(Continued...)

So when you do interviews with local radio stations, do the DJs try to mix it up with you like Stern does?

[There was] that fucking retard in Jackson, Mississippi, who was trying to talk shit to me. They think, "Oh, she's an insult comic, maybe I can try it, too." And it's like, "No, you can't. There's a reason you're earning 12 grand a year at a radio station, dumbass. You're not interesting. You're not funny. So don't try to go up against me." I'm just trying to sell albums and tickets, what's the problem?

You were a journalist before you started doing comedy full-time. Where were you working when you decided to make the change?
I was working in Stamford, Connecticut, at some editing place called Learning International. It was a place that did training manuals for something. They said they were going to have a company-wide layoff. I really wanted to get laid off because I knew I could live on unemployment for like, six months, and I knew I could make it work because I had a cheap apartment. So luckily when the layoff came, they called me in there all somber: "Yeah, we really have to let you go." And I'm like, "Cool!"

I used to have to go, "Hey, white guy, you have to be black tonight. All you have to do is grow a longer dick and quit your job" Did the insult stuff develop over time in terms of what you could say and what you couldn't say?
Well, I started getting an idea that I wanted to do it because it was fun. Every time I made fun of somebody, they didn't really get pissed. And I was having more fun with it than just standing up and saying some dumb regular material. So I remember taking chances and putting a little bit of ethnic stuff out there and being more controversial. You don't become a doctor and immediately the next day do heart surgery. You work up to it. Or a lawyer doesn't try a murder case immediately. You just start slow and dabble in it, then eventually work up to where you can say whatever you want.

How did you know where the line was, though?
Well, there isn't any.

There isn't any?
I don't think so. I mean, there's a line for yourself where you go, "Ah, I don't think I could pull that off yet." If it's not funny, why am I going to bother with it? But a joke in that vein has to be really funny for the audience to buy into it. I think I said something about Patton Oswalt, that he's caused more moments of silence than September 11th. I love that joke, but it still gets like, "Ohhh." And I go, "Shut the fuck up, I'm a New Yorker, I was there." So I can get away with it.

Early on, did you get people coming up to you in clubs who were troubled by your act?
A couple people would say, "Why don't you make fun of white people more?" And I'd be like, every time I pick on an old guy, a gay guy, Italian, Jew, those are white people. There's no general jokes about white people. Rednecks, kind of a "git 'er done" type, I make fun of. So there are specific white groups I make fun of, but that's a big criticism: "Make fun of white people more." Leave that to the black comics. They've been doing it great for years and nobody says to them, "Why do you make fun of white people?" It's like, what?

What is the difference between what you're doing and what happened with Michael Richards? Because when you look at what Michael Richards did, it seemed like it was coming from a very different, very dark spot.
I don't do it [the racial jokes] with anything out of anger. And every time I do something out of anger, it ends up not going in a racial vein anyway. Like if somebody cuts me off in traffic, the first thing I yell is, "You fucking asshole" or "You cocksucker" or whatever. It's never "fucking nigger" or "fucking Jew." I think the audience knows it comes from a good place. Everything is about intention.

If somebody cuts me off in traffic, the first thing I yell is, "You fucking asshole" or "You cocksucker" or whatever. It's never "fucking
nigger" or "fucking Jew"
There are times you have to deal with hecklers. What's the difference between the mock-angry Lisa on stage and the one who's really pissed off at somebody?
I think the anger will come when they've been warned once. Like, there was this group of girls at Caroline's from one of those fucking bachelorette parties that think the world revolves around them because she snared a fucking husband and they're so special and this and that. I can tell this whole group of girls was getting the audience around them annoyed. So I said, "Ladies, come on, seriously, you have to be quiet 'cause there's like 500 people in here, man." And it was said nicely, not cunty; I said, "Please, one more word, and I'm really going to have to get rid of you, I'm sorry." I said it nice.

And one of them challenged me, because there's always some cunt who has to challenge me who thinks they're funnier. And the fucking angry Lisa came out. You challenge me, and it's on, bitch! I was like, "Get the fuck out of here, you fuck!" And I wish I had that on tape because it wasn't even funny. I don't make it funny. I go, "You're fucking cunts." I psychoanalyze them—"I know your little fucking MO. You live off your husbands, you don't appreciate anybody who has to work for a living, which I fucking do and all these other people do, and you have to be the center of attention because you didn't get any fucking attention in high school. So get the fuck out of here and go to a therapist, because this audience paid to see me, not you, you fucking self-righteous Jew cunts."