Top highlights from A Very Punchable Face
What I realized was: I might never have this chance again. In fact, I almost certainly would never have this chance again. Did I really want to look back and think: I could have done more, but I was afraid people would think I was lame for trying too hard? I decided to try really hard.
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The religious kids were really religious, the kind who push religion on others in a way that always freaks me out. They are like people who keep telling me, 'You have to see Hamilton!' Honestly, no I don't and the more you keep telling me, the less likely I am to actually see it. Though I have subsequently seen, "Hamilton" and it's excellent.
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Im a creature driven by a combination of guilt and FOMO, which often overrides any sense of self-preservation.
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The truth is, I've always had a chip on my shoulder about my hometown. But it stems from a deep insecurity that I don't really belong anywhere.
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Thats two lessons I learned very quickly: (1) You dont need to do anything in lifeif it feels wrong or unnatural, it probably is. And (2) I had no one but myself to blame for not trusting my own instincts and pushing back when I felt something was wrong.
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Lorne always says, 'You never want to be the smartest person in the room,' because you always want to challenge yourself and try to get to the level of the people you admire.
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Super religious people are basically saying, You have to see Jesus! Otherwise youll never get to heaven! And I keep thinking, Yeah... but I dont want to go to heaven if youre gonna be there...
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Average, of course, is so much better than below average. But when you meet people who are extraordinary, average feels humiliating. I wish it didnt, but it does.
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I took all the criticism to heart, and I was really really sad for about two full years of my life. I felt like I sucked at the thing I most wanted to do in the world, and that is not a pleasant feeling. I also started feeling like I was a bad person because some people viscerally hated me so much, which is such a dumb, irrational mindset, but I couldnt help it. I actually thought about quitting many times. I thought, Shit, Im trying my best, and people really dont like me. Maybe I should just quit so that everyone on earth can celebrate. Then I got angry and thought, Fuck you, dickheads. You didnt work all your life to achieve this, I did. And Im gonna do it, and do it my way, until someone pulls me off this desk.
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You need to say what youre thinking a lot more and not be afraid of being judged or being inarticulate or offensive or boring.
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In fairness, my mother suffers from Giant Irish Family Syndrome, where she cant even remember her own childrens names without cycling through multiple cousins first. HeySean, I mean Patrick, I mean Colin! It could be worse. She often gets to the dogs name before my brother, Casey.
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When President Howard Taft was campaigning for office, someone threw a cabbage at him, and he quipped, "I see one of my adversaries has lost his head." BAM! You just got Taft-ed. Take a seat cabbage head.
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Thats what Harvard was like: thinking youre pretty good at something, then meeting someone who is really good or even one of the best in the world. And that doesnt mean they get good grades. A lot of the most famous alumni left without graduating because their work became more important than school. People like Bill Gates, Matt Damon, and Mark Zuckerberg. And you know who did graduate? The Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski. The point is: Never graduate from Harvard.
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I now hate the phrase That will work. Its such a mediocre goal to set for yourself.
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Eventually, I trained myself not to speak that way because I didnt want people to single me out. I wanted to fit in other places, not just where I grew up. Thats why I now sound like an Ohio weathermanneutral, friendly, and almost fully recovered after escaping that cult.
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But even though I loved being in water, I never enjoyed swim meets. It always seemed like they were imposing structure and stress on something that should have been freeing and fun. For example, going down a slide is awesome. But if you had to show up every day for slide practice at 7 A.M. and then compete against your best friend in slide competitions, while grown-ups screamed at you to slide better, until your friend won and you cried, slides would seem a lot less awesome. And yes, I cried after the 1994 breaststroke finals when the official said I lost even though technically I had a faster time. And yes, I was beaten by Steve Deppe. And yes, I just googled Steve Deppe and discovered he now runs a successful wealth management business in San Diego. And yes, his online corporate profile says, As a former athlete, Steve continues to exercise daily, whether its lifting weights, running, swimming, or playing sports. And yes, the fourth example he gave of exercise was sports. And yes, I just went out and bought goggles and a Speedo and went down to my local pool and didnt leave until I just went out and bought goggles and a Speedo and went down to my local pool and didnt leave until I swam a hundred laps, hoping that would be more laps than Steve Deppe swam today. BUT REALLY, WHO EVEN CARES ANYMORE, RIGHT??? NOT ME!!! ITS NOT A COMPETITION, EVEN THOUGH IM NOT EVEN MARRIED YET AND STEVE IS ALREADY THE PROUD FATHER OF HIS DAUGHTER, CAMRYN. PLUS, HES AN AVID SPORTS FAN, WHO NEVER MISSES HIS FAVORITE TV SHOW, SPORTSCENTER. WE GET IT STEVE, YOU FUCKING LOVE SPORTS!Anyway.
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And the faster you find friends who challenge you and sometimes make you jealous, the faster you'll grow as a comedian.
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When you go to auditions and you fail to prepare, prepare to fail.'-Paula Abdul
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Speech and Debate is a sport, okay?
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So if youre like me and youre not always sure how to feel about your hometown, remember what Method Man once said: Im in between homes right now, but my last house was dope.
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To this day Im always more productive while traveling because I know the journey itself is getting me somewhere, and that frees my mind to be more creative. Theres a reason it took an American to invent the rocking chairbecause even when were sitting still, we like to feel like were in motion.
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No one in comedy (or any field, really) succeeds in a vacuum. And the faster you find friends who challenge you and sometimes make you jealous, the faster youll grow as a comedian (and regress as a human).
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As Lorne says, 'Careers are made by choices.
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Ive been very lucky to have a job this great for this long. When I look back someday, I think that my time at SNL will seem like the best years of my life. But I also think that my best life is still yet to come. And if not, I can always beg Lorne for my job back.
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Instead I spent the summer touring and doing stand-up, and I decided that whatever happened with Update, I wanted to get better as a performer. I didnt know how, exactly, outside of getting onstage every night, so I started meeting with an acting coach. This was something I hesitated about doing for a long time because I was embarrassed. Isnt that dumb? I was embarrassed about getting help. And I was embarrassed about trying. I was scared to put myself out there and commit to getting better, because if I committed and failed then I would have no one to blame but myself. (This probably described my approach to all my relationships up to that point, too.) What I realized was: I might never have this chance again. In fact, I almost certainly would never have this chance again. Did I really want to look back and think: I could have done more, but I was afraid people would think I was lame for trying too hard? I decided to try really hard.
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We do survive every moment, after all, except the last one. JOHN UPDIKE
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Maybe thats why most people never move off Staten Islandtheyre terrified of hitting traffic on the way out.
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The reality is: Staten Island is like 90 percent of the countryits slow to change, but most of the people are fundamentally good people. Theyre just set in their ways. After all, its an island. It has its own evolution.
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One of my great joys in life was making a movie with Method Man, who told me he would never leave Staten Island because it was the only place in America where he could get pulled over and the cops were actually excited to see him.
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I submitted dozens of pieces for every issue, and even if only a couple made it into the magazine, I was still learning from all the rejections, too. My thought process was always: Keep writing new stuff. Dont worry what gets accepted or rejected. Just keep moving forward and keep improving.
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Eventually, all our graves go unattended. CONAN OBRIEN
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Tiger Woods said that hes always nervous before a big tournament because if youre not nervous, it means you dont care. Im still at least a little nervous before every set I do, even a ten-minute spot at a bar downtown for twenty-five people and zero money. Because I care very deeply about doing a set Im proud of and that I stand behind.
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Any promotion or opportunity you get in life comes with increased exposure and increased criticism. The more people want your job, the more shit youre gonna get for not doing it well.
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Che got me to think about Update in a different way. He taught me that if you try to do something you love and something someone else wants you to do, the both suffer, and the thing you love might disappear entirely.
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Let thy speech be better than silence. Or be silent.
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Victory Boulevard, which was dedicated to the American victory in World War I but also showcased the modern victory of having a Golden Krust Jamaican Beef Patty restaurant share an office space with H&R Block.
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Instead I spent the summer touring and doing stand-up, and I decided that whatever happened with Update, I wanted to get better as a performer. I didnt know how, exactly, outside of getting onstage every night, so I started meeting with an acting coach. This was something I hesitated about doing for a long time because I was embarrassed. Isnt that dumb? I was embarrassed about getting help. And I was embarrassed about trying. I was scared to put myself out there and commit to getting better, because if I committed and failed then I would have no one to blame but myself. (This probably described my approach to all my relationships up to that point, too.)
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I spent about eighty hours a week at the Lampoon, and took an approach I would later take at SNL: I wrote more than anyone else because I wanted to improve as fast as I could.
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If a person is not talented enough to be a novelist, not smart enough to be a lawyer, and his hands are too shaky to perform operations, he becomes a journalist. NORMAN MAILER
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If you dont want to be great, then step aside and let someone else be great. ANTHONY DAVIS, LOS ANGELES LAKERS
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As someone who was bullied growing up, I realized that its way easier to play into the bullying rather than fight it. If youre better at making fun of yourself than a bully is, then the bully has no room to operate. (Except punches. They still have punches. Oh god, do they have punches.)
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Yes, Staten Island is the most Italian county in all of the United States, beating out even Meatball, Indiana. But the beauty of Staten Island is that anyone who lives there long enough, regardless of ethnicity, just becomes Italian.
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Every public golf course on Staten Island has a secret alter ego.
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The sound of an elderly woman slurping sour cream at eight in the morning was seared in my brain forever, along with a visual of the sour cream remnants stuck in her very healthy mustache. After that, I was cool fasting till lunch.
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Like how a lot of mimes are also serial killers.
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One thing I love about SNL is that we welcome hosts and musical guests from all over the country (and the world) with a wide range of social and political views. People forget that its a variety show, and that means a variety of viewpoints, politically and culturally. (And comedically.)
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We sometimes encounter people, even perfect strangers, who begin to interest us at first sight, somehow suddenly, all at once, before a word has been spoken. FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY
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In conclusion: Dont drink and do drugs until youre older, when drinking and doing drugs are extra embarrassing. That way your brain will be in good enough shape to remember all the humiliating stuff you do when you drink and do drugs.
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Every single employee at WWEfrom the stagehands to the lawyer who presented my contractwas ripped. There was a wrestler back in the day named I.R.S., and Im now convinced he was just their actual accountant.
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Everyone. Gets. A pitchfork!
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Let thy speech be better than silence. Or be silent. DIONYSIUS OF HALICARNASSUS
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Look for the job youd take if you didnt need a job. WARREN BUFFETT
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To this day, Im in my head a lot of the time. I create entire monologues and have full, detailed conversations with friendsentirely in my head. And then I get frustrated because that whole carefully constructed dialogue will never see the light of day. It just exists fully built in my brain like a ship in a bottle, and then it floats away before anyone can see it.
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Thats why I now sound like an Ohio weathermanneutral, friendly, and almost fully recovered after escaping that cult.
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We need illusions in order to dream. And then we need to discard illusions in order to grow. LINDSEY BUCKINGHAM
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Lorne always says, You never want to be the smartest person in the room, because you always want to challenge yourself and try to get to the level of the people you admire.
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Where you grew up becomes a big part of who you are for the rest of your life. You cant run away from that. Well, sometimes the running away from it is what makes you who you are. HELEN MIRREN
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