Fidel Castro just talked a long time, and he talked and he talked and he talked and he talked... and he talked during the meeting. I think it was about four hours. But I guess that's part of the Castro spirit.
Look at this Judith Miller thing. Isn't that problematic? Like, she's getting fed information from the White House and she's feeding it to her editors and then it's in the Times and then the people at the White House can quote themselves? And it's the New York Times!
I think, ultimately, the problem with something like this is that you actually have so many more opportunities to say something than you actually have things worth saying. And then, as an artist who doesn't want to do bad work, gosh, how do you fill up all that space when you really don't have anything actually worthwhile to say? And that's what makes the job tough, because the fans get mad - "That's not funny," or "You've been sucking for several months now." And you go, "It's not my fault! I'm trying."
When the news is slow, or when there's just so many other responsibilities bearing down on me that I don't have the time to do it right, that's when it gets frustrating. As an artist, you just don't wanna put bad work out. So when you have to do it seven days a week, you're just gonna have some bad days and bad weeks and bad months and bad years.
I don't know what the future holds. It seems to be going in a really bad, bad place really quickly, and I don't have the answers and I don't have the solutions and I don't know what's gonna happen to change it. But the continued apathy will only lead to a worse situation for everybody.
Perhaps it's time to start examining countries that have made democracy work while still having some kind of the same relationship in covenant with their population. Perhaps we need to look at the Scandinavian countries, or Canada, or something else, but whatever we have now, I think we just have to acknowledge, ain't workin.
The biggest thing that I don't like about L.A. is the sort of 2 a.m. shutdown of everything. It really kind of stagnates the nightlife. It's very hard to casually have fun in Los Angeles. If you want to go out and have fun it's like a full-time job, you have to really prepare, and call ahead, and get on a list, and know somebody... It's really rough to relax here.
I think there's a lot of good and bad to L.A. One of the things you have to consider is that you can, if you're lucky, make a decent living here. That's a big plus. That's pretty positive. The weather is OK.
I just tell jokes, and I think a lot of people take it too seriously. It's not that I don't have things that I'm angry about in the world, and I think most decent human beings are upset about things, and even upset about things in their own country, but I'm not a particularly unhappy fellow.
I do the interviews and then I read about myself. I understand it and I get what it is. But there's so much stuff that I say, either jokingly or lightheartedly, that gets printed like I'm dead serious.
Cuba was fantastic, at least just in terms of... Not to romanticize or glorify it, but just seeing a place that had not really been touched by the hand of American capitalism. Because it's a genuinely different place. A lot of times when you travel, things start to feel the same from place to place to place, because the same people own everything all around the world.
I think everyone's kind of just whistling and pretending everything's OK. At the heart of this is the cover-up, and the misleading the country to war in Iraq. And quite honestly, I don't think Republicans actually did a particularly good or sophisticated job, but I think everybody wanted to be fooled. I remember being on the Bill Maher show talking about how ridiculous this was before the invasion. And, you know, a lot of people, even Democrats, had been so easily thrown into this fear frenzy that they lost common sense.
I just feel like the country is guilty. I think we should be deeply ashamed for what we've done in Iraq, and we've gotta reconcile that, and we've gotta find some way to make peace with this, and we can't do that until we acknowledge what took place, and ultimately, I think that's the poison that is killing this administration. And I think there's a lot of people in the country who are guilty of allowing themselves to be duped in a very sloppy, sloppy manner.
Republicans lost it some time ago. What's scary is when they lose their sense of good planning. Like dude, you know, if you're gonna lie, really... It's a big thing to fake your way into a war. Like, think it through. Do a better job at the lie, if that's what it's gonna be. Do a better job - I mean, whatever your goals were in invading Iraq, it couldn't have been this. This can't be all part of some master plan. Something went wrong.
I'm actually kind of angriest about the fact that everybody keeps saying how angry I am.
If your intentions are already bad, and then you still make giant mistakes, it seems like things just get worse. I get little joy seeing this, because what I don't see is the public saying, "Wow, those guys are really bad, maybe we should re-evaluate everything." I don't see that response with the scandals, I don't see it with the indictments, I don't see it after Katrina, I don't see the public going, "Wow, let's really re-examine the entire direction this country is going."
I think the two-party system is a complete sham; I think it is designed so that the voters can feel like they have the satisfaction of "throwing those bums out of office" every four to eight years, but without the direction of the country ever significantly changing.
I think people were a little bit too concerned about what I would or would not be allowed to say. So let me just get that out of the way and get on to the business of telling, you know, a story, or two, or three, or 15. And also to say, "Okay, look. Here it is, don't worry about it. The restrictions and the watered-down and all the stuff that you thought was gonna happen really isn't the case." So we done got that out the way, and now we can just kind of move on.
There is no opposition party. And the party that is in power is falling apart. Doesn't that kind of mean the country's falling apart? I don't wanna be accused of being an alarmist, but if there's nothing to replace the government with in terms of an opposition party, and you see it all falling down around you, well doesn't that mean that we're all kind of screwed? It kind of feels that way to me. And I'm pretty worried about it, to be honest with you.
Once I heard about the electronic voting machines, and how they weren't gonna be audited, and no one would be able to go in and verify what the votes were. And then the exit poll thing - wasn't that kind of weird? How the exit polls didn't match up to the voting... I feel like, you know, they dropped a couple lines of code in here and there, and swung a couple states in their direction.
