Chapter 1
I'm an improvisational comedian. This is what most defines me as to who I am today. What I do and how I think comes from the fact that I've spent tens of thousands of hours making shit up in front of people.
For some ungodly reason, I thought it was a good idea to get on stage in front of people and try to make them laugh using whatever happened to be going on in my mind at that time. Call it hubris, narcissism, or a pathological need for people to think I was something special, I decided that yes, I had something funny to say, and yes, you should be subjected to what that is.
Disregard the fact that I more often than not had nothing funny to say, and there was absolutely no one clamoring for my genius…well, that's not entirely true, my mother loved everything I did, no matter what. Biggest fan in the world, especially considering there really wasn't much to be a fan of, in my formative years.
On a practical level, how did I come to the idea that not only did I want to get up in front of strangers and make something out of nothing, but that I actually could get up in front of strangers (and many times sympathetic and supportive friends) and play make‐believe?
Let's start with the basics: I came from a funny family. Mom was hilarious, Dad was crazy and funny, and my sisters all knew how to get a laugh. We were surrounded by oddball aunts and uncles (my mom comes from a family of 19). You needed to be able to hold your own to keep the focus in the midst of a lot of loud, little French Canadians. The most prized skill of all was being funny. If you were funny, you had a seat at the table. You could be a blowhard uncle or a swearing and slightly racist aunt or an accomplished foreign diplomat. If you were funny, you were in.
My first memories of watching comedy are of sitting on the couch after school watching Abbott and Costello in black and white on Channel 27 in Grafton, a small mill town in Central Massachusetts. I loved the physical comedy, as well as the word play: Bud Abbott smacking Lou Costello for screwing something up, the constant misunderstandings, overemoting, insults…I loved it all.
There weren't many rules in my family when I was a kid. Come to think of it, I can't think of one single “official” rule I was required to follow. It was never a problem if I wanted to stay up late and watch SNL when I was 8, or Monty Python movies when I was 12. I watched Cheech and Chong, Airplane, Blazing Saddles, all from the comfort of the horrible floral‐print couch in the parlor (that's what my people call the living room), all while my parents, aunts, and uncles played hearts, argued and swore and laughed under a constant white‐blue cloud of cigarette smoke in the kitchen.
This is also where I gained my affection for curse words. My mom was a world‐class cusser bundled into a 4‐foot, 10‐inch French Canadian frame. The woman was loud and swore like a trucker. And before anyone gets all up in arms about my stereotyping truckers, I know whereof I speak, as my dad was in fact a trucker.
My mom could give both George Carlin and Richard Pryor (and for the younger set, Amy Schumer and Brian Callan) a run for their filthy money. And I would give the nod to mom because she could do in two languages. So if you are a sensitive soul or in any way offended by the title of this book or the other swear words judiciously sprinkled throughout, please blame Cecile. I promise you, she would definitely not give a shit about what you think.
And TV shows. Oh, how I loved those '70s and '80s sitcoms. Happy Days and the Fonz jumping cars and doing crazy Greek dances. Watching All in the Family with my mom, with Archie Bunker as a racist foil, the physical comedy of John Ridder in Three's Company; The Jeffersons, Soap, Mork and Mindy and Cheers. I consumed it all, all the various types of comedy and laughter pouring into my feeble child's brain, scarring it for the rest of my life.
I especially loved the HBO Comedy specials. Listening to Richard Prior majestically unleash “motherfucker” after “motherfucker” was like listening to Pavarotti hitting the highest of high notes. George Carlin, Eddie Murphy, Steve Martin, Robin Williams. I was mesmorized.
How could these people be so outrageously funny, holding audiences captive and forcing laughter to come pouring out uncontrollably? It was like a magic trick, getting people to respond the way you wanted them to, whether they wanted to or not. The absolute fearlessness with which they stood on stage speaking their truths with an “If you don't like me, I don't give an “F” attitude. It wasn't rock bands or guitar players or even actors or movie stars for me, it was these guys. They were my rock stars and I watched them so much that I could recite their entire routines along with the TV.
After you've spent your weekend watching SNL, with Gilda Radner's Rosanne Rosannadana derailing Jane Curtin on Weekend Update, or Robin Williams spiraling into the ether on improvisational tangents at Carnegie Hall, showing up on Monday for fourth grade feels a little underwhelming. It became my mission to make everyone laugh. Girls, boys, nerds, jocks, quiet kids, smart kids, dumb kids, freaks, stoners, geeks, and goobers – I was a populist when it came to obstructing my classmates early educational pursuits.
I would employ jokes, stupid comments, props, slapstick (falling back in the chair was a favorite because it was funny, but also gained sympathy from the teacher)—whatever elicited a reaction was okay by me. The one‐on‐one stuff was great, but when I could get the whole class to laugh, including the teacher, well, that was the ultimate feeling of control. Twenty‐eight fourth‐graders and an adult laughing because of something I did or said? It delivered a powerful jolt to my young brain that said Hey, it feels damn good when people laugh at what I do or say.
Many kids use humor as a defensive mechanism when they are young, either to keep people from picking on them or as a way to make friends. That really wasn't my motivation. I didn't struggle with either of those issues. For me it was the sheer pleasure of getting a laugh. That laugh felt better to me than anything else in the world. So I spent a good part of my days trying to get that feeling.
Of course, at some point my teachers had to get on with what they were being paid to do, so I spent a lot of time either in the back of the room by myself (which I didn't mind), in the hall (which I didn't mind), at the principle's office (which I didn't mind), or with my desk moved all the way to the front of the room pushed flush against the teacher's desk (which I hated).
Yet even when I got “in trouble,” I always had the sense that I wasn't really in trouble. It always seemed to me there was a smile lurking just behind the stern look and serious words that the teachers would have to use to set me straight. Basically, I didn't believe them. They thought I was funny, too, and I knew it.
Being funny became my thing, from elementary school all the way through college. That, and motorcycle racing. I bet you didn't see that coming. I come from a motorcycle family. The first time I rode a minibike by myself, I was three years old. My grandfather, Big Al (Fat Pepe to me), owned Al's Cycle Shop in Palmer, Massachusetts, along with my Grammy, Shirley. My dad, “Big Norm” (I'm still referred to as “Little Norm” by much of the family), raced motorcycles from when he was a little kid to age 65. My uncles Bobby and Albert and Aunt Jeanie all raced as well.
My dad or mom would run beside me as I rode a minibike, my legs so short that I couldn't touch the ground. At some point I rode faster and faster until I just rode away from my dad. He recalled, “I didn't know if you knew how to turn or use the brakes, but there was nothing I could do, so I just hoped for the best.” Clearly a very different parenting style from today's helicopter parents.
I raced motorcycles from age 7 until early college. People thought my parents were crazy for letting me race. And yet for me and my family, it was normal – more than normal, it was second nature. When I raced it felt natural and safe, as well as thrilling and a little “F” you'y, too.
Looking back on it now, I have a much clearer view of how it affected me. As a kid racing motorcycles, it instilled in me the belief that I could do much, much more than the regular world thought was possible, or even prudent or sane. Teachers and parents speak in platitudes, like “You can do anything!” and then freak out whenever a kid deviates ever so slightly from what the collective culture deems “appropriate” or “safe.”
Risk is a part of life. Facing risk and overcoming it is one of the keys to achieving something great. Did my parents put me on those minibikes recklessly and without thought to my safety? Of course not. I had to wear every piece of safety gear imaginable. I had to learn and understand the machine. I had to fall down at slow speeds, take some bumps, and understand that a crash at high speed was going to be far more painful, so I better know what I was doing.
I also learned that those bumps and bruises didn't last forever, and that I could get back up and ride again. And as time went along, I noticed a change in people. They were impressed that such a small kid could master something seemingly so risky. They took a greater interest in who I was. They wanted to hear more about what I did. And I started to realize something: I could do more than what most people thought was possible and others would want to hear about it.
Also, I learned about failure. Every race there was exactly one winner. It was hard to finish in first place. I had 100 times more second‐place trophies than first‐place ones. More often than not, someone was beating you. Yet I learned that I could compete, get better, and have fun. After a while I started beating some of the sons‐a‐bitches who had beaten me for years. Lesson: Have fun and actually try to win – do those two things and you will get much, much better.
High school was more of the same, except throw in football, a girlfriend named Nina, and the somewhat reckless behavior common to boys and girls in the 80s. 'Nuff said.
While I enjoyed school socially, I was mostly bored, lazy, and undisciplined. Nothing much else had changed: I'd make my classmates and my teachers laugh, the teacher would eventually have to kick me out, and I spent a lot of time in room 10, the in‐school suspension room. I didn't really mind. It was usually quite fun to hang out with the skids, freaks, druggies, and losers. I got along with them as well as anybody else. And I learned that if you didn't really care about certain things, like getting into trouble, the authorities lost their power over you. I wasn't a dumb kid, but I was no academic super star by any stretch of the imagination, so I got a lot of “progress reports” that were better known as “warnings.”
Problem was, I would never bring them home and would just have one of my female friends sign my parent's name, so there was no one signature to compare to. By the time I was a junior or senior, I stopped playing the charade all together. I got a “warning” notice from my math teacher, Mrs. Langas (hated math but loved her). I said: “Look, you and I both know I'm not going to bring this home and show it to my parents. Even if I did they wouldn't care. So I can either just give this back to you or get it signed by someone else. What would like me to do?” She took it back. She was awesome.
Also, I learned how to cheat. Today I refer to it as “academic life hacking,” simply finding efficient shortcuts to achieve my academic goals. I may not have wanted to do the work, but I sure as hell wasn't going to fail everything, stay back, or get kicked off the football team, so I had to do something. I got really good at academic subterfuge. And not your garden‐variety crib notes or copying or scribbling answers on the hand. I had all that in my repertoire, sure, but I was more sophisticated than that. The great thing about being funny, charismatic, and popular (and also an unfair advantage over the kids who are not) is that you aren't as suspect as those who are perceived as “undesirables”. When you can equally chat up a teacher as well as a classmate, you don't draw as much attention when you are the only one in a classroom searching through a teacher's desk for the grade book. (Now the advantage goes to the technology kids and computer hackers, so I guess I hit high school at just the right time.) I changed a lot of minuses to pluses, Ds to Bs, and 60s to 80s. I managed to get my hands on an entire Spanish midterm exam, take it to the town library, copy the whole thing, and sneak it back to the teacher's desk without her ever knowing it was gone.
Am I proud of all of this? The mature and self‐aware answer is “No, I am not. I now know that I should have worked harder and applied myself to my studies.” That would also be bullshit.
I am kind of proud that I could figure out a way to beat the system, working my way around the things that didn't interest me. And I felt that if no one particularly was hurt, then what was the harm? The harm was that for a long time I didn't have the discipline to complete things, to push through tasks that were unpleasant or not exactly what I wanted to do. The result was to make things harder on myself, because if I had done it right the first time, everything would have been much easier.
Fast‐forward to 20 years later. A career in comedy; improv comedy no less. Starting up several companies. There is a clear and obvious pattern in my life. What I learned racing motorcycles stuck with me. I could face risk. I could face failure on the stage (and believe me, fail I did, and sometime still do). I could face failure in business (I have had a couple of doozies). I could master things I didn't know. Things could be done that others said were not probable or prudent or safe. Bumps and bruises, to the ego as well as the bank account, could be overcome if I just forced my ass back on the bike/stage/business world.
Some people think risk is to be avoided, or at least mitigated. I think risk is thrilling. It's the electrical current that galvanizes our souls. Take a risk. It doesn't have to be skydiving or starting your own company. Maybe it's making that call that you have been too nervous to make. Maybe it's following that idea that you have had but have always been told that it is too crazy. Maybe it's telling someone “I love you.” Whatever it is, go take a risk. It's scary. If we are going to make some shit up, we are going to have to take some risks. And when the risks pay off, it feels pretty damn good.