When I think about women who inspire me, I think of my friend Lynn. She's amazingly funny and smart. We met a few years ago, kind of through OkCupid. She dated one of my guy friends and then we lady bonded. Sometimes Lynn and I will stay up late and have virtual slumber parties and talk about boys and boobs. She's one of those people that's really easy to talk too, and you find yourself saying, "I don't really tell people this, but..." She's wonderfully open, and knows how she feels and isn't afraid or ashamed, which is really liberating. It makes you feel braver in a way to be around someone who's so open. She also just makes me want to be a better, funnier person. I sent Lynn a bunch of questions and she was sweet enough to answer them: When did you first get into comedy? I don't remember being super-into comedy as a kid. I was really into music and reading and writing. But my dad was really into it and would recap SNL for me the next day when I was too young to stay up for it, and I couldn't wait to be old enough to watch it myself. And I was also really into MAD magazine and old National Lampoon books, like their parody of a Sunday newspaper. I first started performing comedy, and performing at all after a long hiatus, when I took UCB improv classes around 2003. I had read about it in the paper when I was super-depressed and living at home on Long Island and thought it sounded really fun. My parents actually got really mad at me because I was unemployed and they thought I was wasting my money. Now they're like my #1 fans, though. It snowballed from there. You're one of my favorite writers, (you're welcome) Do you think about the people first and then putting them in awkwardly sexy situations, or do the awkwardly sexy situations come first? Aww, thank you so much! I assume you're talking about fan fic. Fan fic is actually the only time I write without self-censoring and don't really edit. It's one of the few times I can recapture how awesome it felt to write as a kid just for the love of it without worrying about how good it is or it being for a Project. I just kinda have one basic idea and then stream-of-consciousness write things that make me linge. Or craugh? (cringe-laugh.) For things like my solo show or storytelling, the situations are just my life and then I figure out the best way to tell them truthfully in all their glory. How have Twitter and Facebook changed your comedy? Facebook....from a meeting people and keeping in touch/booking shows standpoint, definitely, but not so much the content. It especially helps with comedy connecting since I can be much better at social media than at real life. I go to shows and mics and desperately want to just look at my phone and ignore people but I force myself to be On for like 15 minutes just to interact with humans. Then I go home and crash from it. Twitter, definitely! Much more so in terms of what I actually write. Before that I was very anti-writing jokes, at least for myself. I'd written some for shows on Fuse and was like, hm, I can do it for money but I can't see myself WANTING to do it. Then I realized there were ways to adapt my sense of humor to the medium (Twitter/jokes, not that they're the exact same thing). It also freed me up to just write and experiment, same as Fan Fic. And the more I saw people respond, the more invested I became, which led to me doing stand-up. A lot of my material is adapted from tweets as a starting point. Have you made friends in real life from tweeting? Definitely! I met Katie Cunningham, who I do We Don't Know Each Other with (wedontknoweachother.tumblr.com). And I've met people I interviewed for my whydyouunfollowme.tumblr.com. That pretty much ties into your awkwardness question, that whole blog is about asking an awkward question. And I've met a lot of comics in person and there's an automatic, oh, I follow you! mutual recognition. I think I've ended up pals with most people I've met off Twitter. Who was your first crush? First Kiss? First crush....a LOT. I was a young trollop. In kindergarten, Matt, Miguel. Miguel gave me his baseball cards on the bus and wore a red leather jacket like Michael Jackson so he was a cool boyfriend. Matt was smarter though and could read the newspaper with me. First kiss was at 14, which was a tragedy at the time cause I was so old. I lied to my friends and pretended I already had. His name was Chris (first in a long line of them) and my friend set us up. He was a cool skater boy with his head shaved except for one floppy purple piece. I wanted to be cool so I skated down his skate ramp...and fell flat on my back. He grabbed my hand, helped me up, and asked me to be his girlfriend. (SO ROMANTIC!) My friend insisted we seal it by kissing, so we did. I was grossed out, cause OMG he FRENCHED me, and I did NOT expect that. And I kept my eyes open. Don't ever do that, people have pores. It turned out my friend was timing us and insisted we go longer. It was pretty shitty. My second kiss was way better. Granny panties or thong? Bikini-cut Spanked or having your hair pulled? Duh, I spank YOU Big spoon or little? Little but really, top spoon Who was your first best friend? How did you meet? Lesley! Our moms were pushing us in our strollers when we were, I think, 8 and 11 months old, respectively. I said hi to her (she didn't say hi back cause she couldn't talk yet. She can now.) Our moms were all "Aww" and got to talking and realized they'd had a class together in college. They started a playgroup and she and I have been friends ever since. We actually went to see Fleetwood Mac last year. THE MEET-CUTEST! Who inspires you? All my friends and the amazing people around me. Cheesy, but true. SORRY. Best vacation? Hmm, maybe Walt Disney World. I first went as an adult and had the best time ever. I went with my best guy friend who I was repressed-ly in love with and decided to make my life as difficult as possible by also inviting my roommate to block the romance. HIJINKS ENSUED! But still a great time. Oh, Paris wasn't so bad either. Favorite New York moment? I'm from New York, Long Island. So I started coming here as a teenager when it was SO COOL to mention you had been to St. Mark's last weekend, NBD. I guess I don't really think in terms of New York moments vs. Life Moments. But I'll say one New Year's Eve, my friends and I were waiting for the subway and doing a stomp-stomp clap rhythm for some reason. The entire platform joined in....and the people on the platform across from us started doing their own rhythmic magic STOMP routine! We basically had a dance-off. Then the train came and we all started clapping and cheering. LOVE. Spontaneous music is the best thing ever. What's the greatest piece of wisdom anyone ever gave you? That's hard! A lot. One time my friend Allison told me when I was freaking out about a paper in high school, "why freak out? you always get it done." And it hit me that, oh yeah, in the end I always do, and it's never actually important a week later. I don't wanna stress about things that aren't actually going to impact my life. My Nana is the best and a couple of things she's said stick with me. One is passed down from her dad, my Great-Grandfather. When she was trying to go to bed one night and couldn't, he told her to take her worries and put them in a drawer and shut it, because she couldn't do anything right now anyway. She said it's helped her sleep through really tough times. Also a while back after a breakup she told me that I've been trying to help people and losing part of myself in the process since I was 13 and she remembers. She told me about things I'd done that I had no i idea she was even aware of. I'm still working on that. I need to call my Nana. Who really knows Lynn? This sounds weird, but I want to be understood by everyone. Even if they don't like me, it's overly important that people understand my intentions and who I am. To a fault, for sure. But as far as who REALLY knows me....my Mom, in a lot of ways. Ainsley knows my heart. My high school BFF Kim. And a lot more close friends I don't want to list and exclude anyone, because they are the best ever and each of them has a slice o' my heart. Also, the longer I'm in therapy, the more I realize that I haven't known all these rumblings underneath the surface myself. That's pretty scary sometimes, but kinda liberating. Cause I try really annoyingly hard to Know Myself, and if I really don't, how can I expect anyone else to get me, or know themselves? DEEPDEEPEDEEPPSAYSOMETHINGDUMBABOUTBUTTSTOFEELLESSPRETENTIOUS You like to study people, what about people makes you smile and what makes you want to punch a baby (in a funny way)? People make me smile (at least internally, I love my flat affect) all the time. When they are awkward-cute, when they try to show they care, when they're nice. It's all very Kindergarten-sounding but true. People make me mad when they act like shitheads and aren't willing to Stuart Smalley-style take a look at themselves and make an effort to change or make amends, especially when the people who care about them ask them to. Not having my efforts in a relationship reciprocated. It doesn't have to be counting favors, but knowing it's unequal. People who stagnate and refuse to learn and grow. I won't punch a baby, cause that hurts me even comedy-wise, but I do actually imagine grabbing the back of people's heads and slamming their faces into the wall til they're covered in blood. Lately it's graduated to pushing them down the stairs, so I think my buried rage is subsiding. Oh, and people spitting food out of their mouths by accident cracks me up. What do you think love is? A huge spectrum of ways to care about people. There was a study that described it as "micro-moments of connection," and I really like the idea of love being something ongoing you find in so many different places. I've never loved any two people the exact same way and I think that's actually great. I also don't believe in the in love/out of love binary. And I never really say "I love you" to people, I'm working on it. Especially boyfriends. Even though, of course I love them, why do I need to say it?! It just seems cheesy and overly fraught with dramatic meaning ("omg, did you tell him you love him yet?"). Whatever, like I said, I'm working on it, OK? GOD. What's the meaning of life? To be happy and help make others happy. It sounds so simple! For me personally, to also try to get as much as I can out of my brain and onto paper/the stage/etc.To connect with people. It's the future, where are you? In NY or California with my Partner (marriage is optional) and our 3.4 kids. I'm making a living from my writing/performing and I don't have to do copywriting anymore. I know, boo-hoo, I freelance write. I'm an asshole. Also, I have 5 successful Indie Albums. Also also, I'm a therapist and a bounty hunter/PI. And really good at jiu-jitsu.
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