Spike Einbinder Is in Their Ugly Angel Phase

Thanks to the coronavirus, comedians are now trapped at home like the rest of us, so we decided that while we’re all self-isolating, we’d do something a little different from our usual “Follow Friday” column. Instead of interviewing up-and-coming comedians we love on Twitter, we’re going live on Instagram every week to check in on some of our favorite people in comedy and get a firsthand look at how they’re handling the pandemic. So welcome to our new version of the column, now titled “Follow (From a Safe Distance) Friday.”

This week, I somehow worked up the courage to ask the incredibly fucking cool Spike Einbinder (Los Espookys, The Special Without Brett Davis, walking a squad of dogs around Brooklyn) for a virtual hang and chat about how they’re keeping it together in quar. They told us the riveting story of how they got scouted at the dog park, gave us some uplifting thoughts on surrounding oneself with gratitude during times like this, and pondered the use of long-range zoom lenses as a means of social distancing for comedy photographers documenting the scene post-pandemic. They also shared the particularly specific inspiration behind their current hair and makeup aesthetic: “The last phase that I exited was ‘beautiful demon,’ where it was, like, a lot of red and dark and eyeliner. And now I’m in the ‘ugly angel’ phase, where I’m doing, like, the cherub on the roof of the chapel, but you look at it closer and you’re like ‘Oh … what? They painted its face like that?’”

You can find Spike on Twitter at @spikeeinbinder and on Instagram at @_sp.i.ke_.