It's slightly annoying. I've been high on camera ONCE in my entire career and it didn't work out well at all. besides that, the most I've had before being on TV is one or two drinks. It's weird when people just ASSUME that I'm high because I'm not yelling. I've never been high on Eric Andre show. It was just one episode of Broad City where I was pretty stoned. I kept fucking my lines up. If you've seen me on the road doing stand up, I've never been high. I've done stand up high a couple times in NYC and that's it.

When comedians talk to an audience member and try to make them look dumb when they aren't. Example Comedian: Where are you from? person: Queens. Comedian: What do you do there? person: I live there. comedian: I mean what is your JOB you fucking asshole??? person: (politely to his seat mate as everyone laughs at him) but I work in manhattan.

People do ask you to tell jokes when you are a comedian. They are either dumb or hostile. Or dumb and hostile. I usually just assume they mean well but are dumb. But when you tell them a joke they don't laugh which is infuriating.

That whole punching-down thing — I absolutely cannot stand people who say that. “Punch up. Punch up.” That has got to be the most boring thing you could ever do onstage. It’s yelling into an echo chamber. What’s so fucking funny to me is that what’s really going on is never brought up. Who donates to the president and who pays for the advertising on all these big news networks? That’s shit people should be upset about. But instead, if you do a fucking feminist joke in a strip mall you make the news. So that’s just a load of shit. Smarmy people who aren’t funny say that. Comedy is a pastime. The pastime is making fun of something you’re not supposed to make fun of because that gives you a me...[Read more]

The nervous energy for me is the entire show. That comes from a place of “will this show be fun, will it work, will it fall on its face?” I try not to do too much with any of my characters other than just say the same material as this person. It all came out of boredom really. I didn’t have any new ideas or jokes to work on, which scared the shit out of me, so I decided to do what I had as different people. It became so much fun to do that I decided to just keep it as a thing and work on it. That sort of led to writing a few bits that were specific to the characters. I’m sure it will fade eventually. My german character makes fewer appearances. I’m sort of addicted to the southern preacher g...[Read more]

I'm considered a "clean comedian" or "family friendly comedian," but that's just how it comes out. There's no incredible calculation behind being clean or family friendly; comedians talk about what they can get away with. Chris Rock or Lewis Black are just gonna do the type of comedy that they're going to do. If you know them, it makes sense what type of comedy that they're doing. I'm always hesitant to be identified as a clean comedian because all comedians, whether they be clean, female or African American or transgender, the only adjective they want is to be funny. I sometimes I feel as though "clean" is this asterisk that kind of disqualifies some of my success. People are not coming to...[Read more]

I don’t understand that term. I mean, I do those rooms that are called alternative comedy. In the 80’s, there was a formula that started happening with the airline jokes, just a person with a microphone, doing very conventional material. But everything before that was alternative comedy. Like when Albert Brooks used to go on Johnny Carson and literally read the phone book. Or Steve Martin would do those great bits. I guess I am. I really don’t know. I’m alternative (he says with raised eyebrows). I lead an alternative lifestyle. (laughs)

I didn’t want to offend people in the crowd because I was afraid to get heckled. Also I wanted to make sure that I knew how to make a joke before I started talking the way I really talked.

Question: In your moving tribute to George Carlin, you credit him with inspiring you to periodically start from scratch with your material. do you believe that that would benefit most comics? Would a Mitch Hedberg or a Steven Wright -- that is, a comic that does tight one-liners -- be able to do the same? Do you think it would benefit a new comic to start such a practice early? Answer: everybody is different. some comedy is more "musical" like steven. he is a pillar of comedy to me. He invented a whole form and all his jokes are poems. so it's different. I wanted to do it like george. now i do it like me.

I think when you see the word 'clean' associated with comedy, a lot of people think that that's the point of it. "Like, 'Oh he's trying to be wholesome. He's trying to make a statement.' And that's not it at all. There are comedians out there who work dirty who I think are great. But I found that that didn't feel natural to me. You want to feel like you're as in-the-moment as possible. You want to feel real. And that stuff doesn't feel real to me.

I was slightly observational at first, going back to my early, early open mics. I was just writing any joke, because I wanted to be a real comedian. But my personality was always there and some of my material naturally became about me — about looking Jewish or hairy or whatever — and people liked that. Your voice and your persona will come out of that, the more you're comfortable with it. So when I tried to fit myself into a Seinfeld mold and I didn't get the laughs, that brought me out. And then comedians said, "Keep doing that." And then it was all about honing it and writing jokes for it. But if you ask me, honestly, I wish I could just go up and do jokes. Boom boom boom bing bing and I'm...[Read more]

I think that i share everything as a way of not feeling guilty about it or shame about it. If i am able to put it out there it is not weighing me down. I say things that I shouldn't and that i wish i could take back, but that's just the way. I. am.

I just noticed that audiences didn't want to laugh at me because of the way I looked, so I just went with that. It seemed fun to play a villain on stage and I wanted my jokes to be so good that I could just calmly tell them on stage. I didn't want to show any neediness. It was important to me to be cool up there.

Stand-up is a form and to subvert something, you have to do it perfectly first. I remember somebody showed me a talk show with “subversion” in it — the guy chainsawed his desk. It was so stupid. Why did you build a desk in the first place if you were only going to chainsaw it? Don’t have a fucking desk! You just want little drops of subversion. Letterman in the ‘80s would be 90 percent a great talk show and then 10 percent subversion. If you get to 30 percent subversion, you’re in Andy Kaufman land. If you get to 70 percent, you’re a guy on the streets screaming at people. What are you trying to subvert anyway? Entertaining people? It’s absurd.