Comedian Larry David joins Jemele to discuss how to be funny, his love of Louis CK, and his thoughts on masturbation. Plus, a look at what it's like to be a millennial in the 90s and what it s like to grow up in a generation where masturbation is normal, and why it s okay to masturbate in front of other people. And, of course, there's a little bit of politics at the end of the episode, but that's not really what this episode is about, is it? It's about riffing, and riffing is funny, right? And that's what we're going to talk about in this episode of Jemele's new show, . Featuring Jemele, Alex, and Alex's new music, and a special guest appearance from his daughter, Arianna, who was a guest on Jemele s show last week. Music by Zapsplat. Art: Mackenzie Moore Editor: Will Witwer Music: Hayden Coplen Editing: Jeff Perla Mixing: Haley Shaw Additional Compositions: David Crossen Logo by Ian Dorsch Theme Song: John Kimbrough Cover art by Ian Somerhalder Thank you to: and for the music used in the episode Thanks to: James Wisniewski (credited: , & , "The Good Wife - "The Best Keynote Presentation" - "Alyssa and "The Bad Girl" by is airdro by Jeff Perlan ( ) and ( ) "Thank You, My Thoughts On This Is My Name" by David Cross ( ) is a song written and produced and produced by , and "This Is My Life" by Bobby Lord ( ) by (feat. by ) and "My Dad's Song is My Life Is My Song" by "Bennie & by Kevin McLeod ( ) . ( -- and ) by "Crispy ( ) & "Bobby Lord in the song "Let's Talk About It" is a Cover Art by . . & "I Can't Stop This" by John Rocha ( ) in the video by "I'm Too Sexy" is on SoundCloud ( ) on
Transcript
Transcripts from "Get Off My Lawn - Gavin McInnes" are sourced from the Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool. You can also explore and interact with the transcripts here.
00:01:05.000He's so funny that when I watched his last special, this is before all the masturbating stuff blew up, I felt cool because this was my generation's comedian.
00:01:17.000So I felt like I was better than Baby Boomers because they had Richard Pryor and Bill Hicks who were also great, but ours is way better.
00:01:24.000He makes you feel like you're wearing a leather jacket.
00:01:31.000Carlos Menci on the other hand, I saw him do a stand up recently and he was saying, you know, these immigrants coming here, they're doing jobs you don't want to do.
00:03:21.000Like, she did this one thing on the Daily Show about teachers and how they're actually poor.
00:03:28.000And we say that they get too much money and then she went to teachers' houses and they look like crap and they, you know, they didn't have a car and they were in a small apartment or something.
00:04:00.000I'm getting political and that's not funny.
00:04:03.000But, uh, so her politics make my skin crawl.
00:04:07.000Jason Jones is kind of bad too, but I feel like, you know, after some beers he gets a little more centrist than liberal.
00:04:15.000But those two as parents are amazing, really great, awesome parents who adore their children and do a great job of raising them and are totally monogamous and aren't perverts or any of that and aren't depressing and they're fun and interesting and engaging.
00:05:43.000Oh, let me just put in my password to update this and it is Bobby two thousand three four six go Yeah, so I'm already not funny out of the gate and it's look I'm being honest that's funny see I
00:06:02.000I had a, the reason I'm bringing up genetic traits is because I often dream jokes, and as Howard Stern points out, when you're dreaming you're not you, you're in a different consciousness, you're in a different dimension.
00:06:15.000Comedy is sort of a complex myriad of electrical impulses in your brain.
00:06:20.000And when those are skewed, you'll see something new and original, and it'll tick the right boxes, but the boxes are in the wrong order.
00:06:29.000And what you think is the funniest thing in the world when you're dreaming, you'll wake up and go, pardonnez-moi?
00:06:37.000Like, I was asleep, and I was thinking about this all night, and I honestly thought I have come up with the funniest concept, the funniest sentence in the world.
00:06:47.000Now, I've already come up with the funniest sentence in the world, and it is, my only problem with breastfeeding- with women- oh, see, I already ruined it.
00:06:54.000My only problem with women breastfeeding in public is that they never wink back.
00:07:00.000Uh, but this I thought was even funnier than that.
00:07:03.000So, I'm almost like spending the money I'm gonna make from this joke.
00:07:07.000I guess it's gonna be a t-shirt and a bumper sticker and I'm gonna be in the history books as the guy who said the funniest thing of all time.
00:07:14.000Actually, the funniest thing of all time...
00:07:17.000I believe it was written by Dan Harmon.
00:08:00.000You know if you're so hungover you're trying to get it up.
00:08:03.000You gotta make sure your nose is above your mouth, and that's gonna make you think you're gonna hit the lid, but there is a sort of a degrees where you can make sure your nose, it doesn't go in your sinuses, but it also goes in the bowl.
00:09:20.000Their final moments, and it happens a lot, it's like a gift he has, and he said he was with Jimi Hendrix as he threw up, and he held him, and he said it was gonna be okay, and he was also coincidentally with Janis Joplin in her final moments, and he held her in his arms, and she was coughing up blood, and he kissed her on the forehead and said it's gonna be alright.
00:10:10.000Like, uh, George Bush just flew back from checking out the damage of Katrina, and boy are his farms mired.
00:10:19.000This went on and on for I'm gonna say five hours and half the time when people are joking and laughing and saying good one the other people are staring at the desk stroking their chin trying to come up with a different arms tired.
00:10:58.000And at one point he was opening the door for me.
00:11:02.000You know how you run out to the back deck?
00:11:04.000We'd rent a house like in Jamaica or something and all of us would go there.
00:11:08.000And he's sort of opening the door the way you do when you go out back and you sort of push the door behind you so the other guy can get out so you don't slam the door in his face.
00:11:17.000But it's a wobbly old house so it got stuck.
00:11:56.000So I'm going I can't believe this Jay.
00:11:58.000I can't get out of here We just we're going in circles, and I'm getting confused and he goes yeah actually this city planning was done by a famous architect His name was Williard Millard.
00:12:08.000He was also known to his friends as Willy Nilly All right, so that's my
00:12:16.000That's my J Johnson update and my long comedian friends name dropping tangent, but to go back to my dream So I dreamt this thing and I thought I got it and I was telling my brain like brain This is brilliant.
00:12:30.000Don't let it go the second Gavin wakes up.
00:12:33.000I want you to write this down and It was you ready for this most hilarious thing ever it was
00:13:33.000I was like, how funny would it be if we did a video where it was called Sexy Dad and Son or Sexy Parent or something like that and it was me and my dad just being sexy to the camera.
00:13:48.000Like you know when Phoebe Cates comes out of the pool in Fast Times at Ridgemont High and they show her emerging from the water with her hair and then she stares at the camera and she walks in slow motion?
00:14:40.000But he's kind of a tomboy, so he'll just have a sweatshirt on and a baseball hat.
00:14:44.000And a penis and sort of boobs because he's taking estrogen, but not really like the smallest boobs in America and you go Can't you just I don't know like you shave your pubes and have your wife take a few Pictures of you privately and store them in a safe and no one has to hear about it including the kids.
00:17:10.000He's four, but none of the other people here are four.
00:17:14.000Now, the thing about waitress jokes, and I've heard people criticize those of us in the amusing waitress community, and they say, look, it's a captive audience, dude.
00:17:25.000You're not allowed to joke with waitresses.
00:18:13.000Pretend that you have to be clear, and I do a lot of waitress jokes.
00:18:17.000Like another one I like to do is if it's a really good meal, and I've cleaned the plate so clean they could just put it back on the shelves without washing it, I always say, yeah, I'm sorry, I can't finish this.
00:18:29.000Maybe tell the chef this is something I'll write about.
00:18:32.000Now, I know this, I'm not trying to say that I'm hilarious and here's examples.
00:18:38.000I'm trying to say these jokes I've tried a million times, probably a million times, and they tend to do pretty good.
00:18:44.000So you can just have them as little staples.
00:18:46.000Like say you're on a date and you're a doctor.
00:22:04.000And I go, look, I don't want to start a fight, but, uh, we, um, just because you went to high school with him doesn't mean he's your best friend.
00:22:13.000I mean, he's moved on and I feel like I should have told you, he should have told you.
00:22:17.000He's still not getting the joke and he's getting kind of angry.
00:22:22.000So then I have to ramp it up and go, and to be frank, I think it might go beyond best friend soon.
00:24:00.000That one you can't say, just kidding though.
00:24:01.000So now you're stuck usually with an enemy.
00:24:04.000Sometimes I'll do it, I'll introduce myself and do something that abrasive right out of the gate and then we'll never get over it and people will always, I'll never be friends with that person.
00:24:12.000I think that's sometimes a good thing to do though.
00:24:13.000I like to save time when you meet new people and say something weird.
00:25:28.000And we used to joke about her sitting at home eating Haagen-Dazs, watching us at the bar, and commenting on the videos, like she's eating rice and going, well, well, well, look what the cat dragged in.
00:26:19.000I do it with my dad all the time and he gets annoyed.
00:26:21.000Actually someone made me a t-shirt and it has a guy sleeping in a hammock with his arms crossed and it says across the top it says don't ask me to do anything and then below it it says I'm retarded.
00:26:33.000And if I wear it, no one reads it, like they just see the word retired.
00:26:38.000I believe it's called perceptual blindness.
00:26:41.000They say that when the Indians saw the first boats coming in from Spain or whatever, their brains couldn't process that a giant house was on water, so they would just see a clear horizon.
00:26:52.000Their brain would just go, sorry, not seeing that.
00:27:28.000By the way, Guinness has less calories than Bud, but the common perception is that stout makes you fat, so I like to say that and pretend I think it's a beer belly.
00:27:39.000I think women who are eight and a half months pregnant are sick of being babied all the time, and for someone to do a slightly edgy joke, it's a relief for them.
00:27:47.000I've even tried that one on an Indian woman who was working at an electronics store who barely spoke English.
00:29:44.000So I'm trying to ingratiate myself as much as possible.
00:29:47.000And I don't want any fat jokes looming around.
00:29:51.000And I didn't use the Guinness joke and it turns out she actually is fat and that probably is from Guinness and that tip would have been real.
00:30:09.000Say you're, you know, at a kid's baseball game, speaking of Little League, and you've been talking to one of the dads and then he disappears, you know, maybe to go play with his daughter or something, and he comes back and he's been gone for like two hours.
00:30:22.000You put your hands on your hips like a school mom, like the the chick from Facts of Life,
00:30:28.000And you go, where the hell have you been?
00:31:12.000And other parents like it, because they can tell you're kidding, but also the kids go, what the hell?
00:31:18.000This was common in the 50s, 60s, and 70s, but it's not done anymore.
00:31:21.000You can let your... Someone's kids can kill someone else, and you just sort of go, that's... Well, I guess the parents are gonna handle that.
00:31:48.000But yeah, you know that reminded me too, that one, that character that I'm doing when I go, I don't know whether to slap you or to hug you.
00:31:54.000I used to date Nancy Wong a million years ago, and she told me, she had this thing she noticed where she goes, have you noticed how kids who grew up in Manhattan are way beyond their years, but in an annoying way?
00:33:08.000I go to this anarchist farm in the summer with all these old punks and hippies and a lot of them kids are homeschooled and I don't like the way homeschooled kids talk to you.
00:34:27.000No woman in the entire world has ever listened to Rush once.
00:34:31.000And if you go to a Rush concert, it looks like the He-Man Woman Haters Club.
00:34:36.000There is no woman for a hundred miles.
00:34:40.000So yeah, if someone says to you, it's actually better in email, says, OK, hang on, I'll have to get, I'll check my other computer, but I might still have that.
00:34:49.000And you go, OK, girls record collection.
00:34:52.000It's almost like my own cockney I invented.
00:35:09.000I actually did it on vacation with Jay Johnson, and it was one of the few times I made him laugh so hard, beer came out his nose.
00:35:16.000I found a coral rock that looked like a decaying penis, and I put it in my trunks, and I acted kind of uncomfortable and shy, and I walked over to, it was just guys at this particular table, like in the backyard, and I said, hey guys,
00:36:35.000Anytime someone says something that sounds sort of like a band, you say, oh, Blankety Blank is playing at Mercury Lounge on Thursday if you want to go.
00:44:25.000And then other people going 31 he said 31 3 1 is 3 and 1 you want 3 and 1 and then Nick would go Are you an idiot and he goes I'm trying David go I'm trying to help and Nick would go well You're not helping you understand anything and then David start pushing buttons and then David go you know what I'm out of here and he would just get off at the next floor and Nick would push 31 the doors would close and then Nick would be alone with these strangers that he just pretended he was one of
00:45:04.000And the genius of that joke is, or that joke, that thing, is the guy, the stranger, is implying that they're on an elevator going somewhere together.
00:45:16.000Like, are they going to go out the top of the building and just sort of soar over the city as a team?
00:45:28.000Another thing I heard Nick would do on elevators is he would fart and go, and then just quietly moment to himself, ugh, that was a total AIDS fart.
00:45:38.000One time, I can't remember what comedian this was, but I had just interviewed Zach Galifianakis and I saw that he was texting the guy at our table, so I stole the guy's phone and I texted Zach, good news, Gavin likes you.
00:45:53.000And then Zach texted back, great, allow me to file that under who gives a shit.
00:46:04.000Derek Beckles was in this horrible relationship with this lunatic stalker chick who wouldn't let him go and he finally broke up with her and got her stuff out of his house and it was like she was gonna kill him and press charges and beat herself up and say he hit her.
00:47:41.000Oh, here's a sophisticated one you can use that I like.
00:47:45.000Inevitably at a party, right, the women end up in one half of the room, they're usually in the kitchen, and the men end up in the other half of the room, and they're in the living room.
00:47:57.000That this happens at dinner parties, maybe the women are cleaning up.
00:48:00.000If the men are forced to clean up, then the opposite happens and the men take up the kitchen and the women are in the living room.
00:48:06.000And if someone from the other group comes, it's like apartheid.
00:48:11.000Like a man shows up in the kitchen and the woman sort of stopped talking, they look at him and they go, yes?
00:48:21.000If a woman like plops down on the couch with the guys and it's like 10 guys, we all look at her going, all right, are you here to ruin all our jokes and curb the conversation and make us have to watch everything we say or what are you doing?
00:48:34.000You need to go back to where you belong in the kitchen.
00:48:37.000But anyway, when I'm going to the kitchen to get a refill, I like to say,
00:48:41.000Isn't this funny how at parties, inevitably, they get separated, and then they're all smiling like, yeah, that is funny, it always happens.
00:51:42.000You always have to do this 100% of the time.
00:51:46.000If a woman is talking about her kid and she says, so my daughter is 22 and she's just in college now, and you go, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute, wait a minute.
00:51:55.000You had a child when you were nine years old?
00:54:07.000I think Brett Ratner is probably a terrible human being, by the way.
00:54:10.000But I often defend terrible human beings because in the court of social justice, you are innocent until proven guilty.
00:54:18.000So sometimes I'll catch, I'll be defending guys that I know are total creeps, but I'll be defending them because the examples that got them in trouble are ridiculous.
00:54:54.000I was defending this guy and by the way, I hate when people think that I forgot what I was talking about because that is such a... it's like you're demeaning the person, you know?
00:55:05.000You're saying they're stupid and they've had too much coffee and they're scatterbrained or they drink too much and they're hungover.
00:56:00.000Oh, and by the way, I was arguing about this when it happened, and I realized, technically, you know, if you really want to get scientific about it, rehearsals are more important, often, for homosexuals.
00:56:17.000Because they tend to, overall, have a different voice, have a more effeminate personality.
00:56:39.000And a lot of them are normal, but, you know, Ryan McGinley talks like a normal human being.
00:56:44.000But most of the gays I know have a slight little, whatever girl, I can't even.
00:56:49.000And so if they're playing a grizzled detective who has to talk about the streets, and as a cop, I've seen things that would make you crap a book on how to puke.
00:57:05.000What he said is factually arguable, but he wasn't being literal.
00:57:09.000He was having fun, and he was talking like a high schooler, and that's what I hate about censorship, because when you say something's gay,
00:57:19.000You are actually doing that whole, my friend likes you!
00:57:23.000You're doing a parody of people who say things are gay.
00:57:28.000No one believes that going to couples therapy is wrong because it's homosexual.
00:57:33.000We say it's gay because it's stupid and we're saying gay in a funny way that mocks our naivete when we were 10 years old.
00:57:41.000So it's actually a pro-gay thing to say.
00:57:45.000Similarly, as we talked on my show about that band The Slants, who had to fight for six years, spend millions of dollars, the Redskins joined their case, because the Redskins knew they're in trouble if you can't trademark what's considered an epithet.
00:58:00.000At six years, Ron Coleman, tons of lawyers, mounds of paperwork, a room full of paperwork, and eventually they did that.
00:58:40.000And within this ambiguous artistic field of expression, there's all kinds of things that aren't as they appear.
00:58:48.000And often what seems as a frivolous, stupid joke has some real depth to it and is a parody of the thing it sounds like.
00:58:57.000So, when things sound racist, they're often a parody of racism.
00:59:01.000When things sound antisemitic, they're often a parody of antisemites.
00:59:04.000And when things sound homophobic, they're often lampooning homophobes or homophobic attitudes.
00:59:11.000And that's what I don't like about you meddling and getting involved in art.
00:59:15.000I don't like you getting involved in band names and songs.
00:59:18.000I don't like you getting involved in sex.
00:59:22.000We got plenty of laws for a woman being assaulted.
00:59:24.000We want you to go to the cops so we can iron it out.
00:59:27.000But getting involved in all this, like, these schools who want you to write a consent form before you have intercourse, that's the real problem with this sexual policing is you're ruining sex.
00:59:38.000I remember talking to this woman, it might have been Ann Coulter about this, we were talking about how the problem with this whole, like, I am going to have sex with you, it is all completely consensual and I want to lay that out early.
01:01:34.000Every ballet you see is that sort of push and pull.
01:01:37.000And I think we're feminists in their quest to make everything egalitarian and fair and wrong and just and to eradicate hate, which is completely insane.
01:06:33.000The West should be about only going to court when we have a serious problem and the rest of us are free to work it out ourselves.
01:06:42.000And while we're working it out, we're allowed to have fun.
01:06:45.000And a big part of having fun is riffing.
01:06:49.000And I know riffing is a rare art form, and I know you're in awe of my incredible talents at riffing, but I hope this podcast has given you a few basic tools.
01:06:59.000Kind of like when a kid gets a Fisher Price toolbox and it's like a plastic screwdriver.
01:07:06.000I hope I gave you at least a plastic screwdriver on how to riff, because
01:07:11.000Joking around is now a revolutionary act.
01:07:16.000You are Che Guevara if you tell—terrible example of a revolutionary—you are Che Guevara if you tell your bartender there's a leak in your drink.