The business of being told to earn a dollar, that no one is going to give you anything - that was kind of my mantra throughout my childhood, and now it's in my adult life. I find that people really tend to relate to the immigrant father, whether he be Italian, Greek, Spanish or whatever.
You go into Wal-Mart, and you see stuff you typically wouldn't see anywhere else.
I like Las Vegas because it kind of gives me a chance to gauge my material in front of a very diverse group of people. There are a lot of different people in the audience, and you can kind of get a barometer for how your material plays throughout the country.
I used to devour a lot of stand-up comedy in my cousin's basement. He had cable and I didn't, so I went there and saw all the comedians.
I go to Vegas now, and I'm in the casino, and I'm gambling, and there's a guy in a wet bathing suit gambling right next to me.
That's how my family bonded - eating and telling stories.
I don't like a lot of clutter.
My mother saw the magazine, and she was like, 'You made it.' I've been on Showtime and Comedy Central, but none of that matters - all that matter is that she sees me in 'People!'
Food is kind of the conduit that brings people together.
Growing up in an Italian family, we used our body to convey a message.
I've never seen a weirder group of people than at the post office. It looks like people are crawling out from under rocks to go to the post office.
Although my values and my morals are old-school, you have to kind of key into the landscape of social media and how the world is progressing. I'd be a fool to sit there and go, 'Yeah, let's use the telephone to telemarket myself'... Social media is something that I definitely have to tap into, to another demographic.
I once did a flip-flop joke in San Diego, and I got booed... but it's all in good fun.
One of my biggest pet peeves is when a guy's wearing flip-flop sandals, which I don't understand. Men's feet are disgusting to begin with, but now they're on display when I try to go out for a nice steak at a restaurant, and I have to sit there and look at some guy's hoof? I don't get it. I don't understand it.
I give a facial expression in a moment of silence for audiences to react to what I just said and kind of let that marinate with the audience for a little bit. I enjoy the physical part of the comedy as much as the verbal content. People tend to gravitate to not only what they're hearing but also what they're seeing.
It took me a good eight to ten years to really formulate what I was doing onstage and start to get really personal with comedy. I always really had timing naturally, it was just about trying to figure out how that timing was going to work onstage.
We grew up in a middle-class family in Chicago. Even when we went on vacation as a family, it wasn't a really fun time, because my father didn't want to spend any money when we got there.
I developed a knack for storytelling early on around the kitchen table with my family. I just happen to be a funny guy.
Everybody seems to be wasting their time online. There is such a narcissistic attitude. It's such a strange world.
I'll never stop doing stand-up. There's nothing better than getting in front of 2,500 people and making an entire room laugh.
