Aug. 21, 2019 - The Joe Rogan Experience
02:50:05
Participants
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
|
We're good? | |
| Roy Wood Yo. | ||
| Junior? | ||
| How you doing, man? | ||
| Pleasure. | ||
| Pleasure to have you on here, man. | ||
| Man, appreciate it. | ||
| Fun of these guys alive. | ||
| I don't know about that, man. | ||
| You are. | ||
| Just trying to pay bills, bro. | ||
| You're one of the funniest guys out there, man. | ||
| I'm very excited to have you in here. | ||
| And we're talking shit about Apple and electronics. | ||
| Apple's fucking you out here. | ||
| So, got the new MacBook, right? | ||
| And the new MacBook with the new OS or whatever it is, it doesn't fuck with the old versions of Final Cut. | ||
| The old video editing software I used to use. | ||
| New MacBook goes, you gotta buy that shit again. | ||
| I'm like, my nigga, I just paid for that shit. | ||
| Hundreds of dollars. | ||
| With my last computer. | ||
| You tell me my old software ain't no good. | ||
| And you could make the software work with the new OS if you wanted to, but they don't to get you to buy it again and all that shit. | ||
| So dirty. | ||
| So now I'm having to learn Adobe Premiere. | ||
| I was pretty good with Final Cut, but... | ||
| You're swapping out. | ||
| Yeah, I've got to relearn a whole new thing. | ||
| And if I'm going to do that, then I may as well relearn a whole new piece of electronics. | ||
| But to do that means I have to gut everything. | ||
| That means you have to gut the Apple TV, you have to let go of the iPhone, you have to let go of the iPad, my girlfriend, the whole house. | ||
| That's how the companies get you. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So everybody in the house, even my son, he had a Samsung tablet. | ||
| I was like, get that shit out of here. | ||
| We gotta get you an iPad. | ||
| So we re-gifted that and then got him an iPad. | ||
| So it's like, no, man. | ||
| People get fierce about that Mac versus Android shit as much as they do about Republicans versus Democrats. | ||
| I want something where I don't have to keep paying for the same shit over and over again every three, four years. | ||
| Apple makes great shit, but they fuck you. | ||
| The interface is so smooth. | ||
| It's so convenient. | ||
| I can check text messages. | ||
| I can do whatever I want on my MacBook. | ||
| I can talk to my television. | ||
| I can one-click and all the Apple Pay and all of that stuff. | ||
| It's beautiful. | ||
| But in three years, it's time to pay up again. | ||
| I almost switched over a couple years back. | ||
| I bought a Pixel when the Pixel 2 came out. | ||
| But then when it came out, I couldn't get text messages. | ||
| And I had to email Apple and ask them to take my email address off of the iMessage database. | ||
| I'm like, take that email off so that I can't get iMessages anymore. | ||
| And it still didn't work. | ||
| I went online to try to figure out what is a way, how do you get out of this? | ||
| How does this work? | ||
| You can't. | ||
| Unless you switch over to text message for a long period of time beforehand, like switch your iMessages to text messages on your Apple, on your phone, or unless you buy a new number. | ||
| You've got to kind of buy it. | ||
| If you're going to get a Samsung phone or something, you've got to get a new number. | ||
| When did you make the switch to Apple in the first place? | ||
| I've been with Apple forever, forever. | ||
| But what was the genesis? | ||
| At some point you had to have had like a Sanyo 59. That was my old flip phone. | ||
| Shout out to Sanyo. | ||
| I remember when I was in radio back home in Birmingham, I was gifted an iPod Touch. | ||
| Oh yeah. | ||
| And I was all Android phones, Android everything, and I had an iPod Touch. | ||
| And at the time, all I had to play music was a mini-disc player. | ||
| So I could only hold like five hours. | ||
| This is like 01, 02. And I had a five-hour mini-disc and I go, fuck it, I'll carry around an iPod Touch. | ||
| And then it made more sense. | ||
| Why am I carrying an iPod Touch and an Android phone when I could just have an iPhone that does both? | ||
| And that started the journey. | ||
| I started with iPhone 1. But before that, I was using MacBooks. | ||
| I was using Mac forever, even before they had an iPhone. | ||
| I used to make my own PCs. | ||
| I used to go to the store, go to Fry's, buy a motherboard, buy hard drives. | ||
| So you never had no time for that. | ||
| That's a lot of time. | ||
| You've got to want to do that. | ||
| For me, I wanted to find out how to do it. | ||
| It was cool to play games on a computer that I put together myself. | ||
| But then you knew how to, like, so you're building the games as well, or are you going out and buying a floppy disk and all that? | ||
| I'm not definitely not building any games. | ||
| I would just, you know, like, I'd buy video games, just play them on Discord. | ||
| But even formatting it and doing everything, I would have to call friends that really knew what the fuck was up, and they'd have to talk me through shit. | ||
| There's some things you'd have to do in the BIOS and... | ||
| The irony of all of this is that I still have an AOL email address, as much as I bitch about it. | ||
| Do you really? | ||
| Yeah, I do. | ||
| And you know what? | ||
| I don't understand email slander. | ||
| It's like, motherfucker, I'm sending you words electronically. | ||
| Does it matter? | ||
| It's AOL. What company? | ||
| What is it? | ||
| Is my email more ghetto? | ||
| Does it come with chicken grease stains when you open it in your laptop? | ||
| No. | ||
| It's the same words that if I send it from Gmail. | ||
| Now, I have a Gmail account so that people will take me seriously when I email them about business ideas, but I still have an old-school AOL email that I've had since college, and I'm like, it's fine. | ||
| It's one of those things, though. | ||
| You just don't let it go. | ||
| You just think about it. | ||
| You've got mail. | ||
| You remember when you first heard that? | ||
| You've got mail! | ||
| And you were happy. | ||
| You were like, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, someone want to talk to me! | ||
| It was very exciting. | ||
| Ooh, want to talk to me! | ||
| And then you get older and you realize, well, please leave me alone. | ||
| Who the fuck is this now? | ||
| You've got mail! | ||
| Yeah, it was exciting. | ||
| It was like a new thing. | ||
| That was 96? | ||
| That's when you got online? | ||
| Yeah, yeah, 95, 96. We had an old CompuServe account at the house. | ||
| And that was how we got online. | ||
| And then we started getting the AOL disk and all of that shit. | ||
| We had a compact Presario computer. | ||
| Ooh, I had one of those. | ||
| I had one of those. | ||
| I started out with one of those old Macs that was like a beige box. | ||
| Remember when they used to be? | ||
| Oh yeah, the Apple IIe. | ||
| I don't remember what number it was, but it was 95, 94, somewhere around there. | ||
| I don't know, that might be like the OG MacBook where the keyboard and the CPU was its own little... | ||
| No, you had a keyboard that you had to plug in, a monitor that you had to plug in, and it was like a tower. | ||
| It was like a beige, funky-looking tower. | ||
| It was slow as shit. | ||
| It was a 14.4 modem. | ||
| Come on! | ||
| Yeah, 14.4. | ||
| I remember when I got 56k. | ||
| I couldn't believe it. | ||
| Look at the speed. | ||
| Wasn't that, Jamie? | ||
| It was a monitor. | ||
| Didn't have the floppy disk built into it, I don't think. | ||
| It's hard to remember. | ||
| I remember it being, there was an actual tower and an actual monitor. | ||
| And it wasn't the joint where the whole computer was like the monitor itself where the computer and CPU were all together. | ||
| No, but man, I thought I was living in the future. | ||
| It was something like that, Jamie. | ||
| Bro, my older brother had... | ||
| Yeah, that one on the far right, that was it. | ||
| My old brother had a MacBook, man. | ||
| He had an old-school Macintosh in the 90s, and he had a Microsoft Flight Simulator, and you couldn't tell me shit. | ||
| I'd go to his house for five hours, would just fly Cessnas in real time. | ||
| Like, I get it now. | ||
| I get why people will sit down with a flight simulator and fly in real time from L.A. to San Francisco. | ||
| Have you seen the new ones they have? | ||
| Oh, it's unreal. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Incredible. | |
| But I would need to buy a PC, and then I know I wouldn't get shit done. | ||
| Have you ever used the HTC Vive? | ||
| No. | ||
| Wait, what's that? | ||
| What is that? | ||
| Virtual reality? | ||
| We have one here. | ||
| Oh, the whole helmet sit-down joint. | ||
| Dude, my kids come here and they battle to the death to see who gets to VR. They fight each other, punch and kick and shit. | ||
| It's amazing, man. | ||
| You put this thing on and you're in another world. | ||
| You're fighting zombies. | ||
| You're in the ocean with whales and shit. | ||
| I went to a Samsung event and they had some AR-type experience where you put the phone on and... | ||
| And it's fun, but then I just, I don't know, in the back of my head, I can't get out of my head how goofy I look to someone else. | ||
| So it's almost like something I gotta do alone. | ||
| Yes, you look goofy. | ||
| You look really goofy when you play. | ||
| There's a boxing game, though, that you can get a great workout in, like a legitimate great workout. | ||
| Because this dude comes at you. | ||
| You see him, he's throwing punches. | ||
| And every time he hits you, you see a bright white spark. | ||
| You feel like you're getting hit. | ||
| It's wild, man. | ||
| You're moving around and bobbing and ducking punches and throwing combinations. | ||
| Your feet start hurting. | ||
| Your hands get tired. | ||
| Is that going to catch on for real, Joe? | ||
| Or is this like the Nintendo Wii when it first came out? | ||
| No, it's going to catch on. | ||
| You're going to lose calories with the Nintendo Wii. | ||
| And then you're just a fat bastard on the couch. | ||
| I learned how to bowl sitting down. | ||
| Yeah, you can get in shape with this, for real. | ||
| Like, if you wanted to do multiple rounds of boxing with this thing, you would get in some serious fucking shape. | ||
| Because it feels real. | ||
| When you put that headset on, and that dude's in front of you, and he comes towards you, and he's got his hands up, and then he starts throwing punches like, oh shit! | ||
| And you're moving around, and he's swinging at you. | ||
| You see the punches flying over your head? | ||
| It's awesome. | ||
| Now, this isn't something that's predictive in a sense, or is it like different types of workouts or different types of sparring sessions? | ||
| Because eventually you can predict if you knew the patterns. | ||
| It's still a workout. | ||
| Yeah, it's a good workout. | ||
| But either way, you're fucking this dude up. | ||
| That's the whole idea. | ||
| The whole idea is to keep it on him. | ||
| It's not like you hit. | ||
| You don't feel anything if he hits you. | ||
| You just see the spark. | ||
| Well, that's next. | ||
| They'll have a vest that vibrates, and then it gets electrolysis. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, there's a haptic feedback vest that you wear. | ||
| There's a place called The Void. | ||
| You go there, and there's a Star Wars game, and the stormtroopers are shooting you, and they hit you in the chest. | ||
| You feel like a... | ||
| And that shit hurt? | ||
| Does it hurt, or is it like just a sensation? | ||
| Just a sensation. | ||
| Just like laser tag or something like that? | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| Exactly like that. | ||
| Nah, it'll get worse. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| They're doing these warehouses now, where you go into a warehouse, and it's all virtual reality, and so they have everything planned out, and you're walking across this beam, and there's fire to the left of you and fire to the right, so you feel heat. | ||
| It's all this crazy shit. | ||
| Oh, no, that's dope. | ||
| To have it set up to make it, you know, really sort of mimic whatever sensation you're supposed to be experiencing. | ||
| No, that I would be all in for. | ||
| You know, when I was listening to you coming up, like, you started talking about the sensory deprivation chambers, and I'm like, that's always been something that's in the back of my head. | ||
| You want to do it? | ||
| Do you have any time today? | ||
| You can do it. | ||
| I don't know how much time I have after. | ||
| Let's see. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| I know, because I know it's a mindfuck. | ||
| It's a little bit of a mindfuck. | ||
| Yeah, but it's one of those things where I go, when I get a house, I'm getting a grill, and I'm getting one of those goddamn Joe Rogan boxes. | ||
| That's what I call them. | ||
| Getting one of them Joe Rogan boxes, and I'm putting that shit in my fucking man cave. | ||
| Yeah, everybody should have an isolation tank. | ||
| It's a fucking beautiful thing to have, man. | ||
| It settles your mind like nothing else. | ||
| Yeah, that's the thing that I always struggle with is just too many. | ||
| I got too many tabs open. | ||
| Of course. | ||
| At all times. | ||
| Most comics do. | ||
| Yeah, and the only thing that slows me down is video games and puzzles. | ||
| Puzzles? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| What kind of puzzles? | ||
| Like putting pictures? | ||
| Jigsaw and Sudoku. | ||
| Those are the three things that I can do that I know immediately the moment I start the activity, everything closes. | ||
| And I'm focused on that one thing. | ||
| It's the only thing that I can do when I need to get my mind off of stuff. | ||
| I was dating this girl one time. | ||
| And, you know, you're in the middle of an argument, and so you're trying not to be a dick in the moment. | ||
| So I just start doing the puzzle and just trying to stay calm. | ||
| And then she walks over and just starts undoing the puzzle as I'm doing the puzzle. | ||
| Oh, my goodness. | ||
| Fuck! | ||
| Oh my goodness. | ||
| Undoing the puzzle. | ||
| Oh, the anger. | ||
| That's a sign. | ||
| That's a sign of someone's intentions. | ||
| When someone's undoing your puzzle, like, oh, you're one of those people. | ||
| Because it's like, this is my place. | ||
| This is the one place I can go and just de-escalate, de-escalate. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| That's bad intentions. | ||
| That's like seriously bad intentions. | ||
| Someone trying to undo your puzzle? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's something shitty. | ||
| Kids will fight to the death over that. | ||
| It's my safe place. | ||
| It's like when weed smokers say, you're fucking up there high. | ||
| I understand that now. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, that's the one thing I've never done. | ||
| You're not with her anymore. | ||
| No, no, no. | ||
| No, you can't. | ||
| No, I crashed that. | ||
| You can't. | ||
| I'll take responsibility on that. | ||
| We got puzzles. | ||
| That's my thing, man. | ||
| Puzzles and a little bit of video game. | ||
| And batting cages. | ||
| I'd love to have one of those in the crib. | ||
| That would be amazing. | ||
| But you need a lot of space. | ||
| You need like LA yard. | ||
| I'm in New York right now. | ||
| There's nowhere to put a fucking... | ||
| You live in the city? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| There's nowhere to fucking... | ||
| Do you like living in the city? | ||
| No. | ||
| Why are you there? | ||
| Because it's a daily show. | ||
| I got to work. | ||
| So that's where the fucking job is. | ||
| Did you think about commuting? | ||
| Yeah, I thought about it at first, but then I had a kid the same year I got the show. | ||
| So I needed to be closer. | ||
| So we got to Harlem. | ||
| So Harlem is at least a shorter commute to the studio. | ||
| Where's the studio at? | ||
| The studio's on Westside Hills Kitchen on the water. | ||
| So it's like 53rd, 54th Street, and we're like in the 130s. | ||
| So it's not too bad on the subway. | ||
| Yeah, it's closer than Brooklyn, which was where I was originally when I first got to New York. | ||
| Did you take the subway from Brooklyn? | ||
| Yeah, I tried to be a city boy. | ||
| The problem is that I've gotten more done career-wise in New York in four years than I did the eight years I was in L.A., How so? | ||
| Because of the show? | ||
| Yeah, it's just New York. | ||
| There's more of a hustle mentality. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Really? | |
| Yeah, I think so. | ||
| I think that I'm more prone to run into comics that are going, going, going, going, going. | ||
| And so when you're around that, it makes you want to go. | ||
| It makes you want to write because you see so-and-so working on a new bit and doing all of that. | ||
| And I didn't see as much of that. | ||
| Now, granted, you don't get to do as many sets in LA because of the logistics of the city, but I just felt like there was more of a go-go-go mentality that just rubs off on you more. | ||
| But because of that, you don't get to socialize. | ||
| All of my friends are in LA, so a lot of social relationships have suffered because New York is go-go-go. | ||
| And you're trying to get the next career thing done, and then you also got to go home and be a dad. | ||
| Yeah, it's got to be weird raising kids in LA, or in New York too, rather. | ||
| I talked to Gaffigan about that. | ||
| He's raised all his kids in New York City. | ||
| Yeah, and they're in like Manhattan or they're in Jersey? | ||
| They're in Manhattan. | ||
| He's been in Manhattan forever. | ||
| Yeah, I don't know if that's something, not for the long run. | ||
| How old's your kid now? | ||
| He's three now. | ||
| Yeah, he's young enough so that, yeah. | ||
| It will leave him. | ||
| Come on back out to LA, Roy. | ||
| Either LA or I would go to Atlanta or Nashville or some shit. | ||
| Atlanta's a good move. | ||
| Nate Bargassi's shown us the recipe. | ||
| What's he doing? | ||
| Well, you know, I think he's got a place down south. | ||
| In Atlanta? | ||
| No, in Nashville, I think. | ||
| Oh, no shit. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Listen, those are both great cities. | ||
| If you're traveling on the road all the time and you just need a base... | ||
| I have a buddy of mine who lives outside of Nashville. | ||
| He fucking takes pictures of his yard. | ||
| It's all green. | ||
| I hear birds chirping and shit. | ||
| It's fucking incredible. | ||
| You need yard, man. | ||
| I grew up with a yard. | ||
| And then family. | ||
| I feel like New York is a great place to go, but it's not the best place to start, necessarily. | ||
| Yeah, it's a hard place to start. | ||
| But I mean, guys start in LA. People can start anywhere. | ||
| I mean, it's better starting there than a place that doesn't have much of a scene, like maybe Phoenix. | ||
| Phoenix has a little bit of a scene. | ||
| Oh yeah, my first nine years were all Southern. | ||
| I was a road guy out of Alabama. | ||
| I started in Tallahassee and Birmingham, where in those days, like in 98, open mic was once a month per city. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| So every week, if you wanted to get on, you had to get on the Greyhound. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Dude, that's commitment. | ||
| So that's the only way. | ||
| And then we started creating stages like in the panhandle, like from Fort Walton over to Jacksonville. | ||
| You start meeting. | ||
| You form a little fucking network. | ||
| And this guy's got a Monday night at a shithole. | ||
| This guy's got a Tuesday night at another shithole. | ||
| And looking back on it, it was all trash stage time. | ||
| That's the best you could do until you move. | ||
| It is amazing, though, how many guys have crafted careers just doing that. | ||
| Like, the will. | ||
| The will to do time and to find spots and to find a place to work out. | ||
| I would make the argument that I'm better off now as a comic 20 years in having started on the road instead of starting in a major market just because I feel like when you're a road guy, You meet every version of what your career could end up being when you're young. | ||
| Because if you're a big city comic, you're only hanging with your peers. | ||
| You run into the big wigs every now and then, but it's some high and bi bullshit at the comedy club and then they go on their way. | ||
| But when you do a weekend with Ron White and you get to watch him properly night after night after night, that's a fucking tutorial. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| And that's a fucking gift. | ||
| And then you can do a weekend, the very next weekend, with a guy who's been doing it 30 years, hadn't written a new joke in 15, burnout, alcoholic, hates his kids, hates his wife, and... | ||
| Once I got to LA, you start seeing, well, no, I know to avoid that because I'll end up like that, dude. | ||
| I know not to do that because I'll end up like that. | ||
| There was a comic, god damn, I can't name names. | ||
| There was a comic that used to read one custody of his child, and the one thing in the court order was that she could not be around the comedy club. | ||
| So you know what he did? | ||
| He fucking brought her around the comedy club. | ||
| So as his feature, I watched his seven-year-old while he would go out and do his set. | ||
| Oh, Jesus. | ||
| Yeah, but that... | ||
| Did he lose custody of his kid because of that? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I haven't seen him since. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Fuck. | |
| You can't bring your kid. | ||
| Seven-year-old. | ||
| I brought my kids when they were like nine and seven outside a comedy club. | ||
| And I let them peek in. | ||
| It was at the Improv in Irvine. | ||
| And I said, because we were all down there having dinner together. | ||
| And I did my show. | ||
| And they were like right around the corner. | ||
| I said, come on, let me take you backstage. | ||
| I'll show you what it's like. | ||
| And the show was about to start. | ||
| And I had my daughter like, come on, peek out. | ||
| Peek out there. | ||
| She's like, oh my god, look at all those people. | ||
| I want to run on stage. | ||
| I was like, go run on stage. | ||
| She's like, should I? No, don't run on stage. | ||
| Come back. | ||
| Yeah, that's safe though. | ||
| That's safe. | ||
| But to have them listen to your shit? | ||
| No. | ||
| What that taught me was the importance of how important it is who you end up with as it relates to your career. | ||
|
unidentified
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Oh, yeah. | |
| Because it can choke your career. | ||
| Because a lot of the guys that I started with, you know, a lot of road guys... | ||
| They're not doing it anymore or they're doing it at the same level that they were in 98. | ||
| And a lot of them I can point to dating the wrong person who attacked their psyche and their self-esteem in that three, four year window. | ||
| Because I feel like every year you get another opportunity to skip a level. | ||
| Right. | ||
|
unidentified
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Right. | |
| And if you don't skip that level, you go back down to levels. | ||
| And so these guys are trying to go from here to here and you're with someone that's attacked. | ||
| Why are you doing that? | ||
| You shouldn't be doing that. | ||
| There was a guy that used to take me on the road with him down south, kind of on some mentorship type shit. | ||
| And we would go do gigs, and if it was within four hours of the city, his wife would roll. | ||
| His wife would roll and both kids are in the back seat, car seat age. | ||
| It's like nine o'clock in Georgia and we're just riding together to a fucking gig. | ||
| We would do the show and then in exchange for an opportunity for stage time, I would drive this family back home and then I would go home and sleep in my bed. | ||
| But we didn't spend the night. | ||
| The family would stay at the hotel while we did the show and then we would get back in the car and drive the fuck back home. | ||
| Knowing what I know now, He was fucking chicks on the road. | ||
| And the only way she was comfortable with him still doing stand-up was if she got the role. | ||
| Interesting. | ||
| And that's got to be stressful. | ||
| He fucked up. | ||
| He fucked up, but he tried to have both. | ||
| He tried to save both. | ||
| He tried to save the career and tried to save the marriage. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And I think who you deal with outside the business is as important as how you handle yourself in the business. | ||
| I understand her position in that one. | ||
| I understand her more than I understand the lady who's undoing your puzzle. | ||
| I don't understand that. | ||
| I don't understand that mindset. | ||
| That's a different mindset. | ||
| At least she's solution-minded. | ||
| That makes sense. | ||
| Yeah, she's trying to figure out a solution. | ||
| Look, you still want to do comedy? | ||
| All right, I'm coming with you. | ||
| That makes sense. | ||
| You shouldn't have a three-year-old in a car seat for eight hours on a Wednesday night. | ||
| No, no, no, no. | ||
| Just cruising the freeway. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
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Oof. | |
| But if that's the proposition she presents to you in order for you to continue doing your career, then, you know, you either got to take it or leave it. | ||
| Comedy is a tricky one, man, because in order to do it correctly, you have to do it almost all the time. | ||
| You got to be up all the time. | ||
| I got a good situation where my kids are in bed by like, you know, eight o'clock on a weeknight, and that's when I leave. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| It's perfect. | ||
| Yeah, I kiss them goodnight, you know, and my spots at the store are usually around 10, so I just roll in, you know? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I'll hang out with my wife for a little bit, then I'll drive into town. | ||
| It's perfect. | ||
| But when do you eval sets? | ||
| Because that's where I start running into overlap in time, is figuring out the execution of comedy versus the preparation to do comedy. | ||
| So reviewing the sets, watching tapes. | ||
| Do you block that out? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| A big one for me is the drive there and home. | ||
| So it's 35 minutes to the store, 35 minutes home. | ||
| So that's when I'm reviewing material. | ||
| I listen to recordings so I have it Bluetoothed on my phone. | ||
| So I do that through the speakers of the car. | ||
| And that helps a lot. | ||
| That helps a lot. | ||
| That's gigantic. | ||
| You know, like, it also puts me in the mind, I feel like the more sets you do, right, the tidier stand-up is, but the more focus you put on your set, like, it's almost as good as, like, a half a set. | ||
| Like, listening to a full set is like doing a half a set. | ||
| That's how I think about it. | ||
| Feel like the same way? | ||
| You find all the extra, you find all the fat to trim. | ||
| Yeah, you find the fat to trim, and you also find like a spark. | ||
| Like, oh, why did I say that? | ||
| Ooh, that might be something there. | ||
| And then you've got to write that down. | ||
| And then I spend time just going over scribbles, like right here. | ||
| You know, like straight pride parade. | ||
| Like, okay, little scribbles. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Like, okay, what was I thinking there? | ||
| Oh, that's right, that's right, that's right. | ||
| And then I'll start adding stuff together, and then I spend time just straight out writing. | ||
| The straight-out writing time is almost always when everyone's asleep. | ||
| So like when I come home from the store, it's like midnight or something like that. | ||
| It's the best time. | ||
| It's the best time. | ||
| Spark up a joint, fire up the old fucking laptop, and that's when I write. | ||
| There's a time, the thing that I struggle with the most in writing is consumption. | ||
| Chappelle says something Years ago in a magazine about how every comedian needs to understand how their joke machine works. | ||
| And identifying the stimuli that you were encountering during a time when you were having a creative high. | ||
| In the writing cycle, when ideas are just popping and coming to you, document what was happening, what was going on during that time, and do your best to recreate those situations and scenarios to inspire writing when you have writer's block. | ||
| So I know for me, it's stuff that bores me or stuff that annoys me. | ||
| Be it reading, magazines, TV, whatever. | ||
| So I have to find time to watch shit that I don't like or can't stand because I know my mind will wander into a place where I can write some stuff. | ||
| But to physically just sit and consume television, and that's what I have to start doing on the go. | ||
| I get it now. | ||
| I used to think these people were stupid, and now I'm one of those people who walks around staring at the fucking phone watching my DVR on the train or something because I have to... | ||
| Constantly take in so that when it is time to write that there's something that there's something worth writing there. | ||
| I had a conversation with Theo Vaughn about this last night where he he's burnt out and he had to cancel some shows and I said what's going on and he said man he goes I just been going too hard too hard too much too many weekends you know nine shows a week over and over and over again seven eight nine ten weeks in a row he goes I just I need to step because I'm not taking anything in Recovery. | ||
| He goes, everything I'm putting, I'm just putting everything out. | ||
| He goes, I had nothing to say. | ||
| Everything seems fake when I'm saying it. | ||
| Like, I feel, I felt, you know that, you know, you're laughing, you felt that spot where you feel like everything you're saying feels fake. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Like, you're just bullshitting. | ||
| Yeah, I'm trying to, I'm still working on a lot more stuff that has more teeth to it and I'm starting to become, obsessed isn't the word, but There's something noodling at me about veterans and the trajectory of veterans when they come back from war and all that shit. | ||
| And I was trying to work on a bit about Vietnam and started watching this Ken Burns documentary that's on Netflix right now. | ||
| They interview North Vietnamese soldiers as well. | ||
| I ain't never in my life seen no shit. | ||
| Because normally Vietnam was always told from our POV, And they're sitting down with just straight up via con, like, yeah, we was trying to get them motherfuckers. | ||
| We set them up. | ||
| It's unremorseful in the sense of speaking about the war from their perspective. | ||
| And it tells the story from both sides. | ||
| And so it altered how I want to tell the joke. | ||
| And that's the stuff that you have to do from time to time to make sure that your jokes aren't weighted to one side. | ||
| That's black belt level material, man. | ||
| If you're going to make some jokes about war in Vietnam and soldiers and soldiers returning... | ||
| You're entering into the trickiest of bouncing beams. | ||
| That's where the reward is. | ||
| That's that Gabby Douglas double, triple, whatever. | ||
| I'm sorry, Simone Biles, pardon me. | ||
| Is that the new girl? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| What did she do? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Something they'll make illegal in competition next year because a black woman did it. | ||
| They're like, don't you do that shit no more, bitch! | ||
| It's like when Surya Bonally was figure skating and she did a backflip on the ice and they were like, yeah, no more backflips. | ||
| They said no more backflips? | ||
| Yeah, they were like, no more backflips. | ||
| But everything they do is dangerous. | ||
| This French chick did a backflip and immediately the ILC was like, no more backflips. | ||
| It was too amazing. | ||
| It was too good. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Maybe they're worried about those BMX dudes. | ||
| Those BMX dudes, they started doing double flips, and then they started doing triple flips, and then a bunch of them started crashing and breaking their necks. | ||
| Oh, that fucking snowboard shit? | ||
| That's insane, though. | ||
| Snowboard is crazy. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Snowboard freestyle? | ||
| You're stuck on that thing, too. | ||
| It's not like skis where your legs move. | ||
| That one in the snowmobile, where they're coming over the handlebars of the snowmobile and coming back down. | ||
| I'm like, no, man. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| No. | ||
| Anything with BMX bikes or motocross or any of those crazy white dudes that are doing flips. | ||
| It's all just... | ||
| How many flips can you do? | ||
| Landing on your front tire. | ||
| And the wrecks, man. | ||
| I spent an hour one night just watching wrecks. | ||
| Just watching guys try to do flips and land wrong. | ||
| Dude, you're just picturing... | ||
| Nerves getting ruined for life and spinal cord injuries. | ||
| It's all compound fractures. | ||
| There's a Birth of Big Air 30 for 30 where they talk about when they started that shit in the 80s in Oklahoma and they were just doing it for the love. | ||
| Like it was just a dude with a ramp in his yard and just word traveled. | ||
| No email, no nothing, just word of mouth. | ||
| There's a dude with a ramp. | ||
| So when we're in town to do that race, we're going to go over to this dude's yard. | ||
| Before that, what did they do? | ||
| You had to be like a trapeze guy. | ||
| Like, before there was motocross and bikes and shit, what did you do? | ||
| Like, if you were a crazy person, you had to be a trapeze guy. | ||
| Yeah, what were your options? | ||
| You didn't have many. | ||
| With skateboarding? | ||
| Skateboarding wasn't really... | ||
| They weren't thrashing like that in the 80s. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, they were just rolling around like assholes. | |
| We're on the sidewalk. | ||
| Move it, pedestrian. | ||
| The craziest shit they did is get in a pool. | ||
| We're in the bottom of a pool. | ||
| This is nuts, man. | ||
| We're on the edge. | ||
| The shit they do... | ||
| Kids in general, athletics-wise, the stuff they're doing... | ||
| You see it in jiu-jitsu and in MMA. The kids that are coming up now, they're so advanced. | ||
| They're all doing flying triangles and flying arm bars on each other. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's like... | |
| God damn. | ||
| Humans are evolving. | ||
| So I came up playing baseball. | ||
| Are there certain maneuvers? | ||
| Like in baseball, before you turn like 15, I think, they try to limit you throwing breaking balls. | ||
| Because it'll fuck with your... | ||
| Elbow? | ||
| Tommy John and all that shit. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| So, are there MMA moves where you just, as a child, you're not allowed to do this yet. | ||
| You have to be a grown man. | ||
| Leg locks. | ||
| As a beginner, they generally try to get you to stay the fuck away from leg locks. | ||
| Because leg locks, I don't know if you're familiar, like heel hooks. | ||
| There's techniques that you do that are going against the edge of your knee. | ||
| So, like, here's your knee. | ||
| Your knee bends like this, right? | ||
| They're going against it this way. | ||
| Or back that way. | ||
| And it's just, there's not much give in your knees, man. | ||
| And so when you get a heel hook, it's like your leg is wrapped around a guy. | ||
| They've got their heel trapped like this, and they're pulling on your knee sideways, and your knee just gets ripped apart. | ||
| It's very, very common that guys get knee injuries from being overzealous and not giving a guy a chance to get out of a technique. | ||
| There's a heel hook right there. | ||
| See that guy screaming? | ||
| Look at his fucking face. | ||
| Bro, I'm telling you, it is some fucking horrific pain. | ||
| You get your meniscus teared apart, your fucking ligaments pop. | ||
| It's a terrible, terrible feeling. | ||
| Yeah, that's a pass. | ||
| There's not much room for... | ||
| In an arm bar, your arm is locked out. | ||
| You can kind of take it a little bit before you have to tap. | ||
| But with your knee, the moment you feel pain, it's too late. | ||
| You're fucked. | ||
| Yeah, look at that right there. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Woo! | |
| Look how bad his knee is ripped apart. | ||
| That's Dean Lister. | ||
| Dean Lister's a fucking gorilla. | ||
| That dude on the bottom, he's like one of the leg lock pioneers in jujitsu. | ||
| He's fucked up many a dude's future walking. | ||
| I'll say this about MMA. It's definitely leveled bar fights. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| A little bit more now. | ||
| I've seen some scrawny guys, like, really... | ||
| Fuck up big dudes. | ||
| That know what they're doing? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And you'll just see the dude. | ||
| And it's funny because there's all the shit talking before the fight. | ||
| And then the fight starts. | ||
| And then, of course, the big dude is tapping. | ||
| And the scrawny dude is still going. | ||
| I'm like, dude, there's no ref. | ||
| You're at a bar. | ||
| You don't get to tap out. | ||
| You get your shit broken. | ||
| Yeah, there's a lot of people that get in fights that don't know what they're doing. | ||
| Imagine if you challenged a guy to a basketball game. | ||
| You've never played basketball. | ||
| It'd be ridiculous. | ||
| Like, I know how to do it. | ||
| I've watched it on TV. But there's a lot of people that'll do that with fights. | ||
| But the consequences of a fight are way more grave than the consequences of a basketball game. | ||
| Somebody kicks your ass in basketball, you just look like a fool. | ||
| Somebody kicks your ass in a fight, you're getting fucked up. | ||
| Maybe permanently. | ||
| Maybe your face is going to be scarred up for life. | ||
| Man, I ain't no fighter, man. | ||
| I'm 0-1-1 lifetime. | ||
| 0-1-1? | ||
| One draw? | ||
| What happened with the draw? | ||
| Teacher showed up. | ||
| I got in a fight. | ||
| I got in a fight in the eighth grade at a stop the violence rally. | ||
| No! | ||
| Yeah, it's real shit. | ||
| Because I figured that'd be the best place to talk shit. | ||
| Because what's a better spot to talk your shit than at a stop the violence rally? | ||
| Because presumably someone will come in and go, hey man. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Let's not do it. | ||
| We brothers, isn't it? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Mario Brown slapped the shit out of me. | ||
| Mario Brown. | ||
| Where you at, Mario? | ||
| Mario Brown is Air Force retired. | ||
| Still, we're cool. | ||
| We're cool to this day now. | ||
| But on that day, he slapped the dumb shit out of me. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, man. | |
| In the gym, in front of everybody. | ||
| Oh, my goodness. | ||
| That's the worst. | ||
| You take your L in front of everybody. | ||
| Ooh, that's a hard one. | ||
| That's a hard L. Yeah. | ||
| I thought I was going to get off on that one wrong. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| I didn't know how to fight at all until I learned how to fight. | ||
| I was terrified of fights. | ||
| I never, never, never was, never was the guy who, like, I was just trying to get away from everybody. | ||
| Because I grew up in different places. | ||
| We moved around a lot when I was a kid. | ||
| So I didn't grow up, like, with a bunch of friends where everybody knew everybody. | ||
| Like, I was always the new kid. | ||
| So you always had to. | ||
| Always. | ||
| Always. | ||
| And so then when I was 14, I was like, alright, fuck this. | ||
| I moved to a new city, new town. | ||
| And I was like, I gotta learn how to fight. | ||
| So I started taking martial arts. | ||
| I just became obsessed with it. | ||
| Do you teach your kids? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, I teach them. | ||
| But they're not into it anymore. | ||
| They were into it for a little while, but they like doing other stuff. | ||
| Mostly gymnastics and shit. | ||
| But are you teaching them that you think to take... | ||
| Because I'm trying to side with my son. | ||
| How to approach self-defense. | ||
| He's three. | ||
| He's three. | ||
| I know it's early. | ||
| But it's not a bad thing to get it to be a part of his body when he's really young. | ||
| My daughter started when she was five. | ||
| But the question becomes about teaching proper conflict resolution. | ||
| Because I also, I'm wired a little weird in the sense that I feel like because he's a black kid, he's not going to get judged the same if he throws the first punch. | ||
| So I don't want him in a position where he might get expelled or some shit, you know? | ||
| But if you got to get a motherfucker off you, go on and bend that knee sideways. | ||
| Yeah, yes. | ||
| Well, that's the beautiful thing about kids learn jujitsu, too, is they also they're really used to conflict because you have conflict in the gym all the time. | ||
| Not conflict in a negative way, but when you're sparring, you know, you slap hands and you just do it and you go full blast. | ||
| You're trying to get each other as hard as you can. | ||
| And you can do that in jujitsu because you're not hitting each other. | ||
| You're just choking each other and getting an arm bars. | ||
| And then when someone gets you, you just tap. | ||
| And then you move on to the next thing. | ||
| And the thing about doing that is then you're not worried about conflict. | ||
| It doesn't seem as scary to you. | ||
| Like, for me, until I started learning martial arts, I was fucking terrified of everybody. | ||
| I thought everybody was going to kick my ass. | ||
| Like, fuck! | ||
| I'd see some dude that bullied me. | ||
| I'm like, shit. | ||
| And I'd go around the whole opposite way of school. | ||
| I'd walk the total way around the school to get to the bus. | ||
| Oh, bro. | ||
| How much longer was that? | ||
| 15 extra minutes. | ||
| I didn't care. | ||
| I had to walk 20 extra minutes home if I didn't want to cut through the South Park projects. | ||
| Because there was this dude, Spencer, that was always, every week, for sure, going to give me the damn business. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh. | |
| Those people could ruin your lives. | ||
| Every week. | ||
| Like, they would sit on the porch and watch me walk in the corner store, and then would come and take my fucking Nile Laters and Laffy Taffys. | ||
| And mind you, I've set aside lunch. | ||
| I ate less at lunch so I could eat candy and chips on the way home, and they would snatch that shit right out my head. | ||
| Only thing that saved me growing up, I had a good-ass basketball goal. | ||
| So all the gangbangers in the neighborhood would come to our yard to shoot ball. | ||
| So I essentially learned every terrible person in my neighborhood shot ball at my house. | ||
| So you can't fuck with me because then you won't be able to shoot ball. | ||
| Oh, that's nice. | ||
| So I don't know if my mom did that by design. | ||
| I know she did it to keep me from going up to Powderly Park to shoot ball where, you know, that's where all the bullshit would go down. | ||
| But all the bullshit came to her house. | ||
| But out of respect to my mom and my dad, like they never started shit. | ||
| And I just walk around the neighborhood perfectly fine. | ||
| Now at school, I can still get fucked with. | ||
| But on the walk home, it was gravy. | ||
| That's very nice. | ||
| Once she got the basketball ball, it was good. | ||
| That's very nice. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| A kid who's really mean, who's like bullying you in high school and in junior high school, that could fuck people's whole lives up. | ||
| Sometimes people never recover from that shit. | ||
| You know, it's a natural inclination that people have to fuck with someone who's scared and weak, too. | ||
| Because you see it in animals, man. | ||
| You see it in dogs. | ||
| Yeah, we are animals. | ||
| That's what we forget. | ||
| We got like clothes and automobiles of civilizers. | ||
| No, it's still, I'm trying to take your woman and reproduce and I'm trying to fucking spread my genes and I'm going to take your food. | ||
| Like that's the basic of bullying is that. | ||
| Yeah, it's nature. | ||
| And it forces you to overcome. | ||
| Because almost every fighter that I've ever met, professional fighter, was fucked with. | ||
| Georges St-Pierre, who's like one of the greatest of all time, told a story on the podcast about he was driving his Range Rover when he was world champion through Montreal, and he saw this homeless guy, and the homeless guy was his bully in high school. | ||
| And he realized, he was like, whoa. | ||
| And he's like, what's going on, man? | ||
| What are you doing? | ||
| And like... | ||
| Talk to the guy and try to make amends with the guy and help him out a little bit. | ||
| But it's like, fuck, man. | ||
| This is his bully in high school. | ||
| And you realize, like, most people that are causing pain and inflicting pain on people, they're in pain, man. | ||
| That's why they're doing it. | ||
| You know, it's like victims... | ||
| You know, the victims of crimes oftentimes perpetrate those crimes on other people. | ||
| That happens when kids get abused at home, they get beaten at home. | ||
| They're the ones who want to beat kids up at school. | ||
| You know, they want to dish out that violence on someone smaller than them because they're getting it dished out on them by someone larger. | ||
| So they can feel some power. | ||
| Yeah, man. | ||
| I mean, that's the constant victim narrative. | ||
| But on the other hand, families of people that grow up that are martial artists, like all the kids know how to fight. | ||
| They're the nicest, friendliest people. | ||
| They don't worry about it. | ||
| It's not the thing that fucks with their head. | ||
| Like for me, I knew I didn't know how to fight. | ||
| So it was scary. | ||
| So like every time someone would fuck with me, I'd be like, oh, I gotta get away. | ||
| I can't fight. | ||
| I don't know what I'm doing. | ||
| Some dude got me in a headlock and threw me down on the ground. | ||
| And was gonna punch me in the face. | ||
| I'll never forget this. | ||
| I forget what was happening. | ||
| We were talking. | ||
| I said something. | ||
| He said something stupid to me. | ||
| I said something stupid back to him. | ||
| Then he just got me in a headlock and threw me on the ground. | ||
| And he held me like that. | ||
| He was gonna punch me. | ||
| I was like, nah, I'm not even gonna bother. | ||
| I'm just sitting there going, God damn it, I'm helpless. | ||
| Locked up in a headlock with this dude on top of me going, fuck. | ||
| And it's only his mercy that he didn't punch my fucking face in. | ||
| Or he didn't want to get suspended or whatever. | ||
| And I remember going, that's it. | ||
| I'm going to learn how to fight. | ||
| This is ridiculous. | ||
| Do you ever run into the people from your past who have a revisionist history on y'all's relationship? | ||
| Not too much, because the only people that I'm friends with from back then, I'm actually good friends with, that I was friends with when I was growing up. | ||
| Like a couple of buddies. | ||
| But most people I don't. | ||
| But most of the dicks, they never bought a ticket to your show and came up to the merch table. | ||
| By the time I was in high school, that's the only people that I still am in contact with anymore. | ||
| I had already gotten balls deep in martial arts my first year of high school. | ||
| So by halfway into high school, I was already crazy. | ||
| I was already competing and traveling all over the place. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But I do run into people that have fake stories. | ||
| I run into people that tell me things that happened. | ||
| Remember that time we were at a party and you kicked that dude in the head? | ||
| I'm like, dude, I never kicked anybody. | ||
| That never happened. | ||
| 100% definitely never happened. | ||
| I never went to a party and beat anybody's ass. | ||
| Never happened. | ||
| You just leave them with that memory or do you correct them? | ||
| I correct them. | ||
| I'm like, I never fought anybody. | ||
| Some dude was telling me some story about some guy told him that one time we were on the street. | ||
| And some guys across the street were talking shit, and I went across the street and kicked both of them in the head. | ||
| I'm like, that never happened. | ||
| Never happened. | ||
| I'm gonna guarantee you it never happened, because the last time I was in a street fight, I was like 15. I'm like, this never happened. | ||
| This is not a true story. | ||
| See, I'm the opposite, man. | ||
| People come to me with shit that I don't remember. | ||
| I just let them have it. | ||
| That's... | ||
| If that's your memory of us in college, fine. | ||
| Whatever. | ||
| It's weird though, right? | ||
| When you know it didn't happen? | ||
| Yeah, it's weird. | ||
| When you definitely know. | ||
| Like, I know for a fact I was never in any street fights outside of high school. | ||
| I had a professor from college accuse me, this was in a Facebook thread of something, I don't know, there's some article about me and all the other alumni are commenting on it. | ||
| And one of the professors... | ||
| I remember in 1994 when you said this thing to me in class and stormed out of class. | ||
| I'm like, I didn't enroll until 96. But I didn't say that. | ||
| I just, I literally just apologize. | ||
| Like, cause she's clearly been mad at me all of this time about something that I didn't even do. | ||
| And I'm just like, there's nothing I can say. | ||
| If that's your narrative, fine. | ||
| You know what? | ||
| I'm sorry for the shit that I didn't do. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Whatever. | |
| Dude, look at Roy Wood, all peaceful and zen. | ||
| But then she replies under that, well, thank you. | ||
| It means a lot and whatever. | ||
| So, in my weird, arrogant brain, I've freed her. | ||
| Of her anger or whatever the fuck it is she thought I did, but I didn't do it. | ||
| That's very cool of you. | ||
| That's a great approach. | ||
| I just don't feel like going back and forth. | ||
| That's a great approach. | ||
| It's so much easier to evade. | ||
| I'm more of an evader and a schemer than a fighter. | ||
| I'm not going to argue with you and go back and forth, but what I will try and figure out a way to do is over the next two years, diabolically dismantle anything you stand for and believe in. | ||
| Like, that's... | ||
| That's my approach. | ||
| There's a comedy club owner. | ||
| God is my witness. | ||
| Before I die, I'm opening a comedy club across the street. | ||
| Is this in San Diego? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| I've heard the stories. | ||
| Where is this one? | ||
| Can you not tell? | ||
| It's East Coast. | ||
| It's one of the Carolinas. | ||
| You know, comedy club owners, we have such a complicated relationship with them because we need them and we don't want to do it. | ||
| I don't want to fucking run a goddamn comedy club, but we need one. | ||
| You know, to have some guys dealing with a bunch of maniacs like us day in, day out, every week, coming in and telling jokes and getting drunk and Smoking weed in the green room and all the chaos. | ||
| It's essential to the art form. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| The existence of the comedy club is essential. | ||
| 100%. | ||
| You ever get scared that the young people don't really go to clubs? | ||
| Don't really fuck with clubs? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Yes, I do. | ||
| It's going to change the business model like in the next decade. | ||
| Well, one of the beautiful things about comedy clubs, though, is that we all use them. | ||
| Like, even if you're doing arenas, like, you use comedy clubs. | ||
| You use comedy clubs to exercise. | ||
| Like, Chappelle comes in all the time and does the belly room. | ||
| That's a 70-seat room. | ||
| That dude just strolls on in, it'll be half full. | ||
| Intimate. | ||
| Yep, and he'll do 40 fucking minutes. | ||
| And that is so critical, man. | ||
| It's so important to get that work in. | ||
| That's why I don't like when... | ||
| A lot of the vets attack the, as they call them, Instagram comedians or the Vine. | ||
| Not Vine anymore, but you know what the fuck I'm saying. | ||
| Yeah, they get mad at them because the club will book them and they'll go, well, the live show is trash. | ||
| It's terrible. | ||
| And it's true for most of them. | ||
| It's not the greatest performance because they haven't had the chops yet. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But they sold 300 paid tickets and everybody ate and drank. | ||
| What do you think is keeping the lights on for your 30% selling capacity ass to come back in next year and the next year to go from 30% sold to 40% sold? | ||
| They're not making no money off of you. | ||
| But if these IG comedians can come in and at least help keep the lights on, I think in the greater scheme of comedy, There's more good than bad that comes from that. | ||
| And I also feel like there's a level of ignoring the tools that they've been able to use to get an audience in lieu of the fact that they don't put new stand-up on TV anymore unless it's contest shit. | ||
| Comedy Central just started with the Live at the Cellar shit, but other than that, I mean, it hasn't been a lot. | ||
| Well, no one's even watching TV anymore. | ||
| I mean, the numbers on regular TV programs are so low now. | ||
| Like, if you're doing a set on Conan, like, what is... | ||
| Did we win over this, right? | ||
| Like, the numbers are, like, less than 400,000 people watch it a night? | ||
| Yeah, that might be live plus three. | ||
| On top of that, that might not even be just live. | ||
| That might be live plus DVR over the next three days. | ||
| It's crazy. | ||
| So no one's watching anything anymore. | ||
| If you can get onto a stage, the way I feel about Instagram comedians or YouTube comedians is if you're doing stand-up, you're a comic. | ||
| You might be a shitty comic, and you might be a famous shitty comic because you're famous from Vine or whatever the fuck it is. | ||
| You're a comic. | ||
| It's whether or not you decide to become a real comic and actually do the work and put in the time and then one day be... | ||
| Look, I hope we see these YouTube comics and they're fucking terrible and then you go to see them seven, eight years later and they're murdering. | ||
| They're crushing. | ||
| Great timing. | ||
| Great premises. | ||
| I'm like, we got one. | ||
| We got one. | ||
| We need more. | ||
| This is a hard gig. | ||
| Think about what you had to do when you were starting. | ||
| Think about you traveling around to all those fucking things. | ||
| Getting on a bus to do open mics. | ||
| They had an open mic once a month. | ||
| That takes a kind of grit and resolve that most people don't have. | ||
| This shit is like hazing where the old heads feel like, well, they didn't suffer the way I suffered. | ||
| Therefore, your success is invalid. | ||
| I don't take that. | ||
| Because you didn't do it the way I did it. | ||
| This is the only way to do it. | ||
| The game evolves. | ||
| The points of access. | ||
| It's like comedy is like... | ||
| To me, it's like a fucking grocery store. | ||
| And you've been in line. | ||
| You've been in this checkout line. | ||
| And then a new checkout line opens. | ||
| And then all these fuckers just cruise through that checkout. | ||
| And you're still stuck in the same waiting to get a... | ||
| Tonight show set line and the Instagram line opens and people just start whisking through to success and you don't know whether or not to change lines or stay in this one. | ||
| The beautiful thing about comedy is you don't have to get out of the line. | ||
| You just open up a new line. | ||
| Open up an Instagram line. | ||
| Open up a YouTube line. | ||
| You can do all those things. | ||
| But they ain't been waiting in line as long as me. | ||
| So why do they get to leave the store? | ||
| You know you have that jealousy, that little piece of jealousy when someone has not been in line as long as you leaves the grocery store before you. | ||
| That's comedy now. | ||
| It is, but it's wasted energy. | ||
| You can't think about that. | ||
| You should think about that the same way you think about someone having success in some field that has nothing to do with yours. | ||
| Like if someone is a Nobel Prize winning scientist, like, fuck, I could have done that. | ||
| But you didn't. | ||
| It's really the same thing. | ||
| I could have thought of that app. | ||
| It has nothing to do. | ||
| But some people are like that. | ||
| Some people see someone with like a startup, some internet startup, and it makes a billion dollars and they get angry. | ||
| They get angry. | ||
| But no, go fucking do something. | ||
| Don't worry about what other people are doing. | ||
| It's a giant waste of your energy. | ||
| Yo, I read a book, Rebel Without a Crew. | ||
| I think it's Rich Rodriguez, I think is his name. | ||
| And he was a filmmaker and he made the, I can't remember the name of the movie, but it was the prequel to what became Desperado. | ||
| Oh, Robert Rodriguez? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And he talked about just shooting that shit gorilla and for essentially pennies, less than $10,000. | ||
| Shot a whole ass film and walks through how he cut the corners. | ||
| And then you think of how they shot Paranormal Activity for, well, like $55,000, $50,000 or $60,000. | ||
| The first Paranormal Activity was dirt cheap. | ||
| They shot the first Saw for a million dollars in 30 days in one building. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Whoa. | |
| Every scene in the car, they're just shaking the fucking camera and jump cutting. | ||
| Billion dollar franchise, getting rebooted now. | ||
| When I see shit like that, I don't get jealous. | ||
| I go, well, fuck, I need to go and fucking gorilla some shit together and learn. | ||
| So that's why I started trying to learn video editing, audio editing, all that shit, man. | ||
| Yeah, no, it was inspiring. | ||
| I love when I walked in the green room and I saw you fucking with that software. | ||
| I love when people are hustling, when they're doing things like that, learning new things. | ||
| And you're like, you know what? | ||
| Fuck this Final Cut Pro shit. | ||
| I'm going to learn Adobe Premiere. | ||
| They keep fucking with me, making me buy a new version every year. | ||
| Now, to be fair, Adobe makes you rent the shit, but I think there's a way to... | ||
| Microsoft does that too now with like Office. | ||
| Yeah, the whole Office suite. | ||
| You rent it. | ||
| You pay like $80 a year. | ||
| There's so many crux out there. | ||
| For the access to it. | ||
| Just crux. | ||
| Crux. | ||
| And then you can't use the old version of Office with the new. | ||
| And if I send you a file that's like Office 03, you can't open it with the new... | ||
| It opens as a text file with no form. | ||
| They do it to fuck you. | ||
| I barely use Office. | ||
| I use it, I have it, but I write with Write Room for the most part. | ||
| Do you know what that is? | ||
| Is that script software? | ||
| No, it's a software that turns your whole screen black and then turns the text green and you can't access your browser, you can't do nothing. | ||
| You just have green software. | ||
| Have you ever seen it? | ||
| No. | ||
| So it looks like some old MS-DOS coding type action? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| On my Windows computer, I use a program called Scrivener. | ||
| And I do most of my writing on that. | ||
| And there's a distraction-free option. | ||
| That's what it looks like. | ||
| Yeah, that's a matrix. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| I write like I'm in the matrix. | ||
| That's how I write when I'm on my Mac. | ||
| Because I think they have a version of that. | ||
| Don't they have a version of that for Windows? | ||
| I think they do, but I've never really installed it. | ||
| I just use... | ||
| Yeah, I need to play around with that. | ||
| It just says Mac OS. It doesn't say anything about Windows. | ||
| I heard a story that they wrote the first Independence Day movie in three days in a hotel room. | ||
| Makes sense. | ||
| This movie's so stupid. | ||
| Just focusing in. | ||
| That type of shit would just help me focus. | ||
| If you had a lot of coffee or some Adderall or something like that, you could write a dumb action movie in three days. | ||
| Easy. | ||
| You could go crazy. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Guerrilla-style shit, man, that's how this podcast got started. | ||
| This podcast reaches some stupendous number of people every month, and it started out with a laptop in my living room, because I was bored, me and my friend Brian, because I had just gotten back from Colorado. | ||
| And I was like, yeah, I can't believe I'm back in L.A. This is fucking terrible. | ||
| I'm like, well, let me do something. | ||
| And so I just started doing Q&As on a laptop, talking to people on Ustream. | ||
| God. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| That's the one thing I wish I could have back. | ||
| I wish I had taken YouTube more seriously. | ||
| You take it seriously right now, though. | ||
| I do now, but not in 2005 when it first came. | ||
| Yeah, but just start rolling now. | ||
| See, that's the same thing you were complaining about before. | ||
| No, I'm just, it's the wish that I had done something. | ||
| That's what your career is. | ||
| It's like, man, I might have done this sooner. | ||
| It's two things I would have done sooner. | ||
| I would have taken the internet more seriously, and I would have taken some more advice and not gotten on TV for 10 years. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Really? | |
| I don't think any comic can do it though. | ||
| I think it is impossible to be a working comic and stay off of... | ||
| If you stayed off of television... | ||
| If you started your career and just never did shit, no festivals, just crush, crush, crush, crush, you become a fucking legend. | ||
| That by the time you finally decide, you're like a college quarterback that just stays in college for years and years and years and never enters the draft. | ||
| And by the time you do, then everything is stratospheric. | ||
| But there's too much money. | ||
| There's too many offers. | ||
| Well, you know who did that? | ||
| It's Joey Diaz. | ||
| Joey Diaz didn't do any stand-up comedy on TV until like 15, 20 years in. | ||
| Yeah, he was crushing. | ||
| But Joey also, I think, is from a different cloth. | ||
| He wasn't seeking that out either. | ||
| He was never tempted by that. | ||
| Well, he was seeking it out. | ||
| They were scared of him. | ||
| You know, he was talking about eating ass and taking in the muffler and all this chaos. | ||
| Taking in the muffler. | ||
| Yeah, he talks crazy. | ||
| But I think I have a different perspective. | ||
| I think I have a bunch of old sets. | ||
| For me, when I was on TV, I was doing comedy like five years, four years. | ||
| They're terrible. | ||
| But the good thing about it is they exist. | ||
| And it lets you see. | ||
| Like, look, in the beginning, I was fucking terrible. | ||
| But just keep going. | ||
| You just keep working at it. | ||
| You keep working at it, you get better. | ||
| I'm not under any illusion that I didn't used to suck. | ||
| I try to talk about it as much as possible. | ||
| I was terrible when I first started. | ||
| You're okay with that being out there? | ||
| I don't give a fuck. | ||
| Dude, I've been digging in the crates. | ||
| I've been digitizing a lot of my old VHS shit. | ||
| Trying to, you know, just... | ||
| For posterity. | ||
| And going through some of my old fucking TV sets. | ||
| They're all terrible. | ||
| Like, the Letterman set is probably the only thing... | ||
| The Letterman and Def Jam set in 06. Those are the only two that I'd still, to this day, would go, alright, I still stand beside those jokes. | ||
| Everything before that. | ||
| Premium Blend, Star Search, Last Comic Standing... | ||
| Apollo, Comic View, all of it. | ||
| I'm like bury that shit. | ||
| My biggest fear is becoming famous, whatever the fuck that is, and then BET just rolling out some sort of remember when Fucking thread. | ||
| He was all the black comics that used to suck 20 years ago. | ||
| And just going, no. | ||
| But that's who you were. | ||
| That's part of the process. | ||
| I like the process. | ||
| I don't care. | ||
| I'm fine with it. | ||
| The problem is that the gatekeepers that decide stuff, they only want the newest shiny thing. | ||
| So if they see you too soon and you're a little too rusty. | ||
| That's the only problem, Roy. | ||
| That's the only problem. | ||
| You don't need those fucks. | ||
| You don't need gatekeepers. | ||
| Internet. | ||
| The internet has no gatekeepers. | ||
| They have people that have podcasts. | ||
| They get you on their podcasts. | ||
| You do your own podcast. | ||
| You put out a lot of content. | ||
| No gatekeepers. | ||
| But the problem is that it takes comics discovering that. | ||
| Because the problem as a young comic is that you inherit the goals of your predecessors. | ||
| So as a young comic, especially as a road comic, every road comic is trying to get on TV. So they make you believe TV is where you need to be going. | ||
| Don't fuck with that YouTube shit, little nigga. | ||
| I tell you right now, you got to get on goddamn Letterman. | ||
| You get on Letterman, and then you get the show. | ||
| I got on Letterman, and it's not a knock. | ||
| On Letterman. | ||
| And it's worth as a credit. | ||
| But the worth of a late night credit in 2006 versus 1996, it's not the same currency. | ||
| No. | ||
| There was a deflation in the currency. | ||
| So it got me more rooms. | ||
| It got me more money. | ||
| But there was no Ray Romano fucking, here's your career. | ||
| Choose your career. | ||
| Here's your Kevin James. | ||
| It doesn't work like that. | ||
| But you're chasing what somebody else wanted. | ||
| And the game is always moving. | ||
| The school of fish are always... | ||
| So you have to be ahead of that curve, and it just didn't listen to the instincts. | ||
| Yeah, it's hard to see where it's going, though. | ||
| If the people from your predecessors, the guys who were successful when you were coming up, where they were headlining and you were middling, for them, that was the goal. | ||
| The goal was The Tonight Show. | ||
| Yeah, but I don't think it's that hard to... | ||
| See the future? | ||
| Not necessarily see the future, but see the trends of what people are paying attention to. | ||
| I'm quicker to read Fast Company than I am a variety or a Hollywood reporter because where tech goes, that's where people go. | ||
| Where people go, they want to laugh. | ||
| So you figure out a way with that to integrate laughter into whatever the new tech, like this TikTok shit. | ||
| I don't know what that is. | ||
| I've seen it, but I don't know what it is. | ||
| You better fucking figure it out. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Because that's the next one. | ||
| Is it the next one? | ||
| That's the one. | ||
| I've almost brought up to you. | ||
| We should maybe think of something. | ||
| We should do a TikTok account? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| We should think about it. | ||
| I don't think you'll like it. | ||
| I don't think you'll like it. | ||
| I won't like it? | ||
| It's music. | ||
| It's musical vine in a way. | ||
| It's music sketches, but it's still funny. | ||
| It's entertaining. | ||
| Tom Segura does it all the time. | ||
| He's into it. | ||
| He's ironically doing it, but yeah. | ||
| But he does some funny shit on it. | ||
| Some of them are getting... | ||
| He does some funny shit on it. | ||
| Because Tom Segura is self-aware that he's a guy that shouldn't be on TikTok, so his existence on TikTok... | ||
| It's what makes it funny. | ||
| He knows how to do that shit, but he's ahead of that curve. | ||
| So the other thing I think compounded guys like me from my generation is that Dane Cook was one of the first that was like, all right, fuck TV, what's over here? | ||
| And so many people shitted on Dane out of jealousy that you ignored the fact that his MySpace move was some fucking bullshit. | ||
| It was huge. | ||
| It was huge for everybody. | ||
| I remember I read People Magazine. | ||
| There was an article about how he had like 200,000 or 300,000 MySpace friends. | ||
| I was like, damn. | ||
| That's crazy. | ||
| I remember thinking, that is crazy. | ||
| How does he have so many friends? | ||
| But he was using that and talking to people online constantly. | ||
| And rather look at him and see how he did it, you stand in your checkout lane and go, fuck him, he got out of the store before me. | ||
| Well, I shifted and I started promoting on it. | ||
| No, I didn't. | ||
| I'm just saying a lot of comics like me just didn't, you lean on what you're told because you look at older comics as mentors instead of realizing that maybe they don't have this shit figured out either and you should be trusting your instincts. | ||
| He was the first guy, right? | ||
| He was the first guy to really make it through the internet. | ||
| On the digital side, yeah. | ||
| 100%, right? | ||
| I'd say that. | ||
| I can't think of anybody before him because I can't think of anything before that other than Yahoo chat rooms. | ||
| No, he was the first guy. | ||
| He was the first guy and the first guy for sure that became famous for MySpace. | ||
| Yeah, because MySpace was like the first platform of that social network and shit. | ||
| Yeah, his album sold like 2 million copies or something crazy like that. | ||
| Yeah, dude, retaliation. | ||
| Oh my god. | ||
| If you stop and think about how nuts that is today, like today a big artist, like if Eminem puts out an album, how many does he sell? | ||
| I'd say 400 first week. | ||
| Maybe three. | ||
| Two. | ||
| Well, 400 first week. | ||
| Let's give it a year. | ||
| Depending on what week you're releasing right now, you could be number one with like 30,000 sales. | ||
| Whoa! | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| 40, 50,000 sales. | ||
| Boy, they just gutted that record business, didn't they? | ||
| That is crazy what happened with the internet. | ||
| The internet took out porn and took out music by the knees. | ||
| I used to have a fucking neighbor. | ||
| He lived right down the street like two houses down from me. | ||
| This crazy porn dude. | ||
| I used to do jujitsu with him too. | ||
| He was all steroided up and maniac and wild eyes. | ||
| He was just crazy. | ||
| Like coke? | ||
| Yes! | ||
| It was coke and steroids and he was just fucking up a storm constantly. | ||
| Pulling past his house and he always had these fat Mercedes parked in his driveway and all hot girls in their underwear walking around. | ||
| It was hilarious. | ||
| This dude was a maniac. | ||
| But then the internet came around. | ||
| The internet just gutted his business. | ||
| Just gutted it. | ||
| And they repossessed his house. | ||
| I'll never forget, man. | ||
| His fucking house got repossessed. | ||
| And I remember seeing it in the real estate section. | ||
| I was like, fuck, man. | ||
| That dude lost his house. | ||
| He had a fat fucking Rolex with diamonds all over it. | ||
| Porn got really fucked over, but you want to talk about the people selecting what they want to see. | ||
| What's a bigger focus group than people who want to fucking jack off? | ||
| And they've decided I would rather see somebody in the hood in their house with no lighting and just terrible fucking camera work. | ||
| And that's interesting. | ||
| What it was it is that porn became free and they just used ad clicks and they would just pirate everyone's porn. | ||
| Say if you were a porn producer and you were making a bunch of porn, they would just take your porn and put it on like whatever website. | ||
| And then you would have to get a lawyer to try to take it down. | ||
| Yeah, it was like some LimeWire to the 80th power. | ||
| It was like way worse than LimeWire. | ||
| Got it the entire business. | ||
| But you don't think the free side and the amateur porn is part of it? | ||
| Oh yeah, that's big too. | ||
| I mean, that's bigger now, but in the beginning, yes, it was just porn clips getting chopped up and nobody paying $40 for a five-hour DVD. You know what I noticed lately? | ||
| I was doing research recently. | ||
| You know what I noticed? | ||
| There's a lot of stepmother porn. | ||
| It's a lot of stepmom, horny stepmom porn or stepsister porn. | ||
| It's all like taboo stuff. | ||
| It's also a lot of getting caught porn. | ||
| Yes, yes, yes, yes. | ||
| Yeah, like the wife walks in, you're in the middle of getting your dicks like, what? | ||
| And it cuts right there. | ||
| It cuts the moment she walks in. | ||
| Yeah, there's a lot of that. | ||
| We did a story on racism and porn for Daily Show. | ||
| And so we were shooting up in Chatsworth or whatever. | ||
| And what I did, I learned so much about the porn industry and that I didn't know that like they would just have a fuck house where it's like an eight bedroom house and every bedroom is an individual studio set up for whatever genre of porn. | ||
| There was like at least five different genres of porn being shot in that house. | ||
| We're out in the... | ||
| And mind you, I still have this image that if you're a porn star and you're working with a porn studio, there's some bread. | ||
| There's got to be a little bit of money. | ||
| And one of the porn stars was... | ||
| Is it actress? | ||
| What's the fucking word now? | ||
| Porn actress? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| So one of the actresses, her car is blocking someone. | ||
| So I go, give me your keys. | ||
| I'll go move your car. | ||
| In this car, I have to be the most filthy, saddest fucking... | ||
| To the point where I'm like, if this is what fucking on camera gets you, there's got to be something else out there. | ||
| And you want to talk about people that need to see where the curve is. | ||
| I think if you're a woman and you're cool with doing porn, you're probably better off just doing it on some self-starting shit than even dealing with any of these LA crooks in the first place. | ||
| Yeah, if you could figure out a way to get an audience. | ||
| I know there's a lot of dudes who run these companies that girls use where people pay to see their videos. | ||
| Like someone will ask you, if you're a porn actress, they'll say, hey, I want you to use this dildo and cover your tits with whipped cream and I'll give you $150. | ||
| On some live stream, like private Skype type shit. | ||
| Yeah, they make their money doing that, and they'll do that all day long, and rake in thousands of dollars. | ||
| Yeah, that's like the food videos, where you sit butt naked and eat some food, and you go on a virtual date with the person. | ||
| Yeah, I think it's... | ||
| Butt naked, food eating? | ||
| Sometimes naked, sometimes not. | ||
| And like you're having dinner on Skype? | ||
| There's a lot of that in Asia. | ||
| Yeah, a woman's just looking straight at the camera. | ||
| So anyway, today... | ||
| Do you talk to her? | ||
| That's up to you. | ||
| Do you have a conversation back to her? | ||
| Sometimes it's just a straight video and you don't get to interact with it because there's multiple people watching the feed concurrently. | ||
| Or if you want to pay a little extra, yeah, one-on-one. | ||
| I will sit here and pretend to be on a date with you. | ||
| And that's more feeding loneliness than some sort of erotic desire. | ||
| But there's not a lot of money in it. | ||
| Neal Khalifa was talking about that shit a couple weeks ago. | ||
| What was she doing? | ||
| She said she only got like 12K. For the year. | ||
| But she only did porn for like a week, right? | ||
| It was like a year or something like that. | ||
| I don't think it even was. | ||
| Whatever it was, it should have been more than 12K. No, that's all she deserves. | ||
| What I'm saying is... | ||
| I didn't see the porn, so I don't know whether or not... | ||
| No, I'm sure she did a great job. | ||
| She put in a solid effort. | ||
| I'm just kidding. | ||
| If you're someone that wants to do porn, you're coming off better just setting up your webcam like Joe Rogan. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Day one. | ||
| Podcast you and Brian with a laptop and a microphone and just Turn a webcam on and just doing whatever the fuck you want to do with yourself then dealing with the industry Yeah, and the record industry is becoming similar to that, too I think so, too, but I think that it's hard for them to find an audience that way There's so much porn like I had a joke I was doing for a while About why are they making new porn like who is jerked off to all of it? | ||
| There's no way anyone has seen it all, but yet they keep making new porn. | ||
| It's crazy. | ||
| There's no demand. | ||
| There's no demand for new stuff. | ||
| There's plenty. | ||
| You would have to be some kind of crazy creep to have seen every porn that has ever existed. | ||
| But it's no different than MMA. There's people innovating. | ||
| Yes, innovating in porn. | ||
| Backflipping and... | ||
| POV and new scenarios. | ||
| Breaking their necks. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I think the cam thing is the big thing. | ||
| Girls fuck on camera. | ||
| They'll have their boyfriend come over and they'll fuck him and suck his dick on camera and you pay to watch. | ||
| That's the big thing. | ||
| And they do private shows and the guy could tell the girl, hey, I want you to do this to him and they'll do it on camera. | ||
| Very strange. | ||
| You know the funniest shit, though? | ||
| So, Steve Byrne and I, We were in Pittsburgh and three things lead to another and we end up at a strip club and it's a weekend and so apparently, I didn't know this, but porn stars tour strip clubs and they'll go to a strip club on the weekend and dance and sell whatever pocket pussy or whatever vagina mold they have and all of the strippers fucking hate them. | ||
| Really? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Like, some of the strippers are cool because, oh, they bring more people into the club. | ||
| But for the most part, the men are saving their tip money to tip the porn star that they came to see. | ||
| So it's like being a seasoned comic, and then the Instagram comic comes in who's never stripped before. | ||
| Like, yeah, you fuck on camera, but it's not stripping. | ||
| What I do is an art. | ||
| What you do is slutty behavior. | ||
| Because, you know, like, there's like a beef between, like... | ||
| Strippers and prostitutes because some strippers are sucking fuck in the back of the club and it fucks up money for the rest of the strippers that are playing the game straight up. | ||
| So there was this weird tension in the strip club while the porn star was on stage and I could not stop laughing. | ||
| Because it was comedy and that's part of why stripping to me is performative. | ||
| In a weird way, it's comedy and stripping. | ||
| It's damaged people entertaining strangers. | ||
| So there's more of a synergy. | ||
| So I don't really get anything out of watching the stripper because in the back of my head, I know you're thinking about groceries or some other shit. | ||
| But it was hilarious as a comic to watch two different same but different type of performance. | ||
| It's like the magician versus... | ||
| The stand-up versus the juggler and how they all kind of don't really like one another for one reason or another because they all think what they do is superlative to the other guy's craft. | ||
| And it was, it was goddamn, it was fucking hilarious. | ||
| That is an inside scene that only strippers can really appreciate what you're talking about. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Like for them, they're like, yes, those bitches. | ||
| Ruining it. | ||
| Coming over here. | ||
| Bunch of fucking whores. | ||
| There's a couple of strip clubs that I used to go to in Birmingham where the club would close at 2 and the police would leave and then at 3 the club would reopen and then it was open season and it was whatever you wanted to do and then you would see strippers in the parking lot Yelling at the other strippers who were choosing to stay for the 3am session, saying that y'all are messing it up and that's why nobody comes before 2 is because of what you're doing. | ||
| So at 3 it became like a brothel. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, it's insane. | ||
| Isn't it hilarious that you could fuck anybody you want for free? | ||
| And there's not a law about it. | ||
| But as soon as money gets exchanged, you're a criminal and everybody's mad at you. | ||
| If you're just a slut, no one cares. | ||
| But if you want to fuck people for money, that becomes a real problem for people because people desire sex so much and there's so many guys that cannot get laid, but they've got some money. | ||
| And if they find out if they can pay for it, people are like, no, you can't! | ||
| You can't pay for it! | ||
| You can pay for everything. | ||
| Everything that's legal. | ||
| Everything else that's legal, you can pay for. | ||
| Except sex. | ||
| You can pay to have someone cook for you. | ||
| You can pay to have someone rub your back. | ||
| You can pay to have someone cut your hair. | ||
| You can pay to have someone mow your lawn. | ||
| You can pay to have someone take out your trash. | ||
| You can pay to have someone clean your house. | ||
| All things you don't want to do. | ||
| You can't pay for someone to suck your dick. | ||
| You can't. | ||
| If someone could do it for free, if they like you, there's no problem. | ||
| It's very strange. | ||
| Or in exchange for college tuition. | ||
| You can't even do that. | ||
| If you made like a deal, like you suck my dick and I'll give you a house. | ||
| People go, hey! | ||
| You can't do that. | ||
| That's prostitution. | ||
| Very strange, right? | ||
| I mean, think about all the things we do that we don't want to do, but we do it for money. | ||
| Everything's fine. | ||
| There's no issue. | ||
| Even think, like, you know, I grew up doing terrible construction jobs I'd never want to do. | ||
| You know, it might be better to suck a dude's dick for a thousand bucks than to fucking carry cement bags all day for $400 for a whole week. | ||
| At least you got that. | ||
| I used to work day jobs. | ||
| I used to work day labor when I was on the road as an emcee so I could make more money. | ||
| The one advantage the South had was that the comedy clubs back then were like five, six day runs. | ||
| Oh, so you would work during the day on the runs? | ||
| Comedy House Theater in Columbia, South Carolina used to be a six-night room. | ||
| And it was Tuesday through Sunday. | ||
| So I would get to town Monday night. | ||
| And Tuesday morning, I would go to a day labor spot, get a job assignment, and work the whole week, nine to five. | ||
| And then at night, go do my little MC bullshit. | ||
| Kids need to hear this. | ||
| Kids coming up, they need to hear this. | ||
| That's important. | ||
| That's real hustling. | ||
| Dude, why am I going to sit here in a hotel all day and do nothing when I could go make a quick, like, minimum wage was like five and a quarter. | ||
| Like, you're only making 40 bucks, but that was extra money. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Like, I counted on that little extra money, and we used to work cement. | ||
| Fuck it. | ||
| Oh, my God. | ||
| There's a quick creek factory in Columbia, South Carolina, and I've worked there. | ||
| I worked there. | ||
| Anytime I played the comedy club, I worked at the Quick Creek Factory. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| So did you have to call them up? | ||
| You show up at 6 in the morning with your driver's license, and you sign up, and then you sit in the lobby, and you watch the morning news until your name is called, and then they give you your job assignment. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| And so you bring boots, you bring a hard hat, because you don't know what you're going to get. | ||
| You might get something with a keyboard, you might just be outside holding a stop slow fucking stop stick while they pave a road, and that's your gig for eight hours. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| And you just stand in the fucking Carolina heat and just fucking 525 an hour. | ||
| I love stories like this. | ||
| Dude, that was my first 10 years was just working day labor, weird jobs to make extra money. | ||
| And if the gig was under five hours, I would drive back home. | ||
| I wouldn't even stay. | ||
| At the time, I was still working morning radio. | ||
| So, if it was within five hours, I would do morning radio, get off the air at 10, be on the road by 11, five hours, nap, do the show, get back in my car at 10 p.m., five hours back to Birmingham, sleep at the station, wake up at 6, wash, rinse, repeat. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Whoa. | |
| I can't lose the radio gig because that was too much of a good gig. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And I was doing prank calls, and I was using the prank calls. | ||
| I was taking my prank calls at the time and sending them to other morning shows. | ||
| This is website, Radio Online, which kind of breaks down. | ||
| It's almost like Billboard. | ||
| It's almost like Nielsen or some shit, but for radio. | ||
| And so I would go there, and I would look for other local morning shows that weren't syndicated. | ||
| in cities where I wasn't performing. | ||
| And so I would send my print calls for free to these morning shows and go look. | ||
| I'm a comic. | ||
| Here's some free prank calls we do in Birmingham. | ||
| They're not going anywhere else. | ||
| You want to air them in Omaha? | ||
| The guy says yes. | ||
| He doesn't have shit else to play on the air. | ||
| So I would send the prank calls. | ||
| The guy would play the prank calls for a couple of weeks, a couple of months. | ||
| And then I would call the local comedy club and go, hey, I want a feature in your room. | ||
| I'm on the radio and I know I can get on there. | ||
| And this is when the belief that radio still could bring people to the show. | ||
| So I would call local comedy clubs in cities where my prank calls were airing and use that as leverage to get booked as a feature instead of an emcee. | ||
| And so that's how I was able to kind of jump a level because I was a feature that was coming in town with the pre-plugged in media access and all of that shit. | ||
| Dude, you're a hustler. | ||
| You're a real hustler. | ||
| I love hearing shit like that. | ||
| I really do. | ||
| I love hearing the driving part. | ||
| I love hearing the getting the day job part. | ||
| Kids need to hear this. | ||
| All you fucking kids listening to this right now, they're thinking you want a job in show business. | ||
| This is what comes with it. | ||
| And that's why you're so good, man. | ||
| That hustler mentality, that's so important. | ||
| That's so important. | ||
| You just network. | ||
| You find people that you can, that are as driven as you. | ||
| And then you just figure out ways to work together and do shit. | ||
| But comedy is so, so many motherfuckers are lying, bro. | ||
| They're lying. | ||
| How so? | ||
| And you lie. | ||
| You get the leverage. | ||
| And like, it's... | ||
| So the way I got hired on radio, so at the time, the thought was that, this is 2001, I'm out of college, and if I can get on the radio, then that'll give me more access in the city, and I can host my own comedy night. | ||
| By hosting my own comedy night, I can offer money to out-of-towners who also have comedy nights and do swap-outs. | ||
| So I needed to get the radio gig. | ||
| So, at the time, they were doing some sort of contest or some shit. | ||
| And who's the funniest in Birmingham or some shit? | ||
| And I missed the window for the contest. | ||
| And so, I knew... | ||
| The long story short is that I go to the radio station. | ||
| I asked the guy at the time, Buckwild, who was hosting 95.7. | ||
| Not the same star on Buckwild, different Buckwild. | ||
| I don't know any Buckwilds. | ||
| Okay, perfect. | ||
| Not the same Buckwild. | ||
| Oh, different Buckwild. | ||
| Oh, okay. | ||
| So, I said, hey man, I'm a comic. | ||
| I have a degree in journalism. | ||
| It's a perfect fit. | ||
| Fuck with me. | ||
| And he goes, nah, we're done with that. | ||
| We're not going to have a comic. | ||
| I go, okay, cool. | ||
| Now, I've done enough of the comedy club in Birmingham to know that on black weekends, the black radio station hosts the black comedy night on Fridays and they throw out t-shirts and all that shit. | ||
| So, I go to the comedy club and I told Bruce Ayers, I said, hey... | ||
| I just got hired at 95.7 and they want me to open for D.O. Hughley this weekend. | ||
| And he goes, okay, that's fine. | ||
| I'll go back to 95.7. | ||
| I go, yo, I know you don't want to fuck with me, but I'm opening for D.O. this weekend. | ||
| Do me a favor. | ||
| Watch my set. | ||
| If I'm funny, put me on Monday morning. | ||
| He goes, you got a deal. | ||
| So I get to the comedy club that Friday and all I have to do is keep Buckwild and Bruce Ayers apart. | ||
| So that neither one knows what the fucking lie was. | ||
| And Bruce came backstage and you just, as long as you act like you belong and you act like the truth is the truth, people will kind of merge in with that shit. | ||
| And Bruce came in and goes, okay, Buck Wild, you go out and throw the t-shirts and then you bring up Roy. | ||
| And I went out, and it was seven minutes, but I fucking crushed, like, just, when you need that one set to go right in every syllable, every fucking comma, it's perfect. | ||
| And I demolished in front of D.L. Hughley, and I walk off stage, and Buckwild says, see you Monday morning. | ||
| And that's how I got radio. | ||
| It's just, what were you gonna do? | ||
| Not fucking book me? | ||
| I'm already not really working the comedy club. | ||
| club I'm already not hired by you what is the penalty for this lie is this lie will this lie send me to jail no it's a hustle lie yeah I'm not saying load your resume with 50 different credits that you don't have but if you've performed somewhere else outside of where you're from you have performed across the country yeah Yeah. | ||
| What you basically did is like the comedy version of a subprime mortgage loan. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You're like, he sold a house to someone who really shouldn't be buying a house. | ||
| But it worked out, and he kept the house. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's amazing. | ||
| Check kitin', man. | ||
| I came up, man, because I got arrested when I was 19 for credit card fraud. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh. | |
| We were stealing credit cards in college and buying jeans and all of that shit. | ||
| So my first two years of stand-up, I was on probation. | ||
| So when you have that, I could have gone to jail or this shit could be a lot worse living in the back of your mind forever. | ||
| Hustling, people call it hustle. | ||
| I just like, no, this is, I have no choice. | ||
| I have to fucking do this. | ||
| I knew a dude who was one of the original credit card fraudsters. | ||
| His name was International Sal. | ||
| International Sal. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah, man. | ||
| He was a dude who used to come to this pool hall I was at. | ||
| And International Sal was like, he was a real nice guy, but he was a famous loser at gambling. | ||
| And that he would make millions of dollars on credit card fraud. | ||
| They had an organized crime empire, and this is what they would do. | ||
| Back in the day, remember they had this transparency? | ||
| Like they would run your card... | ||
| They would put it on the machine and go... | ||
| Yeah, but the carbon market. | ||
| Yeah, the carbon market. | ||
| They would take those carbons. | ||
| People who worked in these department stores would take the carbons and sell them to him. | ||
| He would take those carbons, make a totally new credit card out of that carbon with some sort of machine, and then they would distribute them to these guys. | ||
| They would buy goods with this stuff, and then they would sell the goods. | ||
| And then guys would come to him in the pool hall with paper bags filled with cash. | ||
| And all he wanted to do was gamble on pool and he could never win. | ||
| And when I'm telling you never win, that guy was playing with dirty money and he knew it. | ||
| His head was fucked up. | ||
| He would be staring. | ||
| The nine ball would be in the hole and he would be like a foot away from it. | ||
| And you see his hands shaking and... | ||
| Just shank it. | ||
| Just fuck it up and hit the rail and bounce it off and people go, no! | ||
| He missed! | ||
| He missed! | ||
| I can't fucking believe he missed! | ||
| And International Sal could never win. | ||
| He could never win. | ||
| But he was one of the original dudes. | ||
| Did you find something from him? | ||
| Something very weird just happened. | ||
| What happened? | ||
| So I'm typing International Sal, and I hit spacebar, and two things come up, credit card thief and pool player, but when I click to search for that, nothing shows up. | ||
| Like, for instance, credit card thief, and it just brings up a bunch of other stuff about credit card thieves and other people. | ||
| Well, honestly, it might be because of us. | ||
| I've never looked it up before. | ||
| But the search might exist because of us, because I know I've talked about International Sal before, and him being a credit card thief. | ||
| He's dead. | ||
| My friend's mom was actually taking care of him when he was in hospice. | ||
| He had cancer. | ||
| He died of rectal cancer, man. | ||
| Goddamn, Sal! | ||
| Yeah, it was bad. | ||
| It was bad. | ||
| Sal Butera? | ||
| No, no, no. | ||
| Sal Butera is a famous pool player. | ||
| This international Sal was not a famous pool player. | ||
| Sal Butera was a pool player. | ||
| International Sal couldn't win. | ||
| But he was one of the original credit card fraudsters. | ||
| He went to jail for quite a long time. | ||
| And then got out and was doing the same goddamn thing again. | ||
| What's crazy, though, is that when you get arrested, especially for like some white collar shit like that, like what they don't tell you about getting arrested is that the first thing they do is try to pin other unsolved shit on you. | ||
| So before you even like get a mugshot or anything, you just go sit in a room and they go, here are all the mugshots of other people we are looking at for similar crimes. | ||
| Do you know any of these motherfuckers? | ||
| And then you get a handwriting sample. | ||
| And that's when you find out, oh, I was just a petty fucking teenager that just took a credit card to get some jeans. | ||
| And then you start realizing, oh, there's an entire fucking syndicate of shit happening in this city that I didn't know anything about. | ||
| They're trying to fucking pin on me. | ||
| And that's when the fear... | ||
| Sit in. | ||
| Because in your head, you're like, all right, well, I know I probably won't go to jail. | ||
| I hope I don't go to jail. | ||
| Oh, shit, I might go to fucking jail. | ||
| For some shit you didn't do. | ||
| Oh, fuck. | ||
| And they don't care. | ||
| They do not care. | ||
| They've decided you're already a criminal. | ||
| And that's when I got into comedy. | ||
| That was the fucking depression. | ||
| Like, that was the fucking moment. | ||
| Like, oh, shit. | ||
| Well, Joey Diaz went to jail for armed kidnapping. | ||
| That's how he got into comedy. | ||
| He robbed a dude over some coke with a machine gun, taped him to a chair and shit. | ||
| And then when he was in jail, he learned how to do stand-up. | ||
| That is the best cold open to a myopic. | ||
| When Joey Diaz gets his biopic, it has to start with duct tape on somebody's wrist. | ||
| Yeah, he's friends with the dude he kidnapped. | ||
| He took pictures of him. | ||
| He took pictures together. | ||
| Didn't he put it up on his Instagram? | ||
| He took pictures with the guy he kidnapped. | ||
| He's like, 31 years ago I kidnapped this cocksucker. | ||
| Now we're friends. | ||
| That's the beautiful thing, though, man. | ||
| It's the redemption and being able to make a mistake and get back in the mix. | ||
| Well, some of the greatest, most disciplined people went to jail. | ||
| Like Bernard Hopkins, one of my all-time favorite boxers. | ||
| He's one of the greatest midway champions of all time. | ||
| And Bernard Hopkins spent like six years in jail for armed robbery. | ||
| And he learned how to be disciplined. | ||
| When he was in jail. | ||
| And when he got out of jail, not only did he have a drive that other people probably couldn't comprehend, but he knew what would happen if it went bad again. | ||
| He knew what would happen if he slid back down that road again. | ||
| And apparently, like the corrections officer said, when he was getting out, you'll be right back in here. | ||
| And he was like, the fuck I will be. | ||
| The fuck I will be. | ||
| And he turned out to be one of the greatest boxers of all time. | ||
| There he is. | ||
| Joey's with the guy. | ||
| 32 years ago, I made a mistake, so what? | ||
| It's not where you start, it's where you finish. | ||
| The guy I kidnapped showed up to my show. | ||
| 32 years ago I made a mistake. | ||
| So what? | ||
| That's beautiful, man. | ||
| It's not where you start, it's where you finish. | ||
| That is crazy. | ||
| You know, that's what the whole redemption is about in China. | ||
| You know, do what you can with your second chance. | ||
| That's why I just try to grind, man. | ||
| All this shit is a gift. | ||
| I could have been in prison. | ||
| This culture today does not want people to have redemption. | ||
| It's interesting. | ||
| This culture today wants people to be in trouble for things they did in the past. | ||
| You have to be who you were 30 years ago. | ||
| Yeah, we all go to church and ask for forgiveness Sunday for an opportunity to be forgiven for what we were that week Well the idea that no one that no one gets a chance to redeem themselves It's a terrible world like that's the one of the best things about Christianity is the idea that you have redemption you confess your sins and you move on I just think that it's all new and And I think there'll be a... | ||
| I think it's all new. | ||
| I think there'll be a market correction at some point. | ||
| Because as a society, we are obsessed with who you were. | ||
| Credit reports, rental history, drug history, employment history. | ||
| You sit down with somebody and want to know your date and history. | ||
| Twitter is just racism history or your bad joke history. | ||
| It's... | ||
| It's an opportunity for the first time as a society to audit your past behavior when all we do is judge who you are now based on who you were. | ||
| That's what our society is established upon. | ||
| So that's why it doesn't feel so out of pocket to me that people are doing it. | ||
| It's like, oh, it's a new way to see if you or me, I can literally search your name plus a word and see if you said the word and then I will fucking make it. | ||
| It's no different than a fucking bankruptcy sitting on your record from... | ||
| I like how you described it as a market correction because I think that is what's going to happen. | ||
| We're going to understand that what we're doing now is kind of unsustainable. | ||
| Like going back and judging someone on some shit that happened in high school or whatever it was and trying to look at words you said when you're trying to make a joke like what happened with Kevin Hart. | ||
| And he apologized for it many times and then he's hosting the Oscar and they're like, look, 10 years ago he said this. | ||
| He's like, look, I'm not going to do this. | ||
| I'm not going to do this again. | ||
| I already apologized for those things. | ||
| I'm going to move on. | ||
| Sorry. | ||
| And the Oscars got fucked. | ||
| They wound up having no host now. | ||
| Did we get fucked? | ||
| Did the Oscars get fucked or did stand-ups get fucked? | ||
| Because the Emmys don't have a host now either. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good. | |
| Good. | ||
| Listen, comics shouldn't host that shit. | ||
| That was a comics gig. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That was a gig. | |
| I love Sebastian. | ||
| I love Sebastian. | ||
| But Sebastian made me cry when I was looking at this fucking Video Music Award. | ||
| The VMAs, yeah. | ||
| He's hosting that shit. | ||
| And there's some thing. | ||
| That's what comics do. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We host. | |
| We go get the shit. | ||
| We make the jokes nobody wants to make. | ||
| Sebastian sold Madison Square Garden out four times. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| The fuck is he doing hosting the Video Music Awards? | ||
| He want to sell it out six. | ||
| I don't think that's going to do it. | ||
| I'm just saying. | ||
| Why else do it? | ||
| Why else do it? | ||
| Let me show it to you before you cast any judgment. | ||
| Go to Sebastian's page. | ||
| There's a thing where he's asking Jimmy Kimmel how to do it. | ||
| It's like, don't. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Get out! | |
| Get out! | ||
| Of course they're forcing him to do a bunch of shit that's not on brand for him. | ||
| No, it's not on brand for anybody. | ||
| It's terrible. | ||
| Who else is going to roast that shit? | ||
| Who else is going to show up? | ||
| He's not going to roast it. | ||
| He's a nice guy. | ||
| Sebastian's not going to roast shit. | ||
| Look, if you got... | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't know. | |
| In the first promo, he roasted himself for even being there in the first place. | ||
| Yeah, that's okay. | ||
| So if he roasts himself... | ||
| Ricky Gervais roasts people. | ||
| Like, if Ricky Gervais was hosting something, that's different. | ||
| Yeah, that's totally different. | ||
| And they all get mad at him, and he goes after everybody. | ||
| That's his brand. | ||
| He is cutthroat. | ||
| Yeah, shit's on everybody. | ||
| Including himself. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I've always enjoyed comics being able to have that to just go to. | ||
| If you look at the history of the Oscars, it's almost always stand-ups. | ||
| A lot of times, I just don't give a fuck about award shows. | ||
| See, there it is. | ||
| See, that's the truth. | ||
| That's the real truth. | ||
| It's not even the award host. | ||
| It's, why the fuck are we doing this thing? | ||
| But that's like you would see Chris Rock prepare for these award shows. | ||
| I'm like, you're crazy. | ||
| Chris Rock! | ||
| You couldn't pay me to come anywhere near one of those stupid fucking shows if I was Chris Rock. | ||
| Chris Rock walked out at the NAACP Awards and did a Jussie Smollett joke. | ||
| I saw it! | ||
| Nobody else is going to give you that. | ||
| See how you're laughing? | ||
| Look at you enjoying that shit. | ||
| That's different. | ||
| No other comic is going to give you that. | ||
| That's true. | ||
| What is the worst possible thing that can be said in this room full of black people that hold him and that show sacred? | ||
| And he fucking said it. | ||
| He went right to it. | ||
| He went right to it. | ||
| I don't think Kevin would have done it. | ||
| No, Kevin would have done that. | ||
| Kevin would have done that at the Oscars. | ||
| Eddie Murphy would have done it. | ||
| Did you see Eddie Murphy when he did that, when he got that award, he went after Bill Cosby? | ||
| Yeah, a little jab. | ||
| It was just a quick little silent jab. | ||
| But it was great. | ||
| It was great when he's talking about them making him giving back his awards. | ||
| Wait, does who come back from that? | ||
| Oh, it's Jussie Smollett. | ||
| You can't, right? | ||
| Yeah, you can come back from that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Really? | |
| Black people are the most forgiving genre of people. | ||
| R. Kelly still sells tickets. | ||
| I mean, not right now. | ||
| Not right now. | ||
| He did come back hard, though. | ||
| That is amazing. | ||
| R. Kelly sold tickets the entire time. | ||
| Everybody saw the piss tape. | ||
| He had supporters at his arraignment in Brooklyn. | ||
| Yes, I saw it. | ||
| Big fat ones. | ||
| Black women. | ||
| Yeah, black aunties. | ||
| Out there. | ||
| That's my baby. | ||
| So if you're telling me Justin Smollett can come back from telling a lie on the street of Chicago and faking a whooping... | ||
| He's not as good as R. Kelly, though. | ||
| He's not as good as R. Kelly, but he can get cast in some Jesus movie and redemption, and it'll parallel. | ||
| He's still not admitting that anything happened. | ||
| The problem is that the people that could give him the redemption are some of the people whose trust he betrayed. | ||
| That's the problem, is that you start looking at the Lee Daniels and the Tyler Perrys and... | ||
| You know, maybe the Ava DuVernay's and the people that are in that world of black cinema that could get them back in into whatever this crossover mainstream world is. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So it's about earning that trust again. | ||
| But I think there's no, and I'm just saying from personal experience, you know, there's no group of people more forgiving than, I think, black entertainment. | ||
| I don't think they're ever going to forgive him for calling himself the gay Tupac. | ||
| I don't think gay people would forgive him for that. | ||
| And that's for gay people to decide. | ||
| I know Tupac fans, but they're like, what the fuck are you talking about? | ||
| What the fuck did you just say? | ||
| Yeah, he's gone. | ||
| But then you sit down on somebody's couch and you go, yeah, that was the old me and the new me now. | ||
| And then you come out with your wife, you do some selfies on Instagram kissing. | ||
| Yeah, but he's not going to have a wife. | ||
| He's going to have his boyfriend. | ||
| Husband. | ||
| Okay, fine. | ||
| Whatever it is, come out and be happy and normal in some level of attrition. | ||
| He would have to explain the whole thought process for putting on the hoax, why he kept the noose on his neck, who was talking to the cops while he was holding a subway. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| You got to get drunk through the mud. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Come on out, get this dragon, and then get back to work. | ||
| And nobody's going to care. | ||
| Five, ten years from now, nobody's going to care. | ||
| Is he a good actor? | ||
| I thought he was fine on Empire. | ||
| Empire wasn't my cup of tea after a couple of seasons, but I mean, it was a fine show. | ||
| It was entertaining, well acted. | ||
| I never looked at him like, oh my god, this is fucking... | ||
| It's not like I was looking at some self-produced Netflix movie where I go, how the fuck did this get online? | ||
| He's still saying that he didn't do anything, right? | ||
| He's still saying that he actually got mugged. | ||
| I haven't kept up with it. | ||
| That's one of those stories where after he got cleared the first time, I quit clicking the links. | ||
| And then the city of Chicago started suing. | ||
| When the city of Chicago decided to sue him... | ||
| For the cost of the investigative item done. | ||
| There's just certain shit I don't click on anymore in Jesse Smalley stories. | ||
| Is he in a new movie? | ||
| I don't want to read it. | ||
| That's the only thing I need to know. | ||
| Yeah, I get it. | ||
| I think, I honestly feel like there is a way back. | ||
| Marv Albert was biting people on the back. | ||
| He's wearing a dress. | ||
| So, there's a way back in entertainment. | ||
| There's always a way back. | ||
| Do you think there's a way back for, what's his face from the fucking, what's his name? | ||
| Matt Lauer. | ||
| Is there a way back for that guy? | ||
| Ooh, I don't know about that one. | ||
| That's white women. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Fucking wrong. | |
| White women. | ||
| Justice Smollett was lying on two Nigerians on the curb. | ||
| That's a different layer. | ||
| What did Matt Lauer do? | ||
| Matt Lauer was locking motherfuckers up in the room. | ||
| You can't be just hitting the... | ||
| That's the narrative, but apparently all those executives had that button. | ||
| They all had that button to lock the door. | ||
| But did they use it to grab the ass? | ||
| I bet they did. | ||
| I bet a lot of them are sweating out right now. | ||
| Is there a way back from Matt Lauer? | ||
| I don't know if it is. | ||
| It's a long road, bro. | ||
| You know what the problem with Matt Lauer is? | ||
| I was talking about this last night. | ||
| No, definitely Smollett. | ||
| Has he owned any of it? | ||
| Here's the problem. | ||
| He doesn't do anything. | ||
| He doesn't do anything that a regular person can't do. | ||
| He just talks to people. | ||
| He doesn't do anything. | ||
| He doesn't sing. | ||
| He doesn't tell jokes. | ||
| He can't paint. | ||
| So he's replacing it. | ||
| He's not making motorcycles. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| What do you do that's so awesome? | ||
| He doesn't do anything that everybody can't do. | ||
| Everything he does, anyone can do. | ||
| He's talking to people. | ||
| That's all he does. | ||
| He's like, Hi, I'm Matt Lauer with Good Morning America. | ||
| Whatever the fuck the show was. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Today. | |
| Today. | ||
| So today's show. | ||
| Hello. | ||
| How are you? | ||
| He's just talking. | ||
| And he's talking as bland and non-spicy as possible, but in the background. | ||
| So you think he's... | ||
| Because they replaced him. | ||
| Was it Carson Daly? | ||
| Was that kind of who they used for a while on Today? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Did they? | |
| I don't know why I'm asking you. | ||
| I know you don't watch this shit in the morning. | ||
| It's Carson Daly. | ||
| Me and my girl have this shit on. | ||
| No, Carson Daly had that one show that was on forever. | ||
| Yeah, last call. | ||
| It aired at like 1 o'clock in the morning that no one watched, but it stayed on. | ||
| He's been part of the morning show for a long time, too. | ||
| What? | ||
| Yeah, he's been in the mix. | ||
| Oh, I didn't know. | ||
| I thought you were making that up. | ||
| No, no. | ||
| Matter of fact, they just turned Last Call over to a new host. | ||
| They gave it to Lilly Singh. | ||
| So there's... | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Because here's the thing. | ||
| For there to be a path back, there has to be, what does redemption and ownership of whatever you've been accused of look like? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| Because if you're in this goes back to the whole redemption conversation. | ||
| Is it about your truth or is it about the truth of your accusers or is it about what society perceives you as? | ||
| Right. | ||
| Or the combination of those things. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Correct. | |
| Because if you don't believe, if you don't agree with what your accusers said to you, then you're already fucked. | ||
| Because that's part of the redemption is respecting their truth. | ||
| Even if it's not true to you and it's not what you believe happened and what went down when you hit the shutout. | ||
| Like you did to the teacher. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Correct. | |
| Similar. | ||
| Correct. | ||
| It's just, hey, I'm sorry. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| Now, granted, I don't know if Matt Lowry would be saying that sincerely. | ||
| I was sincerely like, look, what can I do to show attrition to move back? | ||
| Because now, even if you've had that with your accusers, society at large still gets to decide. | ||
| Because the same way society decides who wears the crown, they get to decide who to take the crown from. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| And there's shit you can do about that. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So, I mean, that's... | ||
| In a fucked up way, that's the game. | ||
| I hope he saved up enough money. | ||
| He saved up enough money. | ||
| He was making ungodly sums of money. | ||
| Well, then fucking go spend your money. | ||
| Just relax. | ||
| Go spend your money. | ||
| That's ego. | ||
| But that's ego in feeling like, I deserve to be. | ||
| You took it and give it back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Goddammit, I'm entitled to the fucking employment. | |
| It's also you get used to that gig of being that guy who's on TV. Hello. | ||
| Good morning, everyone. | ||
| Welcome to the Today Show. | ||
| Today we have Tom Cruise. | ||
| I'll never forget him and Tom Cruise arguing over whether or not Brooke Shields should take antidepressants. | ||
| That's a real clip. | ||
| So crazy. | ||
| Yeah, they're arguing over it. | ||
| It's so strange. | ||
| Him and Matt Lauer and Tom Cruise. | ||
| And Tom Cruise is telling Matt Lauer he's being glib. | ||
| You're being glib, Matt. | ||
| You're being glib. | ||
| Because Matt, you know, Tom Cruise is like, he's a Scientologist. | ||
| And they don't believe in pharmaceutical drugs. | ||
| They don't believe in antidepressants or psychiatry. | ||
| There it is, right there. | ||
| There's the two of them. | ||
| And Matt Lauer's got that. | ||
| I'm thinking, because I'm holding a pen and pieces of paper. | ||
| War of the Worlds. | ||
| That's early aughts. | ||
| Yeah, man. | ||
| It was a big deal. | ||
| It was a big deal. | ||
| It fucked Tom Cruise's career up for a long time. | ||
| There's people like, this guy's a fucking nut. | ||
| Why are they talking about somebody else's business, though? | ||
| Because he had talked about it publicly. | ||
| He had talked about the mistake that she's making by taking antidepressants. | ||
| Okay, so yeah. | ||
| Then that's all in the game. | ||
| Well, psychiatry is the enemy of Scientology. | ||
| They have all these big signs that psychiatry kills. | ||
| And it's like someone with an electric... | ||
| It's like in Hollywood. | ||
| They're on this crusade against psychiatry. | ||
| It's like a big part of what Scientology is. | ||
| The thing that makes me laugh is that I don't see a lot of Southern Scientologists. | ||
| I don't see a lot of Scientologists. | ||
| Florida, the big things in Clearwater. | ||
| That's the number one headquarters in Clearwater. | ||
| My sister lives down there. | ||
| She lives real close to where the headquarters is. | ||
| It's fucking weird down there, man. | ||
| Everybody just, they're all walking like they got a secret. | ||
| Do you think in this society, do you think Scientology will be the last religion created? | ||
| When you really think about how recent Scientology is, it's like the 1940s or 50s or somewhere. | ||
| It's roughly the same age as, I don't know, United Airlines, Delta Airlines. | ||
| It's not an old religion. | ||
| We have videos of the guy who made it. | ||
| Will that be the last religion that is created? | ||
| No. | ||
| Because every other religion is like old school, centuries and millennia is old. | ||
| No, there'll be new ones. | ||
| The interesting thing is they're probably the last ones to get tax exempt status. | ||
| Because their tax-exempt status is being questioned right now. | ||
| There's people that are very angry about it. | ||
| But they did it because they all started lawsuits against the IRS, and they started thousands of lawsuits. | ||
| The idea was that they were going to sue the IRS into recognizing them as a legitimate religion. | ||
| And the way to do that was just overwhelm them with litigation. | ||
| And that's what they did, right? | ||
| They're still doing. | ||
| That's what they did. | ||
| Then they achieved tax-exempt status a long time ago. | ||
| It's a very strange... | ||
| Did you ever read Going Clear? | ||
| I saw the doc. | ||
| The HBO thing? | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| The doc is great. | ||
| The book is even crazier because Lawrence Wright goes into depth with all these different people as they were realizing that it was horseshit. | ||
| As they were getting the ninth level of doom papers. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| It's handwritten nonsense by a retard. | ||
| That guy who wrote it, he was self-diagnosing all of his own personal ailments and dealing with them himself and then trying to pass that off as a way to live amongst all these people that were paying attention to him. | ||
| But all of it started from him self-diagnosing. | ||
| Is it natural for Scientologists, and I only know what I know from that doc and Leah Remini, Lifetime shit. | ||
| Is it natural to not be, like the way a Christian is just openly Christian. | ||
| Just, hey, how you doing? | ||
| The Lord loves you. | ||
| I'm here to tell you about Jesus. | ||
| I don't really feel like you get that from Scientologists. | ||
| And watching that doc, I didn't know the dude from Chicago PD used to be the gritty detective guy. | ||
| Oh, damn, I didn't know you used to be a Scientologist. | ||
| Like you never find out that somebody was into that shit until after they're out of it. | ||
| Now I think people keep it tucked in. | ||
| It's not like Mormons where they're riding the bikes and you know what the fuck the deal is. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Now they keep it tucked in. | ||
| But I think back in the day they used to talk about it as openly as possible. | ||
| They would proselytize. | ||
| They'd try to get you to join. | ||
| But how? | ||
| Just try to get people to come to these events. | ||
| Try to get people to come to these free workshops. | ||
| All these different things on anxiety. | ||
| Different things on the mind. | ||
| Dianetics. | ||
| That's what he decided to write about. | ||
| Dianetics. | ||
| And it's like the science of cleaning your mind and avoiding all external influences that are negative and that are ruining your perspective. | ||
| Used to be commercials for that in the 80s and 90s. | ||
| Yeah, man, I bought it. | ||
| I bought a Dinex book and I got it on a list. | ||
| With the volcano exploding in the commercial. | ||
| I remember that shit. | ||
| I bought everything, man. | ||
| I bought Tony Robbins shit. | ||
| I bought Book of Five Rings. | ||
| I bought fucking Art of War. | ||
| I bought everything. | ||
| I was just trying to figure out, like, what's the best? | ||
| I was into psychology when I was young because I was fighting all the time and I was always scared. | ||
| So I was trying to figure out, there's got to be a way to overcome these mental hurdles. | ||
| For martial arts competition, the big thing was the fear. | ||
| It wasn't your physical ability wasn't as much of a hurdle as the fear. | ||
| You know, the fear of competition was terrible, so I was like, but sometimes I'd feel confident, and it'd be great, and other times I'd be fucking terrified, and like, well, I've got to figure out how to be consistent. | ||
| So I started getting into all that kind of stuff, and then when I came to L.A., it was like in 94, I saw a Dianetics commercial. | ||
| I said, fuck it, I'll order that. | ||
| So I got this book. | ||
| Find the way, the questions you seek the answers to. | ||
| Here it is. | ||
| Can words said during an operation harm you later? | ||
| Page 182. Is it possible to increase intelligence? | ||
| Page 122. I was like, oh my god. | ||
| It was a good ad. | ||
| Yeah, look at that. | ||
| Dun, dun, dun. | ||
| Dianetics. | ||
| Bro, I'm going to be like a fucking volcano. | ||
| I'm going to take over. | ||
| Yeah, I was like thinking that I was going to be able to figure out all my mental problems through this book. | ||
| And then I got on the list. | ||
| And like every week I got some new workshop to go to or this. | ||
| So they're just mailers? | ||
| Mail, just mail. | ||
| This is the 90s. | ||
| That's all they did was just mail you shit. | ||
| But oh my god, I got so... | ||
| Come to this, sign up for this. | ||
| It wasn't until I moved. | ||
| One of the reasons why when I moved, I didn't forward my mail. | ||
| I contacted all the companies because of Dianetics. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'd get so much shit from them. | |
| Really? | ||
| That was the fucking... | ||
| That much shit? | ||
| It was so much shit. | ||
| It was like letter after letter after letter. | ||
| More than like the grocery store? | ||
| Also, it started freaking me out that they knew where I was. | ||
| Like, it bothered me. | ||
| It bothered me. | ||
| Like, it bothered me that I was on a list. | ||
| I was on a list of someone who bought the book but didn't go to any classes and they knew where I was. | ||
| Like, maybe I could get them. | ||
| Maybe they... | ||
| If we just knock on his door, hey, do you want to clean up your brain? | ||
| Hey, come on, we've got the solution. | ||
| Don't you want to be a volcano? | ||
| No. | ||
| That's scary, bro. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's scary. | ||
| Well, a lot of people get sucked into that, man. | ||
| I met quite a few people that were Scientologists. | ||
| I was into some of the, I call it the you-can-do-it motivational stuff. | ||
| I remember in high school, our JROTC commander, he used to make us watch this guy. | ||
| I think his name was Bob Mowad. | ||
| Mowad? | ||
| M-O-W-A-D, Bob Mowad, if I'm not mistaken. | ||
| He was a Vietnam vet and survived a terrible white phosphorus grenade accident or something. | ||
| Got fucked up real bad in Vietnam, but was now doing motivational speaking. | ||
| And once a month, we would watch videos of this dude. | ||
| And it just starts in a way, like if you're getting to one, you can kind of start getting in line with the next and the next. | ||
| And I think before you know it, that's when you're into Dianetics land. | ||
| Before you realize. | ||
| Like you can find someone that's meaningful with a meaningful message. | ||
| And then as you progress more and more, it's like, alright, I agree with less and less of each author that I'm starting to fuck with. | ||
| And so it ended up Bob Mowat and then I think Dave Ramsey. | ||
| Oh, financial shit. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, when I was 21 and I was first starting to do comedy, that's when I was really devouring as much of it as possible. | ||
| Because I was trying to figure out how to not be so lazy, how to be motivated, how to get shit done, and how to find the correct path and think about things correctly. | ||
| And so that's when I really got into Anthony Robbins. | ||
| So it's like the mind exercise. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I would follow all those personal power. | ||
| You had workshops that you would do, like notebooks and shit, fill out and things to talk about and things to concentrate on. | ||
| If you did do it, it would help you. | ||
| But really what it's all about is just getting your shit together and moving. | ||
| Just go do something. | ||
| Like what you did by taking a job when you would show up at a gig and you'd be working there Tuesday through Sunday and then take a day job and work nine to five. | ||
| That is more hustle and more hustle mindset than anything you're ever going to get out of an Anthony Robbins book. | ||
| Like that is like just doing it. | ||
| Just doing it makes you do more. | ||
| Like do more hard shit makes you do more hard shit. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Understanding that you want it bad, so you're willing to put into work and do things you don't want to do. | ||
| It's what makes you have that confidence that you know how to push through. | ||
| And the mentality that I'm the type of dude to get shit done. | ||
| Like, I'm not going to waste my day just sitting around a fucking hotel room. | ||
| No, I'm going to go to work. | ||
| I'm going to work all day. | ||
| I'm going to drive five hours and keep that radio gig. | ||
| And then drive five hours and spend ten hours of the fucking 24 in a day in a goddamn car to do gigs. | ||
| Ford Focus. | ||
| Just to do gigs. | ||
| Keep that radio gig. | ||
| Those things are... | ||
| I had a guy on yesterday, this guy Dan Crenshaw. | ||
| He's a congressman. | ||
| He's also a Navy SEAL. We were talking about mentality. | ||
| I'm like, when you went through BUDS, do they teach you how to think or do they show you by example? | ||
| They don't teach you how to think. | ||
| They just show you. | ||
| They harden you through all that work. | ||
| And through all that work, through that insane hell week, all the shit that you have to do when you're going through BUDS training, the six months of breaking you down and building you back up, they teach you you can do anything. | ||
| Just by making you do anything. | ||
| So you will understand how you can pass your limits. | ||
| What you thought your limits were are no longer your limits. | ||
| That's what I feel like is missing from a lot of people that are getting into motivational this and motivational that. | ||
| They ain't doing shit. | ||
| You gotta go do something. | ||
| That's the number one thing, right? | ||
| It's fucking action. | ||
| Take action. | ||
| Do you believe that people that aren't as successful as you think they should be are qualified to be motivational speakers? | ||
| No. | ||
| No. | ||
| There's a lot of that. | ||
| Yeah, most people who are doing motivational speaking should stop. | ||
| They should stop. | ||
| You're just robbing people. | ||
| You're not even motivated yourself. | ||
| Like, I want to wake you up at 3 o'clock in the morning and go, come on, man, we're going running. | ||
| Like, I want to see what you do when you're tired. | ||
| Let me see how you push yourself. | ||
| Come on, man. | ||
| Get up. | ||
| Get up again tomorrow. | ||
| The next day. | ||
| Get up. | ||
| Get up. | ||
| Keep going. | ||
| How long can you maintain a positive attitude? | ||
| Where's all this teaching? | ||
| You're teaching people you can't do shit yourself. | ||
| You need to show people that you can do it. | ||
| The best motivational speakers to me are guys like David Goggins. | ||
| Because that guy that's in that coin right there. | ||
| That guy does it every day. | ||
| And he's got videos. | ||
| He just did a 100 mile race the other day. | ||
| Put up the results on Instagram. | ||
| You can see him showing up 22 hours after the race starts. | ||
| He finishes 100 miles. | ||
| Those type of people. | ||
| Have you ever seen Goggins' Instagram page? | ||
| No, but this is insane. | ||
| Bro, he's a fucking animal. | ||
| This motherfucker got abs on a coin. | ||
| He's an animal. | ||
| You chisel them. | ||
| He's got the world record chin-ups in 24 hours. | ||
| He did some preposterous number of chin-ups. | ||
| What's that? | ||
| I believe he was beat recently. | ||
| Somebody beat him? | ||
| I think so. | ||
| Not for long. | ||
| Yeah, he'll probably come back. | ||
| But it's those type of people, those are real motivational speakers because they're actually doing something. | ||
| There's a lot of people that are teaching you motivation. | ||
| They don't have a business. | ||
| Their business is motivation. | ||
| Like, it's a weird business. | ||
| It's like... | ||
| It's like teaching someone how to drive a race car and you never drove one. | ||
| But see, that's why, and that goes back to the whole, for me, the whole New York versus L.A. thing in terms of comics. | ||
| You just be around other comics that are just doing. | ||
| Like, when you see Dave Attell, like, you'll see Dave Attell in February. | ||
| You'll see him do 20 minutes, right? | ||
| And then you'll see him in March. | ||
| You'll see him do a totally different 20. And then you'll see him three months later. | ||
| And he's taking two pieces of the five minutes from those first 20 and put it with a new killer fucking 30. Right? | ||
| And I go, what happened to the 20? | ||
| Oh yeah, that stuff wasn't tight enough, but this joke, this isn't. | ||
| And when he breaks down why that joke that you love doesn't even fucking matter to him. | ||
| Because it was to get to this. | ||
| Like that. | ||
| You can't teach that. | ||
| You can't explain it, but you can show it, and then I can go home and go, fuck, I need to write. | ||
| I need to go back and look at my old shit and figure out a way. | ||
| David Tell is one of the rare guys that became an alcoholic, sobered up, and got better. | ||
| Right? | ||
| Like usually the guys who are drunk are fucking hilarious and then they stop drinking and they get boring. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| He got the opposite. | ||
| He became a way better comic. | ||
| Tighter and just punchlines. | ||
| People say that about Eminem. | ||
| They say that once he sobered up and went clean. | ||
| He's better? | ||
| No, that he was worse. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's what usually happens. | ||
| That's what happens to everybody. | ||
| It happened to Kinison. | ||
| It happened to Bill Hicks. | ||
| It happened to everybody. | ||
| I never had. | ||
| Not necessarily Hicks. | ||
| I never had alcohol, a love for alcohol. | ||
| Like, I'll drink here and there. | ||
| But I used to get pissed in my 20s when I would go on stage drunk or tipsy or whatever the fuck. | ||
| And then after the show, people would give the liquor credit for me being funny. | ||
| And it used to offend me. | ||
| So that's why I stopped drinking. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| Who the fuck gave credit to the liquor? | ||
| You're so funny when you're drunk. | ||
| This is funny. | ||
| You should drink more. | ||
| You know how in these road rooms, they'll send you shots. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Because you're on stage with Jack, and they've associated that as part of the... | ||
| Also, you lose control of the audience. | ||
| At least I do when I'm up there drinking, because they send a shot, someone else sends a shot, and now it's a fucking big... | ||
| It's a pep rally instead of a performance. | ||
| Yeah, when people are sending you shots, that's a disaster. | ||
| That's a disaster because then everybody wants to send you shots. | ||
| Yeah, but then what am I doing in my performance that made someone think it was cool to do that and that that would make this experience better for everybody? | ||
| You're doing a Burt Kreischer. | ||
| You turn it into a party. | ||
| Take your shirt off. | ||
| Put that in my style. | ||
| I need y'all to shut the fuck up so I can get this chisel shit out of my mouth. | ||
| So it totally changed how I, you know, and also alcohol makes me sleepy, and then it was too much driving in the 20s and stuff, so I can't be drowsy-headed at home. | ||
| So, I don't know, it was just never my thing. | ||
| Yeah, it's a tricky one, man, because, like, one drink will loosen you up. | ||
| Two drinks. | ||
| Now we're getting a little silly. | ||
| Three drinks. | ||
| Now you're kind of drunk. | ||
| And you can still do it, but is it as good as one drink? | ||
| No, it's not. | ||
| But once you get one drink and you get happy, you want another drink. | ||
| Fuck it, I'll have another one! | ||
| And the next thing you know, you're a little drunk. | ||
| And you're on stage. | ||
| I'm at that age now. | ||
| I can't remember what comic did a joke like this, but maybe a couple of them, where before you drink, you have to look at your schedule for the next day and a half to make sure you have the bounce back and recovery and all that shit. | ||
| It's not just, can I go out Friday? | ||
| It's, what am I doing Saturday and Sunday? | ||
| But you're a goal-oriented guy, it seems like. | ||
| For goal-oriented people, the alcohol is one of the biggest impediments. | ||
| You know the craziest thing? | ||
| The only thing I've never been able to make proper time for in my career is exercise. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Why not? | |
| I'm not good about exercise. | ||
| Just hire a trainer. | ||
| You've got money. | ||
| Because that's still... | ||
| I don't have time. | ||
| There's the time. | ||
| And so in my brain, it's... | ||
| Well, when I was still living in LA, I had a trainer and I got to New York and then it's must do this, must write, must watch the video. | ||
| If I exercise, I will be too tired and then productivity will go down. | ||
| When I know deep down, when I exercise, I'm more creative. | ||
| The brain juices and shit work more. | ||
| But it's the only thing that I've never been able to like properly regiment in my life. | ||
| Well, this is how you fix that. | ||
| Force yourself. | ||
| We're in August, okay? | ||
| We have, what, six more days? | ||
| Seven more days in August? | ||
| Something like that? | ||
| What is today? | ||
| Ten more days. | ||
| Ten more days? | ||
| Say the 21st? | ||
| So we have ten more days in August. | ||
| You just say, at the end of this fucking month, I am going to have a trainer and I'm going to work out three days a week with that trainer. | ||
| Period. | ||
| This is how we're going to do it. | ||
| Write it down and then just get it done. | ||
| And force yourself. | ||
| For one month. | ||
| For one month. | ||
| For the month of September. | ||
| For that month, you have to work out three days a week. | ||
| And you write it down and then publicly state it so that you can't back out of it. | ||
| Put it on Twitter or put it on Instagram. | ||
| Take one of those shirtless pictures of my gut profile. | ||
| Just stand there. | ||
| Show everyone, let them clown me. | ||
| But if you do that, you'll force yourself to do it, and next thing you know, you've done it. | ||
| I have this dog that loves running, and so I make sure that if I don't take him running, he's always a pain in the ass, he's dropping the ball on the table, trying to get you to play. | ||
| He's a very energetic dog. | ||
| So, like, that motherfucker makes me run five days a week. | ||
| Five days a week, I get up, I'm like, come on, bro, let's go, let's go. | ||
| He goes crazy, starts running around in circles, and then we go hit the trails. | ||
| Is this the dog that you saw, what was it, was it a snake or some shit you ran over while you were jogging one day? | ||
| Oh, that was a different dog, yeah, that was a different dog. | ||
| Yeah, that was crazy, man. | ||
| I jumped over this log, and as I was jumping over this log, I'm like, that's a rattlesnake! | ||
| It was fat, dude, like my forearm. | ||
| I was like, fuck! | ||
| It's one of the biggest snakes I've ever seen in terms of rattlesnakes. | ||
| It was big, like six feet long. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Big. | |
| That is a big fucking snake. | ||
| And it was just laying flat out on the road like a stick. | ||
| Just warming. | ||
| Yeah, and the dogs went right over it. | ||
| They didn't even notice it. | ||
| It was just completely flattened out. | ||
| I was literally in the air over it before I'm like, oh my god! | ||
| Yeah, that was a different one, man. | ||
| I've killed a bunch of rattlesnakes, man. | ||
| Always seeing those fuckers. | ||
| There was one in my neighborhood real recently where there's a video of a bobcat and a rattlesnake Duking it out in the middle of the street Fucking mile from my house, man. | ||
| It's crazy Coyotes out here man. | ||
| There's a lot of weird wildlife out here. | ||
| You know, California's got weird wildlife There's a lot of shit out there a lot of bobcats and mountain lions. | ||
| What do we have down south? | ||
| We just had squirrels. | ||
| That's it. | ||
| That's only real pest. | ||
| Chupacabras. | ||
| Yeah, that shit. | ||
| You guys have coyotes now. | ||
| Coyotes are everywhere. | ||
| They have coyotes in every fucking state. | ||
| 50 states. | ||
| Rednecks probably eating them, my fucking coyotes. | ||
| Oh yeah, for sure. | ||
| People eat coyotes. | ||
| There's someone eating a coyote right now. | ||
| Right now, while we're... | ||
| Someone listening to us right now. | ||
| Coyote jerky. | ||
| Not bad. | ||
| I guarantee you one of your listeners knows a person that makes coyote jerky. | ||
| Probably. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I'd try that shit. | ||
| My friend Steve Rinella, who's going to be here tomorrow, he cooked and ate a coyote on TV. They wanted to see what it tasted like. | ||
| Oh, look at this fucker. | ||
| It's on a trail near San Diego like a week ago. | ||
| The size of that fucker. | ||
| God damn it. | ||
| It's all curled up and ready to go, too. | ||
| We're too sprawled out as a society. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, these motherfuckers are everywhere, too. | ||
| And we need them, by the way. | ||
| Because that's why there's not as many rats and rabbits and shit. | ||
| It's a whole beautiful ecosystem out there. | ||
| Have you heard the number of rats they've found out are in L.A. recently? | ||
| I just saw a story about it last night. | ||
| It's disgustingly scary. | ||
| They're all at the Comedy Store. | ||
| 12 million. | ||
| Over 12 million. | ||
| They're all at the Comedy Store. | ||
| All 12. And if they hit, there's about 1.5% of them that have disgusting diseases. | ||
| And instead, if it hits over 2%, it starts spreading into people. | ||
| Oh, great. | ||
| And so it's very close to that. | ||
| Oh, good times. | ||
| It's a bubonic plague. | ||
| Yeah, we gotta move, bro. | ||
| We gotta move to the mountains. | ||
| Yeah, man. | ||
| You can't fuck with rodents, bro. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Genetic code too simple. | ||
| They can fucking reproduce. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Sisters and moms. | ||
| Is that sisters and fathers and brothers? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Oh, no problem. | ||
| They have no problem. | ||
| Yeah, there's no mutation. | ||
| Is that true? | ||
| They don't have, like, inbreeding problems? | ||
| No, that's why they can... | ||
| Really? | ||
| Three months gestation. | ||
| Jesus Christ. | ||
| Three months. | ||
| Get me pregnant again. | ||
| Did you ever see that documentary on Netflix? | ||
| That rats documentary? | ||
| No. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Woo! | |
| You ready for that one? | ||
| That's a good one. | ||
| Write that down. | ||
| That one's going to freak you out. | ||
| Because it details... | ||
| They catch some of them and they just run some tests on them. | ||
| And this is in suburban Atlanta. | ||
| And they find all kinds of crazy fucking diseases. | ||
| And they have Manhattan. | ||
| They show all these rats scrambling over garbage and into the sewer system. | ||
| And they show how smart they are. | ||
| How they'll send the young rats to test out poison. | ||
| And then the young rats will eat the poison and die. | ||
| And then the old rats are like, okay, we get it. | ||
| They're smart. | ||
| Adaptive. | ||
| Yeah, man. | ||
| They're clever. | ||
| I mean, they're the most prevalent mammal in any city. | ||
| You know, if you look at any city. | ||
| Just sheer numbers. | ||
| That's a hustler right there. | ||
| There's more rats in New York City than there are human beings. | ||
| I think there's more biomass of rats than there is biomass of human beings. | ||
| So, I mean, it's the weight. | ||
| Yeah, just the weight. | ||
| Yeah, just more. | ||
| Just the weight of, check to see if that's true. | ||
| Sheer volume. | ||
| I might have made that up. | ||
| But the biomass of, I mean, just the sheer numbers. | ||
| There's not another animal that you can think of that's like that. | ||
| What's the right estimate of anywhere between 8.4 million in 2014, all the way up to 33.6 million rats in New York City? | ||
| Jesus. | ||
| That's more than there are people, for sure. | ||
| Whoa, yeah. | ||
| Tri-straight's what, 18 million? | ||
| God. | ||
| God, rats. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Ugh. | |
| The documentary is amazing, man. | ||
| They're vectors of diseases. | ||
| They've always been. | ||
| They've always been carrying diseases. | ||
| What's the number of rat infestation looking like in countries where they eat rats, though? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Interesting. | |
| What's the disease fucking numbers? | ||
| Not a lot of countries eat rats. | ||
| You know what's the weirdest shit? | ||
| You ever seen those temples in India where they feed the rats? | ||
| The rats are everywhere? | ||
| Dude, that'll give you the heebie-jeebies. | ||
| These people are drinking out of, like, bowls of milk that the rats drink out of. | ||
| They, like, scoop it up. | ||
| They have all these rats, like, literally running over their body. | ||
| And the rats are sacred? | ||
| Or is it just, we respect this as your grip? | ||
| They feed the rats. | ||
| They feed them. | ||
| Look at this. | ||
| What do you got here, Jamie? | ||
| What is this? | ||
| Rat temple? | ||
| Speed up ahead so you can see what it's like when all the rats and the people are interacting. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Oh, there we go. | ||
| So they put out food for the rats, and the rats, you could pick them up. | ||
| I mean, the rats have zero fear of people. | ||
| And in fact, they get along with people. | ||
| So this is like a temple that you visit in India, and fucking rats are everywhere, and everybody treats these rats with respect. | ||
| Very strange. | ||
| Just coexisting. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So the reason why rats are scared of people, they recognize that people want to kill them because they carry diseases. | ||
| But in India, they just got a totally different vibe going on. | ||
| So look, like those pigeons are hanging around those rats. | ||
| In New York City, rats hunt pigeons. | ||
| You ever see rats kill a pigeon? | ||
| Yeah, I've seen that. | ||
| And drag them away? | ||
| You're like, whoa! | ||
| Have you seen the video of the pelican that ate a pigeon? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Swallowed a hole. | ||
| Yeah, swallowed a hole. | ||
| I saw a pelican eat a duck. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| A whole duck. | ||
| Pelicans are low-key assholes. | ||
| Assholes. | ||
| Dinosaurs. | ||
| Look at these fucking rats, man. | ||
| They're everywhere. | ||
| Well, that's where we're headed. | ||
| Rats are pelicans. | ||
| That's where we're headed. | ||
| With fucking rats in New York? | ||
| You think so? | ||
| It's just got to be normal. | ||
| I mean, people are going to try and stomp them out and poison and trap and all of that, but at some point, you just got to go, all right, man, you're going to live it, too. | ||
| Well, they're maintaining right now, right? | ||
| You can still go to a restaurant. | ||
| You still go to the movies. | ||
| You still go shopping. | ||
| It's all normal, and there's millions of rats running underneath your feet, under the ground. | ||
| What's the plan? | ||
| What's de Blasio's plan? | ||
| You don't have a plan for people. | ||
| You definitely have a plan for rats. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| What's the fucking plan? | ||
| What kind of plan does he have? | ||
| What do you do? | ||
| Take care of his corrupt cops. | ||
| Take care of all the problems with the streets. | ||
| Take care of all the crime. | ||
| They don't have rat problems. | ||
| I'm a rat plan. | ||
| I thought they had all these studies and EPA motherfuckers that investigate. | ||
| Yeah, but how much money do they have? | ||
| How much money does de Blasio have? | ||
| How much money do they have to spend on things like rats? | ||
| They probably don't have any budget. | ||
| It probably doesn't present as much of an ominous threat as crime or bridges and tunnel shit and fixing all infrastructure. | ||
| Probably. | ||
| It would have to be a pandemic disease, which, as Jamie was saying, can happen. | ||
| We have medieval diseases showing up here now that are just because of trash and shit. | ||
| In Hollywood or in downtown LA with all the homeless people. | ||
| It's fucking crazy because people are literally just shitting on the street. | ||
| Just shitting everywhere. | ||
| The homeless situation in downtown LA scares me more than the rat situation. | ||
| What's the numbers? | ||
| Oh, you need to see. | ||
| Hundreds of thousands? | ||
| Have you ever driven through Skid Row? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Bananas, right? | ||
| Yeah, because it's close to fashion, bro. | ||
| Are you into fashion? | ||
| No, but I was over there one day for some shit. | ||
| There's thousands and thousands of people just living on the street. | ||
| Thousands. | ||
| Thousands. | ||
| Like a whole gigantic theater sells out and all the people pile out onto the street, but that's where they live. | ||
| That's what it's like. | ||
| It's like... | ||
| Like, people going to the Verizon Center. | ||
| Like, 7,000 people you find on a few streets. | ||
| And they think the solution is some sort of hostiles or something that they're going to start trying to do. | ||
| Good luck. | ||
| These people have accumulated. | ||
| They've become accustomed. | ||
| That's their lifestyle. | ||
| Like, that's not what they want, for sure, but they're accustomed to being homeless. | ||
| Like, they've acclimated to that world, and they've lived in it, many of them, for years and years and years, and they go to places and shelters where they get food, they sleep out on the street, they have a whole community of people that are out on the street, they're all doing drugs, and most of them are psychiatric patients. | ||
| Yeah, half are vets, though. | ||
| A lot of them. | ||
| That's the thing that really fucks me up with the homeless population in this country, is that half are vets, and then on some mental illness shit, maybe some of them, their family just can't Give them the care they need. | ||
| But if they got the care they need, maybe they could be a little more level enough to at least be under a roof with a loved one or somebody that can afford to, you know, to take them in. | ||
| No, no, I think you're absolutely right. | ||
| And in the 1980s, they changed. | ||
| So some of them have problems that are solvable. | ||
| Yeah, some of them. | ||
| But some of them don't have anybody to help them get through the problems. | ||
| I mean, and then things deteriorate. | ||
| You know, they get worse and worse and worse. | ||
| And as you get older, you lose hope. | ||
| And then you say, this is me. | ||
| This is who I am now. | ||
| There's like... | ||
| There's like this weird thing with the homeless as well, where I feel like, as a country, we're quicker to help people in groups. | ||
| In a weird way, it still fucks me up, and it's gonna come out wrong, but if there's a natural disaster, the amount of money we will pour into relief and support for a particular area after the hurricane or the tornado or whatever, and that's fine. | ||
| If that same type of outpouring happened just once for the homeless coast to coast, it would change so much fucking shit, bro. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| But if people aren't fucked up in a group at once, then it doesn't resonate. | ||
| Like when you see a single homeless person or the news just shows you the row of tents. | ||
| You don't see the person crying with the rubble behind them and they've lost everything. | ||
| It doesn't. | ||
| For whatever reason, it doesn't connect the same. | ||
| No, you're absolutely right. | ||
| We need, like, if something like Katrina happened or a giant earthquake, then we would realize we have to do something. | ||
| But if there was no homeless people, and then all of a sudden something terrible happened, and there was 20,000 homeless people wandering around downtown, we would immediately go, oh, we've got to fix this. | ||
| Yeah, but it's simmering. | ||
| A slow sort of effect. | ||
| It's simmered and simmering. | ||
| I mean, you think about how much money we spend on other countries, right? | ||
| How much money we spend on aid, how much money we spend. | ||
| And we don't fix inner cities that have been impoverished since the fucking 1800s. | ||
| We don't ever go in there and try to solve problems. | ||
| I've been saying this forever. | ||
| If you want a better country, the best way is to ensure there's less losers. | ||
| And the best way to ensure there's less losers is give people more opportunities and fix places where you have no chance. | ||
| I mean, how many people that grow up in neighborhoods where they have no chance get out? | ||
| It's like it's a tiny, tiny fraction of people that want to become successful and happy. | ||
| Most of them are trapped by the environment that they find themselves just by a random roll of the dice. | ||
| they wind up and they're in Detroit and they're in the worst neighborhood in Detroit or they're in the South Side of Chicago or they're in Baltimore or wherever the fuck it is and then no one does anything to fix it no one does anything to change it but if there was no place like that and all sudden the disaster happened and then there was a place like that then there'd be an outpouring of contributions people would want to do something to try to fix it | ||
| Yeah, I just think that we live in a society where it's just the people in power know that if you help the people that you've been oppressing, then you run the risk of facing their wrath once they have power. | ||
| Do you think that's what it is? | ||
| To some degree. | ||
| Why would I... If I have an opportunity to make something better and people are labeling me as the fault for you being in that situation in the first place, then I run the risk of losing... | ||
|
unidentified
|
Power. | |
| Because those people are gonna come get me. | ||
| They're gonna vote me out of office. | ||
| So it's about aligning your views and choices with the people that's gonna keep you in office. | ||
| Yeah, I guess, man. | ||
| I just would think that in today's day and age, people would be more forward-thinking. | ||
| And they would think, look, we've got a lot of problems with the environment. | ||
| We've got a lot of problems with climate control. | ||
| Like, we've got real issues in this world. | ||
| But we also have problems that have been here forever that no one's done a goddamn thing to fix. | ||
| So these new—like, oh, the ocean's rising! | ||
| The ocean's rising! | ||
| What are we going to do? | ||
| It's not going to affect all these inner cities. | ||
| These inner cities that have had these same problems forever. | ||
| If you looked at the problems, like murder problems in this country, like the places in the inner city where you have gang violence and murder and drug trafficking and the same fucking problems over and over and over again, year after year... | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
| There's no effort. | ||
| What do I gain if I'm a politician... | ||
| And I'm empowered. | ||
| What do I gain by helping those people? | ||
| Well, you get more people that do well, and you have a better economy, and you have a safer society, and people look at you like you're a real leader. | ||
| Like, wow, Mayor Wood, look what he did. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| If they give me the credit, or unless it gets politically spun the wrong way or some shit, and then I'm out. | ||
| That's the case with every single thing a mayor or a governor does. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I just think where politics like that is concerned, we are more inclined to vote and do things that serve our own interests first. | ||
| Politicians are more inclined to enact policies that serve their best interests, and we're more inclined to vote for things that serve our best interests. | ||
| So the two things work against each other, and for it to work, for the system to work, you have to vote for things that are for the greater good, even if it means sacrificing your own position in the process. | ||
| And that's what I think a lot of politicians don't do. | ||
| But I think in this day and age, trying to help impoverish communities, now there's an awareness of how long stuff's been going on and how... | ||
| Do you know who Michael Wood Jr. is? | ||
| Is that his name? | ||
| Michael Wood Jr.? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| He was a cop of Baltimore, and he came across... | ||
| This paper from the 1970s that was detailing like rap sheets, all the problems in the area and all the different crimes. | ||
| And he was realizing this is in the 2000s. | ||
| He's like, these are all the same places with the same crimes that we're handling now. | ||
| So here we are. | ||
| 30 plus years later, the same exact crimes in the same exact places. | ||
| And he's like the feeling of like futility, the handling this, the fact that no one gives a fuck and that this has been this way forever and nothing's being done to do anything other than just continue the process of arresting people, letting them out, arresting people, letting them out. | ||
| And then it's just chaos. | ||
| I give you a good example of self-interest. | ||
| So, in Newark, New Jersey right now, they are facing water contamination levels that are higher than Flint. | ||
| And there has been cover-ups out the ass. | ||
| That's where I was born. | ||
| So, well, go get your shit checked. | ||
| Your parents, too. | ||
| In the past, I think, it's like past eight years or so, they're starting to pull at the threads now and figure out, oh, what the hell is this? | ||
| What's going on with the water? | ||
| And it's all these people getting fucked up. | ||
| The people who covered it up Those are people in office who could have made the decisions that you're saying to not fucking let fucked up water get into the water table. | ||
| So if a corporation says, hey man, motherfucker, don't worry about that dirty water. | ||
| Here's some money and some campaign promises. | ||
| You think that's what happened? | ||
| I think so. | ||
| I mean, you got to unravel the story. | ||
| We got to see how it unfolds. | ||
| But if there is a cover-up, a cover-up only happens if someone has more selfish, self-serving intentions. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Like, the core base of a cover-up is to fuck over somebody who doesn't deserve to get fucked over. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, off that alone, the choice you're making isn't for the greater good of the society or the pride or, like, the way ants, like, you know what ants do that's so dope when it's a flood? | ||
| You ever seen the fire ants make the float? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's what we have to be, but we're not gonna be there, because nobody wants to be the ant on the bottom that might drown and can't get back up to the top in time. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| We don't do that. | ||
| Well, I think there's also a sense of futility, like there's a lack of resources to handle everything, so you just take what you can, handle what you can, and keep moving, and then just get the fuck out of Newark. | ||
| I mean, that's how people look at it. | ||
| People look at those neighborhoods like a place to escape, not that it's anything that could be fixed. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's what I struggle with with Birmingham in terms of going back home and trying to do things that Feed the neighborhood positively. | ||
| Because I feel like I never had that growing up. | ||
| Like, you know, there were a couple of people. | ||
| Your Bo Jacksons and your Charles Barkleys, they come around and, you know, give a high five to a kid or two. | ||
| But to be able to do things that create opportunities so that the feeling of hopelessness or whatever isn't always there. | ||
| Or if there's one thing that can be like, Big Sean did something that was dope in Detroit. | ||
| He put $100,000 down on a recording studio. | ||
| And to help underprivileged kids have access to just fucking just to do something that makes things better. | ||
| So the problem is that in the process of trying to give a fuck, it's stressful. | ||
| And there are people that are pushing and working against you. | ||
| And you could easily just go to sleep in your bed comfortably at night and just... | ||
| Not care, but I try. | ||
| I do as much as I can back home. | ||
| But the idea of getting the fuck out, I'm always torn on. | ||
| Because it's like, I'm gone. | ||
| If nothing else, I can pay my bills till I die. | ||
| And I think my son could go to a decent Division II school and be fine. | ||
| But... | ||
| If I'm not using my gift and all these advantages to try and help better other people somehow, then I feel like I failed the city, or I feel like I failed where I came from. | ||
| So I'm trying to figure out how, because what I've never seen is someone that gave back or attempted to put back into without it costing them something in the process as well. | ||
| Right. | ||
| I see what you're saying. | ||
| Like, you'd have to make a big sacrifice in order to help. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Exactly. | |
| And you'd have to take time that you don't even have time to work out. | ||
| So how the fuck do you have time to go and save Birmingham? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That is a problem. | ||
| I mean, you have bandwidth, right? | ||
| You have a certain amount of bandwidth in your brain. | ||
| And how much of it can you dedicate to charitable things? | ||
| How much can you dedicate to your career, your family? | ||
| Yeah, it's the constant process. | ||
| I mean... | ||
| I think it's the job of people who are running cities and states and the country, but it's about how much resource, how much resources they have and how much they delegate to fixing these problems that have existed forever. | ||
| What I've learned, man, is I learned a shit ton. | ||
| We shot my Comedy Central pilot in Birmingham this summer, which was not an easy feat in terms of the logistics of it, just because Birmingham's not Atlanta. | ||
| It's not a bunch of fucking cameras just laying around. | ||
| But you start seeing how different entities at the state level and the local level, even the county level, all have to get a little touch, all have to... | ||
| Have a hand in it somehow so that everyone feels like they are all part, like you have to please too many people at the same time to get anything remotely done. | ||
| I don't know, I can't speak for the rest of the country, but I know in Alabama, that's generally how it is. | ||
| I think that's generally how it is with all politics. | ||
| I mean, everybody wants a little bit of credit. | ||
| Everybody wants a little bit of a say in it. | ||
| I'm fine with the credit, but just help. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Give you the credit, but help. | ||
| Like, do this logistical thing to help. | ||
| Like, that's the stuff where nobody wants to really, or you're not sure if anybody really has genuine intentions on helping. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| Because not everybody's happy for you at the crib. | ||
| That's the saddest shit ever when you think about charitable organizations and you find out how much people are making to run those charitable organizations. | ||
| Red Cross and shit. | ||
| Yeah, and how little the money actually goes towards the charity. | ||
| You're like, Jesus. | ||
| I know there's going to be some red tape and bureaucracy, but it's like, Red Cross, isn't it some insane number? | ||
| How much of money from Red Cross actually goes towards the actual charity itself? | ||
| I'm going to say 10%. | ||
| That might be generous, but that is a crazy number. | ||
| It costs 90% of all the money that comes in just to deal with overhead. | ||
| Logistics and moving stuff around. | ||
| That's why I kind of like GoFundMes. | ||
| Because you can just find a motherfucker and be like, here. | ||
| Here's $100. | ||
| Yeah, when there's real problems. | ||
| What do you got, Jamie? | ||
| What's the number? | ||
| Let's guess. | ||
| Type that in and it's like stories come about the CEO has been serially misleading about where the 91% of money that it says goes. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Oh, so it's less than 10%. | ||
| It's 9%? | ||
| 91%. | ||
| 91% goes somewhere other than the charity. | ||
| So it's 9%. | ||
| No, no, I think they're actually saying 91% goes to the charity? | ||
| We're very proud of the fact that 91 cents of every dollar that's donated goes to our services, is what he said. | ||
| What does he mean, though? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Rent, gas, food. | |
| Yeah, come on. | ||
| Sign it. | ||
| Did you see that dude that De Niro's suing some lady that worked for him that watched 55 episodes of Friends in a week? | ||
| No! | ||
| Yeah, she embezzled money, allegedly, embezzled money, used his miles to fly on her own personal trips. | ||
| She was making $300,000 a year, but the big story, the clickbait title was he sued her for $6 million after a wild Friends binge. | ||
| She watched 55 episodes of it in four days. | ||
| That's 2008, so that's DVDs. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh! | |
| In 2008? | ||
| That is hilarious. | ||
| So they're still going after it? | ||
| 11 years later? | ||
| Oh, she was his assistant in 2008. She began as De Niro's assistant, and she now is being sued. | ||
| So she basically got to a place where... | ||
| They're working together for 11 years. | ||
| 11 years of employment, De Niro Robinson rose to Vice President of Production and Finance, according to the suit which lists her 2019 salary at $300,000. | ||
| She finally left the company in April after being suspected of corporate sabotage, said the legal filing. | ||
| And she embezzled money and... | ||
| She went crazy. | ||
| You know what? | ||
| That's seven hours a day. | ||
| That's 14 episodes a day. | ||
| That's doable. | ||
| It's doable. | ||
| For four days. | ||
| I binged 24 in like a day and a half. | ||
| The whole season. | ||
| Yeah, the whole season. | ||
| Back in the DVD box set days. | ||
| It was also a good show. | ||
| It's just funny that out of all the shit that this lady did, apparently, allegedly, the 55 episodes of Friends are the ones that became the headline that everybody had to click on. | ||
| Because that's the funniest shit. | ||
| She also watched 20 episodes of Arrested Development one day and some other shows. | ||
| So she's just sitting around watching TV while she's working for her. | ||
|
unidentified
|
How did I know? | |
| What is she supposed to be doing? | ||
| I was like, maybe she's doing research. | ||
| Maybe she's waiting around for something to do. | ||
| What De Niro project needs friends as research? | ||
| Looking for cast, I don't know. | ||
| What De Niro projects are even around? | ||
| Well, De Niro's probably trying to figure out where all his money's going, because he's getting divorced right now, so he's probably... | ||
| Yeah, man, he's getting divorced. | ||
| There was some public spat at a restaurant where he yelled at his wife, I wouldn't have to do these shitty fucking movies if you weren't spending all my money. | ||
| Fuck. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I see that, and I always feel bad for people. | ||
| Like the Cubs, the second baseman, Ben Zobris, he's been, like, I don't know what the, like, physically unable to perform. | ||
| Like, he's basically been on the disabled list the entire season while he goes through and deals with his divorce. | ||
| Oh, God. | ||
| Like, divorce is some serious shit. | ||
| Serious shit. | ||
| To go make millions of dollars playing baseball, I can't right now. | ||
| I have to go to court and count my cash and make sure that my shit is shit. | ||
| So his disabled shit is just dealing with the divorce? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's not even a real injury? | ||
| No, it's not a real injury. | ||
| Well, I guess technically it's mental. | ||
| You know what it is? | ||
| That's a girl taking apart his puzzle. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| She took apart his puzzle. | ||
| That's what she's doing. | ||
| She's taking apart the puzzle of his life while she's forcing him to go through. | ||
| I think it was like infidelity or something. | ||
| Yeah, of course. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Somebody cheated. | |
| I had a buddy of mine who he had to pay for his wife's lawyer. | ||
| You don't even think about it that way. | ||
| Like, if you're married, you go, well, who's paying for her lawyer? | ||
| But, bitch, you're paying for her lawyer. | ||
| If she didn't work, you pay for the general of the opposing army to try to dismantle you financially. | ||
| And he didn't have a prenuptial agreement. | ||
| So he went to war for fucking years. | ||
| Years and years and years. | ||
| And they were trying to drain him. | ||
| And the lawyers are smart, man. | ||
| They know that the real settlement is great. | ||
| But what the real money is, is in legal fees leading up to the settlement. | ||
| They just dragged that shit out for a couple of years. | ||
| Hundreds of dollars an hour. | ||
| Cha-ching! | ||
| And next thing you know, you've lost millions of dollars. | ||
| And this guy, you know, busted his ass 12 hours a day, forever. | ||
| Lost almost everything. | ||
| Still to this day, how about this? | ||
| He's been married for, I think he's been married for 14 years to a new woman. | ||
| He was with her for 12 years. | ||
| And he has been paying her alimony longer than they were married while he's married to a new woman and didn't even have kids with her. | ||
| So he's been paying her for 14 fucking years. | ||
| I'm talking six figures every year. | ||
| She doesn't do shit. | ||
| She lives in a fat house in the Palisades. | ||
| The whole thing is bananas. | ||
| Did you see Larry King is getting divorced? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I didn't know his head. | ||
| This was his eighth wife. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I hope he gets another one. | ||
| I hope he gets another one and he's like a skeleton. | ||
| And they have to like walk him out there in an exoskeleton. | ||
| I can't prove it, but I feel like the divorce lawyer industry is tied to the wedding industry somehow. | ||
| Somehow. | ||
| They don't have to be tied in like legally. | ||
| They know. | ||
| They both benefit from one another. | ||
| Of course. | ||
| Yeah, of course. | ||
| Look at that. | ||
| Perfect relationship. | ||
| How did it go wrong? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I just want to know what the arguments were about. | |
| Well, apparently that was infidelity as well, allegedly. | ||
| No way. | ||
| I can't believe she'd cheat on him. | ||
| Oh, on her side or his side? | ||
| Her side, apparently. | ||
| She had a year-long affair. | ||
| Prenup in that one? | ||
| No. | ||
| She looked fucking hot 20 years ago when they got married. | ||
| Because she's like 59 now. | ||
| So when they first started shacking it up, she was in her 30s. | ||
| Probably looking smoking. | ||
| She's a pretty lady, you know? | ||
| You think that's an addiction? | ||
| Love the same as any other drug? | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Of course. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Most people... | ||
| Because when you're talking about getting married seven times... | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| It gets a little wacky. | ||
| He's had marriages that lasted like less than a year. | ||
| Then he'd get divorced and marry another one. | ||
| I would get married... | ||
| I think once. | ||
| If I do it, it'll be once. | ||
| If you do it. | ||
| I got one in me. | ||
| One. | ||
| I got one in me. | ||
| I almost proposed to a girl like in 03. Those are one of the biggest mistakes. | ||
| Almost. | ||
| Almost fucking made. | ||
| How'd you get out of it? | ||
| Found out she was cheating. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Woo! | |
| That's nice. | ||
| That's a relief. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It was back in the day when you share cell phone plans and she kept pushing us over our minutes for the month. | ||
| I'm like, what the fuck? | ||
| Who the fuck are you talking to? | ||
| So the next month I requested the full itemized Call log. | ||
| Like back in the day, Sprint would send you your entire call log for the month, and I just went through it, and then I could see the patterns of when I was asleep or when I was on stage. | ||
| You could just see that when it's all in front of you, it's easy to just see that, oh, yeah, when I go to work at 6 a.m., then you call this guy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| Yeah, and it was real easy to track down. | ||
| Did you confront her? | ||
| Yeah, I was a little extra about it, but I was young. | ||
| I was fucking young. | ||
| I called Sprint and I basically turned my phone into her phone. | ||
| Oh, shit. | ||
| And then I started texting the dudes from her phone. | ||
| How many guys? | ||
| It was two guys. | ||
| And so I tell both guys to come over at the same time, which is so catty in me. | ||
| And, of course, they show up. | ||
| She calls me, curses me out, and boom, bam, relationship done. | ||
| Oh, so you told them to come over while she was at home. | ||
| Correct. | ||
| But you weren't there. | ||
| Correct. | ||
| Ooh, I like it. | ||
| No. | ||
| That's devious. | ||
| But in the bigger scheme of things, if one of those is that came over and hit her or done anything stupid, I'm liable. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Yeah, hell yeah. | ||
| No. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Come on. | |
| You're not liable for someone causing violence. | ||
| The police will charge you a murder for somebody they shot. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| There are laws. | ||
| If I deceive two men into showing up to the fucking house, you gotta remember, my brain is going, don't go back to jail ever again. | ||
| In my brain, I'm going, there's something that could have gone south somehow. | ||
| I don't think you would have gotten in trouble for that. | ||
| Either way, I wouldn't want the guy to get beat up by some psycho dude who's jealous or whatever. | ||
| I didn't want that. | ||
| Some psycho dude jealous that he's the other one who's cheating on you. | ||
| Yeah, and I had my little $700 engagement ring from Zales. | ||
| I took it back. | ||
| And this is when I learned that if you return an engagement ring, the salesperson loses the commission. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Ooh. | |
| They take the commission back out of their next check. | ||
| Did he say this person got upset? | ||
| He wasn't upset, but he spent like an hour trying to talk me how to return it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Really? | |
| Yeah, he said, man, just go think about it, man. | ||
| Go think about it. | ||
| Did you tell him? | ||
| Just walk around the mall. | ||
| She's fucking two other dudes. | ||
| That's ultimately what I had to do. | ||
| And once I told him that, he processed it with no fucking... | ||
| Just took the L? No pushback, yeah. | ||
| It was a $700 ring. | ||
| His cut was probably only going to be like, what, $70, $80? | ||
| What's the cut? | ||
| Didn't want to give up that $80. | ||
| And I respect it. | ||
| He's fucking hustling. | ||
| He's selling jewelry in a mall. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You don't want to fucking lose your fucking commission. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Those are bad decisions being made, buying jewelry in a mall. | ||
| It's crazy, though. | ||
| It's more like Joey, though, where she and I are cool now. | ||
| Oh, really? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Oh, that's cool. | ||
| She's married. | ||
| It's all love now. | ||
| Well, that's good. | ||
| Look, people grow and learn. | ||
| That's hilarious, though, that you did that. | ||
| Yeah, that wasn't my finest hour. | ||
| But like I said, I'm not a fighter. | ||
| I figure out a way to diabolically construct a situation that tears down your entire fucking operation. | ||
| Yeah, that was a good move. | ||
| That's a learning process, too, for her. | ||
| It's like, damn. | ||
| How could I be so obvious? | ||
| I mean, because what I'm going to do, drive over and cuss you out and, girl, you cheating on? | ||
| No. | ||
| No. | ||
| We're going to all know about each other. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's time for us all to meet. | ||
| So, hey, man, come on over to the house. | ||
| Hey, man, you come on over to the house. | ||
| Meet me at 11. Don't come too soon. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Come exactly at 11. Wow. | |
| Call Sprint. | ||
| Wouldn't you want to be there? | ||
| No. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| Some explosions you just got to walk away from. | ||
| No, man. | ||
| I want to be there for that one. | ||
| Just wear goggles. | ||
| Welding goggles. | ||
| That's something I've never lived down. | ||
| It was just ugly. | ||
| It was just one of those things where you just go, you know what? | ||
| Maybe I shouldn't have done that. | ||
| Her mom's calling me the next day. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Her mom? | |
| Will you just talk to her? | ||
| Talk to my baby. | ||
| Oh, boy. | ||
| No, man. | ||
| I can't. | ||
| Like, it was... | ||
| Dude, it was full-blown, bro. | ||
| I'm sending pictures of the fucking ring and all types of shit. | ||
| Oh, you got extra. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It was not... | ||
| It's not my finest hour. | ||
| But don't you think that, like, those brutal breakups and all the chaos of... | ||
| Infidelity and all that kind of nonsense. | ||
| It gives you a better understanding of relationships when they go well. | ||
| It's all like life lessons. | ||
| You don't get to be a seasoned, grown-up human being without getting your heart broken a few times, without having a bunch of things going and disappointing in your work life. | ||
| And then you become a person with an understanding of all the variabilities that you're dealing with in life. | ||
| I think the problem, though, you know, with love is that it also can be corroding in a sense where if you've really been invested and you've really tried to love and then it didn't work. | ||
| I think like I feel like if you've been in love a couple of I also feel like people get married sooner. | ||
| There's something more pure about it, but people get married later is more honest. | ||
| Yeah, okay. | ||
| It's like this blind love. | ||
| We're in love. | ||
| We've never been done dirty. | ||
| Oh my God, the sky is falling. | ||
| Versus your grizzled vet. | ||
| You've been cheated on. | ||
| You've cheated. | ||
| So you know both sides of that coin. | ||
| So you know how it feels. | ||
| You know both sides of that. | ||
| So when you enter into a relationship, it's more pure. | ||
| But because you have these battle wounds and these battle scars, I don't know if you love the same as the couple that got married in their 20s. | ||
| It's still love. | ||
| It depends on who you're with and how much you appreciate them. | ||
| It also depends on where you're at in your life. | ||
| Like, if you got married now, you're a successful man. | ||
| I mean, you did all the grinding and the hustling, but someone would be entering into your life now where you already made it. | ||
| You're successful. | ||
| You're established. | ||
| The hustle of getting to theirs, now it's just about maintaining. | ||
| Which, although difficult, you have the confidence that it's going to happen, that you don't have in the beginning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| Early days hustling when you were taking those odd jobs. | ||
| Who the fuck knew where your life was going? | ||
| That's one of the beautiful things about it. | ||
| There was gigs I was headed to where I didn't have gas money to get home. | ||
| And the gig I was going to was the gas money to get home. | ||
| So please don't cancel. | ||
| And please don't pull some black promoter shit and don't pay me. | ||
| I literally need those $40. | ||
| I have no way to get home. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| And sometimes you don't get paid. | ||
| And if you don't get paid on the way home, you stop at a daily work spot. | ||
| And you do some yard work or whatever. | ||
| You go do some daily work real quick for the day. | ||
| You miss a shift at the radio station. | ||
| You call the radio station. | ||
| Hey, man. | ||
| I got car trouble in Kentucky. | ||
| I can't get home. | ||
| I'm going to miss the morning show. | ||
| Sorry. | ||
| And then you go do some day job. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| Get your $40 and get home. | ||
| But that's a real life experience that you just can't pay for. | ||
| That's so valuable. | ||
| The fact that you did do it, even though it was horrible when it happened. | ||
| The resolve that you developed from being that person who figures your way through all those problems. | ||
| So if you got married now... | ||
| You're a different person. | ||
| You'll figure shit out better now. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You also learn how to communicate way better so that it doesn't devolve to a point where either you are being malicious to each other. | ||
| Me and my girl is way better at communication than anything I could have imagined with anyone in my 20s. | ||
| Yeah, because of those experiences and learning. | ||
| That's the part where you try to fucking correct. | ||
| But then there's always a piece of you. | ||
| It's like Do you ever find, I guess, I can't ask you this as a married man, but you find yourself sometimes looking at past relationships like jokes where you go, oh, I know how I could have fixed that one. | ||
| Oh, yeah, for sure. | ||
| Where even with the knowledge you have now of relationships and love, I can look back on stuff that I fucked up and go, all I had to do was this, this, boom, and that joke would have hit. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| That would have been. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So that eats like the way like when you do a TV set and you forget one part of the joke and now for the rest of your life, that's the set. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| That's who you are. | ||
| But there's a piece of you that's going... | ||
| Fuck, I should have done that thing. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But that's part of the beauty of growth. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's like you have to leave behind these poorly finished projects to appreciate the one that you're going to put out next that's going to be the best version of it. | ||
| I look at every fucking special I ever did going, ugh. | ||
| Even if they were successful, I just go, ugh. | ||
| I don't have nothing to do with them. | ||
| I can't watch them. | ||
| I fucking get disgusted. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| My first two specials should be combined into one. | ||
| Like I can literally look at the material and go, oh, that segues with that. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Cut that out. | ||
| Put this in there. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And then there's old specials that I said, ooh, I'd like to have another crack at those ideas because those are good ideas. | ||
| I just didn't implement them correctly. | ||
| So why not? | ||
| Move on. | ||
| Gotta move on. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What? | |
| If the idea is still valid and worth being told? | ||
| You get trapped. | ||
| You get trapped in old ideas. | ||
| It's out there. | ||
| It's done. | ||
| New shit. | ||
| Find something new that resonates just as well in the future as this stuff does to you when you're looking at the past. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I feel like I have some unfinished thoughts from the last special. | ||
| Of course. | ||
| But that desire and that hunger is what makes you a great comic. | ||
| Like that, it's not done. | ||
| Oh, I got to do more. | ||
| Oh, this has got to be better next time. | ||
| Or make it tighter. | ||
| Make this better. | ||
| More punchlines. | ||
| Less fat. | ||
| All that's what, that discomfort and angst is what makes you an artist. | ||
| That's why I like trying to do stuff that has some teeth or some edge or some opinion to it. | ||
| Or treading and stuff that... | ||
| I don't know if you should go there. | ||
| No, let's go there. | ||
| Let's figure it out. | ||
| There's a joke in there somehow. | ||
| When you can navigate those waters successfully, it's like... | ||
| Fuck, man. | ||
| You get on the other end with a big laugh. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Dude! | |
| It's whitewater rafting. | ||
| And there's just rocks coming and you're going, left! | ||
| Right! | ||
| Paddle! | ||
| There's a guy calling out how to do the joke and you're just navigating your way down the rocks. | ||
| And if you make it, it is the most rewarding dismount that for me is better than just something more mundane. | ||
| I just can't do it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, when you see people that are doing the same mundane shit over and over and over again, they don't know what it's like to have that thrill. | ||
| They're basically getting on a fucking seesaw every day. | ||
| Doing the same seesaw over and over. | ||
| There's no thrill in that. | ||
| No. | ||
| You're not four anymore. | ||
| There's too many good thoughts out there. | ||
| That's why I love talking with Neil Brennan. | ||
| Neil Brennan is like one of those perfect comics that I can go, hey man, what do you think about this? | ||
| And he'll tag it darker and take it to a place that I wouldn't have even considered. | ||
| And, you know, like, you start noticing, like, there's only... | ||
| Even if you have a bunch of comedian friends, there's only certain friends that understand how or which way you're trying to go with the bit. | ||
| Because someone else might give you a tag that drifts off into easy land, and I don't want that. | ||
| Right, right, right. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| No, Neil's a great joke writer, and his shit, like... | ||
| I like his... | ||
| I like watching him work out premises, because, you know, you can tell, like... | ||
| He's put some real thought into those ideas. | ||
| It's a thesis statement that just happens to be funny. | ||
| He's really breaking shit down. | ||
| I like the ones where I know that it was an argument that he had with a girl. | ||
| Then he's bringing it to the stage and trying to work it out and make it funny. | ||
| Because if you have an argument with a girl and then she comes to see you at a comedy club like a month later and that argument gets relayed to the audience and it's fucking hysterical, you win. | ||
| You win and you fucking slam dunk. | ||
| That is a fucking grand slam that shatters windows in the parking lot. | ||
| I've never had the courage to do it. | ||
| I've never had the courage to perform argument material in front of somebody I was dating. | ||
| Never done it. | ||
| No, it's hard. | ||
| You gotta take a chance and them being really mad at you when you get off stage. | ||
| Like, I give you an example. | ||
| Like, Wilson Vince is another guy that I like talking to out of New York. | ||
| And the premise, the joke premise is that there are no hit video games set in Vietnam. | ||
| Like, that's how much we don't want to explore Vietnam. | ||
| That's true. | ||
| It's on World War II, right? | ||
| And Middle East. | ||
| It's just the hits. | ||
| We only want to discuss the hits. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's true. | |
| Where we won. | ||
| That's a good point. | ||
| There have been games in Vietnam. | ||
| Of course, there's some video games in Vietnam, but as far as hit, popular, Twitch-level ninja shit, none in Vietnam. | ||
| I told Will Cervant Supremist, and he says, that's because if you're playing a game based in Vietnam, you can't win, even if you want to. | ||
| Even when you win, you still lose. | ||
| And it's taking that thought and figuring out how to weave that. | ||
| But that's what I mean where a friend can help me work through an idea. | ||
| But then somewhere, the trick is to come around the backside of that and make sure that you're reinforcing and uplifting the people that chose to fight. | ||
| It's a whole world that I'm just obsessed with. | ||
| It all boils back to the whole Trump draft dodger thing and the hypocrisy that If we agree that the troops are fucked and they're treated horribly, then how is draft dodging bad? | ||
| And that being the thought. | ||
| Especially for Vietnam. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Correct. | |
| It's a war we all agree was a terrible war. | ||
| We didn't know it at the time. | ||
| And some people chose to go, but a lot of people were threatened with jail that they didn't go. | ||
| So if you did not go, based on revisionist history, was that not a solid decision in terms of avoiding? | ||
| And so it's about getting that thought through without disrespecting the heroism of what happened. | ||
| Tricky waters. | ||
| Falling trees. | ||
| Whitewater rafting, baby. | ||
| A lot of rocks. | ||
| So I haven't figured it. | ||
| Those are the basic Lego blocks. | ||
| And I have to figure out how to get down the river without fucking hitting a jagged... | ||
| Do you write in like essay form? | ||
| Do you write things out, like with a computer? | ||
| Yeah, once I have the ideas together, I just go loose on stage. | ||
| I'll just run a bit a couple times on stage without any real structure. | ||
| Just bullet points. | ||
| Here are the four points I want to make. | ||
| Do that for a week. | ||
| Listen to the audio. | ||
| The stuff that's hot, transcribe. | ||
| And then from that transcription, start filling in the blanks of how to flesh out the thought and the point a little bit more. | ||
| But then some stuff requires research. | ||
| There's a bit that I'm working on now about how the most important person, the most important character in a civil rights movie is the white person, is the evil white actor. | ||
| You cannot have a powerful civil rights movie without a white person being evil. | ||
| So these actors are never honored. | ||
| They're never nominated for shit. | ||
| Like a civil rights movie is only as powerful as the white actor is evil because that captures what was fucking happening back in that day. | ||
| So I need to like sit and physically go to box office mojo and look at the last 10 years of civil rights movies versus civil rights movies versus white savior movies and pull actors and pull examples. | ||
| And then look at that and then go to their IMDb and look at their trajectory post civil rights movie to establish a pattern of if you're a white person, you do evil. | ||
| You're risk because my argument is that you're risking your career. | ||
| If you're not an A-list actor and you're playing a racist, you may not do shit else. | ||
| Because for black people, if you say nigga, it's too real. | ||
| So we can't see you as a fucking Romulan in a Star Trek movie years later. | ||
| We're unable to process. | ||
| So that joke, I have that idea, and I'll just work that thought a couple of times. | ||
| But now, before I put it on stage again, I need movies. | ||
| I need examples to back up the thesis statement. | ||
| So that's what I'll start writing and really start looking at all of these examples. | ||
| And I also have, like, it's in the same ballpark of that. | ||
| It's about how, like, people call, like, Green Book, like, a white savior movie. | ||
| And how this movie is about white people doing a good deed for black people back in the day. | ||
| And black people don't like white savior movies because, you know, it avoids the pain and the struggle and all that shit. | ||
| And I feel like white savior movies are just reactionary to powerful civil rights movies because nobody wants to be portrayed negatively. | ||
| So if there are enough civil rights movies that play white people as evil, it's inevitable that a white person is going to write a movie about, remember the time we drove you around to play the piano? | ||
| Like, that's... | ||
| It's inevitable. | ||
| We fed you chicken. | ||
| So don't just show all those evil things we did. | ||
| Let's also acknowledge the time we drove you around. | ||
| And I think if I go back and I look through the history of the box office over the last 20 years, I guarantee you I'll be able to find an oscillation between Powerful civil rights movie and white savior movie. | ||
| And when you write that out, you're just going to write bullet points and then just run it on stage? | ||
| No, now we'll do bullet points of all the movies. | ||
| So the next stage is I'll write all those movies out and I'll go on stage and do half of those movies one set. | ||
| The next set I'll do the other half of movies and see which ones resonate the quickest. | ||
| Because they're not all going to be timeless classics. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Some of them are going to be deep in the woods. | ||
| But like Mississippi Burning. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Or like Malcolm X and Driving Miss Daisy. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Those are two perfect examples of conflicting films in the same year. | ||
| So I need iconic examples like that. | ||
| Where everybody knows the movie. | ||
| Correct. | ||
| But I haven't even seen it. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| So that's trial and error. | ||
| So that just has to go on stage a couple times. | ||
| And then, once I know what the movies are, then we write it. | ||
| Then you verbatim that shit. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| And really fucking get it worked out. | ||
| That's black belt level comedy. | ||
| That's black belt level. | ||
| It's like you have to have like, this is not something that's obvious in front of you. | ||
| You have like a scaffolding. | ||
| And you're trying to construct this and figure out a way to squeeze the most juice out of it. | ||
| That's that white water rafting. | ||
| It's so rewarding when that gets pulled off. | ||
| I just feel like if you look at every genre, and it's not to defend a white savior movie as much as it is to just show why the fuck it happened. | ||
| Black people in the 90s, like Boys in the Hood. | ||
| In the 90s, that was the era of shoot-em-up, bang-bang-hood classics. | ||
| And somewhere around 95, 96, black cinema became much more positive and reinforcing. | ||
| And there was Waiting to Exhale and Poetic Justice and Above the Rim. | ||
| What's the other one? | ||
| Love Jones and Love in Basketball. | ||
| There were all these more positive black cinema. | ||
| That was in direct reaction to not wanting to be perceived and portrayed constantly in a negative light. | ||
| So I could probably go deep into the fucking weeds, race by race on cinema. | ||
| I could do all the Asian movies and end with Crazy Rich Asians as the counter to that, but it's not necessarily Asian savior. | ||
| I don't know how to connect that, but I believe there's a way with all of these cinematic movies to connect it all together. | ||
| And at that point, you probably got a 25-minute bit that you know needs to be chopped down to 10. But that's how you build the whole house, and then you just start chopping off wings. | ||
| And when you do that, are you writing it out? | ||
| Do you ever write things out while I was asking an essay form? | ||
| Because one of the things that I found that has a great benefit is I write things out not trying to be funny. | ||
| Instead of just... | ||
| Writing it out in a way where I'm trying to be funny, I just write it out like I'm writing an essay, like I'm writing an article for a magazine. | ||
| And then in doing that, I'll extract chunks that are funny. | ||
| Because I find that when I'm trying to write as a comic, I'm trying to write set-up punchline, it's too defining, it's too limiting. | ||
| But when I write in an open form, then funny ideas are in there, and I just come out and pull them. | ||
| Do you think part of that is having the advantage of the audience being with you immediately? | ||
| Like when you have your audience, you're afforded that opportunity? | ||
| Because it's weird because the way we build material now, I don't think that's how you did it when you first started. | ||
| Was it more about just the joke, the joke, the joke? | ||
| Yeah, you had to gain their confidence, right? | ||
| That was the thing. | ||
| You had to start strong. | ||
| You had to have a good opening bit. | ||
| You couldn't fuck around too much. | ||
| They had to have confidence in you. | ||
| This guy's going to waste my fucking time. | ||
| If you're on a show, when you're an amateur, there's fucking ten other people before you. | ||
| You have to grab them. | ||
| You gotta grab them. | ||
| You gotta grab them and show them that you have something. | ||
| But then, once you become an established comedian, the other problem is you're working with a bunch of other established comedians. | ||
| Like, say, if I'm working with you, and then there's Joey Diaz, and all these other fucking people that are going on that are murdering, and then you go up with some bullshit new stuff, that stuff has to be ready. | ||
| Having an established audience is great for a couple minutes. | ||
| And then you better have some shit. | ||
| It's almost like there's more expectations, so things have to be more tight. | ||
| But some people don't do that. | ||
| Some people don't do clubs anymore where they're working with a bunch of people. | ||
| They don't do like the store or the improv where they're working with a bunch of people. | ||
| Instead, they do their own shows. | ||
| They do their own shows only. | ||
| They have the same opening act all the time, and then people are there to see them, and it's a low bar. | ||
| They don't have to worry about it as much. | ||
| I think that's a mistake. | ||
| But I think the essay form, I started figuring that out maybe 10 years ago. | ||
| I started writing things in essay form. | ||
| I originally used to do it as blog posts. | ||
| I would write blog posts and I'd take those blog posts and I would extract ideas from them and then make it into comedy. | ||
| But I feel like the writing without the limitations of it needing to be funny is where I get the most ideas. | ||
| Yeah, and then you also have the most truth in there as well. | ||
| Yes, because I'm not just trying to bullshit people for a laugh. | ||
| I'm trying to find out, like, what is it, like, if that premise of, like, the White Savior movie, like, what is it about white people making these movies? | ||
| Like, what are they trying to, are they trying to defend something? | ||
| Are they trying to exonerate themselves? | ||
| Like, what are they trying to do when they make that movie? | ||
| Is it just a feel-good, is it their distorted idea of how to bring everybody together is to show that some white people were really good back then, even in the bad times? | ||
| Look, great movie. | ||
| Hey! | ||
| Good job, Michael. | ||
| Good job, Will. | ||
| Everybody did a great job in this movie. | ||
| What is it that's the motivation? | ||
| You find those gems of humor, those roots of humor in that. | ||
| Yeah, that's what I'll try that. | ||
| I'll try writing it out more before putting it on. | ||
| I just like writing that way because I don't have to do anything. | ||
| There's no expectation. | ||
| It's just thoughts. | ||
| Just spill the thoughts out. | ||
| And then you get absorbed in the writing. | ||
| And then in that absorption, you're a funny guy. | ||
| You're always going to think funny thoughts. | ||
| Those funny thoughts are going to come out. | ||
| When you're talking about something, you're like, what the fuck was this guy thinking? | ||
| And then you go on this whole rant about this thing that maybe... | ||
| If you didn't give yourself the opportunity to sit in front of a computer and just stare at the screen and stare at those keyboard You probably wouldn't have come up with that premise. | ||
| Also, once I have the joke in a decent shape, even if it's kind of loose, I start watching myself on mute. | ||
| I go from audio to once the joke has structure to video, and then just watching myself on mute and just seeing body language and just seeing, does this look funny? | ||
| Does this look... | ||
| That's interesting. | ||
| I've never done that. | ||
| Once I identified what my comedic strengths were, it's quick spastic movements, but not a lot of stage talking. | ||
| Walking the stage doesn't work for me. | ||
| I'm not Chris Rock. | ||
| So, operate in like a three-foot box to either side of center stage. | ||
| And if it's quick in head... | ||
| But nobody, if I take my head one way, then bring my shoulders, instead of bringing my head and shoulders at the same time on a turn, while I'm contemplating a point. | ||
| Something as simple as that For me, helps jokes. | ||
| And then I can go back and listen to the audio. | ||
| Go back and watch the video and see where I'm getting laughs just off movement and I haven't said a word yet. | ||
| And for me, it's quick movements and facial expressions. | ||
| Those are the extra little... | ||
| I call that the extra seasoning. | ||
| That's the shit that, you know, once you kind of get the joke in a good place, where can we add a little seasoning? | ||
| Is it a vocal inflection? | ||
| Is it coming down on this part? | ||
| Is it... | ||
| Looking this way, then looking that way. | ||
| Almost borderline performative on some acting shit, but just looking and finding places where the emotions can change. | ||
| And not necessarily on this line, I do this thing. | ||
| But it's just, oh, this part is funnier. | ||
| If I'm not as excited here, Foxworthy says, I was watching Bring the Funny and he told one of the contestants, if you start at a 10... | ||
| What's Bring the Funny? | ||
| It's a competition comedy show. | ||
| Is it a new show? | ||
| It's Last Comic Standing, but with sketch comics mixed in there as well. | ||
| So it's not strictly stand-up. | ||
| It's sketch and variety acts and all of that type of shit. | ||
| But the same shit. | ||
| You go out in front of three judges, somebody crushes your dreams, and then you talk shit about it behind their backs. | ||
|
unidentified
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Oh my God. | |
| Once you kicked off the show. | ||
| But he told somebody, once you started at 10, you have nowhere else to go. | ||
| So I try to keep that in mind in terms of just not being too big too soon with the material or just shifting gears. | ||
| It's... | ||
| It's a fascinating process, and we discussed this on the show many times before, that there's no books that can tell you how to do it. | ||
| One of the things that's really cool about this conversation is young guys coming up, young girls coming up that want to learn how to do comedy can listen to your process, and they'll get an idea of the map ahead. | ||
| They'll get an idea of the road, because there's no courses you can take that are ever going to prepare you. | ||
| You have to find established comedians and listen to them talk about how they do it. | ||
| In a sense, what we're doing is we're laying down Like, sort of a course for the up-and-coming class, for the people that are starting out now that don't really have anyone to show them how to do it. | ||
| They can cut a lot of time out by listening to a guy like you who's explaining the mistakes that he made and then the good choices that you made and then your process. | ||
| I tried. | ||
| One of the tricks that I had early on was to just avoid topics that anybody else was talking about. | ||
| And then even if the joke wasn't the funniest, I got credit for being original. | ||
| And I don't know if this will work for every comic, but I know coming up early 2000s in the back half of the Def Jam era, to be a black comic that wasn't talking about fucking and sucking and weed and You ever been so broke? | ||
| Like, I just, I didn't touch none of that shit. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, to a mainstream booker, it was just, oh, wow, he did a joke about suicide. | ||
| Okay, well, let's make him. | ||
| Right, right, yeah. | ||
| Book him. | ||
| Well, there's such a... | ||
| It was just weird, off-brand shit, but still finding funny in that. | ||
| There's such a temptation to pick on tried and proven subjects because you know they'll work. | ||
| You're scared in the beginning, right? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I feel like you start as a weird image. | ||
| My first two years of comedy was this weird Martin Lawrence, Doug Stanhope hybrid child. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| It was terrible. | ||
| It was very terrible. | ||
| But I started noticing that The first thing I needed to do, the first objective when I got on was, alright, all the road bookers said, you gotta get a TV credit. | ||
| You gotta get a TV credit and then I can pay you more. | ||
| Alright, well the only thing that was booking people on a regular was Comic View. | ||
| So BET's Comic View became the path, but then... | ||
| I didn't get Comic View like two, three years in a row, and I looked at the material I submitted versus the material that was being performed. | ||
| It was guys doing better versions of the same topics as me. | ||
| So, all right, this year, we're going to try doing different topics from everybody. | ||
| So I watched Comic View for a whole year, kept a log of every topic that was touched on for every episode, and just never did jokes about those topics. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| So you actually wrote it out? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Comic View came on every night, though. | ||
| Yeah, I remember back in the... | ||
| Like 2000, 2001. Comic View came on Monday through Friday, and it was six comics an episode. | ||
| So every week, you had a cross-section of what 40 motherfuckers were talking about. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| For 12 weeks. | ||
| And that's a shit ton of comedy. | ||
| That's a shit ton of topics. | ||
| And you'd be surprised. | ||
| There was a lot of repetition and overlap. | ||
| So by simply not talking about that shit... | ||
| It's enough to get you a little bit. | ||
| It's no different than what's happening now with the alt scene. | ||
| You're just a different delivery. | ||
| You're a different cadence. | ||
| You have a different look. | ||
| Being different is almost as important as being funny now. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| I don't think that being different should be prioritized over being funny. | ||
| But if you're different and you're fucking hilarious, then you... | ||
| Yeah, people appreciate it, for sure. | ||
| Just like any other genre of art, whether it's music or cinema, anything. | ||
| Being different is rewarded. | ||
| That's why I've always liked Emo Phillips, man. | ||
|
unidentified
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Really? | |
| Yeah, I used to like Emo. | ||
| Emo, I just wanted to do the thing. | ||
| And the cadence was never... | ||
| Typical! | ||
| At minimum it's different. | ||
| So he's challenging himself. | ||
| So I'm going to try that. | ||
| That's why I like Theo Vaughn. | ||
| Theo Vaughn's got Theo comedy. | ||
| You can't imitate that. | ||
| The only way that shit works is if it comes out of Theo's mouth. | ||
| It doesn't even make sense coming out of someone else's mouth. | ||
| Theo gets to laugh on He gets a laugh on the setup, and he gets a laugh on the pause. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And the pause is that anticipatory gig. | ||
| Like, they already know it's going to be good, and here it comes, here it comes. | ||
| Like, he's good, man. | ||
| Yeah, he's real good. | ||
| And I watched that guy turn a corner, man. | ||
| About two, three years ago, he just hit his groove. | ||
| He went full mullet. | ||
| He had a mullet before, but it was... | ||
| He just found that groove. | ||
| Like, whatever it is that made him... | ||
| He found what it is. | ||
| He found the frequency, and then he just hit into it. | ||
| And very, very, very original. | ||
| You'd never hear him talking about, like, stuff that other people have talked about. | ||
| There's a New York guy like that, Mark Norman. | ||
| Mark Norman has a way of... | ||
| Sure. | ||
| I love Mark Norman. | ||
| Pivoting. | ||
| He's coming on soon. | ||
| He's on here in a couple weeks. | ||
| He's great. | ||
| Norman just knows how to pivot in a way you think is going this way, and it's just a basketball crossover. | ||
| Very good writer. | ||
| Very good writer. | ||
| Well, listen, man, I've got to wrap this up, but this was awesome. | ||
| I really appreciate it. | ||
| I'm glad we finally did it. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| It was awesome. | ||
| Thank you, Joe. | ||
| I've enjoyed your work for a long time, so I'm glad to have you on here, man. | ||
| I'll let you know when the Vietnam joke gets worked out. | ||
| Let it know. | ||
| Let us know. | ||
| It's going to need some time. | ||
|
unidentified
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All right. |
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