Paul Virzi shares his father’s 1973 Yonkers UFO sighting—a silent, blue-tinted "flying saucer" with portholes—mirroring Bob Lazar’s Area 54 craft claims, while debating whether aliens monitor humanity or treat us like an "ant farm." They critique New York’s comedy scene, where "woke" audiences misread satire, and defend Dave Chappelle against cancel culture’s overreach. Virzi’s 2016 depression, triggered by OCD and a misdiagnosed brain tumor scare, contrasts with Rogan’s childhood trauma and martial arts-driven resilience. Both agree comedy thrives on authenticity, not narcissism, and that failure—like Virzi’s disastrous golf-roast or Rogan’s early strip club gigs—fuels growth. The episode ends with Virzi’s spiritual take on manifesting success and a plug for his Netflix special Nocturnal Admissions and podcast Anything Better. [Automatically generated summary]
Well first, I'm gonna tell you about my dad real quick.
My dad is...
Sicilian to the fuck, he born and raised Bronx, okay?
Grew up in the 1960s in the Bronx.
Always has to dress nice, you know, very materialistic.
A man needs a watch, a man needs shoes, okay?
Me and my brother were in the car one time.
My father would do this shit.
We were young, he shouldn't have, but he would be like, he'd be like, look at that, you see that?
That's a fucking disgrace.
He'd be like, that's a man in a Honda.
And he'd be like, there's kids in that fucking car.
Like that.
1982, Jaguar, XJ6, black, white leather, dressed to the nines.
You know, everybody's crazy but him.
Fuck them, they're crazy.
So, tells me and my brother a story.
To this day, the story's not changing.
He told me he wished he never saw what he saw.
1973, my mother is pregnant with my older brother, Christian.
He's five years older than me.
Okay, so she's pregnant with him.
They're outside in Yonkers.
There's a little grass lot and my aunt, grandmother, and mother are out there and they're screaming, Tommy, you gotta come out here.
You gotta come out here.
So the way my father tells this story, he goes, I'm watching TV. What the fuck?
You know, I don't want to be bothered.
He goes, I go outside and he said, Paul...
He said, sitting where I could throw a rock or shoot my gun at it, there is a fucking...
He said flying saucer, which is fucking hilarious.
There's a fucking flying saucer.
He said it's got a blue tint around it.
Little portholes, but you could barely see.
Quiet.
Quiet as can be.
And he said they were all...
And he said the time was weird.
The time of night was weird.
It was like that weird time where the sun's going down, you don't know.
He said the timing of it was weird and he said his time perception during it was very, something was off with the time.
And he said, he thought, he said, holy shit, I could fucking shoot my gun at this thing.
But then he goes, he goes, then I freaked out because I don't know if this thing's reading my fucking mind.
So I went inside because he thought that it might have been.
So he went inside.
He looked again.
He went outside.
They looked at it.
They were stunned.
And he said, like that, it turned into a dot in the sky.
He said like that it turned into a star like that and he says to this day exactly the same thing.
He goes Paul I always used to think those people were fucking nuts.
He goes all those people I thought they were fucking hillbillies somewhere in the Midwest just trying to get attention.
He goes I know what the fuck I saw and he goes and I wish I didn't see it because I still dream about it and I know what the fuck I saw and I know it wasn't from here.
That's 100% true.
What year was this?
1973. And then I googled 1973 Yonkers and many people saw something.
Well, that thing right there is a copy by this guy Designs by Perry.
The E in Perry is a 3 on Instagram.
And he recreated that thing.
That's a recreation of what Bob Lazar allegedly worked on in Area S4. Yeah.
And that's exactly how he described it.
He said this thing was running on something called Element 115. Element 115 is apparently some element that was just theoretical until like the early 2000s.
I think it was like 2013 or something like that.
They recreated it in a large hadron collider.
But before in a particle collider but before that He was saying that these people had he was talking about this in 1989 that these people Who were working on this thing trying to back engineer it they described it as being some sort there's some sort of an engine that works Off of this element and that what it does is it bends gravity.
So instead of like a rocket where fire comes out the back and it pushes the rocket forward, this thing bends space and time.
So it bends gravity and pushes it through.
Yeah, that's why it's totally silent.
The thing is, it sounds crazy, but all these things that these pilots have seen that they describe having no heat signature, no visible means of propulsion, they all move in that same way.
It is pretty wild, but I mean, you know, everybody's like, well, I ain't seen shit, but if one person saw it, if they only came down for like a half hour or an hour, you know, a few people saw it, then it took off and never came back again, those people would be confused, like your dad, probably, for the rest of their lives, just thinking about it.
Probably making sure we don't blow ourselves up probably when every civilization I think there's probably a bunch of different kinds of life forms in space right like Millions of different times, but I think they must know that we operate off of Biological needs,
like we have a biological need to procreate, a biological need to protect our village and to protect our stuff, and so we're warring still, but yet we're moving this technological age of sophistication where we have nuclear bombs and video that travels on your phone to the other side of the world in a half a second and all the wild shit that we can do now that makes it very complex for us to manage Both our primate instincts and the responsibility of having incredible power.
So they're probably like, let's just fucking keep an eye on these assholes.
They're not homo sapiens, but they were in the humanoid category, and they were three feet tall, they used tools, and they think they might have even had conflicts with people.
This animal, this hobbit person, they didn't find out about this until...
God, I want to say it was like 2000s.
Somewhere in the 2000s, they discovered it.
When did they discover it?
Is that what it says?
Does it say...
I was discovered in 2003. So up until 2003, they didn't even know this was a thing.
And they know that these creatures lived alongside human beings.
I think the fossils they found were as recent as somewhere in the neighborhood of 10,000 years ago.
So somewhere around 10,000 years ago, there was a creature that was like a tiny human-like, like, had hands like a human, a face like a human, but it was three feet tall, covered in hair, used tools, and lived alongside people.
So my father was, before my parents got divorced, he was a bigwig at AIG in Manhattan.
He was like third guy, third or fourth guy at AIG. And the top guy was having a huge barbecue at his place in Long Island.
And he invites my father to come out.
So my mother's there, and my father doesn't tell anybody about the UFO. And he goes, then your fucking mother yells across the barbecue, hey Tommy, tell everybody about the flying saucer we saw!
And he goes, no, I don't know, she's drinking.
And he goes, what the fuck?
Because he didn't want, because especially 1973. Right.
Worst workplace drug testing started off after President Ronald Reagan required it for federal employees in 1986. And it peaked during the drug war of the 1990s.
Then he saw everybody doing it, and then he did it again.
I was sitting courtside.
Nick, I got hammered at the...
I'm good friends.
Pete Davidson's a good friend of mine, and he was at SNL. He goes, dude, come down.
And I'm a diehard Knicks.
Diehard Knicks, because I'm a Yankees-Giants, but I've won with them.
My problem child is the Knicks, and I got my son into it and shit, and we go down, and I'm sitting next to this guy, and he's got his hair slicked back, and everybody's coming up to him, and he's got the beard, and I'm looking at this guy, and I'm drinking vodka.
They just pour vodkas, and I'm just, I'm fucking hammered courtside.
And this guy, and I don't know who this guy is, so at halftime, they take you back to where everybody's drinking and eating.
So finally, they're like, yeah, the guy you're sitting next to is the Mets, the new manager of the Mets, Mickey Calloway.
And I was like, oh, okay, cool.
That's who it is.
So we just start talking.
We're shooting the shit and everything.
And I go, all right.
And I'm hammered now.
So now I like all of the what you shouldn't do, I'm doing.
Yeah, I go, can I ask you a question?
He goes, please, please.
He's a nice guy.
I go, best baseball.
He was before he was a Mets manager.
He was a pitching coach for the Indians.
And I go, now the Guardians, which is fucking awful name.
But he said, I go, who's the best baseball player you've ever seen live in all of the years you've been in baseball?
And he just leans back and he goes, oof.
And then he just goes, oh, Barry Bonds.
He goes, nobody in history made a pitcher pay for a mistake more.
He goes, if a pitcher made one fucking mistake by an inch, over.
Where do you stand with, like, what they can do as far as, like...
Tattoos, piercings, doing shit like that because my kids are not ready for it.
My daughter's 10 and my son is 13. You know, my daughter has earrings and stuff like that.
I don't know if my son's interested in certain things yet, but are you gonna be one of those to be like, you know, be careful like I don't want you doing that or it's like whatever?
I don't think that I have any control over my children's bodies once they become adults.
You know, I think I want to be kind.
I want to give them as much information as I can.
I want to, you know, make sure that they do a lot of things that build up their character and their self-esteem and then allow them to make choices.
I think the best thing that you could do is have a dialogue with your kids where they know they could always talk to you about things.
So, like, I... My wife is more restrictive than me when it comes to television or computer use.
She puts screen time on their phones and shit like that.
I feel like you've got to be very careful to not be too controlling because then your kid will try to rebel.
People don't like being told what to do.
It's like when your boss isn't looking and then you go do things you're not supposed to do.
It's a natural thing.
If you've got a boss that's like, as soon as he leaves, fuck him, you put your feet up on the desk.
If you give people freedom, they don't rebel.
They don't want to rebel.
I have restrictions, like time restrictions and tell me where you're going to be and that kind of stuff, but I'm all about communication with my kids.
I talk to them I definitely talk to them like I'm their father, like I love them, and I treat them, I always tell them I love them, I treat them like they're my daughters, but I also treat them like they're my friends.
Yeah, I do too, and one thing that I tell my kids too is, You know, you're great and worth all your insecurities are normal because we all have them and you're gonna have them and you're gonna walk into a public situation and feel less than for some reason.
I think that You know, it's it's very important for kids to know that you went through a lot of bad shit too in terms of like the way you think about things when you think about yourself and Because, like, they see you now, and you're successful, and you got a Netflix special, and you're fucking doing great on the road and everything, and it's like, oh, dad's a successful comedian.
That's great.
Dad's so funny.
He's so confident.
He goes out there and talks to all those people.
You got to let them know.
Like, no, I used to bomb.
I sucked.
I hated myself.
I this, I that.
I think all that stuff is very important for kids to know because people have this tendency to look at other people like they have it all sorted out.
They have it solved.
And the kids look at themselves and they say, I don't have those characteristics.
I don't have those qualities.
And they feel like they're never going to have them.
So if you could tell them that...
One of the things I always tell my kids is whenever they fuck up, Whenever they do something wrong, one of the first things I say before I say, hey, you shouldn't have done that, I'll say, listen, I did that and more.
I did all those things and more.
I'm not upset at you.
I'm upset that this happened, but this is just a part of being a human being, and now we're going to learn from this.
We're going to grow from this.
So you don't like it, you're upset with the way the result is and the way things turned out, good.
But time went on, and time went on, and time went on, and then finally— When I was really nervous before the Netflix release.
And I knew what we did.
I knew that the show was good.
I knew it was better than my first one.
And I knew that it was good.
But I knew that it was better.
And I knew that we put together a really good show.
But the night before, you get fucking like, you're like, hey, you wake up.
And I woke up and I looked at my phone and the review started to come in.
I don't like to look a lot, but I just wanted to look at the initial.
I was driving to the airport, and it was the first time I actually got emotional.
I wasn't like that, but I started to just think of...
Leaving my family, getting on fucking airplanes, you know, all of the hotel rooms, everything, 20 years, telling my wife like I'm working, my wife's seeing it, and then just everybody hit me up saying this and that, and I just started to tear up, and I was just like, you know, wow, like in my mind, not like made it in like industry's mind.
Not made it rich fame-wise, but for me, to all of the shit that I did, to have a Comedy Central special, which fucking nobody saw, and then to end up doing this and having something out that people were just like, man, I laughed the whole time.
It's like, who are these fucking uncreative people, and they have terrible ideas, and they all want to put their fucking greasy little mitts all over your stuff.
Oh, I told them to wear that shirt.
I told them to do it.
I told them to open with this material.
The material he was going to open for, it would have ruined the whole special.
I'd get up from dinner on a Tuesday to go run to the city for a $25 fuckin' spot for a fuckin' booker that everybody was afraid of.
I think COVID put things into perspective though, Joe.
I think the hamster wheel of what people were doing and then you sat back and you're like, wait a minute, let me slow this down a little bit and fuckin' figure things out.
A lot of people changed their life during COVID for the better.
I mean, for a lot of people, it was terrible.
They lost their businesses and lost family members and shit, but it wasn't a good thing.
But it was an opportunity to advance from adversity.
Adversity gives you little doors where you're like, hey, you don't like what you're doing, and now they're taking it away from you, so here's a chance.
I want to do some acting, because I love that a little bit.
Here and there when I get parts, I'm like, this is actually kind of fun to do, but my end game is to just keep getting better at stand-up and putting stuff out.
I didn't drop out of college to do anything else.
I didn't drop out of college to do anything else but stand-up and get better.
Now I'll do everything else that I have around it.
You know podcasts and do all that stuff, but I you know, I love I love telling a joke I love telling a story and that's why I got into this man and Mikey, you know, yeah The best do you remember when you were an open mic or knew this thought of the dream was just Greg Fitzsimmons and I started out a week apart from each other and You know, I just saw him a couple days ago in LA. We were super tight.
Yeah And we would just sit around going, imagine what it would be like to pay your bills with comedy.
That's the goal.
The goal was just to be a professional.
We saw those guys in Boston that were pros, and I looked at them like, how did they do it?
I think there's a lot of people that run through this world and they think they look great when they look like shit and they think they're skinny when they're fat and they think they're smart when they're dumb.
One of the first times I'm headlining, I'm in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, right outside Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, at a place called Carolina Comedy Club.
It's not there anymore.
And I was just able to headline a B room.
Okay, so you figure there's a good 45 minutes, nothing great.
People are just fucking, people are jumping off, you know, and I come out there, and I can have them, like, look at this fucking Yankee, like, you know, and I'm fighting through it, I'm fighting through it, but you know who is?
Jordan Rock, Chris's youngest brother, who does stand-up.
But for me, my parents took me to see Live in the Sunset Strip when I was like, I guess I was like 14 or 15. I was like first or second year of high school.
And I'll never forget that moment.
Because I couldn't believe how funny he was.
I had seen movies like Stripes, really funny movies.
And I laughed really hard, but not like this.
I remember very clearly looking around while the movie was going on, while everybody was just...
Falling out of their chair laughing, like laughing so hard.
We played a thing the other day when we did a Protect Our Parks podcast with Gillis and Norman and Ari, and we watched this clip of him accepting an award, and he goes up and accepts an award and then does some stand-up.
He talked about Bill Cosby, did a Bill Cosby impression about them taking away Bill Cosby's awards.
There was talk a few years ago about him doing a Netflix special, but I think for a guy like him, it's just like, you know, it's hard to like, you gotta do, you gotta just show up and start doing sets and then, you know, it's so easy for him to just show up on a movie set and he's the fucking man.
It's I mean I know I'm not saying that to be a self-important person because I'm a comedian But I mean for me just for me if I never did comedy again Comedy is important for me just because like to laugh at things.
You know what I fucking love?
Memes.
Oh The the fucking internet provides me with so much goddamn the the my friends like the memes that we send each other back and forth Yeah, they just fine.
I don't know who's doing them.
I don't know who's making them and You know, I mean, I wish I knew all the guys who made all the memes so that I could credit them, but my God, there's some funny shit.
The feeling you get when a big group of people is crying laughing and I'm talking about like when you see somebody like I love seeing the couple but I love seeing the woman go like I love seeing the woman go like this and the husband comes up after like dude she she she was crying laughing I love seeing my wife that's just such a cool emotion to give somebody because it's the only job it's the only job where that happens We actually make somebody,
you know, and what about when somebody's like, hey man, things were going really, you know, I went to Buffalo right after that shooting.
But they put out that letter before they put it out saying, like, if you don't want to work with people whose content you don't agree with, please leave.
Yeah, I had this bit, and this lady, it turned out she was like an executive at some television network, which makes sense that she was so confident.
She interrupted twice.
She interrupted my set.
I was doing this bit.
I said, women can do everything men can do, right?
And she was like, yeah.
I go, no, that's not true.
I go, here's why it's not true.
Because men can't do everything men can do.
That's why we have the Olympics.
I'm like, there's different shit people can't do.
It was a bit about this, there was a woman who was guarding the White House.
She didn't have a gun.
She was at the front door of the White House.
And some crazy guy hopped the fence, ran across the White House.
The dude who was supposed to be with the dogs was on the phone.
So there's a guy with a dog, he's on the phone, probably talking to his girlfriend or something like that.
And the woman who's guarding the front door, the door is wide open, she doesn't have a gun.
The guy opens the door, and the whole bit was like that this guy's running probably.
Is this my last step?
Is this the last step of my life?
Like he's thinking at any moment they're going to fucking shoot him.
He gets all the way to the door, opens it.
There's a girl there, no gun.
Smacks her to the ground and goes running through.
It's a crazy story.
And the Secret Service guy who's having coffee, who wasn't even on duty, guy who's having coffee, sees this guy run through the White House and tackles him.
That's how they caught the guy.
Nobody knew if he had a gun, nobody knew if he had a bomb, no nothing, right?
And the idea was like, the premise was that they shouldn't have a woman guarding the front door of the White House.
I go, you know how I know this?
I go, because I shouldn't be guarding the front door of the White House.
You know how I know this?
Because I met Shaquille O'Neal and his dick is where my face is.
I'm like, if the White House is experiencing a Shaq attack, I'm the wrong dude to save the world.
Austin's a very progressive city, very liberal city.
But they're healthy liberal, like, for the most part.
There's crazy people here.
But it's a healthy level of liberal.
You know, they're just kind people, progressive, educated people.
But New York has like a, there's a thing going on there now where they think they're gonna revolutionize culture, they're gonna change culture, and they're gonna force everybody to think the way they think.
I got no problem with liberal, it's beyond liberal.
Like far, far right and far, far left, that's like the issue.
I got no problem with somebody, Democrat, Republican, it's the people that take it to a level that's just like, can I say something?
Can I have a fucking opinion on something?
And if that opinion doesn't fit, You know, one thing that I saw, and I know people talk about the Kanye West thing, but it's fucking really abusive to call somebody crazy because they don't agree or they like somebody that you don't like.
Now listen, I know Kanye West probably has his issues, like we all do, but calling somebody crazy because they don't fall with the narrative or because they may like somebody politically like that, that's fucking evil, man.
He's a fascinating guy to talk to, too, because you could tell.
He has a hard time having a conversation because I think ideas are just spinning around that dude's head like a mile a minute.
He wanted to redo the studio.
When he came in to do the podcast, he wanted to design a studio.
He was going to get a warehouse and have a studio built that looked like the inside of a womb.
Dude, he had drawings.
He was showing me, we're on a FaceTime, and he's showing me the images that he had drafted that people had made for him about this design that he wanted to do.
The only thing that fucked it up was that Jamie got COVID. And it would have been complicated to move everything to another place and Red Band sat in for Jamie.
Would he have been as demonized, though, if he didn't, you know, support Trump?
Or, you know, that's my only thing.
And I'm not saying everything he says I agree with.
But as soon as he did that and said, hey, like, let's see what this guy has to say.
And I would do this for anybody, whether it was Trump or the other side, but as soon as he said that, since the media didn't like that, it felt like it was just like, is he okay?
Well, I just don't like, you know, I just don't like if anything is different, you just really do get fucking, you know, you get demonized or you just get the way they go at you, man.
What goes on is people love to pile on people and they love to try to get people fired.
It's like a new sport.
When people talk about cancel culture isn't real or cancel culture is real, whatever you want to call cancel culture.
But what is real is that people, especially with the advent of social media, because everybody has a point, Everybody has an opinion that they can express.
They love to pile on and then try to do something about it.
They love to try to attack someone's sponsors.
They do that with various people where they'll go after their sponsors or they try to get their videos removed from YouTube or they're doing things like that.
It's just because people have the ability to enact change.
And it only really works if companies give in to it.
And to Spotify's credit, one of the brilliant things that they did was nothing.
They just said, you know, we're not going to censor rappers.
We're not going to stop them from saying what they want to say.
I'm glad they did that because they, well, Also, they took a giant fucking hit in their stocks.
Their stock came fucking tumbling down when Elon was talking about how they're unwatchable because of their woke ideology.
And then, you know, that Cuties movie.
There was like a bunch of things that happened where everybody's like, hey, hey, what the fuck are you guys doing?
And so then they kind of reeled it in and with the Dave Chappelle thing the Dave Chappelle thing pissed me off more than anything because first of all Dave's a good friend and he's amazing.
He's an amazing guy He's an amazing comedian and the bits that he had on his show were not transphobic.
They just weren't What they were was him talking about someone that was a very close friend of his that committed suicide.
Someone he cared about.
It was almost like a love letter to a friend that committed suicide who happened to be transgender and along the way there's some jokes about it.
And it's not transphobic.
He's not never saying there's something wrong with these people, they shouldn't be that way, we should get rid of them.
There's none of that.
There's none of that in that.
But no one cited any individual bits.
That was the most fucked up thing about it.
They didn't cite any individual bits.
They didn't say, he said this and this is bad.
They just put this blanket of transphobia on it, and then a bunch of people chimed in, including other comics.
If you see someone and they're attacking someone like a Chappelle or a Chris Rock or someone who's at the top of the game or Louis or Bill, a lot of times those people are doing it And they're coming at it from a place of envy.
I actually just had a conversation with a comic about this last night.
He was shitting on this comic and I said, hey man, I'm like, that guy is a nice fucking guy and he's funny.
He was shitting on John Mulaney.
I was like, he's a nice guy and he's a funny guy.
And just because he's doing well and you're not, don't come to me with that shit because you could be doing that about me when I'm not looking.
You start comparing your life and like, my God, man, you could be living in a third world country under the rule of a dictator, you know, with food rations, barely getting by, watching your children go hungry.
Instead, you're out there killing it, and you're upset because someone's killing it more than you?
But another one is the greatest thing a man could do for his children is love their mother.
That one hits.
That's a good one.
He's got some really good ones.
But going back to what you said, it's like...
I cut people like that out because, you know, coming up there would be people like, you know, because I would be, the knock on me was always, oh, Verzi's too positive.
Oh, Verzi's too positive.
He's too happy.
He's too positive.
He's never, he's a, and people would.
Who said that?
Oh, dude.
I saw, like, just, just, no, just come.
Name, name.
People would be like, oh, here goes Verzi, glass half full.
And that's how I am.
That's a weird knock.
That sounds like a positive quality.
Yeah, but I saw it was because they didn't have it.
And it was a projection.
And listen, I was as insecure as could be, but you know what?
It doesn't matter, man.
Run your race.
You know what it reminds me of?
There was a pitcher, you might know this pitcher, Mariano Rivera for the Yankees.
Closer.
Best pitcher.
Best relief pitcher of all time.
It's not even close.
Best relief pitcher.
When Mariano Rivera would come into a Yankee game, the percentage of them winning was 98%.
He would just come in and it was a fucking rap.
Right?
It was a rap.
And the reason why it was a rap is because he reinvented himself after 97 and he threw what they call the cutter.
He threw a cutter.
Right?
94 miles an hour.
Everybody knew it was coming.
And he would saw your fucking bat off and he would strike you out.
You would see him.
The point of this is you would see him in the bullpen showing pitchers how to throw.
Everyone would be like, dude, you have the best pitcher.
And he would be there.
But he was a very skinny, lanky guy.
He would be showing other pitchers with different body types.
They would go and it wasn't because that was his shit.
The way his mechanics, the way his hips would turn, the way his lanky arm would release it.
That's why his cutter was so effective.
So these other guys were the big fucking pitcher trying to do it.
It wasn't effective.
And I always look at it.
It's like when I hear comics try to do what other comics are doing, like, well, look what that one's doing.
You always hear that, too.
You always be at a comedy club.
Well, look what so-and-so's doing.
Look what so-and-so's doing.
It's like...
Do your shit.
Do your path.
And if my path is that I'm too positive and that I'm a fucking happy guy and I'm kind of content with my life and my family and shit and you're going to knock that, then knock it.
Because I'll be honest, dude, I don't have time for it, man.
I've been to hell.
I've been to hell with anxiety and depression.
I've been to hell with shit that happened when I was younger.
What the fuck can you do to me?
All it is is gravy for me.
Nothing is going to hurt me because I've been to fucking hell.
So if I'm going to see some guy doing good, or I'm going to see somebody going good, but man, if somebody does shit that I don't respect, I may go, if me and you were smoking a stick, I'd be like, dude, I wouldn't fucking, you know, I don't know if I would do that.
But it would never be in like a, because that's just not who I am.
And if people want to knock that, but it's projection.
It's really projection of what people have going on with themselves.
It's a lot of just, they don't like where they're at, and so they compare, and they don't like what other people are doing because it makes them think about what they're doing.
I used to not like alt clubs for that reason, because you'd go to an alt club and people would be mad if you tried hard.
Like, I remember, like, there was some comics that were making fun of this guy for being so physical.
Yeah, it's, uh, it's comedies, like, in a lot of ways.
It's analogous to life.
Like, the amount of energy that you spend focusing on yourself and trying to do better and being honest and objective.
That's going to benefit you in all areas of your life.
Because if you could apply that sort of strategy to other things, your friendships, your relationships, your job, whatever else you do outside of that, it's the same thing.
Just do your best and try to figure out what's wrong with the parts that suck.
Try to make them better.
Try to see if you can improve upon things.
It's a constant process.
And in that constant process, there's a lot of joy in watching things get better.
Yeah, no, absolutely, and sometimes you need people outside of you to see it.
I remember my wife, a couple of people I'm talking about that, oh, too positive, too this and that, they're not doing comedy anymore, but I remember my wife would go, every time that person calls you, something happens to you.
Like, there's an angst, there's something like that.
She would go, and she would, why don't you just get that person out of your life?
But I had this thing like, hang on, and maybe I could, you know, but she was like, there's no reason for that.
You know, I've had friends before that would just complain all the time, and it just got to the point where I was like, Jesus Christ, I can't keep this person in my life.
All they do is complain.
It's one thing if you're complaining, like Burr complains a lot, but it's funny.
It's like he's complaining in a comedic style on purpose.
So Bill will fill up, you know, hour and a half, two hours of just talking shit about things, and the amount of premises that he pulls from that are huge.
Because he's always got this thing, like, he's aware that people are listening, so he's got to kind of keep it moving constantly, and there's always something to talk about, and in this uninterrupted ranting style that he has, it's like one of the best gardens for material, because he can just pluck material out of that.
I did a podcast once and I told a story, a really funny story about being on a Judd Apatow thing.
And I was fucking...
And it was really awesome.
And they just...
Thinking about what they were going to say next and I saw it.
You know when you talk to somebody and you just see their fucking eyes and I'm telling this story and they go, oh yeah, so then I did it and I'm like, alright, what the fuck am I doing?
I think another reason why is because I don't think a lot of people have, not everybody, I don't want to speak for everybody, but I think a lot of those people don't have other things like families and like things in their life, you know, because that's number one.
And when you see people that, you know, are living in a studio, one bedroom apartment, running around, just doing spots, don't have anybody, it's just all me, me, you know, and then you're like, I'm going, you know.
I remember one time somebody knocked me for having a family.
They were like, what do you got now, Versi 6 kids?
My wife is a strong woman and does not, yes, she would, she said the other day, she said if somebody, she fucking, she just gave me, she goes, if somebody hurt our children, she goes, I would rip their fucking head off.
I wonder, like, if we need evil in the world to appreciate love.
Like, you know, there's this, like, balance of life.
There's a balance of life that I don't want evil in the world, right?
But, I mean, is it possible to have a world with no evil?
Like, we've literally never had a world with no war, which is wild if you think about it.
I guess, technically speaking, if you go back to the most primitive of primitive man, they couldn't wage war because they were just trying to find food, but I'm sure they attacked each other.
They definitely had violence.
There's never been a time, like giraffes even beat the fuck out of each other.
Yeah, dinosaurs.
They beat the fuck out of each other.
Animals have always competed with other animals.
And unfortunately for humans, the ultimate game of competition is to conquer land and conquer villages and conquer countries and shit.
And that's the ultimate form of a competition, like trying to physically take...
That's what's going on right now in Ukraine.
Russia's trying to physically take Ukraine.
They wanted to take control of this country, this sovereign nation that used to be a part of the Soviet Union.
From what I understand, it's like some of these Chinese interests are divesting in the West, which is also very scary.
Because if they're looking at the way we do sanctions on the Russians, they might say, you know what, there's a weakness that we rely on America and the West for money.
And maybe what we should do is sell all that stuff off and then attack Taiwan.
She could face up to 10 years in prison if convicted.
Oh, my God.
The pending outcome of a trial is scheduled to start on Friday.
She made an appearance in Russian court with order to stand trial on cannabis possession charges following her arrest more than four months ago.
So she's going to be in there a year at least.
Sullivan said on Tuesday that he and the Secretary of State Anthony Blinken have both spoken in the last few days with Greiner's wife to convey our very deep...
That ain't helping.
Sherelle Greiner last week said she hasn't spoken to her wife since February and that she tried to call through the U.S. Embassy in Russia for their anniversary, but they were never connected.
Freeing Griner, according to speculation raised in Russian news media, could acquire the US to free Viktor Bout, a Russian arms trader nicknamed the Merchant of Death.
Yeah, that's what I'm talking about.
He was arrested in 2008 after undercover agents asked Bout to sell them missiles capable of shooting down American planes and other weapons that could kill American troops.
He was arguably the largest and most sophisticated arms trafficker on the globe when he was arrested.
Michael Braun, the DEA's former chief of operations, told Yahoo Sports in May, he was the guy who could deliver virtually anything with certainty to any bad actor all over the world.
So that's what they want a woman who's a professional basketball player who just had a CBD vape pen, and they want to trade her for a guy who sells murder weapons.
When this thing broke out, I wanted to take my family to Sicily and Greece because that's what I am.
I'm Greek and Sicilian.
So I told the kids and Stacey, I go, let's go and let's go to Greece, Sicily, we'll have a good time.
And then all this like...
Is World War III? I'm talking about at the very beginning when we were about to book.
Is World War III coming?
And my wife was kind of like, should we book this shit?
And stupidly, I didn't.
But, you know, I wish that I did because I see people in the Colosseum taking pictures and shit, and everybody's having a good time in Italy, and we didn't do it.
Apparently, they're going to stop the boats from coming in, though, because they have these cruise ships come in, and then they just dump out thousands of people, and they just blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and they fart everywhere and buy stupid T-shirts and then get back on the boat.
But the problem is the congestion that comes from it and the pollution of the water and all that stuff.
Apparently they're doing something to mitigate the amount of cruise ships.
He goes, I was watching one of these shitty videos, but they fuck, because he likes that, but this woman's staring at him.
He's got a fur collar, big, like a suede thing with a fur collar, and this woman is just staring at him, and he just stops, and he looks at her, and he goes, I owe you money?
And she goes, excuse me, what?
He goes, no, I'm just curious.
Do I owe you money?
Because the last person that stared at me like that, I owed her money.
And she just fucking froze.
He goes, okay, have a good day and got in the car and she just fucking, I never said anything like it.
He just said, do I owe you money?
And she just goes, no, why?
He goes, why are you looking at me like that?
The last person that looked at me like that.
But see, my dad always talked to me against the mob.
That's the one thing.
He would always, because he knew them, because he was Sicilian.
But he would always be like, you can't get out of that.
But they did this thing called blockbusting, where they would go door to door and say, hey, black people are moving into this neighborhood.
The real estate values are going to crash.
Sell your house now.
And they got everybody to sell their house.
My grandfather was like, fuck you.
I like black people.
Get out of here.
And so he was like this one Italian guy that lived in this neighborhood and it was originally all black people moved in and then it became other immigrants like Dominicans and Puerto Ricans and the like.
And when I was there, the kid next door was selling crack.
And the kid next door was a drug dealer, and they battering rammed his house.
He had an Audi, a nice Audi.
I remember looking out the window.
This fence and fucking locks and everything.
He's got a nice Audi there.
What is this guy doing?
He was selling drugs.
And my grandfather just lived this life for the last days of his life where he's just taking care of my grandmother.
And then when my grandmother finally eventually died, he died like a year later.
Yeah, just riddled with sadness and it was horrible.
He just was just lost, you know?
But it was, for me, as a young man, just starting this dream of trying to be a comic and being around people that were at the last chapter, the last few pages of their story, it was like a real wake-up call.
Like, you gotta do something in this life.
You gotta go out there and take advantage of this youth and the fact that you have a healthy life, you have a healthy body, you're active, you can still do things, because you can be like your grandmother.
You just brought me back to, you know, you think about life, dude, and how quick and how wild it is, but, you know, 2016 was one of the worst years of my life.
I talked about it a little bit on Honey Do It with Ryan Sickler, who I love, Ryan.
I was in a full-fledged panic attack and it was like I was standing next to myself and I was dizzy and I didn't want to fall down so I kind of put my hand on something and I drove home 100% convinced I had a brain tumor.
Therapists say that something probably was happening and going on that I, you know, that I don't even know.
They were trying to talk to me, talk to me about things when I was younger and stuff, but I just, it was, it started physical and my mind went to something wrong with an illness.
And I was in, I was in a dark place and my wife was, I was gone.
And then I got out of it and I got better and I got stronger.
And I had friends and good friends, you know, to, you know, be there for me and talk to me about it.
But it was, dude, it was like 90 days.
I don't think I was coming out of it.
And then after that, I was like, and then I learned a lot.
I read a lot about mental health.
I read a lot about OCD, anxiety, and because I'm not a fully depressed person, but it goes to that with the anxiety and the OCD. And it's something that I think is in my family, so I try to fight it, you know?
I think that what happened to me, you know, the way things went down when I was younger, and then also some things maybe on my mom's side.
But yeah, it would suck, man.
It would suck to be there.
And I would never kill myself.
See that's that's what like I was so bad that I was like I understand why somebody would do that but I would never do that so I'm just now I'm really sad because I'm just gonna live in this Jesus so and I and I was like is this ever because once like three months and then I actually learned there was like a 90 day like you can be depressed for that and that was the first time it happened that bad but when I got out of it I was like fuck this dude I'm like every like I'm gonna life is too you know my mom had stage four cancer when I was younger too that's what actually Yanis said that that's what he thinks is from In 1997,
my mom got diagnosed with a rare stage 4 cancer, and she was on her way out, but the Dana-Farber Institute in Boston came up with a test drug, and she's alive today because of it.
It's a good thing for you to talk about because there's a lot of people that don't understand what that's like and they don't understand how a person who is a successful comic, who's doing well, you have a family, you're loved, how could that be possible?
There's people that are like super, super successful that are just a mess.
And it doesn't need to make sense.
The mind is just like other parts of your body.
You could get a pinched nerve and your arm doesn't work right anymore because there's something wrong with your body.
Well, there could be something wrong with your mind, too.
Your dopamine levels could be low.
Your serotonin levels could be low.
There could be something wrong, and then it just triggers it.
What people know about the mind is so fucking confusing.
I've had friends that got on SSRIs and antidepressants and shit, and it saved them.
It's one of the reasons I'm very hesitant to say that people should take medication, but I have friends that have taken medication and it changed their life.
It really did.
I have one buddy of mine that I used to do jujitsu with.
He was like fucking really depressed and he was an alcoholic and he was a mess and then he started taking medication and like some sort of SSRI and it got him out of the funk and then he started doing well in his life and then he started doing jujitsu and jujitsu sort of became his medication and he got really good at jujitsu.
And along the way, while he was getting really good at jujitsu, he slowly weaned his way off of the medication and then became functioning and normal.
So it did help him and save him.
He used it as like a cane to help him walk again, and then eventually got rid of the cane.
There was this drug called Luvox and I took a very low dose of it and it would take the edge off because I would get stuck in the thought where I'd be in a hotel and I would sit in a bed and I'd have a thought and I couldn't, I would fucking just be sitting there being like, well, why am I thinking this?
And the drug actually helped me to be like, dude, just fucking go, like, just move on.
So I've learned all that stuff and I have a really good understanding.
I had my first panic attack.
I didn't realize it, but, you know, my mother, I had my first panic attack in the third grade and I thought I was going to die.
It was third grade and it was a panic that came over me.
I started looking around.
I was a little kid I didn't know.
And I called my mom.
I was crying.
I said, and I started to, and my mom got upset because she has anxiety.
So, yeah, and they said that that was because of what was going on as a kid.
Jesus, I'm not trying to bring this fucking thing, but you got me talking about it, and when I talked about it before, people called me up and said, Thank you.
You let me realize it's okay.
And that's the reason why I talk about it a lot is because when you get a message from somebody going, hey man, you helped me.
But yeah, man, I was in a really dark place and it was when I was doing well.
I remember right before, like a year before, I remember I was on the road with Burr.
And Burr goes, dude, you're getting ready for a special, man.
This material is coming together.
And like things were going good.
And then all of a sudden, man, it's just everything went, you know, and my wife was like, you got to go, you got to talk to somebody.
Because you think there's all sorts of endorphins that get released during exercise.
There's many times where I'm not feeling good, and then I work out, and then I feel so good.
I feel so happy.
And so nice, like that's one of the things that made me like so much nicer person is like sticking to a rigorous exercise routine because I you know I grew up My parents split up when I was five and there's domestic abuse in my house and I just always had this like tension about like violence and chaos and not being protected and stuff and And it makes you an angry person.
And the only thing that saved me was exertion.
Like when I would exert myself, when I would work out, like in martial arts in particular.
Afterwards, I was the nicest person in the world.
I was the nicest person in the world.
It was just like it made me...
My mom still talks about to this day.
She's like, there's two yous.
There's you before you started training, and then there's you afterwards.
Because when I was like 14, I was this fucking angry kid.
This angry, confused, insecure kid.
And then I started training.
Martial arts was the first thing that I ever did where I didn't feel like a loser.
Where I was like, oh, I can get good at things.
I'm really good at this.
I got praise for being good.
And I got praise for my instructor.
It became a big deal.
And then I realized, like, oh, I can't just sit around.
Like, half of the reason why I work out a lot is not just I like to look good and be, you know, healthy physically.
That's true, too.
But it's my mind.
I can't leave that motherfucker alone.
Like, that motherfucker needs to go for a run.
Like, he needs to do stuff.
I don't trust it.
I don't trust my mind.
My mind is primitive.
There's a lot of shit in there that just needs to get out.
But when I get it out, I get out in healthy, productive ways, and then my body stays healthy, my mind is clear, I can think things through better, but it makes me a nicer person.
And, you know, they both are cool and realize that the way they were going at each other probably isn't, you know, they would wish they wouldn't have been like that.
But, you know, my mom said when I was really young, I would wake up like really upset thinking something was going to happen to her.
There's a million people here and then another million in the surrounding areas.
It's like, it's not that many people.
So, everyone is nicer.
Like, it's a nicer place to be.
I don't know...
I don't think I would have been the same person if I grew up here, because I think there's something about growing up on the East Coast, cold, hard winters, and people that are aggressive and fucking getting shit done, get the fuck out of here, and for comedy, growing up out there was phenomenal, because doing stand-up in Boston, those motherfuckers have zero attention span for bullshit.
Like, you better come with the fucking punchlines.
Like, if you see comics, like, from Boston, the guys who started out there, guys like Burr, Nick DiPaolo, and fucking, all those guys are killers.
They're just bang, bang, bang, punchline, punchline, punchline.
There's something about getting up and having somebody go, you better go shovel that foot of fucking snow and get out there and do all that shit outside.
And then now, dude, the last four or five years, I have fight night at the house.
I can talk about it, you know, probably compared to you, I'm like a decent open mic level to talk about a UFC. But now I'm starting to like, you know who I like?
And then Adesanya stops him in the second round, and then comes back, has this fucking great run, beats a lot of quality guys, and then fights for the title a second time to try to win his title back, and it got down to the wire.
So it looked like he almost lost like between the fourth and fifth rounds It looks like it was over like they're gonna stop the fight and then he came back in the fifth round and fought great It's like that guy's got incredible incredible heart that guy's heart was on and that's what I miss with boxing man boxing I used to love boxing and it's like you can't UFC is giving me something every two weeks I got every every week I watched I watched the ones at the apex I watched in Vegas and and boxing is like you gotta wait a fucking year for Well, for big fights, for big fights, you gotta wait.
But it's just, the UFC's just, the way they do it is just, they're way more organized, they're way more efficient, it's just a better system.
The way they put together fights, I mean, they're constantly showing you fights.
If you have ESPN +, I mean, it's fucking incredible.
There was a big boy standing there, and he was in the middle of the street, quiet snow.
And I just watched him, man.
And I was like, oh, my God.
That's why I can't...
I got nothing against hunting, man.
But when I hear something like moaning and shit, when I was in eighth grade, I shot a fucking Blue Jay with a pellet gun at like 13. And the thing went down, and I stared at it.
The arrows that we use today, my arrows are all carbon fiber, and then there's brass weights in them, in the front to make a higher FOC, which is like you want a higher weight in the front of the arrow, and then you have a broadhead, and you have veins in the end, the feathers, but they're actually made out of plastic, and these veins are steering the broadhead, making sure it goes straight, making sure the arrow goes straight.
Yeah, there's a long, deep learning curve to archery.
And then bow hunting, it's like archery at the highest level because you're trying to sneak up on a target that has evolved for a million years to get away from mountain lions.
So when you're shooting, say if you're shooting something, if you're a target archer, you're in the Olympics or something like that, your stance is very important.
You have to stand with your toes, have to be in line with where the arrow's gonna be, you draw back, you anchor, everything has to be perfect, and then you release the arrow.
You want all your mechanics to line up.
This motherfucker's out a truck.
It's impossible to do that and still hits a perfect 60-yard shot.
But for me, archery, even if I never hunt it again, I will never stop doing archery.
But just shooting targets is like, when you're thinking, when you've got that pin settled on that target, and you're trying to keep it steady, and you're just going through your shot process, and pulling through the shot, and the arrow breaks, and you watch that arrow right into the bullseye, it's one of the most satisfying feelings in life.
But it was also the kind of guy and girl that, first of all, there was no crowd there.
There was like maybe six people in the whole place.
And there's a guy named Brian Deary.
And Brian Deary was like a guy who would book road gigs.
He was the guy who started out doing comedy and then he became like a booker.
Real nice guy.
And he would always book me for these gigs.
And this was like a brand new gig that he had.
Like, you know, he would call up a place, hey, do you want to do a comedy night?
And they said, well, you know, we actually have a strip club and we want to get a host for a strip club.
So he says to me, do you want to host a strip club?
I'm like, well, how much money does it pay?
Yeah, I'll do it, sure.
It was like $150, right?
So I drive to Woonsocket, Rhode Island for $150 to MC. So I'm not just the comic.
I'm also bringing up the strippers.
So I would do a little comedy.
And when I say I bombed, it wasn't that I bombed.
Because I think when you bomb, there's some sound.
This was science.
I mean, I would tell my jokes to emptiness, and I don't even know if the people that were in the audience spoke English, because it's a very Portuguese community out there, so there's a lot of people who probably didn't even speak English.
This lady goes on.
The lady and the guy both looked like they were the poster people for bad parenting and alcohol abuse.
And this guy had...
I remember he had bad tattoos that he had covered up with bandanas.
So he put bandanas on his arm.
And you could see the shitty tattoo poking out under the bandana.
And the girl just looked sad.
I remember she had a snake on her butt.
A snake tattoo on the cheek of her butt.
It was a terrible snake like a five-year-old drew it.
One of the things about Boston was there was a bunch of bookers, and they would book you in these little weird road gigs all around Boston.
And sometimes they would be like that Brian Deary gig where they would just try it the first time.
And I was nobody, so I got those gigs.
I got the gigs where they weren't proven gigs.
They would just send me out.
And so Mike Clark, who's a dear friend, who's Lenny Clark's brother, Mike Clark, who's the best.
He runs Giggles in Saugus, Massachusetts.
He managed guys and stuff.
He's fucking great.
And he had a gig at a fish restaurant.
It was a seafood restaurant down the Cape.
And so I drive all the way down there, do this gig.
It's just me.
It's a one-person show, right?
And I get there, and they explain to me that you're going to go on stage because this is a huge restaurant.
And there was a place where they had a waiting room where people were waiting to be seated.
I mean, it was like 150 people waiting to be seated, and the rest of the restaurant was huge.
So in this place, they had drinks, and they'd sit and wait for their table to be ready.
So I'd be on stage, and what I didn't realize until I was on stage was that the PA system, where they would announce whether or not your table was ready, was the same sound system as the comedy system.
Back then, it was like, you know, I wasn't that skilled.
So it's like, you know, you're clunky still.
And so you have to catch yourself on a good day.
You can handle almost anything.
But on a shit day, like if I had just gotten in a fight with my girlfriend or something like that, and then I got there and I was angry or depressed or whatever, then it's not good.
But that day I was smiling already when I got there, and then I was like, oh, it seems like a good crowd.
And I got on stage and people were pretty friendly.
Yeah, I had resigned myself to the fact that it was a hell gig, and also resigned myself to the fact that this was probably the last time they were ever going to have a gig there, because Mike's gigs were always good.
So he's like, eh, pal, I don't know about this one, you know, I just started out, you want to do it?
I'm like, I'll do it.
Like, I would do anything.
Like, I would call them up, what do you got for me?
That was the way it worked.
There was several booking agents that you could call up, and you'd say, what do you got for me?
And you'd break out a calendar and write some shit down on the calendar, and then they would give you directions over the phone.
With what you had at the moment, that's the problem.
Like, if you went up there now today, you could probably just go right into some material, nice to be here, thank you very much, and you'd be more smooth and composed, and they would just follow along with you and you'd probably get them.
Or now today I could be like, today I could be like, and I mean I was still, I was actually pretty more advanced though.
I think what it was was, I think when I made the turn to roast and say that about his wife, and I don't know if her, I mean, that's what really turned.
And then I'm making fun of a guy that they're raising money for.
So it just was, you know, I mean, the only thing I didn't do was kick an old man.
And when we're old and retired and not doing stand-up anymore, and people say, that's something that you'll tell your, hey, do you remember a bad night?
Yeah, that's a fucking night that I remember that was bad.
Doug Bell is a character about a comic in the 90s who thinks he's like a legend, but he's not.
And he's got like blonde hair.
Oh my god.
And he'll talk low, and then he'll be like, and then he'll look at the producer, yeah, take that out because I don't need, you know, but like he's like nowhere.
He's the guy I tried to talk into doing podcasts a long time ago, but he's got that relationship with Sirius, you know, because he was on Opie and Anthony, and then he went from Opie and Anthony to Jim and Sam, you know, it's like, they're great on that show, but it's just like, man, your shit should be everywhere.
You're off the scene for seven years and you come back and everything is just crazy.
But I'm the guy, I got a lot of really funny show business stories.
So if you got like a birthday, I'll give you like, I got a million hilarious stories like for an anniversary or like if you had a birthday or an anniversary or something.
I got stories of it.
I was on stage one night and I'm doing my show and I used to have this joke right at the end where I'd go like, no, don't ever get married!
And I'd ring the bell and Chris Rock comes in and he goes on and he goes, hey Bell!
And I look, what?
I'll be with you in a second.
I'm taping this.
It's for Cameo.
I need the money.
So, you know, like that.
I had so many.
So just, if you want a cameo, like a crazy story like that, whatever, just, you know, it's good to see you again.
Because, yeah, like, I'm sure you're the same way.
I was just like, I was just never, like, I always just was like, had to work and had to get the goals in short term, long term, and whatever you fell short, you work harder to get.
I think what it does do that's good is it gets people on stage.
If you sign up for a comedy class and they say, hey, you're going to get up at the end of this class and the whole class is going to do three minutes, at least they're getting you on stage and then maybe you go from that and do something else and you actually wind up becoming a comic.
There's people that have started out in comedy classes, and it was just like a little foot ladder.
I think one of the most valuable resources for stand-up is podcasts, where people talk about stand-up.
Like you, just doing that.
Like if a guy's an open-miker, and he hears this, and he's thinking about doing comedy, and he's like, oh, Paul Verge is funny, let me listen to this podcast.
And he hears your whole process and what you went through, there's value in that.
Like, that's where you learn about comedy other than actually doing it.
Like the closer of my Netflix special, I was playing basketball with my son and it was the first time that he challenged his father, challenged me verbally and like chested up to me and fucking blushed and he looked at me and said let's fucking, you know, and when it happened, When it happened, I just was like, oh my god.
And then I got off and I remember going, oh my god.
That's a fucking, that's a bit.
So I called my friends and I go, dude, you gotta hear this.
And I told Giannis and I told Bill.
And Bill told me something.
He goes, Andy Kindler and Conan O'Brien heard it and they're laughing.
I'm going, I think it's a joke.
So I did it once at New York Comedy Club and I did it once at the cellar.
And somebody goes, close at the garden with it.
And I go, dude, I can't close up the garden.
There's 18,000 people.
They go, close up the garden with it.
So I said, this is what I'm going to do.
I'm going to do my set at the garden, and if it's going well, I'm going to do that joke.
I swear to God, Joe.
And I'm on stage, and I'm having the opposite of what I had at that country club.
Like, if I went to bed and dreamed, it was like, ah!
And they're there.
And I see all these people and it's amazing.
And I just look up and I see Patrick Ewing's thing in the Raptors.
And I go, fuck it, I'm a Knicks fan.
And I'm going, alright guys, I'm going to let you go with a story about basketball and my son.
And I did it.
And the place fucking erupted and it was the third time I ever did it.
And the coolest thing is Burr got on stage.
And he goes, how about Verzi killing with new shit?
He addressed it somehow, but it was the third time.
But I knew when my son did that.
I knew when my son did that, that it was something that could be special on stage.
It was one of those.
But where before you're doing it a while, you wouldn't know.
I don't know how guys are like, I open a notebook, you know, on Thursday for, I can't do that, dude.
I can't fucking.
Plus, I wouldn't know where to, you know, I just want to go and, you know, if my wife and I get into something or something like that happens, then I'm like, oh, that's something, you know.
No, dude, people were like, like, people said to me, like, dude, you followed, like, 28-year-olds for a long time and then bought a fucking taco and just sat there.
As soon as you were saying, as soon as we were talking about that, like, you know, getting the best of something or, you know, doing a set and not getting it right and wanting to get right back on stage and you don't write it down and you want to get right back and do it.
I just thought of that.
I just thought of that.
Don't ever do that again.
That guy was kicking my seat and he was laughing and it ruined my movie.
It ruined the movie and it was a great performance by Adam Sandler.
Yeah, it sucks, too, because if you watch it again, it's not going to be the same.
That's the problem with fucking movie theaters, man.
That's why I love watching movies at home.
It's so much better.
I love when they started, during COVID, they started streaming movies right away, like on HBO Max and on iTunes.
You can get it right away.
While I was out in the movie, I'm like, thank you.
This is what I've been asking for forever.
It's just too risky.
I mean, it's only happened to me a few times where people were talking in movie theater, you had to tell them to shut the fuck up, but it's enough that it's just so frustrating.
Some people will talk full blast.
Some people do that at a comedy club.
Some guy last night at the Vulcan, the front row, just talking full volume.
I should have just turned around and I should have said dude stop kicking my fucking seat but he was doing it in this like really passive aggressive way where like after I did that it was like lower and like but yeah movie theaters anytime they always sit near you and I don't like being around people dude that's why my house is far away I don't like being around people dude I want to be away in the woods man.
Yeah, but Ari came to my backyard and fucking we drank a bottle till 7 o'clock in the morning at the fire pit.
He looked up and he goes, oh my god, I could do mushrooms here forever.
All the comics that get high and do that, they came to my house, they were just like, dude, we gotta go to Verzi's fire pit and do mushrooms and stare at the stars.
I think it's very possible there's something greater than us that's running this whole thing.
I think in some sort of a weird way.
I think it's just what we think of as us, as just being a human being, the energy that it is of being a human being is a very complex energy.
And what it means to be alive is very strange.
Very strange.
And you're a part of some massive process.
Massive process of billions of other similar organisms who all have their own hopes and dreams and ideas and desires and they're all moving towards a certain direction and all of it is moving together.
You just can't see it because you're in the middle of it.
But as a super organism, as one gigantic race of beings, we're all moving in a general direction.
And that's what I like about getting high, is that I can put things into perspective and it humbles me.
And a lot of things that I've put out there and I've asked for and I believe in and I've gotten senses and feelings and, you know, whatever it is, whatever people want to say and people, oh, whatever, you know, this and that.
Yeah, and I think that there's, you know, there's some, a lot of the things that Jim Carrey said when he was like, you know, when you put things out there or you kind of talk it into existence and say something, you know, I don't know if it's some force, but there's some power to that.
Maybe even if it's something that motivates you to get there.
Or even if it's something that comes in subconsciously to you in order to get that end result and get that final goal.
But when you say that, I said some of the shit that I was going to do.
And that's when some people are like, oh yeah, but I said it.
And I meant it.
And I was a guy that was looked over and I was like, no, no, it's coming.
And it's never going to not be that way because that's what I do and who I am.
But when I say something, I feel something and I ask for it.