Daily Trojan USC.edu

Issue date: 10/12/07 Section: Lifestyle

Media Credit: Photo courtesy of Jeff Neira/Comedy Central Back in Black | Comedian Michael Ian Black brings his stand-up routine to the Ivar Theatre on Saturday.

Hello. I'm an On-Air Personality."

This is a line from MTV's long-lost sketch comedy series "The State," where comedian Michael Ian Black got his start. It also, notably, describes Black to the letter.

Black, whom I interviewed on the phone recently, is not, as his humor column in McSweeney's would suggest, a "very famous celebrity." He's the guy you know you know but can't for the life of you name, the sort of person you look up on IMDB out of curiosity. He is, by his own account, the awkward, lanky, offbeat kid one remembers (or tries to forget) from high school.

"Were you always funny?" I ask.

"To me … But a lot of people would disagree, particularly classmates in high school," he says. "I got a lot of blank looks in high school."

His humor is that of personality undermined, celebrity called into question. It contains a particular mode of pop culture jaundice (evidenced by his appearances on VH1's "I Love the …" series), mixing nostalgia with a recognition that most of the music and movies we grow up on are, to put it bluntly, terrible. As a minor figure in the Star Magazine universe, such humor sends up his own relative unimportance.

"I would say self-deprecating is an accurate description [of my humor]," he says. "Self-loathing would be too strong, I think."

His voice is so deadpan it borders on comatose, all gawp and yawn from boredom. Just listening to him gives one the lulling sensation of being carried along by waves. Combined with the late-afternoon slide between lunch and dinner, I find myself having trouble focusing on the task at hand.

Luckily for me, Black is just getting warmed up.

"I just sort of stumbled into comedy," he says when I ask him about his career path. "I never really intended to be a comedian. It's just that, when you're as hilarious as I am, there's a certain obligation to the public. I don't have a choice. If it were up to me, I'd be a bioethicist working on something related to cloning ... Would the world of cloning be better off it I hadn't been a comedian? Undoubtedly. If only I could clone myself, then I could kill both of those birds with one stone."

He's frustratingly funny, like a man so used to his charm that he uses it to evade the truth.

Prying an honest answer from Black is like trying to pull teeth: grueling work, and bloody, too. I try to pose questions that have to get an earnest reply - questions about influences and childhood, about culture and sense of humor. But he stonewalls.

"I just try to think of funny stuff and then say it," is a good example of the kind of thing he says in response. So is, "I just sort of stumbled into comedy." Or, "As far as bad moods go, there's no bad mood that a couple of pills can't fix."

For Black, stand-up comedy is "a delicate, delicate dance, like flamenco"; switching from television to print to the stage is solely a shift from using spell-check to throwing it out.

I get the sense that he's either too canny to admit any kind of vulnerability, or that he's just a collection of witticisms in human form. Though he may personify the words of his new stand-up comedy album, "I Am a Wonderful Man," you wouldn't know from eavesdropping on our interview. He's too elusive to pin down. He just floats.

Maybe my frustration shows; maybe I'm boring him. Maybe I'm too earnest. Whatever the reason, I can feel his lack of interest coming through the telephone wire. I'm not all that surprised, frankly, when he interrupts me midsentence.

"Matt, I'm getting another call. Can I call you back in, like, 15 minutes?"

He ends up calling back, but the time (stretched to 25 minutes) eaten up by his other call means we've used up the 40 minutes I've reserved for the interview.

We wrap things up by exchanging some funny niceties about his being a good (or at least different) interview subject, and about my trying not to take things too seriously. He recommends seeing a shrink.

It's all pleasant enough. But I can't help recalling the thought, while waiting by the phone and assuming he would forget to call back, that he'd lulled himself to sleep.



- Michael Ian Black performs at the Ivar Theatre Saturday at 7 and 10 p.m. His stand-up album, "I Am a Wonderful Man," is available now in stores everywhere.

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