Name: Skyler Higley | You Made It Weird!
Uploaded: 2024-12-18T15:00:10.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Skyler Higley | You Made It Weird!' from Pete Holmes on Comedy Buff. Published 2024-12-18. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Skyler Higley | You Made It Weird!' from Pete Holmes on Comedy Buff. Published 2024-12-18. Transcript available.

Skyler Higley | You Made It Weird!

You made it weird. Yes, you did. You made it weird. Yeah. You made it weird.
With Pete Holmes. Yes, you did. You made it weird. Yeah. What's happening,
weirdos? This is Skylar Higley, who, if you don't know, you're about to find
out, is one of the funniest comedians. I love him. He's incredible. He's a
wonderful writer. He's written for Conan. I believe he won an award. Let me see.
He won a WGA award while on staff at
Conan. He's currently writing for The Onion. He's also working on After Midnight,
which is where I see him most often. We work together whenever I'm on that show.
And I also hosted his new faces at Just for Laughs. He's an incredible comedian.
Conan agrees, says he makes him laugh so hard. Skylar makes me laugh so hard.
And he has an incredible, incredible story. So I'm so glad you guys are here to
check out Skylar Higley. And not too much to plug up top before we just jump
right in. I do have some shows coming up. I'll just say the cities.
Seattle. I think that's pretty much sold out. Portland is sold out. Eugene is
sold out. That's really great. Thank you, everybody. We just added, looks like
Atlanta at Helium, Los Angeles for my monthly show here at Largo, Salt Lake
City, Phoenix, Vancouver, and Austin, Texas. Go to PeteHolmes.com for tickets
to all of those. And in the meantime, enjoy my chat with my wonderful, my
wonderful friend, my wonderful friend, Skylar Higley. Get into it.
Can I say something? Go ahead. I said to Val on the ride down. I go, it's time
to be honest. I am a vegan first and foremost because it upsets my parents.
Oh, wow. Like that's the number one reason. Damn. And that's the first step
towards like stop trying to fix people. Get real about your shit. Even your
good shit is still shit.
It's still 100%. I'm still in the mire of shit. Like I think I love animals and
I do, but let's be real.
Right. I really love confusing and upsetting my parents. Well, it's also like.
I gotta write that down.
No, you must. Keep going. Um, that made me think of, yeah, no, I'm going to
pitch everything to you and you just write it down if you want.
I, I, it is like this thing I had a realization of a while ago where I'm like,
am I, am I, am I smart and do I like reading or do I just like that? The idea
that people see me as somebody who reads.
Can you tell me, Sky, is there anything better than being caught reading? It's
the opposite of being caught masturbating.
You know what? And the ideal conditions are the same. Alone. Alone. Reclined.
Getting into it. Pantless. Not understanding what's happening. Expanding your
mind.
Getting into some new shit I never would have thought I'd be into before.
The foot can be on the back of my knee somehow. Wait, that was too practical.
You know, you know, when you ever, you know, when you come to the table of
contents.
I jizz at the index so hard. It's hard to wait till the index, but I will.
Right. It's better if you wait.
The acknowledgement of, uh, of, uh, the, or the dedication to Janice. Don't
come during the dedication. Who's Janice?
Who is that sexy lady? You know, she's good. Cause when you're reading, she can
look like whatever you want. You ever read a book and you have an image and
then they start describing them and you're like, fuck you, man.
Yeah. Yes. I had her my, my way. Sure. Or him. I had him my way. I don't read a
lot of like novels and fiction anymore. Me neither. What are you reading?
What are you reading? I'm reading. Like, I just got to see now. Now we're doing
exactly the thing that I was self-aware about.
What's that? I was talking about reading. I don't know why I'm like, so like
the best. Oh, he thinks he's anyway. How old are you? 28. You need to be
telling everyone.
To read? About you. Yeah. I'm saying it. All right. And yes, it's cause you're
black. Okay. Levar Burton. Levar Burton, the people.
Oh my God. We need it. Skyler. Yeah, sure. We need it. All right. So, hey y'all
butterfly in the sky, you know, reading rainbow.
I can fly twice as high. Twice as high. I just got a James Baldwin book. Oh man.
Um, everyone's got to own one. Yeah. Reading it's the pickle. Yeah. I've read,
um, I read every time. Oh, you, you've read some. I've read some. I think it's
very good. And well, anytime you hear him speak, you're just like, yeah, it's
like the most stirring content, right?
It's, it's stupid to call it content. No, it's content. But it's the most
stirring ideas. He was like, when he posted his clips, cause he didn't do crowd
work, Pete. He just did speeches. He was like, hashtag. Have I told you how
many times I've wanted to put my Instagram bio a hundred percent crowd work
free, but I realized what a fucking privileged place that is. That's why I don't
do it. Right. Cause my people, the standups, we need to be posting, be posting.
We need to post. Your people, as opposed to my people. No.
Our people. Our people. This can't be racially tense this quick. Well, you can't,
you are ready. You went, you're black and you. Well, I wanted to show my hand
and say, in case you're wondering, let's not waste time wondering. I didn't
think it. Your blackness informed my riff on, on LeVar Burton. Or, or I would
have said it anyway, but I wanted to like, go like, just so you know, I'm aware
that you're black. And I'm saying, you're like this other black guy. Clip that.
I'm aware. This is the clip.
Clip that. I don't like to, to your point. I do not like how self-aware I am
about like, no reading and everything. Everything is become so self-aware now.
And everything is so like, I know exactly. I'm aware that I'm being observed.
Yeah. And now it's like, oh, well now I'm thinking about that instead of just
leaving this room.
That's what that was. Yes. Yeah. The hype, we were talking about hypervigilance.
There's a hypervigilance where you're having a thought and then you're thinking
of how the thought might be perceived by you, but also the audience.
Yeah. And then you're like, well, let me get ahead of that. Sure. We're like
little politicians. We're like, and I understand, like, we want to like, we
want everyone to be like, this is good person.
Right. Well, you also, it's also like, are you, is, are these people
approaching me in good faith? Because I don't know. And sometimes you're in a,
and it's, especially now with comedy, you're in this place where it's like,
people come to see you. They know you. People don't usually know me when they
come to see me. So I can't get away with saying, like, there's more hedging
that I have to do.
Where I go, look, I'm not saying this because you don't know who I am.
You're describing the first 15 years.
Exactly.
Maybe 10, 15, but like so much of early comedy. And when did you start?
I started in 2016.
Okay. So you're still in your first 10?
First 10. I'm getting into, this is eight. This is eight.
Wow.
Nice.
But to be eight in and like nine jobs and you're so funny.
Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you for the respect.
So you're like an old eight.
Yeah.
Old eight.
I mean, I would say I'm an old eight.
Dude.
Sometimes you see someone's like in twenties and you're like, well, this dude's
more like a eight.
Well, and you're like, it feels like an eight.
Like part of it for me now is that it feels like right in the middle of my
career in doing standup.
Everything changed like right in the middle, four years in 2020.
Yeah.
And then suddenly everything's different now.
Yeah.
And so now there's a whole new world of ethics and ideas to navigate.
Which is what you were starting to talk about the hyper vigilance.
Yeah.
And it's now I'm vigilant about how I'm coming across and who is going to see
it and who cares.
And also that it's like comedy is so subjective that you're like, oh yeah, show
the shirt.
Got it.
I feel like that's the way.
Yeah.
Now I feel like I'm seducing you, but.
Oh no, it's fine.
I was seduced.
There's a fire.
I was seduced of the fire next time.
James Baldwin.
Oh, circle back.
Yeah.
I can do callbacks.
You do callbacks?
People don't care about anymore because of the internet.
Everything's 30 seconds.
Don Glover?
Sure.
Because of the internet.
Oh yeah.
Did you read that screenplay by the way?
Which one?
The screenplay that he wrote with the album.
What?
You want to get into this.
This is one of my, look at me, look at me.
Tell me.
What am I looking at?
The, um, because the internet, that album, he also released a screenplay that
goes along
with it that like describes the story of the album.
And it's like a precursor to Atlanta.
Like that stylistic writing that he does.
What?
It was a big deal.
If you were a black suburban kid in 2013, you loved that shit.
You know, I wasn't.
I, oh, I didn't know that.
I, I don't take any of those.
Yeah.
Except suburban.
Yeah.
But even then I was urban.
Yeah.
2013.
I understand.
Herb.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So already.
Already.
You were on something good though.
You were talking about James Baldwin.
Oh sure.
And reading, but you were also talking about, oh dude, I had something for you.
Go ahead.
Just to interject, but it also get you back on track.
Okay.
On that track.
You're on any track you want, but this track was interesting.
You got disrupted four years in.
Oh yeah.
And dude, not to say everything needs to be the way I was, but I liked the way
I was,
um, how my soil was in comedy.
Yeah.
Meaning the crop of people that I came up with.
And you know what we had in common?
We were doing it about three years when, um, 9/11 happened.
Oh shit.
Yeah.
Not that COVID or 9/11 are here to help the artists.
Obviously not.
Of course.
See, that's the hyper vigilance.
So those things are tragedies and there's something about like this, like
global thing.
And 9/11 was less global, but changed the world.
Uh, that adds urgency to the artists and adds like a sort of like, we might die
to the artists.
You tell me if that rings true.
No, I wasn't even framing it like that.
I was sort of thinking about how sort of the, the economics of it and sort of
the value system
with, uh, social media and everything and the tick tock.
It just, I think it really fundamentally changes like the art form when it's
like, it's being.
Clip.
Yeah.
It's inter, it's, what is the thing?
It's like being distributed by this platform instead of, it's weird.
The medium has changed.
Yeah.
Is that what it is?
And it's like the, yeah, the medium is what the art is.
So you're going to get a bunch of people who see it in one way or another and
they're not engaging with it live like this.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
They're engaging with it from behind a screen.
Yes.
And then we also, my friend made this point that now we don't just see stuff.
We also see the thing and the comment at the same time.
Yes.
And that changes your interpretation of what it is.
This is to make a comment.
Yeah.
Like I, I will comment on this.
Before you even have formed a comment, there's a comment for you.
You've seen a comment.
From someone else.
And you don't, how do you know what you think anymore?
Where it's like the first thing I saw was this.
I completely agree.
So here's, there's this study and I'm, you're a reader.
I think about it all the time when it comes to politics, when it comes to the
internet, when it comes to Donald Glover's 2013 script.
Which you read.
Which I read because I was a black teen growing up in the suburbs.
100%.
But there's a, tell me, tell me this doesn't just resonate real big.
Okay.
Real big, real bigly.
They bring in 10 people into a room.
Yeah.
They show them an image.
It's not the first test.
Let's say it's the third test.
So everyone's warm.
There's a line and then there's another line that's shorter than the second
line.
So it's just two lines.
Line A is this long.
Line B is this long.
Okay.
They ask the group, which line is longer.
You're number 10 in the study.
Everyone is a plant except number 10.
You're the only real test subject.
Oh, I know where this is going.
One through nine all say they're the same length.
Mm-hmm.
Dude.
It's like high 80s, 90% of the 10th person say it's the same