Maria Bamford, apart from being one of the best stand-ups in the world, has a unique way of making the unnervingly absurd sound like undiscovered genius. Feeling low and have a comedy special to do? Hire your parents for $600 a pop as your sole audience and film The Special Special Special in your own living room. (Why $600? No tax paperwork for mom and dad.) Have social anxiety and need to try out new material? Contact a Twitter follower, have them meet you at a local Dunkin’ Donuts, and discreetly do your new jokes over a free cold brew. (“Sky’s the limit on that menu,” boasted Bamford to Seth Meyers on Tuesday’s Late Show.) There’s “an unregistered sex offender in the White House,” and you don’t feel safe knowing that he could show up in her home turf of Los Angeles (on a break from disseminating jaw-droppingly idiotic forest management advice)? Head down to the local courthouse.
That’s what the Bammer did in 2018, paying the 40 bucks to actually fill out paperwork to, rather reasonably, keep a person with dozens of sexual assault allegations pending against him and a blatant, megalomaniac’s disrespect for the rule of law a football field away from her. (Also, why does it cost money to file a restraining order? That’s some bullshit right there.) And, while Bamford’s public efforts to keep self-described genital-grabber Trump the fuck away from her person ultimately failed in what she called “a useless gesture that didn’t further the conversation in any way and wasted the time of caring professionals,” well, it was pretty funny. Plus, we’re still talking about/linking to the long and sordid history that’s seen many, many women detail just what a reprehensible sex creep Donald Trump actually is. The Lady Dynamite star, in her rapid-fire, mercurial delivery, explained to Meyers that while she’s more likely to respond to the current political climate in the manner of her beloved deaf-and-blind 20-year-old pug Betty (who’ll wedge herself between kitchen appliances and whimper in her desperate need of leadership), she’s also not above creating a little comic spectacle to nudge things along.
Maria Bamford’s new stand-up special Weakness Is The Brand premiered on January 28.