This week's episode of The Sporkful podcast is up! Listen through the player or iTunes/Podcasts app. (And please subscribe!)
Eating an ice cream cone in a pool of blood may just be the perfect metaphor for Maria Bamford's darkly funny comedy.
"They said it was OK for me to leave the hospital and suddenly the car seat was pooling with blood," Maria recalls. "But before my husband drove me back, I said, ‘Can we please go to Foster's Freeze?’"
"I had planned to have that [ice cream cone] post-surgical procedure and then…just because they f*cked up, I gotta miss my treat?" she tells Dan in this week's episode.
Maria's comedy is its own warped universe. Her ability to impersonate different characters -- often family and friends from her native Minnesota -- is legendary.
And her own struggles with bipolar disorder and social anxiety have long been part of her comedy. Her new Netflix series Lady Dynamite (out May 20) also focuses on the role mental illness plays in her life and work.
This week on The Sporkful, Maria and Dan analyze her salad eating technique and contemplate what it says about her own battles with mental illness.
“I just have to get these greens down. But I’m gonna save all the avocado and the nuts and the salmon for the bottom,” she admits. "I don’t know why I see life as a series of uncomfortable things and then rewards. Maybe the salad is all about depression."
Listen in to the full episode to hear Maria speak candidly about what she calls her "All-American Eating Disorder." Plus, she tells us what we all can learn about dining out from the people she grew up with in Duluth, Minnesota.
This week's episode of The Sporkful podcast is up! Listen through the player or iTunes/Podcasts app. (And please subscribe!)
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Interstitial music in this episode by Black Label Music:
- "Birthday Party" by Kenneth J. Brahmstedt
- "On The Floor" by Cullen Fitzpatrick
- "Hip Hop Slidester" by Steve Pierson
- "Legend" by Erick Anderson
Photos: Courtesy of Maria Bamford; FlickrCC/Leo Hidalgo; FlickrCC/Thomas Hawk; FlickrCC/Stewart Holmes
