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I like a lot of stuff. In high school I LOVED punk. Gang of Four. The Ramones, The Clash. AND - I also loved the opposite of that which were bands like Pink Floyd, Rush, and Frank Zappa. New bands: The National, Vampire Weekend, Savages, Elenor Friedberger, Radiohead, Flaming Lips.
The best thing you can do is write, write, write, and write. And read. A lot. And fail. The more you fail the better you'll get. At SNL you could have an amazing show and then just BOMB the following Wednesday at the table read. Stay tough. Don't compare yourself to other people. Just follow your path and have fun.
It's best to say "How would I like to be approached by someone?" If you're eating dinner with a gf/bf or in the middle of something, it can be awkward to get interrupted. But if your standing alone in a bookstore or waiting in line for a coffee, totally fine. Pics can be weird bc if people see you do one, then they all ask for them. Sometimes the weirdos ruin it for the others.
I purposely do something on air that I haven't planned to get me out of my head. It's like tricking your brain. It makes me feel like I screwed up so I can except that I screwed up and relax.
The sketch I was the most proud of was probably one called Do You Go Runnin Round Re Ro and it was a take on British Gangster movies and how we Americans can't understand what the actors are saying with those thick Yorkshire accents and all.
The first time we did it, Fred just starting doing that voice ("Whaaaaaat are you doing here?!") and Kristen and I were like "What?" It was so funny. I hadn't heard him do it before. Man o man it made me laugh. Then it became a game of who could stretch out the vowels in their sentences the most. It got crazy.
It was a blast. First movie I ever did. Major memories: Danny McBride and I watching the Tyra Banks Show at lunch everyday and the stuntman breaking his leg for real in the opening scene!
It’s made me quit caring so much about my career, and where it’s at, and what I’m doing. It’s so hard to remember the career is the thing that’s just always happening. I think we always look forward to when will I have the job where I go, “There, I did it. I made it to the top of my personal mountain of achievements. And here I am.” I think Roger Waters had a great quote, that I will misquote, but the gist of what he said was: In Pink Floyd, they were always playing and he felt like it was a big rehearsal for a big show until he finally came to realize the big show was always happening. It wasn’t a rehearsal, it was always happening. I could relate to that a little bit.
I think just reminding myself to quit thinking that there’s some kind of perfect show to capture; to remind myself constantly that it is comedy and mistakes are funny. Anything that is too perfect—it kind of becomes too sterile and then it does not feel genuine. If it doesn’t feel genuine then there’s no possible way people are going to feel they saw you.
It’s a weird balance of listening to yourself, so you can kind of be driving the car, but also listening to the audience so you can also see the road. Whenever I have a bad set it’s usually because I’m not doing one of those things at all. I’m either not paying attention to the crowd or I was over-confident with what I was going to do. Whenever there’s a night where I’m dialed in and I have the most fun, it’s usually because I’m right fifty-fifty on listening to the crowd and myself.
I’d say the biggest influence was probably anything religious. I was raised Catholic. And in the South, there’s such a wealthy amount of Southern Baptists. I look at [religion] a little more skeptically through the lens of someone who is from the South. It gives me the confidence to do jokes about being brought up religiously, or any kind of religion, because I feel like I kind of grew up in the thick of it. Not that any of that has anything to do with the voice I put on. That voice definitely just grew out of me needing to do something new on stage. I was like, “Oh, I know this.” And it was a combination of family members and [that] I love doing this voice. Over time I started to figure out...
The nervous energy for me is the entire show. That comes from a place of “will this show be fun, will it work, will it fall on its face?” I try not to do too much with any of my characters other than just say the same material as this person. It all came out of boredom really. I didn’t have any new ideas or jokes to work on, which scared the shit out of me, so I decided to do what I had as different people. It became so much fun to do that I decided to just keep it as a thing and work on it. That sort of led to writing a few bits that were specific to the characters. I’m sure it will fade eventually. My german character makes fewer appearances. I’m sort of addicted to the southern preacher g...
I think failing is important. You have to have the courage to fail at this job I think. For me it’s been the only way to figure out how to say a joke the right way or present a character or an idea. A lot of things won’t be funny but the failing sometimes guides it there I think. It at least shows you where not to take it.
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.
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.
codependent no more, leaving the enchanted forest, the language of letting go, drama of the gifted child, IM FINE...AND OTHER LIES
i think i have way more patience now and can be funnier. as you get older you get more self esteem so you can get to the joke in a more graceful, artful way without rushing to the punchline in a desperate need for validation :) oh and I've accumulated way more mistakes to talk about which is always good. and I'm more humble now so can make fun of myself more because i now can tell how much of an idiot i am being :)
i used to run outside all the time but i kept falling-no joke. then i wrote about in my book the time i got attacked by a homeless guy and i was like maybe its time to join a gym! i used to run 5 miles a day but once i got over my body dysmorphia shit i work out way less. i do squats and push ups like 4 days a week pretty much.
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