There are times when I've had ideas walking down the street that I thought were great, and the minute I got onstage, I would think of them and go, 'Wow, that would never work,' even before I did it in front of the audience.
I remember being at the premiere of 'Beverly Hills Cop II' and the tremendous reaction from the crowd outside, then going to a party at a hotel afterwards where the speakers were blasting 'Shakedown,' a song from the movie. That felt like a show biz moment to me.
I've never understood people who say they're not a practicing Jew. You never hear a black guy say he's not a practicing African-American. What does it even mean?
I have always felt comedy and tragedy are roommates. If you look up comedy and tragedy, you will find a very old picture of two masks. One mask is tragedy. It looks like it's crying. The other mask is comedy. It looks like it's laughing. Nowadays, we would say, 'How tasteless and insensitive. A comedy mask is laughing at a tragedy mask.'
I always wish the hotels were like they are in movies and TV shows, where if you're in Paris, right outside your window is the Eiffel Tower. In Egypt, the pyramids are right there. In the movies, every hotel has a monument right outside your window. My hotel rooms overlook the garbage dumpster in the back alley.
With me, traveling for work is arriving at the airport, checking into the hotel, leaving the hotel the next morning at 4 or 5 to do something like 'The Jimmy and Jackie Captain Crazy Morning Zoo,' doing a bunch of those in a row, then going back to the hotel, and then finally going to the club.
A landlord is showing a couple around an apartment. The husband looks up and says, 'Wait a minute. This apartment doesn't have a ceiling.' The landlord answers, 'That's OK. The people upstairs don't walk around that much.'
My family originally lived in Brooklyn. Our first apartment was a little place above my father and uncle's hardware store in Coney Island. Now, don't get the impression that we were surrounded by merry-go-rounds, roller coasters and Ferris wheels. Nope, this was a little side street.
