Patrice O’Neal on Gothamist

Posted by Maximum Fun on 26th June 2006

Our pal Ben does interviews for Gothamist, often with comics. He justed posted an interesting one with Patrice O’Neal. What I’ve seen of O’Neal’s work on TV has never impressed me too much, but enough people I trust have said he’s the best live comedian they’ve ever seen that he must be something special.

I was twenty-two when I started; I did a bit of living. I would imagine that when you do something, like any young person, that at some point you have to grow up. At some point, you’re going to have to deal with grown-up emotions. If you’re fourteen or sixteen, there are life lessons you’re missing out on. Look at the alphabet. Let’s say that at A you’re born and that at M you’re a millionaire at the age of twenty-one. You skip over things that help you live at M when you jump from G to M. You’re going to eventually come back to that. Some people put their lives in the microwaves and go all the way to Q, but they got to come back and see K and L. You can’t skip life. If you skip letter C, you’re missing out on lessons. If you start at fourteen, it’s great, but there’s letters that you’ve skipped. There’s letter’s I might have missed at twenty-two, but I don’t know what I’ve missed.