Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I had a life experience that most of my - that none of my friends had. I remember I became everybody's rabbi. Everybody who needed advice would talk to me, and it became an obvious thing.
I think Jersey stands alone, and because I'm from Jersey, I never make fun of where people are from. I'll make fun of what they look like, but I'll never make fun of where they are from. Jersey is special.
My parents passed away when I was a teenager, so I had to learn different survival techniques, I think, in comedy. You know, using comedy as a pressure release, as a release valve in life really kept my sanity.
People are not afraid to be very direct with police. And I think that's part of the problem is that people are angry at the cops and then the cops are stressed out and they, you know, pay it backwards, so to speak.
Sometimes during my set I invite volunteers up on stage to get speed-roasted and I'm worried that I may have hundreds of people rushing the stage all at once. Luckily I'm a black belt in karate and I can fend them off.
When I first started doing these roasts in the mid '90s, they were a lost art, like jousting or calligraphy. But I feel like roasts help tame the room and let off steam... It's like it's all being handled by professionals.
When I see something that's sensitive, I go, 'You've got to put that out there.' You need to keep the dialogue going and shine a light on the bad guys. If you sweep it under the carpet, people forget about it. People stop talking about it.
Comedy comes from pain, and no one knows that better than this woman Roseanne Barr—who was molested as a child. Uch. That poor molester. Roseanne never got over it. She felt violated. She had trust issues. She never got the candy he promised her.
Comedians a lot of times we're on the road, we're by our self. We come home to New York to our empty one-bedroom apartment, you know, and we need a place to go where you see a bunch of other miserable people sit around and eat a corned beef sandwich.
Could you imagine me and the roasters taking on the GOP field? It would be the greatest show ever. Prove that you can take a joke. Prove that you're a man or woman of the people. Prove that you're not above criticism even in the form of a backhanded compliment.
With roasting, you've really got to bring your A-game. I hate to admit it, but I probably think and obsess more about the roasts than my own series. Because there's so much attention focused on the roasts. It's like the 'Super Bowl' of comedy. Everybody is going to talk about it. Forever.
With everybody having a Facebook and a Twitter, I feel like regular people consider themselves stars. It's a live, real-time upload of every time we buy a pair of socks, the most telling sign that we're losing our politeness. When you know everything about somebody, you can talk to them any way you please.
People are roasting each other at parties, at work events, around the fire. It's so fun. People are busting each other's chops, and it's a sign of affection, truly. It's a true test of love and friendship: can you make a man laugh at himself? So what makes a good burn? Go after targets you love and respect. And hit 'em hard.
You know, sometimes I worry, you know, is comedy and my type of comedy going to get stale? Is it going to be so offensive that it becomes uninteresting or so niche that I don't have an audience anymore? But it keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger, where roasting now is a movement. These roasts are on in India, in Mexico.
In Boston where community policing is so important, they don't necessarily have to like each other, but they know each other. The cops in Boston make it their business to get out of their vehicles, to engage the public, to walk around the neighborhoods. They live in the community that they police. And I think these things help.
I don't think it's unfair to have writers. I think if you're going to do a roast on television, as if you were doing a play or you were reading a script of a movie, you would have the best possible material. And those are the people who score, the people who are willing to listen to the roasting experts and then come out there and own that material.
Life has to keep going, so you can either be a victim the rest of your life and let it drag you down into drugs and alcohol and depression or you can turn it into something good, fun even, you know, and I tell young people who are going through depression that this might be the most important time of your life. This might be what makes you a great artist later on.