Open Myq

On a cold, windy, rainy, sort of foggy, a little snowy, a bit drizzly, and damn near hurricaney morning in October, I caught up with comedian Myq Kaplan to discuss his upcoming show at Caroline's and his Comedy Central special.

AU: You spell your name unconventionally, tell us about that?

MK: Right now it’s just useful to google myself. Because Mike is a pretty common name, Kaplan is a pretty common name. There’s a guy who has Mikekaplan.com spelled normally, he’s a wildlife photographer, and that’s not me, but I thought about trying to team up with him at some point and do some funny photos – I didn’t think of that until now. But uh, I was a teenager, and I saw that Prince changed his name to a symbol, and I thought that’s weird, I like that, I was a weird kid, and I decided I was going to change my name to something, and I was like ‘My...k’ and someone’s like ‘why not a Q’ and I was like, even better, and it was just a whim and I started doing it at this arts camp that I was at and then I just told people about it and did it in college and then when I started performing it seems like a useful if not confusing stage name.

AU: How did you get into comedy?

MK: I got into comedy via music actually, I wanted to be a singer/songwriter. I taught myself guitar in high school, my parents were music teachers, I played the violin, I didn’t like it, but I enjoyed the guitar, it was easy to pick up because of the violin learning that I’d done. So I started writing songs and enjoyed playing them, and some of them were funny so I was looking in college to get out and play at like coffee houses or other clubs and bars that would let me in, but none of them would let me in until I was 21, but the one place that did was a comedy club called the comedy studio, so I was like hey can I play some funny songs here and they said ‘we can give you seven minutes’ so I was like that’s not a lot of time, I didn’t realize that was a regular amount of time for comedy, but you know, music, you’re like I’m gonna play for an hour, whatever. Bu I went there, I played a couple songs and then I basically, I’d go back there as often as they’d have me, which was sometimes once a month, sometimes not for several months, and eventually I was kinda like enjoyed doing the non-music portion, just talking to the audience, trying to make people laugh, and I realized, hey I could do this without carrying a guitar around, so I started writing more jokes and then focused on trying to get a set together where I didn’t need a guitar and then I was doing comedy.

AU: How would you describe your comedy?

MK: Uh…with words, that’s my hilarious answer to that. I guess, I don’t think a lot of people like to describe their comedy, I think I’d rather have other people do it, but then other people do it and it’s like ‘eh, that’s not right.’ A lot of it is word related, I got a masters in linguistics and because of my interest in language, and so I think that comes through in my comedy. There is some portion of word play in it, but I try to back it up with substance as well. There’s some politically motivated, but always, also some funny motivated, some pop culture related, I watch a lot of movies, I read things, and I talk about anything that interests me, talking about religion or comic books or movies or my vegetarianism, anything.

AU: Do you have a favorite contemporary comedian?

MK: I have a lot of favorites, I don’t know if that’s helpful. The people that I think of first are Paul F. Tompkins, Louis C.K., Doug Stanhope, Brian Regan, Andy Kindler – another guy that I like a lot. There’s a lot of guys I like for lots of reasons, and those are some of them.

AU: Do you have a favorite all-time comedian?

MK: I’ve always said, Mitch Hedberg, initially, and he’s sort of like frozen in time, because he’s not longer with us. I’d obviously be curious to see what he’s doing today. But yeah, if I had to pick one, he’s usually the one that I pick.

AU: Have you been heckled, do you get heckled, and how do you deal with that?

MK: Hey, I don’t come down to where you work, and no…and ask you if people heckle your paper. Certainly over the past 7 years that I’ve been doing comedy, there are heckles, I mean there’s all kinds heckles, which you learn. At this point, I’m pretty calm about it, I don’t have any expectations about any specific show. If I was taping a tv show and someone yelled something about, that’s just sort of unacceptable. I was actually at some of the Comedy Central presents tapings last year, at Anthony Jeselnik and Doug Benson’s taping. I was sitting way in the back, and right behind us, there were these two girls that were just yelling stuff, and I don’t know if they could hear on the stage, but eventually Anthony from the stage was like ‘shut up.’ It can be, but it’s not really meant to be any part of anybody’s comedy. Nobody is like ‘c’mon in and heckle.’ It would be really weird for that to be… it’s usually just drunk people, I’d say, the majority of heckling is just drunk people or people who don’t know what’s expected or supposed to go on. A lot of clubs will have an announcement beforehand that says ‘hey, if you heckle we’ll ask you to leave.’ Some people get confused when a comedian does talk to the audience, when they’ll say ‘hey, what do you think about this?’ you know, or if he’s just asking a question and they’re like ‘oh, we’re having a conversation, I’ll just keep talking.’ And it’s just a misunderstanding, normally, and so what I’ll do is talk to the person honestly and briefly and be like ‘hey, I’m here to say funny things and you’re not, so I appreciate your interest in talking, but don’t, please’ and you know, try to say something briefly, informatively, humorously, you know, confidently, and then get back to it.

AU: Do you have a favorite comedy festival?

MK: The biggest one that I’ve been to is Montreal, I just went there this year. It was sort of, obviously a goal, it’s one of the bigger one’s industry-wise. I would say, if I could only have done one festival, that would be the one to do, but I’ve also done the Boston Comedy Festival a good number of times since I’ve lived in Boston for most of my comedy career, I do enjoy - I like going back there to do that, and when I was living there it was always a great time, people would come from all over the country and there would be a lot of camaraderie in Boston.

AU: Do you have anything else you’d like to promote?
MK: I would say anywhere the internet has the ability to put in a name, you can probably put in my name and find me. I try to put everything up on my website to say when big things are coming. I have a friend named Mika Sherman and we host shows together sometimes, we do some musical comedy together.

AU: I saw online that you have done work for Pizza Hut and Subway, are you looking forward to a lifetime supply of either product?

MK: I’m not actually, I mean I’d be happy to. I’m a vegan, I do eat Subway’s vegetable sandwiches, like if I’m on the road somewhere, like if I’m on the road in the middle of nowhere and there’s only fast food or like you know, a… like I was in, I drove through Louisiana once and I said ‘hey, can I get spaghettis without meatballs’ and they’re like ‘well, it’s made of meat, the spaghetti also’ I was like uh, oh, and there’s subway all over the country, so I do actually stand by my support for Subway a lot, as far as what they’ve done for me, so I would be happy to eat a lifetime’s supply of vegan subway sandwiches if there was also nothing else available to eat.

AU: As a Jew in New York, do you have any reaction to the Ronan Tynan scandal?

MK: I would say… that’s it’s a stupid thing to say to somebody that you don’t know… I’m not a fan of ignorance for ignorance’s sake in general. You know, I understand if you’re a crazy old Jewish lady, I think the things that are objectionable are being crazy. Like I hate those crazy people, not I hate those Jewish people. He should have said. ‘as long as you’re not crazy’ that’s fine, you don’t seem to be. It certainly seems like a foolish thing to say and as far as how big a deal it is and how blown out of proportion it should be, the more people who know about you, and the more famous you are, then certainly the bigger deal it is to the public that, you know, you think are do certain things, whether it should be that way, but if the paper’s gonna run with something… if I was moving into an apartment and somebody said, ‘as long as you’re not one of those crazy jews’ I’d be like ‘no, no, I’m just one of the normal ones’ I’d probably tell friends about it and I’d twitter it, and it would get around eventually.