“Dude, I’m not going to recite my bits into a vacuum, you
know?” Patton Oswalt tells me.
Fair enough, considering I just asked the comedian if he feels
obligated to be funny with interviewers.
“I mean, if it’s conversational and natural and it turns funny,
that’s fine,” he answers. “The only time when it’s frustrating is when
they expect you to run your jokes at them or something. Or, you know,
they’ve heard your album, and they go, ‘Hey, I’ve heard you have some
problem with….'”
Speaking of Oswalt’s comedy albums—which are clever, angry,
and hilarious—I should make a fantastically uncool confession. I
didn’t find out about Oswalt through those albums, or his voicework in
Ratatouille or Aqua Teen Hunger Force, or his appearances
on Reno: 911! (he was the Renaissance Faire douchebag who
referred to his cell phone as a “scrying device”). No, I found out
about Patton Oswalt from The King of Queens.
Yeah, I watch The King of Queens. I know: It’s an
Everybody Loves Raymond spin-off that’s targeted at
fortysomething Middle Americans who laugh at stuff like… well,
Everybody Loves Raymond, I guess. But there’s something about
The King of Queens that hooks me whenever it (frequently) shows
up in syndication. Actually, there’re two things, the first being the
main character’s disproportionately attractive wife, and the second
being Oswalt. Oswalt isn’t on The King of Queens a whole lot,
but when he is—playing Kevin James’ dorky friend
Spence—The King of Queens shifts gears from a pretty
mediocre sitcom to something pretty goddamn funny.
But Oswalt’s best stuff has always been his standup, as showcased in
the indie documentary The Comedians of Comedy and on his two
albums, Feelin’ Kinda Patton and Werewolves and
Lollipops—where the jokes range from the political (his
comparison of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney to Bo and Luke Duke is
creepily accurate) to cautionary facts about midgets. (“Be careful,
because if you lose a fight to a midget, you become one. Did you
know that? It’s true! At the beginning of time, there was one midget,
and everyone was like, ‘C’mon, motherfucker!’ And now look
around. They’re everywhere.”)
The Comedians of Comedy tour, featuring Oswalt and a slew of other
great comedians (including Brian Posehn and Maria Bamford) returns to
Portland this weekend. That tour is why I’m interviewing Oswalt, who
gives quick, semi-grumpy answers to questions about his sometimes
personal material (“I’ll talk about anything. If it’s funny, then it’s
fair game”), his punch-up work on movie scripts (“Go in, do it, go
home. Take the money, go home.”), or if he’s heard from KFC after he
shared his observations about their disgusting “Famous Bowls” on
Conan (“Why would they know who I am? Why would they care?
They’re a billion-dollar company”).
More interesting to Oswalt is the Comedians of Comedy tour, which he
started in 2004.
“I wanted to bring comedy to rock venues where there wasn’t, like, a
two-drink minimum, where I could control the prices. Do an all-ages
kind of show [where] younger people could come out—people who
normally wouldn’t go to comedy clubs—and get fans earlier in
their life, the way people get into bands and music and films.
“It seems to be working,” he adds. “Hopefully, I see it going
exactly the way it’s going now. Very DIY, low-budg, and keeping in
small music venues. The only thing I see changing—as people like
me and Zach [Galifianakis] and Brian and Maria, as our careers take
off, partly because of these tours—we’ll start bringing in
younger people, and hopefully the brand itself will attract the
audience.”
When I ask Oswalt what people can expect from his appearance, his
answer’s about as simple and honest as possible: “Funny standup.”
Again, fair enough. And that’s that, and I realize, too late, that I
should have asked if he could hook me up with some The King of
Queens DVDs.
The Comedians of Comedy appear at the Roseland Theater (8 NW 6th)
at 8 pm on Friday, October 5, $20-25, all ages.
