He used to have a note taped to his computer that read, “Joy is the most infallible sign of the existence of God.”
It's hard to imagine any comedian meditating every day on so sincere a message. It's even harder when you know his life story, which bears mentioning here—that he is the youngest of eleven kids and that his father and two of his brothers, Peter and Paul, the two closest to him in age, were killed in a plane crash when he was 10. His elder siblings were all off to school or on with their lives by then, and so it was just him and his mother at home together for years. They moved from James Island to downtown Charleston, and she sent him to a prep school, Porter-Gaud, where for the next several years he did next to nothing academically. “There was no way to threaten me,” he said. “It was like, ‘What? What's that? Oh, okay, I might get a bad grade? Oh no. Wouldn't want that.’ ”
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