I worked with the Groundlings, doing sketch comedy and improv at a theater here in L.A. It was my hobby, but I took classes and stayed passionate about it because it's what I wanted to do. It just fit. It takes a while before you can actually make money at it. I worked for years.
I wanted to be on Broadway, but in musical comedy.
I've always been funny, but I never considered it as a particular career path until my early 30s, when I realized that hip-hop wasn't going to be the long term.
My dream is to be on 'Saturday Night Live.' I'm going to do everything to make that happen.
I got a call from my manager saying, 'Howie Mandel wants to talk to you.' And I'm a comic - big fan of all he's done. He was pitching me 'Caraoke Showdown', and I was just excited about it.
I do think, with people in comedy, you can have your time, as it were, and then you don't realise that it might have gone. I hope it hasn't for me. I think what I do is, I just... I just try to plough my own furrow, in a way.
I was a teacher before comedy, but it was good because no two days were the same, which this job is too.
I'm a standup comedian who gets to act. I'm never going to not do standup. I love doing it and when I go through periods where I'm doing a lot of acting work, I still do standup.
When I hit my 20s, I struggled to make it. I got married at 19, and my daughter, Je'Niece, was born a year later. I worked blue collar jobs during the day and comedy clubs at night, and I was earning about $25 a year doing stand-up.
I knew at an early age that I wanted to pursue comedy.
I really wanted to, but I just didn't understand how people became comedians. I kind of thought it was something you were born into. And so I wanted to be a veterinarian or an architect. I wanted to be in a band, and for some reason I could understand how you could be in a band because I had guitars and all my friends played music. Comedy was a secret want, but it wasn't anything I pursued.
From the age of 14, I remember thinking I wanted to be a comedian. But that was like saying I wanted to be an astronaut. It felt like a million miles away, something I could never do, but would be great to.
When I was in third grade I taught myself ventriloquism... What's hard is to learn to be an entertainer and make people laugh. I was a few years out of college before I felt I had enough material. Then in 1988 I moved to L.A. and started to do some shows at comedy clubs.
If my career path takes me elsewhere, that's great. But comedy is my forte.
I've had varying luck with comedy in the past, but I'd really like to give that another go. I don't know if I'd chase down a part, but if the right thing came along I could certainly see myself stepping into that zone.
Stand-up is something I just truly love to do, so I'll always go back to it. I'll never stop doing it, that's for sure.
I always used to watch 'The Daily Show,' and there were all these comedic geniuses there. I didn't know if I was going to be hired full time or not. At the beginning, I was sort of hired as a part time, on and off guy. When I first got hired - it was August 2006 - and I was working on and off, and they'd call me whenever.
I think the reward for doing comedy is doing the comedy itself. You get to go to work everyday and laugh and make other people laugh and to me there's no greater reward than that.
I knew I wanted to be in show business so I took the path of least resistance. I loved comedy. But you never know you are funny until people laugh. It's just what I was interested in. I could make people laugh, I guess, but doing it at school and doing it onstage are very different things.
I think it was somewhere around age 3 when I fell down the stairs at my house, and I got up and did a Jerry Lewis impression and got a big laugh. And I thought, "Oooh, I like that. I think I need to do this for a living!"
The book is called 'Thanks for Nothing' and it's really the story of how I got into comedy and traces back every strand in my life that is relevant to that story. It's kind of an autobiography but isn't, as it stops about 25 years ago. It goes right up to the first time I do stand up.
I've always been a fan of comedy. I've always enjoyed it. It's something I'm very passionate about; it's like lifeblood to me. I had to pursue it. I thought I had a little bit of talent, and if I could make a living at it, I would do it. It's worked out so far.
Jerry Seinfeld, he was doing Letterman show all the time, so he kind of had an excuse, that people know the jokes already. He didn't have time to do stand-up. A guy like me, I have no excuses.
I used to sneak up to the 8th floor and watch Eddie Murphy and Joe Piscopo rehearsing 'Saturday Night Live' and could only wonder if I would ever have the chance to be funny. It took me five years to go up the two stories, but it is such a sense of fulfillment to be able to show what I can do on national television.
At one point when I was very young, when I was first starting out, I thought, 'Well, one day I'll be able to put all the music away and become a real comedian.' But then I realized there are amazing musical comedians out there, that musical comedy is probably something I'll always want to pursue.
