My Comedic Inspirations

Do you understand that I collected ALL the stickers? (Starbucks)

Rap anxiety

Cat falling in love with me

Peas pregnancy

These are just a few of the hundreds of objectively nonsensical phrases I have written in the Notes app of my iPhone. While they mean absolutely nothing to you, these words trigger in my brain a good deal of significance. For as long as I can remember, I've had this habit of writing things down. After experiencing something funny or interesting, I've always felt this sudden urge to catalog it as quickly as possible by writing a word or phrase that will jog my memory in the future. These "trigger words" are shorthand ways of describing all of those humorous things in life that I just need to hold onto. 

And I never really had any plans for them. Many of these words have sat for years in my iPhone, notebooks, and stray gum wrappers, completely useless -- wasted words that only I understand, and sometimes even I have forgotten their meaning. 

But now I tell jokes. I mean, I've always told jokes. Everyone tells jokes, but now I tell jokes with a microphone in my hand.

That's me. Note the microphone.

And maybe that makes me a comedian. Maybe it doesn't. Maybe I'm not really a comedian until I have a viral video or until an audience member hurls some kind of rotten fruit at my face. But regardless, this is something I do now, and I don't remember what really made me start. One day I just got up and I did it and then I did it again another day and then again on another day. 

Maybe it has something to do with that one time I ran into Jerry Seinfeld on accident when I was working as a temp Production Assistant on a show called "The Marriage Ref." Perhaps in that interaction, I got bit by some kind of radioactive comedy spider. 

Who knows. But one thing is for sure, this whole joke-telling thing has given a whole new life to all of the trigger words that have been waiting patiently in my iPhone. It's a good feeling. Suddenly, "peas pregnant" becomes a bit about how my sisters convinced me that eating peas would make pregnant. "Rap anxiety" becomes a character who gets flustered when he freestyles. Sometimes the trigger words spread wings and become their own three minutes of material. Other times, I find that they are completely unusable. Other times still, they turn into jokes that an audience just doesn't want to hear. It doesn't matter. It's just good to set them free.

This is what it looks like when I write my set. Thanks, trigger words.

I get asked a lot why I'm doing this, why I decided to get up on a stage with the intention of being funny, and I've already told you, I don't know. Like writing (which I feel pairs nicely with comedy anyway), it just felt natural -- like something I should do, something I might be good at.

But while I may have sleepwalked up to the mic those first few times, my life has always been inspired, almost exclusively so, by comedians. The cast of characters who made me laugh on Saturday nights were my superheroes. The late night talk show with the tall, self-deprecating host was my ritual. The woman who was working on her night cheese and wanted to have it all -- she was my role model.

If you have no idea what I'm talking about, no worries. I'm about to introduce you to all of these people. These are my comedy inspirations, the people who blew my mind with their quick wit and their varied expressions of confidence. You've almost definitely heard of all of them, and you'll maybe even feel pissed that I didn't include some other notable ones. Trust me, there are plenty of others who could make this list, but these are the ones who just reached out and grabbed me with their ingenuity and brilliance.

Instead of gushing about them for you, I'll let their work speak for itself. Here they are...

1. Tina Fey


Bitch is the New Black-Tina Fey by ecacn6

2. Conan O'Brien

Conan O'Brien interviews Martha Stewart - watch more funny videos

3. Amy Poehler



4. Kristen Wiig



5. Mike Birbiglia




6. Tig Notaro



So those are my favorites. Tell me some of yours! 

My Love Letter to Ditmas Park

Let me tell you about Ditmas Park.

Ditmas Park is the neighborhood where Daniel and I are blessed to be currently living. Sometimes when I think about all of the different places in Brooklyn where we could have ended up, a rush of thankfulness just washes over me.

Here's why:

I could go on, but you get it. It's beautiful. It's hip. It's got delicious french toast. You're sold.

We were too when we first arrived here. As I mentioned in a previous entry, Daniel and I have been subleasing an apartment in this area. We've got three roommates (and by roommates, I mean cats) that live with us, and they are a blast. It's a really great situation. 

When we walk out of the apartment building, we are steps away from the main road: Cortelyou Road, which looks like this:

It's full of bodegas, coffee shops, amazing restaurants, organic groceries (not to mention a super successful food coop). As I write this, I am currently sitting at my favorite coffee shop, Qathra, sipping on a chai tea latte and feeling pretty self-assured in my perceived hipness. 

The neighborhood is really relaxed, full of really interesting people and families. I would post pictures of the thousands of impressively adorable babies I see every day, but Daniel doesn't allow me to take pictures of other peoples' kids because he claims it's "creepy and off-putting". You can see how his tyrannical reign over this relationship has some consequences. 

Ditmas Park is also central to a ton of incredible places. It's a short train ride to:

PROSPECT PARK

Grand Army Plaza

Relaxing my life away

THE BROOKLYN BOTANIC GARDENS

THE BROOKLYN MUSEUM

Believe it or not, this is a coffin.

CONEY ISLAND

not to mention, a little place called MANHATTAN

Ditmas Park also might be the friendliest neighborhood ever. In my mind I frequently compare Cortelyou Road to Sesame Street. I could absolutely imagine a spontaneous musical breaking out. The other day when I went for a run, FOUR different people said things like, "Keep it up!", "Good for you!", "Look at you go!", and I definitely heard one guy say, "Don't stop believing!"

WE LOVE DITMAS PARK...almost as much as these people.

I don't know these people, but I'd like to. 

Not that I am trying to brag (by the way, did I mention that Tina Fey and Paul Rudd were shooting a movie down the street from me the other day?). I am just daily floored that I get to live here. 

This summer, I have started on the path to becoming a New Yorker. I don't know how I officially become one. According to How I Met Your Mother, you're a real New Yorker when you've:

1. Seen Woody Allen (Not yet. Where does he hang out? I have so many things to tell him!)

2. Stolen a cab from someone who needs it more than you do (I have a problem with this one because I ride the subway, and I think most of us do.)

3. Cried on the subway and not given a damn (Check.)

4. Killed a cockroach with your bare hands (How about bare feet?)

So by this list's standards, I am sort of halfway there, which is pretty good for just a few months of actually living here. Something I have heard from a lot of locals is that you can tell you are a New Yorker when you go back and forth between loving the city and hating it. 

Boy, do I get that. There are days when I am walking around Manhattan and I am taking in all of the sights and I just feel like that girl from That Girl.

Then there are days when I get stepped on, or it rains, or I eat something weird, or I get yelled at and I just think to myself, That Girl must have been on crack. 

But whenever I feel like that, which is really very seldom, Ditmas Park is so comforting. When we were planning to move here from Texas, my fear was always that I would have nowhere to escape to when the city became a little too much. Now I can safely say that my neighborhood is my escape. 

We signed a two-year lease the other day. Let's do this, Ditmas Park.  

Smart Girls Have More Fun

Think back to the first time you fell in love with Amy Poehler. Was it when she dazzled you as the precocious pre-teen Kaitlin alongside her stepfather REE-ICK? Perhaps it was when, with utter flatulence, she boasted in her one leggedness (jealous?) as the grossly loveable Amber. Your heart definitely skipped a beat when you watched her co-anchor Weekend Update with the separate-but-equally awesome Tina Fey, and you’ll never forget the moment you first heard her say, “Your stupid space car locked me in!”

What's not to love?

You are in love with Amy Poehler. We all are. And like the best kind of love, we continually find new reasons to love her more. I thought that her performance on Parks and Recreation was just it for me. I truly thought if I squeezed anymore love in my heart for Amy Poehler I wouldn’t have room for more practical loves like my love of hygiene and my love of plucking my potential unibrow.

But dadgum, she’s done it again, and my eyebrows are still separated by a substantial distance, thank God. I think I’m a little late to this party, but have you guys heard of Smart Girls at the Party? If you have, you already love it. My sister told me about it last week, and I watched every episode in one night. It was pretty easy to do considering that each episode is less than ten minutes long.

For those who haven’t seen it, Smart Girls at the Party is a web series created by best friends Amy Poehler, Amy Miles, and Meredith Walker. The show is essentially an interview between Amy Poehler and a girl…who is smart. These smart girls are kids with special abilities and interests who deserve to be celebrated with a dance party (which is how every episode ends). The show’s tagline is probably the best way to describe its intent: “the show that celebrates extraordinary individuals who are changing the world by being themselves.”

There was this episode with a rock band comprised of twelve-year-olds that call themselves Care Bears on Fire (I mean, in terms of branding, that’s probably not a great name, but whatever. They are freaking TWELVE and amazing). Another episode focused on these two sisters who actually liked each other and didn’t want to freeze each other’s training bras or fart on each other’s pillows. In still another episode, this wonderfully sweet girl takes the Amys and Meredith to the community garden she created. It made me wish for just a second that I wasn’t the accidental plant-murderer that I am.

One episode I would particularly like to direct your attention to is this one with the effervescent Ruby:

While I think we can all agree that Ruby might need to take a few deep breaths, this is pretty much amazing. From the moment the word “feminism” crawls across the screen, it is clear that this girl is here to talk about something important.

I love how comfortable she is with that word. Feminism. When I was Ruby’s age, I had heard of feminism, but it wasn’t even close to an accurate understanding. From what I had heard growing up in central Texas, feminists were women who burned bras a long time ago for pretty much no reason. For me, this was particularly offensive because I couldn’t wait to wear bras. Come on, feminists!

It wasn’t until I got to college and took an intro to sociology class that this notion was truly abolished. For the first time in my life, I feel like I recognized that some level of unfair treatment of women actually existed. All of a sudden I became furious about the historical discrimination against women, and I became even more furious when I realized that some of this crap was still happening! In the workplace, on television, in classrooms, and in my daily life. Why was it that my only association with feminism had involved some charred bras?

The thing is I am lucky I was awakened in that sociology class because some people in there were totally unaffected. I went to Baylor University, and I don’t at all regret it (in fact I loved it), but diversity is not exactly its strength. In almost any class, 1/3 of the female population is comprised of former prom or homecoming queens. In that class where my brain was exploding, there were other girls there saying, “I mean, like, I just don’t feel like it’s that big of a deal anymore” and “Yeah, but since the man is the leader of the woman in a relationship, isn’t it fine that they are paid less? You know, since Eve came from Adam’s rib and all…” I sat there dumbfounded and also fearful that if they found me out, they might try to steal my ribs to make an even lesser sex.

What I love about little Ruby here is that there is really no ambiguity about what feminism means to her. While feminism is classified by like a million subgroups, Ruby simplifies the underlying reasoning of this movement perfectly: that boys and girls are of equal value.

Ruby means not to diminish in any way the value of boys but instead to illuminate the value of girls. If there is a situation where a woman is treated like she is worth even slightly less than her male counterpart, Ruby doesn’t like it, and she’s going to write a book about it and probably a song too.

I love the activism of Ruby, but I also love that Smart Girls at the Party is not all about fighting the system. Ruby is the sweet exception, but otherwise the show just celebrates these kids for who they are. The disparity between male and female salaries is not discussed. The phrase “glass ceiling” is never uttered. It is assumed that girls are awesome, and that is just a fact of life.

And it’s true, girls are awesome – especially the smart ones. In my time working with kids, I have met some amazing girls. I have met girls who get lost in reading for hours at a time and can talk about almost nothing else. I have met girls who can dance and play guitar and sing like freaking superstars. I have met girls who can paint abstract works of art (intentionally) and girls who play rugby and are missing permanent teeth as a result. I have met girls that dream of being geologists and paleontologists and biologists and, in one rare case, a proctologist. I have met girls who have shared their struggles and cried together. I have met girls who laugh so hard that they can't breathe and girls who cheer each other on no matter what. I have met girls who at first didn’t know each other but ended up becoming sisters.

I love when Ruby gets asked what it means to be a good friend, and she decides it’s when someone is crying and you ask, “Are you okay?” She’s right. I’ve seen it happen with girls Ruby’s age and it is beautiful.

The problem comes when that is not our response. When we see someone crying, and we instead decide to exploit her or say something awful to her or about her or about her family or about her decisions – that is the worst thing we can do. This happens a lot with girls, and I totally get why. In a world where we recognize, either consciously or subconsciously, a need to prove ourselves, we sometimes attempt to outperform our own kind – to disassociate ourselves from women.

This type of thinking does not work and it will never work. As Tina Fey says in the pretty-much-perfect film Mean Girls, “You all have got to stop calling each other sluts and whores. It just makes it okay for guys to call you sluts and whores” Run and tell that, Tina! Jealousy, subtle secret-fights, deceit, and eye rolls will never advance women. Friendship will, and it is the most powerful tool we have.

I am encouraged by Smart Girls at the Party in the same way that I am encouraged by all of the incredible young girls I have met. I see in these kids things that I struggle to do as an adult like believe in myself and talk to Amy Poehler without crapping my pants. It may be too soon to tell, but I kind of think these girls are going to kick ass when they grow up, and I’m so excited to live in that world.