John Mulaney is an Emmy award-winning stand-up comedian, writer, actor and producer. His new special “Baby J” comes out on Netflix April 25th.
John Mulaney joins Theo Von on This Past Weekend to chat about his eventful last few years, rehab horses, surviving on cigarettes and candy, rewiring yourself for the better, finding a path to recovery and more.
John Mulaney: https://www.instagram.com/johnmulaney/
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Today's guest is one of the most unique men comedians on earth.
He is a unique man.
And that's a tough thing to be sometimes.
But he has mastered it.
He has a new special coming out on Netflix called Baby J. If you haven't gotten to see his other specials, you should check them out.
Today's guest is a talent, Mr. John Mulaney.
Shine that light on me I I'll spin and tell you stories.
shine on me and i will find a song i've been Yeah, man, I'm just saving it because we never communicated really.
No.
It's interesting, huh?
Not a bit.
Isn't it?
I'm still saving it because Zach don't look ready.
Yeah, Zach don't look ready.
Yeah, yeah.
That's his nickname, Zach don't ready.
Zach don't look ready.
I know.
See, he gets upset about it, man.
We're just joking, Zach.
We're just kidding.
Yeah, he'll come back around.
He's been losing weight too, so he's feeling more sly, aren't you?
Wasn't?
You've been losing some weight recently, huh?
I'm trying.
I'm out there.
I'm hiking.
Yeah, you look lean, brother.
Hiking is...
Yeah, it's like free.
You just go like run, you know.
100% free.
Yeah, that's freedom, isn't it?
Hiking?
Yeah.
I don't know.
Where are you hiking?
I'm not.
I do Fryman Canyon.
Yeah?
With Dan Levy.
Oh, you go with Dan?
Yeah, I only hike with Dan.
Oh, wow.
He's a good guy to hike with.
He's a good guy to hike with.
You talk about money the entire time.
Yeah, yeah.
Who gets you involved?
I've been involved in countless things with Dan.
I'm still in some, I think I'm in a class action with Dan somewhere along the line.
Did you get involved in one of the flips he was trying to do?
I don't think it was a flip.
was some sneaker thing.
It was like a, I think I'm trying to, Yeah.
Tons.
He has a whole special closet in his home for sneakers.
His wife doesn't have that.
No.
But he does.
Yeah, and his wife doesn't have anything, and he has everything he wants.
He's given his wife nothing.
Oh, it's three children.
And he named them all after he named them all Dan Levy.
Yeah.
Well, Danny.
Yeah.
And then Danielle.
Danielle.
And then the baby's just Dan.
Yeah.
The little girl's just Dan Levy.
I think you have to be at that size.
You have to be at that size.
He just bought a Porsche, too.
Did he really?
So he's really going through it, huh?
Yeah, he paid $125,000 for it.
And his wife, I think I saw her on a bike or I think crutches even.
Crutches.
Old-ass crutches.
Not good crutches.
No, I'm talking about.
I found the crutches at CVS and I said, you guys have a dumpster?
And she said, I could actually use those.
They were just in the parking lot of the venturi.
Oh, she had some real polio chopsticks when I saw her.
That sucks, man.
It sucks how Dan treats her.
You know, it's, I'll put her on my prayer list, you know.
For sure.
Yeah, for sure.
I'll put her at the top.
But it's cool to be married to Dan Levy, probably.
Oh, yeah.
You get to watch him drive to the improv in a bomber jacket and a Porsche.
Yeah, and you get to watch him put all of your money into his hair gel.
Yeah, there's a lot of hair treatment going on, and it ain't just gel.
I'll tell you this.
Did you ever get involved in a sneaker business with him?
I got involved.
I've been involved in some things with Dan.
Yeah, he sends me links like these Jordans are coming out today.
Why don't you buy 500 of them and then we'll sell them?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, and he sends me off-brand, like players that people have, like a lot of foreign players, like, you know, these Vladi D-voks are coming out.
Do they make a Vladi D-Vox?
It's a dress shoe.
It's a hard shoe, like a church shoe?
It's a Czechoslovakia.
Yeah, it's like a Czech Republic.
Like there would be a nice brown loafer.
Yeah.
Good for them, man.
Yeah.
But yeah, Dan is a talented guy.
Oh, he's the greatest.
You got to know Dan.
And he is great.
His energy is always, he always has energy.
His father is an Abraham Lincoln addict.
His father is an Abraham Lincoln addict.
And we went to, we were doing a show in Springfield, Illinois this winter, and we went to Lincoln's grave.
Really?
Yeah.
Just basically for Elliot Levy to take a photo.
Show the respect, man.
He was one of our first responders.
Oh, Abe Lincoln or Abe Lincoln was one of our, you know, when you like to salute our first responders, and no one responded there on that, you know.
He was like a first responder to slavery kind of in a way, I think, wasn't he?
There were probably some people before him who had thoughts on it, but he was definitely out there.
Yeah, he was like, as far as our history books tell us, he was kind of like one of the guys out there.
Like, hey.
Yeah, for real.
Yeah.
He was like an EMT kind of for slavery.
He was an absolute EMT.
He did CPR in this country.
This country was being ripped apart.
This country was dragged under a car.
And he did CPR on it.
Because you would do CPR on someone who's dragged under a car.
John Mulaney, thanks for hanging out, man.
Thanks for having me.
It's nice to meet you.
Yeah, you too, man.
We've never met.
We saw each other in passing at the improv the other day.
That was the first time, I think.
We might have crossed paths at the store once.
Yeah.
But I think it was at the improv maybe two months ago.
Dude, thanks for all your amazing comedy, man.
Thanks for yours.
You are really interesting to watch.
I love like this other, you have like this, you're doing your act.
It's non-stop, right?
Like I feel like when I watch you, I get my money's worth, you know?
Oh, thank you.
That's very nice.
Because it's like you're, there's almost a couple of things going on sometimes.
You're telling a story or you're telling a joke, but you're also commenting on it with like this.
And that's how it's going to be.
Like it's almost like there's this other character and I can't really figure out what the other character is.
Like if it comes from like somebody in your life or if it's like a do you know what I'm talking about at all?
You mean the way I sound on stage or some you're talking about some other ingredient?
And that's it's it's like I'm watching a story.
It's almost like an insider trading.
It's almost like this other guy kind of pops out of you at the same time and like kind of comments on what's going on, but it's like a Yeah, there's a part of there's someone out there.
There's someone in me who doesn't like the show.
Yeah.
And who doesn't like who's embarrassed maybe by the by the fact that he's doing it?
You know, like when those multiple personalities come out on an episode of Law and Order?
Yeah.
They're like, Franklin's not here right now.
You know, and you got to deal with that guy.
There's someone in there who's like, by the way, I fucking loathe telling this story.
Yes, that's what it is.
It's just, and I just, man, it's so awesome to watch.
It's so awesome.
That's nice of you to say.
I appreciate that.
Thanks.
Thanks for watching.
Because I'm like, when's that guy going to pop?
You know, it's like, I can't, it almost gives me something else to look forward to while I'm enjoying the show, you know?
Okay.
Is that not only is John performing, I'm watching, but then there's this other guy who's also part of John who's going to chime in every now and then and tell me something.
Dude, I had a psychiatrist when I was 17, and he told me, he goes, half of you is this really nice guy who wants to, you know, do the right thing and be a good person.
And the other half of you is a gorilla whose sole purpose in life is to destroy the first half.
Wow.
I think that I could see that.
That's interesting.
Yeah, I think, I mean, I definitely, I feel I could relate to a lot of that.
I don't know if mine's a gorilla.
Mine's more probably a chimp, maybe.
Oh, yeah.
Well, that's pretty scary, too.
That's nothing to shake a stick at.
Oh, a chimp can rip your genitals off.
It'll throw him 500 feet.
That's the story, at least.
You know, the birthday cake story, right?
Uh-uh.
A guy brought a guy had two chimps, brought one a birthday cake and not the other, which seems like chimp 101.
Yeah.
Bring one for both.
Yeah, you got a double cake.
And then pop pop hands off, popped his, ripped his hands off, ripped his feet off, ripped his genitals off, threw them 500 feet.
I mean, there's lots of stories like that.
That's just the one I've sort of.
But the worst part is if your hands aren't there, by the time you get to your genitals, you can't even scoop them up.
Yeah, if you walk the 500 feet, which you can't because you don't have feet either.
It's a real, he was like, you can't walk, you can't do anything, you can't reproduce.
It was like bam, bam, bam.
No torso shit.
He went for the prize areas.
He went for the things that really, yeah, that were, wow, that's it right there.
Oh, yeah.
Well, this looks like, yeah, world's most horrific chimp attacks as raging apes rip off people's faces, hands, and genitals.
But I think, say you get the feet are going.
So he took the feet.
So you just Googled chimp birthday cake and that came up.
Okay, so I have some of the details correct.
Yeah, you were correct.
Okay, that's fantastic.
Yeah, I think if you take if you, I'm trying to think, if somebody took my feet off and I don't have any feet, I think you could still stick over there, kind of.
But that's.
You know, like that Oscar Petorius diarrhea.
Yeah, but you're talking about the first moment you lose your feet, you think you could stick it?
If you don't look at the feet, I think and you stay out of that shock moment.
Okay.
I think and you just drive forward.
You're like, we still have feet.
I feel like it would take a while of the physical therapy with the bars, with the ballet dancer bars on either side stumping around.
And then I don't know.
I just can't imagine that I could get up and stump it over to my balls and hands.
Meanwhile, I still got to sing happy birthday.
Because you're forgetting that it's still a celebration for the one chimp.
So that's rude, you know?
Dude, I was at an AA meeting, right?
I mean, I go to AA.
And so I was at an AA meeting.
In person or over Zoom?
In person.
Okay.
And some guy had.
Only because there were so many over Zoom during the pandemic.
Oh, yeah, there were so many.
Some meetings stayed in Zoom, although I didn't know.
Yeah.
And some guy had a C during the meeting.
And this other lady, it was her birthday in the meeting, and they sing happy birthday to everybody.
Yeah.
So she like literally stepped over the guy.
It was her birthday.
It was her moment.
It was like, I'm going to get my cake, you know?
So was it like, were you all about to present the cake and the guy had a seizure?
Yeah.
They're like, you know, Rondra got six years or something, right?
So she comes up and everybody's like, happy birthday.
And the guy seizures up.
Shit.
And then she's just like, steps over him to me, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Oh, she sang to me.
Yeah.
nothing was going to take her shine, you know.
Also, even on regular birthdays, I don't know people that sing to me, but I like that.
I think it's like, well, times have changed, John.
I think people want to, it's about them now.
That's a good point.
Times have changed.
But I think, yeah, dude, I think if my feet were gone, if I don't know about that, I'm running on pure adrenaline.
You know, they lift cars off of children, off of families.
That's what they say.
Yeah.
I mean, I assume those stories are true.
I think they have.
I think look up like unique powers.
Unique powers?
Google unique...
Yeah, Google unique powers from...
Unique mom powers?
Yeah.
Ooh.
Now maybe that's what we're starting to sell.
Search terms.
There we go.
How it's possible for an ordinary person to lift a car.
All right.
In 2012, Lauren Kornacki, a 22-year-old woman in...
Let's do it.
God damn it.
You can't look at anything anymore.
You ever try to look up song lyrics?
What a fucking mess those websites are.
They won't let you look at those either?
No, it's just like tons of.
It's just they're the most insane A to Z lyrics or whatever they're called.
Oh, yeah, I love it.
They have more pop-up ads.
It's like, do you not want us to know what the singer was saying?
Right.
Yeah, and now people are putting like weird, like, you know, everything I do, I do it for T-Mobile.
Like, people are playing the songs wrong because the ads are popping in.
Yep.
You know?
Yep.
It is interesting how there's so much ads.
I think if I, but to go back to this, I think if you had pure adrenaline going, but the saddest part would be to get to your own genitals and not be able to pick.
You'd almost have to balance them on your.
Yeah.
It's like the end of the twilight zone where the guy breaks his glasses.
You finally get to your genitals, but you don't have hands.
And you got to decide what you scoop up with your mouth.
Oh.
For real.
Wow, bro.
That is crazy.
And then what, yeah, I don't know what you take.
Well, you have to take your gonads because if you want to have a family.
Yeah, you have to see what kind of condition.
I mean, you have to make a split second.
What kind of condition are these?
And by the way, I'm assuming the chimp is making a beeline for you and not at all done, especially if you stuck it and stumped away.
Yeah, that's true, bro.
He's going to be right behind you.
He didn't mean to just, you know.
God, man, it's so harrowing to think what you would do in certain instances, you know?
And if you have the ability, because I even noticed, like, if I get like scared at night, you know, I'll even say, like, is somebody there?
You know, like, somebody's going to be like.
Maybe you're lying in bed and you hear a noise type statement.
Yeah, like I'll get, you know, I mean, I'm tough and everything, but I will also, in addition to being tough, I will like go be like, you know, hey, is somebody there?
Like, I'll do like, um, who's, you know?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And like, they're going to say something back, like, I'm here, you know.
Burglar, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And it's always a burglar in my mind, you know, it's always that kind of home alone-esque type of fella.
You think it's someone coming in to steal items and just hoping no one wakes up and asks, is anyone there?
Yeah.
And you just, yeah.
I think about home invasion most of the day.
Yeah.
I mean, you, do you ever yell, I have a gun?
No, that's a good idea.
Yeah.
I have a gun.
I have a gun.
Oh, that sounded pretty good.
With authority, right?
I have a gun.
Now, when you say you're a tough guy.
See, I would mess it up.
When you say you're a tough guy, in that moment, you're in your home.
Someone's coming in.
You don't know what they're about.
Do you feel tough?
At first, I don't, right?
But then I have to remember, hey, you are tough.
Oh, that's good.
So then I will be able to be tough.
Tough, meaning I know how to fight.
Do you do?
I'll go to like jiu-jitsu classes.
Okay, all right.
But not a ton, though.
Okay.
Just enough to like maybe take care of like the guy in a many martial art, the mixed martial arts.
No, no, no, no.
All right.
I'm a huge fan of it.
Sure.
But I am a, like, I'm a one-stripe white belt, and there are four-year-olds that are that, or seven-year-olds, probably, not four.
But, you know, so it's not, it's not an insane thing to get.
But I mean, I do know that once, so once, so say, say there's somebody, I hear something, right?
Yeah.
I get out of bed, I go over, and then I realize the scariest part is you have to turn a corner in your home.
That's oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
So from now on, I turn and I go like, I'll turn and be like, hooray, you know, I will turn like, I'm here or something like that, like something so that if there is somebody there about to attack me, they're not just going to get onto something that's like sinking away.
Yeah.
I had a t-shirt I bought at Kanye West's Life of Pablo tour.
And it was a like a double XL airbrush t-shirt.
And on the front, it had a airbrush painting of Donda West.
Okay.
And on the back, it had an airbrush painting of Robert Kardashian, Kim Kardashian's late father, and O.J. Simpson's attorney.
I was at home a few years back, and it was New Year's.
It was a couple days after New Year's.
And I had had a New Year's party where there'd been balloons and shit.
So the house was still, you know, messy from it.
Middle of the night, the alarm goes off, screaming alarm.
Like the loud ass, someone just came in through the door alarm.
So I get out, fucking threadbare boxers, Donda West, Robert Kardashian t-shirt.
I reach behind the bed for my Easton bat, and it's not there.
I must have been showing it off downstairs.
Okay, so now I'm going, I'm like, I'm out in the hallway, and I'm like, I got to rush down the stairs, which had two turns to it.
Oh, God.
And I'm like, I've got nothing except maybe the t-shirt to buy me some time of confusion.
Like, if I jumped out and you saw a big Donda West when I spun around and there was an equally big Robert Kardashian and it said rest in power, you'd be like, huh?
Like you'd give me a minute of, holy shit, that's a really nice tribute.
Just a hologram show?
Am I a colleague?
A Coachella?
Am I a Coachella?
Or just like, wow, that's a really nice way to pay tribute to your parents.
And then I could fucking do some Miss Piggy like karate.
It's fine.
She would fly through the air.
And I go down and it's pitch black and I'm just in the darkness.
And right then, a balloon decides to lose just enough helium that it floats down.
big-ass yellow balloon floats down right in front of my face.
I've never...
More like, I've never been murdered by a clown, but I bet right before you're murdered by a clown, a big yellow balloon appears.
That's what happens.
And I said out loud, not like this.
I was so existentially scared.
And I was just like, not, not now.
Not like this.
I love that, man.
Murdered by a clown in a Donda West, Robert Kardashian t-shirt.
What a way to go, though.
Yeah, I mean, it'd be in the paper.
You know, summertime is knocking, knocking, knocking on the door, baby.
Summertime, I hear the heat.
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What a way to go.
Wow, man.
There is, you know, it really is a test of in those moments what happens, you know?
There was a famous UFC fighter, this guy, Lionheart Smith, who's an amazing guy.
He's from Ohio, and he got attacked in the middle of the night at his home by a guy on methamphetamine.
Whoa.
And he said it was the hardest fight he's ever been in in his life.
Just because he had that meth, never going to give you up energy?
Yeah.
Yeah, that meth, like Whitney Houston.
Is that Whitney Houston never going to give you up?
No.
Never going to let you down.
It's Rick Astley.
Oh, is that what Rick rolling is?
Yes.
Okay, yeah, yeah.
That's how I know it.
Yeah.
Interesting.
Did you ever do methamphetamine?
I never did, man.
I never did either.
I always wanted to.
Same.
Did you ever smoke crack?
No.
Okay.
Did you neither?
Yeah.
Always wanted to?
I didn't get to do free base.
I smoked cocaine a couple.
You did?
And new people smoke it out of, I, You just do it off of foil.
Oh, wow.
Yeah.
I get one year sober tomorrow.
You do?
Yep.
Congratulations.
Thank you, man.
Holy shit.
Not trying to make it about me, but.
It's important.
There's only two of us.
One year tomorrow?
Oh, congratulations.
A lot of our listeners are people that struggle.
Yeah.
I probably saw you two months ago and you told me you had like 10 months.
Oh, yeah.
Were you, did you take time off from working?
Like, what was it?
I got sober during the pandemic.
You got sober during the pandemic.
I went to two different rehabs.
Wow.
And by December 2020, I was sober.
I mean, I was in rehab then.
Right.
But it was weird because it was this during this kind of pause for everyone.
Right.
So.
What a blessing that it happened then in some ways.
Did it feel like that?
Did it feel like that?
I don't, man, I was, I got to say, I did not experience the pandemic the same way other people did.
I don't know.
Like I was, I was using a lot.
Oh, really?
And I just, it didn't feel like, it didn't feel like anything that different.
I feel bad saying that.
You feel very bad saying that because you must have been pretty into getting high.
Yeah.
You weren't even doing the pandemic.
If you don't know, there's a, I'll say this.
I didn't know that the nasal swab test hurt until well after I got sober.
Okay.
And then I got one not numbed up by cocaine.
And I went, I went, ah.
What are they doing?
I used to get them.
I was like, what is everyone complaining about?
These don't feel like me.
Did you, so cocaine you liked?
Cocaine, Xanax, Klonopin, Adderall, Percocet, Ritalin, any kind of speed.
Oh, so all that speed, huh?
Would you get, I would get so scared at night when I was high on cocaine, right?
Yeah.
That I would be like googling what can I take with cocaine to go to sleep.
And that would take me so many hours.
I'd look at so many, there'd be like you get on these answer sites and people's like, you're going to go to the other side.
Yeah.
Yeah, I go to Quora, right?
Or whatever that is, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Count down from 60 and you'll be dead.
People would say stuff like that and you're just like, oh my.
So you didn't have like, because that's the thing.
I actually, you didn't take any downers.
I didn't take any downers, so I would lay there in misery.
I would Google like, can I go?
May I ask, did you know about downers?
I guess I knew about them, but I just had never taken them.
And I was so scared to mix something with cocaine because it would kill me.
That's what I was fearful.
That was your worry, yeah.
I kind of thought if I didn't have the right balance, yeah, I was more like, if I don't have enough in the right amounts, then something bad could happen.
But as long as I'm balancing Coke and Adderall with Xanax and Klonopin, I'll be just fine.
I remember I walked into my intervention.
I just been to my drug dealer's department and I finally got the right balance.
One pocket, all Adderall and Coke, one pocket, all Xanax.
And I was like, I have done it.
I reached equilibrium.
Opened the door on a bunch of people.
Yeah.
It's okay.
Were you high when you went to your?
Yes, but I was insisting that I hadn't used drugs in days.
I went, look, I am sober right now.
Look at me.
I am sober right now.
I kept saying.
And were you good enough to convince those people that you were?
No, I was pretty strung out by then, so it didn't.
I could present really well for a long time.
But I'd reached a point where it was just off the rails.
I'm seeing that about you.
You're a very good presenter.
Yeah, a doctor at rehab was like, it scares me how good you are at presenting like everything's fine.
Wow.
Yeah.
So were you, when you got sober a year ago, tomorrow, you were, were you busy with all this shit you do?
I was just in my, I was like, I was in my garage and I would thought I was going to just, I was just miserable.
I wasn't even using drugs really.
I was drinking some.
I was burnt out and exhausted, but I just had no program.
Yeah.
And I was like, literally, I was just crying at my brother.
I was like, man, I just can't live.
I just, I, I just can't live like this.
And I know it sounds like such a weak thing to say, but that's just where my mind was, you know?
What do you mean was that a weak thing to say?
I don't know.
There's something about it when you like look and you know that you have food and you have shelter to be in a space where you're like to feel like something is wrong with you that you can't fix, I guess.
Or if you're just someone who likes to have control and thinks you manage well and you're capable, there's some real thing that feels like almost weak.
And I'm not saying it is weak, but it feels weak sometimes to be like, something's wrong with me and I can't, there's nothing I can do about it.
I felt like something's so wrong with me that I have like, I've overrided, like, cause we're designed to survive.
I'd overrided the desire to survive.
Like when you're like, when, when you want pills and drugs more than you inherently want to like make it through the day, that's some weird reverse evolutionary shit.
For your brain to basically be able to run the scenario and go, we haven't slept in four days.
We chain smoke.
We eat sour patch kids.
We'd never drink water.
We're blowing tons of coke.
This isn't going to last.
And you go, I think we're going to keep on with this.
I think we're going to keep doing this.
So you were deep in, huh?
How'd you get so deep in?
Because I don't think anyone would look at you and think this is the Coke guy.
Good.
That was the whole thing.
I mean, I certainly tried to talk about it on stage as having had like a drug and alcohol problem, but it just, I don't know.
Yeah, it didn't.
Something about me seems.
So to me, it's like, well, of course the guy that seems like he has it all together has the problem.
Because that's just like how life is.
Yeah, it's almost like his textbook.
But that's, I don't put that on other, I don't put that on you to be like, how come you didn't see it then?
Because I was, I also, I really thought like, I really thought that I was doing life.
I was able to achieve it life with the drugs as opposed to in spite of them.
It took me a long time over the past couple of years to realize that I did well at what I do in spite of drugs, not because of them.
Wow.
Yeah.
Yeah, because it would be fun.
Yeah, from an outsider, I would always look at him and be like, oh, that guy, yeah, drugs would not help that guy.
Like, that guy is his own.
He is so unique in his own way that anything to like abase that or something or debase that would only mess him up.
But I would have thought like, I'm delivering something people really like.
And I think I'm delivering it because I take two 30 milligram Adderalls and then one Z bar.
And so I'm really sharp, but I don't seem jittery.
And so I go on a podcast or I go on a talk show.
I'm just, I'm delivering.
And I'm giving people what I'm naturally good at, but I'm a little tired.
So I can't naturally do it.
So it's okay.
It's okay to take, it's okay to rip open time release adderall and dump the beads down my throat and then pop a clonopin because then I will get to the level that I naturally am at.
Like I just got to deliver what I'm good at.
And right now we're running on a lean mixture.
And it used to be easier, but now it's harder.
So whatever I'm putting in my body to get to that is fine.
That's Like a acceptable, you know, acceptable.
You're like your own geppetto.
You're like your own geppetto almost in a weird way.
Let me think about that.
How do you in what way?
Like you were because if you were kind of running, if you wanted to get yourself, you were a little burnt out.
You're trying to get yourself to the place where everybody loves you at and where you know you operate best at.
Yeah, I wanted to be like, I'd see myself.
You ever see a, oh, I'd sometimes see a clip and be like, I need to be like, of myself and be like, I need to be like that guy.
Oh, yeah.
How do I get?
That guy's confident, has a bunch of things to say.
Yeah.
How did he get the, how did I, how did he have the thoughts?
Oh, yeah.
I thought, look, man, I miss my old self sometimes.
Your, your using self?
No, just myself like a few years ago.
Yeah.
There was some, yeah, that's what I was chasing something.
There was some moment, maybe, you know, like 2007.
I didn't know what it was, but I was like, I had some electricity in my eyes.
Yeah.
Where, you know, I got to get back to that.
And I just got to get back to that.
And I just got to get back to that.
Yeah.
Somehow it'll happen.
Somehow I'll find the right amount.
For real.
You know, like, I'm 100% serious.
That's that.
Yeah.
That's what I think all the time.
I look at old things and I'm like, oh man, I miss that guy.
Yep.
That was a, yeah, that's a really entertaining person.
Yeah.
And I don't even put it on, I don't even mean like, and I, and I, people demanded, I'm not acting like I couldn't have taken a break.
And, you know, it's not like the audience demanded this of me.
Not at all.
It was what I wanted to do.
It's what I wanted to do.
Oh, yeah.
I don't, yeah, I don't get that perception.
Yeah, no, okay.
But it's interesting.
Yeah, I wanted to get back to him.
I wanted to feel back to myself.
I wanted to be like, that guy was so creative and original.
I know.
Now, I think some of it.
To take drugs because you want to feel like you're 12 or 13 again.
It's a little messed up, huh?
It's a little messed up.
But it also makes sense, I think, if you, for me, some of that goes back to, I think I felt like I missed out on some childhood.
So part of me wants to get back to that.
I think there's some psychological.
Just out on it.
Just missed out on like having some moments of childhood that would have felt more comfortable and fun.
Okay.
But I think part of it is I used to like the element of surprise when people didn't know me.
You had an element of surprise to people.
Yeah.
And there were, and there was something that was nice about that.
It was like it made you be able to be the only one who presented you to people.
And then as you get more popular, I think is a term that I'll use, or where people have seen more of you, then there's some expectations or the thing of surprise, which made me feel like unique that I could just be the controller of me.
That goes away because people have already seen you and have some interpretation of you.
And so I think this all may sound really egomaniacal, but that bummed me out a little bit because I think the only thing I ever felt like I had when I was growing up was myself.
And so I wanted to be able to authentically present that as much as I could.
Yeah.
And that goes away as you get more people have seen you.
Does that make any sense?
100%.
Okay.
I mean, I don't know what it means.
Dude, people used to have stage names for a reason because, you know, they could go home and be like, you know, Johnny Starlight is the guy on stage.
John Mulaney is me, the person who I, you know, the person.
Like, I got to say, I don't, you know, there's some real destructive part of me that I've worked on a lot, but I wouldn't say I have low self-esteem day to day, which is a really nice thing.
And it doesn't seem like you do either.
So it becomes like, you know, I like myself.
Yeah, if you like yourself and then yourself is out there in the world and they seem like you just got to think of them as two different things.
I'm not saying this that articulately.
People had stage names because they could be like, well, that's something else.
That's not me.
That's not the little kid I was.
Right.
Yeah, I think now.
It probably comes from like those people would have fake names because they'd read a review of themselves and it wasn't their real name.
So they'd be like, oh, that's not me.
Right.
That's a thing.
Now we're so, it's hard.
Now everybody knows everything about you.
Within reason, yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, it's hard to detach.
It's hard to keep some things to yourself.
It's even hard to.
Yeah.
Yeah, though.
I mean, whatever people put out there is also.
Right.
Who knows if it's real or not?
Yeah.
But it's like it used to be like, like, I remember we loved Michael Landing growing up, right?
We had drawings of him.
And once a year, Michael Landon.
Yeah, you have Highway to Heaven behind you.
Oh, yeah.
We meaning your family?
I mean, whatever political party builds that, dude, I'm voting for him.
I'll tell you that.
You know, he was dying through my whole childhood, it felt like.
Like, Michael Landon, like, I just remember being a kid and being at the supermarket and like every national inquirer was like, Michael Landon's final battle.
And I was just like, is this person, I didn't even know he was an actor.
I thought he might be famously ill, like just a guy in a jean jacket who was always sick.
Cause I never saw Bonanza till like it was on Nick at night.
And then, yeah, there he is.
God, look at him.
So you were into Michael Landon from Bonanza?
We loved him from Little House on the Prairie.
Oh, Little House.
Oh, we love Little Prairie.
You know what's crazy?
One of the first times I learned about drug withdrawal was from Little House on the Prairie.
Oh, I know what episode you're talking about.
The opium episode.
Yeah.
Isn't that fucking crazy that episode?
I know nothing about Little House on the Prairie, but I saw that once.
I think Michael Landon stays up with the kid who's on opium and sweats it out.
It's like basketball diaries level.
It really is.
In the middle of whatever the hell else used to happen on that show, Cook and Stew or whatever.
Walnut Grove, yeah.
A lot of like, I mean, that's when Pink Eye, you would lose a twin to Pink Eye.
I remember one episode they had.
The kids would be born with pink eye, and it was a real one.
Yeah, there it is.
That's Albert Ingalls right there.
He was addicted.
Was that that character?
So I know nothing about the show.
Was that that character's whole deal?
Was that he was a morphine addict, or was that just a special episode?
No, he was adopted, and so he had this kind of like interesting space.
He was always kind of could play this outsider character.
But he was a friend of their daughter.
He was a friend of the daughters.
Okay.
Albert Angles.
You know, I saw Nellie Olson one time at a Starbucks.
She was the blonde on the show.
She was kind of like.
I really only know the OPM episode, but I was excited.
That's really cool.
I know she wasn't excited to hear me tell her.
I saw the little woman that remember the principal and kindergarten cop?
She's smaller woman.
Let me think.
Her name's like Linda.
Not Linda Ronstadt, huh?
No, not Linda Ronstadt, the singer.
Linda Hunt.
Linda Hunt.
Thank you.
I saw her at Bristol Farms.
I was excited.
There she is.
Remember she goes, what did it feel like to hit that SOB?
Yeah.
Anyway, I saw her at Bristol Farms.
That just made me, I just thought of that when you said you saw Nellie Olson.
Yeah, Nellie Olson.
So why did you bring up Michael Landon?
I'm sorry.
I took us on a drink.
We used to love him, and we would draw every year, mom would like, usually at Easter, honestly, we would draw a picture of him, and whoever like draw the best picture would get like a candy or something from.
You and your siblings would do this?
Yeah.
And whoever would draw the best picture of him would get like a candy or something from mom.
And he was supposed to come to town one year or something, like at the fairgrounds or something.
Where'd you grow up?
In Louisiana.
Okay.
But something happened.
There was like a storm or something.
He couldn't come.
Oh, shit.
Oh, yeah.
All the women's hearts were broken, man.
Mom went down there and it was like our big, like, mom's going to meet him, you know?
Oh, man.
Did you guys bring the pictures to show him?
No, no, we didn't go.
Oh, it was just like women only.
Yeah.
Adults only, Michael Landon meet and greet at the county fair.
Yeah.
And I mean, and I just remember mom coming home and it just was sad.
Yeah, for real.
But yeah, it just made me think you couldn't know any more about an actor or character at that point.
They were almost just their character.
And yeah, if you saw some tablets, you could learn some stuff behind them, but you didn't, it's hard to even now they.
I didn't even know about his career.
That's how little I knew about Michael Landon.
I just thought this man is battling cancer like on the regular in all denim.
I thought Highway to Heaven was, I don't mean this like as a joke.
No, not at all, man.
I thought Highway to Heaven was like not a documentary, but I just was, it was like he was always dying and then he had this show called Highway to Heaven.
And I just thought they were somehow.
I was like, oh, this is just someone we're all watching through go through the final stages of life.
Yeah.
And it turned out he had a big acting career.
Like this guy's in traffic to get to heaven.
Like how long is he to get to heaven?
Yeah.
Yeah.
But yeah, we missed, I mean, that was a bummer for us.
When you look back, so whenever you start to, whenever you, so were you surprised that you were an addict or did you know you were an addict?
I had like skin deep self-awareness of like, I have a drug problem.
I love drugs.
I like them too much.
I don't like them the way other people like them.
It's not like, oh, that was fun.
Let's do that again in two weeks.
This was like, I think, think the plan for the morning should be to get more of that.
I knew I liked them more than other people, but I, it was, but no, not to the depths that it was.
What do I mean to say?
I had a surface level awareness and I would joke about that and say, you know, oh, I got sober in 2005, which I did, but I slowly got back into pharmaceuticals over the next, you know, 13, 14 years.
Prescribed, then not prescribed, or prescribed, then abused, but prescribed, then bought on the street, then everything.
Were you buying them off of Craigslist and stuff like that even?
No, I always thought that might be cops.
Smart.
And it's pressed pills.
It's a lot of like, I have friends that have been.
Oh, this was even before I had an awareness that there might be fakes out there like that.
I've definitely bought Adderall a couple times and snorted it and thought, this is, what is this?
Yeah.
Oh, I bought a whole thing of something one time and did it all.
And it wasn't.
It wasn't cocaine.
Nope.
No, God.
And I don't know what it is.
And I still imagine one day I'm going to walk past a chemical and it's going to connect a little.
Oh, you'll smell it.
Or something.
You'll smell a chemical and you'll remember that that was what you bought.
It'd be like, oh, it was me.
You know what I'm saying?
Yeah.
No, the realization that I actually had no control over this took a long time.
Wow.
It's a hard thing for people to convince.
I mean, I still struggle sometimes, even if I sit in a meeting and there's still part of me that doesn't want to say I'm an alcoholic.
Yeah.
Or an addict.
To me, I go, it's more complicated than that.
Yeah.
Like, you don't get it.
It's not, it's not that I'm like, it's not that just that cocaine's addictive and when I do it, I'm addicted.
It's a different thing.
I use it in a different way and the way I see it and my relationship with it.
It's just.
Yeah, I kind of have a romance.
It's like I romanticize it.
100%.
I romanticize everything in my life in a way.
Me too, yeah.
Do you think you're in a movie?
No, I don't.
I do think I'm in a like one of those fun houses sometimes, but the fair is fucking closed, you know?
Oh, wow.
And it's because the storm came in and Michael Landon canceled.
Michael Landon canceled.
Who was the first famous person you ever met if Michael Landon canceled that?
Let me think of who it was.
That's a great question.
Who maybe saw?
Probably the DARE officer at our school, but he wasn't like nationally famous.
How famous was he?
He was like the biggest guy they ever made in the whole world.
What do you mean?
When the car would pull up, like I remember one time he like shot people from the car.
He couldn't get out of like the officer vehicle or whatever.
He was a huge man.
Oh, he was a big fella.
He was an obese man.
And he would come to speak about dare.
Yeah.
And he got out of the car.
But there were tales of him at crimes where he'd just pull up and just start popping off, you know, because he couldn't at some point he couldn't even get out of the vehicle.
Oh, so he'd fire from the vehicle and open fire on people.
So he was like, in our area, he was pretty popular.
Ronald Reagan.
Was his name?
No, that'd be crazy.
Also happened to be named Ronald Reagan.
The first famous, I don't know, there was this like.
Did you see Reagan somewhere?
No, but we built the tallest statue of Ronald Reagan in our town.
Whoa.
He was supposed to come and he didn't come.
Wait a minute.
You built the tallest statue of Ronald Reagan in the U.S. Yeah.
Or in the world.
10 foot tall.
Look it up.
Zachary, please.
Tallest statue of Ronald.
Ronald Reagan.
Yeah, Reagan.
Covington, Louisiana.
There you go.
God damn.
That's not a bad statue.
I thought they did pretty good.
You know what I would do if I was putting a photo on this website is I'd show how tall it was.
Yeah.
As opposed to these close-ups.
It's a great point, actually.
You see it in a cowboy shot.
And it's supposed to be real bronze, but some of that could be a rumor.
Oh, wow.
And there we go.
Oh, so, okay.
Ooh.
Look at the...
Now that's nice.
That's huge.
Yeah, they did a good job.
Pistol Pete Maravich lived in our town, and so his sons went to our school.
Ian Somervich.
Were they good at dribbling and stuff?
They were good.
Yeah.
They were good.
It's a good movie, that Pistol Pete Merit.
It is good.
Ian Sommerholder, do you know who that is?
That sounds really familiar.
He's an actor.
Can you look him up?
Ian Sommerholder.
He went to our school when he was like the most beautiful guy that ever existed in the world.
And he would just come to the first day of school.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
I do know.
Oh, that guy's got light eyes like a Husky does.
Yeah, yeah.
Like those dogs with the light eyes.
Oh, yeah, like Riff Raff would own this guy.
But he would come to school the first day just so all the girls knew that he was like in town and then just go off and be like a supermodel.
But he would always come the first day of school.
Oh, so then he would ditch the rest of the year.
He'd just be like, I exist.
And then he would ditch the rest of the year.
Yeah, he was like a kind of- No, he was, oh, he was smart.
He knew how to do it.
But he was too, almost too handsome to even exist, kind of, you know, like he was just that Dracula handsome, you know?
Yeah.
I remember as a kid not realizing that people disliked Ronald Reagan.
Like I remember being like, that's the president.
So everyone likes him.
Yeah.
And then this kid in class, Matt Murphy, he told me Ronald Reagan hates poor people.
And I said, well, that'd be impossible because he's the president.
And he's like the best person in the world because he's, why else would he be the president?
Yeah.
I did not have nuanced political views at that time.
Yeah.
Me neither.
I think, yeah, if I thought somebody was the president, then they just cared about everybody.
Yeah, it was an outlandish charge.
Yeah.
To go from, I was clocking him as best person in the world.
Now to find out he especially doesn't care about poor people.
Yeah.
You know, Morgan Wallin's on tour, and so is Suicide Boys.
I love both of them.
Jesse Murph is touring.
I like her.
I like a lot of different bands and performers.
Parker McCollum, all of that.
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I'm trying to think of who was the first famous person that you met?
Because you've run in some pretty famous circles now.
Well, but as a kid.
Hmm.
And you're from where?
You're from.
Chicago, Illinois.
Oh, wow.
Yeah, we grew up in the city.
Mike Dika, maybe?
Did you see him?
You know, I'm trying to, I feel like I saw Chris Cellio.
Jim McMahon somewhere.
Yeah.
But I can't square it.
Who was the first I ever saw?
Jim McMahon.
Jim McMahon, or was he just so famous I felt like I knew him?
That was a weird thing about growing up in Chicago in the late 80s, early 90s, is we just, I just thought that wherever I was, the best basketball team would be.
Like, I didn't, I kind of associated it with my own presence and moved to LA.
Wow, that's crazy.
I was just like, well, of course, like my, you know, and everywhere we go on vacation and people would be like, Chicago, Michael Jordan.
I'd be like, yeah, I know, like, we got it.
We did it.
We got it.
We got it covered.
And then you moved to L.A. And then, yeah, and then I moved to New York.
Yeah.
Well, also the Bulls just, you know, they were so good.
97, 98, 99. I saw B.J. Armstrong at my gym.
Wonderful, wonderful guy.
And I love seeing him.
Yeah.
Every time I see him, I'm like, I know it's you.
And he's like, you've told me that seven times.
He's out here in LA?
Yeah.
He's an agent, I believe, at a sports agency.
But super nice guy.
I think he went to Iowa or Iowa State for college, but I would get so excited seeing him.
America loved that team, though.
I mean, unless you were like in Cleveland or New York.
I met Barkley once, or I met him twice because he hosted Saturday Night Live a couple times.
Did he only host once?
No, he hosted twice, but I was only there the one time.
And I asked him about the dream team because we, you know, with Barkley, like we weren't going to write together.
So Tuesday night, the host would walk around the different offices.
And Simon Rich, this writer and I that work together a lot, we just asked him, we go, what was the dream team like?
And he went, oh, man, he goes, if you ever get a chance to go to the Olympics, do it.
I was like, okay, I'll make sure to.
But he told me, he goes, we would beat those guys by 100 points.
And then they'd ask for photos.
Wow.
He was like, it was the greatest time ever of anyone doing anything.
That's awesome.
Larry Bird was on there.
Yeah.
John Starks.
Horace Grant made that team member.
Yes, he did.
92. David Robinson.
Horace Grant made the team.
I'm pretty sure.
David Robinson.
Scotty Pippet.
I don't know if Horace made it.
You're right, he didn't.
Scotty.
Yeah, Scotty Stockton, Clyde Drexler.
Yeah.
Who always looked 55 somehow.
Carl Malone.
Out of Louisiana Tech, yeah.
He went to Louisiana Tech?
He did.
Christian Leightner was on there.
I wonder how interesting that was for him.
Christian Leitner.
Know Bobby Hurley?
He always looked like the richest guy in the world.
You know, he had like the most.
He had that.
It was a haircut.
It was just a haircut thing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Let's zoom in on Leitner a little bit.
He kind of had the most punchable face in a weird way, which is a messed up term to use, but he had it, man.
He had the most damn punchable.
Was it him or him?
Christian Leighton's right there, yeah.
Christian Leightner, you got the magnifying glass right over him.
He looks a little zooted out there.
Yeah.
Dude, I ended up.
Because I had one, like, I ended up in a taxi cab.
Okay.
Zooted up, man.
Some girl.
Do you mind?
Where were you living at this point?
I was living out here.
Okay.
And that's when I kind of like, I had a couple nights in a row where I got really just coked out, right?
And I started just, and then I was in New York one night and a girl said something to me in a taxi.
Oh, I tried to give her a smooch, right?
And I wasn't being aggressive or anything.
She was flirting.
I tried to give her a smooch.
She kind of like rejected me.
She was kind of mean about it, right?
Or I took it as mean, right?
Okay.
And it was fine.
She got out of the taxi.
There was no animosity between us.
It was just, you know, it wasn't going to happen.
But then something in my head, like I told the driver, let's go get some cocaine, you know?
So next thing, you know, me and this taxi driver are getting some cocaine.
And then he, at one point, wants to get some hookers, you know?
The taxi driver.
Yeah.
He wants to get some cookers.
I'm surprised he didn't think it was a sting that you were asking to get cocaine.
I feel like that's a lot of drivers actually get pinched that way.
Yeah, I think maybe, yeah, I guess you didn't give up.
You didn't seem undercover.
Yeah, yeah.
I seemed overcover, probably.
Or I see that.
I think he's getting like, damn, somebody better cover this.
You're covered.
Yeah.
So anyway, dude, fast forward a couple hours later, I'm driving this guy's taxi.
He's in the back seat.
And we're talking about an LA yellow cab?
We're talking about a New York.
I'm sorry, New York.
New York yellow cab.
Okay, great.
We're up in North Harlem.
I'm driving this guy's taxi, and he's in the back with a hooker, right?
Did he have the beaded seat thing?
How was the seat comfort?
The back seat was pretty nice, I remember.
No, but the front seat, once you were driving.
I thought it was pretty good.
I was pretty scared.
I just wanted to get back to my hotel.
Sure, sure, sure.
And I didn't know.
I would love to be up in that cockpit for a second, you know, of a real New York City yellow cab and just see the setup.
Because I'd never get my setup right.
It felt like.
Drinks to phone cord to just like, I never feel like I have my console right.
Yeah, you're right.
So I'd like to see how they do it.
I think it never, it felt like somebody had sat in there who had like, it felt like the guy in there was like he was going to leave his children probably.
Oh, okay.
It had a sinking.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You could feel the despair.
Also, the guy was in the back seat.
That's true.
So it wasn't just, yeah.
So in terms of his vibe, you had it coming from a bunch of directions.
Right.
And then anyway, so I ended up on, and I had to do Opie and Jim Norton that morning, right?
So I ended up on the radio and Daryl Strawberry was in there.
And I get to the radio station.
I can't even talk, right?
I'm just like blasted out of my brain, you know?
And I'm still thinking, I was still ducking off in the bathroom.
I'm doing cocaine in the bathroom in the stalls at Sirius Radio.
Andy Cohen's in there peeing in the next one, talking to me, right?
And I'm just sitting in there just blasting up.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And then- When you got in there, you're like, go.
It's your office.
What won't I blow this line off of?
I got every surface imaginable from counter to counter.
The saddest part was doing some cocaine off the baby changing station.
Yeah.
I got a Joke about that in my new special.
Do you?
Yeah.
Thanks.
Yeah.
Just for you.
Thank you.
But yeah, so that was a night for me when, oh, and I saw Daryl Strawberry.
He was on the radio station, right?
Oh, you saw Daryl wow gacked up?
He was the other guest.
Oh, wow.
So that was a moment for me where everything kind of lined up.
Could he tell?
No.
I don't think.
I had on sunglasses, which was weird.
I'd been doing well going on this show.
Yeah.
And I had on sunglasses and I could barely talk, I remember.
Yeah.
And that was scary because my only gift I had in my voice, the only thing in my life I'd had to express myself was my voice.
Yeah.
And suddenly I couldn't use it.
Okay.
And you had, and your mind, which you now had to use because you were going to be interviewed on the radio.
Yeah.
And it was real scary.
And then also this moment of seeing Daryl Strawberry, someone who I had always thought was all coked out of his brain.
Sure.
Because that's all I'd ever heard, right?
Was the old stories.
I didn't know that he was a sobra guy and had his deal together.
Oh, yeah.
I assumed he had his deal together, but I did think he'd be able to spot you still.
Yeah, I didn't know what I thought I think.
Okay.
Which I don't know if that even makes any sense.
But there was some alignment at that moment of like me not having control over my voice, me having a perception of somebody else that was false or something.
Sure.
And that just lined up.
And you hadn't slept and you were on cocaine.
Yeah.
But that lined up for me that I needed something, whatever that like, like, like the, uh, what's that thing you tighten with the colors in it?
Kaleidoscope.
Whatever the kaleidoscope is, that it makes people have to realize that something is wrong.
Yeah.
That was the moment where it was like, oh, that's interesting.
I could see right down.
Those things never made me, those like being in Midtown Manhattan, have a meeting, have a, you know, have a big like production meeting on something.
And you could be on the get there, get there half hour late, desperate to have a cigarette.
So like finding an abandoned office and smoking out the window and being almost very much in trouble and it being really clear.
Those moments were so about surviving that hour that I never thought about them with any deeper perspective.
I never thought, oh my God, what has my life become?
I was just like, it would be easier to take the train.
I'd be faster to take the train home to my cocaine, but I can't do Coke on the train.
So it was all just like figuring out the video game of being a drug addict.
Wow.
It was just a scramble for the present problem.
And as soon as that problem was solved, I moved on.
I wasn't like, I can't believe, you know, I remember I went into a meeting holding a bottle of pediolite because I was not eating anything.
I was just drinking pediolite, doing cocaine.
And I was with people I knew and we were waiting for other people to join the meeting that we didn't know.
And I said, if my nose bleeds or if I pass out, it's because I have a sinus infection.
Don't worry, you know, and I'll give a signal if I think I'm about to pass out.
And then, and even to them, I was like, because I'm sick.
Right.
That's why.
Wow.
Yeah.
What's the signal, too?
I can't remember.
Something like, I got, you know, Geronimo.
That'd be a great thing to say before you pass out and your nose explodes with blood.
That covered it well.
Or timber.
Timber, yeah.
Uncle.
Yeah.
Yeah, probably uncle to all of life.
To the gods, yeah.
Wow, so people just didn't know, huh?
Well, there reached a point where people wondered.
Were you getting too big in pop, were you getting too popular that people were even afraid to question you and kind of thing?
I don't think so.
Right.
I don't think so.
Because, like, I was very lucky with having an audience that's grown and grown.
But, you know, you got to, that's a certain level before no one will question you.
Right.
Or even if they have that level.
I was on TV sometimes, but I wasn't like, you know, I wasn't Steven Spielberg or something.
Yeah.
Michael Landon.
I wasn't some Michael Landon who a bunch of yes men tell him he doesn't need to show up to the state fair.
Oh, that shook us, man.
Did you have a lot of people around who knew about your problem?
I have family members.
It's like addiction is in my family.
So there's, so I remember I would drive by the AA.
There's an AA room down the street from where I stay in Los Angeles, and I would drive by there, even through the parking lot sometimes.
And one time a family member of mine was like, you know, normal people aren't driving through the parking lot of AA meetings to see what's going on.
Right.
So there was something inside of me that wondered.
And the biggest thing for me is like make trying to keep my emotions sober.
Like I wasn't insane.
Like I definitely partied some.
I don't drink because I'm afraid if I have a beer, I'm going to go get cocaine.
I've never had a drinking problem.
I'm going to take one sip and then it just gives me an excuse to get Coke.
But mine was just always like thinking something was wrong with me.
I always felt like I've always felt like something, like there's a to-do list that I never even wrote that I'm responsible to do.
And the pain, the energy, the responsibility of it is always every day when I wake up, I'm like, I got to go.
I just have to do something.
I always have to do something.
I'm trying to prove myself to nothing.
Yeah.
I don't even know what it is.
So that was something in my life that made it tough that just exhausted me, you know?
So a lot of my stuff came from that kind of thing, like just feeling inferior, trying to always make, like I'd fall in love with a girl.
And then the second I, if I got a date with her, the second I did, there was some other girl.
It was like, just always needed more.
I always needed something else.
There was always a missing piece to me being okay.
Yeah.
And there was no, there was, I could, there was never a piece I could find that was going to make it, that would fit.
There was no piece out there.
It was just, there was something wrong with my programming a little bit.
How did you feel at that time?
Did you feel like Other shit needs to, other people and other things need to fall into place, so I'm happy, or did you feel like it was on you?
You know, people who blame the outside world, yeah, they go, Yeah, my problem is that people come into my life and create stressful situations, or that thing of like, if you meet one asshole one day, you met an asshole.
If you meet an asshole every day, you're the asshole.
I think that happened kind of later.
But early on, it was just, I'm not doing well enough.
I'm not doing enough to be okay for myself was what it turned into.
Doing enough, like, in your career?
In anything, something.
Yeah.
And it was always this invisible thing.
Like nothing was ever, I couldn't manage well enough to make things okay.
Even if I was managing great, you know?
And I couldn't enjoy.
I was never, I was never enjoying myself.
I was always caught up how can things be different or better?
Or, you know, so a lot of that stuff for me, a lot of like not even knowing who I was, like I need to needing you to let me know who I was if I was okay.
Yeah, for sure.
All that kind of stuff.
So the drugs was just, I think, I like drugs because I like cocaine because it, I could feel how I wanted to immediately.
Yeah, of course.
Like liquor and beer and stuff, it's like, that was just a bunch of damn just.
Yeah, it's, it postpones shit.
Yes.
I wanted the express train.
I wanted to feel how I wanted to feel right now.
Oh, my God.
Yeah.
But then I would get, I would get, I would end up by myself looking at pornography, you know, just geeked out looking at hookers.
It always devolved into some weird space for me too.
And, well, yeah, and you're chasing some, you're chasing the, I mean, people say you're chasing the first time you did cocaine.
I don't think that's true.
You're just chasing the first line that night.
Oh, yeah.
And if I think about doing cocaine, say if I think about it, right?
I think some at a party, right?
There's somebody.
You open a cabinet.
There's some tits in there for some reason, right?
It's a party, you know?
And somebody has some cocaine.
If I do some in this hypothetical situation, the next thing I think about doing is another line of cocaine.
Oh, of course.
I don't think about enjoying the party.
I don't think about if, you know, I think about getting a bat.
I mean, I just go, okay, well, all right.
Now we need a bag of this.
And fewer people that know about it, the better.
Yeah, yeah.
Now, that was a fun thing, too, is the secret espionage side of it.
It was almost like you were.
Oh, my God.
Yeah.
You were like the bad guy that everybody was looking for.
You talk about the Craigslist thing.
I mean, there was a guy.
I don't know a guy.
It was a Craigslist ad that someone was selling Adderall in LA.
The ad was written like home from finals and have all this leftover Adderall.
And I remember thinking, I remember thinking, how can I pull up and I was like, how will I know if it's a sting?
And also, I kept thinking like, this is a pretty low stakes sting for the LA County Sheriff's Office to be behind.
Like to want to meet in a recreational park to sell someone 10 Adderall.
It's a lot of manpower on a pretty small movement.
And then I thought, will it help or hurt that I'm a little famous?
Like when I pull up, will it be more like, could I, yeah, will I be more noticeable or will that become a distracting thing?
I'm like, officers, I'm just, you know, of course it's not me.
I don't know.
Man, you paint so many great scenarios.
I was so late.
The funniest thing was I was so late to meet drug dealers because I was a cocaine actor.
Everything was always running.
And I had a dealer in LA who was furious.
I mean, she was so angry about the time.
She was always like, we don't do.
She had some operation with her sons or something.
She's like, we don't do this.
We don't do this.
It's like a family recipe.
It was just like, this is a half hour late.
I was like, you got, you're, you got to understand your clientele.
Like, we're nothing.
We're not waking up ready for our errands.
We're not waking up.
Yeah, yeah, we've been up.
We've been up.
There's, I'm, you have to go to a bunch of different ATMs.
You know that this is a, this is a process.
Yeah, I'm on a Pedialite hotline right now.
I'm chugging Pedialite.
And if I yell Geronimo, it means I'm about to pass out.
You got to cut me some slack.
Also, LA traffic is a real thing.
I thought taking Wilton would save time.
I had a dealer once who preferred to deal in front of police stations.
Who preferred to deal in front of police stations on the theory that if he got jumped, he would rather be close to police.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
That makes sense.
I guess so.
It wasn't the most fun.
It's scary.
Yeah, it wasn't a great meetup.
Oh, the scariest.
Like, I remember like this guy would always bring his husky with him, right?
So he the husky would come up to the car first, right?
And kind of he's like, you know, the drill.
Pause that, like, just up to the window?
Yeah.
And he'd be like, you know the drill Willis is going to circle the car or whatever.
The Husky was named Willis, right?
So I'd be sitting in there and I was.
What's that drill?
What's the Husky doing?
The Husky would kind of come up and just go around the car.
You had to keep the windows down.
Was it to make sure there weren't other people in the car?
I think just, you know, I think he, you know, the first time he brought the dog in just sat in the back of the vehicle.
Okay.
So the dog would get to know your smell, right?
So I think now the dog had like a semblance of, you know, who was who, right?
Okay.
So Willis would come up and he start smelling, but I would get, I was so just gacked up.
I was just paranoid, right?
And then one time he gets in, man, and he just starts crying.
The dog?
The guy.
The man.
The guy.
I don't know if I'd have been able to know.
Maybe I could have noticed if the dog was crying, but I don't know if I could have.
But the man got in and wept.
And he started crying.
Yeah.
And he said his mom had just died.
Oh, my God.
And I...
I needed to get that coat.
Yeah.
So it was like, I remember in my head being like, for 60 seconds, you have to talk about his Mom, or make sounds that are sad.
Sad sounds.
Where's Willis at this point?
Willis sitting in the back.
Okay.
So I just.
Between you two.
Yeah, kind of.
We assume dog's eyes moving back and forth.
Yeah.
And I just remember just like making just like kind of sad, like, God, that's awful.
Just like, oh, that's awful, God.
Oh.
And one of the sounds was like, it was like, oh, like it was almost a little not sad.
It was like, oh, that's the worst sound.
Oh, you just, you went through your, your SFX bank and you just hit a weird one?
Yeah.
A through Z of sad sounds.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And, you know, just like, but I remember I got to one.
I was like, oh, because I'm just thinking I'm ahead.
60 seconds, sad sounds.
60 seconds of sad sounds.
Get to the coke.
Get to the coke.
Yeah.
And the dude is crying, man.
It just, so moments like that where you're just like, what is going on?
I don't know how to handle this.
Well, I will say there's a lot of factors in that story.
And yes, you know, you could have had more empathy in the moment, but he's also a drug dealer who brings a husky into your car and Willis is sitting in the backseat.
So it's an odd situation.
Yeah.
It's not like anyone else would have handled it a lot better.
Yeah, I always took odd situations like that.
Like it was totally normal, I think, and I still have it.
Oh, yeah, 100%.
Nothing about that.
Nothing about those things.
I remember thinking like, God, the day is, how do people get through their day with all these meetups they have to do?
Yeah.
Cocaine dealers, you mean?
Yeah, just or like, you know, yeah, buying pills.
I was like, man, I was like, what?
I can barely, I got a call, but I'm supposed to meet this person at four.
I'm not going to, you know how many business calls I did on mute?
You know, like on a street corner?
Being like, dang, you said six.
You said six.
You said six.
Yeah.
Okay.
Cool.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
No, I mean, we love, no, like, we love the script.
You said six.
That was like, it was a real, uh, it was exhausting.
It was exhausting.
Yeah.
But it kept you in the moment.
I'll say that.
I had reflexes like an alley cat.
Yeah.
You know, like, could grab this.
It was like, people meditate to be in the moment, you know, like when people do like mindfulness meditation, it's to be fully present.
And like when I was trying to get drugs, I was full.
I was like, okay, bird, siren off in the distance.
Bicycle, that's the second time, like every single thing.
We're here.
Yeah.
Yeah, it did put you right there.
Put you right there.
There was some immediacy, goddamn it.
Maybe there was something about that that I really liked about it.
That it put you right like, because now I will say this, I've thought a lot about the moment, right?
Like the moment doesn't exist as much as it used to.
The moment, it used to be if something happened, it wasn't recorded all the time.
It wasn't captured on a phone.
If you had a good story, you had to get to your friends and tell it.
And if somebody else had a good story, you had to get them to the party that he, dude, listen to what happened to Ron, right?
And that was the only way the moment was like, it wasn't able to be captured, right?
So it had so much value.
Whereas now all moments are captured, right?
So it's like there is not as much value to them in a way because they're yeah.
Well, do you think that's the capturing of it?
Like, you mean you can get a photo or a video of it?
Or do you think that as we get older, we just had so many moments, they become, I don't know, they just become a little less.
It's a good point.
Like time, like time, people say that about time.
That's a really good point.
Like time, when you're young, everything takes so long, but when you're older, it takes, it goes faster because you've done it so many times.
Yeah.
Like the most, I mean, we both get to do really exciting things, but we've done versions of them before.
And you go, oh, this is, yeah, okay.
This is how I thought.
This is what I thought it might be like.
Okay, yeah, it's the same feeling as, you know.
The moment.
Yeah, I think.
I never take stock in the moment.
Really?
I never do.
I just like playing the world's greatest venue or I never am in, you know, later I can appreciate those things, but I never have.
I remember I was down in the bottom of Patagonia in Chile, and it was like all glaciers, three hours from Antarctica.
I was just staring at the sun setting over all these glaciers and I was saying to myself, like, try to enjoy this, try to enjoy this, try to enjoy this.
I would just, just, later I appreciated it, but I'm never really, oh my God.
Do you think that the world is boring to you?
And this is in a judgment of you.
This is like, like, sometimes as a, I think as somebody who's been in and out of recovery and stuff like that, I've noticed at times that I looked at the world in ways the world always felt a little bit boring to me.
I used to have that.
Yeah.
I did.
Yeah.
What do you think?
Or that boring or that boring, not that the world was always boring, excuse me, but that boring was the absolute worst state to be in.
Boredom was intolerable.
Yeah.
And it's tough if you have a creative mind because a creative mind can get kind of bored kind of easy because it can think of different things.
Yeah.
So it has more toys to play with, you know?
I also have a thing.
So it's less, like you were saying, you had kind of the grass is greener envy for you always wanted more some other scenario.
I also like, I reached a point where I felt, I felt very satisfied.
I remember I was doing this tour in 2017 and I was on stage at a theater in St. Louis and it was sold out and it was a Tuesday.
You know, it wasn't like, and I remembered when I first went to the comedy seller, Rock or one of these guys being like, anyone can sell out on the weekend.
Wait till you sell out on a Wednesday or a Tuesday.
So I'm on stage and it felt like the end of the movie comedian, you know, the documentary Seinfeld, which when I saw that, I was like, that's what I want.
I want to stand in a theater and do stand-up.
Like, That's what I want.
And then I was doing it.
And I thought it wasn't a bad feeling, but the feeling was: okay, this is it.
This is all, this is kind of as big as I pictured.
Like, and I'm doing it, and that's great.
Right.
But I had a slight feeling of, I don't know, okay, I don't know what's next.
Like, I was a bit, um, I started to, I started to freak out because I was kind of sad, I was a little satisfied.
Yeah.
But I, but I don't want to, I don't want to make it seem like it was a good feeling.
It was an odd feeling.
Yeah.
Or sort of, this is it.
This is what I wanted.
And it's pretty cool.
Right.
But having a goal really kept me occupied.
And I wasn't sure if I had another one.
Wow.
Dude, that sounds like a great entry to like a murder, like a detective scenario.
Having a goal really kept me occupied.
Yeah.
Having a goal kept me moving and I had reached.
I had to get another one.
Yeah.
It seemed like, I mean, it was a very, very lucky goal.
I got a pee, man.
Yeah.
I'm going to pee real fast.
Okay, cool.
You all right?
100%.
All right.
When you think about like your, so I think that these days there's kind of like two.
Can I ask you something else about addiction?
Go ahead, please.
Okay.
I think there's like two types of addiction that I notice.
I notice people that are like alcoholics, right?
Like they have what is in like the big book of alcoholism.
You know what I'm talking about?
The big book?
Yes.
They have the disease of alcoholism.
Then I also noticed there's this other group who have opioid addiction, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And it's not, I'm not saying that some of them couldn't also have alcoholism.
No, but there's something about the, I mean, there's something so insidious about opioids and how they get in people's wiring that you're not, I don't want to get into the whole like willpower and disease.
And I know that a lot of people have a lot of feelings about that, all of them valid, but you're not choosing to take that opioid.
Like that, that is some science fiction level shit, the way it gets into people's, you know, limbic system.
And like you cannot stop taking them.
You are in agony.
And is that?
And that just seems like some other, there should be a different word for it other than addiction.
Cause I think most people associate addiction.
Most people would say like, yeah, it's not a choice, but you guys are choosing it a little bit.
And there's, I don't know.
It's a, I'm, I really do respect everyone's thoughts on that because it's a tricky fucking thing.
But with the opioid compulsion to take the opioid or the dependence, the opioid dependence, I guess, that that does feel like something else sometimes.
Yeah, it's almost like they made a cheat code for your DNA.
Yeah, it'd be like if you, you know, if you like handed someone a, someone who doesn't like cocaine and you handed them a flower every day with cocaine and it and they smelled it, they'd eventually want more cocaine.
You're yeah, it feels like you're getting into the wiring of people who were just looking for pain management.
Right, right.
And we're not looking to feel, you know, some sort of psychological, physical.
We're not trying to feel some drugged out feeling.
Right.
Yeah.
We're not trying to change their state of consciousness, I guess.
Yeah, it's almost like they just they took into a new lab and like, we're going to find some way to trump the system.
Yeah, I mean, drugs are already overriding your desire to survive in a lot of cases.
And opioids, it seems like 10 times more so.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's one thing.
It's just unbelievable to me.
It's like, and how our country lets that kind of happen, like how our drug administration, like that, did you see Dope Sick?
I did.
Yeah.
It was excellent.
It broke my heart.
Yeah.
You know, it just like you'd think there's a, I think it used to feel like when Reagan was in, right?
Back when Reagan never, never did a thing wrong.
Right.
Or just whoever.
It used to feel like at a time in life, right?
And this could be me romanticizing life, that there was a time when your government or some overall governing bodies, like they looked out for the humans, for the people in the country, right?
And maybe that's just a crazy view.
But it used to be.
No, no, no, I don't mean, I didn't make it crazy, but yeah, I guess.
And maybe that was just me being a kid and the flexible agents.
It could have, you know.
Yeah, I think there's a.
But then now it seems like you cannot count on your country to look out for you or your, the administrations within your country.
I'd say that.
That's what I got out of Dope Sit, kind of.
It was like they trumped the, because they hired people from the Food and Drug Administration to then work on their own board.
And they kind of like, they made it so they would keep getting these pills like passed, like able to be used.
Yeah.
Well, it's the basic problem that with harmful habits, I know that sounds like a corny way to say it, but with things we do to ourselves, we have a morality play about it.
You know, like, oh yeah, they took opioids for post-surgery and then they couldn't stop and they started lying to their doctor.
And it very quickly becomes something got set in motion, but you, the user of the chemical, you're kind of the problem.
You know, you don't have strong willpower.
You would rather be high on an opioid.
I mean, and there's, again, like, it's a strange thing.
Here's how I sort of feel like, are drug addicts making a choice when they use drugs?
This is a crisis we set in motion, but I don't think we're in control of it at all at a point.
I mean, this is, because it's a crisis whose timing you can't control.
Like the immediacy of drug addiction, you can't predict.
You have no power over once it starts.
Right.
No, it's that we see it as a story of a bad thing you did.
You know, like I think some people look at Tiger Woods and they go, his pill use is kind of because he had a tragic character flaw earlier in his life, as opposed to maybe the guy that has to perform at that level physically might develop a dependence on pills.
I do think people like to read into the dependence on drugs, some sort of like deeper moral problem you have.
And it might be because when you are on drugs, you make seriously immoral decisions sometimes.
So I don't know.
So I don't think the country's ever looked out for it.
I think a lot of, I mean, I don't judge people for having a harsh view of addicts.
A lot of people have addicts in their lives and you can't just go, it's a disease and I, you know, like it can really, it's very painful to other people.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
I mean, it's a mess.
They're a mess.
Yeah.
Life's so hard already.
Life's like, life's like a table piled high with so much shit.
Like a bad, you know when you go to like a little restaurant and a tiny circular ass table and they don't have room for anything?
Oh, yeah.
The table piled high with shit and drugs come in and drugs you think are going to solve all your problems and they kick the legs out from under it.
They're just a mess.
It's, it's, they're a disaster.
They're a disaster.
Do you, what do you think?
I know people use them and they don't feel it.
No, and some people.
I'm talking just for myself.
They're a disaster.
Oh, yeah.
I remember I got back from that trip of doing the taxi driver ended up dropping me off.
Okay.
After you did opium gym.
Yeah.
Right.
So then I had to go to the hotel, go to the airport after.
Oh, I ended up, I get to the airport, on the way to the airport, I'm still texting the taxi driver.
Yeah.
Seeing if he can get us some coke.
Like I'm leaving.
There's no.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I'm texting the guy I've been up all night with.
And then when I get home, I had left some cocaine on my counter.
I finally get off the plane.
It was a miserable flight.
You're just kind of rattling the whole way.
Yeah.
You get there.
I walk in my apartment.
There was still some cocaine on the counter.
And I did it.
Of course.
And I was like, I got to get some help.
Okay.
I would never, for one, it was part of my career I'd worked so hard for.
And then I'm having good opportunities.
Like Opian Gym was an amazing opportunity to be on there.
And I was letting drugs were there.
It was just like, and if you'd asked me the day before, would you ever go to Opian Gym high on cocaine?
I'd be like, you are out of your mind.
Yeah.
And so there I was, you know?
So it was like, wow, I have no control over this.
And then it becomes, who the hell scheduled opium gym when I'm in the middle of my cocaine?
Are people nuts?
You want me to go to Midtown Manhattan to the Sirius satellite radio building and record this?
When you were growing up, were you a hard kid for your parents to kind of deal with?
Or do you think that they?
No, I tried to keep my personal life very separate from my family.
I really, like, I didn't want to bring trouble home because that's everyone I looked at people who would get in trouble a lot and it's like they'd leave their cigarettes out.
They'd, you know, they'd get, they'd tag up their own garage, like whatever that was.
Right, right.
I was just like, leave that shit outside.
So you were good at hiding things.
I was like, I was like a Michael Clayton of bad kids.
I was like, I kind of, I was like a fixer.
I was like, all right, here's what we're going to do.
He's the fixer?
Yeah.
Have you seen that movie with George Clooney?
He's a lawyer who kind of like, I mean, I guess he doesn't fix the major problems in the movie.
But he's a fixer.
Yeah.
Just is a like, you know, we're going to get, there it is.
The truth can be adjusted.
Yeah.
There you go.
That's the, that should be the tagline for stand-up comedy.
Yeah.
A lot of these sound like the titles for specials that you would have, I feel.
Yeah, the truth can be adjusted.
John Mulaney, baby.
But yeah, do you feel like it was any part of your like childhood that like that you see that like part of your addiction?
Like, or do you not, is there not a big connection there?
Yeah, there's, I mean, um, is that a weird thing?
I do no, not at all.
I do what I do and I don't let it interfere with business, aka in that case, school.
And I don't let it interfere with my business, meaning, you know, eighth grade, freshman year of high school.
And I don't bring that shit home.
You know, I don't, I don't smoke pot in my parents' house, whatever it was.
I took great pride in having a hard separation between my life and my family.
Like real mafia-like rules.
Like we don't talk, I don't bring that home to my family.
Yeah.
That's pretty amazing.
Yeah.
And because it made my life easier not to.
Yeah.
I mean, I almost got kidnapped twice and I didn't tell my parents because I thought it was going to gum up dinner.
Yeah, I just thought it was like, I need to be able to move free around the city.
I'm eight years old.
Okay.
I got shit to do.
And if they think, you know, it's dangerous, this is going to slow me down.
Yeah, yeah.
That's kind of the voice that comes out sometimes in your material.
You'll be telling a story about being eight years old.
You're like, but I need to be able to move free about the city, right?
I don't have time for this shit.
Yeah.
This is the game I'm in, folks.
This is the game I'm in.
Yeah.
These are the decisions I've made.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
These are the choices we've made.
Were you a happy kid?
Yeah, I think I was just kind of a loner.
I didn't really trust the world, so I got into my own space pretty early.
What were your hobbies?
I like to collect stuff and hide it under my, I had a three-shelving unit in my closet.
I liked to hide weapons under my bed.
Did you?
Yeah, for home invasions.
Oh, yeah.
Crowbar, hammers.
Wow.
Yeah, ready to rock.
I was on the third floor of our house.
I figured I'd hear, I thought no one in my family was ready.
That's what I thought.
I saw Cape Fear, the Robert De Niro one.
My dad's a lawyer, like Nick Nolte in that movie.
And I was like, oh my God, Nick Nolty gets his ass kicked.
Like, my dad would get his ass kicked by Robert De Niro.
Yeah.
Long-haired Robert De Niro would beat the shit out of my dad.
So I started to put weapons under my bed and I was just ready to go.
And my whole plan was that the circuits for the house were also on the third floor.
So I was going to shut all the power off.
And now they're on my turf.
Now I'm in charge.
Dang.
Yeah.
And I'm 10 and I got a crowbar.
But you're planning.
It's interesting to have almost so many of your own plans.
It was stressful, though.
Oh, yeah.
My parents wouldn't set the alarm.
I was just like, you are fools.
This is a dangerous world.
Yeah.
And I'm the only one ready to rock.
I am locked and loaded.
Well, I would, I was so scared.
Like our neighborhood, like people are like dogs were always giving birth and people were always like, they would always catch men like kind of gay and around like married men like in abandoned pools and shit in the neighborhood.
And people were always doing pills and, you know, and getting, you know, filing lawsuits down at the fairground.
Because you could go to the fairgrounds like a day early down there and for 50 cents you could ride any ride.
Why were people filing lawsuits down there?
Because they go do that and then they try to, you know, half the people that show up are like laying outside of the road.
Oh, I got you.
Okay.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You know, it was just that kind of shit.
Did you feel unsafe as a kid?
Oh, yeah.
Okay.
Yeah.
People would drive by our house and like throw rocks through the windows and yell the N-word and stuff.
And it's like, we're not even, you know, it's just like, that could be very confusing to us.
Yeah.
I was like, well, I don't even know.
Yeah.
What's happening?
You know, it was just a scary place, right?
And so I remember at night, I would, like, I wet the bed every night.
Sure.
I'd wet to bed two or three times a night.
And so I'd get up some nights and have to clean the sheets and lay them back down.
And then if I did a third time, I wouldn't even have any sheets.
What a lonely activity that is.
Oh, it was.
A little kid in the middle of the night, just when you're washing your own sheets, just waiting by the dryer.
I'd be like, all right.
Yeah.
Up all night.
No one's, maybe your parents know, but.
Just smoking invisible cigarettes even?
Yeah, just like, I got to.
Okay, I'll switch them.
What a lonely, what a lonely little errand kids have to do.
Dude, that probably was one of the loneliest moments of my, probably, I would say, of my childhood.
And not to try to get into self-pity, but it's like, that was something it would be like, man, I hate that I do this because I'm scared.
I feel like something's wrong with me.
And then I always have to do this by myself, you know?
Because it would take, you know, it would take a good 20 minutes if you clean your bed up and then put on some other sheets.
And then, you know, even if you didn't have to go wash them, you know, if you had to wash them the next day or something, but just to make it all clean, you know, get out the comet or the cleanser and clean the stuff.
But I remember I would look in my closet.
I would tie a string from one doorknob to the other.
Like I would make, I'd have to look outside of the windows and look in every corner, just making sure.
Why would you tie a string from one doorknob to the other?
And then I put a couple of J-bells on it, a couple jingle bells on it.
Okay.
And then you would hear them if somebody went one way or the other.
If someone was coming into your room.
Yeah.
Okay.
So there was just like a ton of like a lot of fear.
I had a ton of fear when I was a kid, I think.
Yeah.
And then I guess when you're in fear, you kind of like fear is kind of a lonely place to be.
Oh, it's very lonely.
Yeah.
So you're always kind of is you're the one who's looking out.
Yeah.
So I think maybe a lot of that kind of shaped how I was when I was young, you know?
It's probably what hell is being very, very afraid.
That's a good, interesting call.
Yeah.
There's nothing worse than being really afraid.
Really ashamed and afraid is rough.
Oh, ashamed too, if you put that in there.
Well, if you add to it, like, I'm in this disaster and I'm to blame for it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Did you have any issues as you got more popular with your own ego?
Probably, but.
Because I've noticed those in my own life, you know.
It's not a judgment.
I'm just curious.
No, no, no, no.
And I'm not, I'm not trying.
When I say but, I'm not trying to dial it back.
Yeah, I mean.
Ego is kind of a scary thing, right?
Because you don't really know where it is.
Yeah, I don't know where it is and you don't know what doses are healthy.
You know how some people have like good boundaries?
Yeah.
And they're like, no, I don't allow this.
And you go like, that sounds like sometimes there's a side of me that thinks that boundaries sound stuck up.
Like that doesn't work for me.
I don't allow 100 people to crash on my floor out of nowhere.
And I'm like, but like I always, that didn't really make sense, my example.
No, like I, I, let me think about that.
I feel like I'm rambling right now.
My ego for sure.
Like, did you feel like once you achieved like some level of success?
Like, do you think success was your driving force?
Like, what do you think kind of was some of your driving force to do stand up and to entertain?
Like, where do you think that kind of comes from for you?
Is it a necessity?
Is it a desire to be seen as a creative?
Is it...
Do you have any thoughts on it?
I have many.
I'm trying to think of a semi-interesting answer.
Yeah, I wanted to, I wanted people to say that guy's the best at what he does.
Wow.
Me, even if it's 10 people.
Right.
I wanted some people to go, that he's the best at what he does.
My dad's a very successful guy and very smart.
Very.
He just, he had stature to me.
He still does.
I mean, but he has stature.
People would tell me growing up, your dad's the smartest person I've ever met.
Your dad's the best attorney I've ever seen.
Like, he just, I wanted stature from a young age, I think.
Well, that makes sense now.
Which is a strange thing because what does that mean?
That means you've already accomplished things, past tense?
Or, and also it's not great for a comedian, you know?
I don't like when, I don't want to be a comedian where It's like everyone respects me, but I'm not funny anymore.
Yeah.
I don't think you could ever be that.
That's nice of you to say, but we all, we're all running from that.
Oh, that's a good next bet.
Yeah.
Well, it's interesting you say about stature because you almost have this thing sometimes.
And I don't know if, or maybe I'm trying to see into this a little, where it's like, can't you like, you almost operate in a way that, and you said it yourself, like, I've done this.
Like, it's already completed.
Like, a little bit, guys, I'm already the number one entertainment in America.
Can we just sit back and please enjoy it?
Right.
Yeah.
Even though we, even though you couldn't even enjoy the moments, you know, it's like, even though it's like, but that's almost like what I would perceive, like stature to a kid.
It's like, it's already been done, you know, like it's already.
Yeah, it's like the first concert I went to was when I was 11. I went to see Frank Sinatra for my birthday.
Of course you did.
Yeah.
And what else would you take you to?
And I asked my dad for tickets.
Or I told my dad, you know, Frank Sinatra's coming to town.
And he was like, what?
You know, he's a busy guy.
He hadn't totally been checking in with me in a couple of years.
He's like, Jesus, all right.
So then we went to see Sinatra at a casino in Aurora, Illinois.
And yeah, that's what I wanted to come out and be, and everyone just go like, this guy's the best.
Wow.
Yeah.
There's no question.
You know, when you walked out, I don't know if I've ever, I've been jealous a couple times when you walked out in your Radio City special the way that thing looked.
I was like, man.
Oh, well, that's all Alex Timbers, our director.
But I said, that guy looks like a real guy.
That's what I thought to myself.
Thank you.
That was the intended, that was the desired effect.
That guy looks like a real guy.
Yeah.
I'm very envious when I come into like, when I've run into you, like, I don't, I don't, I feel very out of place in like LA a lot.
Like, I feel like you guys, I feel like I have this thing of like, I'm scared to go to the store.
I'm scared to go to the improv.
You guys kill in a different way that I can't do.
Hmm.
I feel like I get, I think there was a time when there was certainly like kind of like a, it was like there was the same guys kind of at the store a lot, you know.
No, you specifically, you because you're, you seem like you're having fun on stage.
Oh, thank you.
And you're extremely funny.
Thank you.
You seem like, I wish I could be as I wish I could I feel like you're able to access a different level of understanding of comedy that I don't.
And I when I see you perform or I watch you, I have a lot of I have a lot of envy that this man is this man is very good.
That's nice of you to say.
That's that stature I was looking for.
This man is a 10-foot tall Ronald Reagan.
This is a 10-foot tall Ronald Reagan that Reagan won't even visit.
Yeah, yeah.
I feel like you can go anywhere.
I feel like, especially these days, the comedy store is very much like, I don't know if they're even, it's not even that, there's not that many people performing over there that are headliners, really, you know?
Yeah, I guess.
And that's not the term.
There's not as many.
There's a lot of new folks.
I think like I was doing the bourbon room last night and I was backstage and I have this thought a lot where I'm like, I'm just like, I wish I was funny.
Like, I wish I was funny.
Like, like, I'm going to get out there and I'm going to do my thing.
And I just like, I fucking wish, I wish I was like, like watching your special, I'm like, I wish I was like that.
I wish I was fun.
Oh, that's sweet of you.
Yeah, I wish I could.
Like you're working on two levels at once.
You're working on two levels where you know, you both know and you don't know what you're doing.
Yeah.
You know exactly what you're doing.
The only other person who can do it is like Tracy.
I feel like you like you operate at one level that's extremely silly and funny, but you're aware of that.
But what you present to us is that you're not aware of what you're saying.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I don't know if I am sometimes either.
That's a tough thing.
I think you are, but it's, but, but it's, but I don't know.
And that's what's really, that's what's very captivating about it.
Oh, thanks, man.
I mean, you, I remember when Nate Bargatzi was on your podcast, you said that you were waiting till you got a little older to watch Malcolm in the Middle.
Yeah.
And I think about like, I think about that a lot, you know.
Thanks, man.
Just what exactly that means.
Yeah, I think some things I'm just saving.
You know what I felt like most of my life?
I felt like a late bloomer, man.
I felt like only in the past few years when I got into like trying to get into recovery and stuff, have I started to even grow up?
Oh, yeah.
I felt like I put a lot of like, I didn't, I've put a lot of my evolving off.
And a lot of me has never wanted to grow up because I still want to get the things I deserved as a child from my environment, from my parents.
And I think there's a part of me that like, I mean, I can feel it when I even say that.
I can fucking feel something inside of me grip this, literally grip the fucking skin inside of me.
Yeah.
Like, don't make me grow up without being able to have had some of these things.
There's a feeling you needed to have as a kid that you didn't have.
Yeah.
And you don't want to close the door on that until you can give yourself that.
Yeah.
And I think it makes it real, it almost makes me hate growing up because I'm never going to be able to get back there.
You know, I know that sounds kind of crazy, but like I'll never be able to get back to those moments where like my parents should have been in a certain way Or things should have been safe, or I don't know.
But man, it hurts me.
Yeah.
You know, and some people say it's like you got to get over those things and you have to go through your stepwork and you have to let go of resentments.
And I believe that, right?
But there's something inside of me that's even although I do those things that still is having a very tough time letting go, you know, and growing up.
It's tough, man.
That part for me has been tough.
And I know some people may sound, that sounds like a baby or whatever.
That's okay.
I can't deny what I feel, you know, or what I know.
It's not even a feeling.
What's wrong with a baby?
They're pretty interesting.
Right.
That's a good point, actually.
The world wasn't that, you had some times when the world wasn't that kind to you when you were a kid.
Yeah, I didn't trust it right out of the gate.
Yeah.
You know, and sometimes I don't know why my mother had a really tough time like knowing if there was something wrong with you.
She couldn't, she had like almost an emotional autism.
I use that term a lot.
And my father was real old, so I think I was always scared he was going to die, you know?
Sure.
And so it made, it just, I don't know, the recipe was really weird, man.
So anyway, I talk about that stuff a lot.
I'm not trying to harp on it, but there's sometimes you just have to wait for yourself to get there, you know?
It's like you can do a lot of the work on the outside, but sometimes it's like that inner child or whatever they say, like that motherfucker can be a little slow, you know?
Yeah.
And might always, and, and he might always be like that.
Yeah.
I mean, you got a lot, you got a lot out of being that kid, too.
Like your independence, the confidence you have, like you had to adapt in a different way.
And a lot of that has helped you a lot.
Yeah.
I'm not saying that makes up for it.
I'm just saying sometimes I wonder myself, I go, I think I'll be like this all, always forever.
Yeah.
I think this might be it.
And maybe that's all right, you know?
I love the way you're able to have this.
You have this very like looking at the presentation of yourself and like almost like it's a judge at a school fair, you know?
Like the judge at a Michael Landon drawing contest.
Who's going to get the treat?
Well, guess what?
No picture is going to be perfect because there's a bunch of fucking little kids drawing Michael Landon.
So not one of them is going to be perfect.
But the effort and the joy of watching a bunch of little kids draw Michael Landon for their mother, hoping to win candy, is the, is life.
Yeah.
Do I have the best drawing?
Yeah, I don't know, but it's just the fact that everybody's doing it is the good time.
I guess, yeah.
I mean, dude, nothing sounds more fun than a family having a Michael Landon drawing contest.
Oh, man, we were keyed up.
We were excited.
Trying to think of what else we can talk about.
You know, sorry.
And we'll start.
Oh, no, no, no, no.
I don't think that's that.
I'll put that in the beginning.
Yeah, what do you think about new specials as you get older?
Yeah.
And as we get further away from the part of us that was the.
The first special.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Let's just call it.
Let's call the exciting part of us the first special.
Yeah.
Do you like, has it been tough to evolve as a person and as a comedian?
Has there been scary moments where you're like, I don't know if I want to evolve?
Like, who do I evolve into?
That's something I think about sometimes.
Yeah, I was more, you know, this special I've got coming out is kind of, it isn't kind of, it is about everything from intervention through rehab and after.
So at the moment, or in the past two years, I haven't wondered what I'm going to talk about on stage.
But now having shot this thing and, you know, and I'm really, really happy with it.
And it's longer than my other specials.
And I'm thrilled that it's longer.
It's kind of, this was the time to do this chunk of material.
This was the moment in my life to do this.
With that gone, now I start to wonder.
Yeah.
Now I'm, now I don't remember how to do comedy.
Oh, that's a great statement.
Oh, yeah, I don't.
Last night I was like, I don't have jokes.
I don't.
Maybe I'll try this old one that was part of the hour that I cut.
But I just, I don't, what is going on here?
How do I do this?
I don't know what I'm doing.
Wow.
Yeah, that's scary.
It's really scary letting something go, putting out something that's new, putting out something that's more like, obviously we tell stories that are based on our real lives or have moments, some of them, you know?
But to put out something that's like, really, this is like me just tracking part of my life.
And it was a little bit like, I can't, I can't do, I can't talk about other things until I get this out.
I don't mean like people were waiting for it.
I just mean, I don't, this, I, this has to be what the next special is.
And it was rather easy because there were lots of stories from it.
Um, it wasn't easy to, to get it where it was, but, you know, it took two years of touring, but it, uh, it felt like, okay, inevitably there's, you know, over an hour of nonsense that happened.
Yeah.
So do you, is it interesting?
Like, because some people, I think as we get older, they want us to be older in a way, or they want, we have to evolve or something, right?
Because for sure, you know, we can't have the same thoughts and stuff that we had when we were 10 years ago or 15 years ago when we were starting.
Well, I don't know.
Is anyone saying that?
No one is.
I mean, that might, that's a good, I mean, wanting to evolve is a good thing.
It's scary, though.
I think we're always arguing with some straw man that's not really there of what, like, what we should be talking.
I mean, I don't think.
That's a good point.
I was just doing that.
Yeah.
And now I was trying to bring you into it.
No, I did that last night.
Yeah.
Right.
I was like, oh, maybe I should be like, maybe I should have a lot of political jokes.
I thought this standing back, I was about to go on.
Well, you're respected enough, man, and it's such an interesting, you're so yourself that if you just get up on stage, I am curious as to what is Joe thinking about.
No way.
That's nice of you to say, but like I went and saw Stavi at the Pittsburgh Improv.
Stavros Halkias?
Yeah.
Yeah.
And that I was like, God, I was like, that's a person who's just funny right away.
That's a person who's funny where I'm like, I'm willing, like, I'm just going to watch him talk to the crowd.
I'm going to watch anything.
I would kill to have that.
Wow.
That's it.
Well, I guess everybody wants a little bit of something else, you know, or would love to have moments of the other person, you know?
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
That's like.
Savvy's wild.
He says pussy a lot, too.
And I don't say it that much.
He does.
Yeah.
Yeah.
He does.
He likes saying it.
I feel like he almost does it deliberately.
You think?
I think he knows exactly what he's doing.
Yeah, he makes for it right away.
Or Brody.
Yeah.
Like that.
Brody's very interesting.
Brody was almost a reverse psychology.
I didn't even know what he was doing half the time up there.
I mean, Brody, like, I mean, the amount of times I went, why can't I, here I am, it's my own show.
I'm at a theater.
I'm at an arena.
Like, if I could bring the same excitement that Brody brought to warming up a Chelsea Handler audience, I'd be, I'd have it made.
Why can't I have that thing?
You know?
Did someone at some point in your life or did some straw man tell you that you don't?
Because like when I watched your special last night, I was watching the Yeah, some voice tells me I'm boring.
Some voice is like, well, you're boring and no one wants to hear this.
And you're not fun and you're not, you're actually not, you're not good at performing your own material.
That's something.
Dude, when I watched that, I was like, man.
And I'd seen it before, but I was like, I'm just so involved.
Even when you go to get the sip of water and drink it out of the cup, and you probably think, man.
This is a last-minute decision.
No stool.
So the water's got to go somewhere.
Yeah, it was really interesting.
I was like, that he put it there.
That's what he's doing.
But you probably think.
Get it behind a light bulb.
Well, you're going to get it.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
I'm so bored right now.
No, in that moment, I was like, can I pick up a glass of water without dropping it in front of 6,000 people?
Because I was like, I've never had it on the floor before.
No, I mean, listen, I also, I don't mean to sound like, oh, I feel like shit about myself, but we always just want to be something different.
Oh, it's funny.
I think there's no doubt.
There's probably 20 guys when I watch.
I'm like, oh, man, I wish I had some of that.
Oh, my God.
Yeah.
That'd be really cool.
Absolutely.
And you know what?
I don't think there's anything wrong with it.
I think it's a totally healthy thing.
I think we've been talking a lot about also the things in us that we feel are missing, but it's quite, it's a good thing to watch Stavros and be envious.
Yeah.
Like that's something that gets me or comedians who write jokes that I'm like, you know, when I hear a joke, well, I just saw Nate's special.
I was like, God, I wish I had those.
That's exciting.
There's nothing to me unhealthy about that.
Yeah, that's true.
It's nice, I think.
And it's really just an admiration to that person.
But I think that there's so many people that for sure that look at you and think that way.
Like, I wish I could be as put together as that guy, you know?
And you use the word haberdasher I saw in one of them.
That was cool.
Did I?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Harry Truman ran a haberdashery that went bust.
Did he?
That's the first time I think I heard that word as a little kid hearing about Harry Truman.
Some guy opened one up, I think, bust when we were growing up, and people thought it was like a hash den or whatever, and they shut it down.
I remember.
Oh, wow.
Yeah.
But.
In this violent place you were growing up, someone tried to open a haberdashery?
Yeah.
Very nice.
They had a lot of narcs, bust.
A lot of people were always doing narcing, you know?
Oh, yeah.
Where they get some kid to fuck, you know.
There was a thing called Snap.
Was it called Snaps?
It was this weird program in Chicago where Chicago PD would send like two 13-year-olds up to a bar to try to get in.
And then they'd bust the bar.
I knew this one kid whose dad was a detective.
And so they sent him.
And he went up and he went, don't let me in.
I'm here with snaps.
I mean, if that was true, in retrospect, I can't imagine that would be like an actual CPD program.
But I like that he didn't want the bar to get busted.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Then he could probably come back the next weekend and be like, I did you a solid.
Yeah, let me in.
Then he like gets carted out and the bar to get busted.
What was your like, do you remember like your first relationship growing up?
What was that like?
What do you mean?
Like dating and stuff?
Was that tough for you as a kid?
Or were you pretty good at it?
No, I wasn't good at it.
I didn't realize you weren't supposed to tell girls how much you liked them.
Oh, damn.
Because in movies, that's what the hero would do is he'd be like, I love you so much.
And they'd be like, oh, my God, no other guy at school talks this way, right?
So I thought, okay, you got to be like that.
You got to be like these John Cusack types who tell you how they're feeling.
And no one really likes that.
Yeah.
No one likes that.
Yeah, it's too alarming for people.
The reality of it is too alarming for people.
But that was also like, again, like romanticizing romance.
I was just like, no one had, I brought a heaviness to that that I think people were like, this is, you got to relax.
This is, you know, making out in winter coats here.
Yeah.
Yeah.
This is not anything that serious.
You don't need to be making speeches.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The train isn't leaving the station when it does.
Yeah.
And this isn't Casablanca or something.
You need to like, yeah.
We're going to share a menthol and then hook up standing up.
Like you need to bring it down a notch with this monologue.
How did you get this cage at the end of family?
Exactly.
Yeah.
The end of family man.
Have you seen that?
Is that where he can choose between the two paths?
He's got, we got a new jersey she's tealing on.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
We've got two kids, Annie and Josh.
Yeah.
And he like explains to her what their life is like if she doesn't get on that plane.
You can always go to Paris, just not tonight.
God, dude.
Is that a good one?
Man.
I haven't seen it in some time.
It's good, man.
It'll make you believe in something.
What was your first relationship?
Mine, this girl, this girl was like kind of doing BJs at school and she liked me, right?
And I didn't, it was like, she was really funny.
That's what I liked about her.
But she was also doing BJs, right?
And people were, and nobody was doing them.
Sure.
And so it was kind of nervous because I liked her, right?
I really liked her because she was really funny and she was really cute.
But then the doing BJs part, I kind of, I liked that.
Sure.
But I also was embarrassed in a way because I didn't want people, like people were like kind of like, you know, other people were judging her because she was doing BJs like real early.
And you thought they would judge her.
They thought your motives would, you thought your motives for hanging out with her would be suspect.
Right.
And I thought that they would judge me somehow.
I've always been like – I've always taken on the responsibility or taken on the paint or the judgment that other people put on somebody that I have attached to me in a weird way.
Oh, you mean you get – Oh, wow.
For like something that somebody else will do that I attach myself to.
It's really fair.
I do that too.
I think I do that too.
It's really not fair.
I had a girlfriend that used to, she wouldn't know where people were, like when we're standing around somewhere.
She had bad peripheral vision.
And yeah, the worst, dude.
It was unbelievable.
So she would always, we'd be talking, beautiful girl.
I loved her, but she'd always like walk right back when somebody was walking.
I'm just like, and it ruined it for me.
Oh, wow.
You felt her embarrassment.
Was she herself embarrassed?
Not that much.
Oh, interesting.
So you weren't even feeling her embarrassment.
You were just feeling the only embarrassment.
Yeah.
It was almost like the universe had to give it to someone and she was unaware.
Yeah.
But I would take it on, though.
And I would always be like, I'm not going to let you be a reflection of how people see me.
No matter who that was.
And I think that probably goes back to my childhood.
I was very embarrassed in my situation that I was in or something about it made me uncomfortable.
So that's how I behave still.
It's not fair to other people, you know.
But then you also like used the way you grew up in those things.
And now you know that they're of interest to talk about.
Right.
Well, it's a big part of my still operating, you know?
So it's like some stuff I still have to really work on, I think, you know, or look at.
I see.
But only recently in the past five years have I noticed how all these things play a role in my life.
Yeah.
But yeah, that first relationship.
So yeah, and then once, so we went to a party one night and everybody knew that I was going to maybe, you know, she was going to do a BJ on me or whatever.
Okay.
So we picked like this tree to do it behind, right?
And did you talk to her about it?
Yeah, we kind of, I think, written letters at school.
About that specifically.
Yeah.
Okay.
Or talk to a friend, you know, her best friend, like sure.
So I'm so nervous, dude.
I remember I would barely even go.
How old are we here?
We're probably in seventh or eighth grade.
Okay, wow.
And I remember just being so nervous, dude.
Yeah, I could barely even walk over there and I get by the tree and then we like barely even said any words, you know?
And then she might have felt a responsibility to do it now because we planned it, you know, I don't even know.
Well, you'd exchange many letters over it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And then she starts doing it.
And then the girl's mom, whose party house it was, like, we're behind a tree.
So the only thing you can't see is the actual kind of BJing, but you can see me and her.
Okay.
And then the girl's mom came out and busted us.
And it was so, and she was a, it was just so embarrassing.
It made me, oh, I just felt so much embarrassment, I think.
For yourself?
I think for both of us, you know.
But what, yeah, what she's doing is embarrassing me.
But then I'm also here receiving, you know, I'm here too.
You were definitely part of it.
You were half of it, you might say.
So anyway, that was, I think, you know, I had some early uncomfort with that.
And just the fact that I loved, I felt like I kind of loved this girl.
Yeah.
And other people thought that there was something wrong with her.
And so I think that made me some, you know, I don't know.
I think it did something to me a little bit.
Changed your perception of her.
Yeah.
And it just made, it changed how it made me often like really conscious of what people thought of who I attached myself to.
And do you still have that today?
I think I do still have some of it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's kind of unhealthy.
Well, but it's okay.
I just, you know, it's something I think I got to go through some different, you know, work on it more.
And that's fine.
But yeah.
It's all okay, man.
You know?
It's all okay.
Yeah.
Yeah.
John Mulaney, is there anything else that you wanted to talk about?
I don't want to take up too much of your time because we've chatted for a while, I think.
I want to ask, what does Baby J mean?
Because weren't you calling your tour from scratch?
Yeah.
The tour I was just on is called from scratch.
Just because I started calling these shows I did two months out of rehab, I started doing these shows at City Winery in New York.
And I just called it from scratch.
And there might have been, I was trying to say like, all of this is new and please come to the shows, but it's going to be rusty and it's going to be all worked out and messy and etc.
And then I just kept calling the tour from scratch.
I never loved the name, but I didn't want to think of a new one.
There was too much going on.
There was too much going on in early sobriety.
And I didn't, you know, I just I just kept going with it.
But the special is called Baby J, which is something I refer to myself as in the special because people like when 40-year-old men call themselves Baby J. People find that really cute and like that a lot.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Do you think, is it like about being like a late bloomer?
What is it?
What, what is it kind of in relation to?
I don't know.
I just refer to myself as it at one point in the special and it makes me laugh a lot.
Oh, nice.
But a part of it is trying to get back to that before time.
Like something a lot of the tour I just did, we used my first grade photo as the tour art.
And I mean, it just was, it was like you and I were talking about it, but trying to get back to that age where there was just like electricity and things were really exciting.
Yeah.
And something went off track.
Things got darker.
And now I was sober and so much of my life had changed.
And I was out on the road.
And I was just, I was like, I liked seeing that poster of myself.
I liked seeing that photo of me in first grade outside the venue.
Like it just put me like, okay, we're trying to get back to that.
Something started chasing us after that time.
Something started chasing us.
That's interesting.
Yeah, yeah.
That was a thought I had in rehab.
Like, I don't mean like I heard, well, I sort of heard a voice, but it said, we've been after you since you were a little kid.
And I felt like something, yeah, something's been.
Things have had, there's been many great moments, but something, something's been trying to get your attention?
Or to get you?
To get me.
Wow.
You think it's like a disease or something?
I don't know.
Just some.
We've been after you.
We've been after you since you were a kid.
We.
I didn't care for the we.
Yeah.
Listen, I didn't like hearing voices and detox.
I didn't like grinding my teeth.
I cracked a molar.
It was a whole crazy.
But yeah, I didn't care for the voice.
But if I'm going to hear a voice, I don't like the we of it.
Yeah.
That's a lot of people.
Yeah, that means, yeah, there's a van now.
There's a van.
That implies bats.
Guys driving around with bats.
How bad is detoxing?
I never had to do something like that.
Is it really hard?
Benzodiazeprine, which is Xanax and clonopin.
That detox really sucks.
And do you stay in a room?
What do you do?
I stayed in D. So some people go to detox for a couple of days.
I was there for five or six days.
They try to taper you off with this medication called Librium, which I don't know if that's a benzo.
Anyway, it's similar, but yeah, the first, so that week I was sort of in a medicated detox.
And then the second week was like my skeleton wanted to rip out of my body.
Wow.
Yeah.
And is it?
And they said that they were like, those are the most, no, not like ow pain.
Mine felt like I cannot be, like I cannot sit.
It's not even like, I remember laying on my bed just like fucking writhing, just like I know every part of me wants to rip into.
Wow.
But they said that when I got there, they're like, Coke is not, I mean, Coke was my problem.
They said, Coke isn't your problem.
These, the benzos, the downers is going to be the real beast.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Could you do an eight ball in a day, you think?
Yeah.
Wow.
I mean, I don't say that like maybe it would take a, what was a day also to find a day?
That's true.
That's true.
Maybe a day and a half.
Yeah.
If you're up for 24 hours, that eight ball, dang, dude.
I would, I remember sometimes I couldn't even inhale anymore.
Yeah, yeah.
That, that feeling of, I also, I would feel like vibrating so much, but I remember times when I felt like, okay, I've done too much.
Like this is serious and I've done too much.
And maybe I should go down to my lobby and sit there in case I need to get there.
I lived right near an, right next to an urgent care.
That's great.
I was like, maybe I need to sit here and just tell the doorman to grab a paramedic or something.
But there were a couple nights where I just thought, I've done too much, but then I would still be crashing.
So physically, I'm like, we've done way too much Coke.
I can't feel my legs.
I'm totally like, this is a real disaster.
And then mentally, I'd start crashing a little and be like, I need to do, can I do another bump?
Is there a way for to do a bump that would satisfy this, but not affect the oncoming cardiac arrest that we're about to have?
Dang.
Isn't that crazy?
We would think that.
You're in such a balancing act.
You're in such a go.
You know what?
If I'm going to go to the hospital, I probably should do a line first.
Yeah.
They'd want me to.
Just so I'm talkative.
Yeah.
Yeah.
They would want you to.
That's so interesting.
You on the road now?
Yeah.
What do I have doing?
I got some shows in Phoenix next week.
Oh, nice.
Oh, yeah.
I'm excited about that.
Yeah, you know, I started my tour kind of like I should have had my show more mapped out before I put it up into some like smaller theaters, you know?
Yeah.
So sometimes I feel a little bit bad about that.
I thought it was pretty.
Why did they feel rocky?
Yeah, they just felt a little rocky.
Well, you know, but I just always want to make sure that I give the, you know.
Of course, but you were trying to put on the best show you could.
Right.
I was trying for sure.
Yeah.
I mean, the other route would be to just, what, stay in, do weekends at clubs?
Yeah, yeah.
That would have been probably a route that would have been just to better service the hour, you know?
Yeah, I get that.
Yeah.
I think, but sometimes people are like, come out, come perform.
Well, sometimes you have a couple great shows and you go, this is ready for theaters.
And then you get there and you're like, This is, yeah.
Wow, these people paid money.
And yeah.
Yeah.
And it wasn't bad.
It was just, and we have high expectations.
Yeah, of course.
You have very high expectations of yourself.
Of course, yeah.
When I'm out there at the very beginning figuring out an hour and I'm like, this is actually 40 minutes with 20 minutes of filler.
It's, I feel very, I work hard at the new, I work hard at what I can, and I hope that I have enough charisma to pull off the whole, that, that no one's noticing that this is, you know, padded.
Yeah.
Man, yeah, I think you got a ton of stuff.
Well, also, it's like you go back on the road after you've just done a special.
So the last memory you have is this product that was like finely tuned.
Yeah.
And now you're out there, you know doing stuff about how big the Denver airport is.
Yeah.
Because you just landed in Denver.
Yeah, I remember I had a show in Charleston and literally the next night I had my, I had an hour that came out.
And so the next night I knew this is when you have to turn over, when you can't do material that's on the special, you have to kind of turn over, you know, most of it and do new stuff.
And that was a tough weekend because the first show was pretty awesome.
And the second one was not.
It was just kind of like, fuck.
Yeah.
Well, that's the thing.
It's like you can just hit all green lights one night and be like, I have a new 15 minutes.
And you don't.
You have nothing.
You have one minute.
You have one.
Did you do like a first CD?
Like, did you make like a comedy album?
Yeah.
Unrelated to not a TV.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I did that too.
And I thought when that came out, I can never do any of these jokes again.
Wow.
No one fucking listened to it.
Yeah.
I wish I was, I remember going out to do, was I just starting to headline?
Maybe I think I was going to headline the Houston laugh stop.
And I had a CD that was out.
And I was like, well, if anyone's heard the CD, they'd know these jokes.
So I got to do a whole new hour.
No, you didn't?
No.
Absolutely no one had heard this album.
No, and some guys you can just do, that's one mess up thing about putting things out.
It's like, if you never put things out, then you would just be this thing that people can only go see if they go see you.
Yeah, I think about that.
I think about like the Grateful Dead model, too.
Yeah.
I was like, I wish I could make every show different and tour like that.
And you probably, whatever.
I guess so.
Well, I think a lot of- Do you think people come to see you or your material?
Oh, I don't know.
I think the material, because if you don't have it in if I don't have it in the first 10 minutes, in the first five minutes, it's not that fun.
Yeah, that's true for anybody, huh?
I don't know.
I mean, in an arena, I don't know.
Maybe they're coming just for the maybe some people come for the like, this is cool of it, you know.
But especially, though, no, what am I saying?
I think it's all for the jokes.
Yeah.
Yeah, people want to be entertained for sure.
I think at a certain point, though, people kind of get to know you, especially probably after this special comes out, where people are going to get to know maybe more just about some of your journey.
There's a lot in it.
You get to know me pretty well.
I mean, I think letting people get to know you, that's, you know, it's important.
And then they know you.
Well, they get to know you.
Yeah.
It's all fun them getting to know one side of you.
And then you go, okay.
Also, sometimes I'm not a great guy.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, that happens a lot to all of us.
So you're out now.
Yeah.
Yeah, I'm out.
And I just do sporadic.
Like I was doing like a night and a night and a night in different cities.
Yeah.
And now I'm doing more like kind of smaller venues, but staying in a city for five nights.
That's the best way to do it.
I agree.
I just did the arena thing and that was awesome, but you are hitting a point where more, you can do more nights at a theater.
More people will come see you over more people will find out you're in town.
Yeah.
And you do like an eight-night run or something.
I did that down in Atlanta and Philly.
Did you go to Nashville too, someone said?
I did, I think it was four or five nights at the Ryman.
Nice.
That was really fun.
It was on my 40th birthday, too.
Really?
Yeah.
Oh, I thought you were younger than that, man.
You look younger.
That's a cool room that Ryman, isn't it?
It's the greatest.
Yeah.
Oh, my God.
It's the greatest.
Yeah, it's awesome.
And the Wilbur is really awesome, too, huh?
The Wilbur's really fun.
God, the Wilbur is cool.
The Wilbur, really, you feel the energy there.
With Bill Blumenright?
Yeah, he's the greatest.
Yeah, he's got the best stories, too.
Yeah, he does.
He's got Foxwoods, too.
Yeah, he's got the best stories.
What other goals do you have in your future?
I know you have the Amazing Animation, right?
Is that your series?
Which one?
Big Mouth?
Yeah.
Yeah, I'm on that.
Yeah.
Sorry, I know that.
No, that's okay.
That's created by Nick Kroll and Andrew Goldberg and Mark and Jen, the Flackets, and they're great.
And yeah, we do that now.
Do you have other stuff that you feel like you like creatively that you're like having done like worked in television, created shows, do you feel like stand-up is really the best media?
You do?
It's the most, most fun, best delivery service of comedy.
It's yeah, it's freebase.
It's the best.
It's the best possible situation in terms of delivering.
It's freebase.
Yeah.
It's grimy.
Yeah.
It's a little grimier than TV.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Did you ever end up in a really cool place doing drugs?
Meaning the geographic place?
Yeah, just like a dicey, like, you know, Shoni's or something, you know, someplace that was a little deviant, you know?
Karaoke bar.
I'm trying to think.
Like, were you that guy that wanted to get deep into the trap houses and shit?
Were you like kind of like the, who was the guy?
Anthony Bourdain of like trap houses and stuff like that?
Did Anthony, what's a trap house?
A trap house is just like a place where people are doing drugs and there's like a lady who's like probably like, you know, if you wake her up, she would have sex.
Maybe like in the back.
Anthony Bourdain went to these?
No, he didn't, but he went to like food places.
He went to restaurants, yeah.
Right.
Are you like the guy?
That was not the Anthony Bourdain of trap houses.
Yeah, are you like, would you be that guy?
Like, where is that kind of your, like, some people like to get into the depths of the, of the 5 a.m., you know, and like, just the like, how weird can I get?
No, my, the weirdest times for me were the days because I was, I mean, that feeling of, you know, when you haven't slept and the whole world has?
Just the way that that warmth you feel in your bones, you're going into Starbucks or like, man, like just running an errand and you're like, does everyone know?
Can everyone tell?
There's just something kind of like shinier about us.
Yeah.
You know, like just something like sleeker.
We're just a faster animal because like we didn't just lay down for eight hours.
Oh, man.
I'm sure you are more alert, huh?
Oh, you're like an alley cat.
Like an alley cat.
Yeah, and you're like a fucking very, but you're like.
But things also become far more complicated.
Right.
Oh, I would overthink things.
Overthink everything.
You're like a ghost.
You're like a fast fucking, like a Tesla ghost.
And you're like, these clothes don't look like someone put them on this morning.
Yeah.
These look like yesterday clothes.
Yeah.
Not even that they're wrinkled.
Not even anything.
You just have an air about you that says, I did not just rest.
Yeah.
But I think no one can tell if you're still gacked up enough to converse.
Yeah.
Fuck.
I would be so scared, dude.
I would walk.
Yeah, my depth perception would feel weird.
Yeah.
There's a lot of like, you know, cars.
Everything's coming fast.
Yeah, everything's coming fast.
Oh.
God, dude.
They're a disaster.
Yeah.
Disaster.
Drugs are a disaster.
And that's a nice thing to not have to worry about anymore, isn't it?
Oh, my God.
Yeah, that is not, I'm not in a crisis all the time.
Yeah.
Did you end up getting help?
Like did you go to recovery after that?
Did you go to 12-step or you just kind of went to?
I was in sober living.
I did 12-step, but you know.
Was sober living pretty cool?
Sober living was for a couple months after rehab.
I can't imagine going from rehab to living on my own.
Yeah.
That would have been.
No, I really needed as many training wheels as possible.
Wow.
So you really went through it all.
Yeah.
I mean, no, I mean, or I'm through it all.
I mean, not like you went through the things that people go through.
Yeah.
That was a moment where I really needed to get as like textbook as possible.
Right.
Because I would have told you, like, okay, I can go live on my own now.
I've just been in, I've been in this place for two months and I'm clean.
But it's like, you're clean because you've been in rehab.
Right.
But I would have thought, like, I actually, I, I had a lot of good, and I had a lot of great moments in treatment.
Really did.
Had great counselor and great people.
But like the actual reason that I wasn't on drugs was because I was in central Pennsylvania living in a hospital.
Yeah.
You know.
Was it nice out there?
Was it pretty?
It was a winter.
It was a little desolate.
But sometimes it was quite, sometimes it was quite beautiful.
Did they have any horses or anything like that?
No.
I wish we had had some of that, you know, getting to put a shoe on a horse or whatever they have drug addicts do.
Crazy.
Yeah.
Like you're petting them like, okay.
I have a joke in this special about, I feel so bad for that horse because it thinks it's going to win the Kentucky Derby, but then it's just drug addicts being like, okay, all right.
Petting your strong leg gives me confidence.
I remember seeing this whenever I saw your set.
John Mulaney, thanks so much.
Dio Vaughn, thanks for having me, man.
Dude, it's awesome, man.
It was great to talk to you.
Yeah, you too, man.
I really admire you and your ability, dude.
I really admire you, man.
It's very nice to have a conversation with you.
Same, man.
And when you get on stage, man, it is, I want to know what you are going to do and say.
Same.
100%.
I want you to know that.
I am excited that you're up there.
Thanks, man.
I'm excited when you're up there.
Yeah.
Thanks, Sean.
I envy what you have, man.
It's amazing.
You too, man.
And yeah, check out the new special.
April 25th.
April 25th.
And we'll post about it.
I'll put a post up on my social media too, man, to make sure.
Not that you don't already have your own humongous audience.
