Big Jay Oakerson and Joe Rogan dive into Oakerson’s chaotic career—from MTV2 backlash over his "Aunt Jemima" joke to driving strippers while encountering brothers with swastika tattoos—while critiquing media exploitation, like Girls Gone Wild’s penny-subscription scheme. They debate comedy’s role in social justice, mocking Hannah Gadsby’s stance, and share viral stage moments, including a Boston comedian throwing stools. Rogan’s sitcom struggles (Hardball, NewsRadio) and Oakerson’s Hustlers anecdotes (Jennifer Lopez, Lizzo) contrast with their praise for comedians like Greg Fitzsimmons who stayed true to their craft. The episode ends with Oakerson’s rising Double Crowdwork special nearing 1M views, proving niche humor thrives even in restrictive club environments like Denver Comedy Works’ Wendy’s-style seating. [Automatically generated summary]
Absolutely. Like, when people make fun of me, just the way I dress or whatever, coloring my hair, my piercings, and they're always like, is it going to change at some point?
And I am hitting an age where I'm like, I can't just do a hard shift one day, but it is funny to think, like, I can't see myself at 65. With painted nails.
And the one I always remember, because when I would go back to MTV for anything, they would always be like, we still passed the segment around of you doing that.
What were they thinking?
Yeah. And it was Fiona Apple on an award show years ago to accept her award.
She got there and started quoting.
She's like, the great Maya Angelou or something.
And I was like, Maya Angelou?
I was like, what is she talking about Maya Angelou for?
Look, we all loved her as Wheezy Jefferson, and I enjoy her pancake syrup.
And then they were like, yo, you can't call Maya Angelou Aunt Jemima.
I was looking at an art gallery in Philly recently that had a Dr. Seuss exhibit at it, and I forgot that Dr. Seuss had all those crazy racist drawings and stuff.
You know what's the most crazy racist shit that caught me off guard?
It was R. Crumb.
Yeah, you know our crumb the like 70s sort of psychedelic comic book guy He was very popular when I was a kid living in San Francisco and then when I was an artist And I was like I used to love his stuff cuz like god this guy's so weird and then I saw some of the like the super racist ones and you're like What the fuck it really is the explanation is like yeah,
it's a different time He had some just weird shit, man.
It's so funny when someone makes strong decisions if they change their ways.
I used to drive strippers to bachelor parties to be the bouncer with zero skills to handle that whatsoever.
I took the job as a fat kid that wanted to see naked girls for free.
And I ended up at a bachelor party with two brothers.
It was one of the brothers thing, and he was covered in swastika tattoos and all kinds of crazy shit.
And the strippers were not both white, for sure.
But there's also black people at this party and stuff like that.
And I don't know the explanation these guys have to give, but I talked to one of their black friends and was like, hey, is it weird to ask, but these guys are all covered in swastika and racist tattoos.
And they were like, oh yeah, they just got caught up in some bullshit when they were teenagers.
They're good dudes.
Like, wow.
And they're still wearing short-sleeved shirts, huh?
That seems strange.
You think these guys would be wearing Terrell Owens body suits to cover that up?
It was a girl I lost my virginity to, who was a little bit older than me, and a very hippy-dippy girl.
And we went to go see...
Oh, what the fuck?
Was the movie was a John Singleton movie No, no, no, no.
It was the one on the school campus Why am I blanking on it?
Omar Epps was in it.
Tyra Banks was in it.
Michael Rappaport was great in it.
Higher learning.
I took this girl to see higher learning and the movie is great at the end of the movie Michael Rappaport goes crazy becomes he gets roped into being a white supremacist With the skinhead group on campus.
Never seen that.
These guys were, I mean, like, hardcore on-campus skinheads.
I'm, like, I watch things so open-minded and just looking to be entertained that I miss messages a lot.
But by the third episode, I realized, it's about a little boy gets immediately accused of, until it starts, of killing a classmate.
And he's getting arrested.
Each episode is one shot to make it like a play.
And the acting is unbelievable.
But what it whittles down to, it's apparently from the videos I watched beyond, like this show explained, because I look at all those, and it was like an anti-toxic masculinity message.
And the idea was just like, the kids watched porn, and his dad's a tough guy, so that's why he thought he can kill a woman, or why he can kill a girl.
Wow. And they shout out, and again, I don't know a lot of this guy's stuff other than...
The basic idea, but they shout out Andrew Tate.
And when I heard that name, I was like, oh, that's what this is.
He's had a ton of fucking series, those weird series that you like flip through in the middle of the night like he's a motorcycle detective or something.
It's like there's a bunch of those.
How many series?
He's one of those guys that like always has a series.
That surgery is a crazy way to go because you can't see what you look like.
It's like anorexics or bodybuilders.
You get dysmorphia.
Your brain starts playing tricks on you, and you think your lips aren't big enough, and your tits aren't big enough, and your face is, you know, like there's some skin on the side of your ears.
You can pull it back, and you tuck this and pull that, and my ass would stick out more if they put the implants in, and that would probably get me a better guy.
Let's find out what they do, because I'm bewildered.
So I know that there's an operation where they take fat out of other parts of your body and they stuff it in your ass, and your ass looks like a bag of cheese.
The rest will be reabsorbed by the body over time.
The results you see immediately after surgery and in the weeks following are not permanent.
Around 90 days post-op, your butt will finally stabilize into its new shape and size.
The procedure itself is semi-permanent as opposed to permanent.
As your body responds to natural aging process and normal weight fluctuations, so too will your buttocks.
Depending on the precautions you take during your recovery and the lifespan you maintain in the time following, your BBL may last several years to even decades.
I saw a dude at the mall the other day with a BBL.
This was my question because I know there's an implant as well.
Yeah. So there's butt implants, which is kind of even crazier because then you're taking the risk of having something, a foreign object in your ass where everyone's scared to get cancer.
Like, if you're scared to get cancer, what's the place you're scared to get the cancer the most?
Ass cancer.
You don't have to shit in a bag.
You know?
So, like, you're thinking about these plastic things that you've inserted into the muscle tissue surrounding you.
What kind of inflammation is going to be caused by that?
What about the plastic leaching into your body as you're in the sauna?
Butt augmentation is most commonly performed by fat injections, da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da.
While men can do, like women, synthetic fillers and fat injections, they often are less tolerant of the procedures that require multiple treatments and whose effects are more modest.
Interesting. They're often smaller and flatter buttocks, are more resistant to augmentation efforts, with stronger intergluteal muscles and a thinner subcutaneous fat layer.
So he's saying, I can do it to dudes, but it's not gonna come out good.
When I was heavier even, I went to, I got a consultation, free consultation at a plastic surgeon.
I was like, I bet I'm fine with my hard dick, but I hate my soft hang sometimes.
And I was like, I bet if I got my gun sucked out, liposuctioned, it'll make it look bigger, soft, particularly.
And I'm like, so I went to the consultation.
It was a male doctor, so you're like, okay.
I mean, I knew he was going to have to look, ultimately, at one point.
But this guy takes me to the mirror.
He goes, all right, drop your pants.
Drop my pants and I also have dr. Dick, you know like it's like I'm also a guy so I'm like shit and you can't like I didn't want to try to like fluff it up fluff it before he walks So I am he fucking Comes in and he's like drop your pants He goes walk over to this mirror which I was like oh God don't make me do this and I stand in front of the mirror and he goes On either side of my dick with his hands and
he goes right now looks like this and I can make it look and he just pushes my fat back and goes like this and I was like His dick is just inches from your face.
I was like the whole time.
Uh-huh I pulled my pants up like a victim and left the office and never even thought about it again.
Well, he was not doing things that were anywhere near his home.
He would go away for long stretches at a time and go back and forth, and he had all these reasons for doing so, different businesses that he did that he was involved with.
He's the only guy that I could say, as a, well, there's a few others that you probably could put in that argument, that have zero movies where I'm like, eh.
I liked a movie that you have to try to figure out, but when you can't figure it out, and other people can't figure it out, you're like, this is just a hunk of shit there.
Right. You can't be so artistic that nothing makes sense.
And this dude is a soldier who retired from the war and became a gold miner and made a little score and was trying to get to the town with his score and he runs with the Nazis.
What do you think the mindset is behind like a Liam Neeson who, I mean, there's a movie comes out almost bi-monthly of him getting revenge for something.
We've been introduced in that regard and whenever I see him it's the blank of like Nope.
I went on stage right before him the entire tour, and he has no recollection.
One time, this is a great story, we had tickets to go, or passes to go see Rob Zombie's, I think it was the Halloween, the original Halloween remake he did.
And the scene was pre-famous Jim Carrey plays a rock star junkie, and they're shooting his music video, and the song they're using is Welcome to the Jungle.
I'll make a lot of concession for someone's process, but when I watch that documentary about him doing the Andy Kaufman movie, and him coming into the makeup thing every day, and really screaming and bothering the shit of everybody, you see Judd Hirsch's face in the documentary like,
That's plenty.
You have to get into your mode or whatever, but come on.
Like Deadwood, and then the girl, you know, she'll like lift her skirt up and you're like, God, I bet it smells like a fucking murky dungeon down there.
And then when she bathes, and then there's no shower, so they have to just bathe in it and just hope that whatever's in there washes to the surface.
He came to the cellar one time with the Dennis Hoff guy, which, uh, yeah.
That was a guy of the people, like, quote-unquote celebrities who would come in that I could never pay, like, homage to and have, like, the thing that I didn't want to meet was, like, a Dennis Hoff.
But people didn't complain about being part of Columbia House, I don't feel like, but it's like, remember when, you know, I was like Metallica getting furious about...
When I talked to Kevin Hart in Montreal some years back and he was buying up things for the LOL Network.
That he was starting, which was like, I guess, an internet network.
And they made all this news because when he did the pitch show where they were pitching ideas for his network, he apparently in the room bought like four or five of them.
And when I saw him that night, I was like, are these five shows you saw today?
They're like definite shows.
And he was like, no, but it gets you press.
You know what I mean?
And he was telling me kind of like the whole thing of it.
He goes, but the idea of he was saying he was doing with that, I'm like, are you going to run a network now?
And he was like, no, you want to build it.
Until it becomes competitive, and then another company comes along and goes, can we give you money just to go away?
Is the idea, you know?
So the idea is that he wants Netflix to buy LOL or something like that.
I'm... You know blown away by, you know, I watch you when you talk to Bert sometimes about that, about his like employment of so many people.
Yeah. And everything like, which is great.
He's got a great thing over there, but like production company, I feel like the, when you get a lot of money sometimes.
Which is impressive that you haven't done this it's like you want to do almost like too much like well now I'm a producer of things and now it's like this or other businesses you want to like Start that are outside of comedy like is that what your thing was always like it was never mind like to be like a business owner or anything or some kind of like You know,
Like my alone time I look at is like the hotel, like the hotel room, just watching the bullshit that I want to watch on YouTube and doing it like that.
It is strange.
When I think I want to be off and stationary for a while, I feel like there's a day here and there where it's morning till night.
I just have nothing I have to do.
It's rare.
But when it happens that day, I tend to not be in a great mood.
Like if you're doing something all day long and it's just like business stuff and it's just for money and it's not something you love, that's a different vibe, right?
That's like a hustle vibe.
I'm going to get these numbers up and get this going and I'm a fucking, I'm a worker and I'm a grinder and I'm going to show you because look, I got this now and then I got that now.
See, I'm grinding.
But as if it's a virtue.
I always try to say this is a very important thing that people need to hear.
Just because it's hard to do doesn't mean it's good to do.
There's a lot of things that are hard to do that you don't necessarily want to do.
I don't want to climb Mount Everest.
It's hard to do.
But it doesn't mean it's good to do.
It might be good to do for you because you need to prove to yourself that you can do this extremely difficult thing.
But people are dead.
There's a bunch of dead bodies up there.
That's not a good thing to do.
To me, in my opinion.
There's a lot of stuff like that in life.
And just because you can do things, I'll show everybody that I work harder than everybody else.
Maybe you shouldn't.
Sure. Like, you need balance.
You need balance in this life.
And that's hard to get once you start.
When you start making money, the big fear is, what if it all goes away?
100%. And you start clutching.
You start having famine instincts.
You're like, oh my god, what if it all goes away?
So then you start doing things that you think will ensure that it doesn't go away.
Well, it's that feeling that you feel like you're running a scam.
Yes. Because also it's something, especially with stand-up.
Putting a price on things is so strange when you're like, well, I've done it more than anything, I've done it for free.
Then, second most, I've done it for pennies.
Do you know what I mean?
It's interesting to be like, well, I've done the same job for $50 that I've done for $100,000.
Do you know what I mean?
It's a strange place to be.
And you do feel like, well, what's it going to take until...
I'm back to, like, you know, hey, you want to come do $100?
I still get affected.
And it's just Young Comics being Young Comics.
I don't mind it.
But, like, as long as I've been doing it, I know they just want you to come do their show, but they're like, hey, man, I do a Tuesdays at the, you know, at the stand at 6 p.m.
Like, Levy can throw you $100 and stuff like that.
And you're like, why do you think I'm going to come?
And why are you naming the money?
Like, if you just asked me to do the show, I'd be less hurt if you were like, I got $100 for you, too.
You know, I stopped putting it at one point for the small room at the stands.
When I was in town for the weekends, because, and this is no fault of theirs, I know they're just booking me because I'm home and they want me on the shows that I can do, but they would put those shows, they would book the TikTok celebrity girls,
like girl comics, that were brand new in comedy, but drew the audience.
And they're also young enough in comedy that they're posting their spots.
Do you know what I mean?
If you want to see my schedule, it's like, here.
So the room's filling up for them.
And I'd go up, I mean, the second I'd get on stage, you'd see the face and groans of like, just like, a man's gonna come, what, lay it out now?
And I would even try to play with that idea, do you know what I mean?
Like, explain what's going on in the room.
And they would just, and then my last one ever doing up there, there was an Asian girl in the front row that I was fucking with, like, going back and forth with her.
But she was great.
She was, like, into it.
She was laughing, and she was busting balls back a little bit, which was fine.
You know, she was kind of, like, playing around with it.
And then I see another girl, you know, 22 years old or whatever, 23, going into her phone.
And I was like, oh, I lost you already.
I go, I lost you.
And she goes, uh, maybe it has something to do with the Asian girl thing.
And I was like, what?
He goes, you called her Asian girl.
I was like, wait, but she's fine.
I go, are you, you're getting upset?
On her behalf, and she's fine?
And she was like, yeah?
And I was like, that's retarded.
And then a lady in the back of the room stood up, lady, a girl, and literally clutched her jacket together and went, you just said the R word!
And I went, the manager was in the room, and I was like, take me off the schedule for the rest of this weekend up here.
I go, I'm not even mad at this crowd.
I'm like, you have to give this crowd what they want.
If you put on a three-week open mic gay comic up here right now, he'd murder.
Because if you only do your own crowd, like one of the things that happens to guys is they start doing theaters and they do real well and then they bring a lame opening act and then they're only playing to their crowd.
Yeah, sometimes like one of the great things about the store was like you could come in there on an off night, like a Tuesday night, and do like a 1 a.m. set.
And when you're doing a 1 a.m. set, there's like 25 fucking people in the room.
And you just like, you get to, and they've seen everything.
They've seen five hours of fucking stand-up.
They came from Kansas.
They've seen five hours of comedy, and most of the audience is gone.
Also, assume that if you're booking somebody, though, that you'd have to put those rules for it's like you have to like I always like that thing it's like trust the comic to be like a professional not that they'll always come through in that regard but like You know, you can put me on stage anywhere and assume it's not gonna end with me being like"fuck you,
That's a giant skill if you're doing a bunch of different kinds of rooms.
In different kinds of places.
But when a club owner or someone says that you can't breach certain topics, because that's what you're saying.
If you're saying we don't tolerate racism, listen, I don't either.
But that's not what jokes are.
And there's a way to Touch on race that a super ultra-sensitive person would say is racism, and another person who's more objective would say, no, this is just making fun of the differences we all have and how crazy it is that we would think that any one is superior to the others.
There's ways to do that.
And to say that, you know, that's racism, we don't tolerate racism, like, well, what do you call it?
So you can't just define hate speech because that's your definition.
So you just gotta let people speak freely, and then you decide who you book or don't book, but know what the fuck they do.
That's part of your job.
Part of your job, as someone who books a fucking theater, is, okay, if you have the theater, you own the theater, you don't want anybody performing that doesn't meet your expectations, that's great.
You know, why do you put you through this kind of thing?
Is how I will usually approach that.
But when you see those faces, when they, if someone like that gets shitty, I'm always surprised how...
Aggressive they are when they realize that they're the the minority, right?
I mean, it's like I don't know because you're you suck and you're not funny It's such a funny thing to shift how much you can make that person an enemy of the room by just going She's saying all of you are stupid as shit Because you're laughing at it.
Then just they'll hate her for you Well, there's always gonna be a you suck and you're not funny person in the world Yeah, well, that's a skill you have to get that poor girl that poor girl in a That had the video of her skitsing out on the guy in the audience.
People piled on on her, which was actually fucked up.
She was getting a death threat.
I'm like, why would you death threaten someone who had a bad time on stage?
It seems weird.
But again, that's the situation of getting an audience before you're ready to handle all situations.
Because the thing about that was the heckle on that video is...
I mean heckling 101 like the thing you should be able to handle is someone going you're not funny I'm funny you want me to tell the joke like give me the microphone this is all like I said these are the lobs they throw you at a pitching practice you know the batting practice to fucking do crowd work like day one of karate yeah it's like they're saying you suck and you're not funny like come on you know right away you could see him he's right in the front yeah like you could pick him apart visually or ask him a few questions make him look dumb there's just ways to but She wasn't composed because she
was leaning into that with like, well, I got this whole crowd behind me, but it just looks like a lunatic.
When she put it out to the world, everyone's like, you're crazy.
If it was someone filming her and being like, look at this.
Dumb bitch or something I would be I don't know if I would have went at it because I'd be like if I talked about it I would be like it's fucked up that somebody did that like you're posting her fucking although that said I mean I've watched Pablo Francisco fall off stage 7,000 times What's that?
Yeah, I've seen that too poor Pablo Funny dude though funny motherfucker Yeah, man the thing about that girl is like She ran into all of the fuck you, you're not funny people in the world.
See, if you have a crowd of 200 people and you got one fuck you, you're not funny girl, that's one thing.
But if you scale that out to the entire internet, that is so many fuck you, you're not funny people.
And those are the ones who are going to comment.
You know, there's plenty of people that saw that video, like you and me, who were like, oh, God.
But you didn't comment.
No. So who's commenting?
The fuck you, you're not funny people.
Yeah, yeah.
When there's 30 million people seeing a video, you're going to get 13,000-plus fuck-you-you're-not-funny people who post constantly.
They're always going to post 10, 15 times.
They're going to be arguing with people in the comments, telling you how you should kill yourself.
You've got to hide.
And most people don't.
Most people go online and they read all the things.
But just, I almost wonder, remember that was the fear.
They were like, people try to create viral moments so heckling will become, like people go to comedy clubs like, I'm going to heckle and make a moment.
Yeah. It's also a thing about like comics that are just trying to find a, like a lose their shit moment on stage also.
He tells at one point and it's just this whole personality is just he gives off a bad vibe for sure So he sucks and this girl in the audience sucks and when he can't take any more of her heckling He just goes she's somebody you can't even get a girl.
He goes you think I can't get a girl Look at these biceps and it's so it's a such a break and he means it If you look at these biceps, you'll find it pretty easily.
It's so old, but this is the old Boston Comedy Club in the village.
And so Sussman was looking for new clients, and he thought he saw everybody that he could see in New York at the time.
And so he had a good friend that was taking a trip to Boston, and so he went with him, and he said, I'm going to set up some shows at some of these comedy clubs.
So they had all the local Boston headliners, like big-name guys from the town would all perform for them.
And I was working, driving limos at the time.
And while I was driving, I would come up with some of my best ideas sometimes.
Because, you know, I didn't listen to the radio, I would just drive.
Because you couldn't listen to the radio while you had clients.
And so some of my best ideas came from just driving around.
I had this fucking idea.
I'm like, oh my god, I think this would work.
And so I called up my friend, who was the manager, and I said, hey dude, do you think I could get a guest spot tonight?
And he's like, yeah, absolutely.
So he hooks me up.
I have no idea.
I go downstairs.
This guy who becomes my manager is walking out of the room to go to another club, which is down the street, and he hears me killing.
And so he comes back downstairs, and he watches my whole set.
I know when I got into it, what I thought was interesting, was I started to do stand-up comedy.
It took me a long time to realize, and I love broadcasting.
I think it scratches the same itch for me.
Broadcasting is whatever.
But I never got into it to act.
Or all these different other things.
But as soon as you get into it, especially when you have a manager, you just see the industry unfold.
You see everyone's like, you don't have a commercial agent?
You've got to go out and audition for commercials.
All these things that I was like, supplementary, that I was like, instead of doing that, I'm just going to keep doing the black circuit because I make some money there.
I was getting a couple bucks, enough to survive on shows.
And then I'll just go hang out at the mainstream rooms at night and meet all the comics and get on when I can get on.
But it was never a...
It's never like I would not go so many times though.
When I was doing it, I would still go like three of the nights a week.
We'd do five shows.
Every other night I would still go do a spot at the cellar, and she was giving me 2 a.m. spots.
And I'd have to be on set at 7 a.m., you know, 6 a.m. sometimes.
And when they would get like, you know, I would take naps in between like scenes or whatever, and they would be like, why are you going and doing like stand-up so late?
I'm like, oh, because this show will not be forever, and there is 50 people waiting to jump in my spot there.
Yeah, I mean, I'm established there right now, so it's like, when this goes away, that's the thing that's still gonna be there.
And so I definitely made sure, as I said, but also I didn't want to really be an actor.
The idea that you were like, I came into comedy as a mega fan of stand-up comedy.
I loved all of it.
I didn't even, like, draw lines on, you know, the people I liked more than others, and Dice was my guy for sure when I was 12, 13. I just hit him at the right time.
Yeah. That I loved that, but I was such a fan of stand-up that when I got into stand-up, I only saw, like, now I didn't know what the path was to selling out comedy clubs or theaters or anything like that, but that's all it was.
I didn't get into this, and I was like, oh, and then I'll have...
A sitcom, and then you get told right away like...
Yeah. Okay, and then there's Friends, which kept going a little while longer, right?
You know, and then there was like Caroline and the City.
There was like all these shows that everybody was like...
That was the goal.
The goal was to get on a show and everybody wanted and everybody got a network deal and they were handing out deals Where you would get like a couple hundred grand you didn't have to do anything and they never even made a show and then you get another deal next year There's a bunch of guys who were always having deals and that a lot of those people when I got in the comedy I'd see those people like chest out at the comic strip.
Oh, yeah and stuff but then but then Never heard of a good nothing.
I mean I wouldn't name names, but I mean it was just weird to see people that were like Oh, they just got their second deal with NBC, holding deal, or...
I've been doing it long enough to see people kind of go and be like, shit.
The acting thing seems to be going, and I'm gonna go to LA or something in entertainment, like, besides stand-up is going, and they focus on that for a couple years, and then nothing really pans out from it, and they didn't keep doing stand-up.
And then they're confused because I've never had my own sitcom, I've never had anything, but, like, one thing I never stopped doing was, like, working the whole time still.
So it's like you're building a fan base still.
And when people...
A lot of people left at a time where it was like, oh, this is where you have to start, you know, they went to go to acting when everyone was like, alright, this is its podcast times now and social media times and you have to get all these things going and you connect with the audience and stuff and keep performing and like they went away and then come back and it's hard to start again.
They saw a lot of guys during the writer's strike try to do it again.
Because there's a few of those guys that are really good that are just writers.
And they become trapped in that velvet prison of getting that, you know, you make good money, you got a great health plan, you got a nice house, got a mortgage, maybe start having kids, and you're not really a comic anymore.
Now you're working on a sitcom or you're writing.
And the problem is...
You don't have a backup plan anymore because you can't just go on the road anymore because you don't have a fucking audience.
Right. So all those other guys that you came up with that kept their comedy up during that whole time, those guys can still tour.
Like, Fitzsimmons was very smart about it.
Like, Fitzsimmons did a lot of writing gigs, but he never stopped doing stand-up.
But one thing that I did do for sure is I neglected my stand-up for a few years.
When I was doing news radio all the time, the problem was in news radio in the early days, they were really long hours because we were trying to figure the show out and, you know, there was a lot of network notes.
Back in those days.
The network was really behind it, but it wasn't owned by NBC.
It was produced by Brillstein Grey.
You know, if you wanted to be on the good slots, right, so what Paul Sims would call, Paul Sims is the creator of news radio, would call it the shit sandwich.
So you'd have friends and married with children, and in between you'd have, like, kind of caca sitcoms.
It's like a shit sandwich.
We got in those spots occasionally, and every time we did, we were, like, number two in the country, number three or something.
But then we'd drop down to, like, number 80, because we got moved, like, nine different times over five years.
Nine times over five years.
So the show didn't really become successful until it went into syndication.
Nice. So it was one of those weird things, but I auditioned for two shows ever.
I auditioned for that Hardball show, I got that, that got cancelled, and I auditioned for NewsRadio.
That was it.
Really? It was the nuttiest thing of all time.
So I didn't want it.
It just happened.
So it wasn't something like it was my golden carrot.
My golden carrot was just I wanted to be a professional comic.
Right. And then as I was barely making money as a professional comic, barely surviving, all of a sudden they're like, we'll pay you $25,000 a week.
I was like, what do I have to do?
Are they going to act?
Okay, now I'm acting.
And I would have moved back to New York 100% if I didn't get an apartment.
So I signed a one-year lease on this apartment in North Hollywood.
And so I was staying, and I was like, oh, I've got to stay.
Because I wanted to just go back to New York and play pool.
I would hang out with my friends.
I didn't like it in LA.
It wasn't my cup of tea.
I didn't like being around actors.
And it was hard to make friends with some of the comedians.
And the comedy store was weird back then.
So I was like, I was ready to go back to New York.
Just that lead of that, like, that you're supposed to do.
Like, to me, it was sitting for whatever the 10th time, and watching, especially actors, like, walking back and forth, like, how serious they're taking getting there.
And I'm just, like, holding the sides barely, and I'm like, what's, like, three lines we gotta say?
Like, relax.
And I didn't book stuff, but it's also just, like, as I'm sitting there, like, I don't know if I want to be the, you know, the trident cinnamon gum.
Like talk myself into like when I would get those we're like talking head shows I think on History Channel we did like I love they were trying to do like a spoof of I love the 80s and I love the 90s they would do like I love the 1880s or I love the 1890s or whatever and they would give us like history stories and write jokes and you're gonna do talking head things and I would look at it as the burden of that next day Yeah,
I gotta wake up at 8:00 to go into the city and like To do this thing, I look at all the stuff and I'm like, it's network, it's history channel, so I can't really do exactly what it is I do.
And then, because I'm going to go as close as I can to my own voice, it's probably not going to get a lot of stuff on anyway.
But I had to really commit to myself.
There was a kid across the street from me when I lived in South Jersey for the couple years who was in a Froot Loops commercial, and he said he might as well have been Brad Pitt.
You know what I mean?
To me, I was like, he's been on television.
And I'm like, I'm going to do a TV show tomorrow.
History Channel or anything.
If you told me when I was 12, 13 years old that, hey, you want to do a TV show, be on TV on the History Channel?
You'd be like, no.
TV? Is that possible?
So you have to remember that it is pretty extraordinary to have some of these opportunities.
A couple years back now, but uh shit maybe like seven years six seven years ago, but I was the strip club DJ in that and like I really had to Go there because I look at that in hindsight of it.
It's like it was two 14-hour days of like nothing so much nothing going on, right?
You're just waiting around yeah And just whiffing when I had these opportunities.
But also trying to take in, I'm like, holy shit, that's Usher over there.
And that's fucking J-Lo.
As I'm sitting here like, when do you guys need me again?
It's like J-Lo's in a thong, like, you know, twerking on stage, like doing her scene.
And you're like, oh, I should really enjoy some of it.
Next time she turns around, because she seems nice, she's going to like...
At some point, she's going to talk to me.
We're doing this one scene together where she hands me money.
And I say like a line.
And every time they yell cut, she'd put her robe on and turn around.
Talk to her assistant, but I'm like, she does seem nice, and she's gonna turn around and ask me some version of how you doing, and I'm gonna say, you know, I'm just living the life of a fake strip club DJ, and that's gonna make her giggle, and then we're best friends for life.
And instead of waiting for her to say anything, the next time, her eyes just crossed my eyes.
I went, living the life of a fake strip club DJ.
Like, followed her face.
And she was like, excuse me?
And I was like, oh.
And then her assistant started laughing at me.
And then I demanded to go outside to get a soda.
They were like, we'll get you a soda.
I'm like, please let me go outside and reset this moment.
A young, only one song out Lizzo, and everyone was so excited for her, and I didn't know who she was, and they were talking about the celebrities that were going to be there today, and she's playing a stripper.
And I was like, hmm, I'm wondering who it is.
And then, hours later, my next question was, I'm like, who's the big fat stripper wearing the fishnet outfit?
And they're like, that's Lizzo.
Yeah, like, that's Lizzo.
I was like, Christ almighty, are they making her do that?
And again, it's my own fat insecurity that I put out on other people.
Almost like I said that guy earlier who's like the robe open.
I'm impressed with that because what I have is much more, which I always found interesting, Chris Farley, you know, this most famous thing ever is the Chippendale sketch with Patrick Swayze.
I've always thought, and I just know this from, I'm good friends with his brother and from years of reading stuff about it, like that's...
If you want to trickle back what killed him, it's essentially that.
Do you know what I mean?
It's like he hated, he was willing to do it, like I'll be the fat gross guy, but he hated it.
He didn't want everyone to think he was fat and gross.
So I have a hard time with those kind of things.
So I'm impressed also with someone who's like, ladies, you know, with their fucking fat rolls on their sides, welcome to the party.
How do you do it, man?
And Lizzo just like, fuck it, I'm wearing a thong.
Really? Yeah, there's a couple of people that I met where their skin looked like wet cardboard.
It was the consistency of wet, gray cardboard.
Like sweaty, gray cardboard.
So he was on the set.
Hanging out there was always like a lot of fun people that were on the set that you got to meet and He wasn't working on the show.
He was just there to hang out and so I Ran into him like during the craft service table area and he was just looked terrible and I don't know like what year did he die?
I Think late 90s also So this was around 97-ish, somewhere around then.
So news radio was 94 to 99. December, week before Christmas.
That's when he died.
33. So it might have been the year he died.
Yeah. Because he looked like hell.
He looked like he was just so sweaty and so gray.
He just looked fucked up.
One other time, there was a dude that I ran into at the improv, and he couldn't form sentences.
He had like the same gray skin and he was talking to me, but nothing made sense But he just kept talking and he could he couldn't form sentences and I was like this is the craziest thing I've ever seen It's also weird to get into that and then still be around comedy just be around public You're hanging around with people at a bar and you you you're so gacked up You can't even form a sentence.
I have a hard time with I mean I can I so I can get caught up in like the The dramatic conversation of, like, the science of comedy and, like, all the internal things and the manipulation of it.
But at the end of the day, it's so silly when, like, it's taken so seriously in some way, too.
It's not like, you know, unlike Daniel Day-Lewis, who has to be Lincoln all day, someone can go, Jay, they're calling your name on stage.
Yeah, and there's always someone who wants to come in and touch up your hair, and then there's fucking people moving around, and there's always so many support people, it's hard to just keep your fucking concentration.
He was talking to me about somebody who ripped off one of his jokes, and even that, the way he's talking about the guy ripping off his joke and confronting him about ripping off the joke, it's still...
You know, it's funny, the quietest, the people who are the most surprising, there's...
Huge earning comics that you've never even heard of and stuff.
I always look up, like, Shonda Pierce is a lady, just like an old lady from the South, but she's multi-millionaire, sells out, she performs at, like, churches and stuff.
Really? Yeah, but it's just stand-up, and it's just, like, the most mundane, like...
But it's not for me, obviously, but, I mean, with this...
Kind of whatever, you know, like act that you wouldn't impress anybody, she's making millions.
It's why Nate Bargette is so impressive to me and always has been is because he's clean in that way.
You can call him a Christian comic and it doesn't matter because if you just watch the comedy, if you're not listening to all the labels being put on him, he's just brilliant.
If you want to do all that other stuff too, but if you want to do all that other stuff and you call it comedy, but it's not funny, like you're doing something where you're just trying to educate people, hey, you missed the whole mark of this whole thing, and to say that that's the most important thing,
the only people that would say that are people who aren't funny.
Yeah. That's it.
That's the only people that would ever think that the most important thing is to move social justice forward with your comedy.
Not just because I was like, you know, obviously inspired by like the Dices and stuff for the comics that I like, the dirtier guys.
But I would go dirty because I found out pretty early, if you go dirty, even if you don't get the laugh because the joke wasn't good, you're gonna get the groan and it was a noise.
Yeah. Because that was it to me.
Again, I said the silence was the thing.
Once it was silent, I was like, someone please save me from this.
And then if you're laughing genuinely, maybe people will start smiling.
Yeah, it's a fucking weird art form, dude.
But, you know, kudos to you for just doing that.
Because that's the way to do it.
And then Legion of Skanks, too.
Like, what Lewis and you guys and Dave, what you guys have done is so interesting because you did it all without ever worrying about being, like, removed from YouTube.
You know, because you did it all on his network, on Gas Digital.
They're also fans of people that are willing to do real comedy in this fucking bizarre world where you're being told that the most important thing is for you to do social justice on stage.
Which I shouldn't say that's the world now, because it's not.
It was me, Josh, Adam Meyers, and my girlfriend went to...
A concert and we went to a diner afterwards.
And where they sat us at this diner, our table, was facing the booths that are going across.
And the booth right across from where I'm staring is this cute girl and what I thought was a goth guy.
I thought it was like a goth dude who's wearing like kind of fishnet stuff and everything.
And they are making out hard.
Like going.
They're going for it.
And I'm like, you know, we're kind of like laughing it off.
Almost, at first, you know, like, alright.
I guess, like, they're going...
But then it starts getting, like, there.
Like, she's, like, getting in a position, the girl, the only girl, I thought, when, like, the goth guy, he's rubbing, like, her pussy over the pants, and she's, like, writhing around and stuff.
It's at a point where I go, laughingly, though, too, I kind of go, alright, come on.
And they're like, they have like an, oh my god, what the fuck is wrong with you thing?
Now there's people, they're in a booth, and we're the only people who see them.
We're facing them.
These booths are other people, but they're just not paying attention to what's going on there.
I'm just having to look at it, and I'm like, alright.
And they're like, what's the problem?
And I'm still just kind of laughingly going like, I get it, but like, you know, I'm doing like a, guys, I'm like, you're fucking at the table.
I mean, like, it's crazy.
We're in a diner.
And then it's getting shitty about it, and then I'm just like, I don't know what the problem is.
I'm like that's crazy what you're doing and everything and I'm like we're not wrong here and then she was and then she goes would you have a problem if we were a straight couple and I was like I thought that was I thought that was a guy as I didn't know it wasn't a straight couple and then Whatever it all kind of calms down and then our food's coming Which is weird we still have to sit there and I go yeah I'm gonna go outside and smoke a cigarette and like regroup here a little bit biggest mistake I ever made because I went outside and I'm this is like a big glass front restaurant
you know diner and I'm smoking right outside the diner and I'm watching the narrative get created in the room without me being in the room like the people behind and the staff coming up and being like the we're sorry things People have to still act like that people still act like that today and when I go back in the E I mean we are Pariahs I just feel like and then the host guy Uh,
who like, you know, seats everybody as gay, and he's side-eyed.
It's just, it was so uncomfortable, and I was like...
It's a problem, because that label, you can just slap on someone when you're talking about, like, male athletes that identify as women competing in girl sports.
I know you want to believe this, but if you're going to be on TV saying things, it has to make some kind of fucking sense.
unidentified
Female bodies are just as strong, fast, and capable as male bodies.
I want all girls to know that there are elected officials like me who would never underestimate your ability to beat a boy at their own sport because that's what the premise of this bill assumes that female bodies
are less than male bodies for what reason other than political gain are we spending time and taxpayer dollars on a completely made-up issue so female bodies are
We used to play basketball on a story every Wednesday, and Nate Bargazzi one time brought his friend Nick Novicki, who's a little person, comedian, and he brought him, and we were like, oh, he's going to play?
Like, alright, I guess.
And we let him play, and every time he'd get the ball, the defense would lay off him and let him shoot.
And he'd make it or miss it, but it was what it was.
And then he started, when everyone would lay off on defense, instead of shooting the ball, he'd try to run in and do a layup, and we're letting him.
Until eventually Nate Bargazzi, of all people, goes over and just cleaned his shot right into the projects.
He just sent him away.
He's like, we can't just let this happen the whole time.
It becomes not fun for everybody.
When I was a kid, I remember very few stories, but there was a handful of the girl that fought to get on the men's football team.
Football's such a violent sport that to let girls play it, they have to put them in lingerie.
The lingerie football league is the only visible women playing football sport.
I don't know, but I wanted to start taking bets on it.
If he was fighting just stand-up only, he's very dangerous.
If bare-knuckle boxing was around back then, he would have been a huge star of bare-knuckle boxing.
He would have fucked a lot of people up bare-knuckle boxing.
But once you add in the wrestling, and Kimbo had a bunch of knee injuries from football, you can't really grapple at full capacity with knee injuries and learn grappling at 35 or however old he was.
But, dude, kudos to that guy for having the courage to actually just get into the UFC Ultimate Fighter.
Like, Mirko Kropkopp, back in the day, was the fucking man.
Sure. He was like the first elite kickboxer to really excel in MMA.
He was the first guy to show all these other strikers that you don't even know what you're talking about.
When he started fighting in pride, it was like, this is another level.
He would kick...
People in the body and you would see like there's a photo of him Keith kicking Heath Herig and his fucking shin is halfway into his ribcage It's so nasty when you look at the photo of it You just go the amount of power that that guy could generate in his kicks like there was nobody like that before him and kickboxing or in MMA rather I felt so bad the first that first UFC coming back during a quarantine It was so important to everybody.
I don't know if it was the first one or the second one that came out, but that was when I was like, man, you've got to really pick your timing on when you're going to shout out what you're dedicating a fight to.
Because there's that poor guy.
He lost his stepdaughter, and then he came out wearing the shirt of the stepdaughter who passed away.
And it was all dedicated to her.
I mean, you can see, as Alistair Overeem beat him into submission with punches, the referee was even kind of going like...
Come on, man, please try to fight back.
I said at the end, Alistair Overeem should have been like, it's okay, everybody.
I forget who it was, but the way he entered the ring, he did a thing where he hung on the outside of the cage and swung into the ring and did some crazy move.
This guy was making Future promises with us of what stuff he wants to do with us and hang out and come be a part of his summer festival and broadcast from there because he loves us so much.
But his manager was listening the whole time, and he said as soon as he left the studio, they went, those guys are not your friends.
No. No, no, but you don't have to know how to play to know he does not know how to play.
I could do what he's doing, for sure.
But then, here's what he did.
I don't know what the trickleback is, but I said, after that was going viral, the guitar, I was like, why doesn't this guy just come out and say, like, if he's kind of like, no, I get it.
I get the joke, too.
Like then it kind of puts people in there and stops them in their tracks and then he kind of did that he came because of course It's the worst guitar solo ever of course.
That's why I'm doing it like it's funny and it's like now and Fred Durst came out to watch him do it to prove he was doing it because we're spreads Durst is smart like Howard Stern He makes him think he's his friend, but he's a way bigger enemy than I could ever be to him Because he's going like dude go make an ass of yourself in front of all these people He's a young star guy that grew up to become a man,
Everyone that I've met, I mean, there's some really talented people like Miley Cyrus and people that were childhood stars that are cool to talk to, but they struggle.
Yeah. But I don't know how many people came out of the fame as a young person and were fine.
But the people that stay...
And keep doing it, they're not fine.
Most of them.
I mean, maybe there's a few.
I'm not saying it's impossible to do, but I'm saying the challenge of becoming a normal person with a normal view of the world when you're getting doted on when you're six and you're the moneymaker in the house when you're a little kid,
like your parents stop working to manage you, like that kind of shit.
It's not just people watching you fight that wigs me out so much.
It's that there's something that knowing how to fight and the form of what you're doing looking any kind of good.
Especially if you're street fights, I mean, when they devolve into, like, you know, like, men swinging like this, you're like, oh, man, we really all suck at the end of the day at this.
I remember watching these two guys fight in front of the comedy store.
And it was across the street when the House of Blues was over there.
So it was right in front in the parking lot.
These guys start yelling at each other and blah, blah, blah.
And they get out like almost in traffic.
They're like on the sidewalk, like right where the street tumbles out.
And I see these two guys facing off and I see the white guy.
There's like a white guy and this looks like an out of shape.
African-American fella and the white guy starts swinging with almost like with his eyes closed and then the bus goes in between them so I can't see them and then as the bus goes back the white guy's out cold flat on his back spread eagle and The black guy's already running away He's out cold.
They were just squabbling in front and I don't remember how it was.
I just remember this.
I remember this, and then the bus, and then out cold.
Do you have to deal with, uh, because I mean, I know from, like, when Lewis was working with Biz Bing and stuff, and he'd go to Vegas, uh, he'd be like, they were all surprised at how many drunk guys at the casino try to, like, give him shit.
No. If you hang out with enough drunks long enough, someone will.
Just avoid those areas.
It's just drunk people.
But if you're one of them and you're hanging out and you're drinking with people, yeah, there's people who used to get stupid with Chuck Liddell when Chuck Liddell was the light heavyweight champion.
That's what most people don't have in any kind of fight.
If it's not over in 30 seconds, everyone's holding each other.
One of my favorite things I watch, I watch a lot of body cam crime shit on YouTube.
And there's one.
It's a Key West.
It's a couple.
The guy's hammered.
He's got money, for sure, this guy.
He's just trying to pay his bill with a library card or something, where he doesn't know what's going on.
And he's barking at the staff, and then someone on the staff pushes his face, and then breaks into this melee, but it's 50-something-year-old white people getting into a fight, and one guy gets him in a side headlock, useless, and then they both sort of fall down,
the husband and this guy who intervenes.
And the guy who intervenes eventually puts his, like, legs, you know, puts in his hooks, basically.
But does nothing.
Doesn't choke the guy out.
They're just kind of sitting there, two old, exhausted guys.
Ten minutes later, at least, they get up and they kind of have, like, the you're a pussy, you're a pussy kind of thing.
And they leave.
Then it cuts back to the cops outside and they want to talk to the guy who intervened.
Not mad at him, they just want to get his side of the story, what happened.
And this guy...
It's just an old man, and the cops are questioning him, and they start to lose their patience because he just wants to keep telling his hero story.
He just watched what happened.
It's just two old men holding each other on the ground.
He goes, guy came out of nowhere and punched me, and I grew up doing this shit, man.
So, you know, I told the guy, I go, you got two ways this can go tonight, man.
But tell us, my friend Justin Silver used to have my favorite joke about that kind of personality, though.
He's like, he's like, I'm a liar.
I lie about everything.
And he was like, I'm the guy who gets into a situation with somebody in the street, and then I don't do anything, and then I go home, shadowbox, and call my friends and tell them all the things that I wish I did, like it actually happened.
And his line was, if I did all the things I told my friends I did, my name would be Indiana Bon Jovi Balboa.
When you're a kid and you You have a situation like that happen the rest of the day you play it in your head like what I should have said.
Oh, man Yeah, I wish I had another chance I would have said well fuck you because that's the worst when it goes away Yeah internal dialogue things like for the rest of day.
What should I have said and you like plot it out and plan and scheme I'll find him again one day one day.
So this cop tries a shitty double leg on this guy, and the guy knew how to fight, and the guy sprawls, and the cop tries to hit him, and the guy cracks him, and the guy tries to tell him, hey, stop!
I got into a thing, a road rage thing, where I knocked a guy out.
He wasn't very big, and I basically got out of the car, and he was right away, didn't want to do anything, and I mushed his face.
He was drunk, and I kept mushing his face until he would throw a drunken punch, and then I hit him, and I caught him.
Only time I'm in a fight in my life where I caught him, first shot, and he literally, like, folded on the ground, and then I got in my car, drove away with my current girlfriend, Christine, and when we...
We got, like, a few blocks away, my, you know, my adrenaline started going down, and I was like, and so, jokingly, almost, I just look at her, and I kissed my bicep, like, one shot, and she goes, uh, she goes, she was, like, really pissed.
Like, she didn't think it was funny or anything, and I was like, but it wasn't even, like, kind of hot that I just knocked that guy out with one shot, and she was like, no, like, what if you killed him?
Because I'm walking away from that like, hey, I didn't even get touched, and I got Sweet Beautiful Justice, you know, the way I'm always searching for.
And she was like, no, what if he killed him?
And I'm like, yeah, there is a point there for sure.