In this episode, I sit down with my good friend, comedian, writer, and all-around great guy, Matt Friesen. We talk about what it's like to be a stand-up comedian, how he got into comedy, and how he stays on top of his game. We also talk about how he keeps track of so much information in his head, and some of the things he does to keep it all straight in his brain. I think you're going to love this one, and I hope you do too! Enjoy the episode, and remember to tweet me if you like what you hear. Timestamps: 3:00 - How Matt keeps it real 4:30 - How he keeps his mind sharp 6:20 - What do you do to keep your brain sharp? 7:00 - How do you keep track of things in your head 8:15 - What are some of your favorite things to do with your brain 9:40 - How often do you remember things you remember 10:15 - Can you remember something you see or hear 11:30 12:40 13:20 What's your favorite thing to do in life? 15:00 | How do I keep my brain sharp ? 16:30 | What do I do to remember things? 17:00 // 16:35 | What are you do with my brain? 18:10 19:40 | Can I remember things 21: What's my brain do I can I can do 22: What s my favorite thing I do in my head? 25:00 / 22: Can I do with a pen and paper? 27:30 Do you have a pen & pen? 26:30 // 27:50 28:30 +28:30 / 29:00 +33:30 Can you do more? 35:00/35:00 Do you remember a certain thing I m going to do more than one thing in a conversation 29:10:30/36: What is your brain do you like to remember? 32:40 / 35:50 / 36:40 +35:40/35 +36:00 & 37:00 My brain can do a better job with my memory 36:00 Is there a better way to remember something?
00:01:24.000What's interesting, though, is that people will come up to me with shit that happened just a few years ago, and I'm like, I don't remember that at all.
00:01:31.000I think you have a certain amount of room in your brain, and my brain is always deleting stuff that it doesn't think it needs anymore, and then shoving in new things.
00:01:40.000Sometimes someone will tell me about something.
00:02:33.000I go to the comedy store, I record it and I listen to it on the way home and then I go, oh, maybe I'll do this next time, maybe I'll do that.
00:02:53.000But, yeah, the reason I say that to start off is just like I see you go down a lot of different paths on the podcast, and I often go, man, if I was sitting in that chair, could I add to the conversation?
00:03:28.000Sad life, but then on the flip side, inspiring to a guy like myself, where I'm running, say I'm working out, and I thought of this guy, I go, you know what, let's put another mile into this.
00:03:42.000So, yeah, I mean, I'm just now starting to get into a little bit more books than I have in the past, because in the past, to be honest with you, I haven't really read much.
00:03:54.000I try to read one new thing a week, and the way I try to do it is I use a lot of audiobooks, but I also read books.
00:04:04.000I go back and forth in between them, between reading and audiobooks.
00:04:07.000But I find for whatever reason I retain more with audiobooks than I do with reading.
00:04:12.000Maybe it's my ADD or something like that, because when I'm reading I kind of have to back up sometimes.
00:04:17.000I'll go through a whole paragraph where I'm thinking about some other shit while I'm reading.
00:05:15.000Yeah, when you're doing a bit, are you thinking about what you're, are you like, do you have a bit on deck?
00:05:21.000Like while you're in the middle of the bit, do you like go from there, I'm going to talk about, you know, the gym or the, you know, the this or the that?
00:05:28.000It's funny, and I don't know if you go through this.
00:05:31.000Do you ever go through, well, first of all, when you're doing comedy, do you have a beginning, middle, and end, and do you know where you're going throughout that whole set?
00:05:41.000Or do you, in the moment, go, you know what, I'm going to do the bit about that, that, that.
00:06:34.000So, because of that, I usually decide that day usually what I'm going to open with, and then I leave the middle part up to my imagination, and then I decide what I'm going to close with.
00:06:49.000But when I'm ready to do a Netflix special, I basically have it all mapped out.
00:06:53.000I basically have a starting point and I have an end point.
00:07:33.000Yeah, I think that's the way to do it, though, to be kind of in the moment and go with how you're feeling when you're filming something, just because that's the way you would be anyway, right?
00:07:43.000But sometimes, I've learned in the past, when I'm filming something, I feel like, man, I'd like to get everything that I want out on this special show.
00:09:43.000I retire my material, but I have brought stuff out before if people asked.
00:09:48.000Like, someone asked me to bring up explaining Kim Kardashian's to the aliens the other night, and I was amazed that I could remember it, but I remembered it.
00:09:56.000But for the most part, I retire shit because I feel like, in my mind, if I don't retire things, I'm not going to work on new things as much and limit myself.
00:10:07.000And then I always feel like my newest bits are better than my older bits because even though I've been doing stand-up for 30 years, I still think I get better at it.
00:10:16.000I think it's a constant state of self-evaluation and self-analysis and going over the material and then realize, you know, you have enough good sets and bad sets and great sets.
00:10:29.000You have enough that you kind of recognize the characteristics of each one and where they go wrong, and then you get better at having less bad sets and even less good sets and more great sets.
00:10:39.000And I think that, for me, One big part of that is constantly writing.
00:11:05.000And I just fucking sit at that desk and I'll just work until my eyes start falling.
00:11:10.000Blinking and I start getting really tired and some of my best shit I've ever come up with is that way Wow after shows because I'm all I'm juiced up and then I also have a process of listening to the show in the car because you know that's one of the coolest things about Bluetooth audio that you get your phone you record it on your phone and then in the car home you can listen and And you can go,
00:13:50.000And a lot of guys and women tend to not relish in those moments of silence where sometimes it's comedy gold.
00:13:59.000A lot of people run through the material.
00:14:01.000And for me, as an audience member, I like someone who kind of...
00:14:06.000Gives you, as an audience member, a little beat or maybe some time to kind of marinate in the joke a little bit, opposed to kind of blowing through the material.
00:14:16.000Don't you feel that, like, when you're in a large audience, that's even more critical?
00:14:20.000Because you have, like, there's thousands of people, and it seems like a big pause, like, in between punchlines, or you give a person a chance, give this whole group of people a chance to think about how ridiculous what you just said was.
00:18:42.000Because, man, he really gives you a bird's eye view into not only his family life, but he's on a ski lift and he's got skis and this and that, which I appreciate.
00:18:54.000It's just for me, I don't know, is there some...
00:18:58.000A little sense of privacy every once in a while.
00:19:15.000And, you know, he's doing really well, but he was gone for long stretches of time, away from his family, and he wasn't getting to do much stand-up.
00:19:23.000And he and I had a conversation about it, and I said, Stu, you're too funny to be just working for a television show.
00:19:30.000Anybody can do a television show, but not everybody can do stand-up the way you did stand-up.
00:19:35.000And he, somewhere along the line, decided, alright, fuck this TV shit.
00:19:40.000And I'm just going to concentrate on stand-up.
00:19:43.000And a big part of that was social media.
00:19:45.000So a big part of it for him was, you know, every year we have this Sober October crew.
00:19:51.000It's Ari, Tom Segura, me, and Bert, and we do a one-month challenge.
00:20:43.000I'm just using Burt as an example of a guy who's on social media a ton and has figured out a way to weave that into his kind of aura and what he does professionally.
00:21:02.000I feel like everything I do on social media has to be funny.
00:21:06.000If I do a post, I feel like it has to be funny.
00:21:09.000I feel a little bit intimidated to put something out that's just me doing X, Y, and Z. And that's where I feel I fail at social media, and I feel like I've kind of weaned off it.
00:21:22.000And sometimes I look at my Instagram or my Twitter, it looks like a...
00:23:04.000Say if someone wants to make a desk like this out of hardwood, like this oak, The sawdust, they take the sawdust from sawmills and they compress it and they make these little tiny pellets.
00:23:15.000And so there's no chemicals, no nothing, it's just wood.
00:23:18.000And then the way a pellet grill works, there's a bunch of really good companies that make them.
00:23:23.000I use a Traeger, but I've used a Yoder, that's a great one too, and Green Mountain Grills, that's a great one.
00:24:23.000At the end, this is a different grill than I have, because this one has a thing on the side.
00:24:27.000If you see that thing on the right-hand side, that looks like a direct flame thing.
00:24:34.000Looks like it's got gas as well, right?
00:24:36.000The one that I have doesn't have that, but at the end, I sear it at the very end on a cast-iron frying pan.
00:24:42.000So I cook it from between 225 to 275 degrees, which is pretty low.
00:24:47.000And I'll cook it until it hits an internal temperature, depending upon what I'm cooking.
00:24:51.000Somewhere around 120 to the maximum, like, 130-ish.
00:24:55.000Then I take it out, and I have a cast-iron frying pan, as hot as a motherfucker, and I use either a beef tallow or grass-fed butter.
00:25:03.000And then I sear the shit out of that with some garlic, and I throw some thyme in there, and fucking flip it over, and get that good sear, and then I let it sit for a minimum of 10 minutes.
00:27:08.000Yeah, and even if you buy that lump charcoal, those charcoal briquettes, rather, the charcoal briquettes, there's something in them that makes them that shape.
00:27:17.000They have to, and then they, you know, oh, they light fast.
00:27:20.000Yeah, because there's fucking gasoline in them.
00:27:23.000But lump charcoal, meaning they just take hardwood and then they burn that shit down to, you know, that clunky-looking lump charcoal.
00:27:32.000Just get that stuff and then take some newspaper and roll the newspaper up in one of those.
00:27:37.000You ever use one of those little chimneys?
00:27:44.000It's like you pour the charcoal in this tube, and at the bottom of the tube, you take pieces of paper and you crumple them up in balls, and then you light the balls on fire, and the fire rises up from the paper to the charcoal, and it lights the charcoal on fire, and then you dump the charcoal out into the grill.
00:28:01.000And that puts a nice flavor on it, too.
00:28:03.000But it's, again, the same kind of feeling.
00:28:06.000It's like wood, just this wood flavor on the meat.
00:28:32.000And I've never even heard of someone doing something like that.
00:28:35.000You hear dry-aged steak is like 30 days.
00:28:41.000He's taken it to some weird, crazy place where he's got these...
00:28:46.000These steaks in his gigantic walk-in freezer area where everything is dry-aging, they have certain microbes they put in the air, and then they have fans.
00:28:56.000So it's a certain type of bacteria that they want that covers over the meat, a certain type of mold.
00:30:19.000I think the YouTube channel is called Eater and then the show is called The Meat Show.
00:30:24.000This guy just travels around going to all these different super high-end restaurants that serve steak and trying to see what their preparation is and what they do differently.
00:30:36.000You could fucking lose your mind with that stuff.
00:30:38.000Yeah, you could go down a deep dark hole with me.
00:30:40.000But hey man, I'm willing to try anything.
00:30:43.000I'm more like experimental as far as when it comes to food.
00:31:33.000However, I'm trying to stay away from those types of meals because in the past I ballooned up to 205, 207, not giving a crap about My health or anything.
00:31:47.000And recently, I've lost some weight due to the fact that I've been watching my diet.
00:31:54.000Because you know, I mean, I don't know.
00:31:55.000I mean, you're in shape, so you seem a lot more disciplined than a lot of comedians when it comes to...
00:33:12.000I'm 45, so my range of motion, my shoulders screwed up, my legs, my knee, and this has given me an exercise where I could not only improve my flexibility, but man, I mean, you walk out, I'm drenched.
00:33:27.000And so, yeah, I'm getting back on the physical fitness thing, because I've been on the road so, so much that I kind of let that slip a little, but I want to get back.
00:33:38.000Yeah, you know, some guys are real good about working out on the road.
00:33:41.000Like Brian Callen goes, everywhere he goes, he'll go to a gym.
00:40:33.000If you can find a guy who actually knows what he's doing, that is so huge because they also know what you need.
00:40:39.000They're like, hey, we need to concentrate more on your rear delts and the issues you're having with your shoulders or your mobility, so we're going to work on some band work first and warm you up.
00:40:49.000You could fuck yourself up just doing it by yourself.
00:44:09.000Yeah, but there's something about the way they're preparing these, I mean, yeah, it's one thing if you're getting like sashimi, it's just salmon, but if they're putting it together with rice and, you know, it's like a science.
00:44:28.000Yeah, I was watching this YouTube thing where these guys were going to the sushi place and they were saying that tuna, they will have their tuna in the refrigerator for as long as two weeks.
00:44:38.000And just like dry-aged steak, the aging of the tuna breaks down, the bacteria break down some of the tissue and make it softer and more delicate and change the flavor profile.
00:46:57.000There's something to be said about going out and catching the fish, like you're saying, rather than taking a net and just scooping everything up in its path.
00:49:59.000Hunting regulations are critical, but you know what the population is.
00:50:03.000The fish and wildlife departments have all these different methods they use, whether it's using reports from hunters, whether they fly over with airplanes and helicopters and things along those lines.
00:50:54.000If they could figure something out for the ocean.
00:50:57.000The problem is you have to get everybody to cooperate.
00:50:59.000They can't even get Japan to stop killing whales.
00:51:02.000There's certain Japanese folks who have this really sneaky thing they do, and there's this conservation group called the Sea Shepherds, and they catch these fucking people all the time.
00:51:15.000But what they basically do is they say, we're a research boat.
00:54:52.000I mean, they got, like, guys walking around there from, like, Sicily and Italy.
00:54:56.000And the owner is a little old man that kind of walks around and makes sure everything's okay, and he's speaking Italian, and, yeah, you feel like you're in Italy when you're here.
00:55:06.000I saw Al Pacino there, so you know it's legit.
00:56:36.000So yeah, it's been, for New York, New York for me has been really, really good to me over the years.
00:56:42.000Obviously, I'm Italian, and there's a lot of Italians in the New York City area.
00:56:46.000But what I think has happened is I'm talking about, like, family, and I'm talking about, like, the immigrant experience, my father being an immigrant from Sicily.
00:56:56.000And what I'm seeing at my shows is not only an 88-year-old grandmother, but a 12-year-old kid and kind of everybody in between.
00:57:08.000It's comedy, and I'm not tooting my own horn here, I'm just saying it's comedy that you could come and not cringe because the material might be a little blue or what have you.
00:57:33.000So, yeah, I mean, that's why I think I was able to do four shows at Madison Square Garden, just because my audience is a large swath of multi-generational artists.
00:57:46.000There's just a lot of different people at the shows.
00:57:48.000And to do Madison Square Garden, for me, as we were talking prior to getting on here, I was saying that I think I took a little too much on my plate.
00:58:43.000The more and more I do stand-up, the more and more I feel like you really got to be clear-headed in the moment and you can't overwork yourself.
00:59:43.000And that work ethic has bled into my career.
00:59:46.000And now that I've had some success in my career, I think I have to kind of pull it back a little bit and not say yes to an interview that maybe, you know.
00:59:58.000It's not going to help, but it's going to take up a lot of your time.
01:00:42.000What I want to do now is do my best work.
01:00:44.000That's my number one objective Whether it's stand-up, whether it's UFC commentary, whether it's doing a podcast, I want to do my best work.
01:00:54.000And I don't think that I can do my best work if I'm scattered.
01:01:01.000Doing your best work, whatever you're doing.
01:01:04.000So if you're going to come in here today and do a podcast...
01:01:07.000Whatever you did prior to this cannot really take away from the energy that you need to do this.
01:01:13.000Same thing with the MMA and then the announcing and the same thing with the stand-up comedy.
01:01:17.000I feel that sometimes I jeopardize myself and I take on too much and I've realized that and I'm going to kind of I got another baby coming.
01:01:49.000But I think I need to kind of just choose my roads a little careful.
01:01:57.000Well, that's one of the good things about social media is that it allows you these paths to distribute flyers and you put little posters of where you're going to be and stuff like that.
01:02:08.000And it can reach your actual fans as opposed to just...
01:02:12.000Random person who's listening to the radio or random person who picks up the newspaper.
01:02:18.000But I like to reach the person that doesn't know who I am.
01:02:24.000It's fun to go to your fan base, but I'm sure a lot of the people that listen to your podcast maybe not know who I am.
01:02:32.000And it's a joy for me to get someone, who is this guy, maybe check him out, and to get a new fan, opposed to maybe feeding the fan base I currently have.
01:02:43.000I'm always looking for new people to come on board with what I'm doing.
01:02:47.000So, you know, when I do a radio show in Peoria at 7 o'clock in the morning, I'm hoping someone's in their car going...
01:07:04.000I used to teach martial arts for a living.
01:07:06.000Before I became a comedian, I used to fight.
01:07:08.000Fought in a lot of taekwondo tournaments and had some kickboxing fights and I'd always been a martial artist since I was a kid.
01:07:15.000And so I just was interested in watching the UFC and then I started training in jiu-jitsu and when I was training in jiu-jitsu I was just a white belt.
01:07:35.000I would make more money doing a weekend at a comedy club than I would doing the UFC. And it just got to a point where it was too much of a pain in the ass.
01:07:44.000And so I still remained a fan but I backed away.
01:07:47.000And then the UFC was purchased by this company called Zufa in 2001. And when that happened, they started putting on shows in Vegas.
01:10:32.000Eddie Bravo used to do it as well, where I would...
01:10:34.000We'd be able to talk to him about certain positions, because he would be in the truck, and I'd be able to ask him, like, his left leg's in jeopardy right now, right?
01:10:42.000Or he needs to step over with his right leg.
01:10:44.000We'd be able to go over, because, like, there's some aspects of martial arts that are extremely technical, especially jujitsu, when things go to the ground.
01:10:52.000And you're trying to do commentary, and I have to decipher which is his left leg, which is his right leg, where is he tied up, where is he tangled, and I'm doing it in real time while I'm trying to be entertaining and talking.
01:14:41.000And I've always had, you know, I work for the Four Seasons Hotel, and that chain taught me to anticipate people's needs.
01:14:50.000So anytime I have anything at my house, whether it be a birthday party, a get-together, if it's going to be a fight, I make sure when you come over, you are taken care of not only with your alcohol needs.
01:17:13.000We have a child, so I don't know if you went through this, but a lot of, sometimes when you're coming from a single couple, but a couple with no kids, and now you have kids, now you're finding other people who have kids, right?
01:18:12.000Yeah, I mean, you do run into that, where you meet a guy, like I went to a toddler group last week.
01:18:19.000Now, sometimes I do this, obviously, because I want to hang out with my daughter, but sometimes the material that comes out of going to something like that Is gold.
01:19:06.000I want to hang out with my family and I want to talk to people who are living these life experiences because what I've noticed is I want to keep the same kind of lifestyle I've had when I wasn't successful.
01:19:20.000Because I feel when you start detaching yourself from the daily routine, let's say even going to Target, if you have somebody go to Target for you, you miss out on what happens on a day-to-day, and I want to still keep that rich and available to me.
01:19:58.000Well, I think it was you saying that if you were out at a restaurant and somebody comes up to you and asks for a picture, because everybody wants a picture nowadays to prove they met Joe Rogan and what have you.
01:20:10.000And sometimes it's a little intrusive when you're having dinner with your daughters or your family.
01:20:16.000I've had people ask me for pictures while my daughter's on my lap and I'm feeding her.
01:20:47.000And they seem to think that it's part of the job.
01:20:51.000That every time you're in public, you have to be available to them.
01:20:54.000It's a very weird rule that people have decided.
01:20:57.000Some fairly ignorant people have decided.
01:21:00.000So that's why they would think that even with my daughter on my lap, and I'm literally, I was literally putting food into her mouth, and a guy was like, hey man, can I get a picture?
01:21:40.000Like if someone, you know, if someone is somewhere where they're not supposed to be, you know, like I had a guy come backstage at the comedy store, made it backstage all the way to the back, and he's talking, and I'm like, I was asking the other comments,
01:22:12.000Like, that guy didn't ask for a photo, but if he did, I'd probably take a picture with that motherfucker, but I'd probably take a picture with him out there.
01:22:23.000If you're in a rush, if you're trying to go somewhere and you're literally running and someone wants to pull their phone out, sometimes you can't.
01:25:28.000Listen, my father and my relationship with my father has been, and I had to tell him, I said, Dad, could you come to just be a fan and not like a father?
01:28:38.000When we're all at the store, when we all see each other, I mean, that's one of the things that makes me feel so fortunate is that I have so many friends that are hilarious.
01:28:47.000Like, when I go there, I see these guys and I know that we're gonna have some fun.
01:28:51.000We're gonna do sets, but we're also gonna hang out in that back bar and talk shit and laugh a lot.
01:28:58.000It's a great, friendly environment, you know?
01:31:11.000Yeah, this whole thing you got going on here, and I don't know if you talk about it much, I don't know if you're private about it, but even being here in this studio is inspiring.
01:31:20.000When you were showing me what you have and whatnot, I'm like, man...
01:31:23.000See, I've always looked at people who have things or whether it be if you have a nice home or a nice car or whatever it is, a nice family.
01:32:37.000There's a part in the book I think he went to support his mother or sister in a race in Las Vegas and then I think he just took off and left.
01:32:57.000And what's great about him, one of my favorite parts about David Goggins is that he's real honest about who he used to be.
01:33:04.000That he was like 300 pounds and fat and lazy and he's drinking milkshakes and he just was depressed and couldn't get his shit together and then he hardened himself up through some strange force of will and became that guy.
01:33:17.000Decided he wanted to become that guy who was, as he puts it, uncommon amongst uncommon men.
01:33:24.000You know, that he just decided, I'm going to be the motherfucker of motherfuckers.
01:33:27.000And then he's so much like that when people around him are like, oh, Jesus.
01:33:34.000It's like, you've got to ramp it up, too.
01:33:35.000Like, I'm not ready for Goggins right now.
01:33:37.000I was going to do 20 sit-ups and 20 chin-ups and 20 push-ups, and I was going to go home.
01:33:41.000This motherfucker wants to run till we die.
01:33:43.000You know, but that's, those people, I don't know how many people Goggins has inspired that listen to this podcast and all of a sudden they're out there hustling.
01:33:52.000And they're out there doing things on a level that they never did before.
01:33:55.000And they're putting in that work and exerting themselves in that way.
01:33:59.000And he rubs some people the wrong way because of that, because he's so aggressive and intense.
01:34:03.000Some people are just reluctant to be inspired by a guy like that.
01:40:08.000So, now that you've done, you know, four sold-out shows in Madison Square Garden, I mean, this is the fucking pinnacle of any stand-up comics career.
01:40:15.000There's only a handful of comics that have ever been able to do that.
01:40:18.000There's like Dice, Louis C.K., there's a few others.
01:41:49.000I brought my mother and my sister on stage to share in that moment.
01:41:54.000So yeah, when my mother walked in an empty arena and saw it, she had flashbacks to in 1998 when I did Zanies and we Had to get friends and family there to fill the audience.
01:42:09.000And then now she walks in and her son's doing four of these.
01:42:27.000These are parents who, when I told them in 1996 that I was going to go out to Los Angeles to pursue a stand-up career, didn't look at me and go, what are you nuts?
01:42:37.000They looked at me and go, hey, you know what?
01:42:38.000If you think you got what it takes, get the hell out there.
01:42:58.000So family's always been really, really key to my success.
01:43:03.000Having people who are very supportive.
01:43:05.000And my wife, who's a huge, huge reason I am doing what I'm doing.
01:43:10.000I mean, you know, to have a wife to deal with the life of a comedian on the road...
01:43:18.000Away from home a lot and you got to have like a strong strong woman to be in your corner and to put up with that also just to deal with the weirdo a Fucking comics a weird person.
01:43:29.000Yeah, I mean just to just the mentality of a comedian is tough to be around not tough It's just you know, we're always we're always you know in our own head sometime.
01:43:40.000So yeah, so To answer your question, where do I go from here?
01:46:02.000Dude, what is it like to just be around Scorsese on a movie set and realize you're a fucking actor in a Scorsese movie?
01:46:08.000That's got to be, I mean, that is about as high level as, it's like either Francis Ford Coppola, Scorsese, there's like a few people that, if you're on a set with them, you know, Kubrick when he was alive, it's like, holy shit!
01:47:39.000I didn't sleep, I don't think, for the first week leading up to the scene because I knew it was going to be with De Niro and Pesci.
01:47:47.000What they did was they took Gotham Comedy Club in New York City and they made it the Copacabana, which I thought was fitting because Gotham Comedy Club is kind of...
01:50:00.000And like completely, totally out of control.
01:50:03.000But it is one of those movies where after it's over, you know, the credits roll and you're just sitting there trying to catch your breath just going, Jesus Christ, what the fuck did I just watch?
01:52:14.000There was a part when they were kind of lighting De Niro and I, and we're standing face to face, and he's looking at me, and I'm looking right at him, and I wasn't going to say nothing.
01:52:23.000And then he comes in on my tie, and he goes, your tie needs to be tightened a little bit, and he cinched my tie.
01:56:24.000I mean, when you had this podcast and it became so huge and still is huge to have me on here, you know, I appreciate it because, you know, I don't take anything for granted.
01:56:37.000Well, I don't take you for getting it either, brother.