Adam Carolla, the "godfather of podcasting," reveals his chaotic studio setup—40-gallon air compressors and stacks of gear—while mocking fans who obsess over autographs, even speculating about morbid plane-crash memorabilia. Rogan and Carolla critique Hollywood’s creative control, comparing it to podcasting’s freedom, and debate drug legalization, with Carolla arguing weed is safer than meth despite government priorities favoring pot raids. They dive into bizarre hypotheticals—like a "gay athlete authenticity test" or an "X game" tracking attraction to women—before dismissing neurochemistry as trivial compared to real-life absurdities. Carolla’s upcoming May 21 stand-up at the Wiltern, headlined with Jimmy Kimmel, highlights LA’s oversaturated comedy scene, where even Rogan jokes about skipping it for a Kevin James event. The episode blends dark humor, industry insights, and unfiltered rants on obsession, fame, and societal quirks. [Automatically generated summary]
I don't know if we were talking about this before, but I was thinking about this sort of gas station.
I tell people...
You know, you can decide where to live.
A lot of people base that on, like, well, how are the school systems?
Or, you know, what's going on with the economy or the roads or something?
But I'd say you can base your neighborhood on the gas station because there's sort of three levels.
There are the ones like the ones in my neighborhood where you swipe your credit card and then you have to punch in your zip code because of credit card fraud.
Then there's the slightly nicer neighborhood where you just swipe your credit card but you don't have to punch in your zip code.
And then there's the greatest neighborhoods of all where you just pump your gas and when you're done, you pay somebody.
I mean, when you travel and you get outside of L.A. and you realize, oh, there's just some guy who's going to let you pump your gas and then you can pay him.
Not everyone's fucking Bonnie and Clyde.
All of us are going to jump off sliding across our hoods laughing and peeling out.
That means you're in a good goddamn neighborhood if they trust you.
I wonder if there's going to be some sort of syndrome that doctors are going to run into and chiropractors are going to run into called block ATM back.
Where, like, in the next hundred years, our kids are going to have weird scoliated spines from doing that weird shoulder hunch, punching it.
It's really, you get it from, it's sort of what carpal tunnel is, the guys who work keyboard jobs all day.
This is a weird back hunch to all the people that go to the ATM three times a week and dial in their zip code when they're at the gas station, do the cell phone thing where they're, like, texting.
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It's going to be a weird, because it is just weird.
We may be getting taller as a species, but we're evening it out by hunching over all the time and rolling our shoulders and protecting whatever serial codes we're punching in.
I don't know why, but A, I feel sorry for these guys.
I mean, come on.
When's the last time they got a good blowjob?
Number one.
Number two, all right, so that's their job.
Like, they get up at five, they drive down to JFK, they pay 20 bucks for parking, and they wait for Adam Carolla to come walking up terminal, whatever.
I like it when guys are clever, but not that clever.
That's bordering on cute.
One of the most uncomfortable moments in my life was me sitting next to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
Actually, I had two wildly uncomfortable moments that involved Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
One is, he just sat down on my radio show and I was like, you know...
You never see any guys in their 70s that are, you know, over 6'7 or 6'8.
And I mean, you know, I'm not trying to bring you down, literally, but is there some syndrome or have you talked to somebody or how does it work?
Because you just don't see seven-footers that are 80 years old, but yet you seem like you're in perfect health and I don't know how it works.
And is there something that I'm not aware of?
And he's like, what are you talking about?
And I was like, you know how you don't see a lot of old guys are like over six, five.
They seem to go a little earlier in life.
As a matter of fact, the little short Jewish guys and ones that go on forever.
Is there some connection, correlation between the height and the short longevity?
And he was like, I never thought about it.
And I was like, oh, shit, really?
And he was like, yeah, now I am.
This is kind of uncomfortable.
I was like, but no, but I can't be the first guy to bring this up.
So he did that to me.
And then we're at this Dodger All-Star game or something, celebrity game, and we're sitting next to each other.
Waiting for the real Dodger game to end in the Tommy Lasorda dugout eating hot wings or something that's up on the Loge level.
And some kid came by and said, could you sign my baseball?
And I signed his baseball.
And then he handed it to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and he said, could you sign my baseball?
And he's like, no.
And the kid was like, really?
Could it just take a second?
And he's like, I'm not doing that right now.
And I'm sitting right next to him, and the kid comes back for a third round, and he's like, you know, just real quick.
And he's like, no, I'm sorry.
And I'm like, just fucking sign it, just sign it.
And then he walks away, and then his mom shows up like 10 minutes later, and she's like, I'm so sorry to disturb you, Mr. Abdul-Jabbar, but the ball for my son, he's such a huge fan.
Do you think you could just take a moment?
He's like...
Sorry, no.
And she's like, just a moment.
And she's like, no, thank you.
And I'm just like, I'm sitting next to him wanting to crawl out of my urethra and just go under the carpet.
You know that thing?
Having to pretend like, you know that body language that says I'm not listening?
I was fascinated by his whole situation, his transformation, up until I read the fact that he actually supported the fatwa, as it were, or whatever, against the guy who wrote, what the fuck is his name?
The guy who wrote the book when they went after him?
Yeah, there's the Cat Stevens version, and then there's the teabagger version, and it's always like, they explain their general, look, it's about peace, it's about pilgrimage, spirituality, or whatever, and you go like, okay, I'm down, I'm down, I'm down, and then they always do something, and you go, alright, now I get it, you're an asshole.
I mean, look, Islam is a strange one to convert to.
It's like when Glenn Beck became a Mormon, Yeah, you know, and like, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute.
You're like a fucking grown man?
You're a grown man and you become a Mormon?
It's one thing if you're like born a Mormon, raised a Mormon.
I had a joke that I was doing in my act where the reason why Mormons are so anti-gay marriage is because they're afraid of gay people, rightly so, because if someone could talk you into being a Mormon...
They can probably talk you into sucking their dick.
It's a matter of how much alone time they spend with you.
It is weird when people discover stuff at, you know, age 37. I feel like my brain, like the cement in the sidewalk of my brain was dry to almost any other ideas at that point.
I was deprived early on of all things mechanical and I had a wrenching gene.
The wrenching gene, the wrencher gene, the mechanical gene, it's no different than the musical one.
You know, you always, whenever they say, they talk about a drummer, like, oh, Tommy Lee was banging on pots and pans in the kitchen when he was three, so eventually broke down and got him a drum kit, and he's never left it since, you know?
So, whatever.
He had that gene.
And some people have a musical gene and some people have it for math and some people have it for conversation or socializing or whatever, science, whatever.
There is a mechanical gene and if you have it, unless somebody gets you that equivalent of a drum kit, you'll just fucking go nuts.
And I always lived in the valley and had shitty parents with no money and lived in crappy apartments.
So I was just going nuts.
I would go to other kids' houses and use their garages and use their tools and I never had a garage.
What happened is about the worst sort of combination that can happen when you're trying to be gainfully employed.
Did the Top Gear pilot with all the British guys, I was sort of the lead guy, came out really, really good, really strong.
Everyone...
I could tell it was good because all the hardcore blogger guys who are really deep into this world, the Top Gear world, they're international and they're just a bunch of car tech nerd guys who love to get on the computer and talk shit about nothing.
They love to say not as good as the one in the UK, but they all showed up at the taping.
They did secret taping somewhere.
Some of it's like 700 people showed up.
And they all got back to their computers and went, oh, it's every bit as good as the UK one.
It was for NBC, and it was right at the time that GM and Chrysler and...
Two of the big three, maybe it was Chrysler and GM, were heading to Congress, trying to get money from Congress to stay afloat.
They're making a big deal about them taking private jets to ask Congress for money.
And the show Knight Rider 2.0 was tanking completely in the ratings on NBC. So they're like...
No car talk and no car shows, and they shelved it.
Then I got another sitcom development deal with NBC, and right at the time that happened, it got picked up by the History Channel or Discovery, whatever it's on.
It got picked up for 13 episodes.
So they called me, and they're like, oh, good news, we got picked up.
And then I'm like, no, I'm actually doing another pilot for NBC that's a sitcom, so I can't do it.
So they went ahead and did that, and guess who sitcom pilot didn't get picked up?
So 0 for 2, essentially.
It's like, you couldn't fuck it up any more than that.
See, that's one of the beautiful things about the podcast, is that it's so difficult to fucking develop a show.
It's so difficult.
I've tried developing sitcoms, I've had development deals, I've had...
I've been from the ground floor.
I've been brought in during pilots to try to make it better.
There's so many people involved and so many opinions and producers and network executives.
It's so difficult.
One of the beautiful things about the podcast is there's no one.
I mean, for you, you have a few people that you've hired that figure out your audio stuff and your video stuff, but there's no one to tell you anything.
And as I've always said, what piece of art, whether it was a painting or a symphony, got better because 14 people tried to clusterfuck it, you know?
And by the way, whether you're talking about NBC or CBS, five post-menopausal broads who never made a human being laugh in their life get involved creatively.
But my mom doesn't tell me what set to do before I go out on stage.
And so, not being funny and Being heavily immersed in comedy and funny and explaining to people how to be funny and what is funny is not going to create a better product.
And my fantasy, and a lot of them are women, a lot of them are dudes who don't talk and even have a little bit of a sour, dour look to themselves.
When they go back to their high school reunion...
In like Michigan or wherever they're from.
And they say to their buddies who they haven't seen in 30 years, where are you up to?
Were you living in California?
What's going on?
What are you doing for a living?
And they go, I'm the head of comedy programming on NBC or I'm the head of comedy programming on a major network.
The people they went to high school with must go...
Get the fuck out of here!
You've never said a fucking funny thing in your life!
Are you nuts?
You've never...
I never heard you fucking say a thing that made another human being smile.
What'd you do, stand-up all through college?
Like, could you imagine how fucking confusing it would be?
Because to a layperson, and remember when you were a layperson, you thought, well, if somebody's the head of comedy whatever...
This dude must be the funniest cat in the land, right?
He's going to be able to do Bill Cosby bits and Bob Hope bits and everybody's bit just verbatim, just back to you, like a savant, instead of looking at you and going, I never heard of Mr. Show.
When I did Top Gear, and he came up as the nicest guy in the world, and I was just improvising up a storm, and he came right up to me and he said, I could not do what you do.
Well, it's because when he's driving and he's having this visceral experience and he starts sliding in a corner and he yells, you know, this thing's smoother than the Queen Mother's rear end.
It feels like he's having this experience, you know.
I was yelling at Steve Coogan, who's an English comedian who criticized...
Jeremy Clarkson said something about Mexico, said that the reason why Mexico doesn't have good people in the Olympics is because all of their people who can run, swim, or jump have already gotten over the fence.
Comedians making jokes, is that, you know, in terms of society, in terms of fixing the ills of society and looking for someone to point a finger at and create some sort of social change, comedians telling jokes.
Why is it at the top of everyone's list?
I mean, a newscaster, you know, politician, clergyman, there's a chief of police.
When those guys make an off-color remark, then maybe you should say something about it.
But when a comedian says something, don't you already know inherently by his title?
I was having this exact conversation last night with Daniel Tosh about comedians going after comedians, because, you know, Coogan going after Jeremy Clarkson, and we were talking about David Cross going after Larry the Cable Guy, which is one of the most confusing things.
I like David Cross, and I like Larry the Cable Guy.
Somehow or another, she's keeping it together, and she's like 53. I have this fun imaginary game I like to play when I get stoned, which is sort of the X. It's a cross, okay?
And let's say when you were in...
Junior high, let's say you're in the seventh grade, for the sake of argument, and Dukes of Hazzard is hitting its prime.
And they're blowing up the outhouse with the crossbow and whatnot.
And you're just sitting there and you're seeing an episode that has Katherine Bach...
And then tight Daisy Dukes.
And she does that thing where she leans over the open hood and the steam comes out and everything.
And now there you are, little Peckerwood in New Jersey in seventh grade.
Now, you're at the bottom of each X. You couldn't get further away.
It's not like you stole a bus ticket to L.A. You could fuck Catherine Bach.
But girls, from the moment they're little, from the moment they're little, you're so cute, you're so beautiful, and then they're in high school, then it becomes currency.
It becomes the thing that defines them.
And then it goes away.
And it goes away slowly.
It goes away weird, where they start looking like that rough bar girl, you know, like still hot, but in her 30s, but, you know, you can see her at a cigarette and Maybe I get a couple of shots of jacking you and let's just go fuck in the woods.
Just some crazy bitch.
She's not the 21-year-old girl who's the cheerleader who's impossible to get.
Now she's this wild bitch who's just, you feel for her.
She's trying to pay her bills.
She's been divorced.
And then eventually they become monsters.
They become this weird thing, especially if they go down the surgery route.
Please, ladies, please, just get old.
Don't go crazy.
Don't fuck with your lips and your neck and all that nutty shit that does not make you look better.
Well, also, you guys are going through, historically, a bad phase because your mother didn't have to worry about plastic surgery because it didn't really exist.
And your daughter won't really have to worry about it because they'll have perfected it.
Yeah, you're in the experimental phase and it ain't working out.
It's sort of like CGI. It's a bad generation because our folks were watching movies that every stunt was an actual stunt just done by a dude who didn't give a shit.
And our kids enjoy CGI that works so effectively you can't tell.
We went through a whole phase where we had to watch...
Well, now we're in the theater of plastic surgery and all you women, it's essentially, it's the 50 year experimental phase while they're working on it and you're looking like shit.
You go on these wild rants, but they come to conclusions.
They come to great conclusions.
I don't know how you generate material or if any of this stuff you've already talked about on stage, but seriously, go back and listen to this podcast with a fucking notebook.
Get a guy and make him get high before he watches you.
That's very important.
We were talking about this.
You know, a lot of people say, oh, you're always talking about pot.
Why are you always talking about pot?
Because it's fucking awesome.
And it's awesome, and it has this terrible reputation, this wrong, incorrect reputation because of fucking Nancy Reagan and Just Say No and Nixon and all that nonsense and propaganda that they force-fed you.
They pulled those dudes over in like Eagle Rock and they popped the trunk of their car and they found ski masks, police scanners, body armor, maps, automatic weapons that were modified maps, automatic weapons that were modified illegally.
I mean, semi-automatic weapons that were modified to go full automatic with armor piercing rounds and extended banana clips and stuff.
They found everything in the trunk of their car that basically said, oh, these guys are on their way to rob a bank.
When they arrested them, they could not get them for attempted bank robbery because the law says, hey, man, we got to catch you robbing a bank.
Just because you're driving around with police scanners and armor-piercing bullets and ski masks doesn't mean you're going to rob a bank.
We know practically it means you're going to rob a bank.
But the way our law system works is you have to rob a bank and then we will...
We'll prosecute you for robbing a bank.
And we all agree, alright, that's how it works.
And these guys got locked up for a little something something.
And when they got out, they gave them back a lot of their police scanners and a lot of their shit that was their property.
Fine.
Then they robbed the bank and then they had the North Hollywood shootout, which was completely and utterly insane.
But the point is this.
prosecute them for robbing a bank before they rob the bank.
And how come when you get busted for more than a shoebox full of marijuana or even a coffee can full of marijuana, you get intent to distribute?
They don't have to catch you distributing.
Maybe I just like to stock up on weed.
That's insane.
That's an insane part of the law to me because every other thing works is we need a body for murder and we need a witness for attempted murder.
This is the only thing where they go, you were going to do with this pot even though they never caught you doing anything with it.
And again, maybe you like to shop like you shop at Smart and Final or Costco where you just want a 55-gallon drum of garbanzo beans and that's your fucking business.
Well, you can now, but the problem is, federally, you can't.
You can state-wise.
As far as the state's concerned, it depends on each county has a different law, but you can have a certain amount of plants and a certain amount of pot.
You can have up to like a half a pound of pot and up to X amount of plants as long as you have a medical recommendation.
Or if you have a waiver, you can get even more plants, which I do.
I just bought the DVD. The set, pretty fucking badass.
Good zombie show.
But, you know, there comes a point in the show where, you know, people get bit and they're all sitting around trying to figure what are we going to do.
And some people want to kill the guy and some people don't.
But, you know, a meth head is just like a zombie.
It's like, this guy's infected.
I mean, this guy's fucked up.
He could do anything.
He could kill you.
He could do anything to try to get this shit.
They have terrible decision-making capabilities.
They're almost like just a high-functioning zombie.
And the guy panics and shuts up, and it became this crazy fucking situation where he even is pretty sure he knows who the cops are, but can't say anything because he doesn't want the cops coming after him.
Got, like, building departments involved with things.
Like, I've never had a cool neighbor.
I had no idea that there would be this many ass-wipes.
Like, I mean, I've had...
I had a New Year's Eve party where the cops showed up at 9.45 on a Saturday night on New Year's Eve, which meant the guy called them at 9. Or, you know, it takes cops a good hour to fucking roll on one of those calls.
Somebody called on New Year's Eve...
At like 8.45 to come to my house.
It wasn't raging already.
It was just a bunch of people sitting around having a beer.
And the fucking cops showed up at 9.45.
And the cops walked in and I said, you want me to turn the stereo down?
And they said, not if you don't want to.
And I said, even the cops knew, hey, look, if it's 4 a.m.
and you guys are just fucking cranking helter skelter as loud as you can, well then there's going to be a problem.
But...
I walked in, looked around, and just went, oh, this is bullshit.
And I realized this one person who was sitting home alone wanted the 150 people to all go home because he wanted to fucking finish watching his Hannity and Combs or whatever the fuck was on at 10 o'clock.
And it's like, what the fuck?
I've never called the cops in my life.
I'll put earplugs in, I'll put a shade on, I'll put a pillow.
That's the worst thing about LA. And I'll tell you what, being on your podcast the other day completely reignited my escape from LA scenario.
And I've been talking to Mrs. Rogan about it, and we fucking started looking at houses in Boulder again.
We started talking to real estate guys about the move, I think, is we're going to probably look to get a summer place and then eventually try to move into the summer place and get the fuck out of here.
Sure.
But the problem is the number, the number of people.
When you've got so many people and they're stacked on top of each other and, you know, there's one guy next door and his fucking dog is barking.
I was over at a friend's house the other day and right next door to her house, her dogs are, these dogs are barking like fucking crazy.
And then behind her, there's some other dogs and they hear these dogs barking.
So they come and triangulate the barking.
And there's barking from here and barking from there and everybody's jammed on top of each other and your fucking TV's too loud and your song's loud and everybody's laughing by the pool.
You know, it would be sweet retribution as if it was, let's say it was a hot, hot August night and you're staying at a bad motor lodge and the air conditioning's on the fritz and you're in the south.
You're in the deep south and you blow your load and you go to do your Spider-Man fling with it and it hits the ceiling fan.
It comes back into your eye.
You get pink eye.
And then you have to explain to the doctor that's your own load that gave you the pink eye.
Yeah, because your nicotine receptors in your head stay awake to suck in the nicotine, so your brain's a little bit more awake than normal when you're dreaming.
That's why it says on the box, don't take it, but fuck, it's awesome.
Tobacco, but people don't understand, tobacco in itself, or nicotine in itself, is not a bad drug.
In fact, it's shown to have some benefits as far as people's hearts.
It actually is good for your heart.
The real problem comes with smoking it, and the real problem comes with the 599, these government cunts that have allowed these people to put 599 fucking different additives inside cigarettes, most of them designed just to make it more addictive.
If you look at that movie Inside Job, that Russell Crowe movie, which is based on a true story.
You're sitting there with a full beard, like a full gray beard, and some sort of bizarre marijuana suppository, like all day slow drip thing that just keeps you in a constant buzz, and you're going off about President Bieber.
And you're just up there on your pulpit with a crazy beard.
No, it became like Britney Spears, Lady Gaga, Top 40. 97.1 became a Mexican station, right?
I don't know.
I still think they're playing Lady Gaga stuff, but who cares?
One or the other, both mind-numbing.
One is mind-numbing to people who speak Spanish, mind-numbing to people who speak English, but they're mind-fucking-numbing.
Music, both sides.
The point is, well, what happened is they said to me, in a sort of weird mindfuck, they said, hey, listen, we're going to fold the station out.
Now, for those who, you know, don't know, I replaced Howard Stern on the West Coast.
A guy named Rover did it in the Midwest, and then David Lee Roth did it in New York.
When the change came about.
The David Lee Roth experiment ended super fast.
And the rover thing ended fairly quickly.
And then I was around.
And I was doing well.
were getting I got bonuses in LA toward the end and I would always get bonuses in Vegas and Seattle and Portland and stuff like that.
We were you know, we had our ups and downs for sure, but it had smoothed out and we're doing well.
And they and when I say well, I don't mean conquering the world.
I just mean holding our own, getting solid ratings and getting getting the occasional bonus for being number one.
And they flip the format.
They just figured out, look, why are we paying all these guys millions of dollars to talk when we can just play the aforementioned Lady Gaga and just make the same revenue?
And it's a business decision.
I'm completely cool with it.
I understand.
People are always like, aren't you pissed off?
Fuck no.
It's their job.
I had a contract.
They paid me out the rest of the year for not doing anything.
And it's completely their prerogative.
I get pissed off at personal stuff.
I get pissed off when somebody does something intentionally.
When the super selfish old neighbor next door says, I would rather watch Jeopardy!
and Peace than have...
150 people celebrate the ringing in of the new year.
That's a personal bullshit thing.
When it's business, it's just business.
I understand it.
So they were going to flip it, but they said to me, two months before they were going to blow up the whole station, they said, we're going to send you to New York.
You're going to the number one market, and we want you to take over in New York.
But shh, don't tell anybody.
You cannot tell anyone because nobody here knows the radio station's being blown up.
And the way radio works is they don't give you two weeks notice.
You finish your shift, you walk off the air, and the guy says, go get that box with the weird cardboard handles carved into it.
You're leaving.
And they do it for a reason.
They don't want you going back on the air going, fuck this station, fuck Jack Silver, fuck these cocksuckers, these fucking guys.
They know it.
And most DJs are nuts, and that's what half of them will do.
So they told me two months in advance, we're flipping.
You're going to New York, and we're flipping.
Don't say anything.
So it was this horrible two months for me where it'd be like January, and my producer would come up to me and go, oh, the Wynn Hotel wants us to come back for March Madness and do a special live show at the casino.
It was like, I knew everything was coming to an end and we were talking about shit to do over the summer and stuff like that.
And so it was really weird having these conversations.
It's like knowing you're going to get divorced and your wife's making vacation plans for the end of the summer and you're going to serve her papers in two weeks.
He said, you speak your opinion and you and I are the same way.
We like to hear ourselves talk and we have opinions.
And so I said, yeah, fuck it.
And I found out I said, well, how much do you think this is going to cost?
He said, you buy two microphones and a laptop and, oh, and then a little bit for bandwidth.
And I said, well, how much?
Oh, it's like, I don't know, 500 bucks a month or something.
And I was like, oh, I guess I could afford that.
Let's try it.
And then it was like nine grand for the first month of bandwidth.
And I was like, holy shit.
And so it got down to me spending like a hundred grand out of my own pocket just to do it pro bono with the notion that one day it might turn into a business.
So how did you go about, I mean, you have like this giant staff, this huge, you have a big room and all these employees working and people working video switches.
And how did you go about finding all these people and putting everything together?
Most of the people would hear the podcast and just go like, hey man, I'm digging what you're doing, and I'm a whatever student, and I work for seven bucks an hour, and could I come down there?
They just want to be a part of something, just in a sort of organic kind of way.
I never have any ideas about anything before they are what they are.
I just embark upon the journey.
I don't really look that far down the road.
I mean, I'm not going to walk off a cliff.
I trust that I'm moving in the right direction.
Have expectations and, you know, I have notions.
Well, you know, it's sort of like this.
It's sort of, you know, I probably got it a lot from building.
Because building is a process that goes from shitty to good.
Which is to say the first part of building is, you know, permits and applications.
And you cutting checks to the city for nothing.
And inspectors and plan inspection and all that kind of stuff.
And it's nothing.
It's just a bunch of money and a bunch of papers.
You have nothing.
And then you start demoing and digging stuff up and, you know, digging footings and grade beams and blah, blah, blah, and putting in rebar and waiting for concrete and all that.
But still, it's nothing.
There's no shape to it.
It's just a hole in the ground and you're literally dumping money into this hole in the ground.
But then at a certain point, the cement dries and you strip away the forms and you start to frame.
And when you start to frame, you get to actually see the shape of the structure start to unfold before your eyes.
But it's still like it's wide open.
It doesn't keep the cold out or the heat in or anything.
But you can start to imagine about what it might be like to put down that hardwood flooring and to see all the cool top-notch Viking stoves and sub-zeros going into the kitchen and all that.
Well, that's the part you look forward to.
But if you're Closing your eyes and picturing your new Viking stove arriving, when you're forming your slab, you're going to fuck up your slab.
Just focus on the form.
And know that you'll get to the Viking one day, but for now, you're just forming.
Yeah, I don't really plan things out that much either.
I mean, we didn't plan this out.
We started this out on a laptop.
Literally, we're just sitting right in front of one of these and we had fucking snowflakes coming down on the Ustream broadcast and we fucked around with music and all kinds of different things.
And then eventually we figured out how to do it the way we're doing it now.
But it's still evolving.
But for us, it's been the best tool ever for getting people to come into the clubs.
And that's one of the things that you've done to sort of monetize it.
You've started doing live podcasts and then live stand-up.
And I remember when we did the improv together, the Irvine Improv, was one of the first times, I think, or the first time you had ever done stand-up in like fucking 10-plus years.
And killed.
You went out there and killed, and you did it like you'd been doing it all along.
Yeah, because that's an environment And you get the energy of the environment, but right now there's somebody with earbuds in each ear and they're either walking their dog or they're walking on a treadmill or they're walking their dog on a treadmill, which would be fun.
And what we're saying is penetrating deep.
And that's more of a party where you're just kind of getting caught up into it.
Yeah.
Versus a serious deep penetration.
And I'm really interested in just sort of taking my ideas and inserting them into you more than I am sort of entertaining you, so to speak.
What you do on the podcast, I mean, you can't say it comes easy to you.
I mean, you can, but I mean, the reason why it comes easy to you is because you're doing, it's like someone who does all this power lifting and plyometrics and throws medicine balls around, and then someone teaches you how to choke somebody, and I'm like, wow, jujitsu came pretty easy to me.
Well, that's because you're a fucking crazy physical specimen, you fuck.
And like with you, what you're doing is you're constantly ranting and constantly piecing together ideas and constantly pointing out things that don't...
The rants that I categorize, and I sort of have cues that help me figure out what it is I want to say.
And then it doesn't come out exactly the same every night either.
Right, of course, yeah.
Yeah, and I sort of mix and match.
I guess it'd be like a jam band that had a bunch of songs and changed the set list up on a nightly basis, and maybe they'd never get that good on one song, but yet they could freeform if they had to, and they would never get boring for them because they're constantly mixing the set up.
It's like that first 20 minutes, you just want to be solid, you want to get everyone on your side, and just get that first 20, for me it's like 20-25 minutes, and then it's like, alright, we've established this.
I always tell them when guys open up for me, I say the best thing you can do out there is don't fuck around in the beginning.
Don't try a new bit out when you first get on stage.
This is a cold audience, okay?
A lot of guys that are on the road, like I take guys on the road with me, They're used to doing sets in Hollywood, and they're used to going up and doing 10-15 minute sets when there's a host and a bunch of other people on the show.
I'm like, this is a different experience, man.
These are people who don't know who you are, who are coming to see me.
So they're willing to let you be funny, but you've got to go out there and go tight right away.
You've got to gain their confidence.
It's the most important thing if people don't know who you are.
Gain their confidence right away.
You've got to do solid, tight material right up front.
Get them laughing and go, alright, this guy's a fucking pro.
And then they relax and they settle in.
They have a smile on their face and they're looking forward to hearing you.
And then you're smooth.
Then smooth sailing.
But if you start off chunky and fucked up, then you've got to constantly re-earn their respect.
It's one of the reasons why I've always thought that this podcast, in and of itself, could be a television show.
I was trying to pitch a show based around the podcast, but the show that I was pitching, it was like really produced, and there was all these little segments that we would do every week.
And then I thought about it, and I'm like, "I don't like that." I'm like, "I like the idea of a podcast "because I like the idea of people sitting around "and talking about interesting shit, "and it's fun and amusing to watch." And it was proof positive to me watching that talking funny thing, 'cause it was just four comics sitting around talking about stand-up, and it was fucking great, man.
Especially Louis C.K., man.
Him and Chris Rock, but Louis C.K. especially, he's my number one inspiration right now.
That guy is...
I love what he does.
I mean, stand-up-wise, material-wise, my favorite guy is Stanhope.
I think Stanhope is...
To me, he's fucking fully out there.
He really is a wild fuck getting drunk every night.
Because, you know, Stanhope has a fucking house and the windowsills on the outside of the house are painted lopsided.
He's fucking crazy.
His house is like bright yellow.
He's with green and shit.
And he's a nut.
He literally is that guy.
He's not an...
He's not faking.
He does all his shows in rock clubs.
He sells all of his tickets on brownpaperbag.com or whatever the fuck it is.
Brown paper tickets.
So everything is all produced in-house.
Everything he does is all him.
He doesn't go through any other normal channels.
He has all of his fans.
They show up and see him all over the world.
And he goes on these fucking drunken Jagerbomb rants.
And they're fucking awesome.
I mean, his stand-up to me, his material to me as a fan.
Joey Diaz is still, I think, the funniest guy.
And if I'm gonna watch a ten minute set of anybody on the planet, I would watch Joey Diaz.
Because Joey Diaz, when Joey Diaz crushes, when he really fucking slams at home, nobody's funnier than him.
But as far as like a long set, Stan Hope is the man for me.
I enjoy his material.
But I really enjoy Louis C.K. I enjoy his material as well.
I think he's a brilliant comedian.
But I really enjoy his work ethic.
I really enjoy his philosophy on stand-up.
And how he breaks it down.
I find it, as a comic, I find it so inspiring because he throws away his whole act every year.
He writes a whole act, he writes a full hour, hour and whatever minutes, films it for whatever, Showtime or HBO, who the fuck wants to buy it, and then he throws it out and starts from scratch.
And because of that, because everybody knows that he does that, he's got this massively loyal following.
People can't wait to come and see him because they know, hey, we saw Louie last year.
You think he's going to be doing the same material?
Fuck no.
He's not going to be doing the same material.
It's going to be all new.
And maybe if you yell out bag of dicks, he'll do his bag of dicks joke.
But for the most part, this guy's got 90 new fucking minutes every 12 months.
Like, I mean, I was just watching SNL a couple of weeks ago, and Zach Galifianakis got up there, and he said something that I'd said on Stern's show and on my radio show, you know, ten years ago.
And it was almost the exact joke that I... I don't think he ripped me off.
Well, like, you know, that thing where you go, look, you want to host SNL. I've never hosted SNL, but you want to host SNL, and you say to a comedian, and instead of collecting a bunch of jokes from guys who don't really know your voice, you just go, fuck it, I'll do my, I'll do a real familiar five minutes of my act at the top.
I know it, I'm confident with it, and then we'll get into the rest of the show.
It's continuing in that activity in the face of adversity.
And it's like essentially, if your wife says, I'm going to leave you, if you keep up with fill in the blank, you know, if your boss says he's going to fire you, if you keep up with the...
Booze drinking or the pill popping or the jizz tossing or whatever you're doing.
And you keep doing it.
And then you lose your job.
And then you get divorced.
And then you lose your home.
That's addiction.
And there's such things as functional addicts as well.
I tore my ACL ligament, and I couldn't do taekwondo.
I couldn't kickbox for a while.
I had to get reconstructive surgery and the whole deal.
And a buddy of mine and I started playing pool.
And it started out just knocking balls around.
Two retards had played in a bar before.
No, I didn't know how to play.
And then I met guys that really could play.
And when you watch real pool plays, you watch them, and you go, oh, it's about gambling.
They're gambling, and there's money on the line.
And then it's about tournaments.
And then, you know, you get to see pros play.
And I just became obsessed with these balls moving around on this cloth and the fact that you have to figure out exactly how hard to hit the ball to make it collide with this other ball.
Plus, it was affecting his comedy because I caught him back in the day and he'd be like, Alright, so anyway, this dude's playing a Brunswick with a pretty fast felt.
We're going to pause it and Brian and I will come out.
We'll close it out because we're going to do another half an hour because we usually do about two hours.
But thank you very much for doing the podcast, man.
Like I said, if it wasn't for you and doing your podcast, I probably never would have started this thing in the first place.
You're one of my favorite dudes to talk to.
You're one of my favorite guys to go on your show because you've always got a unique and interesting perspective that I might not have ever considered.
Sure.
There's not a lot of guys like that out there, man.
And what Brian Cowen said about you really is true.
You truly are the best at going on these crazy rants that lead to conclusions.
Like, I'll start rants off, but then 10 minutes into my rant, I'll be like, what the fuck are we even talking about, man?
Fire up that vaporizer, you know?
But you'll actually come to conclusions on them.
You're a very unique cat, man.
The whole thing that you're doing with stand-up and the thing that you're doing with your podcast, it's great stuff, man.