Aziz Ansari

If you're a comedy geek or a hipster (I deeply dislike hipsters, but they nailed it with this guy), you might know who Aziz Ansari is. He's a stand-up comic who is very close to my heart, because he reminds me of myself in a few very notable ways.

1. Ansari graduated from NYU. I go to NYU.
2. Ansari is Indian and speaks Tamil, a South Indian language that I also speak.
3. Ansari is very funny.

The similarities are outstanding and simply can't be ignored. More than anything, though, Ansari's comedy style reminds me of jokes I make or would make if I had any sort of guts.

In an interview I read with Ansari, he mentions that he got into stand-up because a lot of people told him that he was funny. At the risk of sounding like a braggart, people have told me this too, but there is a very good reason I haven't followed through on it, and that is that while I think of myself has having a good sense of humor, it takes a lot of work to be a good stand-up.

I've done amateurish stand-up attempts, but there is a fundamental difference between being funny with your friends and being a good comic, just as there is a difference between being good at drawing and being an artist. When you're with your friends, just hanging out, it's easy to be funny. All you have to do is react to a situation or premise and direct it with a one-liner or witty remark. When you're a stand-up comic, you don't have the luxury of being reactionary and acting off an existing humorous situation, because you have to create the premise, and then make it funny. You are telling a whole story, whereas with your friends in that room, everyone is already on the same wavelength. It is actually very tough, and doing it well requires a lot of practice and finding something that is both universal, so an entire audience can get it, and specific, or at least specific enough to be original.

I will say this in my favor, though. I once heard Jon Stewart describe how he got into stand-up comedy, and he explained the whole idea of creating a premise v. reacting to one (yes, that idea was Jon Stewart's and not mine.) But he also said that good comics have a brain dysfunction in which their brain will turn to a joke or think of something funny in an almost involuntary way. It's just what happens, and you can either choose to control it, or let it run free. I have never heard a more accurate description of the way my brain works, and this has a tendency to get me in trouble. For whatever reason, good or bad, my brain seeks to turn any situation into a joke, and I get a huge thrill when a flippant or off-the-cuff remark I make gets a bunch of strangers to laugh. The interesting thing is, I have no loyalty to any "style" of comedy. Whatever form it takes: rude, sarcastic, witty, mean, intelligent (it usually isn't), or the most likely form of wholly accidental, if it gets a laugh I have no problem with it. It's sort of unnatural to love the idea of making strangers laugh, and probably suggests a desire to fill some void or lack of attention on my part, but I'm not a psych major. All I know is it gets me high to make people laugh, more so people that I don't know because it seems more honest that way. I don't get it, but more often than not I go with it.

When Jon Stewart was talking about either controlling or letting your brain go, he mentioned that he became a comic and let his brain run wild because he was "too weak to fight it." My problem is that I'm to weak to unchain it.