Wikipedia says that Seth MacFarlane is an actor, voice actor, animator, screenwriter, producer, director, and singer—and it would be great if I could just cut and paste the rest of their entry right here and go have a drink with Seth MacFarlane. Seth drinks Jack Daniel’s, and he does not become a mean drunk, which I think says a lot about a person’s character. I’ve seen him in crowds, and he literally suffers fools gladly. Seth was raised in Connecticut, and his allegiance to the spirit of New England is genuine. As a boy, Seth was a girl—and I mean that in a good way. Boys are usually immature and unfocused, but Seth knew what he wanted to do in life when he was two. By five he understood the concept of “getting into the animation business.” At 24 he was the youngest executive producer in television, ever. He’s still not 40, the bastard, and he runs an empire that includes not just the golden goose, Family Guy, but also American Dad!, The Cleveland Show, and the forthcoming Cosmos; has a burgeoning career as a seriously good singer, albeit completely in the wrong decade; and is now a movie director with Ted, which raked in more than $500 million at the box office. He’s the Ryan Seacrest of talent.

Seth MacFarlane loves science fiction and is an atheist, as it should be. He lives in L.A. now, and the first thing you should know about adult Seth is he never travels anywhere without a 45-piece orchestra. When we see an establishing shot of the Griffin household on Family Guy, it requires 45 people to play for three seconds to make that come off just right. When Seth has a party at his endless house, a 45-piece orchestra plays. And plays music 95 percent of the audience has never heard of and hates—that’s gangsta.

Seth has a deep, cringing disdain for anything trendy, and when I say trendy, I mean after 1960. At the Grammys last year, Seth’s choice of best newcomer was Jack Jones. I was performing in Las Vegas recently when an offer came in from a promoter for me to do a live show with Dennis Miller, to which I said, “Fuck no!” I love Dennis as a friend, but why would I want to do stand-up in front of an audience that’s half made up of the very nitwits I relish calling out for being the assholes they are? But it made me think: wouldn’t it be fun to do a show in Vegas with a non-conservative person who could sing and tell jokes and ad-lib with the audience? Well, I don’t have to tell you who the only person who fit that bill was: Wayne Brady. But when he wasn’t available, I called Seth, because who else in our era, when you think about it, can stand on a stage and sing for real, be funny, wetten panties, and pay for an orchestra?

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