Glass Clown

Don't cross Philly standup Todd Glass.

by A.D. Amorosi

[ comedy ]

Mike Carano TOO FAR: Alongside David Cross, Todd Glass says he can push the envelope more — make a joke about jerking off, heckle the audience — than he could when he shared the stage with David Spade.

The first time City Paper wrote about Philly comic Todd Glass, he was on South Street telling jokes about looking like an Oliver North-Fred Flintstone hybrid and teasing about how his mom might banish Christmas. It was 1997 and he was as simultaneously amiable and caustic then as he is now. "And my mom's still threatening to stop Christmases at her house because they're so much work," says Glass.

The 43-year-old comedian from the Main Line is on a treadmill at a hotel in Chapel Hill, N.C., where he's on tour with smarty-pants, freaky-geeky comedian David Cross. After having just downed several cups of coffee and slowed his machine, Glass describes the difference between David Spade, the comic he regularly tours with, and Cross, author of the new book I Drink for a Reason. (Other than the hair.)

"When people see Cross, they know what they're getting because his standup matches who he is on television," says Glass. "With Spade, they don't expect him to be blue." In other words, Glass can push the envelope more — tell a joke about masturbation, lash out at a rude audience member, get meta and lampoon standup itself — with a Cross crowd. In Glass' estimation, that's the upside of your persona matching your reality. What's Glass' reality? He's a surprisingly nice yet abrasively blunt guy who relishes touring, standup and hitting open-mic nights at local venues like Helium Comedy Club, where he can meet new comics with the same enthusiasm he still has.

"I fucking love standup," he says. "The only guys who dig talking about it as much as I [do] are the new guys." 

Cross writes in I Drink about his detestation of an ego-bloated Jim Belushi. So has sweetie-pie Glass ever had such run-ins with other comedians? "I'll put it this way: Most comedians are decent people. I enjoy hanging with these guys," he says. "But there've been guys who weren't nice to me starting out. Some cats were great. Maybe I was 17 and they were 23, and thought they were super old already. You fast-forward to the present and the guys who were cool, you're happy to hear they're doing well — they're writing for Ellen. And the guys who were dicks back in the day and you hear that they're stuck doing corporate gigs? Good."

He's not wishing them ill, per se. "But fuck 'em — they're doing standup on cruise lines," he laughs. "Treat people with dignity. I have zero tolerance for dicks. Guys who work the night shift at Wawa or all day at American Airlines have manners. Does being an asshole make your gig go faster?"

Before cranking up his treadmill back to high, Glass gets all nice-guy nostalgic about that 1997 show. "When I was coming up, my nephew was a kid, and all I thought about was whether or not I'd still be doing this when he was of age," he says. "Sure enough, he came to see me at that gig. He was 15 and in the front row."

(a_amorosi@citypaper.net)

Tue., Oct. 20, 8 p.m., with David Cross, $35, Merriam Theater, 250 S. Broad St., 215-732-5997, merriam-theater.com.