Ryan Chartrand
The speakerphone rang twice before a casual “hello?” came though. “Is this Mike?” I asked redundantly, knowing that one of the top comedians in the nation, Mike Birbiglia, was indeed on the other end of the phone.
It turns out, interviewing Birbiglia felt like catching up with an old friend. “I’m just walking around New York City having a cup of coffee,” he said amiably. Birbiglia, 29, will be performing at the Performing Arts Center at 8 p.m. tonight on his tour, “Comedy Central Live: Mike Birbiglia’s Secret Public Tour.” Tickets for the show are $27 and still available.
With appearances on “The Late Show with David Letterman” and “Late Night with Conan O’Brien,” Birbiglia is at the pinnacle of today’s comedy scene. Last year Birbiglia performed at Cal Poly with the “Friends of the Bob and Tom Show Comedy Tour,” along with several other comedians. This year he is solo and performing material inspired by his popular comedy blog, “Secret Public Journal,” also a syndicated radio segment e-mailed to thousands of readers.
“I keep my secret public journal so I remember what happens in my life,” Birbiglia said. He will also be releasing his newest CD, “My Secret Public Journal LIVE,” on Comedy Central Records. He draws inspiration from comedians such as Bill Cosby and Woody Allen. “It’s like 10 embarrassing stories basically, and there are jokes within those stories,” explained Birbiglia of the tour. “These are some real-life stories of how I made awkward situations even more awkward.”
He doesn’t traditionally stray from any topic, including politics. “It’s like if you’re a comedian you have to at least question the status quo,” Birbiglia said. “Part of the job is questioning things that people accept to be true.”
His last name – pronounced Bir-big-lia – has been a challenge in his career that has turned into a blessing of sorts. “When I first moved to New York I was talking to Jim Gaffigan . one of the first things he said was, ‘You got to change that name, man,'” Birbiglia said. “It was a negative until it was a positive.”
As a student at Georgetown University, Birbiglia worked the door at DC Improv, a comedy club in Washington, D.C. “It was kind of like going to comedy college,” he said. “I recommend it to anyone who wants to be a comedian.”
It was this experience that brought Birbiglia to admire (and open for) top comedians such as Brian Regan and to choose to make a career professionally of comedy. For the past seven years, he has been touring the country, gathering followers who love his down-to-earth, blunt, honest approach to comedy.
Performing again in SLO was a personal request from Birbiglia, who hadn’t heard of the town until last year’s show, when he found himself wondering why he had never visited. “This town is
incredible,” Birbiglia said. “I just remember having such a great time.”