De Pasquale’s Dozen with Kat Timpf

There are only a handful of millennials I can tolerate reading or listening to when it comes to political matters.  Kat Timpf is one of them.  Many know her for her appearances on Fox News and Fox Business, particularly on The Greg Gutfeld Show.  Timpf is also a contributor to National Review, where she frequently writes about over-sensitivity on college campuses, social justice warriors, Hillary Clinton, and other terrible things.

“Good things don’t always happen to good people and I’m very angry about it.  But, if I didn’t have the anger, I wouldn’t be a comedian. Anger fuels the comedy.” -Joan Rivers, A Piece of Work

Joan Rivers has always been one of my heroes. Not only could she make tragedy funny, but she  was also able to use her own tragedies to motivate her success.

Most movies are no match for my attention span, but this line, to me, is a better version of a line from one of the other four movies I’ve seen: “You gotta harness in the good energy, block out the bad. Harness. Energy. Block. Bad.”

Don’t block the bad. Use it. I used to think this kind of thing was stupid and naive, but it really is the truth. Last year, within the same 6 months, I lost my mom and my grandma and my dog and went through a terrible breakup. At that point, blocking the bad became actually impossible, and so I started to learn to channel it. Tragedy can be motivating; you can find humor in anything if you look at it right, and it’s such a beautiful thing that all of that is true.

My dad, who can (and should) be found on Twitter @DadTimpf. He homeschooled me for 4th and 5th grade, and that gave me a huge advantage, because he is still the smartest person I have ever met.

I also got to experience so many things I wouldn’t have gotten to experience otherwise. For one thing, he supported my performing-arts dreams. Homeschool gave me the flexible schedule I needed to attend rehearsals for my roles as a munchkin in Wizard of Oz, a student in The Children's’ Hour and Mrs. Doormouse -- yes Mrs. Doormouse -- in a production of Alice in Wonderland that was adopted to give more kids speaking roles at a local community theater.

We also went on a field trip to New York City to see one of his friends’ off-Broadway plays. It was my first time here, and I just completely fell in love right away. I decided that my life goal was to move here and be on cab TV.

My current job is my dream job. l’m not kidding when I say that all I really want is to work more because I love it so much.

But if I had to choose something else, I’d say stand-up comedy. I do still perform sometimes, but it’s something I used to do every single night. I hope to start doing it more often soon.

ALF! Duhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. I re-watched the whole series this summer (not to like, brag about how cool my summer was) only for the last episode to end with him being busted by the Alien Task Force. I invested all of that time watching every episode and it ended on a cliffhanger because it got cancelled?!  I regret nothing, but it is still a very touchy subject.

First of all, I do not consider Alf a guilty pleasure. It is an American classic, and people should feel guilty for not watching it.

I have a weird thing for true crime shows. I mean… all of them. Off the top of my head? Disappeared, Dateline (I love Keith Morrison’s voice and want him to narrate absolutely everything, including my inner monologue,) Snapped, Unusual Suspects, Forensic Files...

Oh, and I’ve also seen every single episode of Teen Mom 2. Chelsea Houska’s dad Randy followed me on Twitter and it still might be the best thing that’s ever happened to me.

It’s a tie between a trampoline and cash.

One of my favorite things to do is write a funny little poem about the person and our friendship and then stick it on to something actually useful like a bottle of whiskey and give it to them.

Getting to see the way my mom approached life was the *best advice anyone could ask for. She was a social worker who lived her life completely for other people. I’ll never forget how packed her funeral was -- it was almost kind of like a mosh pit, just full of people trying to get up front and tell us what a difference she had made in their lives. We’re kind of all complete garbage compared to her.

*Also every time she told me  “Katherine, honey, don’t be an idiot.”

Me, Ben Kissel, Alf and my dad

I’m currently re-reading John Updike’s Rabbit at Rest and Hunter S. Thompson’s Generation of Swine. I really like to re-read books I love.

As for new books? I don’t know. John Updike is my absolute favorite, and I hope to eventually read every single word he has ever written. I can’t read his stuff without a pen in my hand -- there are always so many sentences I want to underline and remember forever.

“Politician Becomes Popular for Being Fiscally Conservative Socially Liberal and Having a Reasonable Foreign Policy.”

Always. When I was a little kid, I’d listen to talk radio in the car with my dad and just be outraged about all of the things that the government was getting away with all the time. I was a libertarian from the moment I knew what a libertarian was. I am also going to start thinking of my walking into my workplace as walking into an “arena” and am expecting that that will be a great time.