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The trick is not to repeat yourself too much.
You got to at least change it to a kangaroo.
Doesnt have to be living.
Had you performed it onstage really before the Hugh Hefner roast?
I dont think so.
I wasnt planning on telling it that night.
Famously, the Hugh Hefner roast took place a few days after September 11th.
You were the closer and the first comic to address the attacks.
Why did you?I dont know.
Maybe Im self-destructive, maybe Im just plain stupid.
But if someone tells me dont do something, then I want to do it.
Ive always said tragedy and comedy are roommates.
Wherever tragedys around, comedys a few feet behind them sticking his tongue out and making obscene gestures.
The joke that sucked the air out of the room, had you written it beforehand?
I said, I have to leave early tonight.
I have to catch a flight to L.A.
I couldnt get a direct flight.
We have to make a stop at the Empire State Building.
I lost an audience bigger than anybody has ever lost an audience.
People were booing and hissing.
Had anyone said too soon before that?
Maybe thats where it started.
Thats the first time I heard it, and I was quite proud of that.
Because youre a sensitive person, you waited all those years?
Youre saying,Fuck everybody who died on the Titanic, thats years ago.
Even their grandkids are dead, and fuck their grandkids.
Its such a horrible thing.
Its acknowledging its a horrible thing.
How much do you remember about losing the room that day?
Oh my God, I was floating through outer space.
How quickly did the audience turn around?
The comics were laughing, and the audience was going wild.
Just the biggest laughs I ever heard.
You got a lot of positive response from this.
Did anyone who saw it ever come up to you?
I was backstage atThe Tonight Showand somebody called out my name.
I turned around and it was Harrison Ford.
He complimented me on my telling of the Aristocrats joke and how much it made him laugh.
This is one of those stories that I cringe at every time I think of it.
Thats my whole life.
So instead of the right thing to do, which wouldve been, Oh, thank you.
Do you have any other memorable stories about times you did the Aristocrat?
There was a club in Rochester that by law had to have a deaf interpreter onstage.
Holy Christ, I have to.
She acted out all of it, and Ive got to say, I admired her greatly.
