My father told me when I first started that standup is exciting and I should pursue it, but that writing would be the thing that would give me power over my career. I never have to take a road gig or a writing gig I don't want because I always have the ability to play one against the other.

I enjoy writing the same way I enjoy doing standup. Part of the challenge is being creative and making it work no matter what the constraints.

Trickle-down economics - it didn't work. The whole idea was supply-side economics: give rich people a lot of money; they'll spend it, it'll go into the economy. Here's what we found out - rich people, really good at keeping all the money. That's how they got rich. If you want it in the economy, give it to the poor people. You know what they're really good at? Spending all their money.

There's so many ways to do stand up, and I think, for awhile, people weren't really maximizing the freedom of it. We were all kind of doing a similar kind of stand up, and I started to see some original voices come out of Boston.

They say no one knows if we all see red the same way. Except traffic cops.

My grandfather is from Ireland. His name is Florence McCarthy. He moved to New York in 1920. They used to beat him up because his name was Florence. He had to switch his name to Frank. And then this Christmas, he made an announcement - he goes, 'I'm switching me name back to Florence.' And we beat him up, 'cause it's a dumb name and he's old and weak and it was easy.

I knew that drinking and doing stand-up was going to make me less of an effective comedian. And I just had a lot invested in wanting to be a really good comedian and so I stopped for that reason.