Name: Chuck Klosterman On MALE vs. FEMALE Readers
Uploaded: 2026-02-01T14:00:36.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Chuck Klosterman On MALE vs. FEMALE Readers' from TAFS Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2026-02-01. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Chuck Klosterman On MALE vs. FEMALE Readers' from TAFS Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2026-02-01. Transcript available.

I'm a big fan. I used to read you from the time I was like, I think, late high
school.
I know, it's weird to hear that, but I understand it.
Yeah, it was like, I think the way I found out about cool things,
because it was prior to like Spotify or whatever,
I'd like go to like Barnes & Noble and like open up Spin Magazine.
I'd write names of bands, and then I'd download them on Kazaa.
And through that process, I became familiar with you.
Well, when I was at Spin, it was the early, you know, 2002 to 2006,
and it was strange because the perception at the time then is like the cool
part of Spin was over,
that everyone believed that had happened in the 90s.
But I guess then when we left, 10 years moved on,
and people said the same thing about our little period, so.
Yeah, no, I remember I read your books, and I thought it made me feel cool, I
think.
But for the audience and the people that don't know you,
effectively what you kind of write about is kind of,
it is the nonsense that me and my friends spend hours over.
Like, you know, like, you know, what would have happened if Drew Bledsoe, you
know, didn't get hurt.
You know, like speculative kind of, but then the intersection with that and
culture, I suppose, yeah.
Well, it just, it seems completely unmeaningful.
Now, the idea of writing about culture seems very common.
It was less common in, like, book form when I first started publishing.
It was seen as sort of this strange, gimmicky, novelty thing, and now it's like,
it's not weird at all.
Yeah, I think for me it was like David Foster Wallace and you.
I mean, those were the two guys that were writing about, like.
Yeah, the cheaper version, yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Oh, really?
Oh, for sure.
I thought pretty equal, actually.
Were you guys, like, did you know him?
Never met him.
Never met him.
Never met him.
Do you think he would have been mean, you think?
No, I don't think he would.
What they always say about him is that he was very kind.
That doesn't necessarily mean he was nice.
Yeah.
But everyone had always said that, at least outwardly, he was, you know, over-the-top
kind.
That it was rare that someone had an encounter with him that was negative.
Although now, like, there's, like, a biography about him and completely changes
the way that everyone.
That he stalked that lady, right?
Yes, and there's, and the one thing that's a little disenchanting is, like, I
mean, he was.
He was probably the last writer who really did sort of influence me.
Like, in that I would read this and I was like, I wonder if I could do
something like that.
And I feel like you become a writer when you stop that.
But the thing that was kind of a bummer is it sounds like the most interesting
things from his nonfiction work were the parts that he made up.
Yeah.
And that was, because, you know, those are the things that are so memorable.
Like, he wrote this very famous essay about going on a cruise ship.
Of course.
And there's one section there, like, where he's playing chess against some
random little kid.
And it's just, it's an amazing passage.
And he's memorizing these moves and all these things.
And maybe it turns out, like, that didn't happen.
So the thing I remember most is the thing he added.
But, you know, that's creative nonfiction, I guess.
Two things that that reminds me of.
One is, did you see the last Scorsese-Dillon documentary, The Rolling Thunder?
Oh, that one.
Yeah, the fake documentary.
So, yeah, it was, like, half fake, which, like, kind of made it, like, but
there was something about it that was true.
You know what I mean?
Like, because it was half fake, like, narratively, it's like we buy, basically,
when I learned about Bob Dylan or The Beatles, it's like looking at a picture
of your parents before you were born, right?
Like, it's not real.
Like, you weren't there, right?
You create a story, right?
And that's what I found to be the brilliant thing about that.
What I wondered about that film was if someone liked Bob Dylan but knew nothing
about the movie, so they just came into it cold, I wonder at what point in the
movie they would have been like, oh, yeah, this couldn't have happened.
Because if there's one, you know, he wore, like, white kind of pancake makeup
for a while.
And in the movie he's saying, like, this girl went and saw Kiss and she came
back and told me about it, you know?
And then, you know, Bob Dylan has written with Gene Simmons.
They have some relationships.
It's like, could it be?
You know, I knew going in, though, that this wasn't all real, so, but I was
thinking about myself.
Like, when would I have figured this out?
I don't think we, I think people probably would have bought it because it was
presented as a documentary.
It is, you know?
And people know Bob Dylan's real.
And also, you know, like, it doesn't matter at a certain point, right?
It doesn't.
Well, I mean, I think Dylan would say it absolutely doesn't.
That he would probably argue that whatever myth you project on him is the most
important thing about his identity, outside of the music.
Yeah, yeah.
Have you seen that film, I'm Still Here, with Joaquin Phoenix?
That's kind of like, that's one of my top five favorite movies ever, actually.
Basically, it's this documentary that you later find out is, was like kind of a
project that Joaquin
Phoenix and Casey Affleck were doing for a year, which is he presented that he
was going crazy
and wanted to be a rapper.
And he was, he went on Letterman famously.
That was the big thing.
It was almost like the promotion for that movie was as important as the film.
And what you find at the end, there's like, he goes to Costa Rica or something,
or like, I forget, he goes to some place where his father lives.
He's in a, like a rainforest and he goes in this like lake and there's this
baptismal kind of scene at the end.
But you realize like, this man is exhausted.
Like, it doesn't matter if it's fake or if it's real because it happened, right?
Like, and kind of that blurring, I'm like, oh, that's what art is, you know?
And like, that's, it kind of like made a huge impression on me shortly after I
was probably reading stuff written by you.
What's interesting about that though is because of when it happened, you know,
in the 21st century, as opposed to happening in the 70s, there's almost an
assumption there had to have been from them.
That of course people are going to realize that this isn't real.
Where there was a time when you could have done something like that and the
artifact would just be what it is.
And people would say, is this real?
Is it not real?
It's, I don't know if they were like steering into the fact that we can do this
because eventually people will know.
Or if there was actually, if that was the last attempt to legitimately fool
people into thinking something false is actual.
I mean, like, I would guess that there were some people, when Spinal Tap came
up, they might have watched the first few minutes of it, especially when they're
talking to the people in the, you know, the crowd shots.
They might be like, well, this, I just never heard of this band.
The band Anvil had a documentary and people wondered, is this real or false?
It's an amazing documentary, Anvil.
And is real.
And I will say, when I was a little kid, I thought Spinal Tap was real.
Did you?
I thought it was a real band.
What age did you see it at?
Maybe five.
Wow.
Yeah.
Because I saw it when I was like a junior in high school.
Exactly.
Yeah.
But, uh.
It must have been like 93.
Why were you watching, this is Spinal Tap at five?
My parents let me watch anything.
Yeah.
They covered my eyes for the sex parts though.
Well, there's no sex in that.
In any movie.
They covered my eyes for sex and let me watch violence.
So what was the most insane thing you saw at the earliest age?
I would, like, would they let you watch nine and a half weeks or something when
you were
a kid?
Or, like, Faces of Death, were you watching that at seven?
No, I wasn't watching, like, fucking, yeah, yeah.
I wasn't watching Red Asphalt, the Driver's Head movie.
You remember that?
You remember the Driver's Head movie?
Or, like, Last House on the Left.
You were like, oh, he'll love this.
He'll teach him about neighborhoods.
I was watching mainly just, like, this.
Your neck snap.
I was watching a lot of Dolph Lundgren, John Claude Van Damme.
Sure.
Schwarzenegger, Stallone.
Yeah.
I was watching all, I watched all of those movies with my dad.
A lot of the, like, secure the perimeter.
Yeah.
Yeah, lock it down.
Like, a lot of that.
And then a guy's neck gets snapped.
Yeah.
But I think, this is kind of, like, a tangent, but I think because they covered
my eyes for
the sex and let me watch all the killing, I think killing, I didn't want to do
it because
it wasn't a taboo.
But sex, I was like, I wanted to do sex because it was against the, you know.
It is a common thing you'll hear people say.
It's like, you'll be like, oh, it's crazy, you know.
We'll let kids watch violence, but we won't let them watch sex.
It's good.
It actually makes sense because the fact of the matter is, people are going to
encounter
sex in their life.
And if they watch a film version or pornography or whatever these things are,
an early age
is going to warp their perception of this thing that's actually going to happen
to them.
They're probably not going to encounter, like, a mass shooting.
And if they do, I would almost want my kid desensitized to it.
I would rather have him be able to be like, I understand that this can exist in
the world.
You know, it's like, it does seem weird to demonize sex more than violence.
But the fact of the matter is, sex is something that's part of the average
person's life.
Yeah.
Violence is not.
One time a guy did a splits and then punched me and I was like, I'm desensitized.
Yeah, I was comfortable with that.
You knew it could happen.
You knew it could happen.
Damn, I'd seen him do the splits and punch a guy.
So I was like, this is, finally, it's, it's happening.
If there ever was a zombie apocalypse, there are plenty of people ready for
that.
Like, they have learned what to do, like where to shoot it, where, you know,
all these things.
Those are some of the worst people in society.
The ones with the sticker, they're like zombie defense unit or like on their
car.
Those are the worst guys.
Well, them and Patriots fans, I guess.
Okay, let's get, let's get to you.
Because I, going back to the David Foster Wallace thing, you guys were both
kind of doing this
social criticism, I guess, or what would you, how would you describe like kind
of what you've
made your bread and butter doing?
Well, you know, he would have said that he was a novelist and he also did nonfiction.
And it was kind of journalism and it was kind of cultural criticism.
His journalism was really essayistic or whatever.
I suppose for me, like I worked at newspapers for about eight years and it was,
it was very,
like, I loved the job, you know, but it was limiting.
And I wanted to be able to do things outside of that.
And I was like, the only way to do that is books.
Because I wanted to sort of write about things in a way that, I don't know, was
more kind
of entertaining, interesting in a different way.
So I suppose it's cultural criticism.
Do you think a girl has ever read one of your things?
Ever?
Yeah, yeah.
Probably, it's got to be like, maybe like, triple digits.
It's a little bit like being in rush.
I think it's for us.
Yeah, where it's like, like it was, but I will, you know, this was a big, you
know, I wrote
this first book, Fargo Rock City, and it was just about listening like the hair
metal in
the Midwest.
I would do book readings and like 14 people would show up and they were all
exactly like
me.
Yeah.
I mean, exactly.
Like they looked like me.
And then I wrote Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs.
And the biggest change about that is that book readings, there were suddenly
now and more
people, but like a third of them were women.
That was very surprising, you know?
Nice.
You think because of sex, you put sex in the thing?
Well, no, I think I talk about John Cusack in that book.
I don't know.
It's just, it's like, I'm not sure what it is.
I'm not sure how, why, you know?
And then, but, and now it's like, Kenny, your career goes up and now I'm kind
of on the
other side again, sort of moving.
I assume by the end, it'll, like the last time I write a book, it'll be like
the first
one where like 14 people exactly like me.
Yeah.
That's kind of beautiful.
It is.
That's how it is.
That's how it goes forever.
It's a rise and fall.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You got to expect it.
It's kind of, that's kind of what life is, right?
Yes.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, the book is football.
I think it's for, it's for women.
Yeah.
It's great for your book club.
It's been compared to the, to the, to the gay hockey Netflix show a lot, right?
Yes.
I'm hearing that everywhere.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.

Chuck Klosterman On MALE vs. FEMALE Readers

I'm a big fan. I used to read you from the time I was like, I think, late high
school.
I know, it's weird to hear that, but I understand it.
Yeah, it was like, I think the way I found out about cool things,
because it was prior to like Spotify or whatever,
I'd like go to like Barnes & Noble and like open up Spin Magazine.
I'd write names of bands, and then I'd download them on Kazaa.
And through that process, I became familiar with you.
Well, when I was at Spin, it was the early, you know, 2002 to 2006,
and it was strange because the perception at the time then is like the cool
part of Spin was over,
that everyone believed that had happened in the 90s.
But I guess then when we left, 10 years moved on,
and people said the same thing about our little period, so.
Yeah, no, I remember I read your books, and I thought it made me feel cool, I
think.
But for the audience and the people that don't know you,
effectively what you kind of write about is kind of,
it is the nonsense that me and my friends spend hours over.
Like, you know, like, you know, what would have happened if Drew Bledsoe, you
know, didn't get hurt.
You know, like speculative kind of, but then the intersection with that and
culture, I suppose, yeah.
Well, it just, it seems completely unmeaningful.
Now, the idea of writing about culture seems very common.
It was less common in, like, book form when I first started publishing.
It was seen as sort of this strange, gimmicky, novelty thing, and now it's like,
it's not weird at all.
Yeah, I think for me it was like David Foster Wallace and you.
I mean, those were the two guys that were writing about, like.
Yeah, the cheaper version, yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Oh, really?
Oh, for sure.
I thought pretty equal, actually.
Were you guys, like, did you know him?
Never met him.
Never met him.
Never met him.
Do you think he would have been mean, you think?
No, I don't think he would.
What they always say about him is that he was very kind.
That doesn't necessarily mean he was nice.
Yeah.
But everyone had always said that, at least outwardly, he was, you know, over-the-top
kind.
That it was rare that someone had an encounter with him that was negative.
Although now, like, there's, like, a biography about him and completely changes
the way that everyone.
That he stalked that lady, right?
Yes, and there's, and the one thing that's a little disenchanting is, like, I
mean, he was.
He was probably the last writer who really did sort of influence me.
Like, in that I would read this and I was like, I wonder if I could do
something like that.
And I feel like you become a writer when you stop that.
But the thing that was kind of a bummer is it sounds like the most interesting
things from his nonfiction work were the parts that he made up.
Yeah.
And that was, because, you know, those are the things that are so memorable.
Like, he wrote this very famous essay about going on a cruise ship.
Of course.
And there's one section there, like, where he's playing chess against some
random little kid.
And it's just, it's an amazing passage.
And he's memorizing these moves and all these things.
And maybe it turns out, like, that didn't happen.
So the thing I remember most is the thing he added.
But, you know, that's creative nonfiction, I guess.
Two things that that reminds me of.
One is, did you see the last Scorsese-Dillon documentary, The Rolling Thunder?
Oh, that one.
Yeah, the fake documentary.
So, yeah, it was, like, half fake, which, like, kind of made it, like, but
there was something about it that was true.
You know what I mean?
Like, because it was half fake, like, narratively, it's like we buy, basically,
when I learned about Bob Dylan or The Beatles, it's like looking at a picture
of your parents before you were born, right?
Like, it's not real.
Like, you weren't there, right?
You create a story, right?
And that's what I found to be the brilliant thing about that.
What I wondered about that film was if someone liked Bob Dylan but knew nothing
about the movie, so they just came into it cold, I wonder at what point in the
movie they would have been like, oh, yeah, this couldn't have happened.
Because if there's one, you know, he wore, like, white kind of pancake makeup
for a while.
And in the movie he's saying, like, this girl went and saw Kiss and she came
back and told me about it, you know?
And then, you know, Bob Dylan has written with Gene Simmons.
They have some relationships.
It's like, could it be?
You know, I knew going in, though, that this wasn't all real, so, but I was
thinking about myself.
Like, when would I have figured this out?
I don't think we, I think people probably would have bought it because it was
presented as a documentary.
It is, you know?
And people know Bob Dylan's real.
And also, you know, like, it doesn't matter at a certain point, right?
It doesn't.
Well, I mean, I think Dylan would say it absolutely doesn't.
That he would probably argue that whatever myth you project on him is the most
important thing about his identity, outside of the music.
Yeah, yeah.
Have you seen that film, I'm Still Here, with Joaquin Phoenix?
That's kind of like, that's one of my top five favorite movies ever, actually.
Basically, it's this documentary that you later find out is, was like kind of a
project that Joaquin
Phoenix and Casey Affleck were doing for a year, which is he presented that he
was going crazy
and wanted to be a rapper.
And he was, he went on Letterman famously.
That was the big thing.
It was almost like the promotion for that movie was as important as the film.
And what you find at the end, there's like, he goes to Costa Rica or something,
or like, I forget, he goes to some place where his father lives.
He's in a, like a rainforest and he goes in this like lake and there's this
baptismal kind of scene at the end.
But you realize like, this man is exhausted.
Like, it doesn't matter if it's fake or if it's real because it happened, right?
Like, and kind of that blurring, I'm like, oh, that's what art is, you know?
And like, that's, it kind of like made a huge impression on me shortly after I
was probably reading stuff written by you.
What's interesting about that though is because of when it happened, you know,
in the 21st century, as opposed to happening in the 70s, there's almost an
assumption there had to have been from them.
That of course people are going to realize that this isn't real.
Where there was a time when you could have done something like that and the
artifact would just be what it is.
And people would say, is this real?
Is it not real?
It's, I don't know if they were like steering into the fact that we can do this
because eventually people will know.
Or if there was actually, if that was the last attempt to legitimately fool
people into thinking something false is actual.
I mean, like, I would guess that there were some people, when Spinal Tap came
up, they might have watched the first few minutes of it, especially when they're
talking to the people in the, you know, the crowd shots.
They might be like, well, this, I just never heard of this band.
The band Anvil had a documentary and people wondered, is this real or false?
It's an amazing documentary, Anvil.
And is real.
And I will say, when I was a little kid, I thought Spinal Tap was real.
Did you?
I thought it was a real band.
What age did you see it at?
Maybe five.
Wow.
Yeah.
Because I saw it when I was like a junior in high school.
Exactly.
Yeah.
But, uh.
It must have been like 93.
Why were you watching, this is Spinal Tap at five?
My parents let me watch anything.
Yeah.
They covered my eyes for the sex parts though.
Well, there's no sex in that.
In any movie.
They covered my eyes for sex and let me watch violence.
So what was the most insane thing you saw at the earliest age?
I would, like, would they let you watch nine and a half weeks or something when
you were
a kid?
Or, like, Faces of Death, were you watching that at seven?
No, I wasn't watching, like, fucking, yeah, yeah.
I wasn't watching Red Asphalt, the Driver's Head movie.
You remember that?
You remember the Driver's Head movie?
Or, like, Last House on the Left.
You were like, oh, he'll love this.
He'll teach him about neighborhoods.
I was watching mainly just, like, this.
Your neck snap.
I was watching a lot of Dolph Lundgren, John Claude Van Damme.
Sure.
Schwarzenegger, Stallone.
Yeah.
I was watching all, I watched all of those movies with my dad.
A lot of the, like, secure the perimeter.
Yeah.
Yeah, lock it down.
Like, a lot of that.
And then a guy's neck gets snapped.
Yeah.
But I think, this is kind of, like, a tangent, but I think because they covered
my eyes for
the sex and let me watch all the killing, I think killing, I didn't want to do
it because
it wasn't a taboo.
But sex, I was like, I wanted to do sex because it was against the, you know.
It is a common thing you'll hear people say.
It's like, you'll be like, oh, it's crazy, you know.
We'll let kids watch violence, but we won't let them watch sex.
It's good.
It actually makes sense because the fact of the matter is, people are going to
encounter
sex in their life.
And if they watch a film version or pornography or whatever these things are,
an early age
is going to warp their perception of this thing that's actually going to happen
to them.
They're probably not going to encounter, like, a mass shooting.
And if they do, I would almost want my kid desensitized to it.
I would rather have him be able to be like, I understand that this can exist in
the world.
You know, it's like, it does seem weird to demonize sex more than violence.
But the fact of the matter is, sex is something that's part of the average
person's life.
Yeah.
Violence is not.
One time a guy did a splits and then punched me and I was like, I'm desensitized.
Yeah, I was comfortable with that.
You knew it could happen.
You knew it could happen.
Damn, I'd seen him do the splits and punch a guy.
So I was like, this is, finally, it's, it's happening.
If there ever was a zombie apocalypse, there are plenty of people ready for
that.
Like, they have learned what to do, like where to shoot it, where, you know,
all these things.
Those are some of the worst people in society.
The ones with the sticker, they're like zombie defense unit or like on their
car.
Those are the worst guys.
Well, them and Patriots fans, I guess.
Okay, let's get, let's get to you.
Because I, going back to the David Foster Wallace thing, you guys were both
kind of doing this
social criticism, I guess, or what would you, how would you describe like kind
of what you've
made your bread and butter doing?
Well, you know, he would have said that he was a novelist and he also did nonfiction.
And it was kind of journalism and it was kind of cultural criticism.
His journalism was really essayistic or whatever.
I suppose for me, like I worked at newspapers for about eight years and it was,
it was very,
like, I loved the job, you know, but it was limiting.
And I wanted to be able to do things outside of that.
And I was like, the only way to do that is books.
Because I wanted to sort of write about things in a way that, I don't know, was
more kind
of entertaining, interesting in a different way.
So I suppose it's cultural criticism.
Do you think a girl has ever read one of your things?
Ever?
Yeah, yeah.
Probably, it's got to be like, maybe like, triple digits.
It's a little bit like being in rush.
I think it's for us.
Yeah, where it's like, like it was, but I will, you know, this was a big, you
know, I wrote
this first book, Fargo Rock City, and it was just about listening like the hair
metal in
the Midwest.
I would do book readings and like 14 people would show up and they were all
exactly like
me.
Yeah.
I mean, exactly.
Like they looked like me.
And then I wrote Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs.
And the biggest change about that is that book readings, there were suddenly
now and more
people, but like a third of them were women.
That was very surprising, you know?
Nice.