Sadly, Aziz Ansari Is Nothing Like Tom Haverford In Real Life

As every Parks And Recreation viewer knows, Tom Haverford is the ultimate pimp (not literally; just in the rap music sense). Each season finds him indulging in a new round of insanely baller shenanigans, like that time he helped run Entertainment 720 into the ground by giving iPads to everyone who visited his office, or last season’s burgeoning ‘Rent-A-Swag’ side scam, where he hired out his rich-person clothes to silly kids.

Sadly, the real Aziz is nothing like that.

In an interview that was published on Vulture yesterday, the guy who’s famous for coming up with loudmouthed nutcase ‘Raaaaaaaandy!’  revealed his quieter, more mature side while promoting his new comedy special Buried Alive, which debuts on Netflix on November 1. “I realized that in Buried Alive, I’m really only talking about three things: babies, marriage, and a little bit of How do you meet someone?”, said Aziz.

Yep, that’s really all he’s talking about these days.

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He doesn’t want your R. Kelly bootlegs anymore, guys

The interview begins with Aziz dropping into a New York record store, where the clerk offers him some recommendations — “a local disco group, a singer who sounds like Grimes, a compilation of Italian New Wave” — before striking upon some signature Aziz gold.

Finally, the clerk leads us to a stack of “unofficial pressings” near the back. He flips to a rec­ord in the middle, certain he’s got a winner: an R. Kelly bootleg that Ansari has never seen.

“I almost don’t want to buy it,” he tells me. “It’s too perfect for your article…”

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He’s not lying when he says he’s into babies at the moment

He’s into babies so much that he’s even forwarding factual essays about ‘biological clocks’ to female journalists.

Over lunch at Parm, we return to the subject of marriage, and when someone would finally decide to do it. I remind Ansari that children are a biological factor for women, and the clock starts at 30. “I read in The Atlantic that that was a false age,” he says. “I should look that up.” A few days later, Ansari e-mails me the fertility article in question with the relevant sections highlighted. Turns out I was citing a widely reported study using French birth records from 1670 to 1830, and the modern drop-off is closer to 40. He was right.

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He visited a hypnotist to help him stop reading Reddit so much

Ansari reveals that he’s left his phone at home on purpose. He’s trying to do this more often, because he’s worried about what constant screen time is doing to his brain. He uses porn-blocking software to cut off his access to non-pornographic sites like news blogs and Reddit. And since he does nothing halfway, Ansari recently visited a hypnotist for help. “It’s like quitting smoking,” he says. “But you always have a lit cigarette, and you have to smoke for work, and you have to do it to have a social life.”

Tom Haverford doesn’t need Reddit to have a social life! Oh wait, yes he does.

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Nick Offerman thinks he’s had heaps of sex, but I doubt it

Parks and Recreation co-star Nick Offerman has his own theories about his co-star’s personal life: “It must have been a great deal of fun to be at that young age and to be handed the success of something like Parks. So I would hope that he sowed some wild oats about the country, enjoying the relatively unattached status that he boasted.”

Then Ron Swanson shed a tear for all the young sex he had.

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Fine, his love advice sounds exactly like Tom Haverford

“Keep getting divorced all the time. Don’t have kids. We’ll be real happy.”

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Sorry, the rest of his life sounds boring as shit

Now, at 30, Ansari seems to be settling down. He just bought a house in L.A. (“The way my friend feels about his wife, I feel about my house,” he jokes.) He’s concerned about his health enough to own a juicer. His friend Chelsea Peretti (Brooklyn Nine-Nine) says that Ansari has recently begun to host dinner parties.

Jesus Christ, Tom Haverford would be so upset right now.

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