MAN IN MOTION
“Boredom,” Weiner once told Creativity magazine, “has never been something I understood.” Or experienced. He is a man in motion, painting, designing, writing articles and ads, art directing film, or designing the prints for Comey’s collection. For better or for worse, he fits no mold. He’s a man with interests as varied as his talents, with varying degrees of success in each.

Fortunate to look years younger than his age, 29, Weiner has been moving in the streets of New York for a dozen years. In fact, he was not born here; he just arrived early, a feat he keeps repeating. A precocious child of caring, supportive (but ultimately divorced) parents, Weiner spent his youth in Shaker Heights, a leafy Cleveland suburb renowned for its tile-roofed homes, prosperous contentment, homogeneous peacefulness, Teutonic cleanliness, bourgeois gracefulness, and, evidenced by the city’s website, numbingly chirpy Midwestern-ness.

For those reasons and others, young Clay wanted out of Shaker Heights. With his parent’s tacit permission, he decided not to spend his high school junior-year summer tossing the morning paper on neighborhood stoops or languidly drinking malts with Sally on sunny Chagrin Boulevard. Instead, Weiner elected to do something waaaay different.

With a singer-songwriter roommate who looked like Jesus but was addicted to heroin, he subleased an apartment from a close friend’s older sister in the East Village. That summer, while most New Yorkers with time to kill consider more relaxed pursuits and cooler climes, “Local Clay” of Shaker Heights chose to earn his living as a bike messenger. Imagine the tales he told classmates upon his return to Shaker Heights High School in September.

Upon high school graduation, Weiner left to study . lm at USC in Los Angeles, but New York’s appeal lured him back. He returned, entering Columbia University to study philosophy. These first years in New York were never easy but always interesting. He lived in a cheap apartment in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, hanging out at local dives such as The Bar and Enid’s Bar, where, he recalls, “you basically knew everyone, could explore everything, and had plenty of time to fuck around—too much time, actually.” Intelligent and tireless, Weiner was also easily distracted by the city’s numerous less savory temptations, including drugs. “Williamsburg seemed a great place to never grow up,” he said, so he left and moved back to the more responsible community of the Lower East Side.

In 1994, while still at Columbia, Weiner answered a university posting for a part-time job in the set design department of Late Night With Conan O’Brien at NBC. There, Weiner found himself drawn to the writer class, especially their world view and discontent. After that, he decided to take time off from college and pursue writing full time, taking a job as a comedy writer with the Dana Carvey Show where he met and worked with writer Robert Smigel, creator of Triumph the Insult Comic Dog of Late Night With Conan O’Brien and the longest-serving writer still at SNL. After Dana Carvey, Weiner returned his focus to design and personal artwork. A few talented acquaintances in advertising encouraged him to try their business.