Or if it was (it wasn’t), no one laughed. Three years ago, after spending time in Iowa
(the state), Chicago (the city), and New York (the longstanding heir apparent to Old
York), Nanjiani was working the What's Up, Tiger Lily? comedy show in LA, and on a
random night in February he walked into the venue and found himself surrounded
by birthday decorations and tons of pictures of…himself. Put there, he guesses, by
hosts Jon Dore and Rory Scovel.
He told them it wasn’t his birthday. They did not respond. He told the other ten
comedians in attendance that night. They did not care. He then went on stage
and attempted to take control of the situation. “Guys, really, it’s not my birthday.”
Audience: “[Silence.]”
“People did not think it was funny. They thought I was being bitter and ungrateful.”
Today, on the third anniversary of that unhallowed day, Nanjiani awoke to birthday
greetings from @UPROXX, @HBO_UK, and many more, to which he responded as
he had before:
It is not his birthday. It is not a joke. But it is information that is on the Internet,
and that’s the end of that. February 21 is Kumail Nanjiani’s Groundhog Day.
As a former philosophy major myself—and knowing that Nanjiani studied
philosophy at Grinnell College—I was hoping that an observation like that might
open things up to a discussion of Nietzsche’s idea of eternal recurrence or, at the
very least, a discussion of BIG IDEAS. But although Nanjiani did reveal that his
Silicon Valley costar T. J. Miller is an unrepentant Nietzsche fan who references
the German intellectual on stage and IRL, he himself is no such sucker, would not
admit to reading philosophy, and likely does not engage in philosophical studies
on the sly, considering that even video games are beginning to overburden his
calendar at the moment.
That last part may sound a bit precious, but when play is work and work is play—
when your X-Files podcast can lead to an X-Files acting gig (as it recently did for him)
and your one-man show can lead to real-life threats—it’s easy to see how a life of
leisure can also seem like a life without a break.
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