ERIC ANDRE

I was a class clown since second grade.

'The Simpsons' is like Charlie Parker or Marlon Brando or Richard Pryor: Comedy couldn't go back to the way it was after 'The Simpsons' came out.

I don't really know how music and comedy are similar. I try never to dissect it theoretically or academically.

I was eating beans by candle light for a decade.

I loved 'Space Ghost' when I was in college.

Hannibal Burress is my polar opposite in energy. I can be crazy, and he grounds the 'Eric Andre Show.'

I grew up in Boca Raton, Florida - the worst place on earth.

ABC is owned by Disney, so it's a little more conservative than Adult Swim. Polar opposites.

I want to be remembered for my poop jokes. Those are the most important kind.

I have a karaoke punk band called The Ungrateful Dead, but we don't exist yet.

You know something is a hit comedically if you can just call up one of your friends and belt out a line from the show and you both start laughing.

I used to be a Geico Caveman for live events. I was a corporate mascot. It was the silliest job. It was actually awesome and fun, but it was retarded.

I've never seen 'The Goonies.' I've never seen 'Indiana Jones.' I watched 'UHF' over and over again when I was little, and that was it. I had no time for any other movies. I watched 'Naked Gun,' 'UHF,' and 'Airplane!' over and over.

I like Velvet Underground, but I was never really hardcore into them. I like them, and I like Nico, but I won't front like I'm super knowledgeable. I just never got around to it.

From 'Chappelle's Show' to 'Tosh.0,' there's so much race comedy. It's overdone.

I don't think I would do a straight late-night talk show, like a 'Tonight Show' kind of thing. But I'm open to whatever is done well. I don't have any agenda. I'm not like Fugazi - I'm not trying to be just so punk rock until I die. Whatever is funny is good.

I think journaling is a key to success. You can set clear goals for yourself. You can start noticing repetitive behavior patterns and see the type of things that keep bothering you, and then you can have a bird's eye view of it.

I've always been obsessed with bad, awkward television and bad public access. Before YouTube, it was a treat coming across that stuff. When I moved to New York, I used to love watching public access late at night.

First paying gig, I got 20 bucks. I played at some really weird venue. I don't remember the venue; I just remember it was the last stop on the A train. It was, like, the Far Rockaways, Queens, and it was an audience of, like, three people.

People forget at the time that 'The Simpsons' started out, it was controversial - the fact that they said 'hell' and 'damn' in a cartoon was a lot. America was in an uproar.

When you ask people who their favorite comedian is or favorite African-American comedian, people generally say Chris Rock, Dave Chappelle, Eddie Murphy, or Richard Pryor. Redd Foxx gets left out a lot.

It's funny - almost every comedian that I started out with moved to L.A., except for my two friends Hannibal Buress and Amy Schumer. And my two friends that are doing the best in comedy, the most successful friends I have, are Hannibal Buress and Amy Schumer.

Dan Curry is the funniest guy in the world. I can sit in a room with him for hours, and he's just cracking me up constantly. And Kitao is the next Terry Gilliam. A lot of comedy directors are just comedic writers, but they don't have any sense of aesthetic or visual vocabulary.

'Wonder Showzen' is one of my favorite shows of all time. When I first saw it, I thought it was so funny and new and original and edgy and insane and subversive. I didn't know comedy could do that. It redefined what I thought you could do with a TV show.

Half the shows on Comedy Central are just multi-cam blue sets, and they kind of look like game shows from the '90s. It's like, 'Why do such a bland corporate aesthetic when the sky's the limit with what you can do?'