Jon Kane.tumblr.com

At some point during 1986, I made the decision to be a writer and to do so absolutely. Rather than having a go, or trying, or tiptoeing forward, I decided to write as well as I could. This was, in a way, an extreme decision and an open invitation to risk, because if I really threw everything I had into writing and got nowhere, then I would be definitively No Good At It. I hadn’t worked out that going halfway into writing (or any art, or anything else worthwhile) wouldn’t be safe, it would be a guarantee of failure. The joy and fear and work involved in writing have to be real and full to have meaning and to achieve anything. I didn’t know that, I was simply feeling useless in the midst of Margaret Thatcher’s recession with no proper job I could go to. So I wrote. I really wrote. And I was lucky. I got published – and therefore found a way of life and a profession and a love I could never have anticipated.

This is just a small thing, but I hate brunch. I don’t believe that brunch is a thing that anyone actually enjoys on any level. I don’t think the food is food that people like. I don’t think that people want to see people socially on Sunday morning or afternoon. I don’t think any of it is worth waiting in line for. I’m on an anti-brunch campaign because I think it’s a form of mass hysteria that people want to go to brunch and think that it’s a good thing. And I was constantly trying to get anti-brunch jokes into the show, and no one cared, no one shared my point of view. And I’d get them into table reads, and there would be no laugh because everyone likes brunch because we’re being fed soma by the government, there’s this Brave New World madness. But I did manage, in the guise of Abby Grossman, the hipster comic [on “TGS Hates Women”], one of her clips, if you noticed, was her saying, “Has anyone ever had a good time at brunch?” That’s as close as I’ve gotten to fulfilling my anti-brunch jeremiad. But someday there will be a whole story about brunch and eventually America will wake up.

…Of the few things I can cook, I can cook all of those things just as well as I’m going to get them after waiting for an hour. Why leave the house? Do the Sunday crossword puzzle

… I don’t even drink coffee, believe it or not. The tea is better. My children aren’t annoying anyone; I’m not hating someone else’s children. Stay in for brunch, New York!

If you’re going to count on the competition to bring out your best work, you’ve surrendered control over your most important asset. Real achievement comes from racing ahead when no one else sees a path—and holding back when the rush isn’t going where you want to go.

If you’re dependent on competition then you’re counting on the quality of those that show up to determine how well you’ll do. Worse, you’ve signed up for a career of faux death matches as the only way to do your best work.

Self motivation is and always will be the most important form of motivation. Driving with your eyes on the rear view mirror is exhausting. It’s easier than ever to measure your performance against others, but if it’s not helping you with your mission, stop.

It took me until my 40s to realize it: There’s no destination. There’s no getting anywhere. There’s just the going. The key to life is to make the going really fun. Because people that are like, “If I just get to this, then boom!” And then they get there and there’s this dawning of an afterwards. Whereas I’m just always in the going. And it’s not a frantic going like, “I gotta keep going or I’m gonna go nuts!” I can not do anything for weeks or months if I need to and just sit and read books or watch movies. I’m just as fine consuming and absorbing new art as I am trying to make it. But it’s all in the going.

Early on, I took swipes at Tyler’s appearance; I made jokes about a chubby 16-year-old’s chubbiness. A friend reviewed one of these early recaps thusly: “Hilariously mean!” That struck me. I realized I was headed down a bad road. I long ago vowed, as Batman did before me, never to make fun of stuff that people couldn’t help. Because it’s (1) easy and (2) not fair. There are plenty of things that people have complete control over that are worthy of ridicule. So I concentrated on what people wore, how they mangled common phrases and idioms, and how they treated each other…

So I’ve never differentiated between the alternative and the mainstream. There are plenty of alternative comedians, and I mean ones that sort of started off as alternative comics…that’s like saying, “I’m going to start off as a jazz improvisor.” Well, do you know how to play scales? “No. I’m going to start off by improvising.”

It’s like a guy saying, “You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to start off as a four-star chef.” Well, can you cook a cup of rice? “No.” Can you cook an omelet? “No.” Well, why don’t you start off learning how to cook rice, and by the way, that takes about a year. Four star chefs take a full year learning how to cook rice and how to cook omelets. “Well, I’m not going to do that.” Well, then you’re never going to be a four-star chef.

All of those are the same: “I’ll do whatever it takes not to move towards success, because then I will never have failed.