The Joe Rogan Experience - August 13, 2019


Joe Rogan Experience #1334 - Fahim Anwar

Topics
Fredo situation autograph collector community at the store comedy and martial arts Miata Mazda Miata stand-up vs improv career paths theater degree ≠ acting job backyard shows ideas capture method new material shows Joey Diaz comedy arguments bubble shadow ban bits music blogs being an artist stand-up comedy
Hosted by
Joe Rogan
Guests
Fahim Anwar
Mentioned
Andrew Schultz Joey Diaz Chuck Donald Trump Mike Warbell Dude Chris Cuomo Bernie Sanders Ben Affleck Alex Jones George Clooney Dave Chappelle Jerry Seinfeld Comedy Central Richard Lewis Neil Brennan Tina Fey Jamie Tommy Mitzi and 126 more
Joe Rogan Experience #1333 - Tom Papa Joe Rogan Experience #1335 - Jim Gaffigan

Episode Stats


Length

2 hours and 43 minutes

Words per minute

206.91

Word count

33,768

Sentence count

4,360

Harmful content

Misogyny

52

sentences flagged

Toxicity

594

sentences flagged

Hate speech

35

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Comedian Joey Diaz joins Jemele to talk about comedy and comedy clubs and what it's like being a stand-up comedian in Los Angeles. He also talks about how he got into comedy and how he deals with the pressure of being on stage in front of thousands of people every night. He also shares some of the weird things he does to keep up with all the people he has to deal with on a daily basis. And, of course, there's a little bit of a quiz from Jemele! Thanks to our sponsor, Ralph's Ralph's, for sponsoring this episode! We hope you enjoy this episode, and we hope you have a great rest of the week! Cheers, Jemele xoxo. Logo by Courtney DeKorte. Theme by Mavus White. Music by PSOVOD and tyops. The opinions stated here are our own, not those of our companies. We do not own the rights to either of these songs, credit goes to original artists and labels. If you like them, please consider giving us a review on iTunes or rating and review on your favorite streaming platform. Thank you for supporting this podcast. It helps us out tremendously :) - Thank you so much for all the support and support we've gotten so far. -Jemele xxx -- Thank you, Aaliyah, Alyssa, J.D., J.J. & Matt, A.J., Aaliya and A.K. & A. -- J.Alicia J.R. Thanks for listening and supporting the podcast and supporting us. . -Aaliyahilah, J-A.D. & J.B. & J-D.A. Thank you J-O. J-E-YA-R. -J-O-R-A-Y-AJY-S. -A.M. -S.A-P.E. -P.S. & D.A., J-M. & R.AJ-E.E-M-D-C. -E.S-C-I-S-I. -M-AY-T-ABAY-P-A TH-A? -C-A -A-C? -S-AQ-S -PODCAST

Transcript

Transcripts from "The Joe Rogan Experience" are sourced from the Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool. Explore them interactively here.
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:01.000 What's up, man?
00:00:02.000 How are you?
00:00:02.000 Good to see you.
00:00:03.000 Outside the store.
00:00:04.000 I know.
00:00:04.000 Isn't it weird when you run into a comedian that you don't normally hang out with outside the store?
00:00:08.000 I mean, I would recognize you, but sometimes you'll meet someone that you met at a meeting and then it's like at a Ralph's and you can't place the context.
00:00:14.000 That's bad.
00:00:15.000 Especially if it's like an executive and they really like you to remember them.
00:00:18.000 Are you good at faking it?
00:00:19.000 Nope. 0.99
00:00:20.000 Terrible.
00:00:21.000 What's your tell?
00:00:21.000 I just say, I don't know.
00:00:23.000 I'm sorry.
00:00:24.000 Do you do this thing where you go, it's good seeing you, instead of nice meeting you?
00:00:28.000 Nope.
00:00:29.000 I've done nice meeting you, and they go, we've met five times. 1.00
00:00:32.000 I go, shit. 0.99
00:00:33.000 I don't think people understand the volume of people that comedians, especially at your level, come across every day. 1.00
00:00:38.000 Yeah.
00:00:39.000 Like, how many shows we do.
00:00:40.000 People come up to you afterwards and being like, oh, great set, blah, blah, blah.
00:00:43.000 And how many meetings in general.
00:00:45.000 Are you aware of Dunbar's number?
00:00:47.000 Oh, is that like how many number of people?
00:00:49.000 Is it like 100 or something you can keep in your head?
00:00:51.000 I don't think it's an exact science, but I think they think it's somewhere around 150. I believe it.
00:00:56.000 You got about 150 people in your head. 1.00
00:00:58.000 And after that, you fucked. 1.00
00:01:00.000 Yeah. 1.00
00:01:01.000 Yeah.
00:01:01.000 It's tough.
00:01:02.000 It makes sense, right?
00:01:03.000 There's no way you can keep them all in there.
00:01:04.000 No.
00:01:05.000 That doesn't make any sense.
00:01:06.000 It's cool outside the store, you know, having a chat.
00:01:09.000 Yes.
00:01:10.000 Yeah.
00:01:10.000 It's like you feel the most camaraderie with other comedians outside the store when you run into them at an airport.
00:01:16.000 I was just thinking about that.
00:01:18.000 Every time I go to LAX, I'll bump into, like, someone, Joe Coy, or last time it was Burt Kreischer, and, like, Jesus Trejo, we're going to do, I think, Utah.
00:01:27.000 It's just, like, a hub for all of us.
00:01:29.000 Yes.
00:01:29.000 So, you'll see so many.
00:01:31.000 Because we're all just transients.
00:01:32.000 We're here for the middle of the week, and then when the weekends come for the clubs, we're all going somewhere.
00:01:37.000 Yeah, like, people that want to come to the store, Tuesday is, like, probably the best night.
00:01:40.000 And people don't understand why it's so stacked.
00:01:42.000 Like, why is it you?
00:01:43.000 Why is it Burr?
00:01:44.000 Why is it Kreischer?
00:01:45.000 Why is it Joey Diaz?
00:01:46.000 Yeah.
00:01:46.000 Like, well, we're just biding time until the weekend.
00:01:49.000 Right?
00:01:49.000 And practicing.
00:01:50.000 Yeah.
00:01:51.000 Yeah.
00:01:51.000 It's one of the weird art forms that you can't practice alone.
00:01:55.000 You have to use an audience.
00:01:57.000 Yeah.
00:01:58.000 Don't you think?
00:01:59.000 Oh, for sure.
00:02:00.000 And even I'll be telling the same joke, and I won't really change the words, but it'll be like an inflection.
00:02:05.000 It's almost like, I don't know, when a jazz musician or something plays a note just a little differently.
00:02:10.000 You ever notice that a joke won't work?
00:02:12.000 Maybe because I'm making a meal out of this word.
00:02:15.000 But if I kind of just throw it away...
00:02:18.000 Oh, now that fixes it.
00:02:20.000 It's interesting to do it long enough where you realize it's not the words sometimes.
00:02:25.000 There's a performance nuance to it to fix the joke.
00:02:28.000 On paper, it's the same joke. 0.98
00:02:30.000 You know what's really weird is that none of this shit is written anywhere. 0.99
00:02:34.000 Mm-hmm. 0.98
00:02:34.000 Like, what we're talking about. 0.98
00:02:35.000 You know what the worst is?
00:02:36.000 Like, I did...
00:02:37.000 Like, JFL, they're doing a taping out there for TV, and they're like, send us your transcript.
00:02:41.000 Ugh.
00:02:42.000 So that means you have to sit at a computer and, like...
00:02:44.000 Write out your act?
00:02:45.000 It takes the magic...
00:02:46.000 Like, whatever your seven minutes you want to do for the taping, they want you to sit on, like, on a Mac and open up Word and be like, how you guys doing?
00:02:54.000 Or whatever.
00:02:55.000 Just, like, type it all out.
00:02:56.000 You need a better manager.
00:02:57.000 Yeah.
00:02:57.000 No, but the thing, I didn't do it.
00:03:00.000 Good for you.
00:03:00.000 I just dodged it.
00:03:01.000 I asked Aaliyah, because I used to do it in the past, and I was like, yo, they're asking me to write this out.
00:03:05.000 It's taking all the fun and organic.
00:03:07.000 I feel it would really hurt my performance if I literally wrote a transcript, and I'm like a robot up there.
00:03:14.000 And he was like, just don't do it.
00:03:15.000 And I go, what happens?
00:03:17.000 He's like, nothing, nothing happens.
00:03:19.000 LAUGHTER He's like, I've done it a million times.
00:03:22.000 Just be dodgy.
00:03:23.000 It's some pencil pusher.
00:03:25.000 That doesn't make any sense.
00:03:27.000 I think they get, you know...
00:03:29.000 Well, they have power over people that don't have a name yet. 0.99
00:03:31.000 I think they have people above them breathing down their neck and then, you know, shit rolls downhill. 0.98
00:03:35.000 So then they keep on asking, like, where is it? 0.99
00:03:37.000 Where is it?
00:03:37.000 Just change your number.
00:03:38.000 Yeah, yeah.
00:03:39.000 Well, that's why I had the reps kind of be a buffer and I was very aloof and very busy.
00:03:43.000 Did they contact you at all?
00:03:44.000 Was it direct to you?
00:03:45.000 The thing is, I would see them throughout the fest.
00:03:47.000 And they're lovely people.
00:03:48.000 I love these people.
00:03:49.000 And they would say, where's the transcript?
00:03:51.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:03:52.000 And I'd be like, ah!
00:03:53.000 No, I play the game a little better.
00:03:56.000 I go, I'm not there yet. 1.00
00:03:56.000 I'm not in your mother's pussy level yet. 1.00
00:03:59.000 I still gotta be like, I'm gonna go back to the hotel room. 0.99
00:04:02.000 It's a funny thing to say. 1.00
00:04:02.000 In your mother's pussy? 1.00
00:04:03.000 Yeah. 1.00
00:04:04.000 Where's the transcript? 1.00
00:04:05.000 You didn't check your mother's pussy? 1.00
00:04:07.000 I swore that I... Your mother's pussy has a fax machine. 1.00
00:04:10.000 I faxed it to her. 1.00
00:04:12.000 It should be in there.
00:04:13.000 You should go check.
00:04:14.000 Check around the corner.
00:04:17.000 Yeah, so it's the worst having to type it out.
00:04:18.000 Well, it's also like Just for Laughs is a weird situation.
00:04:22.000 It's evolved, right?
00:04:23.000 Well, yes, it's a weird way of looking at it.
00:04:26.000 It used to be very valuable for comedians.
00:04:29.000 Now it's very valuable for Just for Laughs because they have this enormous platform and you go there and everybody knows that all these great comedians are going to be there and they make an enormous amount of money off the comedians.
00:04:42.000 It used to be the comedians would go there because the industry would go there, and the key to the whole thing was development deals for sitcoms.
00:04:50.000 And they tossed out so much money.
00:04:52.000 I always hear about the gold rush and the heyday of JFL and how deals are getting thrown out left and right and lives were made.
00:04:59.000 I don't know that JFL. But fake lives were made too.
00:05:04.000 They ruined it.
00:05:06.000 I have a theory about people who aren't comedians.
00:05:10.000 They see people laughing at stuff and they see something's funny.
00:05:14.000 They think it's funny.
00:05:15.000 But a comedian can go, this is just tricks.
00:05:18.000 Yeah.
00:05:18.000 Yeah.
00:05:19.000 Well, because the amount, the volume of comedy that we watch on a regular basis is so much.
00:05:26.000 So we can discern, like Ian Edwards and I will talk about this.
00:05:29.000 We're students of comedy.
00:05:30.000 We watch a lot of comedy. 0.95
00:05:31.000 People can get like a huge pop out of the room, but like Ian can cut through the bullshit and know that like, oh, that's a parlor trick. 0.95
00:05:38.000 Or, yeah.
00:05:39.000 So it's a different type of thing.
00:05:41.000 But I think a lot of times, you know, suits and everything, they just hear decibels or right place, right time.
00:05:47.000 And they believe this lightning rod moment or whatever, this great set, is indicative of their entire comedic being instead of, like, a lucky role.
00:05:57.000 Yeah.
00:05:58.000 Do you ever hear...
00:05:58.000 What is that guy's name?
00:05:59.000 Was his name Chicken?
00:06:00.000 Is that what his name was?
00:06:00.000 I always hear that as an example.
00:06:02.000 Like, I heard you blew the roof.
00:06:03.000 He was the guy that ended it all.
00:06:06.000 Like, literally.
00:06:07.000 Because I think they gave him a half a million dollars or something crazy like that.
00:06:11.000 I kind of want to see this chicken set.
00:06:13.000 Like, what was the set that just blew everyone's mind?
00:06:16.000 He was a handsome fella, and he was young, and he was very energetic, and they thought he was going to be the next Jim Carrey.
00:06:24.000 Did you see him around?
00:06:25.000 Was he an L.A. guy?
00:06:26.000 No, I don't know where he was from.
00:06:28.000 But I saw him at Just for Laughs.
00:06:29.000 I saw him quite a few times.
00:06:31.000 And he was a nice guy, but he was terrible.
00:06:34.000 I mean, in the way that, like, it was just a bunch of blah! 1.00
00:06:38.000 But there was no substance to it.
00:06:41.000 There was no thought to it.
00:06:42.000 So they tried to put it together.
00:06:44.000 They tried to make...
00:06:46.000 Like a development deal and he did a little touring, but it all went south and it fell apart and he eventually committed suicide.
00:06:52.000 Do you know how many years he was doing that?
00:06:54.000 He hung himself in front of a school.
00:06:56.000 A school?
00:06:56.000 Yeah, like that's what I had heard.
00:06:59.000 Like he hung himself on a tree in front of a school.
00:07:02.000 Jeez.
00:07:02.000 This is his last piece of performance art.
00:07:04.000 I don't know if that's true.
00:07:06.000 See, the thing is, like, I shouldn't even say it on a podcast and millions of people can listen to him, but I did.
00:07:10.000 But the hanging part is right, right?
00:07:12.000 Yes, he definitely committed suicide.
00:07:13.000 It's one of those things, man, where, like, if it didn't work out and he didn't develop, it didn't, he didn't, he never became, like, a legit comedian.
00:07:22.000 But thing alright over there, Jamie?
00:07:24.000 Yeah, I think if that had happened and he actually had, I don't know, the equity of a stand-up comedian and been doing it for long enough, that would be like a bump in the road, but you can come back from that.
00:07:36.000 If that's just sort of like your lotto ticket, then that's why it was so drastic, I think.
00:07:41.000 Well, some people are just not...
00:07:42.000 They're great comics, but they're not really into acting.
00:07:45.000 They're not the best at acting.
00:07:47.000 And they get kind of forced into acting.
00:07:48.000 Yeah.
00:07:49.000 I love Mitch Hedberg's joke where he's a great stand-up, you know?
00:07:51.000 And they'll come up to me and they'll be like, can you act?
00:07:54.000 That's like going up to a chef and being like, can you farm?
00:07:57.000 Yeah.
00:07:58.000 That's true.
00:07:59.000 I mean, I'm butchering it, but yeah, they're such different things.
00:08:01.000 But you have an agent, right?
00:08:04.000 And the agent wants to make money, so it's an avenue for cash.
00:08:07.000 And you look at Seinfeld and Tim Allen and Roseanne and Brett Butler, and there was all these comedians in the 90s that made a...
00:08:16.000 Ass load of money. 0.99
00:08:17.000 Yeah.
00:08:18.000 Doing sitcoms.
00:08:19.000 Well, that's the quicker payoff, too.
00:08:21.000 I even noticed it with my own career.
00:08:23.000 Like, when I was a younger comedian out here in my early 20s, when I moved from Seattle, like, when I first got reps and stuff, I was going out on these auditions for, like, CW shows or just whatever.
00:08:32.000 They just throw you against the wall.
00:08:34.000 You're an actor.
00:08:35.000 Comedy is this thing you do at night. 0.99
00:08:37.000 They don't even really give a shit that you do stand-up. 0.99
00:08:39.000 They probably don't even think you're funny. 0.99
00:08:41.000 Yeah.
00:08:41.000 You know?
00:08:42.000 It's just a cute thing you do.
00:08:44.000 It's like a kid, like a dance recital or something.
00:08:46.000 They don't care as long as you're going to these auditions in the daytime.
00:08:48.000 So they just hope that you hit on a series regular.
00:08:52.000 And then that's some cash flow for the biz.
00:08:55.000 But luckily, I mean, I don't know, I think your successes are carved by your failures.
00:09:00.000 So I'm kind of fortunate that I would get some acting things here and there, but never anything substantial enough to take me away from stand-up.
00:09:08.000 Well, never anything substantial.
00:09:10.000 The worst is when they tell you to stop doing stand-up because it's messing with your acting role.
00:09:13.000 Like, that's what they did to Tim Allen.
00:09:15.000 Oh, really?
00:09:15.000 Yeah, because his acting, he was, you know, he was on Home Improvement.
00:09:19.000 It was a gigantic hit.
00:09:20.000 They were making kazillions of dollars.
00:09:22.000 But he was a, I don't want to say he was a blue comedian, but he, some of it was a little risque.
00:09:30.000 So how did Saget deal with it?
00:09:32.000 He stopped doing stand-up.
00:09:33.000 Oh, okay.
00:09:34.000 So he stopped.
00:09:35.000 Dude, Saget stopped doing stand-up forever.
00:09:38.000 Forever.
00:09:38.000 He really didn't start doing it again until after that show was done.
00:09:43.000 What the fuck was that show again? 0.99
00:09:44.000 Full House. 1.00
00:09:45.000 Full House.
00:09:45.000 Yeah.
00:09:46.000 He stopped doing it for a long time.
00:09:50.000 And then kind of drifted his way back in and now he does it regularly.
00:09:53.000 Yeah.
00:09:54.000 Yeah.
00:09:54.000 I think that's, you know, maybe they did that at the time, but it's almost detrimental to let go.
00:09:59.000 Because stand-up is your car.
00:10:01.000 Like, it's your business.
00:10:02.000 You're in control over it.
00:10:03.000 And the TV stuff, it's like one hand washes the other. 0.78
00:10:05.000 If you let that go, you're letting go of this revenue stream so that when the acting gig is over, you're kind of fucked because this wasn't like building along with it.
00:10:14.000 It also was a point of confidence where you understand what's funny and what isn't.
00:10:18.000 You know how to be funny because you're funny in front of a live audience all the time.
00:10:22.000 All the time, yeah.
00:10:23.000 When you're at the store, you have to be there all the time.
00:10:26.000 You're there more than you would expect someone at your level to be at.
00:10:29.000 You have to be there.
00:10:30.000 You can't slack off. 0.99
00:10:31.000 Everyone knows those really famous guys that slacked off and started to suck. 0.72
00:10:36.000 And the good thing is nowadays, the cycle of comedy, we all do a special basically every two years. 0.55
00:10:42.000 Pretty much all of us.
00:10:43.000 Burr, Kreischer, Segura, Ari.
00:10:46.000 Everybody kind of does a special or tries to do a special somewhere around every two years.
00:10:51.000 So every two years you throw it all out and you're a beginner again. 0.99
00:10:54.000 You have no fucking act. 0.99
00:10:56.000 You're terrified. 1.00
00:10:57.000 You have to come up with new premises and scramble and that requires a lot of performing.
00:11:02.000 I like how Burr was on here talking about it.
00:11:04.000 It was cool to hear a guy like him even talk about just the dilution of specials where he's like, they're not special anymore.
00:11:10.000 It's just like a flyer or like a brochure that I'm still around.
00:11:13.000 Yes.
00:11:14.000 That's all it is.
00:11:15.000 A little bit, yeah.
00:11:16.000 Yeah.
00:11:16.000 I mean, obviously there's different degrees of polish with some of the specials and how great some of them are, but there's so many now.
00:11:22.000 It's a weird name.
00:11:23.000 Special.
00:11:24.000 Yeah.
00:11:24.000 Well, it's just leftover from yesteryear.
00:11:26.000 It's like, why are albums a certain length?
00:11:28.000 Because of the...
00:11:30.000 Yeah, but at least an album is like a collection of music that is all in one thing that you get that's kind of been consistent forever.
00:11:38.000 A special...
00:11:39.000 It's like, what is it anymore?
00:11:42.000 What is it?
00:11:43.000 I guess 45 minutes to an hour of jokes strung together.
00:11:46.000 Yeah.
00:11:47.000 Yeah.
00:11:47.000 To let everybody know.
00:11:48.000 But it's also like an album. 0.94
00:11:50.000 Like if you go to see Fleetwood Mac, I don't know why the fuck I came up with Fleetwood Mac right now.
00:11:54.000 Yeah, I like Fleetwood Mac. 0.60
00:11:55.000 I do too.
00:11:55.000 But you're expecting the hits.
00:11:57.000 Whereas a comic, you're expecting the shit that's not on the special. 0.97
00:12:00.000 You're expecting all new stuff. 0.98
00:12:02.000 Yeah.
00:12:02.000 Yeah, that is interesting.
00:12:04.000 Sometimes you'll get them where they're like, do the...
00:12:07.000 That's a very rare type of act though.
00:12:08.000 That's like, Gaffigan gets that for sure because he's got some classic bits and I think that also happens with Russell Peters.
00:12:15.000 I think he gets some requests for classic bits.
00:12:18.000 Do you ever get that?
00:12:20.000 No.
00:12:20.000 They do.
00:12:21.000 I don't know how to do them anymore.
00:12:22.000 Oh, I know.
00:12:22.000 I purge them.
00:12:23.000 I barely know.
00:12:24.000 Yeah.
00:12:25.000 Someone was yelling out Bruce Jenner the other day.
00:12:27.000 I was like, I can't do that bit.
00:12:28.000 I don't know how to do it. 0.98
00:12:29.000 I'll fuck it up. 0.99
00:12:30.000 Yeah. 0.98
00:12:31.000 Like, you don't want it.
00:12:33.000 You don't want me to do a sad version.
00:12:35.000 Of what you could remember.
00:12:36.000 Where I forget the taglines.
00:12:38.000 Oh, let me do it again.
00:12:39.000 Let me start again.
00:12:40.000 Yeah, redo, guys. 0.98
00:12:41.000 I fucked up, guys. 0.92
00:12:41.000 Remember how much fun you were having? 0.92
00:12:43.000 Yeah.
00:12:43.000 Let's go back to one.
00:12:44.000 So, you are one of the rare comedians that doesn't smoke pot.
00:12:48.000 Yeah, I guess so.
00:12:49.000 We talked about that.
00:12:49.000 And it's kind of interesting, especially being in this industry, not taking advantage of that, because it's all, especially the store, like, you'll do a show, and they're like, hey, do you want these three bags, these three pillowcases of weed and CBD oil?
00:13:01.000 And you're like, nah.
00:13:02.000 You don't take the CBD oil either?
00:13:03.000 I haven't done, like, is it good?
00:13:05.000 Oh, it's great for you.
00:13:06.000 What would I use it for?
00:13:07.000 It's great for anxiety.
00:13:09.000 It reduces inflammation.
00:13:12.000 A lot of people use it for sleep.
00:13:17.000 It's just good for you.
00:13:19.000 It's a nutrient.
00:13:21.000 It's healthy for you.
00:13:22.000 It's hot right now.
00:13:23.000 It's very hot.
00:13:24.000 If I was in the biz, I'd be like, get CBD on the phone.
00:13:27.000 Love CBD. I love what CBD's doing.
00:13:28.000 Love it.
00:13:29.000 CBD, how you doing?
00:13:32.000 Canola's out.
00:13:33.000 CBD? Yeah, canola is bullshit. 1.00
00:13:35.000 That stuff's bad for you. 1.00
00:13:37.000 Can you cook with CBD? That's a good question.
00:13:39.000 I bet you can't.
00:13:41.000 I would imagine it has a low flashpoint.
00:13:44.000 Like it would burn quickly.
00:13:46.000 I don't know, let's find out.
00:13:47.000 I think it's usually mixed with coconut oil.
00:13:50.000 Coconut oil has a high flashpoint.
00:13:53.000 Wait, doesn't grapeseed oil have a low?
00:13:56.000 Grapeseed oil, I think, has a high flashpoint, too.
00:13:58.000 I think it's good to cook with.
00:13:59.000 Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:14:00.000 Okay, so it takes longer for time?
00:14:01.000 Yeah.
00:14:01.000 Okay.
00:14:01.000 It's a high temperature, high before it smokes.
00:14:05.000 Some people said they've cooked with it. 1.00
00:14:06.000 Yeah, fucking burnouts, stoners, bunch of losers. 1.00
00:14:09.000 I bet they stink. 1.00
00:14:13.000 There's some people that do everything with weed, and they need to just stop.
00:14:17.000 Where's the hemp people? 1.00
00:14:18.000 I feel like you don't hear from them as much anymore.
00:14:20.000 Yeah, they're in weight.
00:14:21.000 They're laying in weight.
00:14:22.000 Yeah, was that like the back door?
00:14:23.000 Like, since hemp is cool, what about...
00:14:25.000 Well, CBD is for grandma.
00:14:27.000 That's how you get people to vote for it, because grandma and grandpa use it, and it helps their joints.
00:14:31.000 And they're like, well, I'll tell you what, this CBD, I mean, it's not doing anything for my brain.
00:14:36.000 I'm not getting high, but my joints never felt better.
00:14:40.000 I feel amazed at the CBD, and I'm gonna vote for it.
00:14:43.000 And I really want to get a hold of Trump and let him know.
00:14:46.000 That's not bad.
00:14:47.000 CBD is...
00:14:48.000 It really is the future.
00:14:50.000 What is his region from?
00:14:52.000 The guy?
00:14:52.000 I don't know.
00:14:53.000 It's random, random old guy from the middle of nowhere.
00:14:58.000 CBD is what revolutionized nutrition and really affected my life in a very positive way.
00:15:05.000 I feel like it's a little south, maybe Maryland, maybe somewhere outskirts of Baltimore.
00:15:10.000 People don't know you have that gear or you forget.
00:15:12.000 You do voices really well.
00:15:13.000 I don't have that many, though.
00:15:15.000 I can only do a few.
00:15:16.000 Are you the type, though, where if you're doing a bit and you need this person to talk or whatever, you'll figure it out?
00:15:21.000 Yeah, there's a few voices I can get out.
00:15:24.000 Yeah.
00:15:25.000 Yeah, because you're Alex Jones and like...
00:15:27.000 But I've known Alex so well.
00:15:28.000 I've known Alex for like more than 20 years.
00:15:31.000 So that's just easy.
00:15:32.000 Yeah, I've hung out with that guy.
00:15:34.000 We've been hammered together so many times.
00:15:35.000 It's like it's...
00:15:37.000 That is the most misunderstood guy on the planet.
00:15:39.000 He just needs somebody next to him.
00:15:41.000 He needs someone to go, Alex, slow down.
00:15:43.000 You had a really good point there.
00:15:46.000 You just need a manager who's always with him?
00:15:48.000 He even agreed with me.
00:15:49.000 We talked about it.
00:15:50.000 I said, you just need a rational journalist who's next to you.
00:15:54.000 He goes, you're right.
00:15:55.000 You're right.
00:15:56.000 You're right.
00:15:56.000 I do need that.
00:15:58.000 You need someone who's just...
00:16:00.000 He balances it out. 0.99
00:16:01.000 Look, he was right about all this Jeffrey Epstein shit. 1.00
00:16:04.000 That is a fucking fact. 0.99
00:16:06.000 Alex Jones called this years ago. 0.99
00:16:09.000 Years ago.
00:16:10.000 He was saying that they take a lot of famous people to this island and they have all these young girls that this guy hooks them up with.
00:16:17.000 He was talking about this years ago.
00:16:20.000 Now it is mainstream news.
00:16:22.000 And this human hybrid experiments going on.
00:16:25.000 Yes!
00:16:25.000 Yes!
00:16:25.000 Which sounded like a complete joke when he said it.
00:16:27.000 When he brought it up, we were like, what?
00:16:28.000 We were like, what? 0.99
00:16:29.000 Now it's fucking mainstream news. 0.99
00:16:31.000 This is a fact, man. 1.00
00:16:32.000 Like, people want to write that guy off because he'll tell you he's crazy. 0.95
00:16:36.000 He'll let you know he's crazy.
00:16:37.000 I mean, on my show, there was one of the funniest things he ever said.
00:16:41.000 He's like, look, I want to be honest with you. 0.92
00:16:44.000 I'm kind of retarded. 0.78
00:16:45.000 I fell to the ground. 0.91
00:16:47.000 But that's who he really is, man.
00:16:49.000 People just have him lumped in.
00:16:52.000 It's like some people, they don't represent the best aspects of themselves right to people.
00:16:58.000 And then other people try to define them.
00:16:59.000 People try to define you.
00:17:01.000 It's really kind of weird about the more famous you get, the more people try to define you in a way that's Detrimental or a way that's dismissive and limiting.
00:17:13.000 I've noticed that after this Bernie Sanders thing that I did.
00:17:16.000 So anybody listening to this, if you're saying this, I am not right-wing at all.
00:17:22.000 So stop saying that. 0.95
00:17:23.000 It's silly. 0.99
00:17:24.000 It's foolish. 0.99
00:17:25.000 I've interviewed right-wing people. 0.99
00:17:27.000 I am 100% left-wing.
00:17:29.000 The only thing that stops me from, the only things that I disagree with about left-wing people is support for the military, support for police, and the Second Amendment.
00:17:38.000 That's probably it.
00:17:39.000 Everything else across the board, I lean way left.
00:17:43.000 In terms of, like, Bernie Sanders made a ton of sense to me and I would 100% vote for him.
00:17:48.000 Tulsi Gabbard is my favorite.
00:17:49.000 I mean, I'm not a right-wing person.
00:17:52.000 So this nonsense, like, so many people were saying that, you know, that Bernie Sanders spent this time on a right-wing podcast.
00:17:58.000 Like, what?
00:17:59.000 What are you saying?
00:18:00.000 Sure.
00:18:00.000 And don't you think he weighed the pros and cons of, like, it was an opportunity for him and I think Everyone thought it was a win as well.
00:18:06.000 I don't think he had any idea who I was.
00:18:07.000 Really?
00:18:07.000 Yeah.
00:18:07.000 I think it was one of his young staff members who's friends with Kyle Kalinske, who is a really good left-wing progressive talk show guy on YouTube.
00:18:17.000 And Kyle hooked it all up.
00:18:19.000 And this idea that...
00:18:24.000 It's bad for someone to talk to people. 1.00
00:18:27.000 It's foolish. 0.97
00:18:28.000 There's a weird thing that's going on right now. 0.97
00:18:30.000 I thought it was a great platform for him to get his ideas out there and to be heard in something other than just sound bites that could be taken out of context.
00:18:36.000 It's a great platform, I think, for anyone who's running for anything to have a long-form conversation.
00:18:42.000 And it's good for us, too, because we get to find out who they really are.
00:18:45.000 You really can't hide In a long conversation.
00:18:48.000 Oh, yeah.
00:18:48.000 Three hours?
00:18:49.000 Yeah.
00:18:49.000 I only did an hour and ten with Bernie.
00:18:51.000 That's all he had.
00:18:52.000 Because, you know, the guy's running for...
00:18:54.000 He's legit running for president.
00:18:55.000 Like, he could be president.
00:18:56.000 Right.
00:18:57.000 He's not like...
00:18:58.000 You know, like, there's some people that are running for president.
00:19:00.000 They're like, all right, bro.
00:19:01.000 You know, like...
00:19:01.000 What is that guy?
00:19:03.000 Zoltan?
00:19:04.000 What is his name?
00:19:05.000 He was the guy who was running the transhumanist platform.
00:19:12.000 Ishtavan.
00:19:12.000 How do you say his last name?
00:19:13.000 Very nice guy.
00:19:14.000 Sorry, I forget his name.
00:19:15.000 Is that for this coming out?
00:19:16.000 No, it was the last one.
00:19:17.000 It was 2016 and we had him on.
00:19:19.000 But, you know, it was like one of those guys who were like, alright.
00:19:21.000 Sure, why not?
00:19:21.000 Like Ben Glebe.
00:19:22.000 You're like, alright, good luck.
00:19:23.000 You don't think Ben's gonna win?
00:19:24.000 Oh, I do.
00:19:26.000 Okay.
00:19:27.000 Oh, yeah.
00:19:28.000 But you gotta respect the swing.
00:19:29.000 That's what's great about this country, you know?
00:19:30.000 The swing?
00:19:31.000 The swing?
00:19:32.000 What are you talking about?
00:19:32.000 You could run for president?
00:19:34.000 No, no, not that swing.
00:19:36.000 Just like...
00:19:37.000 Anybody could run for president?
00:19:38.000 Yeah.
00:19:39.000 And it sounds far-fetched, like, yeah, okay. 0.98
00:19:42.000 But, I mean, you've gotta be crazy enough to think it can be you. 0.97
00:19:57.000 Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 0.91
00:20:05.000 I mean, there's a compilation of left-wing pundits talking about the hero that is Michael Avenatti. 0.98
00:20:16.000 You don't hear a fucking word from that guy anymore. 0.94
00:20:18.000 So you were in a time capsule, right, a year ago, when everyone was Michael Avenatti crazy, and they just... 0.99
00:20:25.000 And then they woke you up.
00:20:26.000 Fahim, it's 12 months later, and you'd be like looking over the news.
00:20:30.000 Where's our guy?
00:20:31.000 I mean, I was...
00:20:32.000 That happens on both sides. 0.99
00:20:34.000 They'll have their champion, and then this other shit, you know? 0.99
00:20:36.000 D or R, there's always... 0.99
00:20:38.000 They ascend, and then there's some, like, dark shit from the past, and then you don't see them anymore. 0.69
00:20:41.000 But then there's guys that you know. 0.76
00:20:43.000 Like, one of the things that I was getting during the Trump campaign when he was running for president the first time was like, this guy's not going away.
00:20:50.000 Like, this is not going away.
00:20:52.000 He knows what he's doing. 1.00
00:20:53.000 He knows how to fuck with people. 1.00
00:20:53.000 When did you know? 1.00
00:20:54.000 Like, how early in the campaign did you kind of realize?
00:20:58.000 I don't know, man.
00:21:00.000 Also, did you feel like you had a better read on it just doing stand-up across the country?
00:21:05.000 Because I feel like you could be in a bubble, you could be in New York and LA and just be like, oh, it's never going to happen. 0.95
00:21:09.000 This is ridiculous.
00:21:10.000 But doing stand-up in some red states, you're with the people, you're doing jokes, and you get a temperature of an audience more so than someone who just has a desk job. 0.85
00:21:19.000 For sure.
00:21:20.000 But also, I have a lot of right-wing friends.
00:21:22.000 A lot of right-wing friends, especially from the hunting world.
00:21:25.000 I have a lot of friends that live in Iowa and Oregon, and they have a lot of right-wing friends, too.
00:21:33.000 There's a whole part of the country that the big cities, New York and Los Angeles and the big Democratic-leaning cities, they were all dismissing. 0.99
00:21:43.000 The Democrats thought that Hillary was the most experienced and Trump was a buffoon and that that grab her by the pussy tape, that was it. 1.00
00:21:51.000 We got it. 1.00
00:21:52.000 It's in the bag.
00:21:53.000 They all believed that.
00:21:54.000 But the middle of the country did not believe in her.
00:21:57.000 They didn't trust her.
00:21:58.000 They thought she was some Sleazy politician who's been involved in the business forever and she licks her finger and figures out which way the wind's blowing and that's what she says. 1.00
00:22:10.000 And that they thought that Trump was a straight shooter and he's going to drain that swamp and he's going to do this and bring jobs back and he's talking about clean coal.
00:22:19.000 It's almost like I think he's just so outside of the system like that it seemed like he could have done anything.
00:22:25.000 Just like we want someone to throw a wrench into it.
00:22:28.000 Yes, that's it.
00:22:29.000 There's a lot of people that just wanted a wrench thrown into it.
00:22:31.000 And he definitely threw a wrench into it.
00:22:32.000 And I think, ultimately, that's going to be good for the left as well. 0.99
00:22:37.000 Because they're going to realize that you can't just get away with that same stupid, old school politician style of doing it anymore. 0.99
00:22:46.000 I think he's just blown up the playbook. 1.00
00:22:48.000 Even Bernie calling Trump... 1.00
00:22:50.000 Was it stupid or an idiot in a post or something? 1.00
00:22:53.000 Amazing. 1.00
00:22:54.000 This is a new paradigm.
00:22:54.000 Yes.
00:22:55.000 They're adopting, they're taking pages out of what worked for Trump.
00:22:58.000 Yeah.
00:22:58.000 Like, look, we've got to take some bully tactics.
00:23:01.000 And then even Moscow Mitch. 0.71
00:23:03.000 I'm like, oh, they get it.
00:23:05.000 Nicknames are the only thing that stick.
00:23:06.000 Yeah.
00:23:07.000 Yelling at the rally, like, Moscow Mitch. 0.71
00:23:10.000 This is part of the playbook now.
00:23:11.000 Sleepy Joe Biden.
00:23:12.000 Yeah.
00:23:13.000 That's my favorite.
00:23:15.000 As evolved as we like to think that we get as adults, when it comes to politics, it goes back to grade school.
00:23:21.000 The only thing that seems to be effective is yelling Moscow Mitch, or, you know, Sleepy Joe Biden, or Pocahontas.
00:23:29.000 Yep.
00:23:30.000 These are like stand-up rules.
00:23:32.000 It's just like Rickles.
00:23:33.000 Yeah, it's so interesting.
00:23:35.000 And my favorite about the Pocahontas one was when people were saying that he's racist for calling Elizabeth Warren Pocahontas.
00:23:42.000 It's a Disney movie.
00:23:44.000 You can't go that far.
00:23:46.000 Yeah, if someone called me Aladdin, I'd be juiced.
00:23:49.000 Aladdin's cool.
00:23:50.000 He has a pet monkey.
00:23:51.000 He eats apples.
00:23:53.000 Did you see the most recent one?
00:23:55.000 I did.
00:23:55.000 It was pretty good.
00:23:56.000 Got bad reviews.
00:23:57.000 I didn't understand it.
00:23:58.000 What were they expecting?
00:24:01.000 What I read was that Will Smith modernized it too much.
00:24:04.000 What does that mean?
00:24:05.000 I don't know.
00:24:06.000 I prefer a classic genie.
00:24:08.000 He used modern, urban vernacular.
00:24:11.000 They just weren't uncomfortable with that.
00:24:13.000 You remember how, you know, the first photos came out of Will Smith as a genie?
00:24:18.000 I love how little it takes to whip this nation into a frenzy.
00:24:22.000 Like, I'll wake up and open up Twitter, and then the Will Smith genie, everyone is freaking out over that.
00:24:28.000 And it's crazy how we put them on the same pedestal, like some sort of Trump scandal or like Pedophile Island, and then the Blue Genie or Sonic looks weird.
00:24:38.000 Sonic the Hedgehog.
00:24:40.000 Both take on the same amount of fervor online.
00:24:44.000 Yeah, same amount of psychic energy.
00:24:45.000 Yeah.
00:24:46.000 Yeah, I think one of the biggest gaffes, biggest mistakes ever was Ben Affleck thinking he could be Batman.
00:24:52.000 If Ben Affleck never ran for Batman, he would have 50% less hate.
00:24:56.000 You think?
00:24:57.000 Yes!
00:24:57.000 Aren't there some people who liked?
00:24:59.000 Or no?
00:24:59.000 There's no one who liked Ben Affleck as Batman.
00:25:01.000 Even Ben Affleck didn't like himself as Batman.
00:25:04.000 When was the last time you heard anybody talk about Ben Affleck as Batman?
00:25:07.000 Ready?
00:25:07.000 Go.
00:25:09.000 No one. 1.00
00:25:10.000 Christian Bale's Batman, motherfucker. 0.99
00:25:13.000 Even Michael Keaton's Batman, but he's old. 0.99
00:25:15.000 That's so hard, though.
00:25:16.000 You know you're not going to hit a home run with Batman every time.
00:25:19.000 But everybody who does it and fails their career hits a ditch.
00:25:23.000 Who do you think?
00:25:25.000 Okay, Kilmer.
00:25:26.000 Leveled up or no from Batman?
00:25:28.000 Well, Kilmer did it once and he did a good job, but then he decided to get fat. 1.00
00:25:32.000 He's like, fuck this business. 1.00
00:25:34.000 He went crazy. 1.00
00:25:35.000 Is he in the Top Gun movie, the new one?
00:25:37.000 I hope so.
00:25:38.000 I hope so.
00:25:38.000 That'd be great.
00:25:39.000 But the lady's not in it. 0.97
00:25:40.000 The girlfriend?
00:25:41.000 The really hot blonde? 0.96
00:25:43.000 What was her name?
00:25:43.000 Kelly something or another?
00:25:46.000 McGillis?
00:25:46.000 Is that it?
00:25:46.000 Yeah, she was beautiful back in the day.
00:25:48.000 I think she might have gone the Val Kilmer route, if you know what I'm saying.
00:25:53.000 What about Clooney?
00:25:58.000 Look at that.
00:25:59.000 Clooney...
00:26:00.000 Ah, Clooney!
00:26:01.000 He's fine.
00:26:02.000 He's selling Nespresso and tequila?
00:26:04.000 Nespresso.
00:26:05.000 His was like a comedic take.
00:26:08.000 Arnold Schwarzenegger made way more money than George Clooney in that movie.
00:26:12.000 Me and my buddies, we have a thing.
00:26:14.000 We just say, cool party.
00:26:16.000 We just say it to each other, no matter what party we're at.
00:26:19.000 What is that?
00:26:19.000 Alicia Silverstone?
00:26:21.000 She was in that?
00:26:22.000 And Chris O'Donnell?
00:26:23.000 What?
00:26:24.000 Why did I forget about that?
00:26:26.000 He was Robin.
00:26:27.000 Now he's on a TV show with LL Cool J. What is that one?
00:26:29.000 Is it like a NCIS or something?
00:26:31.000 That is something that the same people who talk like that guy I was making fun of, that's what they DVR that.
00:26:36.000 Oh.
00:26:37.000 That's a wonderful show.
00:26:38.000 Once you get to certain parts of the country, isn't it interesting to find out what their favorite shows are?
00:26:42.000 Yeah.
00:26:43.000 That's where all those NCIS shows, that's where they get all their millions of views.
00:26:47.000 For sure.
00:26:48.000 That's a wonderful show.
00:26:50.000 Chris does a great job and he just pairs well with LL Cool J. He's a little aggressive to me.
00:26:57.000 I mean, he's alright.
00:26:58.000 He's a good fella, I guess.
00:27:00.000 But I really love Chris.
00:27:02.000 I wish we'd get more work.
00:27:03.000 We should bring him back to the movies.
00:27:06.000 I think he'd be an excellent Captain Kirk.
00:27:09.000 He could be Captain Kirk.
00:27:13.000 Also, like I'll go to my aunt's house and that's just playing all the time.
00:27:16.000 Yes.
00:27:16.000 Like Burn Notice.
00:27:17.000 I mean, that's not even on anymore, but like these USA shows.
00:27:19.000 Yeah, Jag.
00:27:20.000 Remember Jag?
00:27:20.000 Oh my god, Jag.
00:27:22.000 Yeah, reruns of Jag.
00:27:23.000 My brother.
00:27:23.000 Oh my, show's on.
00:27:25.000 Jag. 0.71
00:27:26.000 Love it.
00:27:27.000 And the thing is, like, we can laugh about these shows, but they're like, 20 seasons?
00:27:32.000 Jack was on for 20 seasons?
00:27:34.000 Well, we were just going over Survivor the other day.
00:27:36.000 Survivor was on when Fear Factor debuted.
00:27:40.000 It was already on the air.
00:27:41.000 And that Fear Factor came out in 2001 or 2, somewhere around right after September 11th.
00:27:46.000 I remember that.
00:27:46.000 Because I remember being asked questions like, was it appropriate to have a show about fear after September 11th?
00:27:51.000 Oh my god.
00:27:52.000 Some guy asked me that. 0.92
00:27:53.000 I literally wanted to climb through the phone and strangle them. 1.00
00:27:56.000 I'm like, you fucking... 1.00
00:27:57.000 What was your answer though? 1.00
00:27:59.000 That's nonsense. 1.00
00:28:00.000 It's a game show, stupid. 1.00
00:28:01.000 You're like, I'm sorry, I didn't know that fear would play such a factor. 1.00
00:28:04.000 For you.
00:28:04.000 Yeah.
00:28:07.000 So Survivor's been on, what did we say it was?
00:28:10.000 28,000 seasons?
00:28:12.000 On the 39th, I believe.
00:28:13.000 39th season.
00:28:14.000 It's still going?
00:28:15.000 Yes!
00:28:15.000 You didn't even know?
00:28:16.000 No.
00:28:17.000 I think The Amazing Race is still going, too.
00:28:18.000 Do you remember that show?
00:28:19.000 Yeah.
00:28:20.000 CBS is killing it.
00:28:21.000 Yes.
00:28:22.000 That one won the award every year for the Emmy's best game show or whatever reality.
00:28:27.000 I don't know what it is, but yeah.
00:28:29.000 Wow.
00:28:29.000 12 times in a row or something.
00:28:31.000 Crazy.
00:28:31.000 Crazy.
00:28:32.000 Did you like Fear Factor more than, because I remember I loved news radio.
00:28:37.000 That was one of my favorite shows.
00:28:38.000 So did you enjoy that more, Fear Factor?
00:28:41.000 Are there different things?
00:28:42.000 They're definitely different things.
00:28:43.000 I enjoyed the paycheck from Fear Factor far more.
00:28:47.000 I liked working without actors.
00:28:49.000 But I loved NewsRadio way more.
00:28:51.000 NewsRadio was just a far better show.
00:28:53.000 It was a really good show.
00:28:54.000 Well, they're different things.
00:28:55.000 They're very different animals.
00:28:56.000 It ruined me. 0.79
00:28:58.000 It's like going from the Comedy Store to Uncle Fuckstick's Chuckle Hut on Monday night.
00:29:06.000 It's like every other sitcom that I looked at, every other sitcom that I read for, or that I got scripts for, rather...
00:29:13.000 I was like, oof, this is just not good stuff.
00:29:16.000 Isn't it interesting when you get sides, like just sides, just like one scene or two scenes for a show, and you can tell it's good just from that?
00:29:22.000 Oh, yeah.
00:29:23.000 That's so rare.
00:29:23.000 It is rare.
00:29:24.000 Yeah.
00:29:25.000 When someone's a good writer.
00:29:26.000 Good sitcom writing is hard to do, man.
00:29:30.000 That is a really hard gig.
00:29:32.000 But then some people have bad sitcom writing, but they know how to make a bad, successful sitcom.
00:29:38.000 There's bad, successful sitcoms that last forever.
00:29:42.000 They're just unoffensive enough to stay on the air and keep you watching with your mouth slack.
00:29:48.000 I mean, formulas exist for a reason.
00:29:51.000 Those Big Bang kids, they're so clever with their writing.
00:29:57.000 That's what keeps me tuned in.
00:29:58.000 I'm waiting for the vocabulary.
00:30:00.000 Does this guy ever shut off CBS? No.
00:30:02.000 Just keep it on the whole time.
00:30:04.000 I tried Fox, but they're too hostile.
00:30:07.000 Did you know that your TV has other channels, sir?
00:30:09.000 What?
00:30:09.000 Yeah, there's other channels, other programming you could watch.
00:30:11.000 Well, when they took Bill O'Reilly off the air, I said CBS is my channel.
00:30:16.000 That's my channel now.
00:30:17.000 Yeah.
00:30:18.000 You ever been in an audition and it's terrible, but everyone goes through the motions where everyone's just cracking up like it's the greatest show on earth.
00:30:27.000 Like it's Def Jam because the writers and the directors are in the room.
00:30:30.000 They fake laugh to get everybody excited.
00:30:33.000 Yeah, they have to because I think they need this rocket fuel to get this project off the ground.
00:30:37.000 Yes.
00:30:37.000 And they need to give the writer confidence.
00:30:38.000 They have to give the director confidence.
00:30:40.000 They have to give the studio people confidence that it's all good.
00:30:42.000 It's a fake moment.
00:30:44.000 The fake laugh.
00:30:45.000 It's gross.
00:30:46.000 And the thing is, though, like, it's also not only is it gross, though, but it's the 30th time.
00:30:52.000 There's 30 people in the waiting room, and they're laughing like it's the first time.
00:30:57.000 They're faking it left and right, up and down.
00:31:00.000 And we know fake laughs.
00:31:01.000 Oh, we do know fake laughs.
00:31:03.000 It's offensive.
00:31:04.000 If someone's fake laughing at you, it's almost worse than not laughing.
00:31:07.000 It is worse than not laughing at all.
00:31:08.000 If you say a joke and they're like, ha ha ha!
00:31:10.000 Oh, you're like, get him out of here. 0.95
00:31:12.000 You get out of here, you bad person.
00:31:14.000 You, you, you, you, you, you. 0.96
00:31:15.000 It's the quickest way to heckle though, right?
00:31:17.000 Just like, ah!
00:31:20.000 No one can say anything.
00:31:21.000 When I'm laughing, it's like the Fredo thing.
00:31:24.000 No, I thought your name was Fredo.
00:31:25.000 That Fredo thing?
00:31:27.000 Dude, I was talking to my buddy.
00:31:28.000 I thought that you were Fredo.
00:31:29.000 Did you see that?
00:31:31.000 Yeah, of course.
00:31:31.000 Did you see it, Jamie?
00:31:33.000 That Chris Cuomo guy.
00:31:36.000 Donald Trump had the best line today.
00:31:38.000 Donald Trump won the internet today with this.
00:31:40.000 He said, should we red flag Chris Cuomo?
00:31:43.000 Because he seemed unhinged.
00:31:44.000 He was using terrible language.
00:31:46.000 Should not have a gun.
00:31:48.000 He basically exposed those red flag laws.
00:31:51.000 He was like, you see a guy like that, he's irrational.
00:31:54.000 That guy's irrational. 1.00
00:31:55.000 He goes, I'll wreck your shit. 1.00
00:31:56.000 I'll throw you down a flight of stairs. 1.00
00:31:58.000 I like the stairs comment.
00:31:59.000 I enjoyed that.
00:32:00.000 What is he talking about?
00:32:01.000 Because a guy called you Fredo?
00:32:02.000 And he was saying that Fredo is the same thing as the N-word?
00:32:04.000 I didn't know Fredo was derogatory.
00:32:07.000 Or maybe I'm new to it.
00:32:09.000 Not that I would ever try to call someone Fredo.
00:32:12.000 It's not! 1.00
00:32:13.000 It's a fucking character in a movie. 1.00
00:32:15.000 It's like Aladdin. 1.00
00:32:16.000 Is it like there's no, like, I don't know.
00:32:20.000 Cultural context?
00:32:21.000 I'm Italian. 0.99
00:32:22.000 There's no cultural context for Fredo where people are like, what the fuck did you say? 0.95
00:32:26.000 It doesn't exist. 0.82
00:32:28.000 It does not exist.
00:32:29.000 Well, you could say it for someone who's a traitor, but that doesn't even make sense with Chris Cuomo. 0.99
00:32:34.000 It's just a loser in a movie. 0.99
00:32:37.000 Sure. 0.97
00:32:37.000 Well, I guess you know what he's trying to do. 0.97
00:32:40.000 I mean, obviously he's trying to insult him.
00:32:42.000 Yes. 0.91
00:32:42.000 Even if there is no history of this word existing for, you know, I'm ignorant. 0.91
00:32:47.000 I don't know if it does exist or not.
00:32:49.000 But, like, you know this guy's trying to take shots.
00:32:51.000 It's certainly not a compliment.
00:32:52.000 Sure.
00:32:52.000 Yeah.
00:32:53.000 I mean, it's a loser in a movie.
00:32:54.000 It's a brother that always fell short, and he turned on his own brother, who was the godfather. 0.81
00:33:00.000 Because he wanted to be the godfather.
00:33:02.000 What if he explained this insult to Chris Cuomo?
00:33:04.000 Yeah.
00:33:04.000 That would be great.
00:33:05.000 He goes, Fredo was a weak Italian in the movie, and I'm referencing your character. 1.00
00:33:09.000 Yes.
00:33:10.000 You are the son of a great man, because he's Mario Cuomo's son.
00:33:17.000 Let's be honest about why you're here.
00:33:20.000 The name is familiar.
00:33:23.000 It helps.
00:33:24.000 But it's that Italian energy that – and again, these are my people.
00:33:32.000 You're full Italian?
00:33:33.000 No.
00:33:34.000 Three-quarters though.
00:33:35.000 But these people that react that way are common.
00:33:41.000 It's like, what? 0.99
00:33:42.000 What the fuck did you say to me? 1.00
00:33:43.000 I'll fucking wreck your shit! 1.00
00:33:45.000 But you're not supposed to be a respected political pundit and behave like that. 1.00
00:33:51.000 That is nonsense. 0.89
00:33:53.000 That's nonsense. 0.87
00:33:54.000 That's nonsense. 0.99
00:33:55.000 It's a silly way to behave. 0.99
00:33:58.000 It's silly. 0.96
00:33:59.000 That guy needs to work out a lot.
00:34:00.000 But he works out a lot.
00:34:02.000 It's tough.
00:34:02.000 Might be on too much testosterone.
00:34:04.000 Tell your doctor, just pare you down a little bit.
00:34:08.000 Take whatever you're at, just drop it by half.
00:34:11.000 Settle down, bro.
00:34:13.000 Or just work out really hard before you go outside.
00:34:16.000 Do some yoga.
00:34:17.000 Meditate.
00:34:18.000 I like when those...
00:34:18.000 Because LA's pretty passive town for the most part.
00:34:20.000 You'll get some of those.
00:34:21.000 You'll get like an East Coast guy. 0.99
00:34:23.000 You're like, oh shit, who's this guy? 0.99
00:34:24.000 You know what I mean? 0.99
00:34:24.000 Long Island. 0.99
00:34:25.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:34:26.000 Like visiting from out of town.
00:34:27.000 Like, whoa, whoa.
00:34:27.000 No one...
00:34:28.000 Hey, Fredo!
00:34:28.000 Yeah, we don't actually fight here.
00:34:30.000 We just talk big.
00:34:30.000 Go get my shine box.
00:34:32.000 Yeah.
00:34:33.000 It was a very embarrassing moment, but I think it's a very important moment.
00:34:38.000 Look at him.
00:34:38.000 First of all, he is Fredo for life now.
00:34:42.000 I hope he understands that.
00:34:44.000 He's Fredo for life.
00:34:46.000 Unless you want to get tossed down a flight of stairs.
00:34:48.000 He ain't tossing anybody down a flight of stairs. 0.55
00:34:51.000 That's nonsense.
00:34:51.000 He doesn't want to get sued.
00:34:52.000 He's not going to do that.
00:34:53.000 He's not going to touch somebody.
00:34:54.000 He'll hire someone.
00:34:55.000 He's not going to do that. 0.99
00:34:57.000 He's not doing shit. 0.99
00:34:58.000 He's not doing a goddamn thing. 0.99
00:35:00.000 That's one of the reasons why it's so funny. 0.98
00:35:02.000 He's not doing nothing.
00:35:04.000 That is Fredo.
00:35:05.000 You'll never get away from that now. 1.00
00:35:08.000 Better embrace that shit. 1.00
00:35:09.000 Better start selling Fredo t-shirts with your face on it. 1.00
00:35:12.000 Listen, CNN's probably going to fire him.
00:35:14.000 I would imagine.
00:35:15.000 No, I think they're standing behind him. 0.98
00:35:17.000 Get the fuck out of here. 0.99
00:35:18.000 Yeah. 0.99
00:35:18.000 Are they really? 0.99
00:35:20.000 For now.
00:35:21.000 I think they felt like he was attacked or unprovoked.
00:35:24.000 What?
00:35:24.000 By someone calling him Fredo?
00:35:26.000 Yeah, man.
00:35:26.000 Those are fighting wars, dude.
00:35:27.000 Someone call me Fredo.
00:35:28.000 I'm not even Italian.
00:35:29.000 I would snap.
00:35:30.000 I go, how dare you? 1.00
00:35:32.000 He's a silly man. 1.00
00:35:33.000 That's what exposes him is that he's a silly man. 1.00
00:35:36.000 It wasn't like someone was being equally aggressive to him and he was defending himself. 0.98
00:35:41.000 Sometimes if you're in a situation where someone's very aggressive to you, you almost have to be aggressive back just to let them know, hey, I'll go there with you.
00:35:49.000 We could go to a dark place right now.
00:35:52.000 And, you know, I'm not going to let you hit me.
00:35:54.000 I'm not going to let you do something to me.
00:35:55.000 If you think that I'm a pushover, you know, I'm here to defend myself.
00:35:59.000 But that wasn't that way.
00:36:00.000 Like, someone was mocking him and he turned violent.
00:36:03.000 I think it was a little bit of a honeypot situation where he just wanted to get a rise and he was recording from down low.
00:36:08.000 They wanted him to do something.
00:36:11.000 Chris Cuomo, this is CNN. CNN's lost their fucking mind. 1.00
00:36:15.000 Chris Cuomo defended himself when he was verbally attacked with the use of an ethnic slur in an orchestrated setup, the spokesperson said. 1.00
00:36:22.000 We completely support him.
00:36:24.000 For now.
00:36:25.000 Listen to me.
00:36:25.000 This is not done.
00:36:26.000 This is not done.
00:36:27.000 This is just beginning to take on a form of its own.
00:36:31.000 You can't say that's an ethnic slur. 1.00
00:36:33.000 That is a fucking character in a movie. 1.00
00:36:35.000 Yeah, there's news to me. 1.00
00:36:36.000 It's not an ethnic slur.
00:36:37.000 And him saying this, like calling it the N-word, that is so preposterous. 1.00
00:36:42.000 That is so offensively stupid. 1.00
00:36:45.000 Do you ever get that, like, people trying to take shots or get you to slip or something? 1.00
00:36:49.000 Most people are nice.
00:36:50.000 Yeah, for the most part. 0.99
00:36:51.000 I've had guys say goofy shit to me, and I try to say goofy shit back to them. 0.99
00:36:55.000 Like at shows or just on the street or what? 0.99
00:36:56.000 Yeah, just in both things.
00:36:57.000 But I'm not a hostile person.
00:37:01.000 Yeah.
00:37:01.000 I look hostile.
00:37:02.000 Yeah.
00:37:02.000 But I'm not hostile.
00:37:03.000 Like, I'm nice for the most part.
00:37:05.000 I've had people get dicky with me.
00:37:07.000 And then what do you do?
00:37:07.000 How do you handle it?
00:37:08.000 Get dicky back. 0.98
00:37:09.000 Just like...
00:37:10.000 Yeah.
00:37:10.000 You see how three don't fly the stairs.
00:37:12.000 I don't say that.
00:37:15.000 It never escalates to that.
00:37:17.000 It's like some people get weird.
00:37:18.000 You know what gets weird? 1.00
00:37:19.000 The fucking autograph people at the airport. 1.00
00:37:21.000 How do they know, man? 1.00
00:37:23.000 Would you be surprised sometimes?
00:37:24.000 Somebody tell somebody off.
00:37:25.000 Somebody pays somebody off.
00:37:26.000 What do you do?
00:37:26.000 Do you sign or do you just keep walking?
00:37:27.000 Tell them I'll sign one.
00:37:28.000 I'll sign one.
00:37:29.000 They get mad at me.
00:37:30.000 I got a stock in these.
00:37:31.000 I go, no, no.
00:37:31.000 I'm not working for you.
00:37:32.000 Not working for you.
00:37:34.000 There's people that charge people.
00:37:36.000 They'll go to those conventions and they'll sit at a booth and they'll charge someone X amount of dollars.
00:37:40.000 It's like 20 bucks or more for an autographed photo.
00:37:43.000 I don't do that.
00:37:43.000 I'm not going to do that, ever.
00:37:46.000 I don't even want you selling my picture.
00:37:50.000 I don't want it to be sold.
00:37:51.000 I don't want my autograph to be valuable.
00:37:54.000 But if I thought someone was really a fan and they wanted me to sign something...
00:37:59.000 That's different.
00:37:59.000 Yes, I would sign something for them.
00:38:00.000 I'd be happy to.
00:38:01.000 Instead of a four-year-old guy with a ponytail and a stack of... 0.99
00:38:03.000 You have a stack of fucking photos of me in various... 0.99
00:38:07.000 You're selling those. 1.00
00:38:08.000 I know you're selling those.
00:38:09.000 So one guy got mad at me.
00:38:10.000 He was like, follow me around...
00:38:12.000 LAX. I was like, dude, I'm not signing anymore.
00:38:14.000 He's like, next time I see you, okay?
00:38:15.000 I'm like, I'm not signing anymore.
00:38:17.000 But you know by signing one of them, you're making it very valuable.
00:38:21.000 I don't care.
00:38:21.000 If you sign the whole stack, you're cheaping.
00:38:22.000 That's fine.
00:38:23.000 I'm not going to be rude.
00:38:24.000 I'm not going to be rude.
00:38:24.000 So I'm just trying to, like, look, I'll sign one.
00:38:26.000 And I tell them that.
00:38:27.000 Like, I got a bunch of them in Portland this weekend.
00:38:29.000 There was like 10 people met me at the airport.
00:38:31.000 I said, I'll sign one.
00:38:32.000 I think one is good.
00:38:33.000 They can't complain.
00:38:33.000 But I ran into a guy in Philadelphia.
00:38:34.000 They got mad.
00:38:35.000 He tried to get me to sign another one.
00:38:36.000 I go, I'm not signing that. 0.99
00:38:37.000 And he goes, you fucking forget your fans. 0.99
00:38:40.000 I go, you're not a fan. 1.00
00:38:41.000 I go, you're selling these.
00:38:42.000 He goes, what, you think they're worth a lot?
00:38:44.000 I go, why do you hear that?
00:38:45.000 This is like some weird mental gymnastics.
00:38:47.000 You think you better? 1.00
00:38:48.000 They're like, your fucking autograph's worth about $6.95. 1.00
00:38:51.000 I go, and you're a mooch. 1.00
00:38:52.000 I go, you're over here trying to get me to work for you. 0.94
00:38:54.000 I go, go get a job.
00:38:55.000 And so we had this weird conversation.
00:38:57.000 Like, what are you saying? 0.95
00:38:58.000 You want me to sign these so you could sell them, but you're saying they're not worth anything, so I'm a loser.
00:39:03.000 But you're meeting me at the airport to try to get me to sell things.
00:39:05.000 You looked at my flight. 0.98
00:39:07.000 It's so silly. 0.99
00:39:08.000 It's so silly. 0.87
00:39:09.000 But I just don't like the idea of it because primarily I don't like the idea that there's some weird loophole where someone can get you to work for them. 0.71
00:39:16.000 They're just showing up and you're signing these real quick and I'm going to sell them.
00:39:20.000 Because you're asking someone to work for you, even if it only takes five minutes.
00:39:25.000 Or they're taking something from you.
00:39:26.000 One guy had 30 pictures.
00:39:29.000 I go, how many you got there?
00:39:30.000 He goes, 30. I go, are you out of your fucking mind? 1.00
00:39:32.000 How long is it going to take? 1.00
00:39:34.000 If you sat at a Starbucks and you just did them all?
00:39:37.000 You're like, hold on, family.
00:39:38.000 I'm just going to get through these.
00:39:39.000 The UFC makes fighters do that.
00:39:41.000 They sit down, but they give them out to fans and they do stuff with them.
00:39:45.000 They're promotional materials.
00:39:45.000 It's not one guy.
00:39:47.000 Exactly.
00:39:47.000 And everybody signs them.
00:39:48.000 All the fighters in the card sign them.
00:39:50.000 They're valuable to fans.
00:39:52.000 As a fan, I have a signed poster out there from Efren Reyes that I purchased.
00:39:58.000 And Efren Reyes is the world's greatest pool player.
00:40:01.000 I love pool.
00:40:02.000 And he's this Filipino wizard.
00:40:05.000 They call him the wizard.
00:40:06.000 He's an amazing pool player.
00:40:07.000 So I bought it.
00:40:09.000 It was signed by Efren Reyes.
00:40:10.000 I got so excited.
00:40:12.000 But I would never ask Efren to sign something and then sell it.
00:40:15.000 You're not going to track him down to the airport?
00:40:16.000 Yeah.
00:40:16.000 Someone at the promotion for the tournament, they probably got him to sign a bunch of them.
00:40:21.000 They sold them.
00:40:22.000 And it probably helped offset the costs and things along those lines.
00:40:26.000 But the autograph collector is a different animal than the autograph seller.
00:40:32.000 So if you're a person that is just like, I love Fahim's comedy.
00:40:35.000 He's really funny.
00:40:36.000 I want to go to the comedy store and see if I get him to sign something for me.
00:40:38.000 That's a fan.
00:40:39.000 For sure.
00:40:39.000 But if you have 30 of them, you're going to go on eBay and you're going to try to make 50 bucks.
00:40:43.000 That's what you're doing.
00:40:44.000 Well, you're not going to make 50 bucks.
00:40:45.000 I'm just going to tell you right now.
00:40:46.000 They might.
00:40:47.000 If they hold on to it.
00:40:49.000 You're a funny guy.
00:40:50.000 You have a lot of talent.
00:40:51.000 What have you seen?
00:40:51.000 I'm always surprised because I came to the store.
00:40:53.000 I always see you at the store.
00:40:54.000 And you're like, oh man, your videos are funny.
00:40:56.000 And I don't know what you watch.
00:40:58.000 You're just on this other level.
00:40:59.000 So I don't think it even reaches you.
00:41:01.000 No, that's nonsense.
00:41:03.000 That other level thing is a complete total illusion.
00:41:06.000 Oh.
00:41:06.000 I'm here to tell everybody.
00:41:07.000 Yes and no.
00:41:08.000 Because you are a rarity, I think, of the comedians at the store who have gotten to a certain point where you kind of have a relationship with everyone at the comedy store, from the door guy to the waitresses to stand-ups like me or Santino or Ian.
00:41:22.000 You have a relationship with everyone.
00:41:23.000 You come through, you spend time at the store.
00:41:25.000 You're being pulled by a lot of things, like UFC and the family and all this stuff, the podcast.
00:41:30.000 But you will hang at the store.
00:41:32.000 Well, that's a community.
00:41:34.000 It's very important to me.
00:41:35.000 That community means a lot.
00:41:38.000 It means a lot.
00:41:39.000 And I like supporting the up-and-coming people.
00:41:43.000 I think it's very important.
00:41:45.000 I think all the door people, the guys worked a lot.
00:41:49.000 Those guys, we're all going to work together someday.
00:41:52.000 It's very possible.
00:41:54.000 I'll be at one theater, they'll be at another theater.
00:41:56.000 I'll be at a club over here, they'll be at a club over there.
00:41:58.000 We're all the same.
00:42:00.000 It's just an illusion.
00:42:01.000 It's just time.
00:42:02.000 And I think it comes from martial arts.
00:42:05.000 Because in martial arts, everybody trains together.
00:42:07.000 You know, I'm a black belt in jujitsu, but I'm as friendly to the white belts as I am to other black belts.
00:42:13.000 We shake hands.
00:42:14.000 We hug.
00:42:14.000 If I roll, I'll roll with a guy who's new, who's just starting out.
00:42:18.000 I'll give him tips.
00:42:18.000 I'll help him out.
00:42:19.000 You know, we're all in it together.
00:42:21.000 And I feel like that's the approach that I take with comedy.
00:42:25.000 The same approach. 1.00
00:42:26.000 I don't believe in this elitist shit. 1.00
00:42:29.000 I think it's stupid. 1.00
00:42:31.000 I think it's bad for everybody. 1.00
00:42:33.000 It's bad for the person who becomes elite, even more so than it's bad for the up-and-comers. 0.97
00:42:38.000 Because the up-and-comers, if you dismiss up-and-comers and you treat them like shit, you treat them like you're better than them, you're above them, you don't need to talk to them, you don't make eye contact with them, you ignore them when they're trying to talk to you. 0.97
00:42:50.000 And I've seen that from comics. 0.99
00:42:52.000 And I think it's bad for you.
00:42:54.000 For them, it just makes them angry at you.
00:42:56.000 They can't wait till...
00:42:57.000 And I have been in that position before, where someone's dismissed me and been shitty to me, and then I surpassed them, fame-wise, and then passed by, and then they become friendly and weird with you.
00:43:08.000 And you never forget.
00:43:09.000 And they kind of remember.
00:43:10.000 It's very strange when you see the 180s, and you'll be in comedy long enough to see plenty of 180s.
00:43:17.000 I'll give you some names after the show.
00:43:19.000 Oh, really?
00:43:20.000 Oh, I would love that.
00:43:21.000 Some good names.
00:43:22.000 Some juicy names.
00:43:23.000 And then you act however the relationship is now at this point in time.
00:43:27.000 But that's always in the back of your mind.
00:43:29.000 You're like, I remember when it was not this.
00:43:30.000 But there's also I want to give someone an opportunity for redemption.
00:43:35.000 I want to believe that they've changed.
00:43:37.000 So it's hard. 1.00
00:43:39.000 I don't want to be that mean person who's like, fuck that guy for life. 1.00
00:43:42.000 For sure. 1.00
00:43:43.000 But I do...
00:43:44.000 Hopefully that they grow.
00:43:45.000 Maybe they've grown as a person.
00:43:47.000 Maybe been humbled because the career kind of skid and came to an abrupt halt and they're trying to rebuild.
00:43:55.000 They used to be someone that thought that they could...
00:43:58.000 There was a time Mostly pre-internet, where comics looked forward to doing a couple things.
00:44:05.000 One thing they looked forward to was bumping people.
00:44:08.000 And doing a lot of time?
00:44:10.000 Yep.
00:44:10.000 But the bumping people was the big part.
00:44:12.000 It wasn't just doing time.
00:44:14.000 So if you're doing a time thing, if Dave Chappelle calls up and says, I want to do a half an hour, nobody cares.
00:44:19.000 He's really good about it, too.
00:44:20.000 He'll wait until everyone's gone up, and then he'll go out at the end of the night.
00:44:24.000 He's a beautiful person.
00:44:25.000 I love that guy to death.
00:44:27.000 He's the exception to the superstar rule because he's a sweetheart of a guy.
00:44:31.000 But there are some that wanted that spot of the bumper where they could just show up.
00:44:38.000 Oh my God, Mike's here.
00:44:38.000 Mike's here, Fahim.
00:44:39.000 I'm sorry.
00:44:40.000 Mike's going up.
00:44:40.000 Mike has to go up.
00:44:41.000 And Mike looks at you like, I'm going up.
00:44:44.000 There's a few of those guys.
00:44:45.000 Mike fed them.
00:44:46.000 Yeah, feeds them.
00:44:47.000 It feeds them to let you know that you're not on their level.
00:44:51.000 I feel like that happens way less now.
00:44:54.000 Oh, yeah.
00:44:55.000 Well, first of all, because people like us talk about it on podcasts. 0.53
00:45:00.000 Like, if there's one guy that was like a super dick to you, and you're like, let me tell you something, Joe. 1.00
00:45:05.000 There's a fucking guy. 1.00
00:45:07.000 You know, it's... 1.00
00:45:09.000 We're all comics, man. 1.00
00:45:11.000 Just like when you go to a jujitsu school, you take a class or two classes, you're a fucking martial artist. 1.00
00:45:15.000 You know, you might suck, but you're a martial artist. 1.00
00:45:18.000 If you're up on that goddamn stage, you're a comic. 1.00
00:45:21.000 In my eyes, you're just like me. 1.00
00:45:24.000 I've been doing it for 30 years, and you've been doing it for less.
00:45:29.000 Yeah, that's what it is.
00:45:30.000 That's the only difference.
00:45:32.000 It's just a time in.
00:45:33.000 And if you get 30 years down and what you get out of those 30 years is that you're better than everybody and that you can act like you're better than everybody and you're aloof and you're dismissive, you've missed everything.
00:45:45.000 Like when I come to the store, I like that I get hugs.
00:45:48.000 Yeah, yeah.
00:45:49.000 I was surprised because when you first started coming back, like, I would just think, like, I'd be on the wall or whatever, but you're like, yo, what's up?
00:45:56.000 What's up, Behem? 0.54
00:45:57.000 And, like, give me a hug, you know?
00:45:58.000 And, like, we hadn't really, like, talked a ton, but something as little as that goes so far.
00:46:05.000 Yeah.
00:46:05.000 Well, that's nice.
00:46:06.000 Yeah, I hope it does go far.
00:46:08.000 I want comics to feel good about the community that we have.
00:46:13.000 Yeah.
00:46:14.000 I remember, because when I got past the store, it was the Dark Ages.
00:46:17.000 I know the stores had various Dark Ages.
00:46:19.000 Bobby talks about the 90s and stuff.
00:46:21.000 But you were at the Ice House.
00:46:23.000 So you weren't even really part of the story.
00:46:25.000 You were still just going there a lot.
00:46:27.000 Yeah.
00:46:27.000 Yeah.
00:46:28.000 So it was very cool for you to come back and then Adam take over and then it just kind of evolved into what it is now.
00:46:34.000 It's crazy now.
00:46:35.000 Because I remember when it was not that.
00:46:36.000 And there was kind of a beauty in it though.
00:46:38.000 I'm pretty fortunate in hindsight that I got passed then.
00:46:41.000 What year was this?
00:46:42.000 I think I got passed in 2010. Yeah, that was three years into the Dark Ages.
00:46:47.000 The Dark Ages started in 2007. Yeah, it's also crazy to know that, you know, the history and see the video and then, oh, I exist on this timeline now.
00:46:56.000 The store was just, you know, when I'm living in Seattle, it's this faraway place.
00:47:00.000 Even Hollywood and entertainment and all that, it's just this place that exists on a box.
00:47:04.000 It's not real.
00:47:05.000 It is and it isn't.
00:47:07.000 This isn't a real thing.
00:47:08.000 And then you move to LA and I'm hanging at the improv.
00:47:11.000 I'm a ghost.
00:47:12.000 You know, people are walking through me.
00:47:14.000 You know when you first come to town?
00:47:15.000 Yeah, man.
00:47:16.000 I swear to God.
00:47:17.000 I'm literally like, guys, I do comedy.
00:47:19.000 And they're walking through me, and I'm just like, my hands aren't.
00:47:22.000 And I would just hang out, and that's part of the deal.
00:47:24.000 You realize leaving your apartment is a win in itself.
00:47:29.000 You may not be getting up as much as you want to, but even just being out...
00:47:33.000 It's a win.
00:47:33.000 Because someone will be like, oh, you should do my, you know, because out of sight, out of mind.
00:47:37.000 So I would just loiter at the improv.
00:47:39.000 I was nobody.
00:47:40.000 And then I would, it was like Sandler and someone, and maybe Kevin James.
00:47:44.000 I think Sandler and Kevin James.
00:47:46.000 And that was like, I'm sure that's very standard.
00:47:48.000 I mean, I've been here so long, it's very standard now.
00:47:50.000 You see a million people.
00:47:51.000 I don't get starstruck at all. 1.00
00:47:53.000 But it's kind of like, Oh, fuck. 1.00
00:47:55.000 Those are people in a box. 1.00
00:47:57.000 Those are people in the box that I watch.
00:47:59.000 Right.
00:47:59.000 And they just walked in.
00:48:00.000 Yeah. 0.98
00:48:01.000 So that was kind of like a little mind fucking adjustment, you know? 0.90
00:48:04.000 Well, when I was in Boston in 1988 when I started, Mecca was the store. 0.77
00:48:10.000 That was where Pryor performed and Sam Kinison and Hicks started out there.
00:48:17.000 He was a doorman there and Letterman was there and Robin Williams was there.
00:48:23.000 It was Mecca.
00:48:26.000 I thought, when I first started doing comedy, when I realized, like, okay, this is what I want to do.
00:48:31.000 Like, after the first set I ever did, I was like, okay, this is what I'm doing.
00:48:34.000 I'm doing this now.
00:48:35.000 I'm all in.
00:48:37.000 You know, it took me a while to get funny, but I mean, I had it in my head that I was going to get to the comedy store.
00:48:44.000 Oh, yeah.
00:48:44.000 And then when I finally got there, I remember thinking how surreal it was.
00:48:48.000 Because I was like, I guess I was 26, 25?
00:48:52.000 No, 25 or 26, I think, the first time I stepped foot in the store. 0.98
00:48:55.000 And I remember sitting in the back of the room going, holy shit, I can't fucking believe I'm here. 0.98
00:49:00.000 Isn't it odd? 0.98
00:49:01.000 It's just a place.
00:49:03.000 Yeah.
00:49:03.000 But it isn't.
00:49:04.000 It's not.
00:49:05.000 It's not just a place.
00:49:06.000 It's not.
00:49:06.000 I know, but like when you, I guess the manifestation of the place, like, okay, it's a stage.
00:49:10.000 There's chairs.
00:49:11.000 There's a table.
00:49:12.000 You ever see it in the daytime?
00:49:13.000 Yeah.
00:49:13.000 You're like, all right, this is just a space.
00:49:15.000 I like going there in the daytime.
00:49:16.000 It's odd.
00:49:17.000 It feels like it's waiting.
00:49:18.000 Yeah.
00:49:19.000 Like it's waiting.
00:49:20.000 But it doesn't come alive until nighttime.
00:49:21.000 Yeah, it's like a bedded animal, like a hibernating bear.
00:49:25.000 Yeah.
00:49:26.000 And at nighttime, man, the drinks start clinking and, you know, the comedy starts flowing and Jeff starts playing the piano.
00:49:32.000 It's an interesting room, too.
00:49:33.000 When you first started doing it, was it difficult?
00:49:36.000 Because it's not an easy room.
00:49:39.000 The OR is not an easy room.
00:49:40.000 Yeah, the OR. I consider the OR the comedy store.
00:49:43.000 Yes.
00:49:44.000 People will come through and be like, oh, yeah, I've been to the store.
00:49:46.000 I go, what room?
00:49:48.000 They're like, we're going to the main room.
00:49:49.000 Yeah.
00:49:50.000 Okay, cool.
00:49:51.000 Main room is cool, but it's not the heart and soul of the comedy store.
00:49:55.000 The OR is intimate.
00:49:57.000 Nothing gets lost.
00:49:59.000 The main room, it's so big, and there's that second tier, you know how the step goes up, to be able to have that laugh wave hit that back row?
00:50:08.000 Yeah.
00:50:10.000 You're really working.
00:50:11.000 You're performing.
00:50:12.000 And the stage is so big, you have to be more theatrical to kind of do a serviceable job in that room.
00:50:17.000 But in the OR, it's like, literally, you're just watching a man gather his thought or woman, you know, just like, you can be real, you can be, you don't have to be like, you don't have to project as much.
00:50:29.000 Yeah.
00:50:29.000 Yeah.
00:50:30.000 Well, there's different kinds of comedy, right?
00:50:34.000 What's the largest crowd you've ever done? 0.97
00:50:36.000 I've been watching your stories and stuff, and that's fucking insane. 0.92
00:50:40.000 Like, even when you're in the green room, and you just hear these murmurs, it sounds like an angry mob is going to kill you or something. 0.99
00:50:46.000 It's crazy.
00:50:47.000 But they're all just, like, filtering into this giant theater.
00:50:50.000 Maybe 3,000 or 4,000.
00:50:52.000 And that was a trip for me.
00:50:54.000 That's big.
00:50:54.000 But you notice when you do 3,000 or 4,000 that you have to give them more pause.
00:50:59.000 Oh, yeah.
00:51:00.000 More time.
00:51:01.000 For the set, the joke, the punchline to settle, the laughs to settle before you move on to another.
00:51:07.000 But what's great about doing it so long is stand-up is this conversation with the audience.
00:51:13.000 So you know to wait.
00:51:15.000 Yeah.
00:51:16.000 Like you have inherent timing.
00:51:18.000 Yeah.
00:51:18.000 Another comic would just kind of know the timing of the club and just like plow into the next joke while they're still getting laughs from a theater.
00:51:24.000 Yeah, you can't do that.
00:51:26.000 But I took, I was talking about this yesterday with Tom Papa, that one of the reasons, one of the best lessons that I ever had was actually sitting in the audience at one of Richard, not Richard, Lewis Blacks, not Richard Lewis.
00:51:39.000 I mean, I would confuse it, yeah.
00:51:41.000 The word Lewis.
00:51:43.000 A Louis Black show in New Jersey.
00:51:45.000 He was there the night before me and Joey Diaz and I sat in the audience and he would hit a punchline and people would laugh and then he would hit the tag and I couldn't hear the tag because all the other people were laughing around us.
00:51:57.000 And I was like, oh, you got to be like a little more selective.
00:52:02.000 Yeah.
00:52:02.000 You can't just hammer them.
00:52:04.000 Like in the store at the OR, you can hammer them.
00:52:06.000 Punchline!
00:52:07.000 Punchline!
00:52:07.000 Punchline!
00:52:08.000 Punchline!
00:52:08.000 Punchline!
00:52:08.000 You could beat the fucking shit out of them that way, and it's a different kind of comedy.
00:52:13.000 If you have that style of comedy, you might struggle a little bit with a theater, and you'll definitely struggle in an arena. 0.99
00:52:21.000 Arenas and amphitheaters are another animal.
00:52:24.000 I feel like just having no ceiling.
00:52:26.000 How does that work?
00:52:27.000 Is that good?
00:52:27.000 I did a Saturday night in San Francisco.
00:52:28.000 That's more for music, huh?
00:52:30.000 I had a great time.
00:52:31.000 We had a great time.
00:52:32.000 Ally Mikofsky killed.
00:52:34.000 She had a great time.
00:52:35.000 Ian killed.
00:52:36.000 It was fun.
00:52:36.000 It was fun, but it's definitely different.
00:52:38.000 I think it's different because I think they're such fans, and obviously they're going to be tuned in.
00:52:44.000 Yeah, that helps.
00:52:44.000 It's different when you're like, I'll do some festivals sometimes, or back in the day you would do a college or something, and it's just outside.
00:52:51.000 And if they don't know who the fuck you are, and it's daytime, and it's outside, you flew to pick up a check. 0.95
00:52:58.000 All you got to do is not lose your mind on stage and you can collect your check. 1.00
00:53:02.000 If you're like, shut the fuck out, then you're not getting your money. 0.99
00:53:05.000 Well, it's a matter of whether or not you're having fun. 0.99
00:53:08.000 If you're having fun and you enjoy performing and your material is good, so you know it's good.
00:53:14.000 You can have fun.
00:53:15.000 Sure.
00:53:15.000 And whoever's tuning in can have a good time.
00:53:17.000 And the absurdity of the situation is funny.
00:53:21.000 But obviously, it's not going to be like a regular club set or something.
00:53:24.000 Yeah.
00:53:25.000 Dude, I'll take you if you want to come.
00:53:26.000 I'll take you.
00:53:27.000 I'll take you to one of the crazy places.
00:53:28.000 I mean, that just seems like such a mind trip.
00:53:30.000 That would be like a stand-up float tank.
00:53:32.000 You know, Ally's only 22. Yeah, she's so young. 0.92
00:53:35.000 Yeah, she's great.
00:53:35.000 And I've been taking her with me.
00:53:38.000 Her and Ian came this weekend.
00:53:40.000 Ian's one of my favorites.
00:53:40.000 And the first arena she ever did.
00:53:43.000 Well, here's Ally, right?
00:53:44.000 She's done clubs with me. 1.00
00:53:46.000 She does improv with me all the time.
00:53:47.000 She does a store with me all the time. 0.91
00:53:49.000 And she works the door at the store. 1.00
00:53:50.000 She works the door.
00:53:51.000 That's the beauty of the system at the store.
00:53:52.000 It's like one of the last places like that.
00:53:54.000 Yes.
00:53:55.000 There's a system in place.
00:53:57.000 She works the door of the store and she performed in front of 10,000 people on Friday nights.
00:54:02.000 And then went back to checking IDs. 0.86
00:54:03.000 That's the mindfuck of being a young comic. 0.91
00:54:06.000 You'll do these crazy things and then you're back at your job. 0.99
00:54:08.000 But she's wild and hungry. 0.96
00:54:10.000 I don't worry about Allie.
00:54:12.000 She's fine.
00:54:13.000 She's great.
00:54:13.000 She's really talented too.
00:54:15.000 But...
00:54:16.000 You know, so the first big show she had done before that was the Mirage in Vegas.
00:54:22.000 I love that club.
00:54:22.000 I love that club.
00:54:24.000 I love that club.
00:54:25.000 I started doing that club and then I went to bigger arenas and I came back to that club because it was so much fun.
00:54:31.000 Because most of the time when I do Vegas, I do it the night before UFC, like on Friday night.
00:54:35.000 And I was doing these big giant places like the Ka Theater, which is like a hundred foot tall, more than a hundred feet tall ceiling.
00:54:42.000 It's Cirque du Soleil place.
00:54:43.000 But it was too weird.
00:54:45.000 It wasn't the right setup for comedy.
00:54:47.000 And the Mirage is so perfect.
00:54:49.000 Is that the Terry Fedor Theater?
00:54:51.000 Yes, yes, yes, yes.
00:54:52.000 So I went back to...
00:54:54.000 So that was the first time she'd ever done anything big. 0.99
00:54:57.000 And she walked out there like she fucking owned the place. 1.00
00:55:00.000 She owned it. 0.99
00:55:01.000 She had the best set I ever saw her have there.
00:55:06.000 And then I said, okay, you want to do arenas?
00:55:08.000 She's like, ah! 0.98
00:55:12.000 So we did this crazy place in Portland.
00:55:15.000 Portland was insane, man. 1.00
00:55:18.000 Goddamn. 1.00
00:55:18.000 I was off the charts. 1.00
00:55:20.000 Almost too big.
00:55:21.000 Almost too powerful.
00:55:22.000 Not almost too big, but almost too powerful.
00:55:25.000 Do they do concerts in there normally, or what is that space?
00:55:27.000 Basketball. 0.99
00:55:28.000 Oh, shit. 1.00
00:55:28.000 That's what the Blazers play? 1.00
00:55:29.000 Yeah.
00:55:30.000 For real?
00:55:30.000 Yeah.
00:55:31.000 Whoa.
00:55:32.000 Don't it be great if you just have a t-shirt cannon before you're set?
00:55:35.000 You're just like, thunk, thunk.
00:55:36.000 Yeah, I had my buddy Cam Haynes, who lives in Eugene, which is real close to there, was in that same place a couple weeks before that for a game.
00:55:45.000 And he's like, dude, I can't fucking believe you're coming here to do comedy.
00:55:47.000 Like, what is this? 0.96
00:55:48.000 Yeah.
00:55:49.000 It was nuts.
00:55:50.000 You'd almost think as a consumer of comedy, what is that experience like?
00:55:54.000 And is it still...
00:55:55.000 The beats have got to be so different than a club?
00:55:57.000 I don't know.
00:55:58.000 It was fun, man.
00:55:59.000 I was watching Ian on stage and he was murdering.
00:56:01.000 And I was laughing my ass off. 0.91
00:56:03.000 It was great.
00:56:03.000 It's all in the acoustics of the building.
00:56:05.000 And the Moda Center in Portland is a really new theater or a new arena.
00:56:10.000 It's really well made.
00:56:12.000 So the acoustics are excellent.
00:56:14.000 So nothing is lost?
00:56:15.000 Because that's my worry.
00:56:16.000 In a space that big that no one can hear what you're saying and it's muddled and...
00:56:19.000 I've done some big places where it's not the best.
00:56:22.000 I've done some big places where you hear a little echo and you're like, ooh, this could be a problem.
00:56:26.000 So you have to be a little clearer with what you say.
00:56:29.000 Like you almost got to take some of the spice out of your joke, you know, a spice out of your delivery.
00:56:35.000 Because it's a little echoey.
00:56:38.000 The best, though, the best is the ice house or the store or the improv.
00:56:43.000 Like, 200 people, 300 people.
00:56:45.000 Bam! 0.98
00:56:46.000 Nothing's lost.
00:56:47.000 Bam! 0.98
00:56:48.000 Well, that's why comedy clubs are a certain size.
00:56:51.000 If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
00:56:52.000 It's also because that's all they could see.
00:56:54.000 I mean, it's hard to sell.
00:56:57.000 You should have, like, Joe Rogan comedy clubs and they're all, like, 20,000 seats.
00:57:03.000 They're like, yeah, I mean, it's also not when Joe comes around, but we're having a tough time getting people to come out.
00:57:07.000 It's...
00:57:08.000 I mean, how many...
00:57:09.000 There's not that many people that are doing those places.
00:57:11.000 Like, Kevin Hart, Dave...
00:57:13.000 Oh, that's so crazy, too.
00:57:14.000 Like, you guys teaming up to do a tour.
00:57:16.000 Oh, my God.
00:57:16.000 If you're a comedy fan, how great is that?
00:57:18.000 Dude, we did...
00:57:20.000 25,000 people in Tacoma.
00:57:22.000 We broke the all-time attendance record.
00:57:24.000 Oh, you got my brother in.
00:57:25.000 I think he hit up Ian, and Ian was like, because I think I was in London, so I was sleeping.
00:57:29.000 The time was off.
00:57:30.000 So then he just DMed Ian, and he was like, hey, I'm his brother.
00:57:34.000 Can I come to the show? 0.96
00:57:35.000 The Dave things are crazy, though, because he brings a DJ, and Donnell Rollins gets out there and gets everybody hyped up, and the fucking DJ's in between the sets. 0.86
00:57:45.000 It's like he's getting everybody hyped. 0.94
00:57:46.000 That's next level, yeah.
00:57:47.000 Oh, it's so next level.
00:57:48.000 That's like a concert.
00:57:49.000 Yeah.
00:57:50.000 Plus, it's just, you feel crazy.
00:57:51.000 Like, is this really happening? 0.99
00:57:53.000 Like, even Dave, he was like, this is fucking crazy, man! 0.99
00:57:56.000 Like, we were all like, this is crazy. 1.00
00:57:57.000 To get him to say this is crazy?
00:57:58.000 Yeah.
00:57:58.000 We were all like, this was crazy.
00:58:00.000 We all realized this was something.
00:58:01.000 Because people were so pumped that we're doing it together.
00:58:04.000 Yeah.
00:58:05.000 It was mad.
00:58:05.000 It's like the Watch the Throne tour.
00:58:08.000 Kanye and Jay-Z. Whew!
00:58:10.000 Yeah, we're going to do more. 0.99
00:58:12.000 We're trying to figure out where and how, but we had a great fucking time. 0.97
00:58:15.000 Yeah, why not? 1.00
00:58:16.000 It's just so rockstar shit. 1.00
00:58:17.000 They show up at places and have IVs ready. 1.00
00:58:20.000 They do intravenous vitamin infusions with glutathione and get B12 shots.
00:58:26.000 How did you feel after? 1.00
00:58:27.000 Like I could run through a fucking wall. 1.00
00:58:29.000 For real? 1.00
00:58:29.000 Yeah, I could pull a tree out of its roots. 1.00
00:58:31.000 How did you feel before and then after?
00:58:33.000 Were you just like out of it?
00:58:34.000 I was a little tired.
00:58:35.000 You know, we're traveling and we're up late the night before and then you get juiced up with vitamins and you just...
00:58:42.000 You're like, where's that tree? 0.94
00:58:43.000 Yeah, you feel fucking excellent. 0.88
00:58:47.000 This, I guess... 0.89
00:58:49.000 You know, they don't...
00:58:50.000 Rockstars know what they're doing.
00:58:52.000 Yeah.
00:58:53.000 And I'm sure you're only doing a fraction of what they do.
00:58:56.000 They're doing coke.
00:58:57.000 Yeah, we're not doing coke.
00:58:59.000 And they have something different than IV. They probably have some other bag we don't even know about.
00:59:02.000 Probably.
00:59:03.000 Yeah. 1.00
00:59:03.000 It's probably some illegal shit. 1.00
00:59:04.000 Yeah. 0.99
00:59:05.000 Like, they're probably doing NAD. They're probably doing a lot of different things.
00:59:09.000 Yeah.
00:59:10.000 Yeah.
00:59:10.000 This looks insane.
00:59:11.000 At the end of the day, though...
00:59:14.000 Back to the grind.
00:59:15.000 Like tonight, I'm doing the belly room, you know?
00:59:17.000 That's so funny.
00:59:17.000 You're just back in the belly room.
00:59:18.000 Yeah, back in the belly room, doing the belly room.
00:59:20.000 Then I'm doing the improv.
00:59:21.000 I got a 10.30 at the improv.
00:59:22.000 Oh, dang.
00:59:22.000 Double dip?
00:59:23.000 Yes, always.
00:59:24.000 You don't do factory, really, huh?
00:59:27.000 Is that because they tape?
00:59:28.000 Yes.
00:59:29.000 Yeah, they taped me.
00:59:30.000 They tape everybody. 1.00
00:59:31.000 They put your shit online. 1.00
00:59:33.000 They say, we're not going to do it anymore, but they still have the camera up. 1.00
00:59:36.000 Do you just not trust them?
00:59:37.000 Because they'll send it to me with the clips, and I'll be like, it's not ready, or I don't want to put it out there.
00:59:42.000 And then they respect it.
00:59:44.000 That's what Bill Burr said. 1.00
00:59:45.000 Yeah, and then I found the shit online. 0.99
00:59:47.000 I'm like, yeah, look at that. 1.00
00:59:48.000 He's like, what the fuck? 0.99
00:59:49.000 I was like, yeah, man. 1.00
00:59:50.000 There's somebody working there that's not listening to this.
00:59:54.000 And maybe they don't do that anymore, and I hope they don't.
00:59:56.000 But why chance it?
00:59:58.000 It just doesn't feel good.
01:00:01.000 Especially a bit in progress.
01:00:02.000 The way it was handled was very poor.
01:00:03.000 The way it was handled was like, you should be happy that we're putting it online.
01:00:06.000 It was not good.
01:00:07.000 I'll tell you all about it later.
01:00:10.000 But there's plenty of room at the improv and the store.
01:00:13.000 I don't need to go there.
01:00:15.000 I hope it does well.
01:00:16.000 It's a great club.
01:00:17.000 It's fun to work at.
01:00:18.000 I know what you mean, though.
01:00:20.000 I'm in Tarzana now, and someone will be like, hey, do you want to do this show in Irvine?
01:00:25.000 And that's just like saying, my show's on Mars.
01:00:28.000 Irvine at 8 o'clock, you might as well leave your house yesterday.
01:00:32.000 Like, Burr, can you chopper me to Irvine?
01:00:35.000 Have you been in a chopper with Burr?
01:00:36.000 No.
01:00:37.000 You gotta go.
01:00:37.000 But when I was working at Boeing, I had a co-worker who was learning, well, he had his hours up and everything, so he flew choppers, and during our lunch break, he's like, do you want to go in the chopper?
01:00:47.000 Jesus.
01:00:47.000 I was like, sure.
01:00:48.000 So then he's like, let's take the doors off.
01:00:50.000 What? 0.90
01:00:51.000 This guy's trying to kill you. 0.99
01:00:52.000 Nah, but it was fine. 0.99
01:00:53.000 It was crazy.
01:00:54.000 I figured, when else am I going to go in a chopper?
01:00:56.000 That's true.
01:00:57.000 So for my lunch break, I went in a chopper with this guy.
01:00:59.000 I recorded it.
01:01:00.000 Wow.
01:01:01.000 And then my mom saw it, and she just flipped out.
01:01:03.000 She was like, what are you doing for him?
01:01:05.000 I love you.
01:01:06.000 Don't die.
01:01:08.000 It was fun.
01:01:10.000 Yeah, if I had a son and I was a woman and my little boy was in a plane flying around LA with the doors off.
01:01:17.000 Yeah, maybe then I shouldn't have told her that it was my co-worker.
01:01:21.000 Yeah, you should have said it was like a super experienced fighter pilot.
01:01:25.000 He's a military guy.
01:01:26.000 He's had 20 years experience.
01:01:28.000 Yeah.
01:01:29.000 It's weird when you go up in a bird with someone you know so well.
01:01:33.000 I did it first in high school.
01:01:35.000 When I was in high school, my friend Mike, Mike Warbell, he was taking small plane lessons.
01:01:43.000 And we flew around this little small plane.
01:01:45.000 He was my age.
01:01:47.000 Maybe he was older than me, like one year.
01:01:49.000 I think I was 16, he was 17 maybe.
01:01:51.000 But no more than that.
01:01:53.000 You just gotta trust him? 1.00
01:01:54.000 And he was flying in a fucking plane. 1.00
01:01:56.000 He had a co-pilot who was like an instructor. 1.00
01:01:59.000 Oh, that's better then.
01:02:00.000 Yeah, he was taking lessons.
01:02:01.000 Instead of just you and him. 0.96
01:02:02.000 But that was the first time I was ever in a little tiny ass plane. 0.94
01:02:04.000 I was in high school.
01:02:05.000 You ever want to do that?
01:02:06.000 I have no desire to do that.
01:02:08.000 It seems like a rough way to die.
01:02:10.000 I just don't, like even with all the training and all that, I'll leave it to the pros.
01:02:15.000 Like if JFK couldn't do it.
01:02:17.000 Well, I think the JFK story was more complicated.
01:02:21.000 I think he was involved with, I think that flight was like no visibility.
01:02:27.000 I think you ran into fog.
01:02:29.000 Like a more experienced pilot would have known the weather conditions aren't the best to be going up.
01:02:34.000 Yes.
01:02:34.000 And also, you have to understand how to read the gauges, because you've got to know what altitude you're at, and the gauges have to be 100% functional.
01:02:43.000 I don't know what the whole story was with his death, but I believe...
01:02:48.000 Google whether or not JFK's body had cocaine in it.
01:02:52.000 Google that.
01:02:53.000 No, RFK. What's his name?
01:02:55.000 JFK Jr. Not RFK. JFK Jr.'s body had cocaine in it.
01:03:00.000 Because I think there was some cocaine involved.
01:03:03.000 If I'm not mistaken. 1.00
01:03:05.000 It's like, fuck, I can fly in the clouds! 1.00
01:03:06.000 I'm in the clouds, bitch! 1.00
01:03:08.000 He doesn't even have any lessons. 1.00
01:03:09.000 He's just like, it's getting a plane!
01:03:11.000 I think he knew how to fly.
01:03:12.000 And I think he was...
01:03:14.000 I think he was unprepared for no...
01:03:16.000 You know how it is.
01:03:17.000 He was off the Cape, right?
01:03:19.000 It wasn't somewhere near Massachusetts. 1.00
01:03:21.000 That fucking... 1.00
01:03:22.000 Those clouds get thick, bro. 1.00
01:03:24.000 I mean, you don't see jack shit. 0.97
01:03:26.000 So you're flying around in that. 0.98
01:03:28.000 Imagine just flying, right?
01:03:30.000 You're on 500 miles an hour, and right in front of you is white. 0.97
01:03:33.000 That's all you see.
01:03:34.000 500 miles an hour, through the white.
01:03:36.000 And just knowing.
01:03:37.000 Kind of just knowing this isn't a good situation. 1.00
01:03:40.000 Yeah, you're fucked. 1.00
01:03:41.000 And you kind of know. 1.00
01:03:42.000 Yeah.
01:03:42.000 Yeah.
01:03:43.000 Well, when I lived in Colorado, I remember there was a time that I was driving up this hill.
01:03:47.000 We were pretty high up.
01:03:48.000 We were about 8,000 feet above sea levels, 3,000 feet above Boulder. 0.95
01:03:52.000 And as we're driving through the hills up to the house, the fucking clouds were so thick, you couldn't see five feet in front of the car.
01:04:01.000 So you're driving on a mountain road that sometimes has no railings to the left or to the right. 0.96
01:04:05.000 And it's just death to the left. 0.99
01:04:07.000 And you're driving up this mountain road and you can't see jack shit. 0.69
01:04:11.000 So you literally have to turn the fog lights on. 0.88
01:04:13.000 So the regular headlights are no good.
01:04:15.000 You gotta shut those off.
01:04:16.000 And you have to have fog lights on.
01:04:18.000 Because fog lights just kind of light the ground.
01:04:19.000 Yeah.
01:04:20.000 And that's why they exist?
01:04:21.000 Yeah.
01:04:22.000 Like, people don't even think what a fog light is, because most of the time you don't really have to deal with fog.
01:04:26.000 Fog light is a little light down below.
01:04:28.000 So you can see a little bit.
01:04:29.000 Yeah.
01:04:29.000 Instead of blinding it, just with the light.
01:04:30.000 Yeah, otherwise you just see bright white.
01:04:32.000 I don't see anything about that, but they were...
01:04:35.000 You gotta check Infowars.com.
01:04:37.000 Yeah, you're going to the wrong source, dude.
01:04:38.000 Did you use Google?
01:04:39.000 Bing it! 1.00
01:04:40.000 Bing it, Jamie!
01:04:41.000 8.30, 9 at night, and they were flying over water that had no features.
01:04:45.000 So they were over water, it was dark and foggy.
01:04:48.000 So it was basically pitch black.
01:04:49.000 And he didn't have a flight plan either, and he told an instructor that offered to go with him he wanted to do it alone.
01:04:55.000 Oh, but you didn't find anything about cocaine?
01:04:59.000 I googled that and nothing popped up.
01:05:01.000 Something popped up that they might have had a past of that, but nothing said that.
01:05:04.000 Can you put a drug test in an autopsy?
01:05:07.000 Nothing said that.
01:05:08.000 Okay.
01:05:09.000 Maybe I made it up.
01:05:10.000 It's possible.
01:05:11.000 Let's put it in the Wikipedia page just in case.
01:05:14.000 My memory varies so wildly.
01:05:16.000 It's confusing.
01:05:17.000 And I'm wondering if it's old age or if it's just an overwhelming amount of data in my brain and my hard drive has just completely run out of space.
01:05:26.000 Maybe there's some overlap.
01:05:27.000 Like a similar story.
01:05:28.000 For sure there is, because I'll have conversations with someone sometimes, and they'll ask me, we'll be just talking about something.
01:05:34.000 I go, well, that's not exactly how it happened.
01:05:37.000 This is what happened because of this, because as they evolved, they developed the ability to do this and that.
01:05:41.000 And I just know this.
01:05:43.000 I'm like, why do I know? 1.00
01:05:43.000 And someone goes, what are you, a fucking biologist? 1.00
01:05:45.000 I'm like, no, I'm an idiot. 1.00
01:05:46.000 I do retain a lot. 0.97
01:05:47.000 I remember things, but I don't retain some things.
01:05:50.000 Sometimes I forget who I was talking to, or who said what, or where this idea came from.
01:05:56.000 It's weird.
01:05:56.000 It's not selective.
01:05:58.000 Yeah, it's not that good.
01:05:59.000 But it helps when I'm taking nootropics, which I didn't today.
01:06:03.000 Today I didn't take any alpha brain.
01:06:04.000 Why don't we have any here?
01:06:06.000 How come we don't have any here?
01:06:08.000 Oh, give me that.
01:06:09.000 Thank you.
01:06:11.000 Oh, man.
01:06:12.000 How does this work?
01:06:13.000 Well, your brain's going to grow.
01:06:15.000 I hope your head's flexible.
01:06:17.000 Just like the headphones break.
01:06:19.000 Should I throw this in here?
01:06:22.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:06:23.000 I used to work at Boeing.
01:06:24.000 Is this like an Elon Musk moment, guys?
01:06:25.000 No.
01:06:26.000 Am I going to be a mural?
01:06:28.000 I know, right?
01:06:29.000 Isn't that crazy?
01:06:30.000 Yeah.
01:06:32.000 Crazy for me too, man.
01:06:34.000 I didn't even think twice about giving him weed.
01:06:36.000 Really?
01:06:36.000 You didn't think like, oh, this will be a moment?
01:06:38.000 No!
01:06:39.000 I thought we were just hanging out.
01:06:40.000 Me and my buddy Elon.
01:06:41.000 Yeah.
01:06:42.000 Smoking a little weed.
01:06:43.000 Like normal.
01:06:44.000 Stockholders are like, no!
01:06:46.000 You see the Ross Baines painting in the green room?
01:06:49.000 Where in the cloud it says 6%.
01:06:51.000 Oh, no.
01:06:52.000 Yeah, go look at the smoke cloud again, because he lost 6% of the stock.
01:06:56.000 Jeez.
01:06:57.000 But he got it back.
01:06:58.000 It was up to 9% the next day.
01:07:00.000 It went up 3%. 0.98
01:07:01.000 But his street cred went fucking through the roof, dude. 1.00
01:07:03.000 Through the roof, bitch. 1.00
01:07:05.000 I drove his car here. 1.00
01:07:06.000 That guy deserves everything he gets. 1.00
01:07:08.000 That car is a goddamn time machine. 0.99
01:07:09.000 I'm still a Mazda 3 2007 man myself. 0.99
01:07:12.000 Ooh, nice.
01:07:13.000 Yeah, I'm a purist.
01:07:14.000 Nice.
01:07:15.000 Sometimes I'll get a brochure in the mail like, get the 2019 Mazda 3. No chance.
01:07:19.000 I'm going to put a bullet in my head if I get two Mazda 3s in a row. 0.97
01:07:23.000 Don't get a Mazda 3, but get a Miata. 0.95
01:07:25.000 A Miata?
01:07:26.000 Those are dope cars.
01:07:27.000 Isn't that like a punchline? 1.00
01:07:28.000 I don't give a fuck who's making that joke. 0.99
01:07:30.000 They don't know what they're talking about. 0.99
01:07:32.000 Alright, I'm gonna do it.
01:07:32.000 I'm gonna get a Miata.
01:07:34.000 Everyone's making fun of me. 0.97
01:07:35.000 No bullshit, man. 1.00
01:07:36.000 Dude, a Miata is a fucking fantastic car. 1.00
01:07:38.000 I'm not bullshitting. 0.99
01:07:39.000 It has very low horsepower, but it's super lightweight.
01:07:42.000 This will be my defense when people make fun of me.
01:07:45.000 They have a lot of horsepower.
01:07:46.000 It doesn't have a lot of horsepower.
01:07:48.000 It's very low.
01:07:49.000 I think it's less than 200 horsepower.
01:07:51.000 181. Yeah.
01:07:53.000 But Miatas are amazing cars.
01:07:55.000 But as a comedian, how many times do you hear it as a punchline?
01:07:58.000 Those are hacks.
01:07:59.000 Sure.
01:08:00.000 Those comedians are nice.
01:08:01.000 Isn't it funny?
01:08:01.000 There's certain words that are just like go-to, like Chipotle's a great punchline word.
01:08:08.000 They still make them in standard, with a standard transmission.
01:08:12.000 I just want to say thank you, Mazda, or you're welcome, Mazda, for... 0.98
01:08:15.000 It's a fucking great car, man. 0.98
01:08:17.000 I'm not kidding. 0.99
01:08:18.000 They're really fun to drive.
01:08:19.000 They handle really well.
01:08:21.000 I like mine.
01:08:21.000 They're very tactile.
01:08:23.000 But a Mazda 3 is different than a Miata, right?
01:08:25.000 How much different is it?
01:08:26.000 I mean, probably pretty different.
01:08:27.000 What is that one right there?
01:08:28.000 2019 Mazda MX-5?
01:08:30.000 MX-5 Miata?
01:08:31.000 What about the RX-8?
01:08:32.000 You see that red one?
01:08:33.000 That cool red color?
01:08:35.000 Yeah, but the one above that, please.
01:08:37.000 Look at that, with the removable roof.
01:08:39.000 Ooh, that's like a Targa.
01:08:41.000 I could be on the beach with that.
01:08:42.000 Bro, that is a dope car. 1.00
01:08:44.000 People are crazy. 0.86
01:08:45.000 They just want it... 0.72
01:08:46.000 They want higher horsepower.
01:08:47.000 If that was instead of a Miata, if that was a Tesla, if Tesla made an electric Miata that goes zero to 60 in one second, everybody would want that car.
01:08:58.000 Yeah.
01:08:59.000 Dude, it's a great car.
01:09:00.000 Drive one.
01:09:01.000 All right.
01:09:01.000 You know, I'm going to do that after this.
01:09:02.000 I'm going to test drive a Mazda Miata.
01:09:04.000 It's cheap.
01:09:05.000 How much is a Miata?
01:09:06.000 It's like 28 grand.
01:09:08.000 Dude.
01:09:08.000 Come on.
01:09:09.000 Come on, man.
01:09:09.000 That's it?
01:09:10.000 I'm not bullshitting.
01:09:11.000 For 28 grand, you get a great car.
01:09:12.000 Uh-huh.
01:09:13.000 I'm not kidding. 1.00
01:09:14.000 I would drive a fucking Miata. 0.98
01:09:15.000 I just would never think that you would have this much passion about the Mazda Miata, and it's really refreshing. 0.99
01:09:20.000 I am an automobile enthusiast.
01:09:23.000 I love cars.
01:09:23.000 I saw the cars here.
01:09:24.000 I love engineering.
01:09:26.000 I'm a fan of mechanical things.
01:09:30.000 I love how people design things.
01:09:32.000 And what they've done with the Miata...
01:09:35.000 Is they've made a car that it always has a loyal fan base that continues to buy them.
01:09:41.000 Because they don't break the bank.
01:09:43.000 It's not something that you pull up to the club and everybody thinks you're like some super baller.
01:09:47.000 But it's a fun car to drive.
01:09:49.000 They're a really fun car to drive.
01:09:51.000 They're super lightweight.
01:09:52.000 They're very agile.
01:09:53.000 They handle great.
01:09:54.000 They still make them with a manual transmission.
01:09:57.000 Yeah, mind stick.
01:09:58.000 Yeah, they're fun, man.
01:09:59.000 It's a fun car to drive.
01:10:01.000 Don't be hating on me, honestly.
01:10:02.000 All right.
01:10:03.000 But how do you feel about Mazda 3?
01:10:04.000 I want the same love for the Mazda 3. It's not that good.
01:10:06.000 God, motherfucker. 1.00
01:10:07.000 It's kind of boring. 1.00
01:10:08.000 It's like you might as well get a Prius.
01:10:09.000 Yeah.
01:10:10.000 You're in the Prius category.
01:10:11.000 You know, what's happened with Tesla, it's interesting, because when you, for a while, you could be driving a Prius and no one knew if you were rich or poor.
01:10:18.000 It was the great equalizer. 0.99
01:10:20.000 Still to this day, Larry David drives a fucking Prius. 1.00
01:10:22.000 Sure, sure. 1.00
01:10:22.000 But Tesla came along and they were like, yo, now you can stunt and save the earth. 1.00
01:10:27.000 Now people know you're rich and pious.
01:10:30.000 Before, you didn't know if this guy's poor or DiCaprio. 1.00
01:10:34.000 Yeah, but now it's like, so all the poor guys who want to go green are kind of fucked. 0.98
01:10:38.000 But a Prius is different because it's a hybrid. 0.96
01:10:41.000 But that was the only option back in the day.
01:10:43.000 That was the only option.
01:10:45.000 Mercedes has an S-Class Mercedes, top of the food chain Mercedes, that's also a plug-in hybrid.
01:10:55.000 It's just a new one that they just released.
01:10:56.000 Jeremy Clarkson was raving about it.
01:10:58.000 It's supposed to be this incredible car.
01:11:00.000 So Mercedes is actually making plug-in hybrids for their top of the food chain vehicles.
01:11:07.000 That's pretty cool.
01:11:07.000 Seems like that's new.
01:11:08.000 It is.
01:11:09.000 It is new, but it's also a little bit of a step back because it has gasoline.
01:11:14.000 But the step up is going to be a car that charges...
01:11:19.000 And it charges in a normal amount of time, like an hour or two.
01:11:23.000 How long does yours take?
01:11:24.000 Forever.
01:11:25.000 Oh, how long?
01:11:25.000 We have a supercharger here.
01:11:26.000 We have a supercharger installed here.
01:11:28.000 And it still takes, I don't know, probably like five hours.
01:11:33.000 Five hours?
01:11:33.000 If it's dead, it'll probably take five hours, maybe six.
01:11:37.000 You know, but like, if I come here and it, like full charge is, what does it get? 0.90
01:11:46.000 300 and fucking 90 miles or something like that. 0.74
01:11:52.000 Somewhere around that range. 0.98
01:11:53.000 But not really.
01:11:54.000 Are you having to be a little better with your planning?
01:11:56.000 Like, alright, I'm going to put it in here.
01:11:58.000 I'm not going anywhere with it.
01:11:59.000 I go to LA. I go to the comedy store.
01:12:02.000 Like, this weekend I'm in Anaheim for the UFC. I'm not driving that fucking thorough. 0.99
01:12:06.000 Are you crazy? 1.00
01:12:07.000 I'm not getting stranded. 0.95
01:12:08.000 What happens when you get stranded?
01:12:09.000 Does anybody have a battery?
01:12:10.000 Does anybody have electricity that can siphon?
01:12:12.000 Anybody can sit here with me for eight hours. 0.98
01:12:14.000 There's not a goddamn thing you can do. 1.00
01:12:15.000 You have to call a tow truck, and they have to bring it to a charging station, and then you have to sit there like an asshole. 1.00
01:12:21.000 Yeah, it's for six hours. 0.97
01:12:22.000 It's, uh, but the technology, if you get, you can't, look, obviously I'm kidding in some way, because it's super simple.
01:12:29.000 It's got, you've seen one on the inside, right?
01:12:31.000 The giant screen?
01:12:32.000 I've only seen from the outside.
01:12:34.000 Bro, there's one right here.
01:12:35.000 Go sit in it.
01:12:36.000 Oh, cool.
01:12:36.000 Because the comedy store has turned into a Tesla dealership.
01:12:39.000 That's right.
01:12:40.000 It's kind of how you know.
01:12:41.000 It's Callan's got one.
01:12:42.000 Neil's got one.
01:12:43.000 That's how you know the store is in a renaissance where it's like so many Teslas coming in and out of that place.
01:12:49.000 Not just Tesla, it's like Russell Peters pulls up in a Ferrari SUV. And like a Bentley too.
01:12:54.000 He's got a Bentley.
01:12:55.000 Yeah.
01:12:56.000 A Ferrari.
01:12:57.000 Oh no, a Lamborghini.
01:12:58.000 Lamborghini SUV. Dude, like now must be the most trying time to be a lot guy at the comedy store.
01:13:03.000 Just imagine the bullets they sweat.
01:13:05.000 Oh my god, yeah.
01:13:05.000 Having to move because that parking lot in the comedy store is like Tetris.
01:13:09.000 Yeah.
01:13:10.000 There's a finite amount of space and they've got to fit all the paid regulars cars in there.
01:13:14.000 And the price tag on all these are insane now.
01:13:17.000 The problem is they're letting these promoters park there.
01:13:21.000 Aren't they being better about saying you can't park a lot?
01:13:24.000 They should detonate their cars.
01:13:27.000 Instead of a tow truck, it's just a stick of dynamite? 0.92
01:13:30.000 Just a giant Kevlar tarp that they throw over those cars and just detonate them.
01:13:36.000 Just during your set, you just hear a promoter.
01:13:40.000 Because there's so many people that park back there.
01:13:42.000 Like, you're not even a comic.
01:13:44.000 Like, what are you doing back here?
01:13:45.000 Not only that, though.
01:13:45.000 Like, the back bar.
01:13:46.000 And then also the back patio area.
01:13:49.000 They get weird.
01:13:50.000 Because that's, like, our home.
01:13:51.000 That's kind of where we hang out before we have to go on stage.
01:13:53.000 And we want to see guys like you or Santino and just, like, chop it up before we have to go on stage.
01:13:57.000 And then it's like, who's this?
01:13:59.000 And they talk to you and they interrupt conversations.
01:14:02.000 And not in a snooty way, but it is a bit of a...
01:14:05.000 It's like a dugout.
01:14:06.000 It's like a baseball dugout.
01:14:07.000 Adderall people go back there.
01:14:09.000 Oh, yeah.
01:14:09.000 They talk too much to you.
01:14:10.000 Yeah.
01:14:11.000 You don't need that in your life.
01:14:12.000 Right.
01:14:14.000 But they have more confidence than me back there.
01:14:16.000 Because they have Adderall.
01:14:17.000 They have Adderall confidence.
01:14:18.000 I've never done Adderall.
01:14:19.000 Good for you.
01:14:20.000 Have you done it?
01:14:20.000 Isn't it big now?
01:14:21.000 Like, every student has taken it?
01:14:23.000 A lot of people are taking it.
01:14:24.000 It's a big thing amongst journalists.
01:14:26.000 Why?
01:14:27.000 Because they get more work done.
01:14:28.000 Because you're on speed.
01:14:30.000 Like, there was a guy that I had in here that was writing a book on...
01:14:33.000 He wrote that book on Hunter S. Thompson.
01:14:35.000 What is that?
01:14:36.000 Uh...
01:14:38.000 What is his book?
01:14:42.000 Something Gonzo something.
01:14:44.000 Anyway, he was talking about how he needs it to write and he can't write without it.
01:14:49.000 Is it just the deadlines and the workload is insane and that's a way to kind of cope with it?
01:14:53.000 You don't need it to write.
01:14:54.000 Can you move your fingers?
01:14:55.000 Sure.
01:14:56.000 But there's a mental fatigue.
01:14:59.000 Take a break, go for a walk.
01:15:01.000 That's the natural thing to do, but some people want the quick fix.
01:15:04.000 Well, it's not necessarily a quick fix.
01:15:06.000 It's like you can get a good Timothy Denevy.
01:15:09.000 Nice guy.
01:15:10.000 Very nice guy.
01:15:11.000 Isn't there like a mental debt if you keep on taking it?
01:15:13.000 What's the name of his book?
01:15:15.000 What's the name of the book?
01:15:16.000 Yeah, Mental Debt. 0.98
01:15:17.000 Yeah, it's called, you become a crackhead. 0.99
01:15:19.000 Freak Kingdom. 0.98
01:15:20.000 Freak Kingdom.
01:15:21.000 Yeah.
01:15:22.000 You become someone who is on stimulants all the time.
01:15:26.000 And I know several people that have an issue. 0.99
01:15:29.000 I know one guy has completely lost his fucking mind, thinks everybody's against him, thinks that everyone's done him wrong, and he's just out there cracked out in the middle of nowhere on fucking Adderall every day. 0.99
01:15:39.000 And making YouTube videos. 0.99
01:15:41.000 And there's a lot of people like that, man.
01:15:42.000 There's a lot of people like that.
01:15:44.000 It is a meth-like drug.
01:15:46.000 It's very, very, very, very similar to meth.
01:15:49.000 It's just a different release in terms of how quickly your body processes it.
01:15:54.000 It's crazy how widespread it is for something like that then. 1.00
01:15:56.000 It's fucking stimulants, man. 0.99
01:15:58.000 If you can effectively do your job and you don't commit any crimes, and they can sell you that stuff and make a profit, and then you actually are more profitable when you're on that stuff than not, then fucking have at it. 0.99
01:16:11.000 That's how people look at things. 0.99
01:16:13.000 And, like, look, when I was, uh, when pop was sort of legal, when it was medically legal, I had a bullshit prescription. 0.99
01:16:21.000 Your back hurt? 0.98
01:16:21.000 Oh, yeah, everything, bro. 0.98
01:16:23.000 What was your excuse?
01:16:23.000 I used a bunch of different ones.
01:16:26.000 Did you go to the hot doctor?
01:16:27.000 You know, like, you would see on Sunset Boulevard, it's, like, this, like, Persian chick who's, like, I would describe you. 0.98
01:16:32.000 No, I went to a black dude with dreadlocks.
01:16:34.000 He was awesome.
01:16:35.000 This is how he looked at me when I went in there.
01:16:37.000 I feel like that's the best weed doctor to the black guy with dreadlocks. 1.00
01:16:39.000 Like, oh, this guy's good.
01:16:40.000 The best.
01:16:41.000 Do you remember those vaporizers?
01:16:44.000 They're a bag.
01:16:45.000 They're called a volcano.
01:16:45.000 Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:16:46.000 I remember when I stayed with Ari Shaffir in New York, and he had those.
01:16:50.000 And I had never seen that before.
01:16:51.000 It just seemed like such an odd contraption. 0.81
01:16:54.000 Some of the early podcasts, we vaporized with that bag and they're the dumbest conversations because we had no idea what we're talking about.
01:17:01.000 I would like correct myself halfway into a sentence because I forgot what I was saying and then I would forget what the original correction was and then I'm like, no, that's not what I'm saying.
01:17:10.000 What am I saying? 0.85
01:17:11.000 I was so fucked up and it would take like an hour into the podcast before like the fog would settle. 0.99
01:17:17.000 So was that just the medical marijuana delivery system? 0.99
01:17:21.000 Well, no.
01:17:21.000 It's just a delivery system.
01:17:23.000 You can use it right now.
01:17:25.000 I feel like, do a lot of people use it that way?
01:17:27.000 A lot of people vaporize with those bags.
01:17:29.000 What's the upside of that?
01:17:31.000 No, smoke.
01:17:32.000 You're just getting mist.
01:17:34.000 You're basically getting the THC crystals.
01:17:36.000 It's turning into mist.
01:17:38.000 When you vaporize, you're not getting the burnt...
01:17:40.000 Plant material.
01:17:41.000 It's almost like Hershey connoisseurs.
01:17:43.000 Yes.
01:17:43.000 There's a million ways to get what you need.
01:17:46.000 Yeah, or wine dorks or cigar dorks.
01:17:49.000 It's like real similar. 0.94
01:17:50.000 Sure. 0.93
01:17:51.000 But anyway, I walk into this guy's office and he's just the fucking coolest.
01:17:55.000 I wish I kept in touch with this dude.
01:17:56.000 It was somewhere in Hollywood. 0.84
01:17:58.000 I forget where it was, but the dude looked at me and goes, You look sick!
01:18:02.000 Mm-hmm. 0.94
01:18:03.000 You look sick!
01:18:04.000 He goes, you need some medicine!
01:18:06.000 You need some medicine!
01:18:08.000 And he had this big smile on my face.
01:18:09.000 I said, thank you, sir.
01:18:10.000 I feel sick.
01:18:11.000 And I feel like I need some medicine.
01:18:12.000 He goes, what are you here for, brother?
01:18:15.000 And I said, it helps you sleep.
01:18:17.000 He goes, good enough for me.
01:18:18.000 And he runs in his sleep.
01:18:19.000 He's writing a prescription.
01:18:21.000 He gives me a prescription, and he pulls out the biggest bag.
01:18:24.000 He had a custom vaporizer bag for the volcano.
01:18:27.000 And I'm telling you, I'm not exaggerating.
01:18:29.000 It was four feet long.
01:18:30.000 It's this four feet long bag.
01:18:32.000 He puts it on this...
01:18:33.000 It pumps up like a kid's bouncy house.
01:18:37.000 Fills up with weed.
01:18:38.000 He does it there?
01:18:39.000 Oh yeah, we were blasted.
01:18:40.000 We got blasted at his place.
01:18:43.000 The doctor's office was connected to a grow-up, right? 0.97
01:18:46.000 So we smoke, we vaporized, right?
01:18:50.000 And then we go into the back where they're growing the weed and we're barbecued, right?
01:18:53.000 I'm barely in this dimension.
01:18:55.000 And I go in there and I see all these plants and I get a feeling from these things like they're alive, like they're conscious.
01:19:01.000 It felt so weird.
01:19:03.000 To this day, I miss that feeling.
01:19:05.000 I go, was I so high, I was hallucinating?
01:19:09.000 Is it possible that if you get really high on pot, and then you go around the pot leaves, you pick up their frequency?
01:19:16.000 And you understand that they're a living organism and that's one of the reasons why they make you feel so good when you get high.
01:19:22.000 Like one of the reasons why you're interacting with whatever they are, with the molecules, the THC and the cannabinoids.
01:19:30.000 You're interacting with it.
01:19:31.000 And then when you go around the actual potted plants and they're all super healthy because they got this crazy hydroponic setup and they're all the right nutrients and these lush green plants in this perfect environment for growing because, you know, they're experts.
01:19:45.000 Yeah.
01:19:46.000 And I'm like, these things are alive, man.
01:19:48.000 These things, they know you're there.
01:19:50.000 They're like, hi.
01:19:52.000 So it was a successful trip.
01:19:55.000 Oh, yeah, man.
01:19:56.000 It took me hours before I knew what I was doing.
01:20:00.000 Afterwards, it's like hours later, trying to figure it out.
01:20:03.000 I just love how he took the onus of an excuse off of you. 0.97
01:20:06.000 You look sick!
01:20:07.000 That's the moment I walked in. 1.00
01:20:09.000 You look sick!
01:20:10.000 You need some medicine! 0.99
01:20:12.000 And crazy dreadlocks and circular glasses.
01:20:15.000 He was amazing.
01:20:17.000 God, I wish I kept in touch with that guy.
01:20:18.000 He was a great doctor.
01:20:20.000 I've had a bunch of good weed doctors.
01:20:23.000 I had one of them, though.
01:20:23.000 I had to stop going.
01:20:24.000 He went crazy 9-11 on me.
01:20:27.000 What does that mean?
01:20:28.000 He was trying to tell me that the towers were brought down by Tesla technology.
01:20:34.000 And I was like, what?
01:20:35.000 He's like, concrete doesn't vaporize that way.
01:20:37.000 I was like, what do you mean, vaporize?
01:20:39.000 I used to try to do a bit about how, you know, you hear about white privilege and everything.
01:20:42.000 I go, one of the things about white privilege people don't really think about that much is you're allowed to have any conspiracy theory you want.
01:20:48.000 I can't be like, 9-11 was an inside job.
01:20:53.000 Jet fuel can't melt steel beams! 0.99
01:20:54.000 They're like, whatever, Ahmed.
01:20:56.000 Sure thing, Aladdin.
01:20:57.000 No, you don't understand!
01:20:58.000 Right.
01:20:59.000 Dead's different.
01:21:00.000 Yeah, if you looked at the pie chart of people that are really into conspiracies and looked at race, white would be overwhelming. 0.86
01:21:08.000 What would it be, the pie chart of conspiracy theorists?
01:21:11.000 Yeah, I don't know.
01:21:12.000 Like three-quarters of the pie chart, white people. 0.64
01:21:14.000 Yeah, it would sound absurd coming from me.
01:21:16.000 I don't believe that.
01:21:17.000 But imagine if I'm like, 9-11 was a brown guy. 0.99
01:21:20.000 They're like, sure thing, you're not getting off that easy.
01:21:22.000 Yeah.
01:21:23.000 Inside job.
01:21:25.000 Yeah.
01:21:25.000 You worked for Boeing?
01:21:27.000 Is that what you did?
01:21:27.000 Yeah.
01:21:28.000 What did you do over there?
01:21:29.000 I was an aerospace engineer in Long Beach.
01:21:31.000 Were you involved at all in 9-11?
01:21:32.000 Did you have anything to do?
01:21:34.000 This is a hatchet job!
01:21:35.000 I'm out of here!
01:21:35.000 You can tell us!
01:21:36.000 You were lulling me into a false sense of security with the comedy in the comedy store.
01:21:40.000 For years I've been your friend.
01:21:41.000 So anyways, you were involved with 9-11, right?
01:21:44.000 Did you train those pilots?
01:21:46.000 What did you do?
01:21:47.000 What did you do at Boeing?
01:21:48.000 I did stress analysis for the floor beam.
01:21:52.000 It's very unglamorous.
01:21:53.000 It's kind of cool, though.
01:21:54.000 I guess so.
01:21:56.000 It means you're bona fide smart.
01:21:58.000 Yeah.
01:21:58.000 I mean, I'm able to jump through hoops with a goal in mind.
01:22:02.000 Like, I have a high threshold for academic pain.
01:22:05.000 So I took a lot of math.
01:22:06.000 I took a lot of...
01:22:07.000 It wasn't that hard for me.
01:22:08.000 It was like...
01:22:09.000 I mean, it's difficult to get the degree.
01:22:11.000 But, all right, they do these steps.
01:22:13.000 You get this number.
01:22:14.000 There's this formula.
01:22:15.000 You have the tools.
01:22:16.000 They show you how to do it.
01:22:17.000 Monkey see, monkey do.
01:22:18.000 Interesting way of describing it.
01:22:20.000 You have a high threshold for academic pain because it is like a little painful, right?
01:22:23.000 I think just it seems so daunting to the average person and they just don't want to be bothered with that to even get over the hump of learning something like that.
01:22:31.000 They're just like, I could never. 0.52
01:22:33.000 That's for brainiacs. 0.86
01:22:35.000 But the thing is, engineering was a means to an end for me to do stand-up comedy.
01:22:40.000 Like my parents were going to pay for my college.
01:22:42.000 But only certain degrees.
01:22:44.000 So at first...
01:22:45.000 Because I knew I wanted to do stand-up when I was like 17. Really?
01:22:48.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:22:48.000 How'd you know?
01:22:51.000 I think two things happened.
01:22:52.000 So I didn't grow up with stand-up.
01:22:54.000 I didn't really know it was a thing.
01:22:56.000 It wasn't on my radar.
01:22:57.000 I grew up with The Simpsons, SNL, and like Conan.
01:23:00.000 Late Night Conan.
01:23:01.000 Those were my jams.
01:23:03.000 I feel like that's my comedy DNA. But then I was 17. Like on my 17th birthday, we rented Delirious...
01:23:10.000 So we watched Delirious, Eddie Murphy's Delirious, you know?
01:23:14.000 It was like the greatest thing in the world.
01:23:16.000 And that just planted the seed of comedy.
01:23:18.000 So that coupled with my love for SNL, and I'm like, I don't know if Google was around even, or maybe, I don't know, I just researched how do people get on SNL. Maybe Google wasn't around.
01:23:29.000 So I saw they came from two camps.
01:23:31.000 They were either stand-ups or they came from improv.
01:23:36.000 So like Second City, UCB, Groundlings.
01:23:40.000 This was like the pedigree.
01:23:41.000 These are the schools they picked from.
01:23:42.000 And then I researched those schools.
01:23:44.000 They were in Chicago, LA, New York.
01:23:46.000 You had to pay money to take these classes.
01:23:49.000 You may not pass.
01:23:50.000 You have to go back to 101 or whatever.
01:23:52.000 So it's like a school.
01:23:54.000 And stand-up is just you.
01:23:56.000 It's just you out there with a sword.
01:24:00.000 I'm like, oh, I could do that.
01:24:01.000 And there's comedy clubs in Seattle.
01:24:03.000 I can count on me.
01:24:05.000 I don't have to rely on other people to zip-zap-zoop with each other.
01:24:09.000 Improv is a great thing.
01:24:10.000 I'm not knocking it or anything.
01:24:12.000 It's such a different...
01:24:13.000 You have to dedicate your life to one or the other.
01:24:14.000 I think it's very hard to be great at both.
01:24:16.000 and there's not a lot of career paths for improv it's like you get to a certain spot and that's it like there's some people who are very very talented in groundlings in like ucb and then how do they monetize that if they book a commercial they're still beholden to a lot of other people they have to be the right guy or girl the right look there's so many variables that are outside of your control as a talented improv performer But as a stand-up,
01:24:41.000 you could do a weekend.
01:24:42.000 We can always make money.
01:24:43.000 Yeah.
01:24:44.000 Once you get to a certain level.
01:24:45.000 Is anybody famous, like, in terms of going on the road as an improv guy?
01:24:49.000 I guess whose line is it anyway, guys?
01:24:51.000 Yeah, but you'll have to – maybe they'll start doing stand-up because they've built some – you'll see that, right?
01:24:57.000 They'll build some credibility, like a notoriety, and they come from the improv background.
01:25:01.000 But if they want to start making some money on the road, they start doing stand-up.
01:25:05.000 But they're no better off than someone like a 22-year-old doing stand-up now because you've got to put the hours in.
01:25:12.000 Just because you're good at this other thing, you still have to start over.
01:25:15.000 Right.
01:25:15.000 It's like the farm.
01:25:17.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:25:18.000 Exactly.
01:25:20.000 The beauty of stand-up is you can't skip steps.
01:25:22.000 It's so, when you see a comic on stage, it's like when you cut a tree open and you see all the rings.
01:25:27.000 You can just tell, like, oh, this guy's been doing it 20 years.
01:25:30.000 You can't fake that.
01:25:32.000 So I chose to do stand-up because it was just me out there and I could rely on me and I could do it while I do engineering school.
01:25:40.000 So I chose engineering because I knew I wanted to do this stuff.
01:25:43.000 So I thought I needed a theater degree.
01:25:45.000 So I was like, can I do theater?
01:25:46.000 And my dad was like, no, you can't do theater.
01:25:49.000 And then it kept on getting more and more watered down.
01:25:51.000 I was like, can I do directing?
01:25:54.000 No, you can't do directing.
01:25:55.000 They told you what you can and can't do.
01:25:57.000 Yeah, and I love it.
01:25:58.000 In hindsight, I'm so grateful.
01:26:00.000 Why is that? 0.99
01:26:00.000 Dude, if I had a theater degree right now, I'd be fucked. 0.99
01:26:05.000 If anyone's watching and you have a theater degree or you're thinking about getting a theater degree, don't do it. 0.99
01:26:11.000 You don't need it.
01:26:13.000 You're not going to be Jude Law because you have a theater degree.
01:26:16.000 You could do it on the side.
01:26:17.000 Think of how many people have come to L.A. or New York.
01:26:19.000 It's a different thing, okay?
01:26:20.000 Like if you're at Juilliard and you're this instrument or whatever and it's like a top, top, top theater school and it's a feeder to like that world, okay, okay?
01:26:30.000 Or if you're the son of like a huge actor or daughter, sure.
01:26:35.000 But if you're like in, I don't know, Ohio and you're going to theater to school, you're just lighting your parents' money on fire.
01:26:44.000 That's all you're doing.
01:26:46.000 They're letting you go in a 20-year-old jungle gym for four years. 0.97
01:26:50.000 The thing is, you see sometimes an actor, or rather an athlete or someone, will be an actor in a movie, and they'll do a fucking amazing job. 0.94
01:26:58.000 Here's an example. 0.96
01:26:59.000 Like Oprah.
01:27:01.000 Here's an example.
01:27:01.000 The color purple.
01:27:02.000 The highest paid actor is The Rock.
01:27:06.000 What theater school did Dwayne the Rock Johnson go to?
01:27:08.000 The Theater of Hard Knocks.
01:27:10.000 Thank you.
01:27:11.000 So you might as well do wrestling as opposed to...
01:27:13.000 So it doesn't...
01:27:14.000 Theater degree does not equal acting job.
01:27:17.000 Right, but that's a different kind of acting than, say, like Jake Lillenhall or...
01:27:21.000 Sure.
01:27:22.000 You know what I mean?
01:27:23.000 Yeah.
01:27:24.000 Do you think you're learning that at all?
01:27:26.000 Here's the other thing, too, that I always thought was so interesting.
01:27:28.000 Because I did acting class for two months.
01:27:31.000 When I was here in L.A., you know, just to try it out and stuff.
01:27:34.000 It wasn't for me.
01:27:35.000 And what's funny is, like, they'll be teaching these techniques and, like, Meisner and tapping in and blah, blah, blah.
01:27:42.000 And then at the end of the class, they'll be like, all right, does anybody have any sides?
01:27:46.000 Any auditions they want to go over?
01:27:47.000 And it's all just CSI interrogation jobs.
01:27:49.000 Like, I don't know the guy.
01:27:51.000 So you're, like, you're teaching Shakespeare in class and anything anyone's ever going out for is like, oh, yeah, I used to come around here, like, two times a week.
01:28:00.000 How is iambic pentameter helping you?
01:28:05.000 And you're chomping at the bit to get this CSI delivery guy number two.
01:28:11.000 Why are you learning Meisner?
01:28:14.000 And I know there are no bit parts, only bit actors and all that.
01:28:17.000 Was it true?
01:28:17.000 No, that's what acting teachers love to tell you when you complain about getting a bit part.
01:28:24.000 They go, there are no bit parts.
01:28:27.000 Only bit actors.
01:28:28.000 And then you go, oh, I don't want to be a bit actor.
01:28:30.000 I'm happy to be a tree.
01:28:35.000 Well, there's certain comics that will tell you there are no bad crowds. 1.00
01:28:39.000 Those people are assholes. 1.00
01:28:40.000 Sure. 1.00
01:28:41.000 I think we've been...
01:28:42.000 The thing is, if you're a younger comic and you're like, that crowd sucked, you don't have the bandwidth to know what's good and bad yet.
01:28:49.000 Not yet.
01:28:50.000 So you can say that.
01:28:53.000 I can say that.
01:28:54.000 We've all seen bad crowds.
01:28:56.000 Sure.
01:28:56.000 And we can chalk it up for what it is.
01:28:58.000 But if you're a year in or two years in, it was probably you not audibling or just adjusting on the fly.
01:29:07.000 Or you're not very good at that.
01:29:09.000 Yeah, maybe that too.
01:29:10.000 Sure.
01:29:11.000 There's a weird thing about comics where there's certain comics where you know there's no way they're going to figure it out.
01:29:18.000 I don't know, though.
01:29:19.000 I mean, as a whole, yes.
01:29:21.000 But I hear there's anomalies to that.
01:29:24.000 Because I would hear stories about Sebastian, which is so crazy.
01:29:27.000 Because I wasn't there for that timeline.
01:29:29.000 But he's killing it.
01:29:30.000 He's so funny.
01:29:31.000 And he's like the guy now.
01:29:33.000 Well, he was never terrible.
01:29:35.000 Okay, so you're talking about...
01:29:37.000 No, I remember Sebastian in the beginning.
01:29:38.000 He was never terrible.
01:29:40.000 He was learning.
01:29:41.000 I see.
01:29:42.000 But he showed up all the time.
01:29:45.000 He was always a nice guy, and he wasn't terrible.
01:29:49.000 He just didn't do great in the beginning.
01:29:52.000 I think people just take liberties with that story then, and they make it sound like, yeah.
01:29:55.000 No, he was never offensively unfunny.
01:29:58.000 There's certain people that are offensively unfunny, where you're like, there's not a chance.
01:30:02.000 You're missing the DNA. You're colorblind.
01:30:06.000 You're missing it.
01:30:07.000 Whatever it is, you don't have it.
01:30:10.000 Can't breathe underwater.
01:30:11.000 I mean, that's the beauty.
01:30:12.000 I would hear Mitzi stories of her just telling people. 0.98
01:30:15.000 You're terrible.
01:30:16.000 You never met her, huh? 0.95
01:30:17.000 No.
01:30:18.000 I got there when Tommy was around, and it was kind of, so she was still, she was like sick, you know?
01:30:23.000 And he would say, Mitzi saw your tape.
01:30:27.000 And I don't know.
01:30:28.000 I know, I know, I know.
01:30:29.000 Yeah, yeah.
01:30:29.000 So he would always just, like, have this buffer between, like, Mitzi and myself.
01:30:34.000 Of course.
01:30:35.000 And I would just pretend that...
01:30:35.000 Mitzi was...
01:30:36.000 She became, like, uh...
01:30:38.000 What's the guy's name from Psycho?
01:30:40.000 Norman Bates.
01:30:41.000 Just, like, up in the house. 0.99
01:30:42.000 His mom was in the fucking shower, but it was really him. 0.99
01:30:45.000 You know? 1.00
01:30:46.000 Yeah.
01:30:46.000 Like, his mom's dead, and he would put the wig on.
01:30:48.000 That was Tommy.
01:30:49.000 Tommy put the Mitzi wig on. 0.96
01:30:51.000 And then he would always, like, do her voice and stuff, and, like, when giving...
01:30:55.000 Yeah, man.
01:30:56.000 Dude, because he would expunge wisdom.
01:30:59.000 Because I remember I would drive up from Boeing.
01:31:01.000 So I was working in Long Beach.
01:31:03.000 So I got an engineering degree, right?
01:31:05.000 And then I applied to jobs.
01:31:06.000 I did mechanical engineering because my best friend was doing mechanical.
01:31:09.000 And I was like, I don't care what engineering I do.
01:31:11.000 I'll be close to my friend.
01:31:13.000 And you were just doing that so you could have a job?
01:31:16.000 Just to support myself.
01:31:17.000 It was such a long con.
01:31:18.000 It's like, alright, I knew I wanted to do stand-up.
01:31:22.000 In the meantime, I've got to go to college.
01:31:25.000 Right?
01:31:26.000 I've got to be able to support so I can get good in Seattle.
01:31:28.000 That's really funny, man.
01:31:30.000 I guess people don't...
01:31:31.000 Do that?
01:31:33.000 Life's a long time, if you're lucky, you know?
01:31:35.000 And it's okay to have, to plan this far out.
01:31:39.000 It sounds far-fetched, maybe if I told it to someone at the time, but in hindsight, it was the most beautifully executed plan.
01:31:45.000 It worked out great.
01:31:45.000 Yeah, so I did stand-up while I was going to college.
01:31:49.000 My life was just school by day, stand-up at night.
01:31:53.000 It would actually be stand-up on the weekends, because I was living at home, and it's 40 minutes of the club, so I would just do a lot of time on Friday and Saturday.
01:32:00.000 Did your parents know?
01:32:01.000 Yeah, they knew.
01:32:01.000 And it was bad.
01:32:02.000 It was like I was doing heroin.
01:32:04.000 They were against it.
01:32:06.000 How do they feel now?
01:32:08.000 My mom has...
01:32:10.000 I took her to the premiere.
01:32:11.000 I had a small role in Whiskey Tango Foxroth as Tina Fey movies, so I took her to the premiere in New York.
01:32:16.000 And so she got to be on the red carpet and take pictures with Tina Fey.
01:32:22.000 And so she was in.
01:32:23.000 She was in after that.
01:32:24.000 And she keeps on asking me, she's like, when's the next premiere?
01:32:29.000 I'm available.
01:32:30.000 Where?
01:32:30.000 When's the next premiere?
01:32:32.000 That is a hilarious thing to ask.
01:32:34.000 There was an after party, and everyone's milling about, and then my mom's like, there's Tina.
01:32:38.000 Tina's at the...
01:32:39.000 Introduce me.
01:32:40.000 I'm like, yeah, okay.
01:32:41.000 My mom's a sweetheart, but I'm still caught in this showbiz thing. 0.99
01:32:46.000 I'm, what, number 15 on the call sheet?
01:32:49.000 I don't even know if she remembers me, even though I'm in the movie.
01:32:53.000 So I'm like, I gotta pick my spot.
01:32:54.000 And then she just kind of nudges me. 0.99
01:32:58.000 Like a linebacker.
01:32:58.000 She's like, pushes me into Tina.
01:33:00.000 But it was great to have the out of my mom be like, my mom is such a huge fan.
01:33:03.000 And she's like, oh, yeah, of course.
01:33:05.000 And she was a sweetheart.
01:33:06.000 So now she's in.
01:33:06.000 She's in.
01:33:07.000 She's like, you made it.
01:33:08.000 You're actually successful.
01:33:09.000 Yeah, or she could see the light at the end of the tunnel.
01:33:11.000 What about your dad?
01:33:12.000 My dad is kind of more nuts and bolts.
01:33:16.000 He doesn't get fooled by the glitz and the glam or anything like that.
01:33:20.000 He just understands money and things.
01:33:24.000 Like, I've had a nice car or That Mazda 3. If I had a Mazda Miata, I mean, he'd be fucking sold. 0.99
01:33:29.000 Like, you did okay. 0.98
01:33:31.000 But no.
01:33:32.000 Get a Tesla.
01:33:33.000 Yeah, I guess so. 0.99
01:33:34.000 I think what has softened him a little bit, because I just got this place in Tarzana, like a house, and that's like real adult shit. 0.96
01:33:41.000 So I didn't realize that would kind of soften him a bit. 0.94
01:33:45.000 How old are you now?
01:33:46.000 35. So you're like, wow, he's a real adult.
01:33:49.000 I guess so, yeah.
01:33:51.000 Do you have a girlfriend?
01:33:51.000 No.
01:33:52.000 So when you get married...
01:33:54.000 I don't know if he cares about that.
01:33:55.000 Oh, sure.
01:33:56.000 That's what an adult does.
01:33:58.000 I think my dad cares more about the security, like a real career, income, and a house and stability.
01:34:05.000 And comedy was never...
01:34:06.000 And then also, aside from just those things, you know, they're from Afghanistan.
01:34:10.000 So it's a low...
01:34:12.000 In my dad's opinion, it's kind of a low thing.
01:34:15.000 Comedy is like a low thing for someone to be doing.
01:34:19.000 Low?
01:34:19.000 Yeah, like low.
01:34:21.000 Like subhuman.
01:34:25.000 But what if he saw you at like a giant sold-out theater or something?
01:34:29.000 I don't know.
01:34:29.000 Maybe.
01:34:30.000 Yeah, who knows.
01:34:30.000 A big line of people waiting to see you?
01:34:32.000 I guess.
01:34:33.000 I don't know what that thing will be.
01:34:34.000 But he would always say, because we would be in shouting matches when we were younger.
01:34:38.000 Oh, yeah.
01:34:38.000 When we were both younger.
01:34:40.000 Yeah, I mean, look, I love my parents and I know what it was grounded in.
01:34:42.000 I think they just, they didn't want me to be eating out of a dumpster.
01:34:46.000 So they were just, they were there.
01:34:50.000 I mean, most of my dad, his frustration and lashing out are just like, and not like physical or anything, just like, you know.
01:34:56.000 Like, you're throwing your life away, blah, blah, blah.
01:34:58.000 It was because he wanted that security for me.
01:35:00.000 Yeah.
01:35:01.000 I understand it for what it is.
01:35:02.000 When I was like 17 or 18...
01:35:03.000 Yeah.
01:35:04.000 You don't get me!
01:35:05.000 Right. 1.00
01:35:06.000 I hate you! 0.99
01:35:07.000 Like, it just feels so... 0.99
01:35:08.000 Sure.
01:35:08.000 Now that I'm older, I get it.
01:35:09.000 I get where he's coming from.
01:35:10.000 Right.
01:35:12.000 Yeah, so...
01:35:13.000 I don't know what the point was, but...
01:35:15.000 I think now that I have a little more stability...
01:35:17.000 When did they accept you?
01:35:17.000 Oh, yeah.
01:35:18.000 He would always say, um... 0.95
01:35:19.000 He's like, you're out there every night with the pimps and the prostitutes. 0.97
01:35:25.000 Ha, ha, ha, ha! 0.97
01:35:28.000 I don't think my dad's ever been to a comedy club.
01:35:30.000 I've never seen a pimp at the comedy store. 0.77
01:35:34.000 I might have seen one or two prostitutes over the last 20 years. 1.00
01:35:38.000 You're out there every night with the pimps and the prostitutes. 0.98
01:35:44.000 That was his line. 0.97
01:35:46.000 Dude, you should talk about this on stage.
01:35:47.000 I did it in my last special.
01:35:49.000 I tell that story.
01:35:50.000 I talk about this story with my dad, and he would always trot that out there.
01:35:53.000 Oh my god, that's so funny.
01:35:56.000 I mean, he's not half wrong.
01:36:01.000 He's half wrong.
01:36:02.000 He's half wrong. 0.99
01:36:03.000 I've seen a couple prostitutes. 1.00
01:36:04.000 He's like, oh, as long as there's no pimps. 0.94
01:36:06.000 30 years I've seen maybe two or three prostitutes. 1.00
01:36:10.000 The whole front row is just like fur coats. 0.98
01:36:11.000 All pimps. 0.98
01:36:12.000 And like pimp canes. 0.99
01:36:13.000 All pimps.
01:36:14.000 All greased hair.
01:36:16.000 Oh, big diamond rings.
01:36:18.000 But he would say, people should be entertaining you.
01:36:22.000 That would be the thing.
01:36:23.000 I should be the one entertained.
01:36:25.000 Not being the entertainer.
01:36:27.000 Because you're intelligent.
01:36:28.000 I guess so.
01:36:28.000 You're a serious person.
01:36:30.000 I've just found, if you want to make broad strokes, I think in the Middle Eastern community, they love art, but their kids shouldn't be doing it. 1.00
01:36:41.000 They should be consumers of art.
01:36:44.000 Interesting.
01:36:45.000 But what if you were a famous painter?
01:36:48.000 I guess no parent really thinks best case scenario for their kid.
01:36:53.000 Like, eh, but what if a bunch of people buy his art?
01:36:55.000 It's always like, it's a pipe dream.
01:36:57.000 What are the odds?
01:36:58.000 Blah, blah, blah.
01:36:59.000 Yes.
01:36:59.000 You're throwing your life away.
01:37:01.000 And I guess there is some, because statistically, sure, Oh yeah, statistics.
01:37:04.000 Sure.
01:37:05.000 But I think like what I would do different when I have kids or whatever, I would explain the realities of how, you know, the whole theater degree thing.
01:37:12.000 I'm so glad they made me do a degree with teeth because that allowed me to have a legitimate job to get me out here.
01:37:18.000 Like I'm not a trust fund kid.
01:37:20.000 How else would I be close to where I needed to be?
01:37:23.000 Where does your family live?
01:37:24.000 There in Seattle.
01:37:25.000 Oh, so they're still up there.
01:37:25.000 They're still there, yeah.
01:37:27.000 So I would have some practicality.
01:37:29.000 I'd be like, I'll pay for your college, get a legitimate degree where there's an actual job outlook at the end.
01:37:35.000 Like, I'm not paying you to find yourself.
01:37:37.000 When did you quit the job?
01:37:39.000 Like 2010?
01:37:41.000 2010, 2009. So right when you came to the store?
01:37:43.000 Right around.
01:37:44.000 So some things happened.
01:37:45.000 I was working at Boeing for three and a half years.
01:37:48.000 And I would just work by day and I would drive up to Hollywood in the valley by night.
01:37:54.000 I was burning the candle at both ends.
01:37:55.000 You must have been tired all the time.
01:37:57.000 I was.
01:37:57.000 Especially at first because I didn't know the lay of the comedy land.
01:38:00.000 I thought everything was worth my time.
01:38:02.000 Or you don't know until you do it. 0.91
01:38:04.000 So I would do some shitty open mic.
01:38:06.000 Did you do any backyard shows? 0.79
01:38:09.000 That wasn't a thing.
01:38:10.000 Really?
01:38:11.000 That wasn't a thing yet.
01:38:12.000 As of late, you know what's so funny is like the progression of the alt scene is that first it was in weird spots like a washing or like a laundromat and then it was like a meltdown and then living rooms were a big thing.
01:38:24.000 Living room shows and then backyards were hot.
01:38:26.000 That's why I remember living room shows.
01:38:28.000 Oh yeah.
01:38:29.000 I want to do a sketch where it's like the hottest alt show.
01:38:32.000 It's called Crawl Space.
01:38:33.000 And everyone's just on their belly. 0.73
01:38:35.000 You do really funny one-on-one sketches that you do.
01:38:39.000 Like, you play more than one role.
01:38:40.000 Oh, thanks, man.
01:38:41.000 And you do them on your Instagram.
01:38:42.000 Are you just super bored during the day?
01:38:45.000 No.
01:38:46.000 I always wanted to ask you this.
01:38:47.000 Oh, why I do them and stuff?
01:38:48.000 Yeah.
01:38:48.000 Alright, so it's almost just some of the stuff I do is just a byproduct of, I don't know, being creatively backlogged.
01:38:56.000 So I love stand-up and I love sketch.
01:38:59.000 Those come to me naturally.
01:39:01.000 Sometimes people will be like, do you have a movie script?
01:39:03.000 Or like, you know, what's your sitcom?
01:39:06.000 And that's just more work.
01:39:07.000 There's a scaffolding there that if I was teamed up with someone who understands that world, maybe it'd be a little more easy.
01:39:12.000 But I don't want to bang my head against a wall to understand a format where stand-up and sketch just come to me.
01:39:18.000 So that's why I lean into that.
01:39:20.000 So stand-up has been a thing I've been doing for 17 years.
01:39:23.000 I feel like I'm good at that.
01:39:25.000 Sketch...
01:39:26.000 I started doing, I did it, I grew up through it.
01:39:31.000 I would do funny videos in school, like video productions.
01:39:34.000 Back in the day when you had two VCRs.
01:39:36.000 This is before Avid.
01:39:38.000 So you'd jog shuttle, you'd have two tapes, your mix down tape and your raw tape.
01:39:42.000 So you would actually make sketches on a VHS cassette.
01:39:45.000 So I was always into that because I loved SNL. And then you stop doing it.
01:39:51.000 I'm doing stand-up and then I moved to LA and I'm not getting on stage that much because it's so saturated here.
01:39:56.000 It's the biggest market here in New York.
01:40:00.000 Although I think it's easier to get on stage as a stand-up in New York.
01:40:03.000 Here you have to deal with actors and there's a real bottleneck.
01:40:06.000 So I wasn't getting up a lot.
01:40:08.000 But I'm a creative guy.
01:40:09.000 I have all these ideas and I had this idea for this video on how to attend an Afghan wedding or whatever.
01:40:17.000 And I was trying to get people to help me out and shoot it. 0.91
01:40:21.000 And then you're a runt. 1.00
01:40:22.000 No one really gives a fuck. 0.99
01:40:23.000 If you can't do anything for anybody when you first come out here, it's just sort of like... 0.97
01:40:26.000 And not in a mean way, it's just the nature of the wilderness, right?
01:40:30.000 Like, why am I gonna...
01:40:31.000 You're not a proven thing.
01:40:32.000 There's really no upside.
01:40:33.000 So you get a lot of like, yeah, I'll help you.
01:40:34.000 And then flake.
01:40:36.000 So I rewrote it to just do it all in my apartment.
01:40:38.000 So I just filmed this video, this YouTube video.
01:40:41.000 It wasn't even on YouTube yet, though.
01:40:42.000 It was...
01:40:43.000 I did this video called How to Attend an Afghan Wedding or something.
01:40:45.000 It was just called Afghan Wedding.
01:40:47.000 I put it on MySpace.
01:40:48.000 And it kind of does well.
01:40:49.000 It kind of takes off a little bit.
01:40:51.000 And then my brother was like, oh, you should put it on YouTube.
01:40:53.000 Like, it wasn't ubiquitous to put stuff on YouTube yet.
01:40:55.000 I was like...
01:40:56.000 Oh yeah, okay, I'll put it on YouTube too.
01:40:58.000 Put it on YouTube.
01:40:59.000 It kind of makes the rounds on there too.
01:41:01.000 And that was just kind of like the nudge I needed.
01:41:03.000 Like, oh, I'm good.
01:41:05.000 I could do this.
01:41:06.000 And I could do this while I'm waiting to get stage time.
01:41:10.000 So this was another avenue for me.
01:41:12.000 I do stand-up and then I do sketches.
01:41:14.000 And this was in the heyday of YouTube when there was an appetite for YouTube sketch.
01:41:18.000 Like indie YouTube sketch.
01:41:20.000 Just funny guys and there's different sketch groups and everything.
01:41:24.000 You don't think there's an appetite for that now?
01:41:26.000 Not anymore, no.
01:41:26.000 Why not?
01:41:27.000 It's become bite-sized.
01:41:28.000 No one wants to watch sketch.
01:41:30.000 People want to watch makeup blogs.
01:41:32.000 They want to watch pranks.
01:41:33.000 But how do you know?
01:41:33.000 I know.
01:41:34.000 How do you know?
01:41:35.000 Because I've uploaded.
01:41:36.000 You see the downturn.
01:41:37.000 Right, but is it because...
01:41:39.000 Now it's Instagram.
01:41:40.000 Everything's more bite-sized.
01:41:41.000 Oh, okay.
01:41:41.000 So I'm a sketch guy.
01:41:43.000 I love fully formed sketch and really taking my time...
01:41:47.000 And me and my buddy Aristotle, he's a really talented filmmaker and director.
01:41:52.000 I think I just left Boeing.
01:41:53.000 And I had this idea for this American History X type sketch.
01:41:57.000 It's called Dominoes.
01:41:59.000 And he and I did it and we put it out there.
01:42:02.000 And it was beautiful.
01:42:04.000 It's just one of my favorite sketches we've done.
01:42:06.000 And so I just kept on doing sketch...
01:42:08.000 And there was an appetite for it.
01:42:10.000 And then it started to drop off.
01:42:12.000 Like, there wasn't a lot of viewership.
01:42:14.000 Now, YouTube sketch will only work if it was on TV the night before.
01:42:17.000 Like, if it's a Key& Peele sketch that made it, or like an Inside Amy, or like a Tonight Show sketch, or...
01:42:22.000 The only way it'll make the rounds is if the sketch was on TV, and then it has the potential to do well on the internet.
01:42:30.000 Just a born-and-bred sketch on the internet doesn't take off anymore.
01:42:33.000 Instagram does.
01:42:35.000 So I just have all these ideas and I always write them down on my phone and Instagram, those like little one-on-ones is a way to get those ideas out in a very not precious way.
01:42:45.000 And it's just idea driven and people respond to it, you know?
01:42:48.000 So it's just more of like, oh, let me get this idea out of my head.
01:42:51.000 So, when you write, do you sit down and force yourself in front of a notepad or a computer?
01:42:57.000 Back in the day, like when I was first doing stand-up, I had two methods.
01:43:01.000 I would have the jokes that would just come to me, and then I would like sit down and try to manufacture jokes.
01:43:07.000 You know, like, alright, alright brain, what's funny?
01:43:11.000 What's funny about the world?
01:43:12.000 And I would come up with some stuff, but I always found the things that always worked the best were the stuff that just like came out of the ether.
01:43:19.000 It just came to me.
01:43:21.000 And then eventually I got to the point where I would get enough of those ideas where I didn't have to sit down and write.
01:43:28.000 So all I had to do was just be good about capturing what I'm receiving.
01:43:32.000 So I have my phone with me all the time.
01:43:34.000 Back in the day I had a marble notebook and all that, but phones have advanced so much.
01:43:37.000 I have Evernote.
01:43:38.000 Me too.
01:43:39.000 Yeah.
01:43:39.000 So whenever I get an idea, regardless of what the proper medium for it is, I'll get an Instagram video idea.
01:43:44.000 I'll get a fully, fully formed sketch idea where I need production value, a sitcom idea, or a stand-up idea.
01:43:51.000 I have different notes for each of them.
01:43:53.000 And I've just trained myself.
01:43:54.000 My brain is wired a certain way where I just catch the butterflies or just put the bucket under the faucet.
01:44:00.000 So you don't sit down?
01:44:01.000 No.
01:44:01.000 I just...
01:44:02.000 I'll get the idea.
01:44:03.000 I'll jot down as many words as I need to capture it.
01:44:07.000 Maybe...
01:44:07.000 I don't know.
01:44:07.000 Say something happens.
01:44:08.000 We go to...
01:44:09.000 I don't know.
01:44:10.000 I don't know.
01:44:11.000 We go to the lake or something.
01:44:12.000 And then like...
01:44:12.000 Or we go hunting.
01:44:13.000 I get three ideas about hunting.
01:44:15.000 This many words to capture this thought.
01:44:17.000 This many words to capture it.
01:44:17.000 Like separated by commas.
01:44:19.000 So I have it.
01:44:20.000 Do you record your sets?
01:44:21.000 No.
01:44:21.000 Yeah, I'll record them.
01:44:23.000 Do you listen to the recordings?
01:44:24.000 I do.
01:44:24.000 Well, it depends.
01:44:25.000 If I'm doing a hot night at the store, that's kind of like the hits, and I'm not going to learn a lot from the hits.
01:44:31.000 Right.
01:44:32.000 When I want to work on stuff, I'll tell Adam at the store, when I call in my avails, I go up late on Tuesday or Wednesday, whichever one I get.
01:44:40.000 I specifically ask to go late so that there's hardly... 0.99
01:44:42.000 So you can fuck around. 0.99
01:44:43.000 Yeah, there's no pressure. 1.00
01:44:44.000 There's like 10 people trying to sober up.
01:44:46.000 Yeah.
01:44:47.000 I'm on my phone, and it's not like this...
01:44:50.000 Because when it's a packed OR, it's kind of like a, what do you got?
01:44:54.000 Right.
01:44:54.000 Like, I paid this much money, I got a hot date with me, blah, blah, blah.
01:44:57.000 It's a different show.
01:44:58.000 Joey Diaz started getting angry about it.
01:45:01.000 About what?
01:45:01.000 About, you can't practice.
01:45:03.000 Oh, well, you can.
01:45:04.000 You just have to choose different time slots or choose different shows to do it on.
01:45:08.000 There's new material nights.
01:45:10.000 I love those.
01:45:10.000 Like, Neil Brennan has one at Westside.
01:45:12.000 That's one of my favorite shows to do.
01:45:14.000 JF Harris has one.
01:45:15.000 So you have those new material shows.
01:45:17.000 But I'll just...
01:45:18.000 If you choose to do a later time slot, it might be different for you because you're such a draw.
01:45:22.000 But I'm nobody.
01:45:23.000 I'm a cusper right now, so I can just do late night.
01:45:27.000 But I just think you just sandwich those new bits in between old bits.
01:45:30.000 You can, but if you just want the total mental freedom of just throw spaghetti against the wall, and in a professional way, because if I'm doing a hot show and I'm trying to do a sandwich, it can still put the brakes a little bit.
01:45:44.000 Oh, yeah.
01:45:44.000 And I don't need that.
01:45:46.000 I'm not Joe Rogan yet.
01:45:47.000 Yeah, but that's where it's at.
01:45:50.000 That's where you find the way out of it.
01:45:52.000 When it hits the brakes, you panic, and then you find a way out.
01:45:56.000 And sometimes that's where you find a punchline.
01:45:58.000 Sometimes not.
01:46:00.000 You have to deal with the 5 out of 10. 5 out of 10 are going to eat shit. 1.00
01:46:04.000 5 out of 10 are going to make it through. 1.00
01:46:05.000 It's almost like being a baseball manager.
01:46:06.000 I have my A string, my B string.
01:46:09.000 So if I'm doing a hot show and I want to work on a B, so there's different levels of bits that I can polish.
01:46:15.000 I'm not going to throw a D in there.
01:46:17.000 It's prime time, baby.
01:46:19.000 Yeah, right.
01:46:20.000 D is for 1 a.m.
01:46:20.000 D is for 1.40 a.m.
01:46:23.000 D's got no pressure.
01:46:24.000 D's got a lot of potential.
01:46:25.000 Do you do Jeremiah's show?
01:46:26.000 I love that show, yeah.
01:46:27.000 I'm doing that tonight.
01:46:28.000 Dude, that's the best.
01:46:29.000 I love shows where the audience knows the expectation.
01:46:32.000 It's like you're a fly on the wall in the process.
01:46:35.000 Yeah, and there's no pre-recorded or pre-planned material.
01:46:39.000 There's so much goodwill.
01:46:40.000 Yeah.
01:46:41.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:46:42.000 Because you don't get that when it's just like a show show.
01:46:44.000 I've come up with four or five legitimate bits that have wound up on specials because of Jeremiah's show.
01:46:50.000 Yeah.
01:46:51.000 It's almost like a stand-up float tank.
01:46:54.000 Yeah.
01:46:54.000 It's a great little workshop.
01:46:56.000 Alright, what's this idea?
01:46:56.000 What's that?
01:46:57.000 And it's also because everybody knows that you're doing that, so it's kind of more fun.
01:47:00.000 And also, if you hit a dead end, that's funny.
01:47:03.000 Right.
01:47:03.000 Because they know the theme of the show.
01:47:07.000 Yeah.
01:47:07.000 I just wish he would do it more often.
01:47:08.000 He's only doing it like once a month.
01:47:10.000 Do it once a week, man.
01:47:11.000 I don't know.
01:47:11.000 Maybe they know what their sweet spot is.
01:47:14.000 I don't think they do.
01:47:15.000 I think the sweet spot's once a week.
01:47:17.000 Yeah, yeah.
01:47:18.000 I think it's totally possible to do that show once a week.
01:47:20.000 Yeah.
01:47:21.000 Yeah, I love those shows.
01:47:22.000 When was the first time your parents saw you on stage?
01:47:26.000 Oh, you know what?
01:47:27.000 This is so funny.
01:47:27.000 This is kind of...
01:47:28.000 So this is like the last bit on my special.
01:47:30.000 I talk about it like they've seen you once.
01:47:32.000 Once ever?
01:47:33.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:47:34.000 Really?
01:47:34.000 Yeah.
01:47:35.000 Did you bomb?
01:47:35.000 Oh, yeah.
01:47:36.000 Oh! 0.60
01:47:37.000 Oh, in the biggest way.
01:47:38.000 Oh! 0.60
01:47:39.000 Oh, my God.
01:47:40.000 Oh! 0.60
01:47:41.000 Yeah.
01:47:41.000 I mean, do you want to hear the story?
01:47:43.000 Fuck yeah, I do. 1.00
01:47:44.000 Okay. 1.00
01:47:45.000 So this is just a rehash of like the last thing.
01:47:47.000 So the last thing I said, I closed my special with this.
01:47:50.000 So I'm like 17. I'm like 17 or 18. I'm at college.
01:47:54.000 There's a bulletin board and it says like Apollo amateur night on tour.
01:48:00.000 Right.
01:48:01.000 So there's a flyer like the Apollo is going on tour and you can audition.
01:48:06.000 The Apollo Theater in Harlem?
01:48:07.000 Yeah, the Apollo Theater.
01:48:08.000 Yeah, yeah.
01:48:08.000 So they're going to all these major cities, right?
01:48:11.000 So, I'm like, interesting.
01:48:13.000 Especially, I'm just getting maybe a year in or a few months into stand-up.
01:48:17.000 I'm like, this is going to be a great opportunity.
01:48:18.000 Isn't it funny, the level of delusion you have as a young comic?
01:48:22.000 Yeah.
01:48:23.000 Yeah.
01:48:23.000 Where you're like, I'm ready.
01:48:24.000 Yeah.
01:48:25.000 They got to hear what I got to say.
01:48:27.000 I've been doing this for a few months.
01:48:29.000 So, I take the, you know, take the little tab.
01:48:33.000 I have it.
01:48:35.000 I get all the info.
01:48:36.000 I go there.
01:48:36.000 It's in Seattle.
01:48:37.000 So I go there to audition.
01:48:39.000 I forget where they're holding the audition.
01:48:41.000 It's this, like, theater or whatever.
01:48:42.000 So I'm sitting.
01:48:43.000 There's 342 people just, like, wait.
01:48:45.000 It's like American Idol, pretty much.
01:48:48.000 And there's, like, a bunch of, like, older black ladies singing I Believe I Can Fly Under Their Breath. 1.00
01:48:53.000 Like, just because they're mostly singers.
01:48:56.000 So you just hear, like...
01:49:01.000 And I'm just standing there, like, waiting to do my jokes later.
01:49:04.000 Oh my god.
01:49:04.000 And everyone's like, do-re-ming.
01:49:06.000 So finally, it's my time to go.
01:49:08.000 So I go out there.
01:49:09.000 I do my stand-up set.
01:49:11.000 And it does well.
01:49:12.000 Like, it does genuinely well. 1.00
01:49:13.000 It wasn't like a, oh, fuck, let's feed them to the sharks. 0.99
01:49:17.000 Like, I did well. 1.00
01:49:18.000 Like, I made them laugh, you know?
01:49:20.000 So I find out I get selected.
01:49:21.000 I think I'm one of 11. One of 11 who gets selected.
01:49:24.000 So I'm like, sweet.
01:49:26.000 What?
01:49:27.000 And then I invite everyone. 0.98
01:49:28.000 I'm like, mom, dad, everyone from school and shit. 0.97
01:49:32.000 Oh yeah, everyone. 0.98
01:49:33.000 It's at the Paramount Theater in Seattle.
01:49:36.000 Have you been there?
01:49:37.000 Yeah.
01:49:37.000 What is that, 4,000?
01:49:38.000 It's a big place.
01:49:39.000 4,000, 5,000 people, something like that?
01:49:40.000 Something like that.
01:49:41.000 Maybe 3,000, whatever.
01:49:42.000 Big place.
01:49:42.000 It's in the thousands, people.
01:49:43.000 It's a big place.
01:49:44.000 Yeah, it's one of our nicest theaters.
01:49:45.000 Beautiful.
01:49:46.000 Yeah, so...
01:49:47.000 So I invite everyone.
01:49:52.000 It's packed.
01:49:53.000 Oh, it's packed.
01:49:54.000 Come on.
01:49:55.000 Oh, my God.
01:49:56.000 So I do the dress rehearsal.
01:49:59.000 I do the dress rehearsal.
01:50:00.000 I'll go through the motions.
01:50:01.000 A lady comes up to me. 1.00
01:50:03.000 She's like, oh, the producer of the show thinks you should do this bit before instead of your hip-hop stuff.
01:50:10.000 Do this bit first.
01:50:12.000 This bit where I was talking about being Afghan or something.
01:50:15.000 You know?
01:50:16.000 So...
01:50:17.000 I'm like, oh, okay.
01:50:17.000 Whatever.
01:50:17.000 Like, I'm so new.
01:50:18.000 I just trust the producer.
01:50:20.000 I'm like, I guess they know.
01:50:21.000 So I rearranged my set just based on the producer's request.
01:50:25.000 Comes the night of the show.
01:50:25.000 Everyone's there.
01:50:26.000 Blah, blah, blah.
01:50:27.000 It's my time to, like...
01:50:28.000 They introduce me.
01:50:29.000 Blah, blah, blah, blah.
01:50:30.000 You know?
01:50:30.000 Please welcome to He-Man where I come out.
01:50:32.000 I'm like, hey, guys.
01:50:33.000 Blah, blah, blah.
01:50:34.000 I'm like, man, my name is Fahim.
01:50:36.000 It's like an Afghan name, or like Middle Eastern and Afghan to be exact.
01:50:39.000 And he's like, boo, boo, boo.
01:50:41.000 I'm out there for maybe 20 seconds.
01:50:43.000 They just start booing you?
01:50:45.000 It's such an interesting sensation to be booed by that many people.
01:50:49.000 So just like it starts cascading like, boo, boo, boo, boo.
01:50:52.000 And I've seen Apollo.
01:50:53.000 I know how it works.
01:50:54.000 And you hear like the, boo, boo.
01:50:57.000 And I'm like, all right, I don't need to get swept off.
01:50:59.000 Like, I know how this works.
01:51:01.000 So I get booed off.
01:51:03.000 You get booed off just from talking about being Afghan?
01:51:05.000 Maybe.
01:51:05.000 I don't know.
01:51:06.000 Maybe it just really sucked.
01:51:07.000 Maybe it was because it was close to 9-11 and I talked about being Afghan. 0.88
01:51:11.000 Whatever.
01:51:11.000 I get booed, you know?
01:51:12.000 I mean, I'm sure it sucked. 0.97
01:51:13.000 Balls, too. 0.98
01:51:14.000 Whatever I was about to say was going to be so bad.
01:51:16.000 So I was going to get booed regardless.
01:51:18.000 But I lasted maybe 15 seconds, 15-20 seconds.
01:51:22.000 So I'm just shell-shocked.
01:51:23.000 And then I'm just chilling in the hallway.
01:51:25.000 There was a desk.
01:51:26.000 There was an old-school student desk where it's L-shaped and they have the basket.
01:51:30.000 It's just in the stairwell for some reason.
01:51:32.000 So I just sit.
01:51:33.000 I just sit in that chair.
01:51:36.000 I felt like I was in a video game or something.
01:51:38.000 Because that's not a human experience, really, that many people get to go through.
01:51:42.000 So I'm just trying to make sense of what happened, and the world, and my life moving forward.
01:51:48.000 It's a lot going on.
01:51:50.000 It's a lot going on, you know?
01:51:53.000 And then, you know, I get up, I gather myself, I go up the stairwell, I get my things from...
01:51:58.000 You know, I have to see everyone else in the green...
01:52:00.000 Ugh, the worst.
01:52:01.000 See everyone in the green room area. 1.00
01:52:04.000 Get my shit. 0.99
01:52:05.000 I get my car and I think I drive home. 0.99
01:52:08.000 My parents, they take a separate car, right?
01:52:09.000 And then I hear the rest of the story from my brother.
01:52:12.000 So they're all in the Dodge Caravan.
01:52:14.000 My cousin Nilo, my brother, my dad, my mom is just silent on the car ride home.
01:52:20.000 Like, no one's talking.
01:52:22.000 Because, I mean, you know, they saw what they saw.
01:52:24.000 So no one's saying anything.
01:52:26.000 And then, obviously, my dad was never thrilled about me doing standard to begin with, right?
01:52:29.000 So he breaks the silence.
01:52:31.000 He goes...
01:52:34.000 Well, there's no business like show business.
01:52:41.000 And in hindsight, I think that's why when I want them to come out, I want it to be such a polar opposite experience. 0.87
01:52:48.000 And obviously I've come a long way from then, but I'm almost grateful that it did happen because when comics trade bomb stories, I fucking win every time.
01:52:58.000 And for me to be so young, like 17, and come back from that...
01:53:02.000 That means there's really something, like a fire in me, or I was meant to do this, or I really love stand-up.
01:53:07.000 Because that's not a pleasurable experience, to potentially think that could happen again, you know?
01:53:12.000 Now, they've seen you on television?
01:53:14.000 Did they watch your special?
01:53:15.000 Yeah, they've seen me.
01:53:15.000 Did they think your special was good?
01:53:17.000 Yeah, I think so.
01:53:18.000 I never know.
01:53:18.000 My mom will tell me, but I never know what my dad catches.
01:53:22.000 When was the last time you worked in Seattle?
01:53:24.000 Did you do the parlor?
01:53:26.000 Is that open anymore?
01:53:27.000 Is that going under?
01:53:28.000 When did it go under?
01:53:29.000 A few months ago, I think. 0.99
01:53:30.000 Fucking A. So the pool hall part's gone too? 0.96
01:53:33.000 I think so. 1.00
01:53:33.000 Fuck! 1.00
01:53:34.000 Yeah. 1.00
01:53:34.000 You like to play there? 1.00
01:53:35.000 Yeah.
01:53:36.000 It was a great gig.
01:53:36.000 You play pool and do comedy at the same time for me.
01:53:40.000 That's your jam.
01:53:41.000 Oh my god.
01:53:41.000 It's like you designed the club.
01:53:43.000 Yeah, that's how I would design a club.
01:53:45.000 Yeah.
01:53:47.000 Yeah, so it's weird.
01:53:47.000 I mean, I could have them come out to another show.
01:53:49.000 What do they have there now?
01:53:50.000 What's the club?
01:53:51.000 I don't know.
01:53:52.000 I think it's mostly...
01:53:53.000 No, they have Giggles or whatever in the University District. 0.69
01:53:57.000 Or maybe it's called Laughs.
01:53:58.000 It's called Laughs.
01:53:59.000 It's where Giggles used to be. 1.00
01:54:00.000 So they only have, like, one comedy club in all of Seattle?
01:54:03.000 They have Tacoma.
01:54:03.000 They have Tacoma, you know?
01:54:05.000 That's crazy.
01:54:07.000 Spokane.
01:54:07.000 But these aren't Seattle.
01:54:09.000 Fuck, man. 1.00
01:54:09.000 Seattle used to be a scene. 1.00
01:54:11.000 Yeah. 1.00
01:54:12.000 That fucking parlor live was a great club. 1.00
01:54:14.000 How did it go under? 1.00
01:54:16.000 Yeah.
01:54:16.000 Probably Brian Callen.
01:54:17.000 You think?
01:54:18.000 Yeah.
01:54:19.000 No.
01:54:20.000 Just throw it. 0.99
01:54:21.000 I don't know why.
01:54:22.000 What if that became true?
01:54:23.000 It's like the man who broke the parlor. 1.00
01:54:25.000 You fucking ruined it, bro. 1.00
01:54:26.000 Yeah. 0.99
01:54:27.000 Yeah, so when your parents come to see you, will they come to see you in L.A.? I don't know.
01:54:31.000 I haven't.
01:54:32.000 You haven't decided when?
01:54:33.000 I've put on the back burner.
01:54:34.000 I mean, I guess if I do The Tonight Show.
01:54:36.000 I mean, I've done two late nights already.
01:54:37.000 Dude, it's almost 20 years later.
01:54:38.000 I know.
01:54:39.000 They've got to come see you live.
01:54:41.000 Oh, yeah, yeah.
01:54:42.000 What should I do?
01:54:42.000 I don't know.
01:54:43.000 Invite them to a show.
01:54:44.000 Yeah.
01:54:45.000 I don't know what show.
01:54:46.000 And then pretend they're at the first show and then bring them to the second show.
01:54:49.000 Yeah, just to mentally prepare.
01:54:50.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:54:52.000 You obviously have a little bit of a block if you're thinking about it.
01:54:56.000 Yeah.
01:54:56.000 Not a block, but it's a thing.
01:54:58.000 Oh, for sure.
01:54:59.000 Yeah. 1.00
01:54:59.000 I mean, they saw you eat shit. 1.00
01:55:00.000 Yeah, and especially when they were so anti that. 1.00
01:55:03.000 Yes.
01:55:04.000 And then...
01:55:04.000 But you were right and they were wrong.
01:55:05.000 This is how it works.
01:55:07.000 I mean, my parents never yelled at me. 0.81
01:55:10.000 That I can't do comedy or else wasted my life or that I'd be there with pimps and prostitutes.
01:55:15.000 I mean, I love my parents.
01:55:15.000 We have a great relationship.
01:55:16.000 This was just kind of like one thing that was incongruent in the relationship.
01:55:21.000 Almost no parents think their child is going to make it as a comedian.
01:55:25.000 It is the most...
01:55:26.000 It's the most impossible to imagine success business that you could ever think your kid's going to go into.
01:55:34.000 Like we were talking about stand-up, that none of this is written down.
01:55:38.000 We're talking about the principles of stand-up.
01:55:39.000 There's no course you can take.
01:55:40.000 It doesn't exist.
01:55:41.000 Any class is usually taken by someone who's not very successful at stand-up, for the most part.
01:55:46.000 I don't know of any successful...
01:55:48.000 Chris Rock's not out there teaching comedy classes.
01:55:51.000 It can give you the confidence to jump off the cliff.
01:55:53.000 Yes.
01:55:54.000 But outside of that, you're not going to learn.
01:55:56.000 But here's the thing.
01:55:58.000 All these principles that we're talking...
01:55:59.000 I mean, think about...
01:56:00.000 Look, comedy is obviously a viable art form...
01:56:05.000 In a large-scale venue.
01:56:07.000 I mean, I just got done doing two arenas this weekend, right?
01:56:10.000 So we're talking about something that is right up there with music or even with sports.
01:56:16.000 I mean, it's large-scale, enormous people, yet there's no real, like, pathway that's written down There's no real principles of it that are universally assumed by all people who participate in the art form.
01:56:33.000 Whereas if you learn music, you learn chords and chord progression.
01:56:38.000 You learn how to use your diaphragm.
01:56:40.000 You learn how to sing and learn how to play instruments.
01:56:42.000 You learn how to make a chorus.
01:56:45.000 There's none of that for us.
01:56:47.000 I think it was just such a foreign... 1.00
01:56:48.000 I can understand where they're coming from because it's such a foreign concept.
01:56:51.000 If you get an engineering degree or you're a doctor, you do A, B, you get C. There's a blueprint for it.
01:56:56.000 Stand-up is just so nebulous or just like the arts in general.
01:56:59.000 It's just sort of like you can't tell someone what...
01:57:01.000 Like your path to success is going to be different than Ian's path to mine.
01:57:04.000 Sure.
01:57:05.000 And you kind of learn that as a comic as well early on because I think there's a little bit of imposter syndrome.
01:57:10.000 Like if somebody else gets something, you feel like it's an attack on you.
01:57:13.000 But you do it long enough, you realize like...
01:57:15.000 Oh, everyone's journey is so different.
01:57:17.000 Not in a hippy-dippy way, but your relationships are different than mine, so everyone hits at different times, and it's not right or wrong, it's just life and nature, you know?
01:57:28.000 Yeah, you're different than everybody else.
01:57:30.000 You just got to concentrate on doing your best and figure out what you can learn from other people's success and failures, but don't think of it as your own success or failure.
01:57:38.000 Yeah, and eyes on your own paper.
01:57:40.000 Yeah, I wouldn't want my kids to do comedy.
01:57:42.000 If my kids...
01:57:43.000 It would be hilariously hypocritical if one of my kids was like, I want to be a comedian. 1.00
01:57:47.000 I'm like, listen, you're not going to be a fucking comedian. 1.00
01:57:50.000 Stop. 0.99
01:57:50.000 Yeah, I think where I differ with me and my parents is if they want to do something in the arts, I'd be like, have at it. 0.99
01:57:55.000 Like, I support you.
01:57:56.000 I want it to work out.
01:57:57.000 But kind of have a foundation.
01:57:59.000 Work on that.
01:58:00.000 I don't want to send you to do communications for four years.
01:58:03.000 Yeah, but there's no school for it.
01:58:05.000 Yeah.
01:58:05.000 Stand-up school.
01:58:06.000 Here's a school. 1.00
01:58:07.000 Have a shitty childhood. 1.00
01:58:09.000 That's the best school. 1.00
01:58:10.000 But the thing is, I had a good child.
01:58:11.000 Yeah, I was well-adjusted.
01:58:13.000 Maybe that's why it hurts so much.
01:58:15.000 Maybe.
01:58:15.000 Like, I gave him everything.
01:58:16.000 Yes!
01:58:17.000 He still did it.
01:58:18.000 Yeah, that's funny. 0.95
01:58:19.000 You might be one of the rare guys that didn't have a shitty childhood.
01:58:20.000 No, I think there's a new breed where there's people... 1.00
01:58:23.000 Obviously, there is that...
01:58:25.000 There are two more.
01:58:25.000 What?
01:58:26.000 Just well-adjusted?
01:58:27.000 Yeah.
01:58:28.000 I don't know.
01:58:28.000 Is Pete Holmes a level-headed guy?
01:58:30.000 Please.
01:58:30.000 Do you know him well?
01:58:33.000 I don't know. 1.00
01:58:33.000 The fuck out of here. 1.00
01:58:34.000 Everyone is fucked up to some degree. 1.00
01:58:37.000 Yes. 1.00
01:58:39.000 That's why they're comics.
01:58:41.000 Sure.
01:58:42.000 But no matter who... 1.00
01:58:43.000 Anybody you pluck off of Earth is fucked up. 1.00
01:58:47.000 So this is a universal truth. 1.00
01:58:49.000 But usually some kind of fucked up childhood is a prerequisite. 0.98
01:58:53.000 It helps. 0.98
01:58:54.000 It's like the whole...
01:58:55.000 It's fuel.
01:58:56.000 It's fuel.
01:58:57.000 It's like there's fighters that come from good childhoods too.
01:59:00.000 You know I would have this, it's a dumb thought, but I would have it as a kid trying to do stand-up and not have to face this wall of, I don't know, you know, my parents not wanting me to do it.
01:59:11.000 I'm like, oh man, I kind of wish I had like a worse childhood or like not middle class because then it wouldn't be questioned.
01:59:19.000 It would just be like, yeah, of course, what else are you going to do?
01:59:21.000 Well, I was really healthy when I was young because I was a martial artist.
01:59:25.000 I was competing all the time and I always worked out.
01:59:27.000 And I always thought, man, if I was a drug addict, I'd probably be funnier.
01:59:30.000 I really used to think that way.
01:59:31.000 Because, like, the guys who did drugs, like Kinison and Pryor, they had drug problems.
01:59:36.000 They were so funny.
01:59:37.000 I feel like, I mean, you've been doing it for a long time, so maybe you have a better perspective on this.
01:59:41.000 I think like back in the day with the doing drugs and all that, part of that, did that help?
01:59:46.000 Like was it image, like how, in terms of just seeing the comedy for what it is, was it part, it being new, rock star stuff, drugs, so you didn't have to be as tight as say like nowadays because there's so many more comedians?
02:00:00.000 No.
02:00:00.000 Or was it still airtight?
02:00:02.000 There's wildness to it.
02:00:03.000 There's wildness to it.
02:00:05.000 I think the funniest guy of all time is Joey Diaz.
02:00:07.000 And one of the reasons why he's the funniest guy of all time is the wildness.
02:00:12.000 He's truly wild.
02:00:15.000 You know what's great is watching him in the OR, especially in 2019?
02:00:19.000 Yes.
02:00:22.000 The climate we're in? 0.99
02:00:23.000 Yeah, he don't give a fuck. 0.99
02:00:25.000 You can't tell. 0.99
02:00:25.000 He doesn't know. 0.99
02:00:27.000 It's like he came out of a time machine.
02:00:28.000 He's like Encino Man.
02:00:29.000 I know.
02:00:30.000 They just thawed him out and they just threw him onto the OR. And people, they're horrified and so happy at the same time.
02:00:36.000 Yes.
02:00:37.000 I think even the wokest people, when they're watching Joey, and there's just this energy, and people are laughing so hard, your altruism can't break through that.
02:00:46.000 You can't deny what's happening right now.
02:00:48.000 So it kind of makes you, I guess, reassess what you're supposed to do.
02:00:52.000 Like, I shouldn't be laughing at this.
02:00:55.000 It's a weird time for comedy, but in that weird time, you're going to get some of the best stuff because it's supercharged.
02:01:04.000 When it does get through, if you can cover all the bases and make your argument soundly and logically and also have it be funny...
02:01:15.000 I'll see Burr do that all the time, too.
02:01:17.000 And, like, Joey's just such a force of nature.
02:01:19.000 Yeah.
02:01:20.000 You don't have time to, like, think about is this woke or is this knee-jerk?
02:01:24.000 You're just rolling.
02:01:25.000 Burr will kind of just, like, throw out this crazy premise that no sane person would be on board with.
02:01:33.000 Like, especially guys on dates.
02:01:35.000 Like, you just hear some of these arguments or whatever.
02:01:38.000 Yeah.
02:01:38.000 He'll just throw it out there.
02:01:39.000 And he won't steamroll over it.
02:01:41.000 He'll just let it simmer.
02:01:42.000 And that's my favorite.
02:01:44.000 Because he's methodically, surgically taking his time to proving the point of this argument.
02:01:50.000 Well, a lot of these arguments, I would suspect that he's having at home with his wife.
02:01:54.000 His wife's a very powerful woman. 0.99
02:01:56.000 And she's a feminist. 1.00
02:01:57.000 I mean, what a cool woman, too. 1.00
02:01:59.000 You know what I mean?
02:02:01.000 So he has to formulate really well thought out arguments, I would imagine.
02:02:07.000 I mean, maybe he would...
02:02:08.000 But, you know, he's obviously thinking these through.
02:02:12.000 Like, this is not, he's not flippant about these points of view, these perspectives.
02:02:18.000 Yeah.
02:02:18.000 Yeah, so I just love how he just throws a piece of baloney on the kitchen.
02:02:22.000 But when he nails it, man, it's like so much more satisfying even in the past.
02:02:28.000 Because it's like, you're making your way through the rockiest stretch of the river.
02:02:34.000 And I think those are the most rewarding bits as comedians the longer you've been doing it.
02:02:38.000 I could be silly and get a joke and sure that's fun, but it's not that rewarding as if you have an argument like Burr or something where it's just countered culture and you can methodically, it's like going through the laser field.
02:02:54.000 That's way more rewarding than just walking down the hallway. 0.97
02:02:57.000 Right, like Mission Impossible when all those lasers are protecting the diamond, you know, like fucking limbo through these things. 0.70
02:03:04.000 Yeah, what kind of movie is that? 0.89
02:03:04.000 It just walks up and has an apple and goes... 0.89
02:03:06.000 Right, exactly.
02:03:07.000 In the credits.
02:03:08.000 Exactly.
02:03:08.000 Yeah, it's an interesting time to get these ideas out there, but...
02:03:13.000 But you see by the reaction at the Comedy Store that people are looking forward to it because I think they feel the same way.
02:03:20.000 Like, goddammit, everything's going so far. 0.86
02:03:22.000 And so many people are so goddamn sensitive about so many different things. 0.95
02:03:25.000 It's not about intent. 0.95
02:03:26.000 They're just looking at magic words and buzzwords and topics that are off limits.
02:03:32.000 There's no such thing as context anymore or intention.
02:03:35.000 And you get that at the Comedy Store.
02:03:36.000 And I think it's the last place people are talking this freely.
02:03:40.000 Because I used to think, all right, we've been in a bit of a resurgence with stand-up and all the specials and all that.
02:03:46.000 I'm like, when's it going to burst?
02:03:47.000 I'm like, oh, cool.
02:03:47.000 I'm going to get to miss two comedy bubbles.
02:03:50.000 Sweet.
02:03:51.000 I don't think so.
02:03:52.000 Yeah, but then it's proven wrong.
02:03:54.000 It's getting bigger and bigger.
02:03:56.000 Yeah.
02:03:56.000 It's good.
02:03:57.000 That's why. 0.98
02:03:58.000 It was a bubble when it sucked. 0.81
02:03:59.000 Let me tell you about the bubble of the 1980s.
02:04:01.000 There was a bunch of people that had a kind of way of talking about things.
02:04:05.000 So I got a cat in my room and the mouse was like Wild Kingdom in my house.
02:04:11.000 It was a way of talking.
02:04:13.000 There was a comedy way of talking that these guys did.
02:04:17.000 There were some guys that just were not insightful and they just did comedy.
02:04:24.000 In a way that they had heard people do comedy.
02:04:27.000 So they kind of just like mimic the sounds.
02:04:30.000 It's like, you ever heard a band that sounds exactly like maybe Stone Temple Pilots or something like that, but they're not really?
02:04:36.000 Like, they're close, but like, what's so weird?
02:04:39.000 They sound so much like Stone Temple Pilots.
02:04:41.000 I don't know if you remember Gorilla Black?
02:04:43.000 No, what's that?
02:04:44.000 He sounded exactly like Notorious B.I.G. No way.
02:04:46.000 Oh, yeah. 1.00
02:04:47.000 Who the fuck is that? 1.00
02:04:48.000 Gorilla Black, yeah. 1.00
02:04:50.000 Really?
02:04:50.000 Like, when I heard it, I'm like, are we doing this?
02:04:53.000 This is so crazy.
02:04:54.000 Oh, yeah.
02:04:55.000 It was insane.
02:04:57.000 Yeah, I watched a comic one night in 1993 or something like that on stage in Montreal at Just for Laughs.
02:05:08.000 And he was basically doing a Richard Pryor impression. 0.96
02:05:11.000 And I was like, what in the fuck am I seeing? 0.95
02:05:15.000 It's like this guy was doing prior. 0.99
02:05:17.000 I mean, everything about his set, he was doing prior.
02:05:20.000 I'm like, this is so strange to see that people do that.
02:05:24.000 Well, that was a part of the bubble.
02:05:27.000 In the bubble, there was these guys who would wear the clothes they thought a comedian would wear and say the things.
02:05:33.000 And there was so much work, and there were so many clubs, and there were so many evening at the improvs, and all these different little...
02:05:41.000 So anyone can get a piece.
02:05:42.000 Yeah, people got a piece.
02:05:43.000 If you just mimic the part. 1.00
02:05:44.000 Dude, there was a lot of people back then that were arrogant, that were working, and they were headliners, and they were arrogant, and they were fucking terrible. 0.99
02:05:52.000 And I really enjoyed watching them fall off the face of the earth. 0.98
02:05:54.000 And I'll tell you some names afterwards, but the other names I was going to tell you.
02:05:58.000 But these people were doing comedy...
02:06:03.000 They weren't participating in an art form.
02:06:05.000 They were mimicking.
02:06:06.000 They were mimicking the people that were participating in the art form.
02:06:09.000 Like, love him or hate him, Jerry Seinfeld's an artist.
02:06:12.000 Oh, I love Seinfeld, yeah.
02:06:13.000 I do too.
02:06:14.000 But he's an artist.
02:06:15.000 His style, I've heard criticisms that he's not deep enough, he doesn't talk about sex or anything dangerous, whatever.
02:06:23.000 He likes what he likes.
02:06:24.000 He likes a certain style of comedy, and he's a master at that style.
02:06:29.000 But he spawned so many babies, what Patrice O'Neill would call babies.
02:06:34.000 Patrice O'Neill would say, like, hey man, you got a lot of babies out there. 0.53
02:06:39.000 There's a lot of people that are imitating you.
02:06:41.000 You got babies.
02:06:43.000 And there's a lot of, like, Dave Attell, a perfect example.
02:06:45.000 Got a shitload of babies.
02:06:48.000 Dane had a lot of babies, right?
02:06:50.000 Mitch Hedberg, I remember Mitch had a lot of babies.
02:06:52.000 Yes, he had a ton of babies.
02:06:54.000 There's a few people that mimic.
02:06:57.000 But during the 80s, there was a few innovative people and a lot of babies.
02:07:04.000 There was ten babies to every one innovator.
02:07:07.000 And you had these fake headliners.
02:07:09.000 And they would show up in town.
02:07:11.000 But they had those premises that everybody had.
02:07:14.000 They had those beats that everybody had.
02:07:16.000 They talked in the same way.
02:07:17.000 They didn't take any chances.
02:07:19.000 They were shooting straight down the middle.
02:07:21.000 And that was the bubble.
02:07:23.000 And that all went away.
02:07:24.000 That all went away.
02:07:25.000 And when that went away, those guys died off.
02:07:27.000 And there were people that were left over.
02:07:30.000 The people that were left over were the actual comics.
02:07:33.000 The actual people that were good enough where people would repeatedly go to see them at clubs.
02:07:38.000 They wrote a lot.
02:07:39.000 They practiced.
02:07:41.000 They were interested in the actual art form itself.
02:07:44.000 And I was really fortunate that I started out in Boston.
02:07:47.000 Where Boston had a very high standard, due to Barry Crimmins, really, in particular.
02:07:53.000 Oh, that documentary was great.
02:07:54.000 He was a brilliant guy.
02:07:56.000 Rest in peace, Barry.
02:07:58.000 I loved that guy.
02:07:59.000 But he was one of those guys, when he was nice to me as I got older, I was terrified of him.
02:08:08.000 Terrified of him. 0.96
02:08:09.000 Like, him seeing me when I sucked. 0.99
02:08:11.000 Oh, really? 0.99
02:08:11.000 Because I knew it was terrible. 0.99
02:08:13.000 Just because he meant so much to you?
02:08:13.000 Well, I knew what a high standard he had for comedy.
02:08:18.000 And he was one of the main reasons why there was no hacks that were tolerated in Boston.
02:08:23.000 And that everybody had to be original, everybody had to do good material, and everybody sort of policed each other.
02:08:30.000 You know?
02:08:30.000 And when...
02:08:33.000 When you have a community like that, you get to see the art form flourish in a very good way.
02:08:40.000 And we had a lot of different people.
02:08:42.000 They were different, but they were all really high level.
02:08:45.000 So we would get these guys that would come in from out of town, road guys, that were babies. 0.98
02:08:50.000 They were Seinfeld babies or different guys.
02:08:52.000 And you would see how...
02:08:54.000 How poor they looked when they were surrounded by these original murderers. 0.99
02:08:58.000 So you'd have guys like Steve Sweeney and Lenny Clark would go on stage and then one of these babies would go up after them and just eat plates of shit. 0.99
02:09:06.000 Why are they going after? 0.99
02:09:07.000 They had a terrible system in Boston that was really mean and it was designed to make national headliners bomb.
02:09:16.000 Really?
02:09:16.000 Yes, yes.
02:09:17.000 They would pay them a lot of money to book them at a club, and they would book them on a show with three local headliners.
02:09:24.000 Just killers. 0.99
02:09:24.000 And these local headliners would just fucking straight up murder. 0.99
02:09:27.000 And they would do all this local Boston stuff that made everybody excited. 0.94
02:09:31.000 And then they would have one of these guys who was used to going to Cleveland.
02:09:35.000 Hey, I was just in Indianapolis, had a great time, did a little comedy.
02:09:39.000 That's what I do.
02:09:40.000 I'm a comedian. 0.99
02:09:41.000 And they would go up there and just eat plates of shit and get booed off the stage and people would leave and they would do it on purpose. 0.99
02:09:50.000 Just to teach them a lesson or something? 1.00
02:09:51.000 No, they were just mean.
02:09:53.000 Like, those guys never, first of all, those comics never left Boston, okay? 0.96
02:09:58.000 And they would murder almost every night, and they were all animals. 1.00
02:10:02.000 They were doing coke, and they were drinking, they were fucking savages. 1.00
02:10:04.000 They'd pay them in coke. 1.00
02:10:06.000 Really? 0.99
02:10:06.000 Like, no bullshit. 0.99
02:10:07.000 Yeah, Nick's Comedy Stop used to pay people in coke. 0.99
02:10:10.000 Yes.
02:10:10.000 Didn't pay me and Coke.
02:10:11.000 I never did Coke.
02:10:12.000 But I knew the whole deal.
02:10:14.000 Everybody knew the deal.
02:10:15.000 And so when these guys would come in from out of town, they would be angry at these guys. 0.99
02:10:20.000 And they're like, who is this fucking guy? 0.99
02:10:21.000 He's got Evening at the Improv. 0.99
02:10:22.000 I don't have that show. 0.99
02:10:23.000 He's on a fucking movie with Billy Crystal. 1.00
02:10:26.000 Fuck him. 1.00
02:10:27.000 And they would go on in front of those guys and light them on fire. 1.00
02:10:30.000 Light them on fire. 0.93
02:10:32.000 So who's dictating this line at the club or the comics?
02:10:34.000 Club.
02:10:34.000 They're all on Coke.
02:10:35.000 Everyone's on Coke.
02:10:36.000 So is this fun for them? 1.00
02:10:38.000 Fuck them. 1.00
02:10:38.000 That was just fun. 1.00
02:10:38.000 Light him up! 1.00
02:10:39.000 And they would do it on purpose.
02:10:41.000 That's kind of cool.
02:10:42.000 But some guys would survive.
02:10:44.000 I saw Dom Herrera in that environment, but Dom murdered.
02:10:47.000 That was the thing.
02:10:49.000 Dom murdered.
02:10:49.000 So he would go there and he would talk about how strong the lineup was.
02:10:53.000 He's like, this is amazing.
02:10:54.000 This is great.
02:10:55.000 But he would go up and murder because he was a real comic.
02:10:58.000 So Dom was there pre-bubble, during the bubble, post-bubble.
02:11:03.000 He's a comic.
02:11:04.000 I mean, those are the best guys.
02:11:05.000 Yes.
02:11:05.000 Funny guys who take funny guys on the road with them.
02:11:07.000 Yes.
02:11:08.000 Because not everyone does that.
02:11:09.000 Yeah.
02:11:10.000 People panic.
02:11:11.000 Yeah.
02:11:12.000 Like the best comics are like, I want someone funny too.
02:11:15.000 Yes.
02:11:15.000 I want a great show.
02:11:17.000 You know, the reason why I take Ian or Santino or...
02:11:20.000 I always took Joey Diaz before he got too big.
02:11:23.000 Joey Diaz is selling out the Chicago Theater now. 1.00
02:11:25.000 He's fucking murdering it. 0.98
02:11:26.000 But all those guys, Ari and Duncan, I want to have fun. 0.99
02:11:31.000 I want to be with comics.
02:11:32.000 I want this show to be great.
02:11:34.000 I don't want to be the only one that's funny.
02:11:36.000 That's gross.
02:11:36.000 And I think it's a way to discover new comics as well.
02:11:40.000 I was opening for Neil for a bit for his tour for most of the dates and it was so fun for me because I'll headline and stuff but I'm not a draw yet, so I need to have a walk-up for whatever club I'm doing.
02:11:52.000 Comedy on State's great.
02:11:53.000 In Madison, Wisconsin, they have a walk-up.
02:11:55.000 They just have a trust with the community.
02:11:57.000 They all just come to shows.
02:11:58.000 Oh, really?
02:11:59.000 Yeah, it's great.
02:11:59.000 Or Comedy Works in Denver.
02:12:01.000 I've never done Comedy on State.
02:12:03.000 I heard it's great.
02:12:04.000 Yeah, it's really good.
02:12:04.000 There's a theater right next door.
02:12:06.000 You'd probably be doing that.
02:12:07.000 It's such a great comedy town.
02:12:08.000 I did the theater last time I was there.
02:12:10.000 There's actually a poster for that theater in the bathroom out here.
02:12:12.000 So it's fun to do that when they have a walk-up audience?
02:12:16.000 Like the Comedy Works, like you said.
02:12:17.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
02:12:17.000 Comedy Works in Denver, they have a reputation.
02:12:19.000 But if it's a Miranda club, I'm not a draw yet.
02:12:22.000 I'm in purgatory.
02:12:23.000 But the Neal thing was cool because they're all coming for Neal.
02:12:26.000 They're theaters.
02:12:27.000 I'm just doing 20 minutes, which is like, I can shit that out. 0.92
02:12:30.000 It's nothing, you know? 0.98
02:12:31.000 Right.
02:12:31.000 Because I'm like headlining.
02:12:32.000 So there's no pressure.
02:12:33.000 They're there for Neil.
02:12:34.000 I have a great set.
02:12:35.000 And they're like, yo, you were funny.
02:12:36.000 So you get like fans from his fans too.
02:12:38.000 It's the best.
02:12:39.000 And it's a great show as a whole.
02:12:41.000 Yeah.
02:12:42.000 We compliment each other.
02:12:43.000 Yeah.
02:12:44.000 And he gets to introduce people to a funny comic.
02:12:47.000 Yeah.
02:12:47.000 And I'm so grateful that he gets to do that.
02:12:48.000 Like pull a guy up and sort of take a little credit for like, I don't know.
02:12:53.000 Yeah, no, it's great.
02:12:54.000 That's where it's at, you know.
02:12:56.000 But I don't think this bubble's popping.
02:12:58.000 It's too fun.
02:12:59.000 It's too good.
02:13:00.000 I mean, there's too many good people.
02:13:02.000 As long as the art form is good.
02:13:03.000 The bubble only exists and pops when it's a fake thing, like it's a Ponzi scheme.
02:13:09.000 That's not really the case right now.
02:13:11.000 Yeah, there's so many good comedians right now.
02:13:13.000 And everybody's working hard.
02:13:14.000 Yeah.
02:13:14.000 You know, everybody realizes that there's a lot of pressure on you, so they're all like...
02:13:18.000 That's like you were saying, like, how many sets I do.
02:13:20.000 That's why I do so many sets.
02:13:22.000 That's the only way to do it.
02:13:23.000 I do two sets a night, three sets a night, all the time.
02:13:26.000 And there's so many outlets now too, which is kind of what's helping it not pop.
02:13:30.000 Yes.
02:13:31.000 You have Netflix, you have these new streaming like HBO Max and Amazon and Apple.
02:13:36.000 Gaffigan's on here in a couple days and he's got his Amazon special.
02:13:40.000 Yeah.
02:13:40.000 And so does Alonzo Bowden.
02:13:43.000 His Amazon special is coming out soon.
02:13:46.000 And then there's a bunch of other people that have Amazon specials.
02:13:49.000 I'm seeing people advertise them on their Instagram.
02:13:52.000 So Amazon is putting together a bunch of specials now.
02:13:56.000 It's very, very exciting because they have the Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, which is one of my favorite shows.
02:14:02.000 So I'm just psyched that there's a lot of new venues and then there's new streaming things.
02:14:07.000 Like, who knows?
02:14:08.000 Maybe Hulu will get into stand-up.
02:14:09.000 You know, maybe some of these other streaming services will get into stand-up.
02:14:12.000 It's great for everybody, man.
02:14:14.000 It really is.
02:14:15.000 There's plenty.
02:14:16.000 Or there's guys like Andrew Schultz.
02:14:18.000 He just went straight to YouTube.
02:14:20.000 That's exciting, dude.
02:14:21.000 As a performer and another comedian, and I think everyone has varying degrees of, I think, angst that he had coming up.
02:14:27.000 And I kind of felt that way as well.
02:14:29.000 Like, people have varying degrees of how much the industry fucks with you.
02:14:33.000 Sometimes I feel in, sometimes I don't feel in.
02:14:35.000 I do for certain things.
02:14:36.000 And that was just really refreshing, just to take the power back.
02:14:40.000 And even seeing it happen with...
02:14:41.000 I have so many peers in the game.
02:14:43.000 Like, I've known Theo forever.
02:14:44.000 We've been puttering around town and doing shows and just, you know, obscurity.
02:14:56.000 Mm-hmm.
02:14:59.000 Mm-hmm.
02:15:05.000 Well, in all fairness, Theo turned a corner like two years ago.
02:15:10.000 I remember watching him before, and I'm like, this guy's kind of funny, he's unique. 0.98
02:15:15.000 But then two years ago, me and Adam were in the back of the room like, this motherfucker's turned a corner. 0.99
02:15:20.000 He was just killing it. 0.99
02:15:21.000 He was just really funny.
02:15:23.000 But funny in a new way.
02:15:25.000 He had hit some new gear.
02:15:27.000 Some of the words he uses to describe it.
02:15:29.000 But he hit that gear and then everything took off from there.
02:15:33.000 A lot of it was just hard work.
02:15:35.000 Persistence, hard work, and just eventually it really clicked.
02:15:39.000 I think it was like a one-two punch.
02:15:40.000 I think it was turning that corner.
02:15:41.000 And then also just the word to the people.
02:15:45.000 Democratically just his podcast and reaching people.
02:15:47.000 And him doing other people's podcasts too.
02:15:49.000 For sure.
02:15:49.000 Because he's really good on podcasts.
02:15:51.000 He's just fucking silly and funny. 1.00
02:15:55.000 And then his own podcast where he just looks right at the camera and rants and talks about shit. 1.00
02:16:00.000 And you realize how his... 1.00
02:16:01.000 Fucking unusual brain works. 1.00
02:16:03.000 Isn't it funny sometimes you just want to figure out what this algorithm is or what he's doing? 1.00
02:16:07.000 And you go, no, that's just him.
02:16:09.000 You ain't figuring that out.
02:16:10.000 I can't.
02:16:11.000 Yeah.
02:16:11.000 No, you're never going to figure that out.
02:16:13.000 How would you think to call it that?
02:16:14.000 Never.
02:16:15.000 Yeah.
02:16:15.000 He's got Theo comedy.
02:16:17.000 For sure.
02:16:17.000 But it's like what we were talking about earlier, where no one can really teach you how to do comedy.
02:16:21.000 You've got to figure it out.
02:16:24.000 And no classically trained comedian, if there ever really was one, would ever teach you how to do theater.
02:16:30.000 It would be terrible, too.
02:16:31.000 A classically trained comedian?
02:16:32.000 It would be like those babies. 0.99
02:16:34.000 It would be like those guys that are fake Seinfelds or fake Gaffigans or whatever the fuck they are. 0.99
02:16:39.000 Yeah, the Schultz thing was really cool to see because he just did it on his own. 0.94
02:16:43.000 But here's the thing, and I wanted to bring this up with you, Jamie.
02:16:46.000 Is he shadowbanned on Instagram?
02:16:49.000 Tell me what you think is going on.
02:16:51.000 I texted him when that happened because I looked it up.
02:16:54.000 Yes.
02:16:55.000 His name showed up right at the top of my list.
02:16:58.000 But he said other people...
02:17:00.000 Me?
02:17:00.000 I wouldn't show up on mine.
02:17:02.000 Really?
02:17:02.000 Yes.
02:17:02.000 I think they changed the algorithm because I've noticed views...
02:17:05.000 Hold on.
02:17:06.000 It could be what?
02:17:07.000 It could be, but you'll have to take it like a case-by-case scenario.
02:17:11.000 Was the person that first sent it to him, are they already following him?
02:17:14.000 Do they search his name a lot?
02:17:15.000 Did they block anything he's ever done?
02:17:17.000 But people have told him, hey man, I'm having a hard time finding your Instagram page.
02:17:21.000 And so he asked me about it.
02:17:22.000 And I said, what do you mean?
02:17:23.000 And I go, I see you right now.
02:17:26.000 You're on my feed.
02:17:27.000 And he goes, no, no.
02:17:27.000 If you go to search me.
02:17:29.000 So I go, okay, let me search you.
02:17:30.000 I go, whoa.
02:17:32.000 I searched Andrew Schultz.
02:17:34.000 Nothing.
02:17:35.000 I mean, a bunch of other people, but not him.
02:17:37.000 And he's got a lot of followers.
02:17:39.000 Like, let's do it right now.
02:17:40.000 Put it up on screen.
02:17:42.000 Okay.
02:17:42.000 Put it up on the screen.
02:17:43.000 Let's just do it in real time.
02:17:45.000 This part of what I was saying is I follow him, so if you're not already following him, you might show up in a different way.
02:17:50.000 But I do follow him.
02:17:52.000 Look at this, Fahim.
02:17:52.000 Hi!
02:17:53.000 Now just write Andrew and give him some space.
02:17:57.000 Write space.
02:17:58.000 I haven't gotten to Andrew yet.
02:18:00.000 Space.
02:18:01.000 It should have shown up already.
02:18:03.000 Right, but just space and then type in his name.
02:18:07.000 See, it's not coming up.
02:18:08.000 Right, that's what I'm saying.
02:18:10.000 Now hit search.
02:18:12.000 I don't think you can't search on the web.
02:18:14.000 Oh, on the web.
02:18:15.000 But look, it's not showing up.
02:18:18.000 You see Andrew Schultz fans.
02:18:20.000 Even when I typed in his actual account name, it didn't show up.
02:18:23.000 Hold on a second.
02:18:24.000 What is that Andrew Schultz fans?
02:18:25.000 What is that?
02:18:26.000 Click on that.
02:18:27.000 Right there.
02:18:28.000 Below it.
02:18:28.000 Below it.
02:18:29.000 Below it.
02:18:29.000 Below it.
02:18:30.000 Keep going.
02:18:30.000 Keep going.
02:18:31.000 Are you blind?
02:18:31.000 There it is.
02:18:32.000 That's right.
02:18:32.000 Click on that.
02:18:33.000 I know, but it's not.
02:18:34.000 So it's his fans.
02:18:36.000 It's just a fan.
02:18:36.000 Oh, 165 followers.
02:18:38.000 Yes, I am.
02:18:38.000 That's crazy.
02:18:39.000 Right.
02:18:39.000 No, I know it's not him.
02:18:40.000 I'm just trying to figure out what it is.
02:18:42.000 So just in that search, it's not showing up.
02:18:46.000 And it wouldn't show up for me on my phone either.
02:18:48.000 Now, it doesn't make any sense, because what does he have, like a half a million followers?
02:18:51.000 How many followers does he have?
02:18:54.000 Isn't that interesting?
02:18:55.000 Yeah.
02:18:55.000 Like, he thinks he's being shadow banned.
02:18:58.000 What's the...
02:18:59.000 Are they trying to, like, get some money out of...
02:19:01.000 He's got 282,000.
02:19:03.000 282,000 people, and he can't find his page on Instagram.
02:19:08.000 Is it Schultz with a T, or no?
02:19:09.000 No.
02:19:10.000 No.
02:19:11.000 U-L-Z. But it's not showing up. 0.93
02:19:14.000 It's not showing up on mine either.
02:19:16.000 Now, we might be being paranoid here, and it might be just something in the search algorithm that for whatever reason his thing isn't showing up.
02:19:25.000 And he used to say Andrew Hesse Schultz.
02:19:28.000 I don't know why Hesse.
02:19:29.000 What does that mean?
02:19:30.000 Nickname of his, I don't know.
02:19:31.000 Okay.
02:19:32.000 And maybe he thought that Hezzy was fucking him up, so he took Hezzy out of his name on his Instagram page. 0.88
02:19:40.000 So it just says Andrew Schultz now. 0.51
02:19:42.000 But even though, still, you can't find it.
02:19:45.000 Yeah, that's weird.
02:19:46.000 You have to type in Andrew Schultz all together with no space, and then you'll find him.
02:19:52.000 That's what I just did and it didn't come up.
02:19:53.000 With no space?
02:19:54.000 Yeah, that's what I was just doing while you were asking me to type stuff.
02:19:57.000 Oh, so you did it with space and no space?
02:20:00.000 Yeah, that's when I did it to him.
02:20:01.000 I was like, if you're typing in no space, that's where the issue is.
02:20:04.000 If I type in all the way, it's showing up right away.
02:20:08.000 And he said, well, I'm seeing that from people both ways, so...
02:20:12.000 I go, well, if that's what you're seeing, then I'll go out on a limb and sort of say someone is manipulating that search result because you can manipulate search results.
02:20:19.000 Well, here's the thing.
02:20:21.000 They do shadow ban people on certain social media platforms.
02:20:26.000 This has been revealed through hidden camera conversations with people who are...
02:20:31.000 Whatever, moderators or engineers or people that work behind the scenes on Twitter or Facebook and they do manipulate algorithms, manipulate searches and shadow ban people.
02:20:43.000 And there's a lot of people, particularly conservative people, which he's not conservative.
02:20:47.000 But what he is is, you know, he's a raunchy comedian, and he might have done something that someone felt was not woke, or what have you, and they want to slow down the broadcasting of his signal.
02:21:00.000 That's entirely possible.
02:21:02.000 I don't know if it's true, though.
02:21:03.000 I would love to have a logical explanation that...
02:21:07.000 That's why he's not showing up.
02:21:09.000 Yes.
02:21:09.000 But he's, you know, he's complaining about it, that it's a shadow ban.
02:21:14.000 Anyway, go follow Andrew.
02:21:16.000 Andrew Schultz.
02:21:18.000 S-H-U-L-Z. S-H-U-L-Z. Go follow him. 1.00
02:21:24.000 Yeah, I saw him in Montreal. 1.00
02:21:25.000 Just to tell Instagram shadow bands we can get around you, bitch. 1.00
02:21:28.000 He's a marketing genius. 0.99
02:21:29.000 It's just great to hear him talk about what he's doing and how to get around it.
02:21:33.000 It's exciting because you forget as an artist that you have a lot of power.
02:21:37.000 You're everything.
02:21:39.000 You're the product and sometimes, especially in the old models, you just kind of Waited to be anointed.
02:21:44.000 Well, he's got millions and millions of views on his special on YouTube.
02:21:50.000 And if you stop and think about if that was on Comedy Central, which Comedy Central did want to give him a special, he probably would get like Maybe a million people would watch it when it came out and that would be the end of it.
02:22:02.000 I have a special and I don't think people are watching it.
02:22:04.000 Just YouTube is accessible.
02:22:07.000 You can be in comedy jail.
02:22:08.000 You can do a great special and no one can find it.
02:22:10.000 Right.
02:22:10.000 Yeah.
02:22:11.000 Yeah.
02:22:11.000 And everyone has YouTube.
02:22:12.000 Everyone can click on a link.
02:22:13.000 Everyone has YouTube.
02:22:14.000 Yeah.
02:22:14.000 And this was his logic.
02:22:15.000 He was like, you know what?
02:22:16.000 I'm just going to release the whole thing on YouTube.
02:22:18.000 And look, he went straight from not selling out clubs to selling out theaters like that.
02:22:25.000 And now he sells out everywhere internationally.
02:22:27.000 And it's fun from afar to watch the industry change.
02:22:32.000 Because I think early on, so much of your self-worth is put in these people, and you don't realize until later that, oh, they're just heat-seeking missiles.
02:22:43.000 The majority of them don't have taste.
02:22:46.000 It's just revenue.
02:22:48.000 Whatever's hot.
02:22:49.000 Can I get a pie of whatever this is?
02:22:50.000 Yeah, including hacks.
02:22:52.000 There's a long history of them supporting hacks and thieves.
02:22:55.000 It's just a thing where what they're trying to do is make money.
02:22:58.000 If you're an agent or a producer, there's no benefit in you supporting an artist that is not going to be commercially viable.
02:23:07.000 You have to find out, like, who's gonna pop?
02:23:10.000 Who's gonna be the next movie star?
02:23:12.000 Who's gonna be in the movies?
02:23:13.000 You know, you have to figure that person out.
02:23:15.000 What was it like when, you know, let me see, a thing went down?
02:23:18.000 What was the climate like for you, say, professionally after that went down?
02:23:23.000 Because he was at a different level at that time, right?
02:23:25.000 Yeah.
02:23:26.000 He was more popular than me with comedy, for sure.
02:23:29.000 You know, I was doing Fear Factor back then, and I wasn't really working on the road that much.
02:23:34.000 I really couldn't.
02:23:36.000 You know, I was doing...
02:23:38.000 You know, 30 episodes a year plus.
02:23:41.000 So 30 weeks a year of work.
02:23:43.000 And I wasn't really enthusiastic about traveling when I was doing that.
02:23:46.000 I just wanted to...
02:23:47.000 I was exhausted.
02:23:48.000 And then I was doing the store, too.
02:23:50.000 So I was mostly just working on my act and just doing stand-up.
02:23:53.000 And they supported him because he was the one who was making the money.
02:23:58.000 I mean, in fact, I left my agency because they wanted me to apologize to him.
02:24:02.000 And then Louie wound up leaving them, and Attell wound up leaving them, and Swartzen wound up leaving them.
02:24:06.000 Everybody left them right after that because they found out that they wanted me to apologize to them.
02:24:11.000 Everybody in the industry knew what was going on, but they wanted to turn a blind eye and make money.
02:24:18.000 So did it hurt my career?
02:24:20.000 Well, I stopped going to the store.
02:24:22.000 But that didn't hurt me as much as it hurt them.
02:24:24.000 It hurt the store because I told everybody.
02:24:27.000 And then that place was a ghost town.
02:24:29.000 I mean, it went from being packed when I was there because I would let them put my name up on the marquee and I was working for free. 1.00
02:24:35.000 That's how fucking stupid Tommy was. 1.00
02:24:37.000 That fucking dummy. 1.00
02:24:39.000 But then when he got fired and I came back, it made it all worth it. 1.00
02:24:44.000 The whole thing was...
02:24:46.000 It was interesting because it could show you that if there was someone who was...
02:24:52.000 Doing what Mencia was doing that you can get away with it and even with someone who was successful like me like I got another agent like that I mean but by let my agent literally said I was gonna have to apologize to him like you're out of your fucking mind I go listen I'm not only am I not doing this is we're never gonna work this out I'll never work with you again because you're asking me to apologize to someone who is literally a Vampire someone is stealing from the work of other artists.
02:25:18.000 It's all he does and And you guys know it.
02:25:21.000 And you guys are profiting off of this.
02:25:24.000 You're making a giant mistake.
02:25:26.000 And I turned out it was correct. 0.94
02:25:28.000 But it was interesting.
02:25:29.000 Because even though it didn't hurt me financially, I got to see that they were trying to.
02:25:34.000 Because, you know, he wanted an apology. 1.00
02:25:36.000 And I was like, you're out of your fucking mind. 1.00
02:25:38.000 I'm not apologizing to you. 1.00
02:25:39.000 And as he kept getting, people became more and more aware.
02:25:44.000 Other people started finding other bits.
02:25:46.000 The real thing that sunk him was Cosby.
02:25:50.000 It's really funny now when you think about it now, but he had this like such obvious theft of a Cosby bit.
02:25:55.000 I mean, he stole all the inflections and he switched it around a little bit, but people who work with him are trying to tell him to stop doing that bit because it was a giant famous Cosby bit.
02:26:07.000 And he just insisted that he was going to do it. 0.99
02:26:09.000 And when that bit got on YouTube, that and Mexican folks finding out he wasn't really Mexican, that was a fucking knife in the heart. 0.99
02:26:18.000 When they were like, what? 0.99
02:26:19.000 Like, what? 0.97
02:26:20.000 When they found out what his real name was, they're like, you got to be fucking kidding me. 0.81
02:26:24.000 There was so much going on then, though. 0.63
02:26:27.000 That was, you know, he was really popular. 0.93
02:26:31.000 He went from selling out these giant places And, you know, kicking ass all over the country.
02:26:36.000 And people knew him from the television show, and they thought he was hilarious.
02:26:40.000 I guess what's kind of cool about stand-up is that, of all the art forms, stand-up has the most justice in it.
02:26:46.000 Now it does.
02:26:47.000 Now it does, I guess.
02:26:47.000 But there's a lot of people who made it through the net back in the day that were just criminals.
02:26:52.000 I guess it was harder to know back then.
02:26:53.000 There was no internet.
02:26:54.000 It was just sort of like word of mouth or you would hear stories.
02:26:57.000 Look, we all know that there's parallel thinking and there's even cases where you forget you heard something.
02:27:02.000 I've done it.
02:27:03.000 I've definitely done it.
02:27:03.000 Usually we hash it out, like a comic or something.
02:27:05.000 We'll be like, okay, yeah, you can have it.
02:27:07.000 We're all pals and it's bound to happen.
02:27:09.000 It's going to happen.
02:27:10.000 And you just have the conversation.
02:27:11.000 If you're a pro, you're like, all right, I don't need that bit.
02:27:13.000 It's okay.
02:27:13.000 Yeah, exactly.
02:27:14.000 And then there's also people that are like, you said that word and that's the word that I say in my bit.
02:27:18.000 And you're like, what?
02:27:20.000 Some people are hypersensitive.
02:27:22.000 It's almost like...
02:27:22.000 Delusional.
02:27:23.000 Yes.
02:27:23.000 Some people get delusional.
02:27:24.000 I talk about being in a relationship, so...
02:27:27.000 Oh, yeah.
02:27:27.000 If you could stop doing that, I really appreciate it.
02:27:29.000 That's hilarious.
02:27:30.000 I broke up with my girlfriend recently, too, so...
02:27:31.000 Yeah.
02:27:32.000 I own that.
02:27:33.000 Well, especially things that are current events, right?
02:27:36.000 If they're like something like...
02:27:37.000 That's fair game.
02:27:37.000 I can't believe you're talking about Trump.
02:27:39.000 You know I do that whole Trump bit.
02:27:40.000 Yeah.
02:27:40.000 Like, what?
02:27:41.000 Are you crazy? 0.99
02:27:42.000 I've seen these conversations before. 0.98
02:27:43.000 I have a Fredo bit.
02:27:44.000 Yeah.
02:27:45.000 Ah, Fredo.
02:27:45.000 Can you please not...
02:27:48.000 That guy's never gonna live that down.
02:27:50.000 I'm telling you.
02:27:51.000 Yeah.
02:27:52.000 This is just brewing.
02:27:53.000 This is just starting.
02:27:54.000 He's never living that down.
02:27:55.000 That's one. 1.00
02:27:57.000 You know, I'll wreck your shit. 1.00
02:27:58.000 I'll wreck your shit. 1.00
02:27:58.000 I'm gonna throw you down a flyer stairs. 1.00
02:27:59.000 Yeah.
02:28:02.000 Was there stairs nearby?
02:28:03.000 Or would they have to go up them?
02:28:04.000 You'd have to go find some stairs.
02:28:06.000 You're not going to trip down?
02:28:08.000 That's a weird thing to say to someone.
02:28:10.000 I'm going to throw you down a flight of stairs.
02:28:11.000 It's like you want to hurt them, but you want the gravity to do all the work.
02:28:14.000 Yeah, that's true.
02:28:15.000 So it's not that tough.
02:28:15.000 It's lazy.
02:28:16.000 He has all that potential energy once he gets up there?
02:28:18.000 Yeah.
02:28:18.000 And you just knock him over?
02:28:19.000 Right.
02:28:20.000 That's funny.
02:28:20.000 You're looking at it like an engineer.
02:28:22.000 Yeah.
02:28:22.000 I've got to use it somehow.
02:28:24.000 My dad's so proud that I pulled that out of the bag.
02:28:26.000 Do you use your engineer training at all in your stand-up?
02:28:29.000 Is there anything that you say?
02:28:31.000 No, I think one quality I can take away from all the engineering schooling, like I'm not doing formulas and equations and all that, but I think it's just a manner of which I approach things and time management.
02:28:43.000 I'm wired a certain way where I can be studious on my own.
02:28:47.000 I don't, I'm not like smoking weed on the couch and like I'm a muse or I'm a vessel, Godspeed.
02:28:54.000 Okay, what do I want to do?
02:28:56.000 What are my goals for this year, let's say?
02:28:58.000 How many sets do I have?
02:28:59.000 What am I working on for this set?
02:29:00.000 So I'm just a little industrious.
02:29:03.000 It's taught me.
02:29:04.000 And also when it comes to bits, I see them in a certain way.
02:29:08.000 The way I get the bits is very organic, and that's what I like about it, is that it's not clinical or anything.
02:29:13.000 It's just magical, how I think of something.
02:29:16.000 And I'm grateful for that.
02:29:17.000 Do you give yourself time to think?
02:29:20.000 Do you specifically do things like go on walks or anything where you can think?
02:29:24.000 Not specifically, but what I found is one of my favorite things to do is to go to a diner, sit in a booth, have breakfast, have coffee, and then you keep on refilling it.
02:29:34.000 And I'm on my phone, and I'm on Twitter and Instagram, and my mind's just kind of...
02:29:38.000 And I'm listening to music.
02:29:39.000 I love music.
02:29:40.000 So I'm just scouring Spotify and Hype Machine just for new music.
02:29:44.000 Hype Machine.
02:29:45.000 I don't know what that is.
02:29:46.000 So that's how I find music, like Hype Machine and also Spotify.
02:29:49.000 Hype Machine is this blog aggregate.
02:29:52.000 So there's music blogs, right?
02:29:54.000 There's one called Acid Stag that I like a lot.
02:29:56.000 So you can follow a blog, and they'll post songs every day.
02:30:00.000 Maybe they'll post six songs a day.
02:30:02.000 This website, you can follow different blogs, and it's like following someone on Instagram or something.
02:30:07.000 So you look at your feed, and you get to hear all the songs your favorite blogs have posted within the website.
02:30:14.000 And there's an app on your phone, too.
02:30:16.000 And these are kind of underground songs.
02:30:18.000 These aren't top 40. So it's a way to hear great music that you wouldn't hear on the radio, and they're not any less great.
02:30:25.000 There's this whole subculture and genre of music that is magnificent, but it's not on top 40, so people don't really know about it.
02:30:31.000 So Hype Machine's a great way to get some cool tracks off the beaten path.
02:30:35.000 That's cool.
02:30:36.000 I've never heard of that before.
02:30:37.000 That's interesting.
02:30:38.000 So music plays a big part with my comedy.
02:30:41.000 Hype Machine.
02:30:42.000 What's popular now?
02:30:44.000 Paco Versailles.
02:30:45.000 This is like their top 40. So even this is a little poppy for me.
02:30:49.000 I'll have certain blogs.
02:30:51.000 That's Poppy? 1.00
02:30:51.000 I like finding... 1.00
02:30:52.000 Munya?
02:30:53.000 Dove?
02:30:53.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
02:30:54.000 That's Poppy? 1.00
02:30:54.000 I mean, for this type of music, yeah. 1.00
02:30:56.000 Whatever makes the popular list...
02:30:58.000 Durante?
02:30:59.000 Hold on, stop.
02:30:59.000 Yeah, you're not gonna know.
02:31:00.000 Scroll back up, please.
02:31:01.000 Durante Maya?
02:31:02.000 That's Poppy? 1.00
02:31:04.000 Who the fuck knows any of this music? 0.99
02:31:06.000 Oh, there's Childish Gambino. 1.00
02:31:07.000 I know who that guy is.
02:31:08.000 If you're like a teen or early 20s, you'll know this stuff.
02:31:12.000 Really?
02:31:12.000 Yeah.
02:31:13.000 So I just love listening to music, drinking coffee, and on my phone, and I'll just get these ideas.
02:31:18.000 But also just living life.
02:31:19.000 I'll be walking around, and I'll get an idea, jot it down.
02:31:22.000 Well, you don't have a day job, which helps.
02:31:24.000 No.
02:31:24.000 That really helps collect material, believe it or not.
02:31:27.000 I think comics have to be amused, and you have to be experiencing just life-life.
02:31:33.000 If you're working all the time...
02:31:34.000 It was harder when I was working at Boeing.
02:31:36.000 Because I had that mental fatigue of just working on parts and all that and computational stuff.
02:31:43.000 So I'm not thinking about bits when I'm calculating.
02:31:45.000 Sitcoms suck it out of you, too. 0.99
02:31:46.000 I can see that. 0.95
02:31:47.000 Because you think that, oh, it's just like, you know, I didn't really work on my act that much during the day anyway.
02:31:53.000 Now I have a job doing acting.
02:31:56.000 I'll probably get just as much material.
02:31:58.000 Uh-uh.
02:31:59.000 No.
02:31:59.000 No, you won't.
02:32:00.000 You're going to be wrapped up in whatever the fuck you're doing. 0.99
02:32:02.000 And then when you go to do stand-up, you'll be like, oh, yeah, time to do stand-up. 0.99
02:32:06.000 Now I'll think about it.
02:32:07.000 Yeah.
02:32:07.000 You really need that time to be just free to think.
02:32:10.000 Yeah.
02:32:11.000 It's kind of crucial to the creative process.
02:32:13.000 I didn't think about that, but that's true.
02:32:14.000 Because those other jobs, you have mental focus that you're not dedicating to writing bits.
02:32:20.000 Right, yeah.
02:32:20.000 Where I'm at a diner and my mind's just floating around.
02:32:23.000 It seems like you're not working.
02:32:25.000 Like someone on the outside would be like, you're not even working.
02:32:28.000 I might come up with a gem that might be my next closing bit.
02:32:32.000 Yeah.
02:32:32.000 That is working.
02:32:33.000 Just randomly.
02:32:34.000 Yeah.
02:32:34.000 Because you gave yourself that time.
02:32:36.000 Yeah, like you just are watering the grass and a mushroom pops up.
02:32:40.000 Even with me, I think there was a big breakthrough in just accepting that I'm an artist because, you know, my parents didn't want me to do it for so long and it was this dirty thing and it was always... 0.83
02:32:50.000 Pimps and prostitutes. 1.00
02:32:51.000 Yeah, pimps and prostitutes go to the club. 1.00
02:32:53.000 So stand-up and comedy was like a vampire feeding.
02:32:57.000 It was just this thing that I do over here and I want to do it, but it was always different than what I'm supposed to be doing.
02:33:04.000 It was always on the side.
02:33:05.000 It was like a hobby type.
02:33:06.000 There was a division within my mind.
02:33:08.000 But once I left Boeing and I was doing it full-time...
02:33:12.000 What was the impetus?
02:33:14.000 How did you make the decision?
02:33:16.000 Ideally, I always had this pie-in-the-sky scenario that would happen for me to leave Boeing.
02:33:21.000 I would think, all right, if I got to the point where I'm doing engineering and stand-up, I want to get to a point where it's glaringly obvious that engineering is holding me back from this other path, and I have to make the jump.
02:33:35.000 So I needed that to happen.
02:33:36.000 And then I think enough things happened where I kind of had that situation.
02:33:40.000 I booked this acting thing.
02:33:42.000 I booked a role on Chuck, NBC's Chuck.
02:33:44.000 I was still working at Boeing.
02:33:45.000 It was like this huge guest star.
02:33:46.000 I forgot about Chuck.
02:33:47.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
02:33:48.000 And I would do these things towards the end of my tenure at Boeing.
02:33:51.000 I had a manager and I would get auditions.
02:33:53.000 So I would duck out for lunch.
02:33:56.000 And I'm in Long Beach and I would drive up to Hollywood and do an audition.
02:33:59.000 Wow.
02:33:59.000 How long would he be gone for?
02:34:01.000 That one, I would do a combo.
02:34:03.000 I'd say lunch and doctor's appointment.
02:34:06.000 And then I would do, or I would take off.
02:34:09.000 I would come in early and leave early if I had an audition.
02:34:11.000 But I had to be very strategic about what audition.
02:34:13.000 I can't be.
02:34:15.000 So this one, I went out for Chuck, and then I auditioned, and then I got it.
02:34:19.000 It was this huge guest star.
02:34:20.000 And I'm still working at Boeing.
02:34:21.000 And they need me for eight days.
02:34:24.000 I have a day job.
02:34:26.000 So I said I had a family emergency in Seattle.
02:34:28.000 I have to go back home.
02:34:30.000 And they're like, oh, okay.
02:34:31.000 But I was just in Burbank shooting Chuck.
02:34:34.000 So I'm just shooting.
02:34:35.000 And then I go back to work.
02:34:37.000 And people see you on TV? No.
02:34:38.000 Luckily, there was enough of a lead time where that wasn't coming out for a long time.
02:34:43.000 So you quit?
02:34:44.000 No, not yet.
02:34:45.000 So I just thought like, okay, cool.
02:34:46.000 I still keep on being an engineer.
02:34:49.000 And then a couple things happened.
02:34:50.000 Did anybody notice you on Chuck at work?
02:34:53.000 But the thing is, that happened when I left Boeing.
02:34:56.000 So it aired after I had left.
02:34:58.000 Oh, how much lead time was there?
02:35:00.000 Quite a bit.
02:35:01.000 Maybe like six months.
02:35:02.000 It was towards the end.
02:35:04.000 And so no one knew I did stand-up.
02:35:06.000 And the beauty of it was when I entered the workforce of engineering, everyone was substantially older than me.
02:35:11.000 They were like in their 30s.
02:35:13.000 They don't know about Hype Machine.
02:35:15.000 Yeah, they don't know about Hype Machine.
02:35:16.000 So it wasn't second nature to be like, what's your MySpace?
02:35:19.000 Because Jig would have been up immediately.
02:35:21.000 So social media was not second nature with co-workers.
02:35:25.000 So there was a big enough generational gap.
02:35:27.000 So I was able for three years, just no one know anything.
02:35:30.000 So I do the Chuck thing.
02:35:32.000 And then I also, I got really far in stand up.
02:35:36.000 NBC has the Stand Up for Diversity initiative every year.
02:35:40.000 You do a stand up competition thing from different cities, and then they have a final showcase.
02:35:45.000 So I got like second on that.
02:35:48.000 So I got some college gigs out of it.
02:35:49.000 I got quite a few college gigs.
02:35:51.000 And then I booked this show on MTV called Disaster Date, which is like boiling points for dating.
02:35:58.000 They had a cast, and I was one of the cast members, and you would just go on dates.
02:36:01.000 Friends would set up their friends with dates, and they would be like, this is the things that she hates, and you would just be the worst date ever.
02:36:07.000 And you see how long they last on the date.
02:36:09.000 So they need me for eight months, or no, three months. 1.00
02:36:12.000 Fuck, what do I do? 1.00
02:36:13.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah, three months. 1.00
02:36:14.000 So this was kind of that situation where I'm like, fuck, all right. 0.99
02:36:18.000 I just did Chuck. 0.99
02:36:19.000 I have some college geeks lined up.
02:36:21.000 This MTV show needs me for three months.
02:36:23.000 I gotta do this.
02:36:26.000 Oh, I didn't do that yet.
02:36:27.000 I tried to take a leave of absence.
02:36:29.000 Because I planned on coming back.
02:36:30.000 I was like, can I, I need, something came up, can I be gone for three months?
02:36:34.000 And they're like, no, you can't do that.
02:36:36.000 And I'm like, Are you sure?
02:36:38.000 I just kept on trying to finesse it and they wouldn't let me.
02:36:41.000 And then I was reading about unemployment and stuff.
02:36:44.000 And I read that you couldn't quit.
02:36:46.000 You had to get fired.
02:36:47.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
02:36:48.000 So I'm like, all right, here's what I'm gonna do.
02:36:50.000 So on my last day there, I wrote an email just like, Hey guys, I'll be gone for three months.
02:36:56.000 I plan on returning on this day.
02:36:58.000 And then I just went incommunicado.
02:37:00.000 I didn't pick up any phone calls.
02:37:03.000 If I was going to get fired, I wanted to get fired by them.
02:37:05.000 Right.
02:37:05.000 Because I didn't want them.
02:37:06.000 I didn't want to be on the books that I quit.
02:37:08.000 Right.
02:37:08.000 For some reason, my engineering brain is like, this is great.
02:37:11.000 I'll get them on a technicality.
02:37:12.000 They'll fire me and I'll get my unemployment if I need to.
02:37:15.000 So I leave Boeing.
02:37:16.000 I'm shooting the show for three months.
02:37:17.000 And then eventually I get a termination letter in the mail from Boeing.
02:37:20.000 And I'm like...
02:37:22.000 Yes.
02:37:22.000 But then it turns out, I mean, I could have collected unemployment from the MTV show.
02:37:27.000 So I didn't even have to go out that way.
02:37:28.000 Oh, really?
02:37:29.000 Yeah.
02:37:29.000 I mean, it was fine.
02:37:31.000 Ari used to collect unemployment for...
02:37:33.000 Dude, he was like my guiding light in that regard. 0.96
02:37:37.000 Because early on, especially when I left Boeing, and the MTV thing comes and goes, I do two seasons of it, but that's not like a fucking... 0.91
02:37:44.000 It's like a rock-solid thing. 0.90
02:37:46.000 And Ari would show me the ropes. 1.00
02:37:48.000 He'd be like, no, you just collect unemployment from an acting job.
02:37:51.000 You get an acting job, then you get unemployment. 0.99
02:37:53.000 That's how it fucking works. 0.99
02:37:54.000 And he taught me how to do it and all that. 0.99
02:37:55.000 I've never heard of anybody getting unemployment from acting gigs.
02:37:58.000 Ari would do a commercial. 0.99
02:38:00.000 That's how it works.
02:38:01.000 Because you pay into it and all that.
02:38:02.000 It's all on the up and up.
02:38:03.000 It's just part of an actor's, I guess, requirement or necessity of an actor is being available.
02:38:11.000 So if you book a commercial, like a Toyota commercial, let's say you make 30 grand or 20 grand, whatever, in that chunk, you've made enough money in that quarter.
02:38:21.000 To apply, because you're paying into it with your thing, you have to hit a certain amount.
02:38:24.000 And then you're eligible.
02:38:26.000 There's tiers of how much money you get for unemployment.
02:38:29.000 Then you're eligible for X amount of dollars every two weeks or whatever.
02:38:33.000 And that helped me keep afloat for like a year.
02:38:35.000 And then I got to the point where I didn't need it.
02:38:37.000 I had enough steady work coming in.
02:38:39.000 But that was the moment.
02:38:40.000 When did you tell your parents?
02:38:42.000 I thought that they would take it worse than they did, but I think we had been at odds for so long that what I've noticed is you can't stay at an 11 your whole life.
02:38:52.000 Right.
02:38:53.000 Yeah.
02:38:54.000 So I think they had to know this day was going to come eventually because I would talk about it.
02:38:59.000 That was the plan the whole time.
02:39:00.000 I guess they just never thought that it would come to fruition.
02:39:02.000 Now, when you quit, how long did you wait or when you got fired?
02:39:05.000 How long did you wait before you told them?
02:39:08.000 They don't have a day job anymore.
02:39:09.000 It was around Christmas.
02:39:11.000 It was around the holidays.
02:39:12.000 So we were at my aunt's house and then I told them.
02:39:15.000 But it went over better than I thought.
02:39:18.000 Yeah, I was surprised.
02:39:19.000 Did you say all the good things you're getting?
02:39:21.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
02:39:21.000 Obviously.
02:39:22.000 Come on.
02:39:22.000 I'm not going to be like, I quit, and I'm going to figure it out.
02:39:25.000 I'll figure it out.
02:39:26.000 Might come you guys for money later.
02:39:28.000 But I'm really proud of that.
02:39:30.000 In this whole adventure, I've never asked my parents for money.
02:39:33.000 And I think that's a win.
02:39:34.000 Yes, that's a huge win.
02:39:36.000 That's a huge win.
02:39:37.000 Yeah, and I hope that they kind of notice that through the tough times.
02:39:42.000 That's a sign it's going well.
02:39:43.000 They should figure that out.
02:39:44.000 That's a giant win.
02:39:46.000 Yeah.
02:39:46.000 But I mean, I just want to tell people if they have a similar path that you don't...
02:39:50.000 There's this romanticized version of being an artist where you just pack up all your things coming to LA. Yeah, man.
02:39:56.000 And like, no, I got to be 100% of my art.
02:39:59.000 Yeah.
02:40:00.000 I love it.
02:40:01.000 You can have a plan.
02:40:02.000 Do you want to set yourself up for success?
02:40:04.000 Or are you trying to...
02:40:06.000 Bro, are you an artist or are you an engineer?
02:40:08.000 Gotta choose.
02:40:09.000 Be both.
02:40:10.000 There's a lot of hours in the day. 1.00
02:40:12.000 Fuck that. 1.00
02:40:13.000 You're a prime example of that. 1.00
02:40:14.000 It's amazing all the things you do.
02:40:16.000 There are so many hours in a day.
02:40:18.000 And it's such a cop-out to be like...
02:40:20.000 I've got to be all in it.
02:40:22.000 I've got to live and breathe my art.
02:40:24.000 Otherwise I'm going to be a hack.
02:40:25.000 No, be methodical.
02:40:26.000 Set yourself up for success.
02:40:28.000 Well, I think you have to be disciplined.
02:40:30.000 Disciplined, for sure.
02:40:30.000 I think it's very important.
02:40:32.000 You can still be artistic and disciplined.
02:40:34.000 Contrary to popular opinion.
02:40:35.000 You can.
02:40:36.000 And you have to be careful not to lose yourself. 0.99
02:40:40.000 Once you come to LA, how many people do you know who come out here with a particular plan to be an artist or a writer and they're at fucking birthday parties every day? 0.94
02:40:48.000 When you come to LA, you can go to someone's birthday party at a bar every day. 0.98
02:40:52.000 Really?
02:40:52.000 Oh, yeah.
02:40:54.000 It's everyone's birthday every day.
02:40:57.000 Dude, this town's so big.
02:40:58.000 Yeah, that's true.
02:40:59.000 So you get sucked up in the partying life.
02:41:02.000 You'll see it too.
02:41:02.000 Some artists just go down this networking rabbit hole and they have no tangible...
02:41:08.000 And they never want to do a bad show.
02:41:10.000 They just want to do the best shows.
02:41:12.000 And they don't just focus on getting good at stand-up comedy.
02:41:15.000 It's just, I'm going to this party, so-and-so's here.
02:41:17.000 And they have nothing!
02:41:18.000 Do you ever envision a time where one of us or maybe a collection of us writes down all these things and makes some sort of a guidebook to stand-up comedy?
02:41:28.000 I really think someone could benefit from it.
02:41:31.000 I mean, it really is the only art form that, as we were saying before, is a viable art form on large scale that doesn't have any...
02:41:40.000 I can't book or...
02:41:41.000 Nothing! 0.99
02:41:41.000 I mean, every fucking book about comedy, like how to do comedy, is terrible. 0.99
02:41:45.000 It's the worst, yeah. 0.99
02:41:47.000 You know what's weird?
02:41:49.000 You know what's scary?
02:41:50.000 There's all these formulas.
02:41:52.000 I think podcasting has taken some of the mystique out of it.
02:41:56.000 It's also created a bunch of fans of the process, too. 0.89
02:41:59.000 I've talked to people that have come up to me at the Comedy Store and said, hey, I saw you first do that bit a year ago, and then I watched it change, and then when it came on your Netflix special, I was like, holy shit. 0.86
02:42:10.000 Look at it.
02:42:11.000 It's kind of cool to see it grow and become viable.
02:42:14.000 Yeah, I think it's cool that there's an audience for that or that they value that because I think it's easy to assume the end consumer just wants to see the finished product.
02:42:24.000 But comedy fans are so savvy now, they want to see that process and they feel like they're let in.
02:42:30.000 Like, oh, cool.
02:42:31.000 Like it's not a magic trick anymore.
02:42:32.000 No, no, no.
02:42:33.000 It's different.
02:42:34.000 Yeah, no, I agree.
02:42:36.000 Listen, man, I'm glad I got you in here.
02:42:38.000 Thanks for having me, dude.
02:42:39.000 My pleasure, brother.
02:42:40.000 My pleasure.
02:42:41.000 And it's always cool seeing you at the store. 1.00
02:42:44.000 You're a funny motherfucker. 1.00
02:42:44.000 Likewise. 1.00
02:42:45.000 Thanks, man.
02:42:45.000 And I wish you all the best.
02:42:46.000 So tell everybody your Instagram.
02:42:49.000 What is the...
02:42:49.000 It's Fahim Anwar.
02:42:51.000 So just my name.
02:42:53.000 Twitter, same.
02:42:54.000 Fahim Anwar.
02:42:55.000 And then I have a special on Amazon called There's No Business, like Show Business.
02:42:58.000 So I want people to watch that.
02:42:59.000 Oh, your special's on Amazon.
02:43:01.000 Yeah, but it was acquired, so it wasn't like an original.
02:43:04.000 I did it for CISO back in the day.
02:43:06.000 Everyone knew that was going down.
02:43:08.000 Alright, brother.
02:43:10.000 Thank you very much, man.
02:43:10.000 This was fun.
02:43:11.000 Thank you, dude.
02:43:11.000 Bye, everybody!