Tweet to Aisha Tyler on Twitter.com, and the actress/comic who famously tells her friend Kanye West to rap faster in “Slow Jamz” will tweet back to you.
“Tweeting has completely eaten my life,” Tyler said from Davenport, Iowa, a recent stop in her nationwide tour that brings her to the D.C. Improv today through Saturday. “Twitter is really good for comedians,” Tyler added about the social networking Web site exploding in popularity. “Most of the time during the tour when I’m not performing, I’m in front of my computer in a hotel, writing. It’s hard to be innovative and radical on Twitter, but for fans who follow me, I’m trying to keep it interesting. I’m trying not to write, ‘I just ate a bagel.’ ”
Case in point, Tyler’s Saturday tweet: “U shouldn’t be able to call yourself ‘Starbucks’ just ‘cause u sell their coffee. Selling my car on craigslist doesn’t make me a BMW dealer.”
Eight years after becoming the host of E!’s Emmy-winning “Talk Soup,” Tyler reaches D.C. with more than 30 film and TV credits to her name. “Friends” fanatics remember her as the professor who dated Ross and Joey. More recently, Tyler co-starred in the first season of “Ghost Whisperer,” playing Jennifer Love Hewitt’s friend who talked to the dead.
Tyler, a 6-foot-tall San Francisco native, started her career as a stand-up comic, but found herself unable to hit the road for extended tours as acting offers kept coming in, she said.
The writers strike that dragged out from late 2007 into early 2008 slowed down productions and gave Tyler the opportunity to immerse herself in stand-up on the road again while her acting friends were going nuts in L.A., she said.
Touring led to Tyler’s first one-hour Comedy Central special, “Aisha Tyler Is Lit,” which originally aired in late February and is now available on DVD.
Fans of the special, don’t expect Tyler’s D.C. shows to sound familiar.
“This is totally a new hour with no material from the special,” she said. “I talk a lot about marriage and married couples’ sex lives, but I don’t do the battle of the sexes or beat up on guys.”
Allyson Jaffe, co-owner of the D.C. Improv, said she booked Tyler because the comic “has a good reputation among other improv clubs for making people laugh, and that’s our job here.”
Tyler warns she’s going to use “grown-up words” on stage, so “parents, don’t bring your 14-year-old ‘Ghost Whisperer’ fan or it will be a very quiet ride home.”
If You Go
Aisha Tyler
Where: D.C. Improv, 1140 Connecticut Ave.
When: 8:30 p.m. today and Thursday; 8 and 10:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday
Info: $15 to $17; 202-296-7008, dcimprov.com
