Kumail on Letterman

My friend and freshman year roommate Kumail Nanjiani will be performing standup on Letterman tonight. Kumail and I put together a standup night in Fall 2000 at Bob's Coffeehouse on campus at Grinnell college because we each wanted to try putting an act together. We followed this up with another show the following Spring, and then he went to Chicago after graduation, where he started climbing the ladder of standup comedy in Beef City. I ended my "career" after my third performance, when I visited Kumail and other Chicago-based Grinnellians in the Spring of 2002 and went to an open mic with him. He was by a wide margin the funniest person on stage that evening, and he has continued to swiftly rise from there.

He capped off his years in Chicago with a tour leg opening for Zach Galifianakis through the midwest, and with Unpronounceable, a one-man show about his experiences going from a traditional Islamic background in Pakistan to one of the most liberal colleges in the US. Then he moved to NYC, where he has performed constantly, appeared in speaking roles on SNL and The Colbert Report, was a writer and regular on Michael and Michael Have Issues, and recently had a feature article written about him in the NY Times.

Tonight he'll be on Letterman. There is one other scheduled guest, some other up & comer by the name of Mariah Carey. Check him out: he is very funny.