by Nick Swardson debuts the first of his seven-episode sketch series, Nick Swardson's Pretend Time, tonight on Comedy Central. Well, actually, Swardson also showed off the premiere episode over the weekend to a few hundred eager fans at New York Comic-Con. On his birthday.
Among the other things learned about Swardson, his show and his life:
1) Swardson had to pay upward of $4,000 in damages, including forfeiting his security deposit, when he recently moved. All because he had thrown his video-game controllers through windows and into walls.
2) Swardson also confessed to once having all three of his gamer account names banned at one time due to his online video-game trash talking.
3) A fan asked Swardson to come out drinking with him afterward, and said that Swardson was one of his two all-time sought-after drinking buddies. The other? George W. Bush.
4) Swardson joked about getting into a fight in a bar one time because he took out his penis and placed it over his wrist, pretending it was his watch, and asking a guy what time it was. (Note: I think a few of us already heard this one!)
5) Jon Glaser, who spoke with Swardson at New York Comic-Con, told the crowd that his first memory of knowing Swardson happened one year at Seattle's Bumbershoot festival, wherein Swardson opened the refrigerator, turned to reveal his penis and balls atop a leaf of lettuce, and asked everyone whose sandwich it was.
6) Taking that theme into the show, Swardson told Glaser that the process of finding a suitable dildo for a gag in the premiere — in which piranhas chomp on a man's penis — was perhaps as ridiculous as the gag itself. As was the process of dealing with standards and practices on each episode. "To think that we got away with that," Swardson said.
7) Yes, the series is a more than a bit gross, and at times, you could rename it Nick Swardson's Pervert Time.
8) The debut kicks off with blood, urine, donkey shows and a bucket list for kids!
9) Oh, and also the Wheelchair Cat and Garry Gaga sketches you got sneak peeks of earlier. And of course, Gay Robot.
10) Swardson doesn't have a set sketch troupe cast, but rather is rotating people in for the parts as they're written. The debut features Natasha Leggero, Melinda Hill, Al Madrigal, Brian Huskey, Rob Heubel and Ryan Philippe.
11) Perhaps because the show is so dirty, in episode two's intro, Swardson tells viewers: "This show is a lot filthier than I thought it was going to be. It's really, really dirty, some of the sketches. So, don't tell my mom I have a show. If you could, do me that favor. If you see her on the street, just be like, 'I saw Nicholas. He's, he's a doctor. He saved my life. He gave me a new head.' Just something incredible that I did."
12) Episode two is perhaps even darker and more absurd than the premiere, with appearances by Finesse Mitchell, Bob Odenkirk, Huskey again, and also more Gay Robot.
13) Swardson still likes to party, but wishes his fans could let him make the rules, as he explains in this short interview with me following his appearance at New York Comic-Con.
14) I said there's a clip. This is that clip. Swardson came up with Nick Swardson's Pretend Time along with Tom Gianis, and says in this clip how he came up with the actors and writers who worked on the first season with him. Roll it!
