Public transportation is like a magnifying glass that shows you civilization up close.
Chris Gethard
West Orange, where I grew up, is the hometown of Ian Ziering from 'Beverly Hills, 90210,' Scott Wolf from 'Party of Five,' David Cassidy from the 'Partridge Family,' and Mike Pitt of 'Boardwalk Empire' and 'Dawson's Creek.'
I don't think I'm ugly per se, but on bad days, I have been told that I look like the monster from 'The Hills Have Eyes.' That was extremely confidence-shattering, so I try to take care of myself.
I'm a pescatarian.
I quit drinking in 2002, mere months before my college graduation.
Northern New Jersey looks like a cluster of idyllic suburbs, but each of those seemingly normal towns has a dark side that's constantly gossiped about but never publicly acknowledged. They seem to thrive on their strangenesses.
My medications make me easier to deal with. They don't interfere with my creativity or turn me into a zombie or dull my real personality. They help me connect with people, allow me to stay calm when situations seem overwhelming, and help keep my thoughts from racing out of control. They help me leave the house when I'm scared to. They help.
The stereotype of New Yorkers is that we're people who avoid warm human interaction, we're always in too much of a rush to enjoy simple things, and that we're just generally rude.
I very classically would go into manic phases, which were as dangerous, if not more so, than the depressed phases, and I think I'd come up with the best ideas I ever had, and then the next day, I'd look at them and be like, 'This is nonsense,' because it was born out of a manic episode. What a waste of time.
I take medications every morning and night - they're my breakfast, and they're my dessert. I love them.
As far as comedy goes, I'm endlessly inspired by Jo Firestone.
Everyone likes to laugh. Everyone likes to dance along to some music.
When my TV show was in production, dozens of women asked me out on Facebook. Some were shy about it; some were blatant. Some I knew, some were total strangers. But they went for it.
I've exceeded the expectations people had for me as an unconfident runt who grew up in North Jersey as well as the expectations I had for myself.
I am a stereotypical northeasterner. I'm always in a rush. I've attracted stares from out-of-towners when I've shoved past someone blocking the subway door.
I classify myself as a comedian, but I'm one of those comedians who also acts so that I can split the difference and feel insecure about both.
I grew up a loser, and I always felt like one, but I turned out pretty okay. I may be living proof that you can spend your whole life feeling like you're falling down a set of steps and still maybe land on your feet at the bottom.
I've taught people in improv classes, then watched them move to Los Angeles to become Emmy winners and movie stars. That experience, for anyone wondering, is both super exciting and also makes you put a microscope on your own life choices. It causes you to question why you still perform stand-up in so many Brooklyn basements.
'What if?' is just about the worst question I can ask myself, and I want to avoid it at all costs for the rest of my life.
I had bedbugs in 2005. I felt like a leper. Worse than a leper. At least lepers had a colony they could go and live in with other people who empathized. I instead had friends stand up from tables and walk out of restaurants when I told them I had bedbugs, because they were afraid I'd transfer the bugs to them.
The street I lived on for the first handful of years of my life was lined with modest, lower-middle-class houses with small front yards and cracked driveways - your typical North Jersey neighborhood, with all the odd hidden darkness that that implies.
When people ask me, 'Why don't you drink?' I usually smile and say 'Because I'm not good at it.'
In late 2004, I left my much-maligned home state of New Jersey for the supposedly greener pastures of Astoria, Queens. I'd finally be in the mix, living off the subway line, able to go from audition to audition during the day and from late night show to late night show in the wee hours of the morning.
As a stand-up, as a storyteller, as an improviser, I've done thousands of shows. They allow me to work out new material that might turn into something later. They let me keep my muscles sharp for when the rent-paying gigs do come along. They keep me sane.
One thing I've realized is that being a nerd has transformed. I like that it's easier to read comic books and, like, 'Lord of the Rings' now. You don't have to get punched in the chest in the gym locker room for that anymore.
When I really have it together, I think I successfully pull off looking like the exact middle point between Macklemore and Ron Howard, only with a much bigger forehead than either of them.
I've said some things on stage where the crowd was like, 'Whoa, that's bad' - and I never say it again because that's the feedback I get.
I think what I have learned is you can't avoid losing. You're going to strike out a million times. The whole point is not to dodge losing - it's to learn how to lose well.
Thank you to anyone who's ever watched or supported 'TCGS.' Even if you checked it out once, hated it, and never checked it out again - thank you for giving us a chance.
I'm hungry in the ways that every artist is, but I also have this extra layer. I've done a lot of things that were consciously not for money, but because I'm so convinced I'm going to die in my mid-30s, I'm like, 'That's not what's important. Doing cool stuff and having that legacy is what's important.'
Getting help for my issues was one of the hardest things I've ever done, because when I get dangerously sad or manic, those feelings seek to perpetuate themselves.
No aspect of my brief and mild fame actually made me happier.
Sometimes I get gigs in weird, artsy places because weird, artsy people embraced my public-access show, which I could only have done in the way I did in New York.
New Yorkers will be rude, but at least they do so out of the rationale that everyone around them is always slowing them down. Los Angeles, I learned, is a city full of people who have the personality of the coolest pretty boy from your eighth-grade class.
I think the key to improv is always listening. It's embracing. It's positivity. It's hearing things and not shutting them down.
I think so often about how, when I was starting out at UCB, Conan O'Brien was in town, and on his show back then, they sometimes did character bits, and I started getting paid to dress up as a page or a Dutch boy on his show.
I remember the people who mentored me, and I just love being able to do that for other people.
I just really remember the feeling of being a younger comedian who was kind of an outlier for being experimental and weird and how that could feel lonely or hopeless.
I think Carmen Christopher is going to be massively huge. He's just too funny. He's got funny in his bones, and he wants to conquer every room.
Cops are everywhere in New York City. Cars drive by every few minutes. Uniforms stand nonchalantly at street corners.
Cops in New York City don't have the best reputation. It's a fast-paced city, and they deal with a lot, and many people have seen lots of cops interact with the public utilizing what can be gently called 'not the best customer service.'
Anyone who's ever been around an emergency in Manhattan realizes that there are plainclothes officers on these streets walking past us more than we ever realize.
Anyone who lives in N.Y.C. will tell you that getting into a confrontation on a city street is a complete nightmare 100 percent of the time.
I do not like confrontations in New York City.
I'm not exactly Don Draper when it comes to physical attractiveness.
If you are dating someone in New York City, and they invite you over to watch a movie, they don't really want to watch a movie.
No one in New York hangs out in their apartments.
In 2002, I was taking an improv class because, as a white male with glasses who was born between 1978 and 1994, it's legally required that I take at least one improv class in my life.
I'm a dummy from New Jersey.
I will never forget what happened on August 14, 2003. I know the exact sequence of where I was for every moment of that evening. It was a tragic day, and it's burned into my memory. Many people might remember that date, vaguely, as the date of the infamous eastern seaboard blackout that plunged all of New York City into darkness.
