Daniel Lobell: Comedy Renaissance Man
Daniel Lobell is a Los Angeles-based comedian, comic book creator, and podcast host. He is the host of the Modern Day Philosophers podcast, which features comedians like Bill Burr, Brian Regan, Maria Bamford, Aisha Tyler, and Fred Armisen talking philosophy, and Tipping the Scales, a podcast about body image and health. He is also the creator of the “Fair Enough” autobiographical comic book series, and has two albums out on Stand Up! Records: “Some Kind of Comedian” (2013) and “The Nicest Boy in Barcelona” (2017).
In 2017, Daniel made his Edinburgh Fringe debut with his one-man show “Broke As A Joke,” which received accolades from critics and fans alike. He returned with his breakout hit “Tipping the Scales” at the Underbelly in 2019. He has appeared on WTF with Marc Maron, This American Life, The Howard Stern Wrap-Up Show, Dr. Drew’s podcast, Gilbert Gottfried’s Amazing Colossal Podcast!, Risk!, KPCC, and The Artie Lange Show.
In 2015, he gave a TEDx Talk, and he has toured all around the world doing standup comedy. He is a graduate of The Second City improv program and the creator of the first comedy podcast to feature interviews with comedians, Comical Radio. He is married to writer Kylie Ora Lobell and is a proud papa to two dogs, a tortoise, and five lovely chickens.
Where did you grow up? What was your childhood like? What did your parents do?
I’m originally from Flushing, Queens. When I was about six years old, my family moved to Long Beach, Long Island. My parents are both retired for the most part, but growing up, my father was a photojournalist who worked freelance and had his work in many publications, and my mother worked as an occupational therapist.
What was it like growing up in an Orthodox Jewish household? Why did you leave the Orthodox community?
I enjoyed growing up in a Jewish household that kept Jewish observances. I don’t know if we would’ve classified ourselves as strictly Orthodox, but certainly the school I went to was. As I got older, certain experiences pushed me away from it all, most notably being kicked out of yeshiva for poor grades in the middle of the year in 9th grade in high school. My next school was basically for Jews with drug addictions or serious behavioral issues. The school was half of a hallway rented out from a kindergarten. I was being made fun of for praying and taking it seriously within my first week there. It was the beginning of my drifting away from it all. I didn’t like that school very much and begged my parents to put me in public school. I wound up in Long Beach High School. I absolutely loved public school and went from there to spending a year in Israel on a program that was fairly secular. While in Israel, I decided that I fit more as a secular Jew than a religious one at that point in my life and more or less gave up the religious stuff that I was still keeping.
Do you have siblings? What do they do?
I have three younger brothers. One is a chef, one is a chiropractor, and the other works in finance.
What made you want to pursue comedy as a career?
It’s hard to say exactly what made me want to go into comedy as a career, but I can tell you I started doing it when I was 15 years old and I really enjoyed it. At some point, when I was around 19 years old, I decided to give it a go to see if I could make a career of it. I’m still trying to figure that out.
Who/what were your early comedy influences?
As a kid, I loved Leslie Nielsen. He was probably my biggest influence other than my grandfather on my mother’s side, whom I thought was hysterically funny as well. I didn’t know about stand-up comedy as a kid so all my comedy heroes were from the movies: Jim Carrey, Robin Williams, Eddie Murphy, Adam Sandler, Mike Myers, Jonathan Winters, and Mel Brooks were my favorites. After Leslie that is. My grandmother told me to watch “Seinfeld,” and that was the first time I had ever seen stand-up comedy. I thought Seinfeld had invented it. When I started doing it at an open mic night at Starbucks, I thought I was the second person to ever do it.
Who/what are your current comedy influences?
Currently, I really enjoy Sebastian Maniscalco, Bill Burr, Fred Armisen, and whatever Seinfeld puts out I still really enjoy. I still watch a lot of old Carlin clips and I also like Dave Chappelle.
What part does Judaism play in your comedy output?
I don’t know exactly what part Judaism plays in my comedy outlet except to say that Judaism plays a large role in my mind and heart.
What part does Judaism play in your life?
Judaism offers a great amount of structure, community and inspiration for me. Becoming more involved in my religion helped me overcome depression and helped me make some major moves in my life like getting married and having kids that I am not sure I would have been able to achieve without it.
How and when did you come to start the first-ever comedy podcast, Comical Radio?
It was in 2004. I was doing a college radio show out of Baruch College, my school, and my roommate at the time was a bit of a nerd. He subscribed to Wired magazine. He told me about this new thing called podcasts and I asked him if he could help me make my radio show into one. He agreed to if I put them on the show and so for a while I did. But ultimately we weren’t a great fit. What resulted, though, was I became one of the very first podcasters.
What was your motivation in choosing to do your Modern Day Philosophers podcast, and why that topic?
When I moved to Los Angeles from New York with my then girlfriend (now my wife) Kylie, it was a very tough time for me. The transition was difficult. I wasn’t getting much stage time, I no longer had my podcast, I no longer was a New Yorker, I no longer was single, and I no longer was anti-religion. It seemed like all the things that encompassed my identity were now in limbo. I wasn’t sure who I was supposed to be anymore or what anything really meant and I was looking for answers. More than that, I think I was looking for friendship. I had asked another comedian if he would study philosophy with me and he said, you mean as a podcast? And that’s when I realized that’s the only way people are going to do this with me, so I said sure.
Can you tell us something about your 2017 Edinburgh Fringe Festival one-man show, Broke as a Joke?
“Broke As a Joke” was my first Edinburgh Fringe show, which was a learning experience. It was a collection of stories that were all to do with my having been broke for most of my life. Great comedy comes out of when things go wrong, and when you don’t have much money, the situation is primed for lots to go wrong. I had no shortage of material. It was good in that it helped me learn how to make a one-man show and it also taught me that the Fringe is a giant monster and there’s about 1 million people looking to scam you 1 million different ways. I got only a few of those people to scam me and only a few of those ways, but that was enough for a first Fringe experience. It cost me a lot so I left much broker than even when I wrote the show.
What made you decide to create a comic book series, Fair Enough? What do you want people to get from it?
Perhaps the greatest influence on my career was Harvey Pekar, the lake great comic book writer. Not only did I and I still do believe that he was a genius writer, but he also turned out to be a good friend and somebody who pushed me to follow my dreams. An unlikely guy for that job, as he was such a curmudgeon and a pessimist. Yet somehow, he was incredibly motivating and optimistic to me at the time.
When I was a kid I used to make comic books in school, photocopy them and sell them to my classmates. Back then I wanted to be like Stan Lee. When I saw the movie “American Splendor” in 2005, that dream shifted to wanting to be like Harvey Pekar. It would take me a good number of years to put out my first book — in 2005, but I eventually did with Fair Enough no.1 roughly five years ago. Stand Up! Records got behind me. They are my record label with which I have put out two albums, a record, and a film. They continue to be the greatest supporter of my creative pursuits. We recently put out our fifth book together. I’m really proud of this series. I hope people get laughs from reading them and enjoying them in the way that I’ve enjoyed many great graphic novels over the years. Perhaps I’ll even inspire someone else to make autobiographical comic books as well.
Tell us about your TEDx Talk.
The TEDx talk came from a story that I did which was picked up by “This American Life.” The organizers contacted me in Phoenix. It was a wonderful experience. I told a story about raising chickens in my backyard with my Ecuadorian gangster neighbor, Blanko.
What was a highlight of your time with Second City?
I really liked my time at Second City; I don’t know if there’s really a highlight from it. I enjoy collaborative work. I’m not a standup snob who looks down on improv. I love improv. It’s so much fun, I don’t like to watch it, though. I enjoy watching some sports (on occasion) but I don’t like doing them. But I do imagine that if I were more athletic I would enjoy sports in the way that I enjoy improv and in that case I wouldn’t enjoy watching them at all. I’d rather be part of the action than watch it. That’s generally true for stand-up, too, but because stand-up is also well-crafted writing, I enjoy it in the way that I enjoy a book. I’m not particularly impressed by witnessing comedy happening in a spontaneous manner. But it’s super fun to be a part of it.
The teachers at Second City were top-notch and the environment was nurturing and supportive. I also did UCB for a number of years and the Groundlings, both of which were competitive and took themselves very seriously. Some people like that, but I don’t. I like Second City because it felt kind and homey. To me, that’s the best environment to nurture creativity. I’m proud that I completed their program. It feels good to complete something and I even got a diploma that I value much more than the one I got from college because I really loved that school and college was often a real drag.
How did you meet your wife, Kylie Ora Lobell? What do you like best about her? What does she like best about you?
I met Kylie through my friend, comedian Matty Goldberg. We met at his goodbye show when he was leaving New York. After the show, we started talking and realized we were both interning for different Viacom shows, I was at “Colbert” and she was at “The Daily Show.” We both told each other the words no other interns would ever dare utter: that we both kind of hated our internships. Hate is perhaps too strong a word but we weren’t happy and we let each other know at the same time.
The honesty was so refreshing. It was so nice to connect with someone who also was feeling the way I was feeling about something that everyone else acted like was the greatest thing ever. It didn’t hurt that she was also really pretty (and still is). She went on to intern for Comical Radio and the whole time I liked her, but out of professionalism I didn’t let that on. Little did I know that she liked me the entire time, too. After the internship ended, she asked if she could move into my Brooklyn apartment with me because she needed somewhere to live in New York. She was interning at The Onion in Manhattan. She moved in, we fell in love, and the rest is history.
Why do you have five chickens?
I love chickens. I started raising them in Brooklyn, as I mentioned earlier when I referenced my story on “This American Life” and TEDx. It wasn’t long after I moved to Los Angeles that I started getting chickens again in the backyard. Nowadays, with egg shortages, it seems like I was ahead of the time, but really I just enjoy watching chickens in the same way that some people like looking at fish tanks. I find something very tranquil and peaceful about them and I generally find them to be beautiful. Recently one of our chickens had two chicks, so now we actually have six chickens and one rooster.
You are skilled in a variety of dialects. How did that happen and how do you use that skill?
I don’t know how it happened that I got good at dialects. I think that was just something that I came with as a factory preset. I used to do them as a kid and impress other kids on the schoolyard. I enjoy it, and generally, if you enjoy doing something, you’re going to be better at it than if you don’t.
What remains on your bucket list?
I suppose a lot. I want to visit India and Japan. I want to get my comics translated into Japanese and sold there. I would really like to put out a music album. For years I’ve been writing what I think are funny country songs, though some people tell me that they actually sound like legitimate country songs. Either way, I like singing and I would like to put them all on an album at some point. I’d also like to make more movies. I like making movies and I like watching people watch the movies. It gives me the same satisfaction I get from doing stand-up, without having to do all the work every time. You just make a movie once and then let people watch it over and over again and you don’t have to work anymore. The movie does all the work for you! Also, as I mentioned earlier, growing up I wanted to be like the comedians in the movies. I didn’t even know about stand-up comedians. It would be many years later that I learned about the great George Carlin, Brian Regan, Maria Bamford, Colin Quinn, Patrice O’Neal, or Dave Attell. I love watching them all.
What is one thing you’ve never told anyone about yourself?
I tend to talk to myself a lot. This isn’t some great admission it’s just something I’ve never told anyone. I’m not schizophrenic to the best of my knowledge thank G-d. But for a lot of years now, in fact probably since I was very young, I have literally spoken to myself about different things. Both voices are me. Sometimes I feel it’s helpful or just instinct for me to talk things out alone. It’s nice because it’s rare I ever disagree with me and in a world that can sometimes seem so oppositional it’s good to have someone in your corner!
