Aug. 13, 2020 - The Joe Rogan Experience
02:12:25
| 
| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| Hello, Ron. | ||
| Hello, Joe. | ||
| How are you? | ||
| I'm good, man. | ||
| You are good. | ||
| You got double water bottles. | ||
| One water, one protein shake. | ||
| Oh. | ||
| You're not fucking around. | ||
| No, I knew, you know, last time I wasn't aware how long I would be here. | ||
| Now I'm prepared. | ||
| I'm going to settle in. | ||
| I'm not going to be hungry. | ||
| My wife got me all set up. | ||
| Nice. | ||
| Water, protein shake. | ||
| Make sure that your blood sugar doesn't drop. | ||
| Maintain energy levels. | ||
| You are a man who has done one of the most difficult things a person can do. | ||
| You lost a ton of weight. | ||
| Yeah, and then maintain. | ||
| That's the harder. | ||
| Right, that's the hard part. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, the momentum of losing the weight is good, but most people, they get to a point and they want to take a break. | ||
| And then once they take a break, then it all slides. | ||
| Yeah, it's a bit of both. | ||
| Sometimes I want to take a break, but then I want to get to that next level. | ||
| So then I get back on it. | ||
| Well, we were talking about Gucci Mane before we started the podcast. | ||
| Gucci is the guy who's done that. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| He's maintained and looks fucking amazing. | ||
| He took it to the next level. | ||
| He was a big fella at one point in time when he had Burr tattooed on his face. | ||
| The ice cream cone. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And now he's shredded. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| He got rid of that ice cream. | ||
| Well, you were saying it was lean, right? | ||
| Yeah, for sure. | ||
| Yeah, Codeine will put a lot of weight on him. | ||
| Look at the difference, man. | ||
| That is crazy. | ||
| Well, he wasn't too fat in the other one. | ||
| Yeah, that's kind of like him mid-losing weight in that one. | ||
| You can find some real chunky pics of him. | ||
| Yeah, he got thick. | ||
| And now it's shredded. | ||
| Yeah, me and my wife all the time. | ||
| We look at him and his wife, the pictures they take, what they do, and I'm like, I want to head in that direction. | ||
| What do you do for working out? | ||
| I have my trainer about three days a week, sometimes two days a week, and then on top of that, and we'll do, you know, just different circuits, back, chest. | ||
| You know, whatever, whatever. | ||
| Legs. | ||
| And then the other days, I'm always just trying to make sure I hit the treadmill twice a day for two miles on an incline. | ||
| Twice a day? | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| Really? | ||
| You do it twice a day? | ||
| Yeah, in the morning and night. | ||
| I don't do much otherwise. | ||
| So, you know, especially now, a lot of my stuff is sitting in front of a computer, podcasting, playing games on Twitch, and stuff like that. | ||
| So I feel like, oh, if I'm going to sit that long, I've got to start the day, treadmill, end the day, treadmill. | ||
| That's discipline. | ||
| I like that. | ||
| It is. | ||
| I fucking hate it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So it definitely is discipline. | |
| But you like the results. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I like how I feel. | ||
| I like the compliments. | ||
| You know, I was just doing this thing the other day and Jake Johnson, the guy from New Girl, I'm in a cartoon with him. | ||
| And like, that's like, you know, he's like a leading man, dream boaty guy. | ||
| And he's looking at me. | ||
| He's like, man, he's like, you're looking fucking good, man. | ||
| You got your shit together. | ||
| You look like you're about to lead your own show. | ||
| And I hear shit like that. | ||
| And I'm like, OK, I better get on that treadmill again. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, that helps, right? | ||
| It really does. | ||
| Yeah, the positive feedback and positive energy. | ||
| That's one thing that I like about what you do. | ||
| You are very positive. | ||
| You're very warm and friendly. | ||
| All the shit that you do online, you're all smiley and positive and friendly. | ||
| It's cool. | ||
| It gives off a good vibe. | ||
| When I look at your Instagram posts or read something that you post, it's like... | ||
| Ron is on the good path. | ||
| Yeah, I try to, you know, because it's just it's so easy to go the other way. | ||
| And you caught up in what other people are doing and what you think you should be doing, which I battle all of that, too. | ||
| So I don't ever try to act like, oh, I'm just like, oh, everything's great. | ||
| It's like, of course, I go through shit all the time. | ||
| But like, I think I choose to support my friends. | ||
| I choose to support... | ||
| Positive things because that's what I can control and that's to me fighting against that negative as opposed to like just joining everybody in the fray. | ||
| Yeah, what do you mean by, like, how do you feel? | ||
| Like, when you say, like, you feel that too? | ||
| Like, you feel the draw to the negative? | ||
| Oh, I mean, because we all, like, you know, we just want things, you know? | ||
| So, I wanted a Netflix special. | ||
| I want to be a lead in a show. | ||
| I want my own show, you know? | ||
| And I already do a lot of great things, but, and that's why I have to balance it all, because I'm like, oh man, I'm in such a great position. | ||
| I I do so many wonderful things. | ||
| What always helps me, actually, is talking to people like you or talking to people like Bert, talking to any comedian that's been doing it like 20 years plus when I'm at like 14 now. | ||
| And when I talk to them and then they are like, oh, hold on, slow the fuck down, man. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Like... | |
| You look at where you are and what you're doing for how long you've been doing it. | ||
| You're fucking aces, man. | ||
| So chill the fuck out and play it out. | ||
| Don't freak out. | ||
| And that always, you know, having faith, that always helps me out. | ||
| Well, we're all stalled right now. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Unfortunately, because we can't work. | ||
| But stand-up is a long haul. | ||
| Like, at 10 years, people start taking you seriously. | ||
| You know, if you're really precocious, people start looking at you at 7. Like, damn, this motherfucker's good. | ||
| But at 10 years, they go, okay, that guy's a pro. | ||
| Or she's really got it. | ||
| She's legit. | ||
| 10 years, usually. | ||
| So 14, man, you're cooking. | ||
| You know? | ||
| 14, you got things happening. | ||
| You know? | ||
| You're putting together, like, real sets. | ||
| You get off stage, you're like, damn, that was legit. | ||
| That was legit. | ||
| It's a long road to get good at stand-up. | ||
| You know? | ||
| It's like that ACDC song. | ||
| It's a long way to the top if you want to rock and roll. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Ha ha! | |
| I was on stage or not about to go on stage rather at the improv once and there was this lady who was on stage and she you could tell she's real recent and she was just eating it just eating shit up there and me and the DJ were just like and I just looked at him I go it's a long way to the top if you want to rock and roll And then the DJ played that song as I went on stage. | ||
| It's a long way to the top. | ||
| It is, man. | ||
| It's a fucking long way. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And I agree. | ||
| And that's why I had to change my mindset very early. | ||
| Because I came from not having money, not having anything, and having my son really early. | ||
| And so I was like, I need him. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Make it! | |
| I need to do this. | ||
| And then, like, I remember I got on Conan the first time, and they were like, oh, what are you promoting? | ||
| You've got to promote something, you know, when we introduce you. | ||
| And the only thing I had to promote was an open mic that I was doing in Portland the next day. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know? | |
| And I was just like, this is always going to be a part of this. | ||
| This is always going to be here. | ||
| There will be highs, and then there will be another day. | ||
| And so I've got to learn to not... | ||
| You know fear that next day and just be like this is I mean, this is just my life And that's what helps me through all of this quarantine stuff. | ||
| That's why I'm back doing weird zoom shows I'm doing my own live stream show September 5th and people adapt. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| Yeah, exactly Yeah, the best at it so far I've seen is Andrew Schultz Andrew Schultz has adapted the best because he's really figured out a whole new kind of a format He's figured out how to do these 10-minute chunks on a particular subject. | ||
| Like rapid fire with images behind him and his style of comedy. | ||
| I've been calling it a quarantine comedy. | ||
| Because there's no one in the room but him. | ||
| And it's high production value. | ||
| And it's without network notes. | ||
| And it's him being able to distill his voice without anybody telling him what to do. | ||
| So then when you watch it compared to... | ||
| Things you're seeing on TV, which now, because they're forced to scale back, start looking very similar. | ||
| You're like, why the fuck would I watch this? | ||
| He's so much more fun. | ||
| Schultz is so much funnier than those guys. | ||
| Those guys are forced to do TV kind of comedy for the internet, and that shit is not good enough. | ||
| TV kind of comedy is okay if you have TV kind of restrictions. | ||
| Those restrictions that they have for language and content, then you can get away with it. | ||
| But if you're forced to compete in that internet realm, the internet is wild, man. | ||
| Yeah, it's the wild west. | ||
| It's a fucking full-on wild west. | ||
| This show, you can never do this fucking show. | ||
| No one will ever allow me to do this show anywhere else. | ||
| The only way it would have ever worked is to have no one telling you what to do. | ||
| The thing about those feelings that you get when you see other people doing stuff and good things happen to them, you're like, I want that, I want that. | ||
| That's fuel, man. | ||
| That's the key is how you harness that fuel. | ||
| You can pour it all over yourself and light yourself on fire, which a lot of people do. | ||
| Yeah, we see it all the time. | ||
| All the time. | ||
| Or you can just go, I'm going to work harder. | ||
| I'm going to fucking just buckle down, I'm going to stay focused, and I'm going to somehow or another be my best self, be the best version. | ||
| Yeah, I never denied jealousy. | ||
| To me, that's just lying to people when you say, oh, I don't get jealous. | ||
| When I was a very young comic, I would read Patton Oswalt's The Spew, and I think he wrote something. | ||
| He wrote, jealousy is a map of where you want to be. | ||
| And I was like, oh, if I just look at it like that, that's a lot easier for me to swallow. | ||
| That's a wise way of looking at it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| One thing that for me when I first started doing stand-up, I was real jealous. | ||
| And I also didn't like comedy anymore. | ||
| I didn't like other people's comedy because I would be jealous. | ||
| Like I would watch someone kill and I'd go, oh, why didn't I come up with that joke? | ||
| Oh, my God, he's so much better than me. | ||
| Oh, my God, he's killing shit. | ||
| I want to be like that. | ||
| And then I realized, like, oh, my God, I've stopped enjoying comedy. | ||
| And now I'm not a fan anymore. | ||
| And one of the things that switched with me is I realized that I had a very weak... | ||
| perspective on it. | ||
| Instead of being inspired, instead of being energized, I was wishing that they would do badly, which is a real common thing. | ||
| You see someone who's doing much better than you, and you actually hope they fail. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, you see, a lot of people, once you see them start succeeding a bit, I've noticed in general, you stop seeing people champion them. | ||
| They stop. | ||
| They're like, oh, well, you've made it as far as I wanted you to. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So, They call you a sellout. | |
| But I love being inspired. | ||
| That I've never had. | ||
| I've always been inspired by comedy. | ||
| I've always loved comedy. | ||
| Sure, there's comedy I love more than others, but I've always learned to go like, well, that's not for me. | ||
| You know, I respect their craft. | ||
| I respect the way they put that together, but that was not for me. | ||
| But I always looked at it like rap, where it's like, man, you look at like the old Death Row Records, or then they always were sharpening each other by how good each individual was. | ||
| And I look at comedy the same way, where it's like, oh, if I see an amazing set, I'm not like trying to steal that joke or trying to that, but I'm going like, oh, fuck, I got to raise my game. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Well, that was one of the best things that we had at the store. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| We were all working together. | ||
| And, you know, we'd have a show on. | ||
| It'd be you and me and Burr and, you know, and Eliza and Whitney and fucking Ali Wong and bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. | ||
| These shows were fire! | ||
| It was just... | ||
| And you had to warm up in the back. | ||
| I'd be in the back. | ||
| I'd be jumping up and down on cushions and shit and shadowboxing and touching my toes and... | ||
| Taking deep breaths, and you gotta get your body charged up. | ||
| I miss that. | ||
| I miss that a lot. | ||
| I miss that feeling of being in the main room, green room, getting ready to go on. | ||
| And just the hang, man. | ||
| I miss the hang. | ||
| Oh, truly. | ||
| For me especially, because I was still always looking at it as like, oh, I'm the young guy on the total pole here, and it's cool that... | ||
| It's one thing, the original room is awesome, but when you're on these main room shows, you know, like, oh, they're putting me on here because they also think I'm a part of a draw. | ||
| And so be on that wit, you guys, but being younger in the game than you guys and being like, oh, fuck, I have to follow Ali, Joe, Joey Diaz, you know, Whitney. | ||
| I have to follow them all and then I don't have the credits. | ||
| That these people are going to care about. | ||
| It was the thing I've learned to crave. | ||
| Because when I got them, I was like, they are on my side because I'm fucking good. | ||
| They don't know anything else. | ||
| They don't know what I've done. | ||
| They have now figured out I'm good. | ||
| And that I miss so much. | ||
| I was there once and I brought you up and you said something along the lines of, Joe reminds me of that teacher that got arrested for having sex with a senior or something. | ||
| He's like that cool teacher that you find out. | ||
| He tells you all the cool stuff. | ||
| He tells you how the real world works and then you find out he was having a relationship with The teachers ate. | ||
| I was crying. | ||
| I was crying. | ||
| But it's like those kind of moments, man. | ||
| It's like the camaraderie of the store. | ||
| One of the best things about the quarantine is being able to do this podcast and have guys like you on and have all of our friends come here and just sit down and just at least spend time together. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And have some fun, and talk, because I miss that so much, man. | ||
| You know, look, I love my regular friends, and I love my family, I love my neighbors, but they're not comics. | ||
| They're not, man! | ||
| It's fucking different, you know? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| My wife is funny as shit. | ||
| She's funny. | ||
| She says mean shit to me, like, to be funny, like funny shit. | ||
| Makes fun of me. | ||
| It's fun. | ||
| It's like we have a good time. | ||
| But comics are a different animal, man. | ||
| You know? | ||
| And if you're not around them for a while, you go, fuck. | ||
| I wish I could just have someone who just wants to fuck around and talk shit. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Just have some fun. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Someone who's not getting their feeling hurt. | ||
| God, everyone's so goddamn sensitive. | ||
| You know? | ||
| Make fun of me, please. | ||
| Please. | ||
| You know? | ||
| Let's talk some shit. | ||
| Yeah, no, that is what I miss the most, is just being in the back, seeing my friends, and those are things we took for granted so much as well, because I'd just be like, alright, well, I'll see you tomorrow, and now I don't see nobody ever. | ||
| When we were shutting down in March, and I was thinking, like, you know what, man, I'm just gonna buckle down, work out a lot, write. | ||
| You know, come June, whenever the fuck this is over, I'll come back guns blazing. | ||
| You know, and then when I realized that there was going to be a second lockdown, and then there was going to be no return, and here we are in August, and there's no sight. | ||
| It's not going to happen. | ||
| It's not going to happen until 2021. There's no way. | ||
| I was like, fuck. | ||
| Like, this is terrible. | ||
| that I would have to worry about comedy clubs going under. | ||
| But they're going under all over the place, man. | ||
| They just can't stay open. | ||
| It's crazy. - Yeah, no, I mean, I was in the exact same boat. | ||
| I mean, most of us were, we were just like, okay, well, I can last, I'll put it together, just treat it like I'm in a short-term prison sentence and just work out and get my GED and just get it all together. | ||
| Become a lawyer. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Go over my case. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And then, yeah, same thing. | ||
| That second lockdown happened and something happened in my brain where I was like, okay, I'm going to have to just... | ||
| Because before I was like, oh, no Zoom shows, nothing like that. | ||
| I don't like how it's fucking with my rhythm. | ||
| I don't like how I'm not getting feedback... | ||
| But after that, I was like, you know, I just kind of have to adapt and go with the flow and hope things change and know that things change in time no matter what. | ||
| But if this is how it is, I got to stop fighting it and start just like, you know, finding my lane in it. | ||
| So, you know, I'm just trying to do that now. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You have a podcast, luckily. | ||
| I felt bad for dudes who didn't. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| For the folks, the guys and the gals that didn't have podcasts, I was like, ooh, you got no way to keep in touch with people. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, and that was exactly the reason why I started my podcast, because I was like, oh, I'm like... | ||
| Everything I'm doing is a guest in other people's shit. | ||
| I'm a guest in everyone else's home. | ||
| And I don't have a home for people to come hang out with me. | ||
| And so I've been thinking that for a long time. | ||
| And that's the reason why I started my podcast. | ||
| And when all this stuff happened, I was very happy... | ||
| Because I've always been in two minds when it comes to comedy. | ||
| I love specialists. | ||
| I love people who are just like, I do stand-up, straight stand-up. | ||
| I'm going to be the best fucking stand-up in the world. | ||
| Like, I love being that competitive. | ||
| But I also have this part of me that's just like, I love new challenges of all types. | ||
| And so I got into voice acting, regular acting, all that stuff. | ||
| And when this synth came down, I was like, oh, fuck. | ||
| Actually, you know, just like in business, it is good to diversify. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Because voice acting is saving my fucking life right now. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| As a person in show business, you must have as many forms of revenue as you can. | ||
| And you have to save for a rainy day. | ||
| You have to do those two things. | ||
| I've been real lucky that I have weird taste. | ||
| I'm into weird shit. | ||
| So I have, you know, cage fighting commentary. | ||
| And then I also have the podcast. | ||
| And I also have this stand-up thing, which is just on hold. | ||
| Indefinitely. | ||
| You could do it right now. | ||
| Have you thought about doing one of those drive-in movie shows? | ||
| I talked to a bird about it. | ||
| He made it sound interesting. | ||
| He loves it. | ||
| The way he sells it made it sound fun. | ||
| You gotta realize he's drunk, though. | ||
| Yeah, I do. | ||
| I do realize that. | ||
| He's like, horns! | ||
| Yeah! | ||
| He likes horns and people high-beaming him. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm like, what? | |
| Mike, explain. | ||
| He's like, dude, it's like a UFO! I'm actually, I've been talking with Chris Titus, because he has his own little production studio. | ||
| I shouldn't call it Little, because he has his own production studio. | ||
| I don't have no fucking production studio. | ||
| He has his own big-ass production studio, and he's been shooting his own specials, and he's doing a reunion of the Titus show through it, and so I reached out to him, and I'm going to do a live stream show where we'll have 10 people in the audience, and then we'll be live streaming it out on YouTube on September 5th, if people want to get RonFunches.com. | ||
| Don't stop my promo, Joe! | ||
| Sorry, sorry, sorry. | ||
| RonFunches.com. | ||
| So there's 10 people in the audience. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So do you test those folks? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| How do you do it? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, you know, there'll be, not like you, where I took the full test, but it'll be temperature checks and waivers, and they'll be wearing masks. | ||
| They'll be wearing masks, and they'll be socially distanced, yeah. | ||
| It can be done, man. | ||
| Texas is doing that with restaurants. | ||
| You can go to a restaurant in Texas. | ||
| Everybody wears a mask. | ||
| Simple. | ||
| They space the tables out. | ||
| Everybody wears a mask. | ||
| Good ventilation. | ||
| Server wears a mask. | ||
| And they're not having any problems. | ||
| There are draconian laws they've instituted in California. | ||
| This is the only state where you can't go to the barbershop. | ||
| Do you know that? | ||
| I did not know that. | ||
| Every other fucking state in the entire union, you can go to a barbershop. | ||
| You can go to a hairdresser. | ||
| You can get your hair done. | ||
| I don't have an issue with that. | ||
| Obviously, I'm bald as fuck. | ||
| I just think it's crazy. | ||
| The restrictions that the states put on businesses, it's forcing people to flee. | ||
| That's part of what's going on here. | ||
| That's one reason you're leaving? | ||
| Yeah, I just think there's too many folks here, too. | ||
| I think as I get older, I realize there's drawbacks to high population areas. | ||
| There's tension in high population areas. | ||
| And when things go south, when natural disasters or what we're dealing with with COVID, things along those lines, It's just a bad place to be, man. | ||
| It's just not safe. | ||
| It's not healthy. | ||
| It's not wise. | ||
| Like, I like calmer. | ||
| I like a little calmer. | ||
| Because my problem is not getting up for things. | ||
| Like, I have a friend who lives in New York City, and he loves it because, like, oh, I love the energy of the city. | ||
| Everything's happening, moving. | ||
| I'm like, I don't need that. | ||
| I got a lot of energy. | ||
| I need chill. | ||
| I need downtime. | ||
| I need a place where I can... | ||
| You need space. | ||
| You need a fortress of solitude. | ||
| I need relaxation. | ||
| I need a balance. | ||
| And whenever I'd go to places that were more rural, there was like nature and trees and shit, I always feel better. | ||
| I understand that. | ||
| I mean, that's one of the reasons why I like where I live in the Valley. | ||
| I've always been outside. | ||
| When I started comedy, I started comedy in Portland, Oregon, but I lived in Salem, Oregon, and I would just make that 45-minute drive because I did like going into a thing, doing my job, and then leaving that there, coming back home. | ||
| Yeah, that's how I always felt about Hollywood. | ||
| I lived in North Hollywood when I first got here, and I just kept moving further out. | ||
| Then I moved to Encino, and I'm like, I gotta go further out. | ||
| Then I went way out. | ||
| Yeah, man. | ||
| That is true. | ||
| This lifestyle is so weird if it will get you so wrapped up in other people's information and partying and doing shit. | ||
| That's one of the reasons I love. | ||
| I got my little small-town Canadian wife and my son who... | ||
| That's who's been my balance the whole time is that I started comedy. | ||
| My son was already three years old. | ||
| So he, one, was like, you need to be feeding me with this. | ||
| And B, I don't give a shit about your jokes or hanging out at all. | ||
| So, you know, I would like to be here and have you hanging out with me. | ||
| So that's always, I think that's one of the reasons I've been able to be as successful as I am is that I was like, I don't give a fuck about hanging. | ||
| I don't give a fuck about And there's a lot of fear that comes to that, right? | ||
| Because people are always like, oh, I want to be part of the group. | ||
| I want to be part of the clique. | ||
| And if I'm not hanging, I'm not part of the clique. | ||
| And I was just like, well, they'll know I'm fucking good at comedy. | ||
| And they'll like me from that. | ||
| You've never had a problem with that. | ||
| No, man. | ||
| That's one of the things about the store. | ||
| It's a real meritocracy. | ||
| You'll hear people say, like, oh, you know, like, there's cliques there and they don't accept you. | ||
| I think that's horse shit. | ||
| If you're funny, nobody gives a fuck if you're gay, straight, trans, white, Chinese, black... | ||
| Fucking Puerto Rican. | ||
| Nobody gives a fuck. | ||
| Are you funny? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And if you're funny, you're in. | ||
| That place is 100% inclusive. | ||
| If you're funny, you're in. | ||
| You're accepted for the kind of heat you bring. | ||
| When you get on that stage and light that place up, you don't have to hang out. | ||
| You don't have to be one of the people that parties and drinks. | ||
| They don't give a fuck. | ||
| They know you're funny. | ||
| I mean, I've seen you murder. | ||
| When you can lay it down the way you do, you just accept it. | ||
| It's just how it is. | ||
| It's a beautiful thing, really. | ||
| It's like the art form of comedy. | ||
| We all know how hard it is to get to that 14-year spot like you're at. | ||
| And there's a lot of people that have 14 years and are not as funny as you. | ||
| For whatever reason, psychologically, they've not figured it out artistically, they're not true to themselves, whatever it is, they've never found that. | ||
| And I think, I bet having a child and having that intense responsibility, you know, when you're starting out, you know, being an open-miker and also having a child, like, woo! | ||
| That is extreme. | ||
| That's an extreme amount of responsibility. | ||
| Yeah, I agree. | ||
| And I've talked about it with the other comics that I know that are parents because we'll make fun of the laziness of other comics because they'll be like, oh man, I got to do this set at midnight and then I got a meeting at noon. | ||
| How am I going to do it? | ||
| And I'll just be like, well, before I came to this set, I helped my son with his homework. | ||
| I got to get him up on the school bus at 6 a.m. | ||
| And then, you know, so like, I don't have any fucking sympathy for you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, one of the things that I loved before the store closed down was my schedule was basically I would put my kids to sleep. | ||
| They would go to bed at like 8.30, 9 o'clock, and then I would go over my notes, and then I'd have a set at like 10.30. | ||
| It was perfect. | ||
| And then when I would come home, everybody would be asleep, so I'd just hang out with the dog and write. | ||
| You get a chance to come down and not have anybody talk to you. | ||
| Nothing, man. | ||
| Just quiet. | ||
| That's balance, man. | ||
| Yeah, that's what it's up. | ||
| For me, that's so big. | ||
| Balance is so big. | ||
| You have to have it. | ||
| You can't just be all about... | ||
| Because I think... | ||
| Do you know who Miyamoto Musashi was? | ||
| Mm-mm. | ||
| He's a samurai from the 15th century. | ||
| He wrote this crazy book called The Book of Five Rings. | ||
| It's all about strategy and how to be the best at whatever you do. | ||
| And one of the things that he said is, you have to do all things with the same intensity and energy. | ||
| You can't just be a guy who tries to kill people with a sword. | ||
| He was excellent at calligraphy. | ||
| He was an artist. | ||
| He wrote poetry. | ||
| He believed that you had to have a balance as a person, otherwise those flaws would show up in your sword fighting. | ||
| Oh, that's amazing. | ||
| I love that. | ||
| That strikes me hard because I've always believed that in my comedy from the day I started. | ||
| I was always like, oh, I can never let my life Get far away from my persona that I present on stage. | ||
| I can, you know, always be turning ourselves up to 11 or whatever. | ||
| But I go from just my experience and my love of comedy, I go, oh, when people get too far from their persona in any general way and they're lying to you, it just starts falling apart and it starts showing in their act and it shows in their life. | ||
| And I've always... | ||
| That is what gives me material, because I just talk about whatever is active in my life, as opposed to being like, well, this is who I am. | ||
| Because if I did that, I'd have been stuck when I was 23, just being like, I'm the fat stoner guy, you know? | ||
| Right, right, right, right. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, you could get caught up in your act, right? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Look, there's a lot of examples of that, even successful ones, like Kinnison. | ||
| Kinnison is a great example. | ||
| Bobcat, up until very recently. | ||
| Yeah, he, on this podcast, talked about how hard it was to kick. | ||
| And people were like, hey man, do that scream thing. | ||
| He's like, fuck you! | ||
| I'm done, man! | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm like, ah! | |
| He didn't want to do it. | ||
| Yeah, he got stuck. | ||
| He got trapped. | ||
| Emo Phillips, he's another one, you know? | ||
| I mean, Emo's like in his fucking 60s now. | ||
| He's still got to do that weird sort of thing that he did when he was 20 that was kind of cute. | ||
| You know, when you're 60, everybody's like, man, are you having a stroke? | ||
| Like, what's going on up there, buddy? | ||
| Yeah, that one does still hurt me because he's such a tremendous joke writer. | ||
| Yes, amazing joke writer. | ||
| But I do see that. | ||
| Yeah, it's like you have to kind of, you can't just go up there and start talking. | ||
| You can't just be yourself. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Which is one point when, you know, that's what I'm learning as you get into it, people start caring less and less about like, oh, that's a crazy ass joke he wrote, and they want to know more about like, who are you? | ||
| Right. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But we were talking about Kennison. | ||
| He was the guy who got really caught up in it because his thing was partying. | ||
| He couldn't go anywhere without partying. | ||
| So guys would line up giant lines of coke for him. | ||
| He'd be like, oh, here we go! | ||
| And his heart would be beating out of his chest and couldn't sleep for a week. | ||
| And his comedy was suffering real bad. | ||
| I always point to him as a great example for comedians. | ||
| Of someone who was so good for a short period of time and then was so bad afterwards. | ||
| He was so good around like 85, 86. That was like the Louder Than Hell days. | ||
| Like, dude, he was revolutionary. | ||
| Like, nobody had ever seen anything like that. | ||
| This short, fat preacher go on stage screaming and talking, screaming, you ever been married? | ||
| Look at me! | ||
| Look at me! | ||
| Like, this is marriage! | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, oh! | |
| Like, I was married twice! | ||
| That's how fucking dumb I am! | ||
| And you would see him, and it was like this force in nature, but with great material, great insight, great points. | ||
| And then all of it went away, and then it was like cheerleading. | ||
| It was, like, weird. | ||
| Like, I remember he had this bit about drunk driving. | ||
| He's like, we're gonna drink, and we're gonna drive, and we're gonna pull it off. | ||
| You know why? | ||
| Because we do it every fucking night! | ||
|
unidentified
|
Woo! | |
| And it's like, what? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And then he was killed by a drunk driver. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Which is crazy. | ||
| Yeah, I hate that. | ||
| I always hate when people use their charm and they use their tricks to push apart false premises. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| You're fucking lying. | ||
| I think he was just trying to do it just to... | ||
| His brother wrote about it. | ||
| His brother, Bill, wrote a book called Brother Sam. | ||
| It was a really good book for someone who's a Kinnison fan. | ||
| Really interesting. | ||
| He talked about it pretty openly, about Sam just stopped writing. | ||
| His material fell apart, and he just became like a shadow of himself, like an open miker doing a Kinnison impression with like shitty material. | ||
| It's sad. | ||
| It is, but it's a lesson for us. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know? | ||
| Like, you gotta stay on your fucking game. | ||
| And then there's also the problem when people know who you are. | ||
| They come to see you. | ||
| You know, it's Ron Funches. | ||
| Oh, we're gonna go see him. | ||
| And, like, we're excited to see you. | ||
| And everything you say, I'm happy to hear. | ||
| You get your crowd. | ||
| And the problem is if you're only doing comedy to your crowd, you could really delude yourself. | ||
| Oh, absolutely. | ||
| But I think that's... | ||
| Why people who are good like to go around to all the different spots. | ||
| I love to go around and do like house parties and the comedy store and my shows on the road. | ||
| You do house parties? | ||
| Sometimes. | ||
| Like what kind of house parties? | ||
| You know, they do dumbass mansion parties and shit. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Yeah, there's a lot of weird rich comedy producers and you're just like, I don't know what your life is. | ||
| But I will take this money for this event and then I'll probably not see you again. | ||
| And you do it at the house? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| How many people? | ||
| Well, you know, this was way before. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| It'd be like a couple hundred people. | ||
| No shit. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| In the yard or something or inside? | ||
| Sometimes both, you know. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, well, there's a lot of comedy. | ||
| There was a lot of comedy in L.A. and strange places. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I got invited to a lot of yard shows. | ||
| Guys would show up. | ||
| Hey, man, I'm doing comedy in my backyard. | ||
| Yeah, Best Fish Taco, doing a taco restaurant. | ||
| Oh, yeah? | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| You want a Kill Cliff? | ||
| Want one of these? | ||
| CBD drinks? | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Grape CBD drink. | ||
| Delicious. | ||
| Good for you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No THC. Well, that's okay. | |
| I can give you some THC if you'd like that, too. | ||
| We have plenty of that. | ||
| But I got those for us. | ||
| No, it's not bad. | ||
| Delicious, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Good for you. | ||
| 25 milligrams of CBD. Do you take CBD at all? | ||
| Yeah, a bit. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I might get some to my wife whenever her back is hurting. | ||
| That's one of my daily things. | ||
| That's just the thing that's so good for you. | ||
| CBD is so good for you. | ||
| Just anything you can do to reduce inflammation. | ||
| Mm-hmm. | ||
| Fantastic. | ||
| For the body, for the brain. | ||
| I didn't even know I had anxiety until I started taking CBD. I'm telling you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, maybe you didn't! | |
| Well, it's relative. | ||
| I mean, I didn't have anxiety compared to people who have anxiety. | ||
| But I took CBD. I was like, man, I feel really relaxed. | ||
| And I was like, oh, okay. | ||
| I see what's going on. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| No, I like a good CBD. I'll just smoke just a straight CBD sometimes. | ||
| Oh, yeah? | ||
| After a workout or something. | ||
| Yeah, I would say I'm going to do that, and then I grab a regular joint. | ||
| Yeah, but I'll mix them up, too. | ||
| Do you ever smoke weed and then work out? | ||
| Yeah, my trainer hates that, but yeah. | ||
| Why does your trainer hate that? | ||
| He's always like, I can always tell when you're high, when you're smoking weed. | ||
| He's Dutch, so that's how he talks to me. | ||
| Yeah, I had a Dutch kickboxing trainer for a while. | ||
| They have a different way of talking. | ||
| The Dutch way. | ||
| Yeah, they don't understand America. | ||
| You're so fat. | ||
| You don't have to be. | ||
| What are you eating, my friend? | ||
| It is very simple. | ||
| What kind of foods? | ||
| Dutch is a weird country, Holland. | ||
| I don't know if you know this, but they have some of the greatest kickboxers of all time. | ||
| All came out of Holland. | ||
| Real weird. | ||
| A few guys went over to Thailand, started training in Thailand, and fighting in Thailand, and they brought it back to Holland, and then Holland became this gigantic kickboxing epicenter. | ||
| That's crazy. | ||
| I didn't know that. | ||
| I did not know that. | ||
| Some of the baddest motherfuckers of all time come from Holland. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| A place known for like weed shops and red light district and mushrooms. | ||
| That's why I go. | ||
| That's one of my favorite places to visit. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah? | |
| Yeah. | ||
| Four times I've been to Amsterdam. | ||
| I've never been. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I've never been. | |
| Love it. | ||
| And it's not even, you know, you can get just as good, if not better. | ||
| We here in California, for sure. | ||
| But it's just the vibe. | ||
| It's just the lack of anyone ever being like, oh, you dumb stoner. | ||
| None of that. | ||
| Like, I remember I was sitting in a coffee shop and a guy tried to sneak a beer in and they kicked him out. | ||
| And they were like, no drinking. | ||
| And I was like, I like it here. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's funny what we chose to allow and not allow. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Where I'm going in Texas, you still... | ||
| I mean, Austin, it's legal, essentially. | ||
| They've decriminalized it to the point where the cops won't arrest anybody for weed. | ||
| I mean, they don't want you selling large quantities of it, but it's still not legal. | ||
| It's still not legal statewide. | ||
| It's the dumbest thing to make illegal. | ||
| It just makes zero sense. | ||
| You know, I see... | ||
| I see the argument for making alcohol illegal, but I would never agree with it. | ||
| I think people should be able to do whatever they want. | ||
| Yeah, I'm with that. | ||
| But the argument for weed being illegal is the dumbest. | ||
| I'm with personal responsibility. | ||
| But we have so many arguments that we're not really good at it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So... | |
| Well, look at what's happened with COVID. Yeah! | ||
| That's the best. | ||
| I mean, if you look at what... | ||
| We're so bad at it. | ||
| America is so bad. | ||
| Our response to COVID and how we've handled it and allowed it to spread, we're the worst. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, you know, I'm a big pro wrestling fan and that's the thing that's been making me angry because it's just as much as I miss comedy. | ||
| I used to go to my wrestling shows with my friends and my buddies and... | ||
| Now I'm watching the Japanese wrestling that I love and seeing that they have full crowds all sitting there in masks, just hanging out because they are good at handling their fucking business. | ||
| That's when you're just sitting here and you're like, oh, well, we're all falling apart and it's just how it is. | ||
| But then you start looking over at other countries and you're like, well, no, they figured some shit out. | ||
| Well, this virus is so sneaky, man. | ||
| Even Japan has had a resurgence recently. | ||
| It's so weird, man. | ||
| It's the weirdest fucking virus. | ||
| It's just like New Zealand even had a resurgence. | ||
| New Zealand had over 100 days with zero cases. | ||
| And then they just got a... | ||
| I think it was four or something like that? | ||
| Got it and one family got it. | ||
| They're trying to figure out how that happened. | ||
| So they shut down the city where they're at, sort of. | ||
| Stage three or something. | ||
| One family. | ||
| Yeah, so one family of four has it. | ||
| Sneaky fucks. | ||
| What have they been up to? | ||
| Maybe they got some bad tests, but probably not. | ||
| They're trying to trace how it happened. | ||
| It's such a weird, weird, weird disease, man. | ||
| I know so many people that have gotten it now. | ||
| I think I know about nine people, and so many of them have different symptoms. | ||
| I know people that got it, and they just got a mild headache, and they felt like shit for a day, and then they were fine. | ||
| And then I know other people, like Michael Yeo, who was on death's door. | ||
| When people ask me about that, there's extenuating circumstances. | ||
| If you listen to Michael's story, he was worn the fuck out. | ||
| Flew all the way to New York, did shows, did morning radio, did TV, flew all the way back, then got in a car with his family, drove to Vegas, hung out with his wife's mom's family. | ||
| Hung out there for a while and then drove all the way back home same day and then had auditions the next day and then auditions the day after that and then boom it hit him. | ||
| His immune system was compromised. | ||
| Yes, he was wrecked. | ||
| He was exhausted and low vitamin D. Vitamin D seems to be one of the big factors, gigantic factor. | ||
| There was a recent study that Dr. Rhonda Patrick sent me yesterday that I have to go over. | ||
| But one of the things that she said was that in a series of studies they did where they showed people in the ICU for COVID, more than 80% of them had insufficient levels of vitamin D. And out of the people that were in intensive care, only 4% had sufficient levels of vitamin D. Gotta take your vitamin D. Do you take vitamin D? Yes, I do. | ||
| Do you? | ||
| How much do you take? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I just, whatever's in the bottle. | ||
| It tells me. | ||
| Oh, one of those things. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Multivitamins? | |
| No, it's a full, wait, yeah, the D is in the multi. | ||
| Yeah, so full C, then the multi, B, something called arginine that I don't know. | ||
| It's an amino acid. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I do know that, but I don't know what that means. | ||
| It helps build muscle. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| I'm glad I'm taking it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Branched chain amino acids. | ||
| It's a really good post-workout. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Take it after. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I'm supposed to take it after my workout, but before my... | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| What kind of protein drink are you drinking in that thing? | ||
| What is that? | ||
| This is just like some bullshit. | ||
| This is like Metrex, just regular. | ||
| Actually, I need to figure out a better powder because I just got on it and just got the basic, like, oh, this tastes chocolate. | ||
| I'm pretty sure it's not great, but I'm sure you can tell me some good ones. | ||
| I find hemp to be the best protein powder, the most easily digestible. | ||
| I have zero problems with it, digestion-wise. | ||
| Like, if I drink whey an hour later, I gotta stay the fuck away from people, otherwise I'm gonna be farting. | ||
| I don't tend to have a problem with whey, but I always have less of a problem with hemp. | ||
| That's always right. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, it's the most digestible for me. | ||
| I mean, it's just easy. | ||
| It's also something I can eat literally, I can drink it, rather, literally an hour before a workout and have zero problems. | ||
| Just take it with a little bit of coconut water, mix it up, you know, just simple, easy. | ||
| You know, I use the Onnit kind, but there's a lot of good hemp powders out there. | ||
| And it's very absorbable, you know, it's a very bioavailable form of protein in terms of plant protein. | ||
| The two best, I find, plant proteins or pea proteins really good and hemp protein. | ||
| I think hemp protein is a little better, at least in my experience. | ||
| Okay, I'm looking to some hemp protein. | ||
| But Metrix is delicious. | ||
| It is delicious. | ||
| It's like you're getting yourself a little shake. | ||
| Yeah, that's what I do in the morning when I have my favorite breakfast. | ||
| I get a rice cake that has a little bit of almond butter and a little bit of apple butter. | ||
| And then I have a shake and I go, ooh, I'm having shake and cake for breakfast. | ||
| It's just mental games. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| When you first started losing weight, how much did you weigh? | ||
|
unidentified
|
360. Wow. | |
| Wow. | ||
| So you lost well over 100 pounds. | ||
| Yeah, let's say right now it would be 130. Wow! | ||
| That's amazing. | ||
| What's the ultimate goal? | ||
| I'd like to be around 200 and just keep staying lean and just keep putting on muscle a bit. | ||
| But yeah, I'd like to lose like another 15 pounds. | ||
| Nice. | ||
| Yeah, you could do that. | ||
| Yeah, just focus. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, you're at the home stretch. | ||
| Yeah, and that's been the fucking, yeah, that's what sucks. | ||
| Because then I'm like, why can't I have a cookie? | ||
| And then I have one, and then I realize why I can't have a cookie. | ||
| Because then I eat the whole fucking box of cookies, so. | ||
| Yeah, I can't fuck with pizza. | ||
| No. | ||
| If I have one slice of pizza, the glutton in me goes off and I just want to eat that whole thing. | ||
| Mm-hmm. | ||
| That abstain. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mm-hmm. | |
| Do you miss traveling? | ||
| I do. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Actually, I do. | ||
| I was talking with my wife a couple days ago because we were watching some 90 Day Fiance and they were... | ||
| What is that? | ||
| You've never seen it? | ||
| No. | ||
| Oh, it's just a show. | ||
| Actually, it's a whole complex of shows where people from other countries meet people in America and they get married. | ||
| They have to get married within 90 days once they move to America. | ||
| But then also, we've been watching The Other Way on the recommendation of Eric Griffin where Americans move to other countries for their significant others. | ||
| And that's been insane. | ||
| And beautiful. | ||
| It's been beautiful to watch together. | ||
| Why's that? | ||
| It makes our relationship look so much stronger. | ||
| LAUGHTER I go, baby, we never said we should start over. | ||
| I never lied to you about a gambling problem that I had. | ||
| It just makes us look a lot better when we're watching those relationships. | ||
| But they're at the airport a lot, and I would go, oh, that's PDX. Oh, that's... | ||
| She's just like, oh... | ||
| She's like, why are you getting so excited about seeing these airports? | ||
| And I was just like, I think I just fucking miss the whole... | ||
| Process. | ||
| I just miss knowing, oh, I'm going to a new city. | ||
| New people are going to see me. | ||
| I might meet some new friends. | ||
| Like, you know, I miss that. | ||
| Have you been writing? | ||
| I've been writing a bit. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
| I'm sorry, what's your process? | ||
| My process is usually from, like, if we're talking about from the start, I kind of work on this little grid where I just break it down into love, hate, and fear. | ||
| And then I just kind of Get stoned or just sometimes not stoned at all and I'll just play some instrumental music and I'll just write about what I'm scared about what I'm Pissed about what I'm in love with and then I Didn't take those topics and try to figure out jokes about what's going on in my life. | ||
| That's interesting Have you always done it that way? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Love hate fear. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mm-hmm. | |
| What what where'd you get the inspiration to do it that way? | ||
| I think I just got it from a writing workbook from when I was in like an English class in high school. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Yeah, it was just about how you would brainstorm writing a paper. | ||
| It's a great idea. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, it helps me get the basics down. | ||
| So instead of like, oh, I'm writing this joke about this, it's like, okay, I'm writing about my wife because I fucking love my wife, or I'm writing about my son, or I'm scared about COVID, or I'm scared about this, or, you know, the more specific I can get about what exactly I'm scared of, or I'm afraid of, you know, or what I'm in love with, and just the more specific I can get, the better the jokes are. | ||
| And so it's a lot of work that way and then sometimes at two in the morning I'll just be stoned and something will pop in and I gotta go chase down a notebook. | ||
| Yeah, the stoned ideas that just pop out of nowhere are the weirdest ones. | ||
| That's not even my idea. | ||
| That's the universe's idea. | ||
| Yeah, giving it to you. | ||
| But I usually find that it doesn't give it to me if I haven't put in that earlier work. | ||
| Right, right. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It'll give me a gift for putting in the shitty work of trying to figure out this, how the fuck am I going to break this down? | ||
| And then in the middle of the night... | ||
| Some completely joke, some other left field joke will just pop in and it'll be fully formed, set up, punchline, everything. | ||
| And I'm just like, thank you. | ||
| Yeah, it is crazy like that, right? | ||
| It is crazy. | ||
| That put in the work part is what, you ever read Steven Pressfield's The War of Art? | ||
| It's a great book, a real small book too. | ||
| I used to, I'd buy stacks of them in the old studio and I'd just hand them out to guests, like especially comics. | ||
| I'm like, trust me, just read this. | ||
| Because one of the things it's about is about establishing the laws of your work, like the way you work. | ||
| You're a professional, and you show up every day as a professional, and you sit in front of that computer or that notebook, and you call upon the muse. | ||
| And whether or not the muse is real, if you do the work, it acts as if it's real. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I agree. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| I believe with that all the time. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I've been talking to myself lately just like then that's what's been keeping me with my health and my writing and my meditating and whatever is just like figuring out who I am and what works for me and then being like you follow those fucking rules. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Don't break your rules. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Whenever you break your rules, shit doesn't go right. | ||
| Even though it might look cool, it might look amazing, it might be like, oh well this time if I break my rule, it looks like it's gonna be dope and I'll get a bunch of money. | ||
| Never works out. | ||
| So just don't break your fucking rules. | ||
| And I'm just... | ||
| It's hard, but I've been working on that. | ||
| It's just like, oh, I gotta eat well. | ||
| I gotta work out. | ||
| I trust my intuition. | ||
| I'm the leader. | ||
| I'm the fucking boss. | ||
| I don't let other people lead me. | ||
| I lead, even if I don't know where I'm fucking going. | ||
| I lead, and I just follow those rules. | ||
| Have you had that issue with representation, like agents or managers trying to tell you what to do or guide you into a way that you didn't think was you? | ||
| Oh, no, no, not for me. | ||
| I've been truly blessed in that. | ||
| Truly blessed. | ||
| I think I have one of the best managers in the fucking world. | ||
| She's amazing. | ||
| She's married to the game. | ||
| My name's Melanie Truett, Brian Posehn's wife. | ||
| And she's been my manager since before I moved out of LA. She paid my fucking rent when I couldn't afford to pay my rent. | ||
| She's looked out for me every step of the way. | ||
| That's awesome. | ||
| There's been fucking... | ||
| This show is going to series. | ||
| They are making an offer on you. | ||
| This will give you a bunch of money, but it's not the right project. | ||
| Let's fucking pass. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| And that was like... | ||
| In the past, and I mean, that happened a couple of weeks into COVID. We were both scared shitless. | ||
| I know she was scared shitless about that 10%. | ||
|
unidentified
|
A guaranteed season? | |
| Yeah. | ||
| And she was like, no, this isn't... | ||
| She's like, you've already done parts like this three or four times. | ||
| You can do this. | ||
| This will be there for you. | ||
| We're shooting for bigger things for you. | ||
| And just like her belief in me and... | ||
| Drive for me has always been there. | ||
| I never ever feel like she's ever sold me short so that she can get a check. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Ever. | |
| That's huge. | ||
| That's huge. | ||
| It's rare. | ||
| Yeah, I do know that. | ||
| I have many friends that have really bad managers that give them terrible advice to take projects that are just short-term financial gain for the sacrifice of long-term career options. | ||
| Oh, my manager, if she sees the word exclusive in any contract, she's just like, we ain't fucking with them. | ||
| You are not exclusive to anybody. | ||
| You are dating around. | ||
| That's great. | ||
| That's great attitude, man. | ||
| That's what's interesting about today's climate. | ||
| It's like you don't get a lot of real managers anymore. | ||
| You almost have comics who have two agents. | ||
| You have your agent, agent, and then you have your manager who's kind of acting as an agent instead of acting as a manager because they're all desperado. | ||
| Or maybe they don't really have faith in you, so they just want that money. | ||
| They don't really think that you're going to be that person who has a long career or that you could keep accelerating. | ||
| They don't believe in the development. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Yeah, I feel like, yeah, my manager's always been there. | ||
| She's always kind of seen me two years ahead of where I've been at. | ||
| I have that story about recently, but I remember when I first was in Portland and there was this commercial that reached out to me and they wanted me to play a roach in a fucking bug spray commercial. | ||
| And I was broke as fuck. | ||
| And she was just like, no. | ||
| She's like, because we don't know what you're going to be in the next couple years. | ||
| And that commercial could be around forever. | ||
| Smart woman. | ||
| And so if you need the money that bad, I'd rather just give you the money. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Good for her, man. | ||
| Yeah, she's dope. | ||
| And I have many friends who, like, they just are tremendous, tremendous comedians, tremendous joke writers. | ||
| One friend who comes to mine immediately, and I've always told him, I was like... | ||
| You need to dump your manager and get a better manager because you're doing your part. | ||
| And I don't see why you're not getting more money. | ||
| You're not getting more chances. | ||
| You're not advancing at things. | ||
| They're not putting you on these talking head shows. | ||
| You're doing your part. | ||
| He opened for me once. | ||
| I was like, dude, you're fucking crushing me. | ||
| And I'm the one getting the bigger check. | ||
| Like, what the fuck is that? | ||
| Like, get your business in order. | ||
| And I've always, I think from having a kid, I've always been very much into the art and very much into the business. | ||
| Yeah, it's just, it's hard for people to find someone like your manager that is dedicated. | ||
| I got real lucky. | ||
| I found mine when I was an open-miker. | ||
| I've been with the same manager since 1991 or some shit. | ||
| Something crazy like that. | ||
| Yeah, that's insane. | ||
| Yeah, I was like three years into comedy when I met him. | ||
| And I've been with him. | ||
| And then he's basically not retired, but steps back. | ||
| And then my manager, Chandra, she took over 10 plus years ago or more. | ||
| Might be more than 10 years ago now. | ||
| And they're just the best in terms of seeing the big picture. | ||
| And the same thing you're saying about your manager. | ||
| Just looking at the business in terms of what do you really want to do? | ||
| What's going to make you happy? | ||
| There's things you can do for money, but what are you here for? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Like, what do you want? | ||
| You want to like walk away from everything you do going, that was great. | ||
| I enjoyed that. | ||
| That's what I wanted to do. | ||
| Like a special, thank you, good night. | ||
| You want to go, we did it. | ||
| We nailed it. | ||
| High fives all around. | ||
| That's how you want to be able to achieve those moments and get those feelings. | ||
| And I think, I know this is unrelatable to some people that are listening to this, but I think that way with everything, and maybe you don't have a manager for whatever your goal is in life, but you kind of have to think about it as your own manager. | ||
| You gotta think, like, what do I really want to do? | ||
| And are the steps that I'm taking, or the things that I'm doing right now, are they moving me closer to that? | ||
| And if not, what the fuck do I have to do different than what I'm doing? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, to me, I have that manager. | ||
| I also have my vision board. | ||
| I have my shit that I do on my own. | ||
| I am. | ||
| Oh, yes, Joe. | ||
| What's at the top of the vision board? | ||
| My show. | ||
| Getting my own fucking show about my son being a single dad of a son with autism. | ||
| Making it a fucking dope-ass comedy. | ||
| Netflix should do that. | ||
| That seems like a perfect thing. | ||
| You would think. | ||
| LAUGHTER That seems like a really good idea for a show. | ||
| I think so. | ||
| We found a spot. | ||
| We're working on it. | ||
| Okay. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Alright. | |
| You gotta keep it, Mom. | ||
| We'll talk later. | ||
| There's that. | ||
| I want to be a lead in some movies. | ||
| I want to do more. | ||
| I always see myself as like this Rick Marana's Billy Crystal type of unconventional, charming, leading man. | ||
| Maybe you need a buddy. | ||
| I could use a buddy. | ||
| Yeah, you need like, you know, Christopher, like Chris Farley needed David Spade. | ||
| Like the two of them together, they played off of each other. | ||
| You need a buddy. | ||
| I do need a buddy. | ||
| Who would your buddy be? | ||
| I gotta think about that. | ||
| Think about that. | ||
| That would be fun. | ||
| Maybe Bobby Lee. | ||
| Bobby Lee? | ||
| Well, he seems crazy for a buddy. | ||
| He's crazy as fuck. | ||
| He might be a problem. | ||
| If he gets too successful, he might sabotage and go back on pills. | ||
| Bobby Lee's so wild! | ||
| He's so wild. | ||
| He truly is. | ||
| I knew Bobby Lee in the early days when he'd bring a knife to work. | ||
| All sweaty and shit. | ||
| We were at an airport one time and he just goes, oh, the courtesy phone's calling for you. | ||
| And I was like, no, I've been here too, Bobby. | ||
| I didn't hear anything. | ||
| He's like, no, no, no, it didn't. | ||
| And he spends his whole time trying to convince me. | ||
| And he halfway does. | ||
| And then I just go sit down somewhere else and I go, oh... | ||
| He's a fucking high school bully. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He just likes to fucking play around. | |
| Not like beat you up, but like prankster. | ||
| He just fucks with you all the time. | ||
| No, I love Bobby. | ||
| I'm not saying he's trying to beat me. | ||
| I'm saying he's just a prankster who fucks with you all the time. | ||
| Money, no money, nothing. | ||
| That's who he is. | ||
| And I love it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| He's a guy who needs a goddamn special. | ||
| I've been yelling at him forever. | ||
| Now he has an excuse. | ||
| There's no comedy. | ||
| You know, now he's got an excuse. | ||
| But Bobby Lee is absolutely the best stand-up comic that does not have a special. | ||
| I mean, he is as legit a headliner as has ever lived. | ||
| When that guy is crushing, when he's in the OR crushing, you're like, the fact that he doesn't have a special is criminal. | ||
| Criminal! | ||
| Yeah, Bobby, I mean, he's just unique. | ||
| He's just him. | ||
| And that, to me, is the definition of someone you want to give a special to. | ||
| Yeah, I've known that dude forever. | ||
| I've known him for a long time, back when he was crazy! | ||
| But it's nice to see that he's gotten his shit together. | ||
| He's calmer and more stable. | ||
| Doesn't rub his balls on you as much. | ||
| Not as much. | ||
| Not nearly as much. | ||
| Yeah, I got a picture of him standing in the middle of the hallway with his pants down and his dick tucked in between his legs. | ||
| It's like, that's Bobby Lee. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mm-hmm. | |
| We've all seen it. | ||
| You said you meditate? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Like, what do you do? | ||
| You know, nothing like, you know, nothing special. | ||
| Just sit around, do a 10-minute little meditation when I get up in the morning. | ||
| Sometimes they're guided, a lot of times they're not. | ||
| But I talked to, I don't know, you know who Donnick Carey is? | ||
| He's a tremendous writer. | ||
| Wrote for The Simpsons, wrote for Letterman. | ||
| And he came on my podcast and he just told me about this thing that he was doing, this acronym that he was doing every day, Mr. Always. | ||
| Just meditate, read, art, write, exercise every day. | ||
| That was like part of his rules. | ||
| And so I was like, oh, I'm going to try to adapt that into my rules just as a way to keep that going. | ||
| So that's part of what I do. | ||
| Meditate, read, art, write, exercise every day. | ||
| That's awesome. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, that's a beautiful thing. | ||
| If you could structure your life like that. | ||
| And make sure you follow those principles. | ||
| You'll just get more out of your brain. | ||
| Yeah, and then you're surprised about, like, for all the times you're bored and you're like, oh, there's too many hours in a day. | ||
| You're like, if you gotta go through all those fucking things, you'll be like, fuck, half the day is gone. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I don't understand people that say there's too many hours in a day. | ||
| Like, what are you doing? | ||
| I want a hundred lives. | ||
| I want to live a hundred separate lives so I can just do different. | ||
| I literally don't do things because I'm scared I'll get too into them and then I will have less time for all the other shit that I'm already obsessed with. | ||
| I'm the same way. | ||
| I mull over the decision for an extended period of time because I know once I make the decision, I'm all in. | ||
| I started playing video games on Twitch and doing these little comedy nights on Twitch where I show old videos and make fun of people because that's part of things that I miss was that... | ||
| Not just watching comedy. | ||
| I miss being in the back of the room, making fun of this punchline or this tag, and then being like, oh, that's good. | ||
| I miss that, so I've been doing that on Twitch and playing games with people, but it took me a long time to decide to do it because I was like, oh, once I do it, anything, stand-up, acting, whatever, if I choose to do it, I go full force. | ||
| Yeah, you get into it, right? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And then it becomes a part of your daily routine, and then you're trying to get better at it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Podcasting. | ||
| Yeah, man. | ||
| The Twitch thing seems like you could eat up a lot of your day just fucking around on Twitch. | ||
| You can. | ||
| Do you have a good chair that supports your back well? | ||
| I got a solid chair. | ||
| I could use a better chair. | ||
| What about the chair you're in right now? | ||
| Do you like that one? | ||
| It's pretty nice. | ||
| It's very good. | ||
| Yeah, it's solid. | ||
| I like these. | ||
| Good for the back. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Ergonomic. | ||
| You need something ergonomic. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You don't want to develop back problems because of COVID. No. | ||
| You know? | ||
| No. | ||
| Like all the people that are just sitting down all the time? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Well, that's why, again, the two treads a day. | ||
| Just make sure, keeping myself upright, moving. | ||
| So when you do this meditating thing, you do it every day, ten minutes. | ||
| You start your day this way. | ||
| Do you go to a place, like a quiet place in your house where no one's around? | ||
| I usually do it right there in bed. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, yeah? | |
| Make up the bed, get everything together, sit there, meditate for ten minutes. | ||
| Usually try to do it before my son wakes up, before the neighbors wake up, because their family doesn't seem to be as structurally strong as ours. | ||
|
unidentified
|
LAUGHTER Oh, you got wacky neighbors? | |
| They like yelling at each other. | ||
| Oh, that's a bummer. | ||
| All day. | ||
| And then the wife, you know they've had a fight because then in the morning the wife will come out in the morning going, I love you! | ||
| I love you! | ||
| She's like, he's not saying it back, lady. | ||
| Oh, no. | ||
| Oh, no. | ||
| Yeah, they're not doing well. | ||
| There's a trap that some people get in that fight, break up, make up trap. | ||
| Because it makes everything so exciting. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mm-hmm. | |
| That's the problem. | ||
| High school. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, that's why I like, you know, I got married on Friday, super chill. | ||
| Super ass chill. | ||
| The wedding was so chill that I was like, this is going to be a great marriage. | ||
| We just got dressed. | ||
| I got my son dressed and went off with my friend. | ||
| She got dressed with her friend. | ||
| We met together at the place. | ||
| The guy just went over his dumb spiel and then we talked to each other. | ||
| Went home, took some pictures. | ||
| We ordered in from one of our favorite restaurants. | ||
| We watched 90 Day Fiance and then we fell asleep and had sex the next morning because we knew we were going to be there. | ||
| Did you get married during COVID? Yeah. | ||
| Oh, wow. | ||
| Yeah, this last Friday. | ||
| Oh, well, congratulations, man. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| Thank you so much. | ||
| That's why you're so excited about it. | ||
| Let me talk to you in a couple years. | ||
| Well, let me show you a picture of her. | ||
| I've seen a picture of her. | ||
| She's beautiful. | ||
| Congratulations. | ||
| It's one of the things about being talented. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You get a box above your weight class. | ||
| Oh, way. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| I was like, oh, if I didn't do comedy, I'd never even see you. | ||
| That's cool, though. | ||
| That's a bright spot. | ||
| You'll always look back on the time you got married and go, damn, we got married during one of the weirdest times in the history of the United States. | ||
| Yeah, man. | ||
| Leaning into what's solid when shit's all falling apart. | ||
| That was actually, like, we got engaged before it, of course, but I was like, oh, I'm pretty sure. | ||
| I was a little gun shy because I've been I got married when I was in my 20s and Obviously that didn't work out too well and I had my son and I remember leaving my home there and I was like This will never happen again. | ||
| I will you know and it still will never happen again, but I was still a little gun shy But so like oh well we're in the good times we go to nice we go to fucking Wherever and sure we'd hang out at home or we just she'd go on set with me It's a minnie movie in Oklahoma and we still have fun And so I knew she was a good woman I knew that I could trust her, but especially when the shit goes down and everything's going bad. | ||
| And she's out there like, okay, well, what do we do? | ||
| What do we need to pull back on? | ||
| What can we, you know, purchase less of? | ||
| And then I thought I might have to go out of the country for this role for a few months. | ||
| And I was like, oh shit, I'll leave my son with her. | ||
| And I had no worry. | ||
| And I was like, even, you know, when he was with his mom, I would be worried, you know? | ||
| But with her... | ||
| I know she's got him. | ||
| I know she loves him. | ||
| I know she's got his best interest at heart. | ||
| And that really was when it clicked in. | ||
| And I was like, oh, this is my wife. | ||
| Like, this is my person. | ||
| That's beautiful. | ||
| I love stories like that. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| That's amazing. | ||
| Congratulations. | ||
| Yeah, she's special. | ||
| She's a special person, I think, because she's a little small town Canadian lady. | ||
| So she doesn't know how hot she is, you know. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That could be a problem here. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| Oh, she's figured it out. | ||
| She's figured it out. | ||
| A lot of guys, you know, try to hit on her every fucking day, but I'm not worried. | ||
| Good for you. | ||
| Good for you. | ||
| I wonder when this is going to end, the lockdown. | ||
| When are we going to get back to normal? | ||
| Are you going to be one of the first in line for a vaccine? | ||
| Are you going to wait it out? | ||
| I got to wait in the middle. | ||
| I got to be somewhere in the middle. | ||
| As a parent of a child with autism, vaccines scare me in some ways, but it's still obviously... | ||
| Do you think that vaccines cause autism? | ||
| I don't believe they cause autism. | ||
| I believe they can accelerate... | ||
| Certain things and people who maybe are predisposed to having it. | ||
| And I will tell you a personal story and people can choose to like it or not. | ||
| But I just remember the day that we got my son his first vaccinations. | ||
| He had been developing normally and just been chill and been talking and doing all the things pretty normally. | ||
| And then we got him the vaccine and me and my ex-wife, and we just remember he just kind of like was out of it. | ||
| And we even, because me and my ex-wife were big potheads, we were both like, oh, look how stoned he looks. | ||
| Look how fucking, he looks so stoned and he's out of it. | ||
| But he fucking never came back. | ||
| And so that was a moment where I was like, you know, I was like, I don't know if it caused it or that, but I was like, this is... | ||
| That's the story I can tell you. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| It's not the first time I've heard that. | ||
| A friend, my friend Johnny, had a very similar situation. | ||
| I don't, yeah, I don't know. | ||
| I know how adamant the people that make vaccines are that vaccines don't cause autism. | ||
| And I know it's a fiercely debated issue. | ||
| And in fact, Dr. Peter Hotez, who is an expert in vaccines, who actually has an autistic daughter, Is adamant about the fact that there's apparently different environmental factors that contribute to autism. | ||
| And they think all of it takes place during the womb. | ||
| But I don't know. | ||
| I can never be like, well, vaccine gave my son autism. | ||
| I would never say that. | ||
| But I will just tell you that story. | ||
| The thing is, if that story... | ||
| If that was the case... | ||
| How much do you think would ever get out that all these people who have this similar story all have a case against the pharmaceutical companies? | ||
| I mean, just wrap your mind around the legal troubles. | ||
| And I'm not saying that vaccines cause autism. | ||
| What I am saying is if they did, there would most certainly be an effort to conceal that. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| Most certainly. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| That would be a crazy lawsuit. | ||
| Because I mean, how many children are autistic in this country? | ||
| Do you know? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| But I know it's a lot. | ||
| It's a lot. | ||
| And the question is... | ||
| The question's always been, are there more now because fathers are older, mothers are older, environmental factors, or that we're diagnosing it now, we didn't diagnose it before, we didn't understand it before. | ||
| I mean, the first time I even heard of autism was Rain Man. | ||
| Remember the Dustin Hoffman movie? | ||
| That was the first time I ever heard about it. | ||
| I didn't even know what it was. | ||
| I never met anybody who had autism, so I saw that and I was like, huh, what's going on there? | ||
| Yeah, same to me. | ||
| I never thought about it, never had any second thought about it at all until my son was diagnosed. | ||
| I had to become much more aware about it. | ||
| It's still a thing that I get hit with because I'm just a dummy because I'll be like, okay, my son's got his high school and he's doing well and he's going to his classes and then they have to actually sit there and they go like, okay, you know, he's getting a certificate, but you know this isn't a real, he's not a real high school graduate. | ||
| And I'm like, oh, oh, what? | ||
| You know? | ||
| No! | ||
| He's a high school graduate and I want my son to go to college! | ||
| And then I have to sit back and go like, oh wait, fuck. | ||
| We have a different road. | ||
| We have a different life. | ||
| And actually, this lockdown and everything has really been helpful in going through that and just being like, well, everything's fucking weird and different. | ||
| Because I'd always been like, well, no matter what, my son wants to go to UCLA. So I'll pay for him to go to UCLA, even if it's just life classes or whatever. | ||
| But... | ||
| Now I've been thinking about more like, okay, let's just figure out a way for him to be more independent on his own, physically, financially, whatever he can do. | ||
| He might not go to college. | ||
| He might go to college. | ||
| But, you know, again, if I make my show, I'm like, well, he's got to be a consultant on this show. | ||
| He's got to do this, he's got to do that. | ||
| I just want him to have a good life, basically. | ||
| Of course. | ||
| Is there anything that helps him? | ||
| Like, does anything alleviate some of his symptoms? | ||
| I mean... | ||
| Just the constant therapies that he's been in. | ||
| He's diagnosed when he was 2. He's 17 now. | ||
| So he's been in school since he was 2. Just doing different, you know, from pre-kindergarten therapies through voice therapy. | ||
| And I just think it's been that constant. | ||
| Right now he's getting a lot of social skills therapy where he was before everything got locked down. | ||
| He was doing this thing called the Miracle Project, which is awesome. | ||
| They just take kids with different backgrounds and teach them social skills, take them on different outings. | ||
| And my son was doing a play, which unfortunately got canceled because of it. | ||
| But they sent us a tape of the rehearsal. | ||
| And it was dope because it was the day I found out I wasn't getting this role. | ||
| It was on my vision board of, like, I want to fucking get this role. | ||
| And I didn't get it, and I was pissed off and doing the same thing. | ||
| Like, fuck Hollywood. | ||
| They don't understand. | ||
| They don't understand how good I am! | ||
| And then I just watched my son and all these other autistic teenagers do their own production of a play. | ||
| It's the silliest thing I've ever seen. | ||
| My son is singing the Spongebob theme song. | ||
| Another kid is singing a Drake song. | ||
| And just... | ||
| Seeing them go from being these awkward in their shell, looking down, looking at the floor, and then the moment that they're actually interested in something. | ||
| When my son hears this song play, or they know it's their turn to say their line, them light up and fucking just nail their line and be fucking great at it. | ||
| And I was like, man, that's what art is. | ||
| That's what I love is... | ||
| I don't give a shit about money about it. | ||
| I mean, it's nice to pay my bills, but I like this feeling that I get from it and of watching my son get to do it. | ||
| It just makes me feel good. | ||
| I'm sorry, this is a rambly-ass story. | ||
| No, no, no, that's not rambly at all, man. | ||
| You're expressing yourself. | ||
| That's not rambly at all. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, sometimes you need to be exposed to different things just to put it into perspective. | ||
| Just how fortunate we are and how fortunate, you know, how easy we really do have it and how good we really have it. | ||
| And sometimes, you know, when you have ambitious goals and you have, you know, your eyes are on the prize, you got a vision board and you're like, fuck, why isn't this happening for me? | ||
| Sometimes you got to see some struggle. | ||
| You got to see people that just aren't doing that well to realize like, oh, I'm all right. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, I've been made very well aware that I'm fucking doing extremely well. | ||
| Extremely. | ||
| That's one of the best things, I think, about COVID initially. | ||
| I mean, it just took too long and it's been too fucked up now. | ||
| But initially I felt like One of the good aspects of having this thing where you're forced to stay home and everybody's worried about a disease is like you realize like, hey, family, friends, loved ones, this is what's important. | ||
| All this other bullshit is like when the world is falling apart, the love that you have for your family and your friends, that's what's important. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It felt good like that for a couple of weeks and then everybody felt like they started tearing at each other. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| They got scared. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, God, social media is so fucking terrifying now. | ||
| Just dive into this pit of animals eating each other. | ||
| It's like, oof. | ||
| Everyone's so angry. | ||
| There's so much anger. | ||
| And then also, it's like the worst timing ever, right? | ||
| Trump and then the fucking elections are coming. | ||
| So there's all this chaos and... | ||
| Joe Biden can't talk and the fucking, you know, November's around the corner. | ||
| It's like, oh my God. | ||
| And then everything's still locked up and it's like, oh my God. | ||
| And they're talking about dropping down the unemployment check to 400 bucks instead of 600. And then they want the states to pay 25%. | ||
| The state's like, we don't have the fucking money. | ||
| Like, oh Jesus! | ||
| It's fucking nuts! | ||
| It's fucking nuts! | ||
| But then, you know, it's overwhelming until you just go to the basics of it. | ||
| That's something I always believed from when I was very young, and I think it's something as a young African-American man, pretty early, where you just go, nobody's got my fucking back. | ||
| I gotta take care of me. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| No one's got my fucking back. | ||
| The government does not have our back. | ||
| Not at all. | ||
| And it's not possible. | ||
| Not one bit. | ||
| We have grossly overestimated their ability to actually, like, manage something like this. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Which is in turn why, like, I see what we see in that social media of us eating each other and going at each other, especially anyone that is considered of any stature. | ||
| I mean, I see it happen to you all the time, right? | ||
| With people coming at you for one thing or another. | ||
| I laugh about it because I'm just like, it's just fucking Joe! | ||
| Who cares if he doesn't like video games? | ||
| Who gives a fuck? | ||
| I don't care! | ||
| The problem is they didn't even listen to what I said. | ||
| It took a chunk of what I said and took it out of context. | ||
| I love video games. | ||
| That's the problem. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| Old school Quaker. | ||
| Yeah, and I even talked about in that same clip And we wound up putting the full version of it online because someone had taken like a 50-second chunk of it. | ||
| But I even talked about those people that do make a living at it. | ||
| A lot of money. | ||
| There are people that do it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But I'm saying for a lot of people that waste, if you want to do something else, like if you're trying to do something with your life, you can find things that will waste all of your time. | ||
| And that's one of them. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, I mean, I like streaming and I like playing games, but it's also the reason why I do the comedy and I do other things is because... | ||
| I think at the very base of it, there's no stability of trying to make your living off of someone else's product, right? | ||
| You're playing someone else's game. | ||
| It's not yours, you know? | ||
| So at any moment, that can be taken away from you. | ||
| And so on that small level is what I believe in what you were saying completely. | ||
| But I think the reason why people attack so much is because The people who we're told are supposed to be our leaders are obviously not, and then people are just looking for leaders. | ||
| So if you have a big platform, they're just like, oh, you're a leader. | ||
| I had people do that to me. | ||
| When the whole George Floyd thing was happening and Breonna Taylor was happening, one guy in particular just kept... | ||
| When are you going to talk about it? | ||
| When are you going to make a post about it? | ||
| And what he didn't know is I was going through my own personal shit. | ||
| A friend of mine had committed suicide that very week in a home that I had lived in three years prior. | ||
| And I was fucking... | ||
| Dealing with that and dealing with my own life. | ||
| And so I was like, you know, who gives a fuck when I talk about anything? | ||
| You have no obligation to talk about anything. | ||
| I have no obligation. | ||
| And so it pissed me off. | ||
| But then I thought about it and I go, oh, he's not fucking mad at me. | ||
| He doesn't give a shit about me. | ||
| He's scared. | ||
| He's scared shitless. | ||
| And he's looking for someone to lead him. | ||
| And he was hoping it would be me. | ||
| But there's also people look for an opportunity to get upset at you for not complying. | ||
| Like that there's a narrative where you're supposed to be discussing whatever's in the news, whatever's going on. | ||
| There's a narrative that you are, you know, you're a person who talks, so you should be discussing these things. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You're a public figure, so you should lend your voice because they think you should. | ||
| This is the dumbest fucking thing ever because you're just like, well, how do you assume I think about black lives? | ||
| I'm a black man. | ||
| I would like my life to matter. | ||
| Why do I gotta go around talking about it for fucking all day? | ||
| Gumming up the works takes up too much fucking time. | ||
| I agree with that completely. | ||
| You should be able to talk about whatever you want. | ||
| One of my favorite follows on Instagram is Lil Duval. | ||
| Oh yeah! | ||
| And Little Duvall, through all this craziness, he's just maintaining being Little Duvall and having fun. | ||
| That sounds like him. | ||
| Always. | ||
| Always. | ||
| Always light-hearted, having a good time, always laughing. | ||
| His Instagram is one of the most consistently happy things. | ||
| And that shows his character. | ||
| Through all this, he's maintained his sense of humor and his perspective. | ||
| Yeah! | ||
| That's power! | ||
| That's power! | ||
| Why would you ever let someone take that away from you? | ||
| We're here to have fun. | ||
| We're here to have a good time. | ||
| So, no matter what the circumstances, I'm gonna have a fucking good time. | ||
| I learned that in my sets long ago when I was like, well, you guys might not have a good time tonight, but I will. | ||
| Yeah, sometimes you have to, right? | ||
| You have to go internal. | ||
| I am really interested to see how we recover from this. | ||
| I'm really interested to see, because we're in such uncharted territory. | ||
| This is new waters, and it could go good or it could go bad. | ||
| I mean, every single republic, every single empire that has existed before the United States has crumbled. | ||
| All of them. | ||
| They all crumble eventually. | ||
| My fear is the ones that are strong, why we are falling apart, are dangerous. | ||
| They're dangerous societies that are dictatorships, like China. | ||
| If China somehow or another becomes the way they're controlling Hong Kong, controls the United States, we got real fucking problems on our hands. | ||
| Now, I don't know if that's really possible, if this is just like some fear We see bits of it all the time, right? | ||
| In business, you see the way that these so-called independent enterprises refuse to speak on certain things because there's just so much money involved. | ||
| When it gets to that point, you are owned. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Did you ever see that thing where the World Health Organization guy won't talk about Taiwan, won't even mention Taiwan? | ||
| He's in an interview, because China does not recognize Taiwan. | ||
| They believe Taiwan is a part of China, and Taiwan thinks it's independent. | ||
| So the woman interviewer was asking this guy who works for the World Health Organization, Taiwan has done a wonderful job of handling this, and he's like, Click. | ||
| He just disconnects. | ||
| And then he comes back. | ||
| Like, you could see him reach over and disconnect it. | ||
| She goes, well, we seem to have disconnected. | ||
| He goes, but now we're back. | ||
| So what I was saying was that China, well, China's done a wonderful job. | ||
| You know, there's no need to talk about that any further, so let's keep going. | ||
| So he would not even say the word Taiwan. | ||
| And, like, this is the World Health Organization. | ||
| Like, you won't say the name of an actual country? | ||
| Like, really? | ||
| That's bananas. | ||
| Like, well, I can't trust you. | ||
| No. | ||
| You won't even say Taiwan? | ||
| What the fuck else won't you say? | ||
| You know, I mean, there's been a few of those things, man. | ||
| What you see and you go, God damn. | ||
| Just so many businesses have a vested interest in China and keeping relationships with China. | ||
| And while COVID is happening and the economic downturn, they've been buying up shit left and right. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| I mean, because, again, as a big gamer, Tencent is big in the game industry as owners of just about everything. | ||
| And that's one of the biggest companies in China. | ||
| What do they make? | ||
| Everything. | ||
| Like what games? | ||
| I think they own Fortnite now. | ||
| They own a bit of PUBG, I believe. | ||
| They own percentages of just about every company. | ||
| Goddamn. | ||
| And China owns them? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I don't know how I feel about that. | ||
| Like when Trump was saying he's going to ban TikTok, I was like, ooh, I want to see how this plays out. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, that is actually, I was like, oh, that's positive. | ||
| In a way, it is, right? | ||
| It is. | ||
| It is. | ||
| But then Instagram came along with Reels. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Like their TikTok ripoff. | ||
| I don't know who's using that, though. | ||
| Is anybody using Reels? | ||
| I keep an eye on you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
A little busy to pay attention to that shit this week. | |
| Yeah, we've had a busy week. | ||
| Do you TikTok? | ||
| No, man. | ||
| No, no, no. | ||
| You know, I figure you shouldn't be a comedian over 30 on TikTok. | ||
| That seems to not go well. | ||
| It seems like it doesn't go well. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mm-mm. | |
| Someone just got a special off doing it, basically, though. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Who? | |
| Sarah Cooper just got a Netflix special. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What? | |
| Oh, is that? | ||
| You sent me that. | ||
| That's the lady who lip syncs. | ||
| I'm wondering who that is. | ||
| She lip syncs Donald Trump's speeches. | ||
| Oh, okay. | ||
| That's gonna go good. | ||
| I'm excited for that. | ||
| There's many things that are viral that I understand. | ||
| That is not one of them. | ||
| I've watched that. | ||
| I was like, she's just saying what he's saying, but she's doing it. | ||
| Like, there's nothing else to it. | ||
| But she's a stand-up? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| No? | ||
| No. | ||
| What does she do? | ||
| Does she just do that? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| She just hosted Jimmy Kimmel like two nights ago. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What? | |
| I saw that. | ||
| That's why I was like, because I looked her up and I go, oh, I don't know who that is. | ||
| Maybe she's not good. | ||
| But then I saw the Jimmy Kimmel thing. | ||
| So then I go, oh, maybe this whole time she's been grinding and I just did not know. | ||
| Nope. | ||
| I thought as far as I know. | ||
| What does she do? | ||
| Is she a writer or something? | ||
| Yeah, she's a writer. | ||
| Oh, so a comedy writer? | ||
| Google says she's an American author and comedian based in New York City. | ||
| First book, A Hundred Tricks to Appear Smart in Meetings was published in 2016. | ||
| Hmm. | ||
| She's a writer. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hmm. | |
| Maybe. | ||
| Who knows? | ||
| I mean, listen, she might have a fucking Netflix special that turns out amazing. | ||
| Either way, she gets a good check. | ||
| I'm happy for her. | ||
| Somebody told me Seth Meyers' Netflix special was very good. | ||
| And he's... | ||
| I don't think he's really a stand-up, right? | ||
| That's not his background. | ||
| He was an SNL guy, and then he hosted that late-night show. | ||
| But I talked to people that said his special was very good. | ||
| I haven't seen it. | ||
| I just want to see Sam J's. | ||
| That's the only one I want. | ||
| I haven't watched it, but I want to. | ||
| Who's? | ||
| Sam J. Do you know her? | ||
| Um, I do. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Yeah, she's a writer for SNL. I know who she is. | ||
| Powerful black butch lesbian. | ||
| Yes, that's right. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Great joke writer. | ||
| Yeah, I've met her at the store, I believe. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| Oh, there she is. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah. | |
| Yeah, looks a lot like me. | ||
| Looks like my sister. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Yeah, the Netflix... | ||
| Actually looks like my tougher brother. | ||
| Wow! | ||
| The Netflix thing is so interesting, because they've basically taken over the stand-up comedy special now. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Interesting. | ||
| It used to be Comedy Central. | ||
| It's really... | ||
| Comedy Central... | ||
| Getting people to watch the streaming online Comedy Central specials, it's just not the same. | ||
| Yeah, I know. | ||
| And then they geo-block that shit, so... | ||
| Oh, do they really? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Oh, no. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mm-hmm. | |
| So, like, if you're in the UK, you can't watch it? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mm-mm. | |
| Oh, no. | ||
| I don't know why that's a smart decision. | ||
| That's a terrible decision. | ||
| Who made that one? | ||
| Someone higher than the people I talk to, I guess. | ||
| So your special that you did for Comedy Central, they geo-blocked that? | ||
| Yeah, they geo-blocked that, and then they put it out. | ||
| So now it's actually out on YouTube for free right now for 30 days. | ||
| So I was stoked. | ||
| I was like, oh, people in Canada and the UK can finally see it. | ||
| And then I was getting messages being like, no, we can't. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, wow. | |
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's stupid. | |
| Isn't that the best decision? | ||
| Just not to confuse what we were just talking about, her does not have a stand-up special according to the press release. | ||
| It's a comedy special that will be full of vignettes dealing with issues of politics, race, gender, class, and other subjects. | ||
| Short interview sketches and more shenanigans. | ||
| Oh, so it's a writer. | ||
| She wrote something. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Pitched something. | |
| A sketch show event. | ||
| Yeah, but it's... | ||
| I just got... | ||
| It was weird to me that things were going viral because... | ||
| She was just lip-syncing things the president had said. | ||
| So it would be like the president's voice and it would be her lip-syncing it. | ||
| And everybody would be like, this is amazing. | ||
| And I'd be like, she's just saying the words with her lips while he talks. | ||
| Like, what's... | ||
| Missing something. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, you know, we we are around a comedy a lot. | ||
| That's what I always have to remember is that my palate is, you know, more refined. | ||
| Yeah, I think it's also like there's a gene for certain things. | ||
| You know, like I don't have that Grateful Dead gene. | ||
| People love the Grateful Dead. | ||
| They love it. | ||
| They love it. | ||
| I listen. | ||
| I go, okay. | ||
| I don't want to be mad. | ||
| I just you You and I are different. | ||
| It's okay. | ||
| It's okay. | ||
| No need to be angry. | ||
| Yeah, I had no love. | ||
| Did you get it? | ||
| No, I couldn't tell you a song. | ||
| Trucking. | ||
| That's a good one. | ||
| Well, you said you didn't like them, but you really got into it. | ||
| I tried to sell it. | ||
| I don't want to tell you in touch of gray. | ||
| They had some cool-ass Nike shoes they put out recently. | ||
| Did they? | ||
| Yeah, but they went up to like $1,200 real quick. | ||
| Yeah, so I was like, that's out of my COVID price range for sure. | ||
| Yeah, it's a lot of white people that do acid. | ||
| Yeah, oh yeah, yeah. | ||
| Rich White Yup, he's one of those shoes for sure. | ||
| For sure. | ||
| Oh, Jesus. | ||
| You know I want those. | ||
| Oh, those are pretty trippy. | ||
| The green ones? | ||
| Come on! | ||
| They do look pretty trippy. | ||
| Mm-hmm. | ||
| Really weird. | ||
| Put those on the comedy store stage? | ||
| Come on! | ||
| Mm-hmm. | ||
| What's up with the bear? | ||
| I think that's their logo. | ||
| That's their logo. | ||
| A bear? | ||
| Yeah, I looked into it one time because I didn't know either. | ||
| He's named after their engineer who was one of the guys that developed LSD, I think, or something like that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What? | |
| Yeah. | ||
| I'll pull up his name again in just a second to show you. | ||
| One of the guys, but Albert Hoffman synthesized LSD. Right, but up here. | ||
| So he's like a guy who worked with Hoffman? | ||
| When I looked it up, he said it hit like somewhere in the range of like four million hits of acid he's responsible for. | ||
| Something insane. | ||
| Wow! | ||
| I wonder how many ideas can directly be traced to that guy's work. | ||
| A lot of ideas will come to you through acid. | ||
| I've never done acid. | ||
| Want to do it now? | ||
| Mm-mm. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| You should try microdosing it. | ||
| I'd be up to it. | ||
| It's interesting. | ||
| I like mushrooms. | ||
| Osley Stanley. | ||
| He is a clandestine chemist, an audio engineer and clandestine chemist. | ||
| He was a key figure in the San Francisco Bay Area hippie movement during the 1960s and played a pivotal role in the decade's counterculture. | ||
| So he supplied the acid. | ||
| Probably worked for the CIA, this motherfucker. | ||
| Five million doses. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh! | |
| Ooh! | ||
| Stanley was the first known private individual to manufacture mass quantities of LSD by his own account between 65 and 67. Only in two years, he produced no less than 500 grams of LSD, accounting to a little more than 5 million doses. | ||
| And his professional name was Bear. | ||
| Oh, interesting. | ||
| So that's why. | ||
| So they're just like tied to LSD, the dead. | ||
| And he's the engineer that engineered the music, so that's why they say you have to be on that shit to understand the sound. | ||
| Yeah, that's what they say. | ||
| I mean, everyone I know who does acid loves the dead when they're on acid. | ||
| It's called the Wall of Sound sound system. | ||
| I thought that was Phil Spector. | ||
| That's a different thing. | ||
| Oh, he has his own wall sound. | ||
| This Phil Spector case is one of the creepiest Hollywood cases ever. | ||
| I remember when he got arrested, and then I didn't really know who he was, and I did a deep dive into who he was after he got arrested for murder, and apparently that was his thing, like pulling guns on people. | ||
| But when you see him in the trial with all his crazy wigs on, you realize this crazy motherfucker was involved with some of the biggest bands, some of the best music, and he was a psychopath the entire time. | ||
| Yeah, but I think, especially back then, even now, our type of businesses can kind of hide those people, right? | ||
| They don't... | ||
| I've always hung out with, as long as I've done comedy, I was like, oh, that guy's a drug dealer, this guy does... | ||
| That guy's Jesus! | ||
| Just to clarify, too, his wall of sound is a production formula to make records, whereas the engineers was an actual, like, wall of sound of... | ||
| Physical sound amplifier speakers that was touring around the country to make noise to blast in your face. | ||
| Oh, okay. | ||
| They both called the same thing. | ||
| Okay, so he had developed something for touring that they called The Walls. | ||
| Okay, yeah. | ||
| I don't know jack shit about music. | ||
| Do you play any instruments? | ||
| No, never. | ||
| Played piano when I was very young, but no. | ||
| Yeah, that's another one of those things where I feel like if I got into that... | ||
| I mean, if you start playing guitar or something like that, that seems like a long road. | ||
| Yeah, you gotta choose. | ||
| It has to be your passion. | ||
| Whenever I picked up an instrument, it always felt real foreign. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It never felt at home at all. | |
| Yeah, but it seems like a dope thing to learn. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Like, I wish I could shred. | ||
| I just wish I could play something on the piano. | ||
| It seems like, you know, people just fall in love if you could play the piano. | ||
| Right, you'd be sophisticated. | ||
| You just sit down someplace and you just start playing the piano? | ||
| Right, you walk into a hotel and there's a hotel lobby. | ||
| There's a nice bar there with the piano. | ||
| You're like, let me sit down and play you a melody. | ||
| Yeah, and everybody starts gathering around you. | ||
| Yeah, they think you're cool. | ||
| That's a thing. | ||
| But that's like that scene in Animal House where the dude's playing the guitar at a party. | ||
| Remember that scene? | ||
| Sort of, yeah. | ||
| Do you remember that scene? | ||
| No, you could tell I was blanking. | ||
| I know what you're talking about because it's an old joke, but I'm not a big Animal House guy. | ||
| Yeah, he steals the guitar from him and smashes him over the head with it. | ||
| No, he didn't smash him over the head with it. | ||
| He broke the guitar. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This guy. | |
| This scene. | ||
| Can we get a little volume? | ||
| John Belushi is listening to this guy playing this horrible folk music. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I can't do it for you. | |
| Yeah, I know. | ||
| YouTube will have an issue. | ||
| Google those words, you'll find it. | ||
| Back in the day when this is what everybody wanted to do. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sorry. | |
| Did you ever see Animal House? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Probably when I was young. | ||
| Don't recall it. | ||
| It's a classic. | ||
| It seems very slow now, though. | ||
| It is. | ||
| That's the problem. | ||
| There's a lot of those movies that just don't hold up. | ||
| I tried to watch Porky's the other day. | ||
| I was like, this is a rape movie. | ||
| Terrible movie. | ||
| I saw two things get announced yesterday for the projects maybe that won't get made, but Three Men and a Baby remake, and then a potential Fresh Prince reboot, but a drama, not a comedy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What? | |
| Yeah. | ||
| What? | ||
| Why can't they just come up with new ideas? | ||
| I agree with that. | ||
| Listen, how about a show where there's a comedian who has an autistic kid? | ||
| Sounds great. | ||
| Does it come out soon? | ||
| Yeah, it should be like a Netflix thing. | ||
| Or maybe Amazon Prime. | ||
| They do a good job. | ||
| You ever seen The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel? | ||
| I have not. | ||
| It's very good. | ||
| Especially the first two seasons. | ||
| It kind of soured for me the third season, but... | ||
| It's a pretty good representation of stand-up. | ||
| I mean, not perfect, but pretty good. | ||
| Pretty good. | ||
| Like, close enough. | ||
| Where you go, huh. | ||
| That's just funny hearing you watch that show, because I don't think anybody would think that you would watch that show. | ||
| Why is that? | ||
| Because it's just funny, like, Joe Rogan just going like, you know what I like? | ||
| Marvelous Mrs. Maze! | ||
| I like a lot of girly shit. | ||
| I do. | ||
| Well, then you gotta get on that 90 Day Fiance. | ||
| I don't know if I can go that far. | ||
| Think about it. | ||
| I like Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. | ||
| Yeah, that's my shit. | ||
| That's the optimistic and charming. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Come on! | |
| That's a funny fucking show though, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| That's a good show. | ||
| They got like eight seasons. | ||
| Yeah, that was a good one. | ||
| I mean, and so bleak. | ||
| You know, that's the type of shit I like when you can take bleak things and still be so funny. | ||
| The bleakest. | ||
| I mean, someone who got kidnapped and forced into a sex cult in a fucking bunker. | ||
| And then 15 years later, she gets out with a super positive attitude and is facing all the modern world's issues. | ||
| Yeah, it's fucking great. | ||
| She's such an amazing actress. | ||
| Yeah, well, it's a Tina Fey show too, that lady. | ||
| She figures shit out. | ||
| She sure does. | ||
| So, um... | ||
| This vision board, this ultimate vision board, the ultimate thing is a show and movies and stuff like that. | ||
| Is there anything that you have made manifest that's actually happened because of this vision board? | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| My house was one of my first major vision board things. | ||
| I put that when I didn't have a house, living in my apartment. | ||
| And what it does for me is just kind of... | ||
| It focuses me. | ||
| It gives me a direction instead of just being this guy who doesn't have his hands on the rudder or the oar or whatever the fucking thing that steers the boat. | ||
| And so I was like, oh, I want to get this house. | ||
| And so in order to get the house, I had to stop just like... | ||
| Not paying attention to my money. | ||
| I had to stop just buying random sneakers every week. | ||
| I had to start being like, okay, I need to build my credit. | ||
| I had to pay these old bills from when I was 20 and didn't pay those off because I didn't think I'd ever have fucking money. | ||
| So who cares if I skipped out on this rent? | ||
| You know, I had to go back and undo all these things so that I could get to that ultimate vision of getting the house and then we end up I haven't had my house for two years now. | ||
| I fucking love it. | ||
| I put that I wanted to be on Reno 911 in there, and I taped that. | ||
| I don't know if I got cut out or not, because it's a six-minute Quibi thing. | ||
| But a lot of things I put on my vision board end up happening. | ||
| That's interesting that you say that you had to go and redo things that you fucked up. | ||
| What brought you to that decision? | ||
| If I wanted to move in a lot of ways in my life, the same with dealing with my ex-wife and things like that, I had to go to therapy. | ||
| I had to start I wasn't trusting anyone. | ||
| I was like, anyone who wants to hang out with me is just because I have a little bit of money or because I've been on a couple of shows or doing that, which is so ridiculous. | ||
| I was like, no, most people don't even fucking know me, you know? | ||
| But some people did, and sometimes that would happen. | ||
| People would be hanging out with me just because they thought I could introduce them to a fun party or someone else cooler than me. | ||
| And I had to... | ||
| Stopped looking for that and being so worried about that and I had to go and do just a mindset. | ||
| I think... | ||
| This rapper, I also really like, Waka Flocka Flame. | ||
| Many people talk about this. | ||
| I just changed my mindset from a survival mindset to a thrive mindset. | ||
| Like, oh, I am okay. | ||
| I am fine. | ||
| So I can go ahead and just take care of this business. | ||
| I'm going to get more work. | ||
| I'm going to get more jobs because I've proven myself. | ||
| It's not a fluke. | ||
| It's not a mistake that they made in hiring me. | ||
| I'm going to be here. | ||
| What made you like, where did you come up with this idea to sort of correct your mindset? | ||
| Was it just like realizing personally that the way you were looking at things was wrong or did you read something? | ||
| It was just mostly that things in my life were getting better but I wasn't getting happier. | ||
| I had more money. | ||
| I had anything I could buy video game wise, all that stuff. | ||
| I was having a bunch of sex, but I wasn't happier. | ||
| I was still lonely. | ||
| I was still not doing all the things I wanted to do. | ||
| I was chasing things just for money, you know? | ||
| And so I had to just kind of take a step back and go like, okay, don't just chase every single thing you see. | ||
| Figure out what you really go back to like when you started stand-up. | ||
| I'm like, what do you want? | ||
| And all I wanted when I started stand-up was to be able to pay my bills and do the things I want to do. | ||
| And that hasn't changed. | ||
| Was this a gradual process? | ||
| Yeah, for sure. | ||
| For sure. | ||
| Like a couple years. | ||
| So you just realized, was it like you're sitting at home? | ||
| This was not from reading anything? | ||
| It was just from you recognizing that something was wrong? | ||
| It was me recognizing something was wrong in me and me watching the people around me. | ||
| Me watching people with more success than me. | ||
| Just seeing that, like, oh, okay, I feel this way and I have this little bit of money, but maybe if I get more money, I won't. | ||
| But then meeting people with millions of dollars and being like, oh, holy shit. | ||
| Some people still don't have their shit together, no matter how much money they have. | ||
| And some people know exactly who they are. | ||
| They know what they want. | ||
| They are happy within themselves. | ||
| And I want it to be that. | ||
| It's very interesting that you recognized it and made the adjustment. | ||
| That's a sign of a strong mind. | ||
| You were able to recognize that the current patterns that you were operating under weren't fulfilling your needs. | ||
| So you had to assess, but then also move forward and make a change. | ||
| That's a very difficult thing to do. | ||
| Yeah, it's difficult. | ||
| Did that coincide with weight loss? | ||
| It was probably a little bit after the weight loss, but the weight loss kind of gives me the motivation for it. | ||
| My whole life has been motivation for every other step I take. | ||
| I came from just being a college dropout with a son when I was 20. He was diagnosed with autism when I was 23. I didn't have any money. | ||
| My ex-wife was more of an albatross around our thing. | ||
| I have full custody of my son, so it was just like... | ||
| I gotta figure this shit out. | ||
| And once we had a little apartment and everything, I was like, okay, well, I fucking figured this shit out. | ||
| I get my health together. | ||
| And that was a big one because my doctor even told me, she was like, you know, there's so many people. | ||
| I tell all the time, just diet, exercise, diet, exercise. | ||
| You need to lose weight. | ||
| You need to get better. | ||
| You're going to die. | ||
| I tell this to the people all the time. | ||
| And you go, you know how many of my fucking patients have done anything about it? | ||
| And then she says, you. | ||
| That's it. | ||
| You're the only one that I know, that I've talked to about this, who's just done it through diet and exercise. | ||
| So you have a—and she was just like, you have a strong fucking mind. | ||
| So I took that to heart, and I was like, well, fuck, if I can do that, if I can lose 140 pounds, fucking throw—you know, I would work out, throw up, and, you know, I'd give this more to my trainer. | ||
| He would just be like, all right, you throw up, let's— Yeah. | ||
| Can you breathe? | ||
| All right, let's get back at it, you know? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know, where a lot of times people would throw up and they'd be like, okay, well, that was enough for today, you know? | ||
| He would never push. | ||
| He told me day one, he's like, you're a very strong man and we're going to just unlock what you've been covering up with bad decisions. | ||
| It's so true what your doctor said, and it's so interesting. | ||
| When you think about the goals that people have, like one of the major goals, if you asked Americans, like what do you want to do besides be successful, have a family, have a career, they want to lose weight. | ||
| But what I said at the beginning of this podcast, you've done one of the most difficult things a person could do, because you didn't just lose weight. | ||
| You lost a fuckload of weight, and you kept it off. | ||
| And that, to me, is so... | ||
| It's such a... | ||
| It's the craziest thing. | ||
| It's not like gaining weight. | ||
| Gaining weight requires you got to eat all that food. | ||
| You got to really get after it. | ||
| If you really want to gain weight, man, you got to fucking put on that. | ||
| You got to be there to eat. | ||
| You got to get it done. | ||
| People have no problem with that. | ||
| But the not eating, you're literally asking someone to not do something. | ||
| Just don't do something. | ||
| And it's harder to do than to do something. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And then the exercise is maybe even harder to do than to not eat. | ||
| Those are two really difficult things to do that you need to do both of them in order to really get your health in order, in order to really lose weight. | ||
| And everybody knows it! | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Everybody knows it, but nobody does it! | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And then they always want to know, what's the trick? | ||
| What's the trick? | ||
| What's the trick? | ||
| No fucking trick, bro. | ||
| There's no trick. | ||
| Trick is to walk through that door, especially with exercise. | ||
| It is just like a door. | ||
| And that's what my wife said to me. | ||
| She was like, oh, you went from... | ||
| She's like, you were a guy who didn't exercise, and now you're a guy that exercises. | ||
| She's like, there's no part of you... | ||
| That gets up and goes, oh, this is hard. | ||
| Why am I doing this? | ||
| It's just like, this is what you do because this is what you do. | ||
| And the hardest part is making that transition because you go through that first three weeks and you're just like, I fucking hate this. | ||
| Why the fuck am I doing it? | ||
| You're looking at, you know, back when we could go to gyms, you're looking at other people going, oh, well, they're fucking attractive and this and that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| And I'll never be like that. | ||
| You know, and you just gotta get rid of all that. | ||
| I hate that. | ||
| I hate it when I see that in comedy. | ||
| Just mostly because I'm used to it. | ||
| I know where it comes from and I had that in myself when people were like, I don't exercise. | ||
| And they're so fucking proud of it, you know? | ||
| I'm just like, well, okay, we'll see you in 10 years when you change your fucking mind or you just aren't successful. | ||
| Or you're dying. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's the only thing I would tell young me. | ||
| Everything I've done, I'm like, well, that's my process, and I'm glad I wouldn't change a thing. | ||
| The only thing I would have done is told young me, like, hey, motherfucker, if you want to be successful, you just got to be healthy. | ||
| So just get at it. | ||
| It's just better for your brain, too, man. | ||
| You think better. | ||
| I am very fortunate in that I got into exercising and working out very, very young. | ||
| I've never not done it. | ||
| But for me, if I don't do it, I don't think right. | ||
| I'm just... | ||
| And I think it's also, it has to be, because I've been doing it so long, that my brain has this requirement to burn off this energy. | ||
| And that also, the kind of exercise I do is so intense, there's so much aggression, that if I don't do that for a few days, that shit stores up, and then I'm not the nicest person. | ||
| I don't like me. | ||
| If I don't work out for four or five days, I don't like me. | ||
| I'm not that nice. | ||
| I can get edgy real quick, but if I work out every day, I'm the nicest person. | ||
| It's like real simple. | ||
| The body has requirements. | ||
| The mind has requirements. | ||
| If you don't give it those requirements, it starts to malfunction. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's something I've thought about since I was very young, just as our society, that we've kind of mislabeled a lot of words like work and play and what those things mean, and I feel like A lot of things that we consider work aren't work at all. | ||
| They're busy work. | ||
| They're like a waste of time. | ||
| They're just you spending time in a place for a set number of hours. | ||
| Whereas what I consider real work is getting yourself better. | ||
| Exercising, reading, meditating. | ||
| To me, that is work. | ||
| That is how you actually get better at things. | ||
| And that's just kind of how I look at it. | ||
| This is my job. | ||
| I work in entertainment. | ||
| Even if I didn't work in entertainment, it wouldn't matter. | ||
| But the fact that I do, my main jobs are, fuck, stay ready, keep material going, make sure I fucking look good and just have a positive attitude. | ||
| And if I keep it that simple, everything else is fine. | ||
| Yeah, that work, that making sure you do that work. | ||
| For some people, it's just, it's an alien concept. | ||
| They never really developed that habit. | ||
| But if you do, if you just, I swear to God, anybody listen to this? | ||
| Like, oh, I don't think I could do that. | ||
| If you just started, just left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot, just do it. | ||
| Please. | ||
| Just get going. | ||
| Just get going. | ||
| Once you get going, it's so easy to keep going. | ||
| It becomes momentum. | ||
| So much harder to start from a standstill position. | ||
| But once you're doing it and you're kind of like, hey, I worked out every day this week. | ||
| Hey, I worked out every day this month. | ||
| Or hey, I worked out four days a week for the past six weeks. | ||
| I'm like, fuck, man. | ||
| You got some momentum now. | ||
| Yeah, it just feels good. | ||
| And especially, you know, when I was 360, it's not like I was going around doing box jumps and tire pushes and all that shit. | ||
| I was walking. | ||
| I was walking and walking and walking and doing some light bicep curls or whatever, you know? | ||
| You... | ||
| It doesn't matter where you start. | ||
| Did you go all in right from the jump when you said, all right, I'm going to lose weight? | ||
| Or did you vacillate? | ||
| No, once I, you know, again, my mola decision and I make it. | ||
| So once the decision was made, it was more like, okay, it's out of my hands. | ||
| I will do what my trainer says and that's it. | ||
| And that's been the crazy thing because he'll then, like recently, he'll talk about other clients and he'll be like, oh, you know, you wanted him to do this. | ||
| He didn't want to do it, so he didn't do it. | ||
| And I go, oh. | ||
| I never comprehended that I could tell you no. | ||
| I never even thought that I could be like, yeah, I know, I'm tired, fuck it. | ||
| I thought, oh, I'm paying you, this is your job, so I just listen to you. | ||
| But I think that way, it's just me having a good attitude about it. | ||
| Once I was in it, I was in it. | ||
| And then later came the thing of like, oh, I have to mentally now undo like the fact that I still want these things. | ||
| You know, it was easier to just, OK, well, I'm not doing it because I need to protect my health and I'm going to die. | ||
| But once I got down to a healthy way, it was like, OK, now we have to deal with the mental aspect. | ||
| I went to like Overeaters Anonymous for a couple of classes. | ||
| I didn't like that. | ||
| What is that like? | ||
| It's like Alcoholics Anonymous, basically. | ||
| It's the same book even that they read from. | ||
| Yeah, so I think they just need to get their shit changed and get their shit together. | ||
| It doesn't match up because they read you these things like, oh, I reached my lowest moment. | ||
| I lost my family. | ||
| I was living in a train. | ||
| And I was like, well, no, I can't relate to that. | ||
| My lowest moment is that I took a bite of a donut and then put it on top of the trash and then came back and got it and then had to put it deeper in the trash. | ||
| That's what I need to work on. | ||
| Yeah, it's a different kind of addiction, right? | ||
| Mm-hmm. | ||
| Yeah, you don't really lose your life the same way. | ||
| No, it's slow. | ||
| You don't become a junkie. | ||
| It's slow. | ||
| You lose your life in a weird way. | ||
| You lose your physical life. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And you start telling... | ||
| I just remember... | ||
| It's mentally the change of being like, well, you know, I just don't want to do that. | ||
| I don't want to. | ||
| I can't physically go scuba diving. | ||
| They won't let me in my way. | ||
| So, you know, I'm just not interested in any of that, you know? | ||
| And now I'm just like, I want to do anything. | ||
| I went to pro wrestling school for a few months. | ||
| Did you really? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Jamar Nabors has me going to clown college idea. | ||
| So I'm up to anything. | ||
| Clown college? | ||
| Thinking about it. | ||
| What is that? | ||
| Talk to me. | ||
| I don't know much about it, but he went. | ||
| Jamar Nabors went to clown school. | ||
| Jamar's so crazy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah! | |
| And so I was talking to him about acting class, and he was like, man, I think you would kill it at clown school. | ||
| That is hilarious. | ||
| What the fuck is clown school? | ||
| Like, what do you do? | ||
| I bet you there's a lot of water bits, some prop work. | ||
| A lot of nose honking. | ||
| Yeah! | ||
| But I bet you there's some tumbling stuff too. | ||
| So I'd be interested in that. | ||
| But yeah, I went to pro wrestling school. | ||
| Tell me about pro wrestling school. | ||
| Was this because you want to go full David Arquette? | ||
| Great reference. | ||
| Never go full David Arquette. | ||
| There's a You Can't Kill David Arquette documentary. | ||
| Yeah, I know about it. | ||
| I just watched a trailer for it. | ||
| I'm like, this motherfucker is killing himself. | ||
| Yeah, he's out there doing death matches. | ||
| Getting hit in the head with light bulbs and shit. | ||
| Like, okay. | ||
| Yeah, insane. | ||
| No, I didn't want to do that. | ||
| I just, you know, been a big fan of two things my whole life, comedy and pro wrestling. | ||
| And I decided I wanted to, when I lost a weight, I was not aware of what my body was capable of anymore. | ||
| You know, I would still be like pushing myself up off of things and my trainer would be like, what the fuck? | ||
| Like, you know, you're much lighter than you think you are. | ||
| Oh, that's funny. | ||
| And so I decided to go to school to be like, okay, let me throw my body around. | ||
| Let me do as many fucking squats as I can. | ||
| Let me see what I can do. | ||
| Oh, did they make you do like the bodyweight squats? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, yeah. | |
| Like Carl Gotch type workouts? | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| One day they were just mad at us. | ||
| So they made us do like 375 squats. | ||
| Oh, that's a fun day the next day, huh? | ||
| It was a fucking bathtub day. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's And Epsom salts day. | |
| Oh, so much salt. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh my god. | |
| Bodyweight squats will fuck you up. | ||
| Anybody tells me they need a gym to work out, I'm like, listen to me. | ||
| Show me that you could do 200 bodyweight squats. | ||
| You don't need a gym to work out. | ||
| You could develop amazing leg muscles just bodyweight squatting. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, squats, sit-ups, push-ups, burpees, that's a workout. | ||
| Fuck yeah, it is. | ||
| You ever do those Hindu squats where you lift your heel up at the bottom and then push up? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| Tremendous for the quads. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Hindu squats are interesting. | ||
| You start off like this, right? | ||
| And then you drop down. | ||
| You put your hands behind you as you drop down, and as you drop down, your heels go up, and then you push up and come back up to here, and then do it again. | ||
| Oh, so it's like a sweep. | ||
| Yeah, sort of. | ||
| But the thing about it is, here, I'll do one real quick. | ||
| The thing about it is, as you're going down, when you go down, your heels come up, like... | ||
| Down here, my heels are up, and you're up like this. | ||
| So it's like, it really works the top of your quads, like your quads, where it touches the knee. | ||
| Tremendous. | ||
| Amazing exercise. | ||
| And it's just body weight. | ||
| Yeah, especially when I was on the road and couldn't find a gym. | ||
| I would do squats all the time. | ||
| Yeah, but Hindu squats, Hindu push-ups, regular push-ups, and a chin-up bar. | ||
| You're good. | ||
| You're good. | ||
| You don't need anything. | ||
| But if you can get other shit in there, too. | ||
| They got you kettlebells? | ||
| You do shit like that? | ||
| I need to get some kettlebells? | ||
| I don't currently... | ||
| I mean, I was going to the gym a lot, you know? | ||
| So I had everything there. | ||
| At home, I just kind of have up to 50-pound dumbbells. | ||
| I need to get... | ||
| I've been trying to buy bigger dumbbells, but fuck, they're so expensive right now. | ||
| I tried to buy some 65 pounds. | ||
| They wanted to charge me $700. | ||
| $700? | ||
| $700 for a pair! | ||
| That's crazy. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Is that real? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Is that just because everybody bought them out? | ||
| I think it's all quarantined up and then the shipping and the weight of the shipping and all that shit. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| 700 bucks for a pair of dumbbells is hilarious. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, I'm on, you know. | ||
| You gotta go prison style, bro. | ||
| I'm looking for Craigslist. | ||
| Get some rocks. | ||
| Sticks in them. | ||
| But I need to get some bigger weights for sure. | ||
| Trying to get jacked? | ||
| Yeah, man. | ||
| I'm trying to get as healthy and put together as I can until like 40, 41, 42, and then cruise it. | ||
| Just cruise it from there. | ||
| Cruise it. | ||
| Cruise it. | ||
| Still maintain. | ||
| I just turned 53. Okay. | ||
| Well, yeah, see. | ||
| Yesterday. | ||
| Yeah, I know. | ||
| Happy birthday. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| I thought about buying you something, but then I remembered. | ||
| Then I recalled! | ||
| What could I get him? | ||
| A hug is sufficient. | ||
| I don't need anything. | ||
| Man, for real though, happy birthday. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| I texted you the day I found out about the theme. | ||
| Just your ownership of your own shit, the longevity, the how many... | ||
| Because I go back and I look at my podcast, we're just two years deep, and I'm like, oh man, we've made it so far, but I could still do so much. | ||
| And then I go back and I'm watching old episodes of you, and it's like, Episode 565, you know? | ||
| And I'm just like, man, there's a longevity. | ||
| There's just this part of like, this is what I do. | ||
| This is my shit. | ||
| And I told you directly, the fact that you own that shit and it's yours and you licensing them is a huge inspiration to me. | ||
| So I just wanted to make sure I tell you that. | ||
| Thank you, brother. | ||
| And like I said before, I really love what you do. | ||
| I love the energy that you put out. | ||
| I really do. | ||
| Because your energies are consistently positive and friendly. | ||
| I love that you do that. | ||
| And you put that out. | ||
| And you say hi to people. | ||
| I hope you're doing great. | ||
| And I know it's sincere. | ||
| And you have a big smile. | ||
| That's giant for people, man, to have a place like that where they can tune in and get just consistent, positive vibes. | ||
| Because it's great. | ||
| It's all, I mean, you know, shit gets weird, but life's, for me, it's been so much better. | ||
| My life is gravy compared to my childhood and things I went through. | ||
| You know, single mom and she had abusive relationship and all this other shit and just never had structure or knowing, you know, a lot of things were up in the air in my household. | ||
| And now that I'm I literally do what I want to do for my life. | ||
| I know my passions. | ||
| Sure, I don't get everything I want, but it's like, man, I can never... | ||
| And I get to work with my fucking heroes, you know? | ||
| And I never lose sight of that. | ||
| When Wanda Sykes is like, oh, you're fucking... | ||
| Why aren't you in theaters yet? | ||
| You're fucking... | ||
| You know, I'm still a fan first. | ||
| And so it's easy for me to be happy for people because I'm like, fuck, this is dope. | ||
| And success to me just begets other success. | ||
| I don't look at it and go, oh, I couldn't get that. | ||
| I go, oh, something's coming for me too. | ||
| Yes, yes. | ||
| It's just about maintaining that positive mentality. | ||
| And that is really... | ||
| Putting out positive vibes, like what you're doing, really does change people's lives. | ||
| It really does. | ||
| You know, I mean, maybe you don't feel it yet, but I guarantee you there's a lot of people that look to you for that positive inspiration. | ||
| They look to you for just happiness. | ||
| And they just, like, you give that to people, man, and then they get it. | ||
| It's like a little seed you give them, and it grows inside of their body. | ||
| I just got an email from this guy I'm doing this thing with. | ||
| And I didn't know too much about him. | ||
| I knew he was referred to me by this other guy. | ||
| We're doing this project together. | ||
| And then he sends me this email basically after we're done with this thing. | ||
| Hey, man, I just wanted to let you know, like, I didn't tell you this before, but because of you and listening to your podcast, I used to have this terrible job. | ||
| I quit my job. | ||
| I moved to this new place. | ||
| I started from scratch. | ||
| I started doing jujitsu. | ||
| I lost weight. | ||
| I got a way better job. | ||
| Now I have a family. | ||
| I'm married. | ||
| I have a kid. | ||
| I'm a different person. | ||
| And it's because of listening to your podcast and realizing that you can change your life and you can do the things you want to do. | ||
| You just got to push yourself and feeding off the energy of hearing someone say that that's actually done it and recognizing there's no difference between you and me. | ||
| There's no difference between me and the next guy. | ||
| It's just I've done it and you can too. | ||
| That's what people need to hear. | ||
| You see someone like Kevin Hart and you go, that guy's an alien. | ||
| Like, I just, I'm not like that. | ||
| I can't do it. | ||
| But you're not. | ||
| That's not true. | ||
| He's just a dude. | ||
| He's just a dude who's positive, who works hard. | ||
| And if you do that too, you will get successful. | ||
| You will. | ||
| You will find your fucking groove. | ||
| People who haven't done stuff are the people who tell you you can't do it, you know? | ||
| Because that's the reality that they've lived in. | ||
| I've never met someone who's truly been successful who turns around and goes, well, no, but you couldn't do it, you know? | ||
| Because they know. | ||
| They know. | ||
| It's fucking... | ||
| It's just... | ||
| Putting in the work, and then it just, it might take decades, you know? | ||
| I was, again, on Twitch, showing these old videos of mine. | ||
| I showed my special, and then I had somehow found this set of mine from when I was three years in. | ||
| And so we showed it, and we were making fun of it. | ||
| I go, look at me. | ||
| Look how I'm dressed. | ||
| You can tell, like, these are my only good pants, and they aren't good. | ||
| But man, if you didn't have that, you wouldn't appreciate where you're at now. | ||
| That's so important. | ||
| There's a message for people that are struggling right now. | ||
| Like this struggle, fucking enjoy it. | ||
| Suck it in. | ||
| Take it in. | ||
| First of all, it's fuel because it's going to inspire you. | ||
| To move forward and become more successful. | ||
| But also, like, man, you're going to look back on these days. | ||
| The suck that you're experiencing right now will be delicious in five, ten years. | ||
| You're going to look back on it. | ||
| It's going to be amazing. | ||
| You're going to enjoy it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| No, I get text messages. | ||
| I got a text message the other day from my ex-wife's sister just being like, Oh, I'm so proud of you. | ||
| Look at you. | ||
| And you're in movies and this and that. | ||
| And you're amazing. | ||
| And you're doing so well for your son, my nephew. | ||
| And then I was just like... | ||
| This is so cool coming from the lady that used to call me the N-word. | ||
| That's amazing. | ||
| Do you still talk to the ex? | ||
| No, not really. | ||
| Sometimes just, you know, keep her up to date to what's going on with her son. | ||
| Make sure that their relationship is still strong. | ||
| But me and her, no. | ||
| You know, she just... | ||
| I understand if I was in her position, I wouldn't like what... | ||
| She ain't never been the niece! | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't know what that's like. | |
| Yeah, as much as you like to see some people succeed, there's a certain amount of satisfaction in knowing that you bypassed all the pitfalls that other people have fallen into. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Especially if you had some non-fun relationship issues with them. | ||
| Yeah, it truly is. | ||
| I still try to... | ||
| It's my son's mom, so I always have a love for her, and I want her to be successful, and I want her to be happy. | ||
| But I'm very... | ||
| I know I won. | ||
| Oh, it's awful. | ||
| It's awful to take happiness and other people's failures like that, but... | ||
| Yeah, but there's their choices. | ||
| And yeah, it's like also like you can learn a lot from other people's failure. | ||
| Truly. | ||
| As much as you can get out of people's success, man, look at someone who you know that's just sabotaging their life left and right, and you can learn from that too. | ||
| One of the things that you were talking about that I think is so important is taking ownership of your fuck-ups. | ||
| Taking ownership of the things you did wrong and trying to rectify that. | ||
| You don't want to repeat those patterns. | ||
| Recognize them. | ||
| Develop. | ||
| Development. | ||
| Getting better. | ||
| Evolve. | ||
| I think that's a thing, you know, through especially social media lately, that we don't allow people to evolve. | ||
| We don't allow them to change. | ||
| We hold them to the same statement that they made 10, 15, 20 years ago. | ||
| And if someone's an asshole today, that's fine. | ||
| I understand that. | ||
| It's okay to not fuck with people. | ||
| But, like, to judge someone over things they did 10, 15, 20 years ago, obviously, case-by-case basis, but you're... | ||
| You're denying the existence of evolution. | ||
| You're denying that people change and that people can get better. | ||
| And I just always believe in that because I've seen it in myself. | ||
| I've seen it in my friends and the people around me. | ||
| There's so many people that if they truly... | ||
| Some people don't want to change and they never will. | ||
| But I've met a lot of people who weren't the best people and they pulled their shit together because they had to. | ||
| Yeah, I agree. | ||
| I agree wholeheartedly. | ||
| And I know I've grown and become a better person, too, and through all that hard work. | ||
| And I almost don't fault people that feel that way because it's fucking hard today, man. | ||
| And it's less hard for us because we had this advantage that we were kind of moving. | ||
| You know, we already had momentum when this shit hit. | ||
| And we were in a business where, you know, we're very fortunate that when you do well and show business, you can make a decent amount of money. | ||
| You can save some of it and you can put it aside. | ||
| But there's so many people out there that have no hope. | ||
| And I understand the bitterness and the anger. | ||
| I understand it all. | ||
| I get it. | ||
| I mean, this is a fucked up time. | ||
| It's a fucked up time where like half the country can't work. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And when you have that, you're going to have just a dystopian perspective on everything. | ||
| And that's what you have with people today. | ||
| And I just want us to come out of it. | ||
| I really do. | ||
| And when we come out of it, man, I hope we look back. | ||
| Just appreciate where we are. | ||
| If we get to a point where we can all gather and go to comedy clubs and go to restaurants and movie theaters and normal shit like we used to do, sporting events, you can go see pro wrestling live, all that shit, man, I just hope we really enjoy it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And maybe we will. | ||
| I mean, maybe we'll be better because we'll recognize, like, hey, man, this could all go away. | ||
| Now we know it can all go away. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Just learning to respect the audience more. | ||
| I'm clearly nothing without an audience. | ||
| I'm nothing. | ||
| And sometimes I didn't always go into every show being like, I need to give these people... | ||
| I'm sure you know. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| And so I'm just trying to be more aware of that. | ||
| Although it was great. | ||
| I was like, okay. | ||
| I did this one show where they... | ||
| There's a little stage and a screen and people can see you. | ||
| And I was like, oh, it felt so good to get on stage again and I want to be grateful for it. | ||
| And they asked me to come back and then I slept through it and I was mad at myself at first. | ||
| But then I was like, no, this is like getting back to normal. | ||
| Yeah, that's funny. | ||
| I did some stand-up. | ||
| I did a weekend at the Houston Improv, but I was like, man, I can't catch COVID. I gotta get out of here. | ||
| I did, you know, one weekend. | ||
| And I did all the right things, kept the fuck away from people, wore a mask, did my shows, got off, get out of there, didn't take pictures, didn't hug anybody. | ||
| But I was still like, but what if I got it? | ||
| And what if I give it to someone I love? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's just, I got really high the next day, and I got real paranoid. | ||
| I was like, what if I have it? | ||
| What if I have it? | ||
| I'm gonna give it to people. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And then I was like, I can't do this. | ||
| Yeah, I went through the same mindset because I had a couple of gigs on the docket still. | ||
| But I went through that same thing. | ||
| Like, oh, I want to do stand-up so bad. | ||
| I want to perform. | ||
| I want to feel that feeling of people applauding when I enter a room. | ||
| But I just fucking... | ||
| Yeah, that same paranoia. | ||
| Like, oh, what if I give it to someone and, you know, I'm healthy and that's fine, but I give it to someone and they give it to their grandma and their grandma dies because they went to hear me do some dumb bullshit jokes? | ||
| I can't. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't want that. | |
| Exactly. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| But at a certain point in time, like, what do we do if this is normal forever? | ||
| What if COVID doesn't go away and this is just the deal? | ||
| This is just how things are. | ||
| Then what do we do? | ||
| Do we decide then? | ||
| Well, fuck it. | ||
| Let's just have comedy clubs. | ||
| People are going to get it. | ||
| They're just going to get it. | ||
| There is no cure. | ||
| There's nothing you can do. | ||
| Do we just live like this? | ||
| I don't think so. | ||
| That doesn't sound good. | ||
| So the question is always like, are we living like this because we're waiting for them to develop enough hospital beds and waiting for them to develop some sort of a treatment that's responsible that really does work well? | ||
| Is that what's going on? | ||
| I mean, we're all hoping for a vaccine, but if there's nothing, if it doesn't happen, let's just imagine. | ||
| It doesn't. | ||
| What do you do? | ||
| At some point in time, we're going to have to say, fuck it. | ||
| We're going to have to get back to work and get back to life. | ||
| Yeah, that'll be a weird life. | ||
| I don't want that, and then I hadn't thought about that until you brought it up? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Damn. | |
| But now I am thinking about it, and it's like a horror movie. | ||
| Well, here's the thing, man. | ||
| There's more than one version of this disease right now. | ||
| More than one. | ||
| There's one in India that's so different from the one here that if they develop a vaccine for the one that's in North America, it won't work for the one that's in India. | ||
| And it's possible that this thing is going to morph like the common cold or like a lot of other viruses and spread all over the place. | ||
| Well, if they don't have a disease prevention, if there's no way other than keeping your body healthy, keeping your immune system strong, We're not going to live like this, man. | ||
| We can't just live like this forever. | ||
| We're living like this temporarily. | ||
| This is the idea. | ||
| So we have to, like... | ||
| That is a possibility that we need to take into account. | ||
| It's interesting. | ||
| It means life's going to be different. | ||
| It means a lot of people are going to die. | ||
| A lot of people wearing masks. | ||
| A lot of people with fucked up teeth that are going to be real happy. | ||
| I'm okay with the mask, Sam, because that's been... | ||
| I got used to that from Japan, from when I went to Japan for two weeks. | ||
| I was like, oh, that's fine. | ||
| When you went to Japan for two weeks, was it COVID or no COVID? Pre-COVID. But a lot of people just wear masks. | ||
| If they're feeling a little ill, you wear a mask. | ||
| Well, that's a polite thing over there, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mm-hmm. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, that's why they did an amazing job. | ||
| They got to a point where I think the entire country only had 1,000 deaths, which is amazing. | ||
| Mm-hmm. | ||
| Especially if you, because people consider the size of Japan that it's not like super populated, but if you consider that most of the population in Japan is in just very dense areas, like Tokyo is everyone right on top of each other. | ||
| And they never lock down. | ||
| They kept working the entire time. | ||
| They just wore masks, and they only had a thousand deaths. | ||
| It's pretty amazing. | ||
| I have a buddy of mine who's a political commentator, and he was like, you need to look at this. | ||
| He sent me this article explaining all the things Japan did. | ||
| Basically, they follow order. | ||
| They're polite. | ||
| If you go over there, I've only been to Tokyo once, but it's like... | ||
| Amazing how different their culture is, like how polite they are and how they avoid, you know, like on the streets, like everybody, there's no garbage everywhere. | ||
| Nobody picks up their shit. | ||
| You don't even, it's rude to walk around and eat. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You're supposed to go take it to the proper place, get rid of your trash, and then go about your day. | ||
| It's crazy. | ||
| Yeah, they just have patterns of behavior and patterns of what they accept, or what they expect, rather, from society, from people. | ||
| And they all agree. | ||
| Yeah, truly. | ||
| Discipline. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| If you haven't gone, and we ever get the chance to travel, go! | ||
| It's fucking amazing. | ||
| I can't wait to go to other countries again. | ||
| I want to go to some weird places. | ||
| I can't wait. | ||
| If this shit ever lifts up, I just want to go. | ||
| I want to take in as many weird cultures. | ||
| I want to go to Bali. | ||
| I want to see what that's like. | ||
| I want to go to Indonesia. | ||
| I want to go to a lot of the Pacific Islands. | ||
| I want to go to the Philippines. | ||
| I want to go to a lot of places I've never been that I've just seen in videos. | ||
| I just like... | ||
| And I want to go to Egypt. | ||
| That's the thing I've been kicking myself in the head about. | ||
| Like, why didn't I go see the pyramids? | ||
| I need to go see that. | ||
| I'd like to do that. | ||
| Every person that I'm friends with, Schultz went. | ||
| He went right before COVID. Everybody that I'm friends with that went there, they're like, bro. | ||
| They're like, this shit changed my life. | ||
| Like, it's so big and so crazy. | ||
| Like, what the fuck is this? | ||
| Who built this? | ||
| How did this happen? | ||
| What was this culture like? | ||
| And the fact that you got fucked up Cairo right there next to this ancient civilization that's so far more sophisticated in their structures, like... | ||
| That's one of them things where I think perspective-shifting places are very important to go to. | ||
| We're so used to Los Angeles or Boston or wherever you're from. | ||
| You're used to these cities and this is how people live. | ||
| But then you go to Chichen Itza and you go, oh, shit. | ||
| Like, what were the Mayans doing? | ||
| You know, these motherfuckers are doing this shit 1,500 years ago. | ||
| Like, what is this? | ||
| How are they doing this? | ||
| Why were they doing this? | ||
| What was life like back then? | ||
| You realize, like, the pattern that we're in is just the pattern that we're in. | ||
| It doesn't mean this is the only pattern that human beings follow. | ||
| Just an option. | ||
| Just like you were talking about Japan. | ||
| That's a different pattern. | ||
| They're on a different pattern. | ||
| Their pattern, they got into this really disciplined pattern, being polite, wearing a mask. | ||
| Our pattern is fucking chaos. | ||
| But also, our pattern's more creative. | ||
| That's the weird thing about our pattern. | ||
| Over here in America, we do a lot of wild shit, but man, we create a lot of good shit. | ||
| If you think about all the movies and the art and the comedy and the music, All this shit that comes from this one continent. | ||
| Yeah, I mean it can only come from a lack of structure and from chaos and things going on. | ||
| That's why we have so many forms of art that are created here. | ||
| That's why jazz is created here. | ||
| That's why hip-hop is created here. | ||
| Stand-up comedy invented here. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It is. | ||
| It's like that is what's interesting, right? | ||
| It's like you gotta kind of have both of those things. | ||
| You gotta kind of have chaos, but you also kind of gotta have some discipline too. | ||
| I think that's one of the reasons why America's done so terrible with this COVID reaction. | ||
| We're the worst at it. | ||
| All the fucking big countries, we are the worst. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's crazy when you really look at it and they're just like, we don't, the rest of the world is just like... | ||
| We don't want Americans right now, because you're in an underdeveloped nation, medically. | ||
| You fucking idiots. | ||
| You guys don't listen. | ||
| You want to have a big protest where you don't wear masks. | ||
| We want our fucking freedom. | ||
| Thousands of people march down the street saying, we don't want to wear masks. | ||
| Bill Gates the devil. | ||
| Fuck Fauci. | ||
| People are crazy. | ||
| They're wild people. | ||
| But they come up with some good shit. | ||
| Right? | ||
| Such a conundrum. | ||
| Take a part of me, I love America. | ||
| Look, there's a fucking American flag behind me. | ||
| There's a reason for that. | ||
| I love America. | ||
| Genuinely, I love the concept. | ||
| I love the concept of, you know, I'm the grandchild of immigrants. | ||
| My family all came over here from Europe. | ||
| I love the fact that these people, where we're like the ancestors of these people that decided wherever they were, they just didn't want to be there anymore, you know? | ||
| No, not me. | ||
| I was going to get to that. | ||
| Or... | ||
| Or realize, hey... | ||
| You know, that is for sure the most fucked up part of America. | ||
| Right? | ||
| It is. | ||
| The most fucked up, for sure. | ||
| How it was started. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Slave owners that wanted to be free. | |
| But it's also... | ||
| There's a beauty that people don't see. | ||
| I think there's a lot of like... | ||
| In everyday white people that I talk to, there's a little bit of fear of this black anger of people being like, not only Black Lives Matter, that we want reparations, we want everything back, which will also be great, it'll be fun. | ||
| But to me, what's so beautiful about America is this... | ||
| Level of forgiveness that's built into our structure to the fact that we can have that history, that, you know, horrible history, and then there's no other country that freed those people and then they'd live there right next to their oppressors, you know? | ||
| And then... | ||
| And there's forgiveness. | ||
| And there's balance. | ||
| And there's like, oh, well, we just want to continue to be a part of this lifestyle. | ||
| And we want to succeed and have our own freedoms like you. | ||
| We're not trying to then take over and now white people are slaves. | ||
| It's this beautiful thing that there's this forgiveness there. | ||
| And that they want a seat at the table. | ||
| Yes! | ||
| And also, the amount of creativity that comes from that culture. | ||
| Just stop and think of that, right? | ||
| Like, through pressure, diamonds are created. | ||
| And just look at the black American community and think about all the... | ||
| Different forms of art that not just originated with black Americans, but were mastered by them to a point where like like even rock and roll Yeah, like Jimi Hendrix is the greatest guitar player of all time I mean you go and look at stand-up comedians. | ||
| I mean there's there's so many Musicians, so many. | ||
| So many artists. | ||
| So, I mean, that's the crazy thing about art, right? | ||
| Like, so much of art is this dynamic expression that comes from pain. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, I mean that's to me the beauty and the alchemy in art is to take your traumas, take your pain, and then to turn those things into your successes and the reason why you have finances. | ||
| It's amazing. | ||
| Yeah, and I'm hoping that through the, I mean this obviously racial relations are in this really strange upheaval right now. | ||
| They're in a bad spot! | ||
| They're in a bad spot, but they're also in a spot where there's a potential for growth. | ||
| When you see these Black Lives Matter protests, the thing that gives everybody hope is that people are together walking down the street in unity. | ||
| And that they recognize that this is a unique moment to make things better. | ||
| This is a unique moment to take a stand, to talk about things, to recognize that there's problems, and out of the brutal murder of one man, this eruption that has existed all throughout, not just North America, but it's spread throughout the globe. | ||
| It's a crazy time. | ||
| And through crazy times, oftentimes on the other end of it, you get a better world. | ||
| Truly. | ||
| Truly. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I choose to look at those positives because police brutality is not a new subject. | ||
| You know, oppression is not a new subject by any means. | ||
| But the reaction to it, the... | ||
| The amount of allies, the amount of times where I see... | ||
| I get so excited when I see all these young white allies, these people, these millennials that people kind of make fun of, and they're the ones in the fucking streets. | ||
| The first. | ||
| They're the first going to be like, no, this is bullshit. | ||
| We don't do this anymore. | ||
| And I love that. | ||
| To me, that's tremendous progress. | ||
| There was a million man march years ago. | ||
| Years ago, when I was a child, there was marches about this type of things. | ||
| And... | ||
| Before I was a child, you know, that's the thing I talk about. | ||
| Yeah, my mom was out on those marches getting bit by dogs and sprayed by fire hoses. | ||
| And now we've reached a point where I sit at home playing video games and I send my white assistant out to protest for me. | ||
| That's true progress. | ||
| You sent your assistant out to protest? | ||
| I did. | ||
| I can show you a picture. | ||
| Did you test him after he came back? | ||
| Hey man, before you come back to my house, I'm going to have to swab your nose. | ||
| I trust her. | ||
| She's pretty safe. | ||
| It's hard to be safe. | ||
| It is. | ||
| But she's fucking... | ||
| Yeah, she's really particular. | ||
| Thank you, Eleanor, for being so safe. | ||
| That she did that. | ||
| She did. | ||
| She protested for you. | ||
| I already put it on an airplane. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'll find it later. | |
| No worries. | ||
| No worries. | ||
| Alright, man. | ||
| Let's wrap this up and tell everybody where they can get your podcast, social media, all that shit. | ||
| I got a lot of things going on. | ||
| My podcast is called Getting Better with Ron Funches. | ||
| You can find that wherever you find your podcast. | ||
| Even the name, Getting Better. | ||
| I love it. | ||
| Yeah, it's not about becoming the best. | ||
| It's not about we are the best. | ||
| It's the fact that every single fucking day we're trying to get better. | ||
| And sometimes we fall back, but we usually try to move forward. | ||
| And that's what it's about. | ||
| Great guests. | ||
| Conan's been on there. | ||
| Stone Cold Steve Austin's been on there. | ||
| Yeah, it's a good guest. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Nice. | |
| That's nice. | ||
| And I got my live stream event September 5th. | ||
| People can get tickets for that. | ||
| Awakening. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Live stream comedy event September 5th, 7pm Pacific, 8pm Mountain. | ||
| Yeah, you get all of it. | ||
| You know that. | ||
| You were all the rest of them. | ||
| And that is Combustion Live. | ||
| Yeah, that's Chris Titus' company. | ||
| It's going to be live streaming on YouTube. | ||
| You can go get tickets at ronfunches.com. | ||
| Beautiful. | ||
| Other than that, I'm in a Netflix show called Hoops and a Disney Plus movie called The One and Only Ivan, both coming out August 21st, if people want to check. | ||
| Oh, Quibi would love it if I mentioned my game show! | ||
| Oh, you have a game show on Quibi? | ||
| I have a game show coming out on Quibi called Nice One on August 21st. | ||
| It came up off at midnight. | ||
| People know me a lot from that show. | ||
| And this is me basically kind of stealing that idea and then me being the host. | ||
| Good job. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| Keep kicking ass, Ron Funches. | ||
| Thank you very much, sir. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Appreciate you, brother. | ||
| Appreciate you, too. |
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