I'm also interviewing a guy who's just written a book about his experience living in Iraq, faced with the type of violence as he said, an unimaginable scale. And I think that the combination of that is very hard to shake.
The conversation that the Senate and the House are having with the President [Barack Obama] was very similar to the conversation that [John] McCain and I were having, which was two people talking over each other and nobody really addressing the underlying issues of what kind of country do we want to be.
The American people, or at least the ones that I get on the subway with - they know there's a real threat out there. They felt like Iraq lessened our ability to fight that threat.
The government is just you know, blowing the doors off the media. And not everywhere, and I think, this is where you know, a lot of those blog reporters and all of those things are bringing a lot of urgency and a lot of momentum to stories that wouldn't normally carry any momentum.
[The conversation with John McCain] is not about being a pacifist or- suggesting that you can never have a military solution to things. It's just that, it appears that this is not the smart way to fight this threat.
I don't think, if anything, I don't think it's a feeling of hopelessness that people feel. I think if they feel - if they're feeling what we're feeling, it's that this is how we fight back.
I think that, if we do anything in a positive sense for the world, is provide one little bit of context, that's very specifically focused, and hopefully people can add to their entire puzzle that gives them a larger picture of what it is that they see.
The real challenge is when I'm at work, I'm at work. I'm locked in, I'm ready to go, I'm focused. When I'm at home, I'm locked in and I'm ready to go and I'm focused on home. We don't watch the show. We don't watch the news. We don't do any of that stuff. I sit down, I play Barbies. And sometimes the kids will come home and play with me.
Typically, when you're with your friends, premises are coming up left and right. But when you're on stage, you must create the premise. So you have to create the premise, paint the picture and then deliver the punch line.
People always say, when did you realize you were funny? And I think it's not that you realize you were funny. It's that you're brain works in a certain way. And I don't think that that's - I think in some respects it's uncontrollable, and you can either accept it and deal with it and hone it or you can try to fight it. And I was too weak to fight it.
Doing stand-up comedy is in the middle of a traffic jam getting everybody moving again.
What I like to do is come in, write the entire program and treat my staff to hot stone massages.
Comedy is the only form of entertainment where the audience doesn't know what to expect. In an evening, you might get ten comics doing ten different things. That's not what happens when you go to hear music. There isn't a classical performance followed by a hoedown followed by rap.
