In this episode, I sit down with my good friend, comedian and friend, Bob Fosse. Bob has been in comedy for a long time and is one of the funniest people I've ever met. We talk about how Bob got started in comedy, how he got started, and what it was like growing up in the 80's and early 90's in Boston. Bob is a great story teller and comic and I really enjoyed getting to know him and his story. I hope you enjoy this episode and that it makes you think about what it's like to be a comedian in the big city. Thank you to Bob for coming on the show and talking about comedy and comedy in general. I really appreciate it and look forward to seeing him again in a few weeks. Enjoy the episode and don't forget to leave us a review on Apple Podcasts and tell us what you thought of it! Timestamps: 4:00 - Bob's first stand-up set at the Comedy Connection 8:20 - How Bob started out in Boston 9:30 - How he got his start in comedy 14:40 - How to get started in the comedy scene 16:00- How Bob's story of how he started in Boston 21:00 - What it's hard to be funny in Boston 23:15 - His first stand up set at The Comedy Connection 27:30 - His early days in Boston 28:30- How he started writing in Spanish 35:10 - When he realized he wasn't going to make it in Los Angeles 39:10 40:00 -- How he went from New York to New York 45:15 47:40 What's his favorite part of the night of the week? 49:00 | How he's not going to move to Los Angeles? 50:30 | What s his favorite place to do it in LA? 51:00 What's the best place to watch a comedy club in Boston? 52:00 How he s going to do a show? 57: How to keep up with his girl? 58: What s he's going to be in the next? 55:00 His favorite place in the future? 56:00 Can he s gonna do it? 61:00 Why are you going to go back to LA? ? 58 How do you think he s not doing it in New York?
00:01:27.000It's great for me to watch someone like you appreciate it, like go and check it out and go...
00:01:33.000Yeah, it's like, you know, right from the beginning, the same, no matter where you go, I mean, if it's a good place, I would have stayed longer, but...
00:03:16.000That's where I... I went to see an open mic there, and then I thought...
00:03:24.000What I was doing is I was, you know, into comedy from watching The Tonight Show.
00:03:28.000That's when I really got, like, oh, these comedians, you know, Carl and Robert Klein, all these guys.
00:03:35.000I had to watch The Tonight Show because my brother was older than me, and we had to watch what he wanted.
00:03:42.000So, you know, I started watching, then I started to like it.
00:03:46.000And then I heard that there was a club in town, and I thought...
00:03:52.000I should go out, you know, I was 16 when I really was into it, but then when I was about 23, I heard of the club, and I thought, well, maybe I've got to go try it out.
00:04:04.000I wouldn't have to move to Los Angeles or New York.
00:04:08.000And my character then, I couldn't have...
00:04:12.00023, I'm not going to move to Los Angeles.
00:04:40.000I remember the first joke was, but I don't remember the rest of it was, I said I went into a bookstore and I started talking to this very French looking girl.
00:05:03.000So did you always write in that style?
00:05:06.000Like the sort of non sequitur, absurdist...
00:05:10.000No, see, I didn't even write anything until I went to the open, watched the show, and when I knew I was going back in two weeks, during that two weeks, I wrote things, but I had never written comedy at all.
00:05:23.000Right, but when you first started writing comedy, it was always that style?
00:07:21.000It was a very unusual group of artists because they're these wild kind of partying guys, but they had real rigid rules about don't be a hack and don't be a thief and don't be a this and do good comedy.
00:09:56.000So I started, um, when the wave of, like, television comedy was just starting to sort of subside, I kind of caught the last wave, you know, of that kind of, like, the comedy boom was starting to settle down.
00:10:14.000You know, and there was a lot of mediocre comedy out there.
00:10:17.000There was a lot of people that were doing what sounded like an impression of what a comedian should sound like.
00:10:23.000You know, and they were working all over the place.
00:10:27.000Now, were you living in Massachusetts?
00:10:47.000I was driving home one night fairly recently, a few years back, and you know how sometimes like a Bluetooth on your phone just randomly plays a song when you plug it in?
00:10:56.000It just randomly played this Jenny bit.
00:10:59.000And I was laughing so hard driving home.
00:11:02.000And while I was driving, I downloaded the whole album.
00:11:07.000And I just listened to the album coming home from Orange County.
00:12:46.000She had seen Kenison on HBO and then she went and acted out The bit about the homosexual necrophiliacs paying money to have sex with the freshest male corpse.
00:12:56.000So this girl who's a friend of mine is lying on her stomach in the parking lot, acting it out.
00:15:51.000I'd make my friends laugh when we'd go fight in tournaments, and I'd make everybody laugh before we're about to spar, because it was like everybody was real nervous, you know?
00:15:58.000So for me, it was a nice opportunity to get attention and to cut the tension, you know?
00:16:06.000But I think a lot of, you know, just because someone's funny hanging out doesn't mean they could do that.
00:16:14.000I mean, you obviously have done it, but the big difference is, like, if you're in a bar with someone and the TV's on, there's a lot happening going by.
00:16:26.000The waitress goes by, someone drops something, someone says something about that, something's on the TV, something goes by.
00:17:07.000And to me, the most interesting thing about the art form is that no one can tell you how to do it.
00:17:13.000You do it very different than I do it, and we both do it very different than Seinfeld does it, and Seinfeld does it different than Louie Anderson did it.
00:17:20.000It's like everybody's got their own little weird way to do stand-up, and you kind of have to figure that out on your own.
00:20:30.000And he was once involved in a bizarre electrolysis accident.
00:20:36.000All the hair was removed except for the tail.
00:20:38.000Now I rent him out to Hare Krishna family picnics.
00:20:45.000And that whole thing came because I saw the word electrolysis.
00:20:49.000So I would try to find things on purpose, but then after a while, I didn't, my mind was, I would just notice things, because I think comedy, all art is based on noticing what's around you.
00:21:02.000And I would, my mind, like, I drew a lot.
00:21:07.000I would draw realistically in high school and stuff, and like, if you were going to draw this cup and this There's the two shapes, and then you notice, if you're trying to draw it real, this shape, this shape, and then there's the shape that's in between.
00:21:23.000That's also a shape, which helps you get it accurate.
00:21:28.000So you don't really notice that shape unless you were trying to draw it.
00:21:33.000So I think that that exercised my mind of noticing Then later on, doing the comedy, I was already noticing, I think was noticing just some people were very aware of what's around.
00:21:47.000And you know, like in the tower at the airport where the radar goes like this, it goes like this.
00:21:53.000And then there's the little beeps of the planes, like those are the planes.
00:22:46.000Don't you think what you do is you're reacting, right?
00:22:50.000You're talking about the world, but you have to really see the world.
00:22:55.000Yeah, you have to really see the world.
00:22:57.000And I do a real similar thing, where if there's a certain subject that I'm working on, All throughout the day, I'm thinking about that subject.
00:23:06.000If there's a new bit, it's just bouncing around in my head like, what is going on with that?
00:24:25.000You know, but people kind of know the process now, so people enjoy seeing that.
00:24:30.000I've talked to people, like guests that have come back, and they said, you know, that bit, I saw that bit six months ago, and now it's like totally different.
00:24:38.000It's amazing, like you figured out this and that, and yeah, yeah, it's like a process.
00:24:43.000So the fact that fans can come and check out the process, Yes.
00:29:07.000I've been to some of these crazy ranches that they have.
00:29:12.000Like, Texas wildlife laws are very different than anywhere else I've ever been to.
00:29:17.000And the people who own the property own all the animals.
00:29:22.000It's different than, like, wildlife in any other...
00:29:25.000Like, say if you live in Montana, and you own a ranch in Montana...
00:29:31.000You can get landowner tags for that ranch.
00:29:35.000That means like, so you, say if you own like 6,000 acres in Montana, you and your friends and some family members, you could get license to hunt on that property.
00:29:45.000But you're only allowed to hunt a certain amount of animals.
00:30:48.000Elk hunting in most of the country is a difficult tag to acquire.
00:30:53.000It's a very prized hunt because it's delicious meat.
00:30:57.000So it's very specific with the regulations.
00:31:00.000In Texas, you can hunt elk 365 days a year, and you own the elk, because the elk were brought into Texas, even though they used to be in Texas.
00:31:10.000So they were in Texas, and then in the 1800s, they wiped them out, and then when they reintroduced them, they said, well, you ain't from around here, so we own you.
00:31:56.000Unless there's some wild tycoon out there that's got a crazy setup where he lets a goat loose and the Tiger gets to chase the goat and eat it and kill it.
00:32:37.000But I think that would be an invasive animal.
00:32:40.000Like, you wouldn't be able to control it.
00:32:41.000There is problems like bugs and things that come from other and even plants that come from other parts of the world that don't have natural predators and they just run over everybody else and take over an ecosystem.
00:32:52.000Do you have any animals that you own that you've brought in from other countries?
00:33:26.000But it's very interesting, like, the laws here when it comes to wildlife.
00:33:31.000Also, most of the land here is private, which is interesting, too.
00:33:35.000Like, you know, California has a lot of public land, and there's public land that people go hiking on, hunting on, fishing on, and same thing with, like, New York State and a lot of states.
00:37:15.000You can't tell me what to do and what not to do, especially when it comes to health choices, and you're fat and disgusting, and you look like you don't take care of yourself at all, and you guys are giving out mandates on health.
00:38:07.000When I go to New York, every time I go over those stupid fucking bridges, I get angry.
00:38:12.000I'm like, you're making me pay again to drive over the bridge?
00:38:15.000You paid for this bridge a thousand times over, you cunts.
00:38:20.000Because, like, the whole idea in the beginning was, we gotta fund this bridge, so we need to charge people money to go across the bridge.
00:38:27.000But then after a while, the funding's done, you paid for it, you fucks.
00:38:30.000But now you're just addicted to charging people.
00:38:33.000So you have this massive bottleneck where all these cars just stop dead, because everybody's gotta go to these stupid fucking booths.
00:38:41.000And you're just raking in money and just staying incompetent, staying with your terrible money management so everybody's angry at you, and they still just keep paying it every day because there's no way around it.
00:38:53.000You gotta go on the bridge, you gotta pay.
00:38:55.000Put that stupid thing over your rearview mirror so it clocks you every time and dings your credit card.
00:41:17.000What's with all these, like, crazy 50 times over penalties?
00:41:21.000Like, you just get to say that you get to take my money?
00:41:24.000If I'm gonna pay for the parking thing, and you know you're gonna make me pay because you give me a ticket, how about give me a ticket for what I should actually be paying?
00:42:08.000I was thinking about when jaywalking started, it was like you could do it for a long time until there was too many cars.
00:42:16.000And the cars were like, hey, hey, hey, get these people out of our way.
00:42:19.000That makes sense because if you look at those old videos of New York City at the turn of the century when people were first having cars and they were cars mixed in with horses, everyone's just kind of always walking across the street.
00:42:30.000I got a ticket once in jaywalking in Los Angeles in the 80's and it caused me, the penalty was I couldn't, it was with my car, even though I was walking, the penalty went to my car somehow.
00:42:45.000Like even though the crime was walking across the street and then the ticket went on to my registration, which had nothing to do with what I had done.
00:43:23.000Oklahomans who worked downtown arrived early and took the most convenient street parking for themselves, leaving their cars in one spot all day.
00:43:30.000As a result, shoppers had difficulty finding places to park.
00:43:33.000Like other towns addressing the problem, Oklahoma City tried to control this by marking tires with chalk.
00:45:01.000You gotta shut it off sometimes because you always got radio or phone or something and sometimes you have to have nothing because nothing isn't really nothing.
00:46:03.000So you would drive with no radio, and you just, your mind?
00:46:07.000Yeah, especially early in my beginning days of stand-up.
00:46:12.000I drove a lot, because I delivered newspapers, so I drive in the mornings and deliver my newspapers.
00:46:17.000And I do it with no radio on a lot of the time.
00:46:19.000And some of the best ideas that I had came from just doing this manual labor, chucking these newspapers out the window and just driving around, and your mind is free to think about other stuff.
00:46:31.000Instead of constantly having entertainment and bombarding it, I'd listen to Charles Laquadera, the morning radio, but if I just shut it off and listen to nothing, then I got some of my best ideas.
00:46:44.000Plus you're doing this mundane thing with the paper, which is almost like the gears in your head, it's doing something, but that allows another part of your brain to go on its own, because you're distracting enough I don't know,
00:50:49.000I think it's only people who do creative stuff kind of appreciate that you really do have to have that time just thinking.
00:50:57.000Because ideas, they just, they're out there, and if you don't go looking for them, they don't come into your head.
00:51:02.000So if you spend time just too involved in stuff where you've got to be very aware and paying attention and doing this and doing that, like...
00:51:12.000You don't have any, like, just flatness.
00:51:13.000Yes, boredom has a negative thing where it's on a notion to it, too, because boredom, that's where the stuff comes.
00:51:21.000Like, sometimes if I have to, everyone, everyone in there, every day, like, I have to go here, I've got to buy this, I've got to do this, I've got to call this guy, I've got to do this email, I've got to go, then I have to go there because the car needs this, and all of that, and then it's like, it's like,
00:52:13.000And so they have all the writing of the day done, like say if they commit to a certain amount of pages or a certain amount of letters that they write.
00:52:21.000So they write all those words and then they go for a walk.
00:52:24.000And then you think about what you wrote.
00:52:26.000And then ideas will come to you as you're walking around just thinking about what you wrote.
00:52:30.000Like a lot of guys, either they talk into their phone or they have like a little tape recorder and they just talk into it every now and again while they're walking.
00:52:39.000Or even Einstein, when he couldn't figure something out, he'd play his violin, or he'd go for a walk.
00:52:45.000Imagine seeing Einstein walk, what the hell, get back in the office!
00:52:50.000And he figures out this giant thing, because he went for a walk.
00:59:14.000You know, I do a lot of big shows, too.
00:59:16.000But the fun I'm having at the club is the most fun.
00:59:21.000We were all talking about it last night.
00:59:23.000We're all sitting around after the show.
00:59:25.000Because we've all done, like a lot of the guys that come with me on the road, we've done arenas, we've done big theaters, but there's nothing like clubs.
01:00:37.000They also like the fact that sometimes, like, we'll bring up stuff in a podcast, and then I'll write it down, and then that'll become a bit.
01:00:44.000Like, I'll have something pop into my head, and they'll go, ah, I remember when you first talked about that, and now it's, like, your closing bit, because you figured out how to turn it into this five-minute chunk, you know?
01:00:54.000How long have you been doing the podcast?
01:02:44.000And then I would bring in comedians like Tom Segura and Joey Diaz and Duncan Trussell and Ari Shafir.
01:02:51.000And then it just became all of a sudden I have guests and all of a sudden I have scientists and all of a sudden I have authors and psychologists and physicians.
01:03:50.000Graham Hancock was, like, the first real one.
01:03:53.000Because Graham Hancock is a journalist and he specializes in ancient civilizations and the demise of ancient civilizations and that there's evidence that shows That there is likely some sort of a natural catastrophe that took place around 11,800 to 12,000 years ago that wiped out civilization.
01:04:13.000And all the civilization that we think about, like Babylonia and Mesopotamia, those were probably reboots of an old civilization that was destroyed by asteroid impacts.
01:04:25.000There's like all this physical evidence.
01:04:27.000It's called the Younger Dryas Impact Theory.
01:04:30.000There's core samples they do where they find iridium at around 11,800 years, which is very common in space, very rare on Earth, but there's a large layer of it.
01:04:39.000And micro-diamonds which indicate impacts from the asteroids.
01:04:44.000So we probably went through an asteroid shower, and it probably destroyed civilization somewhere around 11,800 years ago.
01:04:53.000So Graham Hancock, he has Ancient Catastrophe, which is on Netflix.
01:04:59.000This whole series on that, where you can follow the evidence, the physical evidence and the archaeological evidence of these ancient civilizations and these ancient construction methods that to this day we still don't understand, like how they move these enormous stones, how they place them,
01:05:29.000It just shows all this evidence of these ancient cultures that just don't exist anymore, including sunken cities off the coast of Japan.
01:05:39.000There wasn't water there, or there was ground there at one point in time thousands and thousands of years ago, and they think that there was actually a city there, and now it's covered by the ocean.
01:05:49.000There's a bunch of those that they find out there in the water.
01:05:52.000There's a lot of indications that there was like really advanced civilization like 12,000, 20,000 years ago.
01:05:59.000So that guy was like one of the first guests.
01:08:14.000Yeah, it's been, it's very, very, I feel super, super fortunate for that aspect of it because I've learned so much talking to so many different people.
01:08:23.000And you get all these different perspectives, these heterodox perspectives and alternative perspectives and people that are like very rigid and their ideologies and then people that are like very open-minded and they're just like trying to find the truth.
01:08:35.000And they're all like mixed in together in this world.
01:08:38.000And if you can bring them together and have conversations with them, it expands your understanding of how the mind works so much.
01:08:45.000Like I was only exposed to a certain kind of people before.
01:08:49.000You know, I was exposed to us like comics.
01:10:29.000So here he's involved in this thing that's illegal, and he's also involved in NASA. He's also involved in top-secret rocket programs, you know, because he's got SpaceX.
01:10:39.000And they're like, hey, motherfucker, what are you doing over there?
01:10:42.000Did he smoke in his private life anyway?
01:11:00.000So if we're having a couple of drinks, and I spark up a blunt, I look at Jamie, and I hand it over to him, and I hand it to Elon, and he's like, hmm, okay.
01:11:24.000He scares the shit out of me when he talks about AI. He's the one, like, out of all the people that have this, like, rosy view of AI, including Michio Kaku, who's brilliant, they have this rosy view of AI, artificial intelligence, and Elon does not.
01:13:30.000Yeah, Greg Overton is this amazing artist.
01:13:33.000And he's done a bunch of these incredible Native American art pieces.
01:13:39.000And this area in particular was rich with Native American history because it was a very, very fertile area because of all the lakes and all the rivers and all the wildlife.
01:13:49.000So there's arrowheads everywhere out here, all over the place.
01:13:53.000I have a friend who has a ranch, and he's pulled thousands of arrowheads from his ranch.
01:13:59.000They do these excavations where they know the areas where they hunted a lot.
01:14:04.000Where there's a lot of wildlife and they dig into the ground and they sift through it.
01:14:30.000Quanah Parker is the last Comanche chief.
01:14:34.000So the Comanches were the people that were in control of the plains, in control of Texas, and they were the most fierce tribe, and they were the most difficult to get past.
01:14:44.000And they were the reason why people couldn't settle this area.
01:14:49.000It wasn't until the Texas Rangers figured out how to combat them on their own terms.
01:14:54.000They cold-camped, they never used fires, they dressed like normal civilians, and they kind of lived like Indians.
01:15:02.000And they ran around, and that's Quanah Parker.
01:15:05.000So, Quanah Parker, his mother, Cynthia Ann Parker, was kidnapped by the Comanche when she was really young.
01:15:14.000Her family was murdered in front of her, and they took her in, and she eventually became the wife of the chief, and they had a baby.
01:15:23.000So, she was white, and she had a half Native American baby, who was Quanah Parker, who was the last Comanche chief.
01:15:31.000And he was big for a Comanche and just like very, very fierce guy.
01:15:36.000That photograph of her sucking, having her kid sucking on her nipple is a very famous photo because she would do that in front of people and they thought that was like so uncivilized.
01:15:51.000Where, you know, in the Native American cultures, in the Comanche culture, they would just breastfeed.
01:15:56.000So she would do that and they took a photo of her doing that because they thought it was like, This is like the evidence that she's not one of them.
01:16:46.000Well that's the nostalgia that everybody loves so much about Native American culture, the fact that they lived off the land, in the land.
01:16:53.000And they did it at the same time where Europe had already experienced the Enlightenment and the Renaissance and there was all this Stuff and cities and all this culture all over the world.
01:17:05.000It was like sophisticated and art and literature.
01:17:07.000They didn't even really have art, the Comanches.
01:17:40.000To be like one of the Lewis and Clark people, to take that trek across the country, and just experience what it was like before the white man came and fucking put his greasy little palms over everything and built cities.
01:19:11.000It's one of those weird ones, where like some people think Eskimo is a bad term, but some Eskimos prefer that term, depending upon where they are in the country and where they are in the world.
01:19:22.000It's like a lot of Native Americans, they actually want you to use the term Indian, American Indian.
01:19:28.000Well, then I say, I wonder if in Cleveland now, little boys are playing Cowboys and Guardians.
01:20:34.000It's about Cabeza de Vaca when they first came to America and how they made their way from Florida across the country and they're like, everybody died.
01:20:43.000There's like a couple guys left at the end of the journey.
01:20:45.000But the stuff that they encountered, the way they had to try to get by, and starving to death, and facing hostile enemies, and just crazy.
01:20:55.000Crazy being there then, doing that then.
01:22:49.000It was real bad for seismology and the study of earthquakes because they had given – because of their own ignorance, they had decided these people could figure it out.
01:23:01.000Why Italian earthquake scientists were exonerated?
01:23:04.000Judge who overturned conviction – yeah, so there was a conviction – say experts use the best available science.
01:23:12.000Yeah, you can't fucking predict earthquakes, jackasses.
01:23:15.000Six scientists convicted of manslaughter in 2012, so only 11 years ago, for advice they gave ahead of the deadly L'Aquila earthquake were victims of uncertain and fallacious reasoning.
01:23:29.000To say the three judges who acquitted the experts and reduced the sentence of a seventh defendant last November in a 389-page document deposited in court on Friday since released to the public, Yeah,
01:23:58.000Well, the judges definitely didn't understand it because they thought that these people could accurately predict when an earthquake is definitely going to come.
01:26:15.000And one of the things that I said to her, I said, do you think you would be the same person if you had not gone through this horrific experience?
01:26:22.000I would never want you to go through this experience.
01:27:32.000I think they convicted him of something else and I think he went to jail for a certain amount of time and then he got out.
01:27:38.000I think I got convicted for some other kind of crime.
01:27:41.000Wasn't it like a break in and entering thing or something like that?
01:27:46.000But most of the evidence, at least as it's presented in the Netflix documentary and talking to her, seems to point to this one guy that they're pretty sure did it.
01:28:46.000She's a kid and she's just over there studying abroad and the next thing you know she's locked up in a jail for something she didn't do and it's in front of the whole fucking world.
01:29:00.000And also then she gets to be embedded in prison with all these women who have had these horrific lives.
01:29:09.000Horrific stories of abuse and this life of crime and their whole families filled with crime and chaos and And you get to realize that these are just people just people that just like went down the wrong road And just all of it just didn't line up Just a little tiny fork in the road.
01:29:28.000Yep the wrong fork and it could happen to anybody wrong circumstances wrong time wrong place you're born in the wrong area and Wrong family, wrong this, wrong that, wrong friends.
01:31:07.000Like how much of it do you actually manifest out of your own mind?
01:31:11.000How much of your choices change reality itself?
01:31:16.000There's just so many ways to process what's happening, because if it's all chaotic or maybe some of it isn't, there's just so many versions to look at it.
01:32:10.000I lived in Burlington, then I went to Middlesex Community College in Bedford, then I went to Emerson College in Boston, then I started doing stand-up, and then I stayed, like, after I got out of...
01:32:23.000I stayed like five years in Boston, then I went to Hollywood for two years.
01:32:29.000Emerson's like a performing arts college, right?
01:37:55.000So here I am in a place that I don't really care for, Los Angeles, and meanwhile the time is going, my life is going, and it's like, well, why not be in a place where I like where I am?
01:39:34.000You know, it's like, to start out at a place, and also when you start out at a place, you know, you're always kind of like, in the back of your mind, you remember how bad you sucked.
01:39:43.000You know, you remember what it was like in the beginning.
01:39:46.000And to be able to come back and sell out an arena is just weird.
01:39:51.000But, you know, Boston has got this rich history of stand-up comedy that I think is unlike any other city in the country.
01:40:00.000Because I think it was the only city where you could have these top talents that never left.
01:40:05.000And so you're dealing with this incredible high level of comedy.
01:41:10.000And he was telling me when he was walking around the city before that people knew he was going to do Fenway and they were saying, hey, I hope it goes great.
01:41:18.000He felt like they were rooting for him, which is a really cool thing.
01:44:24.000One time he was being heckled at the dingo and the lights on the stage, you know, they were track lighting and he just turned the light around to the guy in the audience and he started hammering him.
01:45:20.000And then he did that documentary where he explained his abuse and what happened to him when he was younger and what sort of shaped him as a person.
01:45:30.000I knew him so well and I didn't even know a lot of that stuff.
01:45:36.000When he went to Congress and was arguing with them, that was incredible.
01:45:40.000We should explain what he did because in the early days of AOL chat rooms and things along those lines, People were openly trading in child pornography and he found out about it and he exposed it.
01:45:56.000He made it a big part of his life's work to shut that shit down.
01:46:02.000And this was the very, very, very early days of the internet.
01:46:08.000You remember that part of the movie where they show him in there in Congress arguing with the guy, and then the lawyer beside him for the other side says some lawyer thing, and then Barry shreds him with reality, and then the guy said another lawyer thing,
01:46:24.000and then Barry shreds him with the real point of the situation, and then the guy stopped talking.
01:47:13.000Tony V. Everywhere you would go, there's like so many comics that were just top-notch, man.
01:47:18.000I went into Nick's Comedy Stuff one night.
01:47:20.000One of the things that Nick's used to do that was absolutely brutal, and this was when I was a beginning comic, they would take people, like say if like...
01:47:48.000But before Billy Crystal would get on, it would be Kevin Knox, and then it would be Steve Sweeney, and Don Gavin, and Kenny Rogerson, and Lenny Clark.
01:47:57.000By the time he got on, that audience was beat to shit.
01:51:32.000They're more like when you said things, they were more shocking.
01:51:35.000And a lot of that stuff's already been said so many times now that if you go back and listen to it, it's like some of it doesn't really hold up the same way.
01:51:41.000But for the time, in those days, those guys were the cream of the crop.
01:51:47.000And if you had to follow them in Boston, like, good fucking luck.
01:51:51.000Because I don't think anybody ever killed Harden.
01:51:53.000I didn't, I didn't, those guys, I didn't want to go on after them.
01:51:57.000I did, because I was proud of the lineup.
01:51:59.000But I knew that the sound from the audience of the laughs, I knew they were going to, it was going to be more than me.
01:53:18.000So they thought some of it was funny, and some of it wasn't.
01:53:21.000And Mike McDonald helped me a lot, because he saw me the first time, and I was naively disappointed, because I didn't laugh at everything, which is insane, but that was out of being naive.
01:55:03.000One of the interesting things about the documentary, When Stand Up Stood Out, was that you were kind of the first guy that got discovered in Boston.
01:55:38.000I knew later when I heard about it after I had gone.
01:55:44.000But we all wanted to go on the TV. Everyone wasn't doing it just to be doing it in Boston.
01:55:54.000I wanted to someday go on TV. I had no idea how I would get there.
01:56:02.000And then I got a lucky break because Peter LaSalle came to Boston and he saw me in the club.
01:56:07.000Because there was an article about the Ding Ho, and a freelance writer wrote about it and went into the LA Times, this weird comedy club, Chinese restaurant.
01:56:17.000And then he read it, and then he went back east looking at colleges for his kids were getting out of high school.
01:57:33.000And for us, for guys from Boston, it's so fascinating because it does really do a fantastic job of capturing how unusual that scene was, how strange it was, and how it's really never happened again since.
01:57:49.000Yeah, so there's two things happening.
01:57:51.000The scene is happening on its own, and now there's a movie about the scene.
01:58:44.000When you do stand-up now, are you doing, like, the local clubs in Boston to fuck around to work on new stuff, or do you just take new stuff right to the stage?
01:59:24.000If it gets nothing three times, I know it's never getting anything.
01:59:28.000But if it works once, I don't even really count on it because it might have been a fluke, you know, the audience, how I said it, the mood of the audience.
01:59:34.000But if it works three times, then I can trust it.
01:59:38.000But if they don't laugh at it three times, then I get rid of it.
02:02:44.000So I did it on and off for a few weeks and then I stopped writing it for a while and then I thought, I should just keep writing this but not on Twitter.
02:02:54.000And then that's how the book got going.
02:03:23.000Because there's never really big planning out, at least in what I do.
02:03:28.000And then I just started doing it, and it went further and further.
02:03:33.000I really liked doing it because, like we were saying before, the jokes from noticing, you know, like the sweep of the radar.
02:03:44.000You're walking down the street, you see something.
02:03:46.000But with this, I actually, after I started doing it, I started to sit down on purpose, like for a couple of hours a day, focusing right on this kid in this class.
02:03:59.000And that was different than just random things coming into my mind.
02:04:04.000So I was focusing it, and I couldn't stop doing it.
02:04:08.000I mean, I would do it for a couple of hours a day, but it just...
02:04:13.000It kept going and going and I was creating this weird world.
02:04:18.000And I was fascinated what was in my head because I was sitting there on purpose.
02:04:24.000Because it was like going into your own head with a flashlight.
02:04:27.000You know in the caves when there's stuff written on?
02:04:29.000It was like I was going in my own head with a flashlight because I was determined to try to write for two hours.
02:04:36.000And that determination made me go deep in like...
02:04:40.000And there was all this shit in there that I had no idea if I hadn't focused.
02:04:46.000And then the stuff that I thought of that had nothing to do with the book, just life things, would come back to me and go, oh, this can go right in here.
02:04:58.000You know, for what I do, a couple sentence joke, two sentences, and then have the audience laugh, hopefully.
02:05:24.000And then when I started writing this thing, I thought, oh, I know what I'm going to do.
02:05:29.000After it kept going, I thought, I'm going to put a funnel on this kid's head, and I'm going to pour everything I think about being alive into his head.
02:06:40.000It's like you're hanging out with yourself.
02:06:42.000Me and you are talking right now, but when you're alone joking, it's like There's almost, you're joking and you're reacting to what you joked about.
02:06:52.000So there's, you know, it's one thing, but it's almost like there's plural.
02:06:56.000It's like there's you and your thoughts.
02:06:58.000And you're reacting, your thought and you can almost be a little bit different.
02:07:03.000So you, oh, oh, I like what you just said there.
02:08:25.000And also one of the things that's different is the thing that you're doing these shows and you're just sandwiching these new bits in between your other bits.
02:08:33.000You're not really performing at clubs.
02:08:35.000You're not dropping in and doing a lot of sets at regular places.
02:08:39.000No, just in these theaters that I'm doing.
02:08:42.000Do you miss the club environment though?
02:09:34.000Because when you start, you're starting at 11 at night and there's 10 drunk guys, you should start out in a nice theater and work your way to 10 drunk guys after you've been doing it for four years.
02:11:28.000Well, that's the thing that I don't understand with comedians.
02:11:30.000See, being a comedian, one of the good things I think, or important things, is to talk to the audience like you're really talking to one person.
02:14:50.000Who do you choose to take with you on the road?
02:14:54.000I had them for a long time, but then the show, I do like an 85-minute show, and I thought, I'm not going to bring a guy now anymore, because the audience would be too tired by the time I got to my 80 minutes.
02:15:10.000Like, if you had a guy sitting there for 15 minutes, then the first guy comes on for like 12 minutes, then there's another break.
02:15:17.000So all that energy is now gonna be felt when I get to 70 minutes.
02:17:25.000But if you could take the lessons that you learn from doing the crowd, like the late night spot, like when all these people are on before you and the show's really old, you could take that energy and bring it to a fresh audience.
02:17:38.000It really is like running with weights on.
02:19:10.000And now, because of that and because of the pandemic and all the different things that happened where things just kind of fell into place, we have this spot and then there's like world-class comedians here.
02:20:00.000It's like an art school, not school, but it's like a creative building.
02:20:06.000Yeah, and that's the purpose of it, right?
02:20:09.000The whole purpose of it for all of us to help us develop comedy, to write your shit, and then to also to have a place where people can come and have a good time.
02:21:00.000You know, me and my friend Dean, we have this term called a treehouse.
02:21:05.000Treehouse is our term meaning when something is done, created just for fun, just like when you were a kid and you were 12 and you're building something and oh, oh, oh, oh, has no, like, outside.
02:21:42.000And when you see people do stuff like that and create right in front of you and you watch the sets and you watch their bits grow, it's all just like, it's so much fuel.
02:21:49.000There's so much fucking gasoline in the air.
02:23:11.000Because the club, I had another place that I had bought.
02:23:15.000And that deal fell apart because the place was kind of a mess and the whole story was a mess.
02:23:20.000But that club, that setback, because I had bought this one place, then I had to get out of the deal, and then buy a new place, that was like a whole year plus of wasted time.
02:23:32.000And that was when everybody was moving here, too.
02:23:35.000And so then we were just doing local clubs, like little rock and roll clubs.
02:23:38.000It plays the Vulcan Gas Company, which is basically like an EDM club.
02:26:18.000Because that building is a 1927 building.
02:26:22.000And that building has had Stevie Ray Vaughan on stage in the 1980s.
02:26:28.000If you look in the green room, all those posters that are around the top of the walls, those are all concert posters from people that performed at the Ritz.
02:26:38.000So it's like the Misfits, the Butthole Surfers, Black Flag, all these different bands that performed there.
02:26:45.000So there's the memories of all of those things.
02:26:49.000That happened in that place and they're kind of burned into the framework of the building.
02:27:32.000I felt that the moment I went into the Alamo, it was almost like it was asking me to do it.
02:27:38.000Like when I was walking around when it was the Alamo Drafthouse, the Ritz Theater, they had leased it to the Alamo Drafthouse, but then the Alamo Drafthouse there went under during the pandemic.
02:27:51.000So when I was walking around, it was just this empty theater.
02:27:54.000But it was almost like it was telling me to do this.
02:27:58.000It's like you're walking around like, this is what you can do.
02:28:00.000You can raise the floor up and you can lower the ceiling.
02:28:04.000Fix that stage, put a different stage up.