Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
When I was in junior high, I went to a really hippy dippy Quaker school where we called our teachers by their first names and stuff.
I knew I wanted a 'Girls'-type show about my life, but what's the big thing that happened to me? Oh, I got married when I was young.
Ideally, a good pastor wants to empower a congregation to the point where they don't need him. You want everyone to leave feeling better.
I am a comedian. My brain is critical - it's overthinking - but you can find ways to turn it down and realize that's not who you really are.
It's true that in show business, a lot of times a producer will just not ever be there, not even be aware that a show is renewed or canceled.
I'll admit that I'm self-centered - all of us are - but I can also be external and giving and listening and empathetic and all that sort of stuff.
Traffic: Sit there. Sit. Occasionally move your foot from the brake and crawl forward, then put it back. That's all you do for hours. It's very calming.
I'm super happy to say that it's not that hard to write bad stand-up. I guess the trick is to write bad stand-up that sounds like you're trying to be good.
The skill set of pastor and comedian are incredibly similar. You want to affect people. You're good at reading rooms. You're persuasive, and you're likable.
There's something about taking emotional and career and relationship humiliations, writing them, acting them out again, but then redeeming them in some way.
The world is so mysterious, and there's so many social interactions where I have no idea what I'm supposed to do - what's being asked of me, what's expected of me.
When I started, I was very deliberate about making friends with people like John Mulaney who were really funny and wanted to go up and do as many open mics as I did.
When my wife left me, in real life, T. J. Miller was like, 'I'm shooting a movie in Pittsburgh. I'll fly you out and get you a hotel room,' and I spent a week with him.
Religion often is very embarrassing, and I totally get it. So I am sort of sometimes burdened with the fact that I love talking about it with anybody. Not just religious people.
In real life, T. J. Miller is one of my best friends, and I'll maybe see him for two or three days in a row, and then I won't see him for four months. That's just how our lives are.
I felt like I was in a unique position, or I am in a unique position, to show the evangelical world in a way that I haven't seen on TV before. That's a world that I'm very familiar with.
Why do we say 'Have a great weekend?' That's just a spell. You're just going - I have no control over your weekend. But words matter. They change our interior world. Have a great weekend.
I think my mom recognized that I liked people to be happy. I like people to get along. And I like to be a peacemaker. And I liked the church. So she was like, 'You should be a youth pastor.'
The biggest idea of a good time for me is making the Batman videos that we did. That is my ideal day. That is exactly what I want to be doing... I like doing cartoons. I like writing things.
We'd all like to increase pleasure and minimize pain, but the truth is, suffering, even collective suffering that we're going through, is often the earmark that some real change is happening.
Sometimes I liken the comedian's lifestyle a little bit to a firefighter's in the sense that there's a lot of waiting and a lot of nothingness. And then there are moments of urgent firefighting.
There are elements of comedy that can be competitive and back stab-y, but one of the underreported sides is that we love each other and help each other, kind of like a messed up extended family.
I'm trying to, with my stand-up and with the podcast, give people these little stupid things to give them happiness. I know that sounds lofty or like I'm starting a cult, but I kind of feel that way.
I think a good comedian was probably bullied a little bit. Probably felt doughy and oblong and rhombus-shaped and strange and a little bit of an outsider, and then learned the healing qualities of comedy.
There's nothing you can do to increase or decrease the love that God has for you, but there are things you can do that increase or decrease your awareness of that love. That's certainly been my experience.
When I used to work the road, I remember I used to ask myself in the mirror, literally, like in a movie, back when I was not very good at all, I'd say, 'What's it like being the greatest comedian in the world?'
So we have the story of who we are. I'm a man, and I'm a comedian, and I'm a tall man. I have big teeth and all these things, and I like the first two Batman movies, and I don't drink coffee, or whatever it is.
Be persistent and just keep going to open mics no matter what, even if just to watch and not perform. You'll find that even at your worst keep your head up because you'll still be better than other people's best.
Every performer I talk to will, with different words, talk about the sanctity of a good standup show, how it can really feel spiritual. When everybody is laughing, fixed on the same thing, you feel like you transcend yourself.
Whenever I make a blasphemous joke, I always say that I believe in a God big enough to know that I'm just kidding. How can God not know that I'm kidding? And also, how could God be offended at a thing that he made not believing in him?
I needed to let go of the idea of a God who was mad at me for feeling how I was feeling. Now, I bask in an understanding of the divine that delights in truth and the complexities of the human experience - even when it's not very 'clean.'
I thought divorce was for people that threw plates at each other, and I'd have to be an alcoholic or having affairs. But the truth is, sometimes a very sweet, well-meaning person just doesn't do it for you, and you need to get out of there.
Yeah, I had a talk show canceled. Okay, let's go back to the list of people who had talk shows canceled. Johnny Carson had his first talk show canceled. Jon Stewart. Letterman. Conan O'Brien, if you look at 'The Tonight Show' as a show that got canceled.
If I go out and do a set, there's a good chance that I'll watch another comedian. I'll think - not necessarily their words, but oftentimes the message that's behind the words - the sort of belief that their unspokenly advocating, well, sometimes that's offensive.
When you think about a festival from a comedian's perspective, it has to do with who else does it - that's number one. The second consideration - and this is kind of crazy - is: 'What's the food like? What is the town like? Is it walkable? Is it easy to get around?'
I'm trying to manufacture a sleepover feel; like a tree house or a clubhouse. I want people to be silly and play and feel safe and some people, you have to coax them into that space and some people bring me further into that space, even past the point that I wanted to go.
The beautiful thing about stand-up advice is that it applies to anybody, any gender, any race, any age. The best thing you can do - everybody will tell you - is get on stage as much as you can. I would add to that: get on stage as much as you can - with the people you admire.
I remember talking to comedian Jimmy Pardo about his experience waiting to hear about his own pilot, and we both agreed on one thing: When you can't control your showbiz fate, you can at least control the amount of ice cream you're eating. And if you're like us, it was a lot.
Every human being can relate to wanting their thoughts and their feelings to be accepted and rewarded and validated. So in that way, a stand-up is similar to almost any profession. It's very simply just someone who wants to be heard and live authentically and express themselves.
When it comes to being called a pronoun, sometimes I like to call other people 'me.' I go, like, 'Oh, these mes voted for Trump. This me is begging for change. This me is driving me to the airport.' I find that useful instead of going, like - because it's so pleasant to go 'you.'
I look at my faith like a room, and there was all of this furniture in there, but I had inherited most of the furniture. Then, when I got divorced, I took everything out just to see how I was going to refurnish the room, and that was a very essential step in my life. It was great.
I think there's something so funny about Ram Dass. I was lucky enough to sit across from him at dinner once, and I got up the courage to tell him that he was my favorite comedian. Even though he's not a comic, he talks about showbiz in a certain way and understands that there's a presentation to it.
A stand-up act is almost like a pool. You know what I mean? It's like a pool, and you're always skimming little leaves out of it, messing with the chlorine level, putting up umbrellas. You're trying to make one little stagnant body of water perfect. Whereas a late-night show is like a river, always moving forward.
I can't speak for everybody. But I will say that for me, when I've been depressed - and I get depressed. I have irrational bouts of anxiety. I have random FedEx deliveries of despondency. Just like, 'I didn't order this. Oh, well, keep the PJs on, cancel everything you're doing today. It's time to take a sad shower.'
I have never been political, which for a straight white man that's kind of a byproduct of privilege growing up that I was kind of like, "Who cares who the president is, everything is coming up privilege." But now things are so scary and crazy and I have to say I'm not a fan of Trump at all. I don't agree with him in any way.
I'm not going to have the TV personality and be like, 'There's no bitterness. There's no ugliness.' There's bitterness. There's ugliness. There's pain. There's greed. There's malice, and there's hurt. That's all good stuff for any kind of art. I'm not necessarily feeding that side of myself, and I try not to encourage it too much.
What I don't think I knew when I was young was that 'losing your faith' is actually part of the plan for a lot of people - that it's actually maybe the most beautiful and graceful thing that can happen. The mystery of God can handle all of it. It can handle all of your thoughts, all of your doubts, all of your folly. It's all in the game.
We can give space to someone's depression. We can love them; we can honor - we can just eat some noodles, we can watch some movies, whatever it is. We can just sit and not talk. That's real stuff. It's a real - I don't know if you call it a disorder, a disease, but it's happening, and we don't need to coach people through with ideologies.
One of my obsessions in life is that we have the tools to manufacture moments and real things, but it's overwhelming and there's a lot of fear and you think maybe you'll be rejected or embarrassed or somehow hurt emotionally. So we don't do the things we know we can do, but we can make people feel better and make people happier with compliments or just being positive and that sort of thing and sending it their way.