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P. G. Wodehouse... used, when in town, to solve the problem of the long walk to the post-office by the simple expedient of tossing his letters out of his window: his belief that the average human, finding a stamped and addressed envelope on the pavement, would naturally pop it into the nearest pillar-box was never once, in decades, shown to be unfounded.
When I first came to the U.S. - because I do accents and I've traveled the world. I have friends of almost every single ethnicity, and I would mimic them. And when I came to the U.S., I remember one day we're at "The Daily Show." And I mimicked my Chinese friend. And the guys at the show were like, oh, hey, don't ever do that again. That's really racist.
You see weird things driving... I've never understood log trucks. Sometimes you'll be out on the highway, you see two big giant trucks loaded up with logs, and they pass each other on the highway... I don't understand that. I mean, if they need logs over there... and they need 'em over there, you'd think a phone call would save 'em a whole lot of trouble.
I've always prided myself on being able to perform in the "alt-comedy" zone, but also being able to do comedy for people who aren't media-saturated, and maybe don't have the latest Dan Deacon album. I probably won't be the most popular guy at Zanies in Nashville, and I'll never be the coolest dude at Largo, but I like that I can swim in both those waters.
How far would you go for someone you love ? Well, when my grandkids ask me how I pledged my love to their grandma, I'll say, I told her I would die for her, after I found out I didn't have an incurable disease. Then, I ran away while grandma was getting her ass kicked by a pregnant woman that grandpa slept with. You never know when you're making a memory.
I like to say two things in life that mean the most: genetics and luck. When you look at it realistically, genetics is luck too. Because you could have been born in some really terrible situation and never had a chance to realize yourself or see who you were. And so the luck of genetics and then after that, circumstances, those are the two guiding things.
Before Community started up again for the season, we had the chance to go on a long family vacation where we drove for ten days down the coast. I was like wow, look at these people that I am related to and am actually spending some quality time with! So it was great to be with them, but now my schedule is really difficult so I have to take what I can get.
Even after the Super Bowl victory of the New Orleans Saints, I have noticed a large number of people implying, with bad jokes, that Cajuns aren't smart. I would like to state for the record that I disagree with that assessment. Anybody that would build a city 5 feet below sea level in a hurricane zone and fill it with Democrats who can't swim is a genius.
It’s been a very old thing for people to gather together and laugh at stuff. The first comedian in America really was Abraham Lincoln. He used to go to a pub near where he lived and stand in front of the fire and he packed the place every night and he would just talk and bust everybody in their guts. He was just a hilarious speaker and that’s what he did.
Three has always been tougher than Two. Think of any of your famous threesomes. The Three Stooges? Look at the anger there. My bet is that before Curly was born, Moe and Larry could play together for hours without even a single poke in the eye. Huey, Dewey, and Louie? Donald Duck never had a moment's peace. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly? I rest my case.
If you're looking to freelance, just get as many gigs going as you can, and you can make it work... It's about getting as many side projects as possible, keeping as many balls in the air as you can, and what you're doing, basically, is diversifying your portfolio, with the same kinds of rewards. One falls through, and you still have another one to work on.
Normal people, want to be accepted. Screwed up people, want to be accepted. It's one of the few things we have in common. My whole life, all I ever wanted was my dad to pat me on the top of the head and go, Who's a good boy ? Who's a good boy? But, instead, all he ever did was wipe peanut butter on the end of my nose and laugh while I tried to lick it off.
My real first job was delivering newspapers with I was 15. I would ride my bike around and chuck papers at people's houses. The thing that sucked is when I would go collecting everyone acted like they were not home. Totally sucked but because I could control the weather I showered trashcan size hail down on their homes until they were completely decimated.
This is a world that's big enough for everyone. I like that message in that comes out of John Lasseter, and it comes out Pixar, it comes out of the Apple, Google, the Ben and Jerry's thing. These are American companies that send that message around that is good, that is healthy. And everyone goes, "That's the America I always believed in before Watergate."
I tell ya, if I hadn't chosen the career of being a performer, I think linguistics would have been a natural area that I'd have loved - to teach it, probably, Language has always fascinated me. There's a genetic inheritance there a good language gene, which I inherited [from my mother and grandfather] and she fostered that in me as he fostered that in her.
A man calls a lawyer's office. The phone is answered, Schwartz, Schwartz, Schwartz and Schwartz. The man says, Let me talk to Mr. Schwartz. I'm sorry, he's on vacation. Then let me talk to Mr. Schwartz. He's on a big case, not available for a week. Then let me talk to Mr. Schwartz. He's playing golf today. Okay, then, let me talk to Mr. Schwartz. Speaking.
The Pennsylvania Game Commission has charged a man with going deer hunting with a handgun in a Wal-Mart parking lot. He is being charged with reckless endangerment, but may plead guilty to the lesser charge of being a redneck.... Hunting in a Wal-Mart parking lot. That's got to be some good eating a deer that lives on leftover Twizzlers and Mountain Dew.
My nana was always a widow as long as I was alive; my grandfather died before I was born. All the women on my street - there were four houses in a row with all old women who lived alone who were widowed. They all had kids, but they were all widowed. My mom didn't put me in preschool; I didn't know that was a thing. I just hung out with these women all day.
There was an Israeli artist who was in grad school with me. I remember trying to get to know him on a more personal level. He had moved to the Fairfax area, not realizing that it's a super Jewish part of L.A. He told me, I don't understand why American Jews feel this connection with me. I was embarrassed because I was feeling that connection with him, too!
I think the craziest thing I heard, and this guy's not even nominated, he's from Texas...he said there's no reason that women shouldn't carry a stillborn baby to term, and that it's an excuse to have an abortion if she doesn't want to. She should just let nature take its course from start to finish. Literally forcing birth of a fetus that died in the womb.
I have a lot of friends who were stand-ups, and they just stopped after a while, because they didn't like that battle, or they just couldn't do it. And then they would get on a sitcom and get visible and get back into it, because the audience was just way easier on them. But they lost those crucial years of learning to turn any audience into your audience.
From the minute we're born, boys and girls stare at each other, trying to figure out if they like what they see. Like parade lines, passing each other for mutual inspection. You march, you look. You march, you look. If you're interested, you stop and talk, and if it doesn't work out, you just get back in the parade. You keep marching, and you keep looking.
There are stories in the Bible about people telling other people how to do things. When you hear this young man say "we don't give up," that's something human beings who win will tell you every time. Breaks will happen. When they happen, you keep the same mind about what you're doing. It's about we the people getting on with our lives and doing it that way.
It's been my experience that people who make proclamations about themselves are usually the opposite of what they claim to be. If someone is truly a loyal friend, then they wouldn't need to broadcast it; eventually, people will figure it out. I have a lot of good friends and not one of them has ever introduced themselves by saying, 'I'm a very good friend.'
We set up a bakery called Bad Boy Bakery, to cook on the inside to sell on the outside. It was huge, because it got them working. I'd give them a certificate to go back in the community with a skill. They could get a job. We set up a little bakery and it's gone crazy. I need to be that raw to do the glossy stuff. I need to get back to that kind of scenario.
That's all we had when I was a kid: Robitussin. No matter what you got, Robitussin better handle it. "Daddy, I got asthma." "Robitussin." "I got cancer." "Robitussin." "I broke my leg." Daddy poured Robitussin on it. "Yeah, boy, let that 'tussin get in there. Yeah, boy, let that 'tussin get on down to the bone. The 'tussin ought to straighten out the bone."
How come Mom is crazy and I'm not? Well, it's possible my mom could stand up in front of this many people and talk about all the crap in her life and those people could have sat around and laughed with her, it would've meant nothing and she could have moved on cool. It's also possible she could have taken out the whole front row with a large-caliber weapon.
Campaign analysts say that Dean has produced the most innovative web site in this year's presidential race. I particularly like today's blog, which consisted of the sentence 'I hate myself,' typed four billion times. In Dean's case, this may be the first instance where the actually entity represented by the web site has crashed more often than the site did.
I am a personal optimist but a skeptic about all else. What may sound to some like anger is really nothing more than sympathetic contempt. I view my species with a combination of wonder and pity, and I root for its destruction. And please don't confuse my point of view with cynicism; the real cynics are the ones who tell you everything's gonna be all right.
After the Reagan years, there were only three people of color in the Republican Party. Their slogan was 'Republicans - the Other White Meat.' George [H.] Bush tried to dispel the 'whites only' image of his party, often referring to his Mexican-American grandkids as 'the little brown ones over there,' and nominated Clarence Uncle Thomas to the Supreme Court.
The weight of the world isn't on their shoulders as much in Canada as opposed to America. Americans' perception of it is, "Oh, it seems like a pretty nice place to live. And everyone there is nice. So if people around you are nice, you have a tendency to be nicer." What a wonderful lesson for the rest of the world: Just let a little kindness rub off on you.
...Catholicism is like Howard Johnson, and what they have are these franchises and they give all these people different franchises in the different countries but they have one government, and when you buy the Howard Johnson franchise you can apply it to the geography - whatever's cool for that area - and then you, you know, pay the bread to the main office.
Filming in Cloak & Dagger I was trying to get my Screen Actors Guild card. Everybody tries to get their SAG card if they want to be an actor. People might say that it was their dream to be an actor, but for me, I was a comedian. I already had a job. But I felt like there could be money there, and comedians don't make very much money, or they didn't in 1984.
Picture this scene. A critic arrives at the gates of heaven. 'And what did you do?' asks Saint Peter. 'Well', says the dead soul. 'I criticised things'. 'I beg your pardon?' 'You know, other people wrote things, performed things, painted things and I said stuff like, "thin and unconvincing", "turgid and uninspired", "competent and serviceable,"...you know'.
I came to realize,people who had Chinese accents will continue to have Chinese accents in America are treated as being stupid or not as intelligent as an English speaker who is fluent with an American accent - I came to realize why. But it's always fascinated me how quickly you can change where you stand with another human being just based on how you speak.
My dad's been having a hard time lately. Keeps on losing his keys. Can't hang on to a set of keys to save his life. And he has tried everything too: little hook next to the door, little bowl next to his bed, keychain makes a noise when you whistle. Nothing worked. So finally, this year for his birthday, the whole family chipped in - and we put him in a home.
When people say to me, 'You hate America,' I don't hate America. I love America. I am just embarrassed that it has been taken over by people like evangelicals, by people who do not believe in science and rationality. It is the 21st century. And I will tell you, my friend. The future does not belong to the evangelicals. The future does not belong to religion.
What people really want is not to make something funny, but to make something amusing - which, in many ways, is the opposite of funny. To amuse someone is to eliminate discomfort and awkwardness, kind of like a massage for the brain, while to be funny is to point out awkwardness and discomfort. Everyone thinks they want funny, but they really want amusement.
The violence of the Left is symbolic, the injuries are not intended. The violence of the Right is real - directed at people, designed to cause injuries. Vietnam, nuclear weapons, police out of control are intentional forms of violence. The violence from the Right is aimed directly at people and the violence from the Left is aimed at institutions and symbols.
It's nice when I can be met with warmth and enthusiasm, but doing standup comedy has taught me how to push through the fact that statistically speaking, 100% of Earth's population population doesn't have any interest in what I'm doing at all. I try to think less about having/deserving an audience and focus on enjoying the privilege of creating things I like.
I've had this look for about a year. I usually grow this beard out around Christmas. I like to go to malls dressed as Jesus, and I like to then walk around the mall and go, 'No! No! This wasn't what it was supposed to be about, people!' Then if there's a Santa at the mall, I walk up to him and say, 'Listen, fat man, you're just a clown at my birthday party.'
There's this whole post-modern, nuevo beatnik, retro-bohemian thing going on, you know what I mean? You walk into some coffee shops, and it feels like you're an ex-patriot in Paris in the 20s. You're like, 'Hey, isn't that a young Ernest Hemingway over there? Yeah, I think it is! Hey, let's go have a look and see what he's writing... It's a Gap application.'
When you're writing something, and you're putting yourself out there, or you're performing and someone comes in and savages that, then of course it feels personal. It doesn't feel like it's just business, because there's no business - it's not like we're conducting business, this anonymous critic and I. It's just that this person is tearing me a new asshole.
It's funny that we think of libraries as quiet demure places where we are shushed by dusty, bun-balancing, bespectacled women. The truth is libraries are raucous clubhouses for free speech, controversy and community. Librarians have stood up to the Patriot Act, sat down with noisy toddlers and reached out to illiterate adults. Libraries can never be shushed.
The things that are reflected back at us, often times, are appealing to a base instinct that's about response as opposed to reflection. So for me, it's important to turn on a piece of information that might interest people, you know, that might interest them in pursuing or researching maybe, or even just thinking about it in that moment as I'm performing it.
Revolt in whatever way we want, with the spontaneity of the London rioters, with the certainty and willingness to die of religious fundamentalists or with the twinkling mischief of the trickster... Take to the streets, together, with the understanding that the feeling that you aren't being heard or seen or represented isn't psychosis; it's government policy.
Dear America, when you tell gay Americans that they can't serve their country openly or marry the person that they love, you're telling that to kids too. So don't be f**king shocked and wonder where all these bullies are coming from that are torturing young kids and driving them to kill themselves because they're different; they learned it from watching you.
I have that need in me, I want everyone to love me, but I'm embarrassed by that need, so I wanted to cover it up in my persona. I felt like I wouldn't be able to do stand-up for a career if I was needy. I didn't want to be complaining or whining onstage. I wanted to be cool and do exactly what I wanted to do. That way I would never have to change for anybody.
You can refer to god and you are really just talking about nature. If you are going to say the universe is god, then everything is god, everything is religion. But when we explore traditional religion we are talking about humanistic gods people pray to, that they think can intervene in our lives, who run sort of a heaven-and-hell operation for the afterworld.
My goals were small. My goal was to become a big enough stand-up that I wouldn't have to do radio. I could sell out a club, which is like 300 seats. If I got big enough, I could sell before I got there, and I wouldn't have to get up at 6 in the morning to do radio. That was pretty much the dream. I had no idea I'd be playing Madison Square Garden or anything.