I am invisible in gay bars.

By TV standards - I'm not comparing it to manual labor by any means - by TV comedy standards, it is the hardest job I will ever, ever have. There is nothing that could be harder. I mean, when you combine the amount of writing that has to be done - sharp writing - with the fact that you then take it to the street and improvise with both celebrities who have no idea what's going to happen and real people who are not actors or comedians who don't even know I'm about to talk to them... It's lightning in a bottle every time.

It's one thing to be struggling and not really making money in your early 20s and figuring out your life. Early 30s, you start to wonder, is this ever going to happen?

I had a lot of fans in New York. The press would write about me, but I couldn't get a paying job.

There have been man-on-the-street interviews for years, but insulting people is not that funny to me.

Even when I was struggling and had horrible day jobs and wanted to be successful but wasn't finding my way in, I knew what I had to do. I knew I had to keep working at it and keep putting material out there, even if no one was paying me for it.

I'd be doing Oscar predictions months ahead of time, and not only for the Oscars, for the Grammys. This is just what excited me as a kid.