Clowning on Rodeo
“Ooh, I love your ensemble,” Maria Bamford coos to a young waiter at The Farm of Beverly Hills. It's morning and we're drinking ice water and eating banana bran muffins on the outdoor patio. The waiter is wearing a black-and-white checkered cowboy shirt and RRL jeans. And he doesn't know what to make of Maria's pronunciation: On-SAHM-blay. Compliment? Snide remark?
“What?” he asks.
“Your shirt, I mean. It’s great,” Maria replies. Sincere.
“Oh, thanks,” the waiter says before quickly turning away from the table that would certainly not be his biggest tip of the A.M.
We asked Maria—whom many know from The Comedians of Comedy and whose impersonations range from the cloying office manager at work to her Minnesota Nice mom—to join us for a stroll down one of the world’s great luxury retail thoroughfares. Partly because we assumed she feels the same way many of us do about the street: “I feel … inadequate. Filthy. Filthy and inadequate,” she laughs, wearing cargo pants and a black T-shirt that reads “Maria Bamford Supports Me in My Journey.”
Maria has trouble making eye contact, she is unfailingly sweet, she worries about her “Mennonite” haircut, she is anxiety personified; this is why we love her.
A native of Duluth, Minn., Bamford falls into the trap many of us do in L.A. when it comes to the closet conundrum: whether to make an effort or to go casual. “I always want to be a person who wears elegant, fantastic outfits,” she says, “but when it comes down to it, when I want to dress up, I go, That’s just uncomfortable. And I also feel like it makes people uncomfortable as well. That’s my fear, if I dress really well, they’ll be like, ‘Who are you, fancy pants?’”
For Bamford, an anxiety-provoking half-off sale in Beverly Hills.
Watching makeover shows doesn’t do anything to quell that fear. “I love those shows, and I do try to think about the advice,” Maria says. “Like if they have a flat-chested lady, they always have something poufy around the neck to draw attention to the arms. But at the end of the day,” she says, preparing her snooty stylist voice, “they always seem to tell you, 'You should make a LOT more money. Why are you so poor?'”
It’s hard not to feel the same way with one’s nose pressed up against the glass at Louis Vuitton. The muffins at The Farm were nom-nom, but Maria lives on the eastside and mainly shops there, miles from Hermes. Two of her favorite stores: Clover in Silver Lake and Society of the Spectacle in Highland Park.
“Amy and Katie [at Society of the Spectacle], they’re like my best friends,” Maria says. “Amy also has a pug, and I live a block from there. I prefer a boutique, because then it’s manageable choices. And I think, How far could I go wrong when they’ve made these wonderful choices? I can’t go to a Macy's or a big place anymore, because I always make bad decisions."
While photographing Bamford on Pretty Woman-central, she also shared with us her new daily affirmation, which we assumed she employed while mugging at the back door of Dior.
“It goes like this,” she says. “What would I act like if I were the most beautiful person in the world? And I think I would feel this way:
Whatever I put on is just awesome.
And I look uh-mazing.
And my face is always just … GORGEOUS.”
Maria Bamford’s next Highland Park Sing-Along and Comedy Show is on Wed, Aug. 4th from 7-9 p.m. at Café de Leche in Highland Park. The theme? Hippie songs. Click here for more info.
Awesome! Maria needs her own makeover show.