Atlantic City Weekly

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A particularly sought-after stand-up comedian on the collegiate circuit, Steve Hofstetter brings his unique slant on social commentary to Richard Stockton College of New Jersey’s Lodge at Lakeside student center on Monday, March 28, starting 7pm. Tickets are $10 in advance (visit the campus’ Office of Student Development in the Upper G wing) and $15 the day of the show.

Hofstetter first gained popularity as an undergraduate student at Columbia University writing about sports and campus activities for the Columbia Daily Spectator. He parlayed that experience into three books — two examining the ins and outs of college life and the third a contemporary spin on the ripe-for-ridicule world of professional sports. Recently he released a fifth comedy CD entitled Pick Your Battles that shot up to No. 1 on the iTunes’ comedy charts the day after it was released. The CD includes several tracks in which Hofstetter “declares war” on subjects that irk him, among them New Jersey. “Obviously, as a New Yorker, I’m going to make fun of New Jersey,” he says. “It’s like a sibling rivalry.”

Hofstetter’s also done a ton of radio and TV broadcasting, which he continues to squeeze in occasionally between more than 300 live gigs annually. Atlantic City Weekly caught up with Hofstetter by phone during a rare break in the action, which included a string of seven shows in Atlanta over four days.

Can you tell me a little about what your latest CD Pick Your Battles is about? I saw online that it’s been very well received since its February release.

I was really excited by that. It was one of those things where I was like “I hope it cracks the top 20,” and it shot up to number one.

It was kind of a project that evolved. It’s basically part of the set that I’ve been writing. I mean, the album concept kind of came after the set. It was one of these things where I just took a step back and looked and thought, “OK what’s the theme here?” It’s actually a line that I say in my act, “pick your battles,” which I’ve always found to be important. I have lots of different causes that sort of piss me off that I talk about, and every now and then someone will send me something through Facebook or on my Web site, suggesting, “You should talk about such and such.” I mean I have a lot of Facebook and Twitter followers [over a half million] and their thought is that if I support their cause, everyone else will.

Recently someone told me they’re pissed off that Facebook isn’t selling stock in the U.S. I’m like who cares? Do you know there’s a revolution going on? There’s a lot more important stuff going on, so the idea of picking your battles is an important one to me.

You have an extensive background in sports and sportswriting. Is there a connection between how you might analyze and write up a game and how you gather material for your comedy routines?

Well, whenever I get a question regarding where I get my material, my reaction is always “Why do other people not have material?” They’re living in the same world I am, how do they not see this crap that’s going on around them? I’ll give you an example of something that just happened to me. I’m on a plane and the plane has to turn around in mid air and head back to where we just departed. People are looking around frantically thinking “what’s going on?” and before we’re told that there might be an inconvenience but we’re going to be OK, they make the “please put your tray tables up” announcement. That’s kind of what I mean with the “pick your battles” concept. I mean, what’s your priority in that situation? Telling 100 people that you’re safe and you’re going to be OK, or making sure that everything is neat and the tray tables are put back? The most amazing thing about that situation was that maybe half the plane were normal people who had every right to be a little frantic, going “Hey, I’ve seen this movie before, what’s going on?” And the other half of the plane were people just going about their business, oblivious to the situation, going, “Oh, I guess we’re going to make a landing now.” Amazing. They just wrote me five minutes of material.

You have a rigorous touring schedule that includes a lot of college campuses. Do you prefer working the colleges to the comedy clubs?

I play about 100 colleges per year. It’s part design, part necessity. Colleges pay better than the clubs, so if they want to have me, I’m not stupid. I do have rent to pay, but at the same time I love the colleges. I actually started playing colleges before the clubs, which is very, very backwards in this industry. Usually you play the clubs enough that you get to play the colleges, but because I started out as a writer for college humor, a lot of colleges had me before I was really a comic. I was the college humor guy who could say a few funny things, and then eventually I crafted my act to the point where I was an actual working comic.

But take out the money aspect of it, and just by virtue of the pure show, I love how open and willing the college crowd is. At the same time, though, a lot of times they’ve never been to a comedy show before and aren’t familiar with how a comedy show is structured. I’ll bet that at the typical college show, a third to a half of the audience has never been to a comedy show before, whereas at a club it’s maybe five to 10 percent who haven’t.

One of your YouTube videos is you dealing with a couple of drunk women hecklers in a comedy club in Lansing, Michigan. You really put them in their place, but in a funny way. Do you deal with that situation often?

It’s a combination of alcohol and the misguided notion that they’re more important than the people around them. I mean, the fact is they’re paying to watch me, but I’m not more important than them. We’re all people trying to live our lives and have a good time. If I had a good time at the expense of everyone in the room, I’d lose my job. We’re all trying to contribute to the good time.

Sometimes people think that they’re night is more important than the other 200 people in that room. That’s the thing, alcohol doesn’t make you an asshole, it just helps to show that you are one. There’s a saying that the eyes are the windows to the soul. Wrong. It’s booze. The fact is, no matter how drunk I’ve ever gotten in my life — and I don’t drink any more — but no matter how drunk I got in the past, I’ve never just peed on somebody else’s car because I thought that was funny, and I’ve seen people do that outside of clubs and bars and think it’s funny. What makes you think that that’s OK? Alcohol didn’t do it, alcohol just let’s you do it.

How did your love for sports evolve?

Growing up, I remember being at some sort of boring family gathering when I was eight or nine years old, and one of my parents’ friends took me around the room almost like I was a little party trick to show everyone how much I knew about the Mets. It would be like, “OK name them all by uniform number in sequential order.” It started simple, like “Who plays first base?” and I’d be “Don’t be an idiot, ask me something harder.” But I’ve always been into sports. If I wasn’t doing [standup], I would have been a sports journalist.