The summer in between my sophomore and junior year of high school, I bought The Best of Triumph the Insult Comic Dog on DVD. I didn’t know it at the time, but it would end up being a fairly important purchase. Tracing a line backwards through my life, that DVD is probably what really got me interested in jokes.

I can even narrow it down more specifically than that. There’s a moment on the DVD when Triumph is interviewing people waiting in line for the premiere of Star Wars: Attack of the Clones. After bashing all the “nerds” and “dorks,” he interviewed a guy who was dressed as Darth Vader, asking him about the elaborate set of colored buttons on his chest. It went something like this:

Triumph: “What does this button do?”

Darth Vader: “It controls the oxygen flow to my mask.”

Triumph: “And which one of these buttons calls your mom to come pick you up?”

This stuck with me for a long time. I recognized the ability and incredible talent required to create a moment like that one. Whoever voiced Triumph was, to me, comedy’s equivalent of a heavyweight boxing champion. This faceless jokester just had a little help from a foul-mouthed cigar-smoking puppet.

Still enamored with the seemingly effortless hilarity of Triumph, I dug around and found out that he is voiced by Robert Smigel. Ever since then, I’ve always kept my ear to the ground for whatever he’s worked on, and it’s usually great. He’s definitely a guy I credit with piquing my interest in comedy so long ago.

I met him today.