My stand-up on that special was the narcissistic me that I was. “I have no friends, I have no life, and I live in a moped.” I did a lot of absurd stuff. I remember doing one joke, which was, “My mom never let me go to camp when I was a kid, because she said I would get embarrassed undressing in front of little boys. But, I’ve changed, because I like it now. I like it a lot.” And, then I’d say, “That’s not true. I’m not a Senator.” So, it was a pedophile joke upon a pedophile joke. I definitely was not a guy who you’d say, “Let’s put him as a dad on a sitcom.”
You were on an episode of Politically Incorrect with Christine O’Donnell in 2001. Do you have any thoughts about her Senate run or where she is now?
I’m very happy about how hot she looks. Where is she living now? Do you have her exact address? It’s really strange. I don’t really have any memories. It was not like what Bill [Maher] has now. He’s put himself into a news category almost. When I watch Real Time, I admire what Bill does on that show. It is an unusual and pretty amazing thing. I have a joke that I was watching HBO, and it said, “The following program contains rape,” and then they ran my last special. It didn’t say rape, but it said violence or obscenity. I come out and I do like two hundred dick jokes and drop the f-bomb three hundred times. I don’t know. I don’t know what war that’s causing.
Maher confronts us with the horribleness of the world, whereas, in a sense, your act is an escape. The way you talk about, say, having sex with animals is almost like a vacation.
I don’t want to misread you, but that doesn’t sound like it should be part of your vacation. It sounds like you’re saying that if you go to Yellowstone with your family and you see a bunch of animals, that having sex with those animals is part of your vacation. You’re not saying that?
I’m saying that your act imagines a place where the worst thing that happens in the world is that some people are fucking animals. Which is nice. It’s a more innocent place.
And, little animals, like sea urchin. Things that wouldn’t even be hurt by it. The human being would be hurt. They would be stung, and they would be the one that’d suffer. Meanwhile, when I watched George Carlin’s second-to-last HBO special [Life Is Worth Losing], which was incredibly dark and very poignant and talked about teen suicide, it broke my heart. Half of the show was weighted with this seriousness of how sad life can be for some people. That’s what’s so beautiful about stand-up. To me, there’s no better profession. You can do anything you want with it.
