Sketch Comedy Star Remembers Peculiar Ridgewood Childhood

Ridgewood native and sketch comedy master Andy Daly appeared on WTF Podcast with Marc Maron on Monday, revealing a blisteringly funny time spent at Ridgewood High School in the 1980s.

Daly demonstrated a strange degree of effort and inaction during his time at , he told Maron. The 1989 RHS grad was the proverbial busy body, active in extracurriculars like the TV club, as well as local government.

"I was very high profile but not well liked young man," he laughed, adding he'd draft and send press releases to the newspaper to write about him. "Everyone knew who I was but I didn't get invited to the parties."

At one point, the football coach was gunning for him, the Upright Citizens Brigade alum told Marone. Daly wrote a humor column in the student newspaper condemning the cheerleaders for putting up "ugly signs" that covered up a clock in the cafeteria, he said. It was a poor move.

After calling him an "a––," the football coach tried to psych up the team by calling out the column, Daly said. 

"The football coach put a hit on me," he laughed. "I did get beat up a couple times for that...more intimidation with guys pushing me around lockers and making threats."

His lack of popularity didn't translate into high marks in school, though.

"I was a horrible student," he told WTF Podcast. "I was a model teen except that I was flunking all my classes."

Daly fondly recalled a band he started with friends John and Calvin. Aptly, the band was dubbed "John Calvin and the Protestants."

A "do-gooder" student government type, Daly said he was a remarkably poor politician.

Despite running for student council every year, he never claimed victory. Instead, the principal, Dr. Robert Honsinger, appointed him to be the student representative to the Ridgewood Board of Education.

And Daly took his job very seriously, he said. (Many kids these days use such an appointment as little more than college resume fodder.)

He tried to organize protests against the lack of student parking on streets around the high school but none of the students who would benefit showed up at the council meeting, he said.

None the less, after making it through RHS and Ithaca College, Daly has hit it pretty big with gigs on Eastbound and Down, Late Night with Conan O'Brian, Mad TV, and others.

The California resident will be starring in a Comedy Central show modeled after "Review with Myles Barlow," an Australian show about a man who writes about general life experiences, he said.

Daly will be working with fellow Ridgewood High grad Andy Blitz, a comedian, and Andy's film director/screenwriter brother Jeffrey.

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