I'm just looking for authentic engagement of some kind, and usually, after an hour or more, you get that. Some people talk at you. Some people just want to answer questions, but a lot of times, all of a sudden you drift away, and you don't remember you're on the mic, and you're in something real.
If you let someone talk for an hour, you're gonna have a pretty good idea of who they are, and I think that's more rewarding than me sitting there going, "That's complete bullshit about health care."
I seem to offend everybody. I just never got into the universe. I don't seem to have a tremendous amount of discipline or patience with having to follow a story that is really multi-leveled and science-fiction.
We live in a culture where people are self-centered and careerist and everybody seems to think they have too much on their plate or they just don't have time for other people's pain.
You hope to see an arc of growth in your ability to become a character on television.
Surveillance induced morality: relics of cultural retardation.
I came upon whatever I'm doing organically. I didn't study anything. I don't have any real aspirations other than to connect with somebody, and to have the conversation be genuine. That's the best that can happen. Even if it only happens for 10 minutes in an episode. But I think what people forget is that you don't have to try to get a comedian to be funny. Comedians are innately funny. That the real challenge of talking to them is to get them talking about real things and then see where they need to be funny. And let them do that on their own volition.
On some level any appearance on Television can be seen as a product endorsement.
A lot of people think that Jesus is coming back. That's fine, it's your right. But you know, I live in New York, and I think he's running a little late. I'm asking myself, 'Alright, what happens if Jesus comes back tomorrow? What - does he make rounds to churches?' 'OK, everyone who's been good, buses leave in 10 minutes. I'll meet you in front of the post office. I gotta go. Oh, don't tell the Jews I'm back.'
Some of you may be perfectly happy with mediocrity. Some of you will get nothing but heartbreak. Some of you will be heralded as geniuses and become huge. Of course, all of you think that one describes you...hence the delusion necessary to push on.
In the sixties and seventies you could probably name all the great comics. It was still special.
I'm interested in the fact that comics are people who are oddly courageous in their desire and their commitment to sacrificing any sense of normalcy in their lives, any sense of security, and most of them are oddly unique individuals. Let's have a broader conversation with people that have spent their last however-many-years thinking about their lives. I mean, they're philosophers. They're poets. They're people who are on the outside looking in at the world through a different set of values.
My monologues aren't always funny. They're generally thoughtful. Sometimes at different levels of aggravation. And sometimes no aggravation. But the pressure on me is not to be joke-efficient when I'm talking on this mic. And that sets the tone.
One thing I'm grateful for, and also surprised and excited about, is that I have a place in the community of comics now. In a real way. And I honor that. A lot of what I do is in support of the community and bringing new talent - talking to people that people don't know. And defining us as a community.
My cats, the ones that I have, were feral when I found them so the relationship that I have with them 10 years in is very mutual, earned, and evolved over time. It was never an easy thing. I like that they have a certain distance and have their own sense of selves.
There was a period when I was getting a lot of banana bread, because I mentioned someone cooked me banana bread, and then everyone cooked me baked stuff, and I would take it to the hotel, and it was making me fat.
I think things evolve into jokes. I don't generally write them down as jokes. I talk them out.
I have a very primitive sense that if I just turn on a radio or the television, that somebody's playing that stuff for me.
It may have lost its special-ness forever and the clubs might not being doing well but I think standup is in the best shape it has been in a long time.
Hopefully standup will become special again.
I sort of get tired of myself sometimes. When you're busy, your life becomes relatively small. But I don't really get tired of talking to other people.
We need the children of Indonesia and the Philippines to manufacture our freedom of choice.
I knew most of my radio listeners were lefty political people, and I decided definitively not to be that guy - not to address politics.
I didn't know that people compared Bill Hicks and I but certainly I'm flattered if they do. I knew Bill a bit. We had dinner a couple of times and played guitar together once. I really tried to keep my distance from him professionally.
When I was a bit older I had all of the George Carlin records, all of the Steve Martin records, all of the Cheech and Chong records and all of the Richard Pryor records.
