It was seven minutes long. And I was so nervous that I wore a hole in the carpet walking back and forth before the show. It went well. But I saw video of it years later and I couldn't even get through watching it.

I was at Emerson College and in ’92 I made a New Year’s resolution: I gave myself a whole year to, at some point, try stand-up comedy. Then the school newspaper had an ad about how Nick’s Comedy Stop was having a find Boston’s funniest college student competition. I went home, took a deep breath, called the number and signed up before I could chicken out.

My friends in my freshman year of college in mydorm told me i should be a comedian and there was a stand up showcase on campus. And one of my friends ripped down the poster and ran in my room with it and said "You are signing up for this" and I did. And not many other people did because she stole that poster.

I remember making fun of myself for being a commuter and having no friends and being alone all the time. [And] I didn’t bomb. I did okay, and I remember it was just like, This is what I’m doing now. Comedy is the only thing in my life I never had any doubt about. I obviously learned from a bunch of masters, but it always flowed into me. When you find what you’re supposed to do there’s not a lot of thinking. It just is. And if you love what you do, you transcend so much bullshit. My life was really unbalanced before. [How so?] I had found love in my job and I didn’t know how to do it in my personal life. I got to a pretty advanced age and comedy was a thousand miles down the road and every...[Read more]

[Well] I got out of college. And I - you know, I was funny with my friends. And my friend's wife said to me, you should be a comedian. And I thought, really? I just hadn't - that hadn't occurred to me. And then I went to the Improv, the Improvisation, to watch a show. And as I'm watching the show, I'm starting to think that, hey, maybe Jane's right. Maybe I could do this. In fact, not only am I starting to think I could do it. I think I could be really funny up there. Not only that, I'm going to go up there right now. I go up to the owner of the club, Budd Friedman, and I say, I'd like to go on. Now, I'm just sitting in the audience on a Saturday night. I leave my seat, and I go talk to the...[Read more]

My first standup set was really fun. I tried it randomly in Spartanburg, SC at a rock bar called Guitar Bar. It was an open mic poetry night and they said it was ok to tell jokes instead of poems. I invited a bunch of friends and acted like an idiot for 20 minutes, not knowing what I should do anyways. It was fun enough to make me really want to commit to trying it. So I moved to DC and that was that.