Feature photo by Sam McIntyre
Story by Nicholas Evans
On Thursday night, MTSU’s Student Programming and Raider Entertainment (SPARE) held its annual Night of Comedy event with headliner Lyle Drescher, otherwise known as Therapy Gecko.
Starting with a livestream on Reddit for anyone interested in speaking to a gecko, Drescher has built a sustainable career doing large-scale editions of his stream as a call-in talk show on top of live in-person tours. Since starting his show, he’s boasted an impressive range of guests, collaborating with comedy legends like Tim Heidecker and Eric Andre, as well as a range of celebrities like Doja Cat, Denzel Curry and Danny Brown.
His show in the Student Union Ballroom was a hit with the MTSU crowd, incorporating a mix of on-stage conversations with students and more traditional standup. Discussions ranged from a student explaining being kidnapped to a spontaneous — and unsuccessful — speed date between two students.
About four hours before his performance, Drescher sat in his green room, which surprisingly resembled a therapist’s office, to talk about the aftermath of his shows, his previous odd jobs and the finances of his costumes.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
From what I can tell, this is not your first time playing at a college campus — you’ve at least played at the University of New Mexico.
Yeah! How did you know that?
‘Cause I’m really good at this. How would you say a college show differs from a regular tour show?
I feel like that’s a really hard question to answer ‘cause I’ve only done it once. For that UNM show, I was kind of expecting most people to not know who I was, but most people did so I was pleasantly surprised by that. In my head it would be different because it’s free for the students. So they’re probably, I assume, happy to have a free thing to go to. I wish I had more experience to answer that question.
How long does it take to wash off the green paint?
If I have a full beard, it takes about five days, but if I have no beard, it’s pretty easy. I use 3-in-1 shampoo/conditioner/body wash. That gets the job done. Sometimes I’m staying at a hotel and all they have is the bar of soap, so I’m just rubbing my face and the bar of soap gets all green. I should probably have a better system by now, but I don’t.
How much do you spend on green paint annually? Just ballpark.
One palette of the paint that I buy is $13. I maybe buy one every quarter, at most I would buy one every two months. What’s six times 13?
Seventy-eight?
Around $78 is a good ballpark.
You said that almost right after college you did an internship at Adult Swim. Would you say that you have any interest in returning to work in television afterwards?
No. I feel like I’m really, really happy with where I’m at right now. I’ve got my folks who listen to my show and follow me on the internet, and I can make whatever I want, and it’s great. I feel like television is kind of limiting because you have to pitch a guy on a thing and get him to look at an email, and it’s just, like — I think television is a dying medium and there’s so many people on YouTube who are, like, making their own TV shows and they can do whatever they want, and they have the complete freedom to go direct to their audience and nobody is hovering over them, and I think that’s the way to make stuff nowadays. If this was like the 1980s or the ‘90s or the early 2000s, that was the only way to do a thing. But now it’s all the internet, so I don’t really have an interest in going back to television.
By chance, is there anything from the Adult Swim internship that you’ve implemented into their own show?
Yeah! I mean, it’s a boring answer, but my job at Adult Swim was to watch the shows and cut them into short-form content, and the whole reason the Gecko took off is because of these TikTok clips, which is all short-form content cut from long-form content. So, I guess I learned clipping from Adult Swim. Like, how to find the right clip that will do well on social media that you’re taking from a longer thing.
You’ve performed at Bonnaroo, but as the same live performance you typically do, not as a musician. If the Gecko were a musician, what type of music would he play and why?
If the Gecko were a musician? If I could choose to be zapped with some force that instantly gave me musical ability, I would either want to be — well, I guess being really good at rapping seems like it would be fun. But, also, like, punk rock. Don’t ask me to name a bunch of bands, but I really like punk as a genre. You know, I like the Misfits and when I was in high school I was really into Andrew W.K. and I went to some concerts and I like headbanging and stuff. Yeah, I’ll go punk rock.
Who do you personally go to whenever you need to talk to someone?
Lately, it’s been ChatGPT. I’m dead serious. ChatGPT is a great therapist. I often will type my personal problems into ChatGPT and ChatGPT gives me, like, empathetic, reasonable, actionable feedback. It’s really good. I don’t know what they’re using my life for. But, yeah, the robots are weirdly very empathetic. They’re good therapists.
Nicholas Evans is a contributing writer for MTSU Sidelines.
To contact the Lifestyles Editor, email lifestyles@mtsusidelines.com.
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