David McQuary: Writers Are a Word's Best Friend

Remem­ber the holy trin­i­ty of child­hood humor: Garfield, the Far Side, and Mad Mag­a­zine? Maybe that was just my reli­gion, but David McQuary and I seem to have wor­shipped at the same illus­trat­ed child­hood altars. Valerie talks with a lot of come­di­ans, but not always on the top­ic of actu­al comics. While this sub­ject, and oth­ers, weren’t specif­i­cal­ly the roots of David McQuary’s com­e­dy gene, they def­i­nite­ly played a role in where he would go, and one in par­tic­u­lar con­vinced me that cows real­ly do plot régime change when we’re not looking.

McQuary was born in Texas, spent some time in South Car­oli­na, and returned to get a busi­ness degree at UT before mov­ing to the Hous­ton area he now calls home. In part one of his inter­view, he and Valerie cov­er the begin­nings of his pas­sions for illus­trat­ing, writ­ing, and stand up, and how a cos­tume mal­func­tion [even­tu­al­ly] led to David being a final­ist in the Fun­ni­est Per­son in Austin con­test 2 years running. 

David McQuary: The Past

Aus­tinites, and UT stu­dents especially,may be famil­iar with the Texas Trav­es­ty. This is where David McQuary cut his pub­lish­ing teeth — in a col­lab­o­ra­tive, writer’s room style envi­ron­ment. Part two of his inter­view, he lets us in on how an open mic coin­ci­dence land­ed him the gig, and the series of events that took him from there to a writ­ing fel­low­ship at The Onion; lead­ing to him spend­ing his days in a con­tribut­ing writer role at the satir­i­cal paper, while still find­ing time to per­fect­ing his craft for his Austin stand up appearances. 

David McQuary: Current

To stay up to date with David, fol­low him Face­book and oth­er social media sites. He promis­es you’ll get some­thing out of it. If you haven’t had the chance to see him live yet, check out one of his sets from TNM Tonight, or find some of his many video appear­ances like That Guy Class on YouTube.