SEBASTIAN MANISCALCO

I'll never stop doing stand-up. There's nothing better than getting in front of 2,500 people and making an entire room laugh.

One of my biggest pet peeves is when a guy's wearing flip-flop sandals, which I don't understand. Men's feet are disgusting to begin with, but now they're on display when I try to go out for a nice steak at a restaurant, and I have to sit there and look at some guy's hoof? I don't get it. I don't understand it.

I developed a knack for storytelling early on around the kitchen table with my family. I just happen to be a funny guy.

I do reflect on it sometimes, going, 'Wow, if I knew what I knew now I would be such a better server.'

I don't like a lot of clutter.

Food is kind of the conduit that brings people together.

I go to Vegas now, and I'm in the casino, and I'm gambling, and there's a guy in a wet bathing suit gambling right next to me.

When I was growing up, we dressed up for church.

I started working full time as a comedian in 2005, shortly after we did the Vince Vaughn 'Wild West Comedy Show.' I worked at the Four Seasons hotel from 1998 to 2005, so about seven years, just trying to put some food on the table and pay the rent while I went out to the open mics and got my feet wet with stand-up comedy.

Sometimes it's cool to have banter with the audience. Occasionally, somebody will say something, and I'll say something right back, and everybody laughs, and it's funny.

That's how my family bonded - eating and telling stories.

I give a facial expression in a moment of silence for audiences to react to what I just said and kind of let that marinate with the audience for a little bit. I enjoy the physical part of the comedy as much as the verbal content. People tend to gravitate to not only what they're hearing but also what they're seeing.

I was always taught how to dress for the occasion.

I like Las Vegas because it kind of gives me a chance to gauge my material in front of a very diverse group of people. There are a lot of different people in the audience, and you can kind of get a barometer for how your material plays throughout the country.

I once did a flip-flop joke in San Diego, and I got booed... but it's all in good fun.

I've never seen a weirder group of people than at the post office. It looks like people are crawling out from under rocks to go to the post office.

We grew up in a middle-class family in Chicago. Even when we went on vacation as a family, it wasn't a really fun time, because my father didn't want to spend any money when we got there.

I used to devour a lot of stand-up comedy in my cousin's basement. He had cable and I didn't, so I went there and saw all the comedians.

I'm like, 'Wow, I guess a lot of people didn't have this type of upbringing'... that old world technique of, you know, nothing's given to you, you've gotta work for everything you've done... It's just different from what I'm seeing today.

The business of being told to earn a dollar, that no one is going to give you anything - that was kind of my mantra throughout my childhood, and now it's in my adult life. I find that people really tend to relate to the immigrant father, whether he be Italian, Greek, Spanish or whatever.

If I can relate to the joke, it's going to be funny.

I remember when I was young, I was watching TV, and my father came into the room, agitated, and told me to start a business. I was eight years old.

It took me a good eight to ten years to really formulate what I was doing onstage and start to get really personal with comedy. I always really had timing naturally, it was just about trying to figure out how that timing was going to work onstage.

I'm a very observational type of comedian that points out everyday absurdities.

Although my values and my morals are old-school, you have to kind of key into the landscape of social media and how the world is progressing. I'd be a fool to sit there and go, 'Yeah, let's use the telephone to telemarket myself'... Social media is something that I definitely have to tap into, to another demographic.