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A lot of people know Geoff Tate fromDoug Loves Movies.
He is the winningest player in the shows history, according to the podcasts extensivefan wiki.
Tate has appeared onThe Late Late Showand tours regularly with premiere comedy Dougs, Benson and Stanhope.
His latest album,People Are What People Make Em,is out now onBlonde Medicine.
You live in Cincinnati, but we met in Bloomington, Indiana.
I honestly dont do much comedy in Cincinnati.
If I had to make a tape or something, I would probably go to Bloomington.
It just feels like Jared [Thompson, owner ofThe Comedy Attic] is a fan of comedy.
A lot of clubs, theyve all been there for 25 years, and they all seem bored.
Plus, all the kids in Bloomington seem pretty cool.
The comics have made a nice scene there.
They make me feel young.
Bloomington is interesting, because its a small liberal college town in the middle of Trump-land Indiana.
Cincinnati is the same way, surrounded by northern Kentucky and southern Ohio, which are very red.
Im not friends with any of those people anymore.
And as far as having family members who think like that, its embarrassing.
Youre not one of those people who is like Look at where theyre from!
and make allowances like that?
No, fuck that.
Dont look at where theyre from, look at when theyre from.
Are they from now?
Then get the fuck with it.
I dont care if they dont have internet or cell phone service or whatever.
Its not the fucking 1600s.
Well definitely you’re free to have more patience, because a movie is timestamped.
They cant go back.
You cant go back, although, didnt they go back and editHuckleberry Finn?
Yeah, they did.
And that seems dumb.
But if Mark Twain was still alive, and just talked like that…
I can at the same time think thatHuckleberry Finnis great and Mark Twain is a piece of shit.
The book cant evolve but the person should.
This was my awkward segue into talking aboutCheers.
Theres a lot in that one thats pretty…theres a lot.
Theres a lot inCheersthat is terrible.
I wont beat around the bush on any of it.
A lot of it is bad.
I actually watch it less now than ever.
And its all the standard jokes.
Cliff is looking forward to it, it hasnt happened yet.
Norm makes mention that it was a few weeks after he got married.
And all the other guys are like Ohhohohoh, you dog!
like Sam was a real charming 11-year-old.
I just figured you out.
So now you cant have any relationships with women at all that dont involve sex!
Except for Carla, but only because she is more sexist and dude-like than anybody else in the bar.
Which itself is probably a coping mechanism for being the only chick in a bar.
And being a single mother, she had to exist in a rougher environment.
Her life is not great.
They wrote all this shit into it.
This is how prevalent those archetypes were.
Rebecca is a shrew and some kind of stuck up bitch because she wont fuck Sam?
The fact that she doesnt fuck Sam for three years is heroic now.
And then later, onFrasier,thats basically the same way he lost his virginity.
He had sex with his piano teacher when he was in high school.
So Frasier is also…
Undiagnosed molested, yeah.
But its that masculinity where you cant admit it, or you cant admit that it was weird.
He told us, and I remember thinking This is weird, but I should not think its weird.
So now withCheers, Ive got to watch it all withthatin mind.
Sam is clearly a sex addict, but they dont ever mention it until the very end.
Like the final episode.
They dont even bring it up until the final season is almost over.
I hope that at some point, all this stuff is going to shake itself out of society.
Evolution happens, and it just needs to happen in behavior now.
If it is, its only because I was trying to figure out how to do that as myself.
And its not altruistic, I just decided I didnt like the way I felt.
If thats coming across in what Im doing on stage, then Im glad.
Dice is still doing that bit, and thats supposed to be a character.
But at some point, how can you think that stuff up?
If its not in you, at least a little bit?
Yeah, but now hes that character all the time.
Any time anybody sees him, hes that guy.
Hes never any of his other characters.
Have you read the bookMother Nightby Kurt Vonnegut?
No, I havent.
I feel like thats Andrew Dice Clay.
Im pretty sure thats the only time Andrew Dice Clay has been compared to a Vonnegut character before.
The only good part is that hed be mad if he read it.
Since 2013, youve been putting out an album almost every year.
What motivates you to put out that much work?
Really, I just wanted to be better than Louis C.K.
Everyone was always like Can you believe he does another hour every year?
and I thought, Really, thats it?
And then it turns out generating an hour of material was immaterial.
I just didnt have to be a fucking sex predator to be better than Louis C.K.
Is it harder to come up with a new hour when the world is so unfunny?
What its done is its freed me up to be sillier.
I want an escape from all of this too.
How do you know what batshit thing to talk about?
Theres like 50 a day.
I feel like being silly now and not trying to make the jokes be anything or mean anything.
Ive got this joke about Breathe Right strips, and I do it five times in an hour.
Its the same joke, I just wrote five different punchlines.
I think up punchlines for that joke all the time.
You get away with a lot, once you learn the tricks.
I watched every episode ofSNLlast year, and it was so hard starting every episode with a Trump sketch.
I couldnt stomach it.
Everybody knows about Trump, what are you doing?
Youre not changing anybodys mind.
It would make him crazier if you just stopped doing it.
Like imagine ifSaturday Night Livedecided to never say his name again.
Just refer to him as the president, or POTUS, because that sounds kind of gross.
That sounds ball sacky, a little bit.
Alec Baldwin doesnt put on that fucking face again, they never do another sketch about him again.
They can talk about him on Update, because thats what thats for.
But only call him POTUS, never by name.
And dont show any pictures of him.
That would make him crazy.
Photo by Troy Conrad.
