Satiristas Read online

  It even pissed me off as I was saying it.

  TOM RHODES

  TOM RHODES WAS meant to be Comedy Central’s answer to Pauly Shore—complete with long hair, a love for weed and a smart-ass grin—and his ascent was swift. But even if the spots he did for the network in the nineties relied too heavily on his rockstar good looks and bad-boy image, his comedy never suffered for it. As the decade closed and NBC cancelled his sitcom Mr. Rhodes after one season, Rhodes absconded to the Netherlands to find a second life successfully hosting his own comedy talk show, The Kevin Masters Show starring Tom Rhodes. Having matured into a new sense of artistry and international vantage points, Rhodes holds forth on his experiences as a subversive American comic performing all over the world.

  TOM RHODES: It’s a real talent to find something that’ll rub someone the wrong way. God, what a gift.

  I used to say I was a communist just because it upset my family. Not that I even knew what communism was, I just knew it upset them. I didn’t have the courage to say I was a homosexual, and communist was next on the list.

  I was a smartass my whole life. My uncle once told me, “You always choose the most unpopular angle on anything, the one that’s going to cause you the most grief,” but it’s really fun to upset people. I had two older brothers that bullied me, and I could always push their buttons with just my tongue. It’s better than kung fu or muscles. It happens in bars, where there’ll be some guy my animal instinct tells me is a bully, and I can find the two or three words that’ll make him lose his fucking mind. It’s a gift. I’m grateful for it.

  PAUL PROVENZA: So being a confrontational comedian is not even a choice?

  TOM RHODES: I always thought I was moody and arrogant and bitchy and argumentative, but my mother’s from Argentina, so I went there for the first time last year, and it turns out I’m just Argentinian. There’s nothing wrong with me at all; it’s just the way of my people.

  PAUL PROVENZA: You didn’t start doing comedy in Argentina, so did you have a tough time with crowds, starting out?

  TOM RHODES: I think taking the Lenny Bruce route is just difficult in general for anybody. You’re just going to get your knees skinned up. I remember opening for Bill Maher years ago in Atlanta, and it was packed with his fans. He did things that were so confrontational even some of his own crowd’s feathers got ruffled.

  But who knows if anything we say really affects anyone? In Bakersfield, I did a bit about this antigay protest in Texas, and I said they were yelling things like “Gay is not okay!” and “God condemns homosexual acts!” And some hillbilly in the audience yelled, “You’re damn right!” The bit I was doing was actually a “love everybody” kind of message, ironically, so I just kept going and finished the bit. And I don’t know…Maybe it got through his little pinhead. Just maybe it penetrated his concrete skull and made some tiny little difference. Maybe not. Who knows? Maybe he’s choking some gay guy in an alley right now in Bakersfield.

  PAUL PROVENZA: Or getting sucked off in a men’s room.

  TOM RHODES: That’s equally likely too.

  PAUL PROVENZA: Have you paid a price for doing the kind of stuff you do?

  TOM RHODES: Some woman wrote a letter to the club I played in Indianapolis, saying I had completely ruined her mother’s sixtieth birthday party. I save all those kinds of letters, by the way. Anyway, the club wrote her back saying they’ve used me in the past, but I’ve adopted this new, “rebel” approach, and they wished me well on my “new endeavor” but wouldn’t be having me back.

  Rebel? I just wasn’t the boring, conservative puppet act they were looking for, that’s all. That kind of thing didn’t help on the Southern circuit, that’s for sure.

  PAUL PROVENZA: That’s ironic, given their refusal to stop flying the rebel flag.

  TOM RHODES: I know. And they’re just stupid jokes. With all the violence and pornography available at the push of a button, who can possibly be offended by just words in this day and age?

  I’ve actually been back to Indianapolis, because there’s new owners now, and some soldier who had just come back from Iraq got really upset about jokes I did about the war. But the guy was cool; he actually started crying…It got pretty heavy.

  It turned out he was conflicted about whether or not we were doing the right thing in Iraq, and wanted to know my opinion further. I was, like, “Dude, I’m from an Army family myself. No matter what, nobody has anything against the soldiers.”

  That’s why people should be pissed off anyway—that our lovable soldiers are being sent to fight for bullshit. Maybe the guy just had some epiphany, but who knows what he went through over there.

  I did shows for the Marines in Okinawa and met a lot of guys returning from Iraq. Some guys were really tightly wound; their buddies would say things like, “He’s a little fucked up over it.” That’s another thing: remember how for about twenty years after Vietnam it was like at any moment a vet might just lose it and flip the fuck out and grab hostages on a bus or something? That’s what we’ll have on our hands for the next twenty years after Iraq, too. These powder kegs that are gonna be going off from being in another unpopular war that it’s hard for them to be all that sure about.

  I was living in Amsterdam when this war started, and on TV there I had CNN International, BBC World, and EuroNews—and it was like three different wars happening. And the common perception of a lot of Europeans was that Americans were easily brainwashed. Easily deceived and naive.

  Because everyone else in the world knew that there were no weapons of mass destruction. The UN was on Saddam’s ass for years and he complied with nuclear checks. We destroyed it all during the first Gulf War, and Iraq’s biggest weapons supplier just so happens to be America. And with our technology, intelligence keeps close tabs on every country in the world. Everyone knew Iraq didn’t have anything.

  PAUL PROVENZA: Do you think it’s true that Americans are easily brainwashed or manipulated?

  TOM RHODES: I don’t think so. I know I have a lot of intelligent friends. But a few years ago my brother’s nineteen-or twenty-year-old stepson was saying how we had to go to war there because Iraq blew up the World Trade Center. I was politely telling him that he was an idiot and explained how we should be having a war with Saudi Arabia, not Iraq, since sixteen of the nineteen hijackers, Osama bin Laden himself, and most of the funding came from Saudi Arabia, and that, in fact, Saddam Hussein hated bin Laden and wanted nothing to do with any of it, while the Saudi royal family, however, has been saying America is the great evil for about seventy-five years. So this kid’s mother heatedly goes, “What is it that you hate so much about America?”

  The fucking twat. I love America more than anybody, and I’m standing up to lies, trying to tell the truth because I love my country. In my opinion, it’s the people who don’t love America who, right or wrong, just put on a uniform and march. The people who just go along with whatever the government says, never questioning any of it.

  We’re talkin’ America! Where you can rage about your feelings and ask questions; most other countries will drag you through the streets for having any subversive opinion. My mother’s cousin in Argentina was one of Los Desaparecidos, “The Disappeared.” He was a professor and said some things against the government in class and nobody knows what ever happened to him.

  There was a Spanish comedian in the fifties, whom Franco dragged through the streets because he made jokes about him.

  PAUL PROVENZA: The Moustache Brothers in Burma got five years and seven years hard labor for one joke about the leader of the country. That’s something that makes comedians here actually have some kind of responsibility to speak out. Because we can here, and elsewhere they die trying to.

  TOM RHODES: I agree. And all Americans have a responsibility to live up to the hype America’s created about itself. You’ve traveled loads, so you know how Americans are held to a higher standard around the world. We have got to be dazzling. We’ve got to live up to the high expectations we set fo
r ourselves when we created this fucking dream to begin with.

  America has done and will continue to do more for the rest of the world than the rest of the world could ever do for us, yet the rest of the fuckin’ world hates us. Maybe the next time some little punk-ass country has some big disaster, America should go, “We’re just gonna sit this one out,” just to remind them what impact we really have.

  But Americans also need to wake up and see the global vision. To understand the perspectives of everyone else in the world, not just our own. Comedy and humor making a political statement is part of that.

  I saw a brilliant photo exhibit in Amsterdam by a French photographer who did this covert project with Palestinians and Israelis. He took close-up portraits of both Jews and Palestinians—old men, children, women—all making their silliest, goofiest faces. Beautiful portraits of all these people, mortal enemies, happily making themselves look ridiculous and silly. And he posted them on the barrier between Israel and the Gaza Strip. It was beautiful.

  That’s how people should be, you know? When you’re angry at someone, think of their silliest moments. Everything changes when you can all laugh together.

  PAUL PROVENZA: I think a lot of comedy is filled with ideas that maybe really should be taken more seriously than just as a joke.

  TOM RHODES: I have a plan for our country. You know, Fidel Castro’s dream was to play Major League Baseball. He had a tryout with the Washington Senators and didn’t make it, right? Well, Hugo Chavez, big enemy of this country, tried to play Major League Baseball, also. He had a tryout with the Houston Astros as a shortstop, didn’t make it either.

  So, for our country’s future, I think Major League Baseball needs to let more scrub Latin players into the league, just so we don’t have to deal with these pesky dictators years down the road. I mean, if the guy is batting .185…For America’s security, “Come on in!”

  PAUL PROVENZA: Well, the world would be different if Hitler had gotten into art school.

  TOM RHODES: Right. That’s just a joke I thought of, but you know…it’s not completely crazy.

  I think it was in Thank You, Masked Man where Lenny Bruce said that if the world wasn’t filled with so much hate and evil and corruption, we’d have no need for people like the Lone Ranger. And we’d have no need for people like Lenny Bruce, either. If it was sunny every day and everybody was running to the park with balloons and happy all the time, we wouldn’t need stand-up comedy at all.

  I did an interview on some TV show in Australia, and since I perform all over the world, they asked me if some comedy themes were universal. I said, “Yeah. Pain, suffering, heartbreak, misery…”

  EDDIE IFFT

  THOUGH JUST NOW gaining prominence here in America, Eddie Ifft has long been a favorite among English-speaking expatriate audiences all around the world. In his work and travels, he’s developed a unique perspective on how America is perceived, and made fun of, abroad. While compiling those thoughts, jokes, and observations into a documentary called America the Punchline, Eddie found himself both more proud and more questioning of his country than ever before.

  EDDIE IFFT: I do a joke where I say that America should not have sent more troops to Afghanistan, because you can’t rebuild a country with military force. The only way you can really rebuild a country is with the Olympics, because they bring in parades, Ferris wheels, pizza shops, bottled water, toilets…It’s a boon to any economy, and all kinds of stuff gets built quick whenever the Olympics are involved.

  I also say that another way to rebuild is with a good gay population, because any time a gay population moves into any neighborhood, they Queer Eye for the Straight Guy everything in sight and send real estate values through the roof.

  So what’s the solution to the whole Afghanistan situation? The Gay Olympics.

  PAUL PROVENZA: I genuinely believe the State Department should consider that as a legitimate strategy.

  EDDIE IFFT: Right? It’s true that the greatest victory you can ever have is to infiltrate with culture, not weapons.

  PAUL PROVENZA: You perform throughout the Middle East, but to civilian English-speaking crowds, not on military bases. What’s that experience like for you?

  EDDIE IFFT: Amazing. Middle Eastern people are exactly the same as us. Just like we have Christians that will walk out and be offended by what you say, they have really strict Islamic people that walk out.

  PAUL PROVENZA: Well…Fundamentalism is fundamentalism.

  EDDIE IFFT: But there’s also people that are, like, “Fuck yeah!” there, too. Just as many people feel one way as feel the other, just like here. People aren’t really all that different. It’s everywhere.

  It’s more nerve-wracking performing over there, though, because you’re in this culture that’s not really free. You can’t just say anything you want to, like we’re used to. You’re always reminding yourself, “Jokes here could actually get me beheaded.” Or at least get your tongue cut out. For real. So you’re riding the edge, teetering on lines you’re not supposed to cross. But that’s really exciting as a comic. It’s why people do drugs; it’s why people do anything they’re not “supposed” to. It’s the same buzz you get as a comic playing there. And you do get a buzz doing it, because it’s ultimately about changing their minds or addressing their fears or giving them a different perspective that’s really a big deal over there. You’re taking this risk and saying, “Look, I did it. You can, too. It’s ridiculous that you have these beliefs, that you’re this restrictive. That you’re this archaic.”

  That’s what Lenny Bruce did in our own culture here back in his day. He went, “Fuck you, fuck your dumb fucking words. How dare you keep me from speaking?” But you know, I don’t really want to be Lenny Bruce. I don’t ever want to go to jail. I love my anus, I really do.

  PAUL PROVENZA: Do you find foreign audiences to be any different anyplace?

  EDDIE IFFT: Audiences are all very similar. A lot of people say they’re different, but wherever you go, it’s pretty much always that “80/20 rule.” In any crowd, 20 percent are hip and cool and smart and 80 percent are dull and boring or idiots. That’s the “80/20 rule,” or, as the 80 percent call it, the “20/90 rule.”

  So you just find your 20 percent in any audience, and go for that. I used to go for the big laughs and try to get that 80 percent, but then I realized I don’t even like those 80 percent. Those aren’t the people I would ever hang out with. So now I just go for the 20 percent that I want to be friends with, whatever country I’m in.

  Before I got into comedy, I was the funny guy among my friends and the joke was always on everyone else. We were always playing jokes on people; we were the outsiders, and the other people weren’t in on our joke. When I got into comedy, I had to let everybody in on the joke. I was pandering. Club owners wanted you to do that because that’s the masses; that’s the people drinking the most and buying the most quesadillas. I had to make them laugh; I never wanted them to laugh, or cared if they did. Eventually, I came around to wanting the joke to be on them again.

  That’s probably why I’m not making any fucking money.

  PAUL PROVENZA: What constitutes “pandering”?

  EDDIE IFFT: The answer is a question: do you go to the audience, or do you have them come to you? You can go to them and kill and destroy and get laughs and high-fives and blow jobs after the show, or you can try to retain your integrity and do what you think is funny and original and different and honest and walk out having a lot of explaining to do. That’s taking a risk.

  And it doesn’t matter where your audience is. I’ve performed for tough urban audiences, where you think, “Oh, this audience gets nothing but dick jokes and they want me to fuck a stool.” Then I’ll perform at some country club full of corporate CEOs, where you’d think, “These are the most intelligent men in the world,” but they still want me to fuck a stool, only they want to pretend that the stool is “urban” people. They’re just as dumb in their own way as uneducated people. It has not
hing to do with socioeconomic status.

  Most of us all think the same things, eat the same things, drink the same things. The number one restaurant in America is TGI Friday’s, and we all know that’s not the best cuisine in the world. No food critic’s going, “Those sizzling fajitas were to die for!” Or, “Put Applebee’s on your must do list when you’re in Quad Cities, Illinois!” But that’s what America loves, because it’s all just pandering to the majority. You get the big portions, and you always know what you’re gonna get and it’s always gonna taste exactly the same. That’s TGI Friday’s. That’s Applebee’s.

  That’s Dane Cook. That’s evangelical mega-churches. We’re all chanting the same thing, all drinking the Kool-Aid. It’s groupthink: when you see everybody else do it, you think, “This must be the thing to do.”

  PAUL PROVENZA: Maybe what comedians do in general is try to illustrate the groupthink that goes on around us.

  EDDIE IFFT: Absolutely. Politicians are always trying to rally people for themselves or their ideologies, right? Well, with comedy you can rally people against them. Humor really is the only weapon some people have. I would never pick up a gun, I would never hit a person. Using any intelligence I have—which is not a lot—is the only weapon I have. With a sense of humor, you can rally people.

  I think a satirist is a cynic to begin with. I once read that the role of ancient Greek satirists was to embarrass politicians to the point where the politicians would sometimes even kill themselves just to save face. And I was, like, “How amazing is this power you can have that you can embarrass somebody to death? That I could have that power; that I could be so funny that George Bush would have gone, ‘I can’t believe I went into Iraq!’” BANG!