I grew up very Catholic. I wanted to be a priest.
— Kurt Braunohler
So much of existence is so boring. To have little moments of stupidity is always welcome.
My parents got divorced when I was 2, so I have this weird thing where I have 8 brothers and sisters, but I am also an only child.
Anyone can become a game show host. It simply requires a giant, narcissistic ego and an inability to do anything else. The closest thing to school I did was looking in the mirror one hundred times a day and repeating, 'People should listen to you talk.'
I think we get stuck in routines so easily that when an absurd moment in life seems to be there for no reason, it wakes you up out of your everyday pattern. You pull back and look at life a little bit wider because of that one weird thing you weren't expecting.
It's amazing how much people talk about colonics here. That's not a thing anywhere else in the country. But I totally did a juice cleanse, I did a colonic - I'm getting into L.A. living!
Eric Bryant and Ethan Berlin, the creators of 'Bunk,' asked me to come get involved in very early process when they wanted to make a game show.
Everyone wants something that'll appeal to, like, 13-year-olds to 18-year-olds. Especially working in television and trying to pitch shows, they're like, 'We definitely want something that a 14-year-old will be, like, super-psyched about.' And I'm like, 'I don't know if my reality is appealing to a 14-year-old.'
There are a billion songs that I've heard and said, 'I don't even care to have an opinion about it,' but if I have to hear a snippet of the refrain of 'We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together' once, it'll get stuck in my head, and that drives me crazy.
I pushed against doing a podcast for so long. I'm a very late comer to the podcast game. But you're responsibility as a comedian is to get your viewpoints out into the world, and we have a lot more avenues to do that. So it's a lot more opportunity, but really have to work all the time.
All the great game show hosts have a signature 'look,' from Bob Barker's year-round Brazil Nut-hued tan to Monty Hall's oversized lamb chop sideburns. As the host of IFC's new comedy game show 'Bunk,' I, too, have worked to develop a style signature by being the first man or woman in TV history to host every show in my bare feet!
Other than Caroline's in New York, I pretty much haven't done clubs. That was primarily because I always liked the people and audiences at theaters and bars better.
For a really long time in my life, I fought against how I look. Because I was raised Catholic in school, where everyone had to wear a suit and tie. I hated everything that stood for. And I realized when I walked down the street, everyone would see the guy I hated and not the guy I was.
For people who mourn for old Times Square - hey, there's a ton of places in the city still like that! Get on the train and go visit them!
I go on Wikipedia and alter pages of animals with fake facts that I've made up about those animals.
When I moved to New York at 22, I didn't know what I wanted to do. I took an improv class, and the first scene I did, I felt like 'I want to do this for the rest of my life.' It was the first time I ever felt like that about anything. I tried to make a living off improv.
For a long time, I would go out of my way to have a personal appearance on the verge of an insane person, because it was closer to how I felt, but I looked so dumb. So, I just stopped. It was like, 'I'm just going to look like a banker.'
'Bunk' is better than 'Wheel of Fortune' because we have a wheel, just like them, but our wheel is purposeless. It doesn't do anything. It just spins for no reason. Which is nice because it frees our wheel up to really pursue its dream: becoming a professional paddlewheel.
I never understood using Kickstarter for commercial purposes. If you want to raise money for commercial purposes, I think you should give someone a dividend. They make money, then you make money. It should be an investment, whereas I think Kickstarter's true purpose is raising money for things that are in and of themselves justifying.
The entire New York comedy scene has moved to L.A. - it's bled the New York comedy scene dry.
We are going to do 'Hot Tub' until we die. Every Monday. Then we'll come back and do it as zombies. 'Hot Tub' is very important. What we do is based on our live skills. It's stand-up and sketch and improv; everything we do in 'Hot Tub' is important to our jobs. And every Monday I'm excited to do it.
Who would want to get back together with Taylor Swift after having dated her? I'm sure dating her is like talking to a white sheet of paper with a little bit of vanilla ice cream on it that doesn't say anything.
Auditions are just torture. I'm trying to get better at it. It's a very difficult thing to do. You go into a tiny room with a camera with somebody who is doing this with 100 other people, and they're so bored, and then you have to be like, 'Hey! I'm gonna show you what I got!'
It used to be if you wanted to be a comedian, you used to just do sets. You'd go up three times a night, just get better, and then some people would see you and you'd do 'The Tonight Show,' and then boom, you're a comedian.
It is an intern's job to go for coffee for anyone who asks, preferably delivering it scalding hot and cupped in your bare hands!
A lot of improvisers mistakenly assume stand-up is awful, because there are a lot of stand-ups in the world that did not appeal to me. It was so easy to make a blanket statement when I was improvising only: 'Stand-up's terrible.' It's so ignorant and stupid to do that. But it's easy to do that. So that's where I came from.
The rules of game shows limit stuff so much. I remember on 'Money From Strangers,' being in the van - not even performing - and there was a lawyer there the entire time. 'No, you can't give money for that. Yes, you can give money for that. That's a partial answer. That's a full answer.'
There's this secret Korean taco/cupcake truck I go to. To find it, you have to bring a hard-boiled egg to this deli in Bushwick where they give you the address.
Every day I do one or two podcasts that 92 percent of people never will hear. I'm constantly producing, constantly making jokes for Twitter. There's a lot of pressure there. On the flip side, I think having to produce like that makes you a better comedian.
The feeling of being an outsider was a big part of my childhood. I think that helps comedians. That feeling of being an outsider. That desire for a perspective that's all your own. The idea for me to make stuff myself with my own meaning came from that as well.
It is true that I do not wear shoes as the host of 'Bunk.' I want 'Bunk' to feel like there's a slight possibility that a confident homeless man just wondered into the studio and started hosting a game show.
'Bunk' is a comedy game show where, each week, three of my favorite comedians compete in a series of bizarre and meaningless challenges all for my entertainment. Ethan T. Berlin and Eric Bryant created 'Bunk.'
I was writing this really long joke about the smell of poop, and I was like, 'What am I doing with my life?' I started to think about why I was a comedian, and then I came up with a reason for existence, which is: inserting absurdity or stupidity into strangers' lives in order to make the world a better place.
I want to continually find ways to bring my ideas off the stage and into the real world, into the streets. I think I can make the world a better place, if only for a little while.
I would love to be more specific, but really, any type of bird is the funniest animal. They have to move awkwardly when walking. They have beady eyes; they are very suspicious. They can't do anything right. They have no hands, which is inherently funny.
You don't become a fully-formed human as a female, or even a male, until you're at least 30.
In doing my podcast, I do find that I tend to try out bits that I then try on stage later that day. If they work, great, and if they don't, I regret having talked about it on the podcast.
People have said that to me: They say I have a TV face.
In my new IFC comedy game show, 'Bunk,' we actually use our intern Patrick as a human timer - giving contestants the time it takes for him to wade through a bag of broken glass for a razor blade, to get gum out of his hair, to pick up every strand from a box of spaghetti I spill on the floor, etc, etc.
For a long time, I dressed like an idiot. In college, I had a fully shaved head with just two horns. Like, a coxcomb of hair that I would sculpt into two horns. I looked like a crazy person.
New York is a place that can grind you down and spit you out. A true New Yorker doesn't get ground down - he gets polished.
