Planes, Trains and Blackhawk Helicopters ｜ Bankas Podcast - #081
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
149.55368
Summary
Comedian Ben Bankist talks about the crash of a plane and helicopter near Washington, D.C. on Wednesday night, and the tragic death of the pilot of a commercial jetliner involved in the crash.
Transcript
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Welcome to Bankist Podcast, everybody. It's me, Ben Bankist. I'm in the grand room of my
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extravagant hotel provided by the great River Cree Casino and Hotel, the River Cree people.
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Thank you. Thank you. Comedy shows are a little better in Canada on native land,
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I have to admit. They really do treat you properly on native land, I guess.
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No wonder why people took so much of it. It's just, it's amazing.
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But yes, just did a great show in Edmonton in about a 1500 person theater, pretty much the
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biggest theater I've ever done. Very cool. And people were really nice. They liked it.
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Only a couple fucking boys, good old boys from Edmonton there. Fucking, they fucking, you know,
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a couple hecklers there, buddy. But thank you, Edmonton and people listening from Edmonton.
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Very, very cool. People braved a snowstorm. There's a horrible snowstorm. It's still going
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on. I don't even know if I'm going to be able to get out of here, if my flight's going
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to be on time. But yeah, all I can say is to these pilots, could you look both ways before
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landing the plane? Is that so much to ask? Just a little bit of this, a little bit of that,
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a little bit of that, a little bit of this, and then maybe figure it out from there what
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Shit, we got a Black Hawk coming in hot, a motherfucker, a pull-up, motherfucker. Shit.
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Shit, why does it always got to be a Black Hawk? Why can't it be a White Hawk?
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Unbelievable. Unbelievable tragedy. At first, there was a misinformation. There was mis- or
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disinformation going around that the pilot of the helicopter was transgender. And I mean,
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it wasn't true, but it would have been, it would have been nice if it was true. Wouldn't it just
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felt good to just, oh yeah, yeah, it was, wasn't it? We were right.
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Interesting morning. This is Joe Ellis. I am a Black Hawk pilot with the Virginia Army National
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Guard. I understand some people have associated me with a, the crash in DC, and that is false.
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It is insulting to the families to try to tie this to some sort of political agenda. They don't deserve
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that. I don't deserve this. And I hope that you all know that I am alive and well, and this should be
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sufficient for you all to end all the rumors. I also have a statement. The Department of Defense
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is responsible for casualty notifications. There were no Virginia National Guard personnel
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on that Black Hawk that collided with the jetliner Wednesday evening. Thank you.
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But I see people coming to my shows and, you know, take it for granted, man. This is a dangerous job
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being a comedian. I got to fly. I flew into DC two days ago before this shit happened. And my pilot was
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doing some weird shit. Like we were like 500 feet from the ground and he just went full sideways and
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like pull, like did that and then fucking landed it in two seconds. And I don't know. Was he,
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was he dodging a Black Hawk? Was he, what the fuck is, yeah, let's put the Black Hawk training facility
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right in front of the commercial airport. Can we do that? Can we put,
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can we make sure that we have untrained Black Hawk helicopter pilots flying in the direct line of
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the runway about 500 feet above the runway? Can we have that going on at all times? Who's,
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who's in charge of that? Whose idea is that? Is that like, is that supposed to be response ready?
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Like I get it, but bro, that's crazy. What, what was the training mission? Like try not to
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take out an airliner and then they, it's very scary, very scary. Whole family's just wiped out.
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Is it bad that I feel worse about that one plane crash than all of Gaza? Is that bad?
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Beautiful country, Canada flew in a bit on tour, uh, since the last time we checked in was the
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Rochester show when I had Ari shield, the retarded Jewish guy. We had, we had a retarded Jew on the
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show who made everybody more antisemitic and no, he's a good kid. So I brought him to New Jersey.
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We did the New Jersey show and this camera, by the way, this camera is amazing for podcasts,
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as you can see. But for some reason, this lens did not work super well in, um, New Jersey and,
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in, um, Rochester. So working on it. Also Washington, I had a guy beg me,
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beg me to film my set. And then he, I go, okay, fine. And he goes, here's my pricing. He goes,
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two dollars a minute, four dollars a minute for this camera. I'm like, four dollars a minute.
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I've never, I've had videographers a lot of times. I've never had somebody go, yeah,
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it's four dollars a minute. Give me a fucking price. 200 for the night, 400 for the night.
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No, it's just crazy. And then he cut, um, half of my head is cut off in the video.
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How crazy is that? But it was a good deal. It was a good deal. 200 bucks. Get some half usable
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footage. And, uh, he took some nice pictures of me, which is nice. No, he's a good guy, but
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that's what happened. That's what happened in Washington, DC was a great show. Washington
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I've never performed in DC before. And DC is a special place. Of course, it's a historical place.
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It's, it's interesting place. It's, it's, it's a capital city of America. It's important.
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And got to walk around there, which was really cool. Couldn't really get close to the white house.
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There was some guy talking to the cops in front of the white house, like a homeless guy with two dogs.
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He's like, yeah, the fucking secret service fucking near killed my dogs.
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You got, we just walked away from that situation. He was yelling at the cops in front of the white house.
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But the show is at this great club, uh, called the DC comedy loft. And it really is a loft. It's like a bar.
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It's, it's cool. It's a, it's like a U shaped comedy club and you perform at the bottom of the U.
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And so it's just like, there's wings that go out. One wing has a bar and it was just a really great show.
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I had two comics on the show, random comics from, uh, from DC who are comics that fucking,
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I don't know who they are, but I met them and they were nice and they did a good job.
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They warmed up the crowd and I got to go out there and have some, some fun, man.
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It was really, really fun. One of the most fun sets I've had in a long time. I really just
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was on that night in DC and was just vibing, vibing with the crowd. My friend drove up,
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my friend drove nine hours to be there from Toronto, which is really special thing.
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And then nine hours back the next day and, uh, come came and hang out, hung out in DC.
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That was a nice hotel too. I mean, it wasn't the hotel itself. Wasn't that nice, but the,
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the room, the room was nice. So that was a beautiful time in, in Washington, DC. That's why I was,
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I was so saddened by that fucking Jesus Christ. Fucking Blackhawk bullshit.
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Tell you what, after that accident, I'm always going to be taking the pretzels now or the cookies
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or both on the plane. Cause I was right before that, the DC thing happened. I was on a plane
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and I'm, you know, and they're like pretzels, cookies. I'm like, no, that has seed oils. Okay.
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I know a thing or two here. That's, that's going to cause a slow, debilitating
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death in my late seventies or eighties. So I'm going to say no to that. And then I saw the DC thing
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where it's just like, and I'm like, well, maybe I'll take the cookie. You know what I mean? Maybe
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I'll, maybe I'll get a double vodka, even though I have to pay for it. Maybe I will.
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That's your last thought. If you're in economy and the, and, and something happens is you're
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thinking should have fucking done first class. This is and the first class people are thinking
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I should have done basic and very bad cause only chance of, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I,
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even the pilots of that plane looked a little gay. I'm not going to lie. The pilots, there's a
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picture of them. I saw it. They, they, it looked like they made flight attendance pilots. I'm not
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going to lie. Not going to lie to you guys. I'm being vulnerable and being honest. I'm telling you
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how I see it. I saw a picture of the pilots and they look too gay to figure it out.
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So that's just how I feel. Sorry. Sorry to everybody out there. Sorry to the, I mean,
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the victims families, it's just horrific. There's guys, I just can't even imagine, but also
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you got to laugh again. Maybe it's too, give me a week. Well, the quicker you laugh, the quicker,
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uh, you know, yeah, I guess, uh, I guess America's not going to be getting too many medals and finger
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skating the next Olympics, but, uh, wow. These jokes are, these not going over well, even though
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I'm in a room with an empty room, I can tell the bombing, I can tell, or you're laughing, but you have
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to laugh because yeah, it's fucked up. It's fucked up, but you have to, what do you, life is fucked up.
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This is what the, you know, no offense, the Palestinians, this is what the Palestinians
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need to have maybe a laugh instead. They're like, oh, uh, the ceasefire instead of like doing comedy
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and laughing there, they're parading around Jewish women in the streets. And it looks like there's more
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of them than there were before the fucking war. Jesus Christ. Everybody's just blit blindly supporting
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them. Interesting. Interesting that Egypt doesn't support them. Trump said he's going to send them
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all to Egypt and the Egypt's pro they're protesting against it. It's just crazy that a lot of comics
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are, are super, they, they, they want to make it known that they're like Jews. You guys, it's,
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it's getting a little crazy. Like I'm doing a Chinese accent that's frowned upon, but I'm not like,
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look, you guys actually see causing all the problems. I mean, well, maybe I am, maybe I'm,
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but you could say that about anybody that when, that, when they say about Jews, I could say it about
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blacks. I could say it about, oh, the Chinese people are causing all the problems or Indians
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are causing all the problems. You can blame it on anybody. The problems are your problems
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at the end of the day. If you, if you have some sort of mental problem or you, you're not fulfilled
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enough, you're not happy enough and you got to look to, uh,
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to really blame somebody. You can, you'll be able to blame somebody. That's for sure.
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But look, the Israelis, they are, you know, you meet an Israeli and you're like, okay, I get it.
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They're out of their minds. They've, you know, served the equivalent of, you know, six tours in Iraq
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before they were 18. It's, you know, it's people want to act like it's like, oh, the Israelis,
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they're so privileged. And then they, they're fucking warriors too. They fought for that land.
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And everybody goes, oh, well, yeah, the Jews from the Ashkenazis, they just came down to,
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to, to, to Israel. It's like, bro, they were in the Holocaust. They were,
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they had nowhere to go. They didn't want to go to Israel. That's what people don't realize is most
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Jews like didn't after the world war II, they didn't, they weren't like, oh, Israel, let's go.
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They were like, we have to go because everybody's trying to kill us and nobody wants us around.
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So anyway, that's my two cents. I know people get really pissed. Like, I love your podcast.
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And then you mentioned Israel and I get upset and it's like, well, sorry, but I'm offering a
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slightly different perspective and people go, oh no, that's the perspective of Ben Shapiro.
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Dude, I'm not wearing a fucking yarmulke eating kosher. Okay. I'm just standing up for like,
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yo, like Jews created social media without, they created TV Jews. Like there's comics who are just
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like open about saying like free Palestine, which I'm not like against them saying it. Like it's,
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I think it's funny actually, but they'll say free Palestine. And it's like, yo, you're a comedian.
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You know who invented that? Like your job was invented by a Jew.
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Lenny Bruce, Mort Saul, the first comedians, and then all the Jews who surrounded those guys who
00:15:05.320
thought of, okay, what if, what if you did that thing where you, you stood in front of the people
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and the mic and you talk and then we'll sell tickets and then we'll make money and then we'll
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put you on the road. And then the, you know, the bush belt and we'll get the, you know, we'll
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organize a bunch of places. And then, you know, the first comedy clubs that were opened by Jews,
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the improv, the comedy store, right? I mean, my apologies for that slight,
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slight interruption. I had a fucking full card. You spend fucking $2,000 on a camera and then you
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fucking still, you still, you still doing it yourself. You know, you still gotta
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still gotta make sure that cards fucking got room in it. It's a tough job, man. Comedy,
00:15:53.000
really tough job. Listen to that feedback. You know why comedy is such a tough job? Because
00:16:04.040
it's not, it's not, it's one of the best jobs in the world. I'm going to be honest with you. It's the
00:16:07.880
best job in the world. I feel super blessed to be able to do it. And this is the other part of
00:16:18.760
comedy. You have to, you can't just be a comedian now. You can't just do standup. You have to be
00:16:23.960
somebody that, you know, you have to like read an audio book to people every once a week or twice a
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week. You got to read them a little, a little behind the scenes. I didn't gamble at all,
00:16:37.720
while I was here, which was nice. Usually I would just gamble tons, but I just didn't want to. And I
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felt great not gambling at the river Creek casino. It's fucking whiteout conditions outside. I mean,
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it's just terrifying. It's terrifying. Got to fly from here to Denver, Denver to Austin, two days off.
00:17:00.920
And then I go to Florida, which is going to be a great Edmonton. And then Florida is kind of
00:17:07.640
a nice balance. You get to see true winter, the real raw winter. And then you get to go back
00:17:14.600
and, and just be in a tropical wonderland. I can't wait to be in Florida. Florida is amazing. I love
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Florida and we're going to sell out shows in Florida. It's very cool because
00:17:32.200
there was nobody coming. I mean, there was a, you know, even when I, even last year,
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some of the shows that I did in the States had like nobody come, you know, like Tampa last year,
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we had, you know, 50 people, maybe 40 people, something like that in a, in a big room,
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a room that fits like 400. And I did 40 people. It's a little alarming. I would, I mean, as an
00:18:02.680
immigrant to a new country, I mean, not as bad as doing Uber Eats, but
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other immigrants are like, it's very hard to work here. I, uh, do not have to do a Uber Eats.
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I have to do a Uber. I, uh, I'm on a test rabbit. I do a fixing the painting on the wall.
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And I'm here like, yeah, last, it's a tough transition. I came first time in Tampa. Only
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40 people knew who I was. It's true. But one of those people was head coach of the Tampa Bay
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Lightning. And, um, he was really nice to me, John, really fucking nice. And now we just sold it out.
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We sold out Tampa. We got a late show coming for Tampa.
00:19:00.040
This is, that's, I mean, this, you can't ask for much more than that. You can't ask for much more
00:19:04.760
than that. It doesn't get better than that. The feeling that you sold it out, the relief,
00:19:11.160
right? And I mean, I'm, I'm on the road a lot and I have a family. I have a beautiful
00:19:16.600
fiance and child, two year old child. I have a two year old child. Okay.
00:19:23.080
I have a fucking two year old child. Sign up for patreon.com. Patreon.com.
00:19:31.640
And we're about to have another child. And I get to go to all these cool places. Well,
00:19:36.360
she just stays at home with the kid as it should be. That's how it should be. How do you think these
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people had families before you think men in the fucking in the 30s and the 40s? They think they
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were fucking, you think they even saw their kids or their wife? No. The ones who were making good
00:19:58.840
money? Rarely. Or they brought their kids and wife around to do stuff. Wasn't everything
00:20:06.520
wasn't as strict. It wasn't, I mean, I don't know. I'm completely making this up, but I just feel like
00:20:14.200
you should bring your kids to work. You know what I mean? Like you should be able to,
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I mean, not if you work like a shitty job, you want to take my kid to Uber, but you want to take your
00:20:25.640
kid to fucking like, you know, if you have a business, you want to take your kid and show
00:20:29.560
your how your business is run and stuff like that might be more. That might be better
00:20:36.040
than going to school. I feel like schools sucks, especially now. Imagine going to school as like
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a kid brought up normally. And then you get to the school. There's a bunch of sketchy
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shit going on. There's a bunch of shitty kids. There's a bunch of woke teachers who look past all of
00:20:54.040
these shitty kids and all they care about is transgender bullshit. It's, it's terrifying.
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The idea of sending a child to school nowadays.
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I gotta say there was a lot of gay figure skaters on that plane. I mean, I'm just saying
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I'm joking, guys. I don't know. Is that too far to say my man that my manager is going to call me
00:21:41.960
and be like, you can't post that clip. It's a bad clip. You're doing another hail Haley. You
00:21:45.480
can't do a hail Haley. You can't do. What if I want to fucking him?
00:21:50.440
Incredible. Incredible to fly around the country. It's a beautiful country. America is a beautiful
00:22:00.600
country. I'd say in some ways more beautiful than Canada. Canada is beautiful, but we just have so
00:22:07.240
much empty bullshit land that it's like, yeah, okay, that's beautiful, but there's nothing there.
00:22:12.280
There's nothing over here. There's nothing over there.
00:22:13.960
America has shit pretty much everywhere. If they have vacant land, that's like, okay,
00:22:20.840
somebody's going to move there. Somebody's going to open a farm. Somebody's going to have a house in
00:22:25.720
the middle of the woods, some cool thing. So many cool areas. So much to discover and so much
00:22:35.160
to discover about yourself in America. Whereas in Canada,
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the most profound thing that you can discover in Canada is that you want to go to America.
00:22:43.960
Let's be real here. There are no Canadians that do great things that don't end up moving to
00:22:53.160
America. The ones that don't, Canada has to pretend that they're doing great things when they're really
00:23:00.280
not like Rick Mercer or other random Canadian icons that never left the country, didn't try,
00:23:11.320
got a good, good enough job, made a couple hundred grand Canadian, which is like 50 grand U.S. after taxes
00:23:22.120
for, to work for CBC and get trapped here and do it's, it's, that's a terrifying existence to me.
00:23:28.760
That, that, that, that, that is fucking scary. So what I do is just brilliant. It's just beautiful.
00:23:34.760
It's beautiful to be able to fucking explore. We got pictures of fucking Indians on the one,
00:23:40.280
old school, old school Indians. I'm talking those. It's a residential school graduation photo to my left.
00:23:56.440
Just nice to relax. You know, when I'm on tour, I mean, I'm around my wife, fiance, whatever. But
00:24:11.000
you know, I'm relaxed when I'm at home for a little bit, she lets me relax, but then it become,
00:24:16.360
you know, well, we just moved. Right. So it's a lot of doing shit. That's dumb that when you're rich,
00:24:25.240
you want to be, that's the goal. You want to be rich enough that when you move, you don't even know
00:24:29.000
that you moved. You just dial a number and they go, yeah, it's this. And you go, okay, here's the
00:24:33.720
thing. Do it. Or you don't even do it. You tell another guy that, Hey, I'm moving. Can you figure
00:24:41.060
everything out? And I just show up and it's all there. And they go, yes. And they already have all
00:24:45.980
your credit cards and shit. That's the goal. The goal in life is to make enough money that you don't
00:24:54.080
have to lift a finger. That's the whole point. People go, what's the point of life? Oh, what's the
00:25:01.100
purpose of life? To get enough money that you don't have to lift a finger.
00:25:09.640
You don't have to go anywhere. Honestly, I mean, people, Oh, I want to, I want to be rich so I can
00:25:15.240
go on vacation and I can travel. I don't even, I mean, rich people travel, but like sometimes,
00:25:21.520
you know, it's nice to just chill. And by chill, I mean like for a couple of months, I'm not talking
00:25:27.660
like years. I guess that is still traveling, but you own the home. So you're traveling to a place
00:25:32.440
that you own. Just sounds nice. It sounds nice. Some guy last night they did. So the place here did
00:25:41.320
the meet and greet before the show, which is kind of weird. And it was only 20 people. Cause like they
00:25:48.000
made like a thing where it's like only 20 people can fucking come to the meet and greet and they did
00:26:03.040
it nice and quick, nice and quick. And then one white guy comes in and he shakes my hand. He's like,
00:26:08.780
Oh, I bet you fucking like this part. Don't you fucking take the fucking picture? Of course that's
00:26:14.760
the goal. I don't even want, you know, stand up. I just know. I just show up and we do a couple
00:26:21.240
of pictures and I leave. I got a hundred million dollars. I'd love a hundred million dollars.
00:26:30.600
I want a hundred million dollars. Let it be said on the internet that Ben Bankus will make a hundred
00:26:38.920
million dollars. There was somebody, I almost didn't even want to be their friend. Cause I was
00:26:48.320
like, I want to make a hundred million or 200 million. And they were like, that's not possible.
00:26:52.940
I was like, uh, excuse me, excuse me. Kendrick Lamar is worth $80 million and he's five foot two
00:27:00.460
Drake's worth $250 million. And he, we all know what he does. He gives, he gives comics a hundred
00:27:14.160
thousand dollars to keep taking my act. What a life, what a life, what a beautiful life.
00:27:26.140
Yeah. Got to get out of here soon. I mean, I, maybe we won't do the full, um, to full hour
00:27:32.720
today, which is fine, but, or this is just going to transition into a new podcast, but short and
00:27:41.060
sweet. I'm going back home. I've set up a great podcast studio in my house and that's going to be
00:27:49.700
where the podcast is going to happen when I'm, if I'm not on the road, you know what I mean?
00:27:56.340
And, uh, I love you guys. Thank you for listening. Patreon.com slash Ben Bankus. There is a bonus
00:28:02.240
episode out right now. It's about an hour and 10 minutes. There will be another episode very soon
00:28:08.680
from my home studio that I'm probably going to do tomorrow or the next day. So this will come out and
00:28:12.740
then there'll be another one in a day or two. So thank you. Come out to my shows. If you're new to the
00:28:19.080
podcast, don't worry about it. You don't have to listen to 700 episodes before understanding
00:28:24.800
what's going on. This is not like a fucking Netflix series here. This is an update. This
00:28:29.860
is, this is a fun way to, to, to hang out with me and your favorite comic. And we're going to have
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guests on the show soon. Like I said, the new setup is going to be sweet. Let me know in the
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comments what you guys want to hear more of. Maybe some of you still want me to do news articles.
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We will do that if we have to, but we need to get a producer. So we're looking for an,
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um, an Indian guy to underpay. Anyway, guys, I love you so much. Thank you.