I'm not into looking crisp. That's not how I dress or who I am.
I had a job at a movie theater for like a year and a half and then a job at a health food store for like two years. Those were the only two jobs I ever had.
Im pretty lazy when it comes to creativity. I just want it to be easy and fun.
When I'm performing, I hope my research and my experience with those things I'm talking about rings true.
If I can learn a couple of phrases in Italian but do mostly weird, absurd music things, people will like it.
What I'm doing on stage now is just the tip of the iceberg.
I want to be able to make a movie.
As a child I was very into gadgets and machines and robots.
I would always write lyrics and songs on the piano.
I always composed music as a little kid.
I usually just say I'm a stand-up comedian, but I use looping machines to create ideas with my voice.
An improv artist's best instrument is their ability keep their antennae clean so they're able to receive what I call the connection to creativity. It's the thing that you see in any amazing moment that any human being is performing. Whether it's watching Michael Jordan navigating through all these attackers and then suddenly rising up and putting the ball in the most amazing way, or watching an actor on stage playing Shakespeare, but not thinking about the actor anymore or the stage or you or the chair, any of these kinds of moments of transcendence.
When you're improvising, you're relying on this connection to creativity.
You can either just have fun with the joke or you can have fun with the joke and think about the implication of it. It's totally up to the listener.
A lot of times, in music especially, it's producers making a political decision.
Ultimately I want to be able to create whatever I want whenever I want. And if that doesn't work, I don't mind just doing weird plays.
Whether I go to English-speaking countries or non-English-speaking countries I can just modulate to what works for them.
I like sincerely talking about market analysis and how marketing is ahead of design and design needs to catch up to fulfill the promise of the marketing.
When I'm at the piano, and I'm improvising some song about something, it usually oscillates between factual, absurd, and sincere.
When you look at a photo twenty years from now, if you look at a photo of a moment in your life, or some friends, or yourself, you just have a lot more information about what that memory was. That's exciting to me. It's like a form of time preservation, I suppose.
I've been taking pictures of wherever I go, or on planes, whatever.
I think it's important as a performer, no matter where I travel, if I run into someone at the airport or I'm having a conversation on an airplane, run into someone on the sidewalk, or you're waiting on a long line and you start talking to somebody, who doesn't really share a lot of your same views, but then you come to commonality, I think that's very very important as well.
My mom was a pretty hard worker. She worked her ass off, but I'd say we were middle class. I had a car in high school, so I loved the idea that I could mimic this lifestyle.
I always did music, but music is an easier thing for me. Making videos and doing comedy things was more of a challenge, so I was more interested in that. Music is a little bit more automatic.
I was in punk rock bands, heavy metal bands, world music bands, jazz groups, any type of music that would take me. I just love music.
