J: What about politics and society goes into what you do? It doesn’t seem like a big part of it.
LS: That’s part of my intention, that you don’t see it. For example, I do the Chicken McNugget character, in a costume with a foam chicken head, talking in a very high pitched voice. It says McDonald’s is evil, but not in a way that’s ‘McDonald’s is evil, everybody!’ [shakes a fist], because who cares about that, it’s been said a million times. But there’s a little dig there with that. With the ‘Classy Abuser,’ I’m very much going after gender things. It’s not overt. The women that have seen it have reacted, ‘Oh my god, that’s my ex-boyfriend.’ Men will react that it’s pretty fucked up, but they don’t get mad at me, because it’s not ‘Listen up, everybody, I’ve got something to say!’ Then no one will listen to you.

George Bernard Shaw said if you’re going to educate people you have to make them laugh first. You can’t just preach. You have to make them laugh first or else they’ll hate you. ‘Four Groovy Douchebags’ is kind of like that -- but it’s more about Lite FM, and the soul-crushing music of Michael McDonald and the 1970s that seems so bad to me. I’m glad we’re not in that. Every time I see a 70s movie, ‘oh god, it must have been so awful to live in that time.’ I’m definitely not one of those people who’s shouting and screaming about gender issues and politics, but it’s not because I’m apologetic about it. It’s because I want people to listen to me. If I am going to say something political, I understand that I need to trick the audience. I don’t say ‘I’m not a feminist.‘ I am a feminist and I don’t tell rape jokes. I don’t think rape jokes are funny, ever. But rather than getting on stage and saying ‘Rape jokes aren’t funny!’ I have a stand-up bit that ‘You know you’re a jerk if … you’re a Republican, or this or that … or if you tell rape jokes.’ Invariably, then the audience gets really quite, because invariably on that bill, there’s been a comic who has told a rape joke, and more often than not it’s a woman, which is very upsetting that there’s that trend going on. I’ll look at the audience and say, ‘What, too soon?’ And that’s it. I move on to the next thing. That’s what I try to do -- to insert something that will change the way people think about something, not yell and scream about how wrong they are, because it’s not effective.

To clarify about political sketches, a better example of something I wrote as political commentary aside from the Classy Abuser, was called “Salads.” It’s three women eating salads and they’re just eating in very suppressed fashion. At some point, they’re picking up the lettuce and they’re so robotic. Their lives are just so meaningless. It’s a comment on office life and being a woman in the time we’re living in. You can tell from the conversation that it’s today, not the 1950s. You can tell they’re in an office although I don’t make it obvious. You can just tell. The delivery of the lines is as emotionless as possible, because with emotion on top of it it’s [declaiming], ‘Hey everybody!’ That’s a combination of writing and directing. It is socio-political but not screaming at the audience. …

J: What other things do you have going? What do you have going in stand-up?
LS: It’s not really stand-up in the clubs -- I just did Mo Pitkin’s last night. I’m going to be doing ‘Drink at Work’ coming up; I did ‘Find the Funny.’ I do stand-up, Meat and my solo characters.

It’s more the alternative rooms than the clubs. … I’m working on what my voice is as a stand-up and what I’m trying to do, incorporating some character things into that. It’s definitely something I’m less adept at than anything else that I do. I’d like to start doing the clubs and see if … there’s some people who can translate … they can do the downtown and midtown. There’s the potential there, especially since I do characters more than just telling jokes. That doesn’t go well [downtown?].

J: What are your goals?
LS: I’d like to have Hank Azaria’s career. I’d like to be the female Hank Azaria. He does theater -- I think he won a Tony for “Spamalot;” he’s a leading man in “Huff;” he’s a magnificent character actor who steals every scene he’s in a movie and he’s part of an ensemble with “The Simpsons.” As far as I’m concerned, he absolutely has it all as a performer … in being able to work in so many different ways and still remain under the radar a little bit. I really like his work and see a kinship between what he does and what I try to do.

Those are my big goals. I want Meat to be the first all-female sketch show on television. I want to do stand-up, do colleges and have Comedy Central and HBO specials. I think my style is like Robin Williams, manic with characters, also like Eddie Murphy. Eddie Murphy did SNL and is a stand-up legend. I’m so new to stand-up that it’s such a maybe for me to consider making a living doing stand-up, let alone anything like that. That’s a dream anyway. It would be pretty cool.

Also as a feminist, stand-up is such an easily accessible medium. You can really become someone who everyone knows, if you’re a stand-up comic, male or female and if you have an original voice and are doing something different, whether political or gender-wise … I get upset when I think about when my niece becomes a teenager, what will be on television.

J: What do you think about the proliferation of video sketches and use of video sketches in live sketch shows?
LS: I think it’s a little played out. ‘We have a new video!’ So? So does everybody. The thing about the Internet, technology and all of that is it’s desensitizing everybody to new ideas. Jessica Delfino did a very funny video called “I Want To Be Famous,” that was on MySpace. It was chosen as a top video, and played a million times. Then a couple days later, MySpace chooses another one, and another couple days later, another. When you think about how we live in such an obsessive-compulsive …

The Jessica Delfino piece is so good, and the idea that people would watch it and forget about it five minutes later, when they see something else. That becomes the flavor of the moment, and then people forget about that, and so on. It’s like taking entertainment pills. Instead we could be sitting down, having popcorn, and it will be quiet. It’s an experience, something special. It should be special, a ritual -- like going on a vacation. It should be savored, not beat, beat, beat, beat, beat. …

I think sometimes the reason people watch the news, or pick up a newspaper or magazines, or watch YouTube is so they can stuff to talk about at parties. It’s not even because they’re really that interested. ‘Oh did you see this, or hear this?’ Especially in a time of war, that’s all safe conversation. Everything that’s on the Internet, YouTube and videos, is all safe conversation. It makes me sad because … I wish … if I could be anywhere at any time, I’d be in New York in the 1960s. The fact that we live at this time, when everything is so bland. Jessica’s video is great, and I just know that because of the nature of YouTube and MySpace, and everything is kicked in and spat out because there’s so much stuff.

When videos were first accessible and people did them and used them in their shows from time to time, it was pretty cool. Now it’s totally played out and people should really stop doing it. … Maybe. … New York theater is so dying … and sketch is burgeoning. Wouldn’t it be great if that could be combined with getting people excited to see sketch comedy live in a theater, that’s not “Legally Blonde: The Musical,” “The Wedding Singer: The Musical,” or “High Fidelity: The Musical.” Those are something for tourists to say, ‘Oh you know that movie we watched? We saw it live! Wow!” It’s all part of their homogenized, crappy life -- as opposed to something that could change their life.

J: You might have a character there.
LS: [does Midwestern accent], ‘Oh, I don’t know, we didn’t like that. -- but ‘Heinz Tomato Ketchup: The Musical,’ it’s just like what we ate! But we saw it!’

I would love to see more sketch groups say, ‘Video? That’s over. Fuck it. Let’s go back to …’ It’s harder to create something that kicks ass on stage live. That’s why they called it Saturday Night Live. There’s something so exciting about that. You knew who was really good and funny by watching them live. It’s like bands … they go into the recording studio and do something, but you see them live and they suck. People invariably when they talk about the great musical experiences of their lives don’t say ‘I was listening to my iPod on the train and I was totally not in my environment and I was rocking out to this pre-recorded homogenized thing and had a great moment with myself.’ It’s ‘I went to a concert, I got high, I saw something that blew my mind, I met my wife.’ Live theater, live music, interacting with other people as opposed to sitting at home and getting entertainment by yourself on your computer, and then forgetting about it five minutes later. But they know what to talk about at work tomorrow.

That’s how I feel about videos. I’m glad that we did it, but we had a specific goal in mind when we did it though. That was to go to L.A., do an industry show and meet people who don’t know who we are. We’ll introduce ourselves to them. We can’t give them a tape of our live show where you wouldn’t really hear us. The audience is laughing, but viewers wouldn’t see the expressions on our faces, of the people who are making the audience have that reaction. That misses that moment. So we did these videos and we incorporated them into our show at UCB, but not a lot. We did it as an introduction to us. We only showed one or two short videos in each show. … Maybe about 3 or 4 minutes in all. … Certain groups do a lot of videos. I don’t disparage them at all, but I think it kind of sucks doing it in live shows. It’s passe. …