I'm just very sort of compulsive and lack the ability to keep things in perspective. If I'm not writing or playing guitar or on the microphone or out on the road, I'm cleaning pots and pans or freaking out about some plumbing issue or tweeting.
I always thought I was funny, but I was very sensitive, and very provocative just to get a rise out of people.
What appealed to me was the intimacy of the medium, the fact that I was doing it from my home, and the fact that I wanted to talk. I was not there to plug things. I don't do a hell of a lot of research. I go on a sort of kindred-spirit bonding that preexists the interview, and just see what unfolds.
It's great to have people come out. I do worry, though. They know me very intimately, in a way, if they listen to my show; they know a lot about me.
Any comic can get on the radio show and be funny. You can get that on any morning radio show or afternoon radio show. There are plenty of people who do that. It's not a difficult format, to sit around with two or three comics and be funny.
I'm not against people just being funny or telling stories. I don't need to delve into the soft, dark core all the time. If it happens, it happens.
Show business is one of the few businesses that the devil will actually agree to own just a portion of your soul because he knows if you have a performer's ego you were probably working for him all along.
In a lot of ways, I'm seeking some sort of peace of mind for myself. I'm a fairly emotionally petty, resentful guy who has an inflated sense of himself, and I needed to take that down a notch.
I've always been someone who likes to talk to people. When I was a little kid, I sought out freaks and weirdos that wandered the streets by where I worked in high school. I would just bring them in and talk to them.
When you're a kid, you always feel you have this weird kindred-spirit thing with other Jews, until you get older and you realize it's just middle-class bourgeois Jews that sort of fit a template that your family fits into one way or another.
Most of the comics that I talk to I've never talked to for more than ten minutes ever. So 95 percent of the time you're really hearing the first conversation between me and that guy on the podcast.
The next evolutionary step is into the screen.
Is it hard to make a living in show business? Yeah.
Comedy is obviously a matter of personal taste and the world always needs a clown and some people have no taste at all and any clown will do.
I'm sad to see the passing of the great drug warriors. I certainly did my part in that battle and I don't regret any of it.
I'm not fundamentally a writer. I know writers, and I have a tremendous amount of respect for them. It bothers me that no matter how well I do it, it's not really my format.
I find that if I don't do interviews, I get a little squirrely. I think that when you engage with someone else, or when you engage in something you're passionate about, you're sort of out of your own head.
There are a lot of things that I'm allowing myself to be, but it's a conscious effort to experience contentment for me. My brain doesn't do that naturally. I'm very overwhelmed all of the time.
It always astounds me that over the course of my career, and having lived in four comedy cities - New York, Boston, San Francisco, and Los Angeles - there's very few people I haven't run into.
Because we're comics and we pass each other on campus, we know of each other, and a lot of the time there's a mutual respect there.
In show business, it takes 10 years to create an overnight success. You've heard that, right? But what you don't hear is that that's the exact same amount of time it takes to create a bitter failure.
