He is also -- and here comes the stunning part -- 29 years old. No joke. Milonakis is a former tech support staffer at a Manhattan accounting firm, and for a time he took improv classes in Manhattan in hopes of breaking into showbiz. His youthful appearance is neither an act nor a miracle of makeup. It's the result of a "growth hormone problem," as he told the New York Observer a couple years ago, when "Super Bowl" went national. It is a problem he is reluctant to discuss. He does comedy, after all, and there's nothing amusing about a medical condition.
"I just hate the age thing," he says at lunch. "It's just annoying to me because people ask me my age like 100 times a day. I don't even acknowledge it."
The vehicle of Milonakis's fame -- the World Wide Web -- makes pinpointing his date of birth pretty simple, however. But why belabor the matter? Part of the joy of his shtick is the assumption that it springs from the addled mind of a rambunctious high school sophomore, and maybe to some extent it does. There's a bit of Pee-wee Herman in all this, a grown-up playing a juvenile and mugging with abandon. But the Andy Milonakis on MTV doesn't seem like anything as formal as an alter ego. He's more like a teenager who is channeled so effortlessly that you can't imagine it's an act of channeling.
Still, there's something a bit disorienting about hanging out with the guy. It's like the movie "Big" but in reverse; he's an adult in the body of a tweener. You want to ask him questions like "Are you married?" and "Did you go to college?" but those questions seem inappropriate or ridiculous. (The answers are no and no, for the record.) If you were to read the transcript of a conversation with him, you'd assume he was a grown-up. But face to face, his adulthood is very hard to get your head around, and every once in a while, over lunch, he says things like "These onion rings taste like Satan's bellybutton," a thought you wouldn't hear from many people on the cusp of 30.
"When I first met him, I didn't know what to make of him," says Kimmel, calling from Los Angeles. He co-created and co-produces Milonakis's show. "I didn't know how old he was, I didn't know if he was on drugs. And I still don't know what to make of him."
He's doesn't sound like he's kidding. "There are a lot of mysteries about Andy. Until very recently, he didn't have a checking account. He must be the only person in America with a TV show who doesn't have a checking account. He's a weird kid."
But . . . he's not actually a kid.
"We'll see if he's an adult," Kimmel says. "I'll believe it when he has a kid. Until then, I don't know."
Kids don't seem imminent in Milonakis's life. Asked if the ladies treat him better now that he's semi-famous, he laughs a little uncomfortably, the way any 14-year-old would. "The ladies," he says, putting on his fake Lothario voice. Then he adds: "I was in a bar recently and there were some women there who asked me to sign my signature in places that would make my mother blush."
Cats or Dogs?
Those familiar with his Super Bowl rant will know what to expect from "The Andy Milonakis Show." It is so infantile and so winning that you can't believe anyone had the nerve to put it on the air. It looks as if it cost 45 cents to produce and Milonakis is in nearly every frame.
Much of the time he's swooping down on strangers in the streets of New York and baffling them with non sequiturs and clumsy freestyle rap. In a segment called "Weird Compliments" he walks up to an elderly woman and asks, "Is it me or did you just get out of a bathtub full of rainbows?" In another, he asks a stranger to interview him, helpfully handing over a list of questions.
"What do you like better, cats or dogs?" the man asks, reading the handout.
