Last night I was re-united with the stand-up comedian who really started my brief radio career in promotions and collecting autographs…the absurd, acquired taste, a proud product of the Chicago suburbs…Emo Phillips!
He actually remembered performing at Marquette! I told him it was with Rita Rudner and he threw in Larry Bud Melman too! I recalled it because Larry was the show’s MC. I was more thrilled about Emo because entertainers travel/perform hundreds (sometimes thousands) of shows and who has time to care?
Anyway, Emo came to Austin to do his stand-up which remains great. He had taken some years off from appearing here; the introduction said he hadn’t been here since the Nineties. With his non-sequitur, rapid-fire style still in top form, you couldn’t tell he hadn’t performed for Austin for about 20 years. To give him some additional credit, he was at last year’s Moontower Festival.
After the show, I asked him to autograph my big Adventure Time poster which he was thrilled to do. If you’re unfamiliar with the cartoon, Emo provides two voices: Princess Turtle and a narrator asking the audience to identify the episodes’ graybles. I told him he was my favorite bully on Home Movies, he was Shannon, a kid who tore Brandon a new one in “The Art of the Sucker Punch.” It’s pretty funny should you get the chance to view it, Emo a someone picking on weaker kids is sillier than it seems.