Sean Donnelly Answers Five Questions About Life…Death…and His Dog Rickles

Sean Donnelly is about to premiere his first Half Hour comedy special with Comedy Central this Saturday and his first album, Sean Donnelly: Manual Labor Face is out today! You will get to hear Sean pontificate about lonely days with his bulldog Rickles, married life and the subjectivity of being fat among other things. You can hear on the reg by listening to his weekly podcast with Dan St. Germain, My Dumb Friends which you can find on the All Things Comedy Network. You’ve seen Sean on Letterman and Conan, as well ascan also be seen on Amazon’s “Alpha House,” Comedy Central’s “Broad City” and “Inside Amy Schumer,” TruTV’s “Friends of the People,” and GSN’s “Lie Detectors.” If you don’t already know and love him, this is a perfect week to get up to speed. We asked Sean 5 questions about his life, his death, his dog, and more!

The Interrobang: What is the worst job you ever had?

Sean Donnelly: I worked at a Baskin Robbins. It doesn’t sound like a bad job but I was an idiot and I couldn’t figure out how to do the soft serve part. Literally one day when my boss was in the back, I gave a guy a cone that was barely any ice cream and he was like, “This is all you get these days??!!” and he starts complaining so I just told him to take the cone for free. That job sucked. I worked at a Blockbuster and that was pretty brutal. You have to tell people they owe you money for bringing in something late, so it’s already a confrontation when they come in. Any job I had dealing with the public was the worst job I ever had. Some people are just assholes and they think what little amount of power they have, they’re going to lord it over you.

The Interrobang: Where’s your favorite place to bring your dog in NYC?

Sean Donnelly: I live in Brooklyn so I like to take him to the dog park. But the weird thing is, I don’t take him inside the dog park. He just goes in and sits on people’s feet and they get really mad at me. I also can’t take him in because if he finds a ball, it’s an hour and a half of a fat guy chasing around a dog, trying to get him out of the dog park. It’s like a Benny Hill opening, it’s so embarrassing. It really takes like an hour and a half, where it gets to the point where I’m saying, “Fuck you, man.” or I’m trying to reason with him.

But his favorite place is the butcher’s. The butcher by my place gives him meat every time we stop by. He even tries to fake me out and pretend he doesn’t care as we pass the butcher and then he cuts back like a football player and tries to pull me right inside. He loves it. A lot of people know him from the neighborhood. Like these two guys at the butcher, every time they see him they do this same joke that I don’t get, “It’s Rickles, get him a rabbi hat and some curls and he could be a rabbi dog.” I don’t even know why that’s funny, but I do the polite thing like, “Yeah, that’s funny… totally.” I have no idea what that means, I think it’s probably anti-semitic and I’m being an asshole for agreeing but these guys are so old school, I’d rather just “yes” them and keep moving. I think it would be worse to get them mad at me.

The Interrobang: What’s the best experience you’ve ever had flying?

You always think planes are going to be miserable, but one time I was going to California with my buddies – and this was back a while ago when they would still fly planes even if they weren’t full, they wouldn’t cancel them – and we had almost the entire plane to ourselves! It felt like you were on a private plane. Any time on a plane where I have a row to myself or when you think the middle seat is going to be full but it’s not, that’s a dream come true.

The Interrobang: What’s your favorite city to go do comedy in?

I did my album recording in Madison, WI and that’s a cool college town. And Comedy On State is an amazing, amazing club – the people that run it are nice and they pack out the room. And the audience are smart but not cynical, they’re up for whatever. And you can just walk around and actually do stuff, like catch a movie or eat some good food.

The Interrobang: It’s your last meal, what are you eating?

First of all, I wanna know what I’m in prison for! I’m a very different person by then, I might like something totally different if I end up murdering someone. My mom makes roast beef and potatoes around the meat, that’s my favorite meal of all time. It’s probably the most unhealthy, my mom puts like 4 sticks of butter in the potatoes. They wouldn’t even have to give me the injection, the food would kill me first.

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Watch Sean Donnelly’s Comedy Half Hour Saturday at Midnight and buy his new album available now in stores!

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