On that same tour we ran into a band at Aylesbury Friars, a biggish venue in Oxfordshire, England. They were a four-piece from Ireland called U2. They seemed like nice fellows and they sounded pretty good, but we didn’t keep in touch. They’re probably taxi drivers and accountants by now.

Here in Los Angeles, school's out for summer. For thousands of school kids, this is the first week of summer vacation. And for thousands of parents, it's the first week of hell.

Ros was dead. He had loved heroin more than it loved him. I was shocked beyond imagining; he was the first of my friends to fall.

A friend of mine that I was in a band with started me on Kafka, which in turn led to Camus and Sartre.

Late night is no different than making a film, really, except that it's faster, and if you do a crap one, you can do a better one tomorrow. Writing a novel and doing stand-up - that stuff is very similar.

Now, I know Obama was trying to take the long view, but talking about solar energy in the middle of the oil spill is like watching your house engulfed in flames and saying, 'We really should change the curtains.'

I think commercialism helps Christmas and I think that the more capitalism we can inject into the Christmas holiday the more spiritual I feel about it