The DC Improv food is amazingly edible for a comedy club.

It's good to be back in New York. I have lived here ten years. I'm originally from Indiana. I know what most of you are thinking: Indiana: Mafia. But the fact of the matter is where I grew up there was something very similar to the Mafia: 4-H.

No one goes into standup to make money. The frustration and rejection are just too much.

You can never find the right bowling ball. This one's too heavy. This one's good but its pink!

I think the worst professional advice I received was this kind of unspoken message of "sit back and wait your turn," or "sit back and wait and let other people do things."

Actually, the reason I look like this is because my father was from Sweden and my mother was Elton John.

I live in New York City, but it doesn't matter if you're in any large, metropolitan area, there's kind of a little bit of survival-of-the-fittest, so when you encounter kindness or people going out of their way in an empathetic way, it's almost startling.