“It becomes more important to me as time goes on to make every album the best thing I’ve ever done, so it’s a lot of self-imposed pressure that also kind of slows me down a bit.”

I like the guitar-driven music of Nirvana at its peak. At that point, I thought there was a lot of really exciting music coming out.

And then I’ll try and arrange them in a way that they would tell a semi-cohesive story.

I’m a music fan, and I can listen to the radio, or music, without thinking, “How am I going to screw this up?” [Laughs] If I’m really actively trying to think of a parody, then I’ll have my antenna out, and be a little more proactive about it.

If I could find the right kind of property, get tied in with the right movie, I’d love to be involved, but I just find it hard to be motivated to do another screenplay right now.

I have very mixed feelings about it. On one hand, I’m concerned that the rampant downloading of my copyright-protected material over the Internet is severely eating into my album sales and having a decidedly adverse effect on my career.

Then I try to come up with ideas for parodies. And 99% of those ideas are horrible.

When I started out, I didn’t feel like I was really accepted in the music or comedy communities, and I was somewhere on the edge, but now I feel like I’m accepted in both, which is extremely gratifying.

I don’t like to label myself. I know I’m very hard to pigeonhole.

Velvet Elvis never puts on weight.

I think my chances of ever making it into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame are about as good as Milli Vanilli’s.

I can’t say enough good things about my band. I feel very fortunate that I found them when I did, very early in my career.

So that’s why one of my rules of parody writing is that it’s gotta be funny regardless of whether you know the source material. It has to work on its own merit.

I try to pick songs that I actually like because I realize that I have to live with these songs for a long time, from when I’m working on them in the studio to possibly playing them onstage for the rest of my life.

That’s a big part of my life – doing things that I’m not prepared to do.

You make me wanna staple bagels to my face, then remove them with a pitchfork.

Well I’ve made no secret of my life long love of MAD Magazine, it’s probably my first and greatest influence in terms of my comic sensibilities. I’ve known John [Ficarra] for many years, and we’ve been friends.