Standup comedy was my weird hobby. I would drag my poor parents out to the only open mics that were in coffee shops instead of bars. I’d get up and go, ‘Hi, I’m 17, and I have jokes about matriculation!’ At the time I was like, ‘Why is no one laughing?’ Alexandra Petri Read Quote
I majored in extracurriculars, honestly. I joined the Harvard Stand Up Comedy Society, which is a ragtag band of misfits. I wrote for ‘On Harvard Time,’ which was a student TV show trying to be ‘The Daily Show.’ And I wrote a humor column for ‘The Crimson’ starting my sophomore year. Alexandra Petri Read Quote
Snow is like a manic pixie dream girl: fun and whimsical when you encounter it only through the barrier of a movie screen – but absolute misery to have to put up with in real life. Alexandra Petri Read Quote
Millennials give comics the kind of adulation past generations reserved for musicians. We respect Lady Gaga. But we’ll travel hundreds of miles to touch the hem of Jon Stewart’s robe. Alexandra Petri Read Quote
One of the things I try to do – and I always regret when I’m not doing it – is I try to read as much as possible as I’m consuming news. Alexandra Petri Read Quote
Worst case scenario, nothing I do has any value or purpose, but if I can make someone laugh, I’m at least as useful as a piece of quiche would be. Alexandra Petri Read Quote
I tend to process stuff by making jokes about it. It’s something that makes me annoying to be around in times of real crisis. Alexandra Petri Read Quote
People feel compelled to continue reading and hearing the news. Sometimes, you just want somebody to be yelling at it with you as you’re reading it. I think of that as my function. Alexandra Petri Read Quote
My first summer in college, I interned for Arena Stage in D.C. and taught a disastrous class on standup comedy to middle schoolers at the Arena Stage camp. I had never taught anything before, and needless to say, I quickly lost control of the class. Alexandra Petri Read Quote
