New York is a city where you're so alone, you're an individual, you can disappear. You can make something happen. But it's very different to make something happen in the art world.
No one as yet has approached the management of New York in a proper spirit; that is to say, regarding it as the shiftless outcome of squalid barbarism and reckless extravagance. No one is likely to do so, because reflections on the long narrow pig-trough are construed as malevolent attacks against the spirit and majesty of the American people, and lead to angry comparisons.
Well I've made no secret of my life long love of MAD Magazine, it's probably my first and greatest influence in terms of my comic sensibilities. I've known John [Ficarra] for many years, and we've been friends. About four or five months ago, at a dinner in New York, John made the very nice offer of my being guest editor for an issue of MAD and I thought about it for about half a nanosecond and decided that was a pretty good idea.
It is self-evident that St. Louis affected me more deeply than any other environment has ever done. I feel that there is something in having passed one's childhood beside the big river, which is incommunicable to those people who have not. I consider myself fortunate to have been born here, rather than in Boston, or New York, or London.
Even though everybody who looked at me would call me a Chinese artist, that's the 1980s. New York in the '80s was not so interesting. I think it's quite narrow-minded. There wasn't much encouragement or opportunities for any artist - not just Chinese artists.
I have at last, after several months' experience, made up my mind that [New York] is a splendid desert--a domed and steepled solitude, where the stranger is lonely in the midst of a million of his race.
URBANITY, n. The kind of civility that urban observers ascribe to dwellers in all cities but New York. Its commonest expression is heard in the words, "I beg your pardon," and it is not consistent with disregard of the rights of others.
I don't necessarily notice too much of a change in the sense of the kind of matches that I have in say a Los Angeles as opposed to a New York City. The big difference that I notice, and this is what all love as New York city and Philadelphia has treated me fantastically, but man, you cannot screw up in Philadelphia and New York.
Four years ago, I promised to end the war in Iraq. We did. I promised to refocus on the terrorists who actually attacked us on 9/11. We have. We've blunted the Taliban's momentum in Afghanistan, and in 2014, our longest war will be over. A new tower rises above the New York skyline, al Qaeda is on the path to defeat, and Osama bin Laden is dead.
I produced a play in New York that got nominated for an Outer Critics Circle Award for Best American Play.The play is called Stalking The Bogeyman. It was a story on This American Life, and my former roommate is the artistic director of the New York Repertory Theater. He heard the NPR show, contacted them, and essentially - shortest synopsis ever, like I'm the Cablevision guide button - it's the true story of a man stalking and plotting to kill the man who raped him when he was seven. It's by a brilliant reporter named David Holthouse.
My mother's background was Scottish. She came from an old family, some of whom lived in upper New York State and some of whom had come over from Scotland.