Pete Holmes Makes It Fun (And A Little Bit Weird) On His ‘Faces and Sounds’ Special On HBO

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Pete Holmes: Faces and Sounds

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HBO’s audience may not be as familiar with Pete Holmes as you are.

After all, despite filming an hour stand-up comedy special for Comedy Central in 2013, followed immediately by two seasons of hosting The Pete Holmes Show in late-night after Conan on TBS, Holmes hasn’t yet established himself as a household name or face. His upcoming HBO sitcom, Crashing —executive produced by none other than comedy kingmaker Judd Apatow likely will rectify that situation. So HBO wisely set aside this new hour, Pete Holmes: Faces and Sounds, on Saturday to introduce him properly and give you reasons to root for Crashing to do anything but come February.

The 37-year-old comedian from Massachusetts already has won you over vocally, either from years of voicing the talking E-Trade baby for years on TV commercials, or from his hugely popular podcast, You Made It Weird.

So he doesn’t need more of an introduction when he bounds onstage at the Vic in Chicago, where Holmes started to find his comedy voice after college.

Even that moment, in itself, is enough to suffice for Holmes. “That was the best moment of my life,” he says upon taking the microphone. “We don’t even have to do the show. This is just a bonus now. That felt so good, we should take turns. Each of you should come up one at a time just to feel that. Diseases that are forming will go away.”

Spending time with Holmes does feel like a bonus. He wants his company, onstage or off, to share in the same joy he feels – even if he’s making goofy jokes, faces and sounds about diarrhea in an ornate, old theater.

He certainly doesn’t want to cause trouble. Which is why his first topics involve the fight-or-flight impulse of fear, the nature of sleep, and nightmares. He explores the physicality of all of it, and explains the otherwise-odd posture of many stand-up comedians thusly: “We think you’re going to lunge at us, somewhere in our lizard minds.”

As for nightmares – or even worse, living a nightmare – Holmes argues that your brain is tricking you, depriving you of endorphins and all of the love and enjoyment you could have right this second if you wanted. So why do you focus on what you could be doing, when you’d be perfectly happy with yourself in what you are doing, Holmes asks. Leave it to him. His podcast often asks and explores this stuff at length. Often lengthier than any other podcasts out there, in fact. To cut straight to the chase, you have to seek out joy. Fill what Holmes calls “your joy quota,” telling the audience: “That’s why you’re here, to cash happy checks, to live your life. Good for you.” For him, that means a willingness to attend an Enrique Iglesias concert by himself, surrounded by teenage Latinas. Holmes doesn’t mock himself for going it alone, but he will take shots at his decision to call it a “music concert,” as well as his suddenly coming up blank at the tradition of concert encores.

Holmes bears a slight resemblance to the late great comic actor, John Ritter, and his earlier stand-up persona bore the hallmarks of a younger Brian Regan, but make no mistake: Holmes has grown into his own man. Or rather into a big and tall, “silly silly funboy.” And he wants you to join in the fun.

At one point, he bowls over in laughter and joy after describing his life goal of understanding the trumpet. “I don’t want to play it. I just want to get it,” Holmes says. When the audiences gets it, he’s so happy he stops, then reveals: “That joke never works. I wish you could come on the road with me, just to see me in other towns, like, ‘Three buttons?’ and they’re like, ‘Talk about your dick!'”

He does have some of those, too, btw.

Holmes has such an easy laugh – he knows he’s been ridiculed for laughing so much at his guests in his own podcast – but feels no shame in it. Rather, he wishes everyone else dropped whatever defense mechanisms were keeping them from laughing more. We should all be easy laughs, he says. “I think joy is hiding everywhere. You just have to look for it.” For him, it can come as easily as thinking of how Lenny Kravitz was probably born Leonard, or wearing a silly T-shirt for his airplane trips, or a boy with a deep voice, a Starbucks barista with a quick one, or any number of sounds and words that crack him up.

Holmes also can break into giggles by imagining a rapper or a voiceover artist alone in the recording studio booth, adding their small contributions to a soundtrack nobody else can hear. Or by imagining how the British have a more clever way of responding to tragically awkward conversations.

“I mostly do faces and sounds,” Holmes admits. Ergo, your title.

He’s more the merrier and a much stronger comedian for knowing what works for him, and for recognizing that we all should be as easy to laugh as he is. He’s right about that.

Holmes makes it all a bit easier for us to join in his fun.

[Watch Pete Holmes: Faces and Sounds on HBO NOW and HBO Go]

Sean L. McCarthy works the comedy beat for his own digital newspaper, The Comic’s Comic; before that, for actual newspapers. Based in NYC but will travel anywhere for the scoop: Ice cream or news. He also tweets @thecomicscomic and podcasts half-hour episodes with comedians revealing origin stories: The Comic’s Comic Presents Last Things First.