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July 20, 2023 - The Roseanne Barr Podcast
01:07:20
The Roseanne Barr Podcast | #006 Ron White
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Hi everybody, it's Roseanne and I'm very excited on my podcast today on the Roseanne Barr podcast, as you've noted, because I have a great guest.
He's a fantastic comedian, a very nice man, and I can't wait to talk to him here today.
Mr. Ron White!
Yay!
Thank you.
Thank you very much for having me, Roseanne.
Thanks for coming over.
Okay, if I smoke this in here.
Oh, yeah, let's get that going fire that up It's always fun to oh, I will I don't mind if I do You have some I smoked your pot when I went on Joe Rogan's stage I And I couldn't remember any of my punchlines.
I didn't know how to be funny.
This is really mild outdoor weed.
It's just kind of trippy.
You'll like this stuff.
It's really light.
I smoked that William the Red-Headed Guy spot.
Yeah.
And I said, God, this is like Viet Cong pot.
It made me want to dig a big old tunnel and shoot down helicopters with a pea shooter.
You don't go on stage that way, right?
Do you smoke pot before you go on stage?
Yeah, you know how we work it up at the mothership.
It's every man for himself.
But yeah, I like to kind of do the first one.
A little more sober, but that second show, when we got that gap in there, I get pretty wasted for that one.
Yeah, the whole comedy green room is set up for that kind of thing, isn't it?
Yeah, that's what it's set up for.
Ain't it fun?
It's like the comedy store used to be.
They told me that, I mean, there's other guys that have rooms that are asking me to come play them in Austin.
And I'm like, well, if you build a room between the fat man and the little boy, then I might stop by.
But right now I can do four sets a night and never leave the couch hardly except for to get up and walk over and do the set.
That's just the most amazing thing.
If I was a young comic, I would say there would be no place to live other than Austin, Texas.
That's how I felt when I went down there.
You were there that night when I went on stage and that was like my first time on stage for a long time.
I was there with my son Jake.
Say hi Jake.
Hello everybody.
And my daughter, Jenny, who's very funny and a writer, and she's a libtard.
And my three daughters are libtards.
I don't know where I went wrong.
But anyways, so... Weren't you a libtard at one time?
Oh yeah, I was a terrible... I was all the way, like, double retard.
Yeah.
Libtard, sorry.
But... I'm a center-left Republican.
Yeah, that's what I am now.
I hear ya.
Yeah, so...
You know, there's some few things that I vote for, I mean, in a presidential candidate, but I need to have a regular fucking person in there, you know, that I can depend on.
But I'm not seeing the guy, you know, or the girl, I'm just not seeing the answer right now, so.
You're not a Trumper?
No.
Good God Almighty, really?
No, can't stand him.
You can't stand Trump?
No.
Oh my god.
That's freaky.
Is it over?
Is our podcast over?
No, it's not.
But, you know, I just love him.
I just do.
I totally relate to him and he was so nice to me.
He's like one of the only people that was ever nice to me in Hollywood.
He's like a real guy.
Yeah?
Yeah.
You know, and he's like us.
He shoots from the hip.
But he's got good ideas.
And he won't let nobody say You can't, that can't be done.
That's why I like him, you know?
I could go into why I don't like him, but the list is just extremely long.
I, you know, I never take a stand one way or the other because I don't want people to, to decide how they think because of something I said, especially about politics.
So, you know, um, but I'm a, but I'm a Republican.
I just, but I'm, I'm a never, never Trump Republican.
Oh my God.
Well, they teach their own.
Yeah, right.
But don't you remember back when nobody gave a shit who you voted for?
I mean, just nobody cared, you know.
You just voted for somebody.
Now it's really divisive, right?
Really divisive.
And we were talking about that earlier.
Entire families are kind of torn apart by these political differences.
Well, you know it's all bullshit, though.
It's like a unified field of bullshit.
Not one thing's true anywhere you look.
That's what I think.
I know that's what you think.
You don't think that?
I believe the news is a commodity and it's valuable and there are people out there that's sole purpose is to seek out the news.
Now it needs to be you know whether it's true or not but if you could convince somebody that all the news is bad and it's all fake and the fact checkers are also fake Then where do you go for information?
I just think that if you go to not a news spin doctor, like you don't watch CNN or Fox or any of that stuff, But you read the news from Bloomberg and Reuters or whatever, however you pronounce that, and they have people they pay to gather the news, and it's worth money.
So they're really good at it.
So a lot of times I'll hear these wild conspiracies, a lot of times from you, but I have another friend that I did stand up with for years, and she's just full-blown QAnon and believes every word of it.
And I'm like, why?
What on earth?
And I try to talk her out of it and she's just, you know, she is so stuck in that place because of things she read on the internet that can't be validated.
Except for other things that were on the internet.
I believe that you're getting fed this stuff because it's what you like to eat.
And there's money in feeding people that are hungry, you know, and that's...
So, you know, I have 15 news sources and I read them all.
Well, that's what I do, too.
I read a variety of news sources.
Like, I'll read far left and right.
You know, I don't just read, you know, internet stuff.
But I do, like, huge variety.
And I do, like, government documents and, you know, declassified.
That's my favorite thing.
Anything to do with Profiling too.
FBI profiling of psychotics and shit like that.
Right.
It's my favorite.
Murder.
Solving murders.
You spend way more time on it than I do.
I do.
So maybe you're right.
No, but I mean, I know that the government's corrupt.
I mean, you've got to give it, you've got to know that, right?
I know that the government is corrupt.
I know that.
Okay.
So we agree on that.
So we don't need to go no further than that.
No, that's fine.
That's fine.
And they're all like just like getting paid and it don't have nothing to do with the American people.
Right?
I believe that.
And it's scary because I don't know what in the fuck they're doing.
They don't listen to anything.
And are you scared that they're letting terrorists over the border to come and kill us?
No.
Oh, really?
I'm not worried about it at all.
Really?
That's good to hear.
No, because they're going to walk around Texas, you know.
You can't come into Texas and start shooting people.
We'll shoot you back.
That's our policy.
Yeah.
Everybody in Texas, that's why there's rarely a club shooting or a bank robbery with guns, because everybody has guns here, you know.
And so there is a I would love to see some gun control, but my position with gun control is, let's just make the club a little harder to join.
I'm not going to give up my guns, and I'm not asking anybody else to, because they've already proven that they're responsible gun owners, right?
Because they've owned a gun for years, an AR, whatever, haven't killed anybody with it.
I'm from the Panhandle of Texas, and nobody up there hunts with an AR-15.
They've all got them, but they don't hunt with them.
It's just for protection.
And I genuinely believe in every case it is.
But I would just like to make that... So we're in a club.
We all have them, right?
We all have these guns.
But I think we make that club hard to join.
So you can't just waltz in and waltz out.
Well, you know they steal guns all over the place.
And you can buy them at those... Anybody can get them.
No, no, no.
Yeah, that's why they're...
The very thought of somebody saying, yeah, we've got to get rid of guns, well, that's ridiculous.
You can't get rid of something that's already here.
And it's embedded in our society.
It's a right we have as citizens to carry these guns.
I love guns.
Maybe you got flagged because you did get arrested for pot.
I love that story.
You had like a tiny, minuscule amount.
I had seven-eighths of a gram of marijuana.
They pulled me off my plane.
I used to have a plane.
Wow.
And it was just me on the plane.
I was looking out the window.
We landed in Fort Pierce, Florida and I'm looking out the window and there's Man, there's like a SWAT team out there with dogs and vests and, you know, and I'm like, wow, what's going on?
I wonder as I'm looking out the window and, and, uh, these pilots that I've fired for being dickheads, uh, there's a number you can call, uh, that, uh, that's an anonymous number that you can say, Hey, that plane is a drug plane.
And, uh, then if you know the tail number of a plane, you have a software called flight aware.
You can follow any plane in the world, anywhere it goes.
And so right before I would land somewhere, they would call the DEA or whatever and tell them it was a drug plane and the cops would come out and fuck with me.
That's pretty funny.
And they pulled me off the plane and they told me what happened and I told them what happened.
And the guys, the cops that were there, they were fans and they were like, sorry about this.
They knew I was there to do a show.
They knew I wasn't a drug smuggler.
And they said, can we put our dogs on the plane?
And I'm like, I put them on there.
And of course the dogs were like, ROAR, ROAR, ROAR, ROAR, ROAR!
Because I smoked pot on the plane.
And then they come off and then the guy goes, the dog needs to sniff that bag on your shoulder.
And I was like, ROAR, ROAR!
And so whenever I said, yeah, here, this is all, it's all a little bitty, tiny bit.
And the guy said, oh, they're not gonna do anything about that.
And then the guy, the sheriff that they called, said, bring him in.
He's a flight risk because he has a plane.
And I'm like, this is ridiculous.
And they took me to city jail and I sat in there.
And it was kind of funny.
Back then, I used to get five grand a night in cash because I don't understand money and I like to see it.
Yeah.
Especially back then.
So I'd done seven or eight shows, so I had like 35,000 bucks in that bag.
And so I get to jail and the guy goes, I need to count that money.
He goes, one Mississippi.
Oh my god.
Two businesses.
No, you can't tell it like that.
Just count it off.
Stacks of 100.
Just count off 100 at a time.
There's 5,000.
I'm teaching them how to count.
Come on, man.
So then they moved me over.
Because you've got a show, right?
You've got a show to do.
Yeah, I've got a show to do at the theater.
They moved me over to County Jail, and they were just making announcements at the theater.
Okay, he's out of city, but they're putting him in County Jail, but he's going to come to the show.
The crowd's like, yeah!
So when I got out, there was a truckload of kids.
This is how fast news moves.
And they had made these signs that said, free taters.
And they were in the back of this truck and I wish I would have, I was, I was freaked out because I was going to be two hours late for the show, which I've never a minute late for anything.
And, uh, so, uh, I, I got there and the crowd, uh, one person left, uh, that had a babysitter issue.
And they said, and they apologized for leaving.
So the whole crowd was still there.
And next time I went there and it just bumped because it was such a ridiculous arrest.
I mean, they drove by three meth labs and a dead hooker just to get to where I was.
Right.
And it was just a... It just bumped all sales.
Ticket sales, book sales.
Next time I came back in there, I did five shows.
Because it was just ridiculous.
A ridiculous use of manpower or whatever.
Sometimes that shit, when they're trying to get you, it backfires and helps you out, huh?
Sometimes.
Sometimes.
Sometimes it don't.
I was still pissed.
The guy, the cop in the newspaper, the sheriff, said he may not have had many drugs with him, but how do we know how much he did have?
Well, how do we know?
I didn't tell somebody.
Why don't we just put me in jail for murder?
So he just, and I just wanted to, I wanted to beat that guy out of his job so bad.
I made it open that I would support any candidate.
They wanted to run against him for the election of sheriff and I was gonna make that my... I was so mad I was just spending way too much time and energy just... But that's really bad that's a that's a violation of your civil rights because he's trying to poison the jury pool.
You know he really was and then we ended up making a deal with him so you know just so I could get out I mean just eventually if I didn't get arrested in six months it would be off the record and And I didn't need a marijuana arrest because I travel a lot, you know, so I want my, you know, quick through the airport stuff and, you know, global entry and all that stuff.
You can lose that with a misdemeanor, you know, conviction.
One time I was in Italy and I had some illegal drugs and we was going to fly to another country and, oh God, oh no, that was a long story.
I don't even want to tell it.
But anyway, I was running away from my ex-husband, you know, and he shows up, fuckin' in Italy, that fuckin' guy.
With a newspaper crew, didn't he, that he hired?
Yeah, with the Enquirer.
Can you tell that story?
No, he won't want to.
It's a bore.
It is?
It's not.
Okay, so I was over there in Sardinia, this island off of Italy, beautiful place, and I was running away from my husband and, you know, I'm like, fuck, I'm leaving that motherfucker.
And I was like, okay, I got to count it down because I still had season.
What part of your life is this?
That's my Tom Arnold marriage.
Oh, okay.
At the end of that, you know.
And I'm like, I got to get the fuck out of here.
I'm going to go to prison if I don't get out of here, you know, because I'm going to have to kill that guy.
Because he got on my nerve.
My last nerve.
My last fucking thing.
Uh, frazzled fucking nerve, you know what I mean?
So I'm like, I'm getting out of here before I go to prison.
So anyways, I go over to Italy, and uh... And is it just you?
No, I took my bodyguard that Tom hired, and then we had a baby.
What made you think I didn't want to hear this story?
Talk about how, just tell, just tell it real quick that Tom came with the press.
Oh yeah, so I was hiding out from Tom, Because it's just so gross.
He was trying to get me back, which he always tried to do, and I always went back too because I was stupid.
He flies over there.
I'm living in a fucking cave inside a mountain, a house that was built into a mountain, and I hired the police force of Sardinia there to sit on my roof with guns.
I was a little paranoid.
Right?
Oh, they had me on so many meds by then.
I didn't even know what reality was.
So, anyways, here he comes with the Inquirer photographers.
They call me in my house.
They go, your husband is here.
He just landed at the airport and we thought you'd want to know.
I'm like, ah, fuck.
So, anyways, he calls me up an hour later.
I'm coming down on a white horse holding Three dozen red roses.
I'm coming into the yard and I'm going to, you're going to get on the horse with me and they're going to take pictures.
You're fucking crazy!
You tell me I'm crazy and, but you're fucking crazy.
I go, you better not or they'll shoot your ass and they'll shoot the fucking horse too and your brother and the photographer.
Don't even fucking do it.
So he doesn't.
Instead he gets a boat.
He gets a fucking motorboat.
And he comes by the house back and forth, back and forth in the motorboat.
We had the craziest relationship.
It was insane.
The thing about Tom that always bothered me is everything was always like a photo op.
And when they very first started dating, he actually sold stories to the Enquirer about them dating.
So we had a long history.
That's why I find this funny.
And he called me crazy.
But I was crazy because I got with another crazy person who kept on gaslighting me and saying, you're crazy.
Right.
I realized, oh, you married your kind of psychic crazy twin.
It's like you're both fucking nuts, and you should have nothing whatsoever to do with each other.
Because we were both comics.
He loved you, didn't he?
He loved the fuck out of me, and I loved the fuck out of him.
And of course, I was a Jew, and I was like, I can get this guy to give me jokes, and I'm never going to pay him.
Because he likes me.
And he'll just do it because he'll want to hang out with me so I can use him.
And he would cry to me.
He'd go like, you've got to pay me.
And I'd be like, OK, I will.
I'll pay you.
And then I never would pay him.
It was horrible.
Did you ever pay him?
Are you shitting me?
You walked off with half everything I had.
Oh, did you really?
Of course.
Oh.
Because I always do the wrong thing.
Let's talk about that.
You know what I mean.
You know what I mean.
Yeah, now why would I know about that?
You know, you told that story when you hated that critic and you... Oh!
You know.
Yeah, no, what happened was this guy named Duncan Strauss, I think, was booking the Laugh Stop or either that or he may have been the critic.
I can't remember now.
It's been a while.
But it's been 35 years.
Jesus.
But he came out and saw me do 15 minutes at the Laugh Stop here in Austin, and I'd been doing stand-up for three years, and the 15 was great.
You know, I just murdered the place.
And so he books me to headline the Newport Laugh Stop.
And the guys that were there two weeks before me were Slayton and Seinfeld, and then Ron White's three-year-old act.
And I was really nervous, and I hadn't performed within 1,500 miles of there.
And I knew that Slayton was just murdering clubs, and Seinfeld was murdering clubs.
And I'm like, I don't think I'm ready for this.
And I went on stage.
Right before I went on stage, a waitress came up to me.
She goes, that's Duncan Strauss.
He's here to review the show for the LA Times.
And I'm like, that doesn't make me feel better at all.
And so I had a couple of shots and I went on stage and I thought all the jokes landed, you know, and I'm like, I walked away from the show feeling pretty good.
But he was already gone when I got off stage because I figured he'd want to sit down and talk to me and, you know, speculate on my success.
It was about to come and it was pretty good.
And then the next night, They had like an open mic night.
There was a guy named Mike Epps from Texas.
He was there.
And I just slayed the room.
That was the best set I'd ever had that night.
And afterwards, I've got them all gathered around me.
I'm giving them advice, you know.
I was thinking about calling and getting a divorce, you know.
Hooking up with somebody new, you know, hotter.
Because this is definitely going to go places.
Get really drunk that night with those guys.
I'm staying in the nicest hotel room at that point I'd ever stayed in.
It's called the Marriott Suites on the Bay.
It had a bathroom with a phone and just things I hadn't really seen before.
Big views of the Bay.
I woke up the next morning and I was really excited about seeing that review because that was going to be the start to the whole thing.
And so I walked down to the club.
And I walked in there, and I'd hung out there a couple times, so they knew who I was.
I mean, they knew him a little bit.
And I walk in, and they go, don't read it, Ron.
And I'm like, what?
He goes, don't read it.
It's not true.
The guy's a hatchet man.
I'm like, what are you talking about?
Oh, shit.
The review, don't read it.
It's just, there's nothing.
This is just what he does.
It's horrible.
And I'm like, let me see it.
Oh, shit.
So there's a big picture of me.
Making a face I swear I've never made.
You know, just some stupid look that I was mugging for a laugh.
I don't know what it was.
But there it was.
And it was that big.
In the Orange County edition of the L.A.
Times.
And in big black print it said, even when white's not blue, he's not funny.
That's a headline?
Yeah.
Oh, shit.
Yeah, in big black length.
That's exactly what it said.
I read it a thousand times.
It said it was like watching a polar bear lumber around on stage, something eventful or comical happening only occasionally.
And literally, I dropped it twice out of my hands because it was making me sick.
Oh, shit.
And I truly believed That I had been found out as a phony and I had bought that story myself and so it was that devastating.
So I went across the street and I bought a bottle of tequila and a pack of razor blades And I went back up to my hotel room and I mailed the razor blades to him with a note that said, just in case you're ever in the mood.
And, uh, which, uh, and then I sat there and read it over and over and just drank that bottle of tequila.
I had a big fucking bag of weed all day long.
And I figure the shows are canceled.
You know, there's no way that they'll do the shows.
There'll be nobody there.
And then I'm thinking, well, they got to pay me for Monday or Tuesday and Wednesday or whatever it was the days that I'd work, because it's Friday now.
And so I passed out, and I woke up about 7 or something.
I thought, well, I'll go down there and ask them about the $180 they owe me or whatever it was.
Of course, the fucking place was packed.
Nobody gave a shit about the review.
Nobody read the fucking review.
It was already wrapped around a bass in somebody's fucking freezer.
It was, you know, late 80s.
The clubs were packed.
But I was in no shape to do a show.
I was so hungover, drunk.
Shitty.
And all I could do is get drunker and shittier.
There was no way to pull out of it, you know, through the other side.
So I went up and just proved everything the guy said to be the God's honest truth.
Horrible set.
The guy that booked me called the club to just to see how I was doing because he read it and they're like, oh, he's not okay at all.
And then that, you know, the next night Wasn't as bad because I just wasn't so trashed.
And the second night was like that.
One was really good and then Sunday was really strong.
And, uh, but I, uh, and then I, of course I called my wife and told her how much I loved her and I needed her support to help me through these times.
After I'd ridden a dumper like two days ago.
Now I'm, well, you know, you mean everything to me.
You're my world.
You're my world.
And, uh, I don't want to be alone right now.
And so, and I, and it was, It was the absolute best thing that could have happened because he was right.
He was 100% right.
I had no business there and I knew it.
And so I just got a big smack in the face from this guy.
And I realized right away, you need to go back to the Midwest where you came from.
And you need to sharpen the blade for as long as it takes.
Because you are good at this, you're just not there yet.
So that's what I did.
I went back to the funny bone chain and the punchline chain and did clubs for years and years and got real good at it.
So when Foxworthy came along, he and I hit it off from the beginning.
And when he got big enough to take somebody with him, he took me with him, which was an amazingly gracious thing for him to do.
He's a very nice person.
Now that is a nice guy.
I mean, just polite.
Just a great friend.
So he did that for me, and so the blue collar thing hit, and that's what made my career.
Was it like in a minute?
I mean, what was the minute like when you went, wow, I did it?
Well, we started off doing the tour, and I remember the first time we ever talked about doing it and me being part of it, and Jeff was like, Well, there's this big thing coming up and if you play your cards right, you can be part of it.
And I'm like, why don't I just give you my cards and you play them anyway you want to.
And I'm in.
And then he told us about combining a tour and the four of us going out.
And I'm like, that's retarded.
And it turns out it wasn't retarded at all.
It was huge business.
And I was the opening act, and it was Jeff's tour, you know, and we had another guy, and then we got Dan Whitney, Larry the Cable Guy, which was a really good fit for us.
Yeah.
And, you know, we did these huge venues, and then Warner Brothers signed us up to do a movie, and I didn't even know what it meant, you know?
I'm like, sounds good to me!
And that was the catalyst, you know, there has to be a catalyst.
How fun was it way back when you were just starting?
You know, I had such a blast.
I knew that I had a special brain.
How old were you when you first knew that?
Well, I didn't know what the upside was going to be about it.
But I didn't graduate from high school.
But then I wrote the best joke about having a GED that's ever been written.
What is it?
I didn't graduate from high school.
I do have a GED, and if you don't know what GED stands for, you've probably got one too.
I do have one.
You do?
But I couldn't do traditional schoolwork Almost at all.
And I had horrible attention deficit disorder.
And mostly I was in slow classes.
And I also had some dyslexia.
Oh, shit.
Where was this at?
Where were you growing up?
Deer Park, Texas.
Suburb of Houston.
The smellier, chemicalier side of Houston.
But I knew that I could hold court at a party or a function, and I also could write funny songs, which I did.
And I always got laughs.
I always knew that there was something about it.
It was good, but I had no idea that if you wanted to be a comedian, all you gotta do is go start being a comedian.
You do have to do that, though.
You gotta go do it all the time, immerse yourself in it, but you can do it.
I didn't know it was an option.
They didn't talk a lot about the arts at Career Day at Deer Park.
Yeah.
You know, junior high.
So, when they opened a comedy club, Funny Bone, between where I lived and where I worked, so I saw the sign every day.
Right, soon after it opened, this guy named Sam Bartholomew that I worked with, he went to the first open mic night.
And he came back the next day and goes, you're funnier than these people.
Wow, cool.
You should go down there and give this a try.
And I had also always been a comedy fan.
And, you know, all the Cosby stuff, and Pryor, and I mean, I had Flip Wilson.
Oh, those were all my favorites.
Newhart.
Newhart, yeah.
Andy Griffith.
Yeah, I had him, too.
I had all them albums.
Yeah, so, and I know that what I loved about them was the laughter, just listening to the laughter.
Because as a kid, I couldn't have got the jokes, but I loved listening to them when I was a kid.
And there wasn't a lot of laughing going on over at my place.
So I think that's what kind of hooked me.
Ron, what year did you stand up?
86.
86?
That's when you started?
That's the year I got the Carson Show.
Oh, really?
Yeah, that's weird.
I'm sorry to laugh, but he's already told the story, but I remember when you talked coming to L.A.
and your rise to success was so quick, and I remember just looking at her, we were at the Vulcan, and you're almost receiving.
How long from the time you started until the Blue Collar Tour?
That was about 15 years.
I think that happened right around 2000.
And you had the razor blade reading.
2001, yeah.
It was a long... Yeah, 15 years that nobody gave a fiddler's fuck.
That's what you said.
Yeah.
And you know what?
And that's okay too.
Well, here we are.
Because I was so ready.
And Blue Collar, I was only on it, the first album, for 10 minutes.
And I was sitting there thinking about that.
You know, that I got a shot at getting famous with 10 minutes of material.
That's amazing.
And because most people burn what their best stuff getting, you know, on HBO or whatever.
But but then I've got this big old show that nobody's ever seen.
And and the blue collar stuff was all clean because Jeff was Jeff show and Jeff's work clean.
So I had to do work pretty clean on that.
So a lot of the crowd wasn't ready for the it's not near as wholesome.
in its bigger view, you know. But for the most part it worked great. So, but I kind of saw that
coming down. Well, that's got to be about perfect, right?
To be able to get famous without burning all That's amazing.
But you didn't burn a lot of material before you got famous either, right?
Well, I did that my first HBO special, I burned all my material.
Okay.
That was before I got my show.
I had, you know, a good... Oh, that was before Roseanne?
Yeah, that was kind of like the pilot for my TV show.
Oh, okay.
But I did my full hour clean, fairly clean, you know.
And then I wrote that other show that I told you I got my first cancellation and I did a special out of that too.
So I've done like four or five HBO specials.
Yeah.
And then I just did this box.
I think that was my fifth one.
So I got five hours of comedy and I'm working on my sixth.
I just love it.
It's so great to do it again.
I didn't do it for a really long time.
Yeah, right.
I wish we could build a club like right in our backyard.
We did, but you moved to Blanco instead of Austin.
I know, but I'm going to get a place in Austin for an old lady.
I'm going to get me an old lady place so I can work.
Because I enjoy hanging out with the comics.
I really do.
I love them so much.
They just melt when you walk on stage.
They just go crazy, crazy, crazy with love.
They want to let you know.
They want to let you know.
They do.
It just feels so nice.
What would that guy, if you were you when you were looking back and it was a time machine, what would that guy with the razor blade shit, what would he think if he had a vision of how you are right now?
Would he even imagine it?
No, I don't think he saw it coming.
That's my success.
I mean, I don't think he saw that coming.
Are you talking about from my perspective?
Yeah, your old, your young self.
No, you know, even later on, after Jeff got real big, and because I knew him both before and after that, and I still never thought it would happen to me.
I kind of saw myself like Willie Nelson's harmonica player.
Just a good job over there every week just blowing a harmonica.
I would have opened for Jeff forever.
That was a good enough job for me.
I didn't need a lot.
But I never really ever considered that.
I didn't think I had done the work.
I didn't think I was good enough.
I didn't think all these things that most people do, I guess.
Completely surprised and thrilled.
You know, when I did work, and I've never quite understood it, but that doesn't matter, you know.
But I don't really think I'll do any more extensive touring.
I may go out and do some dates.
It's fun, but, you know, it's fun doing what we're, you know, doing here in town, so I don't think I'm gonna... Yeah, I'm thinking about it.
I could do just a few here and there, because I don't want to lose it now that I found it again.
Right.
It's just too fun.
It's just too fun to keep your brain firing on that level, because it's people like us, you know, the people who are thinkers like we are, how we put shit together for a bit.
We're the ones that gets Alzheimer's.
Yeah, I wouldn't be a big goddamn surprise.
I think that's how it'll go.
Right.
Yeah, something like that.
I don't know.
All I know is that in my directive, I want to be kept alive as long as I can possibly be kept alive, and I want somebody wiping my ass until I'm in my early hundreds.
And even if all I can do is chew oatmeal, I don't want you to pull the plug on me.
I want to live forever.
That's interesting.
You're the opposite.
I want to be an imposition.
I want to be an imposition.
I should look at it that way.
My worst nightmare is that I would need my kids to take care of me when I'm incapable of taking care of myself.
Because I know they'd go like, remember that time you put those cigarettes out on me?
I'm not doing anything.
I'm not changing a diaper or anything.
I'll tell you that right now.
I'm not doing it.
You're a better man than me.
So I just want to go.
Right.
If I get sick, fuck it, man.
I'm out of here.
Bring me a carton of cigarettes and... Propofol.
That's what you want.
Yeah, I want the Michael Jackson drugs.
Call those people at hospice.
They bring a suicide kit to your house.
They do?
And leave it on the counter.
Not in... I mean, that's what they... All your big pain meds, they just... You're going to bag there.
I love that.
Do you want a shortcut to this little thing?
I think they should offer... They don't call it that, but... No, they always act like hospice is depressing, but it's like, literally, they just want you to be comfortable while you die, that's the whole thing.
So you just sit and people bring you drugs.
That's humane.
That's the best thing that could ever happen.
I think that everyone should have that option, if they're terminally ill, you know.
Or not, just for fun.
You probably don't be in a friggin' anti-Trumper.
You probably...
Oh boy.
What a guy.
Can I ask you both, I'm sorry, can I ask you both a question?
No.
Yes.
From like a plebe.
You guys, could each one of you just give advice to, in your own words, to like up and
coming young comics that maybe haven't broken yet, they're going to watch this?
That's a sweet question.
Yeah.
But give me a lighter so I got to tell, I'll go first and I'll give you the last word.
You've got to fucking, huh?
You gotta smoke a lot of pot.
Okay, that's rule number one.
I always say my advice is don't do it unless you have to.
Unless you're willing to go through the negative side of it, the pain of it.
There's a lot of pain, but it helps you grow.
Just keep plugging, if you have to.
I would say not have to, but if you want to.
If it sounds like it would be fun to you and you're okay with doing it as a hobby and not making a dime off of it.
But if you think you're going to be sitting on a couch someday with Roseanne Barr and Ron White, you're not.
So you're probably going to suck at it, but that doesn't mean it won't be fun.
So, and then the big piece of advice and the common denominator I think.
The only thing that all big comics have in common is that they're true to their nature.
Because nothing else is interesting.
Who you pretend to be is not interesting to anybody.
But who you really are, which is tougher than it sounds, but if you can be who you really are, that is interesting.
So, those two things.
Don't expect anything out of it.
Be willing to give it everything and be true to who you are if you can.
And I'm going to tell you right now, you can't.
Well, is that the hardest one?
Because, you know, because you don't know who the fuck you are anyway.
That's why you're a comic.
Sometimes you don't know how honest we're being until you've heard it from somebody else, you know.
Oh, I do that too, you know.
But I know that that's, if you look at Kennison and Cosby and Pryor and you and Basically, that's who they were, except for the rapin' that Bill did.
Well, that was also who he was, to be fair.
Right, that was his nature, but it never leaked into the show.
No, not at all.
So don't be yourself all the way.
Well, I think he had two or three sons.
Have you ever heard my Bill Cosby joke?
No, let's hear it.
It's really short.
Good, let's hear it.
Oh, how do I do it?
Bill Cosby, what Bill used to do was he would give women drugs and when they passed out he would have sex with them.
But in Bill's defense, he explained to us years ago how much he hates cursing.
And no one curses more than a wide-awake woman who's being raped.
The language, ladies!
That's really good.
Oh my God.
I think he's got two or three.
He's a severely divided person.
But you know what?
You never... But you didn't learn how to do stand-up watching Bill Cosby.
We all learned from him.
Bill Cosby himself was the best comedy special, I believe, ever made.
Ever made.
And that was just a tight shot of Bill's face.
You know, you can learn a lot about a comedy special by watching that one because it wasn't complicated.
We all learned everything from him.
But he is like a tortured soul.
Well, isn't that, I mean, I hear that a lot about comics, like, in general.
Do you think, Ron, it's just a bunch of tortured souls?
Damaged.
Yeah, damaged.
I mean, can you be funny if you're, like, completely privileged your whole life?
You know?
Just a question.
I guess you can in some way.
Not really.
Not the wounded kind of funny.
Yeah, that's the best.
Yeah, not the good stuff.
Not the real pain.
Not the real agony of it.
Who do you think, let's get into this for a few.
Who do you think was the most tortured comic you ever knew?
Well, I knew, I knew Hedberg, you know, uh, that was pretty, pretty tortured fella.
And, uh, but just could not shake heroin to save his life.
And, uh, literally.
So what about you?
Uh, Sam.
Well, Sam was tortured.
Sam Kennison was really tortured, I thought.
Yeah?
Yeah.
Mentally tortured.
Did you work with him?
Yeah.
At the store?
Yeah.
He kind of came to Colorado and, you know, helped me go to see Mitzi, him and Louie Anderson.
Oh, okay.
I didn't know that was the Sam you were talking about.
Yeah, but he's mentally tortured.
I mean, I saw him do some weird shit at the store.
What?
You know he did weird shit at the store, right?
I don't know what weird shit he did.
Well, like with guns and drugs and shit.
Well, I know everybody was doing drugs up there.
Well, everybody was doing that, though.
Right.
Having guns and the cops coming, hanging out with them, snorting coke and fucking conjuring up demons and stuff in the green room.
You know they was doing all that kind of shit.
Demons?
They were, yeah, praying to Satan and all kind of shit.
A little weird.
I got a call one time, one day, and Kennison was coming to town, and LeBeau was in rehabbers.
I forget why he couldn't make it, but it was a last minute thing that he couldn't make it.
And so they said, is there anybody around that could do this spot?
And I said, Ron, why, it's alright.
So they gave me the spot at the Dallas County Convention Theater.
Two thousand people sold out.
And it was a remake, so he'd already canceled it once, and he was back again.
And I get there, his brother Bill's there, and he kind of explains that, you know, sometimes The opening act with Sam is like a sacrificial lamb.
So don't get thrown off if they hate you.
Because they really just want to see Sam.
They want to scream.
They're going to start screaming.
And so I'm like, OK, well, you know, and Sam wasn't there.
So they started the show and I killed.
It was a great set.
He was looking out there.
Wow.
So he was going to stretch because Sam still wasn't there.
Well, I didn't have much to stretch with.
You know, I got to like 18 or 19 minutes and I'm like flat out of shit, you know, and leave.
And Sam's still not there.
And I'm sitting back in my little dressing room.
I got a little ice chest with some beer and Alex Raimondo and my first wife, they were back there.
And then Sam shows up.
Now there's 15 people back there.
Limos pull up and a big party.
And he had a two room little dressing suite with lobster and shit.
And his bodyguard came straight to get me.
Now, these people have been waiting 20 minutes.
And said, Mr. Kinnison wants to meet you.
And so, he takes me back there.
And he looks at me, he's got a vial of blow and he's banging it on the table.
Got a lock rock stuck in it.
And he looks at me, he goes, heard you killed them, cowboy!
And I said, yeah, it's a great crowd.
You're going to love them, Sam.
And he goes, how about a cup of coffee?
Yeah, why not?
You know Sam Kenison?
Fuck yeah.
So I did a rail, and then he did a huge rail, and then he faked a heart attack.
And nobody believed it but me, because I guess they'd seen it done.
Oh, because he did that all the time.
Yeah, so I was about to start sucking face with him, and he jumps up and, let me show you how it's done, and goes out there and just annihilates this crowd.
And afterwards, there were people there from the Funny Bone and the And the laugh stop and the punchline at that show.
And afterwards I was talking to them and they were like, let's go out to dinner and talk about your career.
That was on one shoulder.
On the other shoulder was Kennessy going, titty bars, cocaine.
I'm like, yeah, I'm gonna have to talk to y'all tomorrow.
I'm gonna go with shoulder B here.
He was fucking great, wasn't he?
Yeah, he was.
I mean, he was really in his prime.
At that show and then I opened another one where he was just bouncing into a club before a bigger date and horrible set.
Just he got there.
I was supposed to do 10 minutes and he was going to do all that was the headliner in the club that week and I knew he wouldn't remember me and he didn't.
But I was supposed to do 10 minutes.
I did an hour and 20 minutes waiting for him to get there and he got there and he had on sunglasses like cookie crumbs down his shirt.
He was just a wreck.
And, I mean, barely got a laugh the whole time.
Really?
And then went in the office and slept on the floor.
And, you know, that wasn't that long, I don't think, before he passed away.
Didn't he get clean before he died?
He said he got sober for a few months, and then he died, and yeah, he got hit by a drunk driver.
And they said his last words, he looked up to heaven and goes, why now?
Because it's like, fuck, now I'm sober.
Right.
I wanted to go out like a rock star.
Right.
Now I look like a pussy going out, fucking getting hit by a drunk driver sober.
Right, anybody can do that.
It's easy.
But he was just great to watch on stage.
You know, that brings me to the subject of the Comedy Store.
The comics I saw there, just, you know, I look back on my life and think, I saw Richard Pryor perform live.
I saw Rodney Dangerfield.
I saw Sam Kennison.
I saw…I think I saw…no, I didn't see Jerry Seinfeld.
I saw him at the Improv and I saw just fucking great performers right there at the Comedy Store and I have the feeling that that's how the Mothership is going to be.
I mean, it kind of is now.
It'll probably grow in that direction.
Yeah.
I wish some of the older ones would come out.
You know, when I started going to the store, it was after I'd already become a big comic for years.
But I'd moved to Beverly Hills because I was going to do something with HBO that didn't happen.
So I started going down there and doing sets, but I really didn't know who the younger comics were.
And I mean, like anybody.
So I was, I didn't know Sebastian Maniscalco.
I was like patting him on the shoulder going, you should keep doing this.
He's playing the same fucking rooms I had, you know, then.
And I'm sure he's like, fuck you, old man.
Fuck away from me.
And Allie Wong.
I was just trying to encourage him because I had no idea how fucking big they were because I just don't, I'm out of the loop.
Yeah.
I'm out of the loop.
I don't watch stand up.
I don't either, but you know, it's cool to be back and watching some young ones and going, damn, they're funny.
Doing something different, too.
I like that they do something different.
If you can see that.
Yeah, every time I write something it sounds like an old man wrote it.
I know!
I was going to say, it is kind of like, my references are so old.
Like, last night I talked about the jingles that are stuck in your head for no reason.
Like, Winston Teese, you're probably... No, I remember it like a cigarette should, sure.
For no reason it's in my head.
And it lives there.
Yeah.
Rent free.
None of them knew what I was talking about.
Yeah, I never heard that one.
What about ayahuasca?
I need to know about that because I want to try it.
Well, I had a little problem with alcohol.
Just a little one?
Yeah, just a little tiny one.
And then I owned a tequila company called Number One Tequila.
Buy it at your store.
I have drank that!
That's wonderful stuff.
I didn't know that was yours.
Yeah, it is.
Oh, cool.
But I just had a problem.
I beat my head against an alcohol wall every night for 50 years.
Or whatever.
And I don't know why to this day.
And it was just getting worse and I didn't think I could stop.
Ever.
Because it was also ingrained in my personality and my show.
It's what I was famous for, you know, and I really just didn't think there was a life
for me and I started getting really bad numbers on my liver.
And so I'm like, all right, well, I've heard that, you know, ayahuasca, you know, but I call it ayahuasca, the ayahuasca place, which is the one I went to is called Rhythmia.
And that's in Costa Rica and I told them how much I was drinking and they said, nah, you really can't come here because we're not a detox facility.
And, uh, uh, so you have to like not drink for a couple of weeks before you come here.
And I'm like, I can't do that.
That's crazy.
That ruins my plan.
So I knew about this hypnotist, uh, That another guy that was real famous, one of my assistants that worked for her, that he went to this guy because he was out of control in every way he could be, and he quit doing all of it.
So I'm like, well, maybe I'll go to that guy.
So I went over to that guy over in Santa Monica, in his little house, in his garage.
So I went through four sessions with him.
The first one, you don't quit drinking.
He said at the end of it, you don't have to quit drinking now.
I'm like, great, great, great.
I can do that.
And then after the second one, he was like, Now you don't drink.
And I haven't had a drink for two and a half years.
Wow.
That led me to the ayahuasca.
I couldn't have set it up any better.
Just the way this place was, it's not expensive.
Wow.
Air conditioning?
Yeah, great air conditioning.
And the room that you do the ceremony in, There's probably like 50 of us I guess.
Everybody has their own little bed that's really well made.
Nice blankets and pillows and a bucket to throw up in.
Don't you like throw up and shit yourself?
Well, you either throw up or you shit yourself.
I was one of the shitters.
You do this in a room with 50 people?
Yeah, and I would walk in after taking a shit, seeing a bunch of people throwing up, going, lucky!
Because you can do that right in your bed, you know, you got a puke bucket, you don't have a shit bucket, you got to get up and go.
But the guy, it's pretty Ceremonial.
Now is that just to empty you of all things in your system?
It's the poison.
I think whatever it is just makes you puke.
I don't know.
I don't know why.
No, ayahuasca makes you vomit and shit yourself.
I know, is that to empty out your system?
I think it's because it's a poison, like alcohol.
It's a poison?
Well, they're all things that get you high are technically a poison.
It certainly emptied out my system, if that was its intention.
Okay.
That's what it did.
So then what?
Well, I stood in line to get my dose and the shaman there, guys with feathers and What was the dose?
Liquid?
Yeah, liquid.
Kind of a real thick, really nasty stuff.
How much?
Maybe an ounce and a half, like a shot glass.
I did that and I said, so what do you do?
And he goes, well outside there's all these hammocks and a big fire.
It was really fucking pretty.
And he goes, he just to go out there and getting on one of those hammocks until it's time to come in.
And I said, well, how do you know when it's time to come in?
And the guy goes, oh, you'll know.
I was out there and I was coming onto these things and I was like, oh, it's kind of like a light mushroom, but it's kind of smooth and easy.
And then I, and then I opened my mouth and the entire forest rushed down my throat and I was like, it's probably time to go in.
I bet that's the signal right there.
So.
I went back in and laid down on the bed, and it was just really, really intense, hard tripping.
What do you mean by tripping?
I've never done that.
Do you mean seeing things?
Yeah, like somebody's skull.
If you looked at them too close, you'd see their skull instead of their face, and it wasn't very pleasant at all, I didn't think.
And in fact, it was so intense that I couldn't even figure out how to... I had my head itched and I just couldn't figure it out.
I'm like, I know I have hands.
I know they're hooked to arms.
I know I've got fingernails.
I could use one of those to scratch my head.
I give up.
I don't know.
And then somebody was walking by that worked there and I said, could you scratch my head?
I just don't have it.
And they were like, sure.
And I was fine.
Wow.
But I really... You couldn't move, so let me just understand.
You had no control of your body?
I think I could have done it.
But your brain didn't want to kick in to say do it?
Right, yeah, it just, it was, I was just off into it so deep.
Because all your brains were involved in what?
Thinking of, what were they thinking of?
these really dark images from my, I guess, from my past.
I don't know.
So you were seeing your, kind of your trauma pass before your eyes?
You know, it's really kind of just hard to describe.
And I considered not doing it again.
Because it was like just traumatic?
Yeah, just really a traumatic evening of tripping and shitting.
How long did it go on?
Shitting and tripping?
Well that's the beautiful thing about it that I didn't know is that it only lasts for a while.
Like how long?
Like two and a half hours or something like that.
That's too long.
But you can keep doing doses of it but once it gets close to midnight they'll quit giving it to you.
And also not everybody's having the same experience that I am.
I'm laying on there just... I can't get up at all.
And there are people dancing, you know.
There's live music.
They get sitars and drums and stuff.
That'd make me want to kill somebody if there was a fucking sitar.
Well, I don't know if that's exactly what it is.
A 12-string something.
I think it was a sitar, actually.
But it was just kind of groovy trip music, so it was nice.
But the next night, I just had this overwhelming feeling of love.
So you did it again after the traumatic night?
You go back?
Yeah.
Geez, you're a trusting son of a gun.
Well, you know, I'd already bought the e-ticket.
Oh yeah, you gotta go.
Might as well go.
Did you shoot yourself again the second night?
I did.
I still had the shits.
But none of the really down side of the trip.
It was all really light and lovely.
And I was dancing and swaying.
So your body worked?
Yeah, I was fully functioning.
But they also have a rule that you can't talk to the other people.
Oh, I love that.
Which is a great rule.
Yeah, if you don't want somebody trying to explain to you what's going on in their fucking head.
Yeah, no kidding.
So you're with everybody, but you don't talk to anybody.
That's cool.
And then after, on that one, I could wander outside and get back in the hammocks and, you know, all kinds of monkeys and shit.
Oh, I'd love to see monkeys.
Oh, they're monkeys.
Costa Rica's your place then.
Uh-huh.
But, and then I did it two more nights in a row, and then the last night... What was the third night like?
Like, nothing was like the first night.
Oh, good.
They said it was like a death and a rebirth.
Oh!
Like an ego death or something?
I think so, maybe.
Then you come into love.
And forgiveness.
Oh, cool.
Third night, what was the lesson?
I think they were just overall lessons.
I walked away from it, well, mostly forgiving myself.
Oh, that's great.
For any number of things that we can't get into.
But there was plenty of reasons for me to be able to give myself a break.
That's cool.
Isn't that the hardest fucking thing?
And I was able to forgive everybody except one divorce lawyer.
And I just hate that motherfucker so bad.
I just can't do it.
I gave you everybody else, I'm keeping this motherfucker.
I'm going to torture his ass in my hatred for him.
And he deserves it, so fuck him.
But I forgave everybody else, so that was pretty good.
And then yourself, that's awesome.
That's the hardest thing.
Yeah, yeah.
How did that make you quit drinking?
You know, I'm not sure if that's what did it, or if it was the hypnosis, or I just came up with a magical program that works, which is hypnosis, ayahuasca, combo platter, but that's what I would be selling.
Well, maybe unloading your sad baggage and trauma, maybe that... I think has also helped, yeah.
Don't you think people drink or take too many drugs because they're trying to medicate the pain?
A thousand percent.
I think so.
You know, I think that people want blinders, they don't want to see, and they don't want to deal with it, and you know... Too busy.
But I think part of it is that, you know, I think that I needed both of those things.
I needed that medical information to stick in my head that reminds you of the day your liver starts barking, and I'm not preaching sobriety, I don't give a fuck.
In fact, go buy number one tequila and get trashed with it every night for the rest of your life.
Once your liver actually makes a noise, then your life is changed forever.
Yeah, it is.
Physical.
The liver is very quiet until it's too late.
And I know that, right?
I don't think I learned anything new.
But I learned it under hypnosis and now I can't unlearn it.
I went to this fucking hypnosis.
Shit, I'll tell you what happened to me.
Well, I was going to hypnosis to quit smoking.
This was way before I quit smoking.
I've quit smoking like 15 times for years.
Yeah, you're good at quitting.
Yeah, I'm really good at quitting.
Anyway, and it was to quit smoking and lose weight hypnosis.
It was Mrs. Brady's husband, on the Brady Bunch's husband.
The real guy?
The actor?
Florence Henderson?
Florence Henderson's husband had his own hypnosis clinic.
Oh, okay.
He was known for it.
He's a big one.
So I go over there.
I'm losing weight and quit smoking.
Well, it happens to be across the street from Tommy's Big Boy Hamburgers.
So before I go in there, of course, I go over there and get a double cheeseburger and fries and the whole thing and eat it.
And then go over and get hypnotized to lose weight and quit smoking.
That's like when people go into rehab loaded.
What's your version?
Every week.
I always would self-sabotage, you know.
Right.
Well, you know, people say that it's weird that I'm sober.
I'm not sober.
I just don't drink.
You know, of course I smoke pot, I just got through smoking some, but you know, I also do.
But I mean, it's good that you don't drink, because, you know, if you did it'd kill you, you'd fuck up everything.
You'd lose everything, you know it.
Yeah.
It's good.
Alcohol's a fucking demon.
It really is, and you know, it's kind of this younger generation's not drinking that much.
Is that true?
Yeah, they're not.
What are they doing?
Taking fentanyl?
Ketamine.
Xanax.
Yeah, but they're not drinking.
I hear about it all the time and the bar owners hate it because they'll come in and drink water and do ketamine and party.
Have you ever done ketamine?
Yeah.
I did it too.
I love it!
You know what, I think I did too much and it was right before set and I'd never done it before and it was just a little overwhelming and I haven't really done it since.
I asked my head shrinker if I can get some and get on it.
Can you?
Yeah, they prescribe it but you've got to go to treatment.
But I'm going to go because I just didn't feel any of the dark fog, the depressive dark fog.
It cut that right out and I was like, personable.
Wow!
Well, I have enjoyed so much talking to you and having you here.
Thank you so much for coming.
You're interesting as fuck.
You're a great comic.
You're a good person.
Thanks for having me.
You were so sweet to ask.
You know, that's the first time that I saw you was on the Tonight Show set.
I knew for a fact that I'd never seen anybody this good on stage before
in such an original approach to stand-up comedy.
And I was an instant fan, so when you first started coming down to the Vulcan, that was a big thrill, you know, for all of us.
And to see you still had chops was just the greatest thing.
So sweet.
And so we're glad to have you down here, and it was an absolute pleasure to come down and do your podcast.
Thank you.
And eat your food.
We have him start eating.
Let's go finish.
Let's go do it.
We got the meat now.
All right.
Thank you, sweetheart.
I know that a lot of Americans are concerned with rising inflation rates, with the banks collapsing, with China taking over, with Biden being a complete criminal.
You're probably not feeling secure in your investments and your future, and you're not wrong to be scared.
I highly suggest that you look into taking whatever retirement you have, whatever money you have aside, Whatever you're thinking about doing, don't keep it in the bank because $100,000 today that you've saved, that you feel good about, in 10 years is going to be worth about $50,000 or so.
The smartest thing you can do is invest in precious metals, gold and silver.
It is smart.
People have been telling you this.
Your grandfather probably told you this.
I'm going to tell you right now to go to bh-pm.com.
That's Beverly Hills Precious Metals.
Sign up a free consultation.
Let them know Roseanne sent you.
And if you are interested and you are smart, you will think very, very strongly about getting your money out of the corrupt banking system and away from the corrupt stock market and invest in your future in a safe way, which is precious metals.
Strange initials to keep me blind, psychedelic music to blow my mind.
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