Hello reader/best friend. I very much enjoy writing jokes! Here is a short blurb about some of the comedy-related things I have done.

I studied improv at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in New York and wrote for one of their in-house sketch teams for many years. I have contributed a few headlines to The Onion. I have acted in a few episodes of the AMC show Better Call Saul in which I played a rude skateboarding scam artist.

Along with my sketch group Captain Hippo, I’ve sold and developed a pilot for the IFC network and have been a Comedy Central “Comic To Watch.” We also created, wrote and acted in a few different webseries for Above Average. Below is a collection of some written pieces.

I hope you enjoy them. It’s like I always say: “I hope you enjoy this collection of written pieces.

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The verdict is in and the rumors are true: I have two dogs, one big and one small. Hogzilla (big) is a Great American Fiendish Longhound. Peaky Blinders (small) is a Miniature Long-Haired Pomster/Choo Choo mix.

When confronted with any two things, the human brain attempts to compare them. I do not claim to know why the brain does what it does. I am more of an ass man. Here is a handy guide you can use to tell the difference between my big dog Hogzilla and my small dog Peaky Blinders.

Hogzilla is, and I can’t stress this enough, big. His bark sounds like a human man screaming the word “HARF” in baritone. Once a burglar climbed into my house and tried to burgle my treasure and, with a single harf, Hogzilla stripped the man of his clothes, then his skin, then his muscles, reducing the once powerful burglar into a harmless skeleton. Then, with another mighty harf, the bones of the burglar’s skeleton rattled and rearranged to form a tiny bone prison cell around the burglar’s skull. It was actually pretty cool. Also, and I have no idea how he does this, but right before Hogzilla barks his body wrinkles and it makes the sound of a shotgun cocking.

Peaky, on the other hand, makes nary a peep. This is because, again, he is very small. His barks are often mistook for a faucet leaking in the house across the street. Once he got trapped inside one of my nostrils while I was asleep (probably during one of my snores) and I did not hear his yelps even though he was literally inches from my ear drums. I only realized he was in there after he wriggled up my nose and walked passed the backsides of my eyeballs and I saw his silhouette projected onto my wall.

Speaking of food (I am talking about food in the private conversation I am having while typing this), Hogzilla and Peaky Blinders have vastly different eating habits. Before you ask, the answer is yes: I did buy them a big bowl and a small bowl, respectively. The problem is that they got confused (they are dogs, not bowl scientists) and mixed their bowls up. So Hogzilla eats from Peaky’s bowl, which is about the size of two thimbles. I need to refill it four hundred times per meal. Hogzilla can unhinge his jaw to eat things much larger than himself, which is something I thought that only snakes could do. But what are dogs if not snakes that can love you back?

Me (middle), Peaky, and Hogzilla circa 2018-ish.

Peaky eats from Hogzilla’s giant bowl, which is tricky because I need to somehow affix his single piece of kibble to the lip of the bowl with dog-safe paste so he can reach it. If Peaky misses the kibble and falls into the bowl then I have to call, like, ten of my buddies to come help me fish him out and, when we finally retrieve him, he looks like he has seen ghosts or something. Not fun. Once he fell into the bowl and somehow ended up crawling out of my shower drain, which is also something I thought only snakes could do.

Sometimes on rainy days Peaky, Hogzilla and I will play a game called “Twister Town” where Hogzilla will walk in tight circles around Peaky and I, creating a small tornado that scoops us off the ground. Then Peaky will stand on my back and pretend he is flying on a magic carpet and I will sing the song from Aladdin but instead of “I will show the world” I sing “I will show you a squirrel.” It’s just for goofs and nothing serious, just goofing around. However, the routine of playing this game on rainy days has had some sort of Pavlovian affect on the dogs (did not know this could happen) so now if we are walking outside and it starts to rain, Hogzilla will instinctually start running in circles and Peaky will jump onto my back. This causes problems because once we were in the park and it started pouring and Hogzilla went ballistic and ran around a jungle gym and the jungle gym (along with all the kids playing on the jungle gym) got wrapped up in his tornado and disappeared into the sky and I couldn’t even deal with this because Peaky was gnawing and scratching on my neck and I was trying to calm him by singing the Aladdin song. I like to think that the jungle gym ended up in an actual jungle so, in a way, Hogzilla was just putting it back where it belonged. Also, we got to be on the news!

As you can imagine, transportation can be tricky when you live with dogs big and small. Cars are impossible. Once Hogzilla climbed into my Mercedes and the car’s suspension tried to counter his massive girth but, alas, it could not so, alas, the car began to bend and contort and the metallic bending noises somehow formed the human words “take care of my grandma” and finally my poor car gave up and exploded and when the fire and smoke cleared Hogzilla was standing there, unscathed, wearing old-timey racing goggles. So, yeah, no car. A lot of people ask me why I don’t ride Hogzilla around town like he is some kind of weird horse. The answer is because he is terrified of horses (so cute) and even acting like a horse will cause him to shudder and piss. Instead of riding atop Hoggie’s back, he will graciously unhinge his jaw and allow me to climb into one of his massive jowls. It’s like a hammock.

Transporting Peaky is easy as he can fit inside of my pocket and is undetectable to most airline security measures. Hello, Hawaii!

Bathroom!!! When Hogzilla goes, you’ll know it. His poops, my god, I swear. It is like I have TWO Hogzillas (can you imagine??) I needed to buy a house with an abandoned grain silo on the property to store the stuff. It actually rules because I use his “makings” to fertilize my 200 acre leek farm. Our slogan is “Hoggy Farms: make a poop, take a leek (no hogs on premises)™.”

Peaky’s leavings are the exact opposite, they simply evaporate upon leaving his body. Don’t even make it to the ground. He won a blue ribbon once because of this.

“Enough of these differences,” you cry at me, tears streaming down your perfect face, “do Hogzilla and Peaky Blinders have any special team-up moves?”

Not really. This is real life, not some comic book video game. Except, I guess, sometimes Peaky will climb inside of Hogzilla’s jowl with me and it is like all of our powers combine. But we don’t fight crime or anything. We usually just go into town and watch people play chess in the park. I wish I knew how to play chess. Is it less boring if you know how to play? There are fucking knights and castles in it, why is it so boring?? Christ on a boat.

So there you have it. Despite these differences, my small dog Peaky Blinders, my big dog Hogzilla, my cat Boggles (not a fan) and I live in perfect harmony on our 200 acre leek farm in the heart of New York City. Come by for a tour sometime, but please not when it is raining. Bye.

Things: they are what we do most of the time. Sometimes, things are not going so great. Other times, things are going as smooth as Spider’s Silk™. Occasionally I will find myself entombed by an extremely attractive brand of self-loathing. To combat this, I have been making a list of nice things that I like. Whenever I find myself enjoying an activity or a thought or a large rhubarb pie, I take a second to write down what I am doing. This way, the next time I am consumed by darkness or despair or a murder of crows, I can look at my list and remind myself that there are nice things in the world. I would like to share my list with you, The Readers, because I think we could all benefit from being angry at me for enjoying myself.

1. Playing literally any piano.
2. Staring into middle-distance. If you are going to stare into a distance, make sure it is middle. I have tried staring into near-distance and long-distance and they are both extremely stressful.
3. Imagining that I am doing a slow somersault, but my feet never leave the ground so I just kind of roll into myself like I am my own sleeping bag.
4. Realizing that when I was born I was much smaller and, if these trends continue, I will eventually be the biggest thing in the universe.
5. Talking to my beautiful buddies.
6. Thinking about how there should be more jobs that end with “-naut.”
7. Beholding any piece of art that showcases a river or even alludes to one.
8. Waiting by a mirror at the furniture store and, when someone looks at the mirror, saying “you should buy this mirror, it has a great person in it.”
9. Smiling at a dog and then slowly looking up at the dog’s owner as my smile becomes a look of utter indifference.
10. Imagining that the time between inventing gummy technology and deciding to use it to make worms was less than one minute.
11. Acknowledging that one day everyone I know will die but it definitely won’t be my fault because it is impossible to get all of them to commit to hanging out.
12. Making up a name and then adding “@gmail.com” to it and then sending that person an email saying “I hope this email finds you real.”
13. Imagining the spiciest pepper in the world and deciding to never, ever fuck with it.
14. Thinking about how my parents met when they crashed their tandem bicycles into each other. The passengers on their tandem bicycles also fell in love with each other but it didn’t last.
15. Accepting that I will always pronounce it “Sadnay Night Live.”
16. Partaking in anything breakfast or skateboard-related (but never at the same time.)
17. Counting the different types of streets there can be: lanes, roads, avenues, drives, dirt, etc.
18. Looking at my hands until I am sure I can see them making their own decisions.
19. Doing flowers.
20. Remembering that one high school teacher who really made a difference in my life and wondering if they think about me more than the once every six years I think about them.
21. Learning that there are literally hundreds of books just about cooking: how to do it, why we do it, what the stuff we cook is made out of, etc.
22. How nicely “me and you” rhymes with “pee and poo.”
23. Pronouncing “bath” like how a British person would say it and then taking one.
24. Naming the crows that land on my front lawn until I run out of names and switch to numbers and sounds.
25. Fucking, NOT GOLF.
26. Playing a recording of the sound a basketball makes when it does a “swish” and pantomiming along to it.
27. Yelling at my old answering machine for not giving me any answers, literally the one thing it was designed to do.
28. Just gigglin’.
29. Hockey. What even is it? I am never going to look it up, but imagining what it could be based on things I have heard through the zeitgeist is fun.
30. Naming constellations and then looking up their actual names and seeing if I got the same thing and, if I did, giving myself a dollar.
31. Planting a tree in my friend Jeremy’s name.

Thank you for reading my list! I hope it inspires you so the next time you enjoy doing something, you will stop and think “wow, that Daniel guy should be on television.”

If you have a list of things that you enjoy and want to share it with me, please keep it to yourself.

New York City vs. Los Angeles

Few people on this earth have been to both coasts of the United States of America. I was born in New York City during a hurricane and raised to be Mayor. Now almost pre-30, I have decided that what I really want to do is be a rich actor. Last week I granted myself 3 days, American, to go to LA and achieve my dream. When I got off the plane at Los Angeles X, I was violently kicked in the head by all the subtle differences between Los Angeles and New York City. I did a quick search on The Internet to see if anyone had catalogued these differences in a list or perhaps even in a listicle, but found nothing. Here is my list:

(Note: “New York City” has been shortened to “NYC,” for “Nice, your city.”)

In NYC, we have fresh bagels every morning. In LA, everyone drives an electric car to work.

In NYC, hotels have cool, sleek names like “The Annihilator’s Kiss” and “Sleep No More.” In LA, all the hotels are nameless, and you have to go down to the lobby and ask someone if you are sleeping in the right place.

In NYC, I saw a snake once in the gutter where it belonged. In LA, snakes are everywhere: working in the shops and in my car.

In NYC, no one says “hello.” In LA, everyone says “hello” and nothing else.

In NYC, I have a mom and a dad that live in the same town as me. In LA, my mom and dad live far, far away.

In NYC, there are bike lanes on the streets AND you can get a real New York Slice™ at Joe’s Pizza for one buck-twenty-five. In LA, the bike lanes are great but the pizza is just lettuce and tomatoes in a bowl with dressing.

In NYC, everyone tells me to “forget about it.” I miss that. In LA, everyone tells me to remember what I saw here tonight.

In NYC, I take a cab to the subway. In LA, there is only one long subway that covers the entire length of the subway system and you have get in and walk through the cars to your destination because the train does not move.

In NYC, you can see “Hamilton” on Broadway. In LA, you can eat avocados until you bleed a creamy green.

In NYC, the rats play music on tiny instruments made of tin cans and old shoes. In LA, the rats are too hot to play their instruments because the sun is much closer to the earth.

In NYC, it snows every Christmas. In LA, I’m not sure they even have Christmas, but I see a lot of people that have the same haircut as Jesus.

In NYC, nobody wears a hat because, back in the 2000s, there was a man who would grab hats right off of people’s heads and run away and he ruined hats for everyone. In LA, you are required to wear multiple hats and encouraged to grab more. I actually like this about LA.

In NYC, we’ve got the tallest building in the world, but it is empty. In LA, they have the longest building in the world and everyone lives there.

In NYC, I gotta have my cup-a-coffee™. In LA, I drink water with leaves in it.

Those are all of the differences I have noticed so far. I’m off to audition for a “sitcom” (situation com.) The character is called “hipster.” I’m not sure what that is, we don’t have them in New York.

Update: I didn’t get the part.