You don’t think the definition of mainstream comedy is ever going to change?
No. There’ll always be two different and distinct schools. I just think that there’s room for everyone. There are a lot of mainstream comedians who treat alternative comedy like, “Oh, they’re trying to wipe us out.” It’s like, no no no…we don’t want anything to do with what you guys do. You can do whatever you want, just leave us alone, you know?

Are mainstream comics trying harder to appeal to your audience?
Boy…that’s an interesting question. I wonder if that is happening in a subtle way. Because there’s a lot of people that aren’t alternative in any sense going, “Yeah I’m an alternative comic.” They don’t even know…they think it’s some kind of weird catchall phrase and they don’t know what the hell it means.

Right.
But also keep in mind a lot of, um, 90 percent of mainstream comedians are just boring people and 90 percent of alternative comedians are bad comedians. You know? Alternative comedy came out of comedians who’d been doing it so fucking long that they just got bored with it and started fucking around and getting more personal and more experimental. So a lot of these comedians that just started off just as alternative comedians never went through the “just becoming good comedians” first. Does that make sense? It’s like a chef starting out going, “I’m gonna be, like, the guy at Alinea or the guy at Moto.” It’s like, Well, no, you need to learn how to just cook an omelette first. [Changes voice]“Fuck that! I’m gonna do like a weird fusion thing where you’ve gotta wear a silver hat and….” No, dude, just…I bet the guys at Moto and Alinea, if you just gave them a pan and three eggs, they could make the best omelette you’ve ever eaten; but they could do it without thinking, so that’s boring for them. Does that make sense?

Yeah, absolutely. You can’t jump right into alternative comedy.
And unfortunately, a lot of people did. They just started going up in coffee shops or bookstores and going [As the comic], “Yeah man. So, uh, um, this happened today…I don’t know where this goes.” You know? [Laughs] It just goes really sad.

I was listening to your CD, and in the middle of your “morning-after pill” bit, some dude interrupted you by woo-ing, and you spent the next five to ten minutes ragging on him. Are you ever on stage and praying that somebody does interrupt your bit just so you can make fun of them?
No. I have the opposite thing. I have so much material and I’m so anxious to do it, I don’t want to have to waste time. Because dealing with a heckler at this point in my career—and any of my friends are the same way—I can do that without thinking about it. It’s boring. It’s not anything like, “Yay! I get to be in combat!” And it’s not that I’m so quick or skillful, I’ve just dealt with so many fucking hecklers that I already know how it’s gonna turn out. It’s like playing “Doom” in God-mode. There’s just gonna be nothing fun about it. I wanna do my material that I wrote and worked on and not deal with some idiot that I already know that I’m gonna make look like shit. I know that sounds cocky, but it comes more from sadness and frustration.

Oswalt performs with Janeane Garofalo at the Lakeshore Theater Tuesday 19.