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“People seem to either love me and think I’m the best thing to ever happen to comedy, or they want my family dead.”
couldn’t get a straight thing out of me… they didn’t get it… but out here… that’s how every corner is. That’s how we do it out here. You are born to creatively protect yourself. It’s how you protect yourself in an Irish family. If you can zing people and they learn that it’s not safe to zing you, it’s protection. One of the things with me is that I could not tell when they meant it and when they didn’t. Did you ever have that? When you can’t tell if someone’s joking or if it’s a hidden thing? Well, I was really born for that. I mean it wasn’t safe to zing me. I was better at it than everybody because I needed to be OK. I am a firm believer that everything we are is the result of us trying to survive, and be ok with ourselves. As an adult we start looking at that and changing it. We can learn to make choices instead of letting our insides trigger us. Up on stage I am not a reactive person. I don’t care if the audience claps or if they don’t clap. If they laugh or if they don’t laugh… I don’t judge them. I like them. When I first got sober, everything changed in my career. I was, at first, doing comedy because I needed people to like me. I didn’t know how to like myself. I got famous enough and I had a great deal of money and success but it didn’t work. When I got sober and started on a different journey to build different truths to live as a person, I started liking myself from the inside. I hold myself accountable and everyday I try to hold myself more accountable than I did the day before. I am not trying to be a good guy. I have no desire to be a good guy. I have a desire to be a healthy guy and so holding yourself accountable for your behavior is the biggest high anyone will ever get. I don’t care what the price tag is, you always get more out of it than it costs you. Course’ it’s scary but once you get that integrity, it becomes a wonderful part of your creativity. I think artists have the most honesty and integrity of any group of people because it is fundamental to the creative process. The freedom to be who you are and not 43