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GLOBAL*BEAT - G21 INTERVEIWS: BARATUNDE - Our publisher chats with the self-proclaimed "vigilante of comedy" about his new free book and what it takes to make the cut these days in comedy.G21 World HQ - My interest was raised as soon as a friend sent me the e-mail telling me about a comedian who had just produced a free book that you could download online. He said the guy reminded him of a hip new version of Mort Sahl and I should check the book out, in .p df format, for some ideas about humor for your World's Magazine. The comedian's name was the euphonous and unusual Baratunde.
My idea, upon reading only a couple of opening chapters, was that this young man was certainly someone worth talking with. I contact Baratunde where he resides, in Boston, MA, USA and we decided to talk. Here with the transcript of our conversation.
G21: We see that you bill yourself as a "vigilante pundit."??Where did that concept develop for you?
BARATUNDE: When I published my first book, Better Than Crying: Poking Fun at Politics, the Press & Pop Culture, I had to write a new bio and press release. I had always billed myself as a "comedian and writer," but that didn't explain at all where I was coming from or what I was about. I mean, Dennis Miller is also a comedian and writer, but a) he's not funny anymore and b) we're completely different. I wanted people to get a sense of me in just a few words.
As I looked around at all those so-called "talking heads" on TV discussing politics, I realized that all these folks are generally over 45 years old, white and men. These "pund its" looked and, all to often, SOUNDED the same. Based on my age, race and upbringing, I knew I didn't fit in with that crowd even though I was also talking a lot of politics. I'm more irreverant and waaaaaay more interesting than those cats. Thus was born the "vigilante pundit." I like to think of myself? rollin' onto the set of the McLaughlin Group with my afro and droppin knowledge bombs left and right!
When people ask me "what comedians are you like," I tell them to consider me a younger, browner, hipper Al Franken or Jon Stewart.
G21: Your book for free download, The Mojo Quarterly: Keep Jerry Fallwell Away from my Oreo Cookies is described on your Web site as an "Open Source" Comedy Book.??Tell us about that, please.
BARATUNDE: I've been performing my whole life. As a young kid, I played in a Youth Orchestra in Washington, DC. In high school and college, I did several plays and musicals, and about four years ago, I started doing standup. I immediately realized that there was NEGATIVE money in the comedy game for someone at my level.
I didn't say "no money" but "negative money." Early comics don't get paid to do a show. It's like an indentured servitude; you're putting in your time. Not only that, but I had to put money out to travel to the shows, video tape myself and everything else.
Yet I noticed that musicians just starting out could whip a CD together in a low-budget studio and sell those joints even at crappy gigs. I had nowhere near enough audio material recorded to make a good CD, but I'd been writing funny stuff for years. With the encouragement of friends and a desperate attempt to try to make some money, I published that first book (Better Than Crying) myself and sold it for $8 a pop. And while I got a tremendous boost to my press kit (including an appearance on the local Fox News), credibility and ego, I made no money off of it and basically covered my costs.
I learned a lot in the process. The difference was that when people go to a music show, they EXPECT to buy the artist's CD. But when people go to a comedy show, they expect to buy a drink, and that's it.
When it's over, they roll out, and you try to push some literature in their face, even for the low, low price of $8, and they look at you like you tried to rob their mama (which, granted, I did in some cases, but that's cause I don't get PAID, man! It's a vicious cycle).
While all this is going on, I was looking a lot at the Free Software Movement. I'm a big time geek (travel to the Consumer Ele ctronics Show every year, read Slashdot, hack my Xbox) and was drawn to anything that Microsoft was against. My thing is this: if The Man hates it, I'll probably love it. I actually met Richard Stallman (founder of the Free Software Movement) and really dug a lot of his comments about copyright. Some friends of mine were working on a new licensing scheme for music similar to Creative Commons with the basic premise being that most music artists don't make their loot from CDs but rather live performance. Also, open source software was getting a lot of play everywhere in the media. I was even interviewed for a forthcoming documentary about open source called The Digital Tipping Point.
The next leap was to apply this to my own situation. The first book had done ok but I was dead set against doing another book. I wanted to try a CD or DVD, yet both of those take mad time to assemble and edit, even with my pimped out PowerMac G5 (I put some chrome spinners on it). Meanwhile, the jokes in Better Than Crying were getting more and more out of date with each civil liberty the Bush administration violated. I HAD to put something out, so I decided to publish my more recent momentary jokes or "MoJos." I was reading Wir ed, and they did a short piece on print-on-demand, which I looked into for about 10 minutes! The price I'd have to charge people was like $15, and I wanted something less expensive. Then it hit me: why don't I just give the stuff away?
I'm at a point in my career where I have NOTHING to lose. The real thing I need is for people to get access to my material, and the best way to do that is to hijack the television network during the SuperBowl. Since I didn't really have those resources, I settled for a free series of books. The plan is that every quarter, I'll release another MoJo Quarterly including the best news jokes and essays I've written.
The true "open source" aspect comes, not just from having a zero dollar price tag, but also allowing people to re-distribute and re-use my material. ... Meanwhile, this first MoJo Quarterly (as of Feb 21, 2006) has been downloaded 1,550 times, and I've hand-distributed another 150 (I give them out at shows, leave them in barber shops and cafes, etc), so we've got 1,700 books out in two WEEKS, not counting what people might be emailing they're friends.
G21: You were a Philosophy major, what brought you from there to comedy?
BARATUNDE: Mostly it was the 'hos.
Nah, just kidding. For me, philosophy was cool because it helped train my mind to dissect and understand complex argument s, to really get to the heart of the matter. When comedy is good, it does that same thing. A good comic will break down any situation, whether its relationships between lovers, race in America or the church collection plate, and help you see it in a whole new, clearer light.
Every comedian is a philospher; I just happen to have a degree.
G21: Give a bit of background on the "MoJo" or "momentary joke" idea, please.
BARATUNDE: In 2002, I had just begun pursuing comedy. I was taking a standup class at the Boston Center for Adult Education, and I was travelling to Brooklyn weekly for a comedy writing workshop sponsored by Modern Humorist.
The Modern Humorist guys had a lot of connections to big time comedy people from sitcom writers to The Onion and even the producer of "Weekend Update" on "Saturday Night Live." One week, we got an assignment to write Weekend Update-style news jokes, and I did a really good job. Compared to some of the other assignments, these came naturally, so I kept writing them.
For a few weeks, I was submitting jokes to SNL until they wrote me asking how the hell I got their email address and booted me off! No love at all! But I kept writing them and including them in my email newsletter, and I eventually tried performing them in my live sets. It just didn 't work. People just looked at me like, "you ain't Jay Leno. Tell me a damn JOKE!" So I killed the live version and just kept writing, with many ending up in that first book. The live versions do work now, but generally I'm sitting behind a desk, to set the right mood.
I called them Momentary Jokes because they're based on current events and only last a moment before they aren't current anymore and aren't funny. I can't get away with making some witty quip about Clinton and stained dresses or how the "Hundred Years War" actually lasted 116 years. The moment has passed. "MoJo" was just a nice little abbreviation and it stuck.
Since one of the points of these free books is to get my material out a lot more regularly and up-to-date, I decided that "MoJo Quarterly" was a cool name. It makes you think of some sort of men's sex advice magazine, then you open it and find jokes about Paris Hilton, and you realize you weren't that far off.
G21: I was particularly moved by your story about "Joe," the returning Marine, in the book.??This wasn't all comedy at all but brought up some interesting and serious insights.??Tell us more about those types of pieces in the MoJo Quarterly.
BARATUNDE: I'm glad you asked me about Joe. For those who haven't read the boo k (and there's no excuse, because it's FREE), I was coming back to the US from a short, exciting and exhausting trip to Barcelona. The Philly airport was a mess because some incoming storm was pushing back all the flights. It was seriously pandemonium, like it will be in a year when we all die of the bird flu (get your masks now people!). Anyway, I saw all these people wildin' out, and in the middle of this chaos was an abnormally chill lookin' guy. His name was Joe, and he had just gotten back from Marine duty in Iraq.
The essays in MJQ (if I may abbreviate further, which I may, because it's my book) are mostly based on things I've written at my blog over at www.goodCRIMETHINK.com, and while most have some humorous element, I don't just write funny things. I write about things that happen to me, and especially the people I meet. The same is true of my podcast. A lot of it is me commenting on affairs of the week and whatnot, but because I travel around a lot, and am a whore for conversation, I end up meeting the most fascinating folks. Joe was one of them.
Here was a kid who got to take a shower every six to eight weeks and had to suit up in heavy chemical weapons gear in 100+ degree heat. He patrolled the Syrian border for god's sake, and he was maybe 21, 22 years old. If I have an opportun ity to talk to someone like that, I'm going to, and I'm going to use whatever platform I have to share that story with as many people as possible.
I like comedy, and I think I'm funny a lot of the time. But the point for me isn't just to make people laugh. The joke is also a great "thought delivery device" which make some ideas a lot more accessible to people because it's coming at them on a different level. Joe's story helped me understand way more about the war than I could get from watching some pundits on "Meet the Press."
G21: Where are you performing now and how is your special brand of humor being received?
BARATUNDE: I perform wherever and whenever I can. When I'm on a good clip, I hit the stage about four times a week. Since my mom passed last Fall, I cut back a lot to deal with everything that follows the loss of a wonderful person from your life, but the schedule's picking back up, and I should hit full throttle by Spring time.
My stomping grounds are mostly Boston and New York City. In Boston, The Comedy Studio in Cambridge is my home club, and Jimmy Tingle's Off Broadway is another favorite. In New York, I'm a regular at The Tank and Laughing Liberally and roll through Piano's on the Lower East Side. Readers should check my website for the latest, but at the time of this interview, I've got a big show scheduled for April 1st in Boston and several more on the back burner.
I usually get out to the West Coast at least once a year to hit up LA, San Fran and Portland, Oregon, and if all goes well, I should be in Chicago for about half the summer doing an improv program, so I'll try to hit stages in the midwest from Madison, Wisconsin to Ann Arbor, Michigan. I've even done a few shows in London, UK and I'm itching to go back. I love the Brits. They speak English so good!
As for how my comedy is received, I feel good about that. In the long arch of a maturing comedian, I'm still in my early years, but the signs are positive. In some cases, I get an audience that doesn't know or care about what I have to say, but that's pretty rare. In most cases, people explode with laughter, women throw their panties at the stage; it's really a crisis.
I'm curious as to how I'll play in more Middle America-type places or right-leaning crowds, but what I've seen so far suggests that funny can transcend all of that. Some of the best compliments I've received came from Republicans and conse rvatives, including author Orson Scott Card who said, "We don't necessarily see eye to eye politically, but when you're that funny, I laugh even when it's against my side."
That's about all I could ask for. That, and millions of dollars.
© 2006, GENERATOR 21.
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