Stand-up comedy is tough right now. Anybody can come to a concert, tape you, and put you up on the Internet. You either fight it or embrace it.

I started in a business background, but then it was like, 'you know, I can't do math,' so I changed it to a liberal arts degree and got my Bachelor of Arts in Communications and it made sense.

I've tried the female thing. I was in a movie called Dinner for Schmucks a couple of years ago with Steve Carell and I created a female character for that movie. And after a few months of trying her out on the road it just didn't work. I mean, I can think like a terrorist, I can think like a white trash guy, I can even try and think like an African American, but I can't figure out how a woman.

A comedian needs to have his own filters, needs to know his audience, how far he can push things.

If you choke a Smurf, what color does it turn?

I don't aim it at anybody specific, I don't aim my characters to make old people laugh or young people or professionals or blue collar, just whatever I think is going to be funny and it just so happens that.

My mother and my father have always supported me. Now in their eighties, they actually clamor onto the tour bus with me once or twice a year so they can watch the performances and hear the crowds. Traveling with eighty-something-year-olds on a tour bus... there has to be some sort of reality show in that.