I, Zoltan Kaszas (For SEO purposes), was born on a smoggy moonless night in communist Budapest, Hungary to a loving mother, and a father who had already left. Four years later my mother and I moved to the United States Of America, landing in New York City on the night of July 4th 1991. I saw fireworks from the plane as we made our approach to JFK, I asked my mother “what’s up with that?” to which she replied, “Americans love explosions, let’s act accordingly”.
We settled in Pittsburgh, PA for the first five years of our American journey where I learned English from Mister Rogers and the ESL program at O’ Hare Elementary School which consisted of two students, myself and a Japanese kid named Simon, a teacher who’s name wasn’t easy to remember and a classroom so small I’m sure it used to be a storage closet.
After getting tired of freezing winters and humid sweat-down-your-crack summers my
mother decided we move to San Diego, CA where I quickly learned that sandals do go with jeans and that pick-up trucks can have tires as big as your imagination. San Diego (More specifically a trailer park in San Marcos- a suburb north of the city) became our official home.
After graduating San Marcos High School with 2.75 GPA (Hold your applause), I decided that was enough learnin’ for me and I joined the American workforce and immediately hated it. So a year after graduating high school I went to an open mic at the age of 19 in hopes of becoming a professional stand-up comedian. Nine years and many different day jobs later I became a full time professional stand-up comedian.
My “career” ( I put career in quotations because I’m writing this in my underwear on a
Thursday afternoon) can best be described by the title of my non-existent autobiography “The long road to semi success?”
I won The Seattle Comedy Competition in 2013 and that helped get me one step closer to quitting my day job. I got booked on a couple short-lived syndicated TV shows like Laughs On FOX and Punchline (Don’t worry, my own mother has never heard of these either). I filmed a Dry Bar Comedy Special “Cat Jokes” in 2017 that went viral and helped build me an audience of crazy cat lovers. Then I bombed on America’s Got Talent and vowed to one day burn down NBC. I followed that up with my latest hour “Modern Male” which I posted on YouTube at the start of the pandemic because the record company I had been working with wasn’t responding to my emails about it’s release. It currently has 2.6 million views… Oh and the record company promptly got back to me :)
What’s next? I don’t know. I think I’ll keep this con of me being entertaining going as long as I can, hopefully until they throw dirt in my face (By “they” I mean humanity not the nonbinary community). So come and see me live or book me in your blockbuster movie and support small business by supporting the smallest business there is and that’s a stand-up comedian.