GUSTAVO: Now it’s working, now it’s really recording.  Okay to recap, Aric Weber has just been pouring out his soul for half an hour.  I’ll just remember that other stuff.  You’re 24 years old.  You got started with Projectile Comedy because Jason [Harris] approached you a year ago?

ARIC:  I don’t know about the actual time frame, it was quite a while before, it could have been as short as three months before the first show, and that would have been about a year ago now, I don’t know…but uh…

GUSTAVO:  So you’re saying it was mentioned, and you thought of it as, you know, it’s not gonna happen—

ARIC:  Yeah—

GUSTAVO:  But you though it’d be cool—

ARIC:  Yeah—

GUSTAVO:  “It’d be fun, it’s probably not gonna happen but I’m down with it for the fun.”

ARIC:  Yeah.  [Pause]  Just to me it sounded like great and totally cool and totally down, and then it doesn’t really seem, it seemed like one of those garage band things with your buddies where someone’s like “I play bass,”  “Yeah I play guitar!” “Let’s find a drummer,” and then you can’t get a drummer and you rehearse three times and you never find a drummer and someone’s late for rehearsal one time and then the next time he doesn’t show up at all, someone gets a job and then it all falls apart before anything really gets put together.  But, whatever, like I said—

GUSTAVO:  But you didn’t say it before because it didn’t record so—

ARIC:  Oh okay—

GUSTAVO:  It’s all fresh, it’s like it’s the first time.

ARIC:  [semi-announcer voice] Again for the first time.

GUSTAVO:  [singing high falsetto] Feels like the first time…As we break into musical interlude.

ARIC:  [silence for a moment, then joins in] Feels like the very first time…And then, and then it happened, and so I was happy, and there we were.

GUSTAVO:  Sounds great.  So, you say the ringleader is Jason Harris.

ARIC:  Without a doubt.

GUSTAVO:  He started this whole mess?

ARIC:  And if there needs to be, like a meeting with the manager of the bar, or with somebody else—

GUSTAVO:  Business, he is the business leader—

ARIC:  He is—

GUSTAVO:  The C.E.O.

ARIC:  He is, his name is on the business license actually.  Wherever that’s uh, kept, that record…that LP.  That piece of paper [chuckle].

GUSTAVO:  Long Play.

ARIC:  Yeah.

GUSTAVO:  Go on and mention again Helmet Boy so I can put a link to Dave’s webpage.

ARIC:  Well okay.  I remember me and Jay [Jason Harris] had dinner and he mentioned it that time and it had been a while and it’s like ‘yeah totally cool’ and that’s when the garage band thing struck me ‘Yeah it’s gonna be great!’ ‘Never gonna happen’ um, without realizing that Jason’s one of those guys that does what he wants, does what he says he’s gonna do when it comes to stuff like that, not that the people who don’t do that are bad or anything it’s just usually you get these aspirations and then—

GUSTAVO:  Inspirations that you go ‘Yeah!’ and then nothing happens.

ARIC:  Or you move on to something else or whatever happens, but then I remember it was a couple, or a while later and um, and we were over at O.T.’s [David Overturf] house doing like a Helmet Boy T-shirt party where we were cutting out some…what do you call them, uh, transfers? For the t-shirts and stuff and he was like “Hey Jay’s gonna stop over after improv,” and the reason he was stopping over was to talk about this with Dave and since uh, I and Thad [Paxinos], Thad and I were there it was like “oh really, this is going down?” and then it just became real, and then we moved on to scripts and stuff and…it was good stuff.

GUSTAVO:  W-E-B-B or just one B?

ARIC:  One B, one B. [pause while interviewer jots down the interviewee’s name, ten minutes after the interview has begun the second time]. You have great handwriting Gus.

[Response deleted as long-winded and irrelevant]

ARIC:  Mine is-- I can’t even read my own sometimes.

GUSTAVO:  Okay, there’s a question that I’ve been dying to ask you, again. 

ARIC:  [chuckle]

GUSTAVO:  What is so precious to you [more chuckling, as if he knew what was coming] that you would take a thimbleful and be grateful?

ARIC:  All right well shi--

GUSTAVO:  Using the Incredible Hulk and carnies as metaphors.

ARIC:  I think I’m going through this heady, ethereal- my hippy longhair time.

GUSTAVO:  Was there a time you had long hair?

ARIC:  Oh Jesus, yeah.  It was almost to my…where poop comes out.  My butt, that’s what I meant.  Anyway, but it’s gone now, it’s in the past.  We can dwell…Uh, so it’s like that, I like talking to people a lot.  It’s one of my favorite things.  Little too tired to do it now.  I’m so busy.  I’m just kidding.  But like I really like um, those few instance when you…that like indefinable there’s-no-word-for-it moment when someone’s pouring out not their whole soul but ‘cause you don’t want that, that’s kinda gross but part of it for like an instant or like an hour or whatever it is.  It’s like a super-cool thing.  So like, I don’t know just like a thimbleful of connection?  So it’s like if you ever happen upon an instant like that it’s very, very awesome, and very um, whether it be a guy at the Rainbow who’s an ex-carnie and has like maybe two teeth missing and uh, he talks very fast about things like why the world is out of whack right now is because we’ve mined so much ore out of Africa and moved it all over the world that the axises are getting disheveled and something like that, and so everyone’s a little off-kilter we’ll say.  Or whether it be like a guy sitting outside the Carlin as I walk past asks me for a cigarette and then tells me he’s the Incredible Hulk.  So it’s kinda…or it’s just like, you know, my sister talking about whatever.  A thimbleful of connection I suppose. There’s very fun and beautiful things in moments which could be perceived as false.  I knew this girl named Meagan who was the most beautiful liar I’d ever heard.  The most elaborate nonsense would come out of her mouth and you just sat there thinking ‘I can’t believe this is so great that she thinks people actually buy this shit’. And so you just sit there and let it unfold.  The stuff is just falling out of her like uh, I don’t remember what her friend’s name was but she was like uh, we’ll call her Amber. [Imitating Meagan]  “Amber and I were trying to get to this party in Columbus and Amber was driving so slow and I have a race car driver’s license from Nevada, so I decided to tell her to pull over.”  A race car driver’s license from Nevada?  I just remember going ‘what?’ It was just great letting her riff off whatever that thing is, that sensor that makes you realize that you’re talking completely out of your ass.  I guess maybe you could say that’s a real moment because that’s real bullshit.  Pure, undriven…

GUSTAVO:  That’s a great answer, it’s the wrong answer but it’s a great answer. Oh here’s another question that you’ve probably heard before but I’d like to ask you again [more chuckling].  On average, how long would you say it takes you to return a DVD you borrow from a friend?

ARIC:  Well it depends.  If it’s Kentucky Fried Movie which [Chad] Korb lent me, and I was like ‘Oh yeah I used to love this movie’ um, and you watch it when you’re 24 and you’re like [making a sour face]  “ooh” and so I gave that back to him the next day.  But then if it’s like a heartwarming tale of an Italian son and father team and the father is trying to explain to his child that there is beauty within this topsy-turvy world, that might take me upwards of a year.  Especially if it’s Belotta-owned [chuckle].

GUSTAVO:  Right.  Okay.  In regards to PCP, and also in regards to LOL and several other acronyms I’ll insert later, what’s your favorite character.

ARIC:  Um, to play or—

GUSTAVO:  What’s your favorite character in the show, whether it’s your character or somebody else’s character, which character do you have the most fun watching or being.

ARIC:  I certainly like enjoy playing Meriweather Dingleberry just cause I think I have…

GUSTAVO:  A grasp on old southern men?

ARIC:  Well, yeah I got, that’s my bread and butter, that’s my demographic. No but um, realizing through PCP, I think I’m better at long scene-style improvisation as opposed to game ones.  I still like playing both but I just feel like I’m doing better when it’s just one character, and that guy [Dingleberry] I think I have him fairly defined to where I feel like I’m doing him justice, or…whatever.  But I definitely like watching…See there’s a lot of little instances like there’s a script we did that Thad wrote (I may refer to Thad as Gravy later, ‘cause that’s his nickname).  Thad wrote I think it’s called Job Interview, but D.P. [Dan Paul Schafer] played the boss of the guy, or the interviewer, and watching him do that character was great.  And he was the straight man, basically, in that scene, but he was awesome.  And Jason is a phenomenal performer so I love watching Pro-Action Man.  And then um, yeah we’ll stick to that.  I like them all.  I hate to be that guy, but, yeah.

GUSTAVO:  It’s okay to like them all but everybody has their favorites.

ARIC:  I think Pro-Action Man is kinda cool just ‘cause he’s so over the top and exaggerated and, good stuff.

GUSTAVO:  Do you ever worry that you might be the least funny member?

ARIC:  [without so much as a pause] Not as long as Korb’s in the group.

GUSTAVO:  Good answer.  Or that you might have the funniest looking member in the group?

ARIC:  That I might have?

GUSTAVO:  That you might have the funniest looking member in the group.

ARIC:  Oh no, my member’s awesome.  I’ve been told—I’ve got a tattoo.

GUSTAVO:  On your member?

ARIC:  Right, that says um, ‘Awesome’.

GUSTAVO:  Awesome?

ARIC:  Most times it saws awesome but it’s also spelled out in Morse code. [Braille, maybe?]

GUSTAVO:  If you had a theme song, what would it be?

ARIC:  I think I said this on my first night of stand up, so easy answer: Lickin’ Stick by James Brown.

GUSTAVO:  If that’s the song that defines you then—

ARIC:  Yeah, all life’s questions can and should be answered by “Mama come here quick, and bring me that lickin’ stick.”  I think it says it all.  It’s like the Ten Commandments of Aric Weber [takes an exaggerated slug off his coffee].

GUSTAVO:  In High School, you were a member of which clique?

ARIC:  Oh jeez…

GUSTAVO:  Wait for the list.

ARIC:  Oh, okay.

GUSTAVO:  There’s an opportunity for ‘other’ but listen to what I’ve prepared, at least give me that.  Jock, stoner, chess geek, role playing geek, computer geek, nerd, cowboy, cheerleader, ho, trailer trash, mullet ranger, invisibles, key club, band geek, or other.  And you can pick and chose, mix and match, take as many as you like.

ARIC:  I think, well I think like, it’s funny.  Looking back like the changes I went through during High School…in Junior High was when I did a little bit of role playing, and then we move into High School and then the beginning of High School is what we’ll call stoner and then shortly thereafter moved into invisible, by which I assume you mean wall-flower?  And then with the help of a little thing called theater I began to get more comfortable with myself and I became that odd combination (and this would be other) that odd combination of not giving a shit and realizing that a lot of these people I’m not going to see ever again so I might want to make that connection now, so, whatever that is…

GUSTAVO:  Hippie.

ARIC:  Right, but I wasn’t a stoner any more.  But like, we’ll say like, um, just…I don’t know whatever that is.  I wasn’t really popular but I was always nice to everybody and I had my tightly knit social network that we always hung out, the ten of us or whatever, and we had a lot of fun.  I don’t know, nerdy popular.

GUSTAVO:  On the upper scale of Drama Nerds?

ARIC:  Yeah, I guess.  You and your labels…

GUSTAVO:  Hey, it’s what people identify with.

ARIC:  Right right.  You know, let’s just go with stoner, ‘cause my eyes are squinty so people think I’m stoned all the time anyway.  Which is funny ‘cause I haven’t rocked the ganj in over a year, and before that it was three years, so there we go.

GUSTAVO:  Complete this sentence.  If I had a barbed cock…

ARIC:  I’d charge per viewing.  Wait wait wait, if I had a barbed cock…my ex-girlfriend wouldn’t have left me [sobs].

GUSTAVO:  She wouldn’t have been able to.

ARIC:  Exactly.

GUSTAVO:  Which is the purpose of a barbed cock.

ARIC:  And in a roundabout way, the restraining order.

GUSTAVO:  If you had super powers, would you use them for good, for evil, or to get laid.

ARIC:  See it’s so…it depends on the super power.

GUSTAVO:  What would be your super power?

ARIC:  Well like if it was teleportation, I don’t know if this is good or evil, but it’s convenient, to be able to wake up five minutes before work and then be there.  Or like “you were supposed to be here an hour ago,” and like “Oh shit, I’m still 45 minutes away, but not any more baby, ‘cause I got tele”—or flying would be pretty cool for the same thing but I think teleportation would be quicker, but then you could actually go as the crow flies, or as the Aric flies as it were.  Or as the Gus flies, whoever flies.  I don’t know.  Super strength, I think I’d have to use that for good, or to win some tough man strong man competition, and then use it for good, and then become an action star.  But if I had super agility…that’d just be cool.  My favorite super hero when I was little was Spider Man.  He still is probably today.  He’s like a renaissance man, he’s like pretty good at a lot of things but not super good at one thing.  Kind of like…I guess not really.  Jack of all trades, always a bridesmaid never a bride…I don’t know.  But yeah he’s just like.  Depending on the super hero power like if it was super endurance I’d have to use that to get laid.

GUSTAVO:  So you would use that while getting laid but would you advertise ‘I can go all night?’

ARIC:  Yeah I’d have postcards made. Can you outlast the Energizer Aric?  Beat on drummy bunny.  I would hope to use it for good, every once in a while using it for convenience.  Self-serving like whatever…but who knows, really?  It’s like when someone falls into a lot of money, and you go “oh they changed since they got all that money” and they may have changed and they may not have changed but people assumed they changed.  People are like that, projecting or whatever.  But I would hope I would use it for good, but when I got there, I don’t know man.  I might use…but these are…Good, Evil.  What do these terms mean?

GUSTAVO:  Robbing a bank?

ARIC:  See, I wouldn’t rob a bank.  Did you know there’s enough diamonds on the planet, locked up in safes that if they were to escape the safes and wander free on the planet that the price of diamonds would be substantially less?  Maybe I’d do it just to fuck up with the diamond trade.  Diamonds don’t mean shit.  But that’s kinda good, but kinda bad.  Like a Robin Hood of diamonds.  With a beard.  I guess Errol Flynn had a beard.  But Kevin Costner didn’t.

GUSTAVO:  Semi-serious question.  Did you grow up in a funny household?  Was there—

ARIC:  No.

GUSTAVO:  Not at all?

ARIC:  Nope.

GUSTAVO:  Pretty straight-laced?

ARIC:  Pretty…like some [garble] needs to get laid.  I spent a lot of time in my room, reading.  This kinda goes back to the role-playing and stoner, that’s like me being introverted and finally, I swear to God the theater pulled me out of that.  But like um, definitely like uh, my grandpa on my mothers side who’s now passed away, introduced me to the Marx Brothers very early, and I loved that.  And so like I locked onto a lot of wordy comedy which is the stuff I really enjoy looking at and the thing I try to write, I suppose.  I’m not good at one-liners.  So yeah, my folks and my sister, sometimes…I don’t know, it’s just weird thinking that I ended up coming out of that, though I love them to death.  Night and day.

GUSTAVO:  Do you feel that you may have been adopted or maybe kidnapped from your real parents?

ARIC:  I know I did during my angst-ridden ‘No one understands me but Poe and the Cure’ phase.  But no, I look too much like my mom, but it definitely felt like that, I know.  I don’t even remember the last time I’ve seen my parents like read a book.  And that’s a huge part of my life.  And then um, same with music.  I love music so much, and nobody else in my entire family (on my mom’s side)…they like, of course they like music but…yeah they got their own thing going on.  They’re very, very different.

GUSTAVO:  You want to talk about their thing, like what do they do to unwind?

ARIC:  They—I know my dad golfs and he drinks beer, and he likes to watch golf and drink beer, and he does a lot of work in the shop, he builds shelves and things.  He goes to work nine to five, seven to five, normal, June Cleavery like…

GUSTAVO:  Stereotypical dad-like activities?

ARIC:  Exactly. Woodworking, golf, beer…Goes to church on Sunday.  Yeah, that’s it.  He’s content; he’s figured himself out, maybe.

GUSTAVO:  Do you get along pretty well with your family?

ARIC:  I do now that I don’t live with them anymore [laughs].  I definitely do.  My little sister is very close knit and she’s super cool and uh, mom and dad, I get along well with them.

GUSTAVO:  Have they come to see the show?

ARIC:  No.

GUSTAVO:  Is that just something they won’t do, or…

ARIC:  They probably will never come to see the show.  Which is fine.  I’ve asked them before, but I think the bar and the swearing and— It’s like ‘I’m part of this, I really enjoy it and this is what I’m doing.  If you guys’d like to come that’s awesome, but be on your guard because etc.’  The bar is smoky.  My dad has asthma, so he’s a little smoke intolerant.

GUSTAVO:  All right moving on.  Were you a class clown, or just an ass clown?

ARIC:  [laughs]

GUSTAVO:  Ah, bit of both?

ARIC:  No I like, in elementary school I was definitely like the loud, funny, bad kid.  In seventh grade I remember I was.  And then I had like a rough year that year.  I think a lot of it (this is me opening up) I think a lot of it may have had to do with my grandpa passing the one that showed me Marx Brothers, I was pretty close to him, and then looking back it was probably me just lashing out like a [something incoherent] rebelling guy, I had a bad year that year and I remember being punished a lot and then that lead to the severe introversion and I kinda quieted down after that.  I really only had like two friends I think, and each of those friends only had two other friends, me and the other guy and so it’s…

GUSTAVO:  So it was kinda like a creepy Columbine thing?

ARIC:  Yeah but I think I was the only one who wore black.  So I was up until a point, and then I wasn’t, and then I went to like theater and stuff and became comfortable with myself.  I wasn’t really the class clown, I think I was always funny, I guess, but it depended on how comfortable I was around you whether or not I let it happen.  By the end of the school year I didn’t give a shit anymore, I let it out whenever like so much fart. [Exaggerated sip of coffee]  So I don’t know like what ass clown is but maybe when I wasn’t class clown I was ass clown.

GUSTAVO:  Ass clown would be maybe a jerk, a funny bully maybe, I don’t know.

ARIC:  Oh no.

GUSTAVO:  You were nice to people, you liked people, you wanted to connect.

ARIC:  That’s right, that’s right.  I think I tried.  I’m just realizing how kinda pretentious maybe that might sound.

GUSTAVO:  ‘Retroactively I tried to touch everyone.  I was freakin’ Ghandi.’ [Sings] I’d like to teach the world to sing…

ARIC:  [Sings] And have themselves a coke.  Diarrhea in a glass.  Candy apples make me [click]

At this point the tape clicks off.  That was the end of the first 30 minutes of the interview.  I flip over the tape to begin the grueling job of transcribing the second half.  I press play and try to rub feeling back into my fingers while waiting for the recording to continue.  Past the leader…silence.  Then, more silence.  And then finally, more silence.  I fast forward.  Silence.  I fast forward some more.  More silence.  All the way to the end.  Silence.  Nothing recorded.  Dare I say it was the most interesting information one could hope to get out of Aric Tudor Weber?  The most in depth, the most heart felt revelations…Aric blossoming, tentatively spreading his petals full out, revealing all that is Aric.  His most secret thoughts, his strongest feelings about the other members of the group, who he’s secretly in love with, who he simply longs to hold in the spoon position for one, blissful night.  All that information was on the second side of the tape, now lost forever.  Perhaps one day Aric will have the courage to tell his fellow comic hucksters how he feels, but for now it must remain his little secret.  I would say our little secret, but I can’t freakin’ remember who he was talking about since I wasn’t actually listening.  I figured that’s what the freakin’ tape recorder was for.  Freakin’ technology…But on the positive side, we ended on a song like an MGM musical.  What more could you ask for?  Perhaps a second interview?  Let us know in the Guest Book or the Projectile Comedy Lounge.

Interview By Projectile Comedy's Web Content Director and Biographer Gustavo Belotta