We’re sure you’ve seen Paul Rust around, because it’s pretty much impossible to avoid him. The man hosts or performs at the UCB almost every night of the week, plays in two awesome bands (Don’t Stop or We’ll Die and The Glass Beef), and stars in countless internet videos. He’s featured in “Semi Pro”, which opens today, and before he rushes off to take on his first starring role, he took the time to answer our questions via email:

Let’s start with some background information…where did you go to school and what did you study?
I went to the University of Iowa where I majored in Cinema - with minors in Theatre and Communications.

When did you first start performing?
In first grade, I did a lip-sync performance of Weird Al Yankovic’s “Living with a Hernia” for the class. It wasn’t for “Show or Tell” or anything. I just brought in my tape player, then asked the teacher if I could do it and she let me. Which, in retrospect, was a really cool, supportive thing of her to do. Yay, Mrs. Wick!

What non-comedy jobs have you had?
In high school, I worked at Hy-Vee (a Midwestern grocery store) for a couple years - stocking shelves and sacking groceries. I also worked at my town’s movie theatre/video store (no one ever rented “Crossing Delancey” - I checked the records) and DJ’d at the local AM radio station (I found a 45 of “Who Shot JR?” and played it until my boss told me to stop).

In college, I was a housekeeper at a hotel and an RA during my junior and senior years. After college, I worked in the paint department at Wal-Mart the summer before I moved to LA. And then for the first couple years in LA, I logged footage and transcribed interviews for reality-TV shows like “The Real Gilligan’s Island” and Ted Nugent’s wilderness survival show. My favorite one to do was “R U The Girl” featuring T-Boz and Chili.

And so when did you move to LA?
August 2004.

You’ve made a lot of shorts for the internet, do you shoot and edit yourself?
I shoot and edit my own shorts, yes. Stuff I learned in film school. Now that you know I went to film school, the videos probably seem really sucky now.

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For the past few months, we’ve been going back and forth over electronic mail with Mr. Brody Stevens to get some answers to our more pressing queries regarding information that you, The People, deserve. We were going to wait until the Q&A was complete — evidently, his routine of flexing and memorizing U.S. maps cut into his down time — but since we’ve got nothing else to talk about this Monday afternoon, we’re just going to print what we got so far. Enjoy.

You do a vast amount of drum karaoke, both onstage and off. Where does this come from? Do you have any drummers that you try to emulate?
Started banging chopsticks during the Summer of ‘84 in the San Fernando Valley. My playing evolved to no lessons and larger chopsticks, also introducing U2 and Pearl Jam to the playlist, peaking in 1991 during my college years in Tempe, AZ.

To further focus on baseball and comedy, my drum playing went dormant through a move to Seattle and early adjustment days in New York. I decided to bring the drumming back in the Lower East Side for the 1999 pilot season. Surf Reality and Collective Unconscious. These two venues let me do anything, and the crowds took to the “drum karaoke” which was done on chairs with a pair of Sam Ash specials.

In LA, the late night vibe at The Comedy Store created the perfect setting for drums in a club. Started it there, now everyone wants to see it. I look up to all drummers because they are better than me.

Music, that’s a different story. If I like the song, and I can drum to it, we got a ourselves a bit! Actually, not that easy. Finding the right song, factor in the venue, my spot in the show, can I bang on dinner theater chairs?, can the sound system handle an ipod?, etc…

And finally, driving. Nothing like banging away for two hours on the I-10, thumping your steering wheel listening to the latest British export on the way to Mom’s house in the desert so you can help her change a light bulb in the garage.

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We’re back from our extended Labor Day holiday weekend rested and ready to work (clap) for you! First order of business, reminding you that we’re only a week away from the most-anticipated release of the season! Here to answer a few of our more pressing questions about the release is Scott Aukerman who, along with BJ Porter, produced the album, produces the weekly CDR show at the UCB, and is producing the new Fox sketch show set to air next year, The Right Now Show. My God, that was a complicated sentence.

We were lucky enough to be in attendance during the all-night CDR 4th anniversary show, where this was recorded. Can you give us a preview of what made it onto the album?
Basically we recorded the entire evening and took the cream of the crop. Disc one was recorded up in San Francisco during our Sketchfest shows, but disc two is the entire 12-hour CDR4 show distilled down to 75 minutes. We intentionally didn’t want to just put out “everything.” We wanted this CD to be a true “best of.” There isn’t any fat on the recording. Just the best stuff that you can listen to over and over again. (At one point we thought we might put Fireball Deluxe’s performance on the record, but we couldn’t get the rights to Huey Lewis’s “Power of Love.”)

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The Coming would like to draw your attention to one of L.A.’s greatest standups and, well, MySpace profiles.

I’m not doing stand-up. I’m asking God for two eyes.

Not only are Jarrett Grode’s photo captions and blogs unparalleled in the comedy universe, but this kind and generous comic took the time to answer a few questions for us.

Who are your favorite comedians in Los Angeles right now?
If you can sell out Largo, you are my favorite comedian. I know this answer makes actual stand-up seem like an afterthought, but I will have driven home drunk by the time you hit the stage anyway. (True story.)

How often do you work out?
I split my muscle groups and hit each one every five days with three sets of eight repppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp whoops, I just fell asleep with my head on the keyboard.

Was that an inappropriate question?
Yes.

Do a lot of people correct your grammar on “Horrific to who?” (instead of “whom”)?
My father loves pointing out my mistakes. The grammar of this joke is pretty far down the list, but he gets to it. Every time.

A friend of mine saw your standup recently and asked me why you’re not more famous. Well?
I’m sorry, but your friend sounds like an idiot. I have a sixth sense about these things. Re-examine this friendship, because this person (and I use the word loosely) is dead weight. I actually feel bad for you. You deserve better.

If you’ve ever been to the Steve Allen Theatre no doubt you’ve seen some of the incredible artwork in their seasonal program; if you’ve never seen it, a browsable version is available online over at their site. Much of the artwork is from Travis “Fudge” Millard, who has a new 240-page collection called “Hey Fudge” currently available. Tomorrow night, he’ll be over at The Jeff Electric Gallery (3022 Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90026) in Silverlake signing copies. (7pm-10pm) Before he put his signing hand on hiatus to rest up for the big event, he was kind enough to answer some of our questions.

How did you get involved with the folks over at Steve Allen Theatre?
I met Craig Anton years ago through his younger sister Megan, an old friend. And since my move to LA in 2003, Craig has invited me to get involved with a few projects together, (The Idiots, The Tomorrow Show). He introduced me to Amit Itelman, and since then, Amit has kept me locked in the Steve Allen basement, feeding me through a hose, and allowing 15 minutes of internet privilege to respond to your interview questions. If I do it in less than 10 minutes, I get a biscuit.

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Recently, we’ve been criticized for promoting What’s Up, Tiger Lily? way too much while neglecting the other great Monday night comedy show, Garage Comedy at El Cid. (9pm, free!) To rectify that mistake, and to avoid any accusations of being involved in a payola scandal, we immediately contacted GC’s Mistress of the Dark Val Myers, one of the minds behind the show, to answer a few of our questions.

How did Garage Comedy come to be? Please tell us that it once actually took place in a garage.
If you suspected that “Garage” Comedy started in an actual garage that makes you smart, and it makes us bad at thinking of names. Way back in 2002 I converted a two-car garage into a studio to shoot videos with my comedy partner Jon Glover. It was in June of 2003 while sweating profusely and shooting a talk show called “Live from a Garage in East LA” when we got the idea to do a live, webcast version and call it Comedy Garage. Our hopes were dashed when we found out that a bunch of dudes in Santa Monica already did a show out of their way cooler garage and called it ComedyGarage.com. Like any lazy visionary would do, we simply switched the words around, checked the domain name and voila, GarageComedy.com was born.

So, how did it become a live show at El Cid?
The origin of Garage Comedy Mondays at El Cid started in 2004 when I noticed there were stand-up clubs and there were sketch comedy theaters but there was no place for a performance artist with a sense of humor. I also noticed nobody wants to hang out in a smelly, damp, dark garage. I needed a venue and found a multi media art gallery called Fancyland, which was where the live version originally took place. The first show was called Garagecomedy.com The Show, and it was too long, clunky, and was more of an open mic. Kulap Vilaysack helped me to refine and develop the show’s formula and in 2005 we did our first of many shows at El Cid.

What makes the Garage Comedy experience different from all other shows? It seems to us that it includes a lot more alcohol.
Bitch, you think Garage Comedy only different cuz booze? I punch you in the neck!? (Uh yeah, sorry I’ve been drinking.) True it has a certain old-timey, scotch-swirling flavor but that’s just one of the many chunks of tender meat in our saucy stew. GC is a show that feels like a party because you may see something you didn’t want to, and it’s one of the only shows in LA that is free of charge. GC is a warm crowd receptive of performers and comedy fans who are on the same wavelength. Besides the scene that has formed around it, GC is unlike any other comedy show in it’s garage-ness; meaning a synthesis of emergent talent, curious performance art, and gritty egalitarianism.

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Boston’s loss is L.A.’s gain! Chris and David Walsh have finally made the big move to Los Angeles via cross-country road trip. It is a task for a later date to attempt to describe their brilliance in writing, but let us be the first to predict that the AST Top 20 Poll may see a significant increase in Walsh come October. David was kind enough to answer a few questions via electronic mail:

How long have you been doing comedy?
We did stand-up separately for four years and then three years ago we found each other on Craisglist Missed Connections and teamed up.

What precipitated the move to Los Angeles?
So many things. Wanting to get better. Being around creative folks. More experience(s). The mumbo-jumbo about growing, maturing and becoming more well-rounded people. Meeting the President of Show Business. The Movies.

We’re real homebodies and New York was too close. The desire to go home and get comfortable would be too strong. We had to put a giant land mass between us and everything we know. The comedy here is unbelievable right now. A lot of great shit. And L.A. is crazy and stimulating which seems good for creating.

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As you may have heard, Human Giant were on MTV for 24 straight hours this past weekend. (Mark our words: Years from now, bootlegs of the event will be passed around as The Great Document sampling this era of “underground” comedy.) The Giant Paul Scheer was good enough to put off catching up on his sleep for a few minutes to answer some of our questions regarding the history event.

When did MTV approach you about the project?
MTV literally approached us with the idea less than 2 weeks before the event. I never thought it was actually going to be a reality. I remember telling our MTV executive, “Sounds great, but there is no way to get that ready in time. People take months to prepare something like this.” Apparently I was wrong. MTV put all their energy into this event and by the time the details were worked out, we only had about 8 days to prepare for it. It was the most insane experience because we were going live at noon on Friday and there was no stopping it. It was going to happen if we were ready or not. We literally were still getting props and costumes after the show started airing. I even had to miss dress rehearsal on Thursday because I had to fly back to LA to shoot a scene in a movie. So my Friday started by landing at JFK at 10AM and racing to the TRL studios to make it in time for the show.

It seems like they were pretty lenient for what they’d let you get away with. Did they give you any rules to follow?
MTV never gave us a single creative note, which was very different from the actual show. They had us on a 15 second delay so I think they felt if something was offensive they could bleep it with plenty of time (FYI: The average delay is 5 seconds). Honestly I think everyone was so busy orchestrating the event that it opened us up for total creative freedom. Whatever made us laugh in the room got a card on the wall and we pared it down from there. The biggest rules we had to follow were really based around legal stuff. For example we couldn’t ever invite people down to the studio until after midnight (which seemed arbitrary), we couldn’t shave someone’s head (because we weren’t licensed barbers), and we couldn’t feed people on the street (in case they were allergic to the food and died).

What’s the best parts/worst parts of staying up for 24 straight hours?
Staying up for 24 hours straight wasn’t that bad, I just drank water and tried to avoid sugar so I never really crashed. I really thought it was really going to be 10x worse than it actually was, but it was such constant action, you never had a moment to actually get tired. It was like being on the West Wing, we were constantly walking down busy hallways with people to your left and right giving you tons of information. Just as you’d digest it and you’d immediately be back on air and it would start all over again. I guess the worst part of staying up is knowing that you only have 2 hours left, at that point, you can see the finish line and your body starts saying, “Screw it, I’m done.”

Was there anything you weren’t able to show you wished you could have?
I really wanted to show all those great MTV shows that I loved as a kid. The State, Remote Control, Liquid TV, Idiot Box, Squirt TV, The Original Ben Stiller Show, The Maxx, Clone High, Beavis and Butthead, You Wrote it You Watch It, Just Say Julie, Singled Out, Crashing with Andrew WK, Old Clips from the Movie Awards (Like when Clint Howard got the Lifetime Achievement Award), Mariah Carey’s TRL breakdown, Nirvana - Unplugged, and a bunch of other stuff that I’m totally forgetting about. We had a giant list all of which were rejected. We also had a ton of amazing videos that we couldn’t play either, they only cleared 10. But in the end, the lack of footage let us do so many more bits, so I think it was a blessing in disguise.

Can you give us any behind-the-scenes tidbits that the cameras may have missed?
There wasn’t much that happened backstage that didn’t bleed onstage. The only thing you really missed was the huge party that was going on in the greenroom areas. Riggle and Jackie Clarke held court in my dressing room with a shit load of beer and the main green room was packed with friends that drifted in and out throughout the whole night.

Would you ever do it again?
I’m personally really apprehensive about doing it again, because I feel like a lot of things converged perfectly to create a really special night and I don’t think that can’t be recreated. Since we couldn’t compare the show to anything else we had total freedom to do whatever we wanted. If we did it again, it would be impossible not to judge it, I think we’d constantly be thinking, “Is this as good as it was before?” I’d rather do something with the same scope that is totally different.

Comedy By The Numbers is the world’s first scientific manual explaining how to be funny. (At least we think it’s the first, we’re kind of lax when it comes to “research” around these parts.) Published by McSweeney’s, it promises to make “the secrets of comedy accessible, not only to those funny few among us, but also to those who might not have the ability or talent to be funny”, and boy, does it deliver. We read it the other night, and already feel six times funnier. You can purchase the book, which we highly recommend, by following this simple-to-click hyperlink.

The authors, Prof. Eric Hoffman & Dr. Gary Rudoren, were good enough to field some of our questions.

How did you two come up with this book? What was the writing process?

Eric Hoffman: As I remember it, the number idea came out of a bit that myself, Gary, Matt Walsh, and others used to do at the Annoyance Theatre in Chicago. In rehearsals for a show, if someone did what is considered a classic piece of comedy shtick, like extended vomiting or a crazy wig, we would say things like “oh, a number 14 - classic!” It was sarcastic, but there was also a respect for the old bits. Then we’d make up the ‘rules’ of a number 14, dictionary style. And we used to laugh at that quite a lot. The beer helped. I think everyone in comedy has done the number bit at least once.

Gary Rudoren: Eric and I collaborated on a show I directed called “The Idiotic Death of Two Fools” at The Annoyance. (It featured a 12-minute fight scene between Eric and Mike Monterastelli set to the tune of 80s one-hit wonders. One guy dies when a caulk gun gets shoved up his nose, while the other has his windpipe punctured by a staple gun. Oops, we just gave away the big ending.) We developed the script through improvisation and all of us writing. We really started screwing around with the numbers then. Then we started to keep a list. In a notebook. The original notebook is somewhere, I think. Unless we smoked it! (#34, Druggie Humor)

Eric: The book also comes out of listening to teachers or old comedians or ourselves talk about the rules of comedy. You know, “k” is funny. Comedy comes in threes. Comedians shouldn’t attempt serious rock opera. There’s a million of em. Most of that stuff doesn’t work because comedy is surprise. Isn’t it? (Secretly, I believe comedy comes in twos.) And of course there’s books like Steve Allen’s “How To Be Funny,” which my grandmother gave me when I was in high school. I guess she saw that my material at the time was too derivative of Python and Dan Aykroyd. I needed a little Allen influence to make things right. So Gary and I were working on “Two Fools” and he had the brilliant idea to turn the comedy number bit into a little manual, as a promotional item for the show, which we were taking to the Edinburgh Fringe. We printed them up and handed them out to the Scottish locals, who knew exactly what to do with them: Throw them to the ground.

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by M. Berru

Popular comedy troupe Kasper Hauser is infinitely more entertaining than an omelette, even one from the tasty Alcove Café in Los Feliz. I discovered this last week, when we met for an early breakfast interview before their flight back to San Francisco. The group had performed at the Comedy Central Stage in Hollywood the previous night, delighting the audience with Powerpoint presentations, fake pregnancies, monks, and ill-fated karate kicks. John Reichmuth — who wore sunglasses for the duration of the morning, distinguishing him from his twin brother, James — suggested I turn to fellow groupmates Dan Klein or Rob Baedeker if dealing with the four of them got overwhelming.

“We promise if we ever tell you something that’s not true,” says Dan, sensing my difficulty in assessing John’s dry sarcasm, “someone will say ‘that’s not true.’”

“That’s not true,” John quips, and the table laughs.

Kasper Hauser are a well-known sketch troupe based in San Francisco and have participated in such acclaimed events as San Francisco Sketch Fest and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. They published their first book, SkyMaul: Happy Crap You Can Buy From a Plane, in October 2006, and their popular podcast was an iTunes staff favorite last year. Though at first glance they may appear to be your average sketch troupe, I got the distinct sense from the group that Kasper Hauser haven’t gotten to where they are — or where they’re going — by any traditional comedy model.

The foursome met at a Stanford University summer camp in Lake Tahoe. James and John, inevitable performers who grew up in Ashland, Oregon — a place they describe as being “funky and thespian” — soon drew the attention of Rob and Dan (who both hailed from Southern California).

“The first time [Dan] saw us perform he came up to me afterwards and said that he wanted to be my agent,” says John.

“There was a lot of alcohol,” Dan responds.

“At camp?” I ask.

“It was an alcohol camp,” says John. “For heroin addicts.” They immediately began performing together at the camp.

After a couple of “false starts,” as James puts it (including a paying college dorm show, whose profits went to the always-reliable causes of pizza and beer), the timing wasn’t quite right. In the next five years, Dan, James, John, and Rob would collaborate in various forms creatively while each pursued his own career. It’s here that the comedy troupe’s path deviates sharply from the norm.

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