The Joe Rogan Experience - August 09, 2018


Joe Rogan Experience #1155 - Henry Rollins


Episode Stats

Length

2 hours and 31 minutes

Words per Minute

186.10873

Word Count

28,242

Sentence Count

2,763

Misogynist Sentences

23


Summary

Henry Rollins and Ted Nugent talk about their mutual love of rock and roll and how they met each other on the set of Henry Rollins' new show, "Henry and Ted" on HBO's Late Night with Seth Meyers. Henry Rollins is a rock god and one of the most underrated guitarists in the history of rock n' roll. He is also the creator of the hit TV show "Henry Rollins Presents: You ve Been With Me" and the host of the long-running radio show "The Henry Rollins Show" on Comedy Central. Henry Rollins has been a long-time friend of mine and I was lucky enough to get to sit down with him to talk about a variety of topics, including his love of the Stooges, The Doors, and the early days of his radio show on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno. It was a lot of fun and I hope you enjoy it! Thank you to Henry Rollins for coming on the show and for being a part of the podcast! If you like what you hear, please HIT SUBSCRIBE and leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts! or wherever else you get your content. I'll be looking out for new episodes in the coming weeks! Thanks again for listening and supporting the show! Love ya, Henry Rollins! -Jon Sorrentino and The Henry Rollins Podcast! Logo by Jon Foreman. Music by Skynyrd. Artwork by Jeff Kaale. This episode was produced and edited by Mark Phillips. Please don't forget to rate, review, review and subscribe to the show on Podchaser. and tell a friend about it on Apple Music, and we'll be giving away a copy of his new album "I'm Too Sensual For This" on the next episode of the new album, "Goodbye, My Dear Friend" on Dec. 7th July, 2020. by John Rocha. Thank you, Jon and Jon is a big fan of the album "The Good Ol' Man" by The Good Lord Good Olaf, Too Sensible, Good Ol Olaf. Thank You, Jon Goodson, Thank you so much for being kind enough to give us a shout out, Jon, too much love and support you're a chance to help us out here, Jon is an old friend of the band Good Olio. -- Thank you for listening, Jon & Ted is a great guy.


Transcript

00:00:01.000 Here we go.
00:00:02.000 4...
00:00:02.000 3...
00:00:03.000 2...
00:00:06.000 Henry Rollins, ladies and gentlemen.
00:00:07.000 How are you, fella?
00:00:08.000 I'm better now being here with you.
00:00:09.000 I'm better now that you're here.
00:00:11.000 We were just talking about a show that you and Ted Nugent, apparently.
00:00:17.000 Did you pitch it?
00:00:18.000 Who pitched the show?
00:00:19.000 It was an idea that my manager, Heidi, and I came up with.
00:00:24.000 Well, mostly Heidi.
00:00:25.000 It was called basically Henry and.
00:00:27.000 You put me and someone I might have some disagreements with or a few agreements with.
00:00:33.000 And we just go somewhere and we weigh in.
00:00:36.000 With a camera following us.
00:00:38.000 And we're thinking, it'll be like a six-part miniseries, like, you know, me and plus six interesting people.
00:00:43.000 And one of the names that came up was Ted Nugent.
00:00:46.000 Because I'm a fan of his music.
00:00:49.000 I think he's one of the best guitar players I've ever seen.
00:00:52.000 Yet, he and I would probably disagree on one or a few topics.
00:00:58.000 And so we actually pitched it to Ted.
00:01:02.000 Who said he loved the idea, but he said, I gotta go on.
00:01:06.000 I'm busy with it.
00:01:07.000 He had a ton of tour dates, so I think he's on now.
00:01:10.000 But he said, I want to talk to Henry to thank him for thinking of me.
00:01:13.000 Okay.
00:01:14.000 And so Ted called, like on my phone in the office.
00:01:18.000 I guess he got my number from the powers that be.
00:01:22.000 And suddenly it's Ted on my phone.
00:01:25.000 I'm at my desk like, okay, this is...
00:01:29.000 Surreal.
00:01:29.000 And we talked for a few minutes, and he said, what, do you think I'm a bad guy?
00:01:38.000 I'm like, no.
00:01:40.000 Some of the things you say, it kind of takes my breath away.
00:01:45.000 And then we quickly got on the topic of music.
00:01:48.000 He said, you like all that old Detroit music?
00:01:49.000 I go, yeah, man.
00:01:51.000 I mean, you, Mitch Ryder, the Stooges, MC5, I mean, it's kind of the best...
00:01:57.000 It's some of the best music I've ever heard.
00:01:59.000 I mean, I asked him, I go, what is it?
00:02:02.000 Is something in the water?
00:02:03.000 What is it with you Michigan guys in guitar tone?
00:02:06.000 Like, no one gets tone.
00:02:08.000 Like you, Ron Ashton, Stooges, Fred Sonic Smith, MC5. I go, you guys!
00:02:15.000 I mean, you're so good!
00:02:16.000 And he said, we gotta hang out sometime and we'll just talk about music.
00:02:20.000 I went, I'll do that with you!
00:02:22.000 So I'll be taking notes.
00:02:23.000 And he was just telling me You know, like, yeah, I used to hang out at the MC5 house and go see the Stooges.
00:02:29.000 And I'm like, you're killing me!
00:02:30.000 Because this is like, you know, that would have been heaven for me to see those bands like back in 1969 or whatever.
00:02:38.000 When did you know him?
00:02:39.000 Did you know him back in the day or did you only speak to him recently?
00:02:42.000 As a punter, I would go see him like in high school in the 1870s, you know, Carter administration.
00:02:47.000 I'd go see him at play in my local arena in Washington, D.C. in a place called the Capitol Center in Largo, Maryland.
00:02:53.000 And he was as good as rock and roll gets.
00:02:57.000 I mean, I saw the Double Live Gonzo lineup.
00:03:01.000 And like, forget it.
00:03:02.000 It was like two and a half hours of just getting beat up by music.
00:03:07.000 It was fantastic.
00:03:08.000 And to this day, it's still a high watermark as far as gigs.
00:03:13.000 And in the 90s, I met him on Politically Incorrect, Bill Maher.
00:03:19.000 And I said...
00:03:20.000 Hey, man, I'm a big fan.
00:03:22.000 And he gave me a bow hunting catalog.
00:03:24.000 I'm like, well, thanks.
00:03:26.000 You know, for his whack master, you know, you get the croquet mallet and the bow.
00:03:33.000 Anyway, I kept it because I'm a fan.
00:03:35.000 And then I met him years later.
00:03:38.000 And I did this radio show, like St. Patrick's Day, 1997, to crassly promote my next record.
00:03:44.000 And I said, we met years ago, and we got to talking for like a couple of hours.
00:03:49.000 And it was just about music, and I played him some of my new record, which he really liked.
00:03:54.000 And between the commercial breaks, he was like playing riffs for me.
00:03:58.000 We had a little headphone amp, and he was sitting across from me on a stool playing.
00:04:02.000 I'm like, this is pretty cool.
00:04:05.000 And so that's the kind of relationship I have with him where you read some of the things he says, you're like, okay, that's really hard to take.
00:04:15.000 But those records, they're just so good to me.
00:04:18.000 And I saw him play in 2000, opening for KISS, 2001, somewhere in there.
00:04:22.000 And he was great, great.
00:04:25.000 The tone, the playing, just fantastic.
00:04:28.000 And so he's just an interesting...
00:04:30.000 A bunch of guys.
00:04:32.000 A bunch of guys.
00:04:33.000 You know what I mean?
00:04:33.000 Because, like, he can finish a sentence.
00:04:35.000 He's not stupid.
00:04:38.000 He's hilarious.
00:04:40.000 He has a steel trap memory.
00:04:42.000 But then he'll just say, you know, Obama's a subhuman mongrel.
00:04:46.000 Like, man, you don't need to talk like that.
00:04:48.000 Right.
00:04:48.000 Because there's people you will inspire to punch some...
00:04:52.000 Black guy in the parking lot for no reason.
00:04:55.000 Something bad could happen if you talk like that to the millions of people who love you.
00:05:01.000 Someone will get that message and they'll go south with it.
00:05:04.000 And when you're in that position, I don't believe in self-censorship.
00:05:08.000 But I think you should be careful of what you say.
00:05:12.000 I think there's some merit in having some control of yourself.
00:05:16.000 And so I don't completely understand the guy.
00:05:21.000 There's currency and outrageousness.
00:05:23.000 That's what it is.
00:05:23.000 And you cash in by being the guy that says things you can't, I can't believe what he just said.
00:05:28.000 And then you become the guy that goes places that says things that no one can believe that you're saying.
00:05:33.000 You know, I know that there's some people, that's how they get their next book deal or whatever.
00:05:38.000 For myself, I would never want to trade in that because my reality coming up through punk rock and all of that is very, very immediate in that I don't say anything about anybody.
00:05:51.000 Without expecting them to hear it, and with me turning the next corner, like going to my car in your parking lot, and having that person waiting for me at the car, saying, hey, you said this, and having them be able to hold it up on a tablet and say it.
00:06:07.000 I watch what I say, because in my mind, I answer.
00:06:11.000 I will have to answer to all of it.
00:06:14.000 And so I would never say something where someone would go, really?
00:06:17.000 Well, today's the day we're going to see who can kick who says ass.
00:06:21.000 Because, you know, men have this wrong idea that they can't be beat.
00:06:26.000 Are you kidding?
00:06:27.000 Anyone can get knocked on their ass.
00:06:29.000 You think you're tough?
00:06:30.000 There's always, you know, you're in the business of tough guys.
00:06:33.000 There's always a tougher guy around the corner.
00:06:34.000 There's always a tougher guy.
00:06:35.000 But more than that, it's like you don't – most of the conflict that you get in when you're talking shit about somebody, like someone like you or I can do an interview and talk shit about someone and then go public and you don't think twice about it.
00:06:45.000 But now it extends to social media and pretty much anybody could do it at any time and it just seems so easy to do.
00:06:52.000 But – I always try to think if that person was in front of me, how would I treat it?
00:06:57.000 And if I would say, fuck this guy, like when he's in front of me, then I have a real problem with this person.
00:07:03.000 It's a real bad person.
00:07:05.000 But I would always wait until I was in front of that person.
00:07:08.000 And I have waited.
00:07:09.000 I've bided my time with people I don't like and you get into a conversation.
00:07:13.000 And I have said, you know, very calmly, I think you're a ridiculous person.
00:07:18.000 I think you're a standing, walking, talking billboard for cowardice.
00:07:22.000 Sometimes people need to hear that, too, because sometimes people don't hear that.
00:07:25.000 They don't hear that from someone.
00:07:27.000 Yeah, I'm not trying to help the guy.
00:07:28.000 But you are.
00:07:30.000 But believe me.
00:07:30.000 But I waited.
00:07:32.000 Yeah, you waited until we were there.
00:07:34.000 The only people I'll rip on are politicians.
00:07:38.000 Like some member of Congress, I think, is just an inactive waste of food.
00:07:43.000 That'll say anywhere...
00:07:46.000 Hoping it'll bring him to me so I can say it to his or her face.
00:07:50.000 But for the most part, the way I was brought up in the world of music and the street is if you say something, that guy will be lining you up for a broken jaw.
00:08:03.000 So you better mean it.
00:08:05.000 But maybe just wait until you guys are in a room and see what you really want to say.
00:08:10.000 Because sniping from a windowless room from somewhere or being a keyboard activist, that doesn't mean much to me.
00:08:22.000 Yeah, I think Ted is the spokesperson for the right in that he's this contrast in so many ways.
00:08:31.000 He's this wild, and it used to be long hair.
00:08:33.000 He doesn't have long hair anymore, but long-haired guitar player from Michigan.
00:08:37.000 I mean, he's Ted Nugent.
00:08:38.000 He should be a drug user or something, right?
00:08:41.000 He should be on tour all the time, but he's the opposite.
00:08:44.000 He doesn't do any drugs, doesn't drink, and he's super right-wing, and he supports the Second Amendment and guns.
00:08:52.000 He's in this group, and he has some very strong beliefs that he really does hold in that group.
00:08:58.000 But then comes the outrageous stuff that he says, and you would get a mischaracterization of him because of some of the things he says.
00:09:05.000 But if you meet him in person, person to person, he's a great guy.
00:09:09.000 I talk to him all the time.
00:09:10.000 We text each other.
00:09:11.000 That's only been my experience with him.
00:09:13.000 He's a great guy.
00:09:13.000 I've had really cool conversations with him.
00:09:16.000 Yeah.
00:09:17.000 And I'm a hyper fan of the records.
00:09:19.000 I mean, it's gospel to me.
00:09:20.000 Those records are in my DNA. They're perfect.
00:09:23.000 Yeah, I'm with you in that I don't know what fuels those outrageous statements.
00:09:26.000 And I just don't get it.
00:09:27.000 You know, I'm not here to rip on him.
00:09:28.000 I just honestly do not – I can't reconcile the conversations I've had where he's super friendly and happy that you're a fan of the guy.
00:09:37.000 And then you – Watch some things he says on some stage somewhere and you're like, wow, that just bummed out my whole evening.
00:09:46.000 That's like, okay, that's you.
00:09:49.000 That's the First Amendment.
00:09:50.000 Go do your thing.
00:09:51.000 But like, wow, that's...
00:09:52.000 There's currency in that, though.
00:09:54.000 I really think that getting that charge out of it, saying that outrageous thing, it keeps the ball rolling in some way.
00:09:59.000 Boy, it's not a ball I'd want to roll, though.
00:10:01.000 I don't want to roll that ball either.
00:10:02.000 It just doesn't seem sustainable.
00:10:04.000 Yeah.
00:10:05.000 Speaking of sustainable, I hear you have a Showtime special coming out tomorrow night.
00:10:09.000 Wow, that was a great segue.
00:10:10.000 That was a fantastic segue.
00:10:13.000 I should be on radio, dude.
00:10:13.000 I should get a real radio show.
00:10:18.000 Yeah, Joe non-sequitur Rogan.
00:10:20.000 Rip it on Ted Nugent.
00:10:22.000 I don't know where we're going.
00:10:23.000 I like Ted.
00:10:24.000 Yeah, so do I. Showtime special tomorrow, Friday...
00:10:28.000 What's tomorrow?
00:10:29.000 The 11th?
00:10:29.000 The 10th.
00:10:30.000 The 10th, sorry.
00:10:32.000 Friday, August 10th, 10 p.m., East Coast, West Coast, Showtime.
00:10:36.000 It's called Keep Talking, Pal.
00:10:37.000 And so the...
00:10:38.000 There it is.
00:10:39.000 10 seconds on that.
00:10:40.000 They said, what are you going to name it?
00:10:42.000 And I said, keep talking, pal.
00:10:44.000 They go, what does that mean?
00:10:44.000 It's just how you talk yourself in and out of trouble.
00:10:48.000 Like, you're about to get punched out?
00:10:50.000 Like, keep talking, pal!
00:10:52.000 If you don't get a laugh, you're not getting out of this bar.
00:10:55.000 And that's kind of how I came into talking shows, was being, as a young guy, skinny, on Ritalin, Not a good fighter.
00:11:04.000 Not a good fighter at all.
00:11:05.000 You know, just not into it.
00:11:07.000 And, you know, the local bully, I've said something snarky or funny, and all of a sudden he's got me by the scruff of my shirt with a fist in my face.
00:11:15.000 And the only thing you can do is, like, imitate him so much that everyone else laughs and, like, he has to drop you because he's now, like, drop your collar, not your body, because you're now making him laugh.
00:11:26.000 And so when in doubt, keep talking, pal.
00:11:29.000 And the fact that I have a, quote, comedy special on Showtime is so unlikely from some guy from the minimum wage working world.
00:11:36.000 I don't believe it myself.
00:11:37.000 And so they said, what are you going to call it?
00:11:40.000 A lot of these people, they have a lot of confidence.
00:11:42.000 I'm going to call it like...
00:11:43.000 Destruction.
00:11:44.000 Me and my mighty Wang take to the States.
00:11:46.000 I don't have any of that.
00:11:48.000 So keep talking, pal, because I know I'm really not supposed to be there.
00:11:51.000 So...
00:11:52.000 How did you do your first show?
00:11:54.000 What made you do your first talking show?
00:11:56.000 Five dollars.
00:11:58.000 1983, a little venue on Hudson, right off about 10 paces north of Santa Monica Boulevard.
00:12:05.000 It's like a street that dead ends onto Santa Monica Boulevard.
00:12:07.000 There's an art space there called the Lhasa Club.
00:12:11.000 There was a local promoter in town, amazing guy, and he would get like 25 people on stage in one night, everyone gets five minutes.
00:12:19.000 And it'd be the singer of that band, the drummer of that band, that artist, that poet, like real artists who speak for a living, and then the guy with the funny tour journal, or the guy from the band that we all like, and he's going to be an idiot for five minutes.
00:12:32.000 And these shows were really fun because people are off stage all night long, like running off stage.
00:12:40.000 We're good to go.
00:12:53.000 I'd go with him because he had the band van.
00:12:55.000 He'd go into town.
00:12:56.000 I'd tag along.
00:12:57.000 So he'd read out of some notebook his apocalyptic rantings.
00:13:02.000 And one night the promoter said, you got a big mouth.
00:13:05.000 Next week, you.
00:13:06.000 Five minutes or like whatever.
00:13:07.000 Seven minutes, five bucks.
00:13:09.000 All I could think of was the five bucks.
00:13:12.000 We were starving, as any band was.
00:13:15.000 And so the next show, I got on stage at Lhasa, told a story about what had happened at band practice the day before, where a white supremacist in a car tried to run over our guitar player, because we had brown-skinned people at our band practice.
00:13:29.000 And so he yelled, he accused our guitar player of being a...
00:13:45.000 And so for us, that was this Tuesday in the life of Black Flag.
00:13:49.000 For an audience, they're like, you hear Joss hit the ground.
00:13:52.000 Then I read something I'd written.
00:13:53.000 I go, well, my five minutes are up or whatever it was, and I left the stage.
00:13:57.000 And it felt right.
00:13:58.000 I felt like a fish dropped into water for the first time.
00:14:01.000 Like, hey, I'm a fish.
00:14:02.000 Like, I didn't have a band, but I had no stage fright.
00:14:04.000 And just me and a microphone, it felt...
00:14:07.000 More natural than music ever felt, which was cool to do, but never felt natural.
00:14:13.000 Just felt like this thing is in me.
00:14:15.000 It's got to come out.
00:14:15.000 I'm serving a monster.
00:14:17.000 Where the talking show is like, yeah, this is me.
00:14:21.000 And after the show, people came up and said, what's your next show?
00:14:24.000 I said, well, I'm leaving on tour.
00:14:25.000 They go, no, no, when you're just talking.
00:14:27.000 I said, well, no, that's a one-off.
00:14:29.000 I got this $5 bill.
00:14:30.000 I'm out of here.
00:14:31.000 And so the promoter guy said, okay, you're very good at that.
00:14:36.000 You're a natural.
00:14:37.000 So how about this?
00:14:38.000 I promote all these different poets and performance artists.
00:14:41.000 I'll give you 20 bucks.
00:14:43.000 You'll do 20 minutes opening for this guy.
00:14:46.000 Okay.
00:14:46.000 So I did 20 minutes.
00:14:49.000 And then after a handful of those shows, those poet types were opening for me.
00:14:55.000 Because the Black Flag aspect kicks in.
00:14:57.000 Like, who's the dude from Black Flag?
00:14:58.000 People show up.
00:14:59.000 And I guess I was good enough.
00:15:01.000 And so those poets weren't that happy.
00:15:04.000 Like, I'm now opening for this guy?
00:15:06.000 Okay.
00:15:07.000 And that was 83 turning into 84. By 85, I had gone to Europe for some poetry festival, which I kind of blagged onto in Holland.
00:15:16.000 I had done a cross-country tour.
00:15:18.000 12 to 50 people a night's sleep on the promoter's couch.
00:15:21.000 Go buy Amtrak.
00:15:23.000 And started my little book company, 8384, self-published to this day.
00:15:29.000 That's awesome.
00:15:30.000 And it went from strength to strength.
00:15:31.000 And now it's a 14-month tour that takes in 20 countries, multiple nights in cities at nice theaters and Do you only use yourself for your publishing company, or do you publish anybody else's books?
00:15:44.000 We used to.
00:15:46.000 Many years ago, people I knew who I thought were great writers, I put them out.
00:15:51.000 We licensed Nick Cave's books from his publishers in Europe.
00:15:55.000 We licensed a few different titles.
00:15:57.000 We did photo books and a couple of novels, short story collections.
00:16:02.000 And it's very hard to have a book company.
00:16:06.000 It's hard to sell a book in the world unless it's like Stephen King or Danielle Steele.
00:16:10.000 It's mega, you know, at the...
00:16:12.000 At the cash register at the airport store.
00:16:15.000 If you're selling poetry books, different kinds of literature, you are nothing but uphill.
00:16:20.000 My books did okay.
00:16:21.000 They always do okay.
00:16:23.000 Everyone else's books is like trying to sell dead animal guts.
00:16:28.000 You know what I mean?
00:16:28.000 No one's that interested.
00:16:30.000 They'll look, but they don't want to take it home.
00:16:32.000 And so we stopped signing new writers, sold through the press runs, let the licenses run out.
00:16:40.000 Everyone got to keep their masters.
00:16:41.000 And then we just concentrated on me because I keep a whole staff busy with all the stuff I've got going.
00:16:48.000 And so we publish, but we publish me.
00:16:51.000 And I've done a bunch of books.
00:16:52.000 How many books have you written?
00:16:53.000 About 27. Holy shit!
00:16:55.000 That's so crazy.
00:16:56.000 I got nothing else going on.
00:16:58.000 All but two of them.
00:17:00.000 I wanted to do a photo book a few years ago.
00:17:03.000 And Heidi, who runs all my company, she's the smart one.
00:17:06.000 So I showed her the manuscript.
00:17:07.000 She goes, okay, the book is great, but let's not do it on our company because it's a lot of startup money for a photo book.
00:17:13.000 It's just a lot of setup cost.
00:17:15.000 Let's get you a literary agent and do it somewhere else.
00:17:18.000 And so it's a smart idea.
00:17:20.000 And so we got a literary agent.
00:17:22.000 And we did get a book deal with a very good Chicago.
00:17:25.000 It's a Chicago company.
00:17:28.000 Chicago Review?
00:17:29.000 I'm forgetting.
00:17:30.000 And they put out the photo book.
00:17:32.000 And that was a learning experience, like working with an editor.
00:17:35.000 Like, I'll go, well, here's the cover.
00:17:36.000 They go, well, we're going to have a meeting about that.
00:17:38.000 I'm like, you're having a meeting?
00:17:40.000 It's my book.
00:17:40.000 It's my book cover.
00:17:41.000 So I'm used to owning my own machine.
00:17:44.000 But when you work with other people's money, everyone has a big opinion.
00:17:48.000 So that book came out and continues to do very well.
00:17:52.000 And many years ago, I did a kind of a best of, if I have any best of material, I did a best of for Random House many, many years ago that you still see.
00:18:03.000 It's in print.
00:18:04.000 And that's a lot of people's first book of mine because it's in stores.
00:18:08.000 We pulled my company's books out of circulation because of Amazon because they can actually sell it cheaper than we can because they don't mind making five cents on a book because they're selling 80 billion books a second.
00:18:21.000 So we pulled ourselves out of distribution and now it's very much the website and it live shows.
00:18:27.000 And we have less returns.
00:18:28.000 We don't get a pallet of damaged books coming back that were, you know, abused in some bookstore in a shopping mall in the Midwest, like heavily thumbed but never taken home.
00:18:37.000 So you can't buy your books off Amazon unless it's a third-party seller?
00:18:41.000 Right.
00:18:42.000 So you just sell them on your own?
00:18:44.000 Yep.
00:18:44.000 And you might not sell as many, but you don't get 1,100 returns.
00:18:50.000 You get 1,100 returns?
00:18:52.000 Well, you know what I mean?
00:18:53.000 Is it really that bad?
00:18:53.000 Well, when we were selling everyone else's books, too, you'd get a palette of books that looked like a dog chewed them.
00:19:00.000 Or like remainder stickers.
00:19:01.000 It is what it is.
00:19:03.000 And so I am extraordinarily small of fame.
00:19:07.000 I sell lots of books.
00:19:10.000 They do great as e-books as well.
00:19:13.000 In fact, that's kind of overtaking.
00:19:15.000 I'm not an e-book guy.
00:19:16.000 I like to take a marker and mark books up.
00:19:18.000 And so I buy paper ones.
00:19:20.000 But apparently, the real world likes to read on their tablet.
00:19:23.000 And so all my books are on that platform, thanks to Heidi.
00:19:28.000 And apparently they sell very well.
00:19:30.000 I don't keep track.
00:19:31.000 I just write them.
00:19:32.000 I don't count them.
00:19:33.000 If you had to suggest to somebody a good book of yours to start with, what would you say to start with?
00:19:37.000 If I was going to read your books, what should I start with?
00:19:39.000 Oh, I would tell you to read Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy.
00:19:43.000 I would just tell you to read a real writer.
00:19:46.000 Get in the van, my tour journals from Black Flag.
00:19:51.000 People like that book.
00:19:52.000 It's in a bunch of different languages.
00:19:55.000 It's just a cool, insane read of living this very feral life, fighting women and music and relative poverty.
00:20:05.000 So that's a fun one to start.
00:20:09.000 I like the travel books I've been writing the last few years.
00:20:13.000 I travel all over the world.
00:20:16.000 And so I write these books from these places, like from a ship in Antarctica, from a tent in the deserts of Timbuktu.
00:20:25.000 And those travel books I like quite a bit.
00:20:29.000 A dull roar.
00:20:30.000 They always have an A at the beginning.
00:20:34.000 A dull roar.
00:20:37.000 I'll have to come up with the rest of the names.
00:20:39.000 Your manic dedication to work is very inspiring.
00:20:42.000 It makes me feel like I need to work more.
00:20:44.000 When you're writing all the time and doing all these things, you're one of those guys.
00:20:48.000 It feels like you're always with your foot on the gas.
00:20:51.000 Yeah, I'm kind of furious for work.
00:21:21.000 My phone doesn't ring.
00:21:22.000 My old best friend since I was 12, Ian McKay of the band Fugazi, he and I talk every Sunday if possible.
00:21:30.000 But past that, my phone usually doesn't ring unless it's an interview or Heidi going, hey, you're late, get over there.
00:21:36.000 Is that good?
00:21:37.000 It is what it is.
00:21:39.000 Does it work for you?
00:21:41.000 It's all I know.
00:21:42.000 I've been that way since I was five.
00:21:44.000 But the no friends part?
00:21:46.000 Well, I'm not looking for enemies.
00:21:47.000 I'm not looking for a fight.
00:21:49.000 Of course.
00:21:49.000 I just don't want to come over on the weekend for dinner.
00:21:53.000 No?
00:21:54.000 No.
00:21:56.000 You ever have a good time at dinner with somebody?
00:21:58.000 I'm just uncomfortable that I'll say the wrong thing and I just act.
00:22:03.000 I look at the table full of people and go, act like them.
00:22:06.000 You should be friends with comics because you can't say the wrong thing because no one cares.
00:22:10.000 Yeah, but then they'll call and say, hey, come out with us.
00:22:14.000 We're going.
00:22:15.000 Then you have to go.
00:22:16.000 You don't have to go.
00:22:18.000 You just say, fuck that.
00:22:20.000 I'm not going.
00:22:21.000 I'd be a deadbeat friend.
00:22:23.000 That's fine.
00:22:23.000 I never want to go with anyone to do anything.
00:22:25.000 You don't have to.
00:22:27.000 But we'll look at all the phone calls I'm saving.
00:22:29.000 It sounds like you're managing expectations versus...
00:22:32.000 It doesn't sound like you don't like friends.
00:22:35.000 It's just you don't want expectations.
00:22:40.000 It's going to get in the way.
00:22:41.000 Also, I'm just kind of moody in that, yeah, we're going to go out and do this thing.
00:22:46.000 And then I don't want to see anyone do anything until 2028. And I don't want to cancel.
00:22:56.000 Besides hanging out with you, my big social thing is many, many years ago, 2003, I did a song with William Shatner, Bill Shatner, on his album, and we became pals.
00:23:12.000 Henry, come by the house for Monday Night Football.
00:23:16.000 And he invited me to the house for Monday Night Football.
00:23:20.000 He lives a few traffic lights from me.
00:23:23.000 And I'm walking up the stairs to the living room where the big TV is.
00:23:28.000 And I heard all this laughter and voices and I froze.
00:23:32.000 And I was right at the threshold of the door and I said, turn back, turn back, turn back.
00:23:37.000 I'm turning back.
00:23:39.000 Henry!
00:23:41.000 And he saw me.
00:23:42.000 And I'm like, hey, Bill!
00:23:45.000 And I walked in and met all his really cool friends.
00:23:49.000 And he, at least for me, Bill is one of the nicest people I've ever met in my life.
00:23:57.000 And it's one of the oddest Friendships I have in that I've been going to Bill Shatner's house every year since 2003. So what's that?
00:24:10.000 Fifteen?
00:24:10.000 Fifteen years.
00:24:11.000 Right.
00:24:12.000 And I will be there this year.
00:24:14.000 I'm on his next record.
00:24:17.000 He's doing another record?
00:24:18.000 Oh yeah!
00:24:19.000 I did the vocal last year.
00:24:21.000 Rock it, man!
00:24:24.000 It'll be fun.
00:24:25.000 It's for him to announce it.
00:24:27.000 But every great once in a while, his assistant will contact me.
00:24:31.000 Hey, Bill really wants to see you.
00:24:34.000 How about next...
00:24:35.000 Are you free for next Wednesday?
00:24:37.000 Go meet him and the wife in the valley and go eat?
00:24:40.000 I'm like, yeah!
00:24:41.000 And it's great to see him and his amazing wife.
00:24:45.000 And I truly value that friendship.
00:24:48.000 I mean, I look forward to seeing him.
00:24:50.000 I really enjoy hearing what he's up to because he was doing like five things.
00:24:55.000 And it's become this thing where I really look forward to football season.
00:25:01.000 I don't know much about football.
00:25:02.000 I have no idea what a halfback does.
00:25:04.000 They run.
00:25:05.000 I think they run.
00:25:06.000 I don't know.
00:25:06.000 I never knew.
00:25:08.000 But I like going there.
00:25:10.000 And it's always the same group of people, people he's known for like 500 years, and they're super nice.
00:25:15.000 And I've kind of sort of known them for like 15 years.
00:25:19.000 And it's so odd, because I have nothing else like that, really.
00:25:25.000 In my life.
00:25:27.000 I'm just a weirdo.
00:25:29.000 Just William Shackner.
00:25:30.000 Yeah!
00:25:31.000 It's weird!
00:25:33.000 Sounds awesome.
00:25:34.000 The other thing I would do once a year, and sadly it ended, but for a few years, I would go to Gail Zappa's birthday party on January 1st.
00:25:43.000 Because I would play a lot of her husband's music on my radio show, Frank Zappa.
00:25:47.000 And one time someone in the family wrote me and said, Hey, thanks for playing Dad on the show.
00:25:52.000 I'm like, are you kidding?
00:25:53.000 I love those records.
00:25:56.000 And Gail, the mom, the wife, wrote and said, Hey, thank you.
00:26:00.000 And, you know, we know who you are here and we like you.
00:26:03.000 I have a birthday party every January 1st.
00:26:06.000 Why don't you come up to the house this year or next year?
00:26:10.000 And I did.
00:26:11.000 And that was like three or four years in a row I did that until Gail passed away.
00:26:16.000 And, you know, you get there or whatever it is, like two in the afternoon.
00:26:21.000 Two hours before, I'm genuinely nervous to go be in a room full of extraordinarily nice people with fantastically good food.
00:26:32.000 And everyone was always so nice to me.
00:26:34.000 And it's like a who's who.
00:26:36.000 You walk in and you're like, wow.
00:26:38.000 It's just all these people you recognize.
00:26:39.000 I'm not here to name drop, but some of the tables I sat at at that thing, I'm like, really?
00:26:44.000 Am I really talking to, like, really?
00:26:48.000 It's fantastic.
00:26:49.000 And she was always so nice to me.
00:26:51.000 And last time I was up there, one of my books is in the living room.
00:26:55.000 I'm like, wow!
00:26:56.000 And when she passed away, I wrote one of the family members.
00:27:00.000 I said, I am so sorry.
00:27:01.000 Thank you for the hospitality.
00:27:04.000 Your mom was so great to me.
00:27:06.000 And I'm kind of like the rescue dog.
00:27:07.000 I'm used to being outside.
00:27:09.000 So I don't...
00:27:10.000 Come inside very often.
00:27:12.000 And I went to that birthday party because just the friendliness of that, as socially nerve-wracking as those things are for me, I had such respect for that extension of kindness.
00:27:27.000 I cannot disrespect it by not going.
00:27:30.000 I wouldn't dare.
00:27:31.000 The samurai in me says, you must be respectful, even if it makes you nauseous with social anxiety, because I just don't know what to do.
00:27:42.000 I can't say no, because it's such a nice thing to do for someone.
00:27:48.000 She must not really know how I am, otherwise she never would have invited me.
00:27:52.000 So, but things like that, out of sheer politeness and respect for someone being friendly to me, I'm kind of a pushover just because I'm like, wow, that was so nice.
00:28:05.000 I must salute that.
00:28:07.000 I think it's so good that you're open about your social anxiety and then about how you feel like being around all these people because a lot of people on the outside they see someone like you you know black flag All your spoken word things,
00:28:24.000 your books, your fucking...
00:28:26.000 I mean, I always go back to that The Liar song.
00:28:30.000 Your fucking neck was like the size of my waist and you're screaming and you're painted red and like you're this crazy intimidating guy in a lot of ways so to hear you talk about Social anxiety and how weird you feel and I think we all can We all feel that.
00:28:46.000 I always feel like that.
00:28:48.000 I mean, it doesn't matter.
00:28:49.000 I think no matter how famous you get, if you're paying attention, you're going to have an imposter syndrome.
00:28:55.000 You're always going to feel like you don't belong there, if you're actually paying attention.
00:28:58.000 And if you don't, you're probably delusional in some sort of a way.
00:29:03.000 I wonder about the people who don't.
00:29:04.000 I get to do cool stuff.
00:29:08.000 Before I go into that, on your point, it's easy for me to be in front of people.
00:29:15.000 That's a very different thing than being with people.
00:29:18.000 I can be the party, but going to the party is difficult.
00:29:22.000 Put me in front of like five people, 5,000 people, stage fright.
00:29:27.000 No, I can't wait to be out there.
00:29:28.000 You're a performer type.
00:29:30.000 Like, you'd love that audience if they showed up.
00:29:32.000 Like, are you kidding?
00:29:33.000 I'm a dog with a wagging tail.
00:29:35.000 I want to get out there and get it going.
00:29:37.000 I can't wait.
00:29:37.000 I wait the whole day on tour to get out there.
00:29:39.000 The whole day is about 8 o'clock, you know, stage time.
00:29:44.000 Being amongst people, like going to a gallery event, I go see a Shepard Fairey thing or something, and people are super nice to me, and I'm always polite back, but I'm a little nervy.
00:29:55.000 But if they say, can you get up and speak for five minutes?
00:29:58.000 Oh, yeah, I got this.
00:30:00.000 That's so strange.
00:30:01.000 Well, it is strange, but it's also a way to avoid being with people, be in front of them.
00:30:07.000 It's a way to be in the room with people, just be the center of attention.
00:30:11.000 So maybe that's coming from some kind of neediness or some deprivation, what I didn't get as a kid.
00:30:19.000 But you make a great point about that.
00:30:22.000 When you really think, well, this is where I belong...
00:30:26.000 I think you lose all the fun of it.
00:30:29.000 Yeah.
00:30:29.000 And you turn into kind of a jerk.
00:30:32.000 So every 500 years, I go to one of those premieres.
00:30:35.000 I get invited.
00:30:36.000 And you're in a room full of tons of really good food, and none of those people eat.
00:30:42.000 So I just go in there and come out nine pounds heavier, a bunch of shrimp.
00:30:47.000 I just eat.
00:30:48.000 But I was at a big Hollywood premiere, big movie years ago, and it's like that one, that one, that one, that one, and they're all like, ah, it is their lives.
00:30:58.000 And I'm with a buddy of mine.
00:31:00.000 We blagged in there and we're like, what are we doing here?
00:31:02.000 This is so cool because we know we shouldn't be here.
00:31:05.000 And after shaking Ike Turner's hand, 10 minutes later, I'm back in my own kitchen going, that was so weird.
00:31:14.000 Like, what a surreal evening.
00:31:18.000 And because my friend and I were standing next to each other, and he said, that looks like Ike Turner.
00:31:22.000 I go, no, man, that is Ike Turner.
00:31:24.000 He looked like a human barracuda.
00:31:26.000 He's like, terrifying.
00:31:27.000 I said, let's go meet him.
00:31:28.000 I'm like, come on!
00:31:29.000 Like, we bought a ticket.
00:31:30.000 We're at the dance.
00:31:31.000 Let's go talk to this guy.
00:31:32.000 He's like, no, no, no, no.
00:31:33.000 I just walked right over there.
00:31:34.000 I said, you invented rock and roll, Rocket 88. And he went, yes, I did.
00:31:38.000 He shook my hand.
00:31:39.000 Wow.
00:31:39.000 And I said, he first ever distorted guitar on tape, which is kind of true.
00:31:43.000 And he went, that's right.
00:31:44.000 And I fluffed him up.
00:31:45.000 And he was all happy to meet me.
00:31:48.000 And I said, hey, and here's my friend.
00:31:49.000 And I brought my friend over and we shook his hand and kind of stood with him for a minute and went, okay.
00:31:55.000 So it's probably not going to get any better for us.
00:31:57.000 So let's get out of here!
00:31:59.000 And so we ate a few more handfuls of mini burritos and we bailed.
00:32:05.000 But it was one of those nights where we weren't supposed to be in there.
00:32:08.000 And if I ever lose that, then just never talk to me again because my head would have disappeared.
00:32:16.000 Well, that anxiety and that insecurity is a big part of the fuel that keeps everything moving.
00:32:21.000 Super fuel for me.
00:32:22.000 And keeps you analyzing yourself.
00:32:24.000 Yeah.
00:32:24.000 And anger.
00:32:25.000 I like fighting, and I'm not fighting like in a ring.
00:32:31.000 For me, a lot of things are confrontation.
00:32:34.000 Like, tour is, what, you think I can't do 47 shows in 48 days?
00:32:39.000 No, actually, my next tour is 47 in 47. I have a day off and I have two shows a few days later in one day.
00:32:46.000 So, you think I can't?
00:32:47.000 Well then book 20 more.
00:32:49.000 Book 200 more in the winter and just give me a llama and a knife and I'll make every gig.
00:32:56.000 Watch this!
00:32:57.000 And that's so much of what...
00:33:00.000 It fuels me.
00:33:02.000 The challenge.
00:33:03.000 Yeah.
00:33:03.000 And I come up with these huge ideas for books.
00:33:06.000 That's going to take me five years to write it.
00:33:08.000 And it did.
00:33:09.000 And I just finished it.
00:33:10.000 It's going to the proofreader soon.
00:33:12.000 This epic project.
00:33:13.000 What is it?
00:33:14.000 It's a series of music books.
00:33:16.000 It's 407,000 words.
00:33:18.000 What?
00:33:19.000 Yeah.
00:33:19.000 It's a bit much.
00:33:21.000 But so am I. How many pages is that?
00:33:25.000 I don't know.
00:33:25.000 It's a lot.
00:33:26.000 Thankfully, it's mostly on a hard drive so we don't have to deforest some park.
00:33:32.000 But it was an idea I had.
00:33:33.000 I said, okay, this is going to take a lot of years to execute this idea.
00:33:36.000 And so watch me work seven days a week on this thing.
00:33:39.000 Watch me stay up until the next day working on this thing.
00:33:44.000 And a lot of what fuels me, that's what gets me into auditions.
00:33:48.000 Like, I think, you know, like, hey, go audition for this TV show.
00:33:52.000 I'm not an actor.
00:33:53.000 So am I going?
00:33:54.000 Yeah, I'm going.
00:33:55.000 And I sit in that hallway like 20 years older than all these other people.
00:33:58.000 And they got the good gym bodies on, fantastic hair, chiseled bodies, and they all know each other.
00:34:04.000 I'm like this weird old man going for the same part.
00:34:07.000 The only guy not dipped in cologne.
00:34:09.000 I'm like, oh, man.
00:34:11.000 And I go in there and I bomb, of course.
00:34:13.000 I get my parking pass validated and listen to Slayer on the way home.
00:34:19.000 Take the lump out of my throat.
00:34:21.000 How often do you do that?
00:34:21.000 How often are you auditioning for things?
00:34:22.000 Depends if I'm in town and there's interesting things happening.
00:34:27.000 More and more.
00:34:30.000 I don't know what's happening, but I take more meetings and just get more offers.
00:34:33.000 Like, hey, we like you for this, yes or no?
00:34:35.000 Cool.
00:34:35.000 Yes.
00:34:36.000 But there's auditions I do for voiceover, for like animated or like car ads or what have you.
00:34:43.000 And acting.
00:34:44.000 I audition for all kinds of things.
00:34:47.000 And every great once in a while, the audition will get work.
00:34:52.000 But mainly, I just get offers.
00:34:54.000 We like you for this.
00:34:55.000 It starts in October.
00:34:57.000 I'm in.
00:34:58.000 And that happens fairly often now.
00:35:00.000 But I get in those lines at any major studio you want to imagine.
00:35:05.000 Or I go in for the meeting with a casting person.
00:35:09.000 They kind of look you over.
00:35:10.000 But I do those raw auditions where you leave and you see like five headshots on a desk.
00:35:15.000 It is what it is.
00:35:16.000 And you get literally...
00:35:18.000 You're out of there in about 35 seconds.
00:35:19.000 You walk in...
00:35:21.000 You're Henry.
00:35:23.000 Are you ready?
00:35:26.000 Sure.
00:35:26.000 You have any questions?
00:35:27.000 No.
00:35:28.000 Stand on this piece of tape.
00:35:30.000 She'll be reading with you.
00:35:32.000 Thank you very much for coming in.
00:35:36.000 And you leave the trailer.
00:35:38.000 And you get back on the 101 and go home.
00:35:42.000 And you never hear from them again.
00:35:44.000 Often.
00:35:45.000 For me?
00:35:46.000 Most of the time.
00:35:48.000 Out of 100 of those, 98 times.
00:35:50.000 I think that's for everybody.
00:35:52.000 Oh, I'm not putting it down.
00:35:53.000 I'm just saying you asked about auditions.
00:35:55.000 Hell yeah, I go in there.
00:35:56.000 I think that's one of the things that makes actors so fucking weird.
00:36:00.000 It's not just that they need attention in the first place.
00:36:03.000 They get told no a lot.
00:36:04.000 They get told no a lot.
00:36:05.000 Rejection sucks.
00:36:06.000 It sucks and they're already insecure in the first place and then they sort of try to model their behavior based on what they think the casting agents and the producers want to hear.
00:36:16.000 And they change and they develop this style of communicating that's very actory.
00:36:20.000 It's a weird way to make your living.
00:36:22.000 I mean, I've never relied on acting as my source income.
00:36:25.000 In 1984, when I was 23, I had a thing that has been serving me up to sitting here with you now.
00:36:32.000 I was very young and 23 years of age, a young idiot, and I looked all around me and all my peers were super talented.
00:36:39.000 Who are my peers?
00:36:40.000 Minor Threat, Bad Brains, Husker Du, The Meat Puppets, The Dead Kennedys.
00:36:44.000 I'm just surrounded by really talented people who are brilliant, great songwriters.
00:36:48.000 And between tours, many of them are waiting tables, living with mom, living on couches, sleeping at band practice with a kick drum, a pillow as their pillow, just like roughing it.
00:37:00.000 And I reckon that I'm less talented than all of them.
00:37:04.000 And if they're waiters between tours, the only reason I'm not is Black Flag never stops touring.
00:37:08.000 The ball never hit the ground because we'd starve.
00:37:12.000 And so I better get plans B, C, D, E, F, and G ready because music's not going to sustain me.
00:37:18.000 Ironically, it went very well for me.
00:37:20.000 And so I was doing the writing.
00:37:21.000 So I said, I'm going to really get better at writing.
00:37:24.000 I'm going to really bear down on this.
00:37:26.000 The talking shows, I'm getting 35 people a night.
00:37:28.000 I'm going to get 50 people a night.
00:37:30.000 And then voiceover people started coming like, hey, can you do a voiceover?
00:37:34.000 I got a voice.
00:37:35.000 What do you want me to put?
00:37:36.000 I better learn to say yes to stuff.
00:37:38.000 And by the mid-80s, hey, you want to be in a movie?
00:37:41.000 Yeah!
00:37:42.000 What do I have to lose except calories from starving?
00:37:47.000 And so it was fear of not eating and knowing I better have a plan.
00:37:53.000 And so I started developing that in the 80s and 90s.
00:37:55.000 And from that came...
00:37:58.000 When I'm done with this, I'm going to go immediately into this documentary, and then I'm finishing this radio show, and then I'm going off to do this film, and then I'm going on tour, and then I'm coming back and finishing this book.
00:38:07.000 And it turned into this, like, juggling all these things.
00:38:10.000 So I never had to be a full-time actor.
00:38:12.000 Like, that's how I pay the rent.
00:38:14.000 That would be terrifying.
00:38:15.000 Right up there with being a professional comedian.
00:38:17.000 Like, I don't know how someone acts for a living without being really good or out of their minds with anxiety.
00:38:24.000 But being a professional comedian...
00:38:26.000 At least you write your own stuff, so you're kind of in control of that.
00:38:29.000 What a rough world you're in.
00:38:32.000 It doesn't seem that rough.
00:38:33.000 And then you don't have to pay people.
00:38:35.000 You don't have to pay roadies, you don't have a drummer that has to show up.
00:38:39.000 Also, you don't have the bass player who you've got to get along with.
00:38:42.000 There's so many variables with a band that comedians don't have.
00:38:46.000 We always look at you guys and go, wow, I don't know how the fuck you guys do it.
00:38:49.000 Because you might do the same size venues that we do, but you're splitting the money with all these fucking people.
00:38:57.000 And then a lot of times today, the record company gets a piece.
00:39:01.000 They get a piece of everything, right?
00:39:03.000 They get a piece of your merchandise.
00:39:04.000 Yeah, you see bands play really big places, and it's amazing how much money they don't make.
00:39:09.000 Yeah.
00:39:10.000 Where each guy in the band gets, you're like, really?
00:39:12.000 Yeah.
00:39:13.000 Huh.
00:39:14.000 And then you see, you know, someone, like a small comedian playing like a 150-seater for two nights, two sets a night.
00:39:23.000 You know, the laugh, whatever, in the Midwest.
00:39:27.000 And you're like, wow, what?
00:39:29.000 Wow, that's a pretty good weekend!
00:39:31.000 Because he's just taking it home in his suitcase.
00:39:33.000 Yeah, you can get by.
00:39:34.000 You can get by.
00:39:35.000 Yeah, and you can work.
00:39:37.000 You can work everywhere.
00:39:38.000 You know, for a band, I think the venues are more limited.
00:39:43.000 Places you go are more limited.
00:39:44.000 And I think that's interesting that it was almost like a desperation to not have to work a job as a waiter that kept you just hustling and figuring out other ways.
00:39:55.000 I just knew that the straight world, because I'd been in it, I come from it, you know, minimum wage work and everything, and I knew I couldn't survive in it.
00:40:04.000 As a young adult, you start to figure out who you are.
00:40:07.000 And I go, okay, I'm not an artist, but I'm an artist type.
00:40:10.000 I'm nuts.
00:40:11.000 You can't put me in a straight job.
00:40:13.000 I can pass for normal just because I can task it.
00:40:16.000 I can totally do it.
00:40:17.000 You can put me in a Ralph's, a Kroger's, a Starbucks.
00:40:20.000 I will totally get in there and hit the work and clean it all and serve it up with a smile.
00:40:26.000 But I'll be going crazy inside.
00:40:28.000 I will be punching the wall.
00:40:30.000 I think everybody in those places is going crazy inside.
00:40:32.000 I don't know.
00:40:33.000 But I can't sustain in that.
00:40:36.000 And I haven't had to for many years.
00:40:38.000 I've been lucky.
00:40:39.000 I've been in the world of lunatics since 1981, being a crazy person out with other crazy people.
00:40:45.000 And when I look at...
00:40:47.000 A straight job.
00:40:48.000 I'm like, man, I don't think at this point I could hack it.
00:40:51.000 Not because I'm spoiled, just because I've never had to tether my adult mind to that.
00:40:58.000 I work seven days a week, but on Henry stuff.
00:41:02.000 It's me.
00:41:03.000 It's a different thing.
00:41:04.000 It's a different thing.
00:41:05.000 Yeah, you enjoy that work.
00:41:07.000 And it's way over 60 hours a week.
00:41:10.000 I mean, I do two shifts usually, two eight to ten hour shifts, depending on the workload.
00:41:15.000 Well, I can't...
00:41:16.000 Do four hours of sleep a night.
00:41:18.000 How much do you sleep?
00:41:18.000 I time my sleep.
00:41:19.000 I hit the stopwatch on the phone before I go to bed.
00:41:22.000 Just as clock sleep patterns.
00:41:24.000 I did about six point something hours of sleep last night.
00:41:27.000 That's good.
00:41:27.000 It's good.
00:41:28.000 I feel great today.
00:41:29.000 I barely ate and I got in a good workout and all last night I did a lot of pull-ups.
00:41:35.000 I played 15 7-inch records, and between flipping them over, I got a beam in my living room.
00:41:41.000 It's a beam coming out of the ceiling that supports me.
00:41:44.000 And I just run over there and just do a bunch of pull-ups and then go change the record.
00:41:48.000 So you want more music?
00:41:50.000 You have to pay in pain.
00:41:51.000 And you're doing all this by yourself, all alone.
00:41:53.000 Yeah, but by bedtime, you are hurting and ready to sleep.
00:41:58.000 So I got good sleep last night.
00:42:00.000 So you mix the workout in with your enjoyment of music.
00:42:03.000 You just space it in between the songs.
00:42:04.000 Yeah, last night was pulling.
00:42:06.000 Tonight at the turntable, I'll be listening to more records.
00:42:08.000 I'll just do sets of push-ups next to the turntable.
00:42:12.000 That's actually a smart move, because that's probably a good interval of rest.
00:42:17.000 Get a good, hard workout in, and then you listen to a four-minute song.
00:42:20.000 Yeah, but I do it all night.
00:42:22.000 And it's just, I'm not doing 50 sets, 50 rep sets.
00:42:26.000 I'm doing like 15 to 25, but I'm doing them for quite a while.
00:42:29.000 By the time I go to bed, it's Advil time.
00:42:32.000 I'm like, ow, I'm too old for this.
00:42:34.000 But I work on something every day on tour.
00:42:40.000 I don't take vacations.
00:42:41.000 I'm not trying to brag.
00:42:43.000 I just can't handle not doing it, whatever the thing is.
00:42:49.000 Well, you found an interesting way to live life.
00:42:52.000 I don't know anybody like you, but it's working for you.
00:42:54.000 Yeah.
00:42:55.000 It works on all levels.
00:42:56.000 I can sustain.
00:42:57.000 I pay my bills.
00:42:59.000 I'm not bored.
00:43:00.000 And I get, for the most part, to call my own shots.
00:43:03.000 And you seem happy.
00:43:04.000 Happy when I'm working.
00:43:05.000 Yeah.
00:43:06.000 Happy with the tasks.
00:43:08.000 Yeah.
00:43:08.000 I value work.
00:43:10.000 I'm an achievement junkie.
00:43:12.000 Like, if I'm depressed, I just pick something to do, like finish a radio show, edit this thing, transcribe this chapter from a notebook.
00:43:21.000 And after I'm done, I'm like, okay, that's the antidepressant was actually doing something, which is not the worst.
00:43:28.000 It's not booze.
00:43:29.000 It's not a pill.
00:43:31.000 It's the treadmill.
00:43:33.000 Or it's the, oh, that damn thing, I gotta get it written.
00:43:36.000 Well, shut up and write it.
00:43:37.000 When I'm done, it's like an endorphin thing where I'm great for another day.
00:43:42.000 There was an article written about happiness, and that was one of the things that they said that one of the things that seems to sustain people's happiness or facilitate happiness is accomplishing tasks.
00:43:52.000 Setting goals for yourself, accomplishing those goals, and getting this sense of completion, that you've actually done the work and you did it and you disciplined yourself and got through it, and that this is one of the major keys to happiness for a lot of people.
00:44:04.000 Works for me.
00:44:04.000 Totally works for me.
00:44:05.000 Me as well.
00:44:06.000 I've tried everything but drugs, because I've been battling with depression since I was a little kid.
00:44:11.000 And I just knew it.
00:44:12.000 I'm like, what is this?
00:44:13.000 It's just awful.
00:44:14.000 And, you know, later I found out it was depression.
00:44:16.000 And I don't want to do drugs.
00:44:18.000 I just don't want it.
00:44:20.000 My brain plus drugs.
00:44:21.000 It's like someone else's idea.
00:44:23.000 It terrifies me.
00:44:24.000 So I had to figure out, what do you do?
00:44:26.000 And so that's where the gym, you know, working out really is a big help.
00:44:30.000 Writing.
00:44:31.000 But listening to music, that is like kind of my drug.
00:44:36.000 You know, I just put the records on and like three songs in, you're like, oh, there's that feeling.
00:44:41.000 Buoyancy neutral.
00:44:42.000 It's like floating in the tank or when you're scuba diving, you get your air just right and you're floating.
00:44:47.000 That's how I feel when I have the music on.
00:44:49.000 I'm like, ah, this is as good as it gets.
00:44:51.000 And that's why I always have, you know, I'm always looking at new records, going to the record store.
00:44:56.000 There's more happiness coming in.
00:44:58.000 Does the exercise work better or the same as work, like for managing depression?
00:45:05.000 The workout is maintenance.
00:45:07.000 It doesn't achieve much, but I achieve the workout.
00:45:10.000 But do you feel like the endorphin release, does that help you?
00:45:14.000 Yes.
00:45:15.000 Yeah, it does.
00:45:16.000 And as the Buddhists say, I made merit.
00:45:19.000 I went in there and did my time on the treadmill.
00:45:23.000 I don't want to be there.
00:45:26.000 It's like the last 15 minutes.
00:45:28.000 I'd rather be somewhere else.
00:45:30.000 It's cool.
00:45:31.000 You'll be fine.
00:45:32.000 Sit down.
00:45:33.000 Do your work.
00:45:33.000 That's why before the podcast I was suggesting hot yogurt to you.
00:45:36.000 And you seem to be very stiff lately.
00:45:38.000 You've got some injuries and some things that are bothering me.
00:45:41.000 It's all coming back.
00:45:42.000 Dude, I'm telling you, that'll fix a lot of that shit.
00:45:45.000 It'll really change.
00:45:46.000 You have a great workout diversity.
00:45:49.000 When you and I were talking before, We're at your place and you said some mornings you feel like training this way and you'll go to that gym or you'll train like judo or whatever and then the next day it's going to be kettlebells.
00:46:02.000 You really like to mix it up.
00:46:03.000 I think it's good for a body to always be guessing what's coming next.
00:46:07.000 I think that's important.
00:46:08.000 I also...
00:46:09.000 There's some things that I really have to do.
00:46:11.000 I think I need at least one day of hard cardio a week.
00:46:15.000 And I think I need at least one day of hard lifting weights a week.
00:46:18.000 But I also think I need at least one day of yoga a week.
00:46:21.000 At least.
00:46:22.000 Yoga is...
00:46:22.000 To me, it's one of the most important things that I do because for that 90 minutes, I can't go anywhere.
00:46:27.000 My phone's not in the room with me.
00:46:29.000 It's just me and a jug of water and the yoga mat and the class and a bunch of old ladies that are kicking my ass.
00:46:36.000 These old ladies are fucking tough, man.
00:46:38.000 This is this old lady.
00:46:39.000 She goes to this workout class with me.
00:46:41.000 I see her there all the time.
00:46:42.000 She's got to be close to 70. She doesn't even bring water.
00:46:46.000 She just toughs it out.
00:46:47.000 She's there for 90 minutes sweating and grunting through the postures.
00:46:50.000 And you're doing an hour and a half class, those last 20 minutes in 104 degrees.
00:46:57.000 It's so hard to get through.
00:46:59.000 But when you get through, you just feel better.
00:47:03.000 While I'm in it, I can't wait to do it again.
00:47:06.000 While I'm struggling, and I was like, God, I need to do more than this.
00:47:09.000 I need to do this more often.
00:47:10.000 I can't wait to do this again.
00:47:12.000 I always feel that.
00:47:13.000 And it just lengthens everything.
00:47:15.000 All the backwards.
00:47:16.000 Things and the leg things, the hamstring things, just stretches everything out, lengthens it, and all the tension, it just straightens it out and loosens it up.
00:47:25.000 And I just feel like for a guy like you or I, who does a lot of a lot of like, especially like used to a lot of heavy lifting, you were saying a lot of deadlifts and squats.
00:47:34.000 This is the antidote for all that stuff.
00:47:36.000 It's decompression and for your body maintenance.
00:47:38.000 It's just phenomenal.
00:47:40.000 Probably lets loose the lactic acid out of your muscle tissue.
00:47:42.000 Oh, yeah.
00:47:43.000 Yeah, you know, here's what I've observed.
00:47:45.000 You know, I live in Los Angeles, so there's a lot of yoga people.
00:47:48.000 Yeah.
00:47:49.000 But, you know, I know them because they have a mat.
00:47:51.000 But you can also see how they walk, how they sit.
00:47:55.000 They're so in their body, and there is a grace to, I'm not trying to put anyone in the pejorative, but a yoga person, where not only are they limber, they're just really okay Their body articulation,
00:48:13.000 you're like, okay, I don't have that.
00:48:16.000 I'm a herky-jerky, uncoordinated person, but there's a hum coming from that person's overall body.
00:48:24.000 It's a beautiful machine, the way they articulate themselves and the way they sit.
00:48:28.000 It's a very unusual balance.
00:48:30.000 But you can tell someone who doesn't.
00:48:59.000 We're good to go.
00:49:03.000 Sweat is literally pouring off your arms and your head.
00:49:07.000 There's something about that band that's just really cleansing.
00:49:10.000 It just really empties you.
00:49:11.000 I just think it's a thing that you're missing that you would really love if you tried.
00:49:15.000 I bet if you did it and you came back and we did a podcast a year later, you'd be like, FUCK! Yoga!
00:49:19.000 I fucking love it!
00:49:20.000 It's changed my life.
00:49:21.000 It's changed my life.
00:49:22.000 Yeah, I know a lot of fighters, a lot of people who like are hectic for a living.
00:49:26.000 Yep.
00:49:26.000 They're yoga people.
00:49:28.000 Yep.
00:49:28.000 And like in the 70s, you say yoga, someone's going to punch you.
00:49:31.000 Yeah.
00:49:31.000 Like yoga, wham!
00:49:32.000 Well, you know what I found out about it?
00:49:34.000 Do you know who Hicks and Gracie is?
00:49:36.000 Are we talking about the Gracie, the family?
00:49:39.000 Well, the family—Hoyce Gracie's the most famous because he's probably the most important figure ever in the history of martial arts because he won the first Ultimate Fighting Championship and showed that a small man can actually beat larger men with technique and skill.
00:49:52.000 Well, his brother is Hickson, and his brother is like— He's universally regarded as one of the greatest jiu-jitsu guys, if not the greatest of all time.
00:50:02.000 And he was different than everybody else in that he did yoga.
00:50:07.000 I'd never heard of a martial artist that got into yoga, but Hickson would do these breathing exercises and he'd do these balance beam exercises and he was always doing yoga and stretching and that was a giant part of his workout.
00:50:20.000 And he was a Above and beyond everyone else in his time period, like in the 90s, everyone was scared of Hickson.
00:50:28.000 He was the man.
00:50:29.000 It wasn't like there was any debate.
00:50:31.000 It's very rare that you get something that is so antagonistic and so tightly contested as two men using martial arts techniques trying to strangle each other, and one guy stands above all by such a large margin, and that was Hickson.
00:50:47.000 And I really do believe that part of it was his mind, part of it was his physicality, but a lot of that physicality was enhanced by his dedication to yoga.
00:50:55.000 Yeah, he's a legit yogi.
00:50:57.000 He does that fire-breathing shit where he sucks his stomach in in that weird way and has it move up and down.
00:51:03.000 You ever see someone do that?
00:51:04.000 Yeah.
00:51:05.000 He does that like a real yogi.
00:51:07.000 It's a real trip.
00:51:10.000 I think because of his, like, physical...
00:51:14.000 Like, you can see there.
00:51:15.000 He's got this video here.
00:51:17.000 You can see him do this fire-breathing shit.
00:51:19.000 Like, watch what he does with his stomach.
00:51:21.000 It's kind of fucking crazy.
00:51:22.000 He sucks his stomach way, way, way up deep into his ribcage.
00:51:26.000 He does this breath of fire thing, and then as it gets going, he starts pumping his...
00:51:32.000 Here, see if you pull it up there, Jamie.
00:51:35.000 The part where he starts to do it.
00:51:37.000 Look at this.
00:51:38.000 Wow.
00:51:39.000 Yeah, like, what the fuck, man?
00:51:41.000 Isn't that insane?
00:51:42.000 Yeah.
00:51:43.000 It's crazy.
00:51:44.000 And that's just one of the things.
00:51:46.000 He has abdominal muscle control.
00:51:48.000 Yeah.
00:51:48.000 Who gets that?
00:51:49.000 Ridiculous.
00:51:50.000 That's a muscle group you never try and articulate, make it do anything.
00:51:53.000 Yeah.
00:51:54.000 Well, he practiced yoga for a long, long, long time.
00:51:57.000 And because of that, he had this phenomenal core strength and phenomenal balance.
00:52:02.000 And he just had a giant advantage over everyone else.
00:52:06.000 And I think a lot of that advantage was his ability to move his body was different.
00:52:11.000 But it's also just for a guy like you that's been just lifting weights for so long, it's the perfect antidote for your body.
00:52:18.000 It's like your body will react to it like, oh yeah, stretch this out.
00:52:21.000 Thank you.
00:52:22.000 Thank you.
00:52:22.000 I've been asking for this.
00:52:25.000 Lengthen this.
00:52:25.000 Hold that pose.
00:52:27.000 Instead of just lifting something, which is what men like to do.
00:52:31.000 Instead of that, you're holding your arms out there like that.
00:52:34.000 You're like, fuck, I don't even have any weight in these things.
00:52:36.000 I want to drop them.
00:52:38.000 Yeah, I've done a, you know, every once in a while, I've worked out with someone else and they go, okay, we're going to do this and this and then you work out and then you let them, you let yourself be trained.
00:52:47.000 Yeah.
00:52:48.000 And I've done a few workouts like, okay, I'm going to kill you.
00:52:51.000 I'm like, okay, what does that mean?
00:52:52.000 Like, by the end of this, you won't be able to take your shirt off to change.
00:52:56.000 And I've done, you know, where you're benching this much, then this much, then this much, you end up doing like 150 reps.
00:53:03.000 And by the time you can't lift the bar, And you can't lift your arms.
00:53:07.000 You're literally trembling from exhaustion.
00:53:10.000 And I've told that to people.
00:53:11.000 They go, that's yoga.
00:53:12.000 You will tremble from exhaustion.
00:53:14.000 And you'll be so happy when you leave because of how good you feel and you can't wait to go back.
00:53:20.000 And you won't blow your joints out the way you will with weightlifting.
00:53:23.000 I already have.
00:53:24.000 Yeah, there's no way around it.
00:53:26.000 I've paid.
00:53:28.000 Yeah, you know, I did a thing the other day on advice of Heidi, the manager, and Joey Diaz.
00:53:37.000 I tried that cryotherapy.
00:53:40.000 Yes.
00:53:40.000 And I'm a naysayer in lowercase.
00:53:45.000 I understand why it would work.
00:53:47.000 And I'm not saying it's quackery.
00:53:50.000 But I just feel like I'm in an Annie Hall scene when I walk into these places.
00:53:55.000 Because it's like super, hey, we're the whatever therapy, and I'm moonlight, and this is it.
00:54:02.000 And then you shake the guy's hand and he damn near breaks your arm.
00:54:05.000 These people are in incredible shape.
00:54:07.000 And so I said, okay.
00:54:09.000 I got in the robe and I went into that room for two minutes and 45 seconds.
00:54:14.000 And the endorphin rush, it's like a UPS truck of endorphins.
00:54:19.000 You come out of there like, Can I go back in?
00:54:22.000 And since I got out of it, all I've been thinking about is going back in.
00:54:27.000 In the parking lot, I just wanted to turn around and get another shot.
00:54:31.000 And I asked the guy at the counter, like, what is that?
00:54:34.000 He goes, it's endorphins.
00:54:35.000 It just unleashes them like fight or flight.
00:54:38.000 You just get this rush.
00:54:39.000 I said, I want to go back.
00:54:41.000 He's come and see us again sometime.
00:54:42.000 But it was incredible.
00:54:45.000 And it's not long.
00:54:46.000 Like, you're out of there before you know it.
00:54:47.000 Ten minutes, you're in and out.
00:54:49.000 Yeah, but wow!
00:54:51.000 It knocked me out.
00:54:52.000 And I know that a lot of athletes, and I know that you use it, Joey Diaz, but on their brochure, apparently all these sports teams, like it's just part of what you do.
00:55:03.000 Well, one thing it has been proven to do, there's a lot of naysayers when it comes to this, even scientists apparently, that don't exercise.
00:55:09.000 But people that do exercise and do try it all pretty much universally regard it as being beneficial.
00:55:14.000 But one of the things that's been shown in clinical studies is that it reduces and produces more anti-inflammatory bodies in the blood.
00:55:22.000 So it does reduce inflammation in your body.
00:55:27.000 But I think just for the mood elevation it's worth doing.
00:55:30.000 I mean, it does, that norepinephrine release that you get when you get out of there, it's unbelievable.
00:55:34.000 You get that.
00:55:35.000 It wasn't subtle.
00:55:37.000 No, it's amazing.
00:55:37.000 It was like, wow!
00:55:39.000 And the sun feels great on your face when you get outside, you're like, ah!
00:55:43.000 Everything felt great.
00:55:44.000 I mean, I don't do much as far as stimulants, like coffee and aspirin, I guess.
00:55:50.000 So I'm not even sure what the effect is, if anything.
00:55:54.000 And so it doesn't take much to make me go, well, that's different.
00:55:58.000 You know what I mean?
00:55:59.000 Yeah.
00:55:59.000 And that, I walked out back to the parking lot like, damn!
00:56:02.000 Yeah.
00:56:02.000 That was fantastic.
00:56:03.000 I do three, and then I take 10 minutes off, and then I do three again.
00:56:06.000 So I do two sessions.
00:56:08.000 Wow!
00:56:08.000 Yeah, I do two back-to-back.
00:56:10.000 So you go in, you do like, what, two or three minutes?
00:56:13.000 I do three minutes, and then my body warms back up to like, once your skin temperature gets around 84 degrees, I'll let you get back in there.
00:56:19.000 And then I go back in there again for another three minutes.
00:56:22.000 So wait, you'll go into this place...
00:56:25.000 Three minutes, and then I wait for ten minutes, and then I go in for another three minutes.
00:56:28.000 So you do two?
00:56:30.000 Two sessions.
00:56:30.000 Two sessions in one visit?
00:56:32.000 Yes.
00:56:33.000 And how many times a month?
00:56:36.000 Whenever I can.
00:56:37.000 But I've been mixing it up more with sauna.
00:56:38.000 I've been doing a lot of sauna lately.
00:56:40.000 I kind of like that as much, if not more.
00:56:43.000 What, the sauna?
00:56:44.000 Yeah, sauna seems to be really good for muscle injuries.
00:56:47.000 There's something about the sauna, for any time, muscle tissue or soreness or weird shit, sauna just blows that all out.
00:56:55.000 And sauna is also one of those things that, what it is, is your body reacting to extremes, right?
00:56:59.000 Whether it's extreme cold or extreme heat, your body produces heat shock proteins and cold shock proteins in an All those things you're doing is reducing inflammation.
00:57:07.000 That's the number one thing.
00:57:09.000 You want to feel better?
00:57:10.000 Reduce inflammation.
00:57:11.000 One of the best ways to manipulate your body is either through cryotherapy or through sauna.
00:57:17.000 Both of those things are amazing.
00:57:19.000 Yeah, someone I know, she says it's all about inflammation.
00:57:23.000 You've got to beat the inflammation.
00:57:24.000 Yeah, cut out all the sugar, cut out all the carbs, cut out all the bread, cut out all the alcohol.
00:57:29.000 If you can do that, you'll massively reduce inflammation.
00:57:31.000 Yeah, that's for gospel.
00:57:34.000 There's nothing good in there for you.
00:57:35.000 Yeah, man.
00:57:36.000 And once your body gets used to it, too, that's what's really interesting.
00:57:38.000 You don't even really crave it anymore.
00:57:40.000 Like, I still like ice cream.
00:57:41.000 I still enjoy, like, a dessert or something like that.
00:57:44.000 But it doesn't have the same impact.
00:57:46.000 It used to, like, I see a sandwich and I go, oh, look at that sandwich.
00:57:49.000 Look at that pastrami sandwich.
00:57:51.000 Big, thick bread.
00:57:52.000 That doesn't do it for me anymore.
00:57:55.000 I recognize what that is.
00:57:56.000 Like, oh, that's a trick.
00:57:58.000 That's a trick.
00:57:58.000 That's not even really food.
00:58:00.000 Yeah, I don't eat as much as I used to.
00:58:04.000 I just feel so much better when I just skip the middle meal.
00:58:08.000 Like, whose idea was it three meals a day anyway?
00:58:11.000 You don't need that.
00:58:12.000 Right.
00:58:12.000 And I've found that I can live very comfortably.
00:58:16.000 I'm not into, like, torturing myself.
00:58:18.000 Like, I'm going to starve and nail myself to this chair.
00:58:21.000 But, you know, if I'm too distracted to work because I'm hungry, I need to address that.
00:58:26.000 But what I have found...
00:58:27.000 Is if I just kind of don't eat a lot after a couple of days, I'm like a jet in the high air where you're burning no fuel because you're just in the thin air.
00:58:38.000 Where I walk pie food going like, nah, I've had like two meals in the last, two and a half meals like in the last three days.
00:58:46.000 And I feel fine.
00:58:47.000 Actually, I feel like...
00:58:48.000 Really bouncy.
00:58:50.000 I don't need the post-workout seven-minute power nap.
00:58:54.000 I'm feeling really good.
00:58:56.000 Do you do intermittent fasting at all?
00:58:59.000 Yes.
00:59:01.000 The woman I work with, you know Heidi, she does that sometimes.
00:59:05.000 And I'll just follow her lead.
00:59:07.000 So she'll go, hey, I'm doing this.
00:59:09.000 I'll try that because I just don't know this stuff.
00:59:11.000 And she knows a lot more about it than I do.
00:59:14.000 So I just do what she does.
00:59:15.000 And so...
00:59:17.000 A few years ago, I got into one meal a day.
00:59:20.000 I was just trying it out.
00:59:21.000 No one told me to.
00:59:22.000 I was in India, of all places.
00:59:24.000 And I was out all day taking photos and sweating.
00:59:27.000 And I would eat dinner, and that would be it.
00:59:29.000 And I would sleep through breakfast and go back out with my camera.
00:59:32.000 So dinner became my meal.
00:59:34.000 And the first three days of that was a little tough.
00:59:37.000 And then it was like I never wanted...
00:59:39.000 I kind of felt bad when I went back to the Western...
00:59:42.000 Boy, I'm eating a lot of food.
00:59:44.000 Your body adapts.
00:59:45.000 Yeah.
00:59:46.000 Oh, we can adapt.
00:59:47.000 You can live on pizza for the rest of your life very happily.
00:59:49.000 All, you know, whatever.
00:59:51.000 But your body really does adapt to that intermittent, that timed feeding.
00:59:54.000 Well, no, I'm saying it'll adapt to anything.
00:59:55.000 It'll adapt to too much food or it'll adapt to like a fraction of what you used to eat.
01:00:00.000 Right.
01:00:00.000 But just here's what I have found.
01:00:03.000 When I start limiting the food, I'm more alert.
01:00:07.000 My sleep is more restorative.
01:00:10.000 And I bounce out of bed.
01:00:12.000 I'm just flying out of bed.
01:00:14.000 I don't have that afternoon drowsiness.
01:00:16.000 I just stay with it.
01:00:18.000 And I just feel way more buoyant and present.
01:00:22.000 Type faster.
01:00:24.000 Just concentrate more.
01:00:26.000 And when I'm on tour, it's usually I do one point something meals a day.
01:00:32.000 Like I'm about to leave on tour.
01:00:34.000 It's an evening meal post-show.
01:00:36.000 I put myself into an eight-hour feeding window and a 16-hour fasting window every day.
01:00:42.000 And I've been pretty consistent with that over the last four or five months.
01:00:45.000 And it has a big impact, man.
01:00:47.000 When I eat dinner, say if I'm done at 8 o'clock, I just time it out.
01:00:53.000 16 hours later is when my first meal comes.
01:00:55.000 I can have a coffee in between now and then, but nothing with...
01:00:59.000 I don't have any real significant calories.
01:01:01.000 I'm just having some liquid or something like that and that's it.
01:01:05.000 By doing that, man, I wake up in the morning, I'm not craving breakfast.
01:01:09.000 I'm not even hungry.
01:01:11.000 My body's just totally adapted to it.
01:01:13.000 It gives your body a chance to digest.
01:01:16.000 I think we're always in this state of feeding and your body just never has really a chance to digest all that food.
01:01:21.000 It's like juggling.
01:01:22.000 You know, the body's like, as it's processing, it's incoming.
01:01:26.000 Like, really?
01:01:27.000 Another order?
01:01:28.000 It never gets to realize digestion.
01:01:31.000 Like, we're done.
01:01:31.000 It's always, you know, you're like a cow.
01:01:33.000 They're always processing nutrition.
01:01:38.000 And I wonder if that's a Western model.
01:01:41.000 Because in other parts of the world, people live very differently than we do.
01:01:45.000 It is what it is.
01:01:47.000 And a meal is almost just a thing that happens now and then.
01:01:52.000 It's not like it's dinner time and we're going to talk about dinner.
01:01:55.000 Report cards and it's not a gathering.
01:01:57.000 It's like the whole family works all over the city and they're gonna eat, I think, at some point.
01:02:04.000 Even sleep.
01:02:05.000 You go to parts like Vietnam and people are just sleeping behind the counter of the store they work at because they've been there for a day and a half because mom can't come in, so they're running the store.
01:02:15.000 And sleep is this thing that you get now and then.
01:02:18.000 And I think food is like that in a lot of parts of the world.
01:02:21.000 Like a meal?
01:02:21.000 Eh.
01:02:23.000 The next time I eat will be the next time I eat.
01:02:26.000 When you go to these places, and I know you travel pretty much all over the world, do you go out of your way to try to sample in as wide a variety as the local cuisine as you can?
01:02:35.000 No.
01:02:37.000 Depends on where I go.
01:02:39.000 And I'm not that guy who just brings it all from home and I never leave home when I'm abroad.
01:02:44.000 But I can't afford to eat a bad meal and be bedridden for the next day when I should be out hitting the streets looking at stuff.
01:02:54.000 And so I've had, you know, as you do, you run into the bad meal where you're like hugging a tree, watching the arc of vomit like, wow, Linda Blair.
01:03:03.000 And I've done that from here to Myanmar and Russia, wherever I've had some bad meals.
01:03:10.000 And so when the food looks dodgy, like in the interior of Africa, when you point at the meat object and go, what is that?
01:03:17.000 And the guy will say, I think it's goat.
01:03:20.000 Cliff bar!
01:03:21.000 Just because...
01:03:23.000 I just can't.
01:03:24.000 And so what I've learned to do, and it's hard on your back because it's a lot of weight.
01:03:29.000 Say I'm going to be out in Africa for two weeks.
01:03:32.000 I bring about two meals worth of chow with me.
01:03:37.000 That's a lot of nuts, a lot of Clif bars, a lot of peanut butter, things that just don't go bad in heat.
01:03:44.000 Where I can just look at the food and go, no, not tonight.
01:03:47.000 It's going to be...
01:03:48.000 A handful of almonds, and this, and water.
01:03:52.000 Also, in parts of the world where water's dodgy, you find a store, you buy the box of water, rip it open to make sure it hasn't been tampered with, buy the whole box, put it in your backpack, and lug 40 pounds of water for the next five days.
01:04:05.000 It sucks, but you can't be somewhere and go like, I'm thirsty and I don't know about that water.
01:04:11.000 Have you thought about bringing, you know, they have these portable backpack filters and SteriPens and things that a lot of backpack hikers, they use, they're very small now.
01:04:21.000 They're very small and lightweight, and you can get some, like, if you're staying in a place and you think it has dodgy water, you can get a gravity filter, or you put water, like, you could literally get rainwater from outside in a puddle, and I know a lot of people do that.
01:04:32.000 And they take it and they put it in this large gravity filter and it'll drip down.
01:04:37.000 It looks like someone's peeing at the bottom of this huge bag, a 60 liter bag of water.
01:04:42.000 But it filters it all and it allows you to drink basically puddle water.
01:04:46.000 Right.
01:04:46.000 No, I've never gotten that high tech.
01:04:50.000 I've been in some pretty dodgy places, but I've always been somewhere in prep.
01:04:57.000 Like a city before I go into the countryside, where I go, okay, it's going to be five days before I see anything like this again, so I'm provisioning for eight days of water.
01:05:05.000 That's a good thing, but Google SteriPen.
01:05:08.000 You should get one of these things, because this thing is so simple.
01:05:12.000 It basically looks like a pen, and it works with ultraviolet light, and you put it in water.
01:05:17.000 Say if you have a glass of water, you just stir this in the water.
01:05:20.000 It kills everything in the water.
01:05:21.000 Everything.
01:05:22.000 Wow.
01:05:22.000 Yeah.
01:05:23.000 There it is right there.
01:05:25.000 So if there's buffalo piss in that water, it's still going to smell like buffalo piss.
01:05:29.000 Yeah, but it won't kill you.
01:05:30.000 But it's not going to kill you.
01:05:30.000 And it won't give you giardia, and it won't give you anything else.
01:05:33.000 Wow, that's smart.
01:05:34.000 Yeah, and it's not big.
01:05:35.000 It's a small little device.
01:05:36.000 You see it there?
01:05:37.000 No, it's handheld.
01:05:37.000 I get it.
01:05:38.000 Those are drops.
01:05:39.000 Oh, that's smart.
01:05:40.000 Yeah.
01:05:40.000 I think that's a different thing.
01:05:42.000 Yeah, because there's parts of mainly Africa where you go really in.
01:05:46.000 Mm-hmm.
01:05:47.000 The water, like, that's a lot of mosquitoes.
01:05:49.000 Sketchy.
01:05:49.000 And you see the locals drinking, like, clearing the larva out of the way.
01:05:53.000 I'm like, don't do that!
01:05:54.000 Like, what do you mean?
01:05:55.000 That's our water.
01:05:56.000 My good friend Justin Wren, he runs a charity called Fight for the Forgotten, where they build wells for the pygmies in the Congo.
01:06:03.000 And he's had malaria three times from going over there.
01:06:06.000 Yeah, and he's a...
01:06:07.000 He's a beautiful human being.
01:06:09.000 This guy sacrifices so much.
01:06:11.000 He's in the Congo several months out of every year building wells.
01:06:14.000 It's very dangerous.
01:06:15.000 It is very dangerous, and he's got some crazy stories about it, too.
01:06:18.000 I bet.
01:06:19.000 You see little children with horrible distended bellies because they're filled with parasites.
01:06:25.000 It's heartbreaking.
01:06:27.000 A lot of it is clean water, and so they're developing.
01:06:30.000 They were initially partnering up with Water4.
01:06:32.000 Now he's kind of doing it on his own.
01:06:35.000 One of my sponsors is called the Cash App, and through the Cash App, we've already raised thousands of dollars to build several wells in the Congo.
01:06:43.000 We're constantly raising more money and building more wells, and it changes their life.
01:06:48.000 They have free...
01:06:50.000 Actual, clear water that comes out of the ground.
01:06:52.000 You see these people celebrating and dancing when the wells get turned on.
01:06:56.000 Like, this is so powerful.
01:06:57.000 You just think of water as like, oh, hey, here's some water.
01:07:00.000 I got a bottle.
01:07:01.000 But to them, it's everything.
01:07:03.000 Yeah, I've been working on and off with a water NGO for many years called Drop in the Bucket.
01:07:07.000 And I've been to Uganda and South Sudan with them.
01:07:11.000 They drill at schools.
01:07:13.000 And, you know, as a Westerner, water is just the thing we sing in the shower with.
01:07:17.000 You know, it's just like it's always around.
01:07:19.000 You know, you trip over the bottles.
01:07:20.000 There's so much water.
01:07:21.000 Right.
01:07:22.000 In other parts of the world, as you know, not so much.
01:07:25.000 And when you see the impact of water on a school, there's so many things you don't think about.
01:07:30.000 And so I was at this one school where they had drilled, dropped in the bucket, had drilled, like, before, and we were there to visit the well and meet the kids in Masaka.
01:07:39.000 It's, I think, north of Kampala.
01:07:42.000 And what one of the drop in the bucket people say is like, they now have toilets and running water.
01:07:48.000 Do you understand what that means for female literacy?
01:07:52.000 I'm like, what do you mean?
01:07:54.000 A woman, a girl hits a certain age, she goes through a major physiological change.
01:07:59.000 If there's not running water in a way for her to clean herself up, There's a lot of potential shame and self-consciousness.
01:08:07.000 You stop going to school because there's not a way to keep yourself together.
01:08:12.000 And your learning stops at young adulthood.
01:08:16.000 But with running water and a way to, you know, as we Westerners just do so easily, you keep yourself hygienic and you can go back to class and learn to read.
01:08:27.000 And I was like, I never would have thought of that had I not come on this trip.
01:08:32.000 And it hit me like a truck.
01:08:34.000 Because you just think, water, I'm thirsty.
01:08:36.000 Water means so much more.
01:08:37.000 Just dignity.
01:08:39.000 Like, I want to be clean.
01:08:40.000 You and me, we throw our clothes in the laundry every day.
01:08:44.000 Clean clothes, I mean, you see these women walking eight miles each way with the jerry cans of water.
01:08:49.000 Some of that's for drinking.
01:08:50.000 A lot of it's for cleaning clothes because they're sending their kid to a school.
01:08:54.000 They want the kid, you know, human dignity.
01:08:57.000 Water and all of that is a big thing.
01:08:59.000 You know, you can't have dignity without the water because water means I don't stink.
01:09:04.000 And you must respect me as a person because I don't smell like I've been living in these clothes for a week.
01:09:11.000 And I learned a lot of that by traveling.
01:09:14.000 But traveling with that NGO was, you know, like going to class.
01:09:18.000 It was huge.
01:09:19.000 Yeah, man, that's something I never would have considered.
01:09:24.000 Yeah, and human dignity, you know, that's why we have a lot of angry people in the world, because you and I, as Westerners, we don't suffer.
01:09:33.000 There's a lot of indignities that we don't suffer.
01:09:37.000 That a lot of people in the world work hard to not suffer.
01:09:40.000 Like they have to go like, okay, have to go get the water today.
01:09:44.000 You know, that's a long trip.
01:09:45.000 Got to walk to Long Beach and back to get the water because there's no tap.
01:09:49.000 And I got kids and, you know, infants.
01:09:53.000 And I got to make this work because I can't have my family stinking and I got to do the cooking.
01:10:00.000 And hopefully you don't get eaten by a crocodile.
01:10:02.000 Or attacked by a monkey.
01:10:03.000 The monkeys, they smell the water and they mug you for the water.
01:10:06.000 Really?
01:10:07.000 Yeah.
01:10:08.000 They just assault you, you know, bite and they grab the water, knock it over and just lick it off the ground.
01:10:12.000 Yeah, people get assaulted in dry season by monkeys.
01:10:15.000 What?
01:10:15.000 Yeah.
01:10:16.000 So these little creeps, but just you see what people do.
01:10:20.000 They're not trying to be rock stars.
01:10:22.000 All they want to do is what you and I do just without even thinking twice.
01:10:27.000 And that, you know, it's made me as an older guy, I'm pushing 60 and It's made me really reconsider human relationships, like our current political climate, the way people talk to each other now.
01:10:39.000 It's sometimes kind of terrifying.
01:10:41.000 And it makes me really reconsider human dignity, respect, patience.
01:10:48.000 Like there's a lot of people I disagree with, but they're coming from something real, like something very real and honest.
01:10:57.000 Propelled them to make that sign or to do that thing and The the cause and effect I think there may be wrong-headed but the cause is real and the effect is Sincerely the action is sincerely held the the motivation and it's that kind of travel and Looking how looking how people they don't want much.
01:11:21.000 They just want to get by by and large and um It's made me reconsider kind of how I voulez-vous with everyone out in the world.
01:11:31.000 I think I'm getting better at it because it's so hard.
01:11:34.000 It is hard, but I think if you pay attention to it and you keep concentrating on it as you get older, you do get better at it.
01:11:40.000 And the idea that someone who's almost 60 is still learning, like...
01:11:44.000 That is just how we are.
01:11:46.000 We have this weird idea that people are static.
01:11:49.000 You meet a guy and he's 70. When you meet him when he's 75, he's going to be the same guy, if not worse.
01:11:54.000 But no, people, they're capable of growth as long as they're alive.
01:11:57.000 Yeah, and motivated.
01:11:59.000 You'll grow as much as you want to.
01:12:02.000 And I've met 70 year olds who wear me out.
01:12:05.000 I'm like, I can't keep up with this guy.
01:12:06.000 Like I go on some cool eco travel trips.
01:12:09.000 You go like Antarctica and these old like, come on!
01:12:12.000 You're like, I can't.
01:12:13.000 You go to take a photo or show it to me.
01:12:16.000 And then you meet people who are 22 and they're so burned out.
01:12:19.000 And they're so hard to be around.
01:12:21.000 Like, man, if I had your youth, I'd be like bouncing off the planet.
01:12:25.000 What are you doing?
01:12:26.000 And it's just a mindset.
01:12:28.000 And, you know, all kinds of surrounding factors and forces.
01:12:31.000 But it's really just what you want to do at a certain part of your life.
01:12:36.000 I have very little sympathy for adults in that you're 35. This is all you, pal.
01:12:41.000 Your addictions, your crap marriage, that's all you.
01:12:45.000 Like, I don't have that much.
01:12:47.000 Well, I did so much coke, I don't have a house anymore.
01:12:50.000 That's a lot of coke.
01:12:53.000 And I'm sorry that you're living in a box or in a van down by the river.
01:12:58.000 But come on, man.
01:12:59.000 That's a long hill you slid down.
01:13:02.000 So get up and don't make the same mistake.
01:13:06.000 But adults, come on, man.
01:13:07.000 You know who you are at this point.
01:13:09.000 And you know what you can be.
01:13:11.000 And at this point, I abhor rudeness.
01:13:13.000 I hate it.
01:13:14.000 And I hate it when I'm rude.
01:13:16.000 I'm like, damn, I have to punish myself.
01:13:18.000 And so as I get older, I'm working as best as I can to be more clear, to be more polite and more patient, just so I'm more unavoidable.
01:13:31.000 Like on stage, I don't curse.
01:13:33.000 So there's no way you can marginalize me.
01:13:37.000 Even when you're doing your live speaking shows, you're having these discussions, and you're talking about crazy things that you've seen, you don't swear?
01:13:45.000 How many times have I sworn in this room with you right now, today?
01:13:48.000 I don't think you have.
01:13:49.000 I haven't.
01:13:50.000 I keep track.
01:13:51.000 Why is that?
01:13:52.000 Many years ago, almost 10 years ago, I was going out with a woman who never cursed.
01:13:59.000 And I work with people who don't curse, and they get their point across.
01:14:04.000 And this girl I was going out with, she's fantastic, and she never cursed in my sailor-speak.
01:14:10.000 I was like, wow, I don't have any company here.
01:14:14.000 And also Barack Obama, and presidents traditionally don't curse.
01:14:19.000 But he's had such a good way with words.
01:14:22.000 I just admired him on the stump.
01:14:23.000 I'm sure it was all written for him.
01:14:25.000 But nonetheless, I just like how the man carried himself.
01:14:29.000 And I said, I want to be more like that.
01:14:32.000 And I was just in Australia a couple of weeks ago, I was speaking, and I was on a very interesting panel about Me Too.
01:14:37.000 I was the only male on the panel, it was fascinating.
01:14:39.000 And a guy came up with his kids, like, hey, I'm a big fan, and I want my kids to meet you, and my son's 11, and I want him to come see one of your shows one day.
01:14:49.000 I said, oh, I think he should see me on my next tour here in 2020, when he'll be like, what, 13?
01:14:55.000 No problem.
01:14:56.000 And I'm not saying my show is Namby Pamby, But I want to be unavoidable, where you can't write me off, say I'm wrong.
01:15:04.000 Fine.
01:15:05.000 Disagree with me.
01:15:06.000 That's fine.
01:15:06.000 Like, oh, he's just a foul mouth, so we don't have to take him seriously.
01:15:10.000 I don't want to give you that handle to jerk me around by.
01:15:13.000 I have plenty of other handles you can jerk me around by.
01:15:16.000 And so I'm just trying to not give people that angle.
01:15:20.000 And it forces me to evolve my point of view.
01:15:24.000 Where those words are fun and hyperbolic, but they just don't serve me.
01:15:31.000 They don't get across what I want to get across.
01:15:34.000 That's interesting.
01:15:35.000 I would think that you're probably best...
01:15:38.000 You should do it any way you want, but...
01:15:40.000 What I'm thinking is that one way to use those words is to have your point as clear as possible and then use them rarely.
01:15:51.000 You know, like one of the things when I was starting doing comedy back in Boston, they would call it the fuck meter.
01:15:57.000 They would say, you don't want to go on stage and say fuck every other word because a lot of people use the word fuck in place of the word um.
01:16:03.000 You know, they're like...
01:16:04.000 Fucking guy, this fucking says to me, I don't want to fucking tell you what to fucking do.
01:16:09.000 This is just poor communication.
01:16:12.000 This is a shitty economy of words.
01:16:14.000 So that word, you've used it so many times.
01:16:18.000 You've given away all its meaning.
01:16:20.000 It doesn't mean anything anymore.
01:16:21.000 So when you do it, and I'm like, fuck you.
01:16:24.000 It doesn't mean anything anymore.
01:16:25.000 Yeah, but if you say it once a year, it does.
01:16:27.000 Right.
01:16:27.000 You say fuck you once a year, it means a lot.
01:16:29.000 Everyone will believe it.
01:16:31.000 Like, oh, he's serious.
01:16:34.000 But yeah, if you just drop it all the time, and I believe in the First Amendment, but to me, when you use that stuff, you come in as one thing, but the result is you're something else to a lot of people.
01:16:49.000 In front of some people's eyes, yeah.
01:16:51.000 I mean, you certainly limit your digestibility.
01:16:55.000 Yeah.
01:16:56.000 And impact.
01:16:58.000 You know, I'd rather be articulate than overbearing.
01:17:03.000 And, you know, I watch the news and some of these pundits are very, very educated and they're very, very sharp.
01:17:08.000 They're pundits for a living.
01:17:09.000 They make commentary for a living and they're damn good at it.
01:17:14.000 And you're like, wow, that's a hell of a sentence.
01:17:17.000 I'd like to be able to rock something like that one day.
01:17:20.000 And that's kind of what I admire as I start shrinking with age.
01:17:29.000 It's interesting the difference between writing something and saying something.
01:17:33.000 As you do your spoken word shows and you have these stories that you want to tell, but I would imagine that you probably write out a good most of it.
01:17:45.000 Do you do that?
01:17:46.000 Some of it, I mean...
01:17:47.000 Or do you, some of it, you just know the story, so you just tell the story the way...
01:17:50.000 When I'm out in the world, I'll be out all day, like, taking photos or whatever, vou-lay-voo-ing with the locals, getting information.
01:17:57.000 Then I come back somewhere, and I write it up.
01:18:01.000 Or I'll take, you know, sometimes in a place like Haiti, you don't want to be outside at noon.
01:18:04.000 The sun will just, like, beat you up.
01:18:06.000 So you find shade, make your notes.
01:18:08.000 So I'm always trying to make notes.
01:18:09.000 And then at night, I write it all up.
01:18:12.000 A lot of that turns into a book.
01:18:14.000 Like I use every part of the deer.
01:18:15.000 Like when I go somewhere, I make soup, jewelry, a coat, every part gets used.
01:18:22.000 And so the books come from that.
01:18:25.000 But some stories from those travels, I mull them over in my mind.
01:18:32.000 And the show for me, when I'm on stage, it just can't be mere reportage.
01:18:37.000 There has to be something.
01:18:39.000 There has to be an aroma coming from it.
01:18:41.000 There has to be a lilt.
01:18:42.000 There has to be a wisdom or some kind of melody that comes from the raw information.
01:18:49.000 Like I took all these notes and got the Houses of the Holy album, which is just its component parts, but it was mixed together in a way where it's like this beautiful thing.
01:18:57.000 And so that often takes weeks.
01:19:00.000 We're like, so I saw this.
01:19:02.000 What was the story?
01:19:03.000 Well, the guy fell over.
01:19:04.000 But no, it wasn't at six weeks of thinking about it.
01:19:08.000 It wasn't him.
01:19:09.000 He's not the story.
01:19:10.000 It's the guy who was watching and did nothing.
01:19:13.000 That's the story.
01:19:14.000 And all of a sudden, the whole angle changes.
01:19:18.000 And so I'll mull these things over because I have a lot of time.
01:19:21.000 I live alone.
01:19:22.000 And so by the time the story gets to the stage, it's like a stone that's been rolled and polished.
01:19:28.000 There's parts of the valley, Ventura Boulevard, where at night there's nothing but dog walkers and joggers.
01:19:34.000 All the shops are closed.
01:19:36.000 I will park in a parking lot and I'll walk about a mile each way talking out loud, saying the stories out loud.
01:19:44.000 People are going to go looking for you now.
01:19:46.000 Yeah.
01:19:47.000 Henry's practicing his one-man show.
01:19:48.000 That's why I don't give the location.
01:19:50.000 Because you will go, wow, I remember that one.
01:19:53.000 And I will let my brain hear my voice say them.
01:19:57.000 And I'll make edits while I'm walking.
01:20:00.000 Like, okay, no, that's a dead end.
01:20:02.000 And I've been doing this for years.
01:20:05.000 And I do it on the treadmill in my mind.
01:20:07.000 You know, I'll just kind of mumble to myself where people will come over to the gym like, are you okay?
01:20:12.000 I'm like, yeah, I'm just, you know, just say actor.
01:20:15.000 And they'll go, oh, yeah, no.
01:20:17.000 Yeah, and that's the kind of preparation I do because I don't believe in warm-up shows.
01:20:22.000 Like, who wants to see your warm-up show?
01:20:23.000 Like, oh, thanks for your demo.
01:20:25.000 Like, screw you.
01:20:26.000 I paid money.
01:20:27.000 I want A-game.
01:20:28.000 And so I only understand coming with the A-game.
01:20:32.000 And so I do all my woodshedding.
01:20:35.000 Alone.
01:20:36.000 And so by the time I hit stage, that story is very evolved.
01:20:40.000 And then it continues to every night.
01:20:42.000 You know, I keep shaving the parts off, and it's a chiseled thing of beauty a few nights in.
01:20:47.000 Yeah, I found that you really can only do so much on the written page or on the screen.
01:20:52.000 You have to evolve it in front of a live audience, especially with stand-up, which you're essentially doing.
01:20:58.000 Pretty much.
01:20:59.000 I mean, I listen to a bunch of your older stuff, and it's essentially a form of stand-up.
01:21:04.000 You know?
01:21:04.000 Yep.
01:21:05.000 It's like, there's different kinds of music, right?
01:21:08.000 I mean, there's rock and roll, there's blues, there's jazz.
01:21:10.000 There's different kinds of stand-up as well.
01:21:12.000 Sure.
01:21:12.000 And yours is a storytelling stand-up.
01:21:15.000 Yeah.
01:21:15.000 And with that, it's going to evolve in front of the live audience.
01:21:19.000 Like on my Showtime special, tomorrow night at 10 p.m.
01:21:23.000 on Showtime.
01:21:23.000 You'll hear stories.
01:21:24.000 It's called Keep Talking, pal.
01:21:26.000 It is!
01:21:27.000 And a lot of that is just storytelling.
01:21:30.000 And it is funny.
01:21:32.000 But I always leave room in my resume because I don't want to tie myself to comedy because when I'm telling the story...
01:21:42.000 About the part of wherever, like Bangladesh I was in, that wasn't funny.
01:21:49.000 I don't want to be in a comedy club with some guy going, wait a minute, I didn't pay for this.
01:21:53.000 Make me laugh, idiot.
01:21:54.000 And so I don't want to be selling a false bill of goods.
01:21:59.000 And so sometimes it's, quite often it's funny, but sometimes it's not.
01:22:04.000 But for me, events plus time, if someone didn't If there are no casualties, if it was this mere injury, maybe an eye, it is pretty funny.
01:22:14.000 A week later, after the scabs have fallen off, it's pretty funny.
01:22:20.000 Well, the thing is also that you don't have a restricted sort of form in which you have to...
01:22:28.000 Performing, by doing it spoken word style, you essentially can do whatever you want.
01:22:32.000 Yes, and I need that freedom because I can't be dependent upon to make you laugh all the time.
01:22:37.000 Right, yeah, like there's a thing about stand-up is, part of it I really like because it forces you to use economy of words and boil your ideas down into this very clear rhythm where you like keep hammering them with laughs.
01:22:50.000 But part of it is, I mean, where I get my freedom is from this.
01:22:54.000 From doing podcasts.
01:22:55.000 So I can express myself in ways and get thoughts across where it doesn't have to have any form.
01:23:01.000 It can be funny or it can be not.
01:23:03.000 It can be depressing or funny and sad or happy.
01:23:06.000 And it doesn't have to realize itself in 11 seconds.
01:23:08.000 Yes.
01:23:09.000 Right, and it doesn't have to have an impact.
01:23:12.000 The thing about stand-up is that you're always getting a reaction, and if you don't get that reaction, it is not successful.
01:23:18.000 You can call it whatever you want.
01:23:20.000 You can say, oh, this is stand-up, but I'm talking about stand-up, or I'm talking about things that are tragic in my stand-up, so it's deeper and more meaningful.
01:23:27.000 It's like...
01:23:28.000 Okay.
01:23:29.000 But then it's not really stand-up.
01:23:30.000 You know, stand-up is funny.
01:23:32.000 Yep.
01:23:32.000 And once it stops being funny, then you're doing something else.
01:23:35.000 Right.
01:23:35.000 You're doing spoken word, or you're doing a play, or a one-person show, or whatever it is.
01:23:41.000 Right.
01:23:41.000 And I would never dare go into a comedy club And do what I do.
01:23:45.000 You never do that?
01:23:45.000 You never go to improv or something like that?
01:23:48.000 Two times in my life.
01:23:49.000 One time, the venue I was supposed to be in got knocked out because of a storm.
01:23:54.000 And so they said, we've moved your show to like the Laugh Dungeon.
01:23:58.000 And I was in some place in the East Coast with like 80,000 headshots on the wall.
01:24:03.000 That little parquet stage, the PV boxes, the PA screwed into the wall.
01:24:09.000 And I did my talking show and my audience are all sitting at these tables going, why are we here?
01:24:16.000 And on the last big tour in 2016, I don't like nights off.
01:24:20.000 They said, okay, Thanksgiving, I said, find me a show.
01:24:23.000 They said, we found you a show.
01:24:25.000 It's a comedy club next to a strip bar.
01:24:28.000 And there's no backstage.
01:24:30.000 There's no monitors.
01:24:31.000 There's just two boxes in the wall.
01:24:33.000 Family owned.
01:24:34.000 Really nice people.
01:24:36.000 And I forget where it was.
01:24:37.000 Somewhere in Illinois.
01:24:39.000 I was one show, one night.
01:24:42.000 My tour bus was rumbling away in the parking lot.
01:24:46.000 The next night, I think, was like three nights of Ralphie Mae.
01:24:50.000 The great comedian.
01:24:51.000 But it was a straight-up comedy club.
01:24:54.000 And I went in there and I just kind of did what I've been doing for like the last nine months on the road.
01:24:59.000 And a lot of it was very funny.
01:25:00.000 And the audience was fantastic.
01:25:02.000 And so the owner, I came up to the owner and said, I'd play this place again anytime.
01:25:06.000 Thank you so much.
01:25:07.000 And he said, well, you know where we are.
01:25:09.000 Anytime.
01:25:09.000 We loved it.
01:25:10.000 We like you.
01:25:11.000 And you're always welcome here.
01:25:12.000 And that, I don't know if it was my audience or a comedy audience.
01:25:16.000 I said, how did the show do?
01:25:17.000 It's like, oh, it's sold out in a day.
01:25:18.000 I mean, you know, your name.
01:25:20.000 And I think, but this is, but I said, so the audience, oh, I recognize these people.
01:25:25.000 This is my local comedy crowd.
01:25:28.000 They just know you from Sons of Anarchy or whatever.
01:25:31.000 So we'll see how you go.
01:25:33.000 And it was fine.
01:25:34.000 And it turned into like this two-hour laugh riot.
01:25:38.000 I mean, it was just great.
01:25:39.000 It was a super fun show.
01:25:40.000 And you don't have an opening act or anything.
01:25:42.000 You just go right out.
01:25:42.000 No.
01:25:43.000 Because I torture them enough.
01:25:45.000 It's just me.
01:25:46.000 Can I ask you a professional question or feel free to edit this out when you're on stage and like you're doing like a big theater like where you're the main guy like a big Saturday night somewhere How long are you on stage for usually an hour and 10 to an hour and 20 minutes okay?
01:26:01.000 70 to 80 minutes.
01:26:03.000 Yeah.
01:26:03.000 Okay.
01:26:04.000 I'm just fascinated because I live in a bubble.
01:26:06.000 I just do my own thing.
01:26:07.000 I'm on stage for like two hours and 40 minutes.
01:26:10.000 I bring an opening act.
01:26:12.000 And what do they do?
01:26:13.000 Between 20 and 30. And how many openers?
01:26:16.000 One.
01:26:16.000 Sometimes I bring two.
01:26:17.000 That's rare, but it's usually just for fun.
01:26:19.000 So it'll be two people at the most, and they'll do a total of 40 minutes, and then there's a brief intermission before you come on?
01:26:26.000 No, no intermission.
01:26:26.000 They just bring me on.
01:26:28.000 Yeah, bang, bang, bang, we go.
01:26:29.000 And the show could be 80 minutes, 90 minutes.
01:26:32.000 And so the whole thing, you and two openers, it's like two point something hours.
01:26:36.000 It could be two hours, yeah, easily.
01:26:38.000 But that's the whole night.
01:26:39.000 That's the whole night.
01:26:40.000 And are you ever on your own with nobody?
01:26:43.000 Never.
01:26:43.000 Okay, so there's always an opener.
01:26:45.000 Yes.
01:26:45.000 Usually one.
01:26:46.000 Yes.
01:26:46.000 And so that's 20 minutes and 70 to 80. So the whole night is...
01:26:52.000 A little less than two hours.
01:26:54.000 Dependent upon the show, whether or not we have two shows in a night.
01:26:57.000 A short show is an hour and a half, which I like a Rock'em Sock'em Robots hour and a half, like a movie.
01:27:03.000 You go to a movie and it's two and a half hours.
01:27:05.000 Even if it's really good, it's like, whoa.
01:27:07.000 Oh, no, no, you feel it.
01:27:08.000 The last 20 minutes, you really feel the lack of editing.
01:27:11.000 But an hour and a half is bang, bang, bang, bang, bang.
01:27:15.000 Good night!
01:27:15.000 Yeah.
01:27:16.000 Yeah!
01:27:17.000 And so how many two sets a night do you do?
01:27:20.000 Often.
01:27:21.000 Yeah, I'll do it.
01:27:22.000 A seven and a nine or whatever?
01:27:23.000 Yeah, something like that.
01:27:23.000 I'll do it pretty often, depending on the size of the venue, you know.
01:27:27.000 Some places, a giant place, I'll do one show or, you know.
01:27:31.000 But I've done a lot of, especially this last year, I did a lot of two shows at night in big theaters and stuff, you know.
01:27:37.000 Huh.
01:27:37.000 It's a lot of turnaround, too, because you've got to clear out all those people and get a new crowd in there.
01:27:42.000 I work alone, and I don't have a peer group, really.
01:27:46.000 If I do, I'm not trying to find them.
01:27:48.000 And I'm just curious about how other people do their thing, because I live alone in a tour bus, like with a road manager and a bus driver and a merch guy, and I have no opener.
01:27:58.000 Except in Australia, there's a rule they want one for one.
01:28:00.000 And so there's this opener I've used for years.
01:28:03.000 An Australian opener?
01:28:04.000 Yeah.
01:28:04.000 One American, one Australian, which I really like.
01:28:07.000 They used to do that with music.
01:28:09.000 You know, they don't do that with me.
01:28:10.000 When I'm there, I bring American openers.
01:28:13.000 Oh, well, with me the last few years, I've gotten to bigger places.
01:28:17.000 And my agent has said, okay, you're going to have an opener.
01:28:21.000 And I've used this guy.
01:28:24.000 He's done shows with me for like three tours.
01:28:27.000 He's hilarious.
01:28:28.000 Really low-key.
01:28:29.000 He's a really nice guy.
01:28:30.000 I'm forgetting.
01:28:31.000 What's his name?
01:28:31.000 Well, I see the guy every three years, so it's not in the memory, but he's great.
01:28:35.000 And he's super funny.
01:28:36.000 He's real smart.
01:28:37.000 And the audience loves him.
01:28:38.000 I mean, I think he's kind of known, but he's great.
01:28:41.000 And he's just like, I don't know, 20 minutes, whatever it is.
01:28:43.000 And then I go do my thing.
01:28:44.000 But that's per...
01:28:46.000 It's not in every city in Australia.
01:28:48.000 It's like in a couple of places.
01:28:50.000 Oh, so there's...
01:28:51.000 And it's like some kind of thing?
01:28:52.000 Regional rules?
01:28:53.000 Yeah, and that's happened a few times when I would do music.
01:28:57.000 Like, okay, four guys on stage, we're going to have a four-person opener.
01:29:01.000 Like, okay, man.
01:29:02.000 And I kind of like that.
01:29:03.000 Like, give the local band some time, or give the local guy a moment in front of his hometown audience, or let him tour with me.
01:29:11.000 I love that idea, but that's the only time.
01:29:13.000 Every once in a while, I was at Bonnaroo once.
01:29:16.000 And it was tremendously lopsided.
01:29:19.000 It was me and Tig Notaro, who's amazing.
01:29:23.000 I don't know her very well, but I've seen her on stage.
01:29:25.000 And she didn't exactly open for me, but she did like half an hour and I did like an hour.
01:29:33.000 And they cleared the tent and then Cheech Marin came on.
01:29:38.000 But Louis Black was before me.
01:29:40.000 It was like three tent loads of people in one night at Bonnaroo.
01:29:43.000 And that's the only time I've ever...
01:29:45.000 I've done a festival where you're like the 8 to 9.30 guy and then the 10 o'clock guy comes on stage.
01:29:52.000 But quite often I'm just on my own on tour and I'm the only thing on stage.
01:29:57.000 It's a different thing for me.
01:29:58.000 I have to have my friends with me.
01:30:00.000 Otherwise I get bored.
01:30:01.000 I go on the road.
01:30:03.000 Almost everyone I take on the road with me is a national headliner who would normally be headlining somewhere on their own.
01:30:09.000 So it's a cool double bill.
01:30:10.000 Yeah, it's a cool double bill, but it's also, I want the best guys that I can find and I pay them well to go on in front of me.
01:30:17.000 I don't want it to be a bad show by any stretch of the imagination, so I try to get the best guys.
01:30:22.000 But also by that, then I'm traveling with the best guys, so we're having fun.
01:30:27.000 It's a weird group.
01:30:30.000 Stand-ups, there's not that many of us.
01:30:32.000 There's like maybe a thousand of us in the whole country that are like real professional comedians, maybe 500 headliners in the whole country.
01:30:40.000 So there's just not that many of us.
01:30:42.000 And so when we relate to each other in sort of a weird way...
01:30:46.000 Yeah, well, there's not many of you.
01:30:47.000 It's like when presidents get together.
01:30:49.000 There's like four of them.
01:30:51.000 They're kind of chummy because they might be opposed, but they all kind of know they're the only people who know that stuff.
01:30:57.000 Especially when they're out.
01:30:58.000 Especially when they're out.
01:30:59.000 They did their time.
01:31:00.000 Yeah, they can relax.
01:31:01.000 And they just look like they've been sucked dry by a vampire.
01:31:04.000 I noticed when Obama welcomed the President-elect Trump to the Oval Office for that 90-minute meeting that Trump thought was going to last 15 minutes, Obama looked like Tutankhamun.
01:31:16.000 His skin was so drawn across his face.
01:31:19.000 It's like a snare drum.
01:31:20.000 He must have been so exhausted.
01:31:21.000 I think any presidency is going to be taken over.
01:31:25.000 Just any president, like George W. Bush...
01:31:27.000 Was, to me, a handsome, energetic guy when he got into office.
01:31:32.000 But eight years in 9-11 and in the invasion and occupation of Iraq on the way out, his face had fallen.
01:31:40.000 His hair had died.
01:31:42.000 And I'm not a guy who hates him, just disagrees.
01:31:45.000 But the presidency killed that guy.
01:31:49.000 I mean, I just think the stress, because you don't get the nice phone call, hey, we got the cat out of the tree.
01:31:53.000 It's like, hey, we lost eight guys.
01:31:56.000 That thing you said, go, it went south.
01:31:59.000 Well, I'm very curious to see how Trump comes out of this, because he's one of the older guys to get in there.
01:32:04.000 I think he's 70 or 71, right?
01:32:06.000 And just in the past year, there's a picture of Bush from 2000 and 2008. See what I'm saying?
01:32:11.000 That's crazy.
01:32:12.000 I mean, it just kicked his ass.
01:32:15.000 And I'm not trying to put him in the pejorative.
01:32:17.000 It's just reality.
01:32:18.000 It's like when you see those really amazing photos of Lincoln during the Civil War, or...
01:32:25.000 Lyndon Johnson in those think-tank meetings, him and McNamara, his face is sliding off his skull because he's getting those phone calls.
01:32:34.000 Hey, we just lost 600 guys, Mr. President.
01:32:37.000 I'm really sorry to give you this news because he insisted on getting the bad phone call.
01:32:41.000 And you see what it does to a human being.
01:32:44.000 And I noticed it with Bush and Obama because those were trying times for both presidents, very trying administrations.
01:32:53.000 And I wonder what it's going to do to a guy who doesn't take care of himself, who is carrying a lot of weight, probably nowhere near the best diet.
01:33:03.000 And I hope he doesn't have some kind of heart attack.
01:33:10.000 I mean, I'm not the kind of guy who wants people to die.
01:33:12.000 He easily could.
01:33:13.000 But man, you look at him, you're like, man, you need to listen to the White House doctor get on a plan because they can really rock you.
01:33:19.000 They can help you lose 40 pounds back.
01:33:23.000 By spring of next year, and you can really feel better.
01:33:26.000 You look at him, you're like, man, there's someone in the White House who can help you with that.
01:33:31.000 Like, they're paid to get you on the track every morning.
01:33:34.000 They could get him up at 5 in the morning, get him out there, and...
01:33:36.000 He's not going to do it.
01:33:37.000 He's got to watch Fox News.
01:33:38.000 He's got to agree or disagree with those people on the TV. It's too bad, because a president has all those people who are, like, ready.
01:33:45.000 They're already in their jogging outfits, like a dog who wants to go to the park, waiting to train him.
01:33:49.000 And a dietician, they could, like...
01:33:52.000 Rock those calories.
01:33:54.000 I don't think he wants it.
01:33:55.000 I don't think he gives a shit.
01:33:56.000 He apparently drinks like 12 Diet Cokes a day.
01:33:59.000 That's one of the things they were saying.
01:34:01.000 That diet window you were talking about, when you do eat, you have a family.
01:34:10.000 Is it the dinner table?
01:34:11.000 Are you eating at home with the family?
01:34:13.000 A lot of times that's the meal.
01:34:14.000 Is your family, is that meal targeted?
01:34:18.000 Like nutrition for the kids, nutrition for dad?
01:34:21.000 I mean, do you guys eat smart?
01:34:22.000 No, the kids actually eat very healthy.
01:34:25.000 Yeah, we've been eating together really healthy since they were babies.
01:34:30.000 They're always eating vegetables and some healthy meat.
01:34:34.000 They eat a lot of wild game because I hunt.
01:34:36.000 So they eat really healthy.
01:34:39.000 It's an interesting thing with kids, too.
01:34:41.000 If you shield them from interesting foods, like my eight-year-old loves kimchi.
01:34:46.000 She loves spicy Korean fermented cabbage, which to a lot of kids would be disgusting.
01:34:52.000 She loves it.
01:34:53.000 She eats fucking plates of it.
01:34:55.000 And because of that, she rarely gets sick.
01:34:57.000 She eats a lot of probiotics and healthy foods.
01:35:01.000 They're always eating fruit and vegetables.
01:35:03.000 They've been doing it since they were a little kid.
01:35:04.000 We don't stop them from eating candy.
01:35:06.000 But I do tell them what candy is, and I showed them that sugar documentary...
01:35:11.000 And I've talked to them in length about how sugar didn't used to be something that people ate all the time.
01:35:16.000 And it's a really recent thing.
01:35:17.000 I've showed them photographs of people from like the 1800s and the early 1900s.
01:35:22.000 Like, look what these people looked like.
01:35:23.000 They were thin.
01:35:24.000 They were different.
01:35:24.000 They had a different diet.
01:35:25.000 But now we just eat too many carbohydrates and it's fine every now and then.
01:35:29.000 Like, don't keep it from yourself.
01:35:31.000 But understand that these are empty calories and they make your body, they actually make you tired.
01:35:36.000 Well, a thing I've noticed, I look at people when I travel, I just find our species is fascinating all over the world.
01:35:42.000 You look at people's teeth in parts of the world where sugar and corn syrup is just not normal.
01:35:49.000 And you see, like, these 75-year-old women, like, carrying a couch up a hill, and their teeth are these bright white tree trunks, just like of, like, they're never going to fall out of their heads.
01:36:02.000 Right.
01:36:03.000 No dentistry, you know, no noticeable dentistry, and the teeth are gleaming white, maybe darkened from tobacco or tea, but nothing like in the West where their teeth are just getting assaulted by our own diet.
01:36:18.000 And you see people of great age with, like, they're just ripped.
01:36:24.000 And you look at what they're eating, like fish, rice, vegetables, and it's all lean, smart products.
01:36:30.000 Food.
01:36:30.000 And the sugars are all monosaccharides, like fruit sugar.
01:36:36.000 The occasional banana or orange is a treat.
01:36:39.000 But the sugar's really not in the diet at all.
01:36:43.000 Maybe rice breaking down.
01:36:44.000 Nor should it be.
01:36:45.000 But not like we are doing it.
01:36:47.000 No.
01:36:48.000 No one's ever done it the way we were doing it.
01:36:50.000 No one's ever been as fat.
01:36:52.000 And then we have these things to shield people from.
01:36:54.000 We call it fat shaming.
01:36:56.000 Don't tell someone they're fat.
01:36:57.000 Let them just be morbidly obese and go through life at a massive risk of heart attack or stroke or diabetes.
01:37:05.000 Don't say anything because then you'll hurt their feelings.
01:37:07.000 Meanwhile, you could say something to someone and it might be uncomfortable in the moment.
01:37:13.000 Listen, I don't want to be that guy, but you gotta lose some weight.
01:37:16.000 And then that guy could go and look in the mirror and go, fuck, I really do need to lose some weight.
01:37:21.000 And then they'll lose some weight and they'll be healthier and they'll talk to you four or five months later and go, you know, you fucked my head up that day.
01:37:27.000 And because of that, I really started changing the way I eat and I'm so much healthier and I feel better.
01:37:31.000 Yeah, because he's your friend.
01:37:32.000 My friend Tom Segura and Bert Kreischer, they did this thing last year, two years ago, where they had a weight loss competition.
01:37:39.000 And one of the things they kept doing is fat shaming each other, like ruthlessly.
01:37:44.000 And they would use hashtag Bert is fat, hashtag Tom is fat.
01:37:48.000 And they had this weight loss competition.
01:37:51.000 And they fucking both lost a shitload of weight.
01:37:54.000 I think they both lost between 50 and 60 pounds.
01:37:58.000 Wow.
01:37:58.000 And they looked fucking incredible, but then after it was over, Tom was like, dude, let me tell you something.
01:38:03.000 Fat shaming works.
01:38:04.000 It works.
01:38:05.000 It got me off my ass.
01:38:06.000 I realized I was a fat fuck, and it made me lose weight.
01:38:09.000 It doesn't feel good.
01:38:10.000 That shaming thing is you, like...
01:38:13.000 Fat shaming doesn't work on people who aren't fat, okay?
01:38:15.000 It works on people who have a problem but don't want to address that problem.
01:38:20.000 So you bring up that problem, and then they go, oh, you're making me feel bad by thinking about my problem.
01:38:25.000 You're a bad person.
01:38:27.000 No, you have a weak spot.
01:38:28.000 That weak spot shouldn't be there.
01:38:31.000 You shouldn't belabor it and constantly ridicule someone for being fat, but the idea that you're never supposed to bring it up even with someone you care about, even in jest or friends busting balls, like, no, no, no, you should bring it up, because that bad feeling is a gift.
01:38:46.000 It makes you realize, like, oh my god, I've been remiss.
01:38:48.000 I haven't been paying attention to my own physical sovereignty.
01:38:52.000 I have control over what goes in my body.
01:38:54.000 I have control over the amount of calories I take in, the kind of calories.
01:38:58.000 I have control over how much body fat I'm carrying around.
01:39:01.000 And there's ways to fix it.
01:39:03.000 Yeah, I think you should use discretion.
01:39:07.000 Maybe not in line at the supermarket.
01:39:10.000 To people you'd like.
01:39:11.000 Yeah.
01:39:12.000 But it was funny to hear Tom, he was getting angry.
01:39:16.000 He's like, fucking, fat shaming works, man.
01:39:18.000 All these people that say you don't fat shame, fuck, that's how I got skinny.
01:39:21.000 Fat shaming works.
01:39:23.000 Yeah, but you know, again.
01:39:25.000 Yes, don't be rude to someone out in public for no reason.
01:39:27.000 Don't drive an 11-year-old to suicide.
01:39:29.000 Yeah, definitely don't do that.
01:39:31.000 Well, the little kids is the worst because their parents will get them hooked on those sugary sodas.
01:39:36.000 And the goddamn sodas, man, I mean, that is one of the primary causes for people being fat in this country.
01:39:42.000 And it just seems so innocuous.
01:39:43.000 It's just in a glass.
01:39:44.000 I'll just drink this.
01:39:45.000 It's got some ice cubes.
01:39:46.000 No big deal.
01:39:47.000 It goes down so fast.
01:39:48.000 Yeah, it tastes great.
01:39:49.000 On the weekends, I like ginger beer and the Bundabergs.
01:39:55.000 It's the same power as a Coke.
01:39:57.000 I mean, it's a lot of sugar.
01:39:59.000 And I buy a four-pack and I have one bottle a week.
01:40:03.000 Saturday night, my big drink.
01:40:07.000 Discipline.
01:40:07.000 He's going nuts.
01:40:09.000 Look at him.
01:40:09.000 He's got his drink.
01:40:10.000 Nothing wrong with that.
01:40:11.000 It's just the best tasting stuff, but man, it tastes good for a reason.
01:40:15.000 It's so sweet.
01:40:17.000 And like you just want the next one when you're done.
01:40:20.000 But man, I could drink them all day, but I just can't do that to my system.
01:40:25.000 So I do one a week.
01:40:26.000 That's good discipline.
01:40:28.000 Yeah.
01:40:28.000 But it's like, you know, something to look forward to.
01:40:30.000 Do you have a diet that you follow other than that?
01:40:33.000 Yeah.
01:40:34.000 I mean, I love ice cream, so I don't eat it.
01:40:40.000 You know, I try not to because my body is slowed down with age.
01:40:44.000 I just can't shed pounds.
01:40:46.000 But I've never really had a weight problem.
01:40:47.000 I've never like, uh-oh, I've got to lose 30 pounds.
01:40:51.000 My metabolism is such where I'm always kind of like a greyhound.
01:40:54.000 I'm always kind of nervous.
01:40:56.000 Well, you're always working out as well.
01:40:57.000 Yeah, but I'm always kind of like...
01:41:00.000 Doing something.
01:41:01.000 Yeah, and just kind of uptight, kind of nervy.
01:41:03.000 Well, you talked the last time you were about the fact that your parents had you on Ritalin from the time you were a really small boy.
01:41:09.000 Yeah.
01:41:09.000 Do you think that just like wired you in a certain way?
01:41:13.000 I don't know, but I would need a doctor to tell me, but it's not a subtle drug, especially when you're a little kid.
01:41:20.000 But I try and eat as clean as I can because...
01:41:24.000 More energy, less need for sleep, and not feeling so bad all the time mentally, like not feeling like I don't want to do anything.
01:41:33.000 With a good diet, I feel better mentally.
01:41:38.000 And like I said before, I've been struggling with trying to feel okay.
01:41:42.000 I don't even need to feel good.
01:41:43.000 I just want to be neutral.
01:41:45.000 Right.
01:41:45.000 Not just like, ah, okay to be here.
01:41:48.000 That's all I want.
01:41:49.000 Yeah.
01:41:49.000 Not asking for much.
01:41:51.000 And I found a good diet really, really rocks that.
01:41:56.000 Where I feel when I do the bad meal, like a depression meal, like tons of carbs.
01:42:01.000 For like a day later, I'm just like, oh man, I'm feeling every bite of that.
01:42:07.000 And so I don't want to feel like that.
01:42:09.000 So I'm like, nope, can't do that because it's just not worth it.
01:42:12.000 So what kind of food do you eat?
01:42:13.000 What's a typical meal for you?
01:42:14.000 Today I had a salad with some chopped up chicken with a low calorie dressing on it and a cup of coffee.
01:42:23.000 And tonight I'm going to have a glass of carrot juice with a splash of beet juice and probably half a cup of coffee.
01:42:32.000 The other half of the cup I started this morning.
01:42:33.000 That's your dinner?
01:42:34.000 Yeah, I already...
01:42:35.000 So it's basically the salad with the chicken is your whole day.
01:42:38.000 Yeah, I'll eat tomorrow.
01:42:39.000 Wow.
01:42:40.000 I'll be good and hungry tomorrow.
01:42:41.000 If I'm feeling like I can't sleep, I'm distracted from hunger, I've got some peanuts in my room, and I'll have a handful of peanuts.
01:42:49.000 So you eat very clean.
01:42:50.000 I don't know what that means.
01:42:51.000 You eat very clean by that time.
01:42:53.000 Oh, I thought very clean was like some kind of thing.
01:42:55.000 No, no, no.
01:42:56.000 I try and eat clean because I have found I get great results with it.
01:43:00.000 Like, it is no joke.
01:43:01.000 It totally works.
01:43:03.000 And I, as we do in our line of work, I got a lot of stuff coming up.
01:43:09.000 I got a TV show, a lot of shows, a couple of speeches.
01:43:15.000 I got teaching a class at UCLA one day.
01:43:20.000 What is that?
01:43:21.000 November.
01:43:21.000 What are you teaching?
01:43:22.000 They just want me to talk about music and culture.
01:43:26.000 And I just got asked to talk about change at another place.
01:43:30.000 And I have a bunch of shows coming up from here to Kiev, Ukraine.
01:43:34.000 And just a lot of marks I got to hit.
01:43:36.000 It's just what I do.
01:43:38.000 And so I'm basically...
01:43:40.000 Getting ready to walk out of the house until about Christmas and be hitting marks and not screwing up day after day, night after night.
01:43:50.000 And so diet goes into that prep big time.
01:43:55.000 Well, I mean, it makes sense.
01:43:57.000 If you're demanding that much out of your body, you really don't want your body struggling with shitty nutrition.
01:44:02.000 I can't afford it.
01:44:04.000 Like, my car can't go off the road.
01:44:07.000 I can't fail.
01:44:09.000 I'm going to be screwing up.
01:44:11.000 If I hit that set, I'm going to be on a TV show soon.
01:44:14.000 I can't not know the lines.
01:44:16.000 I can't be tired.
01:44:17.000 I can't look like I haven't slept.
01:44:19.000 I've got to be A-game.
01:44:21.000 Do you take any vitamins or supplements or anything like that?
01:44:23.000 I try and I forget and they go stale.
01:44:26.000 I have the five lined up.
01:44:30.000 My friend Heidi said, okay, here.
01:44:32.000 And I got into it, and eventually they get put in the cupboard.
01:44:36.000 And then you look, and I'm like, oh, three years ago.
01:44:39.000 Whoops.
01:44:40.000 And so that's why I do the carrot and beet juice, just so those kind of vitamins are coming through.
01:44:45.000 And I do that almost every day.
01:44:47.000 I just like the way it tastes, too.
01:44:50.000 But no, I've never been able to stick with it.
01:44:54.000 I just forget.
01:44:55.000 Mm-hmm.
01:44:56.000 Have you ever had anything that you took that gave you great benefits?
01:45:00.000 I never noticed.
01:45:01.000 The only thing I've ever noticed is restorative sleep for just general concentration and well-being.
01:45:09.000 And the cleaner I eat, the better I feel.
01:45:12.000 Caffeine, I don't know if I get jumped up on it.
01:45:16.000 I can't tell.
01:45:18.000 And so as far as anything I've ever done, working out is an antidepressant.
01:45:23.000 Good diet is an antidepressant and makes me a more efficient when I'm awake.
01:45:29.000 Other than that, I've never taken codfish oil or whatever and said, wow, my joints feel better.
01:45:35.000 Maybe I'm not aware enough.
01:45:38.000 Where I'm not expecting it to work.
01:45:40.000 So I have no thing I can hold up and go, this really helped me.
01:45:45.000 Besides physical fitness, getting the work done.
01:45:49.000 Like you want to alleviate anxiety before an audition.
01:45:52.000 Rehearse.
01:45:52.000 Go in prepared.
01:45:54.000 And then there's nothing to be worried about because you can't wait to show the guy what you got.
01:45:58.000 And so preparation, good diet, and finishing the thing So you can really clear the deck.
01:46:07.000 Those are the things, because for me, my whole life is, don't be depressed.
01:46:12.000 I work so hard not to feel bad.
01:46:15.000 A lot of what I do is to not feel really bad.
01:46:19.000 It's interesting that you've chosen to do this in a non-pharmaceutical way, like specifically.
01:46:24.000 You have strategies.
01:46:25.000 I'm just afraid of it.
01:46:26.000 I just don't believe that someone I don't know can come up with a drug that's going to work for my unique little mind.
01:46:36.000 And I've seen people on antidepressants.
01:46:38.000 I said, so how's that working for you?
01:46:39.000 Like, I think I'm losing my mind.
01:46:42.000 I've been doing this for three months, and I don't know who I am right now.
01:46:47.000 I'm like, okay, I have that problem anyway, so I don't want...
01:46:52.000 Any pharmaceuticals to enhance that?
01:46:53.000 I'm just basically afraid.
01:46:55.000 That's a legitimate concern.
01:46:57.000 Yeah.
01:46:57.000 I think the brain is real fragile, and I'm not one of those types who say all medication is bad.
01:47:02.000 I'm not that.
01:47:04.000 Anything having to do with the brain, I'd rather just deal with what I got.
01:47:08.000 Right.
01:47:09.000 And use these more kind of on-the-ground ideas.
01:47:13.000 Like, I'll just sweat a lot.
01:47:15.000 I'm going to do a lot of pull-ups.
01:47:16.000 And whenever I do a ton of push-ups or get on the stationary bike or whatever, I do feel better.
01:47:24.000 And when I eat the lean fish salad, you know, the salmon and the spinach, I do feel better.
01:47:28.000 I feel great.
01:47:31.000 And that's good enough for me.
01:47:33.000 Yeah, you've got successful strategies.
01:47:35.000 They were working for me.
01:47:38.000 You do so many different things.
01:47:41.000 At this point in your life, do you have specific goals that you set out for the year or where you would like to be a year from now?
01:47:49.000 Or do you just do things that are really interesting to you and just pursue them with passion and just let the chips fall where they may?
01:47:56.000 I do that.
01:47:58.000 And I don't have a goal.
01:47:59.000 Like, at 65, I want to be here.
01:48:02.000 I have no idea where I'll be.
01:48:04.000 I'm trying to get ready for 2019. I have no plans yet.
01:48:07.000 I'm just hoping for a lot of work.
01:48:11.000 I don't have those kind of long-range plans.
01:48:15.000 Unfortunately, I'm a short-ranged to no-ranged person.
01:48:19.000 And a lot of my motivation is vengeance.
01:48:22.000 And I know that...
01:48:24.000 Revenge and vengeance are synonyms.
01:48:27.000 However, the fact that revenge has re in it, like you do this, I do that.
01:48:33.000 Vengeance is just like the difference between aggression and hostility.
01:48:37.000 Were you aggro?
01:48:38.000 No.
01:48:39.000 I'm hostile.
01:48:41.000 What does that mean?
01:48:42.000 Wham!
01:48:43.000 With the ashtray.
01:48:44.000 That's hostility.
01:48:45.000 You just hit me.
01:48:47.000 Yes, but I'm not aggressive.
01:48:48.000 I just like watching you bleed.
01:48:54.000 That's so ridiculous.
01:48:56.000 Right.
01:48:56.000 And I'm not saying it makes sense.
01:48:58.000 I know.
01:48:59.000 And so I don't believe in tit for tat.
01:49:03.000 I believe in tit-tat.
01:49:05.000 Watch me just jump up and down and just break it all.
01:49:08.000 But you want to prove yourself.
01:49:10.000 Yes.
01:49:10.000 This is a primary motivation for you.
01:49:12.000 And so I wake up every day wanting to get back at every teacher and Every guy at school, every bad boss, whatever parent irked me.
01:49:24.000 And like every day, I out everything, you man.
01:49:27.000 And that's why like, hey, it's four in the morning, you want to work?
01:49:30.000 Yeah.
01:49:31.000 I'll work in a snowstorm.
01:49:35.000 Someone I know, they go on vacation.
01:49:37.000 Have a nice vacation.
01:49:39.000 And every day you're getting tan.
01:49:42.000 I'm not quitting.
01:49:43.000 It's ridiculous.
01:49:45.000 I'm an 11-year-old.
01:49:47.000 It's so juvenile.
01:49:49.000 And it's not cool.
01:49:52.000 It's fuel in some way.
01:49:53.000 I don't spray paint your house.
01:49:54.000 I'm not flattening your tire.
01:49:56.000 I'm just working.
01:49:58.000 And when someone goes, oh, I didn't get up early enough.
01:50:01.000 How did you get five of those?
01:50:03.000 Because I got up at three and I stood outside and I ate this rat tail and I climbed the wall and I got it.
01:50:11.000 And I got two of them.
01:50:14.000 Because...
01:50:15.000 So you could have none.
01:50:18.000 I'm so mad.
01:50:19.000 And I'm not trying to get somewhere by stepping on you to use you as a ladder rung.
01:50:25.000 You cling to this.
01:50:26.000 This is not something you ever plan on abandoning.
01:50:28.000 It's the corner I come fighting out of.
01:50:31.000 It's my true north.
01:50:32.000 It's like, oh yeah?
01:50:33.000 Fuck you.
01:50:35.000 Yeah.
01:50:35.000 And it really works.
01:50:37.000 And it's not like I'm not...
01:50:38.000 I would never cheat someone out of something or steal from them.
01:50:43.000 But whoever gets up earlier is going to get it.
01:50:46.000 Then I just won't sleep tonight.
01:50:49.000 My anger will keep me awake.
01:50:50.000 What are you having for dinner?
01:50:52.000 This?
01:50:54.000 And that's all I need.
01:50:56.000 Like you say, I can't?
01:50:58.000 Then I'll just sit up all night.
01:51:01.000 Because that's all I need.
01:51:03.000 But who are these people?
01:51:04.000 Like when you say, you say I can't.
01:51:05.000 Does anybody really say you can't at this point in time?
01:51:07.000 No, it's all in my head.
01:51:08.000 Or do you have to manufacture these people?
01:51:09.000 Oh, I totally manufacture.
01:51:10.000 Are you kidding?
01:51:11.000 Oh, yeah, absolutely.
01:51:12.000 So you have these people in your head.
01:51:14.000 Henry, you're a loser.
01:51:15.000 Oh, I'm a loser.
01:51:15.000 Oh, what the fuck are you?
01:51:17.000 Yeah.
01:51:17.000 Yeah.
01:51:19.000 And this doesn't mean I'm walking over to hit somebody.
01:51:23.000 No, no, no.
01:51:23.000 I'm not looking to get beat up.
01:51:25.000 I'm just...
01:51:27.000 Motivating yourself.
01:51:28.000 Yeah.
01:51:29.000 And I don't have a bunch of...
01:51:31.000 I don't have an entourage.
01:51:33.000 I'm just...
01:51:33.000 All I got is me.
01:51:34.000 So I get the pom-poms out.
01:51:35.000 Go!
01:51:36.000 Go!
01:51:36.000 Push them back!
01:51:37.000 Push them back!
01:51:38.000 All I got is me!
01:51:39.000 I'm up in my office, you know, like at four in the morning, just like, okay, I'm on Australian jet lag.
01:51:46.000 I'm going to make it work.
01:51:47.000 I've been up since 1.30.
01:51:49.000 I'm going to work for 16 hours.
01:51:51.000 And...
01:51:52.000 I do.
01:51:53.000 Why?
01:51:54.000 Because I'm mad at it.
01:51:55.000 Do I need to write another book?
01:51:56.000 Probably not.
01:51:57.000 Must I? Yes, I must.
01:51:59.000 I must put that into the world.
01:52:01.000 And so you create these people that are telling you you can't do it.
01:52:04.000 The world tells me I can't.
01:52:06.000 And I make money.
01:52:07.000 I never count it.
01:52:10.000 The accountant does.
01:52:12.000 We talk a few times a year.
01:52:14.000 You just make sure it's coming in.
01:52:14.000 I just say, am I doing anything horribly wrong?
01:52:17.000 And she'll say, well, from your receipts, it doesn't look like you eat very much, but you sure seem to like records.
01:52:23.000 Are you eating those?
01:52:26.000 But past that, I just book it.
01:52:29.000 Put me in there.
01:52:30.000 Like, here's five shows.
01:52:31.000 Can I have five more?
01:52:32.000 So I don't really count records.
01:52:36.000 I want to do well.
01:52:37.000 I want to pay my bills and I don't want to lose my house.
01:52:39.000 I want to keep eating and filling the car with gasoline and going to the grocery store.
01:52:43.000 But I'm not just trying to, hey, I got a lot of money I can hang around.
01:52:49.000 I got some money and excuse me, I really got to go.
01:52:53.000 Will you still drive that boring car?
01:52:54.000 The Mazda 6?
01:52:56.000 Yeah.
01:52:56.000 Still keeps getting me from A to B. Yeah.
01:52:58.000 Yeah, super boring, but damn, does it keep starting up.
01:53:01.000 Got me here.
01:53:02.000 I love Japanese cars.
01:53:03.000 I got it because Heidi said, you're getting this car.
01:53:07.000 The other car I had, they took from me.
01:53:10.000 They?
01:53:12.000 The powers that be.
01:53:14.000 I was the voice of Infiniti car for about five years, and they give you a new car every year, and that's a good car.
01:53:20.000 Wow.
01:53:21.000 Nice.
01:53:22.000 That's a great car.
01:53:22.000 I had one of those big Q trucks, those Q whatever they are.
01:53:26.000 They're great.
01:53:26.000 Yep.
01:53:27.000 And it's the car of the future.
01:53:29.000 And when the contract finally came to an end, they said, okay, we'll come and get the car.
01:53:33.000 This is a perfect example, Joe.
01:53:34.000 We'll come and get the car in 30 days.
01:53:36.000 I went, no.
01:53:37.000 Come and get it tomorrow morning.
01:53:39.000 Screw you.
01:53:40.000 Screw your car.
01:53:42.000 And I said to Heidi, because she's the brains, I said, I need a new car.
01:53:45.000 She goes, you're getting a Mazda 6. It's going to be blue, and I'm picking the interior.
01:53:49.000 Get in my car.
01:53:50.000 Why didn't you just get an Infiniti?
01:53:52.000 You're driving them forever.
01:53:54.000 They paid you?
01:53:55.000 They didn't want me anymore.
01:53:56.000 Wow.
01:53:56.000 I mean, all good things come to an end.
01:53:59.000 Wow.
01:54:00.000 Double fingers.
01:54:00.000 You don't want me anymore?
01:54:03.000 And we went to the lot.
01:54:06.000 And two hours later, I parked the Mazda 6 next to the Infiniti that got taken while I was on the set of a TV show the next morning.
01:54:16.000 And I drove my new car to the set.
01:54:20.000 It's kind of shit compared to the Infiniti though, isn't it?
01:54:23.000 It's a different kind of ride.
01:54:25.000 It makes you very humble because you floor it and the nine gerbils go, come on, we're working!
01:54:31.000 And the sunflower seeds fall out and every other car passes you and you're like, oh, I'm coming!
01:54:36.000 And yeah, you get used to a nice ride.
01:54:39.000 But it's...
01:54:41.000 And that was that...
01:54:42.000 She said, you know what?
01:54:44.000 We'll take a couple of days.
01:54:45.000 I'll go, no.
01:54:46.000 New car right now.
01:54:47.000 But that's my question.
01:54:48.000 9 a.m.
01:54:49.000 tomorrow morning.
01:54:49.000 You can afford a really nice car.
01:54:51.000 I mean, you work really hard.
01:54:52.000 Yep.
01:54:53.000 Do you take any...
01:54:55.000 Compensation?
01:54:56.000 Yes.
01:54:56.000 Do you have any happiness that you derive from buying something?
01:55:00.000 I have a really good stereo.
01:55:02.000 Ridiculous stereo.
01:55:03.000 Yeah, we talked about it last time you were here, your giant speakers.
01:55:06.000 But don't you want a car that has a crazy stereo as well?
01:55:08.000 Nah.
01:55:09.000 I just go to Trader Joe's and auditions and to the Joe Rogan podcast.
01:55:14.000 No, I live a really utilitarian life, like in LA when I'm off the road.
01:55:19.000 You don't even wear a watch.
01:55:20.000 No, I use the phone.
01:55:22.000 I use the watch when I travel, just so I can see the time, see the time.
01:55:27.000 But when I'm off the road, I just use the phone.
01:55:30.000 It's just laziness.
01:55:33.000 I live very utilitarian here, because basically I'm just counting down the days before I leave again, because a lot of my work...
01:55:41.000 What happens out in the world, location, like a film or TV show, or just touring or traveling.
01:55:48.000 Last year, Heidi said something funny.
01:55:51.000 She said, you're driving me crazy at the office, like pacing and huffing and puffing like a wild animal.
01:55:56.000 She said, I'm going to book you a trip and you can't know where you're going to the day you leave.
01:56:00.000 I'm just going to get you out of here for 10 days because you're driving me crazy.
01:56:03.000 I will kill you.
01:56:04.000 So I said, book it.
01:56:06.000 And so I said, all I need is the right electrical plug and the basic temperature range so I know how to pack.
01:56:11.000 She gave it to me, and I picked the itinerary up, got in the car to go to the airport.
01:56:17.000 This nice lady takes me to the airport.
01:56:19.000 She goes, where are we going today, hon?
01:56:20.000 I said, let's see where the boss is sending me.
01:56:22.000 I said, I'm going to Lima, Peru.
01:56:25.000 And so I was in Lima and Cusco for a week working on my book manuscript and walking the streets up in the Peruvian Andes up in Cusco.
01:56:34.000 And so a lot of my life happens out in the world.
01:56:39.000 So when I'm here, I'm just editing and prepping to get out of here.
01:56:44.000 And so a car, low-maintenance...
01:56:47.000 Clothes, low maintenance.
01:56:50.000 Inconspicuous.
01:56:50.000 Yeah, I try not to have anything on the shirt.
01:56:54.000 I'd love to have a Listen to Black Sabbath t-shirt on.
01:56:57.000 I'd wear that one every day.
01:56:58.000 I love that shirt.
01:56:59.000 But I'm always trying to slip through crowds and just head down in just blank clothes.
01:57:06.000 You have a very interesting philosophy.
01:57:09.000 And like I said, your work ethic and your philosophy, it's very inspiring because it makes me want to work more.
01:57:15.000 It really does.
01:57:16.000 When I talk to you, when I listen to you talk- I think you get plenty done, sir.
01:57:18.000 I know I do, but that's one of the reasons why I do is because I get inspired by people like Me too.
01:57:22.000 I get inspired by you and other people.
01:57:24.000 I love getting inspired.
01:57:26.000 I live a fairly solitary life, but I have a lot of heroes.
01:57:31.000 I'm a fan of bands and people.
01:57:34.000 I dig presidents and other people in other countries.
01:57:37.000 I go to see bands play and they don't know, but I have all their records.
01:57:41.000 I have the bootlegs.
01:57:42.000 I'm an uber fan of so many people, like a fraction of my age.
01:57:48.000 Because I need that.
01:57:49.000 I need to be pumped up by other people.
01:57:51.000 And it works.
01:57:52.000 You put it on someone's record.
01:57:53.000 You're like, yeah, man, that's great!
01:57:54.000 Well, he's 19. What does he know?
01:57:57.000 Plays a guitar better than I'll ever.
01:57:58.000 I mean, like, what are you talking about?
01:58:00.000 And so it can come in all kinds of ways.
01:58:03.000 I meet amazing people when I travel.
01:58:05.000 So I need that.
01:58:07.000 And the only thing good about me, in my opinion, is what I do.
01:58:11.000 Like, don't be my friend.
01:58:12.000 I'm no good.
01:58:14.000 I'll help you move your house.
01:58:16.000 I'll help you move or paint your house.
01:58:20.000 But I don't want to come to Thanksgiving dinner.
01:58:22.000 I really don't.
01:58:24.000 But if you're in trouble, I'll drive from here to Ohio to get you out of the trouble.
01:58:28.000 I'm so happy to bail you out of a jam.
01:58:32.000 You just don't want to come over for dinner.
01:58:33.000 I don't want to come over for the holidays.
01:58:36.000 Unless you're William Shachner.
01:58:37.000 Yeah!
01:58:38.000 Weird, right?
01:58:41.000 So, what's good about me, when people say, oh, I'd love to hang out with you, I'm like, no!
01:58:47.000 Just, you know, your books are interesting.
01:58:50.000 Thank you!
01:58:51.000 Let me go write them.
01:58:53.000 That's the only...
01:58:54.000 When I'm on stage or got the books or the radio show I do on KCRW, that's my human greatest hits.
01:59:02.000 The rest of my life, I'm just a nervous wreck trying to get somewhere on time and kick ass.
01:59:08.000 And so...
01:59:10.000 I travel for months at a time with Road Manager Ward, my road manager of many years, a top guy, fantastic guy.
01:59:19.000 There's hours that go by where we don't talk.
01:59:21.000 He's got a life.
01:59:23.000 I have a life and we sit on the bus and hours go by and there's no sound.
01:59:28.000 Except the TV, whatever's on.
01:59:30.000 That's nice.
01:59:30.000 It's fine.
01:59:34.000 What's good about me is what you see on stage, on the page, when I do my little radio show.
01:59:41.000 The rest of it, I'm not good friend material, but I will help your ass out of a jam.
01:59:48.000 Like, hey, I'm in Long Beach.
01:59:50.000 Can you come bail me out of jail?
01:59:51.000 It's three in the morning.
01:59:52.000 I'm so ready to do that for you.
01:59:54.000 That's a very unusual quality.
01:59:56.000 I don't know what it is.
01:59:57.000 Why do you find...
01:59:58.000 I don't know, but that doesn't bug me at all.
02:00:00.000 I'm just happy to kind of be the dog with the bottle of alcohol.
02:00:05.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah, running up the hill.
02:00:07.000 Because I'm so happy to get you out of a jam.
02:00:12.000 Just, hey, come and meet the family.
02:00:14.000 Please don't make me meet your family.
02:00:16.000 Damn.
02:00:19.000 How did you meet Joey?
02:00:20.000 How'd you meet Joey Diaz?
02:00:22.000 I think Heidi set that up.
02:00:24.000 You'd never met him before you did the show?
02:00:26.000 I think that was via Heidi, via you.
02:00:29.000 I knew who he was, and he's a really lovable guy.
02:00:34.000 As soon as I met him, I liked him just by seeing him online, but when I met him, there's nothing not to like.
02:00:41.000 He's so honest.
02:00:43.000 He's full, full exposure.
02:00:45.000 Like, who he is, you get it in 60 seconds.
02:00:50.000 And I think that's why people like him, because there's no BS. And like, you know, there's the good, the bad of anybody.
02:00:55.000 He lets you know who he is in the first five minutes, and you can take or leave it.
02:01:00.000 But there's no ambiguity.
02:01:03.000 And I really like being around that because you can be yourself because he has shown up being himself.
02:01:11.000 He's not holding back.
02:01:12.000 That's a really good way of looking at it.
02:01:14.000 You can be yourself because he is being himself.
02:01:17.000 Totally.
02:01:17.000 And he's not going to judge you on that.
02:01:19.000 He's going to be himself but give you also the freedom to be yourself.
02:01:24.000 Unlimited.
02:01:24.000 I mean, we spoke for a while on his podcast, had a great time, and he's one of those guys, if he called me at 3 in the morning, hey, I'm in trouble, I'm in San Diego, I'm like, hold on, give me three hours.
02:01:37.000 I mean, I'll help you.
02:01:39.000 Come and meet the family.
02:01:41.000 Please, just send a card.
02:01:47.000 That's so specific.
02:01:49.000 But I'm just, I don't want to come over.
02:01:53.000 You don't want bullshit small talk, and you've got things to do, and you're obsessed.
02:01:57.000 But what I'm trying to get across is I'm not mean-spirited.
02:02:01.000 I'm so happy to help.
02:02:02.000 Just a lot awkward.
02:02:04.000 But always ready to help.
02:02:06.000 But I think that the thing of that awkwardness is the fuel.
02:02:10.000 It's like we were talking about having imposter syndrome.
02:02:13.000 I don't think it ever goes away.
02:02:14.000 I thought one day it would go away.
02:02:16.000 I'm more comfortable meeting famous people now than I've ever been before, but I still feel full of shit.
02:02:21.000 I think you always will.
02:02:22.000 And everybody that I've ever talked to that's any good, they all say the same thing.
02:02:25.000 They all kind of feel...
02:02:27.000 No one ever feels like they're anything special.
02:02:30.000 If they're any good, they don't.
02:02:32.000 No, and you're always ruthlessly self-critical.
02:02:35.000 And trying to get better.
02:02:36.000 I mean, I've worked with big actors.
02:02:38.000 Big rock stars?
02:02:40.000 And the big rock stars?
02:02:42.000 Like one big rock star one time said to me, I opened.
02:02:46.000 He said, is there anyone out there?
02:02:47.000 I said, uh...
02:02:49.000 Like 19,000 people?
02:02:52.000 You smell the WD-40?
02:02:54.000 That's how they got the last thousand people in.
02:02:56.000 Are you kidding?
02:02:57.000 He said, I'm always worried that no one's going to show up.
02:02:59.000 I said, when has that ever been your problem?
02:03:03.000 He said, well, never, but...
02:03:04.000 Who is this?
02:03:05.000 Ozzy.
02:03:06.000 Jesus Christ!
02:03:08.000 Yeah, who's just one of my favorite people.
02:03:11.000 He's another guy.
02:03:14.000 He's honest.
02:03:15.000 How many people?
02:03:18.000 And I said, are you kidding?
02:03:21.000 We're like in some Floridian Megadon.
02:03:24.000 There won't be anyone out there.
02:03:25.000 And he goes out there and the place goes nuts.
02:03:29.000 The show is great.
02:03:30.000 And I said, you worry about people don't show up.
02:03:32.000 I get really depressed, man.
02:03:34.000 And I went, okay.
02:03:36.000 And...
02:03:38.000 You know, I did the Beacon Theater once many years ago in New York.
02:03:41.000 Beautiful room.
02:03:42.000 Love that place.
02:03:44.000 A few days later, I was at MTV doing something with, like, Matt Penfield or somebody.
02:03:52.000 I was living in New York.
02:03:53.000 And I'm leaving, and the courtesy lady, she said, Hey, George Carlin is in the green room, and he wants to meet you.
02:04:01.000 I went, Wait a minute.
02:04:03.000 Dumb question.
02:04:04.000 The George Carlin?
02:04:05.000 Because I've been listening to that guy since I was in eighth grade.
02:04:08.000 Class clown and occupation fool actually came out for me to go to the record store.
02:04:13.000 They were not nice price records.
02:04:14.000 They were what was on.
02:04:15.000 That's how old I am.
02:04:17.000 Memorized them by eighth grade, of course.
02:04:19.000 And I said, George Carlin wants to meet me.
02:04:21.000 Okay.
02:04:22.000 Walk in, and there's George Carlin.
02:04:23.000 He's there to promote his next HBO thing.
02:04:26.000 And he's going to do, like, multiple nights at the Beacon Theater, a place I would never sell out.
02:04:31.000 He's going to do a month there, whatever.
02:04:33.000 And he said, hey, I'm...
02:04:34.000 I said, Mr. Carlin.
02:04:35.000 He said, ah, I'm George.
02:04:36.000 I'm like, wow.
02:04:38.000 He said, oh, you did a book signing the other night at Tower Records.
02:04:41.000 I said, yeah.
02:04:42.000 He goes, oh, man, it was so cold.
02:04:44.000 I was in line for like half an hour.
02:04:45.000 And finally, I got so cold, I went home.
02:04:48.000 I said, you waited in line to meet me?
02:04:51.000 He's like, yeah.
02:04:52.000 I'm like, why don't you just walk in?
02:04:53.000 Like, oh, I can't do that, man.
02:04:56.000 Wow.
02:04:56.000 And he said, so you just worked the beacon?
02:04:59.000 I said, yeah, it was amazing.
02:05:01.000 He said, did they get the jokes?
02:05:03.000 I said, uh-oh, because that's not really what I do.
02:05:06.000 I said, I'm sorry, what do you mean?
02:05:08.000 He goes, like, can you get to the audience from that stage?
02:05:12.000 I said, it's actually a pretty big place.
02:05:14.000 It's a lot of feet before the first row.
02:05:17.000 I said, yeah.
02:05:18.000 I said, you're George Carlin.
02:05:19.000 I think you're going to do okay.
02:05:21.000 But he was sincerely wondering, like, is it going to be okay in there?
02:05:25.000 I'm like, are you kidding?
02:05:26.000 You were handcuffed with Lenny Bruce in the back of a cop car, and you're asking me if it's going to be okay?
02:05:33.000 Was he handcuffed with Lenny Bruce?
02:05:34.000 Yeah, it's in that great book.
02:05:37.000 It's in that great book, Ladies and Gentlemen, Lenny Bruce.
02:05:40.000 Ah, I got that book.
02:05:41.000 It's a great read.
02:05:42.000 It's a read and a half.
02:05:43.000 I read it like 22 years ago.
02:05:44.000 It was fantastic.
02:05:45.000 Yeah, I think I read it that long ago, too.
02:05:46.000 I forgot about George Carlin.
02:05:47.000 There was a time when, as you know, the First Amendment was not being used in Lenny Bruce's life towards the end of his life.
02:05:54.000 And that was every stand-up thing he did was about the law towards the end.
02:05:59.000 And he was doing a show one night.
02:06:01.000 George Carlin was there, underage.
02:06:03.000 And George said something, and they were waiting.
02:06:06.000 They pounced on him.
02:06:06.000 And then they went through the crowd, ID, ID, ID. Oh, come here, youngster.
02:06:10.000 And they handcuffed them together.
02:06:12.000 So I said, and that's how you met Lenny Bruce, right?
02:06:14.000 He said, no.
02:06:15.000 I had met him before.
02:06:17.000 But he said, we were literally one pair of handcuffs together, just like the book.
02:06:22.000 But I thought, that's not how we met.
02:06:24.000 I said, so how'd you guys meet?
02:06:25.000 He said, Lenny Bruce was very sympathetic to To young comics.
02:06:30.000 So what we would do is, like he said, give me your best five minutes.
02:06:33.000 And he would critique us.
02:06:35.000 I said, is he trying to take your material?
02:06:36.000 He said, no, no, no.
02:06:37.000 He said, okay, leave that part out.
02:06:39.000 That part sucks.
02:06:40.000 Do more of that.
02:06:41.000 And that first part, put it last.
02:06:42.000 He would like help.
02:06:43.000 And he said he was great with all the young comics.
02:06:45.000 He said, like, give me your stuff.
02:06:47.000 Okay, here's how you redo it.
02:06:48.000 Make it better.
02:06:49.000 I said, so you had known him before?
02:06:51.000 He said, yeah.
02:06:52.000 I said, because, you know, Lenny Bruce to me is a real, again, a hero, an inspiration.
02:06:57.000 He fought back.
02:06:59.000 And I walked out of there into the freezing New York to take the N or the R back down to the East Village.
02:07:07.000 But the fact that here's this guy, the point I'm making is Stone Cold Pro, anywhere where I sell out half the tickets, he does 20 nights there.
02:07:18.000 You'll never get out of that shadow.
02:07:20.000 And even he is saying, hey...
02:07:22.000 I have a question.
02:07:23.000 And here's what I've found with all of your big actors and the ones I've worked with.
02:07:30.000 They are obedient to the muse.
02:07:32.000 They work for the art.
02:07:34.000 They are so subservient to the job.
02:07:37.000 It's not about, hey, I'm rich, I'm popular.
02:07:40.000 It's like, damn it, I've got to make this script come to life.
02:07:42.000 And they fear it.
02:07:45.000 Like someone on their first job.
02:07:47.000 And there might have been a middle period, like in the 70s, they had their idiot phase for three years and they kind of went sideways.
02:07:54.000 But man, the big actors I've worked with are just so like, okay, this take is everything.
02:07:59.000 And it's a good lesson.
02:08:01.000 You're like, okay, never lose that.
02:08:03.000 Yeah, because that's what you have when you're young and you're coming up and you're starting to show promise.
02:08:07.000 And somewhere along the line...
02:08:09.000 It seems like some people get into this mindset that they deserve it.
02:08:13.000 Yeah.
02:08:14.000 And when they deserve it, it's a terrible thing that happens to comedians.
02:08:18.000 There's something that happens to comedians when they can't relate to people anymore, and they stop being relevant.
02:08:22.000 And by George waiting in line to see you outside in the cold shows that he never really got to that place, that bad place.
02:08:30.000 And he was probably the most prolific stand-up of all time.
02:08:35.000 That never stopped.
02:08:36.000 He would do a fresh HBO hour every year.
02:08:38.000 Every year!
02:08:39.000 He would just sit down and he would write it all.
02:08:41.000 He would write it all out and then he would just kind of fine tune it.
02:08:45.000 Sort of like you were saying you do.
02:08:47.000 He would fine tune it performance after performance and then put it on HBO and then start work on the next one and then just crank them out.
02:08:55.000 Yeah, I was told by someone who had him at his venue in Northern California, he just sits in front of the mirror before the show and does the whole show at hyperspeed in a low voice.
02:09:04.000 I did that on a TV show once, me and the actors.
02:09:10.000 It was one of the actors' ideas.
02:09:11.000 Okay, everyone in my trailer.
02:09:12.000 And we did the whole show at hyperspeed in a low voice, standing in a huddle.
02:09:17.000 It was really cool because we were just like in each other's face going on.
02:09:21.000 It's funny.
02:09:21.000 And we just kind of did it like this, like crazy mumbling fest for like 20 minutes.
02:09:26.000 And we're like, okay, okay, we got it.
02:09:28.000 And we went out there and did it.
02:09:30.000 It was like live in front of a TV audience.
02:09:32.000 And it was like, I'd never done that before.
02:09:33.000 It was really cool.
02:09:34.000 And apparently that's how George preps.
02:09:37.000 Wow, that's interesting.
02:09:39.000 I don't know anybody else who does that.
02:09:40.000 Most people don't even look at themselves.
02:09:43.000 They don't stand in front of a mirror.
02:09:45.000 I don't look at myself, but I do one thing that actually works.
02:09:48.000 I pace and I quote Lincoln's speeches.
02:09:54.000 What?
02:09:55.000 As a centering exercise.
02:09:57.000 Really?
02:09:57.000 Yeah.
02:09:58.000 Especially his speech from like January 19th, 1838. Give me some.
02:10:02.000 It's a famous speech.
02:10:03.000 He said when he was talking about will America ever be taken over by anywhere else?
02:10:09.000 And he said, no, the only way America is going to fall is from within.
02:10:12.000 So he said, should we fear some transatlantic giant to cross the ocean and crush us at a blow?
02:10:17.000 Never.
02:10:18.000 All the country, you know, Asia, Europe, and Africa, with their war chests combined, with the treasures of the world, are unaccepted.
02:10:27.000 And Bonaparte as a commander could not, in a trial of a thousand years, so much as take a sip from the Ohio River or lay a tread on the Blue Ridge Mountains.
02:10:37.000 If destruction be our lot, We must either live through all time or die by suicide.
02:10:46.000 And I just take chunks of that speech because he's like 28, 29 years of age.
02:10:51.000 He's so eloquent.
02:10:52.000 A sentence of Lincoln is worth 10 of anyone else's.
02:10:56.000 It's all online for free.
02:10:58.000 But it's called The Speech to the Young Men's Lyceum or The Perpetuation of Our Government Institutions.
02:11:03.000 And it's like 3,200 words.
02:11:05.000 And it'll be the best thing you read this week.
02:11:07.000 And how does it work as a centering exercise?
02:11:09.000 I don't know.
02:11:10.000 I just get in the Lincoln framework where words matter to him.
02:11:12.000 He's a lawyer and a politician, so he's a double bastard.
02:11:16.000 I was in the vault of the Lincoln Museum in Springfield a few years ago.
02:11:20.000 They let me in.
02:11:22.000 And they pull out one of his beaver skin top hats.
02:11:26.000 And they won't let me touch it, of course.
02:11:28.000 I didn't try.
02:11:28.000 But the guy with the gloves pulls it out.
02:11:30.000 He said, do you notice an indentation on the right side of the brim?
02:11:35.000 I said, yeah.
02:11:36.000 He goes, what do you think that is?
02:11:37.000 I said, let me guess.
02:11:38.000 There's one on top and two underneath.
02:11:40.000 And I looked and there was.
02:11:41.000 I said, that's him doffing his cap, his hat over and over again.
02:11:47.000 To it wears out the beaver skin.
02:11:49.000 He said, yeah.
02:11:50.000 How do you think he wore it out?
02:11:51.000 I said, he's a politician and a lawyer.
02:11:53.000 So he's trying to get everyone's vote and win.
02:11:56.000 So he's like, good morning, good morning, good morning, good morning, because I have an office and I'm running for office.
02:12:00.000 And he said, yeah, that's probably it.
02:12:03.000 That's funny.
02:12:03.000 They used to use beaver skin to line their hats, right?
02:12:06.000 Well, it was the outside of it.
02:12:07.000 And it's those famous hats.
02:12:08.000 You saw them at the Lincoln Museum.
02:12:10.000 They have one in the vault.
02:12:11.000 And literally, he wore out the hide.
02:12:15.000 But I use Lincoln and amendments from the Constitution.
02:12:22.000 The 14th is – it's in like four parts or five parts.
02:12:26.000 It's the top parts for we the people.
02:12:28.000 The rest is legalese.
02:12:29.000 And I'll do that, or the Fourth Amendment, the privacy one, that's a great one.
02:12:33.000 It's not completely in the front of my brain pan.
02:12:35.000 But I carry a copy of the Constitution with me whenever I travel, and I open it like people open the Bible, and I'll just pick an amendment and read it.
02:12:43.000 Really?
02:12:44.000 Yeah, and I have one of those, the Constitution for Idiot books, where lawyers write about, here's when it was brought into law, here's why, here's what it means in layman terms.
02:12:54.000 And it's never not interesting to read.
02:12:57.000 The Constitution's great.
02:12:59.000 It is fascinating.
02:12:59.000 We think this is an experiment in self-government that these people from 300 years ago put together.
02:13:06.000 They kind of are gods to me in that they couldn't see the future.
02:13:11.000 Maybe they couldn't see the AR-15.
02:13:14.000 But Jefferson and company definitely saw how easily corruptible humans are.
02:13:19.000 Yeah.
02:13:19.000 You give them a little bit of power, we can get a little crazy.
02:13:22.000 And American democracy is really all about the checks.
02:13:25.000 You're a badass, but you're not as badass as Congress.
02:13:28.000 Congress is going to check you.
02:13:30.000 We're seeing that with Trump.
02:13:31.000 I mean, with Trump, we're essentially seeing the reason why all these checks and balances are put in place in the first place.
02:13:38.000 Yeah.
02:13:39.000 For guys like him.
02:13:40.000 Yeah.
02:13:41.000 Because...
02:13:43.000 A president comes from we the people.
02:13:45.000 It can be you or me, potentially.
02:13:49.000 And I think the framers really saw that.
02:13:51.000 Like, it should be from the people.
02:13:53.000 So we got to put this person in checks because he might be a failed businessman, bad reality show actor who doesn't understand.
02:14:02.000 I have to read 1,500 pages of stuff this weekend and have five lawyers advise me.
02:14:07.000 No golf or fun for me.
02:14:08.000 I'm the president.
02:14:10.000 And a lot of presidents do understand before they go in, like, boy, this job's going to be boring.
02:14:15.000 And a lot of people are going to be mad.
02:14:17.000 And in my lifetime, we finally have a president who really is from the people, who says, he looks at like, you know, here's eight folders of stuff to read.
02:14:27.000 I'm like, I don't think so.
02:14:28.000 Give me the cliff notes.
02:14:29.000 Yeah.
02:14:30.000 Like, I'll play it from the hip.
02:14:31.000 Like, no.
02:14:32.000 I'm going to watch Fox and Friends.
02:14:34.000 You tell me what I need to know.
02:14:35.000 And, you know, it's not for me to sit and rip on the guy because he's not here to defend himself.
02:14:40.000 But never in my life have I ever watched an American president and thought to myself, I could have done better in that situation.
02:14:48.000 And there's presidents I've had nothing but disagreement with, but they were way better for the job than I ever could be.
02:14:54.000 I look at this guy and go like, man, you just got played.
02:14:57.000 And When I knew I was going to be talking to you, there's a thing I was thinking about.
02:15:05.000 I heard you speak many years ago about these politicians are gangsters.
02:15:11.000 You said like, okay, what that guy did, that's gangsta.
02:15:14.000 And what this guy just did, straight up gangsta.
02:15:17.000 It was during the Bush administration.
02:15:19.000 I think it was like Halliburton, all these people in the Cheney world.
02:15:22.000 And you're like, that's a gangster move.
02:15:24.000 That's a gangster move.
02:15:25.000 I'm like, I can't disagree with anything he just said.
02:15:28.000 And on that kind of level, I think what I never hear is that Donald Trump is a guy who gets consistently played, rolled, got rolled by his wife, a woman I have nothing against, but she comes from a really tough part of the world,
02:15:45.000 Slovenia.
02:15:46.000 That's just a rough patch of real estate.
02:15:48.000 She's smart and she's tough and she got out.
02:15:50.000 Got to America, well, he's not much on looks, but It's a way in from the storm.
02:15:57.000 So he got played by his wife.
02:16:00.000 He got played by Paul Manafort.
02:16:02.000 He got played by Kim Jong Un.
02:16:05.000 He got played like Jimi Hendrix at Monterey, that particular Stratocaster by Vladimir Putin, and gets played like Rachmaninoff every single day.
02:16:19.000 And anyone he does high-stakes business with or negotiations, he gets played.
02:16:26.000 And Manafort just used him to try and, you know, get out of debt.
02:16:31.000 And all these other people, they just roll all over him.
02:16:36.000 And unfortunately, his hubris is such.
02:16:39.000 He's like, ha-ha!
02:16:40.000 Like, no, dude, you just got blown out.
02:16:44.000 And like everyone around you is playing you.
02:16:46.000 Well, he probably doesn't feel that way with Manafort because Manafort's on trial and he's not yet.
02:16:51.000 Right.
02:16:51.000 But Manafort played him.
02:16:53.000 Because Manafort really does play in that world of oligarchs and millions of dollars and laundering money.
02:16:59.000 If he wrote a book, I was telling someone the other day, I said, of all these people, he should write the book because it would be a page turner.
02:17:05.000 If he told the truth, it would get him killed.
02:17:08.000 He touched the wrong doorknob and he'd get the poison.
02:17:12.000 Putin can't have him telling what he knows.
02:17:15.000 He's a man, he probably will go to prison.
02:17:18.000 Watch him have some kind of strange accident.
02:17:23.000 He was liquefied in the shower.
02:17:25.000 Something about the water.
02:17:27.000 Because he knows a lot and there's a lot of people who can pay a lot of money to keep his mouth shut.
02:17:33.000 You know what's fascinating to me is that over the last year or two, especially from the Fox crew, you're seeing Vladimir Putin admired.
02:17:41.000 Yep.
02:17:42.000 It's very strange.
02:17:44.000 I never thought we would see that.
02:17:45.000 I was watching something a couple of years ago, about a year ago, and I was like, some guy, well, he's a good Christian man and he believes in family.
02:17:55.000 I'm like, he's the butcher of Chechnya.
02:17:58.000 Yeah.
02:17:59.000 Let's flash back to the 1960s.
02:18:01.000 I'm a young boy on the weekend visit with my father.
02:18:03.000 To the right of my father is a wall.
02:18:06.000 There's nothing to the right of my father.
02:18:07.000 Just nothing.
02:18:09.000 And if he's still with us, he'd be in his 90s and hard as a rock.
02:18:13.000 Just like nothing.
02:18:15.000 He's a bar of hickory.
02:18:18.000 Anyway, he's an economist.
02:18:21.000 He's a numbers guy and a PhD.
02:18:23.000 Real smart.
02:18:24.000 I'm coming home to my mom's apartment from the Saturday-Sunday visit with Dad.
02:18:29.000 We're in the Washington, D.C. area.
02:18:31.000 I'm a little boy, five years old, somewhere around there, very small.
02:18:36.000 Economist and communist.
02:18:37.000 I don't know what either of them are, arguably, to a five-year-old.
02:18:41.000 Kind of sounds the same.
02:18:43.000 I'm in the big Buick station wagon to my father's right.
02:18:47.000 We're pulling up to Mom's apartment.
02:18:50.000 Henry, Dad, are you a communist?
02:18:54.000 I don't think my father's facial expression changed.
02:18:58.000 His right hand came off the wheel and his back hand collided with my head.
02:19:05.000 It was just like, I hear the word communist, a boy gets smacked.
02:19:08.000 And it was without hatred or violence.
02:19:11.000 It was like national security.
02:19:13.000 Like, whack!
02:19:14.000 He didn't even know he did it.
02:19:16.000 It was like a sneeze.
02:19:17.000 Like, kapow!
02:19:19.000 And it hurt so much my head went numb.
02:19:22.000 And it was not even the pain, it was like the shock.
02:19:27.000 Of your dad whacking you.
02:19:30.000 You had no idea what you did.
02:19:32.000 And all I could do was hyperventilate.
02:19:35.000 And he opened the door and he let me out.
02:19:37.000 He didn't say a word.
02:19:39.000 He didn't tell you that there's a difference between a communist and an economist?
02:19:42.000 No, sir.
02:19:42.000 So I left until I was like 33. What the fuck?
02:19:47.000 You know what I mean?
02:19:48.000 Because it's so destabilizing.
02:19:51.000 Like your dad just walloped you.
02:19:53.000 And I get out of the elevator.
02:19:55.000 I go into the apartment.
02:19:57.000 But I did that until I was like, you know, until two years ago.
02:20:01.000 It was totally...
02:20:02.000 She said, honey, what happened?
02:20:04.000 I said, I asked dad if he was a comic.
02:20:06.000 She's like, okay.
02:20:07.000 So the point I'm making is this.
02:20:10.000 There's a bunch of people who voted for Trump, where you say Russia, they say, bunch of sons of bitches, trust them as far as you can throw your car.
02:20:20.000 Are you kidding?
02:20:21.000 And when I see staunch conservative Republicans going, well, that Putin guy, I'm like...
02:20:27.000 Are you kidding?
02:20:28.000 People like my dad's heads are exploding.
02:20:31.000 He's an old Cold War guy.
02:20:33.000 We would watch Boris and Natasha, whatever that cartoon was.
02:20:38.000 Yeah, Bullwinkle.
02:20:38.000 Yeah, as a kid, I'm laughing because the guy went, ah!
02:20:42.000 My dad's laughing on a whole other level because it's Cold War funnies.
02:20:46.000 It was written for the parents.
02:20:48.000 The kids get the cartoon.
02:20:49.000 The parents got the jokes.
02:20:51.000 That was for adults with their kids on Saturday.
02:20:55.000 You watch them later on, you're like, oh, this is Cold War humor.
02:20:58.000 I wouldn't have known.
02:20:59.000 That's my dad's world.
02:21:01.000 You say Russia, he'd probably hate my guts because I've been there six times for shows.
02:21:06.000 And they take the Trans-Siberian Express.
02:21:08.000 And so this warming up to a guy...
02:21:13.000 Who is a true bad guy?
02:21:16.000 He's scary.
02:21:17.000 There's bodies buried because of him.
02:21:19.000 He's one of the scariest guys on the planet.
02:21:21.000 And capably violent and will have you taken out.
02:21:23.000 I mean, like Anna Politkovskaya, one of the greatest journalists of our time, she was critical of Putin and she got assassinated in her apartment building.
02:21:31.000 Her books are great.
02:21:32.000 Her books from Chechnya are amazing.
02:21:34.000 And she was critical of him and she had to go.
02:21:38.000 And when you see our president cozying up to this guy, I just want to go Bro, let's talk.
02:21:44.000 Let's take a walk in the garden for 20 minutes.
02:21:46.000 You can't be friends with this guy.
02:21:48.000 My theory is there's some kind of finances where he's got to stick up for him.
02:21:54.000 I don't think it's a tape of people urinating on anyone.
02:21:58.000 I think it's his money.
02:21:59.000 That would be too cliche.
02:22:00.000 Too interesting.
02:22:02.000 It's a money thing.
02:22:03.000 It's a hotel deal.
02:22:04.000 It's money sitting in Cyprus.
02:22:06.000 It's something.
02:22:06.000 Yeah.
02:22:07.000 But the fact that we're becoming okay with this guy, that is the part that bugs me the most.
02:22:16.000 And why people in Congress, or a guy like Sean Hannity, who probably likes communists as much as my dad, even me, I don't trust people like that at all.
02:22:28.000 Putin is a criminal, should be in jail for a million billion years.
02:22:32.000 And the fact, like, hey, he's a...
02:22:34.000 He's a strong leader.
02:22:37.000 He's a human being.
02:22:38.000 We can talk.
02:22:39.000 Like, gosh, he's an ex-KGB guy.
02:22:42.000 And there's no such thing as an ex-KGB guy.
02:22:44.000 Right.
02:22:45.000 Yeah.
02:22:45.000 They're KGB for life.
02:22:46.000 Yeah, for life.
02:22:47.000 And he's a supreme operative.
02:22:49.000 And what he does is he rolls people like you, dude.
02:22:53.000 And like, God, you are a guppy.
02:22:54.000 He's a shark.
02:22:56.000 Like, no, two guys hanging out.
02:22:58.000 No, one guy getting played and one guy playing someone.
02:23:01.000 I think he admires the fact that Putin's able to run his country the way he does, too.
02:23:05.000 Yes, and that's why he likes Duterte and Un.
02:23:09.000 That's what he said about Un.
02:23:10.000 He said he's a strong head.
02:23:12.000 I've been to all those countries.
02:23:13.000 I've been to the Philippines.
02:23:14.000 I've been to North Korea.
02:23:16.000 They're tough places to live.
02:23:18.000 And, like, you don't want your country looking like those places.
02:23:20.000 You don't want America to be like Russia.
02:23:24.000 The economy is destroyed.
02:23:26.000 And there's a lot of people, like in the wintertime, it's really tough.
02:23:29.000 How do you think this plays out?
02:23:30.000 Do you think he goes to jail?
02:23:31.000 No.
02:23:33.000 No, because I don't believe in karma.
02:23:37.000 Karma.
02:23:37.000 Here's my two words that disprove karma.
02:23:40.000 Dick Cheney.
02:23:42.000 He's got a new heart.
02:23:43.000 And a new heart.
02:23:43.000 He has no pulse, which is perfect.
02:23:45.000 Well, he's got a pulse now with a new heart.
02:23:47.000 With a machine, he had no pulse.
02:23:48.000 I knew he had a machine, and he just heard a whoosh, which is perfect for him.
02:23:53.000 It's in the Bible.
02:23:54.000 He may very well live, because he looks like he's watching his weight now.
02:23:57.000 He's looking lean.
02:23:58.000 He might live to be like 105. And so he'll never go to jail.
02:24:03.000 And like, how many millions does he make a year just from his dividends from whatever?
02:24:07.000 Like, who knows what you do with that kind of money?
02:24:09.000 I don't know what you do with it.
02:24:10.000 And so I don't think he goes to jail.
02:24:13.000 I don't think Jared Kushner goes to jail.
02:24:15.000 I think at most they leave, like maybe next year, and they go like, I drained the swamp, I did what I came here to do, and the fake news media brought me down.
02:24:23.000 And all his people buy one of everything he makes forever.
02:24:27.000 Steak, vodka.
02:24:28.000 I think it's possible that Donald Trump Jr. goes to jail.
02:24:30.000 It's very possible.
02:24:32.000 They're talking about perjury charges against him now because his own dad admitted on Twitter.
02:24:36.000 Yes.
02:24:36.000 No, I follow all that stuff as you do.
02:24:38.000 I just don't think white-collar guys go to prison for stuff.
02:24:42.000 I just don't believe it.
02:24:44.000 I just don't believe it.
02:24:46.000 I want to be proven wrong.
02:24:47.000 But I don't have all the facts.
02:24:49.000 I'm a news watcher.
02:24:50.000 I know nothing.
02:24:51.000 I don't get any classified briefs.
02:24:53.000 So I only know what I read and what I hear.
02:24:56.000 Do you talk about any of this stuff in your stage act?
02:24:57.000 A little bit.
02:24:59.000 But knowing my audience, they're very sharp.
02:25:01.000 And they read.
02:25:02.000 They're readers.
02:25:03.000 And they don't need me repeating what they know back to them.
02:25:07.000 Well, good for you for that.
02:25:09.000 If I make a point...
02:25:11.000 I think?
02:25:32.000 Came to New York and went, that guy.
02:25:35.000 Gets naked with the toad a few nights a month, a handful of Prozac, some Stoli, and a credit card, and a seven-figure expense account.
02:25:45.000 You can take a shower and make it go away.
02:25:49.000 And I think he kind of knows that she was not like, wow, what a hot guy.
02:25:55.000 She's like, hey.
02:25:56.000 And that happens a lot in this town.
02:25:58.000 You'll see...
02:26:00.000 That, you know, the couple, and you're like, okay.
02:26:02.000 Yeah.
02:26:02.000 Right.
02:26:03.000 Well, Harvey Weinstein, before his wife left him.
02:26:08.000 Harvey Weinstein's wife is beautiful.
02:26:11.000 Well, yeah, but you see that a lot in this town where you see the old weird dude with like the eight-year-old girlfriend.
02:26:18.000 You're like, oh yeah, that's a setup.
02:26:21.000 That's an agency.
02:26:21.000 That's an agreement.
02:26:23.000 Someone's getting a salary or an implied, you know, there's some kind of quid pro quo.
02:26:29.000 There's a credit card.
02:26:30.000 There's an expense account or there's just a big fistful of hundreds and just let me chew on you for the next four weeks.
02:26:38.000 You know, whatever the agreement is.
02:26:41.000 So if I was going to say anything about Donald Trump on stage, it would be, he sucks!
02:26:46.000 And I never talk about any problem on stage, and I learned this from, of all people, President Clinton.
02:26:52.000 Because some of his later speeches post-presidency, I'm not a huge fan of the guy, but he's a good speaker.
02:26:57.000 And he did some speeches in the UK a few years ago, and I happened to be in England when he was there, and I watched him on TV. The last part of the speech, the last 10 minutes was, here's a problem and here's three solutions.
02:27:07.000 Here's another problem, here's three solutions.
02:27:09.000 We're like, for $60 million, we could put internet through this thing, or we could open this waterway, or we could reconfigure this workforce to upgrade so everyone can get a paycheck.
02:27:20.000 He just had logical ways forward.
02:27:23.000 So what I took from that is, to my audience, don't propose a problem.
02:27:27.000 Well, he sucks, thanks, goodnight.
02:27:29.000 Don't give them a Gordian knot unless you can go, actually, it's not a Gordian knot.
02:27:34.000 Here's three ways to get out of this burning wreck.
02:27:37.000 And so when Trump became elected, I was on tour.
02:27:41.000 I was doing a bunch of nights in L.A. And I said, okay, you have a new president and some of you are depressed.
02:27:46.000 I said, I know.
02:27:47.000 And so gay people are on the endangered species list as if they've never been.
02:27:54.000 Brown people, black people, women people, people with ovaries.
02:27:57.000 These are all...
02:27:59.000 On the, you're screwed list.
02:28:01.000 So, instead of becoming depressed and oh no, we get up, we start doing more benefits, Now all your words matter.
02:28:09.000 Your actions matter.
02:28:11.000 How you stick up for your LGBT friends really matters now.
02:28:14.000 How you stick up for women.
02:28:17.000 How you stick up for racial equality.
02:28:20.000 Equality in the workplace.
02:28:21.000 Like how you check yourself when you vous les vous with other people.
02:28:26.000 Words matter.
02:28:27.000 Actions matter more than ever.
02:28:28.000 And so to me it's an exciting time to show how great you can be because now it's all on the line.
02:28:35.000 The fat is off the land.
02:28:36.000 We're being tested.
02:28:38.000 I love a test, so let's get it on.
02:28:41.000 It's like in your line of work when the guy goes, here we go!
02:28:45.000 That's how I saw it.
02:28:46.000 Like, okay, let's get the money to the ACLU. Let's get some money to Planned Parenthood.
02:28:52.000 Let's get a conversation going about child suicide, intimidation through Facebook.
02:28:58.000 Let's start making things better because this guy is not our ally.
02:29:02.000 Government's not necessarily going to help.
02:29:05.000 At its best, it's inactive.
02:29:07.000 At its worst, it's divisive and predatory.
02:29:09.000 So let's be the antidote by being cool.
02:29:13.000 By not throwing rocks through windows or like getting a guy with a tiki torch and beating him up.
02:29:18.000 Come on.
02:29:20.000 You're never going to convince that guy that he's wrong.
02:29:23.000 So get to the people you agree with and let's start sticking together more and raising more money and get some more interesting people in office.
02:29:30.000 Let's get some young people in office.
02:29:32.000 And I think that's what's happening.
02:29:34.000 Like you're seeing all these young people, like 20s, 30s.
02:29:37.000 Sadly, there's a bunch of kids who died at a high school in Florida.
02:29:40.000 But look what happened.
02:29:42.000 Look at all those kids hitting the streets.
02:29:43.000 Look at all these kids who threw cell phones and selfies and Instagram and Snapchat.
02:29:48.000 They're already ready for prime time.
02:29:50.000 You see these high school juniors in front of a CNN camera going, hi, I'm 17 years old, this happened to my school, and next year I'm going to vote, and here's what's going to happen, and here's the march I'm starting.
02:30:01.000 Like, uh-oh, that's a future senator.
02:30:04.000 That school shooting just birthed a voting demographic.
02:30:09.000 Are you kidding?
02:30:09.000 All those kids are going to vote.
02:30:11.000 All of them.
02:30:12.000 All those kids who marched?
02:30:13.000 There's going to be no millennial apathy with those kids.
02:30:16.000 They're all going to vote.
02:30:17.000 I kind of have an idea what side they're going to vote with.
02:30:20.000 And if you think you're going to sell those kids on their grandfather's drunken homophobia, racism, and overall bigotry and xenophobia, You're wrong.
02:30:30.000 He never had a passport.
02:30:31.000 I don't need to travel.
02:30:32.000 I don't want to meet some damn Mexican.
02:30:34.000 Trust me, the kid's going to travel.
02:30:35.000 He's going to go to India.
02:30:37.000 She's going to go to Colombia and meet other people and get a more global sense of the world, a sense of water, food.
02:30:44.000 Energy, where it comes from, what happens with money, what happens with mediocrity, the danger of it.
02:30:50.000 So I think we're in for some tough times, but I think they're going to lead to good times.
02:30:55.000 And so if I get political on stage, all I say is, like, here's five ways forward.
02:31:01.000 Because the despair part, you need me to tell you?
02:31:04.000 You watch the news.
02:31:06.000 So don't get down in the mouth.
02:31:07.000 Start burning more calories.
02:31:09.000 And that's not my job, but I would never weigh in on stage any other way about that stuff, because all I would be is obvious.
02:31:20.000 And my audience is pretty sharp, and they don't need to be told twice.
02:31:28.000 Outstanding.
02:31:28.000 Thank you, sir.
02:31:29.000 Well said.
02:31:29.000 I couldn't agree more.
02:31:31.000 Friday night, Showtime, August 10th.
02:31:34.000 Henry, motherfucking Rollins.
02:31:36.000 Keep talking.
02:31:37.000 Keep talking, pal.
02:31:38.000 Thank you, sir.
02:31:40.000 Thank you, sir.
02:31:41.000 I really appreciate it.
02:31:42.000 Thanks.
02:31:44.000 That was great.