By Robert Simonson
28 Jan 2010

Playbill.com: With your most recent novel, "Perforated Heart," a lot of reviews made comparison to the work of Philip Roth. How did you feel about that?
EB: Good. If you know anything about Philip Roth, it's obvious [in that book] that I'm playing off of a Philip Roth character. I'm fascinated with Philip Roth.

Playbill.com: Have you ever met him?
EB: I've never met him. I was making a list the other night of people I have met, and I realized that was a very prominent missing person on my list. It's fascinating to me that the artists I'm most attracted to are so completely different from me. From what I understand, he's a very dour guy, and I'm just not like that at all.

Playbill.com: Who was the most surprising person on that list?
EB: The most surprising person on my list is unquestionably Barbara Bush. It was brief, but I did meet Barbara Bush.

Playbill.com: Do you remember what you said?
EB: I don't know what I said, but I remember what she said. She said, "My, what curly hair you have." (Laughs) I met Michael Jordan once and didn't know who he was. I've met porn stars. I did a record album with Frank Zappa. I ended up in a lot of funny places.

Playbill.com: If you did a new solo show today, what topics would you take up, what things that are happening in the society would you talk about?
EB: The thing I would do today would be to make a piece about the obvious truth that we don't want to acknowledge. To some degree, Wake Up and Smell the Coffee was saying that also. But, c'mon. Who's kidding who? We all know now the horrible truths, that the poor will always be poor, that sort of devil's advocate stuff. What just happened two days ago with the Supreme Court ruling [the government may not ban political spending by corporations in candidate elections] was so shocking. John McCain came out and said, "That's it. There were be no more election reform. They killed it and that's the end of democracy." They were all saying blunt things. People were actually being honest. If someone has unlimited money to crush you, they can. I'm really curious when they decided a corporation was a human being. I don't get that. The idea that there's nothing we can do. It's a horrible notion.