Public transportation is like a magnifying glass that shows you civilization up close.

Sometimes we get bored and want to shake up our format. It's a luxury we have on public access - no one cares about us. It literally doesn't matter if we fail, so sometimes we try to go really big and out of the box.

Northern New Jersey looks like a cluster of idyllic suburbs, but each of those seemingly normal towns has a dark side that's constantly gossiped about but never publicly acknowledged. They seem to thrive on their strangenesses.

The street I lived on for the first handful of years of my life was lined with modest, lower-middle-class houses with small front yards and cracked driveways - your typical North Jersey neighborhood, with all the odd hidden darkness that that implies.

As a largely unsuccessful comedian, I've become someone that younger people sometimes find and ask for advice, which I'm happy to give, even though it makes me feel old.

I always think all the other comedians in New York hate me - I'm just convinced that they all dislike me - when, generally, I think I'm a pretty well-respected guy.

I had bedbugs in 2005. I felt like a leper. Worse than a leper. At least lepers had a colony they could go and live in with other people who empathized. I instead had friends stand up from tables and walk out of restaurants when I told them I had bedbugs, because they were afraid I'd transfer the bugs to them.

Cops in New York City don't have the best reputation. It's a fast-paced city, and they deal with a lot, and many people have seen lots of cops interact with the public utilizing what can be gently called 'not the best customer service.'

When people ask me, 'Why don't you drink?' I usually smile and say 'Because I'm not good at it.'

My medications make me easier to deal with. They don't interfere with my creativity or turn me into a zombie or dull my real personality. They help me connect with people, allow me to stay calm when situations seem overwhelming, and help keep my thoughts from racing out of control. They help me leave the house when I'm scared to. They help.

I very classically would go into manic phases, which were as dangerous, if not more so, than the depressed phases, and I think I'd come up with the best ideas I ever had, and then the next day, I'd look at them and be like, 'This is nonsense,' because it was born out of a manic episode. What a waste of time.

'What if?' is just about the worst question I can ask myself, and I want to avoid it at all costs for the rest of my life.

The stereotype of New Yorkers is that we're people who avoid warm human interaction, we're always in too much of a rush to enjoy simple things, and that we're just generally rude.

When I was growing up, I think I was expected to be seen and not heard. You're this little, nerdy kid; no one wants to hear about how sad you are. Nobody wants to hear that you feel lonely.

I grew up a loser, and I always felt like one, but I turned out pretty okay. I may be living proof that you can spend your whole life feeling like you're falling down a set of steps and still maybe land on your feet at the bottom.

My sadness compels me to hide it so that people won't judge me. Seeking help would have blown my cover. Meanwhile, my mania convinces me that it's making me fun so I'll want to dive further into it. Seeking help would've ruined that good time.

If I pretended to be confident all the time, that would just be a lie.

I moved to Queens from New Jersey in 2004 and have continued to stick with New York to such a degree that when people ask me to explain it, I'm sometimes unable to provide an answer.

I will never forget what happened on August 14, 2003. I know the exact sequence of where I was for every moment of that evening. It was a tragic day, and it's burned into my memory. Many people might remember that date, vaguely, as the date of the infamous eastern seaboard blackout that plunged all of New York City into darkness.

Even though I live in New York, I still have this Jersey thing where I feel like I have to prove myself. I'm grateful for any chance I get to be the least talented person in the room, because it'll make me work that much harder.

There's a teacher at the Renzo Gracie Academy in New York named John Danaher. He's leading this whole group of fighters named the Danaher Death Squad, and they're revolutionizing how that world works. I actually went and signed up for classes mostly because, man, if there's innovation like that happening in New York, I want to be around it.

I'm a pescatarian.

As a stand-up, as a storyteller, as an improviser, I've done thousands of shows. They allow me to work out new material that might turn into something later. They let me keep my muscles sharp for when the rent-paying gigs do come along. They keep me sane.

I think one of the things about listening is that it's always at its most powerful when it's present, when it's right here, when it's right now. And that's a lesson about improv that I think just made me a much more social person.

New Yorkers will be rude, but at least they do so out of the rationale that everyone around them is always slowing them down. Los Angeles, I learned, is a city full of people who have the personality of the coolest pretty boy from your eighth-grade class.

I do know I've lived through a bunch of things that people would maybe prefer I keep behind closed doors.

I think so often about how, when I was starting out at UCB, Conan O'Brien was in town, and on his show back then, they sometimes did character bits, and I started getting paid to dress up as a page or a Dutch boy on his show.

I think what I have learned is you can't avoid losing. You're going to strike out a million times. The whole point is not to dodge losing - it's to learn how to lose well.

I think, in my own life, I'm pretty political. I think I have some very strong ideals, and I struggle a lot with it. I struggle a lot with feeling like, 'I have a platform; should I be saying more?'

I take medications every morning and night - they're my breakfast, and they're my dessert. I love them.

The UCB has long been known as a hub of the best comedy in New York City, but it's never been the most well organized or cared for place in the world.

I remember the people who mentored me, and I just love being able to do that for other people.

I just really remember the feeling of being a younger comedian who was kind of an outlier for being experimental and weird and how that could feel lonely or hopeless.

I think Carmen Christopher is going to be massively huge. He's just too funny. He's got funny in his bones, and he wants to conquer every room.

Cops are everywhere in New York City. Cars drive by every few minutes. Uniforms stand nonchalantly at street corners.

Anyone who's ever been around an emergency in Manhattan realizes that there are plainclothes officers on these streets walking past us more than we ever realize.

Anyone who lives in N.Y.C. will tell you that getting into a confrontation on a city street is a complete nightmare 100 percent of the time.

I do not like confrontations in New York City.

I classify myself as a comedian, but I'm one of those comedians who also acts so that I can split the difference and feel insecure about both.

I'm not exactly Don Draper when it comes to physical attractiveness.

I don't think I'm ugly per se, but on bad days, I have been told that I look like the monster from 'The Hills Have Eyes.' That was extremely confidence-shattering, so I try to take care of myself.

When I really have it together, I think I successfully pull off looking like the exact middle point between Macklemore and Ron Howard, only with a much bigger forehead than either of them.

If you are dating someone in New York City, and they invite you over to watch a movie, they don't really want to watch a movie.

No one in New York hangs out in their apartments.

In 2002, I was taking an improv class because, as a white male with glasses who was born between 1978 and 1994, it's legally required that I take at least one improv class in my life.

I'm a dummy from New Jersey.

By August of 2003, I had graduated from Rutgers, gone through a stretch of living at my parents' house, and wound up sharing an apartment with a college friend of mine in Montclair, New Jersey.

Bits are fake conversations comedians have because they are uncomfortable being vulnerable with other human beings in any way.

It's a fun uphill struggle, making health insurance as a comedian, actor, and author. But it's hard to explain to people how I make a living. In New York, most people know enough creative types that I make some sense. But when I'm talking to someone like my suburban cousins or my mom's friends, it doesn't always go smoothly.

I feel like a lot of performers' worst shows happened in Philly. There's something about that town.