When you're confined to a hospital bed, there aren't many appointments you can make. You await visits from friends and family members. You enjoy the coconut ice cream they smuggle in. You tolerate the erratic and invasive visits of doctors and nurses, hoping that one of them will bring you closer to going home.

Josh Gondelman

Categorized in : You Home Family Enjoy

In a dream world, I would love to be a master pastry chef, because it combines something I love doing baking with something I'm not good at doing baking. BUT! Practically, if I weren't writing and doing comedy things, I'd like to teach kids to read. I would be good at that in real life.

Josh Gondelman

real dream writing

tend to be better at describing feelings and ideas, and worse at painting a picture of any physical thing. I have terrible spatial reasoning skills so even if I were describing my girlfriend, whom I see every day, it sound like I was talking about a child's drawing of her. "Very beautiful. Glasses. Brown hair. Super smart brain. Bigger than our dog. Smaller than me".

Josh Gondelman

girlfriend dog beautiful

It's nice when I can be met with warmth and enthusiasm, but doing standup comedy has taught me how to push through the fact that statistically speaking, 100% of Earth's population population doesn't have any interest in what I'm doing at all. I try to think less about having/deserving an audience and focus on enjoying the privilege of creating things I like.

Josh Gondelman

focus nice thinking

I try to be kind, and I try to reflect that in my comedy, but I'm also incredibly bad at being mean. I can't pull it off effectively, so I always end up reverting back to politeness.

Josh Gondelman

end bad be-kind comedy

A v-neck T-shirt is the manliest of all upper-body garments. The defining feature of the style is a plummeting neckline that we normally associate with women's fashion, but when worn by a guy, it basically says, 'Here is a pie slice of chest hair that forms an arrow to my gut.' The deeper the 'V,' the more masculine the shirt.

Josh Gondelman

women style fashion hair

Often, when I leave the house, I dress for comfort. On my better days, I shoot for 'matching.'

Josh Gondelman

dress better comfort house

A vest, as a clothing item, always makes a statement, but depending on context, those declarations vary a great deal.

Josh Gondelman

deal clothing great always

My childhood friends and I would have been featured in 'The Achievers: The Story of the Big Lebowski Fans,' but I never signed the release form we received from the producers. I am both proud and ashamed of this fact.

Josh Gondelman

i-am friends childhood proud

I drink iced coffee nearly every morning and many afternoons year-round.

Josh Gondelman

every drink coffee morning

I was a weirdo, but a well-liked weirdo.

Josh Gondelman

weirdo

I don't court haters. I don't thrive on people not liking things that I do. I treat people the way I want to be treated.

Josh Gondelman

haters treat people way

Especially when I'm heckled, that's a sticky situation because I don't defuse it... I really envy guys who have a grittier onstage presence and can really go after someone. I used to teach preschool.

Josh Gondelman

someone go envy situation

The thing they don't tell you about a Tough Mudder is that, for all the adrenaline pumping and barbed-wire-bicep-tattoo sporting, a lot of the day is fairly idyllic and contemplative. I hadn't spent so much time jogging through the woods in years - or ever.

Josh Gondelman

day you tough time

Toughing out the winter is a dedication to my heritage, both in terms of not going 'soft' by kowtowing to nature's volatility and staying physically close to my family in New England. I don't run from that kind of pressure.

Josh Gondelman

dedication family nature winter

I grew up in the Boston suburbs and inherited a stubborn New England refusal to acknowledge frigid temperatures.

Josh Gondelman

new up stubborn england

'Are you sure you're going to be warm enough?' is a question I get a lot.

Josh Gondelman

question you warm enough

In my early years doing standup, I bombed a lot.

Josh Gondelman

lot doing early years

For many comedians, two common anxiety triggers include performing in front of family members and doing brand new material.

Josh Gondelman

new doing anxiety family

Even under the best circumstances, speaking at your own wedding ceremony is a high pressure endeavor. What even constitutes a vow? I always picture them as exclamations you bellow at the sky.

Josh Gondelman

picture best you sky

A standup set ends on a buildup of tension and subsequent release for a big laugh.

Josh Gondelman

laugh big release tension