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Commencement Speech

May 29, 2009 | General

I was asked to give a commencement speech for Luzerne County Community College in Northeastern Pennsylvania last night. My first reaction when they asked me was “what the hell would I have to say”?

Then I looked at the calendar, saw that I’m almost 40, and figured OK I might have SOMETHING to talk about. So I went there and gave at 20 minute speech to 3000 people in the gigantic Wachovia Arena in Wilkes-Barre PA (not far from where we shot “Wet Hot”). I was pretty nervous especially since most of them didn’t have a clue who I was and were wondering what I was doing up there. But everyone was super nice to me and plus they gave me a chicken dinner with my choice of sodas.

I also asked my Twitter followers for their advice, which I ended up reading out verbatim to the crowd. That might have been the best part. I finished the speech by reading these lyrics from Cher’s “Believe”:

No matter how hard I try
You keep pushing me aside
And I can’t break through
There’s no talking to you
It’s so sa-a-a-ad that you’re leaving
It takes ti-i-i-ime to believe it
But after all said and done
You’re gonna be the lonely one, oh

Here I am when I first got there:

Here was my POV from the podium during the speech:

and view from audience video camera: