Chapter 1. Our story begins with a Lots of Laughs CHAPTER 1. Lots of Laughs I started out as a stand up comedian, and it has always been my dream to be on Saturday Night Live. That is my ultimate goal. If I were on SNL that would be a total dream come true. If I was on SNL, it would be funny. And if I was on SNL it would be so weird and cool and different. You can just imagine it. And now, that dream has come true. I’m being filmed doing my stand up comedy act. For those of you who don’t know what stand up comedy is, I’ll describe it. It’s talking, in front of a live audience. That’s what I do. The way that stand up comedians put it is that we are telling the truth. That’s what I try to do in everything I do. I can’t tell the truth unless I am looking you straight in the eyes when I say it. When I started stand up comedy, I would just stare at a blank white board while I was talking. I’d make fun of the audience. I would point things out. I would try to make the audience laugh. If there was an emotional subject, I would make jokes. That’s why it’s called stand up comedy. You talk about everything, and you make the audience laugh. Now that I am performing on the street, it feels like a bit different. It’s different. It’s different. I don’t really know what it is yet. I hope that I get to use this in my stand up soon. It seems like it’s already been set up, but not just yet. I am going to try this new stand up comedy thing on the street. I might do it a lot. I might have to see if it would be easier to do in comedy clubs. Or if there’s any real difference. I can’t really tell the difference between a comedy club and street performance just yet. Or if there’s any difference. I’ve done stand up comedy all over the place. It’s hard to describe how that is. I was in New York doing stand up comedy. We are in New York City again. I do all types of stand up. I make everyone happy. I am the one to make you feel good. Now that I’m doing stand up comedy, it’s like this. I have to do more research to see how this sounds on camera. Stand up comedy is pretty funny. I don’t see the difference between making a joke and making an audience laugh. So, as long as it’s funny, I’ll do it. It’s pretty simple. Stand up comedy and funny is the same thing. There’s nothing weird about it. To be completely honest, I didn’t start out as a comedian. I started out as a musician. I loved playing guitar, piano and drums. My parents got me a guitar when I was nine years old. My guitar didn’t come with a music stand, so I kept breaking my guitar stands. So I started borrowing them. My guitar would always land on the ground and get dirty. My parents had to replace a lot of guitar stands. But, that didn’t matter. I was still playing. My parents loved it, because I was making such a mess. I still do it. My guitar still doesn’t have a music stand. I went to school in Oklahoma. I did a band that was called, The Kandy Korners. I loved playing music, but I really hated Oklahoma. There was something about Oklahoma that made me want to leave. I’m not sure why, because I still love Oklahoma. I hope that you will like this band. But when I wanted to leave, I could. The Kandy Korners were the only band from Oklahoma. There was only one of us. When I started doing stand up comedy, it was because I didn’t want to go to college. I could have gone to college, but I didn’t want to. I wanted to stay in Oklahoma. I would get in trouble all the time. I would get really angry. I just started to get out of control. I used to have a lot of anger problems. And I was pretty big. I got into fights. So I got into stand up comedy. It’s what I should have been doing all along. I didn’t even want to be an adult. I didn’t like the word. I didn’t like the way that people talked about me, because I was really tall for my age. I didn’t like being called a kid. But I did a lot of things because people said that I wasn’t a kid. I did them all. I did everything that people thought was weird. I played my guitar. I acted in a school play. I was on stage. I made money working at a video store. You name it. I did it all. I know it’s different for a kid. But I’ve never been a kid. I like to have fun. I like to play video games. I liked playing video games, because it didn’t have any consequences. At least, not to me. I didn’t know that kids my age had video games. But they do. And they are just like they’re for adults. But what I did wasn’t like video games. I played guitar. I had all the instruments in my house. My parents had me doing music at five years old. I had a piano and a drum kit in my room. I had an amplifier. I used to go over to my neighbors, and let them listen to my music. I would put a guitar and an amplifier in my moms lap. She was like, “What is all this noise?” I had a huge collection of stuff. I could play every type of instrument. I was so talented. I could do all the moves. I could do everything that anyone can do. I was pretty good, but I wasn’t the best. I was like the best kid in my school. In the world. I don’t know why people weren’t into me. They didn’t like me. They were always against me. They didn’t like my height. And they made fun of me. I liked it. I couldn’t help it. I was used to getting made fun of. I didn’t like it when people made fun of me. But I was making fun of the world. On Christmas, I made an album cover out of paper. I spent so much time making this. It was not easy. I spent three hours making it. I’m not even a good artist. I put a picture of the whole band on the cover. The whole band. And I drew my best look on the cover. And in the picture I look like a punk rock kid. It’s pretty cool. But I did this album cover in the second grade. In second grade, when I made this album cover, I was a punk rock kid. That’s what kids in the second grade are. They are usually the same people in every school. You meet them a lot of times. You find them in middle school too. They like to hang out with other kids in the lower school, while they are waiting for middle school. People used to say, “Wow! You look like a punk rocker!” I know it sounds like an insult, but people were joking around. But, I didn’t mind. I was punk rock. I was punk rocker. It was a compliment. I didn’t care. I didn’t mind the jokes. I was used to it. I took it as a compliment. I guess it was a compliment. I was a cool punk. I was cool like every punk rocker in the world. I wasn’t like every punk rocker. I wasn’t the scruffy one in the band. But, I still was cool like every other punk rocker in the world. I was like every punk rocker in the world, I had to deal with being a punk rocker in the world. I was a punk rocker in the world. I wasn’t a punk rocker in my world. But I was like every punk rocker. And that’s what punk rock was. Punk rock was for punks. A punk is like the lowest person. But I was like every punk rocker. I had a punkish world. I was funny. I was cool. I didn’t fit in. I was used to being mad at myself. I didn’t care if I looked like a punk rocker. It’s true. I like being like that. I liked being punk rocker. It meant that I was something. It meant that I knew. That’s why I liked it. I didn’t care. I was used to being mad at myself. It’s what I got used to doing. And if that’s what I was used to doing, that’s what I wanted to do. So I could just do what I wanted. It was more my thing. That’s why I liked it. It was my thing. So it was like having a punk rocker world. Everyone was punk rock.