Who?
The Short story:
Hi, I’m Odinaka. OD if you’re a syllable conservationist. Try not to stare at my chest.
One of my favorite quotes about comedy comes from Richard Pryor, “Search for the truth and the funny will come.” I love that idea, easier said than done, but I still love it. I tell the story of my life as a mixed up son of Nigerian immigrants, born and raised in the American South but High Schooled in Nigeria, and try to make sense of it to myself and the world. I search for the truth in my life and in society and most of all I dig for the funny. I’d like to leave you with another quote, this time from rapper and soulja boy protege, V.I.C., “Get silly, get silly.”
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Naka On Wood is where you can laugh, think, or chill w/out having to choose which to do first. Here you’ll find videos of mine from sketch, stand up or filmed events. You’ll find thoughts on things ranging from politics to hip hop. And you’ll find a smorgasbord of cool from folks all over the web.
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How I got here:
On Christmas Eve 2005, I couldn’t sleep, and I’m the kind of guy that can sleep standing up if I’m tired enough. I was up thinking, What am I going to do with my life? I had just put the finishing touches on an application to a program offering free MCAT test prep for pre-med underrepresented minority students and upon completing that application, I realized I was simply going through the motions throughout the entire process. That scared me to death because it was right before the last semester of my junior year of college, and I was just then coming to terms with the fact that I was in denial about wanting to be a doctor, but what else could I do?
For three years, I had been telling myself, and others, I was studying chemistry because I wanted to be a doctor. I said I was hitting this road because I loved science and felt I was called to help people. Yet, the closer I got to actually applying to medical school, the less and less I believed the story I was telling everyone. When I probed into the true reasons I wanted to study medicine, the reasons weren’t as altruistic as I wanted to believe: money, prestige, making my immigrant family proud—none of these things were bad reasons, but they didn’t seem to be strong enough to go to school for four years and end up with someone’s life in my hands each day. Finishing the MCAT prep course application was the first day I could no longer push the denial to the back of my mind. It was the first day I started truly asking myself what my talents were. It was the first day I started looking beyond what I thought was acceptable for a diokpara (oldest Igbo son) to do. That night, I started the journey towards my dreams.
The next summer, I got on stage for the first time. I drove two hours from my college in Milledgeville, GA to Atlanta and performed for three minutes in a half-filled, smoky, former church basement. The place was called Relapse Theater, and walking off stage to laughs I created from simply sharing my thoughts and life was one of the biggest highs I had ever experienced up to that point. I only drove to Atlanta that night to cross stand up comedy off my bucket list, but on the drive back, while my friends and I were ragging on each other in the car, I knew in my heart that stand up comedy was going to play a big part in the direction my life was headed. I slept well when I got home.
Naka On Wood Productions: Knock Here
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