Meet Joe Schaefer, an accomplished voice actor, cartoonist and all around jokester. Want to laugh all day long? Hang with Joe for 24 hours and you'll be cracking up in no time. From riding the Metro to tackling killer plants, Joe finds the humor in everything.

07:20 Awake to the sound of my alarm: a shrill, crescendo of a tone specially designed in the Nokia R&D lab by what I imagine is a crack team of Nazis and electronica musicians. My desire to tap into the creative vein late into the night and early morning voice recording sessions often collide with painful results.

07:25 Shower and shave my newly crafted beardscape. It’s sort of a chinstrap /molest-stache combo.

07:55 Grab some toast and check my email. A friend has a job for me designing a web page layout for her new accessories company. The majority of my art is illustration, but I have been known to do some design work. I also take a cheeky look at The Onion.

08:15 On the way to the recording studio. Finances are tight so public transportation it is. In this case it’s a bus / foot / Metro voyage that lasts about 50 minutes. It’s quality time with the city, a chance to be one with the surging mass of Shanghai commuter traffic. Lots of fun faces and characters, and of course the new and interesting smells of Line 3. After riding Line 3, Line 2 seems positively aristocratic.

09:05 At the studio working with Olivia, my voice mentor. We’re tackling an English book for technical school students. Fairly standard stuff: some dialogues, a treatise on the popularity of kick scooters, something about 9/11. We get paid by the recorded hour, so efficiency is the name of the game. We aim to read for as long as possible with no mistakes. Olivia excels at dialogue. My strength lies in the nebulous arena our editor refers to only as “specifications.” We actually do not know what this means, at all.

12:00 Olivia and I head to lunch and discuss some other potential voice acting opportunities. My goal is to get more video game work.

13:25 Get back to my apartment and have a short chat with my ayi about Expo. She’s really a delightful lady.

13:35 Back at home, I unwind in front of an episode of the cartoon “Slam Dunk.” It serves the dual purpose of helping me keep up my Japanese listening comprehension and entertaining me with the misadventures of a high school basketball team. I have always found inspiration in manga like this; my drawing style is certainly influenced by it, and the humor is great.

14:10 Check my email again; the editor of a local magazine I freelance for is asking for the list of movies I want to write about for next month’s issue. I also need to draw up a new comic strip.

14:30 It’s beautiful outside, so I grab my sketchbook and laptop and head next door to the Joy Café to do some work. I fire off a list of movies, with Centurion and The American at the top. Then I brainstorm some comic strip ideas, pondering what amusing aspects of expat life would translate well into a great three-panel joke. I also sketch up some character ideas for a web comic I’m working on. I need a rough story arc, a few re-occurring locations and some initial gags. This ain’t gonna be Marmaduke.

16:00 Back at my apartment once again. I plug in my Wacom tablet and finish inking an album cover for a friend’s band, Sniff the Drum, a duo that covers rap songs. After doing album art pieces for my buddies Boys Climbing Ropes, I have had a few more requests. These are always fun projects, a chance to play around with some caricatures and whatever wild ideas band members inevitably have.

18:45 Time to meet up with my pianist buddy Edd and grab some Subway on the way to Beedees. Our improv group, The People’s Republic of Comedy, is having a show tonight.

19:30 Arrive at Beedees and do some improv warm up with a few of the other members. It’s important to stretch your funny muscle properly so as to prevent tearage.

21:00 A sufficient audience has arrived so we kick off the show. Improv is unpredictable, especially with people watching, but therein lies the thrill. When a scene comes together or you nail a joke and the audience erupts in laughter, it is, frankly, the jam. Tonight’s performance is a good one; everyone in the group had funny moments and I got to break out my Russian character.

00:00 After a few drinks with the team I head to my girlfriend’s place where, after much pleading, I convince her to let me play Plants vs. Zombies on her iPhone.

01:00 The plants always emerge victorious with me behind the wheel. I can now drift off to sleep.

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