by Ryan Meehan
Liza Treyger loves eating food and telling jokes so her life is amazing. She recently was on “Adam Devine’s House Party” on Comedy Central and while there had Mexican snacks and candy. Comedy Central named her one of the Top Comics to Watch at the NY Comedy Festival 2012, where she shared cake balls with two professional wrestlers and it was the best moment of her life. At the Glasgow Comedy Festival 2013 she ate fried sausages and lots of mayo, and at the Bridgetown Comedy Fest she ate donuts and lots of brunch. She loves coming to Cleveland for the pho and rib nuggets. Oh, and in Asheville North Carolina while doing a comedy festival she went on a brews cruise and had scallops and cheese grits. Jeff Garlin invited her to come to the Traverse City Winter Arts Fest where the main sponsor was cherry pie and breakfast lasagna. She’s also our guest today in 7 questions.
RM: When did you decide that you really wanted to do standup comedy? And how much time was it before you decided to actually get up on stage? How did your first time go?
LT: I didn’t know stand up was a thing like I had seen some specials and comics but it didn’t click like a thing you can do. A friend invited me to go to an open mic to watch and after I watched for a while I was like I think I can do this. I went up and did barely two minutes and it was pretty bad and I turned red but I was into it. So I went back the next week with jokes I wrote during the week and did better. Then that next day I started doing it every day and at comedy mics, the other one was poetry and music. So, I was like whoa there’s so many people doing it.
RM: How far is Skokie away from Chicago? How long is your average commute to a gig in the city and what opportunities does Chicago have for up and coming comedians that you might not be able to find in a place like Indianapolis or Cincinnati?
LT: I drive between 20-40 minutes to get to the city. I have a lot of rage and it annoys me sometimes but it works the best for me right now. I also have some great pals that I stay with when I want to get drunk or just lounge all weekend. They’re all fun and great and nice. I loved being able to start in Chicago. There’s a lot of rooms, clubs, mics, and comics but also not overwhelming. We’re also pretty great drinkers so I’m just going to assume Chicago is more fun than other towns. You can work hard here.
RM: What is your main reason for using the compound word “glittercheese” to end your social networking URLs? Is this from some kind of personal experience that you had with both of those things at the same time? Or do you just like them individually so much that you had to combine them together?
LT: I didn’t give it much thought but I really like those two things. I’m really late with technology so I didn’t realize Twitter would be a real thing. Cheese is very important to me and glitter is pretty.
RM: I am eating a certain type of food right now. Why do you want to know what it is?
LT: I just love to go out to eat and have cool snacks so I like knowing what other people are eating. All my friends are the best orderers. I respect people that order well. I like knowing who I can share a meal with or do tapas with or trust to buy the snacks for a blizzard/tornado/hungover locked in situation. I also respect cool creations so I like hearing about wild, hip, or cool things out there. When I travel I like to know the good places to eat and I like being with friends that care about picking a great place. I try to research and experience. Chefs are cool. Megan Gailey is my soul mate for ordering for sure. Just in sync in every way from pizza, how a meat is cooked, apps, we do disagree on desserts but I give in because that’s something she cares more about and I care what seafood or cheese app we get. We disagree on men which has been good for our friendship. I have one friend that won’t get eggs over easy and it just bothers me. Jeff Steinbrunner and Saurin Choksi are my favorite people to eat with too. Ordering black bean burgers upsets me. I like knowing what to expect with certain friends. Like one friend we only do Indian or Thai together. Oh and road trip decisions. I also love when people are in Chicago and I get to show them the best places.
RM: How often do you change the makeup of a joke around in order to make sure that it’s striking all of the right nerves? Do you ever worry about offending people; or do you pretty much just go for it?
LT: I think the first part of this question depends on specific jokes. There are some jokes I’ve been doing the exact same way forever and others are constantly being changed around or added too.
I don’t worry about offending people. People that get offended and think it matters are the worst. I believe in everything I say and am not coming from any sort of hateful place so I’m not worried.
RM: What can you tell us about the work you did creating and co-producing the Riot Comedy weekly showcase? Is that something that you miss doing? What was the best part about that whole experience?
LT: I loved it but I do not miss it at all. Running a weekly show is so much work and stress. I was also 22 and new to comedy so I’m sure I was the worst person to deal with, just intense. Coming up with lineups was fun but promoting and flyering ugh. But the show itself was the most fun thing ever! It was Lauren Vino, Renee Schultz and me in the back of a cheesy rib restaurant and we really killed it. I loved our flyers they were amazing, Schultz made them. Just the best flyers I’ve ever seen. We also had super fun themes and parties: jello shots, free hot dogs on July 4th, candy, birthday show cakes, so many birthdays and so many cakes, and holidays. Rafflin off dates on valentine’s day, raising money for good causes, Halloween and Christmas shows were so fun.
We also had some badass comics over the two years. Like, some of the coolest moments of my life. Being able to watch amazing comics perform in a tight space and all our friends seemed to have a lot of fun performing there. Really fun sets and then a lot of drinking and partying after!
RM: You were recently a part of “Adam Devine’s House Party” on Comedy Central…What goes on when the cameras go off on that set? Is Adam anywhere near as wild as his character in “Workaholics”?
LT: It was my first time on a set and it was super great. It wasn’t too wild. Everyone was really nice and good at their job and just great. I smiled a lot. I love getting my hair and make up done so that was a highlight and I liked seeing how things worked. I drank in the hotel room.
RM: What’s up next for you in 2014? Anything big in the works that we should know about?
LT: All of the things I’ve been working on will continue, like doing lots of stand up and trying to finally finish writing something or filming something like everybody else ever. I’ll be at Riot Fest in LA January 9-12, opening for Natasha Leggero at The Hideout on January 18th, which is one of the best, unique, badass, hip venues in Chicago part of the TNK fest (tomorrow never knows) and I’m a huge fan of hers so I’m really excited. I’ll be featuring at UP Comedy Club in Chicago March 6-8.
Official Website: http://www.lizatreyger.com/
Liza on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/glittercheese
Liza on Twitter: https://twitter.com/glittercheese
Once again thanks for visiting First Order Historians and enjoying more of the internet’s finest in user generated content.
Meehan
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