His grades weren’t great in school, but not for a lack of intrinsic motivation. A staunch academic, our dad was always pushing him to do better, but Harris refused to do things that didn’t make him happy. Rather, he played drums in his high school band, Pralines and Dik, and spent countless hours consuming every comedy special or sitcom he could find on TV or at Blockbuster, his spiritual home. He idolized Louis C.K. and Mitch Hedberg. Hedberg would go on to die of a drug overdose at thirty-seven years old, and Louis C.K. would be accused of sexual misconduct by a number of women. Regardless, these were the giants who, despite their demons, influenced Harris to become who he was.
When we were teenagers, our parents took us to see them on two separate occasions at the Laff Stop, this infamous, little comedy club in Houston that no longer exists. After Louis’s set, Harris approached him at the bar and, in all seriousness, told Louis he could give him some notes on how to be funnier. He was always fearless. Mostly fearless. I remember he used to throw up before going on stage. He threw up constantly as a child. When we were kids, stomach cramps were his go-to excuse to leave anywhere he no longer wanted to be. In high school, he’d chug Kaopectate for breakfast nearly every morning. One time in college, I saw him hang up the phone after a moderately tense conversation with a girlfriend and immediately vomit.
Despite the naturally nervous stomach, Harris started doing open mics as soon as he turned eighteen and could legally enter the clubs without our parents. The whole summer before leaving for college, he got up every Monday night at the Laff Stop, where he’d seen his idols years before. I remember sitting in the audience for these mostly terrible shows, nervously waiting for his name to be called. During his set, I would laugh uncomfortably hard at all his jokes and look around to make sure everyone else was doing the same. He used to tell this one joke about potato shoes that I can still hear in my head in his exact intonation: “Do you think a homeless guy ever went up to another homeless guy and accidentally asked him for some change? Excuse me, can you spare some change? Um, can you spare some change?! Oh, hey Terry didn’t see ya there! You like my new shoes? They’re old. You like my new shoes? They’re potatoes!”
When he got to Emerson College in Boston, he majored in television and video but continued to focus on comedy. He did regular open mics at the Comedy Studio in Harvard Square and started a bizarro sketch comedy group called Fancy Pants with college friends Noah Garfinkel, Jim Hanft, Joe Mande, Gabe Rothschild, and Armen Weitzman.
During Harris’s last semester at Emerson, he opted for an internship at Comedy Central in LA. It didn’t take long for all the executives to start stopping by the intern’s desk to get advice on what was and wasn’t funny. Harris was a living comedy encyclopedia, the Little Man Tate of the comedy world. After the internship ended, he remained in LA and got a day job being a nanny to two little French boys. But at night, it was all comedy. He signed up for classes at Upright Citizens Brigade and continued going to every open mic he could find.
In May 2006, fresh out of college, he got a spot on UCB’s Comedy Death-Ray hosted by Scott Aukerman of Comedy Bang! Bang! Scott would go on to become one of Harris’s dearest friends and closest collaborators, but at the time, he’d never met Harris nor seen his act and was skeptical because Harris was essentially a newborn baby. However, a mutual friend convinced Scott to put him on the show with Doug Benson, Sarah Silverman, Paul F. Tompkins, Tig Notaro, and Blaine Capatch. According to Scott, Harris killed. At twenty-two, on a line-up like that, he made his mark.
Harris was that rare person whose childhood dreams turned into adult realities. He always knew what he wanted to do and actually did it. Being whip-smart, funny, hardworking, and endlessly charming contributed to his success, but it’s also worth noting that he’d always been lucky. He was the asshole who left his cell phone in a New York City cab only to have the cabbie drive it back to my Queens apartment hours later just to return it to him. When he was in college, he lost his wallet in the Boston bus terminal and someone mailed it to our permanent address in Texas with all the cash still in it.
Six months after doing the Comedy Death-Ray show, Harris got an email from Sarah Silverman asking if he’d be interested in writing for her new Comedy Central show:
Okay, so we have a slot open to write on the next season of my show. Do you have anything we can read? My producer will contact you about it, but I wanted to give you a heads up. Flanny loves you and I thought you were GREAT when I saw you. Don’t know what you are looking to do, but if this potentially interests you, submit something—anything—if you think it represents how you write or come up with ideas.
If this isn’t what you are looking to do PLEASE don’t think twice. It was just a thought.
