Nothing against comedy clubs, they work. But when you're sitting with a tablecloth and a candle and an appetizer menu, three-drink minimum, it can feel more like a dinner theater than a live experience.

I don't know. Both my parents are dead. So? Wait, I got pictures of their corpses in my wallet. I had them blown up as murals. Here.

Abject flattery and indiscriminate assentation degrade, as much as indiscriminate contradiction and noisy debate disgust. But a modest assertion of one's own opinion, and a complaisant acquiescence in other people's, preserve dignity.

The fact is that really no comedian sets out to offend you. Some comics enjoy the challenge of taking a subject that is likely to be found offensive and trying to make it funny‚ but the object is still to make you laugh. Offense is only a calculated risk. It's highly unlikely that a comedian whose only goal was to repulse you would ever make it past an open-mic stage, far less build a long career of touring theatres and television appearances.

I used to do boiler room telemarketing for a living, like hardcore fraud stuff that gets busted on 60 Minutes every week.

Charlie Chaplin said something to the effect that humor is an act of defiance, that we must laugh in the face of our helplessness in the forces of nature or go insane. And where is he now? Dead.

My mother was always the one with the dark, really filthy sense of humor. She was a vulgar woman. She used to tell me to do comedy before I even tried it. She was always up for any gag.