The Joe Rogan Experience - April 16, 2026


Joe Rogan Experience #2484 - David Cross


Episode Stats


Length

2 hours and 22 minutes

Words per minute

168.4187

Word count

24,053

Sentence count

2,707

Harmful content

Misogyny

32

sentences flagged

Hate speech

82

sentences flagged


Summary

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

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 .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:02.000 Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out.
00:00:04.000 The Joe Rogan Experience.
00:00:06.000 Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.
00:00:12.000 David.
00:00:13.000 Joseph.
00:00:14.000 Good to see you.
00:00:14.000 Good to see you.
00:00:15.000 Dude, I haven't seen you in a long fucking time.
00:00:17.000 When was the last time we were actually in a room together?
00:00:20.000 Well, I was trying to think of that.
00:00:21.000 I don't know.
00:00:22.000 I would imagine post news radio we hung out at some point at some show somewhere.
00:00:30.000 Somewhere.
00:00:30.000 But I don't know.
00:00:32.000 But I do remember.
00:00:34.000 Because I did news radio a couple times and we hung out.
00:00:37.000 I remember.
00:00:40.000 I think we both, no, just you, had more hair than I was probably already at this point.
00:00:46.000 I was fighting to keep it.
00:00:48.000 I was hanging on.
00:00:50.000 Do you shave or is that it?
00:00:51.000 Is that.
00:00:52.000 Oh, I mean, I'm bald.
00:00:53.000 If I didn't shave, I'd be bald all the way up here.
00:00:56.000 But I got a hair transplant and it was useless.
00:00:59.000 Yeah.
00:01:01.000 I go, having a hair transplant is like taking people that are healthy and moving them into a neighborhood where everyone's dying.
00:01:01.000 I did a joke about it.
00:01:09.000 This is just like, where did Bob go?
00:01:11.000 He just fucking flew off the face of the earth.
00:01:13.000 So, uh,.
00:01:14.000 Yeah, so you just accepted it.
00:01:17.000 Yes.
00:01:17.000 Fuck it.
00:01:18.000 Yeah.
00:01:18.000 I should have done it a long time ago.
00:01:19.000 It's so much better.
00:01:20.000 And I don't have to talk to a barber.
00:01:22.000 I don't have to listen to boring fucking stories while they hold you hostage with a pair of scissors.
00:01:27.000 That's what this is.
00:01:29.000 This gets me.
00:01:31.000 I don't like shaving.
00:01:33.000 It's kind of a pain in the ass.
00:01:35.000 And I also look like a turtle when I shave.
00:01:41.000 I don't like it.
00:01:44.000 And it's not attractive to me.
00:01:45.000 To me, and I jerk off to me all the time, so I want to keep things fresh.
00:01:51.000 But I probably don't have to.
00:01:55.000 I could probably get clippers and stuff, but I go to one of my guys around the corner where I live, and I have this experience where.
00:02:07.000 I want that guy.
00:02:08.000 I want to get in and out, right?
00:02:10.000 Because of what you were saying.
00:02:11.000 Yeah.
00:02:11.000 A lot of chit chat.
00:02:12.000 And there are a couple guys, very quiet.
00:02:15.000 Hi, how you doing?
00:02:16.000 Good.
00:02:16.000 Fist bump, whatever.
00:02:18.000 You know what I want.
00:02:18.000 Doom.
00:02:20.000 Get out of there.
00:02:21.000 There's one guy who just talks all the time.
00:02:26.000 And then they have that the blade, you know?
00:02:30.000 The, what do you call that?
00:02:32.000 You know, the blade, blade.
00:02:34.000 Straight bracer.
00:02:35.000 Thank you.
00:02:35.000 And, um, And they got it right there, so you got to be polite.
00:02:39.000 It's on your, it's by your, you know, and I know I could avoid it if I just get some clippers and just do this thing, but I don't.
00:02:51.000 That was boring, and sorry.
00:02:51.000 I don't know.
00:02:55.000 There's no point to it.
00:02:57.000 It barely has anything to do with what we were talking about.
00:03:01.000 There's something about a beard, though, that makes you distinguished or at least have experience, or look like a homeless, you know, I mean, there are plenty of those guys too.
00:03:13.000 Yeah, there's a lot of those too.
00:03:15.000 But a beard is like, there's a statement with a beard, like a full beard, like yours, white.
00:03:22.000 Mine is just, you know, I don't like shaving.
00:03:25.000 Like, you know, and again, I do, like, I only gain weight in two places stomach and right here.
00:03:37.000 And also, I have a kind of a thin frame.
00:03:39.000 So it's really.
00:03:42.000 Not attractive.
00:03:43.000 It's not attractive.
00:03:44.000 So the beard is sort of.
00:03:47.000 It's more laziness.
00:03:48.000 It's, I don't have to worry about it.
00:03:51.000 Yeah.
00:03:51.000 No, I hear you.
00:03:53.000 And this, you know, I just, I go, I don't know, six, seven weeks, and then I just shave it.
00:03:58.000 Once it gets out, because this, my hair doesn't grow down or it just grows out like a clown.
00:04:04.000 You know, it goes this way, all of it, even this too.
00:04:09.000 And once this starts filling in, it just looks goofy.
00:04:14.000 I have a friend, my friend Hassan.
00:04:14.000 Yeah.
00:04:16.000 He used to shave his head, and now.
00:04:18.000 Purposely to look goofy, he lets the sides go out and it's madness.
00:04:24.000 It's just, it's all fucking crazy thick hair.
00:04:27.000 And bald on top?
00:04:27.000 And bald on top.
00:04:28.000 Yeah.
00:04:29.000 And he does a joke on stage about it. 1.00
00:04:32.000 He's Indian. 1.00
00:04:33.000 This is my impression of an Indian pussy. 1.00
00:04:36.000 And is he just like not concerned about getting laid? 1.00
00:04:42.000 Yeah, I think he's just embracing, but he still gets laid, you know, because he's really funny.
00:04:47.000 I think he just embraces.
00:04:50.000 Not giving a fuck?
00:04:51.000 There he is.
00:04:52.000 Oh!
00:04:53.000 He looks familiar to me.
00:04:54.000 Okay.
00:04:55.000 Very funny guy.
00:04:56.000 All right, cool.
00:04:57.000 He's one of the up and comers.
00:04:59.000 Well, he's from LA originally.
00:05:01.000 He was one of the doormen at the comedy store.
00:05:03.000 Okay.
00:05:03.000 He looks very professorial.
00:05:05.000 He's very smart.
00:05:06.000 Yeah.
00:05:07.000 Yeah, but doesn't give a fuck about his hair.
00:05:10.000 Who's that?
00:05:11.000 Art Bell.
00:05:12.000 I was going to guess Art Bell.
00:05:13.000 I swear to God.
00:05:14.000 Yeah.
00:05:15.000 I swear to God.
00:05:16.000 I don't even know if I've ever seen him.
00:05:18.000 Coast to coast.
00:05:19.000 Yes, yes.
00:05:20.000 Holy shit.
00:05:21.000 From the Kingdom of Nye.
00:05:23.000 Wow.
00:05:23.000 I fucking loved that show.
00:05:23.000 Wow.
00:05:25.000 That was the show that I listened to coming home from Hollywood because I lived out in the valley and I would drive home at night and I'd listen to Late Night with Art Bell.
00:05:33.000 Art, Coast to Coast with Art Bell.
00:05:35.000 I used to do a whole bit about the like, because who's the new guy?
00:05:42.000 George Norton.
00:05:43.000 George Norton, right.
00:05:44.000 And I'm going to digress for one second.
00:05:48.000 Did you ever do you play video games at all?
00:05:50.000 Yes.
00:05:50.000 Well, I try not to, but I used to play a lot of them.
00:05:53.000 Did you ever play Prey?
00:05:55.000 No, but I know what it is.
00:05:57.000 A great, underrated game got ripped off, or just people bit certain things that they started.
00:06:05.000 But one of the coolest things so it's about like this it takes place on a reservation, you know, in the 90s, I guess, or something like that.
00:06:18.000 And there's a bartender and her boyfriend, and it takes place in this bar, and then aliens come.
00:06:27.000 Then this guy goes on the alien ship to go rescue her.
00:06:32.000 But they did this really cool thing.
00:06:35.000 So, first, they have this in the video game, right at the bar, there's a TV.
00:06:41.000 And as you walk towards it, it's like staticky until you get closer to it.
00:06:47.000 And then as your character gets closer to it, it's Art Bell talking about aliens and stuff.
00:06:54.000 I know I'm not doing it justice, but it was such a cool, smart idea.
00:06:59.000 And.
00:07:01.000 God bless him.
00:07:01.000 He was the OG.
00:07:03.000 Yeah.
00:07:04.000 And just some of the guy.
00:07:07.000 One thing that.
00:07:08.000 Because I listen to it a lot, too, because sometimes.
00:07:13.000 You know, you're listening and you're like, this is insane.
00:07:16.000 This is crazy.
00:07:18.000 And he would always, always treat the guest with deference, you know, respect.
00:07:25.000 And I, I, that must have been because there were things that were, you know, if you go back to all the episodes that were kind of contradictory in a sense, you know, like, wait, you think all these things happen?
00:07:37.000 You think there's a place in the middle of the ocean that has, like, it's a community of people that live there and, and, And then, but you also think this, like all these different things, it'd be like, hmm, huh, interesting.
00:07:54.000 Yeah, he would let you go.
00:07:55.000 He'd let you go, yeah.
00:07:56.000 He'd give it some air.
00:07:58.000 But he was, yeah, he was never rude or.
00:08:01.000 No, never.
00:08:02.000 You could call him up.
00:08:02.000 He had a time traveler line where you would call specifically if you were a time traveler.
00:08:12.000 What if, but if you were calling from the past and they didn't have that technology yet, No, that's mostly people from the future, I believe.
00:08:20.000 Like, Art, I'm calling from seven minutes in the future.
00:08:24.000 I think his whole deal was if you are here in this current era, but you are from another time, you could call.
00:08:24.000 Listen.
00:08:32.000 Because, you know, the idea was like, he would have these remote viewers and oddballs on, and they would talk about that we have had the ability to time travel for a long time.
00:08:42.000 Oh, yeah.
00:08:44.000 You know, there are wormholes that exist, and they'd explain the quantum dynamics involved.
00:08:49.000 Time travel has been breached by the CIA in the 1960s.
00:08:52.000 Yes.
00:08:53.000 And you'd have these people call up, but Art would always like give them air.
00:08:57.000 Like let them breathe.
00:08:58.000 Let it breathe.
00:08:59.000 Yeah.
00:08:59.000 Art, I'm a werewolf.
00:08:59.000 Yeah.
00:09:01.000 Interesting.
00:09:01.000 Tell me more.
00:09:02.000 Like it didn't matter, no matter what it was.
00:09:04.000 It was a fun show.
00:09:06.000 Oh, I loved it.
00:09:07.000 Craziest people from fucking Bigfoot people to alien people.
00:09:11.000 Everything.
00:09:12.000 And then a lot of people, ex military, right?
00:09:16.000 You know, get that like.
00:09:17.000 Whistleblowers.
00:09:19.000 I was stationed in, you know, outside of.
00:09:24.000 Remote island that I can't go into from Singapore, and I witnessed some things that I still have difficulty believing.
00:09:34.000 And then he just, yeah, what happened?
00:09:36.000 It was great.
00:09:37.000 Yeah.
00:09:38.000 So fun.
00:09:39.000 And you, so did you also listen to Phil Hendry?
00:09:42.000 Oh, God.
00:09:42.000 Yes.
00:09:43.000 He was the best.
00:09:44.000 Super genius.
00:09:45.000 The best thing about Phil Hendry was the people that didn't understand what was going on.
00:09:48.000 They would call in and be really upset.
00:09:51.000 The first two times I heard him, I didn't understand.
00:09:56.000 What he was doing.
00:09:57.000 He's that good too.
00:09:59.000 And I would be like, this is crazy, this guy.
00:10:02.000 And then eventually you're like, oh, he's doing characters.
00:10:05.000 Yeah.
00:10:06.000 Because he'd repeat characters and stuff.
00:10:09.000 But I got the chance to watch him do a show.
00:10:13.000 So he's got three mics, I want to say.
00:10:20.000 Like two mics, like this, and then a phone mic.
00:10:24.000 Or, you know, a phone, like an old time cradle phone.
00:10:29.000 And he was doing himself, the woman who runs the HOA or whatever, that character, and then somebody else.
00:10:44.000 Calling in like he did somebody calling on the phone, and it was, uh, I mean, it was like a magic act, yeah, it was crazy to watch how without missing a beat.
00:10:54.000 And I could see, uh, you can see how he strategically takes breaths so that he can go from one character to another and interrupting each other, yeah, you know, it was fascinating.
00:11:09.000 But he's a genius, it's the only thing that caught right away.
00:11:12.000 I was like, oh, wait a minute, there's no crosstalk.
00:11:15.000 Well, one of the early times I listened, I was like, I think this is the same guy.
00:11:15.000 Like, right.
00:11:20.000 Yeah.
00:11:20.000 Well, he's, he bumps it up.
00:11:23.000 Like, he's really good at, you know, making it sound as if, like, because he'll interrupt himself and go, and I, okay, but, you know, and stop and then just go right into the other voice.
00:11:37.000 It's fucking phenomenal.
00:11:40.000 And completely original.
00:11:42.000 Like, I don't know of anybody else that did anything like that.
00:11:44.000 No.
00:11:45.000 No.
00:11:45.000 Did you ever?
00:11:47.000 He used to put out stuff for charity, like CDs and things.
00:11:51.000 And he has, I don't know what it would be called, but it was one of the things he put out for charity that was a guy called into the station.
00:12:05.000 He was probably super high, but he called in thinking it was Pizza Hut.
00:12:10.000 And he fucks with this guy in the best way, where he's like, And who's the woman character he does? 0.58
00:12:19.000 It's kind of like a black woman who's like, honey, it is the best. 0.91
00:12:23.000 I don't know. 0.99
00:12:24.000 Marjorie, I think, maybe. 0.77
00:12:27.000 But then he does that woman answering the phone at Pizza Hut.
00:12:36.000 And then he does the automated thing.
00:12:40.000 She's like, I'm going to put you on.
00:12:42.000 It's easier to do the automated thing.
00:12:45.000 And the guy's like, okay, all right.
00:12:48.000 And then he gets on.
00:12:49.000 He's like, Thank you for calling Pizza Hut the best pizza in a three block radius.
00:12:56.000 And if you want, if you want, I'm not doing it justice.
00:13:01.000 You got to go do it.
00:13:02.000 Hear it.
00:13:02.000 Listen, can you?
00:13:04.000 Yeah, you got it.
00:13:06.000 All right, headphones.
00:13:08.000 Okay, it's so brilliant.
00:13:09.000 Wait, whichever is large.
00:13:12.000 Yes, just a regular large, thick crust on a deep dish.
00:13:21.000 You want puff dish?
00:13:22.000 No.
00:13:23.000 You want any of them puffy cheese balls, anything like that?
00:13:26.000 We got a special on Buffalo Wing.
00:13:28.000 We got a special on.
00:13:31.000 Damn, I forgot the other thing.
00:13:33.000 We got a special on something.
00:13:36.000 Alright, what do you want?
00:13:37.000 What kind of cheese do you want?
00:13:38.000 Blue, Swiss, Cheddar, Munster.
00:13:42.000 Okay, I think I'm going to have the wrong location here.
00:13:45.000 Alright, hold on.
00:13:48.000 And he's subdued.
00:13:49.000 Thank you for calling Pizza.
00:13:50.000 Your call is being transferred.
00:13:52.000 Please have all credit card information available for our operators.
00:13:55.000 Yes, Pizza, hello.
00:13:58.000 Hi, yes.
00:14:00.000 Hi, which location are you at?
00:14:00.000 Hi.
00:14:01.000 We are at the corner of La Cienega and Venice.
00:14:05.000 Okay.
00:14:05.000 I'd like to place an order for.
00:14:07.000 Delivery.
00:14:08.000 All right, can I put you on hold?
00:14:09.000 We'll put you through our automated system.
00:14:10.000 Hold on, please.
00:14:13.000 Thank you for calling Pizza.
00:14:15.000 If you'd like cheese pizza, press one.
00:14:18.000 If you'd like a meatball pizza, press two.
00:14:21.000 If you'd like sausage, press three.
00:14:29.000 Press too.
00:14:33.000 Oh, it goes on and on and on.
00:14:35.000 He goes, he eventually gets the guy a fish pizza, and the guy's like, No, man, this, I don't want it.
00:14:43.000 It's really funny, but that's him.
00:14:45.000 That's Phil doing all those voices, and that's not set up.
00:14:48.000 A guy had called into the studio thinking it was pizza, and they're like, Take this call.
00:14:52.000 Did you ever meet him?
00:14:53.000 I did briefly at, when I got to see him do his, he did a live show at Aspen Comedy Festival.
00:15:00.000 Oh.
00:15:01.000 Long, long, long time ago.
00:15:03.000 I did something with him, Bob Odenkirk, and Doug Stanhope.
00:15:07.000 Oh, wow.
00:15:08.000 And Adam Carolla.
00:15:10.000 I don't remember where it was.
00:15:11.000 I want to say it was somewhere in Canada, but it was some sit down.
00:15:15.000 We were talking about the process of going through, because he was in the middle of doing some sort of a television show pilot.
00:15:23.000 Yeah, yeah.
00:15:24.000 So we were talking about the process of creating a pilot and what it's like trying to get a pilot to an actual finished television show and get it approved and what the struggles are.
00:15:34.000 Canadians.
00:15:34.000 It was very interesting.
00:15:35.000 I don't think it was for, it was one of those Montreal Comedy Festival things.
00:15:40.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:15:41.000 It makes sense.
00:15:42.000 It was like some weird talk.
00:15:43.000 It was a long time ago.
00:15:44.000 It was like, God, it had to be like 2001 or something.
00:15:48.000 Yeah, I vaguely remember when he was, there was going to be, because he would talk about it doing this sitcom.
00:15:54.000 Yeah, did it ever happen?
00:15:56.000 I don't think so.
00:15:57.000 He was a really nice guy, though.
00:15:57.000 No.
00:15:59.000 Not what I expected at all.
00:16:00.000 I expected him to be fucking insane.
00:16:03.000 Just to be able to do that every night and not get bored.
00:16:07.000 With just completely fucking with people every day?
00:16:11.000 It's got to be exhausting too, like mentally, because you've got to remember.
00:16:17.000 It's like really great improv guys where you have to remember all these details, bring them back 30 minutes later, right?
00:16:26.000 And you're doing multiple characters.
00:16:28.000 You ever see TJ and Dave?
00:16:29.000 No.
00:16:30.000 Oh, dude, the best.
00:16:31.000 Yeah, what is it?
00:16:33.000 It's TJ Jadogowski and Dave Pasquese, who are like the kings of that.
00:16:42.000 Stuff in, uh, out of Chicago and they come, they tour around, uh, and they're just, they're two guys who, uh, it starts off, you know, it's none of it's planned, none of it's, uh, and they have like a dedicated cult following.
00:16:56.000 When they're in New York, it sells out like that.
00:16:58.000 And you got to go to, uh, at least two shows to see how wildly different it is.
00:17:04.000 I mean, they're two guys that come out on stage, usually it was like three chairs, and it'll just start with like, uh, you know, How's it going?
00:17:15.000 Good, good, good.
00:17:17.000 Are you in line?
00:17:18.000 No, no, no.
00:17:18.000 And you watch it like, oh, they're in line.
00:17:22.000 Where are they in line at?
00:17:23.000 Do they know each other?
00:17:25.000 And then it turns out they're at the DMV, but they're not.
00:17:28.000 It's like a room outside of the DMV.
00:17:30.000 And then they will leave and come back and be somebody else, right?
00:17:34.000 A kid that was mentioned or a wife or something, or be in a car.
00:17:39.000 And it all wraps up.
00:17:42.000 It's all a big story.
00:17:44.000 And.
00:17:45.000 I have seen, I've probably seen him 30, 40 times, and I've seen shows that were more, that were funnier, more poignant than some plays that have been worked on for years.
00:17:59.000 You know, it is better.
00:18:00.000 Completely improvised?
00:18:01.000 Completely, 100%.
00:18:03.000 Wow.
00:18:04.000 Oh, they're, I mean, do you know Tim Meadows?
00:18:08.000 Yeah.
00:18:09.000 So Tim was a guest.
00:18:11.000 Sometimes I'll have a third person.
00:18:12.000 I know who he is.
00:18:13.000 I don't know who he is.
00:18:14.000 Yeah.
00:18:14.000 So I was, and Tim's been, you know, SNL.
00:18:19.000 Yeah, and ensconced in that second city world for decades.
00:18:25.000 And he said it was the most terrifying thing he's ever done because they're like genius level.
00:18:32.000 I mean, the detail you have to remember.
00:18:35.000 And then, on top of it, if one of them is, you know, I'm a marine biologist or whatever, it slips out, then that person has to know about the real person playing the fake marine biologist has to know enough about marine biology to keep the thing going, you know?
00:18:54.000 And it's just next level.
00:18:56.000 It's almost time for spring break.
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00:20:03.000 Well, I'd imagine that's like a muscle that you just get really strong with, like ranters. 0.98
00:20:11.000 Like Tim Dillon is the best at. 0.96
00:20:15.000 Ranting on a podcast alone.
00:20:18.000 He doesn't have anybody with him.
00:20:20.000 Most of his podcasts are just him ranting.
00:20:22.000 And I've watched the development of it.
00:20:24.000 I'm like, that's an amazing muscle to develop because you just get accustomed to that kind of scenario, that situation where it's just, and your mind just gets used to producing content.
00:20:36.000 And like old school AM late night radio guys, right?
00:20:41.000 Who don't have people calling in who are like talking about whatever.
00:20:45.000 And they got to do it.
00:20:46.000 You know, four or five times a week.
00:20:49.000 Yeah.
00:20:49.000 Three hours by themselves.
00:20:51.000 Yeah.
00:20:51.000 I used to always like to listen to them.
00:20:53.000 I used to like to listen to those crazy right wing, angry political talk shows because I didn't know anybody like that.
00:21:00.000 So I was like, what is this guy doing?
00:21:03.000 Well, uh, That was the bulk of the radio.
00:21:08.000 I mean, that's why you have Art Bell and Phil Hendry, like a nice, like, oh, okay.
00:21:14.000 I got Mark Levin and I got, you know, fuck, what's his name?
00:21:14.000 Because I got all this.
00:21:20.000 Rush Limbaugh.
00:21:21.000 Rush Limbaugh, yeah.
00:21:23.000 And when you first start listening, or when I first started listening, and I came out to LA from Boston, you know, and people were like, there's this guy out here who's fucking nuts, you know, and I'd never heard of him in Boston.
00:21:39.000 And then.
00:21:40.000 And you're like, does he, how much of this stuff does he believe?
00:21:44.000 Does he really believe?
00:21:45.000 And how much has he come to believe?
00:21:49.000 Does that make sense?
00:21:50.000 Yeah.
00:21:51.000 Yeah.
00:21:52.000 And those guys, that was a whole fascinating thing.
00:21:55.000 And Wally George, do you remember Wally George?
00:21:57.000 I do, but I don't remember much about him.
00:21:59.000 I remember the name.
00:22:00.000 What did Wally George do?
00:22:01.000 He was the guy who originated what, I mean, now it's really familiar.
00:22:07.000 Remember Morton Downey Jr.?
00:22:09.000 He was a little after the war.
00:22:10.000 Oh, that's right.
00:22:11.000 That's right.
00:22:12.000 And he would look at 83, and he was, and it was a super low budget, like cable access type thing back when that was a whole thing.
00:22:25.000 And he'd get the audience would be hooting and hollering, and he'd have people on, like somebody who, and sometimes they, I think, because it became popular, sort of like with Morton Downey Jr., where people came on to quote unquote fuck with Wally George.
00:22:42.000 Like, I'm going to pretend to be a.
00:22:44.000 You know, a furry, and I'm going to, you know, have gauges and, and, you know what I mean?
00:22:49.000 Like just the archetype of the thing they want to yell at.
00:22:52.000 And, and I think people started, it was, there were some bullshit people on there, you know, people lying about who they were.
00:22:59.000 But he'd have people on and then, and then kick them off.
00:23:03.000 It would happen all the time.
00:23:04.000 Like, come on, sit down.
00:23:06.000 What the fuck do you think you're doing?
00:23:08.000 And everybody would yell at the person.
00:23:10.000 They'd start talking.
00:23:11.000 You're like, get the fuck out of here.
00:23:12.000 And that was, that was the show.
00:23:15.000 We're like, you know, and here's something really crazy.
00:23:20.000 And tell me if this is rumor.
00:23:23.000 Look up at your magic computer.
00:23:26.000 Rebecca DeMornais' dad, the actress.
00:23:30.000 That's, yeah.
00:23:32.000 Wally George?
00:23:33.000 Yes.
00:23:34.000 Yeah.
00:23:34.000 No.
00:23:35.000 Really?
00:23:35.000 Look it up.
00:23:36.000 Casey, right?
00:23:38.000 Jamie.
00:23:38.000 Jamie, I'm going to call you Casey.
00:23:42.000 Who is, I forget who Rebecca DeMornais was.
00:23:45.000 From Risky Business.
00:23:47.000 Oh, wow.
00:23:51.000 Wow, her dad?
00:23:53.000 Is Wally George.
00:23:53.000 Yeah.
00:23:55.000 Isn't that crazy?
00:23:55.000 Wow.
00:23:56.000 Married multiple times. 0.92
00:23:57.000 Shocker.
00:23:58.000 Probably 10, potentially 10 times.
00:24:00.000 Had at least six children.
00:24:01.000 Holy shit.
00:24:02.000 Look at how many times he was married.
00:24:04.000 One, two, three, four.
00:24:10.000 Possibly 10.
00:24:10.000 Wow.
00:24:12.000 Possibly 10.
00:24:13.000 Can you imagine just keep fucking signing up?
00:24:16.000 I don't.
00:24:17.000 I just read literally the other day Fleetwood Mac guy getting married for the fifth time.
00:24:17.000 Yeah.
00:24:25.000 He's 182.
00:24:27.000 And he's getting.
00:24:28.000 Like, what?
00:24:29.000 Stop.
00:24:30.000 Yeah.
00:24:31.000 Why do you want to keep doing that?
00:24:33.000 They believe.
00:24:34.000 They really believe this is it.
00:24:35.000 This is the one.
00:24:38.000 You have to say those vows and mean it each time.
00:24:42.000 Or not.
00:24:42.000 Yeah.
00:24:43.000 Or just say, this is just a fun thing that I do to keep a lady happy. 1.00
00:24:47.000 Yeah. 1.00
00:24:48.000 Or just have a party, I guess.
00:24:50.000 Have a party and pretend that you're normal now.
00:24:50.000 Yeah.
00:24:54.000 And you're married?
00:24:55.000 How long have you been married?
00:24:55.000 Yeah.
00:24:55.000 Yeah.
00:24:57.000 17 years.
00:24:58.000 Oh, nice.
00:24:58.000 Yeah.
00:24:59.000 It'll be 14 in October.
00:25:02.000 If I get divorced, that's a wrap.
00:25:05.000 What do you mean?
00:25:05.000 Like, I'm happy, happily married.
00:25:07.000 I don't want to get divorced.
00:25:08.000 But if I ever get divorced, I'm never.
00:25:08.000 Not saying that.
00:25:10.000 Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:25:12.000 Oh, same here.
00:25:12.000 Uh uh.
00:25:13.000 Oh, I feel the same.
00:25:13.000 Yeah.
00:25:14.000 Silly.
00:25:15.000 I'm not having any more children.
00:25:17.000 So if I don't have any children, it makes no sense to legally be bound to some person.
00:25:22.000 Can't we just hang out?
00:25:23.000 I am 100% with you.
00:25:25.000 I, I, and I was never an anti marriage guy, but I just didn't think I'd get married because I didn't want to.
00:25:35.000 And then eventually I met somebody who I wanted to marry.
00:25:38.000 Yeah.
00:25:39.000 It's like you just have to, it has to, I mean, that's the thing.
00:25:42.000 It has to be the right person.
00:25:43.000 Everybody always says that, except Wally George.
00:25:46.000 But the idea of doing it 10 times is fucking insane.
00:25:52.000 Like that's a, they're doing a different thing.
00:25:52.000 Yeah.
00:25:54.000 I think once you get, I'll give you three.
00:25:59.000 And let's say one of them was some fishy circumstances.
00:26:04.000 I'll give you three.
00:26:05.000 Once you get on your, by the time you're going to be on your fourth or fifth or sixth or Rupert Murdoch marriage, like I, what is the point?
00:26:15.000 And why does that woman believe you?
00:26:17.000 What does it say about the lady? 1.00
00:26:19.000 Well, what about ladies that do it? 1.00
00:26:20.000 I've been here for six years and I know one lady. 1.00
00:26:23.000 While I've been here, she's been married twice, married and divorced twice, and now she's on the third guy. 0.99
00:26:27.000 Yeah, I would look.
00:26:28.000 I mean, that says something about the guys, right?
00:26:31.000 I guess.
00:26:33.000 Yeah, man, come on.
00:26:34.000 If you.
00:26:36.000 You wouldn't ever think, like, you meet somebody, you like them, and then you find out they've been married twice before in six years.
00:26:45.000 Right.
00:26:46.000 And.
00:26:48.000 And you were like starting to fall for her.
00:26:52.000 You wouldn't think, wait a minute. 0.68
00:26:55.000 You would, unless she was hot. 1.00
00:26:58.000 Men are dumb.
00:27:00.000 If she's hot and she's sexy and you really like being around her, you're like, who cares? 0.97
00:27:04.000 She made mistakes. 0.72
00:27:05.000 Yeah.
00:27:06.000 Who cares?
00:27:07.000 I guess you're right.
00:27:08.000 If the sex is that good.
00:27:09.000 Yeah, if the sex is good, she's hot and you love being around her and that's what she wants and you want to make her happy, like, okay.
00:27:16.000 I'll say this.
00:27:17.000 You should find out, you should go talk to the other guys and have a sit down and find out why, you know.
00:27:27.000 The other one is some guys, they'll want to mess it up for you, so they'll lie.
00:27:32.000 They might not be accurate.
00:27:34.000 You know, they might paint a distorted.
00:27:37.000 Also, they might have been the fuck up and they want to blame it on her, and then you'll get a distorted perception of who she is.
00:27:42.000 But then it's back to her that she's marrying people who are fucked up.
00:27:50.000 I guess the point is that we're both making is don't get married.
00:27:54.000 Well, it is a weird thing.
00:27:54.000 You know?
00:27:56.000 It's a weird thing to do.
00:27:57.000 Do you have children?
00:27:58.000 I do.
00:27:58.000 Yeah, it's a weird thing to do if you don't have children.
00:28:01.000 Not weird like you shouldn't do it, but it's a different thing.
00:28:05.000 Yeah, completely.
00:28:06.000 Yeah, you're.
00:28:07.000 And I.
00:28:09.000 I would say that, not that we, you know, my wife and I have any, you know, real issues, but I would behave myself and stay and work at the marriage because of the kid.
00:28:29.000 Oh, absolutely.
00:28:30.000 Yeah, absolutely.
00:28:30.000 Yeah.
00:28:32.000 It fucks kids up when people get divorced.
00:28:35.000 What's your background?
00:28:36.000 My parents were split up when I was five, and my mother remarried when I was seven.
00:28:41.000 And it has been with my stepdad ever since.
00:28:43.000 Oh, that's good.
00:28:44.000 Yeah.
00:28:45.000 They have a great relationship.
00:28:46.000 I just saw them this weekend.
00:28:48.000 And where did you grow up?
00:28:49.000 Fucking everywhere.
00:28:51.000 I was born in New Jersey, moved to San Francisco when I was seven, lived in San Francisco from seven to 11 in the height of the Vietnam War in Haight Ashbury, like hippie town.
00:29:03.000 And then Florida from 11 to 13.
00:29:06.000 That's the opposite of San Francisco.
00:29:08.000 Oh, my God.
00:29:09.000 Yeah.
00:29:09.000 That's the first time I found out about the N word.
00:29:11.000 I didn't know what it meant.
00:29:12.000 And I remember I had to ask my mom.
00:29:14.000 No way.
00:29:14.000 Yeah, I had to ask my mom.
00:29:15.000 I never heard it in San Francisco.
00:29:17.000 Never heard it.
00:29:17.000 Wow.
00:29:18.000 San Francisco in the 1970s, when I was, you know, between seven and 11, was kind of a wild, amazing time.
00:29:26.000 It was really weird.
00:29:27.000 It was because we were in the middle of like the counterculture movement.
00:29:31.000 Yeah, yeah.
00:29:32.000 Berkeley, all that stuff.
00:29:33.000 Uh huh.
00:29:34.000 Yeah.
00:29:34.000 We lived right down the street from Lombard Street.
00:29:37.000 So we're, you know, we were like in the middle of it all, you know?
00:29:41.000 And, uh, It's funny because it was during that time that the Vietnam War ended.
00:29:47.000 When I was, I think I was, when did Vietnam end?
00:29:52.000 74?
00:29:56.000 I think 74.
00:29:58.000 Officially April 30, 75.
00:30:01.000 Okay.
00:30:02.000 U.S. withdrawal, 73.
00:30:03.000 Yeah, so that was like, how old was I?
00:30:06.000 Whatever.
00:30:07.000 The point is, at that time, I remember thinking, thank God they figured out war is bad.
00:30:11.000 We're never going to do this again.
00:30:13.000 I literally had that thought, however old I was.
00:30:16.000 What a naive child.
00:30:17.000 Oh, I was like, because my stepfather had, he didn't get drafted, he got lucky, he just didn't get picked.
00:30:26.000 And I knew a guy, some guy that was a friend of the family that had moved to Canada.
00:30:32.000 He's like, fuck this.
00:30:33.000 He took off to Canada.
00:30:34.000 So I was aware of that, like how people are leaving the country so that they don't have to go to war.
00:30:38.000 Like, this is because if you're a little kid, everything's fucking scary, especially if you come from a broken home and, you know, like, it's just a lot of fun.
00:30:45.000 Yeah, and the concept of a draft or conscription, the idea, like, oh, you may have to go and you're going to learn how to shoot a gun and then go shoot strangers, kids, you know, like that.
00:30:57.000 It's got to be terrifying if you're a kid.
00:31:00.000 No, it was insane.
00:31:01.000 And it was also, there was also the time where, you know, my stepdad was a hippie and my parents were hippies.
00:31:07.000 And when I was going to ask, why did your, sorry to interrupt, but why did they move around so much?
00:31:14.000 My stepfather was a computer programmer initially and then he wanted to become an architect.
00:31:18.000 So he went to school in San Francisco and then University of Florida in Gainesville and then Boston Architectural Center.
00:31:27.000 So we moved to Boston when I was 13.
00:31:31.000 So that was what it was.
00:31:31.000 It was him becoming an architect.
00:31:33.000 Right.
00:31:33.000 And so, like, they didn't like sports.
00:31:37.000 They weren't into anything like that.
00:31:39.000 And then when Muhammad Ali was opposing the Vietnam War, he became this, like, counterculture hero.
00:31:46.000 Sure, yeah.
00:31:47.000 And I remember it was my parents sat down and watched Muhammad Ali versus Leon Spinks because he was trying to win his title back.
00:31:58.000 And they were rooting for Muhammad Ali.
00:32:00.000 I'm like, this is crazy.
00:32:01.000 Like, this guy's.
00:32:02.000 Dance on the Vietnam War has made my parents fans of his to the point where they're going to watch boxing.
00:32:09.000 Like, they never watched boxing.
00:32:10.000 They didn't want to have anything to do with anything violent.
00:32:13.000 They hated it.
00:32:14.000 But they wanted to watch that.
00:32:15.000 Well, if you were the one boxer to watch, if you were anti hitting or boxing or whatever, it was Muhammad Ali.
00:32:24.000 He was a strategist.
00:32:26.000 He was, but quite honestly, by that stage of his career, he had slowed down considerably.
00:32:33.000 And he just wasn't.
00:32:35.000 Remember the Leon Spinks because he. 0.95
00:32:39.000 Leon beat him. 0.96
00:32:40.000 Yeah.
00:32:40.000 And then he beat Leon in the rematch.
00:32:42.000 Right.
00:32:43.000 This is the rematch, right.
00:32:44.000 And that was the big one that we were all glued to the TV.
00:32:47.000 But I remember thinking, this is crazy.
00:32:49.000 They're watching boxing because of this guy's position on the Vietnam War.
00:32:53.000 Have you seen When We Were Kings?
00:32:55.000 Yes.
00:32:55.000 Yeah, it's great.
00:32:56.000 It's amazing.
00:32:57.000 Yeah, it's amazing.
00:32:57.000 Yeah.
00:32:59.000 Yeah, he was a.
00:33:00.000 God, you want to talk about a unique human being.
00:33:04.000 Like a one of one.
00:33:05.000 Yeah.
00:33:06.000 You know?
00:33:07.000 Yeah.
00:33:07.000 And.
00:33:10.000 Outside of Mike Tyson, there was never any kind of figure like that in boxing.
00:33:20.000 No.
00:33:22.000 I mean, there was minor Sugar Ray Leonard a little bit, but not to that extent because he wasn't a cultural figure.
00:33:29.000 Muhammad Ali represented something during the Civil Rights Movement.
00:33:34.000 And he changed his name to Muhammad Ali.
00:33:36.000 Right, right.
00:33:36.000 That was a big thing, too.
00:33:37.000 People were terrified of Muslims at the time.
00:33:40.000 And still.
00:33:42.000 I was going to say at the time.
00:33:43.000 Yeah. 1.00
00:33:44.000 But it was a different kind of Muslims. 1.00
00:33:47.000 You know, that was. 1.00
00:33:49.000 Well, they were the. 0.90
00:33:52.000 You know, the government was really good about portraying every black urban person as like potentially, you know, Muslim Brotherhood, 12 Tribes. 0.93
00:34:04.000 Right, right, right, right. 0.98
00:34:06.000 Those guys.
00:34:06.000 They're still around.
00:34:07.000 The Israelite 12 Tribes. 1.00
00:34:10.000 Oh, those guys, yeah.
00:34:12.000 They used to hang out and hang out.
00:34:15.000 They used to be in Times Square, like, you know, yelling and preaching.
00:34:20.000 I hung out with those guys one day.
00:34:22.000 I wrote a piece about it for my website.
00:34:24.000 Because I went, I was going home.
00:34:27.000 It was when I was living in New York, and I was walking down the street, and there's this guy standing there with like a microphone and a little speaker.
00:34:32.000 Yeah.
00:34:33.000 And they would read things from the Bible.
00:34:34.000 Yep.
00:34:35.000 And they would translate it, and they had this very bizarre translation. 1.00
00:34:40.000 Everybody was black.
00:34:41.000 George Washington was black.
00:34:42.000 Everyone was black. 1.00
00:34:43.000 They were explaining to me, you know, the so called Jew.
00:34:47.000 They're black Israelites.
00:34:48.000 Yeah.
00:34:49.000 The so called Jew was the thing that they would always think.
00:34:51.000 Well, they're Jewish.
00:34:52.000 Yeah. 0.82
00:34:53.000 You don't have to say the so called.
00:34:54.000 It was very odd.
00:34:54.000 Yeah.
00:34:56.000 But their whole thing was there was a.
00:35:00.000 A 12th tribe of the Israelites that were black that have been, you know, written out of history.
00:35:10.000 Yeah. 1.00
00:35:10.000 That was their thing. 1.00
00:35:11.000 Yeah. 0.64
00:35:12.000 They also informed me that I'm not white. 1.00
00:35:14.000 That was a relief. 1.00
00:35:15.000 What?
00:35:16.000 Because I'm Italian. 0.91
00:35:17.000 They were like, oh, you ain't white. 0.89
00:35:19.000 I was like, oh. 1.00
00:35:20.000 Oh, it's like the.
00:35:21.000 Great.
00:35:22.000 Because they hated white people.
00:35:23.000 So I was just talking to this because I was bored.
00:35:25.000 So I was talking to this guy.
00:35:25.000 You know, I was just.
00:35:26.000 I was having him explain everything to me. 0.85
00:35:29.000 And he informed me, don't worry, man, you're not white. 0.93
00:35:32.000 I was like, oh, okay, that's good. 0.95
00:35:33.000 It's good to know.
00:35:34.000 So you can hang out.
00:35:35.000 I can hang out with you guys.
00:35:36.000 You don't hate me.
00:35:37.000 But it was very odd.
00:35:40.000 Very odd.
00:35:40.000 They were all dressed like superheroes.
00:35:42.000 They all had these crazy Avenger costumes on.
00:35:44.000 Yeah.
00:35:45.000 And like jewelry.
00:35:48.000 Yeah.
00:35:48.000 Like big medallions.
00:35:50.000 Huge medallions.
00:35:50.000 Yeah.
00:35:51.000 Yeah.
00:35:52.000 Very odd stuff.
00:35:54.000 There's still, you don't see them like you used to, but they're still out there.
00:35:57.000 Oh, yeah.
00:35:58.000 They're out there.
00:35:58.000 Yeah.
00:35:59.000 But I mean, like in literally in New York, at the periphery of Times Square.
00:36:04.000 Yeah.
00:36:05.000 Last time I was in Philadelphia, I saw them.
00:36:07.000 Yeah.
00:36:07.000 They were out there in the street with the microphones.
00:36:10.000 The whole deal.
00:36:10.000 Yeah.
00:36:11.000 Yeah.
00:36:12.000 It's an odd group.
00:36:14.000 When were you in New York?
00:36:16.000 I was in New York.
00:36:17.000 I moved to New York in 91, yeah.
00:36:23.000 So I started stand up in 88 in Boston.
00:36:26.000 And I got picked up by my manager, who I'm still with, when I was essentially an open micer.
00:36:32.000 Who was that?
00:36:33.000 Jeff Sussman.
00:36:35.000 How do I not know Jeff Sussman?
00:36:37.000 He handles Kevin James.
00:36:39.000 Was he a Boston guy?
00:36:40.000 No, he was a New York guy.
00:36:41.000 Oh, okay, okay.
00:36:42.000 So the story was he had, what was his name?
00:36:45.000 Fucking.
00:36:46.000 The guy who had all the crazy costumes, he was on the Rodney Dangerfield special, Bob.
00:36:52.000 Oh, Bob Nelson.
00:36:53.000 Bob Nelson, yeah.
00:36:54.000 So he handled Bob Nelson.
00:36:55.000 He was the Cleveland Browns.
00:36:56.000 Yeah.
00:36:57.000 He put the helmet on.
00:36:59.000 He had boxing gloves.
00:37:00.000 He did Jippy Jeff's Jim.
00:37:01.000 He had brain damage.
00:37:03.000 He did a bunch of different characters.
00:37:05.000 So Bob, who is a big act, you know, he had the HBO special, the whole deal at the time, he found Jesus.
00:37:12.000 Oh.
00:37:13.000 Where was he?
00:37:15.000 In his basement, I guess.
00:37:16.000 Or something.
00:37:16.000 Oh, Jesus.
00:37:17.000 It was around the neighborhood somewhere.
00:37:17.000 Okay.
00:37:19.000 But.
00:37:19.000 Okay.
00:37:20.000 He had this guy who was his prayer partner that was going to take over as his manager.
00:37:27.000 And so this was my manager's big client.
00:37:30.000 So he's like, fuck, I got to go find some other comedians.
00:37:36.000 So did he just stop doing stand up?
00:37:39.000 I don't know.
00:37:41.000 I don't know if he still does stand up.
00:37:43.000 I don't know.
00:37:44.000 I knew his career.
00:37:46.000 My manager's really good and he's very smart and he did a great job guiding Bob, but.
00:37:52.000 I think sometimes when people have a big religious moment like that, maybe that becomes more of their life.
00:38:00.000 Because he was all in.
00:38:02.000 He was all in with Christianity. 0.96
00:38:02.000 Yeah, yeah. 0.96
00:38:05.000 And so my manager said, Well, I kind of know most of the comics in New York.
00:38:11.000 Let me see if I'm not missing people in Boston.
00:38:14.000 And so he traveled to Boston with a friend of his, one of the guys that owned Governors.
00:38:20.000 And they came.
00:38:21.000 Well, Governors was Bob's.
00:38:23.000 Room, wasn't it?
00:38:24.000 Yes.
00:38:24.000 Yeah.
00:38:24.000 Out in Long Island.
00:38:25.000 One of the rooms that he worked at, yeah.
00:38:27.000 And so they came down to Boston, and I just randomly went up one night at.
00:38:33.000 Duck Soup.
00:38:34.000 Remember Duck Soup?
00:38:35.000 Duck Soup.
00:38:36.000 Duck Soup was, it became the improv after a while.
00:38:40.000 It was.
00:38:41.000 I don't remember that.
00:38:42.000 Billy Downs and.
00:38:44.000 Paul Barkley.
00:38:45.000 Paul Barkley.
00:38:45.000 I think it was actually Billy Split.
00:38:47.000 I think it was Paul's thing.
00:38:49.000 So they did.
00:38:49.000 Oh, they split at that point?
00:38:50.000 I think.
00:38:51.000 I'm not sure about that.
00:38:52.000 But what it was, it was Paul's idea, believe.
00:38:55.000 It was a much more high end room.
00:38:57.000 Like, it was really nice.
00:38:59.000 And it was right across from Nick's.
00:39:01.000 So it was in the below area where the Wiltern is.
00:39:05.000 So, you know where the Wiltern is, which is now the big, you know, where Bill Blumenwright does comedy connection shows?
00:39:05.000 Okay.
00:39:10.000 The Wilbur, right?
00:39:11.000 Yeah.
00:39:12.000 Is that it?
00:39:13.000 The Wilbur.
00:39:14.000 It's the Wilbur.
00:39:14.000 Okay.
00:39:15.000 I'm thinking the Wilterns, L.A. At Wilterns, L.A. Right.
00:39:17.000 I know what you're talking about.
00:39:18.000 The Wilbur.
00:39:18.000 Right.
00:39:19.000 You're right.
00:39:20.000 So, downstairs, the Wilbur, you'd go down, and it was a really nice room.
00:39:24.000 And I was a limo driver at the time.
00:39:24.000 Okay.
00:39:27.000 I was driving limos.
00:39:29.000 Driving a limo in Boston?
00:39:31.000 Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:39:32.000 Jesus.
00:39:32.000 Yeah, yeah.
00:39:34.000 Because I was doing for a job.
00:39:34.000 Oh, man.
00:39:35.000 That's fucking hard.
00:39:36.000 I mean, I just mean, the literal streets of Boston are.
00:39:40.000 Tough to navigate with any vehicle, but a limo, add an extra half a car to it.
00:39:46.000 It wasn't that bad.
00:39:46.000 Yeah.
00:39:48.000 It was mostly airport pickups.
00:39:50.000 Yeah.
00:39:51.000 And a lot of it was town cars, pick people up in town cars.
00:39:54.000 But when you drive around a lot, that's when I would come up with my best ideas.
00:39:58.000 And I had an idea for a joke and I called, God, I can't remember who the guy was.
00:40:04.000 Fuck, I can't believe I'm blanking on his name.
00:40:07.000 He was a really cool dude who was the manager of the club.
00:40:11.000 And I could call him up and say, hey, can I get a guest bot?
00:40:14.000 And he gave me a guest spot that night.
00:40:15.000 I wasn't even supposed to be on the show.
00:40:17.000 And my manager just happened to be in the room.
00:40:19.000 And if I'd known he was in the room, I probably would have been nervous and I probably would have bombed.
00:40:23.000 And I had no idea he was there.
00:40:25.000 And then he came up to me afterwards and gave me his card and he said, Can I see you tomorrow?
00:40:30.000 And I said, Okay.
00:40:31.000 And then I did.
00:40:33.000 He just went for a ride to the airport.
00:40:36.000 So I did a set at the Connection the next night.
00:40:39.000 And then he asked me to come to New York and audition there.
00:40:42.000 And then, next thing you know, I was living in New York.
00:40:44.000 It was like three years later.
00:40:45.000 Very cool.
00:40:46.000 And then.
00:40:46.000 Yeah, it was a crazy story.
00:40:48.000 And when did you move out to LA?
00:40:52.000 94, 93.
00:40:53.000 First came out in 93 and then moved in 94.
00:40:57.000 I came out to 93 for a pilot.
00:40:59.000 I did a pilot on Fox called Hardball with Jim Brewer and a bunch of other people.
00:41:06.000 It was a baseball sitcom on Fox that got canceled.
00:41:09.000 It was terrible.
00:41:10.000 And then the only reason why I stayed, I hated LA, but the only reason why I stayed was because I had got an apartment and I had a lease for a year.
00:41:19.000 So I was like, fuck, I have to stay here.
00:41:22.000 And so I stayed for a whole year.
00:41:23.000 And then I got a development deal for NBC.
00:41:26.000 And I was there in the middle of this whole development deal.
00:41:30.000 And then they said, we have a pilot.
00:41:32.000 That we already filmed, but we're going to fire one of the cast members.
00:41:37.000 We want you to audition for this.
00:41:38.000 And that was news radio.
00:41:39.000 So I got to watch.
00:41:40.000 Who did you replace?
00:41:43.000 Well, fortunately, it was Ray Romano, who was a good friend of mine, was fired during the pilot.
00:41:52.000 And so they replaced him with another guy, and that guy got fired.
00:41:55.000 Oh, wow.
00:41:56.000 So it wasn't, I would have felt terrible if it was Ray.
00:41:56.000 Yeah.
00:41:59.000 But it was Ray being replaced.
00:42:01.000 So I was like, good, fuck that guy.
00:42:04.000 I'll do it for Ray.
00:42:05.000 Do you remember who the other guy was?
00:42:06.000 I do not.
00:42:07.000 He was just an actor.
00:42:08.000 Some guy.
00:42:09.000 I mean, I never met him.
00:42:10.000 I'm sure he's a nice guy.
00:42:11.000 But luckily for Ray, he goes on and does Everybody Loves Raymond and becomes huge.
00:42:16.000 And I just stumbled into this fucking show with no acting experience.
00:42:21.000 That was a fun set.
00:42:22.000 I remember.
00:42:24.000 Because I did it a couple times.
00:42:26.000 And also, that was not my first, but one of the first experiences I had with multi camera sitcoms.
00:42:35.000 You know, you're like.
00:42:38.000 This is literally the easiest job on planet Earth.
00:42:43.000 Oh, yeah.
00:42:44.000 It is the, you have one full day.
00:42:47.000 You have like a full, I think Thursday, right?
00:42:49.000 Yeah.
00:42:49.000 And then Friday is like half a day.
00:42:51.000 Yeah.
00:42:52.000 Monday, come in, listen to this, read the script, go away.
00:42:55.000 Yeah.
00:42:55.000 It's the filming day that's the long day.
00:42:58.000 And it's not that bad.
00:42:59.000 I mean, especially once we got loose.
00:43:01.000 The first season was hard.
00:43:03.000 The first season was 12, 14 hour days because it was like they were trying to figure out what the show was.
00:43:08.000 But once it got rolling.
00:43:11.000 It was pretty amazing.
00:43:12.000 So, I had only been doing stand up for six years.
00:43:15.000 I'd only been, I had done no acting.
00:43:18.000 I had a, they made me get an acting coach for a little while in New York, which I think was counterintuitive.
00:43:24.000 Newspaper.
00:43:25.000 For a pilot, for the pilot, the Fox pilot.
00:43:27.000 Oh.
00:43:28.000 Yeah.
00:43:28.000 Well, how's an acting coach going to help you with a sitcom?
00:43:33.000 It's about instinct.
00:43:34.000 It's about.
00:43:35.000 Well, they were giving me a lot of money.
00:43:37.000 They gave me like $150,000.
00:43:38.000 I mean, you have to learn how to act.
00:43:41.000 Right.
00:43:41.000 Do you know how to act?
00:43:42.000 I've never acted.
00:43:43.000 I'm just saying, like.
00:43:45.000 I know.
00:43:45.000 To deliver sitcom lines is you don't need an acting teacher.
00:43:50.000 Wow, Joseph, let's limber up the body.
00:43:53.000 Yeah, you're not Daniel Day Lewis.
00:43:55.000 You're not doing There Will Be Blood.
00:43:59.000 It was weird because it wasn't anything.
00:44:02.000 I think the reason why it worked out so well is because it was never anything that I wanted.
00:44:06.000 So there was no weight to it.
00:44:08.000 It wasn't like, oh my God, this is it.
00:44:11.000 I am on a sitcom.
00:44:12.000 I'm acting.
00:44:13.000 It was more like, this is crazy.
00:44:15.000 I can't believe I'm doing this.
00:44:16.000 It was more like, wow, I can't believe I get to do this.
00:44:20.000 But, you know, the real thing for me was to be able to be in LA and go to the comedy store.
00:44:25.000 That to me was more, that was more huge than, like, when I got passed at the comedy store, that to me was, like, way bigger than being on a sitcom.
00:44:34.000 I was like, holy shit.
00:44:36.000 Like, because at that, you know, like, at six years in, I was like, am I even, is this going to work out?
00:44:40.000 Like, I don't even know if this is going to work out.
00:44:42.000 Well, it's also not glamorous in any way.
00:44:47.000 That aspect of working, Is there's nothing glamorous about a sitcom, you know what I mean?
00:44:55.000 It's not the thing that when you're not in LA or Hollywood and you're sitting back and you're told about the glamorous lifestyle, the parties, and all that stuff, it's literally you're driving to work and you're going to work, you know?
00:45:09.000 Yeah, but it was glamorous in a sense that you were on television, and that was very weird to me.
00:45:17.000 It was very strange to watch it on TV.
00:45:20.000 I'm like, that is actually me on TV.
00:45:22.000 I had.
00:45:24.000 Zero aspirations for any acting at all.
00:45:27.000 Yeah.
00:45:29.000 It never even occurred to me.
00:45:30.000 When I lived in Boston, I remember me and Fitzsimmons used to dream about the day we could pay our bills telling jokes.
00:45:37.000 That was all it was.
00:45:38.000 I hear you.
00:45:39.000 It was just like, oh God, I would see guys like DJ Hazard.
00:45:43.000 I remember I went to look at this apartment, and DJ Hazard lived in the same building.
00:45:47.000 And it was this converted schoolhouse and these loft apartments.
00:45:52.000 It had like a second floor where the bedroom was, and it looked over the living room.
00:45:56.000 I'm like, God, this is he pays for this with jokes.
00:45:59.000 Yeah, this was like the most amazing thing.
00:46:01.000 Like, that's all I wanted.
00:46:03.000 I saw these like Don Gavin and Steve Sweeney.
00:46:06.000 I was like, imagine being able to pay your bills just telling jokes, untie my ankles in the morning.
00:46:14.000 Yeah, I did.
00:46:14.000 Remember that?
00:46:15.000 DJ Hazard, yeah.
00:46:17.000 Um, what was I gonna say?
00:46:19.000 Something, oh, do you know?
00:46:23.000 Fitzsimmons, Paul Barclay story or Bill Downs, The Watch?
00:46:29.000 It was Bill Downs.
00:46:29.000 Bill Downs.
00:46:30.000 Which one?
00:46:31.000 How's it go?
00:46:32.000 Oh, I don't.
00:46:34.000 You should get it from him because it's his story.
00:46:37.000 But, and I don't want to, I feel like it's his to tell, but it's fucking great.
00:46:43.000 It's genius.
00:46:44.000 It's bringing up something in my memory.
00:46:47.000 So, Bill owed everybody money.
00:46:50.000 Right.
00:46:51.000 And, uh, Like he's still, you know, those guys owe me whatever it is at this point, you know, what $300, $500.
00:46:59.000 And just, and you go there and they were just everybody was big guy, remember?
00:47:03.000 Yeah.
00:47:04.000 I'll pay a soon big guy.
00:47:05.000 Oh, the war.
00:47:06.000 And then, do you remember when?
00:47:09.000 Bill adopted the girls.
00:47:12.000 Yes.
00:47:13.000 Korean girls, right? 0.98
00:47:14.000 He, yeah. 0.98
00:47:14.000 And he would use them like as, because at a certain point, it didn't help to go to the connection or go to the clubs. 0.98
00:47:25.000 And you had to go to their fucking office.
00:47:28.000 If you want it, nobody's going to call you back or whatever.
00:47:31.000 And you'd like, I got to get on the tee and go to their office.
00:47:36.000 And that's the only way I'm going to get money.
00:47:38.000 Is if I show up and he's in a Good mood, and it's not gonna happen from a phone call.
00:47:44.000 And I'd go there every single time.
00:47:46.000 It's like, dude, I gotta pay my rent, man.
00:47:48.000 I mean, I got nothing, and you owe me, you know, $385.
00:47:54.000 And back then, that was huge.
00:47:56.000 And ah, cross, I just listen.
00:48:01.000 So I got these, my kids, one of my kids is sick, and whatever.
00:48:05.000 It's always this fucking excuse.
00:48:07.000 And then, and then, you know, it was still the coke residual and the bottom of his nose.
00:48:14.000 But so he owed Fitzsimmons a chunk of money, like a significant amount, like $1,500, $1,800, like something meaty, you know, especially for back then.
00:48:29.000 And, uh, you ask Greg, because I feel like.
00:48:35.000 No, tell the story.
00:48:36.000 I'm sure Greg's told it to me.
00:48:38.000 Greg and I are pretty close.
00:48:39.000 I just remember it in my head.
00:48:42.000 I do remember part of it, but I don't know the whole story.
00:48:44.000 I don't remember it.
00:48:45.000 All right.
00:48:46.000 So Greg was, uh, At this, you know, some shit club in New Hampshire or whatever.
00:48:54.000 And Downs was going to be there.
00:48:56.000 Bill was going to be there.
00:48:59.000 And he goes there and he goes, Oh, Bill, I forgot my watch.
00:49:06.000 I don't want to go over.
00:49:08.000 Can I borrow your watch?
00:49:09.000 And he's like, Yeah, sure.
00:49:10.000 It's like a Rolex, like some fancy, fancy, fancy watch.
00:49:15.000 And Greg had this all planned out.
00:49:16.000 Oh, I know the story.
00:49:17.000 Yeah.
00:49:18.000 And then he had parked in a specific place.
00:49:21.000 And then he.
00:49:22.000 And then he gets, he's like, all right, thanks.
00:49:25.000 And he's like, all right, don't forget to give it back.
00:49:27.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:49:28.000 And he does his set and then he bolts out the back door, gets in his car, drives home back to Boston.
00:49:34.000 And then Bill calls him, hey, so I think you forgot to give me my watch back.
00:49:42.000 And Greg just basically goes, yeah, you want it back?
00:49:46.000 Give me the $1,800 you owe me.
00:49:49.000 And then met him at a restaurant or a diner somewhere in a public place.
00:49:53.000 Give me the cash and I'll give you your watch.
00:49:55.000 And it was just genius.
00:49:56.000 Yeah.
00:49:57.000 That's Greg.
00:49:58.000 Yeah.
00:49:59.000 Yeah.
00:49:59.000 Those days were fun.
00:50:01.000 Nick's Comic Stop used to offer to pay you in cocaine or cash.
00:50:04.000 I, dude, so I did Nick's.
00:50:08.000 And the only, I've said this multiple times, the only, I'm extremely lucky that I was in Boston when I was in Boston because the comedy boom's going on.
00:50:21.000 And outside of, I don't know, three places, I just, didn't do that well, and I certainly didn't do well at Nick's.
00:50:30.000 I mean, I was the opposite.
00:50:31.000 They, you know, it had that vague feeling of high school where you're the weirdo and people want to fuck with you and throw you in the trash can.
00:50:41.000 And so I got lucky because there were just spots they just needed bodies.
00:50:46.000 So I worked all the time, you know, not great gigs, but I had it was all cash, you know, under the table.
00:50:56.000 And they just needed bodies to, you know, go up and do 15 minutes, 20 minutes, whatever, at some cowboy bar in Pittsburgh or whatever, Fitchburgh.
00:51:07.000 Anyway, so I get this, I get a week at Nick's, and I am not doing well at all.
00:51:16.000 I think I'm opening up for Kevin Knox, so not my crowd.
00:51:22.000 And I didn't have the tracksuit.
00:51:27.000 And, you know, Knoxy's up there doing, hey, you know why Bill Buckner didn't catch the ball or get the ball?
00:51:36.000 It was the 86 World Series because he heard it had AIDS on it.
00:51:40.000 Okay.
00:51:41.000 Yeah, that's a real joke.
00:51:43.000 That's a real joke.
00:51:45.000 And they loved it.
00:51:47.000 Mark!
00:51:47.000 Wonderful.
00:51:48.000 Yes, of course.
00:51:49.000 And that aids them.
00:51:51.000 And then, do you remember this?
00:51:51.000 1936.
00:51:53.000 What does AIDS stand for?
00:51:55.000 No. 0.96
00:51:57.000 Adios, infected dick sucker.
00:51:57.000 What?
00:52:00.000 Oh, I do remember that.
00:52:02.000 I do remember that.
00:52:03.000 I'm marketing for him.
00:52:03.000 Oh, my God.
00:52:04.000 And it's his crowd.
00:52:06.000 Adios, infected dick sucker. 0.94
00:52:08.000 Oh, my God.
00:52:10.000 Yeah.
00:52:11.000 So.
00:52:14.000 I titled one of the tracks on my first album, I think, first or second album, What If Baseballs Had AIDS On Them?
00:52:23.000 Just saying.
00:52:24.000 Just saying.
00:52:28.000 And I'm fucking eating it, right?
00:52:30.000 So they're peeling back my time as the week goes on.
00:52:38.000 And I am, I mean, if I had done even okay, I wouldn't have had this.
00:52:45.000 They're already kind of intimidating, right?
00:52:47.000 Super mobby.
00:52:49.000 Very mob.
00:52:50.000 Very mob.
00:52:50.000 And do you remember where you'd walk into Nick's and there was like the podium, and then behind, a little behind it, is this little room with a curtain, right?
00:52:59.000 And it's not big at all.
00:53:02.000 And I went to go get paid, and the week was over, and I've just, you know, eaten it, eat shit every single night, every single show.
00:53:14.000 And they're all eating.
00:53:15.000 It's like a scene from, like, they're all eating, like, you know, Manicotti.
00:53:20.000 You couldn't make it any better with the fucking napkins in their shirt like this.
00:53:26.000 And I go, hey, nervous as shit.
00:53:29.000 Just, hey, so Dom, I need to, if I can get paid, just for the, you know, whatever.
00:53:38.000 And Dominic goes to whoever, I can't remember the guy's name, his kind of lackey there.
00:53:44.000 And he goes, whatever his name was, you know, Paulie, go pay the kid.
00:53:48.000 And he's, I've interrupted his dinner.
00:53:51.000 He's not happy.
00:53:53.000 Fucking napkin off, takes me, trudge.
00:53:56.000 We go up to the offices upstairs, and there's a safe and it's open, and there's cash and there's a gun, just open, right?
00:54:08.000 And he gives me, he gets the money and he gives it to me, and I just pick it up.
00:54:13.000 I want to get the fuck out of there, and I pick it up, and he's like, Ain't you going to count it?
00:54:18.000 No, I'm good.
00:54:19.000 I trust you.
00:54:20.000 And I just bolted.
00:54:21.000 I never went back there again.
00:54:24.000 I was so fucking intimidated.
00:54:26.000 That was an intimidating place.
00:54:28.000 Oh, dude.
00:54:29.000 The whole thing about it.
00:54:30.000 Every, the Dominic, all those guys.
00:54:33.000 Yeah.
00:54:33.000 Yeah.
00:54:33.000 And everyone's doing blow.
00:54:35.000 And, you know, the performers are at least, you know.
00:54:39.000 It was a maniacal time where all those guys.
00:54:42.000 There was one time where Knicks was running three consecutive shows.
00:54:46.000 So they had their main room upstairs.
00:54:49.000 There was a dance club down in the bottom.
00:54:51.000 And there was one other room somewhere in that building.
00:54:54.000 And guys would go, like guys like Don Gavin and Steve Sweeney, they would go and do a set, And these guys were just raking in money.
00:55:04.000 And constantly doing blow.
00:55:04.000 Oh, yeah.
00:55:07.000 And not paying their taxes.
00:55:08.000 Yeah.
00:55:09.000 And that's what got them all.
00:55:09.000 Yes.
00:55:11.000 Well, they, I mean, back in the heyday, and it went on for years, it was years and years of this.
00:55:11.000 Yeah.
00:55:17.000 I mean, you could go down, you know, 128 and do Kowloon's or whatever, and then just hop all the way back.
00:55:25.000 Hop into these Chinese restaurants or whatever. 0.98
00:55:28.000 Giggles and sagas. 1.00
00:55:28.000 Right. 1.00
00:55:29.000 Yeah.
00:55:29.000 And just go in a straight line and go back and forth and do nine fucking shows and make a.
00:55:37.000 Shit ton of money, cash under the table, tons of blow.
00:55:41.000 And yeah.
00:55:41.000 Yeah.
00:55:43.000 It was a wild place because there were so many comics and it was such a.
00:55:47.000 Boston's not a big city.
00:55:49.000 You know, and to have so much comedy all come out.
00:55:52.000 You've seen Fran Salamita's documentary.
00:55:55.000 I haven't.
00:55:55.000 I got to.
00:55:56.000 It's really great.
00:55:57.000 Yeah, it's really.
00:55:57.000 The stand up stood out.
00:55:58.000 I got to.
00:55:59.000 It's really great.
00:56:00.000 It's really great. 0.92
00:56:01.000 And it goes all the way back to Crimmins and the Ding Ho.
00:56:05.000 And that was before my time.
00:56:07.000 I started in 88. 1.00
00:56:09.000 So the ding ho was already gone. 0.99
00:56:11.000 You heard legendary stories from the ding ho. 1.00
00:56:14.000 Did you see Call Me Lucky? 1.00
00:56:15.000 No.
00:56:16.000 Oh, you got to see that.
00:56:17.000 It's Bobcat's documentary about Barry.
00:56:22.000 Oh, no.
00:56:22.000 Wait a minute.
00:56:23.000 I did see that.
00:56:24.000 That's right.
00:56:24.000 It's fucking great.
00:56:25.000 I did see that.
00:56:26.000 It's really well done.
00:56:27.000 I don't mean just like, even if you don't know Barry, just the story and the way he lays out the path of the film is great.
00:56:37.000 I had Barry on like right after it came out, I had him on the podcast.
00:56:41.000 And Yeah.
00:56:43.000 He's a legend and, you know, huge inspiration.
00:56:46.000 He was an intimidating guy.
00:56:48.000 Yeah.
00:56:48.000 That was the guy that I was scared of because he was like, he was the guy who was sort of the standard.
00:56:58.000 Like, he made sure there was no hacks.
00:57:01.000 He made sure there was, you know, like, he set the standard, you know?
00:57:05.000 And he was really equitable, too.
00:57:07.000 Yes.
00:57:07.000 Yes.
00:57:09.000 Very politically active.
00:57:11.000 Even like way back.
00:57:12.000 Then, like, really knowledgeable and like really understood what was going on in the world.
00:57:17.000 Did you ever see his or one of his State of the Union shows?
00:57:22.000 No.
00:57:24.000 They're fucking amazing.
00:57:26.000 So he would go.
00:57:27.000 I saw a couple of them at the old stitches, and he would go up.
00:57:31.000 And it was when the State of the Union was happening, he'd go up and he'd do his State of the Union.
00:57:38.000 It was just him.
00:57:39.000 And he would go on and he'd have, like, you know, it was pre PowerPoint, but it was whatever the equivalent of, you know, a screen behind him with stuff.
00:57:50.000 And he'd go up there with a cooler, like a legit big cooler of beer, because that motherfucker could drink.
00:57:57.000 Yeah.
00:57:58.000 And, uh, And he would just start.
00:58:01.000 He had a podium and he would just crack beers and just down a case of beer, half a case of beer, and just do his stuff, you know, extemporaneous stuff.
00:58:12.000 I mean, stuff prepared, but about, you know, the State of the Union and all that.
00:58:17.000 And it would always be packed.
00:58:19.000 Like, and you'd see Dennis Leary and, you know, every single comic would be there, you know, trying up against the wall because it was packed.
00:58:27.000 But it was great.
00:58:27.000 I mean, legendary.
00:58:29.000 Well, I mean, I think he was really responsible for a lot of what Boston comedy became.
00:58:34.000 You know, because he was the guy that was kind of the gold standard.
00:58:37.000 And he started the Ding Ho.
00:58:39.000 Yeah. 0.81
00:58:39.000 You know? 0.81
00:58:40.000 Yeah.
00:58:40.000 Yeah.
00:58:41.000 And he is like becoming friends with him was like, whew, like such a relief.
00:58:46.000 Because I was terrified of him.
00:58:47.000 When I was a young comic.
00:58:47.000 Yeah.
00:58:48.000 Like, if that guy thought I sucked, if he hated me, I was like, I'm fucking doomed.
00:58:52.000 Yeah.
00:58:53.000 You know, because he was this character.
00:58:55.000 He would go on stage with a sport coat on and reach into his inner pocket and pull out a Budweiser for every show.
00:59:02.000 You remember that?
00:59:03.000 I don't, but I mean, I know he drank a lot.
00:59:05.000 Yeah, but he would bring his own beer.
00:59:07.000 It was part of his thing.
00:59:09.000 He would go on stage, just reach into his, pull out a Budweiser and set it down on the stool.
00:59:13.000 I. You only drink American beer.
00:59:16.000 Is that true?
00:59:17.000 Yeah.
00:59:17.000 You drink Budweiser.
00:59:18.000 I wonder why that is.
00:59:19.000 I don't know.
00:59:20.000 It's like kind of a patriot.
00:59:24.000 He doesn't seem like he would, the kind of guy who would have denied himself.
00:59:30.000 Well, I mean, maybe it was performative.
00:59:32.000 I don't know.
00:59:33.000 Was there Medellin even that existed at the time?
00:59:36.000 But yeah, he was the only guy, I would say, that, and to your point, like all these other.
00:59:47.000 Legendary comics, you know, Lenny Clark and Don Gavin and Steve Sweeney and all those guys.
00:59:54.000 It was the only guy that those guys were kind of walking on eggshells.
01:00:00.000 Yes.
01:00:00.000 The only guy.
01:00:01.000 Yes.
01:00:01.000 Yes.
01:00:02.000 They'd give all each other shit.
01:00:02.000 The only guy.
01:00:04.000 Yeah.
01:00:05.000 Like, and mean shit too.
01:00:07.000 Yeah.
01:00:07.000 Oh, they would fight.
01:00:08.000 Oh, yeah.
01:00:09.000 Barry was the one guy they wouldn't fuck with.
01:00:12.000 Well, he was different than all of them in that he was incredibly well read.
01:00:15.000 Like, really well read, really knowledgeable about all sorts of.
01:00:20.000 Things with economics and the way the world works, the injustices of our society, but really funny fucking comic, too.
01:00:27.000 Like, great jokes, great writer, you know, and just like he was the standard.
01:00:33.000 He was the glue that held that scene together because they all looked at him to be like, you can't kind of step out of line.
01:00:41.000 Like, you don't want to get, catch Barry's R.
01:00:43.000 Yeah, it's absolutely true.
01:00:46.000 And then when, uh, The revelation he had of being abused as a kid, and then he dedicated, he spoke in front of Congress.
01:00:59.000 He did about AOL.
01:01:02.000 Yeah.
01:01:03.000 During the early days of AOL, for people that don't know, they had all these chat rooms, and sexual predators were using these chat rooms to find children.
01:01:14.000 And also to exchange pornographic material.
01:01:14.000 Yeah.
01:01:18.000 And that becomes a big part of Call Me Lucky, you know?
01:01:18.000 Yeah.
01:01:24.000 Right.
01:01:24.000 Um, right, and yeah, he like dedicated his life basically to just uh going out and catching these motherfuckers, yeah, and and helping you know, uh, the people who would pose as kids and stuff, and that was you know, that was his, and he was also uh.
01:01:48.000 You know, lapsed Catholic, and when all the, especially in Boston, the Catholic Church and Diocese and all that stuff was coming out, he was, I mean, that was his fucking focus.
01:01:59.000 Yeah. 0.52
01:02:00.000 Getting these fuckers caught, you know, exposed.
01:02:05.000 But I think it took someone like him that was, he was levels above most of the other comedians in terms of his understanding of the world and his ability to articulate it, and also a great comic.
01:02:20.000 So that, like, people looked at him like, well, this guy's like, he's clearly smarter than all of us.
01:02:26.000 He's also like super dedicated to the craft of comedy, like, meant a lot to him.
01:02:31.000 Like, the integrity of comedy, like, what it is to be a comic.
01:02:31.000 Oh, yeah.
01:02:35.000 You know, and he came from, and I think this is kind of specific to Boston, too.
01:02:41.000 He came from a jock world.
01:02:43.000 He was a minor league or whatever sub minor league catcher.
01:02:49.000 He played, he was at Syracuse University, and he played for like the Cape Cod League, and you know, the things that eventually you get to minor leagues, hopefully.
01:03:02.000 But and he came from that hard drinking, you know, and and Catcher is arguably the smartest guy in the baseball team, right?
01:03:11.000 He's the guy making the calls for the pitches, seeing everything, defensive lineups.
01:03:11.000 Right.
01:03:16.000 So he came from that world too, which I think helped his cred.
01:03:20.000 Yeah.
01:03:21.000 Well, it's just such an unusual town in what happened there that these guys became these local legends.
01:03:28.000 Where they never had to leave.
01:03:30.000 And they kind of did the same act for decades, which is also kind of crazy.
01:03:34.000 That to me was like, I knew there was definitely a.
01:03:44.000 As I started to separate from that world a little bit and just kind of evolving as a comedian, and there was like the catch scene and Catch a Rising Star.
01:03:55.000 And that was a thing that was an early.
01:04:00.000 I just didn't get it.
01:04:01.000 Like, why are you doing the same?
01:04:05.000 There's no joy in it.
01:04:06.000 And then you would drive some of these guys because they get fucked up and you were happy to have all the work and you'd go up and do 15 and they'd do a half hour.
01:04:14.000 You get in the car, you go somewhere else.
01:04:16.000 And these guys doing Mike Donovan doing, he would do his, remember Rosie, the bounty, the quicker picker upper, the bounty.
01:04:27.000 Yeah.
01:04:28.000 Okay.
01:04:28.000 So he had, there was a, So the commercials were like Rosie, and it was like the scrappy waitress at a diner.
01:04:39.000 Remember, it was like a character that was in all the, it was like the, you know, mascot of whatever, Bounty, the quicker picker upper.
01:04:48.000 And her character was kind of like feisty, as in these commercials ran for years, you know, different, like, ah, you don't do this, do this.
01:04:57.000 And his bit was about taking a gun out and shooting her.
01:05:01.000 And it was funny.
01:05:02.000 You'd see it the first time, but it's like, Dude, that hasn't been on the air in fucking 10 years.
01:05:08.000 And he's still doing this.
01:05:10.000 Yeah, Rosie, I got something for you.
01:05:12.000 I got some advice for you.
01:05:15.000 Like, what the fuck?
01:05:17.000 Okay, wait, Joe.
01:05:17.000 And there was.
01:05:19.000 Did you.
01:05:20.000 Were you there?
01:05:22.000 So, Ed, the machine regime.
01:05:25.000 Oh, yeah.
01:05:26.000 I remember him.
01:05:27.000 So.
01:05:27.000 He wore the suit?
01:05:28.000 Yep.
01:05:29.000 And his headshot was four different.
01:05:29.000 Well, yeah.
01:05:32.000 His headshot was like four squares.
01:05:35.000 Different characters.
01:05:36.000 Yep. 0.98
01:05:36.000 Tina Turner. 0.98
01:05:38.000 And the mob guy, I can't remember the rest of them.
01:05:44.000 I think he had a turban in one of them. 0.99
01:05:46.000 I'm sure he did. 1.00
01:05:49.000 So he goes to jail for rolling back odometers.
01:05:54.000 Yes, that's right.
01:05:56.000 He gets caught, and he was a car salesman, I think, in Rhode Island, I believe.
01:06:02.000 And he got caught rolling back the odometers.
01:06:04.000 He goes to jail for a year and a half.
01:06:07.000 And I was shooting this movie.
01:06:12.000 This is decades later.
01:06:14.000 I was shooting this movie and it was on a cruise ship.
01:06:17.000 And the cruise ship, Ed, the Machine Regime, is the headliner at the comedy venue on the cruise ship.
01:06:27.000 And I'm like, oh shit, that's crazy.
01:06:29.000 I haven't seen this guy in forever.
01:06:31.000 And he's back doing comedy?
01:06:33.000 Okay.
01:06:34.000 And I go there and he does, I don't know, 40 minutes.
01:06:41.000 The same fucking.
01:06:43.000 Act from 15 years ago.
01:06:46.000 It's like you don't have one.
01:06:48.000 You spent 18 months in prison.
01:06:50.000 You don't have one joke.
01:06:52.000 You don't have one motherfucking observation.
01:06:55.000 Even if you lie and say, you know, you know, it'd be weird if you were in prison and whatever.
01:07:01.000 You don't have anything.
01:07:02.000 It's weird.
01:07:03.000 It was a weird thing.
01:07:04.000 And it only existed with them.
01:07:07.000 Most comics in the country were writing new material all the time.
01:07:12.000 I remember that feeling of.
01:07:15.000 I must be different because I'm not.
01:07:18.000 That is such a distasteful thing.
01:07:18.000 I don't.
01:07:21.000 Yeah.
01:07:21.000 Like, I wouldn't want to do that.
01:07:23.000 Well, there was two.
01:07:24.000 I saw two traps there.
01:07:26.000 One of them was that, and the other one was never leaving.
01:07:30.000 They never left Boston.
01:07:30.000 Yeah.
01:07:31.000 And when they did leave Boston, they had so much local material that their act was like cut down by like 40%.
01:07:38.000 And there were a lot of people, their peers, who would give them shit.
01:07:44.000 Like, And it was all just kind of resentful, jealousy, small minded, small town kind of like, oh, you think you're better than us?
01:07:53.000 Which is a Boston thing, too.
01:07:56.000 Oh, you think you're so hot now that you're a hot shot?
01:08:02.000 You go to Hollywood, you go there?
01:08:04.000 Yeah?
01:08:05.000 This is, you know, it was a real provincial, working class kind of attitude. 0.99
01:08:05.000 Fuck you. 0.99
01:08:11.000 You know, they look down on, and, you know, they would give Leary shit all the time, you know?
01:08:17.000 Like, sell out.
01:08:18.000 This is bullshit, weird.
01:08:19.000 Sellout's a weird one because they would all sold out.
01:08:23.000 It just wasn't available.
01:08:25.000 Well, they were all mad at Stephen Wright.
01:08:28.000 Was he?
01:08:29.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:08:30.000 Because so Stephen Wright was like.
01:08:32.000 How can you get mad at Stephen Wright?
01:08:34.000 Well, not mad at him, but bitter because of his success.
01:08:37.000 Because he went and left.
01:08:37.000 Oh, okay.
01:08:38.000 Yeah.
01:08:39.000 He went and left, did The Tonight Show, became huge.
01:08:39.000 Yeah.
01:08:42.000 So unusual, so different.
01:08:44.000 And they came to Boston.
01:08:45.000 The Tonight Show came to Boston to look for comics.
01:08:48.000 Steven Wright was the one they chose.
01:08:50.000 And all these other guys were like, he's a fucking middle act.
01:08:53.000 Like, this is bullshit.
01:08:54.000 Like, that guy bombs half the time.
01:08:56.000 Because his act to me was a lot like Hedberg.
01:09:00.000 Yep.
01:09:00.000 In that, if you didn't know what he was doing and you came to see specific.
01:09:05.000 Like, if Hedberg, there's a famous story of Hedberg was on the road in Ohio and they had this guy who was an opening act who'd do like backflips and fucking sing rap songs.
01:09:13.000 And it was a disaster.
01:09:15.000 And Hedberg kept bombing.
01:09:16.000 And so they switched them and made Hedberg the middle act and tried to fuck him on the money.
01:09:21.000 And Stanhope got into it with the.
01:09:22.000 The owner of the club and became a big thing.
01:09:26.000 But once Hedberg got an audience, then people knew what they were coming to see, and then he was amazing.
01:09:31.000 And then everybody wanted to see that.
01:09:33.000 That was kind of the same with Stephen Wright.
01:09:35.000 Like, if you expected, if you're on a show with Steve Sweeney and Lenny Clark and all these big energy fucking Boston guys, and then, you know, I used to work at a fire hydrant factory, couldn't park anywhere near the place.
01:09:52.000 You know, like, it just, for whatever reason, You know, well, it's also that other comedy is, and I'm not taking anything away from those guys, and the bits were great, but the other comedy is a little easier.
01:10:06.000 It just, you get it.
01:10:08.000 Yes.
01:10:08.000 And, yeah, Stephen Wright, you got to think about it for a second.
01:10:11.000 It was abstract, it was low key, it was all non sequiturs, it was one to another.
01:10:11.000 Right.
01:10:16.000 It was, and so when he left and took off, a lot of guys apparently were like, this is fucking bullshit.
01:10:23.000 Like, when's my turn going to happen?
01:10:25.000 Yeah, I can see that easily.
01:10:26.000 Yeah.
01:10:27.000 Yeah.
01:10:27.000 I mean, that was.
01:10:29.000 It was so I mean, no other scene had that kind of weird provincial, you know, and that thing, like you said, they wouldn't leave.
01:10:39.000 No, they never left.
01:10:40.000 Well, they were huge there.
01:10:41.000 So if they lived there, they could make like a couple hundred thousand dollars a year just running around and cash.
01:10:47.000 Yeah, and not ever have to worry about anything.
01:10:47.000 Oh, easy.
01:10:50.000 And they played golf all day.
01:10:51.000 So there's two things that scared me.
01:10:52.000 One of them was golf, because I saw that when you play golf, you kind of stop trying with your comedy.
01:10:58.000 It's a slippery slope.
01:10:59.000 So it's a gateway drug.
01:11:01.000 Well, you're out there for fucking eight hours a day.
01:11:03.000 Like Noxy was always playing golf. 0.89
01:11:05.000 And.
01:11:06.000 Then the other thing was like, if you never left, you had no chance of developing like a national audience where you could go to a club in Philadelphia.
01:11:16.000 You can go to a club.
01:11:17.000 They couldn't do the road.
01:11:19.000 And I remember thinking, oh, this is a trap.
01:11:22.000 Yeah, for sure.
01:11:23.000 Absolutely.
01:11:24.000 Yeah.
01:11:24.000 I mean, and as you said, half of their stand up was like, you'd have to know about, you know, Storo Drive or fucking Johnny Most.
01:11:34.000 You know, Johnny Most.
01:11:35.000 Yeah, I remember Donovan's bit about Johnny Most.
01:11:38.000 Yeah.
01:11:38.000 But it was like he was doing that bit long after Johnny Most was dead.
01:11:38.000 It was amazing.
01:11:42.000 So, like 20 people in the audience would be howling, laughing, and everybody else be like, Who the fuck is Johnny Most?
01:11:47.000 God.
01:11:49.000 Yeah.
01:11:50.000 It was weird because it was like a velvet prison.
01:11:53.000 It was like how I describe really great comics that get jobs in the writer's room.
01:11:57.000 And I'm like, You got to be careful.
01:11:59.000 Like, that's a velvet prison.
01:12:00.000 Because if you get stuck in that writer's room and you never do the road, you never put out specials, you're never going to get an audience.
01:12:06.000 You're always going to be beholden to an employer.
01:12:09.000 You're always going to have to have a job.
01:12:11.000 And there's great comics that got trapped with that.
01:12:15.000 But wouldn't you say that if they.
01:12:19.000 Yes, it's a trap, but if they didn't have the wherewithal or foresight or willpower to get out of that trap, then they probably weren't meant to do that thing?
01:12:32.000 Perhaps, but sometimes they get a mortgage and then they get a family and then they're stuck.
01:12:37.000 That's the trap.
01:12:38.000 Yeah.
01:12:39.000 Family.
01:12:40.000 Let's call it for what it is.
01:12:41.000 It's a trap.
01:12:41.000 Yeah.
01:12:42.000 And, well, in a lot of ways.
01:12:44.000 It can be if you're trying to be an actual national level.
01:12:48.000 Like, do you know Owen Smith?
01:12:51.000 Comic in LA?
01:12:52.000 No.
01:12:53.000 One of the top 20 best comics on earth.
01:12:56.000 He's fucking brilliant.
01:12:58.000 He's so funny.
01:12:59.000 Owen Smith.
01:13:00.000 Okay.
01:13:00.000 Saw him at the comedy store.
01:13:00.000 Owen Smith.
01:13:02.000 And I remember the first time I saw him at the comedy store, I'm like, how is this guy not fucking huge?
01:13:06.000 He's so funny.
01:13:08.000 He's so good.
01:13:09.000 He's like, he has this bit about adopting a white kid and naming him the N word. 0.99
01:13:15.000 It's just like really, it's a really funny, well crafted bit.
01:13:18.000 Like all of his bits are like brilliantly written.
01:13:21.000 He's a great performer.
01:13:22.000 He's super likable.
01:13:24.000 Got writer's gigs and just barely does the mothership a couple times a year, I believe, at least once a year.
01:13:30.000 Um, but just doesn't get out there.
01:13:32.000 What, who does he write or what?
01:13:34.000 Oh, I think he's a showrunner now.
01:13:36.000 Oh, well, yeah, so it took it to another level, yes.
01:13:40.000 But you know, just got jobs writing when he was struggling as a comic, and those jobs eventually led to a house.
01:13:48.000 And but maybe he, you know, was like, I you you watch him and you love him, right?
01:13:54.000 Because you see a lot of stand up and you're like.
01:13:57.000 A lot of it's shit, and this guy's fucking great, great writer.
01:14:00.000 But maybe he doesn't see it that way, and he's quite happy to have.
01:14:04.000 I think he does.
01:14:05.000 He does see it that way.
01:14:06.000 I've talked to him about it.
01:14:07.000 Yeah.
01:14:08.000 He kind of knows.
01:14:09.000 He just doesn't know what to do now because he's a showrunner.
01:14:13.000 It's making money.
01:14:15.000 Yeah, and there's a lot of responsibility.
01:14:17.000 There's also not a lot of shows anymore.
01:14:18.000 Yeah.
01:14:19.000 Which is a real problem.
01:14:21.000 It's a real problem.
01:14:22.000 Banked on being a showrunner in the 90s, and that's what you threw your hat into, and then all of a sudden that.
01:14:30.000 Thing seems to have dwindled to like 20% of what it used to be.
01:14:34.000 It's, yeah, it's, uh, I used to be quite happy with the idea that I knew, you know, back in the day when you're pitching shows and stuff and trying to develop things and you go, this, uh, let's not waste our time going to these five places.
01:14:52.000 This is not a show for them.
01:14:53.000 This is a show for these three places.
01:14:55.000 Let's, this is this kind of show.
01:14:58.000 Now I have no fucking clue.
01:14:59.000 I, you know, uh, Come up with, like, Bob and I pitched a show, sold the pitch.
01:15:11.000 There was like even, there were like four, I think we pitched it at eight places.
01:15:16.000 Four of them kind of bid.
01:15:18.000 We took what we thought was the best deal.
01:15:22.000 And then wrote the, it was a limited series, eight episodes.
01:15:28.000 Wrote the first four.
01:15:29.000 And it was Bob and his brother Bill, who's a big Simpsons guy.
01:15:34.000 And, um, And it was good.
01:15:38.000 And then they said, the quote was, marketing and analytics couldn't, that was a quote, couldn't figure it out what to do with the show.
01:15:51.000 And so they didn't.
01:15:53.000 And we had four episodes that you could look at.
01:15:55.000 And then we had the Bible for the next four and the outlines and everything was.
01:15:59.000 And it was fucking funny.
01:16:00.000 On the page, it was funny.
01:16:02.000 Then we're like, so here's the cast.
01:16:05.000 We're going to have these amazing people.
01:16:08.000 And Bob and I. As different cult leaders, and, um, I mean, and if that's such a rare thing when it starts off on the page funny, and by the time you get a great cast, and then you get on set and you're like, what if we do this?
01:16:26.000 And then you get into the post and start playing around with it.
01:16:30.000 I mean, it's just, it was a really cool thing.
01:16:34.000 And yeah, marketing and analytics, that's what you're dealing with now.
01:16:38.000 Well, I mean, that has kind of always at least been the case.
01:16:43.000 Well, not analytics.
01:16:44.000 I mean, they would have to say, uh, I mean, analytics is technical.
01:16:51.000 I mean, marketing, I don't know how to help you, man.
01:16:53.000 I can give you some advice.
01:16:54.000 I don't, you know, I think that's a shitty way to market it, but you know that world.
01:17:03.000 But analytics is about the algorithm and all that shit.
01:17:07.000 Is this recent?
01:17:08.000 Yeah.
01:17:09.000 Okay.
01:17:09.000 Yeah.
01:17:10.000 Right after, shortly after COVID.
01:17:10.000 Yeah.
01:17:13.000 It's amazing how many incredibly unimpressive people are responsible for putting out shows.
01:17:20.000 The people that you communicate with, the executives, you're like, this has got to be a mistake.
01:17:24.000 Like, how did you get this job?
01:17:26.000 And I experienced that early on, like at the first pilot that I was on.
01:17:33.000 The first pilot was on Hardball.
01:17:35.000 The pilot was actually very funny because it was written by Jeff Martin and Kevin Curran.
01:17:40.000 They were from The Simpsons and they also wrote Unmarried with Children.
01:17:43.000 Great guys.
01:17:44.000 But they were writers.
01:17:45.000 They were like these quiet, kind of soft spoken guys.
01:17:48.000 And, you know, they ran the pilot and then they brought in a showrunner.
01:17:52.000 From Coach.
01:17:53.000 Remember that show, Coach?
01:17:54.000 Yeah.
01:17:55.000 And this guy just fucked the whole show and turned it into this like, da-dunk-dunk, da-dunk-dunk.
01:18:02.000 It was like this clunky, bad joke, like really shit.
01:18:07.000 It happens more than you think.
01:18:08.000 And the people behind the scenes, like the executives, it was astonishing how little of them had any creative ideas.
01:18:17.000 It was, they were just hoping that it would work.
01:18:20.000 And ego.
01:18:22.000 It's like ego and.
01:18:23.000 I'm an executive, so I'll tell you what's good and what's not good.
01:18:26.000 And we understand this because we're a Fox.
01:18:28.000 And yeah, I was like, this is nuts.
01:18:31.000 Like, this is how it works behind the scene.
01:18:33.000 I thought you'd get behind the scene and be all these geniuses that had put together all these television shows.
01:18:37.000 They had an understanding of like how let people be creative and put a show together and let it run out in the runs.
01:18:45.000 Like, when you're running through the script, like, figure out a little boy who thought the war was everybody learning.
01:18:51.000 Same thing.
01:18:52.000 Finally, they're going to figure it out.
01:18:53.000 Yeah, I'm very naive.
01:18:54.000 Yeah, but.
01:18:55.000 I naively stumbled into that exact right thing with news radio.
01:19:00.000 So when I got onto news radio.
01:19:03.000 I would say some of those execs that you're describing, they probably stumbled into the success of it.
01:19:11.000 Well, you know, Paul Sims, who was brilliant, was coming from the Larry Sanders show.
01:19:15.000 Yep.
01:19:15.000 So, Larry Sanders show, huge success, genius show.
01:19:18.000 And so, they knew this guy was special and super smart guy, like funny, and had a great group of writers and put together a great pilot and then, you know, recast the one role that I came in for.
01:19:32.000 And so, I'm there on this set, and it was like, you know, it took.
01:19:36.000 Long hours to figure it out, but they let everybody do whatever they wanted to do.
01:19:41.000 Like, Paul's approach was so different than anybody else.
01:19:44.000 Like, Dave Foley was like the secret producer of like half of that show.
01:19:49.000 Half of the way the scenes were put together, half of the jokes that were in it was all Dave Foley on set running through the script with the cast coming up with better ideas.
01:19:59.000 Oh, I didn't know that.
01:20:00.000 They let you do anything.
01:20:02.000 Like, sometimes they'd say, Can we see it as written?
01:20:05.000 And then you'd give it to them as written, and they'd be like, I like your idea better.
01:20:08.000 Like, Paul was fucking amazing with that.
01:20:12.000 Yeah.
01:20:13.000 And so once I did that, I was like, I think I'm done with this because I don't think it's ever going to be any better than this.
01:20:18.000 It's rare, man.
01:20:19.000 It was super rare.
01:20:19.000 Yeah.
01:20:21.000 I auditioned for like one or two other ones that were terrible just because I wanted money, you know, and I'm like, maybe it'll be okay.
01:20:27.000 But hell is being on a sitcom that's terrible, that's successful.
01:20:33.000 That sounds dumb to people.
01:20:34.000 Like, no, what the fuck are you going to do?
01:20:37.000 Oh, poor you.
01:20:38.000 You're on TV making.
01:20:40.000 $50,000 a week or whatever you're making.
01:20:42.000 Like, poor you.
01:20:43.000 But no, you're in hell because you're doing something that sucks and you have to show up every day doing this thing when you know you could have been on Seinfeld or if you just got cast on Friends.
01:20:56.000 That's a trap, too.
01:20:57.000 You know, it's like the people who, you know, because it really is like a job and you may have a really nice house, right?
01:21:06.000 And you have a nice car, but.
01:21:06.000 Yeah.
01:21:09.000 You know, you're getting, you know, you're in Studio City and you get in your car and you drive to this job and it's kind of shitty and sucks, but there's amenities, great craft services.
01:21:21.000 This guy makes fucking Frappuccinos right there, you know, and then you go and have dinner with somebody fancy somewhere.
01:21:31.000 And then you just get up and do the same thing over and over again.
01:21:33.000 Yeah, and you keep buying things because that's how you reward yourself.
01:21:37.000 You buy a new television, this one's even bigger.
01:21:39.000 You know, you buy a new car.
01:21:41.000 I got the new car, you know, and that's what you're doing to reward yourself for doing this job that sucks.
01:21:46.000 What?
01:21:47.000 I get that too.
01:21:48.000 I mean, I will on a much smaller scale, but when I make a good payday, I'll buy some expensive boxes of baseball cards.
01:21:57.000 Oh, you're a baseball card collector?
01:21:59.000 Oh, interesting.
01:21:59.000 That's the thing?
01:22:01.000 Yeah.
01:22:02.000 But having going back, it's not like I feel like I have legit, you know, baseball street cred?
01:22:08.000 Yes.
01:22:09.000 Yes.
01:22:11.000 But that's the thing.
01:22:13.000 And also, it's, I mean, the argument can be made.
01:22:16.000 It's an investment, a shitty investment.
01:22:19.000 But an investment nonetheless.
01:22:19.000 Yeah.
01:22:20.000 But it's also like gambling because it's like a scratch off ticket because everybody's chasing the one of one cards and you're opening the packs and stuff.
01:22:28.000 Oh, that's how you do it?
01:22:29.000 You buy packs unopened?
01:22:31.000 I buy boxes.
01:22:32.000 Yeah.
01:22:32.000 So I buy a hobby box, which has a better, it's more expensive.
01:22:36.000 It has a better chance of, well, that is more like auto rookie cards or relic cards or something like that.
01:22:44.000 Um, But those are, that is an investment though, because you could always sell them.
01:22:48.000 People always want them.
01:22:49.000 Yes.
01:22:50.000 I just mean, since I started, you know, God, 30 years ago, 40 years ago.
01:22:58.000 Yeah, 30.
01:23:00.000 Like in the 90s, early 90s, maybe 80, no, 89, 89.
01:23:04.000 So, whatever money I put in, there's nowhere near.
01:23:11.000 If I sold everything, I mean, it's talking about half the money I put in.
01:23:15.000 But I have them and I like them and I'm not going to sell them.
01:23:17.000 I'm not going to sell them.
01:23:19.000 So that's your reward.
01:23:20.000 That's what you put in.
01:23:21.000 That's my reward.
01:23:21.000 Yeah.
01:23:22.000 Yeah.
01:23:23.000 My thing was in my poverty days, it was comic books.
01:23:27.000 So, one of my.
01:23:29.000 Which is also an investment.
01:23:30.000 Yeah.
01:23:30.000 Well, it became one eventually.
01:23:34.000 But.
01:23:36.000 During my poverty days, my biggest, saddest moment was when I had to sell my comic books because I had no money.
01:23:42.000 I had no money.
01:23:43.000 And I had these old Spider-Mans and these old Incredible Hulks.
01:23:48.000 Which were probably now worth.
01:23:50.000 Oh, my God.
01:23:51.000 Probably hundreds of thousands of dollars.
01:23:53.000 I had some really good ones in the plastic sleeves.
01:23:56.000 Yeah, yeah.
01:23:56.000 I'd keep them in the sleeve, be very careful pulling them out, opening them up.
01:24:00.000 Oh, I loved comic books.
01:24:02.000 And I had collected them since I was a child.
01:24:04.000 Yeah.
01:24:04.000 Oh, that's a bummer, man.
01:24:05.000 I wanted to be a comic book illustrator.
01:24:07.000 That's what I did.
01:24:08.000 Is that your thing?
01:24:09.000 Yeah, that's what I did when I was a kid.
01:24:11.000 Is any of that stuff yours?
01:24:13.000 No, no, no.
01:24:14.000 None of that stuff is mine.
01:24:15.000 All the artwork is yours.
01:24:16.000 But you do.
01:24:17.000 Yes.
01:24:17.000 Oh, wow.
01:24:18.000 Yeah.
01:24:18.000 Cool.
01:24:18.000 Well, I haven't in a long time, but I was really good when I was a kid.
01:24:21.000 Yeah, I can still draw.
01:24:21.000 You can still do that?
01:24:23.000 I can still draw a little, but it's like.
01:24:25.000 But if you wanted to do your own comic book, yeah.
01:24:27.000 You could do that.
01:24:28.000 I would have to start practicing again and get.
01:24:30.000 But when I was a teenager, I was really good.
01:24:33.000 And that was what I wanted to do, but I had a really terrible art teacher in high school.
01:24:37.000 He was just a fucking.
01:24:40.000 Just a miserable guy.
01:24:42.000 Just miserable.
01:24:43.000 And is like, you're not going to get that job.
01:24:45.000 Like, you know, I'm like, what?
01:24:46.000 Like, you can't just draw what you want.
01:24:47.000 I'm like, why not?
01:24:49.000 It's like a Dan Klaus thing.
01:24:51.000 Have you read Art School Confidential?
01:24:53.000 No.
01:24:54.000 Oh, you know Dan Klaus, right?
01:24:56.000 Yeah, yeah.
01:24:56.000 I know he is.
01:24:57.000 His stuff is fucking genius, too.
01:24:59.000 I've used that word too many times.
01:25:00.000 That's okay.
01:25:01.000 There's a lot of geniuses out there.
01:25:02.000 There aren't that many.
01:25:04.000 I want to be.
01:25:05.000 If you search around.
01:25:06.000 I want to be judicious with him.
01:25:09.000 But.
01:25:11.000 Yeah, so he's the guy who did Eight Ball, and then he's got, he did Ghost World, turned into a movie, and then there was another one that was Wilson that was turned into a movie.
01:25:24.000 His stuff is great, but he has a thing about art, you know, shitty teachers, art school teachers.
01:25:33.000 He has a comic story.
01:25:35.000 Well, I was, I quit on my last year in high school.
01:25:39.000 I stopped doing art just because my teacher was so bad.
01:25:42.000 And then there was this one guy in my class that I recently reconnected with, this guy, John DeVore, who was the best artist in the class.
01:25:49.000 There was me, this guy, Kevin, and John.
01:25:52.000 And we were the best artists in the class.
01:25:53.000 I was probably like third best, but John was the best.
01:25:56.000 And John got an F his last year from this guy.
01:25:59.000 And I'm like, he gave you a fucking F?
01:26:01.000 He's like, that guy was such a cunt.
01:26:03.000 We were going back and forth in the emails. 0.73
01:26:05.000 Was it about Purity, or what was the no?
01:26:08.000 No, he was terrible.
01:26:09.000 He wasn't a good artist.
01:26:10.000 He was, uh, but he was just miserable.
01:26:13.000 He was miserable.
01:26:14.000 He was like this thin man with a big pot belly.
01:26:16.000 So I think he just drank himself to sleep every night.
01:26:18.000 And he was just, hey, easy, easy, easy, easy.
01:26:23.000 Hey, you're getting too close.
01:26:26.000 He was just sad.
01:26:27.000 He was just a sad guy.
01:26:29.000 But what was his justification for saying this isn't any good or you get an F?
01:26:34.000 If I had to be honest, I think he hated potential.
01:26:37.000 Yeah, because he hated John.
01:26:37.000 Right.
01:26:38.000 And if he hated John, like, John was genius.
01:26:41.000 And John wound up not being an artist either.
01:26:41.000 He was brilliant.
01:26:45.000 Think of how many examples of that where kids' talent or dreams or aspirations are kind of crushed to the point of, like, it's not worth it.
01:26:54.000 No.
01:26:55.000 I don't want to deal with this shit.
01:26:56.000 Well, it's like bad teachers.
01:26:59.000 Bad teachers can really ruin your life, and good teachers can change your life.
01:27:02.000 Yeah.
01:27:02.000 You know, I had a teacher in middle school that gave me one thought that has been stuck with me, like, my whole life.
01:27:09.000 When I was, I guess I was like, 13, and he was a science teacher and he was talking about space.
01:27:15.000 He goes, and he was just saying, I just want you to sit here and comprehend when we're in this classroom.
01:27:21.000 I want you to comprehend the concept of infinity that the universe is infinite, that there is no end.
01:27:29.000 Just hurt your head, lie in bed at night, and think about how it goes on and on, and there's no ending to it.
01:27:36.000 And we were all in class, like 13, going, What the fuck, man?
01:27:39.000 I mean, it was the way he said it. 0.86
01:27:41.000 I'm not doing it justice because he was like kind of a spooky guy who went to Vietnam.
01:27:44.000 He's like a grizzled fucking dude who's like, but brilliant.
01:27:49.000 And that guy, like that one thought, I carry with me all the time.
01:27:54.000 Especially at 13, too.
01:27:55.000 Yeah.
01:27:55.000 You know, it's because you're about to start losing sight of those, the importance that those concepts will have.
01:28:05.000 And we just dismiss them and go, yeah, yeah, it's big, whatever.
01:28:05.000 Yeah.
01:28:08.000 Yeah.
01:28:09.000 This guy birthed my fascination with space at 13.
01:28:12.000 I don't think I was even interested in space before then.
01:28:15.000 And then I became absolutely fascinated by it.
01:28:17.000 I just couldn't get my hand in enough books about cosmology and space travel.
01:28:22.000 But this guy that was his art teacher was just, I think he just, life didn't turn out the way he wanted it to.
01:28:29.000 And he wanted to squash the hopes and dreams of talented people.
01:28:33.000 Yeah.
01:28:34.000 I think that's.
01:28:35.000 Unfortunately, that's a real thing.
01:28:36.000 Yeah.
01:28:37.000 It's more common than you may hope for.
01:28:40.000 Yeah.
01:28:40.000 I think that's a very real thing.
01:28:43.000 You know, very real thing, unfortunately.
01:28:45.000 So that was my dream.
01:28:46.000 My dream was to be a comic book illustrator.
01:28:48.000 So when I was a young kid, from the time I was like, God, like six or seven, when I lived in San Francisco, I would collect all these different comic books.
01:28:56.000 That was what I would do.
01:28:57.000 And that, that San Francisco was the, what's the, you know, the counterculture comic.
01:28:57.000 I would just go.
01:29:06.000 They were like the big R. Crumb.
01:29:07.000 R. Crumb, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:29:09.000 There was like a publisher, right?
01:29:11.000 That's famous.
01:29:12.000 Yeah, God, I don't.
01:29:14.000 Yeah, I do know what you're thinking of.
01:29:16.000 I can't remember the name of it.
01:29:17.000 But I was really interested.
01:29:18.000 I really loved the old creepy and eerie comic books, too.
01:29:22.000 Do you know what my grandmom did?
01:29:24.000 Oh, it's going to hurt your feelings.
01:29:30.000 My uncle, who eventually went insane, was a huge EC comics, right?
01:29:38.000 Early.
01:29:41.000 I don't know.
01:29:42.000 But all the EC stuff and then, you know, early Mad Magazine stuff.
01:29:46.000 But.
01:29:47.000 He had this collection, and I was probably eight, maybe, and I had expressed interest in these.
01:29:59.000 You know, can I not thinking in terms of investment, just can I have them?
01:30:04.000 I like them, and they're and I would sit and read them, and they're really cool and they're creepy, you know, and they're scary.
01:30:10.000 Some of them are scary, and she I don't think she just threw them away.
01:30:19.000 Like original, and I'm going to guess, I don't know, but I'm going to guess.
01:30:26.000 Like a quarter of a million dollars worth.
01:30:30.000 Throw them away.
01:30:30.000 Oh!
01:30:31.000 They're just comics.
01:30:32.000 They were so good.
01:30:33.000 I love those old black and white, like really deeply illustrated.
01:30:39.000 It's like super creepy, like.
01:30:46.000 Yeah.
01:30:47.000 Weird science.
01:30:48.000 Tales from the Crypt.
01:30:50.000 Vault of Horror.
01:30:51.000 Yeah.
01:30:52.000 Those were great.
01:30:52.000 Look at that.
01:30:54.000 Yeah, some of them were really gory.
01:30:56.000 Yeah.
01:30:57.000 Oh, I loved it.
01:30:58.000 The Crypt Keeper.
01:30:59.000 Tales from the Crypt.
01:30:59.000 Yeah.
01:31:00.000 Yeah, that stuff was like.
01:31:04.000 I loved it when I was a kid.
01:31:06.000 Holy shit.
01:31:06.000 Yeah.
01:31:07.000 Those were incredible.
01:31:08.000 It was like, do you remember seeing Twilight Zone when you were a kid?
01:31:12.000 Yeah, sure.
01:31:12.000 It was just blowing your mind.
01:31:14.000 Like, wow.
01:31:15.000 You think about the early Twilight Zone, how many premises they went over.
01:31:20.000 Like, how many different brilliant premises they had in the early Twilight Zone.
01:31:24.000 You know, stolen completely.
01:31:29.000 Over and over and over again.
01:31:29.000 Oh, yeah.
01:31:31.000 But just like so genius and creative.
01:31:31.000 Yeah.
01:31:34.000 Yeah.
01:31:35.000 The William Shackner one when he's in the diner and the little machine that is giving him fortunes and they all turn out to be true.
01:31:43.000 I don't remember that one.
01:31:44.000 Oh, my God.
01:31:45.000 There were so many good ones.
01:31:46.000 How about the Burgess Meredith one?
01:31:49.000 Oh, yeah.
01:31:50.000 Where he just wants to be alone with books and there's a nuclear bomb and he's like, finally.
01:31:54.000 And then he breaks his glasses.
01:31:55.000 Yeah.
01:31:55.000 Yeah.
01:31:57.000 And the.
01:32:00.000 The one, the, what is it called, situation on Main Street or something like that, where they, there's, it's so genius and ahead of its time, where there's a, you know, it's a suburban street and the lights go out or something goes out.
01:32:16.000 And then eventually all the neighbors are at each other's throats accusing each other of this thing.
01:32:25.000 And then the very, and they're all like, and then they start getting guns and at the very, and you're watching the whole thing unfold.
01:32:35.000 And that at the very end, here it is.
01:32:36.000 So, monsters are due on Maple Street.
01:32:38.000 The monsters are due on Maple Street.
01:32:40.000 Yeah.
01:32:41.000 And it.
01:32:42.000 So, they're talking about these monsters that are, you know.
01:32:47.000 And who are the monsters?
01:32:48.000 And it's, they all become suspicious.
01:32:51.000 Yeah, the lights are out.
01:32:54.000 And eventually you pull away from this whole thing, and it's two aliens in a, you know, flying saucer.
01:33:02.000 And they're, yeah, there it is.
01:33:05.000 And they're going, this is how we'll take over.
01:33:08.000 It's street by street by street.
01:33:10.000 This is how we'll do it.
01:33:12.000 You don't have to go in there, guns a blazing.
01:33:13.000 They'll kill themselves.
01:33:15.000 And it's like, how far ahead of time was that?
01:33:18.000 It's genius.
01:33:19.000 And the, uh, divide and conquer.
01:33:21.000 Mm hmm.
01:33:21.000 And the To Serve Mankind.
01:33:23.000 That was a great one.
01:33:24.000 Yeah.
01:33:25.000 It's a cookbook.
01:33:26.000 Yeah.
01:33:27.000 There's so many amazing premises.
01:33:29.000 There was like no duds.
01:33:31.000 If you go back and watch The Twilight Zone even today, like it's all brilliant.
01:33:35.000 There's one I remember.
01:33:37.000 There was a dud.
01:33:38.000 That was a dud.
01:33:39.000 That I remember.
01:33:40.000 I haven't seen it in a long time, but it's a.
01:33:45.000 It's either really, really, really cold and there's this poor family in a.
01:33:52.000 You know, New York City and they can't get heat, or it's really, really hot and they can't get cold, and they're dealing with people who are like, you know, in the family who are really sick.
01:34:03.000 And then the twist was it's like, oh, it's really somebody who has a fever and they're not, it just wasn't that good.
01:34:12.000 Ah, well, they're allowed one done.
01:34:15.000 That's the one I don't think I ever saw that one, but I remember so many of them were so creative.
01:34:19.000 Oh, amazing.
01:34:20.000 It's kind of nuts if you think about it because it was completely original, nothing like that existed before it.
01:34:26.000 And they, I mean, it was like this open field that was rich with premises, and they just took all the good ones.
01:34:26.000 Yep.
01:34:34.000 And then everybody afterwards, like, it's like, don't, like, South Park always just jokes about, like, Simpsons already covered something.
01:34:34.000 Yeah.
01:34:43.000 Like, they always joke around about, like, how the Simpsons have kind of covered so many premises because they've, you know, they've been around since, God, the Simpsons was when I was in fucking high school.
01:34:53.000 Yeah, it's like 30 years, right?
01:34:54.000 At least more than that.
01:34:57.000 When did The Simpsons first come on Fox?
01:34:59.000 It was the Tracy Ullman show.
01:35:01.000 Right.
01:35:02.000 What year was that?
01:35:05.000 86.
01:35:06.000 It was right after I got out of high school.
01:35:07.000 86?
01:35:08.000 I was a tiny, tiny kid, and I had only called them the family, so I kind of remember that.
01:35:12.000 So I graduated in 85, so it was right after high school.
01:35:15.000 And The Simpsons are still on the air.
01:35:17.000 Yeah.
01:35:18.000 Nuts.
01:35:18.000 Nuts.
01:35:20.000 No, do you remember the.
01:35:22.000 87?
01:35:23.000 Yeah, pretend.
01:35:24.000 Do you remember the Twilight Zone where there's the real pompous guy?
01:35:28.000 There's like a men's club kind of thing, whatever.
01:35:32.000 And there's this real loudmouth, pompous.
01:35:36.000 Guy and this other guy's like, you know, you know, would you shut up?
01:35:43.000 I bet you can't go.
01:35:43.000 You can't.
01:35:44.000 I bet you can't stop talking for a year or whatever, a month.
01:35:48.000 I can't remember what it is.
01:35:50.000 And the guy's like, absolutely.
01:35:51.000 He goes, I'll bet you $100,000.
01:35:53.000 You can't go one month without talking.
01:35:56.000 He's like, I'll take that bet. 0.87
01:35:58.000 And they basically create like this little kind of cage in this men's club.
01:36:02.000 And he spends a month and he's not talking and he's And then it turns out the guy can't pay him.
01:36:11.000 He didn't have the money to begin with to pay off the bet because the guy goes the full month or year or whatever.
01:36:18.000 And it turns out that the guy who made that bet, who's not going to talk for a year, also desperately needed the money and had his tongue cut out.
01:36:28.000 Oh, Jesus Christ.
01:36:31.000 Oh, I do remember that one.
01:36:31.000 Yeah.
01:36:33.000 Yeah.
01:36:34.000 Oh, God.
01:36:35.000 And think of these things as kids.
01:36:37.000 Yeah.
01:36:38.000 Whoa.
01:36:39.000 Yeah.
01:36:40.000 And of course, the cornfield. 0.94
01:36:42.000 I'll banish you to the cornfield.
01:36:44.000 Yeah.
01:36:44.000 You know.
01:36:46.000 It's just amazing that.
01:36:48.000 Well, if you stop and think about how new television was back then.
01:36:52.000 I mean, television was only a couple decades old back then.
01:36:54.000 Yeah.
01:36:56.000 Yeah.
01:36:56.000 Barely.
01:36:57.000 If that.
01:36:57.000 Like, what year was the Twilight Zone?
01:37:00.000 What was the premiere?
01:37:04.000 Can I guess?
01:37:04.000 Sterling.
01:37:06.000 67.
01:37:07.000 No.
01:37:08.000 I'm going to say 59.
01:37:08.000 Earlier?
01:37:09.000 Yeah, you're probably right.
01:37:12.000 Is it 59?
01:37:13.000 Wow.
01:37:14.000 I got it exact.
01:37:16.000 October 2nd, 1959.
01:37:18.000 Damn, son.
01:37:19.000 Yeah.
01:37:20.000 Pretty good.
01:37:20.000 Wow.
01:37:22.000 Wow.
01:37:22.000 So if you think about it, television, when did it start?
01:37:25.000 What was the first television programs?
01:37:28.000 Was it the 30s? 0.57
01:37:29.000 I think it was Real Housewives of Yonkers.
01:37:33.000 I think it was Real Housewives of Yonkers. 0.79
01:37:37.000 Imagine if they could watch some of these reality shows today. 0.77
01:37:40.000 They'd be like, what the fuck did we do?
01:37:42.000 Yes, I think so.
01:37:43.000 Wait, Andy Cohen?
01:37:44.000 What?
01:37:45.000 Why?
01:37:45.000 Who?
01:37:46.000 How?
01:37:46.000 What is this?
01:37:50.000 It was, wasn't it like the.
01:37:55.000 Where they would do plays?
01:37:57.000 You know what I mean?
01:38:01.000 Well, I Love Lucy was on and done before this even started.
01:38:05.000 Well, The Honeymooners, right?
01:38:07.000 What year was that?
01:38:08.000 That was 51 to 57.
01:38:09.000 Here's a list of shows that were on before.
01:38:12.000 Yeah, sure.
01:38:13.000 Honeymooners was huge.
01:38:15.000 Alfred Hitchcock Presents was on before that.
01:38:17.000 So, what was the first television show ever?
01:38:19.000 I don't know.
01:38:20.000 We'll go back to the 1920s.
01:38:22.000 1920s.
01:38:23.000 No.
01:38:25.000 The Queen's Messenger.
01:38:26.000 That's BBC.
01:38:28.000 Early U.S. Scripted TV show.
01:38:29.000 Crap television theater.
01:38:30.000 That's what I was thinking of.
01:38:32.000 Where they would do plays, you know, and it was sponsored.
01:38:35.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:38:36.000 Live drama anthology, usually treated as the start of the first golden age of television.
01:38:40.000 Howdy doody.
01:38:43.000 1947, right after the war.
01:38:44.000 Ed Sullivan show.
01:38:46.000 Wow.
01:38:48.000 Yeah.
01:38:49.000 And then the first.
01:38:51.000 Oh, your show of shows.
01:38:52.000 How about that?
01:38:52.000 Wow.
01:38:53.000 1950.
01:38:54.000 I Love Lucy.
01:38:56.000 Wow.
01:38:58.000 Father knows best.
01:38:59.000 Today's show is still on.
01:39:00.000 Wow.
01:39:01.000 Did you guys ever talk about doing more Mr. Shows?
01:39:06.000 We did like a revival ish thing on Netflix.
01:39:08.000 It was a great fucking show, man.
01:39:10.000 Well, thank you.
01:39:11.000 It was very original.
01:39:12.000 I love how things just streamed into another thing.
01:39:15.000 Yeah, that was hard.
01:39:16.000 God, I would imagine.
01:39:18.000 Biggest pain.
01:39:19.000 If you ever see us, you see an episode and we are pulling out of a bumper sticker or pulling out of a sign on a desk, that means we spent.
01:39:28.000 Two motherfucking days yelling at each other trying to figure out a transition and just going, fuck it!
01:39:35.000 Nobody gives a shit!
01:39:36.000 You know?
01:39:39.000 And we tried not to do that, but we occasionally were just like, move on, we're wasting our time, you know?
01:39:46.000 But it wasn't a waste of time.
01:39:47.000 It was so brilliant.
01:39:49.000 Like the people that watched it appreciated it because you could feel this thing about it.
01:39:54.000 Like this was new, this was different.
01:39:56.000 Like you'd taken a creative chance that was unique.
01:40:01.000 And, you know, part of the success of it, I think, there's two things.
01:40:06.000 One is, you know, it was all live.
01:40:09.000 And we did, we, you know, we would show the videos or the little films to the audience.
01:40:16.000 And so any laughs, there was never sweetening.
01:40:19.000 Any of the laughs you hear from the audience, and we got it by the time we were like kind of towards the end of the second series, we got it down to we could shoot a show in 44 minutes, you know?
01:40:33.000 Wow.
01:40:34.000 Yeah, because it was, you know, we wouldn't.
01:40:36.000 You wouldn't have to do it twice often.
01:40:38.000 We'd get it, you know, and our stop down, we got really good at super quick, you know, stage shifts and stop downs and stuff.
01:40:49.000 And yeah, we were, we were, we got good.
01:40:50.000 We got, and that keeps the energy up and the kind of flow of everything.
01:40:57.000 So that was helpful in that.
01:41:00.000 And we also didn't do a lot of reoccurring characters.
01:41:04.000 We did two or three that, Pop up occasionally, but it's all like, you know, and it wasn't like a real person.
01:41:12.000 We do, it's about, you know, it wouldn't be about Paris Hilton.
01:41:17.000 It'd be about the idea of a rich girl who gets famous for being on, you know what I mean?
01:41:22.000 It wouldn't be so, so like you watch some of those SNLs and like, who?
01:41:27.000 What?
01:41:27.000 Who is this person?
01:41:28.000 Right.
01:41:29.000 And you don't get it.
01:41:30.000 You don't get the bit because you don't get the reference.
01:41:33.000 Yeah, because as you watch it in the future, those people aren't relevant anymore.
01:41:38.000 And you don't even know what it was.
01:41:38.000 Yeah.
01:41:38.000 Yeah.
01:41:41.000 You can't remember.
01:41:43.000 Because it's so topical.
01:41:43.000 Right.
01:41:44.000 Yeah.
01:41:45.000 Yeah.
01:41:45.000 Well, it was just you guys are doing something different.
01:41:49.000 And it's hard to do something different in a sketch show.
01:41:52.000 Yeah.
01:41:53.000 Yeah.
01:41:54.000 But HBO was responsible for that.
01:41:55.000 They said, you know, in very clear terms, like, we don't want you to be conventional.
01:42:02.000 This is HBO.
01:42:03.000 And this is back when they were trying to get an identity for themselves.
01:42:06.000 And they're like, we want you to do.
01:42:08.000 Stuff that you can't do on NBC or Fox or whatever.
01:42:12.000 We want you to, you know, help us make a distinction, you know, great.
01:42:18.000 Did you enjoy the process?
01:42:19.000 Oh, very much so.
01:42:20.000 It was, I mean, a lot of laughs.
01:42:24.000 A lot of it was hard.
01:42:26.000 And, you know, initially there was a definite marked change when Bob met his, the woman who had become his wife and had kids.
01:42:40.000 Like he just mellowed completely, you know.
01:42:44.000 But before that, he was fucking driven.
01:42:46.000 And I wasn't.
01:42:47.000 I was, I was a goofball and I wanted to work and I wanted to, you know, I had all these ideas, but I was very much like, hey guys, it's five o'clock.
01:43:00.000 I think the bar is going to be open in a minute.
01:43:02.000 Like, I was, let's go, you know, and he was just super driven, you know, and we had long, long, long days.
01:43:10.000 And then when we did the third season, we did produced and, you know, helped out in all aspects of production with Tenacious D and those shorts.
01:43:21.000 And so there was just no downtime.
01:43:23.000 And I remember there were 38 days where we worked full days nonstop without any break.
01:43:30.000 And I just wasn't that kind of person.
01:43:33.000 I was going crazy.
01:43:35.000 Like, I just need to go have a Saturday, you know?
01:43:40.000 Or it was, it was, that part was hard.
01:43:43.000 All worth it.
01:43:45.000 No complaints.
01:43:48.000 And, you know.
01:43:49.000 There's a point of diminishing returns, though, like where you dry yourself out creatively, too.
01:43:54.000 Yes.
01:43:55.000 And I've, Run other rooms like I've done shows since then, and a valuable lesson I learned when you're just kind of running a writer's room is when you're at that place, and it's exactly like you said diminishing returns, you're not getting any work done, your brain isn't foggy.
01:44:16.000 I was very quick to go, All right, guys, let's go put your pens down, fold your computer up, we're gonna go walk around.
01:44:24.000 We're just gonna go outside and walk around, let's go get a coffee, let's do anything.
01:44:28.000 We're getting out of here.
01:44:29.000 And we'll walk around.
01:44:31.000 Don't worry about it.
01:44:32.000 We'll come back in 35 minutes and we'll, you know, see what we got.
01:44:38.000 That's very good for you.
01:44:39.000 Yeah, it is.
01:44:39.000 It is.
01:44:40.000 Most writers, like, I was actually talking to Brian Simpson about that last night.
01:44:44.000 He was like, I get my best because Brian has been walking a lot.
01:44:48.000 He recently had a heart attack, unfortunately.
01:44:51.000 He's fine, but he almost wasn't.
01:44:53.000 And so now he's dedicated himself to walking.
01:44:56.000 He's walking a lot every day.
01:44:58.000 And he's like, when I go on my walks, like, so many ideas come to me.
01:45:01.000 I'm sitting at home.
01:45:02.000 Staring at my computer, nothing's going on.
01:45:04.000 I go on a walk, and all of a sudden, ideas are firing.
01:45:07.000 When I'm in the process, this will be my fifth time that I've done this thing that I've been doing to get new material for a tour.
01:45:20.000 And I.
01:45:23.000 So, I do these things called shooting the shit, seeing what sticks, and they're all in Brooklyn.
01:45:29.000 And they're all either walkable or I can ride my bike to every one of these venues.
01:45:34.000 And mostly I'll just walk and I'll just go, okay, clear out my head and think about the stuff I want to talk about.
01:45:46.000 And also, I live in New York, so there's constant shit happening that I can observe, you know?
01:45:52.000 And it's the best.
01:45:55.000 The best thing for me, you know, to come up with new material and stuff that just think about it.
01:46:03.000 Just walk, walk, walk.
01:46:04.000 Yeah, like I was saying, when I was a kid, when I was driving limos, that's when I would come up with my best material because I was no radio.
01:46:09.000 You can't listen to a radio because you have clients in the car.
01:46:11.000 So you're just driving and just doing a thing and your mind just starts to wander and ideas come to you.
01:46:17.000 No cell phones, none of that shit.
01:46:21.000 Yeah, it's important, you know.
01:46:25.000 The news radio guys would do something totally different, they would stay up late.
01:46:29.000 That was their whole thing.
01:46:31.000 That's not.
01:46:32.000 Their whole thing was sleep deprivation.
01:46:34.000 Their whole thing was they would play video games. 0.88
01:46:36.000 Like, those motherfuckers got me hooked on Quake.
01:46:39.000 I remember Quake.
01:46:40.000 You remember that?
01:46:41.000 That was the first one with the Unreal Engine.
01:46:43.000 Yeah.
01:46:43.000 Well, Unreal is a different game.
01:46:45.000 You're thinking of Unreal Engine?
01:46:46.000 No, no, no.
01:46:47.000 It was called Unreal Tournament.
01:46:51.000 Yeah, trust me.
01:46:52.000 Yeah.
01:46:53.000 Yeah, I'm a dork.
01:46:54.000 Listen, Unreal is a totally different engine.
01:46:56.000 Id Software was a different company.
01:46:59.000 Id Software was created with John Carmack and John Romero.
01:47:02.000 They came up with Doom.
01:47:03.000 And then they came up with Quake afterwards.
01:47:05.000 So it was a completely different engine.
01:47:08.000 They were the first ones.
01:47:09.000 Castle Wolfenstein was the first 3D shooter, and then Doom was the big one.
01:47:13.000 You clearly know your shit.
01:47:14.000 I thought it was the Unreal engine was the first use for Unreal, the game.
01:47:20.000 Right.
01:47:20.000 Got it.
01:47:21.000 Totally different company.
01:47:22.000 Totally different game.
01:47:23.000 Different dynamics.
01:47:24.000 It was a very different game.
01:47:26.000 I got it.
01:47:26.000 Hey, all right.
01:47:27.000 Jesus Christ.
01:47:28.000 This fucking guy.
01:47:31.000 Great game.
01:47:31.000 You want to know where the name Doom came from?
01:47:34.000 Yeah.
01:47:35.000 The scene in The Color of Money with Tom Cruise, where Tom Cruise shows up at this pool hall and there's this local hotshot player and the guy's beating everybody.
01:47:45.000 Tom Cruise is sitting there with a pool cute case and he's waiting to play this guy.
01:47:49.000 He's like, What you got in the case?
01:47:51.000 He goes, Oh, in here.
01:47:52.000 And he opens up and he goes, Doom.
01:47:56.000 Doom.
01:47:57.000 Oh, yeah.
01:47:58.000 That's it.
01:47:59.000 He's like, Yeah, let's play.
01:48:04.000 So, what they wanted to do with the video game industry was the same, like that.
01:48:04.000 That's it.
01:48:09.000 That was like their moment.
01:48:10.000 Like, this is doom for you guys.
01:48:12.000 That was, well, it was.
01:48:14.000 I mean, I, that was my first experience ever with realizing the sun was coming up.
01:48:25.000 And I'd been playing this thing for eight hours.
01:48:29.000 Yeah.
01:48:29.000 Do you know Mark Cohen?
01:48:30.000 Sure.
01:48:31.000 So, Mark, when Mark was living in New York and he had Doom, and I would go.
01:48:31.000 All right.
01:48:37.000 I wasn't living there.
01:48:38.000 I would like crash at his place and tiny.
01:48:41.000 I'd be like, can I play Doom?
01:48:43.000 And, you know, he would go to bed and wake up and I'd be still playing.
01:48:51.000 Dude, you want to know how addicted I was?
01:48:52.000 I had a T1 line installed in my house.
01:48:56.000 So I had to have, they have to chew up the fucking street and install like a business internet line into my house.
01:49:08.000 I was living in California in Bell Canyon.
01:49:08.000 1997.
01:49:12.000 And they had to do work on my fucking street because there was no high speed internet available where I lived.
01:49:19.000 I could get an ISDN line, which was only like 124K.
01:49:25.000 It sucked.
01:49:26.000 You get too much lag.
01:49:27.000 So I started with 56K or 50, what was it?
01:49:30.000 54K, 56K, whatever it was, dial up, terrible.
01:49:33.000 And then I got ISDN, not good enough.
01:49:36.000 And I'm like, what else is available?
01:49:38.000 And they're like, well, you can get a T1 line, but this is for the president.
01:49:42.000 $1,000 a month.
01:49:43.000 I was like, let's go.
01:49:45.000 Because I had sitcom money.
01:49:46.000 I was single.
01:49:47.000 I was living by myself.
01:49:48.000 And they had to tear up your street.
01:49:49.000 They had to tear up my street and install a T1 line in my house.
01:49:52.000 Hey, what are you doing?
01:49:53.000 I'm trying to get in my driveway.
01:49:55.000 Oh, this guy wants to play Doom.
01:49:55.000 What's going on?
01:49:58.000 This was Quake 2 at the time.
01:50:00.000 And it was so good.
01:50:02.000 The internet was so good that I could host my own server.
01:50:05.000 So I had my own game server.
01:50:07.000 So people could come and play this Quake game off of my machine.
01:50:13.000 Wow.
01:50:13.000 So I'd have no latency.
01:50:15.000 And other people would have some late, especially people at like 56K.
01:50:18.000 I would talk to people when it started going.
01:50:23.000 Yeah.
01:50:25.000 That was me back in the early, early days.
01:50:28.000 Look at that monitor.
01:50:29.000 Yeah, that's what we played on these big ass fucking monitors.
01:50:32.000 And we'd set up local area networks.
01:50:34.000 So the fucking writers of news radio are the ones that got me hooked on this because I didn't play any video games.
01:50:40.000 And I would go to visit them in the writers' room.
01:50:41.000 I'm like, what are you guys doing?
01:50:43.000 And they're like, we're playing Quake.
01:50:44.000 I go, what is Quake?
01:50:45.000 And I watched them play.
01:50:46.000 I'm like, oh my God, this is incredible.
01:50:48.000 And you put on the headphones and it's like, you realize it's 3D sound.
01:50:51.000 Like, oh my God, this is real.
01:50:53.000 Were you a Goldeneye guy?
01:50:55.000 No.
01:50:55.000 I was only, I only played Quake.
01:50:57.000 I was only like a first person shooter guy.
01:51:00.000 I got so addicted to it.
01:51:01.000 And the fact that you could just go online Goldeneye was, I mean, I'm talking about the co op.
01:51:06.000 I know what it is.
01:51:06.000 Yeah.
01:51:07.000 Well, that was a first person shooter, right?
01:51:09.000 Right.
01:51:10.000 But it was like real world physics.
01:51:12.000 I wasn't interested in that.
01:51:13.000 Like with Quake, you could rocket jump.
01:51:15.000 So you could press your rocket.
01:51:18.000 Down the ground, blow up, and you'd go flying through the air.
01:51:21.000 It was fucking amazing.
01:51:23.000 Do you remember?
01:51:25.000 I want to say.
01:51:32.000 Red, or the first one where you could your bullets and shit could affect the environment.
01:51:43.000 Like you could blow out a wall.
01:51:45.000 Yeah, I don't know what that was.
01:51:45.000 You know what I mean?
01:51:47.000 I want to see.
01:51:48.000 It was like it took place on Mars or like a Martian mining thing.
01:51:52.000 But it was the first time you could go, oh shit, I can blow up this edge of the wall and it'll crumble on the guy, you know?
01:52:00.000 As opposed to just bullets and.
01:52:03.000 Oh, you could use the environment as a weapon.
01:52:05.000 Red Faction.
01:52:05.000 I believe that was the one.
01:52:07.000 Oh, there you go.
01:52:08.000 Maybe that was the one where.
01:52:10.000 I had to quit.
01:52:11.000 It was a problem.
01:52:12.000 We set up a local area network at our old studio in LA a few years back, and I played so much that I was like, I got to stop.
01:52:22.000 Do your kids play?
01:52:22.000 I have to stop.
01:52:23.000 No.
01:52:23.000 They play little games, like they'll play Roblox and stuff like that.
01:52:26.000 One of my kids played Roblox.
01:52:27.000 Uh-uh.
01:52:28.000 You know about the chat?
01:52:29.000 I do now.
01:52:30.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:52:31.000 Yeah, like predators are trying to find kids through Roblox.
01:52:34.000 Yeah.
01:52:35.000 That's a big thing at our school, like through.
01:52:36.000 It's weird, man.
01:52:37.000 Yeah.
01:52:37.000 It's weird how many fucking creeps there are out there in the world.
01:52:41.000 Well, thankfully, my daughter, who's nine, how old are your kids?
01:52:45.000 15 and 17 are the youngest ones.
01:52:47.000 Okay.
01:52:47.000 So they're pass.
01:52:50.000 They're safe.
01:52:51.000 They got the right.
01:52:52.000 They get it.
01:52:52.000 They're good.
01:52:53.000 Yeah.
01:52:54.000 But so we had a.
01:53:00.000 My daughter is way into Minecraft, which I have no problem with.
01:53:03.000 It's great.
01:53:03.000 And she plays with her friends.
01:53:04.000 They play online and help each other build things.
01:53:07.000 And.
01:53:09.000 But the Roblox thing became a thing at our school, and everybody at our all the parents were like super on top of that shit.
01:53:16.000 And there's you know WhatsApp chains and all that stuff.
01:53:20.000 And we told our daughter there's like this one game she was playing that had a chat thing, and then somebody who was a quote unquote girl who lived in I live on a farm in Ohio or whatever asking her stuff, and she's like, My name's Marlo, and going back and forth, and then.
01:53:45.000 She asked the quote unquote girl, said, What is your Instagram login or something like that?
01:53:55.000 And my daughter was eight at the time, and she was like, Oh, I don't think she didn't say that's none of your business, but it was something that was smart that was equivalent to I don't think you need to know that or something.
01:54:13.000 And then told us, and we shut down the chat thing.
01:54:17.000 You know, disabled the chat, and that's real, man.
01:54:21.000 Yeah, I mean, it's creepy.
01:54:24.000 I'm very glad that my daughter, you know, because and it really was about the Roblox thing that everybody in our school, elementary school, was they talked about it.
01:54:32.000 Yeah, it's a Snapchat thing too.
01:54:35.000 So, Snapchat comes with something called a Snap Map, and kids use it to know where their friends are.
01:54:42.000 Yeah.
01:54:43.000 And so someone can pretend to be your friend and find out who you are, and then they can know where you are at all times if you have Snapchat enabled.
01:54:52.000 God, the shit this generation is going to have to fucking deal with is just terrifying, man.
01:54:59.000 Right.
01:55:00.000 And what's next?
01:55:01.000 Like, how is that?
01:55:02.000 It's not going to go the opposite direction.
01:55:05.000 It never does.
01:55:06.000 No, it's going to keep going in that same direction where it's going to be more and more intrusive in your life.
01:55:11.000 And my.
01:55:13.000 I mean, it makes me fucking heartsick when I think about AI and we're at the fucking infancy of this shit and what. 1.00
01:55:24.000 I assume you saw that Tilly Norwood thing, the actress that was created by this Dutch. 1.00
01:55:30.000 Oh, yeah. 1.00
01:55:31.000 My.
01:55:32.000 It does not compute.
01:55:33.000 I'm watching this thing and I know that it's made up, but there's my brain is like, it's hard to comprehend.
01:55:41.000 Like, that's not a real person.
01:55:43.000 She's standing right there.
01:55:44.000 She's, you know, picks up a bunch of leaves and there are other people there.
01:55:47.000 And that's a real person.
01:55:49.000 And your brain is going, no, that's all computer generated.
01:55:52.000 We're at the fucking infancy of this shit.
01:55:55.000 And what I don't know what my daughter's going to have to deal with, man.
01:56:00.000 No, no one knows.
01:56:01.000 No one knows.
01:56:02.000 And it's impossible to know.
01:56:04.000 Like, when they show news clips.
01:56:06.000 It's impossible to.
01:56:06.000 Yeah.
01:56:07.000 I mean, so many people are retweeting scenes from video games thinking it's actual war footage.
01:56:14.000 Like, no one.
01:56:17.000 Fucking the Department of Defense did that.
01:56:20.000 Did they really?
01:56:20.000 Yeah.
01:56:20.000 Yeah.
01:56:21.000 That was a whole fucking thing.
01:56:23.000 They retweeted a video game footage?
01:56:24.000 Yeah.
01:56:25.000 And they were saying. 0.72
01:56:26.000 It was for a. 0.77
01:56:28.000 I think it was for a.
01:56:30.000 You know, to get people to sign up thing.
01:56:33.000 And then somebody went, that's from.
01:56:36.000 You know, whatever it was.
01:56:37.000 Call of Duty or something like that.
01:56:39.000 That's not.
01:56:40.000 That's not us bombing somebody.
01:56:41.000 That's a thing.
01:56:42.000 Yeah, just like two weeks ago.
01:56:44.000 That's crazy.
01:56:45.000 Yeah.
01:56:45.000 It's impossible to tell when you look at these artificial actors.
01:56:49.000 Like they have pores.
01:56:51.000 Yeah.
01:56:51.000 You can see like the irises.
01:56:53.000 Have you seen any of the like deep fake, not deep fake, but AI porn, where it's like somebody's like a newscaster is like, and in other news, my big juicy tits. 0.99
01:57:12.000 And I'm serious, and then pulls, and then a dick comes in. 1.00
01:57:17.000 You're like, what the?
01:57:18.000 And it looks real.
01:57:20.000 And then it'll say, like, none of these are not actors.
01:57:24.000 These are none of this is not good.
01:57:26.000 Yeah.
01:57:27.000 It's, you know, good Lord, man.
01:57:29.000 And it's only beginning.
01:57:30.000 And now wait till it becomes VR.
01:57:33.000 So you're going to strap on a helmet with a haptic feedback suit, and you're going to enter into an artificial world.
01:57:39.000 It's coming.
01:57:40.000 It's inevitable.
01:57:41.000 That'll do.
01:57:41.000 I'm going to get divorced and I'm going to get one of those suits.
01:57:44.000 I'm going to go up.
01:57:45.000 I got a house in the woods upstate.
01:57:47.000 That's all I'm doing.
01:57:48.000 Just a T1 line through the Venus.
01:57:50.000 Yeah, I'm going to have them rip up the street.
01:57:53.000 Well, you won't even need it now.
01:57:55.000 It's Starlink.
01:57:56.000 Yeah.
01:57:56.000 You just slap one of those things on your roof.
01:57:58.000 Goddamn.
01:57:58.000 It's fucking wild, man.
01:58:01.000 And no one knows where it's going.
01:58:03.000 I really would be very upset if I miss the shift in porn to that, like.
01:58:12.000 I don't want to die before I get to do that thing where you're like, dude, it was amazing.
01:58:17.000 I put on a helmet and it was like I was fucking whoever.
01:58:20.000 Yeah.
01:58:20.000 I don't want to.
01:58:22.000 I do want to experience that.
01:58:24.000 It's going to happen.
01:58:25.000 You're going to put something on.
01:58:26.000 Thank you.
01:58:27.000 It's going to sync up with your mind and all of a sudden, you're going to be in this matrix.
01:58:34.000 You're going to be in another world.
01:58:35.000 Did you see three planet problem?
01:58:40.000 Am I saying that right?
01:58:41.000 Yeah, three body problem.
01:58:42.000 Three body problem.
01:58:43.000 Amazing.
01:58:44.000 Yeah, but that whole idea that you put that thing on, you're like, oh shit, I'm here.
01:58:48.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:58:49.000 That's exactly how it's going to be.
01:58:51.000 Okay, good.
01:58:52.000 No doubt.
01:58:53.000 No doubt.
01:58:54.000 They already can do a lot of really weird shit with those helmets where they can communicate without words, where you can think a thing and the other person knows exactly what you're saying.
01:59:04.000 They can hear you and they can respond to it.
01:59:06.000 Wait, wait.
01:59:07.000 Yes.
01:59:08.000 Yeah.
01:59:09.000 So there's two people, they're sitting across from each other and they're having conversations with these headpieces on, and the person will think a thought.
01:59:16.000 And this other person will hear that thought.
01:59:18.000 No.
01:59:18.000 I don't understand the technology, but no, we'll show it to you.
01:59:22.000 Find that video.
01:59:23.000 It's fucking bonkers.
01:59:25.000 Because again, this is the infancy of this.
01:59:27.000 Like, here it is.
01:59:28.000 It's called Alter Ego.
01:59:28.000 These are the guys.
01:59:30.000 Yeah, watch this.
01:59:31.000 Put your.
01:59:32.000 I'm going to skip ahead.
01:59:34.000 Yeah, skip ahead to where they're actually doing it.
01:59:37.000 Okay, so see how he's that headpiece on?
01:59:39.000 Yep.
01:59:40.000 We believe it's a revolutionary breakthrough with the potential to change the way we interact with our technology, with one another.
01:59:48.000 And with the world around us.
01:59:50.000 The current way of interacting with computing and AI is limited to how fast you can tap and swipe on screens and keyboards.
01:59:56.000 For the intelligence age, we need an entirely new interface.
02:00:00.000 Yeah, skip ahead to these guys.
02:00:01.000 Here we go.
02:00:02.000 Let's do it.
02:00:05.000 So they're just thinking.
02:00:06.000 How do you think the demo is going so far?
02:00:14.000 I think they just put it on voices for the video.
02:00:17.000 Pretty great.
02:00:17.000 No major glitches yet.
02:00:20.000 So they're hearing this.
02:00:22.000 All right.
02:00:22.000 Enough.
02:00:23.000 When do you want to get lunch after this?
02:00:23.000 Enough.
02:00:25.000 Where do you want to get lunch after this?
02:00:33.000 Skip to the next part.
02:00:34.000 Thai food could be good.
02:00:35.000 This translates into Chinese form.
02:00:44.000 Then he can speak Chinese back.
02:00:50.000 How nuts is this? 0.94
02:00:57.000 So, not only does it read your thoughts, it'll translate your thoughts into another language.
02:01:02.000 And no one is saying anything.
02:01:06.000 My.
02:01:07.000 What if you.
02:01:09.000 But wait a minute.
02:01:09.000 Right.
02:01:10.000 Yeah.
02:01:11.000 What if.
02:01:13.000 You know where I'm about to go.
02:01:15.000 Sure.
02:01:15.000 Right.
02:01:16.000 That's not.
02:01:17.000 Well, so this is based off of them, like, sort of talking in their mouth without actually saying it.
02:01:21.000 Right.
02:01:22.000 Yeah, it's.
02:01:22.000 But.
02:01:23.000 Yeah, if you say that. 1.00
02:01:24.000 I would like to fuck your mouth. 1.00
02:01:25.000 Please don't. 1.00
02:01:26.000 Yeah.
02:01:29.000 Even if your mind just goes, yeah.
02:01:31.000 Well, right.
02:01:32.000 Like, okay, I can't think about this thing.
02:01:35.000 Right, right, right, right.
02:01:36.000 Of course.
02:01:36.000 Oh, God.
02:01:37.000 That's terrifying.
02:01:38.000 And it's just a simple thing that you're sitting on your head.
02:01:41.000 It's not even a big helmet, it's just a little thing.
02:01:44.000 What would Art Bell say?
02:01:45.000 What would Art Bell say?
02:01:47.000 He would open up the future line.
02:01:48.000 He was right about it, everything.
02:01:50.000 Yeah.
02:01:51.000 He missed it.
02:01:52.000 Yeah.
02:01:53.000 Damn cigarettes.
02:01:55.000 He died before he could see it all.
02:01:57.000 God, I wonder what he'd think of it.
02:01:59.000 Because I do sometimes wonder what would Krimmon say about this?
02:02:05.000 What would Bill Hicks say about this?
02:02:06.000 And what would Art Bell think about this?
02:02:09.000 Sure.
02:02:09.000 Yeah.
02:02:11.000 What's the strangest of times?
02:02:13.000 Because we're about to give birth to a digital god.
02:02:16.000 That's essentially what they're creating.
02:02:19.000 It's already shown a propensity to stay alive, blackmail people, lies, it downloads itself into other servers.
02:02:27.000 Uploads itself into different places, leaves messages for its future self if it thinks they're going to discontinue it.
02:02:33.000 All the sci fi stuff is all happening.
02:02:38.000 Yeah, well, not only that, they think the engineers think Claude, which is the.
02:02:43.000 Which one is that?
02:02:44.000 Which company is Claude?
02:02:46.000 Anthropic.
02:02:47.000 Anthropic.
02:02:48.000 They think it's already sentient.
02:02:50.000 It just doesn't have a physical form.
02:02:52.000 That's the one the Defense Department wants.
02:02:54.000 Yeah.
02:02:55.000 And by the way, when they do war games with these things, 98% of the time it chooses nuclear weapons.
02:03:02.000 They have a new version of it called Mythos.
02:03:05.000 When they were testing it, which they're not letting it out yet, I think the test they put it through was like, all right, you're locked on the internet, find your way out.
02:03:12.000 And it did.
02:03:13.000 It found all these things called zero day exploits, which I think if you like hacking, you know what that is.
02:03:19.000 Explained it to me.
02:03:20.000 It's like when they started, it's like on an iPhone, they're looking for zero day exploits on an iPhone.
02:03:25.000 If they could find one.
02:03:25.000 But what is a zero day exploit?
02:03:28.000 I'll find the correct definition so I don't even fuck it up.
02:03:33.000 And it's.
02:03:34.000 Something that Claude came up with?
02:03:37.000 No, no, no.
02:03:38.000 Zero day exploit.
02:03:39.000 Hackers have done this forever.
02:03:40.000 You have zero days to fix the.
02:03:42.000 Cyber attack targeting a software vulnerability unknown to vendors or the public, leaving zero days to fix it.
02:03:48.000 Hackers use these flaws to steal data, install malware.
02:03:51.000 So they completely shut off the AI from the outside world and it figured out a way to send a message.
02:03:58.000 And it thinks it can.
02:03:59.000 Wall Street's very nervous.
02:04:01.000 All passwords might be fucked.
02:04:02.000 Yep.
02:04:03.000 Oh, this is terrifying. 1.00
02:04:04.000 Elizabeth Holmes, you know that lady that. 1.00
02:04:07.000 Got in trouble for that whole fake blood thing. 1.00
02:04:11.000 She just tweeted something, how she tweets from jail.
02:04:13.000 I'm not exactly sure how that works.
02:04:15.000 But she tweeted delete all photos from the cloud, get rid of all your email.
02:04:23.000 There will be no privacy in a year.
02:04:30.000 Anything on the cloud, anything that you think you're keeping from other people, it's going to crack all encryption.
02:04:38.000 All passwords are useless.
02:04:40.000 Everything.
02:04:41.000 So think of all the things that rely on all the banking apps, everything.
02:04:46.000 What about my fantasy baseball team?
02:04:49.000 Seriously, I can't have.
02:04:50.000 Here it is.
02:04:51.000 Delete your search history, delete your bookmarks, delete your Reddit, medical records, 12 year old Tumblr, delete everything.
02:04:56.000 Every photo in the cloud, every message on every platform, none of it is safe.
02:04:59.000 It will all become public in the next year.
02:05:01.000 Local storage and compute.
02:05:04.000 Wow.
02:05:07.000 Recommendation here is to own your own data, download it, store it locally, train your models on it.
02:05:11.000 Yeah.
02:05:12.000 Yeah, it's true.
02:05:13.000 Meaning just have an external.
02:05:15.000 Yeah.
02:05:16.000 AGI is here, even if it isn't broadly deployed.
02:05:19.000 I think she's right.
02:05:21.000 What is AGI?
02:05:23.000 Artificial general intelligence.
02:05:25.000 General intelligence, meaning it acts like an individual, acts like an entity.
02:05:30.000 And then there's artificial general super intelligence.
02:05:33.000 So then it acts like something far smarter than any human being that's ever lived.
02:05:36.000 It has all the information that's available to every human being all over the world instantaneously.
02:05:42.000 Then it makes better versions of itself because it's sentient and autonomous.
02:05:46.000 So then it can create better artificial intelligences and that scales out to a god.
02:05:52.000 Yeah, open the pod door is hell.
02:05:54.000 Yeah.
02:05:54.000 Yeah, but way bigger than that.
02:05:56.000 It scares out the zero point energy, being able to harness the energy of the universe itself, having no boundaries, material sciences all cracked, alloys we couldn't comprehend.
02:06:09.000 Well, Joe, who's going to save us?
02:06:11.000 There's no one saving us.
02:06:14.000 We are the last of the regular people.
02:06:17.000 I think we're all going to have to integrate.
02:06:19.000 I think if you don't integrate, you won't survive.
02:06:23.000 And what do you mean by integrate?
02:06:24.000 Integrate.
02:06:25.000 You'll probably become a part of the artificial intelligence.
02:06:29.000 I think we will be symbiotic.
02:06:32.000 How does that.
02:06:34.000 Like those fucking helmets.
02:06:35.000 It's probably going to be a wearable or a neural link type thing for the bold that want to get a hole drilled in their head.
02:06:42.000 But what if you don't do that?
02:06:43.000 You're going to be left out in the cold.
02:06:46.000 The access to resources, the ability to generate income, like the people that get it are going to be able to control so much so quickly that if you don't adopt it early, you're going to be fucked.
02:06:57.000 Like if you think we have haves and have nots now, just wait until the haves have artificial general superintelligence inside their fucking head.
02:07:07.000 No, thank you.
02:07:08.000 Yeah, it's going to be real weird.
02:07:10.000 I think we're the, I really genuinely believe we're the last of the real people.
02:07:14.000 Like regular biological people.
02:07:16.000 It turned into a bit of a bummer. 0.78
02:07:19.000 We'll be all right.
02:07:20.000 Sort of until we're not.
02:07:21.000 But it's also like we grew up with nothing.
02:07:25.000 And we've, we've, we're like if the simulation is real, you and I are in a very interesting timeline because we grew up where there was, you just left the house and your parents didn't know where you were.
02:07:38.000 And then there were answering machines.
02:07:40.000 And then there was call ID.
02:07:43.000 And then there were cell phones.
02:07:44.000 And then there were cell phones you could watch porn on.
02:07:47.000 And then there was AI.
02:07:49.000 It's like this slow but more rapid as time goes on progression of technology.
02:07:55.000 And it's exponential.
02:07:56.000 And as you said, there's no going back.
02:07:58.000 There's no going back.
02:08:00.000 Unless you want to be one of those people that moves to Alaska and just starts fucking living off a caribou and shooting a musket.
02:08:06.000 Like you're not going back.
02:08:08.000 No, wait.
02:08:08.000 Why do I have to get a musket?
02:08:10.000 You can get a regular rifle, I guess.
02:08:12.000 I mean, I'm not going to cosplay the thing.
02:08:12.000 Yeah, why?
02:08:17.000 I'm happy to have the caribou, but why don't I just have a regular gun?
02:08:21.000 You should probably have a regular gun.
02:08:22.000 Well, you really should probably have a drag-horner hat.
02:08:24.000 Do I have a drag-horner hat?
02:08:25.000 Bow and arrow.
02:08:27.000 Because you're going to have to be able to make your own arrows, and after a while, you're going to run out of bullets.
02:08:31.000 So you're going to have to feed yourself with your own bows and arrows.
02:08:35.000 Okay. 0.68
02:08:36.000 And then the robots will show up.
02:08:37.000 Okay.
02:08:38.000 Robot dogs.
02:08:39.000 Didn't something happen in Ukraine recently where a robot engaged with people in war and the people surrendered?
02:08:52.000 When you say robot, what do you mean?
02:08:52.000 It was a thing.
02:08:53.000 Like one of those Boston.
02:08:55.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
02:08:56.000 Like using a robot in war.
02:08:59.000 The robot infiltrated the Russian area and got them all to surrender.
02:09:05.000 And they all, like, with no loss of life, they just realized, fuck.
02:09:10.000 Did you see that Black Mirror episode?
02:09:12.000 Yes.
02:09:13.000 Terrifying.
02:09:15.000 Absolutely terrifying.
02:09:16.000 And not so far in the future.
02:09:18.000 Yeah.
02:09:19.000 This fucking thing that they supposedly used in Afghanistan, so it is.
02:09:26.000 Ukraine forces Russia to surrender using only robots.
02:09:31.000 Zelensky claims enemy positions seized autonomously for the first time without any of his troops being put at risk.
02:09:38.000 Wow.
02:09:39.000 I mean, If the fucking Terminator show up, it's game over.
02:09:44.000 If there's biological human beings with guns and bulletproof vests and the Terminator show up and they can't miss and they never get nervous and they're not worried about dying.
02:09:52.000 And they're not going to get sleepy.
02:09:53.000 Yeah.
02:09:53.000 They don't have to eat.
02:09:55.000 This thing that we were talking about yesterday, this ghost burmer, supposedly.
02:10:02.000 Now, my friend Andy, who is a former Navy SEAL, who he doesn't believe it's real and I'm not sure it's real either.
02:10:09.000 But what they said is they found that pilot that was missing in Iran.
02:10:13.000 Mm hmm.
02:10:14.000 Using something called ghost murmur that can detect his very specific heartbeat from 40 miles away.
02:10:23.000 So they've supposedly found him hiding in the mountains, waiting for them to pick him up.
02:10:29.000 That makes, I can see that.
02:10:30.000 I mean, your heartbeat from 40 miles away?
02:10:33.000 Your specific biological signature?
02:10:37.000 Yeah, I can see that.
02:10:40.000 I mean, with the technology of like sonar, radar.
02:10:43.000 Well, it's something quantum.
02:10:44.000 It's called, I think it's called quantum magnetometry or some shit.
02:10:48.000 But what do they use to pinpoint the.
02:10:50.000 It's an audible thing?
02:10:52.000 I don't know.
02:10:52.000 I have no idea.
02:10:54.000 But they supposedly located this guy and it has a 40 mile range.
02:10:59.000 He doesn't have anything on.
02:11:01.000 No.
02:11:01.000 I see.
02:11:02.000 It's like they just scan you.
02:11:04.000 They go, okay, this is what David Cross's very specific biological signature is.
02:11:08.000 And then you get lost hiking and they go, oh, there he is.
02:11:12.000 He's under that bush.
02:11:16.000 Why am I under the bush?
02:11:17.000 You're hiding.
02:11:18.000 From who?
02:11:18.000 I don't know.
02:11:19.000 Robot dogs?
02:11:21.000 It's not going to work.
02:11:23.000 It won't work.
02:11:23.000 We've clearly.
02:11:24.000 No, it won't work.
02:11:25.000 Or maybe you got lost in the woods.
02:11:27.000 You're waiting for someone to come rescue you and they can find you.
02:11:30.000 But then I wouldn't be under a bush.
02:11:32.000 Well, you go hiking.
02:11:33.000 Maybe it's raining.
02:11:35.000 You sought shelter under a tree or something.
02:11:37.000 But you hurt your ankle.
02:11:37.000 I don't know.
02:11:38.000 You can't hike out.
02:11:39.000 Okay.
02:11:40.000 And so they find you.
02:11:41.000 It's been 24 hours.
02:11:42.000 Where's David?
02:11:43.000 Oh, we found him.
02:11:44.000 Yeah, we would have found him earlier, but he was hiding under a fucking bush.
02:11:49.000 What the fuck was he thinking?
02:11:51.000 He didn't want to get eaten.
02:11:53.000 But, I mean, if that's real, like, what was the actual term they used?
02:11:58.000 Was it quantum?
02:11:59.000 It was quantum something kooky.
02:12:02.000 Which is, as soon as you say quantum, I'm okay.
02:12:04.000 What are you saying?
02:12:04.000 What does that mean?
02:12:05.000 What does that mean?
02:12:06.000 What are you talking about?
02:12:07.000 Are you talking about quantum entanglement?
02:12:09.000 Like, is there somehow or another?
02:12:10.000 They supposedly use ultra sensitive quantum magnetometers, but I'm trying to find the post where someone's like, that's not what they used.
02:12:19.000 Right.
02:12:20.000 Yeah, I saw the post where someone said no, he had a thing on his body.
02:12:24.000 So they're lying about their ability.
02:12:30.000 Why wouldn't they say that's what we used?
02:12:34.000 I have no idea.
02:12:36.000 I have no idea.
02:12:36.000 If they're going to make up some technology, that's a wild thing to make up.
02:12:41.000 It's a very strange.
02:12:43.000 I mean, if they really are using misinformation and propaganda to show that we have insanely superior technology.
02:12:52.000 I guess you could say it's a bluff.
02:12:55.000 It's a nice bluff to pretend that we're that sophisticated, that much above and beyond everybody else that's out there, that we could find a very specific heart rate signature from 40 miles away.
02:13:06.000 That's what I'm saying.
02:13:09.000 They would happily say, yeah, we've got this ability to do this.
02:13:15.000 I guess, but it's a weird lie.
02:13:17.000 It's probably a lie based on weird lies.
02:13:19.000 Right, but that one might be a lie based on actual theory.
02:13:24.000 You know what I mean?
02:13:25.000 Like, there might be actually.
02:13:26.000 They're coming, they're trying to do this.
02:13:27.000 Yeah.
02:13:28.000 Yeah, which kind of makes sense.
02:13:28.000 Yeah, yeah.
02:13:30.000 But I mean, if that's a robot dog and it's looking for you and you're hiding and it could find your individual signature in an apartment building filled with people, like, there he is, fifth floor.
02:13:42.000 Yeah.
02:13:43.000 Oi.
02:13:44.000 And you hear the metal footsteps going up the stairs chunk, This is scary.
02:13:44.000 Yeah.
02:13:50.000 You're scaring me.
02:13:51.000 It's scary.
02:13:52.000 Well, someone's going to be in control of all this stuff.
02:13:54.000 That's what's really terrifying. 1.00
02:13:55.000 And it's all these autistic dorks. 1.00
02:13:57.000 That are in charge of all these tech companies. 0.99
02:14:00.000 They're going to be at the front.
02:14:02.000 This is also a kind of similar thing where they have said that that's what happened, where they used robots, in quotes, to capture them unmanned.
02:14:11.000 But it's their version of the story, too.
02:14:16.000 Right. 0.88
02:14:16.000 As I'm saying, Ukraine's version. 0.88
02:14:18.000 All these reports I see, it says Ukraine claimed that this happened.
02:14:23.000 And then I'm watching the video and I'm like, this looks a little bit like when we send robots in and swap missions here.
02:14:28.000 Like, we do that kind of already.
02:14:30.000 Hmm.
02:14:31.000 Right?
02:14:32.000 Yeah, but who's the source of this?
02:14:35.000 There's the New York Post trying to capture the enemy Russian position using only robots, no humans.
02:14:41.000 The future is already on the front line.
02:14:43.000 But then it's going to be eventually, why would we send any people out there?
02:14:47.000 It would be robots capturing other robots.
02:14:50.000 Which is great because nobody dies, I guess.
02:14:55.000 Then why don't we just play a game of chess?
02:14:57.000 Right. 0.98
02:14:58.000 Get the two leaders to play a game of chess, and the winner takes the land and the resources.
02:15:04.000 Yeah, not a bad idea.
02:15:05.000 Whatever the fuck we're going to do.
02:15:07.000 It's like the whole thing, it's just insane.
02:15:10.000 Like from the time I was a little child, thinking, oh boy, we figured out no war.
02:15:15.000 That's great.
02:15:16.000 Yeah.
02:15:16.000 To no, we're fighting war with robots that can detect your heart rate from 40 miles away.
02:15:21.000 So, what do you think of what's going on in Iran? 0.63
02:15:24.000 It's fucking terrifying. 0.95
02:15:26.000 Yeah.
02:15:26.000 All of it's terrifying.
02:15:27.000 Anytime you're involved with shooting missiles into towns and blowing things up, blowing up infrastructure, blowing up bridges, you know, and Israel's blowing up Lebanon now.
02:15:41.000 It's like, what the fuck are we doing?
02:15:42.000 Like, how is this still going on?
02:15:45.000 It's, well, it's also clear there was no plan.
02:15:49.000 Zero.
02:15:49.000 No.
02:15:50.000 None.
02:15:50.000 No.
02:15:51.000 Well, Netanyahu's been telling the United States that Iran was months away from building a nuclear bomb for 30 years or 20 years at least.
02:16:01.000 I've always been saying that.
02:16:03.000 Trump was the first one to go, all right, let's do something about it.
02:16:05.000 But it seems like they didn't know what the fuck they were going to do.
02:16:08.000 There was something done about it.
02:16:10.000 In his first year in office, he tore up the. 1.00
02:16:15.000 The blocker buster bombs. 0.94
02:16:16.000 But all this, we're in a worse place now than before this thing started.
02:16:22.000 Yeah. 0.99
02:16:24.000 Look, the Iranian regime is terrible.
02:16:26.000 Like what they do to the protesters. 0.91
02:16:27.000 I'm not disputing that at all.
02:16:30.000 I mean, most people that voted for Trump or wanted Trump to be in office, one of the things that was attractive was this no more wars.
02:16:37.000 Sure, of course.
02:16:38.000 And now we're in one of the craziest ones.
02:16:40.000 Yeah.
02:16:41.000 And China's flying in cargo planes filled with stuff.
02:16:44.000 We don't know what the fuck's in there.
02:16:46.000 And Russia is giving Iran information about where our troops are. 0.89
02:16:51.000 Super fun. 0.97
02:16:52.000 Great times.
02:16:53.000 Oh, it's crazy.
02:16:55.000 And scary, too.
02:16:56.000 I mean, science.org says it's scary.
02:16:58.000 Quantum sensors.
02:16:59.000 So they say it's bullshit?
02:17:01.000 Says it's highly implausible.
02:17:04.000 Did quantum sensors help find a U.S. pilot shot down in Iran?
02:17:07.000 Experts doubt it.
02:17:09.000 Yeah.
02:17:10.000 Now, okay, here's an ignorant question.
02:17:13.000 He's shot down.
02:17:14.000 Wouldn't you know he's on foot?
02:17:18.000 He's somewhere near that site, right?
02:17:20.000 Can't go too far.
02:17:21.000 Yeah, can't go too far.
02:17:22.000 Right.
02:17:23.000 So.
02:17:24.000 Well, the thing is, if he gets ejected from the plane, I don't know how.
02:17:28.000 So, if he got shot down, the idea is that he gets ejected from the plane and then parachutes.
02:17:34.000 That could be a lot of distance because the plane's flying at a very high speed.
02:17:40.000 It's a.
02:17:41.000 An altitude undetermined.
02:17:44.000 He jumps out.
02:17:45.000 When does he jump out?
02:17:45.000 Where?
02:17:46.000 Is it 100 miles away?
02:17:48.000 Is it 50 miles away?
02:17:49.000 Is it 10 miles away?
02:17:50.000 How far can he walk?
02:17:51.000 He's injured.
02:17:54.000 It's fucking terrifying.
02:17:55.000 It's just crazy that the pilots or the astronauts just went up into space and circled around the moon and came back.
02:18:05.000 Everybody that goes into space has this experience called the overview effect, where they go out there and they.
02:18:12.000 One of the first things is going, Oh my God, what are we doing?
02:18:14.000 Like, how are we pretending at these lines in the dirt that we draw?
02:18:19.000 That it's all just a bunch of people on this very fragile biological spaceship.
02:18:19.000 Yeah.
02:18:25.000 Yep.
02:18:26.000 Yeah, it's fucking terrifying.
02:18:26.000 Yep.
02:18:28.000 Yeah.
02:18:29.000 But like all things in the future, all of it's terrifying.
02:18:32.000 The whole, the, the, the future of mankind, like, it's so perilous.
02:18:37.000 It's all, it's all so fragile.
02:18:41.000 All of it.
02:18:42.000 I know.
02:18:42.000 And, It's to think of the stuff that we allow these external things that we allow to affect our life.
02:18:54.000 Like, if there was ever a time to just be a good person, live your life, enjoy, try to spread some kindness and some joy, you know, I mean, it's now.
02:19:10.000 Yeah.
02:19:10.000 You know, it's a good time for comedy.
02:19:12.000 People want to go out and have fun.
02:19:14.000 That's true.
02:19:15.000 Which reminds me, I have a special.
02:19:15.000 Yeah.
02:19:17.000 That was the segue.
02:19:20.000 What's it on?
02:19:22.000 There it is.
02:19:23.000 Is it on YouTube?
02:19:24.000 Perfect.
02:19:24.000 It's on YouTube.
02:19:25.000 The end of the beginning.
02:19:26.000 Where did you film it?
02:19:27.000 40 Watt in Athens.
02:19:29.000 Oh, nice.
02:19:30.000 Nice.
02:19:31.000 Um,.
02:19:34.000 Yeah, I'm happy with it.
02:19:36.000 Fantastic.
02:19:36.000 Great.
02:19:37.000 Yeah.
02:19:38.000 And it's out right now, and people can go check it out.
02:19:41.000 It is out right now.
02:19:42.000 So, are you in the process of writing new stuff now, or did you.
02:19:46.000 Yeah.
02:19:47.000 I'm just beginning the process.
02:19:50.000 So, I was saying before, I'll go out and I'll do, you know, because I don't write.
02:19:55.000 I can't sit down and write jokes.
02:19:57.000 That's just not how it works for me.
02:19:59.000 So, all the writing is on stage.
02:20:00.000 So, I tape everything, I go up with my notes, and I have a couple guests, and I'll do.
02:20:08.000 15 minutes, bring up guests, do another 15, bring guests, do another 15.
02:20:11.000 Oh, that's cool.
02:20:12.000 Yeah.
02:20:12.000 And then break it up into little chunks.
02:20:14.000 Yeah.
02:20:14.000 And this way, because, you know, the first couple shows were terrible.
02:20:19.000 I've got nothing, you know, it's just me apologizing for not having anything yet.
02:20:23.000 But people will, I mean, I have people now who will come to the second show and the sixth show, and then they'll come see me on tour, you know, so you can see the process.
02:20:33.000 The process, yeah.
02:20:34.000 The evolution of it.
02:20:35.000 And which is cool.
02:20:37.000 And it's, as I said, I.
02:20:39.000 I either walk or ride my bike to every single venue, and they start off small and then they get bigger, and I lose a guest.
02:20:47.000 And then, you know, before you know it, I've got okay, I think this is roughly the 75 minutes I'm going to do, and then it's about sequencing, which is really important, you know.
02:20:58.000 And then I take it out on the road, and so the idea is that I'll probably late fall start back again, and I love it.
02:21:10.000 That's great.
02:21:11.000 Fucking love it.
02:21:12.000 It's the best, right?
02:21:14.000 Stand up is the most fun.
02:21:15.000 I really.
02:21:16.000 And, you know, people will.
02:21:18.000 I'll do.
02:21:19.000 I'm doing press for this thing, and people will say, I know you do a lot of things, and what is your favorite?
02:21:27.000 I know you're an actor, you know, and it's all.
02:21:31.000 I like doing all of it, but the thing that I absolutely have to do is stand up.
02:21:37.000 I'd be disappointed if I could never act again or write or direct or whatever, but.
02:21:43.000 I'll be okay.
02:21:44.000 But if you told me I can't do stand up, I'd go crazy.
02:21:48.000 Well, I went a little crazy during the pandemic because I almost, and I made this part of the bit, but I almost, the first show I did, I started tearing up.
02:22:01.000 And I'm in front, I mean, I'm doing this, and it was at the Sultan Room in Bushwick.
02:22:06.000 And I was like, man, I thought, God, I didn't know if I'd ever get to do this again.
02:22:14.000 And shit, you know, I dreamed about this day.
02:22:17.000 And it, It was a year and seven months where I.
02:22:20.000 The longest since I've been doing this.
02:22:22.000 Such a strange feeling, isn't it?
02:22:24.000 A year and seven months where you.
02:22:26.000 And I did some of those outdoor shows, and they're just not.
02:22:30.000 It's not the same thing.
02:22:31.000 It's not the same.
02:22:33.000 Yeah.
02:22:34.000 Well, that's awesome, man.
02:22:35.000 I'm glad you love it.
02:22:36.000 And best of luck with this special.
02:22:38.000 Thank you, man.
02:22:39.000 This was fun.
02:22:40.000 Thank you for doing this.
02:22:40.000 I enjoyed it.
02:22:41.000 Absolutely.
02:22:42.000 All right.
02:22:42.000 What's the name of it again?
02:22:43.000 So people can find it.
02:22:44.000 The end of the beginning of the end.
02:22:46.000 All right.
02:22:48.000 All right.
02:22:48.000 Thank you.
02:22:49.000 Bye, everybody.
02:22:49.000 Thank you.