I spent most of my seventh grade summer dehydrated, green-tongued, and smelling like a Malaysian whorehouse.

I always wanted to be as busy as possible so that if one job went away I'd still have plenty of other things to do.

I started out being a stand up and writing my own material. That took me to Talk Soup, where I was writing and performing for TV. So everything is all the same job in my eyes, and I don't want to ever give up any part of it. I will say that stand-up is my first love; it's how I got started and is in my bones.

I'm just myself, so I don't know that I think of myself as a nerd icon.

When one is undone—sprawled across the cold tile of a public bathroom in a pool of one’s own vomit, or shivering in the back of a taxi in a pair of urine-soaked skinny jeans with no money for cab fare and a dead cell phone battery—much like a wobbly toddler or an unhinged politician, one immediately looks for someone else to blame. God. Your parents. Ex-girlfriends. Undocumented immigrants. Marvin in Human Resources. China.

So much of a stand-up's life is doing live radio and having to be funny and quick on the spot with these strangers, and sort of surgical in terms of how funny I can be in three minutes.

I like to be nice. I want to be a hero. I want to save people. Or just kill zombies, because they deserve it, because they're already dead and they can't feel it. They don't have feelings.