Don't Call Joe Mande An "Internet Personality", Dammit

"See, I hate "internet personality" — [that was] Chelsea [Peretti], and then the 'Twitter rascal" thing is Pete Holmes. I didn't have a Wikipedia page and then I did Pete Holmes' podcast and he told his listeners to make a Wikipedia page for me and describe me as a "Twitter rascal" and an "internet personality", all these things that I can't stand. That whole Wikipedia page is all my friends making me crazy."

The self-deprecating Mande has a razor-sharp sense of humour. He's graced the stages of Conan and Late Night With Seth Meyers, recently wrapped up writing for Parks And Recreation's Aziz Ansari on his own Netflix show, Master Of None, and somewhere in the middle managed to release a tongue-in-cheek comedy mixtape called Bitchface featuring Amy Poehler - it's a wonder Mande has time for anything else at all.

"He's just working out constantly and eating almonds and his brain is still able to come up with jokes!"

"I'm either very busy or just playing Xbox all day, you know what I mean? At the moment I'm on hiatus from my writing work, so I'm in a real Xbox phase at the moment," Mande chuckles, explaining that he's only got "the stomach" to play NBA 2K.

"You're talking to someone with [he emphasises] real self-loathing so... It's funny, when you have a writing job with Parks And Rec, you're there long hours and you don't get to do as much stand-up. When I'm writing I kind of wanna do stand-up and when I'm doing stand-up for too long I wanna get back to a writing job. 

"I'm pretty good at both, but I also know many people who are much better at both than me, so I don't know where I stand [laughs]. I love doing both and I hope I can keep juggling them as much as I can."

NBC's incredibly well received mockumentary Parks And Recreation recently wrapped its seventh and final season (#FarewellPawnee); Mande served as a writer on its last three seasons. Like all fans of the offbeat show and its constellation of stars, this scribe wants to know what the show was like behind-the-scenes.

"When I was there I was like, 'This is the best job I'm ever gonna have.' I think on most TV shows, the actors don't really interact with the writers at all, and at Parks, they're constantly interacting with us and treated us like human beings on the set and asked us for jokes and stuff; it didn't really feel like there was any kind of separation or hierarchy."

Breeding an army of actors with impeccable comedic timing, unmatched facial expressions practically built for reaction memes and lightning-fast improvisation, Parks also brought forth the comedic gem that is Chris Pratt, ie. the affable human labrador Andy Dwyer. 

"I wrote an episode [Bailout, Season 5, Episode 16] which I was on set for and it took place inside an adult film store. We spent a good week in the writer's room just coming up with hundreds of fake porn titles, it was so fun and so ridiculous. When we got on set, Chris Pratt managed to come up with 15 off the top of his head that were better than any of the ones an entire room of comedy writers could come up with.

"And the whole time he's doing that, he's also training to become Star-Lord, so he's not even eating food, he's just working out constantly and eating almonds and his brain is still able to come up with jokes!"

"[Aziz and I] talk a lot about rappers and watch Hitch on the tour bus and go to great restaurants..."

Of late, Mande has also enjoyed the company of Ansari, heading out on the asphalt with the fellow stand-up to open for his Modern Romance comedy tour. One wonders what the two comedians get up to on the road.

"We talk a lot about rappers and watch Hitch on the tour bus and go to great restaurants... we both love cocktails [laughs]. Strangely [Hitch] is one of my favourite movies and he made fun of me when I brought the DVD on the tour bus last year, and I convinced him to watch it. I believe we watched it like three or four more times over the course of the week."

So, given that he's got some time off before his Australian shows, is Mande going to correct the labels that irk him so much on his Wikipedia page?

"As good as I am with certain things on the internet, I actually don't do how to do Wikipedia. I feel like you need to know like, coding and stuff. I looked into it once and I was like, 'This is too much!'

"The reason I don't wanna be called an internet personality is, like, I've been doing stand-up for ten years and I feel like it diminishes all this actual work I put into being a comedian because anyone can write 'comedian' in their Twitter bio and suddenly, they're a comedian. That said, I put myself in this position so I know what I've done to myself!

This writer tells Mande he should probably stop being a smartarse on his Twitter then.

"Oh yeah, I'm well aware of this [laughs]. And I'm friends with people like Chelsea who will tell people to do the total opposite of what I want!"