October 11, 2012
Aisha’s Got Your Back
Comedian Talks Stand-Up, Gaming & Marriage Equality
10/11/2012 (Issue 2041 – Between The Lines News)
Whether she’s dishing with the ladies on the daytime chat show “The Talk,” lending her voice to sarcastic superspy Lana Kane on the FX animated series “Archer” or musing about video games, friends with kids and the plight of the diminutively derriered in her stand-up shows, Aisha Tyler is whip-smart and effortlessly funny.
But the one thing she wouldn’t change in more than 20 years behind the mic is the times she wasn’t.
“The things that make you the funniest are the ones where you really, really bomb because you have to go away and completely re-examine everything about your life and how you approach comedy,” she says, driving home after a taping of “The Talk.” “When you kill you just think you’re awesome and you go do shots, but it’s when you really bomb that you go away and try to get better.”
Tyler’s bombing days are far behind her. Fans who’ve seen her stand-up specials on Comedy Central or her self-effacing viral rap video “No Ass at All” have helped make Stephanie Miller ‘s “Sexy Liberal Comedy Tour,” which paired Tyler with John Fugelsang and fellow “Talk Soup” alum Hal Sparks, the highest-grossing political comedy tour of all time. Tyler said she hopes her solo stand-up tour, bringing her to the Detroit area for the first time for an Oct. 19 date at The Magic Bag, will live up to that streak.
“I love stand-up and I’ve been doing it long enough now that people come – and my fans know me, they know the kind of humor,” she says. “People really know who I am as a comedian, and they know what they are gonna get.”
Raised in San Francisco by her dad after her parent’s divorce when she was 10, she grew up a nerdy tomboy who loved science-fiction, video games and sifting through medical books at the library.
“I grew up on the back of a motorcycle,” she says. “My dad and I used to play video games. My dad was a really loving, caring dad, but he also wanted me to be tough.”