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When we last heard from Matt Braunger, he was telling us about his audition for a commercial where the casting assistant greeted him with, “You’re going in for the role of…Unattractive Man.”
Once he got over the initial show-biz blow, he says that he took his seat and “watched the other guys arrive to be told they were hideous, too. It was awesome.” Welcome to Hollywood.
That was three Matt Braungers ago. Braunger has been making audiences laugh with his high-energy, razor-sharp routines on living in the modern world for so long that there several iterations of him, which you can find in such specials as Big Dumb Animal, Shovel Fighter and Finally Live in Portland. There’s Single Matt, Married Matt and now Dad Matt (down 30 pounds). His daughter Rose was born in 2020.
About to head off for East Coast dates before headlining the Aladdin on May 20, he endured a barrage of questions from WW. We’ll get this one out of the way: How did he feel after Dave Chappelle was attacked onstage at the Hollywood Bowl?
Braunger sighs and says, “The Dave and the Chris [Rock] things both sucked so bad. Rule number one: You can walk out of a show if you don’t like the clown, but NO ATTACKING THE CLOWN. We do sometimes get attacked, but it’s rare. The fear now is, ‘But those guys are super famous. If they’re not safe….’ Nobody’s having second thoughts, but it’s like ‘Ugh.’ So many things right now are ‘Ugh.’”
Want a crash course in prime Braunger? Google “Doors Whopper,” a perfect example of how he writes his material.
“The best joke ideas come to you when you’re not trying to write,” he says. “I remember driving around with Kyle Kinane in 2003 or 2004 in LA and a Doors song came on the radio. I started just bellowing/making fun of Jim Morrison, Kyle cracked up, and ‘Doors Whopper’ was born.”
Braunger may call attention to some bozo-like behavior from his youth, but underneath his stories of doofus-ness, there’s no self-loathing in his comedy. He’s just here to help us relate to his antics.
“The best compliments are when somebody says ‘We’ve watched your specials X amount of times!’” he says. “I’m like, ‘More than once? Why?’ But people do, which blows me away.”
Though he now calls Los Angeles home, Braunger might be Portland’s most famous funny person (along with Mel Blanc, of course).
“I loved growing up in Portland,” he says. “It was comfortable, but also different than other places. Portland rained all the time, there was weird art everywhere, and it kinda felt like we were living on the edge of the world. I like it now—heck, everybody in the world does—but sometimes I miss how low key it was when I was a kid.”
He adds, “One memory I have was of swapping stories on the playground of things that happened last night at Satyricon, a punk club downtown. A kid would say, ‘I heard everybody was naked and they all had sex’ and we’d go ‘No way!’ And then another kid would go, ‘A punk rock singer shaved her head onstage and barfed on the mic!’ ‘Whoa!’ Like all these kids had the inside dope on this weird punk rock venue.”
Braunger can’t wait to hit the Aladdin stage. “There are always friends and family who come to shows in Portland, which is a good thing,” he says. “However, you do lose a little of the ‘Hmm, I’m in Oklahoma City, where I know no one. Why not say something nuts?!’-appeal.”
All in all, it’s a good time to be Braunger. “I love being a dad, and didn’t think it would really ever happen to me,” he says. “I was lucky to have a kid during the pandemic when all the stand-up clubs and venues closed. It gave me something to do. My ritual was simply: feed, clean, and care for this new person. It saved my life.”
Does Rose think her dad is funny? “She thinks I’m funny if I do big, physical stuff. Pratfalls, pretending to hurt myself, throwing things around like a gorilla,” he says. “I have a mic at home and she loves to steal it and run around yelling nonsense. Could be a good opening act.”
GO: Matt Braunger performs 8 pm Friday, May 20, at the Aladdin Theater. 3017 SE Milwaukie Ave., 503-234-9694, Aladdin-theater.com. $20.