Matt Mira extended interview from Say Anything - TableTop ep 9

My name is Matt Mira.
I am a comedian and co-host of the Nerdist Podcast.
I also am a producer on Attack of the Show on G4.

Nerdist Podcast is just this little tiny thing we started
doing two years ago that blew up.
Me, Chris Hardwick, and Jonah Ray, we sit in a room and we
talk, either to famous people or to ourselves.
And people listen.
It's very weird.
But they enjoy it.
I'd definitely consider myself a nerd.
When I was a kid, my mom was a big Star Trek fan.
And she would take me to these things.
And I just didn't know what I was going to.
I was just going to these convention halls in Boston.
I was like, what is this?
And then you'd go in, and there's toys.
And I kind of got into it.
In sixth grade, I showed up dressed as Scotty to a
Halloween party.
No one knew who I was.
I was just, hey, I'm that guy from that '60s TV show nobody
watches but me.
I got into comedy just by wanting to.
When I was a kid, actually, I wanted to convert to Judaism
because I thought, if you were comedian,
you had to be Jewish.
I really thought that was a thing.
So I like, Mom, I don't want to be Catholic anymore.
Let's try this Jew thing out.
They're very funny.
And then she was like, why do you want to be Jewish?
And I was like, well I want to be a comic.
And she was like, you know you don't have to.
And I was like, pretty sure you do.
In fact, I'm still pretty sure you do.
So I will be converting.
Comedy comes from real life.
It comes from real situations.
Pain is one of them.
That's how I cope with life, by turning them into jokes.
Drives my girlfriend crazy, because we can never have a
real conversation.
But I enjoy it.
I'm working a pilot with Scott Mosier.
You know him from SModcast, produced Kevin Smith's movies.
A very good writer in his own right.
We're working on a pilot right now.
Like to see that go somewhere.
Still going strong on Attack of the Show.
We do 252 episodes a year.
And the podcast, I just like doing the podcast.
It's really great.
You go and show up for two hours, and then you're done.
It's an amazing thing.
You just do two hours of work.
And then a check comes in the mail.
It's very good.
I'm more of a gamer than Jonah is, I think.
I play more video games than he does.
Board games I never really got into besides Trivial Pursuit
and Monopoly.
In fact, when Wil asked us to do this and I was like, what
the hell's this board game, I found out, apparently, there
are a lot of games out there that I don't know about, like
all of them.
The one we're playing today is actually pretty fun.
I might look into this whole gaming thing more.
When I was a kid, I had older siblings.
I was the youngest.
And they had this board game called Hero Quest, which they
never would let me play, because it said on the box, it
said ages 10 and up.
And I was not yet 10 years old.
And I actually thought that was a law.
Gaming is escape from reality into a funner place where you
can blow people up and not get in trouble.