Sarah Sherman took a break from her Live and in the Flesh Tour to spend a Saturday morning in Glendale shooting Summer 2024 garments at the Dojo.

Sarah Sherman/Squirm is lady on Saturday Night Live these days, but she's been a weird lady for quite some time now. Back in 2019, I saw her do her skin-crawling comedy opening for Eric Andre on his "Legalize Everything" tour. The show ended with Eric Andre making people chug ranch dressing and yet that paled in comparison to how gross Sarah's performance was. I remember a video component that involved her flapping around her long, long puppet labia at the beach. Horrible stuff. I was grateful that I would never have to be disgusted by her comedy again but unfortunately her stardom has become inescapable and it's made every day of my life gross. She's grossed up SNL and General Hospital and she's grossing up everything. Soon the whole world will be repulsive. Here's an interview I did with Sarah.

Would you tell us the evolution of your personal style and dress sense?

I've always dressed crazy. In middle school I would raid the costume closet of the theater department looking for stuff that Grandma Yetta from The Nanny would wear. I don't really know about capital-F fashion stuff, and the capital-F fashion people don't really know about me—it's all so expensive that I don't even understand who wears it!

You grew up on Long Island.Did you ever go through an emo, ska, punk, hardcore, or "scene" phase like so many Long Islanders?

Actually, no. Strangely enough growing up I was obsessed with the B-52s, Cyndi Lauper,and Pat Benatar. My first concert was the Police reunion tour-I was obsessed with the80s. I didn't get into fucked-up aggressive music until I started Djing at the college radio station and found cool old Residents and Psychic TV records which served as my gateway into metal and noise music. So basically I got into hardcore the backwards way.

What interview question do you like being asked the least?

For some reason I've had one million interviewers ask me "What it was like to get rejected from my college improv team and how did that affect my journey as a comedian?" And I'm always like, how did you find out about this and who cares??? I feel like it fits into some narrative about rejection and triumph, but it's an inconsequential thing that happened when I was a teenager—it's not real life, and it's boring. I've had so much other cool shit happen in my life that's wayyyy more fun to talk about-like, aren't you gonna ask me about the time I made a talking puppet out of raw meat?

You've talked about what you do as "body horror comedy."

I love Street Trash, The Incredible Melting Man, and all that shit. The comedy I do is so focused on myself and my own discomfort with my hideous body that I guess it's been deemed "body horror" incidentally. All the work I've made in my life is me having fun figuring out the grossest thing I can make. What if I ripped all my own skin off? What if I made zits out of bubble wrap and filled them with yellow vaseline pus? That's just what's fun for me to make.

I heard on Wikipedia that Norm Macdonald is an important comic to you.

Norm is everything to me. He's the funniest comic ever. Ilisten to old Norm interviews when I'm feeling stressed out or panicky because there's something so comforting in knowing that I'm listening to something that will be funny. It's not a tightrope walk. I'm never nervous that it won't be funny for a single solitary second.

Norm possesses the ineffable, indescribable quality of just being capital-F funny-it's a quality you can't learn or grow or buy. You just ARE funny or you're not, and that's that! Norm was also so confident in his own definition of capital-F funny, so I always appreciated that he took risks and aggressively stood by what he thought was funny. I've learned to double down because of Norm. I also learned that actual jokes are important because of Norm. You can't get by in comedy with just charisma and charm, you gotta have jokes for real! I'm a comedian whose

strength is less in my joke-writing and more in my ability to flail around and scream, which is why I look to Norm as my North Star. He's someone who didn't flail around and scream like a buffoon, he stood with two feet firmly planted on the ground and said stuff he knew was funny.

Jokes are forever. That's why I appreciate Norm's love of street jokes. Street jokes will outlive us all. You hear the one about the moth going to the podiatrist's office? That joke can be told millions of times in perpetuity for generations to come and it will always be understood and appreciated. But the way Norm put his stank on that one?! Norm's version will always be the best. Also, Norm was a self-described nightclub comic. And that's what I am and always hope to be. A night-club comic.