At my first library job, I worked with a woman named Sheila Brownstein, who was The Reader's Advisor. She was a short, bosomy Englishwoman who accosted people at the shelves and asked if they wanted advice on what to read, and if the answer was yes, she asked what writers they already loved and then suggested somebody new.

New Orleans is still the place where you find out that you have a doppelganger and feel lucky - but somehow unsurprised - to learn that his name is Mad Bottom.

A comic strip that your parents read when they were young is a curious thing: it's an heirloom, and it's also intimate. You peer through windows and look at the things that made your elders laugh, and then you wonder whether the laugh really belongs to you.

In library science school, back in the years of glowing green non-graphical screens and protocols called Archie and Veronica, I wrote Internet documentation.

Humor's a weapon if you want to make it one.

It took me a while to figure out the U.S. sense of humor, a lot of trial and error. I would write down jokes to casually tell my American friend over Skype to see which ones he'd laugh at.

Rapping can be repetition sometimes. Sometimes you gotta highlight your words in a certain kind of way. So I always was a fan of sing-rapping. It was always funny to me a little bit, and I think that being funny and being able to laugh, even at yourself, is a form of flattery.

See, I'm totally fearless. I got my chops in the most, like, dangerous comedy atmosphere. If you can make it in New York, you can really do stand-up anywhere.