Feb. 5, 2021 - The Joe Rogan Experience
03:40:57
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
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Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out! | |
| The Joe Rogan Experience. | ||
|
unidentified
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Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day! | |
| What did you say your podcast was? | ||
| Oh, the He-Manual Dance Hour? | ||
| Oh, the Dance Hour. | ||
| The Dance Hour, man. | ||
| Why is it the Dance Hour? | ||
| It's a loose term. | ||
| Like, it's a comedy podcast, but I kind of have a feel... | ||
| I love dance music and, like, dancing. | ||
| Remember I accidentally posted that thing because I really thought it was you? | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, yeah. | |
| I was like, damn, the game can fucking move. | ||
| That was the longboarding video. | ||
| Yeah, the guy on the board. | ||
| Yeah, dancing. | ||
| Who's dancing on the board. | ||
| I thought someone... | ||
| Sometimes people... | ||
| This thing will happen on Instagram where people keep on sending me pictures or videos of people who kind of look like me. | ||
| That guy kind of looked like you. | ||
| Yeah, but I... I thought it was you. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Well, I just thought it was so funny. | ||
| I go, is there anything I can't do? | ||
| And I posted it on my Instagram. | ||
| And it's this guy, like, his name is Lotif for, we became friends because you did this. | ||
| Oh, that's hilarious. | ||
| Just via Instagram. | ||
| And it's this guy, I think he's in France, and he's just killing it on a longboard. | ||
| Go to his page, he's amazing. | ||
|
unidentified
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I thought you could do that. | |
| Because you could dance so well. | ||
| I thought you could do that too. | ||
| Well, it's flattering. | ||
|
unidentified
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It's my real confidence in you. | |
| For you to be like, just throwing a longboard? | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, this guy right here. | |
| Yeah, he's great. | ||
| So I posted that, or one of these, and I go, is there anything I can't do? | ||
| That's not that one, because I would be like, well, that's not Fahim. | ||
| That's the guy. | ||
| Look at him, handsome bastard. | ||
| Look at him out there, longboarding. | ||
| That is a skill that is very impressive, but highly impractical. | ||
| It's working for him, man. | ||
| Yeah, very impressive to learn how to do that. | ||
| But I remember I posted it, and then I go about my day at my house, and then I check my Instagram, and I'm getting all these followers and shit, and I don't know why. | ||
| I go, what? | ||
| So I have to reverse engineer what's going on. | ||
| And then I look at yours. | ||
| I was tagged by Joe Rogan. | ||
| I look at it, and my heart sank. | ||
|
unidentified
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I go, oh, no! | |
| Because I felt bad. | ||
| Like I'm getting all this stuff from something, just like a dumb joke with my friends on Insta. | ||
| I never think I tagged that guy. | ||
| No. | ||
| No, you did after, because I texted you. | ||
| Oh, I did. | ||
| Did I tag him? | ||
| I go, no! | ||
|
unidentified
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Dude! | |
| I said it's not you, but did I definitely tag the guy as well? | ||
| Eventually, once we cleared it up. | ||
| Okay, okay, okay. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| And then I go, that was a joke. | ||
| And then you did give him credit. | ||
| You know what's the worst? | ||
| When someone sends you a really funny meme and you're like, fuck, I don't know who made this. | ||
| I need to find who made this. | ||
| Because I want to put it up, but I don't want to not have that person get credit for it. | ||
| That's the trouble with meme comedy. | ||
| It's almost like Linux. | ||
| It's open source. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Sort of. | ||
| Here he is. | ||
| Yeah, this is the one. | ||
|
unidentified
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I thought this was you. | |
| I thought it was you, dude. | ||
| With the shirt open? | ||
| So, I didn't fucking tag the guy. | ||
| You didn't? | ||
| No, dude. | ||
| I did not tag that guy. | ||
| Oh, fuck. | ||
| I said whoever the fuck he is. | ||
| Well, tell him now. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, now we know. | ||
| I thought that was you. | ||
| I'm looking at this. | ||
| I'm like, damn, look at Vaheem go. | ||
| I guess I just thought it was so beyond my skill set that people would know that it's not me. | ||
| Well, I don't know what your skill set is. | ||
| There's a lot of people that can do wild shit that you don't know. | ||
| A lot of comics are good at other stuff, and you don't know about it until you get close to them. | ||
| You're like, what? | ||
| You can do that? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| There's a lady that I posted on my Instagram. | ||
| I didn't know it was her. | ||
| I think I posted it. | ||
| I think it was Willie D posted it and I reposted it. | ||
| Marie underscore Bustin Moves is her Instagram. | ||
| Find that. | ||
| And she does this dance to Chubb Rock. | ||
| I think she probably put it on TikTok too, but she puts it on Instagram. | ||
| It's her and her daughters. | ||
| You can't play the music, huh? | ||
| It's too bad. | ||
| But she's really fucking talented. | ||
| And apparently she runs a dance studio. | ||
| And she teaches dance. | ||
| And she's been doing that since 2009 or something like that. | ||
| But she's really good. | ||
| But it's her and her daughters. | ||
| But it's better if you hear the music because she's doing it to an old-school Chub Rock song. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| It's really great. | ||
| But look how talented she is. | ||
| She's great. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I think social media has brought dancing back. | ||
|
unidentified
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I love it. | |
| Oh, fuck yeah. | ||
| It definitely has. | ||
| I mean, I can't dance, but I like watching it. | ||
| I was dancing on YouTube pre-TikTok. | ||
| Were you really? | ||
| I'm like a pioneer. | ||
|
unidentified
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Wow. | |
| I needed more than a minute. | ||
| A minute's too constricting. | ||
| I understand. | ||
| Yeah, I need to let it breathe. | ||
| It's cool to watch. | ||
| It's just I look at dance and I go, should I learn how to do that? | ||
| Like, I can't. | ||
| I can't. | ||
| No more things. | ||
| You have respect for it. | ||
| It's funny because I remember I was walking up to do my set at the comedy store and you're in the parking lot and you're like, oh yeah, you could dance, man. | ||
| I didn't think you would talk about it or even register with you. | ||
| But I'm like, oh yeah, you said I was flexible or something. | ||
| I go, I'm not that flexible. | ||
| You go, no, but you have like a body controller. | ||
| You just had an affinity for dance that I didn't think you would have. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| Because you're in martial arts and I feel like, look, I'm not some world-class dancer. | ||
| I'm just a hobbyist. | ||
| I grew up loving Michael Jackson and like recording all his music videos, his concert footage, slowing it down. | ||
| I learned how to dance VHS. Yeah. | ||
| And... | ||
| There you go. | ||
| Nah, this is bad. | ||
| This is, like, from my apartment a lot. | ||
| This is so bad. | ||
|
unidentified
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It's so bad. | |
| Now I get it, like, when you go on Tonight Show and they pull up a commercial. | ||
|
unidentified
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Oh, no! | |
| Yeah, I'll do some shit on Instagram every now and then. | ||
| But, yeah, I just remember you saying, like, no, you're flexible or you have, like, good body control. | ||
| Great body control, yeah. | ||
| I am a fan of movement. | ||
| Anytime someone can do something cool, because I know how hard it is to do cool shit with your body. | ||
| You know, it's hard. | ||
| It's hard to do. | ||
| You know, my first acting thing, like I was still working at Boeing at the time, and I was auditioning for stuff. | ||
| I booked this role on Chuck. | ||
| Remember that show Chuck on NBC? Yeah, I remember Chuck, yeah. | ||
| So I took a leave of absence to like film it, and there was an action scene in it. | ||
| So there was a stunt coordinator, and I had to learn these like karate moves or like movie karate moves. | ||
| And the guy was like, do you fight? | ||
| And I go, no. | ||
| He's like, do you dance? | ||
| And I go, ah, kind of. | ||
| And he goes, yeah, because you pick up the moves faster than regular people. | ||
| Well, that was Patrick Swayze. | ||
| Patrick Swayze was a really good dancer. | ||
| And so when he did Roadhouse, they basically taught him some martial arts moves to be like this badass karate fighter. | ||
| But meanwhile, the karate was dog shit. | ||
| It was terrible. | ||
| Like, I was not impressed with karate at all. | ||
| It was beautiful karate. | ||
| But his dance, if you watch him in Dirty Dancing, you're like, this guy can fucking move. | ||
| Dancing is hard. | ||
| I did a scene in Zookeeper where I had to learn dancing. | ||
| And me and Leslie Bibb. | ||
| Do you know who Leslie Bibb is? | ||
| If I saw her, probably. | ||
| The hot chick in Talladega Nights. | ||
| Ah, okay. | ||
| She played my ex-girlfriend and Kevin James' current girlfriend, and I was trying to steal her back. | ||
| Or they were separated, and I was trying to win her back. | ||
| And so at this wedding, her and I did this super elaborate dance. | ||
| So we had to practice for two weeks. | ||
| We had to take dance lessons. | ||
| It's fucking hard. | ||
| So any illusions that I ever had about going on Dancing with the Stars- It's gone. | ||
| Well, that and talking to Chuck Liddell about it. | ||
| Because Chuck Liddell, who's UFC light heavyweight champion, one of the baddest motherfuckers that ever walked the face of the earth, right? | ||
| Chuck Liddell's like, it's the hardest thing I've ever done. | ||
| That's how he said it. | ||
| It's the fucking hardest thing I've ever done. | ||
| He goes, dude, it's fucking hard. | ||
| It's hard. | ||
| He goes, you gotta practice every day. | ||
| It sucks. | ||
| Well, because it's... | ||
| I mean, there are parallels, though, between fighting and dancing. | ||
| I think movement is movement. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Like, you're moving your body. | ||
| Yes, yes. | ||
| Just there's a timing element with music. | ||
| Mm-hmm. | ||
| Like, I don't think I'm... | ||
|
unidentified
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Body control. | |
| Body control. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Like, I don't think I'm the best dancer in the world, but I think, like, I feel it. | ||
| I can tell when I watch dancers who can, like, really feel it and lose themselves in the music versus, you know, you see pop stars and stuff, like Bieber or something, like No Shade, but it looks like a guy... | ||
| No Shade? | ||
| No Shade. | ||
|
unidentified
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A little bit Shade? | |
| No, I mean, to illustrate a point, maybe a little bit of shadow. | ||
| You could tell some of these pop people are just learning moves and they are regurgitating these moves. | ||
| They're not like... | ||
| Justin Timberlake, who can dance. | ||
| He can dance, yeah, but like Michael Jackson is precise and it's almost spiritual. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| No, I completely agree. | ||
| Michael Jackson could do things that would make you excited if you didn't give a fuck about dance. | ||
|
unidentified
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He was so good when he would move. | |
| The precision is what it is, right? | ||
| Even just flicking a wrist. | ||
| People could do backflips and all this shit, and it's great, but Michael could just do something with his feet and his index finger, and it's amazing. | ||
| There was a thing that is a part of martial arts. | ||
| They would call it kata, and I really forget what it's called in Taekwondo, even though I'm black from Taekwondo. | ||
| I really don't remember what it's called. | ||
| Oh, poomsae. | ||
| It's the same kind of thing like kata. | ||
| It's like you're doing forms. | ||
| And these forms, like these predetermined patterns, you know, you step forward, block, step forward, punch. | ||
| Like there's a simple one that you learn when you're a white belt. | ||
| And then you move up to really complex ones when you're a black belt. | ||
| And when I was fighting, I used to think they were foolish. | ||
| I thought that was a total waste of time. | ||
| I'm like, why do I have to learn these forms to get a black belt? | ||
| I know how to fight. | ||
| I know how to use the techniques. | ||
| I can show you that my kicking and my punching and my timing and everything is very proficient. | ||
| I'm very good at it. | ||
| Like, that's a black belt, not this form thing. | ||
| It wasn't until much later, as I was getting older in life, and I was like, oh, there's, like, importance in precision. | ||
| And there's a precision to those movements that actually does apply to fighting. | ||
| It doesn't apply directly, but it applies because you're learning precise body control. | ||
| Like, to kick in the air seems silly, right? | ||
| Because you should kick things. | ||
| But when you kick in the air, you have to hold your leg out. | ||
| You learn body control. | ||
| And through that, you can better kick things. | ||
| This is a Taekwondo form. | ||
| See, that kind of shit? | ||
| I used to be able to do that. | ||
| Now, I can't really kick like that anymore. | ||
| My flexibility is not as good anymore. | ||
| I can kind of kick some of the techniques I can still do. | ||
| But like, I used to be able to do that kind of shit like easy. | ||
| Like straight up splits right in the air. | ||
| But now, I'm just fucking... | ||
| I became more of an ape as I got older. | ||
| So does it kind of show you what the movements are like in a perfect world with no resistance or... | ||
| It shows you body control because none of these things are applicable, really. | ||
| There's some times you would use those blocks, but like you'd never throw a sidekick straight up in the air like that. | ||
| It's really just to show body control. | ||
| What if he did this in front of a bully? | ||
| Then he goes, oh, fuck this shit. | ||
| This guy's got such body control. | ||
|
unidentified
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I'm out. | |
| Fucking grab you and pile drive you. | ||
| He goes, that looked nice. | ||
| Yeah, there's you know, there's there's aspects of that though learning how to move your body like that if you can learn how to move your body like that like the best people to start in jujitsu are gymnasts and break dancers other than wrestlers yeah Wrestlers are number one, because wrestlers, they already understand how to control people's bodies. | ||
| But gymnasts and breakdancers, breakdancers in particular, are fucking amazing when they transition to jiu-jitsu. | ||
| I've rolled with some breakdancers, and first of all, they're like a small guy. | ||
| You can't believe how goddamn strong they are. | ||
| It's like holding onto a chimp. | ||
| Because they're used to like bouncing around in one hand. | ||
| It's all like plyometrics. | ||
| I'm obsessed. | ||
| Like they're all ripped. | ||
| I'm obsessed with breakdancing. | ||
| I got into breakdancing. | ||
| So first it was Michael Jackson was my entry into dance. | ||
| So I was always on my feet. | ||
| And then I got into middle school and high school. | ||
| And I loved breakdancing. | ||
| I was infatuated with it. | ||
| And I'd go to this website. | ||
| I would just try to learn. | ||
| But I was in Woodinville, Washington, which is like very white place. | ||
| If you learn breakdancing, you gotta be in Brooklyn. | ||
| It's a community-learned skill. | ||
| I'm trying to learn how to breakdance on Mars. | ||
| But I have the will to do it, and I'm the only one in my school who likes this stuff. | ||
| Are you learning it online? | ||
| Yeah, so I go to this website called Style2Oof. | ||
| This is before YouTube. | ||
| So I would go to this website called Style2Oof, and there was like a French portal and like an English portal. | ||
| I would go to the English one, and they would have all these breakdancing clips, and I would watch them, try to learn them. | ||
| And then, you remember the store Mr. Rags at the mall? | ||
| It was like a Zoomies or... | ||
| No. | ||
| Alright, so there's a store called Mr. Rags. | ||
| It's kind of like a hip-hop skate shop, kind of. | ||
| And they would have VHS copies, like breakdancing videos. | ||
| And I got Battle of the Year. | ||
| I split it with my cousins. | ||
| It was this yellow cassette. | ||
| It was called Battle of the Year. | ||
| It was this yellow VHS, and they had all the crews. | ||
| It's kind of like breakdancing Olympics. | ||
| They have crews from all over the world. | ||
| They have a US crew, a South Korea crew, and then South Korea ended up just killing everybody. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Yeah, they're like the Hyundai of breakdancing. | ||
|
unidentified
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Really? | |
| Everyone laughs at first, and then they just kill everyone. | ||
| They're like the best now. | ||
| South Korea's amazing at breakdancing. | ||
| No kidding. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Well, there's a guy named B-Boy Pocket Kim. | ||
| Do you know him? | ||
| Mm-hmm. | ||
| I don't know if I do. | ||
| Because I just wasn't good at it and I would hurt myself. | ||
| This guy, I've featured him on this podcast multiple times because he's on Stance Elements all the time. | ||
| He does things you can't even believe a person can do. | ||
| Like Stance Elements even has a, on their Instagram page, has a video of me reviewing his shit because it's so preposterous. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Because he can do things that you like. | ||
| I didn't think a person could do that. | ||
| I didn't think a person could move that way on their hands. | ||
| He spins around on his hands in a way, like, if you had to imagine, if you didn't know about breakdancing, what do you think a person could do standing on their hands? | ||
| Well, I guess you could walk around a little bit. | ||
| This motherfucker can do shit on their hands that most people can't do on their feet. | ||
|
unidentified
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Look at this. | |
| Look at this guy. | ||
| That's what drew me to breakdancing. | ||
| I saw videos and I'm, like, blown away. | ||
| I go, what the fuck? | ||
| I'm 90% sure he's Korean. | ||
| The thing is, these power moves are common now. | ||
| What's crazy is established break dancers are like, oh, that's like a dick joke or something. | ||
| No, no, no one thinks this is a dick joke. | ||
| This is fucking outstanding. | ||
| No, I guarantee you there's like hipster or elitist break dancers who look at just power moves like this and they go, no, he's all power, no style. | ||
| I don't think so, man. | ||
| He's one of the best. | ||
| For some. | ||
| No, no, no. | ||
| You're talking crazy now. | ||
| That's like saying, oh, Dustin Poirier, all he does is punch people in the face. | ||
| Oh, those are air tracks. | ||
| I know, he does air tracks. | ||
| I would love to be able to do this. | ||
|
unidentified
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Imagine doing this! | |
| Imagine trying to learn that on your own. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| So, how did you practice? | ||
| Did you practice on pads? | ||
| Yeah, so, again, I was the only person who cared about this, so I worked out. | ||
| I asked the gym teacher, I go, can I just practice on the wrestling mats after school? | ||
| And then I found this other kid who's into it, this Mexican kid. | ||
| Did you form a club? | ||
| Kind of. | ||
| It was just me and him. | ||
| It was an unofficial club. | ||
| No one really knew about it, and so we would practice on a wrestling mat, because it's softer than hardwoods, because you'll bang your knees up in your elbows if you don't know what you're doing up top. | ||
| Is it harder to hold a stand? | ||
| Because it mushes in a little bit, right? | ||
| Yeah, but we were trying to learn windmills and air tracks and crazy shit. | ||
| But I learned how to do a backflip off a wall in my time. | ||
| You could do that? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You could run up a wall and backflip? | ||
|
unidentified
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Whoa. | |
| And just a standing backflip and then a round-off to backflip. | ||
| These are so long ago, I dare not try it because the risk-to-reward ratio. | ||
| I don't know if I can still do it. | ||
| And I don't want to find out. | ||
| Yeah, you don't want to break any of that. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| How old are you now? | ||
| 36. Shit breaks easier when you're 36. Yeah, what's the point? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I'm alright. | ||
| I don't need to know that bad. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| No bueno when you fall wrong from a backflip and break your ankle and then you're walking around. | ||
| Why are you paralyzed? | ||
| I just wanted to see if I could still backflip. | ||
|
unidentified
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Turns out I can't. | |
| And I go... | ||
| It's again, it's like... | ||
| I mean, it's not a useless skill, right? | ||
| Because it's cool to watch. | ||
| But... | ||
| I think it's coolness diminishes as you graduate high school. | ||
| Dancing and stuff is... | ||
| That's what I noticed. | ||
| Why is it so cool to me? | ||
| Well, you're watching... | ||
| Okay, you're talking about professionals. | ||
| This is like top 1% you're watching. | ||
| And that's fascinating to anyone of all ages. | ||
| Right. | ||
| But I think everyone has this relationship with school dances and going in the circle and stuff like that. | ||
| It actually is a social currency when you're younger. | ||
| You know who else can dance? | ||
| Who? | ||
| Adam Hunter. | ||
| Oh, really? | ||
| Really good. | ||
| Oh, I didn't know that. | ||
| Yeah, go to Adam Hunter. | ||
| I think Adam Hunter, comedian. | ||
| He danced at his wedding. | ||
| And he put it up on Instagram, and I was like, holy shit, Adam Hunter can fucking move. | ||
| Like, really? | ||
| He's a wrestler, too. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, yeah. | |
| Also, good body control. | ||
| There you go. | ||
| Coach is wrestling as well. | ||
| But his body control is excellent. | ||
| I feel like if you... | ||
| Like, that's what I was impressed by when I was watching your videos. | ||
| I'm like, oh, Fahim knows how to move his body. | ||
| Like, I'm impressed with... | ||
| Gymnastics, I'm impressed with anything where I know you had to put a lot of time into it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Even if I'm not interested in that thing, I'm impressed with your dedication to it. | ||
| Well, I'm just a hobbyist. | ||
| And also I've noticed, sometimes I hear a song I like and I just want to dance to it, I'll throw it up just because people seem to like it, some of my fans, and it's fun to do. | ||
| I don't claim to be the best dancer in the world, but I've noticed it's kind of like a Rorschach test for people. | ||
| Some people think it's the fucking best thing in the world, and some people are like, this is Napoleon Dynamite! | ||
| This guy sucks! | ||
| I'm not claiming to be the best guy in the world. | ||
| I'm just doing something that makes me happy. | ||
| Well, some people are just always looking for something that sucks. | ||
| That's what they're like, that fucking sucks! | ||
| What fucking sucks? | ||
| What sucks? | ||
| What sucks? | ||
| Oh, that fucking sucks! | ||
| What do you like? | ||
| I don't like you asking me. | ||
| I see a lot of things that suck, but I'm always looking for shit that's cool. | ||
| Along the way, you're going to find some things that suck. | ||
| Yeah, keep it to myself. | ||
| I don't keep it to myself. | ||
| Really? | ||
| No, no. | ||
| I talk a lot of shit. | ||
| You have burner accounts? | ||
| Joe Rogan has burner accounts? | ||
| I don't post on things. | ||
| I talk on the podcast, mostly. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| I feel like talking shit on the podcast, at least you know I'm joking around. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure, yeah. | |
| Just read the written word. | ||
| It can get confusing. | ||
| Intention. | ||
|
unidentified
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It gets stripped. | |
| That's a good way to... | ||
| I feel very, uh, very established. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You are. | |
| Bro, you're a fucking top comedian and you're on the number one podcast on Twitter. | ||
| Bro! | ||
| And we're smoking cigars and drinking scotch. | ||
| This is, uh, I was telling you earlier before, we were only quite the welcome, man. | ||
| I just got here. | ||
| Welcome to Texas. | ||
| What a way to thank you. | ||
| He's one of the early soldiers arriving, moving. | ||
| I feel like I told you some things you can't tell outside about what's happening here, but we got plans, my friend. | ||
| Yeah, people are hitting me up. | ||
| It's interesting. | ||
| We're moving in the right direction. | ||
| Segura's already here. | ||
| Oh, he's already here? | ||
| Well, he bought a house. | ||
| Oh. | ||
| Yeah, he's healing from his leg and his arm from that horrific fall. | ||
| Yeah, I can't watch it. | ||
| I know what happened. | ||
| I just don't want to watch the video. | ||
| I've watched it a hundred times. | ||
| I can't stand stuff like that. | ||
| I don't like it, but, you know, it's a good lesson for people that your body is very fragile. | ||
| Like, when you, especially if you're overweight, like, be real careful with super-athletic explosive moves, because you put tremendous strain in your joints, you know, and his knee just went... | ||
| That's why I don't backflip. | ||
| He was just dunking on a 9-foot rim. | ||
| Can he dunk on a... | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| He can dunk. | ||
| Tom's a very strong guy. | ||
| Very athletic guy. | ||
| He played football. | ||
| I saw some old fellas and stuff. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| He's very athletic. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| He's... | ||
| You know, he learned how to box a little, too. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, is this it? | |
| This is the successful dunk on the 9-foot. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| I didn't know he had that in him. | ||
| Hashtag dunk champ. | ||
| 9-foot. | ||
| But can he dunk on a 10-foot? | ||
| No, no, no, no, no. | ||
| No. | ||
| That's what happened is they went for the 9-3. | ||
| They tried to go up. | ||
| Oh, that's it? | ||
| Okay, don't show anymore. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Don't show anymore. | |
| Yeah, I can't. | ||
| I'm gonna borrow from the pond. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good. | |
| I think I've seen enough. | ||
| It makes my arm hurt. | ||
| I can see his arm break and I'm like, aye! | ||
| Aye! | ||
| Have you ever broken anything? | ||
| Eh, like fractured my wrist a long time ago. | ||
| Backflipping? | ||
| What were you doing? | ||
| Nah, I jumped. | ||
| We had this thing called pillow night at my friend's house. | ||
| You like how we delve into the story, like it's going to be quite the yarn? | ||
| We had a thing called Pillow Night. | ||
| Like, everybody in America, right? | ||
| Oh, please, why bust out the Calibri? | ||
| This is just good audio. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It is, right? | |
| This is just good ASMR. Shout out to Foundation Cigars for hooking us up. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| I appreciate it. | ||
| Yeah, pillow night. | ||
| We would gather all the pillows from the sofas and just everywhere around the house and put it on a mound and then put a bed sheet over it. | ||
| And then you know some houses have stairs that wrap around and there's like a little ledge here where you can... | ||
| So we would jump off of that. | ||
| Oh no. | ||
| We're kids. | ||
| How old were you? | ||
| Like 13 or something. | ||
| Where are the parents? | ||
| I think they might have been there. | ||
| This is probably bad parenting. | ||
| So... | ||
| But they were such cool parents, I didn't want to throw them under the bus. | ||
| Cool parents get kids with broken legs. | ||
| Yeah, so I think they were okay with us doing pillow night. | ||
| So we were having a great time, and then one time when I went off, I think my hand went through all of the pillows, all the cracks, and it just hit the ground. | ||
| And I was like, like I was hurting. | ||
| That sounded like Tom. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, really? | |
| Have you ever heard Tom's noises he was making? | ||
| So I guess it's a human, it's a biological response. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Ugh! | |
| And then I go, put the blanket over me! | ||
| I just wanted it to be dark. | ||
| Just because it was weird. | ||
| Yeah, I've never had this. | ||
| I go, put the blanket over me! | ||
| Don't call my mom! | ||
| Put the blanket over me! | ||
| The darkness will heal me. | ||
| Yeah, just it felt cool. | ||
| It felt cool and healing. | ||
| And then once I could process the pain, I was fine. | ||
| And then the parents were kind of freaking out. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh my god. | |
| Did they know your arm was broken? | ||
| I don't know if they knew something was up. | ||
| And then I covered for them. | ||
| I hurt my wrist playing soccer. | ||
| And then years later, I told my parents the truth, and it was fine. | ||
| So you never got it fixed? | ||
| It healed. | ||
| It was like a fracture. | ||
| It wasn't a clean break. | ||
| So I got it in a splint. | ||
| Yeah, I got an x-ray. | ||
| And where was it fractured? | ||
| I forget, but I went a week or two with a hairline fracture. | ||
| It hurt like shit. | ||
| It's so easy to break bones. | ||
| It's kind of shocking. | ||
| It's shocking how easy they break. | ||
| Does milk really help, or is that bullshit? | ||
| Yeah, it's calcium. | ||
| There's a little bit of calcium. | ||
| Calcium's a part of the bone. | ||
| It is funny how Milk has a PR team. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You see those commercials like, I'm Kevin Love, and Milk helps me perform. | ||
| I did a Milk commercial. | ||
| Really? | ||
| A long time ago? | ||
| Yeah, I did a print ad back in the day for chocolate milk. | ||
| Did you have the... | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| No, I think I was in a tank of chocolate milk, if I remember correctly. | ||
| I remember freezing my dick off, too. | ||
| I think it was really fucking cold. | ||
| I was in this tank of chocolate milk, and I think my hands, if I remember correctly, my hands were on the glass. | ||
| Oh, there it is. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, shit. | |
| So I'm in this tank of chocolate milk. | ||
| This is during the Fear Factor days. | ||
| Brooding. | ||
| What does it say underneath? | ||
| My only fear is like running out or something like that? | ||
| Got chocolate. | ||
| Yeah, my only fear is running out. | ||
| Got chocolate milk. | ||
| Are those your real hands or did they push it in post? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Those are my hands. | |
| Oh, those are my hands. | ||
| Nice. | ||
| Yeah, they didn't give me some bitch-ass Donald Trump hands. | ||
| That's one of the funniest things. | ||
| Everybody on the left is like, don't body shame. | ||
| Don't body shame, ever. | ||
| Look at his hands. | ||
| It's him. | ||
| Look at his hands. | ||
| I bet he's got a little dick. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yay! | |
| Yeah, I always found that fact. | ||
| Body shame! | ||
| I have a bit about that, like how guys get vilified just for our biology. | ||
| You know, when we'll be like, he's short. | ||
| He had a little dick. | ||
| And I go, for preaching all this body positivity, you sure shit on this a lot. | ||
| Like, he had a fucking tiny little dick. | ||
| We come in all shapes and sizes. | ||
| You're beautiful, ladies. | ||
| Body positivity, unless you have a little dick. | ||
| That's gotta be the worst. | ||
| If you have a micropenis, That's gotta be literally the saddest thing because there's not a goddamn thing they could do about it. | ||
| They can fix your lips. | ||
| They can stuff things in your butt. | ||
| They can give you a hair transplant. | ||
| They can do a lot of stuff. | ||
| They can't do a goddamn thing for a little dick. | ||
| Someone needs to champion the cause. | ||
| Because if you have a micro dick, and some dudes have a micro dick, like a small part, not even a whole pinky, like a small part of the pinky. | ||
| You've seen, I'm sure. | ||
| I go, that's small? | ||
| You've looked. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, not mine. | |
| This is how we find out I have a micro dick. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I go, that's small? | |
| No, it's fine. | ||
| It's fine. | ||
| It's fine. | ||
| Oh, okay. | ||
| This is better. | ||
| This finger's better. | ||
| Oh, I get it, yeah. | ||
| I don't have a pinky. | ||
| I've got a... | ||
| A ring finger? | ||
| I've got a... | ||
| What is that finger? | ||
| That's a ring finger, yeah. | ||
| But on the right hand, is it still a ring finger? | ||
| Ooh, that's a good point. | ||
| Fuck. | ||
| Like, if you have a wedding ring on your right hand... | ||
| Well, my friend, this guy, Jean-Jacques Machado, he was my jiu-jitsu instructor. | ||
| He was born with no fingers on his left hand. | ||
| So his wedding ring is on his right hand. | ||
| Obviously, he doesn't have fingers on his left hand. | ||
| So he has to have it on his right hand. | ||
| That's the only time it's acceptable. | ||
| But no one says shit about it, because he'll choke the fuck out of you. | ||
| He still has an arm. | ||
| But when I see a guy who has a wedding ring, like a ring like this, just on their right hand, I'm like, are you just really in the rings? | ||
| Are you not married? | ||
| Like, one day, I hope it'll be on this hand. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But for now, it's over here. | ||
| Like, some guys... | ||
| I mean, I just can't. | ||
| Like, accessory guys? | ||
| I've never been that guy with, like, the leather bracelets, the rings, the necklaces. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Beads. | |
| Beads. | ||
| That's a stretch. | ||
| They just got all this shit on them. | ||
| And I don't... | ||
| I can never be that guy. | ||
| I just can't. | ||
| Or, like, a deep V? I can't. | ||
| A deep V-neck t-shirt? | ||
| Yeah, like a deep V and like having all these trinkets and shit. | ||
| How about like a Hawaiian shirt but way unbuttoned? | ||
| Like unbuttoned way down the navel. | ||
| Yeah, this is too ambitious. | ||
| I feel like I have to get famous enough before I take those type of fashion risks. | ||
| Yeah, you already have to be drunk all the time or on drugs. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You don't give a fuck. | ||
| Or like a fedora guy or hat guy. | ||
| A fedora guy. | ||
| Fedora's a... | ||
| that's a stretch. | ||
| I do wear them paperboy hats all the time. | ||
| That's alright. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I love those. | |
| That's like Peaky Blinders. | ||
| You're good. | ||
| I love those. | ||
| I've always loved them. | ||
| Yeah, those are fine. | ||
| I put them on. | ||
| I like them. | ||
| I feel good. | ||
| They're wool. | ||
| They warm your head up a little bit. | ||
| It gets cold out. | ||
| I've always found, whenever I'm doing stand-up or traveling somewhere... | ||
| Oh, Schultz! | ||
| But that's because Schultz is in Miami. | ||
| I was going to say, so does Vacation give you... | ||
| Look at him, he's on vacation, he's doing a show down there. | ||
| He's like, fuck this winter. | ||
| I'd love that guy. | ||
| I'd love Schultz to death. | ||
| Oh, Akash is faking Coke. | ||
| They should do real Coke. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Maybe it is. | |
| I don't think so. | ||
| I think it's fake. | ||
| They got real booze, I'm sure. | ||
| That's fake Coke. | ||
| Or whatever. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Don't you think we would do that if we were in New York? | ||
| Like, what if Spotify said, hey, Joe Rogan, we're going to double your salary, but you've got to move to New York. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| And then it's like, Jamie, you want to go to New York? | ||
| So we'll do it. | ||
| No, if we were in New York and then the winner came along and said, listen, bro, fuck this noise. | ||
| Fuck this black ice bullshit falling down stairs because you don't realize that your stairs are covered in ice. | ||
| Did you ever grow up in the East Coast? | ||
| Did you live there at all? | ||
| No, I've only bounced in to do stand-up a little bit and I've never spent enough time there. | ||
| I lived in Boston for a long time and I lived there when I had a paper route. | ||
| So I drove a car every day of the year. | ||
| 365 days a year for many, many years. | ||
| So I was in snow all the time. | ||
| It gets tired. | ||
| It gets tired. | ||
| And these guys are like, fuck this. | ||
| Let's go to Miami. | ||
| And by the way, Schultz has been sending me messages. | ||
| He's like, dude, he goes, they look at you like you're the biggest pussy in the world if you wear a mask. | ||
| No one wears a mask. | ||
| So I sent him this video today of someone took up a grocery store in Florida. | ||
| No one has a mask. | ||
| Old people, young people. | ||
| No. | ||
| I saw one mask in the whole thing. | ||
| And everybody's laughing and yakking it up like there's no pandemic. | ||
| That's crazy. | ||
| I think even the perception of Texas, people have it wrong. | ||
| Because when I came here, you know, you have this idea of what it's like, because it's a little more open. | ||
| But you go into these places, you know, I went to Anton's to check out Kill Tony, and we went to a bar, like, afterwards... | ||
| Everyone's wearing masks. | ||
| They're playing by the rules. | ||
| Everyone's wearing masks. | ||
| I think there's this conception that no one's wearing masks and everyone has six shooters and shit. | ||
| This is Austin, though. | ||
| Austin is Texas light. | ||
| It's the perfect blend, in my opinion, because it's like a lot of really cool, open-minded people. | ||
| A lot of tech people are moving here. | ||
| A lot of creative people. | ||
| A lot of musicians. | ||
| Now, a lot of comedians, too. | ||
| And then you got on the outskirts. | ||
| The outskirts are guns. | ||
| The outskirts is all guns. | ||
| So we're in a bubble? | ||
| It's all guns and zebras and fucking tigers and giraffes and shit. | ||
| Yeah, if you just go to Plano, you're not going to see any masks. | ||
| People don't give a fuck. | ||
| There's a lot of places in Texas where they don't give a fuck about masks. | ||
| But also, I think their population is so sparse where maybe they can get away with it. | ||
| Like, LA is just so densely populated. | ||
| There's a little bit of that. | ||
| Yeah, there's a little bit of that. | ||
| Anytime there's a real... | ||
| any kind of... | ||
| Real problem. | ||
| You don't want to be in a highly populated... | ||
| I used to think about... | ||
| That's why I built an apocalypse truck. | ||
| It's one of the reasons why I built... | ||
| I built this truck with a giant gas tank and this 95 Toyota Land Cruiser. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You have it? | |
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| I built it saying, okay, if some shit goes down... | ||
| First of all, I just think they're cool. | ||
| I've always wanted a 95 Land Cruiser. | ||
| It's like the last year where they had two solid axles, front and rear live axles, like these big, thick... | ||
| It's a lifted truck. | ||
| You can kind of go over anything. | ||
| It has lockers. | ||
| It has locking differentials on it. | ||
| So you literally can drive through mud, snow, anything. | ||
| I'm like, the shit hits the fan. | ||
| These fucking roads are going to be jammed up. | ||
| You're going to need to go that way. | ||
| Like, here's the road. | ||
| You're going to need to go that way. | ||
| You can't do that in a Prius. | ||
| Like, you're going to have to get the fuck out. | ||
| I was really worried about... | ||
| Earthquakes, fires, some weird shit. | ||
| If something happens and you have to literally live out of a truck... | ||
| Yeah, I'm fucked. | ||
| I'll have to hit you up. | ||
| You just can't live where there's too many people. | ||
| It's not tenable. | ||
| That's kind of why I left LA. I mean, it's tentative. | ||
| I have an apartment out here. | ||
| Bro, I've got plans for you. | ||
| You've got plans for me? | ||
| We gotta do this, man. | ||
| I'm day two, day two, day three in Austin, but the genesis of it was I have this writing job back in LA, so I'm writing for some sitcom, and it's a Zoom writer's room. | ||
| So we all hop on Zoom, we write the script and all that, and also we're shooting now, so we're watching the actors. | ||
| Can you say the show? | ||
| Yeah, it's a CBS show called United States of Al. | ||
| It's not out yet. | ||
| Who's in it? | ||
| Al Franken making a comeback? | ||
| Yeah, it's an Al Franken vehicle. | ||
| He's just doing coke with a Hawaiian shirt on. | ||
| They fucking Me Too'd me and I didn't even do anything! | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's his comeback, baby! | |
| Ah! | ||
| No, it's like a Chuck Lorre show. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, okay. | |
| He has so many shows. | ||
| Yeah, that guy, he's the OG, right? | ||
| Yeah, man. | ||
| He's like Norman Lear 2.0. | ||
| And then I got to shout out Dave and Maria, the EPs of the show. | ||
| They were familiar with me from the Comedy Store and Stand Up. | ||
| And it was really cool the way I got the job. | ||
| Because most staff writers, you send in a packet, and it's really hard to get a staff writing job. | ||
| But they just offered it to me. | ||
| They just knew my stand-up and were fans of it and were like, would you like to write on the show? | ||
| And it was in the middle of a pandemic. | ||
| So I'm like, yeah, of course. | ||
| I've got nothing else going on. | ||
| Like stand-up was shut down. | ||
| What else am I going to do during the day? | ||
| It's good to keep active. | ||
| It's good to keep active. | ||
| And also I've learned, I've been a stand-up for so long. | ||
| I've been doing like 18 years. | ||
| I've just been, you're an astronaut when you're a stand-up. | ||
| You're just floating. | ||
| You're like a mercenary. | ||
| And I love it so much. | ||
| I have so much respect for stand-up and the craft. | ||
| But I've learned, even just having this job for like a month or two or whatever, perception is reality. | ||
| Just because I value stand-up so much doesn't mean the rest of the world does. | ||
| Like, this job was kind of serendipitously happened and I got it. | ||
| And just some of the headway I've been able to make, just because you have, I'm a writer on the CBS Chuck Lorre show. | ||
| Like, heads turn a little bit. | ||
| People respect it because they know it. | ||
| Who are these people? | ||
| Just when you tell, like, the average person or even industry-wise, you're a known quantity. | ||
| They go, okay, it's like a shorthand. | ||
| Like, CBS and Chuck Lorre, whatever, they trust these guys and they're giving this much money. | ||
| Okay, so that's... | ||
| It's like a resume. | ||
| So you must be good. | ||
| So you must be good. | ||
| Whereas if you're a guy who just kills in the OR... Like, I was just killing in the OR, but that doesn't... | ||
| I think this all stems from your parents not wanting you to be a stand-up and being very bummed out that you were an engineer and you went from being an engineer to being a stand-up. | ||
| You're always looking for this sort of like mainstream, like my son, he's writing for a CBS show. | ||
| Dude, you know what I noticed? | ||
| Because, like, you know, I started stand-up when I was 17 or 18. And it was bad. | ||
| Like, I mean, whatever. | ||
| We love each other, me and my dad. | ||
| But it was like I was doing heroin. | ||
| Maybe we talked about it last time. | ||
| But it was very contentious up top. | ||
| And time tempered him a bit. | ||
| Just he couldn't be that mad for that long because I had been doing stand-up for so long. | ||
| You have to accept it to some degree. | ||
| But once I got this writing job... | ||
| That was it? | ||
| It was crazy. | ||
| My dad became a comedy nerd suddenly. | ||
| He was like, and how do they write the show? | ||
| So it's a room, and then everyone pitches. | ||
| I've never had my dad ask me more questions about comedy in my life. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Really? | |
| Yeah. | ||
| And I realized he wasn't opposed to comedy. | ||
| He just loves nine-to-five jobs. | ||
| He loves structure. | ||
| He loves structure. | ||
| He can wrap his head around punching in and punching out. | ||
| Right, right, right. | ||
| Like doing the clubs, touring with you or something, or like doing these sporadic acting things and getting a writing job. | ||
| This bohemian lifestyle of a stand-up is too esoteric for him to understand. | ||
| I get it. | ||
| But where it's like, they're paying me this. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I write a script from nine to five. | ||
| That he gets and he loves. | ||
| He loves security. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, that's a disciplined man. | ||
| That's what that is. | ||
| Disciplined people love jobs. | ||
| They love security. | ||
| It's also an immigrant thing, though, too. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| For sure. | ||
| It's such an American luxury to follow your dreams. | ||
| And, like, what makes me happy? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| No Middle Eastern dad ever asks, are you happy? | ||
| What does happiness have to do with anything? | ||
| There's duty, and there's how does the family look? | ||
| Right, right. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Are you embarrassing the family? | ||
| Are you embarrassing the family? | ||
| Are you taking your pants off on stage? | ||
| Honestly, I think the early years of me doing stand-up probably thought I was a clown or something. | ||
| That's the thing about stand-up is everyone thinks that you're delusional or a crazy person until you get a sliver of success and then they're all about it. | ||
| Well, it gets very little respect even as you become successful, which is why plagiarism is not taken nearly as seriously in stand-up as it is in literature or in music. | ||
| And music, I mean, think about the lawsuits in music where someone just takes a riff of something. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And then it becomes... | ||
| What is that guy's name? | ||
| Robin Thicke? | ||
| Blurred Lines? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| From Marvin Gaye, right? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And it's clear, right? | ||
| You listen to it. | ||
| The songs are very different, but it's clear that the riff is taken from that one song, He Lost the Lawsuit. | ||
| Or another one is... | ||
| Who sang Bittersweet Symphony? | ||
| They lost all their money. | ||
| Excuse me? | ||
| Yes, it's a Rolling Stones song. | ||
| It's a great fucking song. | ||
| They had to give all that cheddar to the Rolling Stones. | ||
| We have this wild west. | ||
| We have conversations. | ||
| I kind of like the way it is. | ||
| It's weird, though. | ||
| To have that combo? | ||
| Yeah, it sucks. | ||
| It's weird that people don't respect it, but they do love it. | ||
| Everybody loves... | ||
| Richard Pryor. | ||
| Everybody loves going to see Chris Rock or Eddie Murphy or Dave Chappelle or Bill Burr. | ||
| People love to go see a comedy show. | ||
| But the craft of stand-up is not appreciated the way constructing a song is or the way writing a book is or the way a lot of other things are. | ||
| Yeah, you think... | ||
| Because we're mostly fuck-ups. | ||
| Because a lot of us are fuck-ups. | ||
| A lot of us are very undisciplined. | ||
| Anytime you can go on stage, you just wing it. | ||
| Like, you've ever done those stand-up on the spot shows? | ||
| I love those. | ||
| You love those, too. | ||
| Love those. | ||
| Love those. | ||
| You write so much material just because it forces you to... | ||
| Those shows were so important and just being able to have a show where... | ||
| I used to do this thing where I would do... | ||
| And Dave does these now. | ||
| When Dave and I do these shows out here at Stubbs BBQ, we do the show and then we both... | ||
| He gets off stage. | ||
| Good night, everybody. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| Everybody claps. | ||
| And then he turns to the back. | ||
| I come out and then we both go on stage and we just talk shit. | ||
| That's the best. | ||
| And we just improvise. | ||
| People yell things out, and Dave is the master at that. | ||
| It's so fun. | ||
| Most of those things are just me laughing at him, because he's on stage last. | ||
| And then by the time I get on stage, he's probably had three or four shots of tequila. | ||
| He's lit. | ||
| And he's just on fire. | ||
| And it's him making me laugh, him making everybody else laugh. | ||
| We're fucking around. | ||
| But I used to do that after my shows. | ||
| I used to do this thing where I would say, if you have anything you want to talk about, just lift your hand up. | ||
| Tell me what you want to talk about. | ||
| Every now and then, I would come up with something. | ||
| But it would be sort of anticlimactic. | ||
| And I feel that about these shows, too. | ||
| It's like sometimes it's anticlimactic, but those shows like the stand-up on the spot shows, we knew... | ||
| It used to be called Thunder Pussy. | ||
| Do you remember that? | ||
| Oh, yeah, yeah. | ||
| We used to do it in the tiny room at the Ice House. | ||
| Oh, okay. | ||
| The annex? | ||
| Yeah, we got to start doing those out here. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I need those. | |
| Those are the best. | ||
| Those improvisation shows are so... | ||
| It should be a category of comedy. | ||
| I think so. | ||
| Yeah, it's a very important category because there's a freedom to not having any act that you can fall back on where you're forced to create. | ||
| That's kind of why I started doing Lance at the Comedy Store, this character that I... Lance Stampinopoulos? | ||
| Lance Cantopoulos? | ||
| Yeah, and that was the beauty of having... | ||
| Didn't you wear a wig? | ||
| I had a mullet. | ||
| I had a mullet pre-Theo. | ||
| I was the first mullet... | ||
| I love Theo, but I was the first mullet at the Comedy Store post-80s. | ||
| All right, Howie Mandel, he has me there. | ||
| He had a mullet? | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| Howie Mandel? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah. | |
| That's Lance. | ||
| How did you get that on? | ||
| What is that? | ||
| So that's just like a weave. | ||
| It's like two rows of extensions. | ||
| But what's crazy is I would dress up like that at the store and people who even knew me as me didn't know that was me. | ||
| Well, I remember one time I brought you up and I said he has an alter ego. | ||
| Oh, I was so mad. | ||
| Yeah, you're like, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't. | ||
| Because he's not a character. | ||
| He's a real person. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| How did you do that? | ||
| That's like Photoshop. | ||
| Oh. | ||
| But the beauty of it was... | ||
| So, I mean, the character developed on accident. | ||
| It was this organic... | ||
| That's why I love the store. | ||
| Some people think the store is just like... | ||
| You know, some of the alt people are just like, oh, it's all club comics and it sucks. | ||
| Those all people just need a hug. | ||
| I had an argument with someone about that. | ||
| They were saying that they were never accepted there. | ||
| I'm like, God damn it. | ||
| And then once it got hot, then somebody was like, how do I get there? | ||
| You can get accepted there, but you've got to perform. | ||
| It's a tough room. | ||
| Well, you have to, yeah, you have to do well. | ||
| You can't just do East of Gower stuff. | ||
| People want to be accepted because of their credentials. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Oh, I'm on a television show. | ||
| You know, I had a blah, blah, blah, a Comedy Central special. | ||
| You gotta get rid of that band, bro. | ||
| You're driving crazy. | ||
| Sorry, man. | ||
| I'm new to this. | ||
| Just pull it off the top. | ||
| Just squeeze it off the top. | ||
| Just pull it like this, like this. | ||
| What, this? | ||
| Yeah, no, do it like this. | ||
| Pull it, it'll come over the top. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Really? | |
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| Oh, shit. | ||
| It's hot! | ||
| Like a condom. | ||
| It's hot, Joe. | ||
| No, Jesus. | ||
| I just don't want you to smoke the band. | ||
| But I love the band. | ||
| It has all the flavor. | ||
| I love glue. | ||
| I don't think that's what you're supposed to smoke. | ||
| Alright, hold on. | ||
| I gotta finish this song in the store. | ||
| Jamie's shaking his head. | ||
| Whenever I'm confused, I turn to Jamie. | ||
| Isn't a great manly thing... | ||
| Smoking cigars? | ||
| Yeah, I just got into it. | ||
| Do you trust girls who drink scotch and smoke cigars? | ||
| Yeah, why not? | ||
| It's like girls pretending they're into like, I want to watch the game. | ||
| They just want to spend time with you. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Some girls do like to watch the game. | ||
| Yeah, that's true. | ||
| That's no knock on girls who actually like sports. | ||
| But I want to finish the thought on the store. | ||
| People don't realize how experimental that place is. | ||
| Maybe less so once it became this beacon. | ||
| Like once you came to the store. | ||
| I fucked it up. | ||
| Nah, you made it great. | ||
| You made it great. | ||
| You made every night awesome because I was there in the dark ages. | ||
| And that's how that character Lance came to be because there was no stakes whatsoever. | ||
| You didn't have to worry about industry being in the crowd. | ||
| There's no agents. | ||
| No one was coming to the comedy store. | ||
| They were all at Meltdown. | ||
| They were all scouting at a comic book store. | ||
| I have my one foot in alt, one foot in club. | ||
| I've done comic book shows. | ||
| I feel like I'm an alt guy in a club world. | ||
| And I'd rather... | ||
| I just like that. | ||
| Do you really? | ||
| Kind of. | ||
| I'm a little left of center. | ||
| I am as well, but I don't think you're alt at all because you're too funny. | ||
| Thanks. | ||
| But that's kind of what I'm driving at where I want to be able to do well in a club setting anywhere in the country because then that's universally funny. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Because if I do some – and I've done them before and they're great. | ||
| Space is great. | ||
| Time is time and any comic getting up and anyone doing stand-up is great. | ||
| But if you just do alt shows, it breeds a very specific narrow band of comedy and you may be killing it in a laundromat. | ||
| But when you do the Houston improv, it's going to be tough going. | ||
| You'll be like, why isn't it going how it does at the laundromat? | ||
| Because you've been playing the same field the whole time. | ||
| So I got past when it was the dark ages at the store, and I could take big swings and not worry about it affecting my career, because I was doing comedy for comedy, not for results-based, really, other than just artistic enrichment. | ||
| So I remember Willie Hunter was doing this variety show in the main room. | ||
| He knows like a dancer. | ||
| He's like, hey, I want you to be the musical guest. | ||
| Can you dance on it? | ||
| And I go, that's weird. | ||
| If Mia Fahim Anwar just like dances during your variety show segment, that's like odd. | ||
| I go, I'll do it as a character or whatever. | ||
| And he goes, yeah, yeah, whatever. | ||
| I don't give a shit. | ||
| And I go, okay. | ||
| Because this Lance guy, I had... | ||
| So visually, I did a sketch of Melissa Villasenor. | ||
| So I already knew what he looked like visually. | ||
| I go, all right, I'll dress up as this guy. | ||
| And he goes, what's his name? | ||
| I need it for the flyer. | ||
| And I go, his name is, he's made it up on the spot. | ||
| I go, Lance Cantstopolis, because it sounded like can't stop dancing, you know, like Cantstopolis. | ||
| So he puts it on the flyer. | ||
| I do Willie's variety show. | ||
| I come out. | ||
| I dance to Chromios night by night. | ||
| It's funny. | ||
| It's just a funny dance. | ||
| I'm not talking at all. | ||
| And then I'm floating around the comedy store. | ||
| You know, it's a fun house. | ||
| There's the belly room, and it's kind of dead. | ||
| It's later at night. | ||
| Bretton Biddlecomb comes up with a stopwatch. | ||
| He goes, hey, man, we don't have any comics. | ||
| Can you go up in the OR? And I've got the mullet, and I've got the wife beater, and I've got the jeans and shit. | ||
| And I'm like, yeah, okay. | ||
| Like, no comic turns down stage time. | ||
| I'm like, yeah, I'll go up. | ||
| So there's maybe 10 people in the crowd. | ||
| And I'm about to go up. | ||
| And in my mind, I go, I can't talk like this, dressed like this. | ||
| Like, hey, guys! | ||
| Like, I have a mullet. | ||
| And I'm like, anybody from out of town? | ||
| I'm like, I gotta do an accent. | ||
| Otherwise, this makes no sense. | ||
| So I get introduced. | ||
| Lance Gastopolis. | ||
| I come out. | ||
| I'm like, what's up? | ||
| How's everybody doing tonight? | ||
| You're good? | ||
| And I just do crowd work. | ||
| There's some cougars. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Do you have a backstory? | |
| I have no backstory, so I'm just like, what's up? | ||
| I'm just doing crowd work. | ||
| No material. | ||
| You got cougars in the crowd? | ||
| Yeah, I'm like, what's up? | ||
| You got tiny champagnes? | ||
| Yeah, they're good. | ||
| And then, it was getting a type of laugh that is different than a joke laugh. | ||
| Like, I've killed before as me, and... | ||
| But there were these moments that were so special where it planted the seed where I go, oh, this is different. | ||
| This is kind of like when you're a kid with your friends or your brother. | ||
| It's a childlike laughter. | ||
| You don't have to be like, oh, that's clever. | ||
| It just punches you in the chest. | ||
| So I started doing it a little more regularly. | ||
| Like three months later or two months later, I tried it again. | ||
| And then I started to really hone in on who this guy is and how to do it. | ||
| Because sometimes it would be magical. | ||
| It would fucking, like, blow the room up. | ||
| And then sometimes it would be very whatever. | ||
| But then I got good at, like... | ||
| It just became Q&A. There's no material but Lance. | ||
| So they introduce, they go, Lance can't stop this. | ||
| And they crank up this dance music. | ||
| And then Lance dances for, like, a minute. | ||
| Just dances. | ||
| And it sets the tone. | ||
| It's so beautiful. | ||
| Because people are on board. | ||
| After they see a guy dance for, like, 30 seconds up top... | ||
| When they've been watching guys come up and it's like everyone's playing baseball and Lance is playing lacrosse. | ||
| So he dances for like a minute and then it's like, how's everybody doing tonight? | ||
| Anybody have any questions for me? | ||
| It shows how loose you are too that you can go on stage and dance. | ||
| But it's kind of a testament to that stand-up on the spot, no net. | ||
| And it's liberating because I'm a heady guy. | ||
| I'll think about jokes and structure when I do me. | ||
| Like, alright, what do I want to do tonight? | ||
| Lance, I don't have to think. | ||
| I just show up. | ||
| Do you put yourself in a Lance mindset? | ||
| Not really. | ||
| I'm kind of in the back. | ||
| I have the mullet. | ||
| And like, as soon as they play the music, I dance for 30 seconds. | ||
| And that's just so freeing. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And then once I'm done with that, it's just Q&A. And Lance is so fast and quick that it surprises some people. | ||
| And it's just so fun. | ||
| You say Lance like it's not you. | ||
| Because it's not. | ||
| My mom would hit me up. | ||
| She'd be like, I don't like the way Lance... | ||
| I didn't raise you that way. | ||
| I don't like the way Lance... | ||
|
unidentified
|
She saw Lance? | |
| ...talks about fucking... | ||
| No, because I would post it on Instagram and YouTube and shit. | ||
| You probably said that. | ||
| Ah, there you are. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| I like Lance. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know, Lance was the first time I saw you. | ||
| Oh, that's hilarious. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Some people have seen me that way where they've seen Lance first before me and I think that's a trip. | ||
| It took me a while to figure out what the fuck was going on. | ||
| The first time I, you know, obviously I didn't see you on stage. | ||
| I think the store was the first time I saw you on stage, right? | ||
| Probably. | ||
| I think it was 2014. Yeah. | ||
| And that was when I came back. | ||
| And I was just sort of acclimating myself to some of the people that were there. | ||
| And I saw you go on stage as Lance. | ||
| And I forget who told me to watch. | ||
| Like, dude, you've got to watch this. | ||
| This is fucking hilarious. | ||
| I wish I could remember. | ||
| It might have been Bert. | ||
| And then you went on stage as Lance. | ||
| And I was like, this guy's fucking funny. | ||
| And he goes, that's not really his name. | ||
| He's actually Fahim Anwar. | ||
| He's a really funny guy. | ||
| I'm like, what? | ||
| This is not him? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I thought you were that guy. | ||
| No. | ||
| I thought you were this wild dude. | ||
|
unidentified
|
See? | |
| But that's the beauty of it. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| And even in the early days of developing Lance, obviously you want to hit a home run every time. | ||
| You want the room to blow up. | ||
| But even if it's kind of a whatever set, the fact that 70% of the crowd thinks that's a real guy is a win. | ||
| How about 100% of the crowd? | ||
| It is 100%. | ||
| Maybe just the comics in the back now. | ||
| Yeah, the only people that don't know or that do know are the people that have already seen you before. | ||
| This is Fahim. | ||
| Dude, this happened too. | ||
| So I did a Lancet. | ||
| And I always take the shit out after I'm done. | ||
| You know, I perform. | ||
| I go in the back, you know the bar area. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Take the clips out. | ||
| I put a hat on. | ||
| Change your shirt? | ||
| Yeah, I'm like Superman. | ||
| So then I'm back in the back hallway shooting the shit with all the comics. | ||
| And this girl, she comes up and she's like... | ||
| Oh my god, that was amazing. | ||
| And then I never own up to it. | ||
| I'm like, what? | ||
| She goes, oh my god, I'm so sorry. | ||
| I thought you were someone else. | ||
| And then she just went away. | ||
| I thought you were someone else. | ||
| Oh, you have me confused with someone else? | ||
| She's like, oh my god, I'm so sorry. | ||
| Yeah, I just got a quick haircut. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| She believed it. | ||
| That's just a testament to kind of losing yourself in the character. | ||
| It's like hair clips or something? | ||
| He just clips into the back. | ||
| And then it drapes over. | ||
| Did you decide what nationality this guy is? | ||
| So this is beautiful. | ||
| It organically happened. | ||
| People... | ||
| Because I would do Q&A. I'd go, like, anybody have any questions? | ||
| And then it becomes fun. | ||
| Because then the crowd... | ||
| It starts with the comics. | ||
| The comics will start asking some questions. | ||
| And then it makes the crowd feel comfortable asking their own questions. | ||
| And the game is like trying to paint Lance into a corner, but Lance gets out of it every time. | ||
| There's something about going on stage and dancing like that that makes you loose. | ||
| Do you know, do you ever watch Muay Thai? | ||
| You ever seen Muay Thai fights? | ||
| There's a thing that they do in traditional Muay Thai called the Y Crew. | ||
| And the W-A-I-K-R-U. And Y Crew is a dance that Muay Thai fighters do before they fight. | ||
| And it's hard to get people to watch it in America. | ||
| So a lot of the American promotions eliminated the Y crew. | ||
| And a lot of the traditional TIE fighters get very upset by this because it's an important part of it, not just for tradition, but also because... | ||
| It helps them loosen up. | ||
| So they come out and dance. | ||
| So they do this dance where this music plays, traditional Thai music, and they come out and they dance. | ||
| See if you can find some of that. | ||
| Y crew dance. | ||
| And they wear this, I think it's called a mong tong, this headband that goes around and they have these things around their biceps and And they do this dance and they stretch out while they're doing this dance. | ||
| So these two fighters are doing this dance in the ring before they fight. | ||
| So instead of just, ladies and gentlemen, in the red corner, Fahim and War! | ||
| Instead of doing that, these guys come out and, like, give me some music. | ||
| So you hear the horns, the traditional... | ||
| The traditional music. | ||
| I actually did a commentary once back in the day with a gentleman named Richard Norton. | ||
| He and I did commentary for a traditional Muay Thai event and they did all this. | ||
| So he's doing all this and warming up and loosening up. | ||
| And I actually got to do commentary for a legend, this guy named Koban. | ||
| Koban... | ||
| I don't know how to fuck up his last name. | ||
| Luxum Taikom, I think is his last name. | ||
| But he was a real Muay Thai legend. | ||
| It was a small Muay Thai production. | ||
| But this is how they do it. | ||
| They do this thing. | ||
| So they're moving around like this, and part of what they're doing is they're loosening up and getting ready. | ||
| But oftentimes, if there's some... | ||
| Some real static between you and the other fighter. | ||
| They'll look at the other fighter and pretend they're shooting arrows at him. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oops. | |
| Oh, I hit this. | ||
| But it's this thing they do. | ||
| And when you do that... | ||
| I was talking to a TIE fighter about it. | ||
| He goes, one of the beautiful things about it is it gets rid of your performance anxiety. | ||
| Because you do that before you fight. | ||
| And then you feel more relaxed about being in front of the crowd. | ||
| I believe it. | ||
| Like, I honestly... | ||
| It was by happenstance that the intro happened this way. | ||
| But... | ||
| I do think it is twofold. | ||
| I think it loosens me up as a performer because I've just expended all that energy and I'm dancing around and you're just like worked up and ready to go. | ||
| It's not like waiting to blast off into a cannon or... | ||
| Yeah, it just loosens me up as a performer when I do Lance. | ||
| And then also, I think it's very endearing to the crowd. | ||
| Because they have seen... | ||
| It's a vulnerable place to be in. | ||
| To dance in front of a crowd like that at a comedy show. | ||
| And they've seen every comedian throughout the night. | ||
| And I would always have Adam put me up in the elbow of the show. | ||
| Like, midnight. | ||
| There's all these heavy hitters. | ||
| And then, you know how the newcomers kind of come on towards the end? | ||
| Not that they're bad, but they're newer. | ||
| And you just wouldn't know them as much. | ||
| They're growing. | ||
| But there's magic in those moments. | ||
| Yes, that's why I always wanted to... | ||
| Once they've seen a lot of great comedy and they've seen enough people go up and be like, hey, what's going on? | ||
| Because then once you see... | ||
| This is so different than what you've seen throughout the whole night. | ||
| And I've noticed that once I dance for 30 seconds, the crowd's just ready. | ||
| They're just ready to go. | ||
| Because one of the hardest things about stand-up is earning a crowd's trust up top. | ||
| Especially if you're not famous. | ||
| I've always found it fascinating because I've been not famous longer than I've had some recognition, maybe as of late. | ||
| When do you think you started getting recognition? | ||
| How long ago? | ||
| It creeps up on you. | ||
| Four years? | ||
| Yeah, maybe like three or four years. | ||
| I would do Punchline and it would be sold out and that's weird to me because most of my life has not been that. | ||
| Right. | ||
| What turned it for you? | ||
| It's been, you know, back in the day there was, I think, big breaks. | ||
| Like, you do Johnny and you're on. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey! | |
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| There are these singular moments that blast you off. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And mine has been just such a compounding over the years. | ||
| You're so much better off that way. | ||
| I like it, too. | ||
| So much better. | ||
| Because it's better for your mind. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Because the shift, the shift between one and zero, it's much slower than... | ||
| And I'm so much more grateful for it. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Because I know what it was. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And if anybody, like, sometimes I'll get DMs or something and when I have time, I respond to them and it means a lot. | ||
| Like, it's not lost on me that someone drove somewhere to come see me or they really enjoyed the show and I'm so grateful. | ||
| I'm not a child star who just thinks that this is the way the world works. | ||
| Yeah, you gotta hang on to that. | ||
| I don't think I'll ever lose it. | ||
| Especially because I had to fight so hard. | ||
| It's harder when your parents aren't on board with it. | ||
| Right, right, right. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, it's not lost on me. | ||
| Yeah, but... | ||
| Have you noticed, like, even before you became Joe Rogan and such, the hardest part about stand-up is getting that trust from the crowd. | ||
| Oh, yeah, for sure. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Like, is this guy funny? | ||
| I always think it's so strange. | ||
| People will pay this crazy ticket price and two-drink minimum, and when you go up, they're like, this is before you are who you are. | ||
| They're like... | ||
| Is this guy funny? | ||
| Trying to make me laugh. | ||
| Like, you paid all this money. | ||
| Why don't you give me the benefit of the doubt? | ||
| But you kill him with the first joke and then you're gravy. | ||
| Well, it's also because people see stand-up as talking. | ||
| And everybody can talk. | ||
| Not everybody can dance. | ||
| If you go out there and dance, I'm like, oh, I can do some shit I can't do. | ||
| If someone goes up and talks, I can fucking talk. | ||
| I've been funny before. | ||
| Everybody's been funny. | ||
| Everybody said something at work and it's funny. | ||
| You know what I've also noticed about stand-up? | ||
| Because I get this. | ||
| Sometimes I'll post clips and I walk the line sometimes. | ||
| I think something's funny and it's just a joke. | ||
| But when you release it to the internet, some people can take it the wrong way. | ||
| They have their own baggage. | ||
| They see the world through a certain prism and they're like, I don't think you can use that term or I think it's offensive. | ||
| I always hear, I go, I understand you. | ||
| My intent is never to offend when I write jokes and such. | ||
| But I always think it's so unfortunate how we are doing a performance on stage. | ||
| And I think stand-ups, because we are in plain clothes and talking so casually, like a common man, they don't give it the same liberties that you would a stage play or a TV show or a movie. | ||
| If some of the stuff I'm saying you saw on a TV show or whatever, you wouldn't write a letter because your mind can make that separation. | ||
| But because I'm in plain clothes, you think I just wandered off the bus and I'm talking about these things. | ||
| They don't see it as a performance when it is. | ||
| Especially when you're talking about fucking, right? | ||
| That's probably your most controversial stuff. | ||
| No, what do you mean? | ||
| You don't think so? | ||
| Fucking? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| What do you think is your most controversial stuff? | ||
| Well, sometimes if you delve into... | ||
| If you're talking about sexual identity and you've done a crafty joke and you're on the right side of it, but people just hear certain knee-jerk buzzwords. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And it's almost like they don't hear the entire context or that I'm actually on their side. | ||
| They just hear a certain word and they're like... | ||
| The ejector seat out of... | ||
| But don't you think that's also a challenge? | ||
| Because there's a way to introduce these bits. | ||
| And sometimes we take a straight path, and it's not really the right route. | ||
| The right route is almost to go around the back door. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| And sneak it in. | ||
| Like, one of the things that I've found with my own act is the more controversial the material is, the more I have to be self-deprecating before I can introduce the material. | ||
| Like, I had a... | ||
| A bit about the guy who broke into the White House. | ||
| I don't know if you ever saw that bit. | ||
| I don't know if I did. | ||
| It was a tricky beginning because the beginning of the bit, it was like I had to get through some dangerous waters. | ||
| But I really couldn't figure out any other way to do it because the bit was there was a woman during the Obama administration who was guarding the front door of the White House and a guy broke in and smacked her to the ground and just ran through the White House. | ||
| And she wasn't even armed. | ||
| It's the dumbest idea in the world. | ||
| And the thing is, the bit was people say that a woman could do anything that a man can do. | ||
| Right? | ||
| And then there would be some drunk lady, too much to prove. | ||
| Like, yeah! | ||
| And I'd be like, that's not true. | ||
| Because a man can't do everything a man can do. | ||
| That's why we have the Olympics. | ||
| Because there's some people that do shit that you can't do. | ||
| I go, you know how I know this? | ||
| Because I met Shaquille O'Neal. | ||
| And his dick is where my face is. | ||
| Okay? | ||
| And if the White House is experiencing a Shaq attack, I'm the wrong guy to save the world. | ||
| And I go, listen, my favorite people in the world are women. | ||
| I have a wife and I have three daughters. | ||
| They're my favorite people on planet Earth. | ||
| If I had to choose three people to save, those would be the people. | ||
| But if they're guarding the White House, I'm getting in. | ||
| I could fuck them all up at the same time. | ||
| I'd be like, come get some. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| But it's like I had to get to this point where I was explaining, and it was a bit about a crazy person. | ||
| And the whole bit was about this guy, like thinking this is his last day on Earth. | ||
| Like, fuck this. | ||
| I'm going to fuck with this suicidal guy who's running through the White House lawn thinking, is this the last step of my life? | ||
| Is this the last step of my life? | ||
| And he finally gets to the door. | ||
| He grabs it. | ||
| It's unlocked. | ||
| He opens it. | ||
| There's a woman in there. | ||
| Smacks her to the ground! | ||
| And he's running through the fucking White House! | ||
| The only thing that saved the president was that there was an off-duty Secret Service guy who was having coffee. | ||
| And this guy ran past him. | ||
| He's like, what the fuck is going on? | ||
| I think the guy was in his underwear, too. | ||
| I think it was something crazy. | ||
| And he tackles this guy. | ||
| But the waters of getting through, women can do everything. | ||
| And I remember, there was multiple times, like one serious time, there was an executive from some fucking network who was in the audience. | ||
| She was drunk. | ||
| She's like, no! | ||
| No! | ||
| And I was like, you gotta let me finish. | ||
| Because there's a point to this. | ||
| I'm gonna shit on myself. | ||
| You're not letting me finish. | ||
| And then I did shit on myself. | ||
| And she kept going. | ||
| I'm like, oh, Jesus, lady. | ||
| So that's what I'm talking about. | ||
| You massaged it. | ||
| You did the work. | ||
| And like 99.9% of the crowd... | ||
| If the crowd is laughing as a whole... | ||
| That is a reflection that you've done the work in the time that we're in to get away with that joke. | ||
| Maybe five years from now, there's bits that I've done looking back where I'm like, I wouldn't do that today. | ||
| I've grown. | ||
| Society has grown. | ||
| But just the mere fact of tackling a certain subject, even though you've done the work, there is a subsect of people who will still do that. | ||
| No! | ||
| No! | ||
| And that's their own thing. | ||
| That's always going to be there. | ||
| They're looking for a moment where they can chime in. | ||
| And a lot of it is they can't even help it because they're drunk. | ||
| You know, when people get lit up, you're drunk and you find, can I be offended? | ||
| I think I can be offended now! | ||
| It's time! | ||
| It's the beauty and the downfall of a comedy club. | ||
| I mean, it doesn't happen very often, but the beauty is that it's this fun, it's like a fort. | ||
| It's wild! | ||
| Yeah, you can exchange. | ||
| I always think of comedy clubs as an idea fight club. | ||
| It is like an idea fight club. | ||
| It's an idea fight club. | ||
| It's a safe space for saying outlandish shit. | ||
| You can do it in that box because it's performance. | ||
| You're trying to figure it out. | ||
| Sometimes I'm trying to tackle a subject and I say something and the crowd doesn't laugh and it's pretty off-putting. | ||
| And that lets me know, like, okay, I said it the wrong way. | ||
| I have to tweak it. | ||
| Or maybe I need to rethink how I think about things. | ||
| The audience is your editor. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mm-hmm. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| That's one of the other things, too, about when I was in L.A. during this shutdown. | ||
| The only place that you could perform was this place called Jam in the Van. | ||
| You were in a van? | ||
| So it's this series on YouTube that mostly these artists, these musical artists, would perform in this van. | ||
| It's kind of like a tiny desk concert thing. | ||
| That seems like the most COVID-y place possible. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| So this is pre-COVID. It was called Jam in the Van. | ||
| Pre-COVID? Pre-COVID, yeah. | ||
| But then once COVID hit, they stopped doing it in the van, and they have, like, wherever they work out of, they have this, like, outdoor space, and they were starting to put on shows. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I would be there almost every week in LA because it was the only place to get up during the pandemic, during this latest lockdown. | ||
| I would go there like every Friday or Saturday because that's the only place doing comedy. | ||
| There was nowhere else you can get up. | ||
| How were they doing these shows? | ||
| Because you weren't even allowed to do outdoor shows. | ||
| I think they had some loophole where they said that it's a production. | ||
| You know, you've got to find some sort of loopholes or whatever. | ||
| Were they putting it online or anything? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| But somehow they were the only show in town. | ||
| But when I was talking to the guy, he goes, we've been trying to do some music stuff. | ||
| We'll reach out to bands. | ||
| And a lot of them just go, no, I don't want to do it. | ||
| We can't get any bands to do the show. | ||
| But comics are like... | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So there's a lot of stand-up going on. | ||
| There probably still is. | ||
| A lot of stand-up going on. | ||
| And I was thinking, why is that? | ||
| And I realized, stand-up, we need the audience as part of the process. | ||
| We don't know if something is good, offensive, bad, without the audience. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| They are integral to how we develop material. | ||
| Whereas a band can make a song in a vacuum. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| And you're presenting the song. | ||
| So that's why the bands are like, I'm good. | ||
| Whereas comedians are like, yes. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Yeah, 100%. | ||
| Yeah, it's a weird art form. | ||
| We need other people. | ||
| But there's humility in that too, right? | ||
| Because one of the things that happens that I'm sure you've seen is that certain comics, they get successful and then they only do shows for their crowd. | ||
| And even great comics, like Stanhope. | ||
| Stanhope told me I wanted him to go up in the OR. I was like, fuck that. | ||
| That's not my crowd. | ||
| He goes, I worked 25 years to develop a crowd. | ||
| I'm not going to go up to some other people's crowd. | ||
| And I'm like, okay. | ||
| That's what I love about the OR. It's the great equalizer. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And they're on top of you, too. | ||
| They're right where you are. | ||
| The front row is where you are. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You have to actually be funny. | ||
| And also, there's just so many heavy hitters on that show. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| They're not all there for you. | ||
| They're not all there for you. | ||
| So, it's the closest you can get to being an unknown back in the day. | ||
| Because once you get famous enough, it's hard to get a real... | ||
| A real read. | ||
| A real read. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, it's complicated, right? | ||
| It's a complicated art form. | ||
| And the thing that you said about the slow drip of success, I think is so critical. | ||
| I think it's important because it keeps you in touch with who you are as a human being. | ||
| You don't have this drop-off where the world changes and the world becomes like this. | ||
| I've had these moments in my life where I'm like, yikes. | ||
| And then those moments, the smart thing that I've done is... | ||
| I'm good at recognizing danger. | ||
| I've always been good at recognizing danger. | ||
| You know, like, oh, this is not... | ||
| Okay, this is not good. | ||
| And I just back off. | ||
| So I stay away from social media. | ||
| Whenever there's big splash moments, like big things have happened, like a Spotify announcement or something like that, I just... | ||
| Stay out of social media. | ||
| I just stay in my own world. | ||
| It doesn't really exist in my world. | ||
| Jamie and I have joked around about it. | ||
| We've done shows. | ||
| How weird is it that we're here just talking shit and then a small city is listening. | ||
| That's what it is. | ||
| It's bigger than Austin. | ||
| Every one of these fucking podcasts is bigger than the entire population of Austin. | ||
| Just sitting there. | ||
| Listening. | ||
| If you think about that, that'll fuck with your head. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It will fuck with your head. | ||
| It's crazy. | ||
| Like, even when I was thinking about coming here, I didn't tell anybody. | ||
| And then someone texted me. | ||
| He's like, you want to know Austin? | ||
| I go, how did he know? | ||
| And then I find out that you mentioned it on a pod. | ||
| That just shows you the reach of the pod, because I didn't tell anybody, really. | ||
| Yeah, I told everybody to come. | ||
| I want everybody to come! | ||
| I think we can do this without Hollywood. | ||
| That's what I think. | ||
| And I think there's not just a responsibility but a beautiful pleasure that I have with the podcast so that I can boost the signal of funny people and help. | ||
| I love it. | ||
| I love it. | ||
| It's one of my favorite things about the podcast is that I can help people know about talented people and help their careers. | ||
| It's such a paradigm shift. | ||
| I like seeing what's happened with comedians. | ||
| We're sort of on the satellite of Hollywood. | ||
| We're on the outskirts. | ||
| For the longest time, it's like, put me in your shell. | ||
| It's always like tap dancing for Mr. Hollywood. | ||
| But I like what's been going on with, like, you know, Andrew or Tim. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Just funny. | ||
| Like, you are the product. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Like, you're enough on your own. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And it's been really... | ||
| These gatekeepers are just fucking things up. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's been liberating. | ||
| And I always... | ||
| Some people will see, like... | ||
| It's so easy to see comedians get successful and be like, fuck that. | ||
| Fuck him or whatever. | ||
| I never have an attitude towards that. | ||
| I always... | ||
| How can I learn from this? | ||
| Or what's inspiring about this? | ||
| Like they're taking ownership of their own career. | ||
| They're not waiting for someone else to tell them that they're good enough. | ||
| Like they know they're good enough. | ||
| And no one is in control of the pipe anymore. | ||
| Back in the day, there was these gatekeepers to the pipe. | ||
| But now with YouTube, and even the pandemic, when the pandemic hit, It's terrible, and it sucks, and it has hit a lot of people a certain way. | ||
| But if you are healthy, and if you take it a certain way, it can be a catalyst for good and change. | ||
| Because once I couldn't do stand-up anymore, I was like, what can I do? | ||
| What can I do? | ||
| So then I started doing more sketches on IG, and then also... | ||
| We did these things we have in conversation with yourself. | ||
| Yeah, just like little sketches with myself. | ||
| It's like quick and dirty. | ||
| And what's beautiful about IG is it doesn't need to be Dunkirk. | ||
| That's Instagram for a lot of the people. | ||
| IG, yeah, sorry for shorthanding. | ||
| Yeah, so if the idea is strong enough, you can get away with just like playing both characters and just, it's fleeting and there's a romance to that. | ||
| But it made me do more sketches on IG and grow that way. | ||
| And then also look at my hard drive. | ||
| Because I have taped sets from when I was at Comedy Works or when I was in the OR. You put one up today from Comedy Works. | ||
| We were talking about walking in on someone taking a shit. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| So it's really cool because I was like a squirrel saving all these nuts for waiting for Mr. Hollywood to say, all right, you're next up. | ||
| Like, here's everything. | ||
| I've been waiting for you to say I'm enough. | ||
| And I've gone away just seeing the way the landscape has gone. | ||
| Where I'm like, I don't have to be as precious with my material. | ||
| I can start releasing shit from my archives, even like past Lance performances. | ||
| You can hear Jeff Scott laughing in the corner and stuff. | ||
| Jeff Scott. | ||
| Which is so sad, yeah. | ||
| I miss him. | ||
| I miss him too. | ||
| I miss him so much. | ||
| That made me so sad. | ||
| And it hit me, coming by surprise, because you don't realize you've been, this person has been a part of your life for so long? | ||
| Because you just seem like you're doing a set at the comedy store? | ||
| Well, I have a different situation because I've been with Jeff since 94. 94, 95, I think he came around. | ||
| And then, you know, we were, I hadn't seen him for so long. | ||
| And then, when I came back to the store in 2014, he was like one of the first people I saw. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| And he had... | ||
| He was just always there, man. | ||
| He was always a sweet guy, always hugging everybody. | ||
| When I found out he died, one of the first things I felt like was, I don't think he would have died if it wasn't for this fucking pandemic. | ||
| I felt like... | ||
| I think it hit a lot of us that way too. | ||
| He was such a part of the store. | ||
| He was one of the biggest parts of the store without being a comic. | ||
| Without being a guy who actually got on stage, he was one of the biggest parts of the store. | ||
| And that felt like 10 months of him having no connection. | ||
| He was there every night, man. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I hugged that guy every time I saw him. | |
| He was like a performer without being a performer. | ||
| Obviously, he did the piano, but he had such great comedy instincts, having done performing in his past and such. | ||
| Because you've been to clubs before, and they're sound guys, and they're like... | ||
| Yeah, they're not really into it. | ||
| Yeah, they're not. | ||
| But this guy, he was like jazz, man. | ||
| Yeah, he was a performer. | ||
| He was a performer. | ||
| There have been times when I was doing Lance or whatever, and he would just turn on a certain song, and it was never disruptive. | ||
| It was always additive. | ||
| And to think about not having that when we go back... | ||
| And for it to happen during all of this, too, where you can't even properly process. | ||
| There was a Zoom room where people could pop in and talk about Jeff and have all these Jeff stories. | ||
| I had to hop in there. | ||
| It was so many people. | ||
| There were so many great comics, big comics, too. | ||
| The Zoom room was like 100 people. | ||
| It was great to at least have that. | ||
| So it sucked to have something that seismic happen in a vacuum. | ||
| There was a ritual that I would do. | ||
| Not a ritual, just like a thing that I would always do. | ||
| Pull into the parking lot, say hi to everybody, hug all the people I saw, and go to the back smoking area, and I'd always find Jeff Scott getting high. | ||
| Always. | ||
| I'd get high with him, I'd give him a big hug, and I'd go, how many more people before I go on? | ||
| And he'd be like, Well, you know, Jeff Ross is on stage now. | ||
| You got like two more people and then you. | ||
| I go, okay. | ||
| And then I'll go. | ||
| He was a part of the foundation. | ||
| He was so important, man. | ||
| When he was gone, I was like, oh my, no! | ||
| He hurt as much as Brody. | ||
| It hurt as much as anybody. | ||
| I agree. | ||
| And it creeps up on you. | ||
| You don't realize. | ||
| Every set that I've done at the Comedy Store, he's been a part of. | ||
| And what I loved about Jeff is he was willing to play. | ||
| And play is such a big part. | ||
| Sometimes stand-up, you can be so self-serious and think that you're Changing the world. | ||
| There is that, but sometimes it's fun to just have fun. | ||
| And I would get these harebrained ideas of like, oh, here's a music cue. | ||
| Let's do this. | ||
| And he would be chomping at the bit. | ||
| Because most comics just play up, play off. | ||
| But if I'm like, I need him to play some piano, or I need him to play this song, he kind of lit up. | ||
| Because it was like a mini musical or something. | ||
| And seeing his spark... | ||
| Because a lot of times I'll go to a city and I'm like, I have these sound cues and you can see them kind of like roll their eyes or like, ugh, it's more work. | ||
| But Jeff was more than down. | ||
| And he was embedded in the DNA of the comedy store. | ||
| He was there for how long? | ||
| 20 years? | ||
| 25 years? | ||
| More. | ||
| Yeah, I think he was 26 years when he died. | ||
| And he's the unofficial archivist of the Comedy Store because that place is notorious for no cameras, no filming. | ||
| But sometimes he would have his flip cam. | ||
| He'd also remember everything. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| He had an amazing memory. | ||
| But he has this amazing catalog of magical moments at that place that now I think the store is working with the family and stuff to try to retrieve. | ||
| Especially in a pandemic, if you notice the Comedy Store's Instagram... | ||
| What's unfortunate is that I love that place. | ||
| You love that place. | ||
| It's such a magic. | ||
| But it's this black box. | ||
| No one knows the magic that happened there. | ||
| Well, we know. | ||
| We know. | ||
| The fans know. | ||
| There was a lot of people that would go there. | ||
| Get that band on. | ||
| Should I get it off? | ||
| Get that top band, too. | ||
| You got another band. | ||
| Taking all the clothes off, man. | ||
| They had two bands on. | ||
| I don't understand. | ||
| The double band thing. | ||
| The people that would go there a lot, they knew. | ||
| That was one of the beautiful things. | ||
| I ran into this dude before everything locked down, and he was talking to me about a very specific bit. | ||
| And he was like, I just love how that bit has changed. | ||
| You started it out this way, and then I could see that you saw that there was a problem with it that way, and then you snuck it in the back door in another way, I love those fans. | ||
| The hardcore ones who can see the process. | ||
| Like guys who love jazz who don't play any musical instruments. | ||
| Most people aren't like that. | ||
| But I've noticed there's two store fans, there's two audiences. | ||
| There's the physical audience. | ||
| The people who go there in LA and like that guy can see the nuance. | ||
| And then there's the online audience. | ||
| You don't realize how big the store is just sort of culturally and throughout the country. | ||
| They can't go to the store every day, so they don't know. | ||
| And it's almost like the online version is their version of the store. | ||
| So like during the pandemic, I noticed like a lot of Kill Tony clips are posted because those were recorded for posterity. | ||
| And that's their version. | ||
| That's like the glimpse into what the store is. | ||
| Well, it's also the best indication that the store is so integral for the growth and development of the beginning of a comic's career. | ||
| Because most of the store you see, you'll see someone like Ali Wong, or you see someone like, you know, there's so many of them that are just so established. | ||
| That by the time you're seeing them, you've already seen them on Comedy Central, you've already seen them, Andrew Santino, whoever it is. | ||
| You've already seen so much of their stand-up on television that it makes sense that they're there. | ||
| But to see someone who's literally been doing stand-up for like three times and they go on Kill Tony and we're laughing at them like, ah, that's amazing, that's really good, keep going, keep pushing. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| To track the growth. | ||
| I think it's very inspiring, too. | ||
| Especially for me as a comic, even as long as I've been doing it. | ||
| I remember I got Hulu years ago, and then they had Evening at the Improv on there. | ||
| They had a back catalog of all these... | ||
| Bud Friedman? | ||
| With the monocle? | ||
| I don't know if I saw Bud, but they just had comedians. | ||
| You could see Martin Lawrence, you could see Adam Sandler. | ||
| You could see all these titans of industry. | ||
| Do their evening at the improvs. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And they're like a year... | ||
| They're like two, three years in. | ||
| And you see them do their set... | ||
| And they look like any two- or three-year comic. | ||
| And it's so refreshing to see that, I think, and inspiring as a young comic to know that, like, Bill Burr or anybody who you see, you just think, like, that's impossible. | ||
| That's attainable, unattainable. | ||
| I can never be that. | ||
| They weren't always that. | ||
| And seeing those Evening at the Improvs shows you that it's a process. | ||
| That they were just putting the time in. | ||
| And eventually they grew into who they were. | ||
| It's a crazy process, too. | ||
| Because it's so long. | ||
| Like, it's ten years before you're real. | ||
| You know, you might have good sets before 10 years. | ||
| You might do well. | ||
| But really, it's 10 years until you're a pro. | ||
| And have had enough data points where you know what to do in every situation. | ||
| Like a drink spills, you get a heckler, and the OR. I always call the OR the X-Men training room of comedy. | ||
| It is! | ||
| Because if you do the OR for multiple years, there's nothing that'll happen to you that you haven't seen before. | ||
| Especially the early OR. Because the OR before 2007, there was never any real crowd control. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I had two people throw drinks at me. | ||
| One guy threw a bottle at me. | ||
| I've had a girl throw a drink at me. | ||
| A glass. | ||
| No, not a bottle. | ||
| Threw an actual physical glass at me. | ||
| One time I had a girl, she threw a solo cup at me, but it's plastic. | ||
| And I go, is that how smart you are? | ||
| You don't understand physics? | ||
| You thought an empty solo cup would reach me? | ||
| Why did she throw it at you? | ||
| I forget. | ||
| I forget. | ||
| There was a table full of guys. | ||
| It was a father and his son and the son's friend. | ||
| And they were assholes. | ||
| They were like really aggressive assholes. | ||
| And I remember I got on stage and they tried to be assholes to me. | ||
| And I turned on them. | ||
| But I turned on them in a way that they had experienced before. | ||
| I go, you guys are pussies. | ||
| I go, this is what you are. | ||
| What are you, being mean to people that are on stage? | ||
| Because you're drunk and you think you're badasses? | ||
| I'll fuck up all three of you people. | ||
| And there was this weird moment where we're looking at each other. | ||
| And I go, you guys are assholes. | ||
| You're not cool guys who are interrupting this show. | ||
| You're fucking losers. | ||
| If you had anything going on in your life, you wouldn't be doing this. | ||
| And the guy got up and threw a fucking glass at me. | ||
| You know what I love about this moment? | ||
| He threw a glass at me like this. | ||
| Like they've never done it before? | ||
| No, it wasn't like he wasn't sure if he should try to hurt me. | ||
| He wanted to make a statement, but he didn't want me to actually fuck him up. | ||
| It was this weird moment where we were looking at each other and I go, you guys are pussies. | ||
| And you could see the look in their face like, what? | ||
| Like they couldn't believe it because they had been heckling every single fucking comic before me. | ||
| It was crazy because there was no crowd. | ||
| We're talking like 2002, 2003. There was no crowd control at all. | ||
| And when I said, you guys are pussies, I go, you guys aren't tough guys. | ||
| You're over here yelling, telling people they suck. | ||
| I go, you're losers. | ||
| You've never accomplished anything. | ||
| There's no way you have. | ||
| And there's this heartfelt moment where the audience started like... | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah! | |
| I love when that happens because they think that they're the shit and the world revolves around them. | ||
| And then when they hear a room full of strangers clap against them, they have to do some inventory. | ||
| Like, oh fuck, am I the asshole? | ||
| And then it started ramping up. | ||
| And then I started laughing at them and making fun of them because he threw the glass at me. | ||
| And I go, you weren't even trying to hit me! | ||
| I go, you're so scared! | ||
| I go, this is you forever! | ||
| I go, I'm going to forget about you the moment this show ends, and you're going to remember me for the rest of your life. | ||
| And then we kicked them out. | ||
| I had to get other comics to come and help kick them out, and then I bought the entire crowd a shot. | ||
| I did this multiple times. | ||
| This is one of the things that I did. | ||
| I did it like... | ||
| More than ten times. | ||
| Where I bought the entire audience a round of drinks. | ||
| Because I said, look, this is uncomfortable. | ||
| This is supposed to be like a fun moment of community. | ||
| We're all together in this crazy live show. | ||
| And something happened that's fucked up. | ||
| And we can get past this. | ||
| And this is why we're going to get past this. | ||
| I'm going to buy you a drink. | ||
| So I'd buy everyone a drink. | ||
| I'd give the waitresses a crazy tip. | ||
| So I'd spend thousands of dollars to fill the entire crowd up with drinks. | ||
| And then I go, but you've got to do this. | ||
| It's going to take a while for the waitresses to get everyone a drink because there's 150 of us. | ||
| So let everybody and then we'll all drink together and we'll end this thing. | ||
| I love those moments at the store because it's just statistics. | ||
| You do enough shows, that's going to happen. | ||
| You're going to get that outlier who does that. | ||
| But we do so many sets, I kind of enjoy when that happens. | ||
| I'm not going to barrel through it. | ||
| If you are disruptive enough, I'm going to address it and we're going to have some fun. | ||
| You have to address it. | ||
| I'm going to rip you apart. | ||
| And even if it sacrifices the rest of my set, I have another set tomorrow. | ||
| I don't give a shit. | ||
| It'll blend in for me. | ||
| But you're going to remember, like you said, you're going to remember this for the rest of your life. | ||
| Those guys are probably going to hear this podcast. | ||
| Maybe. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Fuck that guy! | |
| I should have thrown that drink harder! | ||
| But sometimes it's worth sacrificing your set to teach this person a lesson. | ||
| It didn't even sacrifice my set because fortunately they had been doing it with so many people that they had built up this resentment from the rest of the crowd. | ||
| People were so angry at them. | ||
| They needed someone like me to come up and go, what are you doing? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And I let them spend time. | ||
| I gave them room. | ||
| I gave them rope. | ||
| I gave them rope before I let them hang themselves. | ||
| That's my favorite. | ||
| When the audience... | ||
| My favorite is when the audience is just here to have fun. | ||
| I hate those moments. | ||
| I hate them, but they're the silver lining when you kind of go, like, who hates this guy? | ||
| And everyone's like, woo! | ||
| If you're a good comic, you can get through that, and it'll work out. | ||
| But that's also the benefit of the store post that when I came back in 2014, there was a lot of crowd control. | ||
| I mean, they had real security there, finally. | ||
| Whereas before, it was comics acting as security. | ||
| So you're asking a 110-pound guy to kick out three people. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Excuse me, sir. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You're being disruptive. | |
| Can you leave? | ||
| The thing about the store is they would hire comics to do everything, which is beautiful. | ||
| It was Mitzi's idea. | ||
| Hire a comic to be the person who takes the tickets. | ||
| Hire a comic to be the person who seats you. | ||
| Hire a comic to be The door people, the bartenders, everyone was a comic. | ||
| Which was good and bad because the good thing was you could legitimately like Tony Hinchcliffe, Ari Shafir, a lot of these guys have gone from being the doorman at the Comedy Store to being a professional. | ||
| It's one of the reasons why I came back because I had to be there for Ari because he was doing his special At the Comedy Store. | ||
| I was there. | ||
| And I remember I was friends with Ari when he was a doorman, when he was an open-miker. | ||
| I became friends with him when he was just a young guy who was just starting out. | ||
| And then to see him, I was so proud of him. | ||
| To see him there doing a Comedy Central special in the OR, I'm like, this is fucking amazing. | ||
| This is amazing. | ||
| It was like... | ||
| A friend having a child. | ||
| Yeah, totally. | ||
| To us, it is that, honestly. | ||
| Yeah, it is. | ||
| And what I love about the store is that there is an old-school system like that where... | ||
| There's got to be a better way, though. | ||
| You need real security. | ||
| Yes, yes, security-wise. | ||
| I've talked to people about that when we talk about putting a club in out here. | ||
| Like, you have to have real security. | ||
| Yeah, eventually we got real security, but part of the reason I do love the store is that it is very nurturing to young talent, and there is a path, because I think stand-up can seem so nebulous, and especially a place that is so... | ||
| I don't know, in the consciousness of the world and the U.S., that they have a system like that. | ||
| Like, okay, I'm a door guy. | ||
| I'll work my way up. | ||
| I'll put the time in, and eventually you can climb if you put the work in. | ||
| There's no other club really has that. | ||
| No. | ||
| And no other club has this sort of... | ||
| There's like a prestige to being a paid regular at the store that doesn't exist anywhere else. | ||
| There's a prestige to being a Comedy Store comic, you know? | ||
| I remember one time I was working with Sam Tripoli and Brent Ernst, and we were at the Hollywood Florida Improv. | ||
| And we were all working together, and Tripoli crushed, Brent Ernst crushed, and then when he brought me on stage, he high-fives me and goes, Comedy Store, motherfucker! | ||
| And I was like, yeah, exactly. | ||
| Like the crowd has no idea, but it's an inside thing. | ||
| They didn't know, but for us, it was like, yeah, this is like, we learned how to do this shit. | ||
| That was when Brent was doing that skater bit. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Did you ever see the skater bit? | |
| Oh, yeah, yeah. | ||
| Didn't he do it on the thing that Sebastian was on? | ||
| It was like the Wild West comedy tour. | ||
| Bro. | ||
| It's a monster bit. | ||
| It's a monster bit. | ||
| It was such a good bit, but he did that bit and just destroyed, and then I went on stage after him, and I'll never forget that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He just looks at me and goes, Comedy store, motherfucker! | |
| And he high-fives me. | ||
| But the other problem with that is I have a friend who is an actual philosopher and writes philosophy books. | ||
| And he said to me, he goes, the problem with that place is not the problem with the place. | ||
| The problem with the place is the perception that other people have. | ||
| He goes, it's a walled garden. | ||
| And he goes, and the people that are outside don't like it. | ||
| It makes them feel bad. | ||
| It makes them feel bad they're not accepted. | ||
| And that's why the place gets so much hate. | ||
| And if you go there and it doesn't go well for you, especially if you're someone who has a television credit or something like that, or you work at the UCB and you think you deserve a level of respect in the industry and you don't feel like you get it there, you develop this resentment to all these people that do get, they're in, they're in with the in crowd. | ||
| And you try looking for reasons why they're in. | ||
| So you try to say it's a white male thing, but then you see Chappelle go up and you're like, well, that still doesn't make sense. | ||
| It was a male thing. | ||
| Or Candace Thompson going up. | ||
| Or Marilyn Weiss. | ||
| You see Ali, Ron, Crush. | ||
| And you're like, well, it's definitely not a woman thing. | ||
| It's not a, you know, what is it? | ||
| What is it? | ||
| Well, it's just a fucking harder place. | ||
| It's a harder place. | ||
| And it's also, there is not a place in, not just in Hollywood, but on Earth that had lineups like that place. | ||
| Where you would see Jesselnik, you know, fucking Whitney, Eliza, Joey Diaz, Theo Vaughn, Ari Shafir... | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. | |
| Everyone was murdering. | ||
| On a Tuesday. | ||
| Yeah, on a Tuesday. | ||
| Tuesday was one of the best nights to be there. | ||
| On a Tuesday. | ||
| On a Tuesday. | ||
| If you were outside of that world and you thought that you were just gonna go up with some fucking half-baked references about The Bachelor, you know, and you thought like this is gonna be amazing and you went up and just ate shit and I saw it I saw people that were established comics that now have Netflix specials just eat shit and just walk out angry and frustrated but you shouldn't be frustrated at the Comedy Store you should be frustrated and If anything, | ||
| you should just use it as fuel to develop your act and make it bulletproof and make it undeniable. | ||
| Because it's not undeniable. | ||
| If you were really good, you would have killed. | ||
| Yeah, instead of getting angry, I always try to use moments like that as introspective lessons. | ||
| Just, alright, what do I need to change? | ||
| How do I fix this? | ||
| Not like, they're wrong. | ||
| It's like, what can I do to crack this? | ||
| Because obviously other people did crack it. | ||
| How can I do it? | ||
| Those are the most painful moments is the moment after someone kills and then you go up and bomb. | ||
| So you know it's not the audience. | ||
| It's you. | ||
| I remember when I was early in my career, one of the worst bombings I ever had. | ||
| Like, life-changing. | ||
| Like, oh my god, I gotta get my shit together. | ||
| Me and Jim Brewer were working together. | ||
| And he was the middle act and I was the headliner. | ||
| And I really wasn't a headliner. | ||
| I got in the gig, my manager booked me as a headliner, and I would do okay as long as the middle act wasn't that strong. | ||
| And I was fine all week. | ||
| But then Saturday night, late show, Brewer was on fire. | ||
| And if you've ever seen Jim Brewer on fire, Jim Brewer is like unusually physical and he's just funny. | ||
| He's funny looking. | ||
| I like Brewer. | ||
| Voices, physicality. | ||
| A great guy. | ||
| So people like him. | ||
| He's great. | ||
| And my manager had convinced me that it was a good idea to dress up. | ||
| So I decided that, oh, I'm dressed nice. | ||
| I had like a nice shirt on, night pants. | ||
| I looked like such a douchebag. | ||
| And I was so nervous. | ||
| I was so nervous because he crushed so hard. | ||
| And I went on stage after him and just ate shit. | ||
| I think I was supposed to do 45 and I did 35 and bailed. | ||
| Horrific. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Horrific. | ||
| But I remember thinking, like, I have some work to do. | ||
| Like, I have to figure out a way to, first of all, never be so nervous when someone kills. | ||
| Because it wasn't like it was just a show. | ||
| It was like, I was trying to figure out, what do I do? | ||
| What do I open with? | ||
| What do I start with? | ||
| I had all these doubts. | ||
| And those doubts, instead of going on stage and laughing at what he had done and thinking, what a great show this is, like I would do now, I went on stage with fear. | ||
| The audience smelled it right away and I just bombed. | ||
| But that was so important for me because that shifted my entire career from that. | ||
| And this is only like, I was probably like four years in or three or four years in. | ||
| So from that moment on, like I worked way harder. | ||
| I worked way harder, and I cut a lot of shit out of my act out, and I concentrated a lot more on writing new stuff, and I tried to figure out what's the best way to go on stage immediately, what's the best way to start off. | ||
| I got restructured my act. | ||
| I wrote more. | ||
| I just got way more intense, way more focused, way more dedicated, because I didn't want to feel that again, that feeling of bombing. | ||
| Those moments are a gift. | ||
| Those moments of painful failure are a gift in any aspect of your life, whether it's stand-up comedy or any other discipline. | ||
| When you have a moment of total failure and you've had some success in the past, like you know you're capable of making people laugh, but in this time you fucking failed and you failed miserably. | ||
| So you have to do an honest assessment of what was it? | ||
| What went wrong? | ||
| What happened? | ||
| And then regroup. | ||
| And then refocus. | ||
| And then re-energize. | ||
| And come back stronger. | ||
| Get over that. | ||
| And that marked a giant shift in my career. | ||
| I had a level of seriousness until that moment. | ||
| And then a much more intense level of seriousness after. | ||
| And I got way funnier after that. | ||
| Way better. | ||
| I remember I worked at the same club. | ||
| There was like a chain of them. | ||
| And I worked at one of the sister clubs like a year later. | ||
| And I remember this manager coming up to me and goes, what the fuck happened to you? | ||
| And he goes, dude, you didn't used to be that good. | ||
| He goes, what happened? | ||
| And I said, I think I just ate shit like one time really hard and realized I never want to eat shit like that again. | ||
| But I was honest about it. | ||
| Instead of saying, you know, these fucking people need to respect me. | ||
| I've been on TV. Yeah. | ||
| I got credits. | ||
| I was like, well, they didn't laugh, so I did something wrong. | ||
| And it's that painful feeling of introspective thinking where you're looking at yourself and you don't like what you see. | ||
| A lot of people avoid that. | ||
| And they start coming up with external... | ||
| Reasons why they failed or reasons. | ||
| It's the people. | ||
| It's the club. | ||
| It's the environment. | ||
| It's the audience. | ||
| It's the booker. | ||
| It's they didn't respect me. | ||
| They didn't do this. | ||
| They didn't do that. | ||
| But it's not that. | ||
| It's you. | ||
| If you bomb, it's you. | ||
| Yeah, because it's easier to just have your spikes out and look at everything else. | ||
| It's harder to kind of do it. | ||
| It's easier momentarily, but over the long haul... | ||
| Momentarily. | ||
| Yeah, it's not beneficial to do that. | ||
| It's terribly unbeneficial. | ||
| I always... | ||
| Look, obviously I'm not trying to not do well sometimes, but I found just throughout my career, I've learned the most from a set that doesn't do well. | ||
| Because on the car ride home, no one works harder than when a set doesn't do well. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Because you're like, okay, blah, blah, blah, I've got to change things. | ||
| If a set does well, you're on cloud nine, and you don't have to do any tweaks. | ||
| But I like having those moments. | ||
| Even where I'm at now, If I don't have those every now and then or Joe doesn't do well, I'm not growing anymore. | ||
| I'm just sort of doing a victory lap. | ||
| Right, right. | ||
| And I'm not trying to do that. | ||
| My best sets have always been after my worst sets. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Sometimes one of the things I do that I know I have an important set, I pretend I bombed. | ||
| I pretend I bombed during my last set and I just go over my material like I'm terrified. | ||
| And that level of... | ||
| Remember the movie Mo' Better Blues with Denzel Washington? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| I don't know if I've seen it. | ||
| I remember watching it thinking, God damn, musicians practice so much more than comics. | ||
| Because I would just show up at shows, and it's like, I know my material, I'll just go do it. | ||
| But I remember watching these musicians, and I don't know why that Spike Lee movie stuck in my head, but I remember Denzel Washington would not fuck his girlfriend because he had to practice. | ||
| I remember thinking, I do not have that kind of dedication. | ||
| If I'm hanging around looking at my notes and my girlfriend wanted to fuck, I'm like, well, in my notes, I know my act. | ||
| Let's do it. | ||
| I like doing that, though. | ||
| Certain shows, I have a set list. | ||
| I can deviate from it, but I like maximizing my stage time, knowing what type of show it is and what I want to do on that show. | ||
| Right, like an experimental show. | ||
| Yeah, or like David Lucas' show tonight. | ||
| I might try a new bit. | ||
| I'm not getting really paid to do this. | ||
| I'm just... | ||
| Fucking around. | ||
| I'm fucking around. | ||
| I'm doing a 15-minute set. | ||
| The whole burden of the show isn't on me. | ||
| It's not like I'm headlining where people are paying a lot of money to come see me and I have to deliver a certain type of show. | ||
| So when I'm doing these guest sets and it's not about the money, I can take bigger swings. | ||
| I can grow. | ||
| And I've been doing it long enough where I'm not going to bomb, but I can have a lull. | ||
| I can recover from it. | ||
| I'm not going to crumble if a joke doesn't do well. | ||
| But it's affording myself the opportunity to be like, okay, let's try this in there. | ||
| Let's squeeze this new bit in. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, to always be doing that, because... | ||
| I think of it as cross-training. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I think, like, you gotta run, and you gotta lift weights, and you also gotta spar. | ||
| Like, you gotta do a lot of different things. | ||
| Like, in terms of martial arts, you can't just only spar. | ||
| Like, you have to do other stuff. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Like, you have to... | ||
| And comedy's the same way. | ||
| You have to write, but you also have to be free. | ||
| You have to be able to experiment on stage. | ||
| You have to be improvisational. | ||
| You have to be able to go with... | ||
| You ever see when a comic who has a rigid set gets heckled and they ignore the heckle? | ||
| Yeah, you could do that for so long before you look like a robot. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You look like a robot. | |
| And then you go, this guy's not addressing the... | ||
| Because stand-up is all about addressing the reality of the situation second by second. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And you could do it for like one or two... | ||
| I think every comic has this moment when you're on stage, at the OR, wherever you might be, and someone's kind of being a little loud, maybe a table, and I'll plow through it. | ||
| And there's this moment where you go, do I steamroll over them, or do I have to address this? | ||
| And then sometimes it becomes so egregious, where you gotta be like, what's going on over here? | ||
| You gotta talk to them. | ||
| And there can be fun that's had, but if you just keep on steamrolling... | ||
| The audience loses all faith in you because they're like, this guy's not even present. | ||
| Also, they can see that you recognize. | ||
| If you've got some crowd that's really talky and loud right there, and you're doing this, and you're like, I don't understand why anybody... | ||
| And then you see that this guy notices, but they don't address it. | ||
| They're little animals. | ||
| They can smell you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
They can sniff it. | |
| They smell you. | ||
| Because it's all about being real. | ||
| Yeah, it's also all about actually being in the moment. | ||
| You could say the exact same words and not be thinking about what you're saying and saying them the right way with the right cadence and they won't laugh. | ||
| But if you're tuned in and you're really concentrated on what you're thinking, Then they'll feel you. | ||
| That's the trick, right? | ||
| Because if you've got a subject you've done on stage 30 times, you've done 30 nights in a row, you've been working on this bit, you've got to pretend, or at least you've got to address it, like this is the first time you're saying it. | ||
| Yeah, you have to access the feeling you had when you wrote it. | ||
| That's a good way to put it. | ||
| And it is almost like a performance or a play. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And you're there again from when you wrote it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And you're delivering it in the moment. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And if something happens, I can go off track and address these shitheads in the corner or whatever and then go back to it. | ||
| But that's not a skill. | ||
| Like being nimble, I always think that's such a skill that comes later in life or just doing stand-up. | ||
| The ability to be nimble, to go off script and on script is huge. | ||
| That's why there's no substitute for stage time. | ||
| Yes, stage time. | ||
| Like, I'll get DMs sometimes from Young Comics and they're like, how do I get at the store? | ||
| They just want to go to the top immediately. | ||
| Yeah, of course. | ||
| And it's not about... | ||
| And you'll see just maybe New York, LA as well, they just want to go to the... | ||
| They think they're ready for the prime time immediately. | ||
| But it's not about that. | ||
| Like, that'll come when it comes. | ||
| Your only focus right now, if you're a new comic, is stage time. | ||
| You can't skip steps. | ||
| That's the beauty of... | ||
| The one thing I love about stand-up, like I'm fortunate enough to get writing opportunities and acting opportunities when they come, but stand-up is one of the rare art forms where you can't skip steps. | ||
| You can't hide in editing. | ||
| No. | ||
| You're up there for 15 minutes, for 20 minutes, an hour, whatever it is. | ||
| Don't you think it's so fascinating how you watch a comic and you can almost tell a friend how long they've been doing it? | ||
| Sometimes. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But sometimes even a guy who's smooth and polished, if their bits lack depth, you go, oh, he's comfortable up there, but he doesn't have the ability to take something into deep water. | ||
| Yeah, you scratch the surface. | ||
| I take it for granted that I've been doing it long enough where if you're in the clubs night after night, you kind of know what is base. | ||
| What is just scratching the surface? | ||
| Like what is hack or a trope? | ||
| But you don't know that. | ||
| If you're a year in or two years, everything's so new to you. | ||
| How would you know that? | ||
| But I think we have the luxury of doing it long enough where you go... | ||
| Our brain is wired a certain way where we go deeper. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| There's so many different things going on. | ||
| Like you can see people that are really worried about their image. | ||
| See people that are really worried about people liking them. | ||
| They dress a certain way, act a certain way, and then they'll tell a joke and be really hoping that it gets a laugh, and the audience knows that they're hoping it gets a laugh, and they don't give it to them. | ||
| And you see that fear in their eye, and then they move on to another subject, and you're like, oh my god, you're dead. | ||
| You're already dead. | ||
| You know what I've realized? | ||
| One of the lessons I've learned from stand-up is it's almost more important than the jokes. | ||
| Obviously the jokes need to be there, but... | ||
| The audience knowing that you're comfortable on stage, I think, is almost 90 or 95% of stand-up. | ||
| It's a lot. | ||
| Just knowing that you're enough without the crowd, not needing anything from the crowd. | ||
| Obviously, you want them to laugh, but that you'll be okay. | ||
| I have this quote where I've created a Word doc, just like lessons I've learned throughout life, whether it pertains to stand-up or whether it pertains to life. | ||
| And like one of my big ones as of recently, maybe the last three or four years, is be comfortable being observed. | ||
| Mmm. | ||
| Which seems like a given in stand-up, because you're on stage and such. | ||
| But you'll see comics who are up there and doing jokes, but they're not comfortable being observed. | ||
| But I think it applies to life, even, too. | ||
| Because there was a time in my life where I'd be at Coffee Bean or something, and I'd be worried that, like, I'm taking too long with the half and half, or with the sugars, and that I'm holding up a lot. | ||
| That someone's waiting? | ||
| Yeah, that someone's waiting, and I'm taking too much time. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But then... | ||
| Just one day I was like, I'm not being egregious with how long I'm taking the time that it takes. | ||
| I was born. | ||
| I'm allowed to be here on this earth. | ||
| It takes the time it takes. | ||
| And when I'm done, I'm done. | ||
| I don't have to rush. | ||
| I just have to take the time that it takes to do this thing. | ||
| And I'm not this I'm in everyone's way is imaginary and it's debilitating. | ||
| And, like, moving through life at the pace that you're supposed to. | ||
| That's also a very West Coast thing. | ||
| Because on the East Coast, everybody's like, come on! | ||
| Come on! | ||
| Let's go! | ||
| And there's a benefit to that, too. | ||
| I guess. | ||
| But you have to be pretty. | ||
| You have to be, like, a tourist, like, looking up at the skyscrapers and doing, like... | ||
| I take the time it takes to do sugar and half and half. | ||
| I'm not going to be like... | ||
| Yeah, there's that, but there's also the awareness that people want you to hurry up, because they're behind them. | ||
| Like, there's both things. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| There's both things. | ||
| One of the beautiful things about the East Coast, doing East Coast comedy, this is, I think, attributable to cold weather. | ||
| Cold weather and immigrants. | ||
| Mm-hmm. | ||
| in the fucking early 1900s, and that's where my grandparents came and a lot of other people that live on the East Coast. | ||
| The people that were their ancestors and their grandparents, they came from Europe or from wherever, and they landed on the East Coast and they stayed there. | ||
| And there's like a savagery to those people. | ||
| Like, there really is. | ||
| They have a very short attention span for nonsense. | ||
| And if they work all day and they're tired and they go out to a comedy show, they want to be entertained. | ||
| Let's go. | ||
| They don't want self-indulgent, nonsensical bullshit. | ||
| And one of the things about growing up in Boston that was really excellent... | ||
| And you look at the comics that came out of Boston, whether it's Bill Burr, myself, Patrice, there's a lot of guys who came out of Boston that have this like, let's go! | ||
| There's very little pause in between the bits. | ||
| There's a recognition and an acknowledgement of the audience's attention span. | ||
| Because you kind of have to have that. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And you have to realize, don't be self-indulgent. | ||
| These fucking people worked all day, and they're tired, and they want you to entertain them. | ||
| That's what you're there for. | ||
| And you can't take yourself too seriously, and don't be too casual up there. | ||
| Let's go. | ||
| I agree with that. | ||
| Just sort of to be tight, to have your set be tight and not be self-indulgent. | ||
| But I think there's a risk with early comics where they just kind of like, they don't let a bit breathe enough or explore within it. | ||
| And I think the lesson I learned was that... | ||
| It's like I've been doing it long enough where you can let the joke breathe or take these moments. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And I think it applies to life as well because I used to move through life like I'm bothering everybody or I'm an encumbrance. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Whereas now it's sort of like I'm not being a grease. | ||
| I'm not taking too much time with the sugar in the aftermath. | ||
| It's funny that you keep going back to that. | ||
| Like I've been traumatized? | ||
| Sugar and half and half. | ||
| It's a microcosm. | ||
| It's a microcosm for everything else. | ||
| As long as you're not taking too much time, it's okay to move through life in the allotted time that you are allowed. | ||
| Because sometimes people will nip things too soon and you don't get to milk the bit for as long as it needs to be. | ||
| Right, right, right. | ||
| I know what you mean. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| I think it comes with proficiency, too, right? | ||
| Like, you know you're good enough. | ||
| The bits have real merit. | ||
| And you know, like, you can hit them with a big laugh and then hold on to it. | ||
| And, like, you're proficient. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know what you're doing. | ||
| That comes with doing it and then also trusting the writing that you've done. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Because sometimes there are some bits that I do where I tell the joke or maybe I'm setting something up and they're Being comfortable in the silence. | ||
| That's something that I learned at the OR. Because before, some comics become steamrollers. | ||
| And if they don't hear laughs every two or three seconds... | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But then the audience recognizes you're panicky. | ||
| It's hypnotism. | ||
| Chappelle is so great at this as well. | ||
| I love comedy that can... | ||
| You get these huge pops. | ||
| It's just sort of like... | ||
| If you look at the graph of the laughs and everything, it's like jazz. | ||
| I mean, it sounds cliche, but you can be like, pop, pop, all uppercuts. | ||
| But I love a jab. | ||
| I love a hook. | ||
| I love an uppercut. | ||
| I love just like hugging and... | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's comedy to me, just being able to paint with all the colors. | ||
| Because I think a lot of the downfall, which can be successful in the short run, is just like all uppercuts. | ||
| But then it becomes formulaic. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's the need to get a response constantly to reaffirm your position. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Yeah, just not needing that validation. | ||
| Just realizing I'm enough for the idea. | ||
| You know what's around the corner. | ||
| The audience doesn't. | ||
| So it's kind of cool. | ||
| Don't you see the pitfalls? | ||
| Like sometimes you watch a young comic or a comic that's not that good yet, and you see what's holding them back, and it's almost like you wish you could tell them, but you can't. | ||
| You could. | ||
| Maybe. | ||
| Dude, he would like put that on his vision board or he would like put it in a scrapbook. | ||
| I've had some conversations with comics where I try to tell them they don't want to hear it. | ||
| Like, okay. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Even with where you're at? | ||
| You give them notes and they go, I don't want to hear it? | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| I was, you know, what I'll say, you gotta edit. | ||
| If this bit is a really funny bit, but it goes too long, you gotta edit. | ||
| And you see them the next time, they're doing the same thing. | ||
| Like, you know there's funny parts of that bit, and then you're trying to milk it. | ||
| But you lose the confidence of the audience, because that other stuff is not that funny. | ||
| And I'm like, you have to recognize that you have to kill your babies. | ||
| Meaning that's a writing phrase. | ||
| You have to edit. | ||
| And sometimes you get really attached to some of the work that you've created. | ||
| And you don't want to edit it out. | ||
| Like, I've got some great bits that never made it onto CDs or comedy specials. | ||
| And I had a friend of mine the other day bring up, like, whatever happened to that bit? | ||
| I go, dude, that bit has never been onto anything. | ||
| And I'm like, that bit was a killer. | ||
| I never had a place for it. | ||
| Yo, I know what you're saying. | ||
| There are bits I have that smash in the 15-minute set at the OR or whatever, but in my hour, it has no home. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| There's a difference between, I always liken creating a joke. | ||
| A joke is like a single. | ||
| And a set is like an album. | ||
| So just because you have a great joke doesn't mean it belongs on the album. | ||
| So it's like a movie. | ||
| It's like a movie. | ||
| You gotta cut scenes out sometimes. | ||
| Gotta cut scenes out. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And you gotta cut sections of bits out. | ||
| There's a phrase that I always use with comics that I want them to really have it in your toolbox. | ||
| It's the economy of words. | ||
| You have to be able to get... | ||
| It's huge. | ||
| You have to be able to get to the point before the audience knows what your point is. | ||
| And then it pops. | ||
| the master of that is Joey Diaz. | ||
| Joey Diaz hits you with jokes and you don't know what the punchline is. | ||
| You don't... | ||
| Like, by the time he hits the punchline, you're still absorbing what he says. | ||
| Like, he has this... | ||
| This is, in my opinion, one of the best bits I've ever heard in my life. | ||
| I love transvestites. | ||
| They cook. | ||
| They clean. | ||
| You can beat on them every once in a while. | ||
| The cops come. | ||
| Who they gonna believe? | ||
| Me or some dude with a wig and a black eye. | ||
| There's no support groups for these people. | ||
| It's a bit where it's so preposterous. | ||
| Like you're seeing a guy with a wig and a black eye cooking and the cops come. | ||
| There's so many different things going on there. | ||
| But there's no fat in that. | ||
| Because he's an East Coast guy who comes from this shit-talking background and he was in prison. | ||
| For fucking kidnapping a drug dealer with a machine gun. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| There's no room for nonsense. | ||
| There's no room for self-indulgence in that world. | ||
| And so all his jokes come at you like that. | ||
| Joey Diaz is the king of the 20-minute set. | ||
| He can murder. | ||
| In 20 minutes, he can hit frequencies and RPMs that no one can hit. | ||
| Yeah, I've seen it. | ||
| It's crazy. | ||
| It's insane. | ||
| You've seen it. | ||
| People don't know. | ||
| If you watch his comedies, he's got a couple comedy specials. | ||
| They're good, but they're not representative. | ||
| You've got to see him live when he doesn't give a fuck in the moment. | ||
| It's in the moment. | ||
| I've seen that with certain comics where you see them live and it's like this otherworldly thing. | ||
| When you try to capture it on film, it's different. | ||
| First of all, you're not there in the crowd. | ||
| That's a part of it. | ||
| Live performances are so much better. | ||
| When you watch a recorded performance, whether any of my best specials probably triggered, it's maybe 70% as good as actually being there. | ||
| Maybe 60. Being there is better. | ||
| Being there is just better. | ||
| You're there. | ||
| You feel it. | ||
| You sit down. | ||
| When I go to a show today, if I go to a show like... | ||
| I went to see Bill Burr when he was out here. | ||
| He was performing at one of the theaters out here. | ||
| Got to hang out with him. | ||
| It was beautiful. | ||
| Got to sit down and watch his show. | ||
| But being there, I was like, I'm going to see a show. | ||
| It's a feeling in the air. | ||
| Ladies and gentlemen, Bill Burr! | ||
| Everybody goes crazy and claps, and you're sitting there. | ||
| It's exciting. | ||
| You're there. | ||
| You're physically in the presence of a guy who's just on top of his fucking game, and it's fun. | ||
| It's exciting. | ||
| It's in the air. | ||
| You can smell it. | ||
| It's like firewood burning. | ||
| There's something about it. | ||
| Ah, there's something about it. | ||
| It makes you feel good. | ||
| You're there. | ||
| There's people there. | ||
| You look around. | ||
| You see these people. | ||
| They're really there. | ||
| You could walk up to that person and shake their hand. | ||
| They're right there. | ||
| That's real. | ||
| There's a lived, felt moment. | ||
| You feel it. | ||
| You don't feel it when you're watching TV. You get a facsimile. | ||
| You get a reasonable version of what it would have been like if you had been there seeing Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock. | ||
| When he's there... | ||
| You don't get that from a fucking television! | ||
| You kind of get it. | ||
| So you have to be so much better than the way it's going to come off on television. | ||
| Because on television, it's only going to be a fraction of as good as what it really is when you're there live. | ||
| And there's also the comfort thing. | ||
| One of the things that I put, Bill Hicks' Relentless. | ||
| He had a one-set special. | ||
| One set, in a theater, on HBO. You know, ready? | ||
| Here it is. | ||
| This is your whole fucking life's work. | ||
| Go! | ||
| This is the most people that are ever going to see your material ever. | ||
| Go! | ||
| And there's a theater with thousands of people. | ||
| He does one set and you can tell he's kind of tense. | ||
| It's not as good. | ||
| I've seen Hicks live. | ||
| I saw Hicks live several times. | ||
| I saw him live at the Comedy Connection in Boston in 1988 when no one knew who the fuck he was and he murdered. | ||
| Murdered in this preposterous way. | ||
| And I've seen Joey Diaz... | ||
| Do a set that Bill Hooks couldn't hope to follow. | ||
| Couldn't hope to follow. | ||
| No one could hope to follow. | ||
| He hits these moments where he says things you can't fucking believe he sang. | ||
| He's also a human cartoon. | ||
| Just looking at him is hilarious. | ||
| And he's free. | ||
| He's free. | ||
| He's free. | ||
| And he's high as fuck. | ||
| He's literally in another dimension, like looking at the world through a dirty windshield. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I remember he'd come by the store, and he's such a sweetheart, man. | ||
| Like, I didn't know that. | ||
| I just know, before he started coming around the store, you just know him as kind of this entity or whatever. | ||
| But he's like the nicest dude. | ||
| He'll call you, he'll text you, he'll be like, how you doing? | ||
| Well, he came back when I came back. | ||
| Oh, okay, okay. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| He came back when I came back in 2014. That's when he returned. | ||
| He was the first to leave. | ||
| He left even before I left. | ||
| To Jersey, right? | ||
| No, no, no. | ||
| He moved to Jersey recently, but he left the store. | ||
| Before I left in 2007, he had already left. | ||
| Might he leave? | ||
| He just felt like that fucking store was fucked up. | ||
| He didn't like Tommy. | ||
| He didn't like the way they were running it. | ||
| He didn't like a lot of things. | ||
| He didn't like Pauly. | ||
| He didn't like a lot of things. | ||
| Joey Diaz is very sensitive. | ||
| Joey Diaz will not accept a text message from you. | ||
| You have to call him. | ||
| Don't fucking text message me. | ||
| Call me, cocksucker. | ||
| You gotta call him. | ||
| He wants to hear you. | ||
| He wants to hear your voice. | ||
| He goes, I go, how come you don't like text messages? | ||
| He goes, I'm insecure. | ||
| I want to hear your voice. | ||
| I want to know you love me. | ||
| I go, you know I love you. | ||
| He goes, I know you fucking love me, Joe Rogan. | ||
| I want to hear everybody's voice. | ||
| I want to hear your voice. | ||
| I want to talk to you. | ||
| He wants to talk to you. | ||
| He's right. | ||
| He's right. | ||
| The same thing with being there. | ||
| How many people have gotten in weird disagreements with friends on Twitter? | ||
| Have you ever seen that? | ||
| Where two people are disputing shit on Twitter? | ||
| You're like, what are you doing? | ||
| So much can be lost over text. | ||
| Everything can be lost. | ||
| It's better to just talk to someone. | ||
| Everything is better in person. | ||
| I think there's very few human beings that I've ever had a disagreement with in whether it's an email or a text or they've seen something, they didn't like it on a podcast and they've tweeted about it or something. | ||
| Like if you're there talking to me, we can have a reasonable conversation. | ||
| It's one of the least comprehensive and worst ways to communicate with another human being ever is through some sort of proxy, whether it's Twitter or Instagram or any of these things. | ||
| It's the refuge of cowards, the way people communicate through these alternative forms of expression. | ||
| They're not good either. | ||
| You know they're not good. | ||
| It's a way to snipe at someone without actually having to confront their retort. | ||
| It's very weak. | ||
| I don't engage in it. | ||
| I mean, I used to until I figured it out, but I don't have any Twitter beefs. | ||
| I have zero. | ||
| I don't either. | ||
| I just kind of let them, whatever they need to say, they need to say. | ||
| I reach out to people. | ||
| I've had a few people say shit about me on Twitter and I reach out to them. | ||
| And I'm like, look, that's not true. | ||
| Like, you don't... | ||
| I think sometimes they don't expect you to even reach out. | ||
| So they're like, oh, shit. | ||
| And then they kind of do a 180. Reach out. | ||
| I've reached out through text and say, let's have a phone call. | ||
| And I have a few of those conversations like, I can't right now. | ||
| And they never do. | ||
| Because they're cowards. | ||
| They just don't want to... | ||
| And even a phone call is not as good as being in front of me. | ||
| If you were in front of me and we were talking, you'd realize, like, I'm not a bad person. | ||
| Like, it's... | ||
| We're just... | ||
| We're missing communication. | ||
| We're not... | ||
| We're not syncing up. | ||
| And you get angry and attribute your own life's failings. | ||
| And it's usually people that are unhappy with some aspect of their life. | ||
| Whether it's their recognition or their accomplishments or something. | ||
| They always feel like they deserve more than they've achieved. | ||
| And then they'll be angry. | ||
| Or something. | ||
| There's something wrong. | ||
| There's some underlying thing that... | ||
| Leads to a lack of compassionate dialogue with a person that you know. | ||
| You know, it's like it's unnecessary. | ||
| And it's almost always because someone is insecure or falling short or they have to come up with some way to diminish other people. | ||
| It's really unnecessary. | ||
| Yeah, it's easy to put people in a box. | ||
| I've always found just like once you kind of talk to them face-to-face, people are people. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| They may have difference of opinions or whatever, but like once you're face-to-face, they'll surprise you with the humanity and such. | ||
| And a lot is lost over Twitter and text and such. | ||
| Especially face-to-face with no audience, right? | ||
| Where you don't have to like perform to other people that are watching it. | ||
| You know, like when people can just be human face-to-face. | ||
| I think we're in an adolescent stage of communication, and I think the next level of technology is going to elevate discourse. | ||
| I think that what we're dealing with now through Twitter and through all these other things, we've expanded the way people can contact each other, but we've limited the way you can express yourself and limited the human interaction. | ||
| So the beautiful thing about it is someone can express themselves like a whistleblower who's working at a chemical plant can express that this plant is dumping toxic shit into the river and it's killing fish. | ||
| There's beautiful things about Twitter and about social media and about all these different things. | ||
| You can expose things that are currently happening right now that are bad. | ||
| The bad thing is it's a very limited way of expression, a limited way of communication. | ||
| It's not human. | ||
| Anybody can write something down in a text and there's all this room for interpretation of what that actually means or who the person is that's saying that or what's their motivation. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| The unfortunate thing about it is, you know, it's a very powerful tool and all that, but it strips away intent, which I always think is a catalyst for disaster. | ||
| Like, oh, I didn't mean it that way. | ||
| And then you can't even sort of explain your position until it becomes... | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| We're constantly looking to, like, call people out, right? | ||
| That's the thing that's going on right now. | ||
| People are looking to call people out, constantly call people out. | ||
| I think there's an atrophy to it, though. | ||
| People are a little tired of it, because we've been through this rodeo enough where it's like, you can only see the sky's falling how many times before you're like, is this really a scandal? | ||
| Right, right. | ||
| And there's also the people that have called people out. | ||
| Then you start looking into their life like, oh, bitch, you're crazy. | ||
| And then we all know crazy people. | ||
| And we're all like, oh, we all know people that blame everyone else but themselves. | ||
| Also, I'm curious. | ||
| Did you hear about the Armie Hammer cannibal thing? | ||
| I don't know what happened with that. | ||
| I don't know that much either. | ||
| Listen, I've done an amazing job of filtering out bullshit over the last year or so of my life. | ||
| I'm very proud of myself. | ||
| So I look at that and I'm like, I don't even know who that dude is. | ||
| He's an actor. | ||
| I don't know all of the facts and all that, but to me it seems like it's some weird kink he has. | ||
| He wants to eat people? | ||
| Unless he has a freezer. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh. | |
| With like human body parts? | ||
| What did he do for... | ||
| What was his role? | ||
| I think sometimes we would text... | ||
| He was the Winklevoss twins in the social network. | ||
| He played both roles of the brothers. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| He's like a pretty big actor. | ||
| He's like a movie star. | ||
| I didn't watch that movie. | ||
| Really? | ||
| No. | ||
| Army Hammer? | ||
| No, he was in Call Me By Your Name. | ||
| Yeah, I didn't watch that movie. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Yeah, the Facebook movie. | ||
| I felt like... | ||
| The problem with that Facebook movie is that's a fucking recreation of actual conversations. | ||
| I hate those things. | ||
| It's like the Jackie Robinson movie. | ||
| Jackie, go out there and knock it out of the park. | ||
| Who fucking said that? | ||
| Are you sure that guy said that? | ||
| You're putting words in people's mouths. | ||
| I saw the movie on a plane and I was like, that movie was just racism followed by home runs. | ||
| Jackie Robinson. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, just like, we don't serve apple pie to your kind. | |
| And then, I was wrong about you. | ||
| I didn't watch that movie either. | ||
| I don't like recreations, you know? | ||
| Like, Lone Survivor, the Marky Mark movie. | ||
| I know Marcus Luttrell, the guy who the movie was based on. | ||
| Oh, was that the Clint Eastwood one? | ||
| No, that was the Sniper movie about Kyle... | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Chris Kyle. | ||
| Was he like Gladiator? | ||
| Well, Gladiator's about a time where no one knew anybody that was there. | ||
| I know, but... | ||
| I know Marcus Luttrell. | ||
| Do you understand the difference between that? | ||
| You don't know Gladiator? | ||
| No. | ||
| Marcus is my friend. | ||
| I text Marcus Luttrell. | ||
| Like, I know who he is, and Marky Marcus playing him in a movie. | ||
| I'm like, this is crazy. | ||
| I can't even watch it. | ||
| I have to watch because Marcus is going to come on the podcast. | ||
| I haven't watched that movie. | ||
| Huh. | ||
| I don't like recreations of real life stories. | ||
| They bother me. | ||
| I like documentaries. | ||
| I love documentaries. | ||
| I love documentaries. | ||
| But there's a thing about recreations where you put words in someone's mouth. | ||
| Like when they do a Lincoln movie. | ||
| Like the Daniel Day-Lewis Lincoln movie. | ||
| I didn't watch that. | ||
| I'm like, bitch, you don't know if Lincoln said that. | ||
| I watch Vampire Slayer and I go, that's Lincoln? | ||
| That was a good one. | ||
| I don't know that he slayed vampires. | ||
| Abraham Lincoln Vampire Slayer is the best Lincoln movie ever. | ||
| You're afraid the slaves and did that? | ||
| What was my point? | ||
| Armie Hammer. | ||
| What the fuck did he do? | ||
| I mean, I only have a cursory knowledge of it. | ||
| He wasn't a superhero? | ||
| No, they were saying he's a cannibal. | ||
| But he wasn't a superhero in a movie? | ||
| Armie Hammer. | ||
| He was a man named Uncle and Lone Ranger. | ||
| Lone Ranger! | ||
| Lone Ranger's a superhero, bitch. | ||
| Is it Man Called Uncle? | ||
| No. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's a great movie. | ||
| I like it. | ||
| Was he the superhero with Johnny Depp? | ||
| Let me see what he looks like. | ||
| If you saw him... | ||
| Armie Hammer with Johnny Depp. | ||
| Johnny Depp, by the way, is probably the dopest tanto of all time. | ||
| That's him? | ||
| How dope does Johnny Depp look? | ||
| Let's focus on that. | ||
| Look at that fucking... | ||
| Look at that thing with him with the crow. | ||
| You know, people got mad at Johnny Depp because he was playing one of the Comanches, and the Comanches did horrific things. | ||
| They literally roasted their enemies alive, chopped their arms and legs off, and threw them on bonfires. | ||
| And people are like, Johnny Depp is playing one of the most ruthless and Vicious. | ||
| Look at that picture. | ||
| Go to that one in the center of Johnny Depp with the white face paint. | ||
| Come on, bro. | ||
| How dope is that? | ||
| How come they didn't get a real Comanche to act in this movie? | ||
| That's exactly what people are. | ||
| They're mad at that, too. | ||
| I think it's so... | ||
| There's got to be a happy medium. | ||
| I understand that there needs to be progress in Hollywood and such, but I always point to that rock movie, Skyscraper or whatever. | ||
| They're like, why didn't they get a real amputee to be an action hero? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Paraplegic, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| I think The Rock just had a missing leg in that movie. | ||
| I thought he was in a wheelchair. | ||
| No, I think he just has a prosthetic leg. | ||
| The thing is, as woke as you want to be, what amputee do you know who can move some tickets? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right? | |
| You forget the business element of it. | ||
| They're not just doing this to be woke. | ||
| It's like there's a business. | ||
| There's financials involved. | ||
| If you're forking over all this money, are you going to go with this unknown amputee to star in this movie? | ||
| Maybe it's an independent film, but these people are trying to recoup their money. | ||
| They're going to go with The Rock and CGI it. | ||
| You can go the other way, too, with Jumanji, like Jumanji 2. Why does an Asian lady get to play Danny DeVito? | ||
| That's bullshit. | ||
| Danny DeVito is an Italian-American. | ||
| He should be played by another Italian-American, not an Asian lady who's mocking him. | ||
| It's just so interesting the way, like, where are these lines? | ||
| And it's so ambiguous. | ||
| Like, even James Corden, there was that, like, movie Prompt. | ||
| I think it was on, was it on Netflix? | ||
| Or maybe, I don't know where it came out, but it was called Prompt. | ||
| Nicole Kidman was in it, I believe. | ||
| And he plays a gay man in prom. | ||
| And then he was kind of torn apart on Twitter. | ||
| Like, why the fuck is James Corden playing a gay man? | ||
| Torn apart by who? | ||
| Just like the Twittersphere and such. | ||
| That's the problem. | ||
| I know, but okay. | ||
| But people feel it's an amplifier. | ||
| People feel like it's very real. | ||
| And it's still like a thing, even though it's a minority. | ||
| But the thing is, like, a lot of gay actors will play straight and everyone is okay with that. | ||
| That's actually very progressive. | ||
| When was that ever happened? | ||
| What? | ||
| Gay actors playing straight. | ||
| That happens. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Gay actors never get to play straight in a romantic role. | |
| Neil Patrick Harris got to play. | ||
| He gets to play straight. | ||
| In that one sitcom, but nobody bought it. | ||
| No, the guy in Suits. | ||
| What is Suits? | ||
| Suits was the show on USA. Meghan Markle or whatever was in it as well. | ||
| USA? USA. They know character. | ||
| Meghan Markle? | ||
| Meghan Markle was in it. | ||
| The lady who's Married to the Prince? | ||
| Yes, yes, yes. | ||
| Who else? | ||
| The guy from Mindhunter, I believe. | ||
| He plays straight. | ||
| You're going obscure as fuck. | ||
| But still, we're in a time where back in the day, if you were gay, you couldn't play straight. | ||
| And now you can. | ||
| Not in a major movie. | ||
| There's no out straight guy or out gay guys who play a leading man in a major movie. | ||
| It's the one hiccup in Hollywood. | ||
| And people have said, let's just not even name names. | ||
| Why doesn't this guy come out of the closet? | ||
| And this is the answer, because that guy's a leading man in a movie. | ||
| And you cannot be a leading man in a romantic role if people know you're actually thinking about... | ||
| Well, in these TV shows, it's allowed. | ||
| But for some reason, when... | ||
| What TV shows? | ||
| Maybe one or two weird TV shows that you've heard of and I never have. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And the Neil Patrick Harris thing, but nobody buys that. | ||
| But everyone tore James Corden apart for playing a gay man in this... | ||
| You say everyone. | ||
| There's 14 people on Twitter. | ||
| Well, 14 people had a problem with it. | ||
| He got a lot of stuff because he got an extra Golden Globe nomination for that role. | ||
| And so he's getting extra stuff for it. | ||
| Extra stuff? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I guess they don't want, like, perceivably privileged people to play underprivileged people. | ||
| It's such a minuscule perception, or such a minuscule portion of the population that's upset at James Corden for some movie role. | ||
| It's kind of like when everyone's coming at Chappelle for his, like, latest special, and then he wins... | ||
| What did he win? | ||
| Like, a Grammy? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Yeah, he won the Mark Twain award. | ||
| Something like that, but there's all these hit pieces on him, and he had the awards to prove for it. | ||
| But who are these people? | ||
| No matter what you do, you're going to have someone that's mad. | ||
| And if you're doing comedy, especially if you're doing comedy that pushes buttons, you're going to at least have the opportunity for someone to decide that's a target and to go after you. | ||
| It's probably a sign that you're doing good work. | ||
| You know what's like a, I want to try this a bit, but like the last frontier of heterosexuality in advertising is like watches. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Watches? | |
| It's always like a manly man. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| If you look at any watch ad, it's always like, I'm George Clooney for Rolex. | ||
| It's always like super masculine. | ||
| You're never going to see like, I'm Jonathan Van Ness for Swatch. | ||
| Daniel Craig for Omega. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| It's like the last frontier of advertising where they keep it uber masculine. | ||
| Well, watches are male jewelry. | ||
| It's one of the rare acceptable male jewelry if you're not a rapper. | ||
| Yeah, but it's just kind of interesting just on the sidelines to see the way advertising is going, how they've been very inclusive with everybody, but watches has held the line. | ||
| Huh. | ||
| Haven't you noticed that? | ||
| I didn't notice it at all. | ||
| But I like watches. | ||
| I like watches a lot. | ||
| I'm a fan of watches. | ||
| But I'm a fan of mechanical things. | ||
| One of the things I like about watches is that they're mechanical. | ||
| Somebody figured out how to make these little... | ||
| Like this watch right here. | ||
| This is an Omega. | ||
| It's a titanium watch. | ||
| And it's got all these little pieces in it. | ||
| And when you move it... | ||
| Feel how light that is. | ||
| That is pretty light. | ||
| I thought it would be heavier. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| That's a new James Bond version. | ||
| The Omega Titanium Watch. | ||
| Super light. | ||
| But it's also like, there's all these wheels and gears in there. | ||
| And as you move, that's what winds the watch. | ||
| I am fascinated by that. | ||
| That's the watch right there. | ||
|
unidentified
|
See? | |
| That's so masculine. | ||
| Masculine as fuck. | ||
| No time to die. | ||
| But I'm just a fan of engineering. | ||
| I love engineering. | ||
| I love people that create interesting things that are mechanical. | ||
| There's something about that. | ||
| Because we're in such a tech world, that something that's mechanical is... | ||
| I love handmade knives. | ||
| I love manual gearboxes in cars. | ||
| I love old muscle cars. | ||
| I love mechanical things. | ||
| I love to feel the mechanisms working. | ||
| I have a Tesla, and I love my Tesla. | ||
| I love it to death. | ||
| It's probably the best car that I have. | ||
| But there's something that I miss. | ||
| And what I miss is the... | ||
| I want to... | ||
| I want to feel the gear. | ||
| I want to feel the... | ||
| I push the left pedal down. | ||
| The clutch engages. | ||
| I push the gear shift into third gear. | ||
| I let the clutch out. | ||
| I push down the gas. | ||
| There's this interaction with this thing that lets me... | ||
| I'm engaged. | ||
| I'm feeling it. | ||
| There's something about those... | ||
| Those kind of old cars and mechanical watches. | ||
| There's a lot of other things. | ||
| Those things excite me. | ||
| Tactile! | ||
| It's like a dance. | ||
| Yeah, I like cooking over fire. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| There's things that I still like that are older things. | ||
| I like running on dirt. | ||
| I like those things. | ||
| I like chopping wood. | ||
| There's tactile experiences. | ||
| You know? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I know those are dying. | ||
| I know they're dying. | ||
| The manual gearbox is dying. | ||
| My car stole a stick. | ||
| I talked about it last time I was on here. | ||
| The Mazda 3. It's a stick shift. | ||
| People are kissing with masks on. | ||
| Do you understand what's happening? | ||
|
unidentified
|
What? | |
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| People are making out with masks on. | ||
| No, one mask. | ||
| They're dangerous. | ||
| Dangerous people. | ||
| I feel like mass kissing is a step in the wrong direction. | ||
| We're going to become aliens. | ||
| We're going to become the greys with the big black eyes, the giant heads. | ||
| We're not going to kiss at all anymore. | ||
| No. | ||
| We're going to do it all through our brains. | ||
| That'll be a relic of the past. | ||
| It's gonna be like the difference unit Tesla and a manual 1970s Chevelle is gonna be the difference between real fucking and And and people just plugging into some fucking some computer and just letting it all happen inside some virtual reality Experience where you don't have to worry about cooties That's what I'm worried about man I'm worried about tactile human experiences. | ||
| And I'm not really worried. | ||
| I'm recognizing that the same way, if you wanted to look back on primates, early primates, and go, like, if you brought a chimp into the future and said, hey, this is what it's going to be like. | ||
| You're going to fly in planes, and you're going to eat off plates. | ||
| Like, fuck that. | ||
| I like swinging from trees, and I like throwing my own shit at my enemies. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, my God. | |
| Like, I can't give that up. | ||
| I'm not giving up throwing shit. | ||
| I like shit in my hand and giving it a good toss. | ||
| Yeah, and I fucking get together with my other chimp buddies and we fuck up some dude who crossed our imaginary line and we kill him. | ||
| You know, there's parts of that that for sure... | ||
| Life is better today. | ||
| But I'm not a future human. | ||
| I'm a current human. | ||
| And in my current state, there's tactile experiences that I enjoy. | ||
| I like kissing. | ||
| I like holding hands. | ||
| I like shaking a person's hand when I meet them. | ||
| I like drinking whiskey. | ||
| I like driving cars. | ||
| I like shifting my own gears. | ||
| I like opening doors for myself. | ||
| Whenever there's one of those things where you step towards it and the door opens up, I never use those fucking things. | ||
| I grab that handle. | ||
| I open that bitch up. | ||
| I like opening doors. | ||
| I want to experience things. | ||
| I want to interact with the world. | ||
| I like interacting. | ||
| I think there will always be a place for that. | ||
| No? | ||
| No more? | ||
| Well, COVID has put a wrench into that. | ||
| COVID is basically showing us what the future holds in store for us. | ||
| What the future holds in store for us is the elimination of biological threats. | ||
| And there's a lot of biological threats that we take for granted, like emotions. | ||
| Hormones. | ||
| The desire to breed. | ||
| Conquering. | ||
| The natural primate instincts to dominate environments and to expand our boundaries and our kingdoms. | ||
| All those things are dangerous. | ||
| They're not good. | ||
| But they also create art And romance and controversy and they provide people with enthusiasm and motivation. | ||
| There's all these things about being a human that creates art and makes things like wine. | ||
| It makes things worth living. | ||
| Whiskey, cigars. | ||
| I do miss the kinetic nature of life pre-COVID. You know what I mean? | ||
| Like bumping into someone, going to something, just serendipitously meeting someone. | ||
| That doesn't happen anymore, really. | ||
| Now everything is just so... | ||
| It happens in Texas. | ||
| I'm two days in, so I'm learning, but... | ||
| I'm going to take you around. | ||
| We're going to be fine. | ||
| The people that don't want it to go back are the people that are most fearful. | ||
| The people that are like, my grandmother died. | ||
| I understand. | ||
| I get it. | ||
| It's a terrifying tragedy that anybody has to die from a disease. | ||
| But we have to recognize that we're all going to die. | ||
| And you can't stop all life because a disease comes along and kills some of us. | ||
| We have to recognize what can we do to mitigate the dangers of this disease. | ||
| Plus, what can we do to mitigate the dangers of dissolving our culture? | ||
| We haven't done that. | ||
| Instead, we've only concentrated on mitigating the dangers of spreading something. | ||
| So stay home. | ||
| Wear three masks. | ||
| Touch no one. | ||
| Wear gloves while you're driving. | ||
| Like, fuck, man. | ||
| This is not life. | ||
| This is not life. | ||
| And most of these people that are three-mask people, they don't know goddamn anything about vitamins and quercetin and saunas and all the different methods that you can use to stimulate your immune system. | ||
| It's like we don't want people to be able to take their own chances and make their own risks. | ||
| And the more liberal you are and the more left-wing you are, the more likely you are to appeal to authoritarianism. | ||
| And this is one of the most discouraging aspects of our culture in 2021. All these people that are supposed to be left-wing people. | ||
| When I was a kid, I've always been left-wing. | ||
| My family's... | ||
| Stepdad's a hippie. | ||
| He was a hippie. | ||
| My mom... | ||
| They were very open-minded, left-wing people. | ||
| It was all about free expression. | ||
| It was all about letting people be who they are and living whatever life you wanted to be and accepting people for who they are. | ||
| That's not what's happening now. | ||
| This is all this fear-based, weird appeal to authoritarianism. | ||
| There's too much disinformation on the internet. | ||
| We have to have a czar of truth. | ||
| There's people calling for a czar of truth. | ||
| Do you know this? | ||
| No. | ||
| This is the new thing. | ||
| They're asking for the government to create a czar of truth. | ||
| The fucking government! | ||
| To decide what's real and what's not. | ||
| To dispel disinformation. | ||
| See, you can pull this up. | ||
| Czar of truth. | ||
| This is something that CNN has talked about. | ||
| a lot of these like fucking weirdo Networks have talked about like do you do you understand these fucking people understand what happens when you start censoring people We start saying things like we need the government to step in the government's never good at anything They've never been good at anything. | ||
| Not one fucking thing Even during this whole like COVID crisis like businesses are suffering. | ||
| They're just your business. | ||
| You're fucked Especially in LA. | ||
| It's not a percent of all LA restaurants are gone. | ||
| Yeah Yeah. | ||
| There's no contingency plan in place and then also they're like, stay home, but then how do you make money? | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| So you can't have it both ways. | ||
| You have to have like a safety net in place. | ||
| The people that are making these distinctions and making these decisions, they don't lose a paycheck. | ||
| That's the problem. | ||
| All these mayors and governors and health board advisors, they don't miss a fucking paycheck. | ||
| They can shut down everything. | ||
| And they do it for optics. | ||
| Well, yeah. | ||
| I think there's a way to be smart about this. | ||
| Obviously, this is a real thing, and it does affect people. | ||
| Yeah, but listen, man. | ||
| You got through it. | ||
| I got through it. | ||
| Yeah, sure. | ||
| But I'm younger, and I know there are cases where people are hit really hard by this. | ||
| But I think... | ||
| Sometimes there's bureaucracy attached to it where you're not even using logic. | ||
| Like, the comedy store, you know? | ||
| They were allowed before this, like, look, it's in purple tier right now, whatever it is. | ||
| Purple tier? | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| Outdoor dining is allowed now in Los Angeles. | ||
| But when I made the decision to come out here, everything was clamped down. | ||
| But before it was clamped down, they did have outdoor dining and all that. | ||
| And the Comedy Store was allowed to have outside seating in the parking lot, you know where we park before we do our sets? | ||
| So there was tables, there was chairs, and they could watch TV. They could watch a football game. | ||
| They could watch the Comedy Store documentary. | ||
| They were able to be congregated in that parking lot. | ||
| But they weren't allowed to, if you put a comedian doing jokes outdoor, that was suddenly against the rules. | ||
| But like nothing has changed other than instead of a TV that their focus is on, they are watching a comedian. | ||
| But for some reason, the city deemed that not allowable. | ||
| Because the city is filled, the city government is filled with people so fucking stupid, they want to be a part of the city government. | ||
| That's the problem. | ||
| Yes, on the ground floor. | ||
| That part goes in your mouth. | ||
| It makes no sense to anyone. | ||
| It doesn't have to make sense. | ||
| And it was frustrating because before the shutdown, when everything was super locked down, I was doing a lot of outdoor shows in LA. And I was doing all these alt shows just in backyards and on the top of hotels and stuff. | ||
| But the Comedy Store wasn't allowed to do shows because it was called the Comedy Store. | ||
| There was too much attention on it. | ||
| Is that what it is? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I think it's just a bunch of fools. | ||
| That's all it is. | ||
| It's just a bunch of fools working in government. | ||
| It doesn't have to make any sense. | ||
| They just have to keep their jobs. | ||
| And they have to give off the perception that they're doing something that is helping. | ||
| And it's not true. | ||
| It's not real. | ||
| The beautiful thing about this state is that the governor, Governor Abbott... | ||
| Is it dead? | ||
| Did I kill it? | ||
|
unidentified
|
You killed it, you son of a bitch. | |
| I got a lot of juice, don't worry about it. | ||
| I didn't bring it though, dummy I am. | ||
| But I was doing all these shows around LA, but I couldn't perform at the comedy store. | ||
| They would perform in front of the glass in the OR, you know? | ||
| You know that glass that overlooks sunset? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Did you ever see the movie Midnight Express? | ||
| Who's in that again? | ||
| I forget. | ||
| But it's an old movie about a guy who gets busted smuggling drugs in a foreign country. | ||
| It's the scene where a girlfriend comes to see him and she lifts up her tits. | ||
| Shows him her tits so he's jerking off through the glass. | ||
| That's what comedy in the glass is like. | ||
| Same thing. | ||
| I have an idea. | ||
| He's just sad. | ||
| I think like movies nowadays that have sex scenes, get rid of it. | ||
| We don't need that. | ||
| That was of the 90s when you didn't want to go through the beaded curtain and it was too embarrassing to go through the curtain. | ||
| Like Pornhub exists now. | ||
| You mean the curtain of like video stores? | ||
| Yeah, like if you wanted to see porn or whatever, you had to go through the curtain. | ||
| I walk those things like a cowboy. | ||
| I kick those fucking things open. | ||
| So any movie nowadays with like graphic sex scenes or kind of silhouettes, what are you doing? | ||
| It's 2021. I don't need to see this. | ||
| Yeah, but if you want to make a moment where the two characters, male and female characters, are male and male characters, are female and female characters, I'm trying to be really inclusive. | ||
| Sure, inclusive. | ||
| I get it. | ||
| But just make it small. | ||
| You don't need to make a meal out of it. | ||
| Just show it. | ||
| Why don't you show them fucking? | ||
| But back in the day, you would look Basic Instinct or like the movie Species, and people would rent that because that was like a way to get off without going through the beaded curtain. | ||
| Who do you hang out with? | ||
| I was a child. | ||
| I was a child. | ||
| Species. | ||
| No, there was like a sleepover. | ||
| I met that gal. | ||
| Who's that gal? | ||
|
unidentified
|
You did? | |
| Yeah, she was on Fear Factor. | ||
| Natasha Hendrick. | ||
|
unidentified
|
She's beautiful. | |
| I had a huge crush on her when I was a kid. | ||
| Yeah, she was on Fear Factor once. | ||
| I had a crush on the chick who was in Hot Shot Part Deux as well. | ||
| Who was that? | ||
| That Charlie Sheen movie. | ||
| It was like a take on... | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Because Airplane gave birth to the Leslie Nielsen movies. | ||
| Was it Naked Gun? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, Naked Gun. | ||
| And then I think Hot Shots was like the last of those type of movies they did. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Let me see what that lady looks like. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I don't remember her. | ||
| Oh, I remember her. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Oh, she was beautiful. | ||
| Wasn't she from Italy? | ||
| Yeah, something like that. | ||
| Or like France. | ||
| Yeah, there she is. | ||
| You know, I was watching it the other day and... | ||
| Dude, have you seen Charlie Sheen lately? | ||
| No. | ||
| But Charlie Sheen and John Cryer are in that movie. | ||
| And then they end up being on Two and a Half Men. | ||
| I go, oh fuck, I didn't know they were in this before that. | ||
| You think John Cryer wishes he was Charlie Sheen and Charlie Sheen wishes he was John Cryer? | ||
| I think Charlie Sheen is happy with his life, right? | ||
| No? | ||
| I don't think so. | ||
| Have you seen Charlie Sheen lately? | ||
| No. | ||
| But that's just time, right? | ||
| Show a cameo. | ||
| No, it's drugs. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| There's a lot of people that have gone through time and they're fine. | ||
| Yo, he was into Tigers before Tiger King. | ||
| That's true. | ||
| Tiger Blood. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Hashtag Tiger Ball. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hashtag Tiger Ball. | |
| Hashtag winning. | ||
| He was the first really promotable hashtag. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| See if he could find his cameo, because it's bizarre. | ||
| I'm on there. | ||
| They were hitting me up for the longest time to be like, yo, join Cameo. | ||
| For me, I'm always so grateful anyone cares enough to care about me at all, just having not been famous for the longest time. | ||
| If anyone cares about me, I just cherish it. | ||
| So it felt dirty for me to charge for a happy birthday or whatever. | ||
| I could never bring myself to be on the platform. | ||
| But then I realized some of these fans might actually want that. | ||
| And just because I feel this way doesn't mean that I have to diminish how they feel about it. | ||
| You can just give the money to charity. | ||
| That's what I did. | ||
| So now I just give the money to charity. | ||
| Callan does that too. | ||
| Let me see. | ||
| Let me see. | ||
| Let me hear it. | ||
| Come on. | ||
| Looks great. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And yes, we did just that. | |
| Tune in, you're going to love it. | ||
| Right on. | ||
| Hey everybody, Charlie Sheen here. | ||
| I just did a great podcast with KDD Media called "Knocking Doors Down" and yes, we did just that. | ||
| Tune in, you're going to love it. | ||
| Right on. | ||
| Go to the other one. | ||
| That's the one. | ||
| This is the one. | ||
| Play this one. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Greetings, good people of Planet Cameo. | |
| It's the Sheen. | ||
| I'm back. | ||
| Let's make a deal. | ||
| Let's make a deal. | ||
| I will stay back. | ||
| Not like stay back. | ||
| No, I will remain here. | ||
| I will remain available. | ||
| If you can all agree that all the tiger blood and winning and we could just kind of leave that where it belongs in the past... | ||
| These are very difficult, unprecedented, and trying times that we're all finding our way through. | ||
| So if a message from me can brighten the day of yourself or a loved one or even someone you don't really care about, then I'm honored to offer that. | ||
| So, greetings. | ||
| It's bringing happiness to the fans. | ||
| I get it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But I don't want a benefit. | ||
| You only do coke for so long. | ||
| Before it catches up? | ||
| Yeah, it fucking... | ||
| It blows your wires out. | ||
| I've never done it. | ||
| I've never done it. | ||
| Me neither. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Me neither. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I hear it's big out here. | ||
| I hear it's big. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I hear people are failing COVID tests because they're doing coke. | ||
| What's going on? | ||
| This is his setup to make his videos. | ||
| He's got like a post-it to try not to swear. | ||
| That's high tech. | ||
| It says... | ||
| Mark private. | ||
| Mark private. | ||
| Try not to swear. | ||
| Why is it doing that? | ||
| You know what I found? | ||
| I think cameo suits like super characters. | ||
| If you're a regular, like I've heard Susie Essman from Curb makes a killing on there because she just curses people out. | ||
| Susie Essman is hilarious. | ||
| She was a great comic. | ||
| You ever see her do stand-up? | ||
| I only know her from Curb. | ||
| I don't know her as a stand-up. | ||
| I worked with her once in Brooklyn in the fucking early 90s. | ||
| It was funny. | ||
| I remember seeing her on television, and she was one of the first people I middled for that I had seen on TV. I worked with her. | ||
| I forget what the club was. | ||
| She was great. | ||
| Who was the first big person you worked with? | ||
| Lenny Clark. | ||
| Oh, yeah? | ||
| Yeah, Lenny Clark, who had just come off of HBO. He'd been on, and it was the second time I ever got paid to do stand-up. | ||
| I opened up for Lenny. | ||
| How'd that happen? | ||
| Fucking crazy. | ||
| There was a guy named Norm LaFoe, and Norm used to book gigs in, like, mostly western Massachusetts. | ||
| Norm gave me a lot of my early gigs. | ||
| He gave me my first gig ever with Warren McDonald. | ||
| The first guy I ever opened up for was Warren McDonald. | ||
| Second guy I ever opened up with was Lenny Clark, and I'm still good friends with Lenny and his brother Mike to this day. | ||
| And Mike Clark, his brother, that guy paid my rent so many fucking times when I lived in Boston. | ||
| He gave me so many gigs. | ||
| I will be indebted to that man to the day I die. | ||
| But his brother Lenny was a legit legend in Boston. | ||
| Everybody loved him. | ||
| Lenny Clark was one of the original guys from the Ding Ho Comedy Club, which is the original comedy club in Boston that Barry Crimin started. | ||
| And it was Lenny Clark and Kenny Rogerson and Steve Sweeney and all these fucking murderers. | ||
| The best comics that ever came out of Boston. | ||
| Don Gavin. | ||
| The best guys. | ||
| They all came out of this one fucking Chinese restaurant that they did stand-up out of. | ||
| And when I came on the scene in 1988, Lenny was a legend. | ||
| And he had just started going out to Hollywood and he had done the HBO Young Comedian special with Sam Kinison and Roddy Dangerfield. | ||
| And I opened up for them at this place, Jay's in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. | ||
| And Jay's was like this place that was the best road gig. | ||
| You'd have to drive two hours to get there, but it was the best road gig that you could get. | ||
| You got Jay's? | ||
| Oh, you got Jay's. | ||
| That's a good spot. | ||
| That's a good spot. | ||
| I remember going out there and opening up for him and just being like, I can't even believe I'm on the same stage as Lenny Clark. | ||
| And afterwards he's like, Kid, you're fucking hilarious! | ||
| With this crazy Boston accent. | ||
| How good does that feel though? | ||
| Oh my god, it was amazing. | ||
| I guess a young comic just... | ||
| Because it's so uncertain and you're so unsure to have somebody on the other side of the shore to kind of... | ||
| Because they've been through it. | ||
| They've seen everything. | ||
| They have all these data points that you're not privy to. | ||
| Yeah, it was amazing. | ||
| To give you that reassurance is... | ||
| It was amazing. | ||
| Yeah, it's amazing. | ||
| Bobby was kind of like that for me. | ||
| Bobby Lee? | ||
| Yeah, because he was one of the first guys at the store to take me on the road with him. | ||
| So I would tour. | ||
| I would open for him. | ||
| And I had just left Boeing. | ||
| I was working at Boeing Aerospace. | ||
| So that's like a legit job. | ||
| Engineering. | ||
| It's like a career. | ||
| It's not just the job you're leaving. | ||
| And part of you is like... | ||
| Thinking about getting a mortgage and a lease. | ||
| Maybe. | ||
| Living in Brentwood. | ||
| Well, no. | ||
| It's not that much money. | ||
| Eventually. | ||
| The thing I've noticed about engineering, especially... | ||
| I think the people who excel at it love it. | ||
| I think it's true of any industry. | ||
| Anyone who excels loves what they do because they're studying that stuff even after they punch out. | ||
| But I was just doing engineering as a means to an end. | ||
| It was just sort of to get me out to LA and I could do stand-up at night. | ||
| I didn't dream of being a lead at Boeing and being a manager or something. | ||
| And this thing happens where you have a pretty good salary engineering, but then this thing happens called salary compression, where you work there long enough and then new hires start getting paid more than you, just with inflation and everything. | ||
| Unless you become a lead and climb the ladder... | ||
| So, whatever. | ||
| Resentment, like comics who don't like the store. | ||
| If you care about that shit. | ||
| But I was just using it until I could do stand-up and all this entertainment stuff. | ||
| So I had left Boeing, and I was just doing stand-up full-time and all that, and then Bobby had me feature for him on the road for a bit. | ||
| And I had some things, and then they kind of, they run its course, and then you're just floating in space, and then you're like, did I make a bad decision? | ||
| But we would go, you know, you have dinner after the show and stuff, or we go to swingers. | ||
| I used to love that place. | ||
| That's what's so sad about the pandemic as well. | ||
| Swingers closing, Cafe 101's closing. | ||
| All these institutions that are embedded in who you were are gone. | ||
| The standard's gone. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But I would be second-guessing myself and he'd be like, You're good. | ||
| Sam Tripoli, too. | ||
| I remember I would be having these sets at the store, and he'd be like, you're special. | ||
| You're even money, dude. | ||
| Sam's a soldier. | ||
| He's a soldier, and he doesn't need to do this stuff. | ||
| He's like, you take swings. | ||
| You don't take victory laps. | ||
| You're using this place for what it's meant to be. | ||
| I love what you're doing. | ||
| Just keep doing what you're doing. | ||
| It'll happen. | ||
| But when you're a younger comic and stuff, it seems so fantastical. | ||
| It's all doubt. | ||
| But then you have these guys who are on the other end of it. | ||
| Who say something to you that inspires you. | ||
| And they're where you want to be. | ||
| And then you take it in a little bit. | ||
| You go, okay, it's hard for me to see this, but I guess so. | ||
| And that meant a lot to me. | ||
| Bobby saying those things or Tripoli saying those things lets you know you're on the right path. | ||
| I'll never forget people saying those things to me. | ||
| I'll never forget Lenny saying... | ||
| You know who was the first one to ever really juice me up? | ||
| Marc Maron. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| It's kind of funny because... | ||
| He doesn't juice anyone up. | ||
| Well, he and I have had some weird moments in the past because I think more perception than anything is like just we're very different kind of human beings. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Very different styles of human beings. | ||
| But when I was an open-miker, Mark pulled me aside, and he said, and I told him, he and I had like a dispute at one point in time, and I said, I gave you so much slack for so long. | ||
| I was nice to you for so long because you were so nice to me when I started out, but you're such a cunt. | ||
| And he's like, you're right, I'm sorry. | ||
| And we had this moment where he apologized, and I said, look, I root for you. | ||
| I really do. | ||
| When I was an open-miker, I was like not even a year in, I had a set and I came off stage and Mark goes, listen man. | ||
| He goes, you're doing something really cool. | ||
| He goes, just keep doing what you're doing. | ||
| Don't listen to anybody. | ||
| He goes, just keep being yourself. | ||
| And I was 21. It was raw. | ||
| Didn't know what the fuck I was doing. | ||
| And Mark Maron was a professional. | ||
| And he was also from Mecca. | ||
| He was from the store. | ||
| I knew he was from the store. | ||
| Marc Maron had cut his teeth with Sam Kinison at the goddamn Comedy Store. | ||
| And one of the most amazing podcasts that I ever had was Marc talking about him being at the store with Kinison and doing so much coke that he heard voices for a year. | ||
|
unidentified
|
For a year! | |
| For a year! | ||
| Dude, he heard voices in his head for a year. | ||
| And Mark bravely struggled through all that shit and regained sanity and kept his sobriety through that entire time. | ||
| And a lot of people have these weird, complicated relationships with Mark. | ||
| But the reason is, people are complicated, man. | ||
| You just talk to him in person. | ||
| The conversations that I've had talking to him, no microphone, just in person, they're okay. | ||
| They're fine. | ||
| You know what I've noticed, though, as well, is success tempers people. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| He feels better. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He feels better. | |
| Like his podcast took off. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| He had Obama on his fucking podcast. | ||
| Yeah, it's huge. | ||
| And then you kind of need that anchor. | ||
| Like even Tony, who I love, you know, he's great. | ||
| But I remember Tony before he got success. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| It was a different Tony. | ||
| Yeah, it was an angry Tony. | ||
| Yeah, it was a little. | ||
| But I understand it for what it is. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| When you're a young comic, everything is so uncertain. | ||
| I know what it's rooted in. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And once you know that things are going to be okay or whatever, then you get to see the person for who they are. | ||
| And he's the most lovely person now. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| I saw him at Antons the other night when I first came in. | ||
| I love him to death. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| I love him to death. | ||
| And people that don't understand him... | ||
| He's, first of all, one of the best roasters that has ever lived, that has ever walked on the surface. | ||
| There's an art to it. | ||
| He might be the best. | ||
| He might be the best. | ||
| I think he's like Jeff Ross 2.0. | ||
| I think he's one of the better roasters. | ||
| On Monday night, last Monday, I was the guest of Kill Tony, and Tony Hinchcliffe fucking murdered. | ||
| I mean, murdered. | ||
| I mean, he hit the whole audience with these fucking one-liners that were so crisp. | ||
| It was almost like he had formulated them in advance, but he didn't. | ||
| They were off the cuff. | ||
| And I was crying. | ||
| I was crying. | ||
| And then afterwards, we had a conversation, and he was like, it felt so good. | ||
| I go, dude, you killed me. | ||
| And he goes, it was so funny watching you laugh. | ||
| I go, dude, it's like sometimes I forget. | ||
| I forget how good you are. | ||
| That's his environment. | ||
| He's a great comic, for sure. | ||
| He can do both. | ||
| He's a great comic, but he's the best roaster that's ever lived. | ||
| I really believe that. | ||
| He's a fucking savage. | ||
| It's such a different thing. | ||
| I don't have that. | ||
| I don't like that. | ||
| I'm not good at roasting. | ||
| I'm too nice. | ||
| I'm too really mean. | ||
| You're mean? | ||
| I don't like to open that door. | ||
| I don't like to let the wolf out of the cage. | ||
| I don't want to be mean. | ||
| I don't like it. | ||
| My brain doesn't think that way. | ||
| I'm more constructive. | ||
| I'm trying to help the comic. | ||
| I don't try to tear them. | ||
| I know it's meant to be why everyone's there, but I'm not great at just roasting someone. | ||
| I just don't want to do it. | ||
| I don't want to do it either. | ||
| I don't want to make anybody feel bad. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I've been invited to do that. | ||
| I'm like, I don't want to hurt your feelings. | ||
| Same way. | ||
| I don't want you to be mean at me too. | ||
| It's one thing about jokes, but I've been at Roast Battle before and I've watched some of those fucking things. | ||
| And I watched this one where this guy... | ||
| Shit on this girl's looks. | ||
| And the feeling... | ||
| I could see her face where she was thinking about her next joke, but also watching a piece of her soul burn off forever and never return. | ||
| Because the whole audience was laughing about her appearance. | ||
| I'm like, I don't want to be a part of that. | ||
| But I'll watch. | ||
| Yeah, look, I get there's an appetite for that. | ||
| There's a place for that. | ||
| I love watching as a spectator, but also as a comedian. | ||
| I do think there is a pitfall, though, with younger comedians because it is a shortcut of sorts to be seen quicker than kind of working on your craft of stand-up. | ||
| But it's part of the craft because it's joke writing. | ||
| It is. | ||
| The problem is... | ||
| Here's the problem. | ||
| Comics lack discipline and structure. | ||
| And it's one of the reasons why your father probably looked at you doing stand-up as like, what are you doing? | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| You should have a job. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Oh, you got a writing job. | ||
| Now I'm happy. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| When comics know that they're going to do Roast Battle in two weeks, they will fucking prepare. | ||
| But when they have a show in two weeks, they don't prepare. | ||
| That's a good point. | ||
| That's what it is. | ||
| It's that, and then also, it's like getting really good at penalty kicks. | ||
| And not being a soccer player. | ||
| Dude, that's brilliant. | ||
| That's brilliant. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Like, you can kill it at roast battle, and, you know, Jeff Ross is there, and there's clips and stuff, and you can kind of get on very quickly, and that's fantastic, but don't not water the plant of stand-up. | ||
| Well, use the same dedication and discipline and focus that you use to be good at that particular roast battle and apply it to your actual act. | ||
| I don't want to mention any names, but I know people that are really good comics. | ||
| They could be good, but they're fucking lazy! | ||
| They're lazy and they like taking naps. | ||
| I think that's kind of what's great about the way that I entered stand-up comedy coming from... | ||
| Discipline. | ||
| Discipline, just immigrant background, and then engineering as well. | ||
| I didn't treat it... | ||
| I think in the 80s you can get away, or in the 70s you can get away, maybe more in the 80s, just like being a pothead and whatever and roll out of bed and there was this rock and roll attitude to stand-up. | ||
| But it's so saturated nowadays. | ||
| You have to be as disciplined as if it was you're working at Goldman Sachs or something. | ||
| Or you're a fighter. | ||
| Or you're a fighter. | ||
| Whatever. | ||
| Hours are hours. | ||
| You can only be as good as the amount of focus and energy and effort that you put into being good. | ||
| You want the universe to just give you this thing. | ||
| But it's like a lottery ticket. | ||
| You ever see what happens to people that win the lottery? | ||
| They lose all their money. | ||
| But the people that actually fucking grind and grind They don't lose that money. | ||
| They keep that money because they understand it and they appreciate it. | ||
| The same thing with love. | ||
| One of the saddest things is watching beautiful men, like a really handsome, perfectly chiseled man, try to find love. | ||
| Because at a certain point in time, they realize that... | ||
| They have something they don't deserve. | ||
| They have a Willy Wonka golden ticket where everybody loves them based on their facial structure or based on their height or based on their frame, their anatomy, and it's sad. | ||
| It's sad because you didn't earn that appreciation. | ||
| You didn't earn it. | ||
| I always think about that. | ||
| I don't have that, but I always think about stand-up, how you're able to punch outside your weight class. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You mean with girls? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Some of the gets I've been able to get, I would not be able to have it as an engineer. | ||
| I like how you say the gets. | ||
| The gets. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sometimes they're like, this is crazy. | |
| As long as you understand and appreciate it, there is a balance because the thing that you have that those other guys don't have is you are funny. | ||
| Girls like to laugh. | ||
| Like, girls like to be protected. | ||
| They like to be... | ||
| Like, I mean, this is... | ||
| Obviously, I'm generalizing, right? | ||
| There's girls who don't give a fuck about funny people. | ||
| There's girls who want to take care of themselves. | ||
| There's a lot of women that don't want to have anything to do with powerful men. | ||
| They want, like, a bitch-ass man they can control. | ||
| And that's fun for them. | ||
| Like, there's a lot of beautiful women that have these fucking wimpy guys with pencil necks. | ||
| And they just keep them around. | ||
| Because they like someone that they can control. | ||
| To get stomp on. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| People have different styles of living. | ||
| But there's a cost to every gift that you've given. | ||
| How many really beautiful women that you know that are funny? | ||
| There's very few. | ||
| It's tough. | ||
| It's one of the things that I really, really, really respect about Whitney. | ||
| Is that she's beautiful, but she's also really fucking funny, and she doesn't ever rely on her beauty, you know? | ||
| And there's a few women like that that just, like, they recognize there's a pitfall in being beautiful. | ||
| And instead of, like, leaning on it, they lean on their work and their art and their mind, you know? | ||
| And that shows that you understand. | ||
| We're all imperfect in every way, shape, and form. | ||
| All of us. | ||
| There's no perfect human that's ever lived. | ||
| But the things that you... | ||
| People have stereotypes, right? | ||
| One of the stereotypes about beautiful women is that they're bimbos or they're dumb, right? | ||
| And that's got to be horrible if you're a brilliant, beautiful woman. | ||
| It's got to suck. | ||
| But everybody knows that you've got a free ride. | ||
| You've got a free ride because everybody loves you, no matter what. | ||
| If you want to. | ||
| Yeah, right. | ||
| If you want that free ride, it's there because you have perfect structure and our DNA calls out to that perfect structure. | ||
| Our DNA wants that perfect structure because we want to breed with perfect structure. | ||
| But then you have someone who has a beautiful mind, you know? | ||
| Not like the Russell Crowe movie, but... | ||
| Beautiful minds are different. | ||
| There's people that say things that you just like... | ||
| That's what I love about stand-up and the store. | ||
| It's, I mean, I guess everywhere, but the store is just such a concentrated example of this. | ||
| Where you don't see the physical being of the person or age isn't a thing. | ||
| Can you kill? | ||
| Can you kill? | ||
| It's almost the most, you know how we talk about inclusivity and all that stuff? | ||
| There is no more of that than at a comedy club because the bottom line is can you kill and do you have a space brain? | ||
| And I'm fascinated by the way you think. | ||
| Like the fact that I could be friends with Joey Diaz or I would never encounter him in the real, you know what I mean? | ||
| You'd have to find him in a zoo. | ||
| I'd have to find him in a zoo. | ||
| But the fact that we're all at this club and we're performing, you just fall in love with people's brains. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And there's like a romance to that. | ||
| It's a real meritocracy. | ||
| I had this conversation with Ali Wong once. | ||
| She was like, really wanted to know what I thought. | ||
| She goes, you think stand-up is a real meritocracy? | ||
| I'm like, it's the purest meritocracy in art. | ||
| Like, you're either funny or you're not. | ||
| Like, you know, and Allie's a fucking murderer. | ||
| I knew her before she blew up. | ||
| It was great. | ||
| Like, she lived in Pico and Robertson or something. | ||
| I was living in K-Town. | ||
| And we became friends, and we would chat and stuff. | ||
| And I remember one time, I think we had lunch, and then we just played Dance Dance Revolution. | ||
| You guys played dance where? | ||
| She got it on PlayStation. | ||
| So we had lunch or whatever. | ||
| She had the ground pad? | ||
| No, it was called Just Dance or something. | ||
| So we were just playing that. | ||
| And then she was talking about... | ||
| Like, waiting to do a special and stuff. | ||
| I think someone offered her a half, and then she was waiting to do an hour. | ||
| She's like, I gotta get pregnant first. | ||
| I mean, I don't think it was that calculated. | ||
| But it's very cool to see these people before they pop. | ||
| Like, I knew Theo before he popped. | ||
| I knew Santino before he popped. | ||
| Like, Hasan Minhaj. | ||
| Like, he was in a sketch group with me. | ||
| So, like, we were doing sketches around LA before he popped. | ||
| What do you think about the controversy with him? | ||
| What's the controversy? | ||
| Is it the workplace thing? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Or what? | ||
| I think it might be bringing some people over. | ||
| I don't know if he was privy to it, because there's showrunners and stuff. | ||
| He's just concentrating on doing the show. | ||
| But that show was a good show, right? | ||
| I liked it. | ||
| It was like a John Oliver... | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| But there was also... | ||
| Wasn't there an episode that he did about Saudi Arabia? | ||
| Yeah, they banned it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, they banned that show. | ||
| That was crazy. | ||
| Did you ever see The Dissident? | ||
| No. | ||
| Brian Fogle was on the podcast, and he's the guy who made The Dissident, the documentary, and he also made Icarus. | ||
| I love Icarus. | ||
| That's so fascinating. | ||
| Yucarist is amazing. | ||
| And The Dissonant's amazing, too. | ||
| And it's about the killing of Jamal Khashoggi. | ||
| You know, and it's the criticism of Saudi Arabia. | ||
| And when I saw that Hassan's show was pulled because of the criticism of Saudi Arabia, I'm like, what? | ||
| Netflix? | ||
| You know, it made me think, like, man, like, I don't know if that's the place. | ||
| I don't know if that's the place anymore because I feel like there's too much corporate involvement. | ||
| There's too much influence on content. | ||
| Anytime anything gets big enough, you're going to get shit like that. | ||
| There's going to be strings attached, you know? | ||
| Yeah, that's the criticism of me being on Spotify. | ||
| Yeah, how's that been? | ||
| How's the move been? | ||
| They don't give a fuck, man. | ||
| They don't care what you do? | ||
| They haven't given me a hard time at all. | ||
| There's a few episodes they didn't want on their platform that I was like, okay, I don't care. | ||
| But other than that, in terms of what I do in the future, the big test was having Alex Jones on. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| Let's see how this relationship really goes. | ||
| A lot of people are like, you know, they're telling Joe Rogan what he can do, what he can't do. | ||
| I'm like, they're not. | ||
| They're not. | ||
| And let's show you. | ||
| Alex Jones and Tim Dillon was like one of my favorite podcasts I've ever done. | ||
| I love Tim. | ||
| I love him to death. | ||
| Is he coming out here? | ||
| Yeah, he's moving here. | ||
| March 1st. | ||
| Whitney hit me up. | ||
| I think she's doing my show. | ||
| She's coming. | ||
| She's doing my show in Vulcan. | ||
| That bitch is coming. | ||
| She's coming. | ||
| I want Annie to come out here. | ||
| Annie Letterman is another one that I love her mind, man. | ||
| She's so funny. | ||
| She's so funny. | ||
| She said about the Chinese anal probe. | ||
| Have you seen the anal probe they're doing at airports now for COVID? No. | ||
| She's like, that's the only probe you want them to keep going? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| You sure you found it? | ||
| Keep going. | ||
| Keep going. | ||
| Keep looking. | ||
| I don't know if you found that long-haul COVID. One thing I will say about the Spotify layout, though, as a fan, I want to tune into the pod sometimes. | ||
| I find it hard to watch on my TV. Yeah. | ||
| So that sucks. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| They're working on that. | ||
| It's eventually going to be on all platforms in terms of television-based platforms. | ||
| Well, right now it's on Chromecast, and it's on Google Play, and they're working on Roku and Apple TV. They're working on a bunch of different platforms that will eventually be. | ||
| But it's not as smooth as it probably should have been when we first transferred over in December. | ||
| But they just weren't ready for the volume. | ||
| They had never had a show. | ||
| First of all, they created video because of the conversation we had about this podcast. | ||
| They wanted the podcast to be audio only. | ||
| And my manager was like, think about the Elon Musk moment when Elon Musk is smoking weed. | ||
| That is a viral moment that only happens with video. | ||
| Where Elon's like, it's legal, right? | ||
| I'm like, yeah, it's totally legal. | ||
| I saw the painting! | ||
| I remember I was at the airport. | ||
| And I had sunglasses and a hat and I'm on my way to Vegas. | ||
| And I'm like looking at this CNN monitor and it shows Elon smoking weed on my podcast. | ||
| And I'm like, oh no. | ||
| What a trip. | ||
| I was like, what have I done? | ||
| But those moments, those crazy viral moments, they don't exist without video. | ||
| And my manager said that to Spotify. | ||
| Spotify's like, you're right. | ||
| And then they started working on the video platform. | ||
| And then, you know, there's been a lot of weirdness. | ||
| Like, a lot of... | ||
| You know, we're talking about, like, how people... | ||
| Get a sense of who a person is without actually communicating with them, without being there with them. | ||
| And you could define someone or have this distorted perception of who a person is without actually communicating with them. | ||
| That's one of the things that happened with Spotify, with some of their staff, where they thought I was transphobic or thought I was a bad person. | ||
| I saw one of their staff say that I was a shock jock. | ||
| Like, I'm not even remotely like that. | ||
| Yeah, you're just a dude with a mic. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I always tell people, because sometimes, I know he's a comic and stuff, so I see you more as a comic than anything, and you didn't intend on this becoming as big as it's become. | ||
| It's just organically grown, and people tune in because they want to tune in. | ||
| You're not being force-fed down people's throat. | ||
| They're, like, choosing to listen to you. | ||
| Yeah, but I've actually, on purpose, never advertised for this show. | ||
| I've never asked people to watch it. | ||
| I've never gone on television shows and promoted it. | ||
| I've never taken out any billboards or ads. | ||
| Spotify did some of that stuff when I switched over to them, but I never did any of it. | ||
| So I always think it's so odd when people hold you to the same standards as CNBC or these entities. | ||
| You're just like a guy with a mic. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| But they don't like it because it gets much more of an audience than them. | ||
| That's what freaks them out. | ||
| When you have these huge multinational corporations that have thousands of employees and they can't even touch the amount of reach that a guy with a podcast has. | ||
| That's madness for them. | ||
| I've seen clips of your first episode or whatever or pictures. | ||
| It's absurd! | ||
| It's absurd! | ||
| You know? | ||
| It's been an organic thing. | ||
| You can see how it grows. | ||
| But it's also a lesson to all these other comics, too. | ||
| Like, what's the difference? | ||
| Well, the difference is I grind. | ||
| I just keep going. | ||
| It's the same thing that got you good at comedy. | ||
| What got you good at comedy? | ||
| Stage time. | ||
| What gets you good at podcast? | ||
| Podcast time. | ||
| You know what I've noticed? | ||
| Just keep doing it. | ||
| Even just doing my podcast, especially during the pandemic. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What's it called? | |
| Dance time? | ||
| Fahyman or Dance Hour. | ||
| Dance Hour. | ||
| Fahyman or Dance Hour. | ||
| Just when the pandemic hit, you lean into what is available to you. | ||
| So stand-up wasn't really there. | ||
| So I doubled down on the podcast. | ||
| I got a nicer space to film it in a nice studio. | ||
| And I've been doing it for two years now. | ||
| And obviously I'm better at it now than I was the first three months or whatever. | ||
| It's a skill. | ||
| It's a skill. | ||
| And time is time. | ||
| And anything that you do... | ||
| And I've just found it's helped with my stand-up even because talking is talking. | ||
| And even though this is conversational, it just wires your brain and you have certain pathways where you are comfortable formulating thought and it's conducive to podcasting and then also stand-up. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, the best example of that is Bill Burr. | ||
| Yes, with his Monday morning podcast. | ||
| Because he's fucking ranting just him and a microphone. | ||
| And he's so prolific with his stand-up because he's developed that muscle of creation. | ||
| And also, I'm kind of an introvert. | ||
| Like, I don't really talk a lot. | ||
| Just like, if I'm at a party or something, I'm not like life of the party or anything. | ||
| It's kind of laying the cut. | ||
| So having a weekly podcast where I have to expunge at length for an hour or two hours, whatever it may be, It forces you... | ||
| You have no guests? | ||
| Sometimes I do. | ||
| Like, I had Joe List on. | ||
| I love Joe List. | ||
| I love Joe List, too. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| It's hilarious. | ||
| So, I'm going to use my network. | ||
| I've been doing stand-up, so I want to, like, get Bobby on eventually and just whoever wants to do it to, like, get some guests. | ||
| But I also like not having it be so guest-dependent where the people just like me and my co-host... | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So I've just found that podcasting has lent itself to elevating my stand-up even. | ||
| For sure. | ||
| It not just elevated my stand-up, but it elevated the way I think about things. | ||
| It elevated my ability to communicate with people. | ||
| I'm way better at talking to people now. | ||
| I'm critical about my ability to talk to people. | ||
| If I have a conversation that's clunky, and this is so weird, like just a dinner conversation, I say something clunky, it bothers me. | ||
| I wake up in the middle of the night, take a leak, and it bothers me. | ||
| If people think I'm cocky, I'm the most hypercritical person that I know. | ||
| I fucking hate everything I do. | ||
| I have to accept that when I release a special, I don't ever watch them. | ||
| I edit them and then I never watch them again. | ||
| I just release it. | ||
| I don't want to watch myself. | ||
| I hate myself. | ||
| I'm the same way, dude. | ||
| In that way. | ||
| Sometimes trolls will write some shit or whatever. | ||
| I think what trolls don't understand is... | ||
| I don't love everything I do. | ||
| Of course. | ||
| You're probably right. | ||
| Yeah, for sure. | ||
| There's no other way to get good. | ||
| You have to be hypercritical. | ||
| The thing about being an artist or whatever is you have to put yourself out there. | ||
| Good or bad, you have to put yourself out there. | ||
| And if you get that, you get that. | ||
| Some people like it, some people don't. | ||
| But I took the swing and there it is. | ||
| And I don't love everything that I've done. | ||
| The thing is they didn't take the swing. | ||
| The trolls didn't take the swing. | ||
| And one of the things that they have the ability to do is they have the ability to criticize you and criticize everyone without looking at themselves. | ||
| And that's why they focus so much time on criticizing other people. | ||
| Yeah, I've almost found, though, that... | ||
| I don't get mad at that. | ||
| I understand it for what it is. | ||
| But also, I think that troll forum or whatever, that's their comedy store. | ||
| That's their outlet. | ||
| Yeah, for sure. | ||
| And I get it. | ||
| Well, that's why I think comments are important. | ||
| I used to think that comments are like... | ||
| Like, I had a friend reach out when I said that... | ||
| I want to figure out a way for Spotify to put comments on the episodes. | ||
| And they were like, don't fucking do that. | ||
| This friend reached out. | ||
| And he was like, that is the worst part of YouTube is the comments. | ||
| I'm like, I don't know if that's right. | ||
| I mean, it's sometimes the worst part of the comments. | ||
| But also sometimes it gives people the ability. | ||
| And I can't read them. | ||
| And one of the reasons why I can't read them is I don't have the time. | ||
| I don't have the time to engage with all these different ideas and opinions. | ||
| And I think that if I was being disingenuous with my criticism of myself, I probably could use comments to keep me in line. | ||
| But I'm fucking ruthless with myself. | ||
| Like, I'm good. | ||
| And I don't want to hurt my feelings. | ||
| I'm the same way. | ||
| I kind of create, I put it out there, and I don't need to go. | ||
| I always liken going to the comment section, it's like Lord of the Rings. | ||
| You put a battle helmet on... | ||
| Fight the orcs. | ||
| Yeah, you fight orcs. | ||
| It's just not emotional as an artist. | ||
| There's no good in going into the comments section. | ||
| It's not healthy. | ||
| It's not healthy to hear the good stuff either. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But I understand the value and that it's community based and that's great. | ||
| That they have a forum to do that. | ||
| There's a value in that. | ||
| That's where YouTube shines. | ||
| I don't have to be privy to that. | ||
| I can just create, blast it out, and just worry about me. | ||
| That's where YouTube shines over all other forums, is that they have that comment section. | ||
| I think that Spotify needs to recognize that. | ||
| I've tried to talk to them about that, and there's been some discussion about putting comments. | ||
| But one of the things they said was like, if we put comments on your podcast, we have to put comments on everybody's podcast. | ||
| Yeah, so. | ||
| But I go, why? | ||
| Just put them on mine. | ||
| I don't give a fuck. | ||
| Just put them on mine. | ||
| It's like these people that are commenting, even if they have criticism, they're fucking listening, man. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Like sometimes they hate me and sometimes they love me. | ||
| They're entitled to it. | ||
| But that's just like me. | ||
| I don't like me all the time either. | ||
| Yeah, dude. | ||
| I have this thought. | ||
| I go, sometimes when somebody writes something shitty, I want to be like, you think you can top what's in my brain? | ||
| Yeah, it's impossible. | ||
| You think you're a better troll than my brain? | ||
| You're not there when I wake up at five in the morning angry at myself and I go to the gym. | ||
| You have no idea. | ||
| Yeah, the biggest troll's in my head. | ||
| Good luck. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good luck. | |
| Good luck. | ||
| Yeah, there's fucking monsters in my head. | ||
| Good luck. | ||
| You can't, yeah. | ||
| You can't top it. | ||
| It's a weird art form, man. | ||
| And one of the things that's so critical about a place like the Comedy Store and one of the things that I need to recreate out here in L.A. is a place where we all feel safe. | ||
| We're all surrounded by like-minded artists. | ||
| And we need an artist colony out here. | ||
| And we don't need Hollywood. | ||
| Look, I had a lot of crazy ideas coming out here. | ||
| And sometimes I think... | ||
| Sometimes I think I'm guided by this weird instinct that knows what I would want someone to do if I wasn't me. | ||
| Like if I wasn't me and there was this dude who got this crazy deal where he got all this money and he had all this influence because he had this pocket. | ||
| What would I want him to do? | ||
| I'd want him to make a utopia for the art form. | ||
| Make some place where I'm like, listen... | ||
| Get wild. | ||
| Let's create. | ||
| Let's do it. | ||
| I want to support you. | ||
| I want to elevate all these artists. | ||
| I want to let you know you're okay. | ||
| I want to let you know there's a place that you can come. | ||
| You could experiment. | ||
| You could express yourself. | ||
| You could work on your act. | ||
| And then when your act gets good and you want to show it to the world, I want to help you show it to the world. | ||
| And I want more people to try. | ||
| I want more open micers. | ||
| I want more beginners. | ||
| I want more people who are thinking, I don't like this accounting job. | ||
| I want to be a comic. | ||
| I want you to try. | ||
| I want them all to try. | ||
| Mitzi Shore, outside of comedians, she's the most important figure in the history of stand-up comedy. | ||
| I agree. | ||
| I need to bring it to LA or to Austin. | ||
| But in my L.A. studio, there's a painting. | ||
| You saw that painting. | ||
| There's a painting of Mitzi that's on my fucking wall in the studio. | ||
| That's going to come out here. | ||
| I'm going to bring that out here. | ||
| It needs to be here. | ||
| I need that spirit because I want that here. | ||
| It's never been done as a comic, but I think I've got a rare and unusual opportunity to do it, to help. | ||
| This is a weird art form, man. | ||
| And the art form has taken a big hit during this pandemic. | ||
| It's taken a big hit because, you know, during woke culture, there's a lot of challenges. | ||
| But I think those challenges are ultimately going to lead to stronger comedy, better comedy. | ||
| Guys like Tim Dillon, guys like Andrew Schultz, guys who are just bucking the system during COVID, during the pandemic, during the woke culture, and getting buck wild. | ||
| And I feel an extraordinary responsibility. | ||
| And I have a drive to it. | ||
| It's hard to explain. | ||
| I need to explain it to my wife or explain it to my manager or to anybody. | ||
| I'm like, I have a responsibility. | ||
| Outside of doing this podcast, I have this responsibility to this art form because I think I have the ability to do something that is unusual. | ||
| And I think I've got to do it. | ||
| And I think I've got to create a real colony out here. | ||
| A colony that's independent of Hollywood but also supportive of I want to let everybody know. | ||
| You're a fucking good comic or a good person. | ||
| You want to just figure it out. | ||
| I want to elevate you. | ||
| I want to boost your signal. | ||
| I want to get it out there. | ||
| I really do. | ||
| It's very, very, very important to me. | ||
| I want to help all kinds of people. | ||
| Authors and musicians and all these interesting people that have all these interesting ideas. | ||
| But I want to help the art form. | ||
| I really do. | ||
| I want to help it the way Mitzi helped me. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Even when you were texting me about, you know, your plans and all that. | ||
| It's very different than a regular person would do it. | ||
| It was kind of very selfless. | ||
| That took me aback where I'm like, wow, this is rare. | ||
| Because it's very artist-friendly, what you're trying to do. | ||
| I feel like I have an overwhelming abundance of things that have happened that are good to me. | ||
| It's almost like it's not fair. | ||
| I get why anybody would be mad at me. | ||
| My life is too lucky. | ||
| I've had so many great careers. | ||
| I have three great careers going on at the same time. | ||
| I have the UFC, I have stand-up comedy, and I have the number one podcast in the world. | ||
| It doesn't make any sense. | ||
| Why does anybody have all this stuff? | ||
| It doesn't make any sense. | ||
| But I feel like that. | ||
| And I feel like I have a responsibility. | ||
| Like I could either just like hide or run away from all this. | ||
| Like this is too much. | ||
| I'm gonna go to the woods. | ||
| I'm gonna live on a mountain. | ||
| You're just like corralling it and making it work for you and for all of us. | ||
| I want to help everybody. | ||
| I really do. | ||
| I really do. | ||
| Because I think we could do something really unique. | ||
| I think we could change it. | ||
| I think we could change it all. | ||
| I think we could help. | ||
| I have a thought on this. | ||
| Can I pee real quick? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, go pee, bro. | |
| Where's the bathroom? | ||
| Go out that door. | ||
| Go past the kitchen and to the left-hand side. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What's up, Jamie? | |
| That could be really bad, too. | ||
| Three-hour mark. | ||
| I was waiting. | ||
| Can you hang on? | ||
| I try to hold for this. | ||
| I don't want to talk by myself. | ||
| These are always boring. | ||
| Just me by myself. | ||
| How are you doing out here? | ||
| Good? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| How often do you get high and look out your window and think about jumping? | ||
| It's the call of the void, man. | ||
| It happens every day. | ||
| It's weird, isn't it? | ||
| Jamie lives on a very high floor of a beautiful place with a crazy view and he sends me pictures from his apartment and I get nervous from your pictures. | ||
| I don't know if I could live where you live. | ||
| The Call of the Void describes an impulse to hurl yourself into a void. | ||
| While unnerving, it's a pretty common experience. | ||
| It has nothing to do with suicidal ideation. | ||
| I get a lot of dreams about falling. | ||
| Falling from extreme heights. | ||
| I called Burt Kreischer while I sent him a text. | ||
| I woke up in the morning, I had a terrible dream about Burt Kreischer that he was climbing a bridge and he fell off a bridge. | ||
| He was doing some crazy stunt. | ||
| He tried climbing this bridge and he fell. | ||
| I didn't watch him die, but I saw him fall. | ||
| I got scared. | ||
| I called him up. | ||
| I told him, I sent a text rather. | ||
| I said, dude, I had this crazy fucking dream about you. | ||
| You were climbing a bridge and you fell off a bridge. | ||
| He does crazy stuff though. | ||
| That's the problem. | ||
| This is apparently very similar to when you're driving down the 101 and you're like, what would happen if I just went and turned into it? | ||
| Same kind of thought. | ||
| The worst is the 1. Yeah, when you're going up to San Francisco, Pacific Coast Highway. | ||
| They don't say the out here. | ||
| We have to adjust the way we think. | ||
| My wife let me know that. | ||
| You can't say the and then a highway in Texas. | ||
| I only have two here. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| There's no differentiation. | ||
| Like, which one? | ||
| Let me say the 360. You can't say the 360. You gotta say 360. Do you like it out here? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, it's been... | ||
| Do you like it better? | ||
| Hard to say that, but because LA, we didn't leave the place I went to. | ||
| Right. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Right. | ||
| So, no. | ||
| I mean, stuck inside all year. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Yeah, because of COVID. I like it way better out here. | ||
| I feel better. | ||
| I feel more like I'm on the right path. | ||
| I feel more detached. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| But like what we were talking about with Fahim, that I feel like this weird responsibility. | ||
| I feel like I'm on the right path out here. | ||
| I don't know if that's right. | ||
| But I'm not 100% confident in that. | ||
| But I know that that's how I feel. | ||
| Like I should be going. | ||
| Like when I make decisions about things, I have this weird voice inside my head. | ||
| It's not even a voice. | ||
| It's like a feeling. | ||
| Green light, red light. | ||
| And green light says go. | ||
| Voice inside my head says, jump. | ||
| I wonder about you, man. | ||
| I don't want to get a text message. | ||
| The weirder ones are when it was snowing, for instance. | ||
| When it gets really foggy, you can't see the distance. | ||
| You can't see anything. | ||
| It just looks like you're on the balcony of a first floor, whatever it is. | ||
| It looks like there's nothing there. | ||
| That's fucking weird. | ||
| Did you think about jumping? | ||
| No, not at all. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't think about it, but I'm wondering why do I think about it? | |
| Why is there something in the back of my head that's like, get up off the couch and go run outside, right? | ||
| And I'm like, what the fuck is that? | ||
| It's not a thought I would ever have in my head. | ||
| The call of the void. | ||
| I used to feel that when I did Fear Factor, when we'd be on a roof, and these people had to do a stunt, and I'd look off the edge of the roof. | ||
| There's a... | ||
| You have a thing about heights? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| No, I don't really have a thing about heights, but I do have a thing about worrying about heights, and I have dreams sometimes about falling. | ||
| But I try to figure out what those dreams are. | ||
| I think those dreams are that I recognize that I'm in a very unusual place, and I could fuck up and fall from where I'm at. | ||
| I think that's some sort of a metaphor. | ||
| I know that I'm in some weird spot that you could easily say I don't deserve. | ||
| But I don't think anybody deserves a spot. | ||
| Yeah, I've always found you're on the ground floor of so many industries that no one would have known have popped off the way they have. | ||
| Like you were so early to podcasting, and then UFC, and then stand-up, you've been doing forever as well. | ||
| So it's this three-pronged approach that it's like the perfect storm. | ||
| Well, it's not. | ||
| It's totally on accident. | ||
| That's the beauty of it, though. | ||
| That's probably what helps the most. | ||
| It's like the UFC. When I started doing the UFC, dude, I was on Fear Factory. | ||
| Oh, no. | ||
| It was before Fear Factory. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Excuse me. | |
| I was on News Radio. | ||
| Dude, I love that show. | ||
| It's a great show. | ||
| I got so lucky. | ||
| It was one of my favorite shows. | ||
| I was like fucking six years into stand-up. | ||
| You know, the show that I'm working on right now, there was a writer who was on News Radio. | ||
| Who? | ||
| Andy Gordon. | ||
| Andy Gordon? | ||
| Andy Gordon. | ||
| He said to say hello. | ||
| You're working with Andy Gordon? | ||
| Andy Gordon. | ||
| You know what's great, too? | ||
| I wish I could tell you a story, but I don't think I should tell you on air. | ||
| I'll tell you off air. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| He told me to ask you about something. | ||
| We'll talk about it afterwards. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| We'll talk about it afterwards. | ||
| I love that guy. | ||
| He's so great. | ||
| He's a nice guy. | ||
| And one of the beauties about being in a writer's room is, you know, I'm like a young gun or whatever when it comes to... | ||
| I've just been doing stand-up. | ||
| I've been an astronaut. | ||
| Go pee, young Jamie. | ||
| And shave your head. | ||
| So, like, you get to hear all these great Hollywood stories because he's been a writer on news radio. | ||
| He's been a writer on a lot of things. | ||
| Everything. | ||
| And, like, Just Shoot Me. | ||
| And, like, I watched that show as well. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And you get to hear... | ||
| I'm just a fan of Hollywood stories and how the sausage... | ||
|
unidentified
|
And he's been around, right? | |
| Yeah. | ||
| What did he say about news radio? | ||
| We didn't get to talk about it that much. | ||
| I think because I'm in the writer's room and sometimes I'll say, oh, I got to do a show later tonight or I'm going to see Joe. | ||
| I like being a stand-up in the writer's room because some writers, they're just happy being a writer and that's great. | ||
| But I'm also doing this other thing as well. | ||
| Well, it's not just another thing, it's a dangerous thing. | ||
| I guess so, yeah. | ||
| People look at you like, oh, Vahim's a stand-up. | ||
| Yeah, but that's all I've known. | ||
| That doesn't feel... | ||
| Sometimes people are like, oh man, how do you do stand-up? | ||
| I can't imagine. | ||
| The thing is, if you've put the time in, it's not as scary. | ||
| You don't ask a helicopter pilot, like, are you afraid every time you go up? | ||
| Right. | ||
| Because they know what they're doing. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And the same is true of stand-up. | ||
| I've put so much time, it's not as scary as you think it is. | ||
| The average person is thinking about it like they had to go on stage that night themselves. | ||
| But they haven't put the work in. | ||
| Don't you think that's the case with basically everything that's difficult? | ||
| You start off, it seems impossible. | ||
| If someone wanted to be an engineer at fucking Raytheon, whatever. | ||
| Let's say SpaceX. | ||
| SpaceX. | ||
| Yeah, perfect. | ||
| If you wanted to do that, if you wanted to design rockets that are reusable, that could eventually go to Mars, the thought process when you're a child and you like watching fucking Battlestar Galactica... | ||
| Did you watch? | ||
| I watched the reboot. | ||
| The reboot's the shit. | ||
| I loved it. | ||
| The reboot is probably one of the best... | ||
| You know what I just started? | ||
| The Expanse. | ||
| Oh, I heard it's good. | ||
| It's on SyFy, right? | ||
| No, Amazon. | ||
| It was on SyFy, but I think now it's on Amazon. | ||
| I was on SyFy for a while. | ||
| I was on Joe Rogan Questions Everything. | ||
| Me and Duncan Trussell. | ||
| And Ari Shafir, too. | ||
| What's he doing? | ||
| I see his Instagram. | ||
| Is he finding himself right now? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Ari? | |
| Yeah. | ||
| He's doing drugs in another country. | ||
| Can't talk about it. | ||
| We'll express ourselves later after I talk to you about Andy. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Sounds good. | ||
| But if you think about any difficult thing, it seems insurmountable when you look at if you have to go to 12 years of school and four years of internship and Whatever it fucking takes to have a career in anything and you're going to have $200,000 in student debt, the boundary that you have to cross in order to be successful in something, it seems impossible. | ||
| So when someone actually makes it, And they've actually gone through 15 years of whatever and then here they are. | ||
| You're like, oh my god. | ||
| It's so ner- You know what it's like? | ||
| It's like when you're a jujitsu white belt and you meet a black belt. | ||
| You're like, what? | ||
| This is crazy. | ||
| And you roll with a black belt. | ||
| You feel helpless. | ||
| You're like, this is impossible. | ||
| This doesn't make any sense. | ||
| This person, they know what I'm going to do before I do it. | ||
| They have total control of my body and they can kill me anytime they want to. | ||
| This is terrifying. | ||
| And then when you become a black belt, it's the weirdest feeling in the world. | ||
| It's like, I can do to people what they're terrified that another person could do to them. | ||
| Like, that's me now. | ||
| Now I have this responsibility. | ||
| The same thing with stand-up. | ||
| Like, you start out, you're like, hey, have you ever noticed when you go to 7-Eleven, the guy working behind the counter is not always Indian? | ||
| Like... | ||
| You have these fucking stupid ideas that you think are gonna be funny, and then one day you're on Netflix. | ||
| One day you're on stage, you're telling jokes, and people are roaring laughing. | ||
| One day you get off stage and Theo Vaughn high fives you, Joey Diaz gives you a hug, and Dave Chappelle is your friend, you can text him, you're like, this is madness. | ||
| This is madness. | ||
| It doesn't make sense. | ||
| Also, you blink and you're there. | ||
| Oh yeah. | ||
| Because, especially if you really care enough about something, you just have your eyes on your own paper, ideally, and you're just working on the craft and all that. | ||
| And before you know it, you're in this, even where I'm at, like I'll get DMs or people trying to ask me advice, or maybe even in L.A., You don't see yourself that way because you've been living with yourself for so long, but you can't do something for X amount of years and not be at a certain level. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Or you get scared and you just fall apart and you never make it there. | ||
| That happens too. | ||
| And I think one of the reasons why that happens is the lack of support from colleagues, from peers, from people that are like you. | ||
| And that's one of the things that I want to encourage out here. | ||
| I think it's like... | ||
| We need some gap that's bridged. | ||
| I always talk about this in terms of impoverished communities. | ||
| We need to figure out a way to support impoverished communities the same way we think about the way to support gigantic corporations that have been impacted by the pandemic. | ||
| Why have they thought about doing that but not thought about doing that to Detroit? | ||
| Not thought about doing that to Baltimore? | ||
| Not thought about doing that to these crazy spots that have been deeply... | ||
| Engulfed in crime and violence forever. | ||
| They're missing a sense of community. | ||
| And a microcosm of that is the support and community of stand-up comedy. | ||
| The thing that separates the beginner from a guy like Bobby Lee or a guy like Ari Shafir is love and support and time. | ||
| And sometimes there's rough moments where they can't really make it without help. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Me too, man. | ||
| Like I said, Mark Maron helping me, or Lenny Clark telling me I was funny. | ||
| Many times, man. | ||
| There's many times. | ||
| You know what's really cool is when the pandemic first hit, stand-up wasn't going on and all that. | ||
| Also, Neil Brennan has been a mentor to me as well. | ||
| He's been really cool. | ||
| I went on the road with him maybe two years ago, just touring. | ||
| And I'll call him every now and then. | ||
| And he was like, are you cool? | ||
| Do you need money? | ||
| And that's not often that happens. | ||
| I have the writing job and I was fine. | ||
| But just that was such a move that he did that it's not lost on me. | ||
| I thought it was very cool. | ||
| He's very cool. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, he's an underappreciated guy. | ||
| He helped me... | ||
| We were actually in Austin, because we were on tour, and Austin was one of the cities that we hit. | ||
| We were staying at the Line Hotel, and we were just walking around. | ||
| And he was like, oh, yeah, you have like an interesting brain, and if you ever want to write on SNL or something, or I think you could probably be a good writer on there. | ||
| If you need to submit a packet or anything, I'll help you out. | ||
| I was like, oh, I just kind of like filed it in the back of my brain. | ||
| And then... | ||
| Then I had tried to sell this sketch show just because we had done Goatface on Comedy Central, which is like a one-hour sketch special with me, Hasan Minhaj, Aristotle Atheris, and Asif Ali, because we were doing YouTube sketch for a long time, and we were trying to—we just thought like, oh, we're the next up, just with— Just Middle Eastern people, South Asian people, like how important living color was, I feel like brown people in America are the next... | ||
| Are you brown? | ||
| I'm Afghan. | ||
| So my parents are from Afghanistan. | ||
| I'm darker than you. | ||
| Dude, once I get in the sun, I'm in Austin, maybe I'm gonna lay out. | ||
| Yeah, but when I get in the sun, I get almost black. | ||
| Are you Italian or what are you? | ||
| Yeah, but I have vitiligo, so I can't really get in the sun or I look like a fucking... | ||
| I can get dark. | ||
| I have like white spots, like my fingers are all white. | ||
| I've gotten way paler as I've gotten older, but there are like old pictures of me where I look super dark. | ||
| I have Sicilian ancestry. | ||
| So you get dark. | ||
| I can get dark as fuck. | ||
| But just in terms of ethnically... | ||
| But you say you're brown. | ||
| I identify as brown. | ||
| I guess technically I'm not supposed to say that. | ||
| Am I browner than you? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| We should have a brown off after this. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Jamie, who's darker, me or him? | ||
| I mean, I'm pretty pale right now. | ||
| But it's Italian-Americans at one point in time. | ||
| My grandfather explained this to me when I was a child. | ||
| My grandfather and I had a very close relationship because I really don't know my dad. | ||
| And I lived with my grandfather when I was a struggling comedian when I moved from Boston, New York. | ||
| And we had some real intense, long conversations about his childhood where he came over as an immigrant from Italy. | ||
| And Italians were... | ||
| They were... | ||
| They were treated the same way racist people treat Mexicans. | ||
| He explained to me how he's teased and picked on and bullied and they called him a guinea wop and all these horrible things. | ||
| It's weird because they've been accepted now. | ||
| Italians have slowly... | ||
| It's like during the course of my lifetime, my grandfather's lifetime, they've become white people. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But they weren't white people. | ||
| I feel like every ethnicity takes their lumps in America. | ||
| Like initially it's Italians and then Irish and then black people. | ||
| And then I just feel like Middle Eastern, South Asian people are on the chopping block currently. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So, In Living Color is just such a beacon to me when that came out. | ||
| I love that show. | ||
| I love what they were able to do. | ||
| It was like a release valve. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| Especially in the 90s of that time. | ||
| I just felt like what we were doing with Goatface... | ||
| Just my sketch group, it spoke to an underserved consciousness in America. | ||
| So we did the sketch show for Comedy Central. | ||
| It was like a one-hour sketch special. | ||
| I was head writer on it. | ||
| I was really proud. | ||
| It's on Amazon. | ||
| I think you could rent it. | ||
| But I was proud of what we created. | ||
| And after that, I thought... | ||
| Sometimes you're talented enough, but you feel like, okay, they didn't say yes, because I don't have enough of the credits to say yes. | ||
| Because everything is risk-meditated. | ||
| Say yes to... | ||
| Like a sketch show or something that I want to do. | ||
| Like if you want to do your own sketch show? | ||
| Yeah, or even Goatface. | ||
| You learn that not everything is merit-based in Hollywood. | ||
| It's just everyone's trying to keep their job. | ||
| Well, that's the beautiful thing about social media and YouTube. | ||
| Yes, you don't need those gatekeepers. | ||
| But if you're working in the traditional Hollywood paradigm, them saying no is not a reflection on you as a performer or as an artist. | ||
| It's just they're saying no because if they see us, their job is on the chopping block. | ||
| You need to give them enough ammo to not get fired if it goes south. | ||
| Or they have to have the balls enough to step out and say, I think this person has enough talent. | ||
| Yeah, but no one's really willing to do that. | ||
| Well, some people do. | ||
| It's very rare. | ||
| So, I thought I had enough stuff going on. | ||
| I go, okay, I was head writer on Goatface. | ||
| I had gotten variety, top ten comics to watch. | ||
| I'm at the store. | ||
| I'm one of the guys at the store. | ||
| I felt like I had enough credits to warrant, maybe, like, what I want to do. | ||
| So we went around. | ||
| We're like, Absolutely, which is a production company. | ||
| They did Nathan For You. | ||
| They did Kroll's—maybe not Kroll's show, but they work with Tim and Eric a lot. | ||
| So they're good. | ||
| They're like a reputable production company, and we would go to all these—we'd have these meetings at, like, Hulu and HBO and all these places, and they were just kind of like, whatever. | ||
| And we thought it was a slam dunk just with the product. | ||
| And then I realized, I'm like, oh, they just kind of like see me as a runt. | ||
| Or they don't see me the way I see myself and like these other people see myself. | ||
| I need to get these other credits for them to kind of take you seriously. | ||
| So that's when I was like, let me try to be a writer for SNL. Let me try to catch that Neil card. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Because, you know, he had mentioned that just when we were walking in Austin. | ||
| I was like, it'd be cool to just touch that place. | ||
| Because that's why I got into stand-up. | ||
| I just loved SNL growing up. | ||
| Isn't it funny, like, the perceptions, like, with people's perceptions, especially in Hollywood, that's the problem with gatekeepers. | ||
| People can say, like, there's a person that can say, I don't think people are going to get this guy. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I think that's something I've struggled with. | ||
| Or they can say, I think people are going to get this guy, and then they push you through. | ||
| And then, like, a lot of people get pushed through that really don't necessarily work. | ||
| I think what I, for as long as I've been doing stand-up, I think one thing that's been working against me is that, I am a comedian who happens to be Afghan. | ||
| It's not my identity. | ||
| I don't draw on it all the time. | ||
| It may be like 5% of what I do on stage. | ||
| I don't think it's 5%. | ||
| Yeah, maybe it's like 2% or 1%. | ||
| Yeah, I'm a stand-up comedian who happens to be Afghan. | ||
| I just like funny first, and that shit, look, I'm proud of it. | ||
| It informs who I am as a person, but I was born in Seattle, Washington, Evergreen Hospital. | ||
| I'm American. | ||
| My parents are from Afghanistan. | ||
| I'm proud of it. | ||
| But I don't need to draw from it. | ||
| It's not everything. | ||
| It's not everything. | ||
| And I think sometimes these diversity opportunities that happen in Hollywood, they want you to be diverse in the way they want you to be diverse. | ||
| Like, if I wanted to do a workplace comedy, they'd be like, oh, we could just get that from a white guy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know what I mean? | |
| They don't say that in so many words. | ||
| I know what you're saying. | ||
| But it's like they want to strife. | ||
| They want you to be a guy who used to live in a cave. | ||
| Yeah, to go like, did your mom get killed in a killing field or something? | ||
| Who was killed in your family by a drone? | ||
| Yeah, were you a refugee? | ||
| Like, they want that story. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So I'm up against that. | ||
| So when I got these no's around town, I was like, alright, I gotta give them the trinkets they need. | ||
| Everyone respects SNL. Let me try to get a job there. | ||
| And Neil was a very cool man. | ||
| I would send him my sketches. | ||
| He would work with me. | ||
| We'd be on the phone for like an hour or two. | ||
| He doesn't have to do this. | ||
| He's very established. | ||
| He's huge. | ||
| But I think that's the beauty of the comedy store where Where you find people you like and you gravitate towards them and you want to usher in the new generation and he doesn't do that with a lot of people and I just felt very gracious that he took the time to do that so we put together this packet and then I send the packet in And then I don't hear anything about the packet and then they're like, then they hit up my manager and then they're like, can you send in, we're looking at him as a performer. | ||
| Like, can you send in his stand-up? | ||
| So then we send five minutes of my stand-up and they go, alright, they like it. | ||
| They want, they want like another five and then we send another five and they go, okay, let's do it to the next round. | ||
| And it's during a pandemic, so the final stage, I would have been in 30 Rock, performing in front of... | ||
| But it's a pandemic, so I have to just do stand-up in front of my curtain at home. | ||
| Whatever. | ||
| I do it. | ||
| So I go through this whole rigmarole. | ||
| And it's cool to even be in this position. | ||
| And then, you know, I find out I don't get it, which is, you know, it's cool to even get this far and you're in the stratosphere, I guess. | ||
| But part of me is like, what happened to the packet? | ||
| No one ever... | ||
| I wasn't even trying to be a performer. | ||
| I was just trying to write. | ||
| I was just trying to write for it. | ||
| I was so happy when Punky got it. | ||
| Oh yeah, man. | ||
| I've known Punky for so long and she's been a- She's great on it too. | ||
| A bartender at the fucking store. | ||
| That's almost like old Hollywood. | ||
| Shit like that doesn't happen that much anymore. | ||
| It's amazing. | ||
| Like, oh, I was a bartender at the comedy store and now I'm on SNL. It's amazing. | ||
| Punky's always been so cool. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| She's so nice. | ||
| And she's so wild. | ||
| She's so wild. | ||
| You know, you watch her doing stand-up, talk about her relationship with her woman. | ||
| Leslie too. | ||
| I remember when she got it. | ||
| She's another store person. | ||
| Leslie's funny. | ||
| She'll post my dance clip sometimes. | ||
| But then she like half shits on me as well. | ||
| She's like, this is so god awful, but I can't stop watching. | ||
| And I'll get all these followers. | ||
| But she like, I think she likes it though. | ||
| She's fucking with you. | ||
| She keeps posting it. | ||
| She's a comic. | ||
| I met Neil when he wasn't even a comic. | ||
| In Boston? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| No, at the Boston Comedy Club in New York. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, yeah? | |
| Neil was like a fucking doorman or something. | ||
| I forget what he did there. | ||
| That's kind of inspiring, the pivot that he made. | ||
| A lot of writers wouldn't do that. | ||
| Well, when I first did Chappelle, he wasn't a stand-up. | ||
| When I first did Chappelle's show... | ||
| Well, the first time I did Chappelle's show was totally by accident. | ||
| I was walking down the street in New York and I saw Dave with a mustache on. | ||
| A fake mustache. | ||
| And I go, what are you doing today? | ||
| He goes, oh hey Joe! | ||
| I got a show coming out, man! | ||
| He goes, you want to be on it right now? | ||
| I go, right now? | ||
| I go, I got an hour. | ||
| And he goes, we're handing out ribbons for the best New York boobs. | ||
| And Dave was playing this character where he had a fake mustache on. | ||
| And he was relatively known. | ||
| Yeah, it's me and Dave. | ||
| So you just bumped into him? | ||
| Totally bumped into him, walking down the street. | ||
| And he goes, we're going to hand out these ribbons for New York boobs. | ||
| So I had literally an hour. | ||
| I ran into him and Bobcat Goldthwait, just walking down the street. | ||
| There's me in the lower left-hand corner of that right side. | ||
| We can see it just right there. | ||
| Did that picture right there. | ||
| That's it. | ||
| That's just me and Dave. | ||
| I'm just holding up these ribbons. | ||
| I had one hour. | ||
| I had a meeting going on. | ||
| I had one hour. | ||
| I think I was working at Caroline's and I was just walking down the street with this box of New York boobs and he's like, you got the best New York boobs! | ||
| How were people? | ||
| What were they like? | ||
| Hilarious. | ||
| They were laughing. | ||
| Really funny. | ||
| Dave's amazing. | ||
| That was the first time I was on. | ||
| And then the second time I was on, it was... | ||
| There it is. | ||
| Me and Dave, me with a full head of hair, handed out ribbons for the best New York boobs. | ||
| You got the best New York boobs! | ||
| And look at the girls shaking their titties! | ||
| Today you would bet Me Too'd in a fucking second. | ||
| You'd be on... | ||
| Every Vox article would be about what a fucking ableist, racist, sexist, homophobic, fill-in-the-blank-ist piece of shit you are. | ||
| So there was that, and then the other time I was on was a Fear Factor sketch. | ||
| That time I flew out to L.A., and Tyrone Biggums, Dave's character, was on Fear Factor, and... | ||
| That me and Neil were hanging out and Neil was the producer of the show. | ||
| And I had known Neil from Boston Comedy. | ||
| I was like, dude, look at you, you're the producer. | ||
| So he was like one of the co-creators of Chappelle's show and one of the writers. | ||
| And he was in a bunch of the sketches and... | ||
| And then afterwards, he started doing stand-up. | ||
| So that was probably like 2003 or some shit. | ||
| And then after that, he started doing stand-up. | ||
| And then I remember running into him doing stand-up. | ||
| I'm like, oh, that's cool. | ||
| I like that he took a fucking chance. | ||
| Big chance, man. | ||
| Because it's super cush. | ||
| He could have had a lane and been fine. | ||
| It's very daunting to do what we do. | ||
| But it's all we've known. | ||
| So it's not as risky to us. | ||
| So, I just don't see that trajectory a lot. | ||
| Well, especially from someone who has other options. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And is successful in those other options. | ||
| You know, he had other ways to do it. | ||
| But it was cool to know him as the guy who was just at the club and then see him blow up. | ||
| But also, the work he put in, too. | ||
| He'll tell me about things he's done and he would have someone kind of make sure I'm smiling on stage and stuff. | ||
| And just like... | ||
| He puts the work in it, because some people feel entitled, because he had so much success with Chappelle's show. | ||
| It's easy to just be like, alright, just come in like a steamroller, but to actually take the time to learn the craft? | ||
| Well, you have to. | ||
| If you don't, you eat shit. | ||
| There's no ifs, ands, or buts. | ||
| If you go on stage and you haven't put in that time, you're not going to do well. | ||
| I think he was aware of that. | ||
| Being around Dave for so long, and also being at Boston Comedy, and when I met Neil, it was in the early 90s. | ||
| It was like... | ||
| 91 or 92. At the same time I met Ian Edwards. | ||
| I love Ian. | ||
| Oh, I fucking love that dude. | ||
| I talked to him like every week. | ||
| I talked to him yesterday. | ||
| He's like, how's that in Austin? | ||
| I'm like, I've been here two days. | ||
| I don't know yet. | ||
| He's thinking about coming out here. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Yeah, he's part of my plan. | ||
| Nice. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| He's one of those guys as well. | ||
| I talk about space brains. | ||
| He has one of those space brains where he'll make a joke and you go, I could have never come up with that in a million years. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, he's got a uniquely relaxed sense of humor. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| He's slow and his punch lines like sizzle. | ||
| You know, they have... | ||
| He gives them time to ignite... | ||
| He's almost a master class in let him come to you. | ||
| Because a lot of people try to cater to the audience. | ||
| Ian's Ian. | ||
| He takes his time. | ||
| He's dope. | ||
| He lets the audience come to him. | ||
| He's got great jokes. | ||
| Him and Owen Smith are my personal two favorite examples of... | ||
| Unfortunately, what can happen when you get a guy who becomes a world-class stand-up but has spent so much time writing and writing on sitcoms that people don't know? | ||
| And I've done my best to let people know about Ian and I've done my best to let people know about Owen. | ||
| But those two guys are as good as any fucking comic on the planet Earth. | ||
| I said to Owen once when he was on the show, I said, you are one of the top 20 stand-up comedians alive on earth. | ||
| And that's a fact. | ||
| And people don't know. | ||
| And I think it's crazy. | ||
| I think it's crazy that people don't know. | ||
| They're working on the same show. | ||
| Owen, he's show-running Last OG. Yes. | ||
| And Ian's writing on it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| Brilliant. | ||
| Comedy store guys. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Brilliant. | ||
| And both geniuses. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You can get lost in it. | ||
| You get lost in the writing gig because it's a steady paycheck. | ||
| Steady paycheck. | ||
| And then also, I've noticed it. | ||
| Like, I haven't been in the room that long, but it seems like nothing. | ||
| You're just sitting in front of a laptop for eight hours or whatever. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| But you're wiped afterwards. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And also... | ||
| You can't go up on stage. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You can. | |
| If you go up on stage, you don't have any energy. | ||
| One thing that you realize, though, is that whenever you have a job, they're renting your brain. | ||
| Right? | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| So I'm thinking of funny stuff, but it's for the show. | ||
| Whereas if I wasn't, then you can have more time to daydream and you could think about bits for you. | ||
| I've gotten better at it because the first week I was like, oh no. | ||
| It was so new to me just having this much time dedicated to something other than just fucking around to daydreaming for my stand-up and sketches. | ||
| But then I have a good split. | ||
| Once I punch out, I can think about me. | ||
| The weekend comes, I'm still thinking about bits. | ||
| So I found the balance. | ||
| But you can get lost in it. | ||
| It's like Inception. | ||
| You know, when you go too many layers down, you can go so far down the writer's hole that it's hard to come back to stand-up. | ||
| Well, the problem is it's a job. | ||
| And you get that paycheck every week. | ||
| And for you to say, I don't want that paycheck every week, that's hard to do. | ||
| It's very hard. | ||
| But if you want to do that fucking road, particularly before Zoom and before pandemics, you couldn't just detach yourself from the mothership. | ||
| You had to have an umbilical cord. | ||
| That's one of the perks of the pandemic, which sounds terrible, but again, I'm a proponent of turning... | ||
| Lemons in the Lemonade is I'm able to write remotely. | ||
| So while I can do that, because eventually I might have to be back on the soundstage and give alts and stuff, and it's a collaborative process, but while it's not, I get to be here. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, sort of seeing opportunity where people don't see opportunity. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, you don't have to be like, woe is me, and just wallow in it. | ||
| You took a chance coming out here, because there's not a lot... | ||
| You understand that it's about to happen. | ||
| About to happen, and also... | ||
| When I was in LA, it was just very depressing. | ||
| I mean, I could handle it, but I would get done with my writer's room, and then at night, there's nothing. | ||
| Walking dead out there. | ||
| The weekend, there's nothing. | ||
| How sad are the streets? | ||
| Streets of LA are weird. | ||
| Yeah, man, dude, I would drive down Sunset, and it's like a ghost town. | ||
| It's like Vanilla Sky. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| So strange. | ||
| So strange. | ||
| I've never seen... | ||
| People are racing and shit. | ||
| Cops care about other things. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, racing. | |
| Isn't that crazy? | ||
| Yeah, no one cares. | ||
| So many people are driving so fast down Sunset. | ||
| The cops have bigger fish to fry. | ||
| They don't really care about that. | ||
| And you learn things about yourself in the pandemic. | ||
| And I just learned I'm a stand-up and I love stand-up. | ||
| And I need an audience to do what I do. | ||
| You need to go somewhere where they let you do it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You can do it out here in a fucking indoor crowd. | ||
| They don't give a shit. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| They do and they don't. | ||
| Like, they're masked up. | ||
| They're taking precautions and stuff. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| Whatever. | ||
| They don't give a fuck. | ||
| They let you make out with the crowd. | ||
| It's packed. | ||
| That place is packed. | ||
| Anton's on Monday? | ||
| I went there. | ||
| I went to Kill Tony. | ||
| There was tables, but they were spaced out a bit. | ||
| Yeah, about three feet. | ||
| If COVID's in the air, you're getting it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| I don't give a fuck, dude. | ||
| I've got my own. | ||
| I'll be smart about it. | ||
| I'm not going to go to a rave or some shit. | ||
| Bro, you already got it. | ||
| I've already got it. | ||
| You got the fucking antibodies. | ||
| You go out there and make out with randos. | ||
| Who gives a shit? | ||
| I go, don't worry, I've already had it. | ||
| You're safe. | ||
| You don't have a girlfriend in LA, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| Oh, nice. | ||
| That's how I was able to come out here. | ||
| Get yourself a Texas gal. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| This is an invitation to any Texas. | ||
| They're real women. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Yeah, they wear cowboy boots with no socks on. | ||
| You know, I have a theory as to why a lot of bachelorette parties, they'll go to Tennessee or they'll go to Texas and they'll dress up like a cowgirl. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Really? | |
| Really? | ||
| Yeah, like dressing up like a cowgirl is a thing. | ||
| And I think... | ||
| With who? | ||
| It's just fun for girls to do to dress up, like wear a hat and boots. | ||
| And I think it's the only sociable or the socially acceptable form of cosplay. | ||
| Oh, okay. | ||
| Right? | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| Because it's one step below dressing up like Chun-Li from Street Fighter. | ||
| Right, right, right. | ||
| But it's fun. | ||
| Like, we're cowgirls! | ||
| And you can't be an Indian anymore. | ||
| Yeah, you can't do that. | ||
| Can't wear a feathered headdress. | ||
| But dressing up like a cowgirl, it's fun. | ||
| People don't look at it as weird as if you're Chun-Li. | ||
| You can be a cowgirl. | ||
| You can't be a cow... | ||
| You can't be an Indian. | ||
| Cowboys and Indians, you can't be a... | ||
| You can't do that anymore. | ||
| You can be a cowboy. | ||
| Only when you're a child, you can do that. | ||
| Even a child? | ||
| They'll beat the shit out if they find you. | ||
| Yeah, I beat the shit out of some kids. | ||
| I go, you can't do that. | ||
| You can't do red face. | ||
| Yeah, you can't do that. | ||
| How dare you? | ||
| Give me your laser gun. | ||
| It's 5 o'clock. | ||
| Let's wrap this up. | ||
| Fahim, welcome to Austin. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Glad you're here, brother. | ||
| This has been the best welcome I've ever had anywhere. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Very excited you're here. | ||
| I remember when I texted you, you were just so warm. | ||
| You were so happy. | ||
| You're like, gotta have you on the pod. | ||
| You're gonna love Texas. | ||
| My first show is tonight. | ||
| I'm headlining Vulcan Saturday. | ||
| Vulcan Gas Company is a fun place. | ||
| I think Whitney's gonna pop on and do a show. | ||
| Oh, is she here? | ||
| She might get here Friday. | ||
| She might drive. | ||
| She FaceTimed me. | ||
| She's like, Tim Dillon's coming out. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Woo! | |
| So yeah, she'll be a special guest on my show. | ||
| All right, maybe I'll come by. | ||
| I invited you. | ||
| I know you got your own thing or whatever, but if you have time, obviously I would love to have you on the show. | ||
| Let's fucking do it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yes, sir. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Let's wrap it up. | ||
| What's your podcast again? | ||
| Podcast, Fahim Anwar Dance Hour. | ||
| Dance Hour. | ||
| And then also, last time I was on, I had a special. | ||
| It was on Amazon, but now it's on YouTube. | ||
| So it's called There's No Business Show Business. | ||
| That's the only... | ||
| Remember my dad shit on me? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| Tell everybody what that was. | ||
| What that was? | ||
| I got booed at the Apollo back in Seattle. | ||
| I was like 17 or 18 years old. | ||
| And I auditioned to be on the Apollo in Seattle. | ||
| And so I invited everybody out. | ||
| I invited teachers and classmates and all that. | ||
| And then just everybody came out. | ||
| My parents came out. | ||
| And this is the only time they've seen me do stand-up. | ||
| And they were so against it, right? | ||
| Especially my dad. | ||
| And then they announce me. | ||
| I come out, and it's kind of shortly after 9-11. | ||
| I've told the story. | ||
| I'll use it on the last one. | ||
| But I'm like, hey, my name's Vyman Noir. | ||
| It's a Middle Eastern name. | ||
| I go Afghan, to be exact. | ||
| And people are like, boo! | ||
| They just start booing. | ||
| There's like so many boos. | ||
| Like 4,000 people. | ||
| And then the siren comes on, and I get booed offstage, right? | ||
| And then my parents took a different car. | ||
| I drove there myself. | ||
| And then I hear the story from my brother. | ||
| They're driving home and my dad goes, he's like happy, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
He's like, well, there's no business like show business. | |
| So that's always stuck with me. | ||
| And I named my first one-hour stand-up special, There's No Business Like Show Business. | ||
| And now it's on YouTube. | ||
| It's on Comedy Central's YouTube. | ||
| Yeah, there it is. | ||
| My buddy Aristotle directed it. | ||
| And I'm proud of it. | ||
| It's very cool that... | ||
| I love this new wave of comedians just putting their shit out on YouTube. | ||
| What's going on with your lips? | ||
| They put makeup on you, bro. | ||
| The trouble is, when you're an ethnic performer, they're used to doing white performers, and they're not used to olive skin. | ||
| And also the way it's shot, too. | ||
| No, bro, they put lipstick on you. | ||
| Your skin's fine. | ||
| Your lips are ridiculous. | ||
| They jokered me. | ||
| Don't let them do that anymore. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Just tell them this is what I look like. | ||
| That's what I tell them. | ||
| Sometimes I'll do shoots now where I'm like, I'm fine. | ||
| I don't need... | ||
| No, just don't let them. | ||
| Just say, you can't put makeup on me. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Honestly. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Like, if it's a shine thing, if I'm shiny, sure, powder it. | ||
| Look at my fucking shiny head. | ||
| You're good. | ||
| Don't you talk to me about shiny. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You're good. | |
| Look at his head. | ||
| You can play a movie off my head. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| Don't let them. | ||
| This is what you look like. | ||
| It's what I look like. | ||
| Flaws and all. | ||
| You don't need to Photoshop me. | ||
| You don't need to put lipstick on you. | ||
| But they didn't. | ||
| Maybe my lips were just especially red that day. | ||
| Unless you were sucking some cherry dick. | ||
| Maybe I was. | ||
| I always have the onstage jitters and I always try to suck like a few dicks before I go on. | ||
| Just to relax yourself. | ||
| Just to get the nerves out. | ||
| Can't be worse than this. | ||
| Yeah, it can't be worse than this. | ||
| So that's on YouTube. | ||
| Go watch it, ladies and gentlemen. | ||
| He's fucking hilarious. | ||
| And if you can get a ticket to Vulcan Gas Company Saturday night, Don't sleep. | ||
| Don't sleep. | ||
| And we're going to be doing shows out here for him. | ||
| Yeah, man. | ||
| I'd love to have you out there. | ||
| The party will be happening. | ||
| Good night, everybody. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Goodbye. |
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