Dennis Miller urges skipping college due to debt traps and critiques modern media's censorious culture, contrasting Bernie Sanders' rise with Donald Trump's comic timing. He rejects current political polarization, predicting a cataclysmic reset akin to 1929 rather than incremental change, while dismissing complex statistics on unemployment and coronavirus lethality. Miller concludes by praising Jimmy Connors' honest legacy, recounting a Las Vegas anecdote where his nanny was mistaken for his wife, before apologizing for his lengthy appearance. Ultimately, the episode suggests societal fractures require division rather than reconciliation. [Automatically generated summary]
If I was telling a kid right now, I'd say, Brother and Sister, unless there's a super serious thing you can get a degree in that you can exchange for your green rectangles, don't go!
Because half the people going in right now are getting degrees that mean nothing.
Reminder, everybody, subscribe to RubinReport.com if you want to get all our videos early and totally ad-free.
And more importantly, joining me today is a stand-up comic and host of Dennis Miller Plus One on the RT network, as well as the Dennis Miller Option podcast.
Dennis Miller, I've already said your name three times.
They've split apart and obviously the west coast of Africa with Ivory Coast, Liberia is the most contentious place on the planet, and I think that's a sudden hard drive tremble from way back when, where a guy went out into his yard in Liberia once and said, honey, what's this crack?
No, I appreciate it, but like I said, I don't know, you're in your 40s, right?
I would have probably fought the plot more then, but I'm telling you what, you seem like, just the time we talked beforehand, you seem like a smart enough cat that somewhere down the road, I can't see you fighting it into the barn.
You seem to be in love.
You've got a beautiful family in the picture out here.
You've got a great place.
You're kicking ass and taking names career-wise.
Yeah, you should do it now.
But at some point, the harvest is What are you gonna do?
I'm into getting up and reading, taking a hike, having a good meal, appreciating the fact I married the most beautiful, witty, charming girl I ever met, adoring my sons, watching some baseball, and then reading as I fall out to sleep.
I don't view show business as some sort from the Stone Moment where you're anointed.
It's a job.
I grew up in Pittsburgh and my job, what I was good at, was I would think jokes up and then I tried to give those jokes to somebody else to do and then I found I didn't have the ego for that.
Once I saw somebody do a joke I thought, up on the Tonight Show and Carson laughing, I'm not built for this, I better become the unlikely conduit.
But I've never thought of myself as the silver surfer comedian.
I did props when I first started because I thought visually that way, but then I remember I couldn't fit the props in the overhead.
I had slight props, and then I thought, you know, I'm not gonna wait a half an hour at a Right.
For a toilet seat I could put on my head and say, Alas, poor Turdick.
So I ditched out on that, started writing jokes, like I said, told a couple of other comedians, saw them do them and score with them and thought, I've got to be the guy.
So like I said, it was very I didn't have a whoosh, whoosh thing about stand-up.
But I remember I was in Baltimore and I had auditioned for SNL maybe a month before.
And then I remember They picked the cast.
USA Today had a picture of them.
I wasn't in it.
I was still in Baltimore.
And I was so tough at that point because on your way up you have to be tough.
You did stand up in New York 12 years.
I was a gladiator.
And I remember seeing that picture.
I didn't have a crestfallen thing.
I think I came close to that.
Alright, keep going.
Then, I was up doing Letterman, and somebody came into the Letterman dressing room and said, listen, Lorne Michaels wants to see you on 8, or no, 17, where his office was.
And I said, geez, I knew something was up.
He's not calling me down to revisit me to tell me why I didn't give it to him.
But I'm thinking maybe I get a shot on it as a comedian or something, like Stephen Wright would come on Sam once in a while.
I went down, I knew it was going to be something good, but then I walked in and I remember it's one of those moments that stick in your head.
Lorne sits at the end of the thing, he's got one of those green domed lights on his desk, you know, that gives it that Arthur Conan Doyle feel.
He's got the quarter glasses on, reading scripts or something, and over his shoulder is the Empire State Building, and I remember it being like red, white, and blue.
It wasn't Fourth of July or anything, but he looks up and he goes, Hey, Dennis Miller.
I go, Hey, Lorne.
He says, how would you like to do weekend update?
And I said, I'd like that a lot.
He said, I'll see you tomorrow at around 11.
I said, all right, sir.
I walked out and I remember thinking, I'm not a big drinker, but I remember saying, I'm going to go get four fingers of something brown on the rocks and knock this down, because this is pivotal.
And that was magical.
I don't want to act like I'm sitting over here playing Sputin.
I'm talking about stand-up.
I was kind of step-by-step, Maginot line, move it six inches, fall back four, move it four.
But when that happened, I remember thinking, all right, take some mental Polaroids here.
Don't be blase about this because that's its own defense mechanism.
This is a big deal.
Chevy Chase did this.
You're going to do it now.
Enjoy it until you either become a success or get whacked.
So I did enjoy it a long way.
I took all those moments and, you know, the first time you sit in that seat and they count you down, I just thought, All right, I might go out, but I'm going out on my shield here.
I used to try to stay out of the SNL sketches, because, you know, when you're with geniuses, Carvey's a comedic genius, Lovett's, sketch-wise, a genius, Phil, the ultimate clue guy.
I mean, the only guy, I never thought I'd see a guy like Danny, and Phil got in the realm with him, and I always thought, well, this is a serious play.
Mike Myers comes in.
See, you got four leads there who could kill the ball.
I'm the fifth guy in a sketch.
I'm the bartender saying, here's your gimlet.
And yet I gotta be there blocking it for three and a half hours.
So I used to go around and say to writers when they wrote me in, I'd say, I want to be like the D.H.
I want to pick a rock song, swing the weighted bat down the tunnel, come out and hit the ball for ten minutes.
I'm sure you've been asked this a million times, but what do you think it is about SNL or the ages or the collection or the level of talent of all the people that there's so much tragedy around the cast members?
You're working as an entertainer in some way, and all of a sudden you're on the best entertainment vehicle for young people in the world, quite frankly.
No, you can spend your days sitting in a room thinking, oh my stomach hurts, I'm spilky, I gotta go get loaded.
Or you can just get on with it and have a blast.
And it is scary.
And there are weeks where it felt horrible when you'd go badly.
That's any gig.
But that whole crash and burn thing, I'm so far from that.
If somebody would have said to me, you know, at the end of the day this is going to cause you to do yourself in, I said, I'm not taking the job.
I don't know, maybe not anymore because things that used to interest me about people, their psychological tells now have turned into blatant whining, so I don't think I'd be a good shrink for today.
People come in and say, you know, I got in a fight when I was in fourth grade and you used to be a fucking 70.
Wake up!
But at the time, I thought that might be interesting.
Show business is no magic, I've said magic kingdom, no exalted higher plane.
It's show business.
It's you going out to strangers and saying, let me either make you think, cry, or laugh.
That's all it is at the end of the day.
People have always been interested in that.
Town criers.
People, you know, Seventh Seal going around doing the puppet shows to the paupers.
It's, I don't know, to me it seems like a hard drive issue.
I'm sure there was somebody sitting around the mud pit way back when, you know, in Kubrick Town, where somebody came in with a femur and cracked the other.
And I'm sure there was some guy trying to do a rye rejoinder to the other ape having their head crushed in.
Folks, I want to tell you, it's been around since day one.
You're in a shoot, man, a wind tunnel test, and it's flying, so you can't always be lucid about it.
Uh, that, uh, if you're on the planet for 85 years, the front end of that, 20, there's guys like Eddie who beat it, but usually until 20 you're anonymous.
And the last 10 years, you've probably, so you're 30 of those out.
You got a half a century.
If you get any part of that where you're famous and you're actually seated at a nice table, where strangers come up to you and say, You've won.
And to try to think this is the way life should be, it isn't.
I'm trying to, what do they call it, mindfulness, but that's almost falling into its own cliche.
I'm trying to be aware of what a great run I had.
And I might be in the denouement of that.
And that's fine.
You know, but you can see when you even mention it to people, where you say, I don't think it was hot as it was.
I don't know if I'll ever be that hot again.
People kind of wincing.
Well, I think...
I mean it sincerely.
I think the examined life is everything, and I want to examine my life.
I want to feel legit here as I, hopefully another 30 years, get it into the barn.
I want to analyze what part of me, which was a shy kid, ends up getting braggadocious enough to try showbiz, hits the ball hard, and I think I inhabited that Yeah, I love the answer.
and now not as hot, I want to inhabit that plane just as well. It's equally valid.
I don't know that humans are built to keep it up till they're, all of a sudden you're Larry Sanders doing the show at seven and going, I don't mean Gary.
Yeah, I think about it sometimes, even though I'm sort of right in the thick of it right now.
It's like, you know, when things change or I change or family expands or whatever it is that like, Will I want to do it at this level, or deal with a certain amount of hate, or any of those things, you know?
And at some point I remember thinking, it's like base camps on Everest.
And, you know, all of a sudden you're planting the flag.
You think, how the hell did this happen?
And then all of a sudden when you're at six base camp and you're boiling water with the Sherpa, And they say, we're not going to let you make the climb tomorrow.
You go, okay, I'm going to get cozy in here with Tenzing Norgay IV.
I give a pat answer, then I turn into the guy on the second row to tell him about all this thing.
I'm not as scared shitless of anonymity as some people.
If I fall back into that, I'm going to examine that the same way I examined being...
I remember the first two years of being famous.
Maybe this was a tell.
And when I say famous, folks, where's the camera?
I don't want to sound like an asshole.
I'm just saying you end up famous.
I remember spending two years up front, not even being able to focus on it because I would notice it.
I would be too pleased with it.
The pragmatic side of myself would castigate the side that was too pleased with it.
The other side would come in and defend me against the mean side, say, oh, come on, he's just got fame.
And I'd say, I'm spending 12 hours a day figuring this out.
And at some point, I remember, it's like an algebraic equation.
Cancel terms out.
It just is.
It doesn't mean anything in a weird way.
Are you a good dad?
Are you a good friend?
And I'm not saying I am.
As far as friends, I'm a little distant.
But I'm just saying there are so many ways to shoot your life through.
And when you're in it, it takes all your attention because you've got to stay laser focused.
I always view fame like it's a party.
All of a sudden you're outside and it's like those old Warner Brothers cartoons where the house has got notes coming out.
All of a sudden you get in the door and you like stay against the wall and it's a Sardis character.
It's like a Last Supper of Fame and you're pressed against the wall looking at it.
And you edge into the party and then all of a sudden the sweet spot is halfway into the party and then like you have two seconds there and then you realize half the party's happening behind you and you don't know who's going to A2 Brute in the sauna and eventually you get through to the other wall and go to the bathroom.
So at some point I always had that in my head from the first moment that I got it and so I'm not disappointed.
It always seemed to have a natural shelf life to me.
Yeah, so I don't want to do the greatest hits with you because I want to do sort of where you're at now, but so when you then start doing O'Reilly, and then suddenly people are going, wait a minute, this is SNL, Weekend Update guy, he's like this sort of like hip, cool, lib kind of, suddenly you're on O'Reilly.
We definitely were a one plus one equals three thing.
Because on my own, I'd probably, at that point, draw two.
I don't know what Billy was drawing, but probably two.
But you put us together in the mutton jeff of it.
It always reminded me of that scene in the Chaplin movie, not saying we were chaplinesque, where Charlie puts his foot behind his leg and kicks the guy who's working the border guard thing, the guy at Ellis Island, kicks him in the butt.
I was doing that to O'Reilly.
And the key moment in that relationship was when I told Bill, you're like a big Irish beat cop where you're spinning that stick, everybody's scared shitless of you, and I'm going to call you Billy instead of Bill.
That why.
It was a great move.
Because all of a sudden, the power, the monolith, is being poked fun at by the Mutt & Jeff guy.
And it was cool.
That's why it worked together, is because I could make him laugh, an unguarded laugh periodically, and I could poke fun at him.
I could call him Billy.
I could wear shorts on his show, which, you know, I'd put my leg up and he'd say, do you not have pants?
Well, I do know that I don't go to a lot of social events and stuff like that when I'm working.
I like to say hi and be normal.
I'm in a cat's place.
But I'm not a real social guy, and he isn't either.
So when you put the two of us together, I was enamored of that part of our rally.
And I sometimes didn't understand his brusque manner, and I sometimes thought, why is he beating his drum to that degree when I'd watch him on the show?
And Bill, if you're seeing this, I'm not You know, I'm telling you, I saw that cat do stuff for soldiers, kids who'd been abused, Haitians after storms.
Yeah, sometimes in the way that doesn't matter, the topical stuff, I sometimes find him equally ill at ease as I am.
I think the way that it'll turn this... Yeah, it might be, but I think the way that it'll turn this is everybody who's in the public eye should get up to a joke, A witticism, a pithy revelation, and stop it down themselves and look at the camera and say, I have something here, but I'm going to stay out because I understand the new rules.
And have that happen ad nauseum for a few years.
And relate to people how crazy and post-Orwellian it's gotten as far as jokes, dialogue, throwaways, cruelty.
Indeed, humans are cruel once in a while.
Uh, you know, the fact that that's all neutered down now, I think that people should be reminded that we're missing some of the texture of life walking around like we're in Logan's Run or something.
You know, it's, uh...
I don't think it will change for a while because to me it's the Lord of the Flies and right now the uptight people have the conch and they're the ones who are going to speak.
And therefore if I'm sitting there and I get to a point in a joke where I go, this puts me where I have to talk to people who I disagree with about how bad I am.
Yeah, you know I used to do, there's some, my old stand-up tapes are right there, and I used to do a joke way back when that I used to say the N-word, and it was not to be racist in any way, it was actually a stupid, silly Transformers reference that I was imitating a Transformer, and I would say this, and it would always get a huge laugh, huge laugh.
I would close with it sometimes.
And then one night I was on stage at Gotham Comedy Club on 24th, These people want to do a Nantucket sleigh ride with a bit where they ride it to the bottom?
Doesn't interest me.
I'm out there to please people.
I remember thinking, I'm putting that one away and I never did it again.
I never liked that feeling, but I was just like, this is way before all this. - These people wanna do
And I remember thinking, you know, when Jackie Robinson first came up and he goes to Montreal in the Dodgers, he's playing minor league baseball and they've got to assign somebody to go out with the cat and ride wingman.
Well, listen, when you, I think Cosell was just shy of being an ACLU lawyer.
I used to read Cosell in Sport Magazine once a month, and he was always at the vanguard of these movements.
Who was tighter with Ali?
For God's sakes.
And you know, I saw a special on Ali the other night, and it was called I Am Ali.
And I was reminded, I did not appreciate what he did to Joe Frazier.
Indeed, he missed his own.
He buried his own lead at some point when he called Frazier names and stuff like that.
And they had Marvis Frazier on talking about how it hurt his father and hurt his family.
Ali wasn't perfect either, but I watched a guy operate between races so seamlessly in that thing.
I thought, there's what we should all be striving to get to.
Not being complete.
Ali was so beautiful.
He was so proud of being black and beautiful, and then he'd be with these old square white people teasing with him, then he'd be with the grannies, then he'd be with the children, and I thought, now here's a guy who gets it.
Well, listen, I realize my liabilities and I would say one thing that I would say I'm okay at is I have a reasonably deep cultural drawer and a somewhat quick retrieval system.
When I see those Christmas stories every year where the kids are working in the Amazon disbursement centers and Minotaur or something and they got packages coming at it
with speed light. You asked me what I wanted to do for a living.
I think I could have stood at the Y on the road and said, okay, Emory boards,
headphones, boom, boom, boom. I think I could have been the, what do they call it on the kitchen shows?
I think I could have worked the pass on cultural referencing.
Well, I think it's a bit of a monkey trick, so I don't know where you get that, nor do I think it's anything that you say where you get that.
But I do remember on Saturday Night Live, When I would get to write the news, and after a few weeks, they had so many holes in the dike they let me kind of, me and Herb Sargent were writing the news.
Other people would write jokes, but we predominantly wrote it.
And I noticed, you have to get actual about yourself, I couldn't, I needed adrenaline to be really creative, and adrenaline came from fear for me.
So I would notice I could not, occasionally a joke would pop into my head Monday through Thursday, but I could see life on the griddle is what perked me.
So Friday around 4.30 in the afternoon, it was really funny, I'd think about Whitney Brown, and he was so smart.
A little more malevolent than me, but a brilliant cat.
And we were kind of friends, but I always thought if we go to a two-anchor thing, it's Whitney.
So 4.30 in the afternoon on Friday, I'd think of Whitney and I'd think, brother, you better get this thing together.
There were guys who did it alone, but I always look back on that and think, well, that was a good thing.
When you were served your opportunity, you stepped up to it.
But I remember I had a big, three big sheets of paper about that size on my wall, three different ones.
And it would say, indignation.
And then the middle one said, what am I?
And then the third one said, arcane reference.
And it was like a haiku for update.
I'd get to a point where I'd think, oh, what's... And I'd just look at that and go, what pisses you off?
Put the seesaw in, the fulcrum, what am I?
The Jetsons robot me?
You know, I used to make it reductio absurdum.
I really got primal at that point.
I felt like I was like...
You know, like you're a great white.
You might as well have heard the theme from Jaws is you're just swimming, looking for the line, because I got scared that I would lose the gig.
But I did have that template in my head.
So maybe that's where the reference is.
Yeah, and now it just seems like it's just sort of built in or something, like it just became... Well, I must say that even before I became a comedian, goofy stuff would stick in my head.
Eight on HBO, so I'm thinking it must have been one of your first ones I remember watching.
Again, I'm young, I'm 15, something like that, thinking, I don't get all of this, but I like it.
You know what I mean?
There were things that you were saying that I was like, I don't know what that reference is, but I kind of liked it, because I was like, other people are laughing, so there must be something here.
Yeah, when they know it's not working, where you would shake it, I mean, you would literally, you just did it, but you would sort of shake it off, kind of.
Yeah, so even though I can sense that Dennis Miller 2020 is slightly evolved out of maybe the full grind and fight thing, where are you sort of at politically?
I asked you right before we started and it's like you strike me as you're probably... I'm socially illegal.
Yeah, you strike me as mostly libertarian kind of something like that.
I've met enough fervent believers who are homosexual.
What does God say?
I can't talk to you today?
You're gay.
So that whole thing doesn't exist for me.
I don't trust radical Islam as far as I can throw it.
I'd like to keep half my money.
Some people think that's a piggish statement, but I always think... You greedy bastard.
Yeah, but I think, well, I'll keep one.
I give you one, I don't even know you.
And then people say, you know, and after I pay taxes on it, I'd like to keep it for my kids.
And then they go, why do you want to spoil your kids with a, you know, inheritance?
And I go, Hey, why the fuck do I want to spoil your kids?
I don't even know your kids!
At least I got joy out of my kids.
It's pretty simple stuff.
I feel like I'm a pragmatist, but in today's world, man, if you're not in lockstep, you're painted as... Christ, I've seen pictures of myself on the web with a Hitler's stash and all that, and I think, I can't spend time worrying about that.
Those people are so reactionary.
The only way I can let them into my life is if I let them ding me.
I don't give a shit.
I'm more than willing to seek the approbation of strangers.
It's the human condition.
But only if it's worth it.
And I get a pretty good Spidey sense.
I can tell early on, do I even need to know this person anymore?
You know, you meet some people within five minutes.
You go, too strident.
I'm still willing to make these calls for myself.
Sorry, I'm in my own control tower.
I can't accept every plane that wants to put it on the deck.
I gotta pick.
And I can tell pretty quickly.
And if somebody's amenable just to be open-minded, I don't even need to agree with them on politics, any of that shit.
Are they kind enough?
Are they a decent enough soul?
A good family person?
That's a big thing with me.
Funny?
Do they make me laugh?
So I got my criteria.
One of them's not being dovetailed with their political beliefs.
Anytime you see kids looking up at Bernie Sanders in the same way you see those young girls at the Sullivan Show looking at the Beatles, the world's gone horribly askew.
I see those kids like...
And I think, are you kidding me?
This is the guy we used to avoid his lawn because nobody knew if he had buckshot loaded up.
Listen, when you get to a point, and for kids, I know they're gonna talk about healthcare, but I, by and large, I don't think kids in their 20s, and they're always so invincible, are thinking, man, I'm gonna have a goiter when I'm 70.
Is it gonna be covered?
I don't think they work that way.
I do think a lot of kids are getting out of college now with, North of a hundred or high tens?
School on!
They can't even get off the pad in their 80s.
It's almost like they're working with loan sharks.
They got to pay that off before they can get to their dreams.
Therefore, they think, fuck my dreams.
I'm not going to have a house.
I'm going to live in a small micro apartment.
I'm not going to get a car.
I'm going to bike around or pick up one of these jerk-off scooters on every corner.
And I'm going to go out once a week with my friends and film a Michelob commercial, where we're all sitting around and we're all putting our beer on top of the turntable.
And I'm going to pay for a great glass of wine because I don't have any options on getting a house or a car.
And I think all that's happened is if I was a kid and I was sitting there with a hundred grand worth of school loans, and it was for an environmental studies degree, where quite frankly I went out and they said, here's some dishwashing solution, go clean that dove up on the beach.
I'd be saying, who's the guy who wants to forgive my loan?
I'd probably be going there.
But I'm not anymore.
I'm the old guy who had minimal school loans, paid them off, and they can't expect me to go back and see it that way.
I don't want to give up everything for people who...
If I was telling a kid right now, I'd say, Brother and Sister, unless there's a super serious thing you can get a degree in that you can exchange for green rectangles, don't go!
Because half the people going in right now are getting degrees that mean nothing.
And you can have four years on the ground.
Find out what you want.
Get in there.
Get into whatever the equivalent of the mail room is.
Spend those four years, you know, Jesus, for God's sakes, 1,500 days while they're sitting in there, you know, holding seances and stuff like this, where you can be out there building a resume where the boss goes, that kid busts his ass.
Oh, he always talks about how I've been in public service.
And you just want to say, oh, for Christ's sake.
Okay, yeah.
Thanks for helping.
But, you know, I don't dig guys who get off, who quite frankly get off their old man's nickel onto the public dime in their late 20s and ride it all the way.
It always bored me with Jerry Brown.
You know, he's pitching himself as, you know, an ethereal creature.
And I always think, brother, you've been on the teat for like more than six decades now, okay?
So don't tell me about what a free form you are.
But Biden has never been as smart as they told me he was, or he told you he was.
Anybody who knows their IQ is a big tell for me.
Two things.
When a guy you're golfing with goes into the woods and you get to the green, you go, what'd you get?
And he pulls his hand up.
I know he's fucking.
And whenever a guy says, I know my IQ, I go, Christ, I don't like that to begin with.
I go, why?
Why do you know your IQ?
Are you that insecure?
Are you faking it that much?
Biden's one of those guys who knows his own IQ.
And I never saw him as a genius.
I always think of Joe Biden as the third guy in a car on a Sonic commercial.
So before we get to the Trump guy, do you think a good person, like actually like sort of an enlightened, decent human being could ever be part of this thing?
It seems like the ship has pretty much sailed on that, although I think a great reckoning could be coming maybe to our whole political system.
Yeah, I don't know if it'll be 29, Where all of a sudden the Dow, you know, it's happening now because of the virus, but I'm just saying, it'll either be 1929 or 1860, something like that.
Unimaginable.
You don't want to be the first guy in and say, I can see a civil war coming.
They'll make you out to be the bad guy.
But seriously, for the reset to happen now, I don't see it being incremental.
I see something Just the shy of cataclysmic happening.
Maybe Corona's it.
I don't know.
But if anybody thinks the Dems are going to solve Corona after what I just saw in their own caucuses in Iowa, I don't know that I want to hand it off to them.
But I don't see it coming back around.
I see it getting very tribal.
And I can only hope at some point we divvy up the albums like a relationship that's gone.
I'm telling you, I think at this point we got a dead shark and I don't quite know how we figure it out but at some point we shouldn't try to go close together because that's only going to make it more rancorous.
We don't get along.
We don't even agree.
I tell you one thing I do notice is I find people, I've been on the right and I've been on the left as far as issues in my life. I've also been thought of as somebody
who's on the left and on the right mistakenly over my life. I find the left is really more
brutal than the right.
I mean I used to tear people in the conservative community a new asshole.
When I'd meet them they'd kind of make at least laugh about it.
And I think McCain had told me once that Stockdale, when he was in the Hanoi Hilton, when kids had given up and they were gonna kill themselves, he would get on the pipe at night and tap it with a flint To pray with them in sign language to convince them not to die that night.
I have found that, but I can only speak for myself.
Like I said, I've poked a lot of fun at conservatives, and I've met some who hated my guts, and I've met others who at least laughed about it a little.
That's just my experience.
People on the left do not take a joke as well.
I think that's kind of... I don't think I'm saying anything sacrilegious there.
I saw him live in December, and he goes up there, and you know, he's got the prompter, but he's also winging it half the time, and he's ad-libbing and everything.
And he did this thing about, he was talking about windmills, and he goes, he goes, I've been studying windmills my whole life.
Nobody knows more about windmills than me.
And then he starts, you know, rifling off some stats about windmills that were obviously on the prompter.
And I turned to David and I was like, you know that the headline in Politico today is gonna be Donald Trump says he knows more about windmills than anyone, which he obviously meant as a joke.
And then lo and behold, we see all the headlines, BuzzFeed, blah, blah, blah.
And it's like, I think that's his greatest gift.
He knows how to punk these guys every time, whether you like it or not.
But that's, I can't even do that with him anymore.
Everybody talks about Trump now.
Notice how many times the word whether you like him or not comes up.
That's all it's laying covering fire down.
I don't like him some days, but it's about more trivial shit than some of the stuff he's doing, which matters.
I think some of the things he's doing as far as the, you know, when somebody comes to me and say, Says that the black unemployment rate's down to its lowest ever and somebody immediately goes, Obama started it!
Okay, I'll give Obama credit for that.
I'm gonna give him credit for getting it down a little lower.
I just can't play this stupid game where he's the Antichrist.
For God's sakes, there are days I feel that he's super adept at his job.
There are other times I think he's super thin-skinned.
There are days I think his comedy chops are, you know, Beautiful.
There are other days I find it buffoonish that he would waste time punching down to somebody that's, you know, stupid on the other side.
He's the human condition to me.
All I know is this.
I don't see the country being over as they do.
I don't.
This coronavirus is yet another thing.
They're gonna say the country's over.
I guess I'm a half-fool guy.
Do I think that, occasionally, do I see Trump is half full of it or half empty?
Yeah, I guess I do.
There are other days I look at him and say, good for you, I wouldn't take that shit either.
Imagine the maelstrom this guy is in on a day-to-day basis, him and his wife.
And when people say, oh, he's mean in a tweet, I go, yeah, he's punching back.
Everybody talks about Federer and he's obviously, I think even Jimmy would probably say the greatest player ever because of the...
The majors.
But to this day, in the Open Tennis Tournament, Roger Federer's around 30 matches wins behind Jimmy, who's in the one slot, and he's around six tournaments behind Jimmy.
In a world of tepid, in a world where everybody's figuring out how to explain somebody's missteps before you get to them, to have a guy who's an honest arbiter of his legacy, tells you where he screwed up, or he tells me at least, tells me where he did well, and lets the numbers speak, and doesn't beat the drum, he's a mensch.
You know, I like that stuff about people.
and there's too many altruistic people with publicists nowadays.
Imagine the selflessness being shepherded down a red carpet by, you know, Rogers and Cowan.
Hey, this guy did something that nobody's supposed to know about.
I don't know if a lot of people call it a man in full.
It was a book, well you'd have to read it, it's about a man reaches a point in his life where if he feels he's a man and fool, indeed he very well could be.
And that's not defined as you classically define when you're a kid.
It just has to come a moment where you just sit there and there's no static.
And you just say it's not even exultant, it's not triumphant, it's just kind of quiet.
And you think, wow, I feel like a man and fool right now.
The frabba jabba in my head's letting down a little.
You know what, I've never read the book, but I do love Frank Sinatra's My Way, and I think that's kind of... Exactly, although Frank didn't dig the song!
He's open for Sinatra down at the Desert Inn, which isn't even there anymore.
That's how long ago this was.
I'm up at the MGM Grand.
He says, listen, I'm opening for Frank tonight, and you want to come down and see the show?
And I go, yeah.
I said, what if we're working at the same time?
He said, I checked.
We're offset.
Come down after your show.
I go down to see Sinatra.
Driesen says, I'll leave you as many tickets as you want.
Now, I'm in town with my wife, who's pregnant with our second child, and our baby, our Filipino nanny, Koi Koi.
And my mom's with me and me.
I do the show.
I go back to collect them.
My wife says, you know, I don't want to go.
I don't feel up to it.
I feel sick.
And I'm going to stay in.
I go, I got three tickets.
Why don't I take Koi Koi?
Because I hear her in her room at night listening to Sinatra once in a while.
She's a great idea.
Off we go.
Nanny, my mom, and I, we go down to see Sinatra.
He, you know, it's like, it's a revelation for me.
And he's not on top of his game, he hasn't been in it his day in a while, but it's still fab.
He's Sinatra, Frank Jarrett.
I'm thinking, I'm knee deep in it.
I go back to thank Driesen after the show, and he says, unbelievably, he says, hey Frank, Doug, you're on SNL, you want to have dinner?
Are you kidding me?
We go to that old restaurant in the Desert Inn.
It was an Italian place.
It had a gold, cheap gold elevator, circular.
You'd go up, and you'd go in, and there'd be the bar, and then the main room, and then the VIP room, then the VVIP room, then the Pope room, and way in the Colonel, the Nucleus, the Sinatra room.
We go all the way back.
Treason opens the door.
There's a table.
It's pretty small.
There's like 10 people, and there sits Sinatra right across from me.
Barbara, his wife, sits here.
His attorney is here, his attorney's wife.
Over his shoulder, two huge Luca Brasi bodyguards.
Driesen sits here, and my mom sits here.
I sit across from Sinatra.
Koi Koi, the nanny, is sitting here.
And around ten minutes in, I realize they're being so nice to us.
They think Koi Koi is my wife.
And I don't want to shut it down.
I figure, I'll just roll with this.
So I start getting shit-faced.
I'm not a big drinker, but I'm thinking, I'm with Sinatra.
I'm putting something on cubes and I'm going to tinkle the glass.
He's talking about a fight he had at Mr. Kelly's in Chicago.
I'm thinking, Christ, I'm at Ocean's Eleven.
This is the greatest night of my life.
So I toss it, and then we're having fun.
And then Koi Koi nudges me under the table and I look down and she's got an autographed book on her lap.
And she's motioning and I panic.
I can't say anything because I have to go complete body language.
I look up and I'm locked eyes with Sinatra.
He's looking at me.
He thinks I'm having a grand mal seizure.
He thinks I'm a freak, so I have to flat knock the tabula rasa, so I'm just sitting there, but now it's hanging over my head like the autographed book of Damocles.
So, around an hour in, I go, see, we gotta blow, because I'm too nervous now.
Go around the table.
Now, here's how cool Frank is.
My mom goes up first.
She said, Mr. Sinatra, when I was a young girl, 1952, I saw you at the Stanley Theater in Pittsburgh and had dinner with you.
It was the biggest thrill of my life.
Sinatra looks at me and says, 1952, Stanley Theater in Pittsburgh.
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