Out comedian and Philadelphia native Todd Glass is coming home for the Thanksgiving holiday when he performs later this month at Helium Comedy Club.
The standup-comedy vet said he’s looking forward to spending some quality time in his hometown to enjoy the holiday between performances.
“I’m from Philly so I go home for Thanksgiving on Thursday,” Glass said. “It’s nice because I get to go home and then my family will come and see the shows. In all the years I lived in Philly, I’ve never stayed in the city, so it’ll be cool to come back and be able to stay downtown and enjoy the city and hit Pat’s for cheesesteaks late at night and get my daily dose of Wawa. I think I must go to Wawa five times a day. I’m obsessed with it.”
Absence does make the heart grow fonder, even for Wawa.
Anyway, since we last spoke to Glass, he’s written and released his memoir, “The Todd Glass Situation: A Bunch of Lies about My Personal Life and a Bunch of True Stories about My 30-Year Career in Stand-Up Comedy.”
In the book he talks about growing up in Philadelphia during the 1970s and delves into his decision, at age 48, to finally live openly as a gay man and the reactions and support from his comedy peers.
Glass said that the process of writing the book, which he did with the help of co-author Jonathan Grotenstein, made him a better performer.
“It was probably the hardest thing I ever did but I think it’s helped me in my standup because the more you tap into things, you sit around and you tell stories and you decide what’s cool and interesting,” he said. “It’s helped my standup to start talking about things I wouldn’t have talked about before. It was a good process and a fun process.”
Besides his frantic performance schedule, Glass is at work on a new TV show that he hopes will see the light of day — actually evening, to be exact — soon.
“I’m working on a late-night show which is actually based around my podcast,” he said. “Whenever a show announces it’s leaving or getting canceled, it feels like everybody relaxes because the stakes are not important but that’s when it gets good. So the theme of thelate-night show, it’s called ‘The Last Show’ and every show will be the last show. That will be the theme of it: ‘Goodbye. This has been a fun run. Goodnight. I had a good time.’ I’m working on that right now and just touring. I still love doing standup.”
Todd Glass performs Nov. 26 and 28-29 at Helium Comedy Club, 2031 Sansom St. For more information, call 215-496-9001 or visit www.toddglass.com.