May 29, 2019 - The Joe Rogan Experience
01:44:38
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| We're live, ladies and gentlemen. | ||
| What's up? | ||
| It's hilarious seeing the two of you guys together. | ||
| When your son told me, when he told me he was your son, first of all, he instantly became my friend. | ||
| And second of all, I was like, what is it like having John Witherspoon as a dad? | ||
| That's gotta be crazy! | ||
| But mind you, I only told you because he was asking me, because I go to the clubs all the time, hanging out and whatnot, and, you know, just kicking it with friends. | ||
| And he said, who's at the club, Nat Davis? | ||
| He was like, JD, who is it that... | ||
| Who the bringer there? | ||
| Who the funny one? | ||
| And I was like, I mean, there's a bunch of them. | ||
| I said, Joe's always there. | ||
| He's got a bunch of people who come to his show. | ||
| He's like, Joe Rogan. | ||
| I'm like, I know Joe. | ||
| That's my man. | ||
| My man, Joe. | ||
| We worked together when I was at the comic store. | ||
| And he told me to say hi. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Last time I saw you, I think, was Caroline's in New York. | ||
| We were doing, I was doing like the 8, you were doing a 10 or something like that? | ||
| No, I would do two shows, but it probably was on a Thursday, you probably did. | ||
| Something was happening, we were doing it close to each other. | ||
| It was a long time ago. | ||
| Yeah, a long time ago. | ||
| It was a long time ago, like maybe 15 years ago. | ||
| Yeah, oh yeah. | ||
| I haven't been there in a while. | ||
| I haven't been to New York in a while. | ||
| I stopped going to New York for about a second. | ||
| Caroline's a weird one. | ||
| Have you done Caroline's? | ||
| I haven't done Caroline's. | ||
| It's like a touristy place. | ||
| All tourists. | ||
| And foreigners. | ||
| It feels like you're doing stand-up in New York. | ||
| It feels weird. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| It feels like what people want New York to be, but they're from somewhere else. | ||
| Like a good percentage of them are. | ||
| Guatemala. | ||
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But it's great. | |
| It's a great club. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| But it's just, you know, it's different than The Cellar or, you know. | ||
| Dangerfields is my favorite. | ||
| Joey Diaz was just down there and he said he did Dangerfields like five, six nights. | ||
| I never did Dangerfields. | ||
| Nobody does Dangerfields. | ||
| No. | ||
| It's half full all the time. | ||
| It's amazing. | ||
| They're still around. | ||
| Yeah, they're still around. | ||
| Somebody's got to be selling coke. | ||
| Somebody, somebody, yeah. | ||
| Or somebody must be on coke all the time. | ||
| They keep that place like that. | ||
| Well, the name alone probably brings people in, but it's an iconic place, man. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I like New York. | ||
| I haven't been back since Letterman gone. | ||
| I don't go do his show anymore. | ||
| I haven't been to Carolines in about three years, four years. | ||
| But you do a lot of clubs in the room. | ||
| We were talking about that before. | ||
| Oh, I do 40-something clubs. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| 40 clubs a year? | ||
| You know, my agents come to my house in January, and they tell me all the clubs I got that year. | ||
| They tell you what date we go over it. | ||
| We go over every one of them. | ||
| All right, June 15th, in case you're going to be in so-and-so. | ||
| Y'all like the money we're going to get? | ||
| Yeah, okay, that's good. | ||
| That's a go. | ||
| That's a go. | ||
| So we do 40-something clubs. | ||
| I said, man, this is too much work. | ||
| I ain't been 52 weeks in a year. | ||
| Yeah, that's crazy. | ||
| I got to have some time off. | ||
|
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Yeah. | |
| What about me? | ||
| Y'all worry about this money. | ||
| But when you have time off, all you do is complain about not being on the road. | ||
| I complain about people telling me what to eat, what to drink. | ||
| Oh my goodness. | ||
| I like to get me a little taste every now and then. | ||
| Everybody need a little taste. | ||
| That's what I'm saying. | ||
| Everybody need to keep the wolf off your back. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| So I give me a little taste. | ||
| The real problem is that travel, though. | ||
| That's what we're talking about. | ||
| Oh, that's too much. | ||
| The air travel over and over and over again. | ||
| And then we were freaking out about 837s, and you were explaining to us that mostly they use them in overseas and some southwest. | ||
| And in African countries. | ||
| And in Asian countries, they use them. | ||
| Well, they had like two planes that just got lost, right? | ||
|
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One from Malaysia and all the other ones. | |
| I think that's all pilot. | ||
| Pilot doing all that. | ||
| Lex Friedman is a software engineer, and he specializes in AI. He's a professor at MIT. And he was explaining to me, basically, the software glitch was making it nosedive. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
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What? | |
| That's not something I would want to hear. | ||
| Not when I paid $2,200 to get in my seat. | ||
| Well, if you're a software engineer, you would have to up the pilot or co-pilot to let them know, like, hey, someone has to... | ||
| Obviously, they all know what they're doing in the cockpit, but does someone know what to do if the computer's gone? | ||
| That's a really good question. | ||
| Do they have any training in how to reboot computers? | ||
| Or is there a bypass or a workaround for the computers? | ||
| Lex does artificial intelligence. | ||
| That's mostly what he does. | ||
| He works on cars, autonomous cars and planes and stuff. | ||
| As these things get more and more updated, you just have... | ||
| Glitches happen. | ||
| It happens all the time with your phone, right? | ||
| You get a new bug, and Twitter will just crash on you all the time, and they release an update. | ||
| But if you're on a fucking plane... | ||
| What are you doing? | ||
| Yeah, and how do you react? | ||
| How do they practice it? | ||
| Wow. | ||
| You'd have to go through a flight simulation of, hey, there's a bug in the plane, here we go. | ||
| How do they run over all that software before they put it on a plane? | ||
| You know, they had... | ||
| The plane that crashed... | ||
| What was the last plane crashed? | ||
| That was where? | ||
| In Africa? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| There was two in short... | ||
| Was one Russia? | ||
| No, it wasn't Russia. | ||
| I think it was in Africa. | ||
| Anyway, those pilots are trained to the end, to the hilt. | ||
| They train those pilots. | ||
| But they don't know themselves, some of the guys who's training people, what the heck's going on. | ||
| It was a pilot that was off work that was on the plane just before this plane crashed. | ||
| Same plane. | ||
| They had trouble before. | ||
| And he came out of his seat and went up to the cockpit and saved the plane. | ||
| Jesus Christ. | ||
| He knew what to do. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| He's the only one who knew what to do on the planet. | ||
| Imagine being in that fucking plane, watching that guy, looking down the aisle, watching that guy walk into the cockpit. | ||
| Yeah, what are you doing? | ||
| You don't see no one. | ||
| They protect that. | ||
| They put the food cart in front of the... | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Is that food cart stopping anybody? | ||
| No. | ||
| But they got a bolt on the door. | ||
|
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Yeah. | |
| All those doors in the cockpit. | ||
| But the pilot is in the bathroom taking a boo-boo. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's what that is. | ||
| They don't have their own pilot's bathroom? | ||
| No, no, no. | ||
| They can't fit it. | ||
| Can't fit it on the plane. | ||
| They blocked the area. | ||
| Yeah, they put that food cart there. | ||
| See, I've seen that many times. | ||
| That's a weird move. | ||
| Like, don't you have, like, a dedicated thing for it? | ||
| Why is the food cart the thing you... | ||
| Don't you have, like, a... | ||
| You should have a gate. | ||
| Someone will leap that. | ||
| Right. | ||
| They should have another door just like they got on the cockpit. | ||
| Yeah, they should have like some, like a, like, you know, they do one of those metal gates in front of glass windows. | ||
| Yeah, have one of those. | ||
| Click, clamp it down. | ||
| Well, they knew that didn't work because they had the riot in 66 and they tore all them down. | ||
| Oh, the gates on the doors. | ||
| I remember that. | ||
| I was watching them guys. | ||
| Something they did to the lock. | ||
| That fucking flew open. | ||
| Yeah, what could you do to stop someone from bum-rushing the cockpit? | ||
| Like, those flight attendants are not gonna stop it. | ||
| No, no, hell no. | ||
| Well, they should probably prepare planes with a flight attendant who has training like that in the future, like a female or a male who's just... | ||
| No, that's too much trouble. | ||
| That's too much money. | ||
| Too much money, they're not going to do it. | ||
| The pilot is locked in the bathroom. | ||
| The other pilot and the stewardess is locked in the booth where they fly the plane. | ||
| So you ain't getting in there anyway. | ||
| I guess, yeah. | ||
| Unless when the party come out the bathroom. | ||
| Then he's not when he opened the door. | ||
| But they got the other guy. | ||
| The steward has got to come out. | ||
| He got to go in. | ||
| It's too complicated now. | ||
| Then the people that sit down are going to know what's happening. | ||
| They're going to jump up. | ||
| I know somebody better not try this. | ||
| That's chaos on a plane if you start seeing all that that you're talking about. | ||
| Well, don't you think turbulence is chaos? | ||
|
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No. | |
| I was on a plane once and two dudes almost got into a fight. | ||
| The lady stopped serving them. | ||
| One guy was putting his luggage in a spot above another dude's head. | ||
| And the guy said, that's for my stuff. | ||
| And he said, no, whoever gets there first is the one who gets it. | ||
| And he's like, bullshit. | ||
| And he's grabbing his arm and got physical for a second. | ||
| I took my bag off to get some out of my bag. | ||
| I'm on the plane first. | ||
| Some guy walked past me. | ||
| I said, okay, excuse me. | ||
| And then I'm looking for my stuff. | ||
| He's going to put it. | ||
| I said, hey, hey, hey, hey, bro. | ||
| You see this bag here? | ||
| That going up there. | ||
|
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He said, well, you should have had it up there. | |
| I looked at this sucker. | ||
| He said, sorry, sir. | ||
| He got in his seat. | ||
| Now, he's sitting next to me, too. | ||
| For the rest of the flight. | ||
| Whole flight. | ||
| He didn't say nothing. | ||
| You should have had it up there. | ||
| I said, man, get the hell out of my way. | ||
| He thought I was a crazy man. | ||
| Tough guy, huh? | ||
| I wasn't tough. | ||
| I just didn't know. | ||
| The plane is full now. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| One seat next to me open. | ||
| He's going to put his stuff down. | ||
| I'm trying to find my earphones. | ||
| This punk gonna put this stuff up there. | ||
| Before you just come in, there's a place for you above my head. | ||
| I'm in my bag. | ||
| You don't think that's my bag. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| Because you were going through your bag to put this stuff up there. | ||
| Yeah, I'm doing like this looking for my thing. | ||
| Some people just look for an opportunity to be a dick. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I think planes are the closest that people get to walking that emulates road rage. | ||
| Yeah, the line. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's the closest thing. | ||
| Like when people get up and they get up too soon and then like they're pushing forward already and you're like, come on, man. | ||
|
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Yeah. | |
| Let everybody get up in the line. | ||
| Some people are like, nah, don't push through. | ||
| I was at the gas station just now, and you know how they have the big oil tankers that have to bring the gas to the gas station? | ||
| They were blocking in where people needed to go to park, and the guy who was there was telling me that some lady was just there, and she was mad at him because he pulled in a few minutes after she parked to get gas in her car. | ||
| And he was saying that... | ||
| She was like, you're blocking me in. | ||
| He's like, lady, I'm either going to block you in or I'm blocking the street. | ||
| I can't block the full street with all the traffic. | ||
| And then by the time she was ready to go, she finally was nudging her way out of the gas station. | ||
| And the guy was trying to help her, and she's like, don't help me. | ||
| I don't need your help, all right? | ||
| And he said, I'm sorry, it's going to be a minute. | ||
| She's like, I don't got a minute. | ||
| And then I asked him, I was like, what kind of car is she driving? | ||
| He was like, a Range Rover, new Range Rover. | ||
| I'm like, oh, she's got plenty of time. | ||
| She's got a minute. | ||
| One guy put his seat back before the plane took off. | ||
| You know how you get comfortable? | ||
| He had a seat all the way back. | ||
| He said, hey buddy, hey, you cannot put your seat back before the plane get up in the air. | ||
| He said, what the fuck? | ||
| Got your knees on somebody's legs. | ||
| I got the back of the chair on someone's knees. | ||
| He said, buddy, I've been doing this for 20, 30 years. | ||
| He said, I don't give a fuck what you've been doing. | ||
| You cannot do it today. | ||
| They got into a spat. | ||
| Two passengers. | ||
| Two passengers. | ||
| Why is one passenger playing cop? | ||
| That's just how it is. | ||
| Seat cop. | ||
| There's videos of that all the time. | ||
| I remember I saw one of them out here coming into or leaving Burbank. | ||
| It was like two guys who either the plane just landed or they were just about to take off. | ||
| They got into a full fist fight. | ||
| Mind you, it's a Southwest flight over a seat that didn't belong to anyone. | ||
| Because over there at that airport, they're probably going from Burbank to Vegas. | ||
| And the dude was like, hey man, I'm taking that seat. | ||
| No, no, that's mine. | ||
| And the next thing you know, it's a fight in between the aisle. | ||
| It is crazy that they serve you booze on the plane. | ||
| You can get drunk at the airport. | ||
| Alcohol is a drug, and that drug is everywhere that's flying. | ||
| Everywhere that's flying. | ||
| It's 100% set up. | ||
| But you can't bring any alcohol through security. | ||
| No. | ||
| We're using our security. | ||
| We're going to use our alcohol. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's hilarious. | ||
| And they'll pour that stuff, brother. | ||
| They all know me on the plane. | ||
| So they give me a bottle of the gold. | ||
| You think I'm mad. | ||
| Mr. Witherspoon, wrap it up in a towel. | ||
| Big fucking towel. | ||
| I'm going to sneak out here with this big-ass bottle in a towel. | ||
| But I do it. | ||
| I put it right in that bucket. | ||
| I put it under that bag. | ||
| I get it. | ||
| They don't want liquid bombs or some shit. | ||
| They don't want you bringing something on the plane. | ||
| I get it. | ||
| It's true. | ||
| I wish that wasn't something you ever had to think about. | ||
| But if it happens once every few years, it's enough that you've got to... | ||
| Think about it. | ||
| Think about it. | ||
| You know, I had, you can't have ounces, three ounces liquid in your bag. | ||
| So I had a three ounce bottle of my expensive cologne, but I used half of it. | ||
| So I ain't got no three ounce. | ||
| I got one and a half now. | ||
| We got to take the whole thing. | ||
| I said, no. | ||
| What? | ||
|
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You're going to take all the Michael on that clump and cost me about $300. | |
| Sir, I'm taking $150 this clump. - They took my cologne. | ||
| Did you spray it on yourself before getting on? | ||
| One more pump for the road. | ||
| I sprayed this on everybody else too. | ||
| But they serious about that. | ||
| Some dudes still rock cologne. | ||
| I wear cologne. | ||
| Heavy. | ||
| Like it? | ||
| Oh, I get it from Bird Off Goodman. | ||
| I get this stuff. | ||
| See, when I grew up, there was a lot of pimps around the neighborhood. | ||
| And they wore the best cologne. | ||
| Them dudes were sharp, boy, they had me shiny. | ||
| And they hit them's hair like this. | ||
| So when I got old, that's what I would do. | ||
| I'd get the cologne like this. | ||
|
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You'd start smacking yourself with it? | |
| Them pimps used to crack me up, boy. | ||
| They would be so sharp, yeah. | ||
| Shoes be so shiny. | ||
| And they get that cologne. | ||
| I'm not. | ||
| He's smiling. | ||
| He's talking to me. | ||
| That boy smells good. | ||
| I'm broke. | ||
| I got about three cents in my pocket. | ||
| And holes on the bottom of my shoes. | ||
| And then pimps be up the air. | ||
| The fella, yeah, he's going to be all right one day. | ||
| Just hang out again. | ||
| Keep doing what you're doing. | ||
| Keep doing what you're doing. | ||
| Oh, boy. | ||
| You ever see pimps up, hose down? | ||
| Yeah, oh yeah. | ||
| Oh yeah. | ||
| Crazy. | ||
| The doctor. | ||
| I know what's his name. | ||
| See, the real life? | ||
| It's like, oh, that's a weird life. | ||
| It is some clowns. | ||
| They like clowns who get together and that's what they do. | ||
| And that's where they live. | ||
| I used to be around 12th Street. | ||
| You weren't in Detroit. | ||
| You were too young. | ||
| No, I'm not. | ||
| 12th Street, Black Bottom. | ||
| They call one place called Black Bottom. | ||
| Hastings Street, all pimps and hoes. | ||
| They had them big old hats on. | ||
| They didn't have, back then, they didn't have high-head shoes on. | ||
| You know them, what do you call them? | ||
| Platforms. | ||
| Back then, Detroit was booming, right? | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| Detroit fell off quicker than any city in the Western world. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| In terms of, like, it was the richest city in the world during the height of the car. | ||
| Motor, yeah. | ||
| Motor city. | ||
| Mm-hmm. | ||
| Yeah, because the people, the factories closed. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And when the factories closed, people had put their money into the house, the car, factory money. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| They got that loan, see, because you got that, you been in here 15 years, you got a good record, you got a good thing, they give you a car and give you a home. | ||
| But when that's like a fail board, people, oh my God, what am I going to do? | ||
| What am I going to do? | ||
| What caused it? | ||
| Do you know? | ||
| I mean, obviously, manufacturing moving to Mexico and other world countries. | ||
| All that stuff. | ||
| A little bit of that. | ||
| Everybody were for themselves. | ||
| General Motors, Ford, they were for themselves. | ||
| But a lot of companies are still there. | ||
| It's just the... | ||
| Not like it used to be. | ||
| But like a lot of car companies, you know, like Ford, right? | ||
| Not like it used to be. | ||
| GM. They're still there, but they're there in a much more limited role. | ||
| Or they're kind of like the base or kind of like the warehouse. | ||
| Or maybe they moved that, too. | ||
| Maybe they're... | ||
| You know that show Top Gear? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| They do a new show called The Grand Tour. | ||
| They do it on Amazon. | ||
| And they did one episode where they went to Detroit. | ||
| And they were in Detroit. | ||
| They bought a house for like two grand. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
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A whole house for $2,000. | |
| Like a fucking whole house. | ||
| Like a house house. | ||
| That's crazy. | ||
| Like you could live in it. | ||
| Yeah, oh yeah. | ||
| It wasn't a bad house. | ||
| I mean, it needed some work, for sure. | ||
| Everybody moved. | ||
| But nobody's there. | ||
| Everybody's gone. | ||
| When we were there, when we drove through, it was like the amount of giant warehouses that are completely empty with all the shattered windows. | ||
| It's very depressing. | ||
| It's very weird. | ||
| But it's coming back. | ||
| I was there two months ago. | ||
| My brother had died. | ||
| I went to his funeral. | ||
| And we drove around. | ||
| I couldn't find my grandfather's house. | ||
| They tore that shit down. | ||
| Somebody burned it down. | ||
| Some of the stuff like that. | ||
| But it was just like any other city to me. | ||
| It's coming back for sure. | ||
| But it's also like there's a lot of young businesses are starting up and craft businesses and You know, when there's enough people around, people have ingenuity. | ||
| They figure out a way. | ||
| It's just not going to be what it used to be. | ||
| And it's a whole new ballgame now. | ||
| It is a new ballgame. | ||
| New people. | ||
| These people are young. | ||
| My son, what's his name? | ||
| Alexander. | ||
| How old is he? | ||
| 23. He loved Detroit. | ||
| He'd never seen this many... | ||
| We were downtown Detroit on Saturday night. | ||
| Warm, hot night. | ||
| People walking around. | ||
| There's beautiful women walking around there. | ||
| My son went crazy. | ||
| He said... | ||
| We don't go there and you're from there. | ||
| We just don't go to where his family's from a lot. | ||
| So it's one of those things where... | ||
| My family gone. | ||
| You got relatives. | ||
| I don't know them. | ||
| I don't know my brothers. | ||
| My brother's daughter's cousin's brother. | ||
| And neither does Alex or me. | ||
| That's why Alex was more inclined. | ||
| He was excited. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| His nieces? | ||
| Oh, my God. | ||
| They loved him. | ||
| And they walked around. | ||
| I said, look, I'm going back to the hotel. | ||
| I was getting too much harassment, so I said, I'm going back to the hotel. | ||
| So I told the driver, take me back. | ||
| They can jump out. | ||
| You can pick them up later. | ||
| And they've got a ride. | ||
| So they got back to the hotel about two, three hours later. | ||
| But I was sleeping by then. | ||
| Oh, but Detroit is nice. | ||
| When I was there, I'm telling you, man, Detroit was nice. | ||
| Yeah, I did the Fox Theater, and it's so old that they have these pillars in the wall that are stained from cigarette smoke, like a darkish, orangish stain just from nicotine. | ||
| That's crazy. | ||
| A beautiful theater. | ||
| Yeah, beautiful theater. | ||
| They had to replace one of the pillars. | ||
| So they had one pillar that was clean, and then the other pillars, you go, whoa, that's cigarette smoke? | ||
| And you get to really see it. | ||
| And everybody sang there. | ||
| Frank Sinatra got his signature. | ||
| Everybody got their signature all over the place. | ||
| Oh, really? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| I put my signature down about 20 times. | ||
|
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Yeah. | |
| I've been there about eight times. | ||
| It's a great place. | ||
| I remember watching Temptations down there. | ||
| Oh, wow. | ||
| Temptations. | ||
| Frankie Lyman and the Teenagers. | ||
| That was a long time ago. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| But beautiful, beautiful place. | ||
| All the other places torn down. | ||
| The Olympia Stadium where they used to play and sing. | ||
| And Pistons used to play basketball there. | ||
| They tore that place down. | ||
| I saw Elvis Presley there. | ||
| Elvis Presley. | ||
|
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Wow. | |
| A little kid. | ||
| And I saw Elvis. | ||
|
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Wow. | |
| I always wanted to go to see the Cronk Gym, but I think they tore that down too. | ||
| I used to play basketball at Cronk's Gym. | ||
| Really? | ||
| You see, there used to be a basketball court there. | ||
| Then they tore it. | ||
| Might have torn it down now, but they built boxing rinks around there. | ||
| So all the boxing, when we play ball, they've got boxing around there. | ||
| I went up there one day with my shoes. | ||
| I said, what the hell? | ||
| What happened here? | ||
| They then closed the doors and everything. | ||
| Turned into boxing. | ||
| A lot of great boxers. | ||
| What's the name? | ||
| Tommy Hearns and them people came out of there. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Lennox Lewis. | ||
| Lennox Lewis. | ||
| Manuel Stewart was the head coach there until he died. | ||
| Yeah, that was an amazing gem. | ||
| But it was one of those places, there's a few places where you want to go. | ||
| Like when you're in L.A., you want to go to Wild Card. | ||
| You just want to say you've been there. | ||
| I want to go to the cage where you commentate. | ||
| Anytime. | ||
| Anytime. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You tell me. | |
| I want to see the people knock the crap out of me. | ||
| Let me know. | ||
| Anytime you want to go. | ||
| There's going to be some fights in California. | ||
| I want to look through the screen like this. | ||
| Get that motherfucker! | ||
| Oh, man. | ||
| We can get you pretty close. | ||
| Oh, my God. | ||
| We can get you right up there. | ||
| We can hear the smacks. | ||
| I like to get real close and take a look at this boy. | ||
| I can't believe that dude. | ||
| That head dude like this. | ||
| You got to knock the fuck out. | ||
| That's really serious about that. | ||
| Have you ever gone to one of them live? | ||
| No. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No? | |
| Never? | ||
| Never. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| Let's hook that up. | ||
| Yeah, that'd be funny. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Just imagine. | |
| You should film him. | ||
| You should film him. | ||
| I'll stay ready. | ||
| I'll stay ready. | ||
| I'll be like, so what are your feelings about the fight? | ||
| He's almost set up a tripod in front of him. | ||
| Oh my god, just reacting. | ||
| Oh man, I see it on TV. Like a GoPro or something. | ||
| Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| GoPro aimed at you. | ||
| I love it when they do little... | ||
| A thing on their background. | ||
| They do a little piece on the background. | ||
| I saw one. | ||
| This guy was woofing, woofing, woofing. | ||
| Oh, he's talking about whenever I whip your ass, I want your wife to come over and clean my house. | ||
| I want her to come and cook me a meal. | ||
| She cooked anything I want her to cook me. | ||
| This guy was Brazilian. | ||
| The guy, the opponent, he said, well, man, come on, man. | ||
| Let's play and let's fight and you ain't got to talk about my wife and stuff. | ||
| Man, you don't tell me what to do to Italian or something like that. | ||
| Chael Sutton is his name. | ||
| The Brazilian is Anderson Silva. | ||
| Oh, yeah, yeah. | ||
| He's old now. | ||
| One guy's old. | ||
| He's about 43. Anderson's 40. Chael might be a little older than that. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Anderson's greatest middleweight of all time. | ||
| First round, this boy put his foot up The foot did like that. | ||
| Are you talking about the one where his ankle snapped? | ||
| Are you talking about that one? | ||
| No, he's talking about kicking him in the head. | ||
| It was a fight. | ||
| I've never seen a foot come up that quick. | ||
| And the toes hit the motherfucker. | ||
| I've never seen nothing like this. | ||
| And that boy did like that. | ||
| Fell asleep. | ||
| I think you're thinking of a different fight now. | ||
| You're thinking of Vitor. | ||
| Vitor Belfort and Anderson Silva. | ||
| He was woofing, woofing, woofing. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And he running his fight. | ||
| That's the Vitor Belfort one. | ||
| That's not the guy, though. | ||
| That's the front kick to the face one. | ||
| That's like a legendary kick. | ||
| The other one was Chael Sonnen. | ||
| The Chael Sonnen one, he kicked him and then he dropped him and then he kneed him to the body and took him out with punches. | ||
| Unbelievable. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Unbelievable. | |
| How? | ||
| Unbelievable how he can work that foot. | ||
| How do you feel about your son's impression of you? | ||
| It's really good. | ||
| He doesn't think it sounds like him at all. | ||
| He doesn't. | ||
| Give me something. | ||
| I only know it because this is how he talks to me all the time. | ||
| He'll always be like, J.D., what are you doing today? | ||
| You got work. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You got to go sit back and talk to all them people. | |
| Get it? | ||
| I ain't never... | ||
| All the noises. | ||
| He'd be... | ||
| Hey, you'd be perfect for ASMR. We should just make that type of stuff. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Him just breathing. | |
| I was in line at the airport coming from... | ||
| I think I was in... | ||
| St. Louis or something like that. | ||
| And so I'm behind this lady, anybody in line, but two, three people in front of her, and I'm behind her. | ||
| So I'm back to wait, making my little noise. | ||
| She was like an old, old Latino woman, Spanish woman. | ||
| And she looked back, and she went back to looking forward, and then she, I said, well, I don't care, whatever. | ||
| She said, you make a lot of noise. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| She said, you make a lot of noise, sir. | ||
| I don't remember making any noise. | ||
| That's funny. | ||
| You do when you got in the car today. | ||
| You got in the car and you... | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| I gotta express myself. | ||
| It's noises and questions. | ||
| Those are it. | ||
| The moment you get in the car, how far we gotta go to get to Joe? | ||
| We're driving 30 miles an hour. | ||
| He's like, I think you're going a little fast. | ||
| Don't you think? | ||
| A little quick on the freeway. | ||
| I'm like, we're on the freeway. | ||
| It's 60 miles. | ||
| I'm going slow right now. | ||
| What is that? | ||
| But no, his voice is just like one of many I've come across because I do voiceover and all that stuff. | ||
| So it's one of those things where I'm lucky enough to have that one in my back pocket because sometimes I'll throw it out there and people will be like, I don't know. | ||
| A lot of people do a John Witherspoon impression. | ||
| It's interesting. | ||
| Yeah, we get some practice on it. | ||
| Yeah, man. | ||
| It's got to be nice, though, seeing him get in the show business. | ||
| Getting in the stand-up. | ||
| I guess so. | ||
| Do you like it? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I do. | |
| He's funny. | ||
| I came from 11 kids, so I hope you'll be successful. | ||
| I'm going to try my best to be successful. | ||
| He's too busy counting his coins to worry about my career. | ||
| God bless us all. | ||
| You're on your own good luck? | ||
| I mean, no. | ||
| He's supportive, but he's one of those guys where... | ||
| Because I didn't want to do entertainment at all when I was younger. | ||
| I wanted to do art. | ||
| And when I was drawing, I used to go to college. | ||
| And then I didn't know how to turn art into a career. | ||
| So one of my friends was like, why don't you try acting? | ||
| You're always wasting time in class making us laugh. | ||
| And I was like, oh, that's an interesting idea. | ||
| So I started doing commercial acting and whatnot. | ||
| But... | ||
| I have friends who are comics. | ||
| I don't usually bring up, he's my dad. | ||
| It's something that just randomly happens, usually. | ||
| And when that comes across, they're like, oh, that's crazy. | ||
| So you got a well of information in the sense of being a good comic and writing and this and that. | ||
| I'm like, not yet. | ||
| Not that I don't, but it's just asking him questions about stuff like that is the funniest stuff. | ||
| Like he just said, it's very flat out and just kind of like, yeah, JD, be funny. | ||
| How much more can you tell a guy, though, really? | ||
| Yeah, you just gotta get your own, you know? | ||
| We were talking about that last night. | ||
| People ask me, do you go to the clubs and look at your son and help him write? | ||
| Hell no! | ||
| I've featured for him and he doesn't watch my set. | ||
| I just go up and I do my time and I come into the green room and I'm like, hey, you ready to go? | ||
| And he's like, oh yeah, JD, they sound like they were laughing, so sound like you did alright. | ||
| I'm like, yeah, man. | ||
| What is a father to do? | ||
| Do you ever give him any criticism or any pointers or anything? | ||
| You ever give him any pointers? | ||
| Any tips? | ||
| Better be funny. | ||
| I'm usually the one on the opposite spectrum giving him tips about how he can leverage his notoriety in his day and age on the internet. | ||
| That's my thing. | ||
| So it's one of those things where if I have a question about stand-up, I'll ask. | ||
| But he doesn't... | ||
| Yeah, you should definitely have a very active social media. | ||
| Yeah, I help him run it. | ||
| I see him. | ||
| Who's on there all the time? | ||
| Kevin Hart is always on there. | ||
| Here's the thing. | ||
| Literally creating his social media was just a fluke because one day, like five or six or seven years ago, someone trended that he passed away. | ||
| And because of that, we had to create social media for him. | ||
| So when that happened, he's calling me, and I'm getting calls from random people who know him, and also my cousins. | ||
| I got family calling me crying, like, is he okay? | ||
| Is everything okay? | ||
| And he called me, and he's like, JD, you gotta help me. | ||
| There's something wrong on the internet. | ||
| They think I'm gone. | ||
| He's saying, all my family's calling me and I don't want to talk to them. | ||
| So we created him a Twitter that day. | ||
| And then through Twitter, I told him, I'm like, well, just tell people you're around. | ||
| And we tweeted out like, hey, y'all, this is the real John Witherspoon, blah, blah, blah. | ||
| Don't listen to those phonies making up them rumors. | ||
| because it was worldwide trending or whatever. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Like hashtag RIP pops or something. | ||
| And then off of that, his Twitter gained like 25K in like an hour. | ||
| And then later on down the road, he got into Instagram kind of randomly where he just – he had an Instagram, didn't really post, and then I think one day you did – You did just a random thing where he was... | ||
| Yeah, I talked to Megan and... | ||
| What's her name? | ||
| Oh, he was making a joke about Bill Cosby and whatnot. | ||
| And he was like, Bill, can't mess around with that stuff, Bill, and whatever. | ||
| But other social media platforms randomly found it, reposted it, and now he's like... | ||
| He went from like 6K to like 120. He ain't got a lot of people following me. | ||
| I just don't do anything. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| He doesn't understand how social media is like the future, but I try to keep him in the loop. | ||
| It's a great way to avoid doing morning radio. | ||
| You don't like doing morning radio, do you? | ||
| Oh, God, I hate doing... | ||
| I get to get up Friday morning. | ||
| I get to... | ||
| Listen, I get to Kansas City at 10 o'clock that night, Thursday, tomorrow night. | ||
| And then I get up Friday morning. | ||
| I don't know the time or anything like that yet. | ||
| But I probably do three or four radio stations. | ||
| Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. | ||
| They drive you. | ||
| And you're so sleepy. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You drive back over here and over here. | ||
| You want something to eat? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Nah. | |
| You go take a nap later and then you're still kind of wrecked when the first show rolls around. | ||
| Then you got to do two shows. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So it's not fun. | ||
| And I'm, you know, I'm slowing down. | ||
| But if you build up your social media, you can cut that part of it out. | ||
| Really? | ||
| And I'm sure you have, like, relationships with some of those radio stations where you like them. | ||
| Oh, yeah, they like me. | ||
| Like, you want to come in and do it. | ||
| I mean, that's cool if you want to do it. | ||
| But to have to do it. | ||
| To have to do it is... | ||
| To have to do it. | ||
| It's bad for your sleep. | ||
| It's just not good for your brain either. | ||
| And you can post a story on IG, or you can post an Instagram video saying, like, hey, I'm going to be here this weekend. | ||
| Bill Bellamy does that. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| Cut it in half. | ||
| Cut the time in half. | ||
| Yeah, you don't have to do that get-up-in-the-morning stuff. | ||
| But they want to see me. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| These radio DJs. | ||
| Right. | ||
| They want to see Pops. | ||
| They want to see Pops. | ||
| Oh, man, this is legend coming in. | ||
| I said, I ain't no damn legend. | ||
| I just needed some money. | ||
| That's why I'm a comic. | ||
| I go out and work all the time because I need money. | ||
| Definitely explain that because I did have a question when I first started doing stand-up and I was like, hey, Dad, from a motivational standpoint, I was like, hey, Dad, what got you into stand-up? | ||
| What is it that motivated you to want to do it? | ||
| He looked at me and said, Motivated me. | ||
| I was broke. | ||
| He's like, I was broke and someone told me I was funny, so I went to California and got on stage and just started making dollars. | ||
| I was like, so then what are you doing here? | ||
| You don't even like this? | ||
| He's like, I mean, it's alright. | ||
| I do my thing, you know. | ||
| I'm not a comic who just loves to make people laugh. | ||
| What do you love to do? | ||
| Count that money. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Count that paper. | |
| Oh, my God. | ||
| Let me tell you. | ||
| Sometime on the way home, see, if I had a good week, because some of them clubs pay a lot of damn money. | ||
| They pay over $37,000 for six weeks, six nights, I mean, four, six shows a weekend. | ||
| And I don't count the money, but when I do one-nighters, they have to pay you half of the money up front and give you money just before you go on stage. | ||
| So some of them I have $14,000, $15,000 in my pocket. | ||
| Brother, I'll be on that plane feeling that money. | ||
| I'll give you a glass of wine. | ||
| I'll give you a tall glass of that. | ||
| These are his passions. | ||
| These are his passion projects. | ||
| And I'm having a good time. | ||
| I call the Bank of America to check out my account at 4 o'clock in the morning. | ||
| I punch you in my thing, punch you in this. | ||
| You have your balance is... | ||
| I say... | ||
| That's so ridiculous. | ||
| We gotta get you the app. | ||
| We gotta just get you the Bank of America app. | ||
| You save the phone call. | ||
| I don't mind. | ||
| I'd rather go through the motion. | ||
| You like to hear it tell you. | ||
| The last phone number is your social security number. | ||
| Your balance is... | ||
| Oh, this is so wonderful. | ||
| I was broke when I was coming up, man. | ||
| Where'd you start? | ||
| Where'd you start doing stand-up? | ||
| Back in Detroit. | ||
| In Detroit? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I was... | ||
| My brother used to go to acting class on Thursday. | ||
| He and his wife. | ||
| So I said, boy, that's pretty cool. | ||
| I should try to be an actor. | ||
| So I got in the Yellow Pages. | ||
| They had a Yellow Pages. | ||
| They don't have them now, though. | ||
| Everybody got to go through their phone and get their number. | ||
| But they had the Yellow Pages. | ||
| I went to the Yellow Pages and went to an acting class, private acting lessons, and... | ||
| I called a guy. | ||
| He said, $25 an hour. | ||
| Come on over. | ||
| We can get started. | ||
| So this teacher at John Binkerman's acting classes put in a comedy show once a year. | ||
| And he said, I want you to be on the show. | ||
| I said, I don't know about no comedy. | ||
| He said, well, this is a very lucrative business. | ||
| You can make a lot of money. | ||
| I said, really? | ||
| I went there and stole the show. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| I said, wait a minute. | ||
| That's funny. | ||
| I used to do impressions of Nike and Cole, Johnny Mathis, and Joe Cocker and all that stuff. | ||
| Oh, Mick Jagger. | ||
| I used to do Mick Jagger. | ||
| He's so cold. | ||
| He's so cold. | ||
| And they had about 500 people out there for the show. | ||
| I'm bouncing across the stage like Joe Cocker, boy. | ||
| It was so funny. | ||
| And I got a stand ovation. | ||
| And I said, wait, I could probably make some money doing this. | ||
| So it really was money. | ||
| Money was your number one motivation. | ||
| When you're broke, money is, you know, talking about love and affection. | ||
| That's some bull. | ||
| He didn't have that luxury. | ||
| No luxury. | ||
| Get out of my way so I can count this money. | ||
| Where did you start out in L.A.? What clubs did you start out here? | ||
| Oh, I drove from Detroit to L.A. I moved to New York. | ||
| I moved to New York in 1971. I was about 30 years old. | ||
| 29, 30. I went to New York to be a fashion model. | ||
| I was a fashion model in Detroit. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Fashion, commercials. | ||
| I worked at Cadillac Motor Car. | ||
| And my job was plating bumpers, these big fucking bumpers. | ||
| And so, the bumpers, I need the money, so I'm picking this up. | ||
| Because, you know, now you're using adrenaline and you're losing endorphins and everything else you've got in your body. | ||
| The kid can't put that big bump on this fucking line so it'll keep going and get into the plating pit. | ||
| So I have now the bumper go down, and I had about three minutes. | ||
| I look at this magazine. | ||
| I saw a guy standing next to a car and said, I look better than that dude. | ||
| Damn. | ||
| I went to the Yellow Pages again and got me a call, the acting lady, called the modeling schools. | ||
| They said, oh sure, come on in. | ||
| They gave me a job that weekend. | ||
| I thought I was hot. | ||
| I went to New York. | ||
| Them dudes look ten times better than me. | ||
| I said, you a model? | ||
| They said, you a model? | ||
| I'm a midget model. | ||
| So I couldn't do that, so I got the hell out of there. | ||
| I went to New York. | ||
| I stayed in New York three years, back to L.A. I mean, I went back to Detroit, got a car and drove to L.A. by myself. | ||
| And when you went to L.A., you went to do stand-up? | ||
| Yeah, I went to do acting and stand-up. | ||
| I cut that modeling out. | ||
| That shit worked. | ||
| Where did you start out doing stand-up here? | ||
| At the Comedy Store. | ||
| The store. | ||
| Yeah, I was the first one. | ||
| I was there with Mitzi. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| I was there when Mitzi first started. | ||
| Sammy had the place. | ||
| Sammy and Mitzi breaking up. | ||
| Mitzi... | ||
| Sammy used to... | ||
| Sammy went on the roll. | ||
| Sammy was a big time comic. | ||
| He was working for Sphinx Sinatra and Dean Martin, all the... | ||
| He opened it for them. | ||
| Mitzi... | ||
| Needed somebody. | ||
| I needed a place. | ||
| So I got a job. | ||
| Mr. gave me a job as the emcee. | ||
| Dave Latimer was the emcee the first show. | ||
| I emcee the second show. | ||
| He didn't have no money then either. | ||
| He had a wife. | ||
| He had a red truck and a dog named Bob. | ||
| That's the only thing he came to LA with. | ||
| I just had this blue Mustang I bought for about $150 to drive to LA. $150 car drove all the way to LA. Wow. | ||
| You know, I was determined to get out there and get me some of that money. | ||
| That car leaked all the transmission fluid. | ||
| I had to get out every 200 miles to fill the car back up with oil and transmission fluid. | ||
| Every 200 miles? | ||
| Every 200 miles. | ||
| About that nightmare, you hear, oh, oh, you hear that shit. | ||
| And the only light you see is the headlights on the car. | ||
| At that point, I got my stick. | ||
| I had a stick with me. | ||
| I had a little funnel, put that oil in that car. | ||
| Looking around, you know what I'd be doing. | ||
| Uh-huh. | ||
| And got to California. | ||
| No, I actually went to Las Vegas first. | ||
| You got stuck. | ||
| I got stuck in Las Vegas. | ||
| Yeah, he told me about that. | ||
| What happened? | ||
| I blew his money. | ||
| I had a guy tell me. | ||
| Try to keep this thing in front of you. | ||
| Can you grab that? | ||
| Oh, here. | ||
| Yeah, man. | ||
| Please stand in front of the mic. | ||
| I had a guy tell me. | ||
| My friend, he rich boy, he said, look, just go to Las Vegas first, see what the comics are doing. | ||
| Then you go to LA, then you know what they're doing in Las Vegas. | ||
| That's the comics they work in Las Vegas all the time. | ||
| I went there, them old ass joke, Jewish joke they playing, they tell it. | ||
| But Gabe Kaplan, that's so funny, big head motherfucker ain't funny. | ||
| He's a good actor. | ||
| But he was... | ||
| I waste all my time. | ||
| But he told me to stay there half an hour. | ||
| I mean, half of 30 days to stay there. | ||
| So I paid up my rent for 30 days. | ||
| And I went that night, got my new, my navy suit on, and as sharp as I can be, boy. | ||
| Got modeling clothes, you know, standing around, you know, hair, big ol' afro. | ||
| Man, I lost every dime I had at that fuckin' horseshoe casino. | ||
| I went back home crying. | ||
| Now I don't know what the hell I'm going to do. | ||
| Here I've been drove two and a half days across the country. | ||
| And so I call people in Detroit to try to get some money. | ||
| But you know, when you call, you're a long ways away. | ||
| Everybody got no money. | ||
| People don't answer the phone. | ||
| They say, oh no, I ain't got no money. | ||
| Click! | ||
| So I got some borrowed money from some of my friends and had to stay there for six months. | ||
| Until I got no money to go to L.A. Well, you said that, didn't you tell me that you hit, you did one of the Salado machines and it hit with like three grand or something? | ||
| I had $150 left. | ||
| I saw Diana Ross. | ||
| See, what I would do, I would go at night and during the weekend, during the week, I mean, you can go to the front of the casinos and the guy in the front there, you say, I'm a comic, I just want to sit in the back here and watch the comic and I'm gone. | ||
| They let you do that. | ||
| You sit there, nobody's sitting there, got 2,000 seats in those places or something like that. | ||
| So I had a dollar and a half left. | ||
| I saw Diana Ross. | ||
| She had a great show. | ||
| So on the way, I said, I'm going to pay this fucking money. | ||
| I'll just be broke. | ||
| My check is coming from the unemployment. | ||
| It'll be here another day or two. | ||
| I can go without food for a day. | ||
| Jesus My stomach said You better put some down here nigga So So I put that money in the machine It rung up, I think it was $7,000. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Oh shit, now what have I done? | ||
| The guy came, he said, I just got on job. | ||
| Just hold on, sir. | ||
| I just got here. | ||
| You have struck the jackpot today. | ||
| I said, what jackpot? | ||
| He came and just put them $100 in my hand. | ||
| It was like a miracle. | ||
| It was like Moses came down and handed me some money or something. | ||
| It was so damn, that money felt so good. | ||
| I went home. | ||
| I packed my stuff. | ||
| I had about two more days on my rent. | ||
| I got in that car. | ||
| I got me some gas. | ||
| I drove. | ||
| You know how they have, in Vegas, they got this little island in the middle of the street. | ||
| Drove over that damn thing going back, going the opposite direction. | ||
| I said, hell with this. | ||
| And when you go over an island, the car said, boom! | ||
| Combs come out, dust come out, old combs, old stuff come out all on your seat, on your hands, your feet be dirty, dust be all over there. | ||
| I drove all the way from 3 o'clock in the morning, 4 o'clock in the morning, whatever time it was, I drove all the way back to L.A. Oh, man. | ||
| And my friend let me stay at her house for about a month. | ||
| Candy, she was a good friend of mine. | ||
| I'm glad she let me do that because that was amazing. | ||
| She lives in Beverly Hills from an apartment Motel, I mean, no money eating a potato. | ||
| I know what time me to get some money. | ||
| I'm eating a baked potato, a white potato now, with a white potato and some old bread and some syrup. | ||
| And I said, I gotta get the fuck out of here. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This ain't going up. | |
| This is not good for the kid. | ||
| I come out here with big plans. | ||
| I went straight to her house and I got a job at Gucci. | ||
| And I went to the comedy store and everything. | ||
| I just stayed there. | ||
| If you didn't go to Vegas, would you have even got stuck? | ||
| So that's a six-month waiting game that you had to play because you lost your money on accident. | ||
| The worst, I was counting airplanes coming in and taking off. | ||
| Of course, you can see them from my door. | ||
| You see the plane coming to Le Carre, I think the name of the hotel, the plane terminal. | ||
| They come in, you see them take off. | ||
| That's all I did all day long. | ||
| A plane coming in. | ||
| That's wild. | ||
| A plane taking off. | ||
| A plane coming in, a plane taking off. | ||
| And you're just stuck there. | ||
| Stuck in Las Vegas. | ||
| So I deserve my money. | ||
| So people tell me, you love money? | ||
| Yes, I deserve every dime. | ||
| Because I went through the shits. | ||
| Oh my God. | ||
| And that car lasted another four or five years. | ||
| Really? | ||
| 65 Mustang. | ||
| That's a great car. | ||
| It is a great car. | ||
| Regular gas. | ||
| I got me some new tires. | ||
| Like I told you, I got me some new tires. | ||
| A case of oil and a case of transmission. | ||
| And I got my old color TV and a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken. | ||
| Back then when you were trying to get up in the store, how did the auditions go? | ||
| What did they do? | ||
| No, you had to go through the... | ||
| Potluck. | ||
| You had to go through that. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, yeah. | |
| Open mic. | ||
| Same thing. | ||
| Same as today. | ||
| But there wasn't that many comics. | ||
| They had to close at about 11 o'clock because there's no comics that go on anymore. | ||
| How many comics were there? | ||
| Oh, it must have been about 10, 15. Really? | ||
| And what year is this? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Huh? | |
| What year is this? | ||
| 74. So it was the beginning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The very beginning. | |
| As soon as Mitzi just started. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| I was there in the beginning. | ||
| She liked me. | ||
| She would get me. | ||
| Johnny, come out of here and work the door. | ||
| You can do anything you want. | ||
| I said, I need a job, Mitzi. | ||
| So... | ||
| I hustled the door. | ||
| Mitzi, she said, y'all better watch Johnny. | ||
| He can make some money at that damn door. | ||
| What I would do, what do you call it, maitre d' or something? | ||
| What do you call that? | ||
| Yeah, maitre d'. | ||
| So I would put reserve signs in the front seats up there. | ||
| Reserve for the owner's grandmother. | ||
| Reserve for the mother's, Mitzi's father. | ||
| And so now the main room and the other room be crowded, packed. | ||
| I said, we sold out, sir. | ||
| He said, what are the tables up there for? | ||
| I said, that's the owner's grandmother to be here soon. | ||
| He said, well, $500 will put me in that seat. | ||
| I said, right now. | ||
| So I would make $200,000 a night, sometimes $500,000. | ||
| Just at the door. | ||
| Then she had me go MC and all that stuff. | ||
| Wait, you said $500,000? | ||
| You meant $500,000. | ||
| Oh, no, it wasn't that kind of money. | ||
| That picture's her. | ||
| That's Mitzi. | ||
| I know I recognize that picture. | ||
| That's when she was younger, though. | ||
| Yeah, there's a photo that was from the comedy store that was sitting around the back room, and Taylor Boss, he painted it. | ||
| Yeah, that's when I... That's what I knew her when she was like that. | ||
| She was a smart lady. | ||
| Sure was. | ||
| Let me tell you something, brother. | ||
| She was a whip. | ||
| She had her ways. | ||
| Yeah, she was definitely eccentric, but she's one of the most important people ever in comedy. | ||
| In comedy, and people don't realize that. | ||
| A lot of people don't realize it. | ||
| Mitzi was the shits. | ||
| She and little Pauly with his crazy head running around that little baby. | ||
| I know them all. | ||
| I know Pauly says she's a baby. | ||
| I know them all. | ||
| Mitzi, Mitzi Hamichani ain't got to come back. | ||
| We don't have nobody to work the door. | ||
| I can get up and go over there. | ||
| So I'm at the door. | ||
| I got 8 o'clock show. | ||
| You know, 8 o'clock. | ||
| So I'm obscene and working the door and everything and hosting the room and all that. | ||
| So I'm up there on stage. | ||
| You've got a little rope you put across the door and close the curtain. | ||
| And, you know, people come up in the original room. | ||
| They come up the steps there. | ||
| You know the original room? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So she's in the booth taking money, taking pictures, taking money and selling tickets. | ||
| She and I are the only one there working. | ||
| And the bar is in the back. | ||
| So Mitzi, I'm going to stay. | ||
| Now I've got 10 people in the room. | ||
| So she said, I'm just going in and I get them, give me the cover and you go ahead and put the rope back. | ||
| So now I'm up there about, I got 15 minutes. | ||
| She said about three minutes, four minutes until I'm like, Johnny! | ||
| There are people that lied! | ||
| Come down here and let them in. | ||
| You cannot do no more material. | ||
| Come on, Johnny. | ||
| I said, Mitzi, I'm trying to finish my act. | ||
| Johnny, come on. | ||
| I want to get this money. | ||
| That's what I learned from her, too. | ||
| I want to get this money before they turn around and go home. | ||
| Oh, God. | ||
| That was the funniest. | ||
| She's the funniest lady. | ||
| She's the funniest lady. | ||
| Let me tell you, she was hot. | ||
| She was tough. | ||
| Mitzi was tough. | ||
| She told me, you stick with me, I'll make you a rich man. | ||
| I said, Mitzi, I come here to be a comic. | ||
| I can come here to be no rich man. | ||
| I'm coming to be a comic. | ||
| But she's too much trouble. | ||
| Too eccentric. | ||
| Too eccentric. | ||
| I didn't want to hang around too long. | ||
| Argus is still there out of his mind. | ||
| Argus is still there. | ||
| He was there last night. | ||
| Yeah, I know it. | ||
| I go there and see him. | ||
| I see him all the time. | ||
| When I go by there, I only go once a year or so. | ||
| But I see Argus. | ||
| I like Argus. | ||
| He's talented. | ||
| He is. | ||
| A genius, but he didn't want to leave the comic store. | ||
| He's got a radio station downstairs, he told me. | ||
| They have a podcast. | ||
| Oh, it's a podcast. | ||
| Yeah, they have a podcast studio. | ||
| You ever know that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah. | |
| It's a good studio. | ||
| But Mitzi, I've been knowing Mitzi. | ||
| I knew her in 1974 when I went over there. | ||
| And I noticed when I got on Open Mic Night, for people who want to try to become on the regular show, Mitzi used to love Impressionists. | ||
| She loves people who can do voices. | ||
| And I just realized that after about three weeks of being there trying to be funny, I'm doing old Red Fox jokes. | ||
| The horse race was going and the jockey was riding on my dick. | ||
| The horse name was my dick. | ||
| This fucking Red Fox used to be... | ||
| He would come by and he would be so fucking funny. | ||
| So then the person come out and sing. | ||
| She love people to sing. | ||
| Tina Turner. | ||
| Women that sing Tina Turner. | ||
| She put two or three of them right behind each other. | ||
| They do the same song. | ||
| Jesus. | ||
| I said, Missy's going crazy. | ||
| Why do you think she did that? | ||
| She loved impressionists. | ||
| But she put them on back-to-back? | ||
| And she loved the women. | ||
| Because, you know, the women, all of them got the same impressions. | ||
| But she put two or three of them on the same show. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Same impressions. | ||
| I went up there. | ||
| I started doing impressions. | ||
| Because I did them in Detroit on the show there with Nat King Cole and them. | ||
| She said, oh, Johnny, this is so wonderful. | ||
| I want you to work Friday night. | ||
| She put me on early. | ||
| He put me on some nice times and said... | ||
| But she wanted me to stay with her on that door and emceeing. | ||
| Help her out. | ||
| She had me close the place one day. | ||
| I shouldn't be responsible for this. | ||
| Close the door. | ||
| Just lock the fucking door. | ||
| Well, she's always had comics work there. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| From the beginning. | ||
| All the time. | ||
| All the time. | ||
| I wanted to work. | ||
| I wanted to work there. | ||
| Most of them comics live in her house up there. | ||
| In Crest Hill? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, they lived on the hill there. | ||
| She bought all the property around there. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Mitzi owned so much money when she died. | ||
| Oh, my God. | ||
| The house up on this house... | ||
| You know the house she had up on the hill there? | ||
| Cresthill, yeah. | ||
| That's the name of the house? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| That was the one where a lot of comics lived in it, right? | ||
| No, no, no, no. | ||
| The comics lived behind a comedy store up the hill. | ||
| She got about three or four of those. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| She owned about three or four. | ||
| I went over there. | ||
| She would have a party over there. | ||
| The fucking party was fabulous. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, look at California. | |
| And these dudes got the house all dirty. | ||
| You know, they didn't see why they tried to make the bed. | ||
| The cover was thrown on top of the bed. | ||
| You know, just thrown. | ||
| Nothing tucked in or nothing. | ||
| And Mitzi owned all that back up in there. | ||
| I almost bought that Crest Hill house. | ||
| It was for sale back in the day. | ||
| I went to look at it. | ||
| But I had a dog. | ||
| I was pretty sure he was going to get out of that backyard. | ||
| I had a crazy dog. | ||
| I was like, this is not a good yard. | ||
| It's the one right behind the store, right? | ||
| I think, does Pauly have it? | ||
| Pauly's got the one that's up and to the right. | ||
| Oh, okay. | ||
| He's got one that's at the top of the driveway. | ||
| He owns it, I think. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| I saw him the other night at the store in the parking lot, and he was telling me how he used to watch him. | ||
| Oh, my God. | ||
| I knew this little sucker. | ||
| I didn't watch his ass. | ||
| I watched him run into the wall and stuff. | ||
| He had Kennison babysitting him, man. | ||
| Kennison used to babysit him, too. | ||
| That's crazy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, my God. | |
| Can you imagine leaving your fucking child with Kennison? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| Kennison was... | ||
| I told David Letterman, he said, Spoon, anybody new at the comedy store that's real funny? | ||
| I said, man, you got to see this crazy dude named Sam Kennison. | ||
| And so he said, have him send me tape or something or give us a call on the show. | ||
| I said, Dave, you're going to love him. | ||
| Man, Sam went on that show where Dave just fell on the floor. | ||
| Sam was so funny. | ||
| And Sam, I said, Sam, David Letterman, I want to see you on this show. | ||
| He said, oh, really? | ||
| It's the first time he ever got on TV. Wow. | ||
| And he was always been my friend. | ||
| Sam? | ||
| Sam Kenneth always was my friend. | ||
| So I used to work. | ||
| Mitzi, after a while, she would get these young cats, like David Letterman, to be the emcee of the first show. | ||
| So I would work at the 12 o'clock show, all the crazy people on the show. | ||
| Me, Paul Mooney, Sam Kennison, all the... | ||
| What's the boy's name? | ||
| He'd do Elvis, and he did... | ||
| Andy Kaufman? | ||
| Andy Kaufman. | ||
| I remember introducing him. | ||
| I introduced all of them. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He said, my name is Andy Cogman. | |
| Yeah, I know. | ||
| They come to me and tell me how they want me to introduce them. | ||
| Just say, I'm Andy Cogman. | ||
| I'm looking at this dude like he's out of his fucking mind. | ||
| I'm Andy Cogman. | ||
| Lenny Schultz. | ||
| You ever seen him? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| Crazy Lenny. | ||
| Crazy Lenny with the pigs. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| He used to bring dolls on stage and punch them. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, wow. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| It was so great. | ||
| He had a base to do about, like, remember the only, the bear, Smokey the Bear? | ||
| Only you could prevent four. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah. | |
| He would pull out the bear. | ||
| Only you could prevent four. | ||
| Sorry, he was, fuck you! | ||
| And he punched the bear. | ||
| It was so ridiculous. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And people would come to him just to see Lenny. | |
| He would go nuts. | ||
| He was like really crazy expressions. | ||
| He was just an unbelievably funny guy. | ||
| Like a naturally funny guy. | ||
| He was an East Coast legend. | ||
| Oh, where? | ||
| Yeah, he's one of those guys. | ||
| Then he got, I forget, a lady broke up or something. | ||
| And they got a divorce or she moved out or something. | ||
| Oh, my God. | ||
| Then it was crazy then, boy. | ||
| He was bears and all that shit that he would beat up. | ||
| He was whipping their asses. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Did you know Bob Woods? | |
| Bob Woods is another legend. | ||
| Another East Coast legend. | ||
| He's East Coast? | ||
| Big giant guy. | ||
| He was like a Long Island legend. | ||
| So he didn't play in the comic store that much? | ||
| I don't think he ever made it out. | ||
| Oh, he didn't make it out. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| There's a few of them. | ||
| If he did, he didn't stay. | ||
| I'm hanging. | ||
| There's Bob Woods. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Oh, where? | ||
| Oh, no, I didn't know him. | ||
| Yeah, he was a Long Island legend. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Yeah, back in those days, he was a legend in Long Island around the same time, like those Boston guys, like Lenny Clark. | ||
| They were all big time in Boston back then. | ||
| I knew all the Boston guys. | ||
| They were tough. | ||
| They don't have a club there anymore not well they have laugh Boston They do local headliners they have Nick's comedy stop You know laugh Boston does guys that tour there go there, too But I mean they still have some like good local talent and then they do like the Wilbur but it used to be there It's like 10 fucking clubs That's what I like. | ||
| Oh, but they got people. | ||
| They jammed into each other. | ||
| People come in late. | ||
| They come in late and they're trying to get to the front. | ||
| When they got to see that, they take 30 minutes. | ||
| I say, bring your ass on up here. | ||
| Jump over somebody. | ||
| Jump over the divider? | ||
| I filmed my last special at the Wilbur. | ||
| At the Wilbur? | ||
| Yeah, I loved it. | ||
| I like the club in Chicopee. | ||
| Oh, that place way out there. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| About an hour and a half. | ||
| You got to drive an hour and a half. | ||
| And the club at the... | ||
| What is the mall right there? | ||
| They call it what the other club used to be. | ||
| What is the name of that club? | ||
| In Andover? | ||
| Is that what you're thinking of? | ||
| No, it's right there at the mall. | ||
| You know, where all the stores and things. | ||
| Oh, Faneuil Hall? | ||
| Faneuil Hall. | ||
| Yeah, the Comedy Connection, Faneuil Hall. | ||
| That's gone. | ||
| Yeah, that's gone. | ||
| It's been gone. | ||
| That was amazing. | ||
| That was a good club. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| What, about four or five hundred? | ||
| It was a big place. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And you do a show there and then drive all the way to Chicken Pea an hour and a half. | ||
| Then an hour and a half back and do another show on Friday. | ||
| Oh, man. | ||
| I can't do this. | ||
| And then you go out to Chicopee. | ||
| It's a Chinese-Hawaiian restaurant. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And they try to give you enough to last a whole month. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What? | |
| You eat. | ||
| Then they try to give you enough to take with you. | ||
| To go box. | ||
| To go box that's bulging with food. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| They gotta get rid of it. | ||
| Oh my god. | ||
| Excellent. | ||
| And the food was excellent. | ||
| It's gone, I'm told. | ||
| Is it gone? | ||
| The kids. | ||
| The kids didn't want to stay there. | ||
| I think that's what it was. | ||
| The mother and father died. | ||
| Oh, and the kids didn't want to keep running the restaurant? | ||
| They didn't want to keep the place. | ||
| Beautiful place. | ||
| And then near Hartford, Connecticut. | ||
| Hartford. | ||
| Because Chicopee is in... | ||
| Chicopee... | ||
| Chicopee is in Massachusetts. | ||
| Western Massachusetts? | ||
| Massachusetts, yeah. | ||
| But those were the days, boy. | ||
| Long ass flight. | ||
| But I love the fact that the airport was 10 minutes from the hotel. | ||
| Get you in, get you out. | ||
| Get me in, get out. | ||
| There was a lot of clubs back then. | ||
| Oh my god, a lot of clubs. | ||
| It's interesting, there's more comics now than ever, but I don't know if there's more clubs. | ||
| Well, they got a lot of clubs around, but they only book... | ||
| They don't have... | ||
| Showcase nights. | ||
| Like, they have 15, 20 comics. | ||
| They don't have that. | ||
| They have three comics, and that's all they have. | ||
| So they make their money. | ||
| It's a whole different ballgame. | ||
| There's, like, independent shows now. | ||
| That's how it is nowadays. | ||
| Like, the club circuit's pretty kind of the same. | ||
| There's some new clubs, but, you know, I hear, like, most clubs on the road, like, they're not, like, the ones out here or New York. | ||
| No, they're not. | ||
| Because you don't get a chance to really showcase. | ||
| You have to either already be somebody or... | ||
| They book you in January. | ||
| Yeah, be on your way type of thing. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I've been booked, what, Kansas City? | ||
| I've been booked January 2nd or 3rd in Kansas City. | ||
| When is it? | ||
| When is it? | ||
| Next, this week is 20. It'll be December 1st, December. | ||
|
unidentified
|
June. | |
| I mean, June will be, what, Friday or Saturday? | ||
| This weekend. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, Saturday. | ||
| Saturday. | ||
| I've been booked six months on this Babel already. | ||
| Jesus Christ. | ||
| Six months solid. | ||
| I'm talking about a book in this club six months ago. | ||
| I'm booked all year for this year. | ||
| I got dates. | ||
| I wish I brought my stuff. | ||
| I have dates that I know I'm going to do in December 12th to the 15th. | ||
| I think I'm going to be in Arlington, Texas. | ||
| But I know that you get with Chris Smith and them, but they want 10%. | ||
| But they book your ass. | ||
| If you want to get to a club, you can get that. | ||
| They have you book your book. | ||
| You be in bed talking about book. | ||
| I'm booked. | ||
| I'm booked too much. | ||
| Do you still enjoy the shows, though? | ||
| No. | ||
| I've had enough. | ||
| I've had enough. | ||
| You know your fans may or may not watch or listen to this, right? | ||
| They know that, you know, it's hard work. | ||
| It's hard work. | ||
| You're there performing, yeah. | ||
| Whenever I've done shows with him, the moment, because, you know, I'll hang out, because after every show, he'll try to sell merch and take pictures, but as soon as he gets in the green room, he's like, gee, do you see how hard I work? | ||
| You see this? | ||
|
unidentified
|
You see all this I'm doing right here? | |
| You don't know nothing about this hard work. | ||
| I'm like, okay. | ||
| Your business is tough. | ||
| Yeah, it's a grind. | ||
| You do five, six weeks in a row. | ||
| That's what I hate. | ||
| I'm on my second of five weeks. | ||
| It's the second week now. | ||
| So I got to go next week. | ||
| I go to Hartford, Connecticut. | ||
| Hartford Springfield. | ||
| That's why you actually fly to that. | ||
| Then I go to Memphis. | ||
| So wait, you said you hate it, but why don't you just stop? | ||
| Paper. | ||
| Paper. | ||
| You set him up. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He's lobbing his way. | |
| The only time I've ever seen him do anything outside, because he's old school, so it's one of those things where he's so used to, like, you know, he's so used to, he's got his agents, his managers, and he's so used to someone giving him work. | ||
| So it's one of those things where I'm, you know, on the road, you're giving the spots, you're giving the clubs. | ||
| And I was like, well, what do you like doing? | ||
| Because you asked that earlier, and like... | ||
| The one thing that we've made between him doing comedy and now is we created a YouTube channel for him where he does a cooking show. | ||
| He has his own YouTube channel because I do YouTube and all this stuff. | ||
| I do gaming videos and a bunch of other random stuff, sketches and vlogs. | ||
| He was like, well, I guess I got a little time off. | ||
| We can do something random. | ||
| He's like, maybe we can do this cooking idea I got. | ||
| I said, sure, let's do it. | ||
| We create the channel, we make it, and it's called Cooking for Poor People. | ||
| Cooking for Poor People because when you're hungry, everything tastes good. | ||
| Yes, and his channel is The John. | ||
| So I eat a bunch of crap. | ||
| I cook a bunch of crap. | ||
| Like what kind of food? | ||
| Chicken feet and rice. | ||
| Chicken feet? | ||
| We did chicken feet, pig feet, oxtail. | ||
| Oh, I've had chicken feet. | ||
| What is chicken feet like? | ||
| Tough. | ||
| You gotta be. | ||
| Asian people eat it. | ||
| Chinese people eat it every day. | ||
| He tried to feed it to our dog and our dog ran away from him. | ||
| So that's like a clip from the video. | ||
| He don't know what a delicacy it was. | ||
| That's what that was. | ||
| And then I recommend wine. | ||
| I have wine. | ||
| I have a tall glass of Mad Dog 2020 with them chicken feet. | ||
| With them chicken feet. | ||
| And Thunderbird. | ||
| Thunderbird wine. | ||
| Thunderbird wine. | ||
| Cisco. | ||
| Where do you get Mad Dog 2020? | ||
| He's good at finding these. | ||
| That's a place right there on Van Nuys. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Really? | |
| Some Mexicans sell it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And they're hanging out in the, you know, just like an old school. | ||
| They're hanging out in the front with their bottle. | ||
| They bring it down here and hide it behind the crate. | ||
| And they bring it up and hit that. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Then they go buy some more. | ||
| I'm shocked that it had it. | ||
| There you go. | ||
| So I helped them produce and create, help them work on this thing. | ||
| But, you know, it gets good. | ||
| Look at that pig feet right there. | ||
| Shelly threw my shit away. | ||
| I can't believe she threw the old pig feet away. | ||
| It ain't old. | ||
| I like the kitchen, too. | ||
| Yeah, that's old school. | ||
| Whose kitchen is that? | ||
| It's his. | ||
| It's the house we have. | ||
| We bought the house next to us. | ||
| Oh, nice. | ||
| So I got the house next to me, and I tore the whole fence down. | ||
| Guess house, kitchen. | ||
| And I got all that old kitchen. | ||
| So I said, I'm going to leave that. | ||
| I'm going to leave that kitchen away. | ||
| That's a perfect kitchen for a show on cooking. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's tight and old school. | ||
| It reminds you of growing up. | ||
| Yeah, and it works well. | ||
| I think we made maybe 12, 15 of these things, but people watch them. | ||
| It's just one of those things where he works on the road. | ||
| So whenever free time comes around, we used to sit back and knock them out and try to shoot them, and I would edit them and whatnot. | ||
| But now I'm busy, so he has an editor. | ||
| But I try to help him market it when it's finished. | ||
| I'm like, alright, post it on the social platforms, get it out there and whatnot. | ||
| What about a comedy special? | ||
| I've done that. | ||
| Showtime. | ||
| You think about doing one now? | ||
| I did one. | ||
| I paid for it myself, but... | ||
| How long ago? | ||
| My stomach's too big. | ||
| I looked at that damn stomach of mine and said, oh man, what the fuck? | ||
| I would have spent $10,000 with a $15,000 stomach. | ||
| It was horrible. | ||
| How long ago was this that you filmed it? | ||
| Oh, I did it, though. | ||
| I must have been, let's see, about four years ago, four or five years ago. | ||
| Did you release it? | ||
| No, I got it. | ||
| Oh, you're talking about that one. | ||
| I thought you were talking about the one that's already done and out there. | ||
| No, that's called You Gotta Coordinate. | ||
| Yeah, that one was from Showtime. | ||
| So you made one, you didn't release it because you didn't like your stomach? | ||
| I didn't like my stomach. | ||
| But you also didn't get anybody to finish editing it, right? | ||
| Did they finish it? | ||
| It's all finished. | ||
| It's finished? | ||
| I didn't know that. | ||
| What's your friend's name that does animation and stuff? | ||
| Gabe? | ||
| Gabe did the album. | ||
| He did the artwork. | ||
| The artwork on it. | ||
| Oh, that's random. | ||
| I didn't know you finished. | ||
| I thought you always shelved that because you watched it and you didn't like the way it came out and then you never finished editing and posting it. | ||
| I didn't like the way my stomach came out. | ||
| You better take that right now and sell that bad boy. | ||
| I gotta look at it. | ||
| I hate to see myself, my stomach be... | ||
| Why don't you get somebody else to look at it? | ||
| I'm gonna do that. | ||
| Just plug your ears and just walk away from it. | ||
| Why don't you cut that wine and bring that stomach down and do your thing? | ||
| Everybody need a little taste. | ||
| No, it never makes any sense. | ||
| Never makes any sense. | ||
| Joe should have some wine here for me right now. | ||
| I'll get some if you like some. | ||
| Joe, don't get him anymore. | ||
| We have wine in the back. | ||
| Oh my gosh. | ||
| A bunch of liquor on that, a bunch of whiskey. | ||
| He's just going to shame himself later in the mirror. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, look at that joke-ass wine. | |
| That big bottle is probably one. | ||
| Go joke-ass wine. | ||
| But you don't want to lose weight, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I want to lose weight, but they say you got to stop. | |
| He wants to lose it while drinking alcohol. | ||
| They want you to stop drinking. | ||
| Or take it in increments. | ||
| Break, dude. | ||
| I do. | ||
| I get a bottle a day. | ||
| Do you drink a whole bottle a day? | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| You can't... | ||
| You should get together with Ron White. | ||
| Dude. | ||
| No, he drank that hard shit. | ||
| I don't want that shit he drinking. | ||
| That shit kill you. | ||
| He drinks his own tequila. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, yeah. | |
| I saw that last night. | ||
| He was in the back bar. | ||
| Yeah, we had some of his tequila. | ||
| He drank too much. | ||
| I know that shit's getting him fucked up on stage. | ||
| I see him up there. | ||
| He can act like he's not drunk. | ||
| That motherfucker drunk as he can be. | ||
| Ron White goes hard. | ||
| Yeah, he goes very hard. | ||
| He goes hard. | ||
| He goes hard every fucking night of the week, too. | ||
| Yeah, that's tough. | ||
| It's tough. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But it's working out. | ||
| I drink white wine, Chardonnay. | ||
| Oh, nice and light. | ||
| Then I drink a little Cabernet Sauvignon. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Nice red. | |
| Yeah, red wine. | ||
| But then you get another one and then maybe one more. | ||
| And then you get the bottle and pull it up to your mouth and drink your swig and then put it away and go to bed. | ||
| That ain't nothing bad with that. | ||
| Till the next day. | ||
| Till the next bottle. | ||
| Out of all the things you drink though, give me another swig. | ||
| There's some evidence that wine's good for you. | ||
| A little bit of wine? | ||
| A little bit of wine's not bad for you. | ||
| A little bit. | ||
| Two glasses of wine a day for longevity and health. | ||
| Yeah, there you go. | ||
| How much wine's in the glass and how big's the glass? | ||
| Glass, glass. | ||
| I said, well, what about ten? | ||
| If you're so good, what about ten glasses? | ||
| That's even better. | ||
| Man. | ||
| It'll get you ready to go to work. | ||
| You gotta go back. | ||
| I'm in no rush. | ||
| I'd say something if I had somewhere to be. | ||
| I don't want you rushing down that freeway. | ||
| He's being a dad. | ||
| Good for you. | ||
| I'm being a dad. | ||
| I got money at home. | ||
| I got a couch. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What? | |
| It always comes full circle. | ||
| No, I host a show. | ||
| Was he always like this? | ||
| Always. | ||
| Oh, no. | ||
| I've got friends who ask me, so your dad, that's who he is? | ||
| Is that a character? | ||
| I'm like, oh, no, no, no. | ||
| He got on for being himself. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| He's one of the lucky... | ||
| He's professionally himself. | ||
| Yeah, I told him that jokingly back in the day. | ||
| I was like, you know you're lucky, right? | ||
| He's like, what do you mean? | ||
| I was like, you are where you are because you are who you are. | ||
| You don't have to fake it. | ||
| You just go... | ||
| No, you're supposed to. | ||
| When you're acting, you should be yourself. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You're funny enough. | ||
| Definitely be yourself. | ||
| You gotta be yourself. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I'm on the cartoon. | ||
| What is it? | ||
| The Boondocks? | ||
| I didn't change my voice for the Boondocks. | ||
| No. | ||
| I did all. | ||
| I did that. | ||
| And they're coming back. | ||
| The Boondocks are coming back. | ||
| That's a great show. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's one of the best cartoons I've ever been on. | ||
| I met the dude who created it. | ||
| He was friends with my friend Todd. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And Magruder. | ||
| Smart dude. | ||
| Very smart. | ||
| He did, but like Jesus also. | ||
| He wrote that too. | ||
| Like Jesus. | ||
| That's another one that you're on. | ||
| That he fell into. | ||
| That's the funny part. | ||
| Because remember, the thing is, I went in for that show to play one of the leads or whatever. | ||
| It didn't happen, but I remember, because he's friends with Aaron and whatnot, Aaron just called him in to do a one-day role. | ||
| Remember? | ||
| Yeah, he wanted me to... | ||
| He said, John, we need your character to just do the pilot. | ||
| I said, yeah, I'll try it, man. | ||
| I don't feel like doing no Jesus. | ||
| I'm a homeless man, so... | ||
| I got into it. | ||
| I thought it was cool. | ||
| He said, who wants a job? | ||
| It's yours. | ||
| I said, well, good. | ||
| So he went in to do a guest star role, and then they were like, dang, he's funnier than what we were thinking. | ||
| So they gave him a role. | ||
| He was a serious writer. | ||
| You did three seasons. | ||
| You did two that aired. | ||
| We finished the third. | ||
| You did a third one, and it hasn't aired yet. | ||
| And I used... | ||
| See, when I did Hollywood Shuffle, I played a man who had lost everything. | ||
| He was homeless. | ||
| So I'm sitting out there. | ||
| And Robert Townsend didn't have any money for wardrobe. | ||
| So I went to the second-hand store, Goodwill, and bought coveralls and an old shirt. | ||
| And I had a T-shirt that I tore and put a pin to put it back up. | ||
| So that was... | ||
| I thought that was clever. | ||
| So this happened... | ||
| 20 years ago, I kept that outfit in my garage for 20 years. | ||
| And I used it on Black Jesus. | ||
| Same thing I wore on the Hollywood Shuffle. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Not Hollywood Shuffle. | ||
| What was it? | ||
| Whole Cake. | ||
| What's the name of that? | ||
| Hollywood Shuffle, that's it. | ||
| That was Hollywood Shuffle. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| There it is! | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| He got all that stuff. | ||
| But then they, so yeah, so then they took, so then he wore it, they did their thing, and then they were like, well, this thing stinks, so we'll just recreate it for you. | ||
| They did everything over, got the same outfit. | ||
| That I had. | ||
| Look at that one. | ||
| I got Thunderbird wine. | ||
| I got my little wine. | ||
| Look at that. | ||
| Four cakes. | ||
| Whatever happened to Robert Townsend? | ||
| What is he up to? | ||
| He's a director now. | ||
| Just directing different movies? | ||
| A lot of different movies and commercials and things. | ||
| He used to do stand-up too. | ||
| Oh yeah. | ||
| We used to go on tour with him. | ||
| We worked all the big places. | ||
| I remember his specials. | ||
| He always had those HBO comedy specials. | ||
| Damon Wayans did them. | ||
| A bunch of people did them. | ||
| Yeah, Robert Towns. | ||
| He's still around. | ||
| I saw a picture on my phone. | ||
| I don't know how. | ||
| Where's my phone? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| It's probably in your jacket, man. | ||
| I don't want to lose my phone. | ||
| He does that at home. | ||
| He'll say, hey, I don't live with him. | ||
| I'm grown. | ||
| I'm married and all that stuff. | ||
| I live on my own with my wife. | ||
| He'll call me and say, JD, you seen my cameras? | ||
| I moved my camera and I don't know where it is. | ||
| I was like, I don't live with you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't live with you. | |
| I have no idea where your things are. | ||
| He's like, well, you know. | ||
| And my brother lives with him still, so it's one of those things where I'm like, why don't you ask Alex? | ||
| He's around, or someone who maybe is at the house more often. | ||
| He's like, I feel like you might be the one who might know what his thing is. | ||
| Because I've seen you around here. | ||
| I know you come around. | ||
| You come take my things. | ||
| They take my stuff. | ||
| I don't get me. | ||
| They take your stuff? | ||
| I buy cameras. | ||
| I buy a camera and put it over there. | ||
| Because I know where it's at because it's over there. | ||
| I come back, it ain't over there now. | ||
| I have no idea where it's at now because I put it over there. | ||
| That's because you and Mom and Alex and whoever else roams through the house will move things around all the time. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm not there. | |
| I'm not there to move things. | ||
| But I know where I put things in. | ||
| When I come back, it's not there. | ||
| But the thing is, why do you call me when I'm never there? | ||
| You know where they are. | ||
|
unidentified
|
See? | |
| It doesn't make any sense. | ||
| You and your mama know where. | ||
| Mom will take his stuff. | ||
| Mom will go shoot her stuff because she produces and does her little independent movies. | ||
| So when she grabs your cameras, that's where they move to. | ||
| Did you feel pressure doing stand-up because this is your dad? | ||
| No, actually. | ||
| I didn't want to do it. | ||
| Never. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Really? | |
| Because I got into acting and I thought that was far enough. | ||
| I was like, oh, my dad already does that. | ||
| I don't want to... | ||
| I don't want to jump in on the rest of that stuff. | ||
| And acting was just kind of like on a whim. | ||
| And then stand-up was like a dare. | ||
| A friend of mine was like, we should... | ||
| Because we, back in the day, not too long ago, maybe early, 2011 or 12. It's not back in the day. | ||
| But me and my boys were hanging out one night in our 20s, and we just went... | ||
| We had come from a club, and we drove past the Laugh Factory. | ||
| And I was like, you guys want to go watch comedy? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I was like 24 or something. | ||
| I was like, I used to know that. | ||
| I was like, the owner knows me from when I was a baby. | ||
| If he's there, maybe... | ||
| He's going to babysit you. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| Jamie Masada. | ||
| Buddy, I watch your baby, buddy. | ||
| I take care of baby for you. | ||
| That's his introduction. | ||
| Every time I'm there, whenever I do shows, that's his introduction for me. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He'll be like, hey, buddy, I want you to meet Johnny Witherspoon, son. | |
| I used to carry him when he was a baby. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Buddy, I used to carry him around like a baby. | |
| Bring him on stage. | ||
| Yeah, we went there... | ||
| We went there randomly one night. | ||
| That's so fucking funny. | ||
| That's good. | ||
| That's a good impression. | ||
| We went there randomly one night and I remember the door guy, I was like, hey, is Jamie here? | ||
| And he's like, Jamie who? | ||
| As if I didn't know him. | ||
| I was back then. | ||
| I was like, you know, the owner? | ||
| And he's like, tell him J.D. Witherspoon's here. | ||
| I didn't think anything. | ||
| I don't use my name like that. | ||
| But then he comes down and he's like... | ||
| Buddy, what are you doing here? | ||
| This and that. | ||
| You're doing comedy? | ||
| I'm like, no, no, no. | ||
| Me and my friend, we just won't watch the show. | ||
| He's like, yeah, come in. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Let's get him a bottle of wine, all that stuff, and we're just hanging out. | |
| But then later, through the night, he was talking. | ||
| He was like, so you're trying to do comedy like your dad? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I was like, no! | |
| I'm good. | ||
| I don't care to do that. | ||
| I'm fine. | ||
| And my friends were with me. | ||
| He's like, come on. | ||
| He's like, you should try it. | ||
| You're probably funny. | ||
| Maybe even funnier than him, buddy. | ||
| And I was like, I don't know. | ||
| But then later on that same week, he was like, well, if you ever want to come by, he said, swing by, do the open mic or whatever. | ||
| And my boy Henry, whatever. | ||
| Henry was like, hey, we should do that, man. | ||
| That'd be kind of funny. | ||
| You know, maybe we be comedians. | ||
| I was like, nah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Nah. | |
| I don't think so. | ||
| And then one night we just said, I think I had someone's email from the Laugh Factory and hit them up. | ||
| It was like, hey, me and my buddy are going to come by. | ||
| Maybe we can do the mic. | ||
| And then they were like, yeah, sure, we'll throw you up, this and that. | ||
| And my buddy Henry, he's the one who pressured me into it. | ||
| We practiced our jokes on camera at home to see how that would look. | ||
| It was the weirdest thing. | ||
| It was so weird. | ||
| Because I was getting into creating content and I was going to film school and I was making my YouTube videos. | ||
| I was doing sketch comedy on YouTube. | ||
| And then we shot a little thing. | ||
| We watched it back. | ||
| I was like, I guess. | ||
| And then we went to the mic that night and we went. | ||
| I did it. | ||
| I was at the back end of the lineup so I actually had a decent crowd. | ||
| It was like, because it starts off, there's nobody there. | ||
| It's just comics. | ||
| And then By the time it was my turn, it was close to the 8 o'clock show, so it was like 35, 40 people. | ||
| I had three jokes for my three-minute set, clean, and I did it, and they did all right. | ||
| People laughed, and I was like, oh, okay, that's cool, random, you know? | ||
| And I didn't think much of it. | ||
| Henry bombed. | ||
| Yeah, no, but it was just one of those things where after that... | ||
| Piss. | ||
| Go ahead, go ahead. | ||
| Right up there past the werewolf. | ||
| Where's the camera at? | ||
| No, the camera's up here. | ||
| The camera's over there. | ||
| If you gotta go piss, say it to the camera. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He just said it. | |
| He just said it. | ||
| Oh, man. | ||
| But yeah, no, so we... | ||
| Shit. | ||
| Dude, your dad is a trip. | ||
| He's so funny, man. | ||
| I got a bit about how when you just get old, you just don't care. | ||
| You just don't care about what you say. | ||
| He doesn't give a fuck. | ||
| No, not at all. | ||
| But also, that's part of who he is. | ||
| Part of his business is not giving a fuck. | ||
| Yeah, pretty much. | ||
| How funny is he, though, man? | ||
| He's the funniest dude I personally know. | ||
| That's how I categorize it. | ||
| I would think that if that was my dad, I would feel a lot of pressure. | ||
| I think it's pressure if I, from the beginning, always want to do stand-up. | ||
| You know, kind of like a Michael Jordan thing. | ||
| I never, like, it was all, a majority of the stuff I do now is very, like, just happenstance. | ||
| It's like, oh, I just fell into this, and I'm alright at it, so I'll just keep doing it. | ||
| Why not? | ||
| You know, when it comes to things like YouTube, and, like, I know you do unboxing videos and game-related videos, you can kind of do that now. | ||
| If you're an interesting person, you don't really need much. | ||
| No, no, definitely not with the internet. | ||
| Your dad, if you came along today, if he just didn't exist and all of a sudden he didn't have this giant body of work, and you just put a camera on your dad like, this is my dad, your dad could be fucking famous today. | ||
| If he was a guy that works at the post office, just a regular guy, and you were telling your friends, my dad is the funniest fucking guy alive, and then you put a camera on him, he would blow up. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| It's interesting and whatnot. | ||
| I never really think of it because people always ask me when I was growing up, they'd be like, how is it that your dad, how do you feel? | ||
| I used to get that all the time. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Kids would be like, your dad's whoever, blah, blah, blah, famous this and that, Friday, the Wayans Brothers. | |
| And I'm just like, yeah, but to me, he's just my dad. | ||
| He's just a goofball. | ||
| It's normal. | ||
| I get it. | ||
| To you guys, you see somebody who's an entertainer and whatnot. | ||
| I'm like, he's always like that. | ||
| Dude, how funny is he shelved his special because he doesn't like his style again. | ||
| Oh, he does funnier stuff. | ||
| He does weirder stuff. | ||
| You gotta find that special and get it out. | ||
| Oh, I mean, we could post it. | ||
| It's definitely... | ||
| Or he could sell it. | ||
| And nowadays, he could hit up... | ||
| I'm sure his people could hit up Netflix. | ||
| Like, we have a body of work. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| People would watch it. | ||
| That's the thing. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Could you talk him into doing a new special? | ||
| Gotta get that stomach down. | ||
| I'll have to talk him into coming back here and hitting the gym. | ||
| Does he exercise? | ||
| He does, but the main thing is the consumption. | ||
| Alright, let's cut back on drinking and then continue exercising. | ||
| You'll see the change. | ||
| I try to tell him, do a drink every other day. | ||
| Doesn't sound like he's interested in that. | ||
| No, it doesn't, does it? | ||
| It sounds like he's 100% interested in drinking. | ||
| He's 100% enjoying that money and drinking my wine. | ||
| He's having a good time. | ||
| He's back. | ||
| He's living his life, enjoying it. | ||
| That's how I got into comedy and then I just kept doing it and my friend was like, yeah, I'm good. | ||
| How many years are you doing it now? | ||
| I would say I started in 2012, but I want to say I didn't continue in the beginning so consistently. | ||
| I did mics for the first two years, and then I started getting booked on shows. | ||
| And then I kind of got lazy. | ||
| It was one of those things where everything I was doing, I would weigh my options. | ||
| If something was more of an opportunity, I would do that over trying to get better at stand-up. | ||
| But now I've been consistent for like three years. | ||
| Three to four years just like grinding at it because I've made strides doing things and acting and creating content on the internet. | ||
| So now I kind of have... | ||
| I guess a little bit of a cushion to just go and get good now, you know, because I've been working. | ||
| You're doing other stuff. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You don't have to totally rely on it. | ||
| Well, it's one of those things where because I don't have to rely on it, it's that much more something I want to approach. | ||
| I'm like, oh, well, now I can have fun. | ||
| I don't feel pressured, not with anything about that, but more like I don't feel pressured to get booked, get booked, get on a show, get a special this and that. | ||
| Get that money. | ||
| I just feel like, oh, I can just take time and get good now. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Thumbs up. | ||
| You were around when Pryor was in his heyday. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| That must have been something. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| So you were just kind of... | ||
| In 74, when you were just getting there, Pryor, he was in the peak. | ||
| He was already... | ||
| He was in the peak, right? | ||
| Big time. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| He was big time. | ||
| And... | ||
| What was that like? | ||
| It was, he would, you know, when I was around the comedy store, I was basically the host of the comedy store. | ||
| When I emceed, you know, and I go to the door. | ||
| If they have a problem, I go to the door and settle the problem and all this stuff. | ||
| Just missing one. | ||
| She knew I'd do all this stuff and it wasn't no fighting and I'm just being polite and stuff. | ||
| And Richard would come in. | ||
| I look at the back, Richard Pryor's in the back. | ||
| I said, what the hell are you doing here, Richard? | ||
| How are you doing? | ||
| He knew Paul Mooney. | ||
| Mooney was... | ||
| and David Banks, all these... | ||
| Anytime you got all these guys at the comic store, Rich would want to do another album. | ||
| So what happened is... | ||
| Richard, the first time I saw Richard in the back, I said, Richard, how you doing? | ||
| Spoon, I just come about to see how you doing. | ||
| I said, fine, I'm doing it, Richard. | ||
| He never come about to see how I'm doing. | ||
| He's just saying this to set it up for he want to work on his act for a new album. | ||
| So I said, Richard, everything fine? | ||
| He said, you want a drink? | ||
| No, no, Spoon. | ||
| I'll be fine. | ||
| You want to go to the stage? | ||
| No, no, no. | ||
| I just come about to see how you doing. | ||
| I said, how you doing, Richard? | ||
| So I know to go away and come back. | ||
| And I said, Richie, anything you want to drink? | ||
| They didn't want to drink now. | ||
| So he wanted to drink. | ||
| He'd get a little red drink he liked with olive oil. | ||
| What do you call that? | ||
| Cherry in it. | ||
| That kind of stuff. | ||
| And so I know to go away. | ||
| I go away. | ||
| They told me, Richie's going to drive you crazy. | ||
| Richie come back. | ||
| Richie's going to drive you crazy. | ||
| So I go away, come back. | ||
| Richie, everything I'm fine? | ||
| Anything else you want? | ||
| He said, you want to go stay? | ||
| He said, no. | ||
| I don't want to go stay. | ||
| I said, how are you doing? | ||
| And so I go away and come back and say, Richard, do two minutes. | ||
| Some people said, Richard Pryor came by the concert. | ||
| He said, sure, I'll go up there and do two minutes. | ||
| He said, when do I go on? | ||
| I said, you're going on right after this guy get off. | ||
| I'll put you on right now. | ||
| And he'd go up there and do two hours. | ||
| Then he'll have his secretary call me the next day and say, thanks for helping me get on stage. | ||
| Helping me get on stage. | ||
| He had to be pushed on stage. | ||
| That's so weird. | ||
| Yeah, that's amazing, ain't it? | ||
| Robin Williams! | ||
| But Richard would do like two hours? | ||
| Was that a regular thing? | ||
| Hour and a half. | ||
| Regular thing, huh? | ||
| Well, his album, you know, he'd do his whole album. | ||
| Then he had his writers in the back. | ||
| Mooney would be at there writing him, coaching him on stuff to say, you know, all that stuff. | ||
| He had all that. | ||
| And then he would have three weeks in the original room where he would work every night. | ||
| He'd come out every night. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| It ain't like some comics, you know, get too high and he can't come out. | ||
| He'd be better every night. | ||
| And so Mitzi put me on the show with him. | ||
| So I would open the show and do 45 minutes and then Rich would come home and do an hour and a half. | ||
| And then we moved to the main room. | ||
| After about three or four, about a month in the original room, we moved to the main room. | ||
| That's when, man, he would draw so many fucking people. | ||
| Old hoes, they ain't been out on the street for a long time. | ||
| With fur collars, fur coat on. | ||
| Fake fur coat on. | ||
| Pink and yellow and shit. | ||
| He would have, in the main room, he would have, oh my god, he had Mick Jagger, what's the name, the boy that... | ||
| What's his name? | ||
| Willie Nelson. | ||
| I talked to Willie Nelson to go up on the stage and sing a song in the original room. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Really? | |
| Yeah. | ||
| I said, really? | ||
| You got your guitar? | ||
| Yeah, I got it. | ||
| I said, could you go up there and sing a song? | ||
| I love Willie Nelson. | ||
| He was so good. | ||
| He's still around, though. | ||
| He said, I'm scared, dude. | ||
| I'm nervous. | ||
| Don't be nervous with these fucking people. | ||
| He went up there and sang one of his songs, boy. | ||
| That was a thrill for me. | ||
| So then we moved to the main room. | ||
| But I would kill every night in an audience like that. | ||
| I would get a standing ovation because I would do Mathis that I learned from Detroit and Nat King Cole and them. | ||
| I would do Johnny Mathis at my last bit and I would do Elle Green just before that. | ||
| And I would... | ||
| I saw Al Green throw roses out to the ladies one time. | ||
| I was at this theater down. | ||
| Anyway, he would throw roses. | ||
| He handed roses to the ladies. | ||
| So when I was working at the comedy store and I'm in front of Richie, I would get dandelions. | ||
| A hand in front of the ladies. | ||
| And some lady did exactly what I wanted her to say. | ||
| She said, Al Green, give us roses. | ||
| I said, boy, you lucky these ain't plastic because I ain't got no damn money. | ||
| I go home and watch these so I can get them back to you tomorrow night. | ||
| And I did that doing D&J, Johnny Matthews. | ||
| This is just impressions that I added to my act because there are a lot of ladies out there and they love that shit. | ||
| And I got the women through the roses back at my feet. | ||
| I said, damn, this shit is cool. | ||
| And Richard told me, I said, Richard, everybody said, Richard, you should take Spoon on the road with you. | ||
| You're going on a tour. | ||
| He said, I love you, Spoon, but you're too funny. | ||
| I can't have you out there on the road with me. | ||
| He said I was too funny for him. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| And he took Finaness, you know Finaness Henderson? | ||
| Sure. | ||
| And Finaness would do impressions instead. | ||
| He did all impressions. | ||
| So he took him on the road. | ||
| He told you you were too funny? | ||
| Spoon, you're too funny. | ||
| I love you, but you're too damn funny. | ||
| You're open for me. | ||
| I don't want to have to work that damn hard. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| I'm throwing roses back at my feet. | ||
| Them dandelions. | ||
| That's hilarious. | ||
| That was a great compliment. | ||
| But I have the billboard of the comedy story, Richard Pryor and John Billy Spoon. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| I had it somewhere in my phone. | ||
| Yeah, I think mom posted it. | ||
| Oh yeah, she did. | ||
| And then I think I helped you repost it on your IG story and then the comedy store screenshotted it and posted it. | ||
| Oh, did they? | ||
| Yeah, they did that like a month or two ago. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| But older than David, he probably had his own TV show. | ||
| You know, he's on NBC at 8 o'clock, and he was so fucking high, boy. | ||
| Richard, I knew we weren't going to last. | ||
| I knew that shit. | ||
| We only did four shows. | ||
| We had scheduled 22. Richard was too fucking high. | ||
| Oh, man. | ||
| What was he high on? | ||
| Cocaine and vodka and stuff, you know? | ||
| But I didn't have no money. | ||
| I probably would have got me something if I had some money. | ||
| I ain't no damn money. | ||
| I'm making this little $400, $400 that they're giving me for this week. | ||
| He said, y'all ain't making no money, but I'm making $250,000 a show. | ||
| I said, damn. | ||
| Wow, he's making that much? | ||
| See, there you go. | ||
| Look at that. | ||
| Richard Pryor and John Witherspoon. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| I wish I had the year up there. | ||
| Probably 77. God, that's amazing. | ||
| 77. But I know Richard. | ||
| We used to go over his house every Sunday. | ||
| We used to be over his house every Sunday. | ||
| And he had... | ||
| He had a barbecue. | ||
| He had a boxing gym where you box. | ||
| Tennis court. | ||
| Swimming pool. | ||
| He had about four acres over there. | ||
| Where was it? | ||
| Where was it? | ||
| It's on Parthenia. | ||
| That house there was for sale recently for about $4 million. | ||
| But I don't think people realize that Richard's probably living there. | ||
| They don't want to do that because he caught on fire over there. | ||
| Whoa. | ||
| Remember the time he got caught on fire? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That was that house? | ||
| It was in the house there, yeah. | ||
| Fuck, I would love to own that house. | ||
| That's in like Northridge or something, Parthenia. | ||
| Yeah, it's on Parthenia. | ||
| North Hills. | ||
| It's right down the street, North Hills, yeah. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| We used to go over there every Sunday. | ||
| Can you imagine owning Richard Pryor's old house? | ||
| It's kind of cool. | ||
| I don't want to go in there. | ||
| That spirit might hit me. | ||
| He on fire going to run past the swimming pool. | ||
| Those cocaine days must have been crazy there. | ||
| Oh, man. | ||
| And what's amazing about this is it's so cold, boy. | ||
| When stuff got on radio that Richard Pryor is in hospital in critical condition, from burns from a pipe that blew up, his family went there and stole all of his people that he probably never seen and haven't seen in years, jumped over that damn, he had his family went there and stole all of his people that he probably never seen and haven't seen in years, All this stuff was taken out of his house. | ||
| Then they say he's going to survive. | ||
| They jump back over the fence and put it back. | ||
| What? | ||
| They put it back? | ||
| Yeah, they put it back. | ||
| Richard Price, you're going to steal his stuff? | ||
| You've been borrowing from him for 20 years, now all of a sudden you're going to steal his watch? | ||
| That's crazy. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's hard to beat the top. | ||
| But we had so much fun over there. | ||
| And Sammy Davis Jr. would come there every Sunday in a limousine and a tuxedo on. | ||
| Really? | ||
| We got shorts on. | ||
| You know, the raggedest shorts you can find. | ||
| Old t-shirt. | ||
| We playing basketball. | ||
| Sammy coming to High Martin. | ||
| High Martin. | ||
| Sammy, go put some fucking shorts on. | ||
| How old was he back then? | ||
| Sammy? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Oh, I bet he was. | ||
| This was 76. He must have been. | ||
| Wow, he was young then. | ||
| Because he died about 60. He was 62, 63. He must have been in his 50s, 40s and 50s. | ||
| Tuxedo, huh? | ||
| Tuxedo! | ||
| And a limousine. | ||
| Imagine being a fly on the wall. | ||
| Sammy Davis Jr. pulls up in a tuxedo. | ||
| Oh, man. | ||
| Steps out of a limousine. | ||
| Yeah, while they're playing basketball. | ||
| We all so fucking... | ||
| We all so fucking... | ||
| Raggedy, stinking. | ||
| We done played ball all day long. | ||
| Sammy walked past him. | ||
| Hi, man! | ||
| Sammy, wrong house, wrong day. | ||
| Come on, play some ball with us, Sammy. | ||
| There he is. | ||
| Look at that. | ||
| Look how sharp he is. | ||
| Wow, look at the bell bottoms. | ||
| Oh yeah, that's the day. | ||
| That's the day, brother. | ||
| Wow, that's crazy. | ||
| Richard played tennis. | ||
| Did he? | ||
| Yeah, he played tennis, yeah. | ||
| And basketball. | ||
| We playing ball, Richard. | ||
| He checking me and grabbing my dick. | ||
| Richard, this ain't no basketball. | ||
| I check the only way I know. | ||
| Richard, back off me, brother. | ||
| Oh, God. | ||
| He's a funny man. | ||
| So when you were around when Kennison came by, when he first started working there, he was a big shift, right? | ||
| No one had seen anybody like him before. | ||
| Oh no, even since. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, he was a very unusual dude. | |
| What's so funny, one time he... | ||
| He bought some Chinese food, put a hat on his head, put a long coat on, and some big sunglasses, and ate it in front of this Korean store. | ||
| Just standing in the window. | ||
| He's outside standing in the window doing like that. | ||
| Fucking Sam. | ||
| Why was he doing that? | ||
| He's just crazy. | ||
| He had the same thing on the stage at the Comedy Store. | ||
| He would be up there with his sunglasses on and he would have Chinese food or Korean food and he'd sit there and eat and tell some jokes and then go back to eating. | ||
| On stage. | ||
| In the original room. | ||
| That's funny. | ||
| I've seen them crazy. | ||
| I've seen some crazy ass people in the original room, but they were funny. | ||
| The Comedy Store has a lot of history. | ||
| Oh, my God. | ||
| And Mitzi let them do it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Mitzi was so nice to the people. | ||
| She was brilliant, let me tell you something. | ||
| She knew to let the comedians run the place. | ||
| She was smart. | ||
| She would joke around about it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The island of misfit toys. | |
| But you know what? | ||
| I try to tell her, I say, Mitzi, give the comics $5 to buy some eggs and bacon on the way home. | ||
| She didn't want to do that. | ||
| They don't deserve nothing. | ||
| This is college. | ||
| This is their college, Mitzi. | ||
| Anybody paid to get in here, you better go on and get these people. | ||
| They're going to mess up your... | ||
| And then when she went to a big stink with the right, I mean, the strike. | ||
| Big stink. | ||
| And then you had some people that were, you can tell some people were crazy. | ||
| What's his name? | ||
| Jumped off the roof of the Hyatt House. | ||
| What was his name? | ||
| I knew his name. | ||
| I knew the kid. | ||
| I used to introduce him all the time. | ||
| Oh, shit, I don't have his name right now. | ||
| But I said, Mitch, you just give them something, you know. | ||
| They think that they've done something since. | ||
| Most of them drove right here. | ||
| And they all want to succeed at something. | ||
| She's paying us for eggs. | ||
| But she didn't want to do it. | ||
| I don't know how much they get today. | ||
| You don't know, do you? | ||
| I'm not a regular, so... | ||
| You get a percentage of what the take is for the door in the main room. | ||
| Oh, you do? | ||
| If the main room's sold out, you can make money. | ||
| Yeah, they used to do that before. | ||
| They've been doing that for a long time. | ||
| $25, $50. | ||
| I think you get $400 or $500 in the main room. | ||
| In the main room, you can make some money. | ||
| But for guys like us, it's more important as a place to exercise. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| I did two shows there last night. | ||
| I used to love to work with Richard Pryor, one of the wonderful audiences. | ||
| Everything you say, they're right there. | ||
| Oh, I'd imagine. | ||
| Oh, man. | ||
| They must have realized, too, because before, when you think about real, giant, famous comedians before Pryor, there's like a tiny handful of them. | ||
| Nobody like him. | ||
| So he was just one of one. | ||
| I remember Red Fox used to come through there and he said, I want to get me a double of Cavazier and a Coke, and I ain't paying for none of this shit. | ||
| Red was so funny, my man Red. | ||
| I was at a gas station stop one day in the little stores and had cassette tapes of Richard Pryor performing live at Red Fox's Club. | ||
| Red Fox at a club. | ||
| They just had a recorder and he's just fucking around. | ||
| You could tell he's ranting and raving. | ||
| He's just high, just laughing and talking shit on stage. | ||
| It's not prepared material, half of it. | ||
| It was amazing. | ||
| What a character, Red Fox, that boy. | ||
| He wouldn't pay his taxes. | ||
| So the government came there one night when all the people in the room just took everything, everything. | ||
| Went to his house, took everything. | ||
| He took a ring off his finger. | ||
| He took his shoes. | ||
| They left him a chicken raw to cook in an oven. | ||
| And so they shut him down. | ||
| It's the place he had. | ||
| I think it was on La Cienica somewhere. | ||
| It was in L.A., yeah. | ||
| In L.A., yeah. | ||
| So he crying. | ||
| He called Sammy Davis. | ||
| Sammy called Franks and our true name. | ||
| They took everything they own. | ||
| I worked so hard to be who I am. | ||
| I didn't do it. | ||
| I owe the taxes. | ||
| It ain't that bad. | ||
| They took everything. | ||
| So Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr. and some other friends went to his club and worked two or three weeks every night. | ||
| Two shows. | ||
| Sold them out to get enough money to get his taxes and get his club back. | ||
| He was so happy to everybody. | ||
| He said, oh my God, I want to thank you for doing this for me. | ||
| Oh, please just take my hug. | ||
| Let me just hug you, hugging everybody. | ||
| So they all went on their separate ways. | ||
| Red Fox. | ||
| Still didn't pay his fucking taxes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No! | |
| They come again with a lien on his ass. | ||
| You son of a bitch. | ||
| They weren't coming back now, see? | ||
| Oh my God. | ||
| Went and paid taxes again. | ||
| He ain't paying no taxes. | ||
| Was this before or after Sanford and Son? | ||
| It was before. | ||
| I don't think he paid after Sanford and Son. | ||
| He didn't believe he paid no taxes. | ||
| This is my money. | ||
| I paid my taxes. | ||
| Uh-uh, uh-uh. | ||
| Damn. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You gotta pay them. | ||
| I had a tax problem. | ||
| We had an apartment building in Beverly Hills, our own apartment building in Beverly Hills. | ||
| I said, boy, I'm doing good. | ||
| I just ride my car past there and say, hmm, that's my place. | ||
| And I swear, the taxes got bad that something happened to me and they took that fucking place. | ||
| I had to sell it. | ||
| I didn't take it, I had to sell it. | ||
| I hate that. | ||
| Today I hate that. | ||
| You hate all that money you missed, don't you? | ||
| Oh, God. | ||
| Well, it's just a right pass. | ||
| And look at the place. | ||
| And some lady called. | ||
| We had a person to clean up the place all the time, see? | ||
| A manager of the hotel. | ||
| And so my wife was out there watering the grass and stuff. | ||
| And she called the police. | ||
| Called him and said, there's a black lady out here watering the grass. | ||
| And we don't recognize her. | ||
| Somebody who was a tenant? | ||
| Or are you talking about the manager? | ||
| Yeah, a tenant. | ||
| The tenant. | ||
| Called the manager. | ||
| And he said, well, it's probably the owner. | ||
| And it was Angela I did. | ||
| That's funny. | ||
| I used to go back there and sit, because they had the washing machine and dryer outside. | ||
| In the back, near the parking lot. | ||
| So it was outside, but it was enclosed. | ||
| I sat down there, boy, it would be so quiet back there. | ||
| I said, boy, this beat Detroit. | ||
| Them dogs chasing my ass down the street. | ||
| This is much better. | ||
| I got a pocket full of money. | ||
| I ain't want to leave. | ||
| I got a pocket full of money. | ||
| I ain't want to leave. | ||
| I ain't want to leave. | ||
| They got my ass out that damn place. | ||
| You need to make a podcast, call it the Pocket Full of Money Podcast. | ||
| That's a sad idea. | ||
| Have you ever thought about doing one? | ||
| Huh? | ||
| Have you thought about doing a podcast? | ||
|
unidentified
|
A podcast? | |
| What is that? | ||
| That's what we're doing right now. | ||
| I don't want this thing to be on the air. | ||
| You can't. | ||
| He's in a different realm, Joe. | ||
| But you can sell out everywhere if you did that. | ||
| I guarantee you. | ||
| Sell out where? | ||
| You can make money off of it, first of all. | ||
| Comedy clubs. | ||
| Somebody told me that. | ||
| Somebody told me. | ||
| Oh, I don't want to do comedy clubs. | ||
| I sell out anywhere. | ||
| I sell out to comedy clubs. | ||
| I don't have trouble with those. | ||
| Theaters? | ||
| If I'm on... | ||
| They don't pay enough money. | ||
| You mean sell out... | ||
| I go up there and do... | ||
| How many hours do you have to do? | ||
| For a podcast? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You just do whatever you want. | ||
| You could do it every time you're on a plane. | ||
| Just talking to your phone. | ||
| Were you talking about how much time you're doing with the podcast or the theater? | ||
| What were you talking about? | ||
| Podcast. | ||
| As much time as you want. | ||
| Say if I was in the theater and I'm doing a podcast. | ||
| You've got to sit at a thing like this and talk to people. | ||
| You're not in it. | ||
| See, I knew he crossed it. | ||
| I was like, what? | ||
| No, no, no. | ||
| I heard it. | ||
| No, no. | ||
| He's saying, can you sell out theaters by yourself? | ||
| That's what he asked you. | ||
| I doubt that. | ||
| Okay, so we established that. | ||
| You sell out clubs, but then he was saying if you were doing a podcast, kind of like what we're doing right now, that's what this is, you could, as you build up the podcast, you could be promoting it and recording it. | ||
| You wouldn't have to do it in a theater. | ||
| You could do it in that comfort of your own home. | ||
| Yeah, you could set it up. | ||
| Just like this. | ||
| Just like this. | ||
| And then you become popular. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| I mean, you've got popularity behind you, so I'm sure people want to hear it. | ||
| 100%. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Just people listening to this are going to want to hear it. | ||
| Yeah, I have a podcast with Paul. | ||
| Me and my buddy Paul. | ||
| What's it called? | ||
| The JD and Paul cast. | ||
| It's just me and my buddy, and we talk like video games. | ||
| Video games, technology, current events, and also movie. | ||
| We'll do little mini movie reviews on it. | ||
| What kind of setup do you have? | ||
| Do you have permanent microphones? | ||
| I'm like a tech dude, so I have everything. | ||
| My office at my house is decked out with a bunch of stuff. | ||
| I brought him over there recently to help me... | ||
| I get him to do videos with me just because it's like they're funny and I don't care and like let's just make something random because the other day we played Mortal Kombat and I had him I had him react to the fatalities so I was like that's a funny video my dad reacts to Mortal Kombat fatalities and literally we're watching it literally he's just like oh my look at the head go left and right no this so amazing yeah that stuff is and that's on my gaming channel which is Run JD Run on YouTube that stuff is too serious for me but like our podcast But | ||
| I've also had him play VR because he wanted to play VR real bad. | ||
| He's like, I've seen you doing the virtual reality. | ||
| Let me see you try that. | ||
| So we did the one with the shark attack. | ||
| Oh, God. | ||
| That's another one. | ||
| This one wasn't even a game. | ||
| It was just like a tutorial. | ||
| You just put it on and live through the thing. | ||
| It was like a deep ocean dive, and he was tripping out. | ||
| I saw the shark go past me. | ||
| The shark's in his face and he's screaming about it. | ||
| Mind you, there was a point in the video where he's not talking, but he's shaking. | ||
| I thought something bad was happening. | ||
| I'm like, Dad, are you good? | ||
| He was trying to kick and or strangle the shark, which was virtually in front of him. | ||
| He was like this. | ||
| I'm like, Dad, are you good? | ||
| He just yells out at the shark. | ||
| He's like... | ||
| Fuck out of here! | ||
| Get out of here, Sean! | ||
| What's her name? | ||
| Shelly was standing in the cage. | ||
| The cage takes you down in the water. | ||
| I then bought him a PlayStation 4 to play the game at his house. | ||
| And I don't know what happened to any of that stuff. | ||
| Your son took it. | ||
| My brother took it. | ||
| Because my brother uses it for Netflix. | ||
| He just watches the play. | ||
| There we go. | ||
| Look at him going crazy. | ||
| Look at my neck. | ||
| He's bugging. | ||
| And that's me and my brother. | ||
| We're dying laughing about it. | ||
| That damn thing's over my head. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, Jesus, look at his face! | |
| Look at my neck. | ||
| My eyeballs are down to my neck. | ||
| Oh, my God. | ||
| Oh, man. | ||
| Oh, my God. | ||
| This is the show. | ||
| Yeah, no, but... | ||
| The show is you and him. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We've... | |
| I mean, I try to create stuff with him all the time just because it's random and funny. | ||
| Back in the day, I probably didn't do it because people... | ||
| It's one of those things where it wasn't a huge deal, but... | ||
| We're just watching this, but what is the video title, Jamie, for people? | ||
| My dad freaks out playing VR. Look at that! | ||
|
unidentified
|
Look at that! | |
| I didn't see this show. | ||
| Look at that! | ||
| The YouTube channel is... | ||
| Get away! | ||
| It's on my channel, which is YouTube.com slash RunJDRun is the name of the channel. | ||
| My face is cramping from laughing. | ||
| You gotta see it in its entirety. | ||
| It's so goofy. | ||
| This is a show. | ||
| You two together. | ||
| You do it once a week. | ||
| Get together with your dad. | ||
| Just go pick him up. | ||
| Grab him. | ||
| Make it really easy. | ||
| Bring him to your place. | ||
| You do a show with him once a week. | ||
| Boom. | ||
| That's it. | ||
| Might have to do an audio thing. | ||
| Oh my god. | ||
| Do an audio thing. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| What's the audio thing? | ||
| Easy. | ||
| Audio this. | ||
| Podcast. | ||
| Like this here. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We gotta find a name. | |
| We gotta find a name. | ||
| I'm gonna go finish packing. | ||
| I gotta get out of here. | ||
| Alright, let's wrap this up. | ||
| Get to my wife. | ||
| Joe. | ||
| He's the king of complaining, man. | ||
| I'm trying to tell you. | ||
| I tried to tell him on the way over here. | ||
| I'm like, hey man, don't be weird. | ||
| Let's just hang out and enjoy it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm going to do my thing, JD. I'm going to do my thing. | |
| I'm going to pee. | ||
| I'm going to pee. | ||
| If I got to take a shit, I'm going to take a shit. | ||
| My face hurts right here. | ||
| It hurts. | ||
| It's like these muscles are cramped up. | ||
| You a goofball, man. | ||
| You ain't got no couth. | ||
| Where your couth at? | ||
| John, I appreciate you. | ||
| Ain't no couth. | ||
| What is couth? | ||
| It's nonsense. | ||
| It's for lesser mortals. | ||
| Yeah, he's a clown, bro. | ||
| I appreciate you, sir. | ||
| Thank you very much for being here, man. | ||
| Were we at Jamie's place when you were? | ||
| Yeah, sure. | ||
| Yeah, that's probably when we first met. | ||
| You must have been young. | ||
| You were a little kid then. | ||
| Yeah, I was a little kid. | ||
| I was in my 20s. | ||
| Yeah, that's what I'm saying. | ||
| Yeah, back in the day, man. | ||
| I was about 60. Wow. | ||
| That was about 15 years ago, 14 years ago. | ||
| Probably somewhere out there. | ||
| Maybe more than that even. | ||
| Maybe more than that? | ||
| Yeah, more than that when I met you. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Maybe late 50s or something. | ||
| I probably was doing the Wayne Brothers or something back then. | ||
| Yeah, that's probably what it was. | ||
| You were in your 40s. | ||
| Friday. | ||
| Probably doing Friday. | ||
| Doing Friday, the Wayne Brothers. | ||
| Yeah, all that. | ||
| It's been a long time, my friend. | ||
| Oh, man. | ||
| It's amazing. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| You're hilarious. | ||
| It was a pleasure having you on here. | ||
| Yep, that's what we're doing. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| A podcast. | ||
| You guys are going to do it, too. | ||
| We've got to come up with a name. | ||
| Let me know. | ||
| I'll have you back on. | ||
| We can just talk about your dad. | ||
| We'll figure it out. | ||
| Oh my goodness. | ||
| Give your Twitter handle, your Instagram, all that jazz. | ||
| Oh yeah. | ||
| At JD Witherspoon everywhere. | ||
| And if you want to see those gaming videos, it's RunJDRun on YouTube. | ||
| That's me. | ||
| And then you got your joints? | ||
| At John Witherspoon. | ||
| I have something like that. | ||
| Oh man, this is so hard. | ||
| You understand, Joe, he thinks he's in a simulation. | ||
| He thinks he's in the Matrix. | ||
| The internet is crazy to him. | ||
| Thank you, gentlemen. | ||
| The John Witherspoon is where your cooking show is at. | ||
| On YouTube. | ||
| Just type in John Witherspoon on the internet. | ||
| JD Witherspoon, if you want to see some goofy stuff, we're here. | ||
| Thank you, gentlemen. |
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