it “Joke Machine” — Maria Bamford and I. We consider it a game, even though it’s deadly serious. It’s very fun. All comics should do it with the friends that they write with.
You come to an agreement — like my buddy Auggie Smith, who is from Portland. He likes to do it timed. You do five minutes — everything that everybody comes up with regarding that joke belongs to the comic who has the premise. So you have to go in knowing who’s going to leave with the punchlines. You can’t say something funny and then go, “Oh wait, I want to keep that.”
S.Z.: You love standup.
J.K.: I do love it. It’s the best. I started when I was 19. I was doing it for so long and it’s 25 years, if I count the '80s as one year, and I tend to.
When I first started doing it — when you first start anything — you’re never any good at it, but blessedly you don’t know. And you’re like, “I don’t care if I’m bad at it, I’m going to keep doing it.”
It was like heroin. It was so addictive from the first time I did it.
S.Z.: What about it is addictive to you?
J.K.: I think just having a voice — just being heard. Even if the things I was saying were just shocking and getting that kind of reaction.
When you first start doing stand up comedy, you mostly do shock jock stuff, just trying to get a reaction out of people. And then you figure out material that is very much you, that is the kind of stuff that you will write. You’ll put your own stamp on (the material). I tend to write more of a storytelling style.
S.Z.: Tragically, Robin Williams took his own life recently after living with addiction and depression for quite some time. It is ironic that someone who brought so much joy and laughter into the world suffered from such debilitating illness. Do you any comment about his death?
J.K.: His great influence on me was that he always reminded me to be grateful for the sheer joy of being on stage. I met him, maybe, three times. He was always an advocate of standup. He loved doing it and loved watching it. He was a good guy to be around at a comedy show. Which is another great way to influence comics — hell, people. Leading by the example of courtesy and support.
I’ve been thinking a lot about his recurring fight with addiction and depression and think of how much I benefit from a — relatively — straightforward chemical setup in my head. I get depressed, like everyone, but it’s never for more than six to eight months at a crack – and, maybe, every four or five years. What I really fear is the depression swooping down and killing you before you realize how depressed you are. Remember that life mends itself in the next moment. In the next day. Sometimes it takes a bit.
I will miss his light and joy and I wish him peace. For the rest of us I remind myself of the advice from my incredibly, self-centered parents. In my father’s words, “Just be happy and do something nice for yourself. It doesn’t matter if it makes other people happy. Better you think of you.”
S.Z.: You tour 25 weeks a year. That seems like a lot. How long have you been doing that?
J.K.: Yeah. It’s been even more than that the last two years. It is a lot, I’m gone three to four days a week, home three to four days a week.
S.Z.: Kind of dreamy, really.
J.K.: It can be. I have a lot of frequent flyer miles. The worst part of it is being tired from the travel. The best part of it is the new audiences everywhere.
I just did North Carolina. I’d never been to North Carolina. I’m going to Ohio this week. I’ve never been there.
S.Z.: I was born in Columbus, Ohio.
J.K.: Go Buckeyes. I’m a Minneapolis comic, but I’m from a little factory town outside of Milwaukee. I went to Madison and that’s where I started standup.
I moved to Minneapolis in 1990 to do stand up full time — or as full time as a day job would allow — because everyone I started doing stand up with moved to Chicago.
S.Z.: I was watching “This Would Make an Excellent Horcrux.”
J.K.: Great! That’s my hour special that I just released.
S.Z.: There were a number of times that you had me rolling. I perked up when you made a joke about Paul Ryan. Tell me about your politics.
J.K.: I don’t do a lot of political material. I have a B.A. in poly sci, so I always have an opinion, but I don’t always have all of the information. I don’t want to be that person – the person who is just angry.
There are not a lot of people who are looking for my opinion politically so I tend to do my jokes more from a socio-political (angle). I talk about family and I talk about my husband and my friends. I talk about my hobbies and toys. But it’s not like Lizz Winstead (co-creator of “The Daily Show”). It’s not like Will Durst or Kate Clinton or some of these people who are super political. And if somebody gets up in their face and wants to argue, they have a lot of facts at their fingertips.
Whenever somebody does want to talk politics with me and they make some broad sweeping statement, I always say, “I’m going to need a source on that statement.” You can’t just tell me some weird statement and then back it up with a random website or right-wing blog. That doesn’t count.
I would need a second source if it was Wikipedia. So, I’m gonna need a source. It’s got to be real. And I’m probably going to believe the worst of the Koch Brothers anyway.
S.Z.: You have been pumping out “The Dork Forest,” your podcast for eight years. For our readers who may not have tuned in yet, can you tell us a bit about the show?
J.K.: I interview people about what they really enjoy in life, whether it’s a hobby or just any sort of obsession. This week I talked to Sean Patton about New Orleans. Last week it was Doug Mallard about Magnum P.I. and two weeks ago it was Rhea Butcher about “Back to the Future.”
S.Z.: I imagine you have met a wide spectrum of people from all walks of life. Everybody dorks out on something, right?
J.K.: I’ve talked to Diva Zappa about knitting, and I’ve talked to Maria Bamford about Suze Orman. So … it can be about anything. Sometimes it’s comics, just because I do comedy and they’re most of the people I know, right? But sometimes they are regular people just walking around in life.
S.Z.: Whatever your passion is you can be a dork about it in The Dork Forest. What is the difference between a dork and a nerd? Any?
J.K.: As far as I’m concerned, they are exactly the same. All I know is that on “The Big Bang Theory,” those people are neither geeks, nerds or dorks. They seem to be bros. The show has a weird sensibility. Everybody gives nerds and dorks a bad name. Oh you live in your mom’s basement and you don’t have a girlfriend. And they are always guys. That is out-of-date.
Marvel makes $17 billion on its comic book movies and everybody is wearing a Captain America t-shirt.
There are a lot of women who are nerds and dorks that don’t get enough cred. It’s super fun to have more women on the show. I had Aisha Tyler on and she is a giant nerd. She can dork out the best. She plays massive, multi-player video games.
S.Z.: You married a nerd. A male nerd, as you are keen to point out.
J.K.: He came up to me a month ago and he was like, “I don’t want to make video games anymore. I want to make board games.” And then we stared deeply into each other’s eyes for a moment and he says, “Yes. The lucrative world of board games.” He’s still making video games. He makes iPhone games and Facebook games. He’s done it all.
S.Z.: You made that “marry a nerd joke” on “Conan” and you got some blowback from that. What’s the difference between delivery of and the interpretation of a joke?
J.K.: I didn’t mean that he didn’t have a life. I meant that we both don’t have a life.
The thing about some jokes — especially people who do a lot of edgy stuff — all of a sudden you have Madison Square Garden full of people and they’re like, “That’s right! Give it to the Muslims.”
And you think, “No, no! That was ironic. Ironic racism ... what’s happening?”
And so you can have your joke sometimes co-opted by bad guys. That wasn’t the heart of the joke. The heart of the joke was to celebrate women’s sexuality or some obscure thing about race or religion or something.
You talk about the things you experience, but you can’t always control what people are going to do with the material.
I do that joke about animals. New cat, new dog — it’s about people spending thousands of dollars on their pets. It’s on my website. It’s been animated. It’s from my last album. It’s got like 75,000 hits. And it’s essentially that people are out of their minds — $3,000 for diabetic medication for their cat. That’s 3,000 new cats, Because cats are free!
People come up to me and say, “my dog gets chemo. 80 bucks a week.” And I’m kind of like, “You know there’s a guy who lives in front of my 7-Eleven. You might want to give him 80 bucks a week, you know?
S.Z.: Is anything funny? Is it okay to laugh at lewd jokes about war or death or racism or whatever …?
J.K.: Yeah. As long as it’s funny. That’s the only rule.
There are people who do incredibly dark, incredibly misogynistic (standup). I just saw Sarah Silverman do this thing about 9/11. It was hilarious, the heart behind it. And what I was talking about with the co-opting of your material. Somebody can take it and run with it and turn it into something you didn’t mean it to be.
We are all exposed to a world that can be pretty depressing. That’s the premise of the joke — and then (a comic) tells what is commonly referred to as the punchline. Some comics focus on the horrible thought and then they don’t have a punch line. If you are going to write edgy material, you need a punch line. There are a lot of young comics who think, “Well Sarah Silverman talks about rape and all these other things that are super sad. I’m going to do it too.” Comedy is a delicate craft.
My advice to young comics: try not to make a video and then post it on Youtube because it takes a minute to learn how to ride that fine line.
Kashian will be performing at the Hellium Comedy Club Augst 28 through the 30th.