Comedian Mike Birbiglia bought a van for his nationwide Secret Public Tour.
He added normal modifications such as a navigation system, nice wheels and a plasma TV.
Oh, and he also painted it to resemble A-Team’s GMC.
“It’s the kind of thing you get to do when you have the emotional intelligence of a 15-year-old,” he said.
A Boston-area native whose radical van will make a stop in Eugene on Saturday, Birbiglia is “really into” the Pacific Northwest.
Every show on the tour features a super-secret special guest and he assured the guest scheduled for Eugene is cool.
Known for his candid observations and his home-made childhood greeting cards, Birbiglia is a staple of Comedy Central. He has filmed two TV specials and is gearing up for his third.
“Comedy Central has been very good to me,” he said.
Birbiglia’s Secret Public Journal is the catalyst behind the tour and a CD by the same name.
“These are my most embarrassing stories,” he said. “I got up the nerves to tell my friends and then I told strangers and they laughed.”
The journal started as a weekly e-mail he sent out to a small list of people and has since grown exponentially.
“I thought maybe I should write these (e-mails) out in a more concrete form,” said Birbiglia, whose journal has developed somewhat of a cult audience. “Something like 30,000 people read it now.”
Birbiglia also reads his journal to millions on the Bob and Tom Radio Show every week.
“It was one of my more positive experiments,” he said of his Secret Public Journal. “I’ve had a lot of negative experiences too, but they don’t have a tour named after them.”
Birbiglia said the tour has been amazing thus far. “My whole goal lately is that people come to my shows on purpose. So, it’s been like a dream come true.”
In Madison, Wis., where Birbiglia recently stopped, fans expressed their dedication. “Two guys and a girl had tattoos of my bear logo on their arms,” he said. “It was crazy.”
Another show was especially memorable. “I don’t usually bring the childhood cards, but I did recently because this guy wanted to propose to his girlfriend.
“It said ‘will you by my wife for five dollars per day’ and on the back it said ‘please say yes, please say yes, please say yes.’ It was a very touching moment.”
Yale recently invited Birbiglia to perform on campus. He said that the student newspaper ran a slanted story about how no one knew who he was. “It was like I was Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. They invited me to speak but I was introduced with an outline of reasons why I’m a jerk,” he said.
Birbiglia sent the newspaper an editorial.
“Secret Public Journal LIVE,” Birbiglia’s new CD, was released in late September.
On the CD, Birbiglia shares a story about his experience taking a required computer science class at Georgetown.
“I showed up the day before the last class to find out what was going to be on the final,” he explained. “The guy next to me said ‘Hey, do you think we’re going to get the final back?’” Birbiglia ran to the computer science department and the professor told him he gets the worst grade in class.
“I said ‘Yeah, a zero?’ and he said ‘No, you get the same grade as the person who did the worst on the test.’”
Birbiglia goes on to say the person who did the worst in class actually passed. “That’s how I got through college.”
Birbiglia wants you to come to his show. “What’s the worse thing that could happen?” he joked.
“Stand-up comedy live is always better than seeing it on TV or listening to a CD. It’s 10 times better live,” he said. “I like to think my live show is 500 hundred times better.
“If you can’t make the show,” he said, “I hope that you buy my CD and you have a computer to burn it for all your friends.”
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