Patton Oswalt Is My Spiritual Guru

Matt Tobey found some Patton Oswalt musings on A Special Thing (comedy nerd message board) and put them on the Comedy Central Insider (it's ostensibly a thread about Friday Night Lights, which I've never seen):

"You know how, when you're nineteen, and terrified of what everyone thinks of you ("You are what people perceive you to be...") you do that disdainful bullshit, where you say, "Oh, he doesn't like SPINAL TAP", or "Oh, she likes FAMILY GUY", and you follow it with the phrase, "...and that tells me all I need to know about him/her".

That's kinda cute when you're nineteen, because older people hear it and have a hearty chuckle behind your back. Because -- tee hee! -- saying that tells everyone else everything they need to know about YOU...

But no one faults you for it, 'cuz you're nineteen, and pretty soon you'll grow into Alan Moore's famous phrase, "Forget cool. Like everything."

It's stuff like this that makes Patton Oswalt more than a comedian and actor. I'm actually not kidding about the spiritual guru part (okay, well, nobody is my spiritual guru, but Patton Oswalt has a lot of insights that personally make me feel better about the world.) Like when he talked about how jealousy and bitterness among comedians doesn't make sense to him (yes, it's a link within this site, but nobody else quoted that, k?) I don't think it's a coincidence that a person with that kind of attitude has garnered the respect that Patton has in the comedy world. Everything I've seen, read, or heard about him has shown him to be essentially...what's that concept that keeps coming up? Oh yeah: GENEROUS.

What I'm getting at here is that I think Patton Oswalt should write a self-improvement book. Seriously.

 

Comments

[matt]

Awesome. He's fucking great.

[Lena]

He's also really supportive of writers. He's known by the staff at Skylight because he takes the time to talk to them about what he's reading/what he should be reading. And he's helped do 826LA and NYC events on more than a few occasions.