What's most galvanizing for me is the opportunity to be topical and relevant and entertaining. That's the holy grail.
Some of Mr. Gregory's poems have merely appeared in The New Yorker ; others are New Yorker poems: the inclusive topicality, the informed and casual smartness, the flat fashionable irony, meaningless because it proceeds from a frame of reference whose amorphous superiority is the most definite thing about it they are the trademark not simply of a magazine but of a class.
I always feel that most political jokes, if you're going to do them, you have to do them within the next five minutes, or else they're outdated. By the time you've got it to the point that it's strong, it would be 12 years old.
People come to my shows and know that they're going to hear about what's going on in the world - what's happening at the moment. My material is as new as anything on the dinner table.
Most of my books are about contemporary subjects, and the world changes so fast that I'm lucky when events haven't overtaken the book I'm writing at the moment.
The beautiful thing about faking a news show is the topicality is delayed.
The tragedy of journalism lies in its impermanence; the very topicality which gives it brilliance condemns it to an early death. Too often it is a process of flinging bright balloons in the path of the hurricane, a casting of priceless petals upon the rushing surface of a stream.
There are conspiracy theorists who think I was crafted in a boardroom. Because I'm so very relatable and so very topical and so very Tumblr.
