All the great game show hosts have a signature 'look,' from Bob Barker's year-round Brazil Nut-hued tan to Monty Hall's oversized lamb chop sideburns. As the host of IFC's new comedy game show 'Bunk,' I, too, have worked to develop a style signature by being the first man or woman in TV history to host every show in my bare feet!
New York is a place that can grind you down and spit you out. A true New Yorker doesn't get ground down - he gets polished.
Other than Caroline's in New York, I pretty much haven't done clubs. That was primarily because I always liked the people and audiences at theaters and bars better.
Eric Bryant and Ethan Berlin, the creators of 'Bunk,' asked me to come get involved in very early process when they wanted to make a game show.
Every day I do one or two podcasts that 92 percent of people never will hear. I'm constantly producing, constantly making jokes for Twitter. There's a lot of pressure there. On the flip side, I think having to produce like that makes you a better comedian.
So much of existence is so boring. To have little moments of stupidity is always welcome.
My parents got divorced when I was 2, so I have this weird thing where I have 8 brothers and sisters, but I am also an only child.
I pushed against doing a podcast for so long. I'm a very late comer to the podcast game. But you're responsibility as a comedian is to get your viewpoints out into the world, and we have a lot more avenues to do that. So it's a lot more opportunity, but really have to work all the time.
I go on Wikipedia and alter pages of animals with fake facts that I've made up about those animals.
For a long time, I dressed like an idiot. In college, I had a fully shaved head with just two horns. Like, a coxcomb of hair that I would sculpt into two horns. I looked like a crazy person.
I want to continually find ways to bring my ideas off the stage and into the real world, into the streets. I think I can make the world a better place, if only for a little while.
When I moved to New York at 22, I didn't know what I wanted to do. I took an improv class, and the first scene I did, I felt like 'I want to do this for the rest of my life.' It was the first time I ever felt like that about anything. I tried to make a living off improv.
In my new IFC comedy game show, 'Bunk,' we actually use our intern Patrick as a human timer - giving contestants the time it takes for him to wade through a bag of broken glass for a razor blade, to get gum out of his hair, to pick up every strand from a box of spaghetti I spill on the floor, etc, etc.
There's this secret Korean taco/cupcake truck I go to. To find it, you have to bring a hard-boiled egg to this deli in Bushwick where they give you the address.
For people who mourn for old Times Square - hey, there's a ton of places in the city still like that! Get on the train and go visit them!
The rules of game shows limit stuff so much. I remember on 'Money From Strangers,' being in the van - not even performing - and there was a lawyer there the entire time. 'No, you can't give money for that. Yes, you can give money for that. That's a partial answer. That's a full answer.'
For a really long time in my life, I fought against how I look. Because I was raised Catholic in school, where everyone had to wear a suit and tie. I hated everything that stood for. And I realized when I walked down the street, everyone would see the guy I hated and not the guy I was.
A lot of improvisers mistakenly assume stand-up is awful, because there are a lot of stand-ups in the world that did not appeal to me. It was so easy to make a blanket statement when I was improvising only: 'Stand-up's terrible.' It's so ignorant and stupid to do that. But it's easy to do that. So that's where I came from.
It is an intern's job to go for coffee for anyone who asks, preferably delivering it scalding hot and cupped in your bare hands!
People have said that to me: They say I have a TV face.
