If you're aware of the broader Birthday Boys/Sloppy Boys/Doughboys/Comedy Bang Bang universe, odds are you already know and love Mike Hanford.
As a member of the Upright Citizens Brigade-launched Birthday Boys, Hanford starred in that L.A. sketch group's cult-adored IFC show from 2013 to 2014. Enjoy his smugness overload as political cartoonist Tom Purdy, whose very smart and very funny clip holds the hell up today.
"We were given two seasons to win people over, but we couldn't find the audience," the great Bob Odenkirk, producer/co-star of the Birthday Boys show, wrote in his 2022 memoir. "It was a good team. In the end, I agree, and I think they do, too, that seven white guys is too many white guys to have in one place, ever, for any reason."
Post-Birthday Boys, Hanford landed a staff writing job for IFC's Comedy Bang Bang show. He'd already become a fan-favorite on the CBB podcast for his absurd, RV-cruising, biographically suspect John Lennon character, and as a frequent guest on the spiritually related Doughboys podcast, which is co-hosted by fellow Birthday Boy/onetime Racket interview subject subject Mike Mitchell. (In 2016, Hanford and Mitchell appeared together in the Judd Apatow-produced Netflix rom-com Love.)
Hanford's party-rock comedy band, the Sloppy Boys, has released four albums since 2018, and a spinoff cocktail review podcast has further fortified legions of Slop-head fans; paying subscribers get access to Hanford's bonus Questions with Lennon pod. Earlier this year, Hanford and Sloppy Boys bandmates Tim Kalpakis and Jefferson Dutton (both Birthday Boys) released the feature-length doc Blood, Sweat and Beers, which catalogs their journey recording an album at famed Texas studio Sonic Ranch alongside producer Money Mark of Beastie Boys fame.
These days, when Sloppy Boys tours aren't snubbing the Twin Cities (more on that below), Hanford is perfecting his semi-recent pivot to standup comedy. That's what he'll be doing for a full hour Sunday at the Parkway Theater in south Minneapolis, where you can expect Slop-heads turning out to support the crazy-funny goofball known as the Han Man.
Using a luxury yacht Zoom background (his NYC apartment was reportedly a mess), Hanford recently yakked with Racket ahead of the show about his career in comedy, growing comfort with standup, and his beef with the mean, green Grinch.
Let's get all the Hanford lore. Tell me about growing up in western New York.
I didn't do any organized comedy until I got out to L.A. after college. I liked comedy, but I had no idea how that stuff works. My mom one time was like, "Oh, you're funny, you always make me laugh." And I was like, "Oh, well, that's neat!" I was a very shy goof-around as a kid, and as a teenage I just loved goofing around with my buddies.
What comedy did you gravitate toward as a kid?
The Simpsons.
Dude, for sure. This gets said enough to the point of not being interesting, but for anyone who's funny today, that show was such a foundational text. The sensibilities just get baked into people.
It's really something special. It gave you this fun, bright sense of doom, that the world is fucked.
And very friendly in how counter-culture it was. A lot this can probably be ascribed to John Swartzwelder's weird libertarian views, but it drove home how institutions can't be trusted—church, school, cops, whatever. And as institutions crumble all around us today, that really hits home.
Exactly. There's really something to all those "Simpsons predicted it!" memes. So there's Simpsons, and then the Goofy character was my favorite. And my mom and I connected over Steve Martin; she liked him a lot, and would do his sort of nerdy dance, and I was like, "I like that too!" And obviously Mr. Show in college, and SNL, The State, all the cool indie Gen X stuff. In the Birthday Boys house somebody gave us a DVD of the Stella shorts and we were like, "What the fuck is this?!"
Tell me about meeting the Birthday Boys at Ithaca College.
There was a program at Ithaca called "Ithaca in L.A.," where you spend one semester in Los Angeles, getting used to the city, doing internships, and learning to write scripts. A friend of mine had told me about Tim Kalpakis and some other guys, and I saw them in a parking lot and said, "Hey, I heard you guys are looking for a fourth roommate... I'm looking for a first, second, and third." We eventually got to L.A., and all became good friends.
And there was no plan, career-wise, for what to do in L.A., right?
No. I went out there thinking I'd be a screenwriter. I don't think I've written a full screenplay. [Laughs.]
So you guys start the sketch group at UCB, and then get the IFC show. I'm curious, when you sit down at reflect at night about the Birthday Boys TV show, how does it sit with you? I mean, I fucking love it, but I feel like it got snuffed out before being fully realized.
I think that's our feeling, too. Season 1, you're getting everything out there, and Odenkirk was a bigger part of it, because he later got pulled away to do Better Call Saul. But yeah, Season 2 was really clicking along—coming up with bigger ideas, having more fun. If we had a Season 3, we would have known how to do the show perfectly.
So the demise... it was executive studio bullshit? What happened?
Yeah, somebody new came into IFC, cleared the slate. It happens all the time.
What direction did you want to go when the show ended?
We kinda knew the show was going to end. Bob, because he's more experienced, could read it in the tea leaves. He told us to put it all on the line, just in case there's not a Season 3. Immediately after it ended, I started training for a marathon because I knew I had to be doing something, for my brain to be cleaned. Then I worked as a writer for Comedy Bang Bang. Then, in terms of my solo career, I had to assess what my strengths were, and also rile myself up to start doing standup.
Lemme put you on the spot: What's your favorite Birthday Boys sketch you wrote and what's your favorite CBB one you wrote?
The first one that comes to mind is the Starwars sketch that Dutton and I cowrote...
For Comedy Bang Bang, my favorite was a piece that Henry Winkler performed. He was an encyclopedia salesman who tried to sell [host] Scott [Aukerman] encyclopedias that he had written himself. He's like, "Now say you wanna learn about bees, you grab the 'C' book and look up those creepy crawlers!" He played it so excitedly dumb, which he is so good at. He was dumb-confident, and then a pathetic guy at the end. It was perfect.
I realize this is really dissecting the frog, and that sucks...
It's good to do sometimes. At the right moment!
OK good, so how would you boil down the comedic sensibility of the Birthday Boys, Sloppy Boys, and your solo stuff?
I think the vibe is fun and exciting. Like that Simpsons thing—fun but with a tinge of, "Oooo, but things suck."
It seems like with all the albums, the movie, and the podcast, you guys are really investing in the Sloppy Boys band/podcast lately. Is that true?
Oh yeah, the podcast for sure. We're growing that in a way we didn't think was going to happen. For the band part of it, we realized we could tour these four albums, and how fun the live shows are. Our fanbase is so fun and so into it. You get a little taste for that onstage rock 'n' roll stuff! We're all in the same room, we all get the joke.
And the band's decision to never play the Twin Cities... that's a deliberate thing? Based on spite? Take me through that.
Well, we had a sit-down with the mayor. This was years ago, maybe 15 years ago. We said we wanted to do our show, which at the time was: all pyrotechnics. And the mayor said, "What you want to do here, is not legal in this state..." We made a big thing about it, saying until you make changes we're not coming back.
Well I'm glad we cleared that up.
And my standup show? No pyrotechnics, so it's easy for my to skirt that law.
Looking back on your recent run as a writer on The Tonight Show, those remote videos—which feel kinda ripped from you social media man-on-the-street stuff—had to be the biggest Mike Hanford exposure to date, right?
National network TV... I think you're right. Jimmy [Fallon] just said, "Hey, let's do something on this horror movie that's coming out." We did it the way I do "College Guys" with my buddy John Haskell, and people really liked it.
OK, so Marc Maron would have a field day with this, but you were and are an improv/sketch guy, and now you're a standup guy. Tell me about that transition.
I started doing solo character shows during when the Birthday Boys were happening, and when the show ended my improv teams had sort of dissolved. I'd done a little standup before that, but I was shy. I went on a Comedy Bang Bang tour in the U.S., Australia, and U.K., and Scott asked me to do open each night with 15 minutes of standup. It was kind of a standup fantasy camp, because I was showing up to big theaters and performing for crowds who already knew me and liked me from the podcast; it was all positive reinforcement. More recently, I kinda forced myself to do it from the ground up, and would do fucking open-mic nights. And I hated doing it!
But you're comfortable now?
Very comfortable. On this tour I'm doing an hour, building it up to shoot it or make an album. It's a long time to be onstage, and not everything works. Sometimes it falls flat, and it's fun to dig yourself out. It feels like my improv and sketch work help out. I have the written stuff, but with my improv training, I'm fine rolling with the punches. That said, if anyone were to heckle me I'd fall apart. [Laughs.]
And you have John Lennon to fall back on right? That's a guaranteed killer.
I've actually never done that in standup. I think that character works so well playing off of people, because they're like... "What, you do that?"
Super naive question, but on an old Reddit AMA, you said John Lennon's manager was aware of your character... that's a lie, right?
Yes! At one point, and this is how naive I am about how big the world and the interest is, somebody tagged Yoko on Twitter with a clip, and I was like, "Well, I hope this doesn't upset her..."
[Laughs.] Her poor husband died, after all!
It's like, Mike: Yoko Ono has no fucking idea who you are!
Let's do the a.m. radio zoo thing, pretend it's the morning of your show. Get people out to the Parkway.
You're gonna see a show... you're gonna see an hour-long comedy show, like you've never seen before. We're gonna blow it out! If you've ever been to anything I've done live, you know what's coming: You know it's gonna be fast, funny, and in. Your. Face.
Any Hanford-Minnesota connections?
Here's my connection with the Twin Cities: Prince. I've gotten into Prince in the past five years. First of all, when I was told that's where he's from, I was like, "No, he comes from Manhattan... or space... or some place weird." It's just so cool thinking about him up there in the snow, writing music.
I'll leave you with some quick ones. What don't people ask you that you wish that'd ask?
How are you doing? How are you doing, Mike? No, no, no. I don't really talk about my comedy that comfortably. It's tough for me to be like, "Why yes, here's how my craft..." It's comedy: It's all about grabbing what you can, and making it as funny as you can.
I got one more thing for you. My wife is a huge Hanford fan, and she watches that Grinch clip, maybe monthly? I don't have an articulate question here... just, care to comment?
If I can be involved, in any way, with making people happy with a little stupid video like that? That makes me happy.
The clip is great, I love it too. The hand motions, where he's sort of like, above the Grinch in a Bill Maher sense... so fucking funny.
Something I gravitate toward in comedy is: Somebody who's really upset at something that's not a problem. Nobody has a problem with the Grinch, nobody has a problem with this song. Why is this person like, "Aright... I gotta make a statement about this..."
Well Mike, if you clear up the pyrotechnics issue with the mayor, I'd love for the Sloppy Boys to come to town.
We're gonna go out to dinner with the mayor when I'm up there. We'll talk.
Mike Hanford
When: 6 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 4
Where: Parkway Theater, 4814 Chicago Ave., Minneapolis
Tickets: $20/$25; find more info here
