April 3, 2021 - The Joe Rogan Experience
02:36:02
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
|
Joe Rogan Podcast. | |
| Check it out. | ||
| The Joe Rogan Experience. | ||
| Train by day. | ||
| Joe Rogan Podcast by night. | ||
| All day. | ||
| Hello. | ||
| Hello. | ||
| Welcome. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| What's happening? | ||
| Thank you for having me. | ||
| So you said you're in town working at, it's called the Sunset Strip Comedy Club? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Is this the first weekend? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| That's open? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Whoa. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's awesome. | ||
| How'd you hear about it? | ||
| They hit me up. | ||
| So they just started? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Where's it at? | ||
| This is opening weekend. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, wow. | |
| You don't even know where you're going. | ||
| No. | ||
| Did you just get here today? | ||
| I got here yesterday. | ||
| Did you walk around? | ||
| I walked a little bit. | ||
| Did you get any brisket? | ||
| Not yet. | ||
| That's tonight. | ||
| What did you do when you got here? | ||
| I went and got halal and then I went swimming. | ||
| Oh, okay. | ||
| Cool. | ||
| Check it out. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Wander around. | ||
| Who are you working with? | ||
| Fahim, Anwar, and Amir K. And I can't remember the rest of the lineup, but... | ||
| Yeah, that's it. | ||
| Yeah, Fahim did some shows with me and Chappelle at Stubbs, too. | ||
| There it is. | ||
| Is this the place? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yep. | |
| Where's it at, Jamie? | ||
| Downtown, 3rd Street. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| East side, I think, because it's East 3rd Street. | ||
| Nice. | ||
| Does it say how many people it seats? | ||
| It does not. | ||
| Nice. | ||
| Yeah, the guys who run it have been really great. | ||
| They've been really nice. | ||
| That's fucking awesome. | ||
| I'm excited. | ||
| And they love you. | ||
| What does Tim Dillon have to do with that? | ||
| Tim Dillon's on their page there. | ||
| Is he talking shit about them? | ||
| I think he's talking about the Austin scene. | ||
| Yeah, he's out here too. | ||
| Are you going to move here, Laura? | ||
| Not today, you know? | ||
| Are you thinking about it? | ||
| We'll see. | ||
| Never say never. | ||
| Never say never? | ||
| Are you considering it? | ||
| I mean, before this year, I would have said that I never wanted to leave L.A., but I also couldn't have imagined them shutting Hollywood down until further notice. | ||
| So I don't know what is going to happen next. | ||
| The district attorney, I think that's who it is, killed the gang task force, too. | ||
| That's the new thing, because apparently there's not enough crime. | ||
| He's like, how do we make it worse? | ||
| Let's kill the gang task force. | ||
| Is that the same task force that was like the dirty one? | ||
| The rampart one? | ||
| Oh, I don't think so. | ||
| I think that's a different one. | ||
| Maybe. | ||
| I don't think so, though. | ||
| Maybe it was dirty. | ||
| Maybe I'm looking into it the wrong way. | ||
| Just wondering. | ||
| You might be right. | ||
| I might be looking at it the wrong way. | ||
| I mean, if no one can leave their apartments anyway, what difference does it really make, you know? | ||
| My friend Eddie almost got jumped at a gas station two nights ago. | ||
| Damn. | ||
| Yeah, he pulled into a gas station and he got out of his car and some guy started walking backwards towards his car with hoodies on. | ||
| And he was like, what is going on here? | ||
| And then he's like, I'm getting back in my fucking car. | ||
| And then they just ran up to his car and he locked the car and took off. | ||
| Damn, I've been making people walk me to my car after shows because I accidentally caught a preview for the local news. | ||
| And it was like a woman being put down on her face on the sidewalk while two dudes robbed her. | ||
| And I was like, well, I can't forget that I've seen that image now. | ||
| So I guess I don't go places by myself anymore. | ||
| That's the thing that happens when you shut down the economy. | ||
| Not only did they shut down the economy, but they also handicapped the police officers. | ||
| Cops are terrified to arrest anybody. | ||
| I was talking to a friend that's a fireman who's friends with cops, and they were all discussing this, apparently, that they just don't know what to do. | ||
| Like they're scared to arrest people because they're scared that they're going to do something that's going to be abusive and they're going to get filmed or considered abusive or if someone's resisting arrest. | ||
| And they're just in this weird position where a lot of people hate the police now. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So cops, they don't want to be bothered with shit. | ||
| Like Sunset is like a drag strip now. | ||
| Have you seen people flying down Sunset going 150 miles an hour racing? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You have? | ||
| I've seen that. | ||
| Fucking weird, right? | ||
| Yeah, I'm laughing because I was with Dylan Sullivan last night and we walked to get food and there were like a bunch of junkies around and they kept just like appearing and I was getting really nervous and then we saw a cop car Across the street and we're like let's go be by the cop and we walked over to stand by the cop and I was like this is not very this is that's not a very popular mindset right now | ||
| to go and be near the cops yeah and I pictured someone spray-painting like fuck the police and me like doing a carrot mark and saying fuck yeah the police because we got so excited to see them we're like oh thank god the cops are here where were you at? | ||
| 6th and a different street Yeah, there's that area around where the Vulcan Gas Company is that's a homeless shelter. | ||
| That's where we were. | ||
| We were parked right outside of Vulcan Gas Company. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| One of the guys there tried to steal one of my security guy's car. | ||
| Damn. | ||
| The whole place down there is so weird. | ||
| It's funky. | ||
| And even though it's kind of like semi-dangerous, but their version of danger is just so different than the LA danger. | ||
| It's kind of cute danger. | ||
| You know, it's like just crazy homeless people. | ||
| It didn't feel cute. | ||
| And with all due respect, you're a lot more muscular than I am. | ||
| I don't think that people will fuck with you as fast as they'll fuck with me. | ||
| Well, you never know. | ||
| It's easy to get a gun here. | ||
| It's a different animal. | ||
| Yeah, we were parked before an alley, and people just started coming out of the alleys, and I was like, we gotta go somewhere else. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, COVID fucked everything up. | ||
| The pandemic fucked everything up. | ||
| It did not fuck up Austin. | ||
| It just fucked up Austin less than it... | ||
| Fucked LA up. | ||
| LA is fucked. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's not just fucked. | ||
| I tell people about it, and they're like, come on, you're exaggerating. | ||
| And then they go, and then they call me and go, holy shit, dude. | ||
| It's unrecognizable. | ||
| Well, and it's fucked because if you're going to shut everything down, you have to give us a lot of money because rent is so obscene there that I think it's unimaginable for anyone who lives anywhere else to... | ||
| In the country. | ||
| I mean, it's so expensive. | ||
| I've been on unemployment for a year, which I've never applied for unemployment before in my entire life. | ||
| Like, you know how hard I work. | ||
| I'm not a handout person. | ||
| But if you're going to shut all the comedy clubs, like, and I was applying for jobs that I didn't even want on Indeed just to try to make some money because my unemployment covers less than half of my rent. | ||
| And I'm just like, what do you expect me to do? | ||
| And if I'm in a position where I, every month, am I going to be, how am I going to not be homeless? | ||
| I just can't imagine people who have it so much worse than I do. | ||
| Yeah, and there are a lot of people like that. | ||
| And there's also, like, it incentivizes people to do crime. | ||
| It really does, because they're like, I need to fucking get by. | ||
| I've got to figure this out. | ||
| And so people that were maybe on the cusp of trying to be a good person and maybe fell back into a life of crime. | ||
| It's just... | ||
| It's not good. | ||
| It's just... | ||
| The problem is when you have mayors and governors and these people that don't... | ||
| They don't have a vested interest in the economy booming. | ||
| Like, it doesn't matter to them. | ||
| Like, they get paid regardless. | ||
| You know? | ||
| So if their paycheck was dependent upon the economy... | ||
| Say if the governor and the mayor got paid a percentage of the gross revenues for the state, like 0.001% or whatever the fuck it is. | ||
| This is how you make your living. | ||
| Everybody has to do well. | ||
| And if you develop policies and you enact laws and legislations and rules, especially during this pandemic, that cripple businesses. | ||
| There's a way to keep businesses open and still keep people safe. | ||
| They've done it. | ||
| They've done it in other places. | ||
| Right. | ||
| But California, Florida's the crazy one, right? | ||
| We always look at Florida like those people are out of their mind. | ||
| They're crazy. | ||
| They're fucking alligators and hanging out in the streets. | ||
| But Florida has less COVID cases per capita. | ||
| They have less deaths per capita, and they're wide open. | ||
| Well, and we're not at the... | ||
| It's not last April anymore. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| 25% of Americans have received at least one shot of the vaccine. | ||
| The most vulnerable populations got the vaccine first, which doesn't make sense to me, but I'm not a doctor or a virologist. | ||
| Like, it makes sense on one level, and then it's very confusing to me on another level. | ||
| I'm like, I would think we would want to try it on... | ||
| Healthy people first, but that's neither here nor there. | ||
| They tested it on people before they tried it on the old folks. | ||
| The idea is the old folks are less likely to survive it if they get it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But this was like the finish line, I thought. | ||
| I thought when the vaccine's out, we're going to pop shit back open. | ||
| That's what they did here. | ||
| And that's what they're doing in a lot of states. | ||
| That's what they did in Arizona. | ||
| The problem is, California, they've been feeding off that fear porn for like a full year, and they don't want to let it go. | ||
| I mean, they almost want the virus to be completely eradicated. | ||
| And the real fear is that what happens when the flu comes around? | ||
| What happens when a less dangerous virus comes around? | ||
| Are you going to reenact the same rules? | ||
| Are you going to just keep the economy crippled? | ||
| It's going to be Mad Max. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That fucking place is gonna be all tents and guns and fucking dogs and it's gonna be chaos. | ||
| It's really gnarly and it's interesting to me how little people allow for like incorporating new information and changing your mind about stuff especially at this point because there are people who still are like comics shouldn't be doing shows. | ||
| You know what? | ||
| Those people all don't do shows. | ||
| You ever notice that? | ||
| Those people, you shouldn't do shows? | ||
| You motherfuckers never did shows. | ||
| Those are all people that their career sucked and they weren't that good. | ||
| And they want people to stay home because part of them didn't like the fact that people were doing so many shows and doing so well. | ||
| There's not a lot of really good, successful comics that are saying people shouldn't be doing shows. | ||
| It's generally scrubs. | ||
| Yeah, for sure. | ||
| It's people who did it as a hobby. | ||
| And I don't think that you should get to have that opinion if you're not a professional comedian. | ||
| Like, what are you doing? | ||
| Unless you also are talking that way to all of your friends who have been working in offices. | ||
| And unless you have a better idea for someone than doing shows. | ||
| Like, I don't know how you can... | ||
| Expect people not to feel differently about this when we have more information. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| We know more about this disease. | ||
| We know more about how it's transmitted. | ||
| We know more about how deadly it is. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And it's interesting because there's so much misinformation that is being given to us. | ||
| We know that you don't have to be six feet apart and wear masks and be outside. | ||
| If you're outside, you're probably not going to give it to other people. | ||
| At all. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And if you're inside, you can wear masks. | ||
| You can do it and be safe. | ||
| They've been doing shows all across the country. | ||
| They haven't had these mass outbreaks that come out of these shows. | ||
| It hasn't happened. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| I mean, I did Vegas and I wore my mask when I wasn't on stage and I didn't get sick. | ||
| And so it's kind of like the more stuff I did and didn't get it, the more I was like, wait, this isn't... | ||
| I was under the impression that if I left my house, I was going to die. | ||
| Yeah, that's what they want you to think. | ||
| Have you been taking vitamins? | ||
| Obviously, you look great. | ||
| You lost a ton of weight. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| You're super healthy. | ||
| I'm very proud of you. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's amazing. | |
| It's really cool. | ||
| Yeah, I take a lot of vitamins, including vitamin D. Are you taking D with an ionophore, like quercetin or curcumin or any of those things? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Okay, let me get you some quercetin, because quercetin increases the efficacy of zinc. | ||
| It gets it into your bloodstream better. | ||
| So D3, zinc, and an ionophore, particularly quercetin. | ||
| There's been studies done on quercetin and the way it impacts people's health with quercetin and zinc with COVID-19. | ||
| I'll send you a link. | ||
| Cool. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, they told us that there was a virus killing obese people. | ||
| I was obese at the beginning of the pandemic, and so I lost weight. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| To not be obese anymore. | ||
| And now I'm in a healthy weight range. | ||
| And they made obese people eligible for the vaccine. | ||
| And I wasn't eligible for the vaccine. | ||
| I was like, are you fucking kidding me? | ||
| Can't you wear like a fat suit? | ||
| Go get vaccinated? | ||
| I got vaccinated as a food worker. | ||
| I gave them my comedy store tax form. | ||
| And the lady was like, do you handle food? | ||
| And I was like, yeah, I do. | ||
| I handle food every day. | ||
| So I didn't... | ||
| I handle food too. | ||
| I didn't lie, but I didn't super tell the truth. | ||
| But we're not at the point now where we're just vaccinating the people who are most vulnerable. | ||
| Those people have had it for the most part. | ||
| Now we're back to ranking members of society from the most to least important. | ||
| And there's no one I can talk to about that and be like, well, listen, I'm getting on a plane. | ||
| I'm going to be flying. | ||
| I can't plead my case, but I can give them my tax form and get the vaccine. | ||
| So that's what I did. | ||
| Yeah, it's a weird thing when they tell you that your business is not essential. | ||
| And that's a weird thing. | ||
| It's like you're not worthy of the vaccine yet. | ||
| I get it with vulnerable people. | ||
| That does make sense to me. | ||
| And I do get it with frontline workers. | ||
| I get it. | ||
| But after that, it's like, how do you decide who's getting this? | ||
| It feels pretty essential to me. | ||
| Comedy's essential. | ||
| I think it's mental health. | ||
| I think it's very good for people. | ||
| Making people laugh is... | ||
| To me, I've gone to comedy shows and walked out and felt better. | ||
| I just took a drug. | ||
| Oh my god, yeah. | ||
| I didn't do stand-up for seven months and then did a show again and it was like I came back to life. | ||
| What was the first place you worked? | ||
| I don't remember what it was called. | ||
| Where was it? | ||
| In LA? Yeah. | ||
| Did you practice your stuff? | ||
| Did you go over your material? | ||
| How did you approach the show? | ||
| Well, I had written a lot of new material. | ||
| I had been writing in quarantine, but so much of that made no sense because it was written by an insane person because I lost my mind in my home. | ||
| So I'm writing shit that's specific to my apartment and also writing stuff about something that was on the news in March. | ||
| So by the time I went on stage and went and looked through it, I was like, this can never be seen by anybody. | ||
| So I did some stuff that was like new and then I did some old stuff. | ||
| People say it's like learning to ride a bike. | ||
| It's like learning to ride a bike and then not walking and then standing up and your legs have atrophy. | ||
| Like that first set was people were laughing and I had fun but I wouldn't try to sell it to HBO or anything, you know? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| My first set I did... | ||
| What happened? | ||
| I just lost all sound. | ||
| I lost... | ||
| Oh, it just came back. | ||
| How weird. | ||
| Ghosts. | ||
| I could hear you the whole time. | ||
| Oh, that's so strange. | ||
| My first set I did the Houston Improv with Moses and Hinchcliffe. | ||
| And we did it in July. | ||
| But then I got paranoid that I was going to give it to somebody. | ||
| I was like, what if I get it and give it to somebody? | ||
| I wasn't as worried about getting it as I was giving it to somebody. | ||
| So I said, let me just take some time off. | ||
| And then I didn't do it again until Chappelle asked me to do these shows out here. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And I was like, fuck, alright, I'm living out here. | |
| He's coming out here. | ||
| I'm going to do some shows. | ||
| And as soon as I started doing those, I'm like, fuck, I'm back. | ||
| That's exactly what happened to me. | ||
| I did that one show, and then the next night I did another one, and on the way to that show that night, I had this feeling that I hadn't felt in forever, and it was the joy of going to do it. | ||
| And I remembered that I used to have that feeling every single night when I would go to the comedy store, or when I would go do a show. | ||
| Because I never... | ||
| I never took it for granted. | ||
| I was always excited. | ||
| I was always happy. | ||
| I always looked around. | ||
| No, you always were. | ||
| I always looked around at the mountains and was like, damn, I'm in LA. I loved it. | ||
| It's happening. | ||
| You're doing it. | ||
| So I came back to life. | ||
| And I don't know. | ||
| It's interesting to me because it's like the same people who on National Suicide Day will post about How important mental health is and come talk to me if you ever feel sad this that and the other and now a year in it's like why are people not talking about mental health and why are those same people saying like you're a piece of shit if you go see your friends you know what I mean because like people are killing themselves They're killing themselves in record numbers. | ||
| Swartzen has a friend who works as a sheriff and said that they would get like one suicide a week back in the day and now they're getting five a week. | ||
| And they were just overwhelmed by the number. | ||
| It might have been one a month and now it's five a week. | ||
| But it's just, they're overwhelmed. | ||
| People are, they're not counting that in terms of like the amount of people that have drug overdoses and die because they're depressed. | ||
| They're not counting that. | ||
| And they think about the deaths and the toll. | ||
| And they're not counting like how many people's lives have gone from, you know, they created a business, they worked hard for years and years, and then it's just been taken away from them through no fault of their own. | ||
| Through no fault of their own. | ||
| And there's no severance for that. | ||
| My friend Katie is a nurse in Chicago, and I have been in contact through this whole thing. | ||
| And it was, I mean, her hospital was teeming with COVID patients. | ||
| She said now it's teeming with alcoholics who are having DTs, people who lost their jobs in September and And have been drinking themselves to death all day in their homes. | ||
| She said that she's never seen DTs this bad. | ||
| Like she said, it's crazy how many people are dying of alcoholism there. | ||
| Because they did. | ||
| They stopped having AA meetings. | ||
| Well, they're on Zoom. | ||
| They're on Zoom, but you have to have the password. | ||
| You have to know a guy. | ||
| And it's also just not the same thing. | ||
| And it's so inaccessible that it's costing people their lives. | ||
| Yeah, it's the undiscussed aspect of the pandemic. | ||
| You know, it's uncomfortable for people. | ||
| When they think about the cost of the pandemic, they want to think about how many people are going to get sick, how many people are going to be in the ICU. That's something we have to absolutely consider. | ||
| But you also have to consider what happens when you shut down... | ||
| The entire economy. | ||
| What are the other repercussions? | ||
| And here's the big question, because this is the big experiment. | ||
| How long is it going to take before LA bounces back? | ||
| Because LA is a big fucking city. | ||
| And where's the money going to come from? | ||
| Where are you going to have the money to open up all those businesses? | ||
| They lost 75% of their restaurants. | ||
| How is the store and the improv, how are they going to stay open for another year like this? | ||
| Because those goofy, draconian motherfuckers that are keeping that place locked down, they're not going to let it open. | ||
| They're going to maybe let them do some outside shows eventually. | ||
| But right now, indoor shows are out of the question. | ||
| So how long is it going to take? | ||
| It's going to take unless people specifically talk about that in the recall for Gavin Newsom, specifically talk about comedy clubs. | ||
| Until they do that, they're not going to... | ||
| People are specifically talking about restaurants. | ||
| So they opened up restaurants again. | ||
| He's panicking. | ||
| Because they're worried about him getting recalled. | ||
| Because they've gathered enough votes now. | ||
| Isn't the comedy store classified as a restaurant? | ||
| No, it's not. | ||
| No, it's not. | ||
| What makes a restaurant? | ||
| I mean, they serve food there. | ||
| What's a restaurant? | ||
| Yeah, I think you need 51% of your money to come from food and drinks versus ticket prices. | ||
| Something like that. | ||
| Something wacky along those lines. | ||
| But it was when comics were doing sets in the window. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I don't know what classifies it as a restaurant, but the problem is the live performance. | ||
| And the idea of comedy is you're all laughing. | ||
| So when you're like, they're telling people not to scream at Disneyland. | ||
| Do you know that? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| They told me when you go on rides, don't scream. | ||
| Like, okay. | ||
| I'm going to mime it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm going to... | |
| That's so... | ||
| They also tell you to keep your arms and hands down and no one ever fucking does that. | ||
| No one ever does that, right. | ||
| Yeah, I hope people scream instead of protest. | ||
| They're probably going to stop people from screaming, though. | ||
| They're probably going to tell people. | ||
| Because, you know, look, they don't want an inspector to come there and say, hey, people are screaming, we're going to shut this place down. | ||
| Disneyland's been closed for a fucking year, and they're losing some insane amount of money. | ||
| It's like $300 million a day or something crazy. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's nuts. | ||
| I might have made that number. | ||
| I pulled that right out of my ass. | ||
| How much money is Disneyland losing per day while Disneyland's being closed? | ||
| I think it might be $100 million. | ||
| I really do. | ||
| Isn't that what it costs for a churro at Disneyland? | ||
| Isn't a churro at Disneyland $100 million? | ||
| It's less than that. | ||
| It's less than that. | ||
| Yeah, there's gotta... | ||
| Let's guess. | ||
| I say $100 million. | ||
| What do you say? | ||
| I'll say $50 million. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| I like what you're doing. | ||
| Price is right. | ||
| Let's go. | ||
| I just have no idea. | ||
| $100 million seems... | ||
| If you guessed a million, I would have been like, maybe... | ||
| I would have probably guessed half of that. | ||
| That just seems like so much money. | ||
| It's way more than a million. | ||
| Disneyland is huge. | ||
| And it's really fucking expensive. | ||
| And then you got Disneyland and California Adventure all in the same park. | ||
| I can count on one hand the amount of times I've had more than $2,000 at once in my life. | ||
| So I don't have a concept of what a million dollars is. | ||
| It's a lot of money. | ||
| But it's not a lot of money if you're running Disneyland. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I mean, that's probably their fucking rent. | |
| What do you got, Jamie? | ||
| It's giving me just Disney's overall... | ||
| Disney's a gigantic company, so it's not breaking it down just for Disneyland, unfortunately. | ||
| Did you write, Disneyland is losing... | ||
| Yes, yes. | ||
| So now I'm looking... | ||
| Per day? | ||
| How much is Disneyland's daily revenue? | ||
| No, no, no. | ||
| Just say, how much is Disneyland losing per day? | ||
| It's adding it all together with Disney, the company, and how much they lost in China, and Orlando, and the TV channels, and all that stuff. | ||
| Did you write Disneyland? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Fuckers. | ||
| I know there was an article. | ||
| Jamie will get it. | ||
| I know you will. | ||
| I have faith. | ||
| There's gotta be like a middle ground, you know? | ||
| Yeah, like let people do whatever the fuck they want. | ||
| Like let people do whatever the fuck they want. | ||
| And like put those little dots where people can stand a little bit further apart. | ||
| I think we should have been doing that anyway. | ||
| I've always thought handshaking was disgusting. | ||
| I think we should all stop shaking hands for the rest of our lives. | ||
| When I was looking back at my old material, I found two separate bits I tried to write about how shaking hands is nasty. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What? | |
| Before COVID, I didn't even realize I felt that strongly about it, except that I did. | ||
| I was always like a fist bumper or like, better yet, don't touch me. | ||
|
unidentified
|
After shows, you don't have to fucking touch me, dude. | |
| I've had men kiss me on my mouth after shows. | ||
| I've had people grab my stomach after shows. | ||
| People put their hands on me and try to touch me, and I'm like, it's germs. | ||
| Men have kissed you on your mouth? | ||
| How many? | ||
| One. | ||
| Took me a while to add that up. | ||
| Well, I tried to fish. | ||
| I was like, I mean, men have kissed me on my face. | ||
| One guy kissed me on my mouth, but I was pushing him off of me and yelling, stop, what the fuck are you doing? | ||
| And like the people with him were like laughing. | ||
| And I was like, what the fuck is your problem? | ||
| I snapped on him. | ||
| I yelled at him. | ||
| And then I didn't shake anyone's hands after that. | ||
| That's the difference between being a woman comic and being a male comic. | ||
| Dudes have never tried to kiss me. | ||
| I've never had a guy try to kiss me. | ||
| I honestly don't even believe you. | ||
| I feel like dudes have tried to kiss you. | ||
| I feel like you've probably been kissed on the mouth by more women after your shows. | ||
| 30 or 40 guys. | ||
| A couple women have tried to kiss me. | ||
|
unidentified
|
There you go. | |
| But it's not threatening. | ||
| That's the difference. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's not dangerous. | |
| That's just because you're into it. | ||
| Just because you're into it doesn't mean... | ||
| No, it's not dangerous. | ||
| They can't really rape me. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| I feel threatened on your behalf, but I respect your right to feel safe. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| I appreciate you feeling threatened on my behalf. | ||
| But my point is, like, a woman is not physically scary to me. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Where a man is physically scary to a woman. | ||
| Here it goes. | ||
| Deep info. | ||
| Okay, here it goes. | ||
| 12 million per day. | ||
| Wow, I'm way off. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's just for Disneyland, though. | ||
| $12 million per day based on $200 million. | ||
| Coronavirus closures cost Disneyland $7.9 million per day and Disneyland California Adventure $4.1 million per day. | ||
| Damn, I didn't realize. | ||
| So when you start adding it all up, it starts getting to be more and more. | ||
| Walt Disney World in Florida lost $25 million per day. | ||
| It's way bigger though. | ||
| Oh, interesting. | ||
| Magic Kingdom, $8.8 million per day. | ||
| Animal Kingdom, $5.8 million per day. | ||
| Epcot, $5.2 million. | ||
| And Hollywood Studios, $4.8 million. | ||
| Okay, I was way off. | ||
| I was gonna go with a billion a day. | ||
| How about that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
A billion? | |
| So what is it, 14? | ||
| Is that what it said? | ||
| 14 million a day? | ||
| That's still a shitload of money. | ||
| Add that over 365 days and you got a lot of cheddar. | ||
| So that's three... | ||
| 250 million a week. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's billions. | ||
| Damn. | ||
| Billions of dollars. | ||
| Just because someone told them they have to shut up. | ||
| I mean, they would have definitely lost money, period. | ||
| There's no way to not lose some money. | ||
| Everybody lost some money, but to lose that much money is just preposterous. | ||
| Well, and then if you think about those workers, think about how much they could possibly be collecting in unemployment, and it's got to be a hundred bucks a week. | ||
| I mean, it's got to be so low if they were minimum wage workers. | ||
| Because you just get a fraction of that. | ||
| And where can you live on $100 a week? | ||
| Where can you pay rent? | ||
| What closet can you rent? | ||
| I'm not talking about having your own apartment. | ||
| I'm saying where can you live for that amount of money? | ||
| You can't. | ||
| You can't. | ||
| You have to live with your parents and you have to hope they can pay their mortgage. | ||
| It's interesting, like, what we just did there is basically what's happening in California in terms of fear of COVID. Like, when there's a person that ramps it up so high, like $100 million a day, you came at $50 million a day. | ||
| Right? | ||
| That was your estimate after I came in with $100 million a day. | ||
| Meanwhile, we're both way off. | ||
| That's, in a sense, in California, everyone's like, we're all going to die. | ||
| Everyone's going to die. | ||
| And then if you're reasonable, you're like, no, only like 30% of us are going to die. | ||
| And then you're like, wait a minute, it's not even that. | ||
| 30% would be wild. | ||
| That's what the bubonic plague killed. | ||
| Well, that was what a lot of people were seriously worried about. | ||
| Really? | ||
| I've had people express to me today that 5% of people that get COVID die. | ||
| I'm like, bro, that's not possible. | ||
| That's not true. | ||
| It's not true. | ||
| It's less than 1%. | ||
| And then you also have the problem of die from COVID or die with COVID because most people who die have an average of 2.6 comorbidities. | ||
| And I think they've recently elevated that. | ||
| I think it's more than that now. | ||
| Which means they have either diabetes or some other cancer, some other disease that makes them extremely vulnerable. | ||
| Then they get COVID and then they die of it. | ||
| Doesn't mean you should minimize the fact they died and COVID definitely killed them because if it wasn't for COVID, they would have probably stayed alive. | ||
| But they were not doing good already. | ||
| And that's a lot of us. | ||
| That's the problem. | ||
| And they don't fucking say shit about that. | ||
| They don't say shit about, you should take vitamins. | ||
| You should exercise. | ||
| Like, you took it upon yourself to lose weight. | ||
| And that's really important because almost 80% of the people that were hospitalized from COVID were obese. | ||
| Almost 80%. | ||
| It was like 78%. | ||
| That's what my friend Katie said. | ||
| You know, I asked her what she was seeing in Chicago. | ||
| And she said that it was obese men and people of color. | ||
| People call her it because of vitamin D. Really? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, because darker folks, their melanin actually protects them from the sun but makes them generate less vitamin D. | ||
| My friend who's a doctor worked in New York and he said he would experience, when they were testing folks, he would experience some folks that were black that had undetectable levels of vitamin D because they never went out in the sun and it was cloudy out and they didn't supplement. | ||
| So they literally had undetectable levels of vitamin D, some of the people that came in there that were sick. | ||
| So here's a question that I have had on my mind is if obese people were prioritized for the vaccine, why were people of color not also prioritized for the vaccine? | ||
| Well, what they should have been is given vitamin D, you know. | ||
| I mean, and not just given vitamin D, but everybody should have been told from the beginning. | ||
| Like, vitamin D plays a critical role. | ||
| 84% of the people that were in the ICU with COVID were deficient in vitamin D. Only 4% had sufficient levels of vitamin D. People that were in the ICU with COVID. And that's a big problem with the entire country because human beings aren't designed to be indoors. | ||
| This is not normal. | ||
| To be covered with clothes. | ||
| We're supposed to be outside doing shit. | ||
| That's how the human body evolved over hundreds of thousands of years. | ||
| So this whole environment that we're living in is terrible for the generation of vitamin D. The only other way to get vitamin D is to take it in pill form. | ||
| That's the only other way. | ||
| You either get it from the sun, your body generates it, or you have to take it. | ||
| There's no other way to get it. | ||
| It's actually a hormone. | ||
| Vitamin D is a hormone. | ||
| It's not even really a vitamin. | ||
| It's a crazy and it's responsible for so many things. | ||
| It's responsible for brain function, muscle growth, your immune system. | ||
| But they don't tell you that. | ||
| You don't see Gercetti on TV saying, folks, this is what we found out. | ||
| Look at these charts and statistics about people that have suffered from it. | ||
| It's really important to take vitamin D. They didn't say that. | ||
| Yeah, I did all that. | ||
| I went outside and I started taking it and I lost weight. | ||
| I didn't want to... | ||
| And I haven't gotten it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good. | |
| Aren't you happy you lost weight? | ||
| Don't you feel like lighter? | ||
| I feel lighter. | ||
| That's exactly how I feel. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Like you're moving around? | |
| Yeah, dude. | ||
| Well, it's like... | ||
| It's equivalent to like eight bags of potatoes. | ||
| And if I think about what it would be like to carry that around in a backpack like through an airport and then get to set it down. | ||
| Take one of those 45 pound plates. | ||
| That's a heavy fucking weight. | ||
| Like you put on a barbell, one of those big ones. | ||
| That's what you lost. | ||
| My ankle weights and my hand weights together are 20 pounds. | ||
| And if I think about carrying that times two, or even across a room, I would be tired. | ||
| And that's what you were doing. | ||
| And I feel so much... | ||
| Better. | ||
| I mean, I had had back pain from the time that I was a teenager. | ||
| I'd had joint pain. | ||
| And I thought that I was just going to have it for my whole life because I didn't think I was heavy enough that it was affecting my joints. | ||
| And that pain is all gone. | ||
| And it makes sense to me. | ||
| Because again, if I carry around a heavy bag through an airport, my back will hurt at the end of the day, if I do that right now. | ||
| And to have to carry that weight around everywhere I go, everything I do, even just sitting, having that extra weight, I just don't want it back. | ||
| And I think part of it might be, because I stopped eating flour and sugar, which I've heard are inflammatory as well, so I think part of it might be that. | ||
| But the other thing is just getting to set down the weight. | ||
| I feel awesome. | ||
| I think both are factors, yeah, for sure. | ||
| I mean, definitely. | ||
| It's just logical that the weight's a factor, but for sure sugar and flour and any processed foods like that cause inflammation. | ||
| So what did you do for exercise? | ||
| I play tennis and swim and I do workouts that Stacia Patwell created. | ||
| She was a comic, she ran a show at the store and she's a trainer and she started doing these classes on Zoom for female comics and a bunch of us have had before and after transformations where like a bunch of fat comics have gotten hot because of her workouts and She's onto something dude. | ||
| She's so fucking funny and she can like work you out for an hour where I'm just like laughing. | ||
| I feel like I'm hanging out with a friend and she has this specific brand of tough love where she'll like she'll call she'll call me a pussy like right before I'm about to drop out of a plank and she'll be like the world has enough pussies. | ||
| Don't be a bitch. | ||
| Don't bitch out. | ||
| What is her name again? | ||
| Stacia Patwell. | ||
| S-T-A-S-I-A-P-A-T-W-E-L-L. Does she have an Instagram? | ||
| Yeah, and her Instagram is just that. | ||
| It's all one word. | ||
| Jamie will find it. | ||
| She's a fucking monster, and she called her thing School of Thought. | ||
| T-H-O-T. Oh, T-H-O-T, that's hilarious! | ||
| School of Thought! | ||
| She's a beast, dude. | ||
| Is that her right there? | ||
| Yeah, she has the transformations in her highlights. | ||
| All right. | ||
| She's so fucking funny, dude. | ||
|
unidentified
|
She's nostalgic for Boston in the 90s right now. | |
| Yeah, she'll yell at you in her, like, Long Island accent and something about it. | ||
| I wouldn't tolerate half the shit she says to me from... | ||
| Someone that wasn't funny. | ||
| Oh, there I am. | ||
| Look at that. | ||
| Oopsie doopsie. | ||
| Bitsy's in a bra. | ||
| Uh-oh. | ||
| Go to the far right. | ||
| Look at her. | ||
| Dude, you lost so much weight. | ||
| That's crazy. | ||
| Got my little cats in the background that I adopted so I wouldn't open my wrists in a bathtub. | ||
| There we go. | ||
| There she is. | ||
| I did not know I was that fat. | ||
| Boy, do I have egg on my face. | ||
| What did you think? | ||
| I thought I had 25 pounds to lose. | ||
| And so I set, I mean, I'm comfortable talking about numbers. | ||
| So my top weight was 180. I set my goal weight at 155. And now I'm 142.5. | ||
| And I'm not, I'm in a healthy weight range. | ||
| So if my body stops like easily losing weight, then I'll be like, okay, this is the weight that my body wants to be. | ||
| But I'm still losing weight and it's not protesting. | ||
| I'm certainly not starving myself. | ||
| That's awesome. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So it was just a matter of eating the right food and just forcing yourself to do rigorous exercise. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I joined a support group for overeaters and I weigh, measure, and write down every single thing I put in my body and eat balanced portions that were given to me by a dietician. | ||
| So I measure out like... | ||
| Protein, grains, fruits and vegetables, fats. | ||
| And then my goal that I try for is to be in a caloric deficit of about 250 calories a day, which averages out to about a half a pound a week of weight loss. | ||
| And I don't do it perfectly, but that's enough where I'm not starving all the time. | ||
| I'm satiated, so it's sustainable, but I'm also steadily losing weight. | ||
| I haven't had pizza in a year. | ||
| I haven't had any added flour, any added sugar in 10 months. | ||
| Well, you're a disciplined person. | ||
| I really admire your work ethic. | ||
| I know I've told you this before, because you would come to the store with your notebooks. | ||
| I'm like, look at you. | ||
| Your notebook is like, you're fucking like meticulous. | ||
| Like all your shit would be like super written out. | ||
| And so many comics are so impulsive and sort of scatterbrained and they don't focus. | ||
| And I really admire that you're focused. | ||
| I always admired that. | ||
| I thought it was cool. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| I admire that about you too. | ||
| So that means so much coming from you. | ||
| I admire your work ethic. | ||
| Yeah, I pretty much like took the energy that I had been putting into stand-up and just applied that same thing to this. | ||
| Because it's like, if you really want to do something, why fuck around? | ||
| Why waste the effort? | ||
| Like, what would be the point? | ||
| And I spent so long trying to like... | ||
| weighing and measuring and having like an intention that it's like I just put up a shitload of boundaries to where it was unfuck up able because I believe in taking like little actions in the direction of the thing that you want but it doesn't help me if I'm like I'm gonna try to just eat better which is such a general concept | ||
| and then if I'm stepping on the scale once a week then what happens when my weight is up because as it stands now I'll step on the scale my weight could be up three pounds and that's fine and I don't trip because I wrote everything down I know that I'm in a caloric deficit and I know it's water or salt whatever I don't understand that stuff but then I step on the scale the next week and it'll be down you know and so I thought that like a weight loss chart went like that but it really goes like that | ||
| and I think especially for women I mean mine's just been up down up down up down but the general trend is you know and If you could take the energy, the good that you feel from losing weight and getting healthy and just somehow or another put it in a VR. Put it in someone's head. | ||
| Just fucking feel this. | ||
| Just feel this. | ||
| Ready? | ||
| Put it on. | ||
| Like, oh my god, I feel so good. | ||
| You can get there. | ||
| You can get there. | ||
| But the problem is everybody wants to get there so quick. | ||
| They want to get there immediately. | ||
| They want to take a pill. | ||
| They want to listen to Dr. Oz. | ||
| They want to get there quick. | ||
| You can't fucking get there quick. | ||
| It doesn't work. | ||
| And the crazy thing is you've got to get sick the same way or you've got to get better the same way you got sick. | ||
| It takes time to get overweight and it takes time to lose weight. | ||
| You're not going to just starve yourself and lose it all because your body is going to go into deficit. | ||
| You're going to freak out. | ||
| Your metabolism is going to crash. | ||
| Then when you eat, you're going to pack it on quick because your body is going to be like, oh my God, we might starve to death. | ||
| I have to slow my metabolism down. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I think a huge part of it too is like the action has to be the reward. | ||
| So like I love doing my workouts because she makes me laugh. | ||
| It's built right into my routine. | ||
| I eat my oatmeal. | ||
| I meditate and then I do one of her workouts and it feels good. | ||
| It feels good for my body and the same thing with food. | ||
| Like I don't eat Most of my favorite foods from before anymore. | ||
| But I love everything I do eat because I've learned how to cook stuff. | ||
| Brown rice, vegetables, proteins. | ||
| I've learned how to cook food the way that it tastes good to me. | ||
| And so I'm not doing workouts I hate. | ||
| I'm not eating food that I hate. | ||
| And so it's sustainable. | ||
| That's awesome. | ||
| You got crazy. | ||
| It's sustainable. | ||
| Everybody gets electrocuted. | ||
| Yeah, it's good to see. | ||
| I'm very happy for you. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| You got that heavy fucking Midwest accent, that Chicago accent, right? | ||
| Is that where you're from? | ||
| Where are you from? | ||
| I'm from Milwaukee. | ||
| Yeah, it's that same thing, that Midwest. | ||
| You know, just like you could tell, you know? | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| I mean, it's funny. | ||
| I don't hear it, you know? | ||
| I think you have it less now than when I met you. | ||
| How long have you been at the store? | ||
| I got passed seven months before COVID. Here's a good story. | ||
| Laura was on stage once and Bert Kreischer and I were coming from... | ||
| We did a show in the main room. | ||
| Then we had a couple of cocktails in the Comedians Bar. | ||
| And we're hanging out. | ||
| We were walking by. | ||
| And just on a whim, we decided to walk into the OR. And you were fucking slaying. | ||
| And there was like maybe... | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| How many people were in there? | ||
| 10? | ||
| 15? | ||
| Something like that. | ||
| And it doubled by the time your set was over. | ||
| And we were howling. | ||
| And I remember we came up to you afterwards. | ||
| I even put it on my Instagram. | ||
| I put it on my Instagram how funny you were. | ||
| And then Adam got super excited because he loves you. | ||
| Adam Egan. | ||
| We were all talking about it. | ||
| But those moments are so important to me. | ||
| When you see someone in front of a small crowd... | ||
| That is on late at night. | ||
| And that fucking audience has seen everything. | ||
| They've been there, a lot of those people have been there from the beginning of the night. | ||
| So they've been there from 8 o'clock. | ||
| And here we were, what was it, like 1 or something like that? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It was late. | ||
| And here we were at 1 a.m. | ||
| and you were killing. | ||
| And I was like, wow. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's... | |
| That's... | ||
| That's the real thing. | ||
| Those are the moments of the beginning. | ||
| Those are the roots of a real career. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| It's so funny because I am so glad that I didn't know that you and Burt were watching. | ||
| Because I remember that set. | ||
| And I remember I was trying new stuff. | ||
| And I remember talking to audience members... | ||
| Like, I tried a punchline and it didn't work. | ||
| And I remember having a conversation with them about it and being like, did that not work? | ||
| Did you not get it? | ||
| Like, do you not know what I meant? | ||
| Or did you get it and you didn't think it was funny? | ||
| And they were like, we don't really know what you're talking about. | ||
| And so I explained it and then changed that joke or cut that joke. | ||
| But I would never, if I knew you guys were watching... | ||
| I would have done a polished 15 minutes. | ||
| I would have done my best material. | ||
| So, thank you. | ||
| I mean, you're very generous and you're very kind because that wasn't like a... | ||
| It was not a TV-ready set I was fucking around. | ||
| It didn't have to be. | ||
| It was late night at the store. | ||
| You're better off not doing a TV-ready set because they've already seen everything polished. | ||
| They want real. | ||
| That was one of the good things about it. | ||
| He's like, why didn't that fucking joke work? | ||
| And you were just loose. | ||
| You were loose and you were angry and it was raw. | ||
| We were laughing hard. | ||
| We laughed really hard. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| We both talked about it afterwards. | ||
| I'm like, damn, she's fucking good. | ||
| I still love comedy. | ||
| I still love watching new people. | ||
| I still love it. | ||
| I've been doing it for so long, but I still love watching the process. | ||
| I still love Kill Tony. | ||
| I love watching those new people do one minute. | ||
| I love when they kill. | ||
| I love it. | ||
| It reignites my passion for it. | ||
| Yeah, I was talking to Dylan Sullivan about that last night about how the OR was so fun because you can watch... | ||
| People be so funny and you can watch them bomb, being hilarious at like one in the morning. | ||
| And those are my two favorite things about stand-up, are watching people be hilarious and then separately watching them eat shit is hilarious. | ||
| To watch someone tell a joke to a bunch of people and have no one laugh, it's hilarious. | ||
| It's hilarious. | ||
| That makes me the most uncomfortable. | ||
| Oh my God. | ||
| The worst thing is when you go on the road and you don't pick your opening acts. | ||
| I started bringing people on the road with me for two reasons. | ||
| One, because I wanted someone to hang out with selfishly. | ||
| Also, I wanted my friends to get work. | ||
| I got to a point where I could hire people to come with me. | ||
| When someone is terrible and they go on before you, you get confused. | ||
| You're like, oh my god, maybe comedy doesn't work. | ||
| Maybe it's not real. | ||
| Maybe nothing's funny. | ||
| Like sometimes you'd be in like Florida or something like that and Tampa, and not to single out Tampa, but someone would go on stage and they'd be so bad. | ||
| I worked at one time with this guy who's the middle act was so bad that I was baffled. | ||
| I was like, I don't think there's anything funny. | ||
| There's nothing funny. | ||
| Like I had to close myself. | ||
| Have you ever been to Tampa? | ||
| No. | ||
| The fucking green room's on the third floor. | ||
| So there's three floors. | ||
| So I would close myself in the green room and then have to time out when this fucking guy was getting off stage and then run down to the bottom because I couldn't listen. | ||
| Because if you listen to a bad act, it'll fuck your head up. | ||
| It really will. | ||
| Because your timing will be off. | ||
| There's a thing called... | ||
| I don't know if this is real, but I read about it once. | ||
| No, I didn't read about it once. | ||
| Someone was talking about it. | ||
| I never researched it. | ||
| It's called Allophrenia. | ||
| And the idea was that if you talk to someone who's schizophrenic, Like if you talk to them long enough, it's possible that you could start exhibiting signs of schizophrenia. | ||
| So I think the conversation was someone was talking about visiting someone in the hospital and that there's been cases where people go to visit people who are schizophrenic and they spend time with that person and then the staff starts looking at them and goes, hey, are you okay? | ||
| Like, you start acting fucking weird, because you're around this person. | ||
| Maybe it's someone you love or care about, and you're there with them, and they're out of their fucking mind. | ||
| And the idea... | ||
| Look up allofrenia, see if that's real. | ||
| Yeah, it's called a shared psychotic disorder. | ||
| There we go. | ||
| It changes it, too. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| A shared psychotic disorder is a rare type of mental illness in which a healthy person starts to take on the delusions of someone who has a psychotic disorder such as schizophrenia. | ||
| For example, let's say your spouse has a psychotic disorder and as a part of that illness believes aliens are spying on them. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What? | |
| Hey! | ||
| Why is this so fucking specific? | ||
| Trying to tell me something, Jamie? | ||
| If you have a shared psychotic disorder, you'll start to believe in the spying aliens, but apart from that, your thoughts and behavior are normal. | ||
| People with psychotic disorders have trouble staying in touch with reality and often can't handle daily life. | ||
| The most obvious symptoms are hallucinations, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. | ||
| So... | ||
| I almost feel like that happens when you watch bad comedy. | ||
| Like, you will absorb whatever fucking craziness that makes them think that material's any good. | ||
| And it scares the shit out of me. | ||
| Something new? | ||
| It can happen in groups of people. | ||
| Groups of people. | ||
| So cults. | ||
| Or being in a comedy show and watching it together. | ||
| That reminds me of another phenomenon. | ||
| They did a study called Being Sane in Insane Places where a person who was sane checked into a mental hospital and they had to end the study early because the psychological damage that the person endured was so great that it became unethical. | ||
| So he would be like... | ||
| He would just ask a nurse, like, hey, could I have a piece of paper to, like, write something down? | ||
| And she would be, like, patient, engaged in writing behavior. | ||
| Like, everything. | ||
| Or he would be, like, hey, could I talk about, like, grounds privileges? | ||
| And the nurse would be, like, hi, James, it's nice to see you. | ||
| And then walk away. | ||
| And the dude started to go insane. | ||
| And the way that I connect that to that is, like, the audiences then expect you to suck. | ||
| The audiences treat you the way that they treat him. | ||
| Right. | ||
| the shitty comedian and that's the worst part people know who you are they know you're funny people don't know who I am and so at the time when I was in Tampa they didn't know me either because that's the bitch is when is when people see a comedian who sucks and then another comic gets on stage they don't know who you are either they assume you're at the level of the person who just went up yeah they're upset they're not gonna laugh at your stuff that are plus they're not warm And they've had a few drinks, and they're just like, what the fuck am I doing with my night? | ||
| Yeah, it's brutal. | ||
| It worked all day? | ||
| And some mediocre shitheads on stage spouting out nonsense? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, well, you've got to think also, when you think about that study, what's it like living with an insane mother or father? | ||
| Right? | ||
| Like, that's got to rub off on people. | ||
| There's probably people that don't have whatever it is that causes... | ||
| A mental disorder. | ||
| But then they live with someone who does and that someone imparts that on them just by virtue of living in this house where you're with a fucking insane person. | ||
| Yeah, absolutely. | ||
| I think it also happens with homeless people. | ||
| I think that there are people who have been getting treated like they're crazy for so long that it drives them crazy. | ||
| Because I can't imagine asking someone for something or talking to someone and having the person just like fix their eyes and keep walking, you know? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I had a really good friend when I lived in New York who was semi-homeless. | ||
| He was homeless sometimes and not other times. | ||
| He was a pool hustler. | ||
| And I actually met him in a pool hall. | ||
| And he became literally one of my best friends and stayed on my couch a lot of times. | ||
| And sometimes he would stay on my couch. | ||
| He would snore so loud because he hadn't slept in days. | ||
| It was crazy. | ||
| And I moved to LA. He stayed in New York. | ||
| And I didn't see him for a while. | ||
| And then I went to New York to do this thing. | ||
| And I went to do this TV thing, and he came to meet me there. | ||
| And I just, in my mind, it was me hanging out with my friend Johnny. | ||
| It was normal. | ||
| But for him, one of the things that he was saying to me, he goes, dude, I gotta tell you, man, this is... | ||
| Because there was a bunch of crew and all that. | ||
| He goes, this is the only time in years where people have been nice to me. | ||
| He goes, because I'm with you, I'm hanging around, everybody's nice to me. | ||
| And then it made me think, oh, this guy gets treated like shit everywhere because he's basically sleeping in flop houses or these hostels or anywhere he can if he can get the money. | ||
| He had a... | ||
| Serious drug problem it wound up killing him and I remember I never forgot that like he was saying like This is crazy man like people would be nice to me here like no one's ever nice to me I remember thinking like why is no nice to you you're a great guy and then I I'm like how fucking weird is my thinking like I'm doing a, you know, I was friends with this guy. | ||
| I was a struggling comedian. | ||
| He was a pool hustler. | ||
| And then years later, I'm on a TV show. | ||
| And I come to New York to film this TV show and I hang out with my old friend. | ||
| But he's still the same guy doing the same kind of things. | ||
| And maybe even worse off. | ||
| Because his health is failing and he's deep, deep into the drugs. | ||
| And, you know, we're hanging out. | ||
| And, you know, he's like, I can't believe it. | ||
| This is like the only time anyone's ever been nice to me. | ||
| It's been a long time since people have been nice to me. | ||
| And I'd be like, whoa. | ||
| Like, imagine going through your day all day long. | ||
| People are barking at you, treating you like shit. | ||
| You're staying in these homeless shelters or flop houses with all these other crazy people and they're yelling at you. | ||
| Damn. | ||
| So... | ||
| It's heavy. | ||
| Do you have, like, successful person's guilt? | ||
| Like, is it weird for you to see people from your past? | ||
| No. | ||
| That's cool. | ||
| No. | ||
| You can't. | ||
| Gotta keep moving. | ||
| Can't worry about that. | ||
| Because for sure I've been like super fortunate. | ||
| For sure. | ||
| No doubt about it. | ||
| But I also work pretty hard. | ||
| It's like I know that I've been very lucky. | ||
| But I also know that I've taken advantage of moments and made the best out of them. | ||
| Because I'm obsessive and I work real hard. | ||
| And I think a lot of people have learned from that. | ||
| I think I've showed a lot of people that are in my life, and a lot of people are like, you've got to work. | ||
| That's how you get things done in this life. | ||
| You can get by on talent, and you can get by on brashness. | ||
| There's a lot of things that you can pull off in this world where you can kind of skirt the system, but really you're better off working too. | ||
| Even if you have all those things, and I've always kind of been impulsive and kind of crazy, but I also work. | ||
| I work really hard at everything I do. | ||
| I've always done that. | ||
| Because of that, I don't really feel that guilty. | ||
| But I do feel obligated to help. | ||
| Especially as I've gotten more and more successful, I've felt more and more obligated to help. | ||
| I'm always trying to help friends. | ||
| I'm always trying to help people. | ||
| That's one of the things that I've tried to do really well with this podcast is boost people's signal that I think are really good and really funny or interesting or whatever. | ||
| I think it's very important to me. | ||
| Yeah, I have the vast majority of my Instagram followers because of you, because of that Instagram post that you did. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's hilarious. | |
| Wait until after this. | ||
| Let me tell you one more story about my friend. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| I was on a television show called News Radio and I was on it for, it was 99 episodes we wound up doing, right? | ||
| But two of them I wasn't on. | ||
| One of them was the pilot and the other one was another episode where I had one part but it didn't work. | ||
| So they cut it out. | ||
| It was an ensemble cast. | ||
| There was eight people in the cast. | ||
| So my friend was arrested, and they put him in a mental institution. | ||
| So he's in this mental institution, and he's watching TV. He's like, yo, yo, yo, my boy's on this show. | ||
| My boy's on this show. | ||
| I'm going to show you my friend. | ||
| So he's watching news radio. | ||
| It was the one episode where I wasn't on. | ||
| So it gets to the end of the episode. | ||
| He goes, bro, I'm in paper slippers. | ||
| He goes, I'm in this fucking mental institution with all these legitimate crazy people. | ||
| He goes, I'm not crazy. | ||
| I'm just on drugs, right? | ||
| And I'm hanging out with these fucking crazy people. | ||
| And at the end of the TV show, the credits roll, and you weren't on the fucking episode. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And they're like, yo, go get your medication. | |
| Go get your fucking medication. | ||
| You don't know anybody on TV. We were crying and laughing. | ||
| We thought it was so funny. | ||
| The one episode where he was in a mental health institute. | ||
| He was only in it for a week. | ||
| That one episode was the one episode where I wasn't on the show. | ||
| That's hilarious. | ||
| That sucks. | ||
| He could have just been like, no, I know that guy. | ||
| Like a different dude. | ||
| When he died, it was like as sad as I've ever been in my life. | ||
| It was so sad. | ||
| I found out from my friend Tommy, who I'm still friends with, lives back in Connecticut, and he told me, and I was just devastated. | ||
| I just couldn't believe it. | ||
| I hadn't talked to him in a couple of weeks, and he died of an overdose somewhere. | ||
| It's horrible. | ||
| It's just so sad. | ||
| Just so, just like, gripping sad, where you're just like, there's nothing I could ever have done. | ||
| I tried so hard to get him off drugs so many times, you know, and this is like back when I didn't even smoke pot back then. | ||
| I would just like occasionally have a drink, but I was like pretty, like, straight edge. | ||
| I was like, like super obsessed with being successful and working out all the time, and he was my crazy drug addict friend, you know? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I'm so sorry. | ||
| And there is nothing that you can do to save someone else from their own addiction. | ||
| No. | ||
| No, there's nothing you can do. | ||
| I mean, you just hope. | ||
| You hope that one day, like, you know, people, they take turns in life where they say, I'm not doing that anymore. | ||
| I'm not gambling. | ||
| I'm not doing that anymore. | ||
| I'm not doing whatever it is. | ||
| You know, I'm not doing coke. | ||
| Whatever the fuck it is. | ||
| Sometimes people just stay, they just hit these plateaus and then they're done with it, you know? | ||
| I always hoped. | ||
| And I always hoped. | ||
| I always hoped that he would just one day go, I'm done. | ||
| I'm going to get my shit together, you know? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And there's no predicting who's going to get it and who's not. | ||
| There are people who go in and out of recovery and then one day it clicks. | ||
| My dad was quitting stuff for my whole life and... | ||
| And eventually got sober in jail when I was 12 and was sober for the rest of my life. | ||
| He was sober for the next 12 years until he died when I was 24. And I don't think that anyone ever really expected him to stop drinking, you know? | ||
| So it's like worth having hope for people, but also... | ||
| My mom didn't argue him into finally quitting drinking. | ||
| I didn't beg him into finally quitting drinking. | ||
| Nobody convinced him except for his own misery of losing his family and then being in jail. | ||
| You used to party hard. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| What made you... | ||
| Do you think it's a genetic thing? | ||
| Yeah, I do. | ||
| I think it's a genetic thing. | ||
| I think that there also can be an environmental component. | ||
| I know that some things that I liked about it were it made me feel comfortable talking to people. | ||
| Crowds have always been kind of draining for me, large crowds, especially if it's like people I don't know. | ||
| Um, and I felt like I could talk to guys for the first time when I started drinking, but then I couldn't stop drinking once I started drinking, so I would be, like, laid out on a bathroom floor with the guys I liked, like, stepping over me to pee, you know? | ||
| It just got real... | ||
| That's how it always went! | ||
| I'd feel... | ||
| There'd be like a moment in the night where I was like, oh yeah, I'm fucking hot. | ||
| And then I'd have like throw up in my ear and be fucking pissing someone's futon. | ||
| So it just was always real rough and there was a period of time for like years where I woke up and started drinking and drank all day and was a blackout drinker every night. | ||
| And then I actually had a boyfriend and I I quit drinking for him and then I started again and it just was always like it always went back to the same place like I tried quitting I tried quitting every year since I started. | ||
| I started drinking pretty much daily when I was 17 and then got sober when I was 29 and haven't had a drink or a drug since. | ||
| But my bottom wasn't when I stopped. | ||
| When I stopped was just when I was done. | ||
| It's an interesting thing. | ||
| But my last drink was actually just like a couple sips of a friend's beer. | ||
| And then I just was like... | ||
| Something clicked and I knew I couldn't do it by myself. | ||
| And I was willing to accept help. | ||
| I was willing to do anything. | ||
| I was willing to do whatever it took. | ||
| And so I did. | ||
| I got help. | ||
| It was free. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What year was this around? | |
| January 21st, 2014. Wow. | ||
| You know it by the day. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's great. | ||
| I only have like a, other than the birth of my children in my head like that, I have like the day I started comedy, the day I was married, that kind of shit. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But that's a big one. | ||
| I don't know when I started comedy and I don't know when you got married, but that's my date. | ||
| I started comedy August 27, 1988. And I think back to that day all the time because I almost pussied out. | ||
| Wow, yeah, me too. | ||
| Do you almost buzz it out? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| What happened with you? | ||
| I called... | ||
| You had to call the comedy club ahead of time to ask for a spot. | ||
| Which comedy club? | ||
| The Comedy Cafe in Milwaukee. | ||
| I don't think it's with us any longer. | ||
| I think it has passed away. | ||
| But... | ||
| Yeah, you called ahead of time to get a spot on the open mic, and then you could do a set for five to seven minutes. | ||
| And so I typed my set out word for word on the computer, practiced it in front of a full-length mirror a million times, and wanted to cancel. | ||
| But I would have had to cancel to cancel, and I'm not a bitch, so I did it. | ||
| You were drinking back then? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Oh yeah. | ||
| Yeah, I used to go on stage blackout drunk. | ||
| I would not have any of the success that I have right now if I hadn't stopped drinking because I would blackout. | ||
| And yeah, I went on and I told my jokes, and some of them hit and some of them didn't, but I got the fix. | ||
| I got that feeling of telling a joke to a room full of people and having them laugh at it, and I've been hooked ever since. | ||
| How did you remember your material if you were blackout drunk? | ||
| I wasn't blackout drunk at that moment. | ||
| Oh, other times? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| And sometimes I didn't. | ||
| I mean, I fucked up a lot, you know? | ||
| There were times where I, like, went on stage and I would repeat my jokes that I had just said. | ||
| I would ask my friends, like, how did my set go? | ||
| And they'd be like, you are shit-faced, you know? | ||
| Like, you're drunk. | ||
| It looked like you were really drunk, you know? | ||
| I knew, generally, if I couldn't remember it, that it probably wasn't that good. | ||
| Generally? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Generally, I'm like, well... | ||
| But I mean, that's like the difference between then and now. | ||
| And it's like what you were talking about. | ||
| Now, if you have an opportunity, you make the most of it. | ||
| Now, if I have an opportunity, I make the most of it. | ||
| I show up early. | ||
| I'm polite and professional. | ||
| And like, nobody wets their pants. | ||
| And I maybe get another shot of the thing later. | ||
| You know, you get to move on to like the next level on to the next step. | ||
| Back then, I remember in Milwaukee, there was a headliner who thought I was funny and wanted to see if he wanted to bring me on the road. | ||
| And so he got me a feature set at a show, a one-nighter. | ||
| And I went and did it and got blackout drunk and don't remember anything he said to me on the ride home, but I do know he never brought me on the road with him. | ||
| You know? | ||
| Like, I know I'm not on tour with him right now. | ||
| Is he on tour? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I don't think I've spoken to him since. | ||
| Maybe he'll see this. | ||
| Maybe he will. | ||
| His name was James Irvin Barry. | ||
| All right, James Urban Barry. | ||
| He was very nice. | ||
| I was very drunk. | ||
| It was not his fault. | ||
| It's a weird thing, that genetic propensity for alcoholism, because I've seen it in people where their parents are drunks and they just can't fucking help it. | ||
| I've seen it. | ||
| And some people like to think that it's all willpower, but I'm not so sure. | ||
| I don't have that thing. | ||
| I can have a drink or two and I can not drink for a month. | ||
| It doesn't bother me. | ||
| But I've seen it. | ||
| Where, like, one drink and then they get fucking shark eyes. | ||
| It's like, plink! | ||
| They flip over. | ||
| Like, you know, gerbils? | ||
| You ever look in a gerbil's eye? | ||
| No, I never looked in a gerbil's eye. | ||
| Look in their eyes. | ||
| They're dead. | ||
| They're dead eyes. | ||
| Like, some people, their eyes just black out. | ||
| They get glazed over. | ||
| And they're not there anymore. | ||
| Oh, Charles's not here anymore. | ||
| Charles is gone. | ||
| Now this fucking shark boy. | ||
| Their eyes just glass over. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, I was never there when it happened, but that's exactly how my friends describe me. | ||
| They'd be like, I looked at you last night and you weren't there. | ||
| That's exactly how they describe me. | ||
| It's what it seems like when someone's blacked out drunk. | ||
| It's such a weird thing. | ||
| Some human beings, like, for whatever it is, with alcohol, it sinks. | ||
| Like, that was always, like, the big problem with Native Americans. | ||
| They would give them alcohol. | ||
| And Rhonda Patrick was explaining, Dr. Rhonda Patrick was explaining this to me, that there's actually a gene. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And that some folks, depending upon their ancestry, if their ancestors grew up without alcohol, they would have no protection from... | ||
| Is that true? | ||
| Fun enough that's true. | ||
| That is true. | ||
| Is that right? | ||
| It seems like I'm bullshitting. | ||
| I always have to pause. | ||
| That is true. | ||
| And I believe it's less of an enzyme that your liver produces that helps you process alcohol. | ||
| Women have less of it as well. | ||
| But Native Americans, yes. | ||
| Yeah, because they didn't have that as a part of their ritual. | ||
| So it's for thousands of years. | ||
| Oh, it's this thing. | ||
| That's what it is. | ||
| Even though you can hear me, I can't hear me. | ||
| It's this fucking... | ||
| Hello. | ||
| Hello. | ||
| Jamie, this thing's a piece of shit. | ||
| Do we have another headset? | ||
| You want this? | ||
| Yeah, let me try that one. | ||
| Oh, there it goes. | ||
| It came back. | ||
| I think it's probably this little deck more than it is the headset itself. | ||
| Yeah, it's a weird one. | ||
| It's a weird pot too. | ||
| I've seen some people, they smoke pot and they just lose their fucking marbles. | ||
| There's this guy named Alex Berenson. | ||
| He wrote a book called Tell Your Children. | ||
| And I had him on with this guy who's a cannabis doctor from Canada, Mike Hart. | ||
| And they were debating whether or not cannabis is... | ||
| Tell Your Children is basically about some people, when they smoke marijuana, have psychotic breaks and schizophrenic episodes. | ||
| And I've seen it. | ||
| I know people that have lost their fucking marbles with weed. | ||
| And I know at least one guy whose whole life went on a downward spiral after Joey Diaz gave him an edible. | ||
| Like, legitimately. | ||
| On the podcast, by the way. | ||
| But he has crazy edibles. | ||
| I don't even feel like that's fair to edibles because I hear him talk about the milligrams and I see normal people's reactions to it. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| I've taken his edibles. | ||
| He like tricks people into taking them, doesn't he? | ||
| Oh, yeah, yeah. | ||
| He lies about what the dosage is. | ||
| He's such a savage. | ||
| He's such an interesting person. | ||
| He would take an edible that's 500 milligrams and he would take it out of the wrapper and put it in a wrapper that's 50 milligrams. | ||
| It's so rude. | ||
| It's so rude. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's so fucked up. | |
| That would ruin someone's like, he's done it, he did it to Tom on like an airplane, didn't he? | ||
| Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| Tom was so mad at him. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I want to start drugging people. | ||
| That's funny. | ||
| It's only funny when it's Joey. | ||
| You'd have to go along with it. | ||
| You don't think I could pull it off? | ||
| You definitely could pull it off. | ||
| But I'm just saying, if you're not doing the drugs yourself, the thing about Joey is he's doing the same dose. | ||
| He's dosing you, but he's also taking exactly what you're taking and more. | ||
| I think I could pull it off more because I don't do drugs because anytime I get like a gift box from a weed company, I give it to my friends and I feel like I could easily be like, oh here and have one that says it's like 10 milligrams and like ruin Frank Castillo's week. | ||
| Yes, you could. | ||
| Frank could probably take it. | ||
| Steve. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Frank Castillo could take it though. | ||
| He knows how to smoke some weed. | ||
| I know he smokes a lot of weed. | ||
| He could put it away. | ||
| He'll be alright. | ||
| I don't know if he could put it away without making a fool out of himself. | ||
| He smokes a lot of weed, but he also will not be able to process anything that you're... | ||
| He doesn't wear it well. | ||
| He doesn't wear it like a gentleman. | ||
| I'll say that. | ||
| Wear it like a gentleman. | ||
| Yeah, Joey... | ||
| The thing about Joey is, though, it's not just dosing you. | ||
| He'll dose himself. | ||
| Like, he takes what you're taking. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Like... | |
| Yeah, but he's built like a brick house. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| I mean, he... | ||
| Yeah, he's 300 pounds. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Call me the other day, Joe, I'm down to 290. Congratulations! | |
| Ha ha ha ha! | ||
| But he could, just all that mass, he could put away some fucking Chibichus and those stars of death. | ||
| Those are 250 milligrams. | ||
| That's a big dose. | ||
| And he would just down two, three of them. | ||
| I've seen it. | ||
| It's like shocking. | ||
| I've seen him eat three of them. | ||
| And you're like, you get nervous. | ||
| I gotta get out of here. | ||
| Isn't like 10 milligrams a respectable dose? | ||
| Or like 30? | ||
| For a pussy. | ||
| Isn't that like the normal range for someone who's got a family and is trying to fuck his wife on a Friday night? | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Like a normal person. | ||
| Yeah, if you don't... | ||
| He's not normal. | ||
| Joey's not normal. | ||
| But the thing we always would do is get dosed up when we get on planes. | ||
| Getting on planes, getting high was always the real way to go. | ||
| Dude, your material about getting high and going to the airport and flying gives me panic attacks. | ||
| It's so true! | ||
| There's nothing I would less want to do than be fucked up at an airport. | ||
| But that's the point. | ||
| The point is it makes it an adventure. | ||
| So instead of it being this boring thing that you have to do, now you're barely keeping it together. | ||
| It's like trying to walk a tightrope while you're blindfolded, with one eye blindfolded, and one arm's tied behind your back, and you've got a fucking splinter in your foot. | ||
| I'm never bored at the airport. | ||
| I'm always overstimulated at the airport. | ||
| I'm always overwhelmed. | ||
| There are so many people doing so many different things from so many walks of life. | ||
| There's so much going on. | ||
| You've got to be alert. | ||
| You have to be alert? | ||
| You've got to go through the lines and stuff. | ||
| People tell you what to do. | ||
| There's very little margin for error before a TSA agent will correct your behavior. | ||
| That's why it's fun to be stupid high when you're doing that because you have to keep it together. | ||
| But one time, me and Duncan, we were going to film a television show, and we got fucking obliterated. | ||
| Same thing, ate giant edibles, went to the airport, totally missed our flight. | ||
| We were talking. | ||
| Me and Duncan, we could talk for hours. | ||
| Me and Duncan were just sitting there in the airport, and then we realized, dude, when's our flight? | ||
| And we looked up, and our flight had already left. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No! | |
| Our flight was claw gone! | ||
| That's so stupid. | ||
| It's just a classic stoner move. | ||
| So we had to take another flight. | ||
| We flew all night. | ||
| And then we went to work in the morning with no sleep. | ||
| We had to film the show with zero sleep. | ||
| And the show that we were filming was about the Center for Disease Control in Galveston, Texas. | ||
| So we're down in Galveston. | ||
| Like, still high. | ||
| Right? | ||
| Like, no sleep at all. | ||
| Trying to stay awake. | ||
| Drinking coffee. | ||
| Talking to this guy who's telling us everyone's going to die. | ||
| So this guy was talking to us about... | ||
| We were talking about weaponized diseases. | ||
| And his, essentially, the guy at the Center for Disease Control was telling us, it's not weaponized diseases I'm concerned with. | ||
| It's live. | ||
| It's just viruses mutating and jumping from livestock to people. | ||
| And he's explaining that to us. | ||
| And we were so high. | ||
| And then we were in this building where they were working with Ebola and all these... | ||
| I mean, the Center for Disease Control at Galveston, they work with some of the worst hemorrhagic viruses and all these... | ||
| Terrifying diseases. | ||
| They're all in this fucking building in Texas. | ||
| And they have these crazy ventilation systems and people are in spacesuits and they're walking around dealing with these things. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's all down there. | ||
| So here's Duncan and I. Missed our flight. | ||
| High as fuck. | ||
| Wandering around Galveston. | ||
| Next to a vial of Ebola. | ||
| Trying to stay awake. | ||
| Listen to this guy talking about how everyone's going to die. | ||
| I'm like... | ||
| What makes that story, like, just get funnier and funnier the longer I picture it is thinking about how many times they say the name of the fucking flight in the airport before it They announced that we're going to start boarding to Galveston. | ||
| Boarding has started to Galveston. | ||
| We're pre-boarding to Galveston. | ||
| Now first class to Galveston. | ||
| They say the name of the flight 20 times. | ||
| How did neither one of you hear it that many times? | ||
| It's worse. | ||
| Jamie is right where the gate was. | ||
| We weren't far away. | ||
| We were right there. | ||
| We were just talking. | ||
| Dude, did you see this thing? | ||
| Like, Duncan's telling me about some documentary he saw. | ||
| Why didn't anyone prod you? | ||
| It was just us. | ||
| We didn't have, like, people that were going with us. | ||
| But I mean, someone working at the gate. | ||
| Nope. | ||
| No one working at the gate gave a fuck about us. | ||
| By the time I went to the lady, that flight's long gone. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Shit! | |
| She's like, not only did it leave, it left two hours. | ||
| We've also boarded and a different flight left. | ||
| Yes, we had to fly to Houston and then we had to drive from Houston to Galveston. | ||
| It was a disaster. | ||
| It was hilarious though. | ||
| But it's funnier that way to think about it. | ||
| Just think about how ridiculous it was. | ||
| How far is Houston to Galveston? | ||
| I don't remember. | ||
| I want to picture every part of this process. | ||
| You renting a car, one of your high asses driving it in the middle of the fucking night. | ||
| Yeah, I think by the time we got there we probably weren't too high. | ||
| We're definitely a little high. | ||
| But we tried to sleep on the plane. | ||
| Maybe we had like 30 minutes of sleeping in the hotel or something like that when we got there. | ||
| But not much. | ||
| It was a disaster. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| That's one of the reasons why people think pot's bad for you. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Because they miss flights, because you get forgetful. | ||
| When I would get high, and I used to get high every day, even though it gave me horrible panic attacks. | ||
| horrible panic attacks gave me panic panic attacks and it gave me puke burps and I would smoke with like the guy I had a crush on like the guys I had a crush on and would get high as hell would be so aware of like every molecule of my body would be so self-conscious and then would start like deeply belching and the guy's like oh what the fuck It was fucking hell. | ||
| I would drive and I would go 14 miles an hour. | ||
| I would stop at a stop sign for half an hour. | ||
| I just couldn't be sure of the distance. | ||
| And I was like, well, maybe that car is far away. | ||
| Maybe it's close. | ||
| Your guess is as good as mine. | ||
| But I do know that I would rather wait for it to pass than go now and have it hit me. | ||
| I just couldn't tell. | ||
| Oh my god, it was... | ||
| It was hard. | ||
| It made life really hard. | ||
| Puke burps. | ||
| That's not good. | ||
| And mints don't cover that up either. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Deep. | |
| Basie. | ||
| Mortifying. | ||
| All the time. | ||
| All the time. | ||
| Was it a weird adjustment? | ||
| Becoming sober? | ||
| It was like pretty immediately awesome. | ||
| I didn't realize how hard it was to maintain like a lifestyle of active addiction for as long as I did. | ||
| Man, it was just a load off to stop having to be fucked up 100% of the time. | ||
| It really was. | ||
| So your body just bounced right back. | ||
| I don't know about my body. | ||
| My relationship with stand-up changed a lot. | ||
| Before I would go on stage, I would try to drink as much as I could fit in myself because I was so nervous. | ||
| Now I just get nervous. | ||
| It never made the nerves go away. | ||
| It just made me be nervous that I was going to look drunk. | ||
| So I was still nervous when I went out, but I was like, I hope I don't look fucked up. | ||
| And now I'm just nervous. | ||
| It's weird because I have really bad stage fright, but I also... | ||
| I don't care that much. | ||
| I'm just so used to it that I just walk through it and I'm just like, oh, this is the part of my lizard brain that makes my heart pound out of my chest as if I'm gonna go to war right now. | ||
| It's such a weird nervousness too. | ||
| I think I like it. | ||
| I hate it. | ||
| I feel sick. | ||
| I get dizzy. | ||
| But I think I'm addicted to it. | ||
| Because my resting heart rate is 47. Really? | ||
| Is that low? | ||
| Yeah, it's really low. | ||
| Has it always been that low? | ||
| No, it's low now that I'm in shape. | ||
| And if I work out, I can get it up to like 100. When I'm working out, it's around 100. Wow. | ||
| When I go on stage, it will go up to 140. And so on my Fitbit, you can see like a spike. | ||
| Like you could look at the chart and you would know what nights I had shows. | ||
| You would know how many sets I did. | ||
| It just like, yeah, my heart pounds out of my chest. | ||
| I think you get addicted to overcoming it. | ||
| Like the feeling of elation when it's over and you do well. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So there's like those three highs. | ||
| There's like the high before you go up, which I feel like I'm going to be sick. | ||
| I only know that I'm not going to throw up or faint because it hasn't happened. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And then there's the high of, like, being on stage and it going well. | ||
| And then there's the high after of, like, the relief and of having had a good set. | ||
| And that, I think, is... | ||
| I like the one on stage and I really like the one after, too. | ||
| Yeah, it's... | ||
| It doesn't go away. | ||
| Do you still get nervous? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You don't... | ||
| I've never noticed that. | ||
| You've never seemed nervous to me. | ||
| I can handle it. | ||
| I know what the feeling is. | ||
| I can't handle it. | ||
| I know what the feeling is. | ||
| If I hadn't done the work, though, like if I'm not prepared, I've had shows where I kind of just sort of showed up and went on stage. | ||
| It was not good. | ||
| The difference between having an hour or two to go over my material and think about what I'm going to do, you don't have to do that, right? | ||
| But if you do that, you definitely feel better and your performance improves. | ||
| Shows it. | ||
| And those are the nights where new material gets born. | ||
| When I go, I like spend a couple of hours and go over my notes and really, not just write, but go over what I'm going to do. | ||
| Like there's different stages, right? | ||
| There's like writing new stuff, but then there's also going over your stuff. | ||
| Like sitting there and going, oh, I haven't done that one in a while. | ||
| Like, oh yeah, ooh, that will tie into this. | ||
| And then sometimes, like if I have a big show, like an arena, when I do arenas, I write my shit out. | ||
| So I'll get there way early, and I have index cards, and I write out bits, and I'll write out key parts of the bits. | ||
| I'll go over my whole fucking act. | ||
| I'll be there for an hour and a half writing on index cards. | ||
| So that way, like, I got it drilled into my head. | ||
| Even though I've done this set hundreds of times, or at least a hundred, you know, whatever. | ||
| I'm in shape comedy-wise. | ||
| I'm ready. | ||
| I still, I want to be super fucking ready. | ||
| I want to be warmed up, ready to go. | ||
| Yeah, and that's so soothing to me. | ||
| What I'll do when I'm at a show, just before I go up when I'm nervous, I'll write out my set list and I'll do it over and over. | ||
| If I don't have anything else I need to write, I'll just keep writing it because it helps me memorize and it also calms me down. | ||
| It makes me feel like I'm doing something. | ||
| My very low, like, manageable, easy action, low bar goal that I set for myself is 30 minutes of writing stand-up a day. | ||
| Because if you do that, like, that's a new hour a year. | ||
| Because 30 minutes a day is, if we say, like, three pages, three times seven, 21 pages a week. | ||
| And I'm talking about my, like, double-spaced notebook pages. | ||
| And usually in a half an hour, I can crank out six. | ||
| So three is, like, being very conservative. | ||
| That's 21 pages a week. | ||
| Times 52 weeks. | ||
| That means that just like 1 20th of what I write has to be usable on stage. | ||
| 1 20th. | ||
| And that's about what it is. | ||
| I would say about a 20th of what I write is usable long term on stage. | ||
| Most of what I write gets thrown out. | ||
| Burr said once, five minutes a week. | ||
| Or five minutes a month, rather. | ||
| If you do five minutes a month, you've got an hour in a year. | ||
| Yeah, so that's about a minute a week. | ||
| If you look at it that way, you're like, oh, yeah, that's doable. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's totally doable. | ||
| It's totally doable. | ||
| But how many people don't even do that? | ||
| Yeah, everybody doesn't. | ||
| That's the thing. | ||
| The problem with comedy is that no one tells you that you have to do stuff. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Like, comics are their own boss because they really can't not be their own boss because most of us are dysfunctional. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But the problem with that is, like, you're not a good boss of yourself. | ||
| Right. | ||
| If you're a good boss, you'd be like, hey, you fuck. | ||
| This is your project. | ||
| Get it done. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Or you're fired. | ||
| You're fired, Jetson. | ||
| A lot of us flunked out of school. | ||
| A lot of us were class clowns. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| And it is such a simple thing. | ||
| I also think that we're like impatient. | ||
| And part of the writing is like, I set a timer for myself. | ||
| And then if I'm like on a roll, if I'm working on something and I'm enjoying, I'll certainly work longer than 30 minutes. | ||
| That's just to get me seated with my notebook and a pen in front of me. | ||
| But when I do that, then a lot of that time is spent just me staring off into space trying to think of something to say. | ||
| A lot of it is spent just doing free association writing. | ||
| It's not all spent writing a juicy, great new bit. | ||
| And I think that comedians... | ||
| They dread writing because they don't want to deal with writing shit and they don't want to deal with staring off into space not being able to think of anything so they try to think of something before they sit down to write and that's not what works for me personally. | ||
| And they have a laptop so then they just start fucking going on YouTube or watching porn or looking at websites or Louis C.K. told me he has a laptop that's not even connected to the internet. | ||
| That's smart. | ||
| Yeah, the Wi-Fi is disabled. | ||
| That's smart. | ||
| Yeah, I tried to write on a laptop again recently because it just is more efficient and I can't... | ||
| I can't do it. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's too fast. | ||
| I need to be able to slow down because it gives my brain time to think of more things. | ||
| And it's also hard. | ||
| Can you type good with those nails? | ||
| You got some serious nails. | ||
| I can't do jack shit with these nails. | ||
| I've never had nails this long in my life. | ||
| I know. | ||
| They seem odd for you. | ||
| They don't feel right. | ||
| There was a miscommunication with my nail tech. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Really? | |
| And they weren't supposed to look like this. | ||
| Dude, your hands look slimmer. | ||
| That's because my nails are comedically oversized. | ||
| No, but your hands look slimmer, too. | ||
| Like, you haven't just lost weight in your body. | ||
| You've lost weight in your hands. | ||
| I've lost a couple notches on my watch. | ||
| I won't lie to you. | ||
| But it's your hands themselves. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Yeah, I didn't realize I had... | ||
| Such a fat body. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I've lost two inches of height. | |
| I think I lost an inch of fat off the top of my head and an inch of fat off my feet. | ||
| How do you lose height? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Maybe you had fat in between your discs. | ||
| Straighten out your posture. | ||
| I thought I was 5'7". | ||
| I don't know who I was kidding, but then I measured myself. | ||
| Then I got into like a healthy weight range for someone who's 5'7". | ||
| And I was like, I still feel like I'm a little bit fat here. | ||
| And I measured myself and I had 10 more pounds of this. | ||
| I was like, son of a bitch. | ||
| So that was... | ||
| Yeah, I've been 5'5 this whole time. | ||
| What did the nail lady say to you? | ||
| I wonder what my agents think when like, because I definitely was doing slates and saying, Hi, I'm Laura Bites. | ||
| I'm 5'7. | ||
| I'm based in Los Angeles. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And then one day I just started being like, Hi, I'm Laura Bites. | |
| I'm 5'5. | ||
| I'm based in Los Angeles. | ||
| And you're like, what happened? | ||
| I'm like, what happened? | ||
| I shrunk. | ||
| I measured myself. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Yeah, maybe your whole body just shrunk. | ||
| You want to talk more about my nails, you said? | ||
| Yeah, what was the communication error? | ||
| I would like them to be oval and this color. | ||
| And she was like, what length? | ||
| And I said, medium. | ||
| And they're pointy. | ||
| And I would call these long. | ||
| Yeah, but not for a hoe. | ||
| It took... | ||
| I don't know how to take that. | ||
| Well, if you wanted, like... | ||
| I don't want to be a hoe. | ||
| I just wanted to have nice nails. | ||
| But they're fake, right? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Fake nails. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I had to look at them for that long. | ||
| It's a whole prop. | ||
| Yeah, I, you know, I'll tell you what, I got a hair in my eye. | ||
| And you couldn't get it out with the nails? | ||
| I couldn't get it out. | ||
| My friend who took me was like, oh, do you wear contacts? | ||
| Oh shit, those are going to be a bitch to get out. | ||
| And I managed, you know? | ||
| But then I got a hair in my eye, and I was like, am I going to have to, like, call someone? | ||
| Like, I can't get it out. | ||
| I could see it, and I couldn't... | ||
| Yeah, I don't know how... | ||
| Can you put a Q-tip in your eyeball? | ||
| I guess you could. | ||
| That's sketchy. | ||
| I just brushed it with my finger, and then eventually I got it out. | ||
| Yeah, it wasn't... | ||
| Was it an eyelash or an actual hair? | ||
| It was a hair. | ||
| How long was it? | ||
| That long? | ||
| Couldn't it, like, couldn't, wasn't part of it hanging out? | ||
| Where you could just kind of get it? | ||
| If part of it was hanging out, I would have gotten it. | ||
| So the whole hair? | ||
| Yeah, it was, it like wrapped and went up and I was trying to drag it out and it went like more into my eye. | ||
| What were you doing that it got so in your eyeball there? | ||
| I was petting my cat. | ||
| Oh, it's a cat hair. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Oh, that makes sense. | ||
| That makes sense. | ||
| Yeah, that's gonna cost me. | ||
| That's gonna cost me some gentleman admirers. | ||
| Cats? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You think so? | ||
| Yeah, but it was a calculated risk. | ||
| I had no companionship for like months of quarantine, and I was like, I just gotta adopt some cats. | ||
| And honestly, it took a lot of the pressure off, because I was like really wanting a companion, and now I'm like, I'm good. | ||
| I'm good for a while longer. | ||
| I got cats. | ||
| Is that a thing where guys don't like girls with cats? | ||
| I think it's a thing. | ||
| I also have read that 30% of men are allergic to cats. | ||
| And I think that there's definitely like a stereotype of like a single woman with cats. | ||
| I think also a lot of people let the litter box get pissy and their house smells like piss. | ||
| I clean the litter box twice a day. | ||
| Part of my morning routine, part of my bedtime routine. | ||
| Yeah, I believe you. | ||
| I've seen the way you write. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Double spaces. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Very orderly. | ||
| Are you OCD? My dad was, and it's genetic. | ||
| Oh, is it really? | ||
| OCD's genetic? | ||
| Yeah, I haven't been... | ||
| I don't know, because I don't know what it's like to be in a regular person's brain. | ||
| I know that I have tendencies, I'll tell you that. | ||
| I don't know what it's like to be in a regular person's brain. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, I don't know if there are regular people. | ||
| Laura, I don't think that's a real thing. | ||
| I mean, like, without OCD. Oh, okay. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I've never been in another brain. | ||
| Good point. | ||
| So I don't know. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Do you wash your hands incessantly? | ||
| I don't wash my hands incessantly. | ||
| I do think about things that I've touched. | ||
| Although I just pretty much... | ||
| Well, that's the handshake thing, right? | ||
| Yeah, that grosses me out. | ||
| Has it always grossed you out? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Your whole life? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Probably not before I knew what germs were and stuff. | ||
| Although, yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And I don't know what that is. | ||
| I don't know if that's because I'm being touched by another person. | ||
| I don't know if it is the germs. | ||
| I think it's both. | ||
| I think that, especially now, having not shaken hands very much for a while, I think that it is strangely intimate to hold another person's Hand. | ||
| People like touch their penises with their hands. | ||
| That's what I hear. | ||
| That's like so fucked up that you would even expect me to hold that. | ||
| So gross. | ||
| And they probably don't even wash their hands. | ||
| Maybe they do. | ||
| Maybe they don't. | ||
| Even if they do, then they touch a door that was touched by someone who touched their penis and didn't wash their hands. | ||
| And maybe I don't want to touch that. | ||
| So I keep a hand sanitizer in my purse and I'll go for it before I eat. | ||
| I get it. | ||
| Yeah, I'm not too worried about a girl touching her vagina and then touching my hand. | ||
| Well, girls don't touch their vaginas to use the restroom. | ||
| To pee? | ||
| Some of them do. | ||
| They check it. | ||
| No, they don't. | ||
| They open up, look in there. | ||
| No, they don't. | ||
| Put a mirror in front of it. | ||
| Take a picture. | ||
| Send it to their friends. | ||
| That's a separate issue. | ||
| Oh. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Yeah, germs are weird, right? | ||
| It is weird that you can get germs from someone's hands. | ||
| You're touching their body. | ||
| You're literally an ecosystem of germs. | ||
| You touch someone's body and you get... | ||
| I used to never... | ||
| Worry about that like I used to do Shows and after the show shake everyone's hand and take pictures with hundreds of people I would do like I did the Chicago theater It was like hours and hours of people in line taking pictures We were all laughing and just taking pictures of people for hours and just shook everybody's hand Wow, and now you think about that today like God Recipe for so many diseases like how did you not get sick? | ||
| But I think it boosts your immune system. | ||
| Mm-hmm Oh, I'm sorry. | ||
| No, go ahead. | ||
| I would just be so exhausted by that. | ||
| That's such a long time. | ||
| Does that drain you? | ||
| Are you an extrovert? | ||
| Do you feel recharged by that? | ||
| No, I just felt thankful that people would come to the show. | ||
| I stopped doing it, though, because too many really crazy people would come, and it started getting... | ||
| Started getting to the point like, yeah, this could go sideways. | ||
| Yeah, dude, your crazy fans have hit me up, so I can't even imagine what you have seen. | ||
| How'd they hit you up? | ||
| I'm even afraid to say it, because what if they're watching, because they for sure are. | ||
| Okay, you have to say it. | ||
| We'll talk later. | ||
| They've hit me up in my DMs. | ||
| Yeah, for sure. | ||
| And they want me to say stuff to you. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Please don't. | ||
| Don't tell Joe about that time I kissed you in the mouth. | ||
| No, it's like dumb shit. | ||
| It's like they want your number and stuff. | ||
| Like, obviously. | ||
| Well, that's reasonable. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Yeah, it's weird. | ||
| The fan thing is weird. | ||
| You must deal with like, you know, I don't want to say who it is, but there's a girl that used to go to the comedy store that stopped putting her name down on the list because she had this one rabid fucking stalker that wouldn't stop. | ||
| And it made me so angry, you know, that she was so nervous that she had to take her fucking name off of the lineup. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, there's a man there who had to do the same thing. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| God damn. | ||
| But that's a thing, you know? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I hope that that doesn't happen to me, at least for like a long time. | ||
| I hope I get to enjoy some time where that's not that. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Did you ever have people come up to you that say like, I go to all your shows or... | ||
| Yeah, I like it. | ||
| You know, I've just had like sweet fans, you know? | ||
| That's cool. | ||
| Something that has happened that I'm like so tickled by and confused and is so weird to me is like... | ||
| There have been guys who have seen me and are too nervous to ask me for a picture, or are too nervous. | ||
| There have been two now, so not a ton, but where they're too nervous to talk to me. | ||
| And one of them I saw, and the other one told me at a later show that he stood and was ready to introduce himself, but then got too nervous. | ||
| And the idea that people would be too nervous to meet me is very flattering to me at this point. | ||
| It's way better than the forced kiss, though. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, I've had crazy shit happen. | ||
| I had someone grab my stomach. | ||
| I was drugged at a show. | ||
| What? | ||
| I was roofied while working a club. | ||
| When you were sober? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Whoa. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Where was this? | ||
| It rhymes with crappers. | ||
| Crappers. | ||
| Oh, in Burbank? | ||
| Holy shit! | ||
| Yeah, dude. | ||
| It was gnarly. | ||
| How long ago? | ||
| It was two years ago, maybe three. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Time is weird now. | ||
| Two or three years ago. | ||
| Yeah, I was like, fine. | ||
| And I was in the green room. | ||
| Do you have any idea who did it? | ||
| I have no idea who did it. | ||
| And I even called to see if they had because they have what looks like a surveillance camera in the green room. | ||
| And I called to see if they would like check the footage. | ||
| And she said that that's the one that's like not hooked up. | ||
| Oh, great. | ||
| Mm-hmm. | ||
| She said that famous people felt it was too intrusive, so they disconnected it. | ||
| And she wasn't like, but we'll reconnect it because I totally give a shit. | ||
| She gave me the third degree. | ||
| She was just like, you have no idea who did it? | ||
| Well, if it was me, I would want to know. | ||
| So you have no idea. | ||
| Did you accept any drinks from anyone? | ||
|
unidentified
|
God damn. | |
| Yeah, one of the comics got me a Diet Coke because he was going to get himself a Coke and I asked him if he would get me a Diet Coke and then hours later this happened. | ||
| Like, he didn't drug me. | ||
| It wasn't one of the comics, you know. | ||
| I mean, I don't know. | ||
| I don't know who it was, but it was... | ||
| I went in like a second from being totally fine to being on drugs. | ||
| Like, I know what it feels like to be on drugs. | ||
| I fucking love being on drugs. | ||
| And I actually had a great night besides... | ||
| How violated I felt. | ||
| Because I was like four years sober at that point. | ||
| And I was just like, dude, I went home. | ||
| I stayed up until three o'clock in the morning with my roommate. | ||
| I like ate ice cream and laughed on the balcony. | ||
| I had the time of my life. | ||
| I was like, how did I ever stop doing drugs? | ||
| This is fucking awesome. | ||
| It felt like opiates. | ||
| And yeah, and then the next day... | ||
| Are you sure it was a roofie? | ||
| Did you get tested? | ||
| No, I didn't get tested. | ||
| And the next day I had a hangover for over 48 hours. | ||
| Are you sure it wasn't ecstasy or molly? | ||
| I have no idea what it was. | ||
| Why do you think it's a roofie though? | ||
| Because I did some Googling and the date rape drugs, it's the most common ones feel like painkillers. | ||
| And I've only ever taken two pills of Vicodin for my hand. | ||
| How was your hand? | ||
| My hand's great. | ||
| Yeah, this was before. | ||
| This was one of my failed surgeries. | ||
| And it felt like that. | ||
| It felt like those two pills of Vicodin. | ||
| So it felt like a painkiller. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And that's supposedly what roofies are like. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And it didn't feel like ecstasy. | ||
| Have you done ecstasy? | ||
| Yeah, I've done ecstasy. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| No, it didn't feel like ecstasy. | ||
| My experience with ecstasy is I felt like hot and then I felt cold and I felt really cool. | ||
| I felt like I was so cool. | ||
| And I didn't feel like I was so cool on this. | ||
| I just felt like cool daddy. | ||
| I felt like I was cool. | ||
| I felt like I looked cool walking. | ||
| I thought roofies make you not know where you are or what you're doing. | ||
| I mean, I don't know. | ||
| And I also think that roofies interact with alcohol. | ||
| And I think that I did not have any alcohol in my system. | ||
| So I think that that's why I was fine. | ||
| I think that's why I was able to stay up. | ||
| I also don't know what the dose was. | ||
| I was a bigger girl. | ||
| I might have not finished my drink. | ||
| I mean, you know, there's all kinds of stuff. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| That's kind of crazy that someone is running around just dosing comedians. | ||
| It's actually happened to a lot of people. | ||
| Because I had some bits about it that I was doing for a while. | ||
| And I had a lot of people come up to me and tell me that they'd had the same thing happen. | ||
| Men and women. | ||
| Yeah, I've talked to guys and girls that have said they've been dosed. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, it's spooky. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, I know men who have been raped with the date rape drug. | ||
| By a guy or girl? | ||
| By a girl. | ||
| Hmm, did they really though? | ||
| I mean, I think so. | ||
| If they had a drink and don't remember what happened after that and woke up naked next to a fucking crazy chick who did the same thing to their friends. | ||
| Oh. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| So she just does it to people? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| I don't understand. | ||
| You think girls don't have to do that. | ||
| How it works anyway. | ||
| Unless someone's mentally ill and it's a control thing and it's a power thing and it's because the person has no control or no power. | ||
| I totally believe it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Because also, I mean, why would they make that up? | ||
| Why would a guy, you know, why would a guy make that up? | ||
| People make things up. | ||
| Maybe he's just trying to commiserate with you. | ||
| I hadn't told him this. | ||
| Oh, so he told you first? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And then you're like, well, guess what happened to me? | ||
| No. | ||
| I don't remember my story in any way in relation to his story. | ||
| Let's find out what the effects of, is it Rohypnol? | ||
| How do you say it? | ||
| Rohypnol. | ||
| Rohypnol? | ||
| Let's find out what the effects are. | ||
| Can I run and use the restroom? | ||
| Oh, hell yeah. | ||
| Okay, cool. | ||
| Want to take your headphones off first? | ||
| Yeah, I'm good. | ||
| You know where it is, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Okay. | ||
| What's it got? | ||
| You ever been roofied, Jamie? | ||
| I don't think so. | ||
| You probably wouldn't even notice it. | ||
| No. | ||
| If somebody tried to dose you with weed, it'd be their fucking loss. | ||
| It'd be a waste of money. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Ha ha. | |
| You'd be like, ha ha. | ||
| For people who don't know, Jamie is impervious to edibles for whatever reason. | ||
| He can get high if he smokes weed. | ||
| But you've eaten about a thousand milligrams at one point in time? | ||
| According to the last time I brought this up, I may lack... | ||
| Our WebMDs in my DMs told me I may lack an enzyme of some sort in my liver. | ||
| I may want to try... | ||
| Crack? | ||
| Something to bond it to. | ||
| Sort of like vitamin D needs something. | ||
| Maybe that goes into lacking something. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Do you miss it? | ||
| I've heard the stories of you and everyone saying what happens to them when they've eaten X. I'm like, hmm, weed doesn't do that to me. | ||
| I wonder what that's like. | ||
| Let's see. | ||
| And I just am like, I don't feel anything. | ||
| Heavy doses of weed might as well be acid. | ||
| It's like, I mean, without the visuals, it's a heavy psychedelic. | ||
| You know what it does? | ||
| If you close your eyes. | ||
| Like, a heavy dose of weed, when you close your eyes, you have like a light show. | ||
| Like this crazy, for me, I always describe it as like, I've seen neon cartoons fucking. | ||
| One time, I remember I took an edible and went on a plane, and I closed my eyes, and I was just watching this cartoon play out. | ||
| It was like old-timey, early Mickey Mouse days kind of cartoons, but they were neon, and everyone was fucking. | ||
| All the cartoons were fucking. | ||
| Dogs were fucking people. | ||
| People were fucking mice. | ||
| Completely different than your description of DMT, obviously. | ||
| Yeah, way different. | ||
| Is it different than mushrooms, then? | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| For me, mushrooms have always been... | ||
| I see iconic imagery. | ||
| I see pyramids and Mayan ruins and hieroglyphs and shit like that. | ||
| And weird visualizations and geometric patterns. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I always feel like I can see the fiber of life appearing before me. | ||
| It shows me some key... | ||
| You know how when you would play Quake, I don't know if you ever played it before, where you turned off all the textures? | ||
| Did you ever do that? | ||
| Yeah, if people didn't do it, it's Chanel. | ||
| You know how guys like will make maps and you could go to the like especially like Quake 2 and Quake 3 Quake 2 in particular you could go and see how they were making the maps and it's almost like oh you see the structure of everything it's like when I've taken mushrooms there's been times where I thought I had a better understanding of the structure Of the things that I was seeing. | ||
| Whether it's people or buildings or even outside and trees and everything just like looked, I understood it more. | ||
| Like I could see it more. | ||
| I don't get that with weed. | ||
| With edible weed I just get this like Bizarre exposure to reality like really bizarre like all like hyper aware of all of my vulnerabilities hyper aware of Of everything hyper aware of just so that one time I went did 1300 milligrams. | ||
| I was at a concert where 1300. It's so hard. | ||
| You were in a dome and there were visuals like you're explaining. | ||
| Maybe that would have done something. | ||
| But I do remember a very specific moment during it. | ||
| I was focusing on something in the background of the music. | ||
| And I was asking all my friends, do you hear that? | ||
| And they're like, what the fuck are you talking about? | ||
| I'm like... | ||
| There's a sample in the background there. | ||
| It's like a melody I've heard when I was younger or something. | ||
| I was freaking out. | ||
| I was like, no one hears this? | ||
| And then for three, four, five months before that song ever came out fully, I could never hear it again, and I always wondered. | ||
| Then I finally figured out what it was, and it was like this sample from the fabulous Johnson Brothers or something. | ||
| Oh, and it's like way behind. | ||
| It's like deep in the background of the music. | ||
| I just heard it. | ||
| The layers of sound that they put together with some songs. | ||
| It's like you don't fully appreciate it until you hear it breaking, pulled apart. | ||
| There's some cool videos some young DJs have made on TikTok. | ||
| Oh, she's probably locked out. | ||
| Did you get locked out? | ||
| Yeah, she shut the door too, if I just realized. | ||
| Doing that, showing how Drake's producer has taken this Whitney Houston four-second sample, reversed it, pitched it up really high, and then they slowly fade into the song you recognize. | ||
| You're like, I never knew that was Whitney Houston. | ||
| How would I have ever gotten there? | ||
| But they show you in like 30 seconds. | ||
| It's really cool. | ||
| We're talking about music, man. | ||
| Cool. | ||
| Here's the rohyphenol stuff, just so she's back. | ||
| Side effects. | ||
| What is rohyphenol? | ||
| Why is rohyphenol called a date rape drug? | ||
| Amnesia is an expected pharmacological effect of benzodiazepines. | ||
| Oh, rohyphenol is a benzodiazepine? | ||
| Rohypnol causes partial amnesia. | ||
| Individuals are unable to remember certain events that they experience while under the influence of the drug. | ||
| However, this effect is particularly dangerous when Rohypnol is used illicitly to aid in sexual assault. | ||
| Victims may not be able to clearly recall the assault of the assailant. | ||
| How is it taken? | ||
| It can be taken by mouth? | ||
| Whole tablet? | ||
| Rohyphnol is not approved for medical use or manufactured in the United States and it's not available legally. | ||
| Really? | ||
| So, maybe it wasn't that. | ||
| Because it says it causes amnesia. | ||
| Maybe someone did give you a painkiller. | ||
| Yeah, I really don't know. | ||
| Somebody dosed you. | ||
| Okay, drowsiness, sleep, dizziness, loss of motor control, decreased reaction time, impaired judgment, lack of coordination, slurred speech, confusion, aggression or excitability, loss of memory of events while under the influence, stomach disturbances, respiratory depression at higher dosage. | ||
| Yeah, I experienced zero of those. | ||
| But aren't there, if you look it up, aren't there other things that people drug people with? | ||
| Well, it sounds like a painkiller if you've had painkillers and it was like when you were on a painkiller. | ||
| Yeah, that seems like a really reasonable way to connect the dots. | ||
| Yeah, because I think that's the whole reason why assholes give it to people. | ||
| It's because they can't remember anything. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, I was talking about, like, being sober in my set, and so I wondered if someone was just fucking with me. | ||
| I didn't feel like, I mean, I know that I wouldn't know, but I didn't feel like anyone was targeting me to, like, rape me because... | ||
| They were ineffective. | ||
| Yeah, they were ineffective. | ||
| Yeah, maybe. | ||
| I just went and got my check. | ||
| I called my friend and was like, I need you to pick me up right now. | ||
| And then I got my check. | ||
| But you stayed awake. | ||
| And then I got picked up. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| See, that's the thing. | ||
| You stayed awake and you remember it. | ||
| What do I know? | ||
| But I've never... | ||
| The only painkillers I've ever taken is I had knee surgery and I got a morphine drip when I was in the hospital. | ||
| Damn, that sounds awesome. | ||
| It was wild. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Because you could just hammer it anytime you want. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. | ||
| And just... | ||
| I've seen my mom on morphine and it looks like a good time. | ||
| I mean, she had had surgery. | ||
| She wasn't just like on the couch. | ||
| Yeah, me too. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I was on this perpetual motion machine because it was ACL surgery. | ||
| So they want you to keep your knee moving. | ||
| So it straightens your knee and straightens it out and bends it and straightens it out. | ||
| And it's just constantly going... | ||
| While I'm in bed, post-surgery, throbbing, just... | ||
| Hammering that morphine thing. | ||
| It's pretty wild. | ||
| I've done that. | ||
| But I had another knee surgery, and they gave me something. | ||
| It was either Vicodin's or Percocet's. | ||
| I can't remember, but I took one, and I felt so stupid. | ||
| I was like, I'd rather be in pain. | ||
| This does not react well with me at all. | ||
| Yeah, I had those two pills and then I have turned that down every other time because I'm addicted to it. | ||
| I mean, let's be honest. | ||
| It's just the way that my brain works. | ||
| But even when you got dosed, you didn't start using again. | ||
| No. | ||
| You understand. | ||
| There's another drug that people apparently say is also a date rape drug, GHB, and that does have some similar effects as you sort of say. | ||
| Yeah, that's a liquid one too, right? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I've heard of people getting dosed with that too. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Increases levels of dopamine in the brain? | ||
| That sounds right to me. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Loss of inhibition. | ||
| They start within 5 to 20 minutes, taking the drug 3 to 4 hours. | ||
| It lasts. | ||
| GHB causes a loss of inhibition, relaxes people, boosts their sex drive, and promotes feelings of euphoria. | ||
| But side effects include memory lapses, drowsiness, clumsiness, dizziness, or headache, lowered temperature, tremors, nausea, and diarrhea. | ||
| Did you poop your pants at all? | ||
| I didn't poop my pants. | ||
| I had a wicked hangover. | ||
| I had a hangover for over 48 hours. | ||
| Did you get hangovers when you would take pills back in the day? | ||
| I was never like a pill person. | ||
| I got hangovers from alcohol every single day. | ||
| So when you had like your hand surgery, did you worry about taking pain medication? | ||
| I just took ibuprofen. | ||
| Yeah? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's good. | ||
| Because I wouldn't have. | ||
| I thought about it, but it wasn't worth it. | ||
| If I had, I mean, I definitely believe in letting doctors do their jobs. | ||
| And if I had, you know, a spinal surgery or a knee surgery or something else where the doctor was like, no, you need some serious painkillers, then I would take them. | ||
| But if it's something where, like, I have the choice. | ||
| Yeah, I do know guys have done that and started using again. | ||
| I do too. | ||
| I do too. | ||
| It's scary shit, right? | ||
| Because you don't want to be in fucking agony from a surgery, but then it's like, you don't want to also go off the deep end and ruin your life too. | ||
| The problem is opening the door, right? | ||
| I'm guessing. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know, I'm not an addict, but I would imagine the problem is opening the door. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And letting those pills in again. | ||
| Yeah, they suggest having someone else hold on to them and, like, dose them to you where you can't, like, find them or get to them. | ||
| But the thing is, like, addicts are smart about getting their hands on drugs that they need, you know, that they want. | ||
| So it's like, even if it starts off like that... | ||
| People are easy to talk into shit, too. | ||
| Like, I feel like if I had someone give me my medicine, had a friend dosing it out to me, and then I was like, you know what? | ||
| This is getting to be a pain in the ass. | ||
| I'm not, like, loving this. | ||
| I'm not worried about it. | ||
| I can just take them. | ||
| That would be the end of the conversation, and they would give them to me. | ||
| Wheel your way in. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| Next thing you know, you're lying on your couch. | ||
| Lying on my couch, relaxing. | ||
| Cats are walking on your face. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's that simple. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| Fucking weird. | ||
| Human beings are so weird when it comes to substances to perturb our consciousness. | ||
| Like people love to do it. | ||
| They love to find something. | ||
| And you know with you maybe now it's working out or maybe it's like going on stage. | ||
| Like there's part of it is just the the art form that you love and the thrill of performing and make people happy and laugh. | ||
| But there's probably a little bit of a drug thing there too. | ||
| Oh with me it's still the food. | ||
| The food is... | ||
| I think about food all day long. | ||
| I have a constant countdown clock till the next time that it's time for me to eat. | ||
| And the only difference... | ||
| You have a countdown clock on your phone? | ||
| In my head. | ||
| Oh. | ||
| I'm always thinking about it. | ||
| I get sad while I'm eating every time I eat because the meal's gonna end. | ||
| I spend the whole time I eat bummed out because it's going to end. | ||
| And then I'm constantly counting down to the next time I get to eat. | ||
| And it was like that before. | ||
| It was like that when I was eating whatever I wanted to. | ||
| The only difference is I'm not eating 20 times a day now. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| So you just always have loved food. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, yeah. | ||
| It's interesting, because with addiction, it's less about enjoying than wanting. | ||
| I've always wanted a lot of food. | ||
| From the time I... I mean, there are pictures of me as a baby stuffing the biggest bite in my face that I could. | ||
| I was born fat. | ||
| I mean, I just have... | ||
| Yeah, from the time I was a little kid. | ||
| I think I just liked getting out of reality from the time I was a little kid. | ||
| I was a daydreamer, and then I was an eater, and then I was a drinker, you know, and now I like meditate and try to be present. | ||
| But I also have a life that I like more now than I liked my life when I was a little kid, so I can be present now. | ||
| What kind of meditating do you do? | ||
| I do 20 minutes a day where I just meditate. | ||
| I mean, I focus on my breath. | ||
| Sometimes I'll do a body scan. | ||
| A body scan? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You can start at your tips of your toes or the top of your head. | ||
| And then just focus in on, like, relax your scalp. | ||
| Relax your forehead. | ||
| Relax your eyes. | ||
| Relax your nose. | ||
| And you just spend time on every part of your body. | ||
| Just relaxing it is what I do. | ||
| Did you learn this method from someone? | ||
| Yeah, but I can't remember who or when, but something that really changed the way that I looked at meditation was Jimmy Shin, who I'm sure you know, or you don't at all, and that's fine too. | ||
| He ran shows at the Comedy Store, and he and our friend Greg were talking to me about it, and they said that You can have your thoughts racing the entire time you're meditating and have that still be a perfect meditation. | ||
| Because I was always obsessed with like, I'm doing it wrong. | ||
| I suck at this. | ||
| I keep thinking stuff. | ||
| I can't do this. | ||
| It's too frustrating. | ||
| And then I would quit. | ||
| And once I accepted that I could think the whole time, then I was ready to like do it. | ||
| Because I'm such a perfectionist that the idea of being bad at something, like I don't want to do it. | ||
| And... | ||
| Now I really like it. | ||
| And now when I have a thought come into my head, as they do, I imagine it just like releasing out through my chest like steam and just going up. | ||
| I meditate lying on my back. | ||
| Do you ever do breathing exercises? | ||
| I hate breathing exercises. | ||
| Really? | ||
| I've done them and I don't like them. | ||
| Why don't you like them? | ||
| I've done like, because they make me panic. | ||
| I don't like them. | ||
| They make me feel like I'm short of breath. | ||
| They do. | ||
| They make me feel like I'm short of breath. | ||
| I've done the one where you breathe in through the nostril and then breathe out through it and then do that. | ||
| Covering each nostril, is that what you're saying? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I don't like counting for the, because then I just get to, I don't like it. | ||
| Yeah, that's my favorite. | ||
| I like counting. | ||
| No, I feel like I can't get enough breath then. | ||
| I do two different ways. | ||
| I either do box breathing, which is like five seconds in, hold for five, and then release for five. | ||
| I do it in this cycle. | ||
| Or I do six seconds in, six seconds out. | ||
| That's the one I do the most because that's the one I do in the sauna. | ||
| Mm-hmm. | ||
| Why I don't do five and five. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| It's just like I started doing just six in and six out and I found a way where if I do it on a regular basis and just thinking about my breathing I can get into this weird trance. | ||
| And a couple of times I've done it where I think I've achieved like some bizarre psychedelic state. | ||
| And I haven't been able to do it recently. | ||
| Like last time I did it was months ago, but I still do the breathing thing, but I think maybe I'm using it too hot. | ||
| I think maybe if I lower the temperature to like 170 instead of like 185, I'll be able to relax a little bit more and I'll be able to achieve that state again. | ||
| Because I think the times I've achieved the state, I was using a sauna that didn't get as hot. | ||
| Damn, and you don't faint? | ||
| No. | ||
| No, I've been doing it a long time, though. | ||
| I've had a sauna at my house. | ||
| I used to have a sauna at the old gym or the old studio in LA. It has a gym attached to it with a sauna. | ||
| And so I would do a sauna all the time. | ||
| And I would crank it to like 200, 220. Wow. | ||
| Have you ever fainted just as a person in life? | ||
| No. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| No, no, no. | ||
| I've never fainted. | ||
| Cool. | ||
| That's really hot. | ||
| Yeah, I'm obsessed with... | ||
| Um, control. | ||
| I don't think I'd be into fainting. | ||
| I've never even been knocked unconscious. | ||
| You've never been knocked unconscious? | ||
| Nope. | ||
| Wow! | ||
| That's crazy! | ||
| How not? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Wow! | ||
| You've been knocked unconscious? | ||
| No, but I'm not a fighter. | ||
| I never fought professionally. | ||
| I thought you were going to say, like, oh, I get knocked unconscious all the time. | ||
| No, I've fainted a lot. | ||
| I've never been knocked unconscious, though. | ||
| I've been dropped where, like, my legs gave out. | ||
| The last fight that I had, the last kickboxing fight, I got hit with a left hook, and my legs just stopped working, and they went like this. | ||
| Weak! | ||
| Whoa. | ||
| It was weird. | ||
| Like, they shut off. | ||
| Did salvia. | ||
| That's a crazy feeling. | ||
| It's a crazy feeling when your legs just clock out. | ||
| Salvia is so strange. | ||
| That's one of the strangest drugs. | ||
| You used to be able to buy salvia at head shops. | ||
| I don't know if you still can, but I was like, and I remember doing it, going, this is fucking bananas. | ||
| You could just get this at the store. | ||
| Because they missed it. | ||
| You know? | ||
| They just didn't regulate it. | ||
| There was so many drugs that were, like, completely illegal. | ||
| And this one that was like, holy shit! | ||
| There's a video of Ari, okay? | ||
| Ari Shafir did salvia at Brian Redband's house. | ||
| And they made a video out of it. | ||
| And Ari was only under for ten minutes. | ||
| He swears to God that he lived months of a different life doing salvia. | ||
| He had friendships. | ||
| He had relationships. | ||
| He lived for months. | ||
| And I don't think he's lying. | ||
| No, I don't think so either. | ||
| I'm telling you, when you see him next, ask him the question, ask him about it, and he'll tell you. | ||
| It is a wild story, because he describes it in deep depth. | ||
| He's like, I'm telling you, man, I was living there. | ||
| I was living for months and months, and then I came out of it, and I was like, oh my god. | ||
| And he was like, how long has I gone? | ||
| They're like 10 minutes. | ||
| I was like, what the fuck? | ||
| Like, he lived another life for months. | ||
| The way he describes it, it's too vivid. | ||
| I believe him. | ||
| Oh, absolutely. | ||
| And hallucinations is her. | ||
| Watch, he's going to hit it. | ||
| He takes his big giant hit. | ||
| And then he sits back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And look at him. | |
| He's just hanging on there. | ||
| And then eventually... | ||
| Yeah, there he goes. | ||
| He was thinking it didn't do anything, but eventually it just takes hold of him. | ||
| Remember that did happen? | ||
| He took one hit and it didn't hit, so he does it again. | ||
| Oh, that's what it is, right? | ||
| He took the second hit and now he's gone. | ||
| Now he's gone. | ||
| So this is one minute into a four minute video? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| By the time we're two minutes in, he's freaking out. | ||
| Put the mic closer? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Look at Tripoli. | ||
| Look at Tripoli. | ||
| He lived a whole life there. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Please stop yelling Stop yelling. | |
| Stop yelling. | ||
| Please don't bring it up. | ||
| Please help me get up right now. | ||
| You're bleeding at Tripoli. | ||
| Like a Tripoli with the sunglasses on. | ||
| That is so hilarious. | ||
| He does not want that. | ||
| That is so hilarious. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That was when Red Band had the studio at his house. | |
| So he's talked about this on Theo Vaughn's podcast. | ||
| He also wrote it out. | ||
| That's on a Reddit post from a long time ago, but probably the more recent him talking about it. | ||
| So he talked about the months that he felt like he was... | ||
| He explained it, yeah. | ||
| Like, he lived... | ||
| Like, I don't think it's true, but I don't not think it's true. | ||
| Well the thing about hallucinations is they occur in the same part of the brain as sight. | ||
| So if you hallucinate you are seeing the thing. | ||
| So I absolutely believe that a drug could unlock a door in the brain that's best left locked and he could have all those experiences and fully have had them. | ||
| Time is an illusion. | ||
| I fainted in the high school cafeteria once and Was shooting through space with stars coming at me for years. | ||
| I mean, just for years. | ||
| And I opened my eyes and saw the blue streamers. | ||
| And I knew where I was right away, but I couldn't believe I was still there. | ||
| So I haven't had it where I had other experiences, but I've had that feeling of a lot of time passing and then coming back and feeling like I traveled through time, essentially. | ||
| Is that the only time you've ever fainted? | ||
| No, I fainted a bunch. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| What makes you faint? | ||
| I fainted from low blood sugar. | ||
| I fainted from getting too hot. | ||
| I fainted from getting too nervous. | ||
| I fainted from drugs. | ||
| And I think that's it. | ||
| Nervousness has made you faint? | ||
| Yeah, I fainted after I gave a speech in high school. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| And I think there was one other time I fainted from being nervous. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| At least you didn't faint before. | ||
| I wish I'd fainted before. | ||
| I wouldn't have to give this speech. | ||
| I delivered my first line and then my first line was, I am a servant. | ||
| And I forgot everything else. | ||
| And then I fainted. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I was so pissed. | ||
| I practiced so fucking hard for that thing. | ||
| And then I just, everyone looking at me and I blacked out. | ||
| Don't you think, though, that kind of prepared you for doing stand-up? | ||
| Like having such a crazy experience of nervousness and like you got your first dose of what it's like to face that fear. | ||
| I think it's a miracle that I've never... | ||
| Because I threw up before a piano recital when I was a little kid, too. | ||
| And I think it's a miracle that I've never fainted or thrown up before a show. | ||
| It is a miracle. | ||
| Because I've been so much more nervous before shows because they've actually mattered. | ||
| They've been important. | ||
| My piano recital, I wasn't going to get into Juilliard if I played Simple Gifts well when I was seven, you know? | ||
| Maybe that's why you didn't faint or throw up, because it matters to you. | ||
| It's like this part of you that's like, this isn't just nervous, it's also important. | ||
| I do feel unstoppable with comedy. | ||
| Unstoppable is a good word. | ||
| Yeah, I feel like it's my destiny. | ||
| That should be the name of your first special. | ||
| I like that. | ||
| Laura Beats Unstoppable. | ||
| Laura Bites. | ||
| Bites. | ||
| Like biting. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Bites. | |
| Did I say your name wrong? | ||
| No, it's just so much worse if it's Laura Bites. | ||
| That's why I want you to know. | ||
| It's so much worse. | ||
| I've said it right, but I've said it wrong too. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Just the way it's spelled. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It looks like Bites. | ||
| Yeah, it's awful. | ||
| It's the worst name. | ||
| It's not. | ||
| It's not the worst name. | ||
| It's only okay for a comedian. | ||
| I couldn't do anything else. | ||
| That's not true. | ||
| You could be like a CEO of a bank. | ||
| Lara Bites. | ||
| Why not? | ||
| You could be a teacher. | ||
| You could be Miss Bites. | ||
| Oh my god. | ||
| A teacher is the last thing I would be. | ||
| Your kids would make fun of you. | ||
| I would have to spend my entire... | ||
| That would be such a purgatory to spend the beginning of my life and then the rest of my life being made fun of by kids in school. | ||
| Would it be though? | ||
| If you're a nice teacher... | ||
| Your kids will roast you anyway. | ||
| They're kids. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's true. | ||
| Laura bites. | ||
| They'll definitely do it behind your back. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Have you thought about changing your name? | ||
| Like Laura Mencia or something? | ||
| Yeah, dude. | ||
| I really planned to get married at some fucking point here when I was a kid, but I guess that's not going to happen. | ||
| I was going to change my name so fast. | ||
| I'm 36. Dude, you can still pull it off. | ||
| I could still get married? | ||
| Well yeah, I'm not fucking dead. | ||
| That's what I'm saying. | ||
| 80 year olds get married. | ||
| You're saying like I was saying you couldn't. | ||
| Now you're arguing with me. | ||
| But I can't change my name now though. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| You mean for stand up? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You certainly could. | ||
| What are you talking about? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't know. | |
| What if tomorrow you just were like Joe Johnson? | ||
| Who gives a fuck? | ||
| Maybe I will. | ||
| Maybe I'll change it. | ||
| To spite me? | ||
| No. | ||
| To be Joe Johnson? | ||
| I'm going to be Laura Bites. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm going to change my name. | |
| I would be so pissed if you did that. | ||
| Just make me un-Google-able. | ||
| You could absolutely do that, too. | ||
| Just make me un-Google-able. | ||
| Just change my name. | ||
| People are like, what are you doing? | ||
| Proving a point. | ||
| I guess. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, Eliza is just Eliza now. | ||
| She was Eliza Schlesinger forever. | ||
| Yeah, when did she- Sebastian Maniscalco? | ||
| Not anymore. | ||
| Just Sebastian. | ||
| I guess that's true. | ||
| You could just be Laura. | ||
| But everyone calls me Laura. | ||
| Oh. | ||
| But it's L-A-R-A. It's Laura. | ||
| It's Laura? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, my sister's name's Laura. | ||
| I know the difference. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Thanks, I appreciate that. | ||
| Why don't you just call yourself Laura? | ||
| There's no other Laras. | ||
| I guess that's true. | ||
| That's what I'm talking about. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I don't know if I... Please welcome Laura! | ||
| Yeah, but that seems... | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Do you think I got it? | ||
| Yeah, I don't want to shit on Sebastian or Eliza because I have a lot of respect for both of them. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Well, Roseanne pulled it off. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| She used to be Roseanne Barr. | ||
| But that's Roseanne. | ||
| I don't have Roseanne energy. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I guess I could cut it. | ||
| But how would I begin that? | ||
| Today? | ||
| Just change my Instagram? | ||
| Right now. | ||
| At Lara? | ||
| Just Lara. | ||
| It's too short. | ||
| L-A-R-A. No, it's perfect. | ||
| I bet if you looked on Instagram right now, before the show airs, I bet you could get it. | ||
| I bet nobody has Lara. | ||
| Maybe. | ||
| Jamie? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Jamie? | |
| Checking. | ||
| I don't know how to really check. | ||
| L-A-R-A. Just at L-A-R-A. If you search it, though, it's searching for... | ||
| Better not be some fucking dumb bitch. | ||
| I think there's lots of sluts who have my name. | ||
| There is a verified account, actually. | ||
| Really? | ||
| What? | ||
| God damn it. | ||
| Who are they? | ||
| It's Lara. | ||
| I don't fucking know. | ||
| What does she do? | ||
| Let's see. | ||
| Ruins my plan, I guess. | ||
| She's an artist, musician. | ||
| Shout out to Lara. | ||
| Wow, she looks cool. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Spanish. | ||
| Damn. | ||
| Well, that's that. | ||
| That settles that. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| She's hot and she wears glasses. | ||
| It's a win-win. | ||
| Wait, is that? | ||
| That's her handle? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| At Lara. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Damn it. | |
| How about that? | ||
| She's got 102,000 followers, Lara. | ||
| Damn. | ||
| Well, I guess there you have it. | ||
| Maybe when you blow up, you can buy it from her. | ||
| So there's a bitch. | ||
| What about bites? | ||
| What about just bites? | ||
| You sell appetizers. | ||
| Yeah, it's, um... | ||
| When you have, like, Schlesinger, Manasako, those are tough names. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I always wonder how many people have searched Laura Bites, like L-A-U-R-A-B-I-T-E-S after my shows or something. | ||
| I wonder how many potential fans have just fallen through the cracks. | ||
| Well, they'll get it now that we talked about it for 10 minutes. | ||
| At least some of them will. | ||
| When you do your first special, I think Unstoppable is really like a genuinely good name. | ||
| It's funny. | ||
| I really like that. | ||
| Unstoppable. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Why do you feel unstoppable? | ||
| Because I'm not... | ||
| I've never been good at anything else. | ||
| And everything else I've tried to do... | ||
| The door has shut in my face. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| And with comedy, the doors are just open. | ||
| It just keeps working out. | ||
| Stuff keeps happening. | ||
| The next thing keeps happening. | ||
| Everything points to this being what I'm supposed to do. | ||
| There have been other things I've wanted in my life. | ||
| I wanted to get married and have kids. | ||
| You can still do that. | ||
| You keep saying that. | ||
| Yeah, but I don't want it anymore. | ||
| I don't care about it anymore. | ||
| I want it back then. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| What if you meet some new guy now? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Post-COVID. How? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Likes cats. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I like not having to run shit by another person. | ||
| I like being able to make my food the way that I like it and season it the way I like it and not have to worry about fucking Bozo's high blood pressure or the fact that he doesn't like fucking fish or what he wants to watch, what he wants to do. | ||
| And also there's just like... | ||
| I feel like I talked to you at the store about this before COVID. Like... | ||
| There's the issue of the fact that the relationships I've been in since doing stand-up, I've had the same fight over and over with my boyfriends, which is they're just like, I can't always be your last priority. | ||
| And I'm like, well, you can't come before any of the shit that you come after. | ||
| So I don't know what to tell you. | ||
| That leaves us in quite a position. | ||
| Because you're, you know, like you are my fifth priority. | ||
| And that's the best I got. | ||
| And it's just, yeah, fifth. | ||
| Stand up, working out, eating food, sleeping, boyfriend. | ||
| It comes even before friends and family, which frankly isn't healthy, but I'm willing to offer that. | ||
| But that's the best I can do. | ||
| That's very honest though. | ||
| You can't come before all my basic needs. | ||
| Well, it's sad when someone gives up those priorities and then puts a guy in first place and it winds up not working out and you've wasted so much time. | ||
| Yeah, dude. | ||
| Well, and this is also like, you know, when I was in Chicago and like working 40 plus hours a week at a day job, doing 34 shows in a month at night, so like literally bringing my comedy clothes with me to work, changing in the bathroom into like a mini skirt, and then like seeing my co-workers and being like, oh, I'm going. | ||
| They must have just thought I like partied a lot because I always... | ||
| Went from work to a show, and then getting home, and it's 11, 12, sometimes 1, and having to, you know, put some food in my face and go to sleep and wake up at 6 and do it the next day. | ||
| Like, I'm sorry that I can't pencil in date night, motherfucker. | ||
| Like, I'm tired as hell. | ||
| You know? | ||
| And they would get mad. | ||
| And I for a while would be like, if you want to see me like come to a show. | ||
| And so I can't fault them when the fact is like I was unavailable. | ||
| What about dating a comedian? | ||
| Is that out of the question? | ||
| I mean, do you know any? | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| I know some comedy couples that work. | ||
| Tom and Christina, right? | ||
| Yeah, totally. | ||
| That works great. | ||
| Natasha Leggero, Moshe Kasher, that works great. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Rich Voss and Bonnie McFarlane, that works great. | ||
| Those are three really funny couples where they're all really funny. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And it works. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| I mean, it's possible, but my friends who do comedy who are as funny as I am can date women who are way hotter than I am. | ||
| And so they do that. | ||
| They date women who are way younger and hotter than I am. | ||
| Because women love it when guys are comics, but I can't date anyone any hotter than ever. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| And you can't date anyone who's not as funny as you either. | ||
| I can date someone who's, I can for sure, I plan to date someone who's not as funny as me. | ||
| I only date people who aren't as funny as me, as a matter of fact. | ||
| Yeah, fuck yeah. | ||
| There's like five, there's like five dudes who are funnier than I am. | ||
| And the half of them are fucking mentally ill, incredibly damaged, emotionally unavailable. | ||
| You know comics, you know? | ||
| Wait a minute, you just say half of them? | ||
| Only half of them? | ||
| You're optimistic. | ||
| You're looking at the world through rose-colored glasses. | ||
| I would date a comedian. | ||
| I would date a comedian if he was also the other things that I want someone to be, which is not a drug addict and not a bum. | ||
| Nice to me. | ||
| Good communicator. | ||
| That's probably it. | ||
| Disciplined. | ||
| Someone you respect. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| But I'm flexible on that. | ||
| I don't necessarily have to... | ||
| You'd be okay with him half-assing his career? | ||
| If he's doing a good job... | ||
| The job of half-assing it? | ||
| No. | ||
| No, because someone who half-asses it isn't going to sympathize with what I'm doing. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| That's what I'm saying. | ||
| The thing is, like, you are really dedicated. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I can't be with someone who's going to get in my way. | ||
| Yeah, I've seen you before you go on stage. | ||
| You're going over your shit. | ||
| You're, like, really... | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's all that matters to me. | ||
| So that's why. | ||
| It's all that matters to me. | ||
| Everything else is like, take it or leave it. | ||
| A guy, if it happens, it happens. | ||
| And that's really reaffirmed for you after this pandemic, right? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Yeah, everything else I could do without. | ||
| Everything else I could live without. | ||
| So how many years did you do it before the pandemic? | ||
| Like ten. | ||
| Ten years. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's the thing is, like, for a lot of comics, like, that's such a big year. | ||
| The year where, like, when you're getting your shit together and you just started working and you're really kind of moving and shaking and going on the road and then all of a sudden the year's gone and you're like... | ||
| Starting up the engine again and moving. | ||
| No momentum anymore. | ||
| You have to start from scratch in a lot of ways. | ||
| Obviously not scratch, but you're getting your feet on the ground again and getting back in comedy shape. | ||
| It's a rough year for a lot of folks. | ||
| Yeah, for sure. | ||
| But it's happening, and it's going to keep happening. | ||
| I think it's going to be fine for me. | ||
| A lot of people are super fucked. | ||
| I think I'll be fine. | ||
| I think you're right, though. | ||
| I think a lot of people deserve to be fucked, though. | ||
| There's a lot of people that were kind of half-assing comedy to begin with. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And this just knocked them down, and they might not get up. | ||
| Yeah, and I know a lot of people who are like... | ||
| I don't know if I want to keep doing stand-up. | ||
| Maybe I want to do something else. | ||
| And I'm just like, then it's great that you got this opportunity to find out that you don't want to do stand-up anymore. | ||
| I know a bunch of people who quit, who are like, I think I actually want to do this instead. | ||
| And I think that that's fine. | ||
| Tim Dillon said it best. | ||
| We were talking about it. | ||
| He goes, it might be a good thing to weed a few people out. | ||
| That's exactly how he talks. | ||
| Not a bad thing. | ||
| Not a bad thing. | ||
| Yeah, 100%. | ||
| And it's better to get weeded out when you're a few years in than when you're a few decades in. | ||
| Dude, I've been getting... | ||
| I don't know why. | ||
| I've gotten two messages in like the last week from kids. | ||
| One was from a 12-year-old and the other one was from a 17-year-old. | ||
| And both of them were these adorable little messages that are just like, Hi, my dream is to be a stand-up comedian. | ||
| Do you have any advice for someone who's starting out in comedy? | ||
| And it was all I could do not to be like, Don't do it. | ||
| Do something else. | ||
| Do something else. | ||
| You're probably too healthy for this job. | ||
| If you're sending a nice, respectable message to an established comedian and you're 12... | ||
| Little sweethearts, though. | ||
| Good for them. | ||
| Good for you, you little fuck. | ||
| It made me think of my nephew. | ||
| And I responded and I was nice. | ||
| Because I was like, if my nephew wrote a message to a comedian and wanted a response, I would want someone to respond to him. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| That's very nice of you. | ||
| I'm nice to kids. | ||
| I'm not that nice to adults. | ||
| Adults, I'm like, yeah. | ||
| If I think somebody could really be funny, I give them a shot. | ||
| I'll talk to them and I'll tell them, yeah, listen, you just gotta do it. | ||
| But if you're gonna do it, you gotta really do it. | ||
| It's not an easy thing to do. | ||
| There's a reason why... | ||
| The real numbers, I don't know. | ||
| I would guess. | ||
| I'm just going to take a wild guess. | ||
| I don't think there's 500 of us in this country. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Like real, legitimate, professional stand-up comedians that make a living doing comedy. | ||
| I don't think there's 500. I think there's a lot of people that are trying it. | ||
| There may be a few thousand trying it. | ||
| That are out there hustling, trying to make it happen. | ||
| But ones that actually make it, there might be 500. Let's be real generous and say there's 1,000. | ||
| There's 330 fucking million people in this country. | ||
| There's 1,000 professional comedians? | ||
| That's nuts. | ||
| It's akin to... | ||
| There's specialties in... | ||
| Surgery that have a thousand, you know, it's a it's a bananas number. | ||
| It really is crazy Yeah, and then you think like how many of those people can sell out a theater? | ||
| How many people sell out a club? | ||
| The number gets smaller. | ||
| How many can sell out a theater? | ||
| The number gets real small. | ||
| Really small. | ||
| How many can sell out an arena? | ||
| There's like 20. Five dudes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't know. | |
| Maybe 10. When I say dudes, I mean people. | ||
| Yeah, humans. | ||
| It's not that many. | ||
| It's like, to get to the level of being a legitimate professional... | ||
| It takes so much trial and error, and the emotional pain of bombing is so fucking ruthless on your self-esteem and how you feel about life. | ||
| And some people just can't take the hit. | ||
| But if you can take the hit, if you can keep going, and if you're like you, or you're like, I feel unstoppable. | ||
| You're like, I feel unstoppable. | ||
| I am fucking unstoppable. | ||
| That's what I'm saying. | ||
| I'm your friend. | ||
| And I've bombed more times than I could possibly estimate. | ||
| I've had people say no to me more times than I could possibly estimate. | ||
| I've not gotten stuff more times than I could possibly estimate. | ||
| But it's just like with the writing. | ||
| If 1 20th of it works, guess what, bitch? | ||
| I got a new minute. | ||
| If 1 20th of it works, then guess what? | ||
| I'm passed at that club or I'm on that show or fucking whatever. | ||
| And it's crazy how many people who have been doing this for years are still looking for shortcuts. | ||
| I can't imagine what you get hit with. | ||
| Because I get so many messages. | ||
| Every time I got passed at a club in Hollywood, I got so many messages from people who were like, how'd you get passed? | ||
| Who do I email? | ||
| I'm going to move there. | ||
| And I'm just like, the answer 100% of the time is I did the open mic enough to be in front of the booker and I had a good set. | ||
| I don't know a shortcut. | ||
| I've waited outside of comedy clubs. | ||
| I waited outside of the Laugh Factory in Chicago for fucking two weeks in the freezing cold, left work early to stand out there for an hour to go up on the open mic and do a clean three minutes the next week. | ||
| Like, I could go on and on and on, but I followed the fucking process. | ||
| I didn't know a guy, you know? | ||
| And we have this idea that, like, Especially in the Midwest or in places that are not the coast, people have this idea where it's all about who you know. | ||
| But what they don't tell you is like, but you meet those people by working hard and showing up and being tenacious and not quitting. | ||
| And being funny. | ||
| And being funny. | ||
| You have to be good. | ||
| You have to be undeniable. | ||
| That's what I tell people. | ||
| Like, what's the secret? | ||
| Be undeniable. | ||
| And if you're not undeniable, become undeniable. | ||
| That's what you have to do. | ||
| Like, that's how you'll get work. | ||
| That's how all these things will happen. | ||
| I get annoyed when people ask me to be on my podcast or when people ask me if they can open for me. | ||
| I'm like, I don't even know you. | ||
| Like, no, you can't open for me. | ||
| That's so crazy. | ||
| I got fucking Joey Diaz and Ari Shafir and Duncan Trussell and Tony Hinchcliffe and Ian Edwards. | ||
| I got savages opening up for me. | ||
| Murderers. | ||
| You want to open up for me? | ||
| Get the fuck out of here. | ||
| Just go get your shit together. | ||
| Go get it. | ||
| But you don't just go around asking. | ||
| People ask you. | ||
| That's my best advice to people. | ||
| Just be undeniable. | ||
| And it's possible. | ||
| You can do it. | ||
| Or you can't. | ||
| I mean, I don't know who you are. | ||
| I don't know what your level of resolve is. | ||
| I don't know what your personality is. | ||
| It's not something I recommend to people. | ||
| I tell everybody to have a podcast. | ||
| Like, go get a podcast. | ||
| Go do it. | ||
| It might work out. | ||
| Shit, I was terrible in the beginning. | ||
| Just keep going. | ||
| It might work out. | ||
| It's easy. | ||
| I think it's like that trifecta that you referred to before of, like, a little piece of luck, hard work, and talent. | ||
| And if you have the hard work and talent, we all get enough little pieces of luck along the way. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That we're ready for it, you know? | ||
| I've been lucky to have bookers watching me when they've been watching me, but I backed it up with talent and working my ass off. | ||
| Yeah, and you made the talent. | ||
| Like, I'm sure you were terrible in the beginning. | ||
| We were all terrible. | ||
| I was fucking terrible. | ||
| Of course. | ||
| The audacity that I had when I was 21 to think that I could be a professional comedian, I want to go back in time and smack myself in the face. | ||
| Like, who the fuck are you? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| I didn't think I could. | ||
| I did not expect to make it this far. | ||
| I started it as a hobby. | ||
| I'm as shocked as you are. | ||
| I mean, I can't fucking believe that. | ||
| I can't believe it. | ||
| I made fun of guys in Milwaukee who were talking about becoming professional comics. | ||
| I was like, you'll no sooner be a professional comedian than I will turn Italian. | ||
| Like, it's just not... | ||
| You're not. | ||
| You know? | ||
| I thought that that was for someone else. | ||
| But it's like... | ||
| Just one little action at a time. | ||
| One little thing at a time. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I started out with Fitzsimmons. | ||
| We started like a week apart from each other. | ||
| I love him too. | ||
| I was with both of you the last night. | ||
| Last night the store closed? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So sad. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| I don't think it's ever going to be the same. | ||
| I was with you guys when you found out that your kids' schools were canceled through the end of the year. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It was fucking horrifying. | ||
| It's so weird because they didn't mind not getting up for school early and not having to drive, but they were a little weirded out. | ||
| But after a couple weeks, you could see it wear on them, like staring in front of a fire. | ||
| And then I saw how bad the teachers were doing it. | ||
| And how uninspired they were. | ||
| It was so infuriating. | ||
| Listening to these teachers, I mean, just not caring at all. | ||
| They didn't have to. | ||
| And the kids were so disconnected. | ||
| I was like, we gotta get out of here. | ||
| And in Texas, one of the great things was they actually go to school here. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| When they found out they can go to school, they were like, what? | ||
| And both my kids caught COVID. Yeah. | ||
| One kid got it from an after-school sports activity, and then she gave it to my wife, and she gave it to my other kid, and it was nothing. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| They had a headache for a day, you know, because for kids, it's nothing. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I get it that the teachers wouldn't want to get it, but now, especially now, like, oh my God, you can get vaccinated. | ||
| You can... | ||
| We know about health and wellness and... | ||
| But moving here has been amazing. | ||
| It's a different thing. | ||
| Yeah, my sister's family has had it. | ||
| My sister works at the school. | ||
| They all live in northern Wisconsin. | ||
| And they all got it. | ||
| Her husband got it. | ||
| He was on the couch watching football for a day. | ||
| Like, they were all sick a little bit. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| I mean, it really depends on what your health is like when it happens to you. | ||
| You know, some people, they get it when they're really run down, and then they're fucked, and it's not good. | ||
| But some people, they get it when they're feeling great, and just, oh... | ||
| My real estate agent had it. | ||
| She didn't even know she had it. | ||
| She had to get tested three times. | ||
| She's like, are you sure? | ||
| She went in again. | ||
| She was trying to go to a wedding in St. John's. | ||
| And they just kept testing her. | ||
| They tested her three times. | ||
| She's like, I guess I got it. | ||
| She just stayed home for a week. | ||
| That's so weird. | ||
| Nothing. | ||
| Not a single symptom. | ||
| Nothing. | ||
| Yeah, it's wild. | ||
| I guess my nephew actually is having more health problems, but I don't know the details of them. | ||
| Post? | ||
| Post? | ||
| How far away from the infection? | ||
| Like, after. | ||
| How long after? | ||
| Just now? | ||
| Just recent? | ||
| Yeah, they had it in the last month. | ||
| There's a lot of things you could tell him that he could take to help. | ||
| A lot of it is inflammation. | ||
| It helps. | ||
| Fish oil helps. | ||
| CBD helps for a lot of people. | ||
| There's a lot of different vitamins and nutrients that can help bring your immune system back into line again. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So many people don't even take vitamins, which is really crazy to me. | ||
| I don't understand how you can go through life without taking vitamins. | ||
| Yeah, I don't know why not. | ||
| I mean, it seems like an easy enough thing to... | ||
| Unless you're totally broke. | ||
| You know, but even then, like, how much is a multivitamin? | ||
| How much do you spend on cigarettes? | ||
| How much do you spend on booze, you know? | ||
| Yeah, well, and I feel like that is lumped in with, like, I consider it, like, a food cost. | ||
| Like, it's one of those things where it's not negotiable for me. | ||
| It's nutrients for my body, you know? | ||
| Unstoppable, Laura. | ||
| That's gonna be the name of your special. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Or something funny. | ||
| Yeah, it's weird because they had it where my sister... | ||
| Half her family had it and the other half didn't get it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And then a few more of them got it. | ||
| She has four kids. | ||
| Yeah, it's weird. | ||
| So it wasn't even... | ||
| In the actual household. | ||
| And I've heard crazy things, like I lived with someone who swore that the COVID molecules hung in the air for up to an hour after a person walked by. | ||
| Who said that? | ||
| My old roommate. | ||
| The roommate I had at the beginning of this. | ||
| Someone who was terrified? | ||
| Yeah, she was terrified she wasn't leaving the place. | ||
| And I thought that no one was leaving their apartments, and I stayed inside for three months, didn't touch another human being, didn't fucking do anything. | ||
| I went on a hike with someone, and they both got super mad at me, and I was like, I'm going to move out. | ||
| And I told them the next day, so it was a separate conversation, but I was like, I'm moving out. | ||
| So you went on a hike, and your roommate got furious? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| We had an advantage that we were testing everybody at the studio. | ||
| We're testing every day. | ||
| I've been tested hundreds of times. | ||
| I've been tested a lot too. | ||
| And when I have worked weekends, like when I worked a weekend in Vegas and it was indoor, and I quarantined before and after and I got tested. | ||
| I flew to Wisconsin and I quarantined before and after and got tested. | ||
| Didn't go around other people until I'd been tested. | ||
| You know? | ||
| And so that's what I'm talking about, where it's like, I think that you can be careful and still live a little bit of life so that we don't all end up killing ourselves. | ||
| Some people don't want to not be scared, though. | ||
| I think that there definitely is... | ||
| I think that part of what was keeping my roommates inside was agoraphobia. | ||
| I think they just didn't want to leave the house. | ||
| I think they had other anxiety issues. | ||
| And I think that this was an excuse or this was part of it. | ||
| Yeah, well, it has been a testing moment for a lot of folks for their mental health. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| When did you... | ||
| I was nervous at first. | ||
| At first, I was really scared. | ||
| At first, like, when I remember me and my family went to this grocery store, people weren't even wearing masks yet. | ||
| We're stocking up on food. | ||
| That was back when Fauci was telling people not to wear masks because they didn't have a good enough supply. | ||
| So he was lying and saying, masks aren't important. | ||
| Don't wear a mask. | ||
| I was like, well, you don't wear a mask? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| After a while, I was like, wear two masks. | ||
| I'm like, what happened? | ||
| What happened? | ||
| What's happening? | ||
| We were stocking up on food, and everybody looked spooked. | ||
| Like, all the people looked spooked. | ||
| Because nobody knew what it was. | ||
| So in the beginning, I didn't know what it was. | ||
| And then a couple of my friends got it. | ||
| And it was not that big. | ||
| It was, you know, people that were like my age that were healthy, they got it. | ||
| They coughed a little bit. | ||
| And then, you know, a couple months later, I knew quite a few people that had it. | ||
| And I'm like, well, this obviously is not what I thought it was. | ||
| And then I started relaxing. | ||
| Like I said, I did a set in July. | ||
| But then I was worried about giving it to someone else that wasn't healthy. | ||
| That was my fear. | ||
| So I was like, I can't do this. | ||
| Plus, I was doing the podcast all the time. | ||
| It just wouldn't be fair. | ||
| So my priority was just do the podcast, wait for the dust to settle, wait for it all to either get herd immunity or go away, and just keep being pretty... | ||
| I was pretty careful. | ||
| But then after like 9, 10, I started getting annoyed at people. | ||
| That we're still scared. | ||
| I'm like, why are you at the same level of fear? | ||
| Like, this is driving me crazy. | ||
| And how come you haven't done anything about your fucking health? | ||
| We've been locked up for 11 months. | ||
| You're still eating fucking donuts every day and waiting for a vaccine. | ||
| Like, what are you doing? | ||
| What are you doing? | ||
| 100%. | ||
| Yeah, and then I'm mad at everybody who's not scared anymore. | ||
| Jesus. | ||
| Fat Twitter got so mad at me. | ||
| I tweeted something to the effect of like just saying what happened? | ||
| You know, I was obese at the beginning of this. | ||
| They said a virus is killing obese people. | ||
| So I lost weight and now obese people are eligible for the vaccine. | ||
| And I'm not. | ||
| And people were like, this comedian would rather fat people die than wait her turn for the vaccine. | ||
| This comedian hates fat people. | ||
| They just like came after me. | ||
| I'm like, where the fuck did you come from? | ||
| Where the fuck did you come from? | ||
| They came from the same place that your roommate came from. | ||
| They're fucking scared. | ||
| And when you're fat, you are more vulnerable so you're probably more scared. | ||
| Also, you're stuffing food down your face and you know you're doing harm to your health. | ||
| And you're just looking to shame people and get angry and blame people. | ||
| There's a lot of people that it becomes a sport to just attack people and pile onto them on Twitter. | ||
| And to completely distort what you're saying. | ||
| What you're saying should be like a message of hope. | ||
| Like, hey, here's me. | ||
| I mean, you put it all out there, too. | ||
| You got your fucking stomach hanging out. | ||
| You're showing all these pictures. | ||
| You're not shy at all. | ||
| You're saying, look, here's me at the beginning. | ||
| Here's me now. | ||
| Like, just a human. | ||
| There's nothing special. | ||
| Just a regular human who put in the work. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You can do it too. | ||
| Well, and I see a lot of body positivity posts in my Instagram feed, and the narrative is, you can be living your absolute best life and be morbidly obese. | ||
| And I haven't had that experience, you know? | ||
| I can't- I like how you just phrased that. | ||
| I haven't had that experience. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I feel better and I don't think that that is me worshiping thinness. | ||
| I feel better. | ||
| And also, like, fat people do get treated worse than thin people in this society. | ||
| I thought that we didn't make eye contact with strangers as a culture and so many more people look at me now. | ||
| So many more people look me in the eye now. | ||
| Like leaving my apartment complex to walk to my car just out in the world. | ||
| And that fucking feels better. | ||
| That's aside from like the physical weight loss. | ||
| It feels better to be treated better. | ||
| And that's kind of bittersweet because I also am getting a lot more attention from men, which makes me kind of hate them. | ||
| But I also... | ||
| Get it! | ||
| Because the one physical attribute that's universally attractive across all cultures is a smaller waist-to-hip ratio because it indicates that a woman is fertile but not currently pregnant. | ||
| Men are attracted to women who look like they could get pregnant in the same way that, like, we look towards bright colors because it might be a piece of fruit on a tree. | ||
| Right. | ||
| It's just genes. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And so that's not people being dicks unless you're, you know... | ||
| I know, but people want to pretend that it is. | ||
| They want to look past what we understand about evolutionary biology and apply some shallow intention to it. | ||
| But it's just natural. | ||
| Yeah, it pisses me off because so many of the people who are so easily offended and so quick to attack other people are people where I'm like, you're on my side. | ||
| We're on the same side. | ||
| Why are you fighting with me when you didn't have my back when people were calling me fat in my comments? | ||
| If you're really for body positivity, where the fuck were you then? | ||
| You weren't supporting me. | ||
| You know, you came out of nowhere to shit on me as soon as I got thin. | ||
| Like, where have you been? | ||
| Where have you been? | ||
| You know? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Now, it's a weird time because there's a lot of people's opinions that get broadcast to a lot of people now. | ||
| And a lot of those people, you wouldn't really probably care about their opinions if you were just talking to them. | ||
| But when they get together in these little bully groups and they go and attack them, this comedian wants fat people to die and would rather them die. | ||
| For sure. | ||
| They're just crazy. | ||
| Just mentally ill people. | ||
| Which is something she would never say to me if she met me. | ||
| Of course not. | ||
| It's not even real life. | ||
| It's just like some bizarre portal where people can just blow shit through and splatter someone's face. | ||
| It's like you have a rock and you see a glass window and you just want to throw it. | ||
| It doesn't make any sense. | ||
| It's like the way people communicate on Twitter. | ||
| It's like, are you really that outraged that a girl is expressing that she used to be fat and she lost weight and now she can't get the fucking vaccine because they're giving it to fat people? | ||
| You're really that upset? | ||
| That's what's pissing you off? | ||
| There's a lot of shit in the news, honey. | ||
| Go out there. | ||
| Go out there. | ||
| Pay attention. | ||
| Pay attention to the world. | ||
| There's a lot of fucked up things going on. | ||
| If that's what's occupying your time and then you're replying and going back and forth for hours about this and probably checking your phone incessantly, just go run up a flight of stairs. | ||
| Just do some sit-ups. | ||
| Drink water. | ||
| What do you think is a solution to that? | ||
| Because that's, I think, like the biggest problem that's facing this country right now is just how much fighting there is between people. | ||
| And people who I don't think would disagree with each other if they- Yeah, we're not that different. | ||
| I know that that's cheesy and it's a cliche, but everything is just in such a pressure cooker. | ||
| There has to be a solution. | ||
| I mean, what do you think it is? | ||
| I think people should stay the fuck out of those kind of situations. | ||
| Don't communicate with people that way. | ||
| It's a terrible way of communicating. | ||
| It's the worst way to... | ||
| Express an idea. | ||
| It leaves so much to interpretation. | ||
| It's so limited. | ||
| And it's not how human beings are designed to communicate. | ||
| We're designed to do it like this. | ||
| It's one of the best things about podcasts. | ||
| Is what you and I are doing is not much different than what we would be doing if we were just sitting across a dinner table talking. | ||
| Right. | ||
| We would just be talking. | ||
| Just like this. | ||
| Looking at each other in the eye. | ||
| That's how people are supposed to talk. | ||
| That's how you find out who a person really is. | ||
| That's how you find out how they really express ideas. | ||
| This shit where you're just writing things out and tweeting things and you're doing it so people like you or pay attention or you're virtue signaling or you're trying to attack people and you're misrepresenting their original opinion and you know you are. | ||
| You're just doing it because you can. | ||
| Or you're doing it because you think that somehow or another they've said something that offends your group because you've got this tight group of people that also like to be fat. | ||
| It's nuts. | ||
| It's crazy. | ||
| You're doing it to win. | ||
| There's a guy named Alan Levinovitz and he's been on the podcast before and he had a really great expression. | ||
| He said it's like processed information. | ||
| And much like processed food is bad for you, Processed information is bad for you, too. | ||
| And he was saying that Twitter and these kind of things, that's what it is. | ||
| It's processed information. | ||
| And that resonated with me so hard because I'm like, oh, of course. | ||
| That is exactly what it's like. | ||
| Because real food is like, you know, real food. | ||
| You know, like meat and vegetables and stuff that's supposed to be good for you. | ||
| And it's got vitamins. | ||
| And it's not some... | ||
| It's a thing that's pumped full of preservatives and it'll last on a shelf for 10 years. | ||
| That's what's shitty for you. | ||
| Processed seed oils. | ||
| That's what's shitty for you. | ||
| And that's what gets people super unhealthy. | ||
| Well, this processed information gets people super mentally unhealthy. | ||
| Totally. | ||
| Well, and like... | ||
| We have relationships with people at the store who do not agree with us politically. | ||
| Like I have friends who I don't agree with politically, and it has never turned into a screaming match. | ||
| It's never turned into us just insulting each other or calling each other pieces of shit. | ||
| It hasn't even turned into us yelling at each other. | ||
| And that's what's so hard about it. | ||
| And I have relatives too. | ||
| We don't see eye to eye politically, but we love each other. | ||
| And we don't just fight when we see each other. | ||
| I have plenty of friends that I don't agree with politically. | ||
| After my first TV set, I swore that I would never read YouTube comments again. | ||
| And I intend to keep that promise to myself. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| It's just not productive. | ||
| It doesn't do anything good. | ||
| I don't internalize the positive feedback. | ||
| I memorize the negative feedback for the rest of my life. | ||
| And it's just useless. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's not good for you. | ||
| What's his face? | ||
| Fucking Hannibal Lecter. | ||
| Fuck's his name. | ||
| Anthony Hopkins, thank you. | ||
| He had a statement that's really interesting. | ||
| He goes, I don't read what other people think about me because it's not my business. | ||
| Yeah, I really like that principle. | ||
| What other people think of me is none of my business. | ||
| Laura, I've got to wrap this up. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| Thank you for having me. | ||
| Always a pleasure. | ||
| If you want to move here, we're going to have a beautiful comedy club soon. | ||
| I do want to move here. | ||
| No, I don't. | ||
| Do what you want to do. | ||
| It's going to be an awesome place. | ||
| Tell everybody where you're at again. | ||
| Sunset Strip Comedy Club. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And then May 6th through 8th, I'm going to be at Comedy at the Carlson in Rochester, New York. | ||
| And August 12th through the 14th, I'm going to be at Mark Ridley's Comedy Castle in Royal Oak, Michigan. | ||
| And do you have larabeats.com? | ||
| Do you have a... | ||
| No, I have Instagram at larabeats. | ||
| Spell it. | ||
| L-A-R-A-B-E-I-T-Z. Okay. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| My pleasure. | ||
| Always good. | ||
| Bye. |
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