Bill Maher brings friends Ross and Spade to Hawaii for shows

Bill Maher openly aspires to be “the Don Ho of New Year’s” with his annual shows in Honolulu for the eve and on Maui for New Year’s Day. For his fifth tour of the islands, perhaps wary that his act will start to sound like “Tiny Bubbles” on repeat, America’s premier political comedian is changing things up a bit, bringing a couple of guests along for the party.

Maher has had surprise guests open for him before — most memorably, Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder two years ago — but this year he shares the bill for the first time, with fellow comedians Jeffrey Ross and David Spade.

“I just thought after four years, make it a bigger show,” Maher said in a phone call from Los Angeles, where his “Real Time With Bill Maher” is shot. “It’s New Year’s, it’s a holiday time.

“It’s a great way every year to not only get together with some people who I don’t see enough, who I’m so fond of and who make me laugh constantly, but to kind of bring that to the audience, too. … So yes, Jeff and Dave this year. Next year it’ll be two others. Hopefully there’ll be some surprises.”

SPADE IS best known for his snarky characters on “Saturday Night Live,” roles on sitcoms such as “Just Shoot Me” and a movie career that includes the popular “Grown Ups” series. But he got his start doing stand-up comedy in Arizona after graduating in business from Arizona State University.

“When I did ‘Saturday Night Live,’ I did (stand-up) less,” Spade said by phone, “but I still tried to do it, do colleges, and now, I just did a show the other night at a theater with (Adam) Sandler, (Nick) Swardson, Norm McDonald and (Rob) Schneider. It was pretty fun. I still do Comedy Store. I still do some road gigs. I love it.”

As a comedian, he brings the same bite he showed on “SNL” in recurring bits such as “Hollywood Minute” and with characters such as the flight attendant for Total Bastard Airlines (“Buh-bye!”) while also showing skill as a storyteller (also on display in his new book, “Almost Interesting”).

Spade credits growing up the youngest of three brothers and his diminutive size for his comedic style: “I was a little pipsqueak, so it was hard for me to get a foothold out there with the world, not just with girls, which was impossible, but with guys, too, just to be hanging out. I was sort of mumbling sarcastic jokes to myself, and that turned into a style over time to get people to want to hang out.”

He anticipates the three longtime friends will put on a loose and fun night of comedy.

“It’s sort of like what I did with Sandler the other night. We just got together backstage, you know, 10 minutes before the show started. We’re like, ‘What are we doing here?’

“If (Bill) says come up there, I’ll come up there. Whatever he wants to do.”

ROSS’ JOB is to be downright insulting, whereas Spade is snarky. Years of work on Comedy Central’s annual celebrity roasts has earned him the title of Roastmaster General.

He says he never planned this path, but rather was moved in that direction as comedy fans became more boisterous.

“Roasting became more and more popular, and I became better and better at it and audiences around the country became more and more rambunctious,” Ross said in a phone call, “so I felt like it was a way to make my shows more interactive and break up what other people were doing, just to set myself apart.”

And Ross has expanded his niche beyond roasting celebrities. He has roasted everyday people on his show, “The Burn With Jeff Ross,” and during live shows.

How does he manage to hand out brutal insults without making his targets want to kill him?

“That’s the art,” he said. “That’s going right to the edge. The hardest part is knowing where the lines are and just crossing it, just with your pinkie, just a little bit. You want everyone to leave the roast going, ‘That was so much fun.’”

Ross’ comedy took a serious turn last year when he roasted inmates in his TV special “Jeff Ross Roasts Criminals: Live From Brazos County Jail.” He admits he feared for his life “the entire time, every minute,” but he did it to bring some meaning to his work after seeing a statistic that 9 percent of American males would go to jail at some point in their lives.

“I thought this was a national emergency, this was crazy; and I thought in order to roast crime in America, I had to personify it. I had to find a jail that would let me in, and I asked hundreds and finally found one.”

Audience members at the Hawaii shows might get that same opportunity if they are willing — Ross says crowd roasting is a possibility.

“It’s New Year’s, and I feel like I owe it to the crowd. … Everybody wants to be part of the show, so if you’re reading this and you’ve always wanted to be roasted, this is your chance.”

MAHER’S JOB calls for him to do his own roasting of sorts, but as host of the topical HBO talk show “Real Time,” his targets are largely politicians, and the year before a presidential election is an Olympic season of sorts for him. The crowded Republican field leaves the proud liberal many marks, but he expects Democrat Hillary Clinton to emerge as our next president.

“Is Bernie (Sanders) more closely aligned with my own views? Certainly. That’s why I support him and sent him money. But I’m also a seasoned political watcher at this point, and the chances that a 73-year-old socialist Jew is gonna get elected president, I think, is not as great as Hillary Clinton.”

Though Maher prefers Sanders, he says he’d be fine with a second President Clinton.

“I don’t lose sight of the fact that although she’s not exactly aligned with all my politics … she’s pretty close. And politics is the art of the possible. And I don’t worry that Hillary is gonna destroy the world the way I do with Donald Trump.”

Maher also sees (and fears) the possibility of a Republican winning the presidency.

“When you only have two parties and you have an electorate that is … at best uninformed and half uninvolved, anything is possible. Every election in this country is basically a coin flip. Even when it’s a landslide, they win by 60-40. Obama won pretty handily last time, and he got 3 percent more of the vote than Mitt Romney did.”

With the end of the Obama administration about a year away, Maher has a wish list of things he’d like to see taken care of before the president whose campaign he famously donated a million dollars to leaves office. Tops on his list is addressing climate change, which the president did recently in Paris with an international accord. Next up is an issue close to Maher’s heart.

“If he has time, I would love to see the last thing on his agenda be weed. You know, he’s been a real hard-ass on weed, but in his second term he managed to come out a little more. He went to a prison. He talked about how we incarcerate too many people, too many nonviolent drug offenders. He said pot is less damaging than alcohol, but then he appointed an attorney general (Loretta Lynch) who proudly said she doesn’t even agree with that. She thinks pot is terrible and it should never be legal, even for medical. …

“But that, would be my guess, would be the last thing. And I understand why it had to be last. You cannot be the first black president and right off the bat make your ‘I have a blunt’ speech.”