I’ve gotten very cynical and kind of anhedonic about all the things I have to do to get to do comedy: all the travel, hotels, and airports.
I like to write, I like to do stand-up, I like to act.
I grew up in such a featureless, personality-less suburb. There was nothing to push against.
You can be an amateur and have a passion for something, but it takes a long time to actually become a professional, meaning that you can handle any situation.
I have a very tiny house in Burbank. I drive an 8-year-old car. I’m gonna drive it into the ground. I enjoy what I enjoy.
I hate all sidekicks.
I had a romance novel inside me, but I paid three sailors to beat it out if me with steel pipes.
I mean, the death in the late eighties and early nineties really shook out a lot of hacks. The pond just sort of dried up for a lot of really bad comedians.
George Bush is not stupid. He’s evil. OK? There’s a huge difference between stupid and evil.
I’ve hung out in the writer’s room a few times, but the fact is we’ve got such a good writing staff, I don’t want to get my peanut butter fingerprints on anything.
Everything we have today that’s cool comes from someone wanting more of something they loved in the past. Action figures, videogames, superhero movies, iPods: All are continuations of a love that wanted more.
Stand-up is something I just truly love to do, so I’ll always go back to it. I’ll never stop doing it, that’s for sure.
Every audience is different, even within the same venue. You have to just make every audience your audience; you can’t pre-judge an audience based on the size of the room or the type of room.
Based on my own experience, when you’re going through adolescence you don’t know how the world works. You can’t set a story in the world you live in because you don’t know what a utility bill is, or how to budget your paycheck.
A lot of nerds aren’t aware they’re nerds. A geek has thrown his hands up to the universe and gone, ‘I speak Klingon – who am I fooling? You win! I’m just gonna openly like what I like.’ Geeks tend to be a little happier with themselves.
To get asked to do stuff like ‘United States Of Tara’ and ‘Caprica’ is terrific. I can’t complain.
Now we live in this DVD, iTunes, Hulu age, and show creators and networks are realizing that and letting shows develop on those terms rather than ‘We gotta just punch it week to week, man.’ Now they’re like, ‘What will happen if someone watches the entire show?’
I’ve had some pretty good arguments with people, but I’ve never regretted it. I’ve had people come up where it’s all emotion and no fact. That’s always sad.
There are times when I have to take, I call it a ‘silence bath,’ where I shut off all of the external gadgets. I go walk around, talk to people, and just live life for a while.
I mean, all alternative comedy is are comedians that have being doing it for so long, for so long, that they were relaxed enough to start becoming personal on stage.