So I think that just by dent of how I performed, and being fierce, and getting on stage, and taking control, and not allowing anybody to interrupt me, and not allowing the audience to take over as they will do like a pack of wild animals if they smell blood, and you’re on stage and you’re fearful—they’ll turn on you in these comedy venues, you know, and rip you to shreds. So I’d be like, ‘Okay, motherfuckers. I’m gonna beat you to the punch. I’m gonna rip you to shreds before you can even get near me.’ So I was like a fucking wild beast with my teeth bared.

So, yeah, I scared the shit out of them! So they were like, ‘I’m not gonna fuck with that bitch!’ So I got fierce and I stayed fierce. And there are some nights when I can tell I’m gonna have to go into fierce mode—it’s not my first choice. I don’t really like it ‘cause it’s exhausting, and most of the time I don’t need to do it anymore, which is why nights like San Francisco can happen now because people are coming along for the ride, and they love it, and I can bare my little fangs for a minute, but then I can go to places which are much more vulnerable and emotional and deeper, and that’s where you want to be able to go as an artist.

MS: Whether describing you as performer or writer, you have been referred to as: “a tangle of barbed wire;” “a living, breathing bonfire;” “a cranky, needling older sister;”

SB: [Laughs.] I like that.

MS: “…both satirist and shaman;”