Tracy Morgan is interviewed in November’s Playboy Magazine. He’s not The Interview, he’s the “20 Questions”. Which is more than enough, because I really didn’t want to know most of this stuff. Now I kind of want to bleach my brain. Tracy is promoting both 30 Rock and his memoir, I Am The New Black. Tracy talks about everything from his love of Lorne Michaels (SNL and 30 Rock executive producer) to his love of anal sex. Try this for the full interview (content is really, really NSFW, but there are no bad pictures, thank God), but here are the highlights – if you want to call them that:

PLAYBOY: You suggest that you briefly sold drugs. Is it wrong to imagine you as the funniest drug dealer ever?
MORGAN: I was, man. As a matter of fact, my dealing partner—my best friend, God bless him—was murdered a month to the day after my son was born. We used to chop that crack, bag that shit up at three o’clock in the morning, and I’d make that motherf-cker laugh. And he was like, “Yo, Tray, why the f-ck you doin’ this, man? You should be at the f-cking Apollo or something.” I’d tell him “Shut the f-ck up.” He got killed, and I went into comedy. He’s guiding me right now. He’s probably sitting here next to us, him and my father and my grandmother. All of them are with me every day, every second of the day, leading me in the right direction.

PLAYBOY: I Am the New Black details some painful memories from your life. Was there anything you were reluctant to share?
MORGAN: I was a little worried talking about my father’s death. That cuts deep. He got AIDS, and he went from about 200 pounds all the way down to maybe 90 pounds. He didn’t even look like my father anymore; he looked like a skeleton. When I was in the 12th grade I came home from football practice one day, and he was sitting outside our building. I said, “Dad, what you doin’ out here?” He looked so fragile, no teeth in his mouth, and he said, “I had to get out of the house, get some sun.” I picked him up, took him upstairs in my arms. We got to the door, and he started crying, blood coming out of his eyes. I said, “Dad, what you crying for?” And he said, “I remember when I carried you up here when you was a baby.” Two, three weeks later, he was dead.

PLAYBOY: You play a character on 30 Rock named Tracy Jordan who is more than loosely based on you. When Tina Fey pitched the show to you, did you ever wonder, Wait, is she making fun of me?
MORGAN: Tina is my baby girl. She’s my sister from another mother of a different color. I’d do 25 to life for her. She is down like four flat tires. She pitched the show to me like, “Yo, this is your personality. It’s your alter ego.” She always says, “Keep the cameras rolling and let Tracy do what he do.” I love that about her.

PLAYBOY: You’ve repeatedly insisted that [the 30 Rock character] Tracy Jordan isn’t based on Martin Lawrence, yet there are some glaring similarities. Are you sure there isn’t a little of Martin Lawrence in that character?
MORGAN: Martin Lawrence didn’t corner the market on doing crazy sh-t. You got Dave Chappelle, you got me, you got all kinds of crazy motherf-ckers out there. Everybody does something bizarre in his or her life. It’s just that black entertainers stick out. When we do something crazy, they go, “Oh sh-t!” Mike Tyson ain’t the first motherf-cker to put a tattoo on his face.

PLAYBOY: So when Tracy Jordan stripped down to his underwear on an episode of 30 Rock and ran through traffic, that was pure imagination?
MORGAN: That was based on my uncle Fat Mike. He ran down the street in his underwear with a lightsaber—several times. He was way crazy. He was Tracy Jordan to the fifth power.

PLAYBOY: Last year you told David Letterman that your hobbies include “doing karate and trying to get females pregnant.” Now that you’re older and wiser, have your hobbies changed?
MORGAN: I’ve got my third-degree black belt and I’ve gotten several women pregnant, so I’ve moved on to other things. These days I’m into bike riding and breaking water. I like breaking women’s water. If you’re pregnant and you need your water broken, you need your labor induced, give me a call and I’ll ride my bike over and take care of it.

PLAYBOY: Your stand-up includes a lot of jokes about anal sex. Are you talking about it just for shock value, or are you really a butt fiend?
MORGAN: I like f-cking ass! Ain’t nothin’ like the butthole. The ass is a delicacy, goddamn it. I’d put hot sauce on it. When you eat the brown hole, that’s when her toes do this. [sticks legs out and curls toes] You got to be willing to do anything to please your woman, to satisfy her. I didn’t invent it. You think I was the first one to think of having anal sex with a girl? Hell, no. I’m quite sure Adam f-cked Eve in the ass. In the Garden of Eden he tore her ass up, and she was screaming like a motherf-cker.

PLAYBOY: You frequently refer to SNL producer Lorne Michaels as your Obi-Wan Kenobi. Does he have special powers we don’t know about?
MORGAN: Yeah. Motherf-cker took me out of the ghetto. That’s my dude, man. He’s been like a dad to me. I remember when I was on Saturday Night Live my first year and I wasn’t getting much. I was down; I was ready to quit. It was three o’clock in the morning, man, I’ll never forget. Makes me want to cry sometimes when I think about it. I love that man. I love that man. [long pause; starts to cry] I’m sorry, man. Excuse me. [another long pause] Son of a bitch… motherf-cker’s good. I remember one time Lorne took me to his office, and he said, “Tracy, you are here not because you’re black. You’re here because you’re f-cking funny, man.” [bursts into tears again; wipes face with shirt] Changed my whole perspective. I wasn’t so guarded anymore. I knew white people weren’t so f-cked-up. I could’ve fallen into some dark shit, but he wouldn’t let me. I left his office, and I was crying for, like, two hours. It made all the difference to me, not just for my career but for my life. They say every Jewish man is supposed to love one black motherf-cker in this life. I’m glad Lorne Michaels chose me.

[From Playboy]

Yeah… it’s an intense interview, and this is only half of it. I like that Tracy is deeper than off-the-cuff one-liners. He’s got some soul, and that story about his dad made me tear up. The Lorne Michaels stuff was touching too. But Tracy is also a dirty, dirty man. It’s an interesting dichotomy, and I might have to order his book!

Maybe I’m alone, but I love Tracy Morgan. I know he’s crazy, but I totally love him and his 30 Rock character, which I assume is loosely based on the real Tracy. African-American comedians have had a tortured history on Saturday Night Live - for every Eddie Murphy, there are at least two players whose names you can’t even remember because they were hardly in any skits, and they left after a year or two. The fact that Tracy was able to find a character that people love – even if it is based on his life – is wonderful.

Anyway, Tracy has a new tell-all book called “I Am the New Black”. Tracy writes about his Saturday Night Live days, as well as his childhood and the nature of fame. The biggest revelation is that everything wasn’t so happy and cozy at SNL – Tracy claims that Chris Kattan and Cheri O’Teri used to ignore him. Tracy writes: “I could remember those two, especially those two people, treating me like the invisible guy. Now look where they at. Cheri Oteri, she can’t even get arrested…That’s what happened to me over there. They never treated me well. I never cared for them either. F— ‘em.” Gatecrasher has more:

Watch out, “Saturday Night Live” cast members: Tracy Morgan has a new tell-all, and he’s not afraid to use it.

In “I Am the New Black” – out from Random House next Tuesday – the funnyguy slams some of his former “SNL” co-stars, writing of his 10-year stint on the show: “I had my finger on the pulse of urban comedy, but when I brought my act to ‘SNL,’ those mother——— just felt bad for me. None of the cast I came up with saw this future for me. No, sir. All I have to say about that is, where’s Chris Kattan now? Where’s Cheri Oteri now? That b—- can’t even get arrested.”

But Morgan does have some love for a few of his past “SNL” cohorts, including his current “30 Rock” boss, Tina Fey. “Tina wasn’t scared to come into my world and find the funny up in there. She’s that kind of cool,” he writes.

The two get along so well, in fact, that Fey even used one of her more bizarre nights during her ‘SNL” stint with Morgan as the inspiration for a famous “30 Rock” episode in which she accompanies Tracy to an “after-after-after-after party.”

“I wasn’t really friends with many of my castmates at ‘SNL,’ but that doesn’t mean I didn’t roll up into ‘SNL’ and all those after parties with my own friends,” the comedian explains. “Friends of mine were running an illegal strip club they called the Loft. It was in an office space they’d rented and converted into an after-the-after-party spot. They put a stage in it, they put a few futons all around, and they’d get strippers and girls to come and do shows.”

(And a few, er, other things, which Morgan details in the tome – but it’s a tad too racy to detail here.)

“I invited everyone to go down there one week. And Tina Fey, Rachel Dratch and a few others came along. I didn’t tell any of them what they were in for, so it was all cool when we got there. At first … they thought it was just a private party. Then these two girls came out onstage and started [engaging in sex acts], and that just shut it down. All the grips and crew guys from ‘SNL’ were standing around and loving it, but my castmates took one look at that, turned right around and rushed out of there.”

But even Tracy knows that if he’s anything, he’s memorable. “They might have left,” he says, “but it was all that anybody talked about around the show for the next week.”

[From Gatecrasher]

I’ve always found Chris Kattan pretty annoying, so I can believe that about him. But I hoped that Cheri O’Teri was nicer than that. Oh well. She could be a piece of work, who knows? Generally, I find these sort of tell-all, behind-the-scenes books very tedious, but Tracy’s might be a good read.

30 Rock is coming back this week, by the way. I can’t wait, I’m so excited. And I actually enjoyed Tracy’s story of his boys arranging the after-party. One of my favorite parts of 30 Rock is Tracy’s (and the other characters’) interactions with his two-man entourage, Dot Com and Gris. Those two actors are so lovely and so funny, they kind of steal every scene they’re in. More Dot Com and Gris!

Tracy Morgan and Bret Ratner are shown at the VH1 Hip Hop Honors on 9/23/09. He’s also shown 8/29 with Spike Lee at Michael Jackson’s 51st birthday celebration in Brooklyn. Credit: WENN.com

Singer/dancer/comic actress Jane Krakowski has been in the business since she was a little kid, but most people don’t know her by name. You may know her as Jenna, the self-absorbed, B-list actress always trying to make it onto the A-list, on the hit NBC comedy “30 Rock,” starring Tina Fey. Before that, she was consistently hilarious as Elaine, a slutty, attention-starved receptionist on “Ally McBeal.” Most people don’t know that she is an amazing singer with a Broadway pedigree. Anyway, Jane was recently asked about her role on “30 Rock” and what it’s like to be on that show.

You may know her as clueless Jenna on the NBC sitcom 30 Rock or remember her as scheming secretary Elaine on Ally McBeal. But you’ve never seen blonde beauty Jane Krakowski as Scarlet O’Hara in Gone with the Wind or King Kong’s squeeze Ann Darrow – until now! Jane, 40, recently starred in two digitally doctored webisodes at smoothanddreamy.com, reenacting those scenes from famous films with hilarious twists. Jane told Star all about it – and her 30 Rock co-stars!
Why did you star in these webisodes?
I’ve never done anything like this before, with so many digital effects. I mean, I’m kissing and talking to Clark Gable – it’s mad! We picked movies everyone knows, so when they go off kilter, you know it’s meant to be funny.

Does it ever bother you, how Jenna’s treated on 30 Rock?

I am a big fan of anything self-deprecating, and you have to have that sense of humor to be on 30 Rock. I love Jenna’s disillusionment with her level of show business success.

Tell us a 30 Rock Secret!

Tina Fey breaks out a stripper dance quite a bit, which makes me laugh. Tracy Morgan sings a lot. He knows so many songs. He can bust out a Michael McDonald tune or Christopher Cross’ “Sailing.” That’s a big one for him!

[From Star, print version, June 15, 2009]

It sounds like that set is a lot of fun. Tina Fey dancing like a stripper? I would pay to see that. And I believe Tracy Morgan did bust out some Michael McDonald on an episode of the show last season. I wonder if the writers added that because he was singing it around the set? My favorite Jenna-centered “30 Rock” episode was when she intentionally spiked Kenneth the NBC Page’s lunch with strawberries so he would have an allergic reaction, all because she had a crush on a hot EMT! There’s another episode where Liz, Tina Fey’s character, is invited to do a photo shoot with Jenna and ends up stealing the spotlight because she is willing to pose with a rubber chicken and Groucho Marx glasses. Good stuff from two very funny ladies!

Photos above of Jane Krakowski at the 2009 Screen Actors Guild Award. Photo credits: Fame. Photos below of Jane at the 2009 Lortel Awards celebrating Off-Broadway, May 3, 2009. Photo credits: WENN.

Tracy Morgan sure isn’t doing himself any favors lately. The “30 Rock” star has had two DUIs since 2005. His wife of 22 years recently filed for divorce, citing Tracy’s alcoholism. Despite several public claims that he’s completely stopped drinking, Morgan appeared on the “Late Show” on Thursday, and he seemed to have partaken of some substance or other. Letterman started off the interview by asking about Morgan’s recent DUI and how that all went. Tracy cracked a few jokes, and then told a story of having a sake bomb at Benihana’s recently. And just to clarify – though I probably don’t need to – a sake bomb consists of one shot sake rice wine and one glass of beer, which the drinker drinks as quickly as possible. After mentioning this, Dave asks Morgan, “So you’re abstaining, completely?” to which he replies “Huh?” Then there’s a pause and he goes on to talk about how he’s quit drinking completely, at the request of his eldest son.

Later in the interview, Dave asks Jordan how he’s been keeping himself busy during the Writer’s Guild strike. His response was golden.

“I’m just doin’ karate and getting females pregnant…at the same time.”

[From the Late Show]

Culture Bully gives a rundown of the interview’s other highlights.

In between DL asking Tracy about his ankle bracelet and his sobriety Tracy dropped comedy gold on the nation. It’s moments like these that make me wonder if I should start watching TV again.

“It’s in the Smithsonian next to Michael Jackson’s glove, and his nose.” [about his SCRAM bracelet]

“Now if I go near alcohol I turn into a Gremelin.”

“Tie Tony up the night before the game and make his legs like spaghetti.”

“I call him by his government, Phillip.”

“I found the edge a while ago and jumped off, I’m crazier than a box of rocks.”

[From Culture Bully]

Tracy Morgan strikes me as one of those people that should really be kept busy. Free time could be exceptionally dangerous for him. The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers should seriously consider negotiating better with the Writers’ Guild to end the strike, if for no other reason than making sure Tracy Morgan goes back to work as soon as possible. Before he really does get females pregnant.

Picture note by Jaybird: Tracy Morgan leaving Letterman’s show. Images thanks to

“30 Rock’s” Tracy Morgan’s wife Sabina has filed for divorce after 22 years of marriage, citing his long-term alcohol abuse. Morgan got a DUI in Hollywood in 2005 and a DWI in Manhattan in 2006. As a result he had to wear a Secure Continuous Remote Alcohol Monitoring (SCRAM) bracelet around his ankle for six months, though he did get to take it off early due to some medical issues he was having with it. The couple separated last year, and Morgan confirmed to TV Guide that the couple was proceeding with a divorce. Though he stated that he was going through with it and that the pair were still good friends, according to Sabina, that’s not the whole story.

Comedian Tracey Morgan’s [sic] wife is filing for divorce, claiming the 30 Rock star has lost his battle with alcoholism. The 39-year-old star recently claimed he had been sober for months, spurred on by his three sons’ pleas for him to stay off alcohol. But Sabina, his wife of 22 years, claims he is back on the booze. She says, “I have to divorce him. I still have feelings for him, but the marriage is over. I’m having my lawyer file the divorce papers. I gave him every opportunity since August to stay in the marriage, but he’s failed. “It’s terrible that he’s drinking again. He knows he shouldn’t be doing that for so many reasons, his health especially.”

[From Contact Music]

I would assume that when Sabina cites Tracey’s health, she’s referring not just to the general detrimental health effects of alcoholism, but also to the fact that Morgan is diabetic. Most diabetics can drink a little, depending on their individual cases, but the heavy drinking associated with alcoholism would obviously be a pretty big problem. Tracy did a pretty good job of making everything sound all sweetness and light in his TV Guide interview, and didn’t really acknowledge his alcoholism.

TV Guide: Were you embarrassed about being arrested for drunk driving?
Morgan: Yeah. I never wanted to be a poster boy for that type of behavior. Drinking and driving is not a cool thing.

TV Guide: You were sentenced to wear an alcohol-monitoring bracelet for six months. What was that like?
Morgan: I was like the Man in the Iron Mask! It had hair all over it from my leg when I took it off.

TV Guide: What was the most annoying thing about it?
Morgan: Sores. It’s metal up against raw skin. Also, I’m diabetic. If I get a little scratch, it’s hard for it to heal.

TV Guide: How liberating was it to get it off?
Morgan: Well, it felt great not to be monitored. I’m a grown man. But it also felt weird. Because I had to live without alcohol for six months. So now it’s like, I can drink if I want. But do I want to? No. So I know it did good.

[From the Seattle P.I.]

Well clearly he didn’t do that “good,” as his drinking seems to still have been problematic enough to end his marriage. Tracy is really good on “30 Rock” – his character, Tracy Jordan, seems to be a mix of himself and vintage Eddie Murphy. Hopefully he’ll get his act together and not give “30 Rock” too much more real-life material to draw from.

Picture note by Jaybird: Header of Tracy Morgan leaving the Letterman Show on Tuesday. Images thanks to Splash Photos.

I wish I were a celebrity. If I were, I could drive around drunk and get in a little trouble the first time, but not so much the second time. I could be told I have to wear an alcohol monitoring device around my ankle, but I could take it off early because I didn’t like it. And I could afford fancy lawyers and doctors to say it was medically necessary to take it off… because being annoyed is a medical problem. To be fair, Tracy Morgan is kind of a minor celebrity, but he’s big enough to be able to afford to ignore judges and cops and laws and such. After he got 2 DUIs within about six month of each other – one in Los Angeles and one in New York City – Morgan was forced to go to rehab, do community service, and attend AA meetings. Pretty standard issue. He also had to wear a SCRAM anklet – you know, that alcohol monitoring device that Lindsay Lohan voluntarily sported six months ago to show the world how sober she was… before she went to rehab a few more times. Well apparently the SCRAM bracelet didn’t agree with Tracy Morgan, and he decided to go ahead and take it off early. That got him in a bit of hot water with the judge, who was going to make him keep it on even longer after he admitted to drinking alcohol over the summer – until Morgan produced photographic evidence along with doctors’ reports saying that it was medically necessary for him to take it off – and the judge agreed!

Tracy Morgan has made peace with his prosecutors. A Los Angeles judge ruled Tuesday that the 30 Rock funnyman has completed the terms of his DUI-related probation and will not be punished for taking off his alcohol-monitoring ankle bracelet a wee bit early, the L.A. City Attorney’s Office confirmed to E! Online.

Morgan, who on Sept. 18 was ordered to keep his Secure Continuous Remote Alcohol Monitoring device on for another 80 days after he copped to imbibing booze over the summer, claimed in court last week that he took the accessory off early due to “medical issues.”

After reviewing several letters from doctors and one from the company that manufactures SCRAM bracelets, as well as a handful of photos depicting the nature of the undisclosed medical condition, the judge concluded that Morgan had a valid reason to untether himself before the court-ordered end date.

According to Morgan’s attorney, Blair Berk, Morgan has voluntarily been taking daily breath or blood tests to prove that he’s staying on the wagon. No further court appearances on his case are scheduled, said City Attorney’s Office spokesman Frank Mateljan.

[From E! News]

Boy I would really like to know what “medical issue” arose from this bracelet that was so terrible a judge let Morgan take it off. Last time I checked, the bracelet wasn’t made out of rabid pack of angry bees that sting you at random to check the level of alcohol in your blood. Because I know SCRAM considered this bumble-based technology and quickly ditched it. So if the problem is anything less than bees, I really can’t figure out how it could possibly be so bad that a judge agreed to let the guy take it off. Unless the judge was actually paid off by the bee industry. Wait, that would make no sense. But so does taking a bracelet off for “medical reasons.” So I’m pretty sure it must be bee related after all.

Picture note by Jaybird: Here’s Tracy Morgan at the 2007 VH1 Hip Hop Honors on October 4th. Image thanks to PR Photos.