I'm not going to be around for a long time, so I like to be able to look at myself in the mirror and say I talked about stuff when I'm not supposed to and didn't have to. I could be in the closet, but I feel insulted at the idea that I should be.
— James Adomian
I think one of the perks of getting to do comedy is the ability to hang out with the funniest people in the world.
Even a liberal city will have a prehistoric homophobe. After a show in Washington State, this guy came up to me and said, 'Your shows was a lot funnier before you started in on your agenda.' I told him, 'Please, please keep people like you from coming to my show. I'm glad you had a bad time.'
It feels bad to play a bad guy. I did George W. Bush for years, and I hated him. But you have to give full voice to the villains. You have to have really convincing villains, or it's not worth anything as drama or comedy.
I'm usually in control of the room, but if I sense some kind of hostility, I address it. Occasionally, there are pockets of homophobia, and it's not just the South - it's all over the country.
It's fun to perform Bernie Sanders and give his boring percentages and fact-based points to address some ridiculous Trumpisms, because that was always my fantasy for what the general election would look like.
I sort of attract people who are interested in my comedy for being able to talk about whatever I want to talk about and not being ashamed of who I am and not hiding it.
Everyone learns how to talk by doing an impression of their parents. I'm one of many people who has a highly developed ability to do that.
Eventually, all of our impressions will be dead. That's one of my favorite things about Paul F. Tompkins' 'Dead Authors' podcast is to be able to do impressions of people you've never otherwise think to do or get to do. I did Walt Whitman on there, and that was really fun.
For me, growing up in Los Angeles in the '90s, Huell Howser was the most consistently watchable entertainer on TV. I was more of a radio geek as a teenager, but Huell I watched whenever I got the chance. A lot of us did.
You have to come to full realization of just how horrible things are. And this is how horrible things are: Donald Trump is almost the President of the United States.
I Google myself, and I Bing myself, but only in private. I find it very comforting to Bing myself with a nice cup of eggnog.
The key to gallows humor is to make the joke, no matter how certain the gallows is.
I'm aware that people enjoy creating categories that make it easier to digest pop culture or the media or entertainment or whatever. But I really have too much to do to fit into any easy category.
I've always wondered if, at some point, everything will snap, and it'll be like 'Alice in Wonderland,' where the delightfully mad people turn into sinister mad people.
One funny thing I realized is how many people had no idea that I was gay because they don't bother to look it up or ask.
I've always liked Bernie Sanders. I've always wanted to do a Bernie Sanders impression, but I didn't believe people were familiar enough with him to pull it off. And I've gone down the rabbit hole of doing impressions that not everybody gets. It's not fun.
The moment you think you're not funny, the next funny thing you think of is just around the corner. So you have to appreciate the natural breathing patterns, the ups and downs. There are moments you're going to be hilarious and moments where you're going to be not so hilarious. That's just the way it works.
I used to impersonate people a lot when I was very young. But the good Lord gives us teachers to make fun of first. And then, of course, by college, I eventually graduated to a more sophisticated kind of comedy more people were familiar with.
I think we're realizing that gay people are able to do the type of comedy that we just assumed was for straight people over the years. Whatever old boundaries there were, which were very real and still have an effect on us, in the way we socialize, I think that's slowly becoming less important.
I'm more interested in - I was going to say putting on an interesting show, but then when I think about it, it's more like putting on several interesting shows. I think I'm more interested in doing funny things than calculating how I'll best be received.
