By Peter Lindblad
Never go against the family – unless you’re Rachel Feinstein. Whether the comedian is mocking her firefighting husband or her “aggressively liberal” mother onstage, Feinstein gets a lot of mileage out of making fun of those nearest and dearest to her wickedly funny heart.
Expect to hear a side-splitting stream of jokes about both when she plays The Cooperage in Milwaukee on Saturday, April 1. Her spouse’s shopping habits are especially triggering for Feinstein.
“He’s obsessed with Costco,” said Feinstein, who was born in Bethesda, Maryland and moved to New York City as a teenager. “I don’t know if anybody has a husband like that. I don’t know what it is with men and bulk.”
When holidays roll around, Feinstein understandably gets nervous.
“I was like, for Valentine’s Day, don’t get me anything from Costco,” said Feinstein. “Don’t get me anything you can put in like a cart on top of glasses and salmon. I don’t want it. And he got me the one thing I told him not to get me. He got me pajamas from Costco. He’s like, ‘These are from Costco. They’re really high end.’ And I’m like, ‘They’re Cortland pajamas.’”
When she quotes her husband, Feinstein tends to fall into an exaggerated, meat-headed, manly New York City accent that only makes everything more hysterical. Take, for instance, her quips and stories about their domestic life.
“He’s also very OCD. I don’t know if anybody’s married to somebody like this, but I wake up and I’m in trouble and I really don’t know what for yet,” said Feinstein. “He walks around the apartment, and he’s used to being the boss, because he’s the boss at his firehouse, and he’ll walk around the apartment, and be like (imitating him), “What’s this over here? Why is this like this? What happened over here? Why are these dishes in the sink? Why didn’t you put them in the dishwasher?” He talks about these things like he’s a detective. Like somebody’s going to bag this scene up and take it to the lab like it’s ‘Forensic Files.’ I’m serious. I’m always in trouble, no matter what I do.”
Still, he always seems to come out of her shows smelling like a rose, according to Feinstein.
“And no matter what I say about him onstage … I could be like, ‘You know, my husband boarded a plane without me,’” said Feinstein. “That’s how oblivious he is. And I’ll be like, ‘Where are you?’ And, literally, the crowd is always on his side, and he loves it.”
Rather than listening to Feinstein’s rants and using them to be a better partner, he’s just soaking in the adoration.
“You would think I go onstage and tell all these jokes about him, and then he’d maybe learn something, but he’s like (imitates him again), “Oh, great. They love the Costco bit,” and I go, “They’re laughing at you. That’s you!” said Feinstein. “And he’s like (imitates him again), “Nah, they loved it. You killed it with that. Yeah, they liked the Costco pajamas.’ And then after the show, for some reason people always want a picture with him. They’re always cropping my dumb face out … no matter what they do, they just give excuses, like, ‘Oh, he’s a public servant,’ but also the Costco pajamas? Can we focus on that for a second.”
Feinstein’s appearance in Milwaukee will see her honing her current hour for taping as her next special in the spring. Adored by fans and fellow comedians alike, Feinstein’s first hour special was “Only Whores Wear Purple,” which debuted on Comedy Central. The spotlight shined upon her on Colin Quinn’s HBO pandemic special “Colin Quinn & Friends: A Parking Lot Comedy Show,” while Feinstein also made her mark on Chris Rock’s feature film “Top Five.”
Amy Schumer has played a big role in Feinstein’s career, as she acted with Schumer in Hulu’s “Life & Beth” and Schumer movie vehicles “Trainwreck” and “I Feel Pretty.” Feinstein is also credited as a writer on Comedy Central’s “Inside Amy Schumer,” although she feels that’s a bit of a misnomer.
“So, whenever I see my name as writer or producer, I’m like, ‘Was I?’” asked Feinstein, with a laugh. “I go through like a few funny voices, you know. I often have wine on my cheek from the night before.”
It didn’t seem like work, that’s for sure.
“Amy is hilarious. I mean, it’s pretty fun to hang out with my friends … my friends, mostly, a lot of them are comedians,” said Feinstein. “Like, it’s my high school friends and then a lot of comedians, so there’s not really an adult around cracking the whip – just a lot of fools, like myself, but it’s fun … things you’d get in trouble for saying anywhere else and then somebody makes a joke out of it, things that in school people were calling home about on Monday. (Imitating her mother’s lamentations) ‘You said, what? That’s unacceptable, Rachel Louise. It’s unacceptable.’”
Feinstein admits she often ended up in detention. It was like a second home, and she said she’d try to make the best of it, even going so far as to make “a musical score” for it. That might be a joke. It’s sometimes hard to tell with Feinstein, who always had to deal with a social worker mother who, as Feinstein explains, can be “a lot.”
“She’s always wearing some kind of like menopausal cape …,” said Feinstein. “She’s aggressively liberal … my mom likes to come to New York and bond with the cab drivers. She likes to kind of read an ethnic name and honor it, like (imitates her mother), ‘Good morning, Alejandro. What a marvelous name. What region is that?’ I’m like, why? … She wants access to his name right now. My mom’s a lot. Her name is Karen, and she was devastated to figure out what ‘Karen’ meant, because she’s a liberal (laughs). ‘Oh no!’”
Her husband and mom are far apart on the political spectrum.
“I mean, if my husband could decorate our home, it would have a giant mural of the Founding Fathers, but my parents, they’re characters,” said Feinstein. “Sometimes, they like oversharing. My mom has no boundaries. Every time I’m alone with her she has like a mud slide and tells me something I never wanted to know – just some dark information about somebody I don’t know in the first place. Like she’ll (overly dramatic) say, ‘They have the COVID-19!’ I’m like, ‘No one says the COVID-19.’ Only my mom says, ‘COVID-19.’ I’m sure it’ll be fine. (Again, imitating her mom) ‘I don’t think so! He’s got the novo coronavirus.’ She loves to tell me when people are ‘immunocompromised.’ She loves that word.”
Just as her hubby likes to get her gifts from Costco. She’s thought about turning him into a character for a show, but that could have unintended consequences.
“Oh yeah, for sure, but he’d love that, too. ‘Oh, that Costco stuff is going well,’” she said, again assuming his voice. “And then he got me some Costco candy for Christmas, like one of those big kind of like champagne glasses, a champagne glass … and that was it. It had some chocolates inside of it, and then, he just kind of hurled it at me, like a wolf or something. It’s just a glob of like poop on top of it … it’s fascinating.”
On top of that, there are his friends and co-workers, who fill his head with all kinds of crazy notions.
“Imagine if your husband was going to have sleepovers with like six of his dumbest friends for half the week,” said Feinstein. “It doesn’t help that he comes back from the firehouse with all types of new ideas. He comes home with new conspiracy theories and presents that are wrapped like that … like they look they were wrapped by an animal with rabies.”
And they’re quick to offer romantic advice.
“Oh yeah, forget it. It’s a disaster,” said Feinstein. “I mean, it’s like, ‘You boarded a plane without me? I got on the plane. Where were you?’ And he’s like (imitating him), ‘Yeah, I just figured I’d get my stuff situated. You know, Vinnie does that.’ And I said, ‘You know he’s going through a divorce right now.’”
There’s little chance of Feinstein and her partner splitting up. He gives her so much material for her stand-up routines, and it’s not like she didn’t know what she was getting herself into.
“He did have the same behavior when we were dating,” said Feinstein. “So, I was running out of time, and I needed to get married. I just needed to wrap it up, and I was just like, ‘I need to figure this out for me to have a kid.’ A lot of women are surprised when they’re proposed to. They’re like, ‘Oh, me?’ Not me, I was like looking for a ring in my salad.”
While she’s racked up tons of appearances on late-night talk shows, having also voiced Adult Swim’s “Venture Brothers” and the “Grand Theft Auto” video game franchise, Feinstein doesn’t really have some grand plan for the rest of her career.
When asked what’s next for her, Feinstein responded, “That’s a really good question. I’m going to think about that all night. I really don’t know. I know I’m going to be in Milwaukee.”
In preparation for her arrival in Wisconsin, Feinstein wants residents and fans from Milwaukee to tell her what to do while she’s in town and where to eat. Go to her Instagram here to let her know what’s good in the Cream City.