America needed comics; it didn't really matter if they were original or not. People had money to burn and wanted to laugh.
As a performer you are being used to keep people watching so the commercial endorsements that support the network can be seen by as many people as possible.
As for the craft, it's back to where it was before the boom.
By the time I started doing comedy in '86 club owners were already saying the boom was over.
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.
For my next trick I will make everyone understand me.
Have you ever had one of those moments when you look up and realize that you're one of those people you see on the train talking to themselves?
Hopefully standup will become special again.
I created the script from actual transcripts of several improvised versions of the show. There's always room for a bit of improvisation. I can't seem to help it.
I didn't deal much with Microsoft. The show was produced by Broadway Video and they were great to me.
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.
I didn't watch him much and I didn't listen to his albums much because we did talk about some of the same topics and his diction was a bit contagious.
I don't think there is something about the Internet that draws me as a performer.
I originally improvised the entire show, which had its drawbacks.
I think seeing Pryor's first movie, Live In Concert, when I was in high school changed my life. Pryor really put the heart in darkness for me.
I think that standup has always been an acquired taste and there was always only a handful of performers that were really inspired.
I was also a big Woody Allen fan. When I got into college I listened to Lenny Bruce but it's taken me years to put him into context historically and really get what he did.
I was being paid to hone my skills and work different comedic muscles with almost no negative consequences in a complete vacuum.
I'm not completely sure we aren't all living in a hallucination now.
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.
If a comic is doing old jokes or someone else's jokes or someone else's persona or pandering to mediocrity without an original thought or even a flash of brilliance and just making people 'laugh' without any creative integrity at all I think they're bad.
In the sixties and seventies you could probably name all the great comics. It was still special.
Is it hard to make a living in show business? Yeah.
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.
It seemed everywhere you went the first thing the guy would say after the first show was, 'I don't get it. Last week was packed.' I believe they were all mentally holding on to a night in 1982.
It seems people are more willing to let other people control their minds now and recreational drug use doesn't seem to have that same renegade sense of adventure that it once did.
It seems that the drugs have become more focused in their applications and less romanticized. I don't know if that discussion will ever be relevant again.
It takes a discipline, which I innately avoid at all costs, so it's good for me. You know, the growth thing.
It's easy to maintain your integrity when no one is offering to buy it out.
Jerusalem Syndrome is actually a rare psychological condition that occurs to some visitors to the Middle East. They get to Israel and just snap.
Left wing, right wing, I am wingless and tired of trying to fly. Here comes the ground.
Many of the eighties road acts have moved on to other professions or are working in some capacity in show business.
My parents actually took me to see Jackie Vernon when I was like ten.
On some level any appearance on Television can be seen as a product endorsement.
Over the last year I honed it down to an hour for the Aspen Comedy Festival and now, after a year, I actually have a script.
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.
Some comics are doing great stuff. Most of them are unknown to the country at large.
Some think that their being in the Middle East is one of the keys that unlocks the final unfolding or Armageddon as we call it.
Surveillance induced morality: relics of cultural retardation.
The 'liberal' idea makes room for the bare desperation of what it is to be alive in this world, for the underdog and those who struggle for justice but don't want to live in the fear that breeds hate and blame and the exclusion of everything different. Humility! That's funny.
The bile makes it better. I am an information wasting machine - 100s of words a day.
The bottom fell out because there were to many unoriginal acts that repeated themselves in different performers.
The demand for standup in the eighties was created by how easy it was to exploit 'comedians' and create very cheap television programming.
The development of the comedy club industry destroyed the uniqueness and intimacy of the profession but it also created jobs for comics and bred some great performers.
The Internet has usurped the collective unconscious and access to cosmic consciousness has become difficult and almost primitive.
The money ran out, people caught onto the hacks and sought more efficient forms of entertainment.
The next evolutionary step is into the screen.
The premise of the show is that I've always had Jerusalem Syndrome.
The script allows me to really hit certain beats and maintain a certain lyrical language that I wouldn't do if I were just improvising.
The show is comprised of personal stories and abstract paranoid manic insights into my own personal search for mystical insight.
The show moves through the most cathartic periods of my life in the guise of a mystical and spiritual quest.
The target is the mighty Oz. An illusion. Lets get the guy at the controls behind the curtain out here and see what he's made of.
There are also always those burnt, hard kernels at the bottom that don't pop. You know why they don't pop? They don't pop because they have integrity.
There are fewer TV outlets for straight standup, which means fewer amateurs doing it on TV except in sitcoms.
There were a lot of casualties. Things change and drugs change.
They think they are a biblical character like Moses, Jesus, or Allah. Some think that they are in a direct communication with God on a one to one level.
We need the children of Indonesia and the Philippines to manufacture our freedom of choice.
We usually had different takes on things and we definitely have different styles and any comparison to Bill I take as a complement. He was a great comic.
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.
When I was a young kid I loved Don Rickles, Buddy Hackett and Jackie Vernon.
When you actually meet the devil and he offers you a deal most artists eventually negotiate.
You got to decide what your soul can handle and how you want to be seen.
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