Nov. 4, 2019 - The Joe Rogan Experience
01:34:55
| 
| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| Network. | ||
| The timer's on? | ||
| All right, we're rolling. | ||
| First of all, before we get started, I want to say thank you to Luis J. Gomez for hooking this up. | ||
| Shout out to the Legion of Skanks. | ||
| Without them, we would be nothing. | ||
| Yes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We're here. | |
| Absolutely. | ||
| What's up, buddy? | ||
| Good to see you, man. | ||
| What's up, Joe Rogan? | ||
|
unidentified
|
My brother. | |
| What's happening? | ||
| Hey, I'm alive. | ||
| You're alive. | ||
| Look, man, I've been following this whole... | ||
| Everybody's been following you. | ||
| Yeah, but first of all, thanks for being so nice. | ||
| You're very supportive, Joe. | ||
| I mean, that means a lot to me. | ||
| I'm happy to see you healthy. | ||
| Yeah, thank you. | ||
| You look good. | ||
| Your face looks good. | ||
| You look thin. | ||
| You look healthy. | ||
| You look like you're vibrant. | ||
| Yeah, no, I'm present. | ||
| I talked to David Tell, and David Tell came to visit me in rehab, and he said, you're present. | ||
| You don't want to leave every five seconds, which is what cocaine does to you. | ||
| Right. | ||
| No, I feel good. | ||
| I feel good. | ||
| I got nine months clean. | ||
| That's amazing. | ||
| That's amazing. | ||
| Two days ago was nine months. | ||
| What's the hump? | ||
| What do they say you have to get over before you can stay clean? | ||
| Well, first of all, my drug history is insane. | ||
| The first time I got high, and I tell these young kids, because I'm 52 now, so I was in rehab and jail in a halfway house the last eight months. | ||
| And with some of the craziest motherfuckers you've ever met in your life. | ||
| And they all have stories, but once they know my story, because I had some success in life, basically as a full-blown junkie, they're fascinated by it. | ||
| And the first time I got high was 1979. Jimmy Carter was president of the Holy shit. | ||
| So when you tell a 22-year-old kid that, they're like, blown away that I'm even alive. | ||
| And I am too. | ||
| I hit a home run in Little League. | ||
| I'll never forget this. | ||
| And my buddy's older brother, we used to call this kid Sick Jack. | ||
| I don't know what happened to him. | ||
| But he handed me a joint. | ||
| And I took a puff of the weed. | ||
| And from... | ||
| 11 years old, I loved it so much. | ||
| I just loved being... | ||
| I loved the feeling of being out of control. | ||
| You talk to a normal person, they go, I hate being out of control. | ||
| I loved it. | ||
| I loved, like, wow! | ||
| And you have an excuse for it. | ||
| I was fucked up. | ||
| Yeah, that's the thing, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| An excuse for being wild. | ||
| An excuse for just being a screw-up, too. | ||
| And my old man was a lunatic. | ||
| He was not a drug addict or an alcoholic, but he was a criminal. | ||
| He was a low-level criminal. | ||
| He came to the streets of Newark and got to the 10th grade in high school. | ||
| And he was my favorite human being of all time. | ||
| He was my older brother, but I saw him do a lot of bad shit. | ||
| You know, I saw him fight all the time. | ||
| He was a boxer when he was young. | ||
| The real street smart guy. | ||
| And his life was chaos. | ||
| And I loved the chaos. | ||
| I was addicted to risk. | ||
| That's why I'm a gambler, too. | ||
| So when cocaine came into my life a few years later, I was 16 the first time I did a line of blow. | ||
| And that was really fun because now you're up all the time. | ||
| And that started basically a 35-year drug run that didn't end until like nine months ago. | ||
| I mean, I don't know if it's ended. | ||
| You know, that's the thing. | ||
| I don't put pressure on myself. | ||
| I'm like, that one day at a time stuff, it sounds so cliché. | ||
| But I take it one minute at a time. | ||
| I can't guarantee people I'm never going to get high again. | ||
| I just know I'm not going to get high in the next 10 minutes. | ||
| You don't want to get high again. | ||
| Is there a risk of saying that you don't know if you're ever going to get high again? | ||
| Well, the direct opposite is true. | ||
| That's what they tell you in a program like Narcotics Anonymous. | ||
| And again, I'm not some big program guy. | ||
| I didn't turn into some God guy, anything like that. | ||
| But I'm a little more spiritual, I would say. | ||
| And, you know, it's all stuff, you know, you used to tell me the last time I was on the show, you know, you were telling me to try to live right, like, you know, exercise, anything, anything to get you through the day that's positive, you know? | ||
| I, in other words, by saying you'll never get high again, and I used to do that all the time, When you're really bullshitting yourself and everybody else, you put a lot of pressure on yourself. | ||
| Even these young kids, these poor kids, man, are looking at a lot of jail time, prison time. | ||
| They're living under a fucking bridge, some of these kids, and they got nothing. | ||
| That's why the careers of me and you have... | ||
| And congratulations on everything you've done, Joe, man. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| You're a solid guy, a great talent. | ||
| But, you know... | ||
| The careers we have are such blessings. | ||
| I mean, we're living out a dream, you know, and these kids have nothing. | ||
| And for a 23-year-old kid to say in a group therapy session anywhere, I'm never going to get high again, it's daunting to say you're never going to do anything again. | ||
| And even for me at 52 years old, I love it. | ||
| You got to say I love being high. | ||
| I love the chaos. | ||
| I love the lifestyle. | ||
| You get addicted to the lifestyle, too, because you don't live like everybody else, you know? | ||
| And I had a means of making money legally. | ||
| And, you know, these kids had to rob to get all the shit. | ||
| And so that was enabling, too. | ||
| We live in an enabling world. | ||
| But to say you're never going to get high again is so much pressure. | ||
| To say I don't know and just work on the next day, and for me, it's like I take it minute by minute, literally. | ||
| I got high, like we're here on the Lower East Side of Manhattan right now. | ||
| I got high everywhere here. | ||
| Back in the 80s, I used to come here with my buddy's older brother and get mescaline hits, lewds back in the day, you know, weed in Washington Square Park, blow. | ||
| So there's triggers all over the place. | ||
| So I just say, if I can get this one more, just get one more block without fucking up. | ||
| That turns into a day and then time, you know? | ||
| So it's harder to say for yourself, I... I'll never get high again. | ||
| What was the longest you went before this nine-month stretch? | ||
| It feels like the last time I had nine months clean, I was nine months old. | ||
| No, I... Okay, in the late 90s, I came out of LA County Jail. | ||
| Well, again, the first time I got arrested, I got arrested for attempted bank robbery when I was 17 years old. | ||
| I wrote a bank teller a joke note that said I have a gun. | ||
| And I went to jail, and I got on probation. | ||
| I asked his teller for $50,000. | ||
| Whoa. | ||
| And... | ||
| She started to give me the money. | ||
| And she hit the silent alarm. | ||
| I was with my girlfriend at the time. | ||
| I was 17. She was 18. So a SWAT team showed up to her house. | ||
| We just left. | ||
| So you had the money? | ||
| I didn't take the money. | ||
| She started to give me the money. | ||
| But again, this is my fucked up personality flaw. | ||
| I was like, wow, I'm going to get 50 G's. | ||
| And she started to give it to me. | ||
| But then something said, I can't do this. | ||
| I took the note I gave her and I crumpled it up. | ||
| I said, I'm just kidding. | ||
| And I threw it in a garbage can. | ||
| I get in my girlfriend's car and she drives away. | ||
| She goes, what happened there? | ||
| I didn't even tell her. | ||
| I go, it's bullshit. | ||
| They had her name because she had an account. | ||
| She's an adult. | ||
| Oh, Jesus. | ||
| And a SWAT team shows up at her house. | ||
| So we both get arrested. | ||
| We're handcuffed. | ||
| And I go to jail. | ||
| I say, and her old man, I think, was connected. | ||
| It was like a mob guy. | ||
| And he sat me down and he goes, when you rob a bank, you no take my daughter. | ||
| He didn't have a problem with me robbing a bank. | ||
| He had a problem that I took his daughter. | ||
| He goes, you don't take women when you rob a bank. | ||
| And I go, I wasn't trying to rob a bank. | ||
| He goes, no. | ||
| He goes, I know you. | ||
| You're a craze. | ||
| And he was right. | ||
| But again, I just loved the action. | ||
| That's why I love gambling. | ||
| So... | ||
| I go out to LA, I get MADtv, now I'm making 10 grand a week, and I got a bad cocaine problem. | ||
| And I started gambling. | ||
| The first Tyson-Holyfield fight, I lost $25,000. | ||
| I thought Tyson was gonna fucking kill him. | ||
| And Quincy Jones, who produced MADtv, got us ringside seats at the fight. | ||
| And I lose 25 grand on a fight, another 8 grand at the tables. | ||
| I get blow. | ||
| I take it on a plane back to LA at 1 o'clock in the morning. | ||
| I take a swing at a cop and I go to LA County Jail for trying to assault a cop. | ||
| And he found an eight ball on me. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| So I had an eight ball of coke on me. | ||
| I take a swing at a cop. | ||
| And that's my last day at Mad TV. Oh, Jesus. | ||
| What year was this? | ||
| This is 1996. Right after. | ||
| We did that sketch at Mad TV. Yeah. | ||
| Which is like 95, I think. | ||
| That was 96. It was 96? | ||
| It was the second season. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Which is funny to watch because it's so fucking long ago. | ||
| Oh, kids. | ||
| About a month after that. | ||
| We taped that sketch. | ||
| I got arrested. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| And so I go to LA County. | ||
| I come out of LA County. | ||
| I'm on probation and I got to take urine tests and everything. | ||
| So I got clean. | ||
| So to answer your question, I had almost a year clean at that point. | ||
| And then after that, it was off to the races again. | ||
| So nine months is the second longest I've had clean since I'm... | ||
| 11 years old. | ||
| Now, what are you doing for thrills? | ||
| Do you have to replace... | ||
| The Joe Rogan podcast! | ||
| Do you have to do something to replace the feeling of gambling? | ||
| Because you're not gambling, right? | ||
| That's an excellent question. | ||
| No, I can't do anything. | ||
| Because it escalates. | ||
| It escalates. | ||
| If I put a $5 bet on a roulette table right now, by tomorrow morning I'd be running guns to Cuba. | ||
| I'd have a human trafficking ring. | ||
| The badness just gets worse and worse because I can't have a beer. | ||
| And that's hard to admit to yourself, too. | ||
| I mean, I can't have one beer. | ||
| And it took me a long time to grab that concept. | ||
| Some people can't. | ||
| Have you had moments where you could have one beer in your life? | ||
| Have you ever gone, grab a slice of pizza, have a couple beers, and that's it? | ||
| Yeah, watching a game. | ||
| But the problem is I mix vices. | ||
| I tell a story. | ||
| I was a longshoreman at the Port in Newark, okay, for a couple of years. | ||
| I was at the Orange Juice Pier. | ||
| This happened twice. | ||
| I had a bookie I used to gamble with. | ||
| So drinking and coke and gambling does not mix well. | ||
| That's why they give you free drinks at a casino, because you're messed up. | ||
| So, for Monday Night Football, the bookie took bets up until 8 o'clock. | ||
| Kickoff was 9 o'clock. | ||
| So, at 5.30, right after I got out of work, I would call the book and I would say, give me $1,000 on the Giants play the Cowboys. | ||
| Give me $1,000 on the Giants. | ||
| Then I start drinking. | ||
| 7.30 comes around. | ||
| I forget I made the bet. | ||
| Two separate times, I bet on the other team at 7.30. | ||
| At 7.30, I called the book and I said, give me the Cowboys. | ||
| So all I could do was lose the VIG. All I could do was lose. | ||
| So this happened twice. | ||
| So the bookie... | ||
| Tape all your calls and they destroy the tape at the end because the cops get it. | ||
| But what they do is they have the calls on tape in case you have a dispute. | ||
| Like, I'd have bet that. | ||
| He goes, no, I got you on tape doing it. | ||
| So I said to the bookie, why did you let me do that? | ||
| He goes, because you got to learn a life lesson. | ||
| I go, thanks, Mr. Bookie, for giving me a life lesson. | ||
| You know, I'm trying to win money. | ||
| And he goes, I got to tape you at 530. Making a bet. | ||
| So at 5.30, I'm like all articulate. | ||
| I go, yeah, give me the Giants laying seven over the Cowboys. | ||
| Give me the under over 41. Give me a dime, which is $1,000. | ||
| He goes, here's you at 7.30. | ||
| Give me the fucking Cowboys! | ||
|
unidentified
|
No! | |
| I want the Cowboys in the Under parlaying! | ||
| And you hear him try to go, you just bet the Giants. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Fuck you! | |
| No, I didn't! | ||
| I put some chick on the phone. | ||
| Give him the Cowboys! | ||
| I'm a Cowboy fan! | ||
| I met some girl who was a Cowboy fan talking to me in a, you know... | ||
| So a bookie's trying to give me life coaching tips. | ||
| Oh my god. | ||
| So what happens is if I would go have the one beer on a Tuesday night in February at a sports bar, then I realize Virginia Tech is playing in a college basketball game. | ||
| I bet Virginia Tech, then I have two beers, then I got Coke, then it's over. | ||
| So, your question is a great question. | ||
| What do I do for thrills? | ||
| What are you replacing it with? | ||
| That's where this business, which has taken me back now, I think, 11 times. | ||
| This is my 11th comeback. | ||
| I have fans that I got through MADtv and The Stern Show, of course, that are so loyal Stand up. | ||
| Stand up. | ||
| This business. | ||
| Doing what we're doing right now. | ||
| Talking to another funny guy who I love. | ||
| Bullshitting. | ||
| Making money doing comedy. | ||
| I have a gig tonight in Poughkeepsie. | ||
| I'm going to Poughkeepsie. | ||
| And I'm going to get on stage and talk to people for an hour and make a lot of money doing it. | ||
| Are you doing bananas? | ||
| No, I'm doing a place called Laugh It Up. | ||
| Laugh it up in Poughkeepsie. | ||
| So, yeah, I did the bananas thing a bunch of times. | ||
| So, you know, that's what I'm grabbing onto right now. | ||
| Because women, I've lost three, I say this all the time, I lost three fiancées because of heroin. | ||
| Heroin saved me a lot of money. | ||
| I dodged three torpedoes with that. | ||
| The heroin was way less expensive than a divorce. | ||
| So, you know, right now, I cling to my work. | ||
| Comedy is the only thing that hasn't abandoned me. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| You know, in a lot of ways. | ||
| And, you know, there's businesses that keep taking me back. | ||
| You know, a lot of people who are addicts, they get really addicted to marathon running. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Have you ever thought of doing something like that? | ||
| I'm telling you, it seems like a crazy idea, but if you could think you could run a block, then you run two. | ||
| Next thing you know, you run a mile. | ||
| Next thing you know, you go, I'm going to do a 5K. Well, I do a bit about this in my stand-up back. | ||
| The first time I tried to get off heroin, this trainer who I hired... | ||
| This kid. | ||
| He said, you know, I guarantee you a heroin high is not as good as a running high. | ||
| And I said to him, have you ever tried heroin? | ||
| That's a ridiculous thing to say. | ||
| He goes, no. | ||
| I go, well then you're not qualified to be in this fucking conversation. | ||
| Because I've done heroin and on occasion I've run. | ||
| And it's not even close. | ||
| The only way you get a running high, you've got to be in really good shape. | ||
| And you've also got to run more than 20 feet. | ||
| Yeah, you've got to run a lot. | ||
| I mean, do you run? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, I would love to get that kind of thing in my life. | ||
| Again, I'm way healthier than I ever was in a long time. | ||
| Where are you living? | ||
| I live in Hoboken, New Jersey. | ||
| Yeah, there's got to be a place near there. | ||
| Yeah, no, there's nothing. | ||
| That's the thing about nowadays. | ||
| Young comics, like, forget about the drug culture. | ||
| If a 25-year-old comedian has some gluten, he starts to freak out. | ||
| Like, they go to Alcoholics Anonymous, they have gluten, by mistake. | ||
| So there's nothing but healthy shit going on. | ||
| In Hoboken, it's nothing but young people jogging, Pilates, yoga, you know. | ||
| Get in it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Huh? | |
| I'd love to. | ||
| I mean, you know... | ||
| It's something to get addicted to. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| You can get addicted. | ||
| I'm for sure addicted to exercise. | ||
| I know that. | ||
| I've known that about you for a long time. | ||
| But it can help you. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, getting something like that in my life would be the ultimate turnaround. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Because I love sports. | ||
| I'm a good athlete. | ||
| I was an all-state baseball player. | ||
| And I could shoot hoops. | ||
| I was playing a lot of basketball in jail. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Were you? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I was running full courts, man. | ||
| I got an outside shot like crazy. | ||
| But I'm the kind of guy, I have hand-eye coordination. | ||
| I could gain weight playing basketball. | ||
| I don't even move. | ||
| I just shoot the ball. | ||
| The running thing is something I, you know, I got to release an endorphins. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| What you just said. | ||
| See, that's a very insightful question because the whole thing is substituting the I with something else. | ||
| Finding something else you're obsessed with. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| In my life, I've always been obsessed with things, but luckily, none of them have been bad. | ||
| Right. | ||
| But it's the same personality. | ||
| The same personality that could have led me to be a junkie, led me to just get obsessed with martial arts or comedy or playing pool. | ||
| I wish I got addicted to martial arts and heroin. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, I struggle with video games, pool, like anything that I could get better at, I get obsessed with. | ||
| Well, you know, it's funny. | ||
| Everything in my life went back to drugs. | ||
| You know I love shooting pool, too. | ||
| Yeah, you're good, man. | ||
| We played when we were at my studio. | ||
| Yeah, I found that when I did cocaine, I was better at pool, because I focused more. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure, yeah, yeah. | |
| A lot of guys take amphetamines. | ||
| Yeah, and you have this hand-eye coordination gets better, so you're playing nine ball or something. | ||
| I actually wrote a movie script I'm trying to write called Booker Sugar Nine Ball, where a guy gets way better. | ||
| He becomes the best nine ball player on cocaine, so he has to keep getting money playing pool to score more cocaine. | ||
| Well, the best guys from back in the day, they were all taking amphetamines, like Buddy Hall and all these world champions. | ||
| Yeah, they were all drug addicts. | ||
| They were playing days and days at a time. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, the movie The Hustler with Gleason, they play for... | ||
| That was booze. | ||
| That was just booze. | ||
| But these guys really did do that. | ||
| I mean, these guys played for... | ||
| They got on pills and they played for days. | ||
| The key is what you said, obsession. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Obsession. | ||
| I get obsessed over a woman I'm dating. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| I get obsessed over, you know, anything I like. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| I don't want to stop. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| I want to keep rewarding myself. | ||
| The situation... | ||
| You know, you're a very successful guy, so is someone going to be able to tell you, I was making all this money, and I'm taking care of people around me, supporting people around me, and so who's going to tell me to stop? | ||
| Right. | ||
| You know? | ||
| That is always a problem. | ||
| That's a problem. | ||
| Yes, ma'am, people. | ||
| It's a real problem. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Like, I make millions of dollars a year. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Fuck you. | ||
| Something's going right. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I'm not going to stop. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| Then what happened is I got legal consequences like I've never had before. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| So your situation now, like, you can't... | ||
| If you test positive at all for anything, you're fucked. | ||
| I could go to jail. | ||
| Like, even if, like, I smoked a joint in this room with you. | ||
| If it came up... | ||
| I mean, that's, you know, everybody... | ||
| Again, I'm on this thing called drug court, which is like probation on steroids. | ||
| It's kind of new. | ||
| It's only 20 years old. | ||
| The premise of it is there's not a lot of guys with my charges. | ||
| Right now, I have a third-degree possession charge right now. | ||
| And because the charge in L.A. is so long ago, that was expunged off my record. | ||
| So technically, I got a first-time offense, third-degree. | ||
| Not a lot of guys with that little of a charge get drug courts. | ||
| Drug court is for people who can't stop robbing people. | ||
| Because, in other words, they were putting everybody in jail for robbing stuff. | ||
| And they linked that behavior back to drug use. | ||
| They were stealing to support their drug habit. | ||
| So they get all these robberies on their jacket. | ||
| And they go, okay, to try to help you, instead of giving you prison, we're going to give you this thing called drug court. | ||
| But you got to report, like I gave five urines this week. | ||
| So if I... If I got high, first of all, my situation, because I'm well known, the second... | ||
| I give clean urine, clean urine, clean urine, and then 1.30, it's all over, you know, the news. | ||
| Now, why do they give you such a harsh sentence if it's just possession? | ||
| I don't really know. | ||
| Are they trying to make an example? | ||
| I think that's part of it, yeah. | ||
| Because, you know... | ||
| Every time when I got... | ||
| The first charge was just regular probation. | ||
| And I got no new charges or anything. | ||
| It was all these technical violations because I kept pissing dirty. | ||
| And eventually after I failed that, they gave me drug court. | ||
| But, you know, again, I got no problem with the people in the legal system. | ||
| But what is your feeling on, like, what works? | ||
| How do you get someone... | ||
| For you, is it being scared? | ||
| Is it crashing? | ||
| That's part of it. | ||
| But you got to want to do it. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And you want to do it right now. | ||
| But was it because they threatened you with so much... | ||
| I mean, is there... | ||
| What I'm trying to get at is, is there like a method to this that makes any sense? | ||
| There's supposed to be, but... | ||
| Okay. | ||
| The premise, I think... | ||
| The best thing about jail for a drug addict is... | ||
| It actually locks you away from the drugs for a little while. | ||
| Because, you see, now, cocaine made my life chaos for a long time. | ||
| But when heroin came into the game, forget it. | ||
| Lights out. | ||
| Heroin is... | ||
| If I saw some kid thinking about trying heroin for the first time, I would tackle them. | ||
| I would do anything to get them to stop. | ||
| Because the only way to stop this opioid crisis is prevention. | ||
| You know, doctors became pushers with oxys and stuff like that. | ||
| You know, drug companies, it's a lot of money. | ||
| You know, on the legal and illegal side of it. | ||
| So once heroin gets in your system, you need it every eight hours. | ||
| You need it every eight hours like it's oxygen. | ||
| So you become desperate. | ||
| Withdrawals are insane. | ||
| So... | ||
| Is it insane? | ||
| Like, what is it like? | ||
| It's insanity. | ||
| Well, okay... | ||
| When I became, you know, again, my story on The Howard Stern Show, the big headline at the end of why I left that show was, and I speak sometimes at NA meetings and I try to get this through young people's heads. | ||
| I was basically a full-blown junkie on the biggest radio show of all time. | ||
| I mean, that's the headline. | ||
| Nodding off on the air. | ||
| But I also had a full-time stand-up comedy schedule. | ||
| So my life became the kind of chaos that not many human beings have ever seen. | ||
| So I would have gigs in Pittsburgh, Phoenix, and Detroit three weeks in a row. | ||
| Then I got to get back at 6 a.m. | ||
| to be on Sternum. | ||
| Now, by the end, I was so paranoid to bring drugs on a plane, but I needed the heroin to get on stage. | ||
| Picture the flu times 10. That's what withdrawals are. | ||
| And there's aches. | ||
| All the emotional pain you're masking comes back. | ||
| So withdrawals are a living hell. | ||
| So when you see the withdrawals coming, you see the heroin getting out of your system, you're like, okay, it's going to get really bad. | ||
| Then you realize most people can't leave the room. | ||
| Then you realize you got to do five radio shows a week, and then you got to fly to Detroit and do stand-up on a Saturday night. | ||
| So when I landed in Detroit, I wouldn't have heroin. | ||
| So my life became a dance of, like, I would land in every city, and I would say... | ||
| I would get in a cab, and I'd say to the cab driver, I need heroin. | ||
| I gotta score. | ||
| Otherwise, I can't do this show. | ||
| Sometimes a guy would recognize me and want tickets to the show. | ||
| I would go to the worst part of Detroit, or the worst part of anywhere, any city, and try to find heroin, because in an hour, I gotta be on stage, and in 20 minutes, I'm gonna be deathly sick. | ||
| When I say sick, like shit in my pants, throwing up, So you're getting there with no connections? | ||
| No connections. | ||
| Did you ever not score? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I used to call them dope-sick sets, because withdrawals, they call it dope-sickness. | ||
| And one time I was on stage in Orlando, Florida. | ||
| I had to do an hour, half an hour into my set, I realized I'm going to shit my pants in front of 2,000 people. | ||
| So I said, okay, in my head, and you know, with your act, Sometimes you got jokes you could do like a robot. | ||
| So I'm just going through the motions. | ||
| You say this, it'll get a laugh. | ||
| You say this, it'll get a laugh. | ||
| I realize I'm going to shit my pants in front of 2,000 people. | ||
| So I said there's two choices. | ||
| I can either say, guys, I got to go to the bathroom, listen to some music, And go shit or shit my pants in front of 2,000 people. | ||
| Did you shit your pants? | ||
| No. | ||
| I said, play a song. | ||
| And I ran to back. | ||
| Did you tell them? | ||
| Are you going to shit your pants? | ||
| I came back and I said I was going to shit my pants. | ||
| So okay, these are Stern fans. | ||
| I go, it would have been funnier if you shit your pants! | ||
|
unidentified
|
Of course. | |
| So now I got Stern fans who know I was about to shit my pants. | ||
| The last half hour of the show was like them yelling shit your pants. | ||
| Yeah, they're a particularly ruthless balance. | ||
| I remember I saw you at the Luxor in Vegas. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| It was one of the first times I ever saw you in front of a Stern fan. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Like the Stern fan group. | ||
| Right. | ||
| They're ruthless. | ||
| It's crazy. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's crazy. | ||
| And then they say they love you, but then they're screaming shit out. | ||
| And Vegas is another... | ||
| Again, so that became my life. | ||
| The chaos was insane. | ||
| Do you think it was encouraged, too? | ||
| Did they enjoy the fact that you were off the rails? | ||
| Some people did. | ||
| And because of that, do you think that you identified with that? | ||
| Like, this is who I am, this is what I do? | ||
| That's a great question. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| Part of me said, maybe this is my thing. | ||
| And that's you bullshitting yourself. | ||
| Because that's also you saying it's a reason to continue. | ||
| I could keep fucking up because this is how I make money. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And this is my... | ||
| A lot of money. | ||
| A lot of money. | ||
| I mean, okay, the most money I ever did making stand-up, most money I made, it was actually at Mandalay Bay, Super Bowl Eve 2007. This is an example of my life. | ||
| In one night, I made $140,000 doing stand-up. | ||
| Okay, I got $70,000 for two shows. | ||
| I did two shows. | ||
| I'm on the plane flying back from Vegas. | ||
| I'm doing the math. | ||
| Between the gambling, the drugs, and the hookers, I lost $145,000. | ||
| Okay, so when I got home, my accountant thought I was going to give him a check for 140 grand. | ||
| I said, I need 5 G's. | ||
| Oh, Jesus Christ. | ||
| I made $140,000 in a night. | ||
| One night. | ||
| My father climbed roofs for a living, okay? | ||
| He never made that in 30 years. | ||
| And then I'm going back to co-host the biggest radio show ever. | ||
| And I lost a hundred... | ||
| I had a $10,000 hooker who looked like a young Carmen Electra. | ||
| And I lost money playing craps. | ||
| I lost on the game. | ||
| And the drugs I bought. | ||
| Jesus. | ||
| I was down $145,000. | ||
| So after I paid out my commission to the agents, the weekend cost me like $40,000. | ||
| Have you put this in a book? | ||
| I don't know if that story's in a book. | ||
| I wrote another book in jail, too. | ||
| I wrote a fourth book. | ||
| It's called Rippin' and Runnin'. | ||
| And I'm trying to get a deal for it right now. | ||
| Who the fuck wouldn't give you a deal for that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Jesus Christ! | |
| That's just one fucking story of madness. | ||
| The thing about those stories is they're so great. | ||
| It's such a catch-22, right? | ||
| It's like the stories are so amazing. | ||
| And people love you for those stories, but they also want you to be clean. | ||
| Well, here's the thing. | ||
| So that's the catch-22, you know? | ||
| And then I'm saying to myself, so again, the answer to your original question is, if I were to be honest with you right now, the reason, the thing that got me, the method I'm using now are consequences. | ||
| If I didn't have jail hanging over my head, I don't know what would happen today. | ||
| But I think I'm far enough out of getting hot. | ||
| Like, I got, the drugs are finally out of my fucking system. | ||
| There's other drugs they give you. | ||
| That are basically legal dope. | ||
| There's this thing called Suboxone, which is an opiate blocker. | ||
| But it's dope. | ||
| What does it do to you? | ||
| It stops you from getting high on heroin. | ||
| But it stops the withdrawals, too. | ||
| So you also get high. | ||
| It's an opioid. | ||
| But it's legal. | ||
| So if you're on what they call Suboxone maintenance, you can pee with that in your urine. | ||
| And you'll be alright if they know you're on it. | ||
| But you're getting high. | ||
| You're getting high. | ||
| It's like methadone. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Methadone. | ||
| We used to have these guys that would come to the pool hall. | ||
| We'd call them the methadoneians. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| They would go down the street, they'd get their methadone, they'd come to the pool hall and they'd just be zombies. | ||
| Okay, another story about methadone. | ||
| For a little while I took methadone at a methadone clinic while I was on Howard because I was desperately trying to get off heroin. | ||
| But look, again, the only difference between methadone and heroin is legality. | ||
| Like once the courts are cool with one for some reason, and the other one's illegal. | ||
| I mean, if you have no legal issues, why not just keep doing heroin? | ||
| It makes no fucking sense. | ||
| Probably better for you. | ||
| Heroin is the one drug that doesn't affect any organ. | ||
| Like the way people die on heroin is you... | ||
| You overdose. | ||
| But, like, look at Keith Richards. | ||
| I mean, he just got good shit. | ||
| He got pure shit. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And he never OD'd and died. | ||
| So, like, he's almost preserved. | ||
| It kind of doesn't affect your liver. | ||
| Nothing like that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Really? | |
| So there's no real health consequences other than overdose? | ||
| Really other than ODing. | ||
| And the withdrawals. | ||
| Because it becomes a part of your body. | ||
| Like... | ||
| Again, I'm not recommending it. | ||
| It's a living hell. | ||
| It's a living hell. | ||
| The lifestyle and the people that get into your life because of it. | ||
| So a couple of times I went to a methadone clinic that opened at 6 a.m. | ||
| Because the guy was a fan of Stern, he would let me come into the methadone clinic at 5.30. | ||
| They give it to you in orange juice. | ||
| You take a shot of orange juice with the methadone. | ||
| Twice I threw up on the air. | ||
| And one time, again, I was never funnier off the shit than this. | ||
| Howard was talking, I think it was Roseanne Barr, and Howard said, hey, you look thin. | ||
| She was on the phone. | ||
| And I'm nauseous. | ||
| Like, okay, so listen to this timing. | ||
| I'm nauseous from the methadone. | ||
| I feel like I'm going to throw up, and I got a live mic, you know? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| And she goes, yeah, Howard, I've been exercising. | ||
| And he goes, what have you been doing? | ||
| She goes, well, I get in a two-piece bathing suit now. | ||
| As soon as she said that, you hear me go, bleh! | ||
| As soon as... | ||
| And Howard thought I was doing it to be funny. | ||
| He goes, shit, what are you doing? | ||
| I go, ah, yeah. | ||
| As soon as she said, I get in a toothpaste. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Timing. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| My comedic timing was better. | ||
| So now I'm doing that for a while. | ||
| But at that point, I had no legal issues. | ||
| What the fuck am I even trying this for? | ||
| Right. | ||
| And Suboxone. | ||
| Look, Suboxone helped save me. | ||
| It helped me get off it. | ||
| But eventually, you got to get off that too. | ||
| And you kick... | ||
| How hard is that? | ||
| Is it hard to get off it? | ||
| Okay, there's something called fentanyl out there. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Okay, which is elephant tranquilizer. | ||
| It's synthetic. | ||
| It's like spice, like synthetic weed. | ||
| Okay, all these kids in jail, by the way, these young kids, they smoke this K2 shit. | ||
| They stop while they're talking to you. | ||
| Like a kid will be talking to you in jail, like that jail jumpsuit, and it'll just be like, he stops. | ||
| It looks like he got hit with volcanic ash or something because they spray these chemicals on the weed and it does something to them. | ||
| They start dancing like Julie Andrews or something. | ||
| All these blunts and crips are dancing to the sound of music. | ||
| The hills are alive! | ||
| It's really, it's weird. | ||
| So fentanyl is like the heroin version of that. | ||
| It's synthetic heroin. | ||
| Yeah, much stronger. | ||
| People are dying from touching it. | ||
| Like, they touch it, it gets in your system. | ||
| Cops are dying, or cops are getting overdosed from handling people that are sweating. | ||
| Right. | ||
| It comes from China. | ||
| There's all these conspiracy theories about China trying to kill us. | ||
| And who knows? | ||
| It's weeding out a lot of junkies. | ||
| I was in a rehab, which I gotta give a shout-out to. | ||
| This place, Turning Point in Patterson, is where I really got clean. | ||
| I was there for three months. | ||
| I did a month in jail, and then I did three months at Turning Point. | ||
| Great place. | ||
| They really helped me out a lot. | ||
| My counselor, Sarah. | ||
| Shout out to her. | ||
| I got clean there. | ||
| But it was in Patterson in the hood. | ||
| And the gangs would fight each other to get the corner right across from the rehab. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, Jesus. | |
| Because... | ||
| People would come out. | ||
| Yeah, people come out and they get high. | ||
| Two kids I was in there with went and got high. | ||
| They died that day. | ||
| Jesus Christ. | ||
| They just leave and they died that day. | ||
| From fentanyl. | ||
| These are junkies. | ||
| If you get a certain amount of time clean... | ||
| Your willpower, your resistance goes down. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So they would take what they used to take and they would kill them. | |
| So to get off the Suboxone is very difficult because you've got to kick it. | ||
| You've got to kick it. | ||
| Withdrawals take average four to five days. | ||
| And I've done that in jail twice. | ||
| So if you have fentanyl in your system and you take a Suboxone, you go into what they call pre-sip withdrawals, which are like... | ||
| The regular withdrawals times a million. | ||
| Like, you feel like you're going to die. | ||
| You start to hallucinate. | ||
| This happened to me twice. | ||
| I went to jail not knowing that the cocaine... | ||
| They put it in everything. | ||
| They put it in the cocaine. | ||
| They put it in the marijuana because they want people to catch a habit. | ||
| And if a couple people die, because if you've got a habit, now you've got to keep going back. | ||
| So you're buying what you think is blow. | ||
| It's not. | ||
| It's blow with this fentanyl in it. | ||
| Heroin's brown when you get it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Jesus Christ. | |
| It's brown when you get it. | ||
| Fentanyl is white. | ||
| So if it's really a lighter color, it's got fentanyl in it. | ||
| But people want to get high so bad, they take the risk. | ||
| If you're a junkie, you'll take that risk. | ||
| So I did not know I had fentanyl in my system. | ||
| It was in the cocaine I had. | ||
| So I get to jail, and I see this kid in the bullpen at the jail. | ||
| And he was a dealer, I knew from the street. | ||
| And he owed me a favor. | ||
| And these kids smuggled drugs in their sweatpants. | ||
| They have it right here. | ||
| And if you see a kid going like this all the time and kids walking over to him, you know, he's got something. | ||
| So I went over to the kid and I said, what do you got? | ||
| And he goes, I just got subs, Suboxone. | ||
| I said, give me one. | ||
| Because, you know, I couldn't deal with the anxiety. | ||
| He gave it to me. | ||
| I didn't know I had fentanyl in my system. | ||
| I took a Suboxone with it and in 10 minutes I was writhing on the floor. | ||
| So they threw me in a cell and I had a kick. | ||
| I had a kick with those kind of withdrawals on a jail cell. | ||
| How long does it last? | ||
| Five days. | ||
| Five days. | ||
| Now, the COs, when I was kicking at Essex County Jail, the COs there, I love them. | ||
| They're great guys. | ||
| They're tough motherfuckers. | ||
| They got a tough job, and they were very supportive of me, and they protected me in there. | ||
| They were good guys. | ||
| So they were giving me food. | ||
| They would try to keep me hydrated and shit. | ||
| There was a doctor there that was really cool. | ||
| But I was naked. | ||
| Because you're also on a suicide watch. | ||
| If people kick from heroin, again, all this emotional pain comes back on you. | ||
| And a lot of people commit suicide. | ||
| So they give you what they call this turtle shell, that you're naked and you go in this turtle thing that's like a Velcro thing. | ||
| So I kicked for five days in that thing, just rolling around the floor. | ||
| I started to hallucinate. | ||
| My old man's been dead for 30 years. | ||
| I could have swore he was talking to me right in front of me. | ||
| You know? | ||
| It's just... | ||
| And then knowing that, then I get it out of my system. | ||
| I get out of jail and I get high an hour later. | ||
| You know? | ||
| So, you know... | ||
| If you keep doing that, there's something wrong. | ||
| So what happened this time that changed? | ||
| They kept me away for longer than I ever was. | ||
| I was doing a two-week bid, a week bid in jail. | ||
| This time, I was in jail for almost two months, and I kicked. | ||
| Then I went to a long-term rehab, and I got locked away from it. | ||
| And I started to think clearer and think about the consequences and think about my mom and the fact that my mother is this great Italian woman who... | ||
| You know, I thought she just needed money from me. | ||
| I took care... | ||
| My old man on his deathbed said, take care of your mother. | ||
| And as an Italian guy from North Jersey, you'd think that means money. | ||
| It doesn't mean anything else. | ||
| So I kept giving her money, not knowing she was worried about me dying, you know, all the time. | ||
| So I thought about her pain, and I said, I can't do this anymore. | ||
| So I just started to think clear. | ||
| And then the one day at a time comes in. | ||
| So that's the difference. | ||
| The difference was I was locked away from the dope Longer than I ever was. | ||
| So not only did the physical withdrawals go away, but the mental withdrawals. | ||
| Charlie Parker, the great jazz musician, who was a heroin addict, died when he was 35. He said, they can get it out of your body, but they can never get it out of your brain. | ||
| Charlie Parker died at 35? | ||
| Charlie Parker was 35. Jesus Christ. | ||
| The coroner said he was 66. Wow. | ||
| Yeah, but he had the most profound thing I ever heard someone say about heroin. | ||
| He said, they can get it out of your brain, but they can get it out of your body, but they can't get it out of your brain. | ||
| Because you remember it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| You remember the- It's a way to deal with shit. | ||
| And it's a maternal thing, right? | ||
| It's almost like being in the womb. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| You're protected. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Absolutely. | |
| I've never done it, but when I had knee surgery, they gave me a morphine drip. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, forget it. | |
| They gave me a button. | ||
| Yeah, that's it. | ||
| Anytime I was in the hospital, I could hit it anytime I want. | ||
| I just hammered that thing. | ||
| Yeah, of course. | ||
| And you just glide off to the most beautiful, wonderful feeling. | ||
| Well, that's the thing about drugs. | ||
| They work. | ||
| You know, it's instant. | ||
| And again, that's something else in our business. | ||
| I don't want to wait for anything. | ||
| I want the money now. | ||
| I want to cum now. | ||
| I want to fucking get high now. | ||
| I want to gamble now. | ||
| That's the part of what makes you a great comic, though. | ||
| That impulsive wildness is what people enjoy in comics. | ||
| All my favorite comics, Kinison, Joey Diaz, all of them struggled. | ||
| All of them. | ||
| Pryor. | ||
| Look at Richard Pryor, yeah. | ||
| Lenny Bruce. | ||
| Lenny Bruce. | ||
| Hicks. | ||
| All of them. | ||
| All of them had drug problems. | ||
| Mitch Hedberg. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Robin Williams. | ||
| Everybody. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Everybody had drug problems. | |
| Greg Giraldo. | ||
| I'll give you a great Greg Giraldo story. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| So this to me sums up a comedian who's also a drug addict. | ||
| All right. | ||
| 2006, William Shatner roast, Comedy Central, right? | ||
| Gerardo was just hitting with the roast. | ||
| He was getting to be a big deal. | ||
| But I had partied with him a couple of times and, you know, we both had the same problem. | ||
| So we were the only two guys coming from New York City to do the Shatner roast. | ||
| This was 06 for Comedy Central. | ||
| So I'm at the JFK first lounge, first class lounge waiting for my plane. | ||
| And I know Greg is supposed to be on a plane. | ||
| He shows up five minutes before the plane takes off. | ||
| And he goes, Artie, man. | ||
| He like hugs me, he's sweating. | ||
| He goes, I'm tweaking. | ||
| Like he was taking amphetamines. | ||
| So I go, he goes, I'm not getting on a plane. | ||
| I go, dude, you're like the best guy at these roads now. | ||
| You have to get on a plane. | ||
| This is your career. | ||
| And he goes, I can't get on a plane. | ||
| I go, you have to get on a fucking plane. | ||
| So I had all this Vicodin I smuggled under my sock. | ||
| I said, take a couple of Vicodin and have a beer. | ||
| So I got him a beer and he started to calm down a little bit. | ||
| I literally held his hand, okay? | ||
| I held his hand and got him on a plane. | ||
| I changed my seat to sit next to him. | ||
| He was too paranoid to go to the fucking bathroom. | ||
| So I would guard the bathroom so no one could come in. | ||
| And we get to LA. Now we gotta go to a dress rehearsal at CBS Radford. | ||
| Farrah Fawcett was on that roast, so now he's still freaking out, paranoid, and he goes, I'm going to hug Farrah Fawcett. | ||
| I go, you can't go near Farrah Fawcett. | ||
| I go, not only is your career going to be over, he goes, I'm going to hug Farrah, I have to kiss her. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I go, she was two feet from us. | |
| I go, you can't kiss Farrah Fawcett! | ||
| I go, you're going to get arrested! | ||
| Your career's going to be over and you're going to be arrested for sexually assaulting fire faucet on amphetamines. | ||
| So I go, you just got to calm the fuck down. | ||
| We get to the dress rehearsal. | ||
| And he goes, please don't tell anybody. | ||
| Now, I've been there. | ||
| So I know what he's... | ||
| So I go, I want... | ||
| So we go back to the hotel. | ||
| I leave my room. | ||
| I sit by him like Florence fucking Nightingale. | ||
| I'm giving him like hot compresses and shit. | ||
| The morning, the next morning, the car's coming to get us to take us to the show at noon. | ||
| And he comes out of it. | ||
| He comes out of the bathroom. | ||
| He goes, I think I came down. | ||
| He hugs me. | ||
| He's crying. | ||
| He goes, thank you so much. | ||
| I go, dude, you would have done the same thing for me. | ||
| Okay, so now we go to the roast. | ||
| He's the first roaster up. | ||
| First thing he says. | ||
| He goes, Artie Lang's here. | ||
| How about a hand for Artie Lang? | ||
| And everybody applauds. | ||
| He looks at me and goes, look at you, Artie. | ||
| You fat fucking drug addict. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's the first thing he says! | |
| And I went like this. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I went probably like this. | |
| and he went like this. | ||
| That look, that look, Yes! | ||
| That look's a comedian. | ||
| What are you going to do? | ||
| It's there. | ||
| You going to take it? | ||
| I just saved his fucking life. | ||
| Oh, I'm crying. | ||
| I practically made out with him. | ||
| I stopped him from sexually assaulting one of the Charlie's Angels. | ||
| The one. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, the one. | |
| Farrah Floyd. | ||
| He goes, I want to kiss Farrah Floyd. | ||
| I go, you can't kiss Farrah Floyd. | ||
| I've never said that to another human being before or since. | ||
| Very few people probably ever have. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You said that to Lee Majors. | |
| Oh, shit. | ||
| So the first thing he says is, you fat fucking drug addict. | ||
|
unidentified
|
AHHHHH! | |
| He had to throw fat in there, too. | ||
| And then he gives me a... | ||
| Oh, my God. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, my God. | |
| Again, this is something, things you wish you had on tape. | ||
| About 1998-ish, me, Mitch Hedberg, and Greg Giraldo both did sets. | ||
| We all three of us did sets at the Comedy Cellar. | ||
| And there was an old diner on 9th and 23rd called Chelsea Square Diner. | ||
| I don't know if it's still there anymore. | ||
| The three of us. | ||
| It was me, Greg, and Mitch. | ||
| And if you ask why God spared me out of that three, I have no idea. | ||
| It's just sheer luck. | ||
| But God spared me for some reason. | ||
| I don't know why. | ||
| And I remember talking, the three of us were talking about drugs. | ||
| And Hedberg, he told this to a couple of people. | ||
| And I didn't know Mitch as well. | ||
| I did a couple of gigs with him. | ||
| But, you know, he said, you know, a lot of people are trying to get me to stop. | ||
| I'm never going to stop. | ||
| He said, just don't waste your time. | ||
| I'm never going to stop doing it. | ||
| I love it that much. | ||
| And, you know, at the time, I didn't realize how dark that was. | ||
| And he died, you know, he's been dead almost 15 years now. | ||
| You're talking about a real genius. | ||
| He just was like, I know I can never stop. | ||
| That's how much it takes over to the point where you might die. | ||
| He goes, I don't care. | ||
| I want to do it this way. | ||
| Jesus. | ||
| Remember when he almost died from gangrene? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Because he was shooting into the same hole. | ||
| He was going through... | ||
| He might have been with Attal, I don't know, and Louis Black. | ||
| They did a tour together. | ||
| And again, that's one of the sadder stories. | ||
| The security at the airport smelled the gangrene. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh boy. | |
| That's how they found out. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And they found shit. | ||
| I think he beat the case. | ||
| I think they found like paraphernalia or stuff, but you're talking about, you know, one of the best, maybe the best joke writer ever. | ||
| And he just doesn't, he just like, I just, again, when you live in this life, like standups, most of us dreamed of doing this our whole lives. | ||
| And now you're doing it. | ||
| Who's going to tell you to stop anything? | ||
| I think with him, too, they were inseparable. | ||
| The stand-up and the heroin together. | ||
| Yeah, like Miles Davis said, with playing the trumpet. | ||
| Again, you're talking about extreme personalities. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| John Belushi. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And again, like you say, you have the same personality, but it just manifested itself in different ways. | ||
| I was lucky when I was a kid, I knew junkies. | ||
| Oh, so did I. My friend Jimmy's cousin was selling coke when I was in high school, and I watched him rot away. | ||
| I watched him shrivel up, and I remember... | ||
| I was also, I was very paranoid. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And I didn't want to ruin my life. | ||
| I was always worried about ruining my life. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| So I'd see things like that. | ||
| I'd be like, all right, stay the fuck away from drugs. | ||
| Stay away from that. | ||
| That's an amazingly mature attitude at that point because I was a direct opposite. | ||
| I said, that's going to be part of the success. | ||
| Yeah, for me it was self-preservation. | ||
| And look, that's a smart way to think. | ||
| But I tell when I speak, I tell these kids because they're like, how did you make it, man? | ||
| Like, how did you make it in show business? | ||
| Like, they Google me and they see me, you know, on The Tonight Show. | ||
| They go, how did you do that? | ||
| In rehab, they're watching my movies on YouTube. | ||
| These kids are magicians with the fucking thing. | ||
| And I stand up and they go, how did you do this, being a junkie? | ||
| And I'm like, I don't know. | ||
| I can't even remember. | ||
| Well, that's part of the problem is that you're kind of rewarded for being so wild. | ||
| And being wild, it's accentuated by the drugs and by the craziness and gambling and all of it. | ||
| Well, I say the way Ray Romano wrote new jokes about having kids... | ||
| And a family. | ||
| You know, a lot of comics, you comment on your life. | ||
| That's how you get new material. | ||
| So my life was not a wife and kids. | ||
| My life was this craziness with drugs and gambling. | ||
| And that's where I sort of... | ||
| I mine that for material. | ||
| And it's also the audience loved it. | ||
| They loved the fact that you're out there living that life. | ||
| Like Bukowski or Hunter Thompson. | ||
| Anyone who's out there living that life, there's like... | ||
| It's romantic. | ||
| Yes, yes, yes. | ||
| You're not living like the average schlub. | ||
| Ray Liotta says it in Goodfellas. | ||
| We were rock stars. | ||
| All these guys who had to wake up and go to a 9-to-5 job. | ||
| We don't know that life. | ||
| Dude, I saw the other side when I was at this halfway house. | ||
| With all these crazy motherfuckers, I had to get a job as part of the program. | ||
| So I pumped gas and I worked on the back of a garbage truck for a while, throwing garbage. | ||
| And I pumped gas as a kid. | ||
| And you know the money we make for being on stage. | ||
| I'm going for that money. | ||
| I pumped gas 40 hours one week. | ||
| I got a check for $280 a year. | ||
| You know, so that's life, man. | ||
| Yeah, that's real life. | ||
| That's real life. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Okay, the story about this kid in the halfway house. | ||
| I had three roommates. | ||
| One was a carjacker. | ||
| The other one was an arsonist, okay? | ||
| This other kid was a junk. | ||
| This kid was my bunkmate. | ||
| He lived on the top bunk. | ||
| I was on the bottom. | ||
| He's like 22 years old. | ||
| He had a form of Tourette's. | ||
| Every 11 seconds, my hand to God, he made this sound. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey! | |
| Every 11 seconds. | ||
| He went, hey! | ||
| All night. | ||
| To get to sleep, he watched porn on his phone. | ||
| So he loved a specific kind of porn. | ||
| And he would keep showing it to me. | ||
| He's jerking off on the top bunk. | ||
| And I got to go pump gas the next day. | ||
| I'm like, my life is fucking over. | ||
| And he loved watching these really fat black jigs get fucked by small white guys. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's what he liked. | |
| So this is what you hear all night. | ||
| You hear this. | ||
| Fuck me with that honky dick. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey. | |
| Fuck me, you little white pussy. | ||
| Hey. | ||
| And political correctness is even in like jails. | ||
| In the old days, people would have just lit him on fire and thrown him in a dumpster. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But now it's a disease. | |
| So he's got a disease. | ||
| But the kid, I go, you're on the fucking internet. | ||
| You can watch the hottest chicks on the planet. | ||
| He would jerk off these chicks. | ||
| I go, those chicks look like the 86 Celtics. | ||
| That looks like Bill Walton. | ||
| But then it's like this enormous Oprah-looking chick with a little Richard Simmons-looking guy, and he goes, Hey! | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey! | |
| Did you ever ask him why he's into that? | ||
| Sort of, but no explanation made any sense. | ||
| Okay, this other kid I was in jail with, I was in protective custody. | ||
| So if you're in protective custody at jail, it means you're a murderer, a snitch, or some sort of celebrity. | ||
| So you're up there with hardcore motherfuckers. | ||
| So this black kid who was next to me in the cell, great kid. | ||
| I love them. | ||
| I love them. | ||
| But when me and him were both out of the cell together for rec time, I noticed the guards were real protective of me. | ||
| Like, no, they would make him go in the shower and lock the shower while I walked past him. | ||
| He had some sort of ghetto Tourette's or something. | ||
| He'd ask you a question about your life and then he would interrupt you by going, Word Up! | ||
| I'm going to ask you a question. | ||
| Just start the answer. | ||
| What's your name? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Word Up! | |
| Where are you from? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Word Up! | |
| Born in Jersey. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Word Up! | |
| Every 11 seconds he went, Word Up! | ||
|
unidentified
|
Word Up! | |
| I love the guy. | ||
| Why was he protecting you? | ||
| Because I'm locked in myself 23 hours a day. | ||
| One of the guards told me the guy chopped up three women. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh. | |
| Word up. | ||
| Cut up! | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oof. | |
| So that's the... | ||
| You're rubbing elbows with these guys. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Jesus. | |
| I think he chopped up three girls. | ||
| The most affable... | ||
|
unidentified
|
I like the kid. | |
| I still basketball with him. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The Golden State was playing. | |
| Yeah, because you're in solitary confinement. | ||
| Was he able to have conversations? | ||
| He was mentally ill, obviously. | ||
| But he kept... | ||
| Like I heard him on a phone. | ||
| The other thing about jail, man, they have tablets now. | ||
| They have the technology. | ||
| So for one hour a day, I was out of my cell. | ||
| And you could play basketball or whatever. | ||
| But you're in these cages. | ||
| So they give these young kids who are in jail for a long time tablets. | ||
| They could call anybody on the outside. | ||
| So they call their girlfriends, which is always a bad thing. | ||
| Like it starts out nice, but you hear the build. | ||
| Like, how you doing, baby? | ||
| Who's that? | ||
| Who's that in the background? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Who the fuck is that? | |
| And they start screaming at him and they get violent. | ||
| And I go, don't call your girlfriend. | ||
| And when this kid would talk to anybody's life, he kept saying, word up! | ||
| Every five seconds. | ||
| So when you're trapped with these guys in your cell for 23 hours a day? | ||
| No, I had my own cell. | ||
| Protective custody is you have your own cell. | ||
| And what are you doing when you're in that cell? | ||
| For 23 hours a day. | ||
| I wrote. | ||
| Again, that helps being creative too. | ||
| I wrote. | ||
| And I read a lot. | ||
| I had a great lawyer. | ||
| My lawyer at the end sent me a lot of reading material. | ||
| Again, this is where Stern fans, though, you talk about how crazy you are. | ||
| They're also the sweetest people on the planet. | ||
| Stern fans all wrote me letters. | ||
| We're rooting for you. | ||
| I hope you get better. | ||
| They sent me books that they knew I liked. | ||
| And, you know, you kill time. | ||
| 23 hours a day. | ||
| You basically have a bathroom. | ||
| So you have a pad and pen? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So you're writing things out? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Did you write stand-up? | ||
| Did you write memoirs? | ||
| I wrote a lot of stand-up, and I wrote this book. | ||
| I have a rough draft for a book, which is all stories like I was just telling you. | ||
| I mean, this book, I've written three books, and they're all crazy stories, but this one, if I do it the right way... | ||
| Which it's hard to fuck up because it's just repeating these stories. | ||
| It's going to be insane. | ||
| I'm sure, but I want you to... | ||
| You've got to release an audio version of it. | ||
| There's no way it's going to do you justice in the printed form where I have to interpret how you're saying these things. | ||
| The first book I had out, Too Fat to Fish, which debuted number one of the New York Times bestsellers. | ||
| That's another thing with drugs. | ||
| I read halfway through the audiobook and I couldn't do it anymore. | ||
| I was always in withdrawals in the booth. | ||
| So I quit. | ||
| I just quit in the middle of it. | ||
| So who read it? | ||
| I hired two guys with speech impediments. | ||
| Oh, Jesus. | ||
| On purpose? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
One guy couldn't read. | |
| He was reading a book. | ||
| One of the guys had trouble reading. | ||
| And he had to read a book. | ||
| Oh, my God. | ||
| Is that available right now? | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| I'm going to buy that tonight. | ||
| You can get that. | ||
| I'm going to buy the audio version of it tonight. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Halfway through, I just stop. | |
| Halfway through, I get to chapter six, and then I just do a thing. | ||
| I go, guys, I quit. | ||
| And they put that in the audiobook. | ||
| I go, I'm not doing this anymore. | ||
| Oh, my God. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm sweating. | |
| I'm leaving. | ||
| You hear me, like, leave the booth. | ||
| The next thing you hear is, then I had a thing come happen with... | ||
| The studio time took like four extra months. | ||
| Oh my god. | ||
| The publisher ran the mouse over and said, we're going over time. | ||
| If someone's going to read the book, they have to know how to read. | ||
| You know who David Goggins is? | ||
| He's a Navy SEALs. | ||
| Yeah, I've heard that name. | ||
| He did a great thing with his book where he wrote a book, but in the audio book, He had his business partner read it, and then he would talk about it afterwards. | ||
| Oh, okay. | ||
| Almost like a podcast form. | ||
| Right, right. | ||
| That's interesting. | ||
| Yeah, because the thing about these stories, like the way I'm hearing you say them, this is how I want to hear it in the book. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah. | |
| I don't want to hear you read your book. | ||
| Right, right, right. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| It's almost like you'd be better off, instead of writing a book, if someone just transcribed what you're saying. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| A lot of these stories I tell in stand-up, too. | ||
| Yeah, but if somebody could just get out of the way, like if you can get someone who can interview you who's not going to get in the way, like these conversations, like just talk and then you just go with it. | ||
| That's a good point. | ||
| Well, technology's changing that game too. | ||
| That's putting out the idea of like a multimedia book. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| Well, this is what Goggins did. | ||
| He put his book out. | ||
| You could read the book. | ||
| Right. | ||
| But then the audio version is the book plus. | ||
| So it's the book plus him explaining, like, these stories are actually fucking crazier than I'm even writing in the book. | ||
| There's more to each one of them that I left out. | ||
| Well, you know what's interesting about that? | ||
| The way I've written all three of my books with my buddy, the co-author, Anthony Boza, who's writing for Eminem. | ||
| He's writing Eminem's book right now. | ||
| And he wrote Slash's book right before me, Tommy Lee. | ||
| And he was writing a book with me and Courtney Love at the same time. | ||
| The kid almost jumped off a building. | ||
| He would listen to Courtney Love ramble. | ||
| And then he'd come to me, I'd be nodding off. | ||
| And then I was just making... | ||
| The kid didn't know he was coming or going. | ||
| He wanted to jump off the Chrysler building. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So... | |
| And he's got to require the two of you to make a living. | ||
| Oh, my God. | ||
| He needs both of you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, my God. | |
| Me and Nick DiPaolo had our own radio show for a little while. | ||
| Yeah, I remember. | ||
| And we got this big contract. | ||
| And the first time we did stand-up at the Tower Theater in Philly, Nick goes, Yeah, my life's great. | ||
| My entire future depends on Artie Lang. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Well, that was the attitude that he had on the show, too. | ||
| I watched the show, because it used to be on television. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right, right, right. | |
| It was one of the networks that was on Direct TV. Audience Network. | ||
| Direct TV. So I was watching, and I was like, these two are not getting along. | ||
| I know both of you. | ||
| And Nick is such a grumpy old Italian now. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He's so funny, but yeah. | |
| Yes, very funny. | ||
| Great joke writer. | ||
| No, absolutely. | ||
| But... | ||
| The two of you guys, though, it was a weird mix. | ||
| One guy is this sort of grumpy guy who likes to complain about things. | ||
| The other guy's getting high all the time. | ||
| Gambling and everything that moves. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That sounds great! | |
| Well, maybe you need a third person to fucking mediate. | ||
| Yeah, like a law enforcement official. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Some of you you both respect. | |
| So the way we wrote the books was, I would tell the stories like I'm telling them to you into a recorder, and then we'd transcribe them. | ||
| And so it's almost like the premise was the way Mark Twain wrote, like people talk. | ||
| That's great, but the original recordings need to be preserved. | ||
| To say it again and again and again, you lose something. | ||
| Yeah, those recordings exist. | ||
| They just tell them the story. | ||
| That's what you need to release. | ||
| That's what everybody wants. | ||
| See, the polished, produced version of these things is never as good. | ||
| When I try to polish myself, it never works. | ||
| It doesn't work with anybody. | ||
| What people love is like, this conversation we're having right now is just you talking. | ||
| This is what people love. | ||
| They know you have the story. | ||
| You can't wait to tell it. | ||
| Oh, wait a minute. | ||
| Let me tell you this. | ||
| And then boom, it comes out and it's live. | ||
| It's like hanging out, shooting pool, telling stories. | ||
| It's alive. | ||
| It's alive. | ||
| And when it hits their ears, it's alive. | ||
| There's something missing when people are trying to overproduce things. | ||
| Say that again, Artie, but this time... | ||
| Well, that's why the HBO show I did for a few years, Crashing, Apatow was really smart with that. | ||
| He just sort of let me talk, and it worked. | ||
| That's a good point. | ||
| The stories are like... | ||
| This stuff's not even the tip of the iceberg. | ||
| It's just like... | ||
| It's chaos that I can't believe I put myself through. | ||
| I mean, God did spare me. | ||
| I should be dead a million times overdue. | ||
| In a lot of different ways. | ||
| A lot of different ways. | ||
| Just how it was. | ||
| Well, you're in a very unique position now because you did get through all that. | ||
| Because you did get through all that and now you're in nine months sobriety and you've got these great stories and you're funnier than ever. | ||
| It's a very weird position for you to be in because you can help a lot of people with this story. | ||
| I'd love to... | ||
| Well, again, you know, when you talk about the method thing with getting clean, the 12-step program, which a lot of people, obviously, if you're not in it, you know, it's a legendary, iconic program, AANA. But you don't really know what the 12-step is. | ||
| The premise is once you get to the 12-step, By you helping other people, it helps you. | ||
| In other words, because that's what you're talking about. | ||
| That's a productive way to use your time. | ||
| I'm going to go help this guy. | ||
| Like someone in NA will say, there's a guy dying and his family needs us. | ||
| And you don't even know the guy. | ||
| You go and you try to help him. | ||
| So by the end of helping him for five hours, you maybe save him, but you're also saving you. | ||
| So the premise is... | ||
| This was very poignant. | ||
| One of the speakers at Turning Point, this guy in rehab, really explained it perfectly. | ||
| At the beginning, Alcoholics Anonymous, it's also a great story, a great American story. | ||
| A stockbroker and a doctor couldn't stop drinking. | ||
| And they realized just by talking to each other, they could stop. | ||
| They helped each other. | ||
| So they devised these 12 steps. | ||
| So they would go around to hospitals. | ||
| This is in the mid-30s. | ||
| And they would say to the people at the hospital, is there anybody in the drunk ward, like a hopeless alcoholic? | ||
| And they'd go, yeah. | ||
| And they'd go, did they have any family here? | ||
| And they'd say, like, his wife is here. | ||
| She's, you know, desperate. | ||
| Can we talk to her? | ||
| So they would go to the wife. | ||
| The guy's in a hospital bed in alcoholic withdrawals, just a delirium. | ||
| And they would say to her, listen, we found a cure for alcoholism. | ||
| We think we found a cure for alcoholism. | ||
| Can we talk to your husband? | ||
| And she goes, you know what? | ||
| That sounds like a total fantasy to me. | ||
| You could try. | ||
| We've tried everything. | ||
| I don't know how you're going to cure him. | ||
| And they said, no, no, you don't understand. | ||
| He's going to cure us. | ||
| Like, by talking to him, we're going to get better. | ||
| Like, he's going to cure us. | ||
| And hopefully, along the way, he gets it. | ||
| You know, so that's like a simple premise, but that's a stroke of genius in a way. | ||
| It's like you're using your time for something insanely productive. | ||
| And you know, like you're a generous guy. | ||
| You like helping people. | ||
| You're a good friend, you know? | ||
| You get a little bit of a rush. | ||
| You get a lot out of it. | ||
| You get a lot out of it. | ||
| I tell people I'm like a selfish, generous person. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| Exactly. | ||
| Well, they think, like the 12-step, they say it's true altruism, where true altruism is not the way these big corporations give back, but you get nothing in return. | ||
| Right. | ||
| But in a way, that's bullshit because it helps you. | ||
| You get something back. | ||
| When I help people, I get a rush. | ||
| It helps me. | ||
| That feeling you get if you give somebody you love a gift, the gift you're trying to give them is, look, we're trying to get you better. | ||
| And by the time you spend all this time working on them, you've stayed clean. | ||
| You know, it also does. | ||
| It radiates. | ||
| They'll do the same thing. | ||
| They realize that somebody helped them and that it helped you to help them. | ||
| And then they'll do it to someone else and they'll feel it as well. | ||
| And it also spreads the culture of being generous. | ||
| Again, you're right on the money. | ||
| That's very insightful because that's what AA is. | ||
| It's a domino effect. | ||
| Yeah, the culture of being generous is very important. | ||
| The culture of being friendly, the culture of being supportive. | ||
| The selfish people, they die alone. | ||
| It's a fucking horrible way to live. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| There's a lot of wealthy people I've met through this business who are just angry motherfuckers. | ||
| They're broken. | ||
| And they don't have anyone to call on. | ||
| No one loves them. | ||
| No one hugs them when they see them. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| Nobody gets excited. | ||
| You need that. | ||
| Well, this business is a particular thing during the TV era, which I think is kind of gone. | ||
| I think now we're in the internet era. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, absolutely. | |
| The internet era is what's happened. | ||
| But the internet era is a much more generous era because it actually helps everybody to have all these shows and no one's competing against each other in a sense because, you know, it used to be like there was one host of The Tonight Show. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| And everybody stabbed everybody to get that fucking job. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And that was those Late Night War, the movie with Letterman and Jay Leno. | ||
| And the stories about Carson, how ruthless he is with Joan Rivers if he tried to go up there. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Ruthless, yes. | |
| I mean, that's how everybody was. | ||
| Why be that way? | ||
| I think back then it was a famine mentality because there was a few slots and there was hundreds of comics and everybody was just fucking fighting in the trenches with knives. | ||
| That was the... | ||
| No, look, again, see, you though as a good person with character, that's your attitude, which is great. | ||
| You live that lifestyle. | ||
| Like, in other words, what you're saying is important. | ||
| Like, this is the biggest podcast going. | ||
| If you were hosting The Tonight Show... | ||
| And look, I've been on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon a million times. | ||
| I kill every time. | ||
| But to have me on the mainstream... | ||
| And I love Jimmy, but... | ||
| To have me on a mainstream show talking like this, there's consequences to that, corporate-wise. | ||
| Yes, they can't do it. | ||
| They would fight you to have me on. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| So you're in a situation where me and you are two guys who've known each other a long time, who respect each other's work and as people. | ||
| And I'm a guy, I mean, let's face it, I'm trying to get back on my feet. | ||
| And you come to New York and you let me do this. | ||
| That's huge. | ||
| That's something you couldn't do. | ||
| I came to New York a day early. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| That's why I'm here. | ||
| I was supposed to land today at 4 in the afternoon. | ||
| It's downright touching. | ||
| Listen, I love you, man. | ||
| I'm happy that you're doing great right now. | ||
| And if I can help put some wind in your sails and keep you moving in this great direction, I'm happy to. | ||
| A lot of people tell me, like, you got a lot of fans in rehab. | ||
| Everybody goes, I heard you on Rogan. | ||
| I heard you on Rogan. | ||
| Rogan was talking about you. | ||
| And it's always positive. | ||
| And dude, that helps me get out of bed some days. | ||
| It does. | ||
| And I'm saying, your point is well taken. | ||
| If you were hosting The Tonight Show, you'd have all these people batting you. | ||
| You can't have Artie on right now. | ||
| It's crazy right now. | ||
| But you in this position, you can. | ||
| You can do whatever you want. | ||
| You can do whatever you want. | ||
| And we're here right now in Louis' studio. | ||
| Because I guess in some way we're supposed to be competitors or something like that. | ||
| But we're not. | ||
| Lewis and I, we're all friends. | ||
| The podcast community is one of the most open, supportive communities. | ||
| And comics now, every comic has a fucking podcast. | ||
| And because of that, it's like everybody's supporting everybody. | ||
| Everybody's helping everybody. | ||
| Hey, Dan Soder's got a new HBO special. | ||
| Everybody go watch it. | ||
| Hey, Ari Shafir's got this thing coming out. | ||
| Everybody go check it out. | ||
| Everybody's helpful and everybody's supportive. | ||
| It helps that everybody you just mentioned, they're good guys. | ||
| But it's this community. | ||
| It's a different feeling that ever existed during those Tonight Show Wars. | ||
| No, not even close. | ||
| Not even close. | ||
| Not even close. | ||
| Those guys hated each other. | ||
| They did. | ||
| Even Stern. | ||
| When Stern was anybody in any other market. | ||
| I saw the Howard situation. | ||
| For eight years, that world. | ||
| Howard even says, Howard was this insane ball of talent and ambition. | ||
| And if you got in the way of that train, man... | ||
| If you were his competitor, he would go after you, your family, everything. | ||
| I saw that firsthand. | ||
| And you're talking about... | ||
| It's scary, but you're right. | ||
| That's a major positive about this situation. | ||
| But I think even the way Howard did it, it's like... | ||
| I don't think you could do it that way today. | ||
| No way. | ||
| Nobody would accept it. | ||
| No way. | ||
| No way. | ||
| It's a different world. | ||
| There's a lot of people who would check them on it before it got crazy. | ||
| But you talk about every comic. | ||
| Everyone has a podcast. | ||
| When I went to jail a couple times, I'd get my own cell. | ||
| And they'd go, why does he have his own cell? | ||
| Well, because he's on a big radio show. | ||
| And then, why do you want your own cell now? | ||
| Because I have a podcast. | ||
| And the guard says, well, so do I. I have a podcast. | ||
|
unidentified
|
LAUGHTER They do. | |
| Everyone has one. | ||
| I mean, again, everybody shoots video. | ||
| It's a very... | ||
| I mean, look, it also inspires a lot of talentless boars to do this shit. | ||
| You've got to have some sort of... | ||
| But it's open-ended. | ||
| If you have something to offer and someone is a good person and you want to help them, you can do it. | ||
| With this platform. | ||
| Yeah, and the entry, it's not expensive. | ||
| You need an iPhone and just some sort of a Libsyn account or something like that. | ||
| Well, I'm starting another one. | ||
| Yeah, I know. | ||
| Beautiful. | ||
| It's called Artie Lang's Halfway House. | ||
| I love it. | ||
| It's great. | ||
| And the premise is these stories with Mike Boschetti and a lot of the guys I met in these crazy times with these crazy stories. | ||
| They're the most unique stories on the planet. | ||
| Well, you were doing a podcast from your apartment for a while, right? | ||
| Yeah, for two years. | ||
| But I was, you know, I was running, I was on drugs. | ||
| I mean, okay, I did a podcast in my living room. | ||
| I was late 18 times. | ||
| Puerto Rican comedians were beating me in my kitchen. | ||
| That's hilarious. | ||
| I was late 18 times. | ||
| That's hilarious. | ||
| People are waiting outside. | ||
| And I caught traffic by the bathroom, I would say. | ||
| So that's how out of control it was. | ||
| My friend Jay is one of the producers of The Doctors, and they were going to fix your nose. | ||
| But they were worried that if they did it, they'd have to give you painkillers. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Well, that's a big thing, too. | ||
| With the drug court thing, if you get any type of surgery, they got to do paperwork. | ||
| Also, the guy from Botched wants to do it, too. | ||
| I'm obviously in a bidding war to fix my nose. | ||
| What happened to it? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| A bunch of things. | ||
| 30 years of drugs. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Okay, you want to hear stories? | ||
| First of all, a bookie I was dealing with a few years ago had a guy who used to work for him who got this idea to try to get money out of me. | ||
| And he sucker punched me at me. | ||
| This kid was a 19-year-old boxer. | ||
| And I was going to my car one day. | ||
| And he thought I was like, he saw me on TV. He thought I was like a billionaire. | ||
| And I'm going to my car. | ||
| And I hear, Artie! | ||
| And the kid hits me with a right Right hand. | ||
| I mean, like you can never get off on a regular fight. | ||
| Like the way Tyson hit Trevor Burbank. | ||
| And right here. | ||
| Right here. | ||
| And collapse the bone right here. | ||
| Knock me out for 10 minutes. | ||
| At least 10 minutes. | ||
| And, you know, that situation got solved the way it got solved. | ||
| But, you know, I... What does that mean? | ||
| Well, I just had to deal with it in my own way. | ||
| I made up with the guy through, you know, intermediaries on the street. | ||
| And everybody's fine, and we moved on. | ||
| But the kid laid me out. | ||
| The kid, I mean, it's a 19-year-old, just boom. | ||
| And so that's one thing. | ||
| 30 years of drug use, but this is one of the craziest stories. | ||
| So there was this stripper I used to go on the road with, and she would meet me in cities. | ||
| She was actually from Boston. | ||
| She was from Southie, and she was hot, but when she talked during sex, she sounded like Mark Wahlberg. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That accent's so gross. | |
| Fuck me, you wicked heart! | ||
| But she was beautiful, and over the years, I would meet her at hotels. | ||
| She would call me on the road. | ||
| And she was a drug addict. | ||
| We used to snort drugs together. | ||
| So we're at a hotel in St. Louis. | ||
| It's about five years ago now. | ||
| No, no, less. | ||
| Four years ago. | ||
| And we're snorting OxyContin. | ||
| So to snort the pills, you got to crush them up. | ||
| So we're in this hotel room, this nice hotel room. | ||
| I got a show that night at a big theater. | ||
| And I take a shower. | ||
| She takes out about five pills and starts crushing them. | ||
| Now, it was a nice hotel, so we had room service. | ||
| The room service had a salt shaker that was glass. | ||
| So she couldn't crush one of the pills. | ||
| She takes... | ||
| She takes the salt shaker and starts hitting the pill with it. | ||
| And the salt shaker breaks. | ||
| Glass breaks. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| So then she takes a credit card and, you know, makes it into a fine powder, a fine dust, not knowing there's all glass in the powder. | ||
| She cuts out like four lines. | ||
| She gets called down to the desk to go. | ||
| I bought her a gift. | ||
| So she goes down to get the gift. | ||
| I come out of the bathroom and I see the lines and I take a pen that I cut down and I snort one of the lines and there's glass in it. | ||
| I snorted glass and oxycodone. | ||
| Holy shit. | ||
| So it sounded like a zipper. | ||
| I saw one picture of your nose where it was enormously swollen. | ||
| That's after the kid punched me. | ||
| That was after he punched you? | ||
| That was after the kid punched me, yeah. | ||
| He tweeted it out. | ||
| He was trying to be a jerk off. | ||
| He took a picture of me with my phone and tweeted it. | ||
| He had a bad plan, put it that way, to try to get money out of me. | ||
| And the bookie, who, it's a long story, but anyway. | ||
| That was after I got punched. | ||
| Yeah, so that got out all over the place. | ||
| And again, that's my life. | ||
| That's the chaos that was my life. | ||
| But I snorted a line of oxycodone at all glass, fine, cut up glass. | ||
| It sounded like a zipper. | ||
| And then my nose just started to... | ||
| It just went nuts. | ||
| It was bleeding. | ||
| And I went to the hospital. | ||
| I had to cancel the show. | ||
| And I wanted to strangle the girl. | ||
| And that's when it caved in? | ||
| That started the process. | ||
| If you watch the show crashing... | ||
| I'm on that three seasons. | ||
| You could see my nose morphing into what it is now, like from a regular nose to what it is now. | ||
| And again, part of me, I tell young kids, part of me doesn't want to get it fixed because every time I look in the mirror, I go, this is a life. | ||
| This is what happened to me. | ||
| It's a reminder maybe to not fuck up again. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And maybe it tells kids that too. | ||
| It's just such a dangerous thing to get it fixed and then to be in that kind of intense pain and then have the temptation to take a pill. | ||
| The premise is while you're in the hospital you get what you need because you can't get it. | ||
| It's an operation so they got to put you out. | ||
| They put you out. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| But then afterwards look I had my deviated septum fixed. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And they gave me a couple different painkillers that I didn't use. | ||
| I got out and I didn't use them when I had knee surgery either. | ||
| I don't like them. | ||
| Okay, let me ask you something. | ||
| See, this fascinates me. | ||
| So as a guy who gets obsessed with stuff, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| And you feel that euphoria at that morphine drip. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| The obsession over that feeling is not as strong as you not wanting to fuck your life up. | ||
| Not even close. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I know it feels great, but my brain is like, uh-uh. | ||
| Get out of here. | ||
| Cover your hand. | ||
| Tuck your chin. | ||
| Bob and weave. | ||
| Get the fuck out of the corner. | ||
| Get out of there. | ||
| Here's what a drug addict is. | ||
| This is where they claim it's a disease. | ||
| I'm smart enough to realize that too, but I do it anyway. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| I'm the direct opposite. | ||
| But I never got into the drugs at a young age. | ||
| But still, you feel that feeling. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| That's something like, to me, the sick person is, why don't you want to feel like that all the time? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's crazy. | ||
| Like some people have a painkiller prescription, all these pills in a bottle, and they don't finish it. | ||
| I've got that premise to me. | ||
| Yeah, I sold mine. | ||
| I took Percocets. | ||
| I think it was Percocets when I had my first knee operation after the morphine drip. | ||
| I got out. | ||
| They gave me Percocets. | ||
| I took it one day, and it made me so stupid. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| I remember sitting on my couch going, God, I'm so dumb right now. | ||
| I can't think. | ||
| In one day, I counted because I was obsessed with it. | ||
| I took 123 Percocet in one day. | ||
| Oh my God. | ||
| So I got pancreatitis. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Jesus Christ. | |
| I was on the liver list and then my liver came back. | ||
| Holy shit. | ||
| You were on the transplant list? | ||
| They were about to put me on the list. | ||
| The doctor said to my family, he said to my mother and sister, he's going to need a liver. | ||
| This is five years ago. | ||
| Because I got out of control with the Percocets, which is why I went back to snorting. | ||
| I was trying not to snort. | ||
| I was taking them orally. | ||
| For your health. | ||
| Yeah, right. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's better for your liver. | |
| So once you snort the glass, how do they get it out of your nose? | ||
| Well, I went to the emergency room. | ||
| I was in the hospital for like four days. | ||
| What do they do? | ||
| They cut it out? | ||
| Yeah, they had to go in. | ||
| They do a surgery where they knock you out. | ||
| They got to go up and they clean it out. | ||
| And then I had surgery again a couple of years ago to do it. | ||
| So there's no, like, I can breathe good and everything now. | ||
| I don't know, you know, but again... | ||
| They would take a piece of your rib. | ||
| That's what they would do. | ||
| They'd take your cartilage from in between your rib, which will eventually grow back, and then they would prop it up. | ||
| They do it to fighters. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| I met the guy at the doctor's. | ||
| I went to go see him. | ||
| The guy who does that. | ||
| And he was like, I don't know. | ||
| He goes, he never saw a worse nose. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| He looked in the nose and he goes, I never saw a worse nose. | ||
| That's incredible. | ||
| Congratulations. | ||
| Yeah, well... | ||
| I'm very goal-oriented. | ||
| But if they did fix it, the real issue would be what it feels like when you get out of the hospital. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And whether or not that would disrupt your progress enough to the point where you would slip right back. | ||
| Well, again, I'm making more mature decisions now because I could have went right into this. | ||
| But... | ||
| And again, the doctor at Botch was cool about it, too. | ||
| He said, you need more clean time. | ||
| At least a year before you even try. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Well, good for him for thinking that way instead of just... | ||
| It would be a big episode for them, you know? | ||
| And again, if I couldn't breathe, it'd be one thing. | ||
| But I can breathe all right. | ||
| I never looked like David Beckham anyway. | ||
| What do I care? | ||
| It's got to give you some material on stage as well. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| I say, stop the smell of roses in life, and they had cocaine on them. | ||
| It's been an odyssey of craziness. | ||
| My life has just been an odyssey of craziness. | ||
| Now, we tried to do this in LA. One of the reasons why I had to come to New York is your parole officer would not let you get on a plane. | ||
| Right now, the probation I'm on doesn't let you travel. | ||
| You can't leave the state more than 24 hours. | ||
| So when you go to do a gig... | ||
| Come back that night. | ||
| I used to do that anyway. | ||
| I don't love staying. | ||
| I'm in Poughkeepsie tonight, and it's a two-hour, and I'm coming right back. | ||
| Yeah, I like that. | ||
| One show. | ||
| The other thing, I used to get... | ||
| Whenever I tried to come back, I'd get greedy, and I would start doing two, three shows a night for the money. | ||
| I do one show, mostly. | ||
| So you don't get burnt out. | ||
| You time it out. | ||
| You pace out your energy. | ||
| You do the one show. | ||
| And I come back. | ||
| Because the money is good enough. | ||
| Don't get crazy. | ||
| Don't put your health at risk. | ||
| Don't stress yourself out. | ||
| The good thing is that sort of mature thinking you have about not wanting to fuck up your life. | ||
| Each day I get more and more to thinking that way. | ||
| So it's improving still, even though you're nine months in. | ||
| It's a constant. | ||
| I mean, that's like to a lot of people. | ||
| Like endurance. | ||
| Like you're strengthening your endurance, your resolve. | ||
| Mentally, more than anything. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, it's almost all mental. | ||
| At this point, it is. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| At this point, it is. | ||
| Something spared me, and I'm 52. I would love my legacy to be someone that helped people. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But you already have, whether you realize it or not. | |
| And I guarantee you, if you keep going, you will. | ||
| I hope so. | ||
| You will. | ||
| No, it's 100%. | ||
| If you keep going with these stories, with your personality and your sense of humor, this is 100% going to help people. | ||
| And not just a few. | ||
| Fucking millions of people. | ||
| You know, Robert Downey Jr., when the paperback version of my first book came out, I wrote a paragraph about him to where, you know, again, about the ruthlessness of show business. | ||
| People say show business is very forgiving. | ||
| Well, if you're that talented of an actor, like Robert Downey Jr., they let you come back. | ||
| And through his assistant, he contacted me and... | ||
| Was so, was so nice. | ||
| Like, you know, and again, at this point he was Iron Man, you know, and he, you know, and I'm this comedian. | ||
| He's a big Stern fan. | ||
| He had read the book and he appreciated that I, that I was complimenting to him in the book. | ||
| And again, there's an example of the 12 step stuff. | ||
| He really was like, he goes, I'm through, he said basically to me, I'm here for you. | ||
| If you need me, I'm here for you. | ||
| Joe Walsh from the Eagles, who I met through the Stern Show, same thing. | ||
| That's amazing. | ||
| These guys are like, because it helps them. | ||
| It helps everybody. | ||
| So Robert Downey helped me in a way just by knowing that he got better. | ||
| Because you talk about chaos. | ||
| His life was... | ||
| I remember talking about him on the Stern Show when he got found. | ||
| You know, the stripper with the Wonder Woman outfit and crystal meth. | ||
| He had a stripper dressed like Wonder Woman and crystal meth in somebody else's house. | ||
| But I've always wondered a guy like that that's so fucking talented. | ||
| He's talented in this weird, explosive, sort of creepy way. | ||
| He's a unique guy. | ||
| If you watch his movies, even if he's in a shit movie, he's great in it. | ||
| You always look at what he's doing. | ||
| He makes unique choices as an actor. | ||
| But I've always wondered if the engine behind that is the same engine of addiction. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| Impulsive, wild, reckless sort of energy. | ||
| And now he just contains it in progress and success. | ||
| He's constantly working. | ||
| I mean, I don't know him personally, just through that contact I just told you about. | ||
| It seems like he's way into the program of AA or NA. And again, it's also like the premise of going to a meeting, an NA meeting. | ||
| I try to go to five or six a week now, and that's not even... | ||
| They want you to go to 90 and 90. There's a lot of comedians in recovery. | ||
| I won't mention who they are, but it's an anonymous thing. | ||
| There's so many guys where 20 years ago there was a stigma attached to it. | ||
| There's not anymore. | ||
| I think people understand now. | ||
| It's not being weak. | ||
| People used to think it's weak. | ||
| It's like these are behavior patterns. | ||
| They're thought patterns and you get stuck in a rut of them. | ||
| There's a smooth carved path that your behavior just slides right in and goes. | ||
| And it's hard to hit those fucking brakes and stop that path. | ||
| And you use the behaviors to manipulate. | ||
| Like, if you have a talent, like a sense of humor. | ||
| You know, it's funny. | ||
| One of my POs said to me, you're going to tell me you never used your sense of humor to obtain drugs? | ||
| I go, I don't know what drug dealers you know, but they don't accept jokes as payment. | ||
| Like, listen, Noodles, I want that ounce of cocaine. | ||
| I have no cash, but knock, knock. | ||
| That's not going to work. | ||
| You use your sense of humor to get the money to buy the drugs. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Indirectly. | |
| What the people at the task evaluators at Drug Court and a lot of these rehabs do is they link exactly what you just said. | ||
| They link every behavior back to drug use. | ||
| Like, why act in this way? | ||
| Why being charming if you can be charming? | ||
| Some people can't be charming. | ||
| Some people just rob you. | ||
| Well, I was talking about this with a friend of mine recently about girls, about basically every comic really became funny because they were trying to figure out a way to get girls to like them. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Absolutely. | |
| That's the first pussy. | ||
| 100%. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's it. | |
| I mean, with men, you try to explain it to women. | ||
| Like, for me, like... | ||
| You're up to about 11 or 12. All you want to do is hit a home run in Little League. | ||
| And then one summer, you see a set of tits or something, and then it's all about pussy. | ||
| That's it. | ||
| You just got to try to get pussy. | ||
| Yeah, that's it. | ||
| And then that is, talk about an addiction. | ||
| Yeah, oh my God. | ||
| And then if you get involved, like the girl I was telling you about, if you get involved with a chick who's got a drug problem with opioids and is good looking, who you want to fuck, you're talking about Adolf Hitler. | ||
| Chicks are manipulative already. | ||
| But if you have a pussy and a drug problem, What did Richard Pryor say? | ||
| He goes, I don't know why bitches always complain and they got half the money and all the pussy. | ||
| That Richard Pryor, that's Socrates type shit. | ||
| It is. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That sums up life. | |
| That literally should be on his fucking grave. | ||
| They got half the money and all the pussy. | ||
| I'll give you another story. | ||
| Okay, you ready? | ||
| This is being a drug addict. | ||
| I was with this other girl at Martha's Vineyard. | ||
| This is like 20 years ago. | ||
| And I went to visit John Belushi's grave on Big Belushi Fam. | ||
| I had an eight ball of coke on me. | ||
| And everybody at Belushi's grave, I was in Paris once where I got arrested for drunkenness. | ||
| But anyway, they do this at Jim Morrison's grave. | ||
| People leave bottles of booze, like heroin needles, sometimes loaded on Jim Morrison's grave. | ||
| So people have beers and everything on Belushi's grave. | ||
| So I took the eight ball of coke out and I took half of it and I left a couple of rocks on top of Belushi's headstone at like three in the afternoon. | ||
| And I said, that's on me, John. | ||
| Four o'clock in the morning, I went back and got it. | ||
| It was still there? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| At four o'clock in the morning, me and the girl ran out of coke and I said, is it raining? | ||
| She goes, why? | ||
| I go, come on, we're going to go back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh my God. | |
| I went back and got the cocaine. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh my God. | |
| He didn't need it anymore. | ||
| No, I don't think so. | ||
| The gesture was already in place. | ||
| Could you imagine, though, the level of retardedness that is your life at that point? | ||
| I'm with a girl at four in the morning and I go, is it raining? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| She goes, why? | ||
| Because I left the Coke on the thing. | ||
| And we're both hoping he can get, you know. | ||
| Oh my God. | ||
| Another guy, a young kid. | ||
| The other great thing about AA meetings is someone could say the most profound thing from any walk of life. | ||
| Like some professor who's a genius at MIT could be in a meeting with a cook at a diner. | ||
| And the cook says something because he's got a different perspective on it. | ||
| This kid said once, who was a janitor, the best part about cocaine is going to get it. | ||
| And that is totally... | ||
| That's the smartest fucking thing. | ||
| It sounds so simple, but when you hear someone has it, you go... | ||
| I always said... | ||
| I'm surprised a lawyer, a prosecutor, hasn't tried to convict somebody on this yet. | ||
| They call DUI driving under the influence. | ||
| You're totally under the influence of drugs driving to get them. | ||
| I don't care if they're in your body yet. | ||
| You're under the influence of drugs. | ||
| You want to get high. | ||
| You're speeding to get to the dealer. | ||
| So if you kill a kid on the way to get coke... | ||
| They're going to test you. | ||
| It's not in your body, but you were totally under the influence of Colgate. | ||
| You know, I mean, that's like... | ||
| You might just have opened up a whole new can of worms. | ||
| I don't want my brothers to get around. | ||
| But I'm saying, like, am I under the influence? | ||
| It's not in me, but I'm influenced by it completely. | ||
| And it is. | ||
| It's like a kid on Christmas morning. | ||
| If you're a drug addict, you anticipate that... | ||
| See, I equated it with fun. | ||
| The gambling, you know. | ||
| Because what's gambling? | ||
| It's just instant fun. | ||
| You're bored to death. | ||
| Are you still watching sports? | ||
| Yeah, I don't like it as much. | ||
| Of course not. | ||
| I used to bet... | ||
| Again, I like pure gambling. | ||
| People who... | ||
| People who bet on stuff and handicap it, that's like a job. | ||
| Who wants a job? | ||
| I don't want a job. | ||
| I don't want to do research on a fucking game. | ||
| I just want to bet. | ||
| Find out who's injured. | ||
| Yeah, I don't want to do any of that shit. | ||
| That's not action. | ||
| Because then you kind of know what might happen. | ||
| I used to go to the Mirage Sportsbook in Vegas. | ||
| They have a line on everything. | ||
| You could bet on two kids playing wiffle ball in Minnesota at the Mirage. | ||
| They have a line on everything. | ||
| It's heaven for gamblers. | ||
| So I would bet on sports I knew nothing about and then do cocaine. | ||
| And like 4 o'clock in the morning, I'm going around to people at the bar going, Hey, did you see the high school lacrosse scores? | ||
| I got Ramapo versus Don Bosco prep. | ||
| I would bet on lacrosse because I knew nothing about it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| I would put each Super Bowl from 2004 to 2011. I had 10 grand on a coin toss. | ||
| 10 grand on a coin toss. | ||
| And seven of the times I probably... | ||
| Five times I probably lost. | ||
| So before the kickoff, I was down 10 grand. | ||
| Now, how far behind are you? | ||
| All lifetime. | ||
| If you want to look at lifetime gambling. | ||
| Just gambling? | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| Because everybody's behind. | ||
| 3.2 million. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| Probably 3.2 million is where I've lost gambling. | ||
| Holy shit. | ||
| If I had to be, I'd do that math in my head a couple of times, you know, yeah. | ||
| I'd say I'm not about 3, over $3 million. | ||
| That's very specific. | ||
| 3.2 is very specific. | ||
| Yeah, because I updated it in my head. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Because I'm obsessed about that too. | |
| You know, to lose that much money, you got to bet on the Jets a lot. | ||
| I had an uncle. | ||
| I had an uncle. | ||
| I used to do this joke. | ||
| My uncle was a degenerate gambler. | ||
| And he said, you know, Art, when I was a kid, I was into the Jets. | ||
| And then I got into girls. | ||
| And then I got back into the Jets because I realized there's times when a girl won't fuck you, but the Jets will always fuck you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And he's so right. | |
| So you can't figure it out. | ||
| The coin toss is pure gambling. | ||
| Heads or fucking tails. | ||
|
unidentified
|
10,000. | |
| When that's about to happen, I can't describe it. | ||
| What's the rush when it gets heads and you crawl the heads? | ||
| It's like pussy. | ||
| It's almost like pussy. | ||
| It's not like pussy. | ||
| But it's something. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's close to it. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| And then, so now how do I keep that fucking going? | ||
| And when you were on Stern, too, it came up, so it was almost kind of encouraged because it was a thing. | ||
| Well, again, Howard gets a bad rap sometimes. | ||
| I don't mean encouraged by him, but I mean, just the fact that... | ||
| Again, Howard tried to help me a lot, and he was good to me. | ||
| I just... | ||
| He didn't... | ||
| Like, again, when you're in a junkie's life, eventually you don't know what to do. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| You don't know what to do if you don't live that life. | ||
| Like, Howard and I, a lot of our rapport on the air worked because he was the most disciplined human being ever, and I was the most undisciplined. | ||
| It was like the odd couple. | ||
| So from the first time I went in here with Norm MacDonald, I had the story about getting arrested and made a TV. He goes, I love out of control guys. | ||
| They're fun. | ||
| So when I got on the show, it's four and a half hours you're feeling every day. | ||
| It was part of my life. | ||
| So I would talk about going to Vegas and gambling. | ||
| But I'm on the air. | ||
| The camera's always on you on that show. | ||
| So I'm on the air committing felonies. | ||
| I'm talking to bookies, dealers, hookers. | ||
| There was a guard there. | ||
| After Heath Ledger died as a joke, I said I had the same dealer as Heath Ledger as a joke. | ||
| And it was a joke. | ||
| The DEA shows up at Stern with the windbreakers on, says the DEA. He says, we've got to talk to Artie. | ||
| Pull me out there on a commercial. | ||
| I'm like, I'm at work, bro. | ||
| And I was joking around. | ||
| I told him I was joking around. | ||
| And one of the guards who worked there said, Artie, man, you are one entertaining fucker. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He goes, the guard was like, he thought it was hard. | |
| He goes, the DEA! The fucking DEA! He goes, you're on a Howard Stern show, baby! | ||
| You made it! | ||
| You made it! | ||
| What the fuck are you doing? | ||
| The DEA is here! | ||
| He goes, motherfucker! | ||
| The DEA came for this motherfucker! | ||
| This motherfucker's a gangster! | ||
| The DEA! And Howard just looked at me and said, no, no, no, no, no, no. | ||
| He gave me to look like Greg Gerardo gave me. | ||
| In my head, I sometimes, when I think of Greg, you know, you have all these moments where, like, just Greg doing it. | ||
| That one moment. | ||
| That one moment. | ||
| Arnie, you fat fucking drug addict. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You can't kiss Farrah Fawcett! | |
| Who tells another guy that? | ||
| The crazy thing is if you see Greg on stage, you see him with a microphone, you would never think he was out of control. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| Because he was so smart. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, absolutely. | |
| His writing was so good. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Absolutely. | |
| He seemed so educated and smooth. | ||
| Okay, the last movie Chris Farley ever did was Dirty Work. | ||
| So I'm in the movie with him. | ||
| And right after Dirty Work, right before he passed away, he hosted Saturday Night Live. | ||
| So Norm was still doing Weekend Update. | ||
| So Norm called me up and said, listen, Farley's out of control. | ||
| Come to the party after the show because you got to help me watch him. | ||
| That's how bad he was. | ||
| I was watching him. | ||
| You had to help watch. | ||
| I had to help watch him. | ||
| So this is how fast Norm is, though. | ||
| This is a testament to Norm's wit. | ||
| So I'm at the party and Norm is talking to somebody and I'm watching Chris. | ||
| I'm on coke. | ||
| I'm coked up. | ||
| So I see Farley disappear into a bathroom with Andy Dick. | ||
| Oh boy. | ||
| Okay, him and Andy go into a bathroom. | ||
| They come out five minutes later like giggling. | ||
| Norm comes over to me and goes, what's going on with Chris? | ||
| I go, bad news, bro. | ||
| He goes, what? | ||
| I go, he went into a bathroom with Andy Dick. | ||
| I said, there's only two reasons a man goes into a bathroom with Andy Dick. | ||
| And neither one of them's good. | ||
| And Norm looked at me without Mr. Beat and said, Holy fuck, I hope he's high. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You see Norm say that? | |
| Holy fuck, I hope he's high! | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's a great impression of Norm! | |
| Holding his stomach? | ||
| Good news, he was high. | ||
| Chris Farley showed up on the set of news radio one day to visit Andy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm sure he did. | |
| He had the complexion of wet cardboard. | ||
| I've never seen a man look more unhealthy. | ||
| Dude, I went to a strip club with him in Toronto. | ||
| We shot the movie in Toronto. | ||
| We had chicks hanging out. | ||
| I mean, he was just like... | ||
| Oh, out of control. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| When he died and that chick took a picture of him with the foam coming out of his mouth, laying on the ground. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's where you knew it was going to end. | |
| That's the people you're around. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's like... | ||
| One quick Mitch Hedberg story. | ||
| So I opened up for Mitch Hedberg like 22 years ago and he comes up to me after the show and he goes, hey, Artie, man, you're a fat guy. | ||
| I go, that's what he said. | ||
| I go, I could lose a couple, but what are you talking about? | ||
| He goes, I wrote a joke that I can't do because I'm not fat, but I give it to you. | ||
| He goes, you know when you're a kid and they tell you to wait a half an hour after you eat before you go swimming? | ||
| And I'm like, yeah. | ||
| He goes, you should say you've never been swimming because it's never been more than a half an hour since you last ate. | ||
| And I go, that's a great joke. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And I could have that joke. | |
| He goes, yeah. | ||
| So then he comes back and he was smoking a lot of weed. | ||
| So he comes back totally serious. | ||
| He goes, hey man, you're right. | ||
| That is a good joke. | ||
| I'll make you a deal. | ||
| If I gain like a hundred pounds before you do that on TV, I get the joke. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm like, all right, whatever. | |
| So, okay. | ||
| So cut to like a month later. | ||
| I'm with Norm MacDonald having dinner with people. | ||
| And Norm does that joke about me. | ||
| He goes, hey man, Artie's never been swimming. | ||
| It's never more than a half an hour since he last ate. | ||
| I'm like, where the fuck did you hear that joke? | ||
| He goes, I heard a fat guy do it at the comedy store. | ||
| I go, really? | ||
| So I see Mitch two weeks later. | ||
| I go, Mitch, what the fuck, bro? | ||
| You gave me that joke. | ||
| Norm said he saw a fat guy do it at the comedy store. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So he's all fucked up. | |
| And he goes, hey Artie, man, you know, listen, I'm sorry. | ||
| You know, I get fucked up a lot. | ||
| I forget shit. | ||
| I probably gave that to a lot of fat guys. | ||
|
unidentified
|
LAUGHTER Ha ha ha ha ha ha! | |
| He was the weirdest joke writer ever because it was all silly non-sequiturs. | ||
| Everything was a non-sequitur. | ||
| No bits transferred into other bits. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Just joke, joke, joke, joke, joke. | |
| It's great to watch Mitch, like I get such a kick out of watching him now, do a set where he starts off bombing. | ||
| Like he'll tell a joke and the audience doesn't get it. | ||
| And he'll go like, okay, you guys don't like me yet. | ||
| I'll keep trying. | ||
| And then he gets him. | ||
| And then the first big laugh he gets, he's like a little kid. | ||
| He goes, yeah! | ||
| He was my favorite to listen to his album on the way to the airport. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| Because LAX traffic is so horrible. | ||
| And he just laughed. | ||
| But it was so silly. | ||
| Yeah, it's silly and smart at the same time. | ||
| Smart and silly. | ||
| One of my favorite jokes ever is somebody said, do you want a frozen banana? | ||
| I said, no, but I want a regular banana later, so yes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's such a fucking ridiculous joke. | |
| It's perfect. | ||
| It's so ridiculous. | ||
| Well, he did a joke once. | ||
| He did this joke on TV somewhere, and you could almost tell he paused before he did it because he'd get in a lot of trouble. | ||
| He goes, my FedEx man is a drug dealer, and he doesn't know it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| I mean, that's like fucking, you know. | ||
| Or how about like, I used to do drugs. | ||
| I still do drugs, but I used to, too. | ||
| Well, the crazy thing about him is he would do, you know, an hour, ten minutes of that. | ||
| Like, how the fuck do you remember what you said and don't say when you're on heroin? | ||
| Nah, nah, nah. | ||
| Well, that's the thing. | ||
| I forget shit all the time. | ||
| Like I said, like I bet on the other team. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| With the bookie. | ||
| I would bet on the other team. | ||
| But he was high when he was doing shows, right? | ||
| And at the end, the last time I saw Mitch was two weeks before he died at Stern. | ||
| And then I went to go see him at Caroline's and... | ||
| Like, you're watching this genius. | ||
| Shell. | ||
| A shell. | ||
| Literally a shell. | ||
| Like, he was, you know, taking drugs from people in the audience, pills. | ||
| I took a birth control pill once because I thought it was a Vicodin. | ||
| Some woman gave me a pill. | ||
| Jesus Christ. | ||
| I didn't have the baby. | ||
| It worked. | ||
| But he was, like, scratching at the walls and shit. | ||
| I'll give you one more quick Norm thing. | ||
| So, when Dirty Work came out, I got awful reviews. | ||
| And, uh... | ||
| The reviewer of my hometown paper said, Artie Lang has all the charm of a date rapist. | ||
| That's what it said. | ||
| So Norm goes like this. | ||
| He goes, hey man, that's fucking great. | ||
| I go, why? | ||
|
unidentified
|
why? | |
| He goes, a date rapist has to have way more charm than a regular rapist. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And that made me feel better. | |
| Yeah, so, I mean, listen, man. | ||
| I'm alive. | ||
| I don't know how, but I'm alive. | ||
| Look, you're healthy, you're happy. | ||
| You know, one of the things that I've noticed when I started seeing you do these little Instagram videos, it's like... | ||
| Your eyes. | ||
| Your eyes are there. | ||
| You're present. | ||
| That was what was interesting. | ||
| There was a sparkle to your eyes that wasn't there the last time that I saw you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| Well, everything changes, man. | ||
| You look at someone's eyes, especially if you're like amphetamines and stuff, they become peed. | ||
| You're putting poison in your body, so I stopped doing that. | ||
| Listen, if you ever need anything from me, I'm here. | ||
| Just reach out. | ||
| Actually, my mother's got glaucoma. | ||
| You know that guy you have on the show, David Sinclair? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| I need a contact for him because my mother needs that optic nerve thing. | ||
| She heard about it. | ||
| Yeah, I don't know what they're doing with that yet. | ||
| They've got something where they're going to inject bacteria that's somehow or another altered into your eye and it's going to fix people's veins. | ||
| Well, that's how wide your audience is. | ||
| My mom said, oh, Joe Rogan had a guy on about a optic nerve. | ||
| Yeah, it's very interesting stuff. | ||
| David Sinclair is his name. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I got to get the number from you. | ||
| Okay, yeah. | ||
| But listen, Joe, thanks, bro. | ||
| Listen, I love you, man. | ||
| I'm happy to see you this way. | ||
| I love you, too. | ||
| I'm glad we did this. | ||
| I'm happy we did, and thank you for it. | ||
| Thanks for taking the time. | ||
| My pleasure. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Bye, everybody. |
Export Selection