Related posts tagged 'Travel'
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Related posts tagged 'Travel'
A lot of people seek out spiritual travel-sites without any ties to a specific religion: When they’re in Israel and they’ll go to the Western Wall and feel so spiritual there; a month later they’re in Thailand and they’ll go to a Buddhist retreat. They just glom on for a minute and play pretend.
It's so hard. I'd say walk around the city you're visiting if you can. Make it interesting. Yoga in a hotel room is great, too. Find a youtube exercise video and do it in your room. That's what I did for a while.
I don't think you can say there's a "best" part. It comes down to what you're into. Thailand has a way bigger party scene than Myanmar, for instance. So if you're into partying, I'd go to Thailand. But Myanmar is far less mapped out. So if you're into exploring, I'd say Myanmar.
Each country is its own thing. And the experiences you have will depend on your attitude, who you meet, and even things like the weather. So find some place that interests you and realize that no matter where you choose, it'll be the right place because you'll be traveling.
I'll refer to some paraphrased advice from "Vagabonding" by Rolf Potts. Once you decide you want to travel, stop by EVERYTHING. Make no new purchases. Every shirt you don't buy puts you closer to being in some faraway place. Every lunch you pack from home gets you a little closer to crazy foreign street foods. Every pregame session and snuck in flask put you that much closer to drinking a local beer in a new country.
You can save way more than you think. But you gotta stop making all purchases. And spend as little on recreation as you can. You can save up thousands like that in no time.
And you could go to SE Asia for 4 months on $5,500. Guaranteed. Flights included.
Most of the major cities in their own way can be a little overrated because of tourism. Underrated cities are great. Chattanooga, places like that. Milwaukee is Chicago without the traffic.
There's a lot to hate about Sweden. Beautiful people, the high cheek bones, the fact that every person speaks better english than we do and the durability and great warranty plans on a brand new Volvo.
And the last place I played golf? Well the last place I can think of is I was working on a job in Hawaii with Emma Stone, and one day I got to play golf at a place called Weilea on a place called Oahu. I played with Scott Simpson, and I played with 3 other great, great Hawaiian guys who were SO much fun and so positive, and one was the club champion. And when you play with great players, you play better, it just elevates your game. A high tide raises all boats, you've heard that one?
I played so well, I won $50. Winning $50 playing golf? That's money. So I won $50, and they couldn't believe I could putt, and that I didn't choke. We played into the sunset on the pacific ocean, with leaning p...
My favorite place to play golf is in Ireland. that's where my ancestors come from, and it's the most beautiful country to play golf in, and when you come as a guest to play golf you are treated like a king.
The oddest… well, I was eating at a sushi bar. I would go to sushi bars with a book I had called "Making out in Japanese." it was a small paperback book, with questions like "can we get into the back seat?" "do your parents know about me?" "do you have a curfew?"
And I would say to the sushi chef "Do you have a curfew? Do your parents know about us? And can we get into the back seat?"
And I would always have a lot of fun with that, but that one particular day, he said "would you like some fresh eel?" and I said "yes I would." so he came back with a fresh eel, a live eel, and then he walked back behind a screen and came back in 10 seconds with a no-longer-alive eel. It was the freshest thin...
Related posts tagged 'Performing'
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Related posts tagged 'Performing'
The tricky part about answering this, is that it is a bit of both. It was totally not set up. And was I mad, yes and no. I was mad that he wrecked my desk, but I was happy that he gave me an excuse to get mad at my guest on TV. I am always nice to my guests. But I love it when things go wrong on television. So I was kind of playing the character of the angry TV host. Because it is funny watching somebody get mad. People don't understand what happened there and give me some grief about it, saying that I should have just let him cut the desk and smiled. But the thing is, that would not have been nearly as funny.
It was pretty crazy. I already had a whole rhythm to my week as a writer, so it took a while to change it up and focus more on performing than on writing. Here's what helped a ton: Rob Klein and Bryan Tucker took over most of the Head Writer job and they're two of the funniest writers I've ever met. Rob and Bryan and I write a lot together for the show. Also Dennis McNicholas who used to be one of the head writers with Tina Fey and Adam McKay started producing WU last year and that was awesome. And our WU writers are the best and made our jobs a lot more fun: Pete Schultz (Leslie calls him "Franklin), Josh Patten (Leslie calls him "Clarence"), Katie Rich (Leslie calls her "Rachel"), and Mega...
I’ve definitely seen some crazy shit. I saw this one show where a guy goes up and somehow picks himself up in a plastic garbage bag. It was so upsetting. I’ve also seen a guy in L.A. jump up and land on thumbtacks. Someone from Chicago, Ian Abramson, did sort of break the mold of a stand-up comic—he found himself performing on Conan, and he did his bit where he wears a shock collar.
We shot video for many many years. When I would edit the videos and see myself cracking up it ruined the bit. So I got good at keeping a straight face. Practice.
Definitely. I kind of hate when I hear a performer who says they "never get nervous." I just don't believe that.
I’ve learned that if I foul it up, if I pause wrong or stumble over a word, the joke doesn’t go as good, and sometimes it doesn’t even go at all. It’s so much about timing. If there’s a three-second gap and I don’t say the next joke, I can lose the whole thing.
It really is a lesson I realized early on: You better know what you’re gonna say and say it the right way. Even if I wasn’t doing one-liners, even if it more traditional, telling stories, I’d still have to say it in the exact right way. It’s just how my brain works. I’m lucky all of this just meshed, you know? I didn’t decide to talk like this or sound like this. The surreal jokes and the voice just worked together. It was all by acci...
It always was and it still is. … For most standups, you have to be in the moment because anything can happen in the room. … Your job as the comedian is to let everyone know that everything’s gonna be OK. The most extreme example is like if someone had a heart attack — which has happened to me and other people that I know. It’s crazy. But you’re the one on stage, you have lights pointed at you, and you have a microphone, and you have to say OK, 'Well, we’re going to deal with this and everything’s going to be fine.'
I started to take improv classes with Washington Improv Theater at the exact same time I started going around to open mics in DC to watch and if lucky perform. Took about a month of watching before I really got to get on the microphone at any of the shows. So that month of foundations of improv learning with the great Dave Johnson really influenced my approach to standup. Not that I wanted to get up and improvise but the moments of not being funny on stage was easier to cope with after having learned to relax and build from nothing in class.
The thing that I love about Scott is that he is not an agent of chaos, but he is an agent of mischief. He loves to paint other people into a corner. And it’s fun, it’s really fun. You know, there are times when it’s frustrating because you might have a thing that you wanted to do but now because you did screw up a word or something, he jumps on that — but, you know, everyone is in agreement. ... It’s entirely up to the improviser, to the guest, to say, 'You know what, yes, I am going to go along with this idea, this very challenging idea that he has pushed me into, because it’ll be fun to try to get out of it. It’ll be fun to try to make sense of this.'
And, ultimately, that’s one of the th...
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