What do skateboarding and stand-up comedy have in common? Daniel Simonsen can explain

Mark Masters/Vail Comedy Show
Norwegian comedian Daniel Simonsen brought his off-beat brand of comedy to Vail and Eagle on Sept. 10-11, headlining events as part of Mark Masters’ Vail Comedy Show.
Simonsen leans into the Scandinavian stereotypes — he’s quiet and brooding on stage, and uses his strange accent to his advantage, garnering laughs through his monotone delivery, long pauses and self-deprecating jokes.
He told the crowd a bit about his background, growing up in Norway under unusual conditions, and how it led to his style of comedy.
After the show, in an interview with the Vail Daily, Simonsen talked about another aspect of his background that he didn’t discuss in his act — his fascination with skateboarding.
Here are a few snippets from that interview:

Support Local Journalism
How did you get into skateboarding?
It started with me snowboarding … when I had a holiday break from school and I’d take a bus for like five hours and I’d snowboard by myself. I was very into it, and then seeing people skateboarding in my city and just being blown away because it was so cool, it was just cool. I thought it was such a great thing immediately … my mom would take me skiing sometimes, or my aunt, and I didn’t like skiing at all, and then I saw snowboarding and again, it was so cool, how they were dressed, and there was something that immediately drew me to it.
The thing is, I’m very scared, so in sports, I wasn’t good because I was so frightened. But I wanted so badly to do it still, so I was really dedicated to something that I probably should never have started. And it’s the same with skating, I practiced religiously, by myself, I was really devoted to it. But snowboarding for me was just a little phase, once I found skating, that became all of it, and I would only snowboard a few times a year in the winter … I kind of stopped (snowboarding) when I started skating, snowboarding was such a pain for me because it’s an early morning thing and I couldn’t stand getting up at like 8 on a Saturday when you’re off school.
Did you grow up learning how to Nordic ski as part of your culture?
I do remember as a kid that I had to go (Nordic) skiing, and I had to do the ski trips, and I remember never liking it. We had to walk for hours, and we’d walk uphill and it was so exhausting, and finally we could run down after maybe two hours of walking or whatever, so I never wanted to go, and I would be really grumpy in the car there on the way. I think they found me kind of annoying, the rest of my family, because I was so not up for it, but then I found snowboarding and I was really into it, I don’t know why I liked it so much more, there was something so cool and there was more of a spirit there of I guess anarchy or whatever, they’d be living more, you know.

Do you find skateboarding and comedy to be analogous?
Definitely, because both things are extreme things. (Skateboarding) is an extreme sport, and I don’t know what you would call this, but it’s an extreme performance. … They have this saying in skateboarding when they do a competition, I remember Chris Cole said it about a contest he was going to enter — “I go for broke, I either get first place or 10th place.” And it’s a little bit similar with stand up, I do feel you have to risk, and you have to dare to hurt yourself. That was something I was very scared of in skating, but it is very similar in comedy — you really have to dare to take a risk and try things and fall on your face. So definitely, I always thought of it as very extreme, both things, and there’s an adrenaline to both things too.
In that way, did skateboarding prepare you for stand-up comedy?
One thing I think it prepares you more than anything is that devotion, the dedication, to be that dedicated to something. There’s a lot of ways a joke is almost like a trick, where you practice it and you perfect it until it’s there, and that’s very similar to skating. I do think there’s a similarity between falling and hurting yourself, it’s the same, this is just you hurt yourself in a different way — you hurt your soul more than your body. … It’s like public failure, both things are conquering fear, for sure.
How far did you take skateboarding?
I don’t think I was particularly good, but I would practice more than friends who had a lot of talent. I would practice kickflip, kickflip, kickflip, and I was obsessed. I had to feel that I could do it perfect, and I never really could, I could do it for a day and then it would go away from me and then I got obsessed with it. But I think the most craziest thing I ever did was kick kickflipping down three stairs, and that, to me, blew me away, because I didn’t think I could dare to do something like that. It was very scary for me, so the first time I did that my mind was blown, I couldn’t believe I had done something like that. And then I did it quite a few times after that, and suddenly I got a little bit more respect from some of the skaters, like they would actually applaud me, so that was a great feeling.
What I love about skating so much is when I see a part like Heath Kirchart, or Arto Saari from Finland, or now you have guys like Nyjah, when you see those guys put out a video part, and see someone push themself to the maximum, I think that’s extremely cool. … I watch it every day, it’s my way to escape the world. Often when I have a rough set or I’m kind of feeling down, then I look at skate videos on the way home, and it just lets me escape all of that. So I think that’s something I will, for the rest of my life, be in tune with. I think it’s a really cool thing.