Comedian Joe Pesci talks about the joys and pains of a hangover, and how to deal with it. Joe is a stand-up comic, actor, writer, and podcaster. He's been in the business for a long time, and he's always had a good sense of humor. He also happens to be married to a woman who is also a yoga teacher, and they have two kids together. Joe and his wife live in New York City, but they live in Los Angeles, which is a hell of a long drive from Los Angeles. Joe talks about what it's like to be hungover after a night out, and why you should never drink after a big night out. He also talks about how he deals with hangovers, and what to do if you're a person who likes to drink a lot of alcohol, but doesn't drink enough to get a good night's rest. Joe also discusses the benefits of a good hangover and how important it is to take care of yourself after a day like that, especially when you've had a few too many drinks the night before. And, of course, there's some good ol' fashioned chai teas and shots of tequila. Enjoy the episode, and remember to tweet me if you like it! Timestamps: 3:00 - What's your favorite thing to drink? 4:30 - How do you feel about your hangover? 5:15 - What do you need a good one? 6:20 - What s your worst hangover from a day of the day? 7:00 8: What are you looking forward to do next? 9: Should you drink more? 10:30 11: How do I feel like you're getting a buzz? 12:40 - How much do you want to drink tonight? 13: What s the worst thing you're drinking? 15:30 Is it a little dirty? 16:30 Do you need to drink more than that? 17:30 Can I have a cup of teas? 18: How much of a cupcake? 19: Do you feel like I should I drink a glass of teacup or something like that s a little bit of teabag? 21:00 Do you have a shot of teavore? 22:40 Do you like a martini or something else?
00:02:11.000That's a danger of being a comedian, though, because I set my alarm, like, if I'm hungover, I got a show at 8 o'clock, I set my alarm for 6. P.M.? Yeah.
00:06:49.000When you find someone who's an expert at that shit and they really know what they're doing, I'm going to bring the guy some bear meat and have him turn it into salami.
00:08:17.000And we had a horse tenderloin, you know, but it's one of those things like, you know, you say horse to people and it's for some folks Like there's a lady that lives in my neighborhood.
00:08:26.000I would never tell her that I ate a horse She rides she rides her horse by my house every day and she's real nice, you know Don't let her know that I eat horse I don't eat a horse on a regular basis.
00:09:38.000I mean, it's the best way, because you think about all the stuff that we used to have to do.
00:09:42.000You know, every time you would go on the road, you'd have to show up days earlier and do all this press.
00:09:46.000Like, I think Ralphie May was still doing that up until recently, where he would show up at a town, like, weeks out, and do press, and then come back in a week of, and...
00:09:56.000You know, really try to get the word out that he was going to be there.
00:12:58.000It was very weird because there was all this musical equipment on stage, too, and they asked me to...
00:13:04.000I was warming up the crowd, and I was also supposed to get people to come closer to the stage, and they wanted me to just get attractive people.
00:13:13.000They wanted me to just get pretty girls to come closer to the stage.
00:14:10.000And I was up there for less than, like, maybe two minutes, and somebody tossed just like a Dixie cup top, just, you know, a light piece of paper.
00:14:18.000All I had to see was that I was out of there.
00:15:29.000She's a good person and You know, she was like, she used to ask me about the world like she wasn't really in it, because she wasn't really in it.
00:16:27.000You know, we used to, it was a funny thing, in the casino, we would meet, like in the arenas, I would do my act, then they'd have a break, and then she'd come up.
00:16:37.000So we'd never see each other, except she had like a team prayer, and sometimes I was in that.
00:16:42.000But one night, we would cross each other.
00:16:46.000One night, her grandmother and grandfather were there, and she said to me, she goes, you just did a jizz joke with my grandparents there?
00:16:54.000And I said, and by the way, your ass is out, and your grandfather's looking at it.
00:19:48.000Yeah, you know, like I remember saying on stage, because, you know, she's always doing the prayer and Jesus does, you know, I don't know a lot about religious history, but I don't think Jesus had 300-pound bouncers pushing old people away, you know?
00:24:26.000I just happened to be there, and these two guys were arguing at a bar.
00:24:30.000I mean, it didn't seem like they were arguing that much.
00:24:32.000I mean, it didn't get like crazy or heated, and this guy just smashed this guy in the face with a Heineken bottle, and fucking blood was everywhere.
00:24:59.000Yeah, I'll have a, you know, martini, extra 30, that's how you like it.
00:25:03.000And then, for whatever reason, your elbow touches some guy, he spills his drink a little bit, whatever the fuck it was, I don't know what happened.
00:25:10.000I mean, I was a good distance away in a crowded bar, but I just happened to look over as these guys were exchanging words, and I saw that guy bottle that guy in the face, and I was like, what?
00:25:21.000Well, look, the whole Bora mentality, the guys that will get in a fight because somebody bumps into them, you're going to get bumped into if you're in a crowd.
00:25:28.000Yeah, well, if someone bumps in, you know, they say sorry, and that's the end of it, no matter what happens.
00:28:20.000You know, there's a lot of people that are just not planning ahead, or they think life is some fucking movie.
00:28:24.000They're going to pistol whip somebody, and that's going to be the end of it.
00:28:27.000How many times you see in a movie a guy crack somebody over the back of a head with a piece, and the guy goes down and wakes up an hour later, oh, Oh, what happened?
00:28:34.000And then he gets in a bunch of fights.
00:28:36.000Well, me, movies, fighting is such bullshit, as you know.
00:28:40.000First of all, hardly anybody gets knocked out.
00:30:38.000I guess they, you know what, probably they have different chords, the frets are different, so they have like different chords already set up so they can go back and forth.
00:31:52.000But what they did figure out is that left-handed people are better at fighting.
00:31:57.000Because and one of the reasons is they're doing everything the opposite way so it confuses everybody my father was a boxer and he taught me to start right-handed If you know if I was ever sparring it like summer camp mm-hmm, and then switch left-handed instead of confused the fuck out Yeah,
00:32:15.000left hand is weird, because the jab's coming from the wrong side.
00:32:18.000You're expecting a jab from over here, and it's coming from over here.
00:32:21.000And then the left hand is the big weapon, instead of the right hand.
00:32:23.000It fucks you up, unless you're used to it.
00:33:30.000He's not getting hit, and he's defensive, and he's counter-punching, but because of the stuff that you're involved in, I got more used to action.
00:33:40.000I mean, I know they get locked up sometime on the floor for too long, but it's still pretty funny when even they're locked up and the guy's just pounding the other guy's temple.
00:33:48.000Well, there's more variables in MMA, and that's what makes it more exciting.
00:33:53.000Because you never know what the fuck's gonna happen.
00:33:54.000You never know if a guy's gonna kick you or take you down or try to submit you or punch you.
00:33:58.000There's just so many different things going on and there's so many different things you have to think about and prepare for and so many different angles that a person could take when things aren't going their way, you know?
00:34:08.000And that just doesn't exist in boxing.
00:34:10.000When you're a guy like Manny Pacquiao and you're fighting a guy like Floyd and Floyd's got you figured out after the first round, Good luck.
00:34:16.000You know, your only luck, the best case scenario is you land a really good left hand, and then you follow up with a combination.
00:34:22.000And he tried to do that a few times, but Floyd just went into that defensive shell and just shook his head at him.
00:35:11.000He used to come and see me in West Palm all the time, and he knew that I had some history of boxing in my family, and he brought me this great picture of all the Philly fighters.
00:35:21.000And I was out there at the dinner with him one night, and I started picking his brain a little.
00:35:25.000I said, who's the baddest motherfucker of all of them?
00:35:27.000He said, who do you think of all the guys that you saw or could beat anybody?
00:35:39.000I don't know what mob ties he had, but apparently heroin.
00:35:43.000That second Ali fight was definitely thrown.
00:35:46.000Yeah, you know you could say it's such a joke the way he's faking well He got punched like they call it a phantom punch is not a phantom punch He definitely got punched But he was waiting for the first punch to land so that he could just lay down like you pull that up Jimmy we go watch this it's a Muhammad Ali versus Sonny Liston 2 in Lewiston,
00:36:06.000You know I thought it was gonna be Foreman Because of his size and his strength, but he you know he said Liston was the toughest Yeah, well, you know what?
00:36:15.000Foreman, before Ali beat him, was a different animal.
00:36:17.000Post-Ali, he was never the same guy, because that air of invincibility was gone.
00:36:22.000And then he had that crazy fight, I believe it was with Ron Lyle.
00:36:25.000They just fucking blasted each other in the head and knocked each other down like four or five times.
00:36:29.000Do you remember the punch that he hit George Foreman with in Jamaica?
00:37:08.000A lot of people thought Michael Sphinx was going to give him a hard time because Sphinx had gone 12 rounds with Larry Holmes and beat Larry Holmes by decision and he was the light heavyweight champion.
00:41:03.000But if you look at Ali's body, like, as Ali goes back, the thing about Ali was that if he wasn't training for a fight, he wasn't working out.
00:41:11.000So he didn't spend those three years lifting weights and running hills and fucking hitting the heavy bag.
00:42:43.000Granted, he's had three years off, but he's just...
00:42:46.000I mean, the old Ali, go now to Ali versus Cleveland Big Cat Williams.
00:42:52.000And I've always said, if you want to look at, like, Ali in his prime, when Ali was in his prime is when he was fighting this guy, Cleveland Williams.
00:42:59.000And Cleveland Williams is this big, fucking scary, murderous puncher.
00:43:03.000And Muhammad Ali boxed this guy's fucking face off.
00:43:08.000Who was the one that he, when he was doing, what's my name, what's my name?
00:46:04.000I remember the first time I brought her up, and I said, you know, about, oh, no, she brought me up, and I said, Maymay Ali, I said, I was thinking in the back, I wonder if I could beat Ali's daughter in a fight.
00:47:13.000And he just redefined what it meant to be a professional boxer.
00:47:17.000He introduced a whole new way of doing it.
00:47:19.000And now, like, there's a lot of MMA fighters that use this style now.
00:47:24.000I mean, it's different because they throw kicks and because takedowns are incorporated into it, but a lot of what they call, they call neo-footwork movements.
00:47:32.000Like, Dominic Cruz is probably the best at it.
00:47:34.000He's the, uh, Former bantamweight champion and T.J. Dillashaw, who's the current bantamweight champion, both guys are great examples of people that use this kind of misdirection and footwork, like constantly left to right, right to left.
00:47:48.000But those guys also incorporate switching stances, like they'll fight southpaw and then orthodox and orthodox southpaw, they go back and forth.
00:47:56.000Look at this, Ali's just right in front of this dude, and he can't do shit to him.
00:48:01.000Go to the knockout where you see, I don't know where it is on this video.
00:53:32.000Like if you had a LeBron James, like LeBron James became a boxer when he was young instead of became a basketball player and was just as dedicated to boxing as he is to being a basketball player, there's still some crucial elements.
00:53:46.000You can be a great athlete in other sports, but you wouldn't be a great fighter.
00:53:50.000I mean, you might be able to be a great baseball player or be a great basketball player, but when it gets down to fighting, There's some intangibles involved in fighting that don't exist in any other sport.
00:53:59.000You've got to be willing to go out there and risk your health, and no one is there to help you.
00:54:13.000And you have to be able to you got to be able to hold yourself together under Just a barrage of fucking punches and the most dangerous guy in the world Who's your opponent who's trained for eight weeks for this moment just to kick your ass I mean he's been not drinking not partying sleeping all the time just so he can have more energy to fuck you up.
00:54:36.000Yeah Well, now the best athletes don't go into boxing.
00:54:40.000They go into football and basketball, I think.
00:54:42.000Well, even MMA. You know, we have a hard time finding the best athletes in MMA. There's a few of them now that are just starting to leak into MMA, like guys who are like Olympic caliber wrestlers, who are tremendous athletes.
00:54:54.000I thought that guy Silva was really good.
00:55:28.000I mean, there's no doubt that Anderson is a spectacular athlete and the best MMA fighter of all time.
00:55:33.000But I just think the level of competition that's involved in MMA, or at least was, in his division, now that division is fucking stacked with killers.
00:55:42.000But when he was in his prime, there was a long time where, like, the title challengers were like Patrick Cote or Thales Latis or these guys that, like, really weren't at his level.
00:55:53.000But now there's like seven or eight guys in the UFC's middleweight division that are just murderers.
00:55:59.000So it's one of those things where a guy like Anderson, who is the cream of the crop, the best of the best, pretty much the best ever, and because he's at such a high level, all those guys that are training, that see him and aspire to be him or aspire to beat him,
00:56:15.000those guys all come up in the gym, and by the time Anderson's done, When the new guy comes along, Chris Weidman, there's like this overwhelming momentum of competition behind him because all these guys have been under the shadow of the greatest ever.
00:56:51.000Chael could have got out of that because that wasn't a fully locked-in triangle.
00:56:54.000People have gotten out of way tighter triangles.
00:56:56.000But there's a bunch of factors, though.
00:56:59.000One is Chael kind of was susceptible to submissions, and it was a psychological thing where sometimes he would be winning a fight and he just couldn't take the pressure or something.
00:57:23.000And to get caught in a triangle like that, like, he didn't have to get caught in that triangle.
00:57:28.000He could have played it smart and just held that guy down, kept his posture, and, you know, he got caught, and, you know, he tapped pretty much immediately, and then he tried to, like, not say he tapped.
00:57:40.000It was, like, a lot of weird shit that happened there.
00:57:42.000Your career is amazing when you think about...
00:57:45.000I told you, my friend McGettigan, the guy who prosecuted Sandusky, he said, I think Rogan's the best announcer in any sport right now on TV. It does very nicely.
00:57:54.000And I remember when I was complimenting you on stage at Laugh Factory, and you said, I'm very uncomfortable with this.
00:57:59.000But I would love for the people to see you doing stand-up, because you're so good at being serious.
00:58:07.000If they ever saw your act, it would be explosive to them.
00:58:10.000Well, you know, I think people like to define people in one way.
00:58:14.000Like, you're either silly or you're serious or, you know, you're either sexy or you're goofy.
00:58:20.000You know, everybody wants to be defined in one way or another.
00:58:23.000It's easier to define people, but we all have, like, various aspects to our personalities.
00:59:01.000I just don't think they have certain gifts, you know?
00:59:05.000Like, one of the things I study is us stand-up comedians.
00:59:10.000And there are some people, you can see them walk on stage, they're putting their bottle of water down, and you know they're going to be good.
01:01:22.000I mean, you don't get a sense of how really funny he is on the show, because they show a little of us goofing off, but most of it's so inappropriate.
01:01:31.000You know, he'd be like, we're getting ready, we're going to kill some deer.
01:01:58.000Now, who goes out there with you besides you two?
01:02:01.000Well, there's Steve Rinella, who's the host of the show.
01:02:04.000And then usually he brings either Ryan Callahan, who is another very experienced hunter and a guy who runs this clothing company called First Light Clothing Company.
01:02:13.000It's like an all-hunting clothing company.
01:02:17.000It's kind of funny that, like, all these different, you know, synthetics, all these different things they've created for clothes and for, you know, for textiles.
01:06:03.000Well, you know, they, at one point in time, were minorities.
01:06:06.000I mean, it's interesting when you watch, there's a parallel to boxing, because if you look at boxing in the United States, it's always the immigrants that are at the lower end of the social ladder that were really the best at boxing.
01:08:44.000You know, I had a pilot called Dom Time, and it was like a sports talk show, and Steve was my announcer.
01:08:51.000I asked him to be my announcer, and this is before I had any idea he was even interested in it, because he had that voice, everybody, you know.
01:16:42.000He did have a joke about Floyd Mayweather too.
01:16:44.000I don't know if this really happened, but Whitney Cummings, he said Whitney Cummings yelled out in the middle of Floyd Mayweather's fight, she stood up, Floyd Mayweather beats women!
01:18:17.000Girls will tell you that they got roofied, and it's always terrifying, but somehow or another, the girl is telling you he's okay, and they're right in front of you, and you go, wow, it's hard for me to connect to this.
01:18:31.000God, it's awful, and it's terrible, but it's hard for me to connect to this.
01:18:35.000Like, I know it's real, and I know it happens, but when I heard that Bill fucking Cosby was drugging and raping women, allegedly, I should say, allegedly.
01:20:37.000Like, we were talking about rape, and I was saying that there's no way I could rape somebody because I have too much compassion, and I could never hurt somebody.
01:20:47.000Like, you know, I know it sounds like, oh, big deal, you couldn't rape somebody, but I don't even fucking get it.
01:20:51.000Like, how you could be that evil to get hard seeing somebody cry and stuff, you know?
01:21:50.000But she's a nice person, you know what I'm saying?
01:21:52.000She made through that and stayed a nice person, even though she's a quote-unquote diva.
01:21:57.000She's a diva because she's extraordinarily talented and very respected and loved and all that good stuff.
01:22:03.000That thing that makes you like everyone out of my way, you know, you know that Whether it would Diana Ross did it and you saw with the Whitney Houston thing the bodyguards pushing it aside Yeah, the Streisand thing that John Mellencamp he did John Mellencamp friend of mine Omar Not not the tent maker another one more from the wire No?
01:22:26.000He used to tell me that he was stage managing, and you weren't allowed to talk to him.
01:22:32.000He had to talk to his manager, and he would say it, like right next to him.
01:22:35.000And there's a guy like the blue-collar, gritty guy.
01:22:38.000You know, they didn't like him in Indiana.
01:22:40.000I was in Indiana for a fight, and they showed John Mellencamp's picture, and the fucking whole crowd booed.
01:23:20.000Like, Bruce Springsteen is notoriously personable.
01:23:23.000Like, if you talk to Bruce Springsteen, like, Brian Callen had a conversation with Bruce Springsteen, and he said, you talk to that guy, and you would think that he's a fucking, you know, whatever.
01:23:32.000He owns a company, or he's a fucking banker, or he's a normal dude.
01:24:01.000So why I said what a fucking nightmare I said the curtain goes down and they're all going Bruce and the curtain comes up and I'm standing there with a mic they're going you're not Bruce We want Bruce Whoever the fuck you are get away Those are that's a hard thing when you're opening for somebody when they want the other person That's a shitty thing to say to I've seen people open for other comics and you know bring bring out you know Tosh well I bring out you know on the bill and So it wasn't like I was surprised.
01:24:31.000I was on the bill, I was on the marquee.
01:29:55.000Those girls, I mean, they had a different kind of body.
01:29:57.000They were obviously very beautiful, but they did not have, like, there's some ridiculous Instagram girls that have, like, two million followers on Instagram, and they have these giant butts.
01:31:10.000Like, we want big, muscular asses now, whereas if you look at Playboy from just a few years ago, there was no girls that had big, giant asses like that.
01:32:06.000It's just weird the style of movies and of entertainment.
01:32:11.000Like when he was sitting there singing that terrible song in front of all those people.
01:32:16.000It's like people actually went to see something like that and they enjoyed it.
01:32:20.000You know, the world has changed in so many weird ways, man.
01:32:24.000So many weird ways that it's like, it's hard to keep up with it, or it's hard to put it into perspective unless you go back and watch old stuff.
01:39:24.000I got to play a gay friend of mine who I went to college with, and his name, we used to call him Vinny the Binny.
01:39:31.000And the reason I got the character was my wife and I were going down to a college reunion, and this is when he got gayer and gayer because he was a hairdresser on the Broadway, and he's a really good dude.
01:39:40.000He's driving me down, and I go, Vinny, you want a beer?
01:39:42.000He goes, no thanks, Don, but you have one.
01:39:53.000Remember he used to do those HBO specials where he'd have all the different comics up and he had these elaborate sets and he was hosting it and he had all those movies.
01:40:03.000The movie was so funny with Damon and Kenan Waynes and John Witherspoon.
01:42:39.000But, I mean, it was great that you had the power and the unselfishness to help those guys' careers.
01:42:44.000Well, one of the things about the Comedy Store, where we all work on a regular basis, we get to see guys who are good and guys who are not good, you know?
01:42:51.000And Ari said to me once, like, when you took me on the road, you know, I wasn't funny.
01:43:11.000I mean, it's all it is, but he had that ability.
01:43:15.000I mean, maybe it would be like two out of three bits would be killer and one of them wouldn't be so hot, but those two were fucking killer.
01:43:23.000Most comics are notoriously hard on themselves.
01:45:25.000It was like, you know, the audience was pretty good size, you know, maybe a hundred people, but all the comics in the back of the room, we were just crying.
01:46:23.000I'd take him on the road, and people would, like, I would do a theater or something like that, and Joey would go on stage, and people just wouldn't know who he was.
01:46:30.000And they would start laughing after a while, but they would give a nice, polite round of applause when he got on stage.
01:46:36.000Now when Joey goes on stage, I film it sometimes just to show people.
01:50:40.000All right, ladies and gentlemen, we'll be back tomorrow with Adam Scorgy, the producer of The Union and The Culture High, and he'll be here tomorrow.