For a few years all I listened to was The Smiths, Things Fall Apart by The Roots, Love Is Dead by The Mr. T Experience, Nostalgic for Nothing by J Church, and the first Servotron album No Room for Humans. And that was it. For two or three years, those are the albums I listened to. I just fell into this very bizarre phase where my head shut down on me. I just obsessed over things and those albums happened to be in that rotation of me obsessing over things.
When young comedians ask me for advice that's the one thing I always say is if they're improvisers I'm like do improv, don't make that your sole thing. And at the end of the day when you do your best work you also just kinda, by definition flush it down the toilet and never do it again.
If there's one regret I have of my time in comedy it's that I really I was so obsessed with improv for so many years and I exclusively did improv for the first 6 years or 7 years. I was doing comedy and then I started doing solo work and stand up, a bit of writing, making videos, and really going into it on that end.
There was a lot of soul searching and at the end of the day I looked back and realized it was all worth it and successful in its own way and it's led to me having this career that's much more in my hands and in my control than it would have been otherwise.
Life gave me a weird path to walk and it wasn't a very traditional path and that's good, I enjoyed it greatly. But I don't think that it was anybody's traditional definition of success but I really am thankful for it.
I'm actually in a funny place now where I'm more secure than I've ever been. My career is more stable than it's ever been and that's nice, but it's put this thought in my mind where I'm like, "I have more to lose now." I still have to remind myself that I can't be quiet and back away from the things that have got me here, which is kind of doing it my way and not necessarily caring what the consequences are. A lot of that comes back to music.
We've switched to text messages, we do anything we can to avoid being on the phone.
It's nice that I can go on the road and there are more people to buy tickets. There are also more people to piss off who might not buy a ticket if I say the wrong thing. But I have to remember that if I stifle what my gut tells me to say in the name of "What if that person doesn't buy a ticket someday?" that's just not how I came up or how I thought. I have to consciously remind myself that even though things are going better now, I still have to be who I've always been. I can't get gun shy or scared about that.
I really think suicide has a branding problem because it has a tagline. It has a catch phrase, and I bet a lot of us know it. It sucks. It's really condescending. I bet we've heard it. Suicide - the coward's way out.
We don't judge people for dying in car crashes. But we do judge people when they die of suicide.
Even the prettiest performers and even the most handsome performers, when they get that opportunity, they still need to step up to the plate and deliver.
You need an immense amount of luck and an immense amount of perseverance to even be on the playing field for success on a grand scale. You work as hard as you can for ten years so you finally have a chance to be lucky - It's really rare that somebody gets lucky. It's usually a combination of a lot of talent, a lot of hard work. People that get lucky also tend to be really great looking.
Everyone needs some trial and error figuring out how it's gonna work for them. I could have gotten that out of the way a little sooner but I think you're totally right, the way I kind of think about things and the way I wanted to put myself out there doesn't fit the traditional side of things. I needed things like podcasts and YouTube and things that allow you to get it out there yourself and stand in the flames.
For sure I think that at the end of the day if I got started a little sooner on stuff that was more written more permanent I would have just made a lot of mistakes earlier. I don't know if it would have led to earlier success but I think it would have led to thicker skin and it would have gotten the ball rolling.
Being comedian outside of performing, you're someone who's analyzing life, and thinking about it, and observing so much. In my opinion, it can make you feel sort of on the outside looking in.
There's a weird loneliness that comes with being a comedian, especially standup. Even with improvisers, I think there are certain moments of truth where you feel really, really connected to audiences, and that's when you're on stage. I think there's definitely something inside the personality of a person who wants to be a comedian that's looking to connect at all times. That's where the adrenaline rushes in their lives come from.
There's a lot of exhibitionists who want to tell their stories anonymously and there's a whole lot of voyeurs who want to feel like a fly on the wall and hear about people's lives.
I think public access television has more to do with my career than anything else in the world. And that's a system that's been around of many decades and is something that people think is so outdated that they don't even think it still exists.
You need an immense amount of luck and perseverance to even be on the playing field for success on a grand scale.
When you try to go back and watch improv on tape, it almost never feels as good as it did when a crowd was laughing at it.
People who get lucky, also tend to be really great looking, which is luck on some level, but it is also just the fact of the matter.
I was that kid who did every activity when I was in high school. There wasn't a day that I didn't stay after school to do something. I just had my hands in everything. And I was similarly very, very angry. I was an angry little guy.
The Internet seems like a safe house for the opposite mentality, for cynics and for jerks and for people who want to lash out. And it's a valid thing. It's a valid forum and I'm not going say that they aren't valid feelings. But it's sad. Considering the potential that something like the Internet, that connects so many people, has for good. I think it's sad that it's used so often for nothing but unfounded, overzealous negativity.
There are many hundreds of millions of people who have jobs harder than (mine), and I also remind myself of that every day. No matter how frustrating this can be, I am very lucky that I have been able to cobble together a little life, in which (comedy) is what I do. I am certainly not in danger of getting stuck in a mine anytime soon.
I'm not good at math. Numbers are a terrifying thing to me. My father is a whiz with money and the stock market, and he tries to explain it to me, and I find it terrifying.
