This Past Weekend with Theo Von - #611

00:00:00.180 Today's guest is one of the greats. There's nobody like him. He's a comedian, he's a

00:00:06.900 filmmaker, and now he's a novelist. This is his new book, Ingram, and I've read it, and

00:00:13.080 it's great. It's like this Huck Finn, like an emotional kind of Huck Finn. You'll love

00:00:20.860 it. I guarantee that. I'm grateful to spend time with him today. He's one of my dear friends,

00:00:27.300 and I think he has a lot to offer the world, so I feel lucky to ride on this planet at

00:00:33.140 the same time as him. Today's guest is Mr. Louis C.K.

00:00:53.620 Yeah, man, I'm excited to see you guys perform tonight.

00:00:57.300 The Ryman's a beautiful place.

00:01:01.920 Yeah, do you feel uncomfortable ever saying certain things in such a beautiful venue? And

00:01:06.860 not you particularly, but also definitely you.

00:01:09.800 Yeah, I mean, I don't know. The Ryman feels like, I mean, Harry Houdini was there.

00:01:15.140 Yeah. And so was Martin Luther King. And so was Johnny Cash and Elvis. A pretty good balance

00:01:24.300 of perverts and...

00:01:28.340 Wizards.

00:01:29.140 Perverts and wizards.

00:01:31.100 Yeah.

00:01:31.700 I think so. I feel okay about talking about bad stuff that you shouldn't talk about. There's

00:01:42.460 places like a symphony space, you know, when you do like one of those where it's like really

00:01:47.400 hallowed and there's like, you know, there should be a guy in a tuxedo playing a cello.

00:01:53.660 Yeah, there should be like a maitre d' of instruments or whatever that guy's called.

00:01:56.840 What's it? Yeah.

00:01:57.840 The maitre d' of instruments. Like a conductor?

00:02:00.180 The leader. Yeah.

00:02:01.240 Yeah. When you have those guys and then I'm on there and I'm talking about the hair on

00:02:08.020 the tip of my cock.

00:02:09.420 Yeah.

00:02:11.360 Oh, yeah.

00:02:12.600 But then again, I sold the tickets. It's just a bunch of seats.

00:02:15.780 Yeah.

00:02:15.920 But it is though, you get into something and you're like, oh, this isn't it. Or I had

00:02:20.900 to do a church once. This man invited me. And I don't want to say he was a pervert or

00:02:26.840 whatever. Or I don't want to say, I don't want to say he was, he seemed like somebody

00:02:31.480 who was willing to touch somebody that was probably young.

00:02:34.720 He's willing to touch somebody who's maybe probably young.

00:02:38.240 Yeah.

00:02:38.760 That's borderline.

00:02:40.500 Okay.

00:02:41.720 He's willing.

00:02:43.140 Right. He was willing to. I'm not going to say he was.

00:02:45.520 Right. If somebody was like, hey, this kid, this kid's dick is bleeding.

00:02:49.240 Yeah.

00:02:50.680 Anybody, we all feel kind of weird about applying pressure. He'd be like, I'm willing.

00:02:57.660 Yeah.

00:02:58.820 Right.

00:02:59.380 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That kind of guy. Like a, like an EMT for small cocks, you

00:03:04.980 know, like that.

00:03:06.760 Shot his hand up a little too quick.

00:03:08.680 Yeah.

00:03:09.880 I mean, I just would.

00:03:11.760 Yeah.

00:03:12.640 Yeah.

00:03:13.200 Okay.

00:03:13.640 Like had a couple of small tourniquets in his pocket, you know, he's equipped, but yeah.

00:03:20.260 So that guy invited me to do a show and it was in like Laughlin, Nevada or something

00:03:24.520 out in the middle of the desert. And it was at a church and he was a church man and he

00:03:28.700 was like a pastor, a leader of a church. We get there and I was like, oh man, this guy

00:03:34.680 had only seen one of my bits and it was just more of a safe bed. It just had nothing edgy

00:03:38.500 in it.

00:03:38.960 Right.

00:03:39.280 And I got into the stuff and you could see a man get up with his family and just, I

00:03:45.040 mean, he was leaving the show. He was leaving the church though too. You could see.

00:03:48.540 Oh no.

00:03:49.140 I felt horrible. And it's, I kept looking at him in the back and he's trying to be supportive

00:03:54.420 and I was like, don't support me. I was like, this shouldn't be happening, you know?

00:03:59.540 And you felt that way?

00:04:00.560 I did.

00:04:00.820 You shouldn't have been doing it.

00:04:01.840 Yeah. But I couldn't just, all I have was my material. I could do some riffing, but it's

00:04:05.520 also in a church that was, the lights were all on, but yeah, some venues, it's just a

00:04:09.440 little.

00:04:10.080 Yeah. It's funny. I used to be more defiant. I used to feel more like, you know, Hey man,

00:04:14.860 this is what I, you know, right. Fuck you. But I feel less that way. I'm not going to

00:04:19.680 change what I do, but I don't want to upset anybody. I'm not trying to.

00:04:24.900 Yeah. But I'm not as defiant. I'm not as like, yeah, show them. I was talking about

00:04:30.600 something on stage recently and somebody in the, in the balcony yell, I got angry. And

00:04:35.280 I said, what's wrong? And this person, I don't remember what the bit was, but they were like,

00:04:39.500 that's not cool, man. And I said, are you, are you offended by what I said? He said, yeah.

00:04:44.140 And I just said, I'm really sorry. Like I had never done that before. I was just like,

00:04:48.440 I'm really sorry.

00:04:49.720 Yeah.

00:04:51.140 Anyway, and I'm going to keep doing it.

00:04:53.060 Yeah. Yeah. We got to, I mean, that's yeah. You got to keep going. Yeah. Um, I did a club

00:04:58.940 in Florida down in, um, um, Key West. Oh yeah. And it's a good, I love the guy who runs it,

00:05:05.980 this guy, Tom, and it's a fun club, but a lot of the crowd is like people that are on a cruise

00:05:11.480 and they jump off and they had no context for what I was like getting pure silence on some stuff.

00:05:18.500 And at some point I just said, listen, um, I, uh, I just want you to know, I'm not trying to upset

00:05:27.600 you. I'm just wanting you to know that this is all, I don't have another way to go. Right. This

00:05:32.960 isn't me antagonizing you. This is just, you and I are very different. Yeah. And if you could try to

00:05:37.900 open your heart a little bit, I can't, I'm opening up to you, but I can't like invent jokes for you

00:05:42.820 right now. Wow. And I, and they are like, okay, okay. And I could see these sort of old people in

00:05:47.480 pink, pink and coral blue shirts going, all right, we'll try a little harder. Yeah. Cause at first

00:05:53.040 they just thought, well, he's just, he's, you know, sometimes if somebody is upsetting you,

00:05:56.100 you think they want to. Right. But sometimes it's just that they're just being what they are. If you

00:06:01.020 can know that, I think it helps. Oh, even as you're saying that it makes me think like, even when I

00:06:05.240 was a kid, if my mom would have every now and then, like I know I bring that back things to childhood

00:06:08.820 all the time, but it's like, or if a parent would every now and then be like, Hey, I know this is

00:06:12.780 not good. I know this sucks for you. Right. And I know this is, everything we're doing here is

00:06:17.080 really, it's a Barnum and Bailey. Yeah. It's a real shit circus. I've tried to say that to my,

00:06:24.820 but that's all we got. Right. And like, I used to think that about my kids when I would say no

00:06:30.220 about something. Cause when I was a kid, no was mean. It was always like, no. And like, no,

00:06:38.060 because I said, so stuff like that and no, cause you don't deserve it or whatever. And I don't

00:06:44.640 think no has to be a bad thing. I think every, the life is full of yes and no. Right. And the

00:06:50.500 first few years of a kid's life were just, yes, you're just trying to keep them alive and just

00:06:54.160 let them know they're loved. And then you have to start going, not that though. And it's tragic for

00:07:00.040 them. Like what the person I love is saying, no, why would they do that? And because you feel

00:07:04.940 guilty about saying no to your kid, you put a little spice on it, but you can be nice about

00:07:10.480 it as long as you're firm. You know what I mean? Like you don't roll over. Cause the key just go,

00:07:14.560 no, I'm sorry, honey. Yeah. That's, I know how much that sucks, but it's not changing and think

00:07:22.520 of something else, but it ain't, that's a wall. That's a brick wall. Yeah. And you'll be okay.

00:07:27.720 I also let them know you'll be okay. Yeah. And then they'll know that no is just a turn. It's

00:07:32.640 not a wall. It's just a, it's just a, it's a curve. That's all go look something for something

00:07:37.480 else. Yeah. And that's a great way to think about it too. Cause then it keeps you in a space of like,

00:07:41.240 well, what else could I, what's possible? How else would I figure this out? You know,

00:07:45.040 it almost puts a little challenge into the child. That's it. And also for when my kids would

00:07:49.840 complain about, and if they just harangued and said, come on, I just, no, I'm not even going to

00:07:56.620 discuss it. But if they're like, wait, and they reason and they try to lawyer through it, I go,

00:08:03.300 I'm here, I'm listening. Yeah. You know, that I'll listen to. That's a good skill for them to

00:08:07.980 build, you know? Yeah. I remember at night, if we got, if we got in trouble, like if we got

00:08:12.340 suspended from watching television or something by mom, we could go down and do a performance,

00:08:16.760 right? Yeah. And we didn't have a lot of like, we had a little bit of face paint. I don't want to

00:08:22.600 say it was like, it would seem racial, but some of the shit probably, we didn't have a lot of

00:08:27.120 colors. Okay. What colors did you have? Like black, red, and yellow? I mean, we had some.

00:08:34.380 Yeah. Well, no, we just didn't have a lot of colors. Right. And we didn't, and we loved a lot

00:08:39.420 of black stuff. So I think we probably did in the heat of the night or something. We would do scenes

00:08:42.960 from that, you know? Yeah. And they call me Mr. Tibbs. Yeah. Why not? God, dude, we love

00:08:54.420 that show. I love Carol O'Connor. He was so, God, he was so multifaceted. Well, did you ever see the

00:08:58.260 movie? The movie's amazing. In the year of the night? Yeah, I have. With Sidney Poitier? Yeah.

00:09:02.160 And Rod Steiger. Oh, is that the other guy in it? A raisin in the sun, man. Sidney Poitier

00:09:10.840 was something great, huh? Yeah, he was. And what do you call it also? To serve with

00:09:17.280 love. I haven't seen that. Yeah, he plays a British teacher teaching. He's a well-educated

00:09:24.120 black teacher teaching Cockney white kids how to be gentlemen and ladies. Oh, that

00:09:31.100 sounds good. It's beautiful. Oh, I've seen scenes from this, though, just online and

00:09:37.040 stuff. But yes, but if we went down and performed and we would also had, I think we had a kite

00:09:44.460 that we would kind of do this Japanese dragon kind of thing. So we had a couple of like kind

00:09:48.440 of motifs that we would use to win back the ability to do something new. But that was a

00:09:53.920 way of us like at least show up and show me something, right? Yeah. Don't just sit there

00:09:59.160 and put on a kabuki and like have like an allegorical play. Yeah. That says, let us have

00:10:05.760 the, you know, let us eat the Captain Crunch for dinner. Yes. Let us have this chance. That's

00:10:11.280 all we wanted. Yeah. And sometimes it would be nice. Sometimes you had to sing Mammy to

00:10:14.640 get it. You had to swing low. Yeah. It got, I mean, there were times. Yeah. I wanted to

00:10:23.120 emulate black people when I was a kid. When I was a kid, it was all my heroes were black. Muhammad

00:10:28.160 Ali was like the greatest thing in the world when I was a kid. And Bruce Lee. And I mean,

00:10:33.680 everybody who I admired, Bruce Lee was black, right? Bruce Lee. No, Bruce Lee, they was the

00:10:40.280 Asian. Yeah. But dude, black guys were like, yeah, that's a real. Yeah. That's a real

00:10:46.440 one. Reggie Jackson. I mean, I grew up different generation than you. Yeah. Yeah. No, but those

00:10:51.060 are still some real heroes. Yeah. Yeah. There was something about being black that just

00:10:55.600 seemed. I went to, um, fun and risque at the same time. Yeah. Yeah. It wasn't, uh, well,

00:11:04.840 at my school, I was, uh, went to public school in Newton, Mass. And, uh, we had a, there was

00:11:10.460 a program called Metco where kids from inner city Boston were, were brought in buses to our

00:11:16.160 schools. Yeah. And, uh, so there was a contingency of not the kids that were not only black, but

00:11:21.280 living in, in a very different place. And, um, so they would sit at, there'd be tables at

00:11:27.340 the cafeteria of just black kids. And I would just go sit with them. I just wanted, I wanted

00:11:31.880 to be part of that. Yeah. And I would sit with them and they'd kind of go, all right.

00:11:37.960 Hey fellas. And, uh, I just, I, I felt like I just re was reaching for that, you know?

00:11:46.520 Hmm. But you think it was because, cause I would, I definitely noticed that too. I like

00:11:51.180 being around black kids. It was fun. It was interesting. You didn't know what was going

00:11:55.620 to happen. Yeah. There was an element of like kind of crossing the tracks a bit.

00:12:01.340 Yeah. Because where I grew up in Newton, I mean, I lived in Mexico when I was younger,

00:12:05.400 but I mostly grew up in Newton and it was a suburb that was already split because there

00:12:11.300 was a working class side and a, and a rich people's side. And, um, I grew up right on

00:12:17.160 the, literally on the tracks, like the, the, the train tracks, the mass turnpike was a block

00:12:22.460 behind my house, like one block. I heard, I fell asleep to the sound of, of traffic.

00:12:27.760 And so we were right on the line. My family, we had a little house, a little half a house

00:12:32.020 that we rented. Um, but, uh, it was, that was all white though. Um, everybody was white

00:12:38.260 in Newton. Later, I drove a cab in Newton in my hometown and found out that there was

00:12:42.000 a, uh, a little enclave of black people that lived in one little, like one street in Newton.

00:12:48.080 But, uh, but in Boston itself too, the main city was very segregated. So there, there was

00:12:54.560 this one kid in our, um, one Medco kid, his name was David. And, uh, he, um, his family's

00:13:02.980 house burnt down in Boston and my friend's dad had a half a house that he rented out

00:13:08.900 and he donated it to their family so they could have a place to live while they were

00:13:13.060 rebuilding. Wow. So this black family moved into our neighborhood and, uh, the, and they

00:13:19.080 were nice people. I, I didn't think of it. I knew David was okay. Kid, he wasn't a, he

00:13:24.240 was kind of a dick, but he let him let anybody be a dick. But there was this one, uh, he was

00:13:29.480 a black dick. He was a black dick and he had one, but no, no, no. But yeah, I wasn't aware

00:13:35.080 of that, but there was a kid in our, in our school who was a really vicious bully and he

00:13:41.420 had a gang. And one day, uh, David went to the park Cabot park and, and, uh, and Michael

00:13:50.180 was the bully. I'm using real names. I don't know. Maybe you should bleep them. I don't

00:13:53.820 know. If he did it, he did it. But Michael, uh, Michael. I'll call him out.

00:13:59.480 This gang and they took David and they said, uh, we're going to show you this

00:14:03.360 swing is your swing. And it was paint. They painted a swing black and they

00:14:07.800 painted a bench black and they painted all one of everything in the park. And

00:14:12.700 they said, that's your, that's the swing. That's the bench. And I heard that

00:14:17.700 story and I, I found it hard to believe, but I went to the park and those, there

00:14:21.040 was a black bench and it was black as long as the rain, you know, until the rain

00:14:26.480 washed off the paint and the park painted it green over. That's what it was

00:14:31.040 like. And this was like a kind of like a liberal suburb, you know?

00:14:34.760 And do you think a lot of that was actual like true racism or do you think some of

00:14:39.360 it was just like, I know you're not playing as a racist, but I think sometimes

00:14:43.520 people, if, if that's what's going on, people will continue it, you know?

00:14:47.760 I, yeah, I, I think so. But I think, uh, uh, if you actually go get a bucket of

00:14:51.940 paint, if you actually go put your money down as a kid and you paint a bench

00:14:56.500 black, I think that's pretty racist. I think it's pretty hardcore racist. Yeah.

00:15:02.280 Yeah. It was nasty. I mean, he was, he was mean to everybody. He found a way to,

00:15:06.300 to hurt. He was a sadistic person. Um, yeah, scared the shit out of him.

00:15:12.860 Uh, it never hurt me cause I was a little bigger, but I never fought really. So,

00:15:17.540 but, um, yeah, that was, that was weird. It was racism in Newton. It was weird

00:15:23.680 cause it was like, yeah, I've been a boss in this still. Well, and also cause

00:15:27.220 there was that division, like down where you were there, folks were a little more

00:15:30.440 mixed in, weren't they a little bit? Did you live amongst? Yeah. I mean, it's just

00:15:34.660 funny in the South. People will be like, it's so racist. It's so racist. A lot of times

00:15:38.180 people have this view, but also you have a relationship. There's like a lot of

00:15:43.240 connectivity, I feel like. So I don't know. You know, I remember one time me and

00:15:49.900 my buddy Devin, we were, went fishing and there was these kids on these railroad

00:15:54.220 tracks up above us, up above the river. And they started throwing rocks at us and

00:15:58.680 calling us the N word and stuff. White kids? Yep. Calling you guys that? Yeah.

00:16:05.060 And, and I wasn't black. I was, you know, at the time. Yeah. I wanted to be part of it.

00:16:12.680 For the black periods of your life. Yeah. I was like, but I still was like, you

00:16:16.760 don't know us mother. You know, I was like yelling shit back and even Devin's

00:16:20.240 looking at me like, dude, what the fuck? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They'll try to steal my

00:16:23.800 thunder here. So it was just like, I don't know. All that stuff was just like, I

00:16:28.600 don't know. I do think kids throw everything around. Kids just say stuff. Oh, for

00:16:33.260 sure. Cause they want to try it on. Yeah. Um, like I don't trust people that will

00:16:38.720 say, like, I think if somebody won't say, some people won't, won't say right. Or

00:16:46.540 they won't say the F word for about gay folks. And you know what it is. Huh? Gay

00:16:52.840 Fs. Gay Fs. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Folks. You mean the folks is the F word, right? No.

00:16:58.460 I'm saying. Yeah. Some people won't say, and I'll say it really fast. Cause some

00:17:03.200 people don't like hearing it. Fs. That got right by the people that don't, they

00:17:09.100 weren't, they were doing something else. Well, some of them, yeah, it's like you

00:17:11.680 could have looked away. You could have been driving and looking out of the

00:17:13.880 street before you know it, it's gone. But some people will say the N word, but

00:17:17.920 won't say that word. That's what I don't get. It's like, yeah. How do you even

00:17:22.580 get that? You won't say the N word, but you will say the F word or that you

00:17:26.640 won't say which way? Some people won't say, won't say the F word. Yeah. But

00:17:32.060 they'll say the N word. Really? Who's that? What group is that? That to me is

00:17:37.080 race. That's racist. It's like. Yeah. If you have a general sensitivity about

00:17:41.460 like, well, I just don't want to, some of these words have gotten too hard to

00:17:43.700 use. Yeah. I used to say all of them. Yeah. But I don't now because it just has

00:17:49.520 a different effect. Yeah. I'm like, you're saying, like you're saying earlier, we, we

00:17:53.460 get older. Some things just kind of, it lands different. Sometimes. It lands different

00:17:56.560 depending on how things are. Language is a living thing. Right. And the way people

00:18:01.320 communicate is always changing and, and, and the sounds you make are affected by the

00:18:07.200 other sounds in the air. Yeah. So you don't live in a vacuum and it doesn't mean

00:18:12.780 that's not a moral thing to me. That's just, do you want to be understood? Right. Do

00:18:17.720 you want to, uh, what do you want to convey? What feeling are you trying to put out

00:18:21.840 there? And sometimes the N word can be said with a lot of love. It can also be said

00:18:27.440 with humor or just, um, experimental confusion. But at a time where, uh, there's

00:18:33.900 like certain things that got tightened up, it doesn't have that effect anymore.

00:18:37.400 So, uh, so make an adjustment. It's interesting. I think cause for, and also

00:18:42.820 it's by generation, it's like some, it's like some people may accept a 15 year old

00:18:49.280 half Mexican kid saying it, but some people might not accept a 50 year old half

00:18:53.680 Mexican kid saying it. That's right. That's right. And, uh, I mean, the word

00:18:58.220 colored was, uh, no way when I was growing up colored was like the, that's, but now

00:19:04.340 they say it, but now it's people of color, like things move around. When you start

00:19:10.400 censoring, you, you freeze yourself and you're no longer hearing what's going on

00:19:14.720 out there. You know what I mean? Like you gotta have the flow and, and you, you gotta

00:19:20.180 just trust people to go like, okay, let's put N word on the, on the shelf for a while

00:19:24.960 and cunt is back. Colored is respectable. Now it, it, it moves around. It's, it's

00:19:32.020 fascinating language. It's like the most amazing thing about what we do, you know?

00:19:36.020 Yeah. Yeah. And you use it so well, man, you use it so well. And it is interesting.

00:19:41.780 Like I will try to find a word. It's like, sometimes I'll say something and I'll be

00:19:45.040 like, no, that's not it. I need the exact word. Yeah. And if I can get the exact

00:19:50.600 word, it can help me unlock a feeling. For sure. It can help me be extremely

00:19:54.980 specific about what I'm trying to say. Where do you look for your words? I look

00:20:00.080 like in my feelings a lot of times, you know? I, yeah, I look at my feelings.

00:20:04.660 You got a dictionary in your heart. Yeah. It's like, that's not the word. And

00:20:08.960 sometimes you get it and sometimes you don't get it. I bought a big dictionary

00:20:12.480 recently because I write, um, I like to have a dictionary with me when I'm

00:20:17.280 writing fiction and, uh, um, I, I wrote it and I wrote this book and then I

00:20:23.520 started writing this other one and I write it with a typewriter. It's very

00:20:26.660 old fashioned. And so I, I, um, I wanted to get a dictionary that had a lot of, a

00:20:34.340 lot of depth to it because when I'm looking for a word, I go, I like looking at the

00:20:38.340 reference and some dictionaries have like usage of the word they give you.

00:20:43.020 Like, so there was a guy named Samuel Johnson back in England in the early

00:20:47.040 1700s. Yeah. And he was the first person to write a dictionary for English.

00:20:51.460 He just wrote one. He was like, somebody should have it. There was none. There was

00:20:55.160 like lists of words and catalogs, but he came up with the idea. I'm going to sit

00:21:00.460 down and write a dictionary of the whole English language with every word

00:21:04.600 describing the word and, and giving examples in poetry and, and literature.

00:21:10.700 And, uh, he just sat down and he did it. And, uh, it's like this, it's huge. I

00:21:15.820 have two, there's two volumes and it sits on my desk on each side of me. And I

00:21:19.880 flipped through these big pages and I read what Samuel Johnson himself, how he

00:21:24.100 described each word.

00:21:25.280 Was it hard to find those?

00:21:27.200 Uh, I got one on eBay. I, the thing that's crazy is I want to get a real, uh,

00:21:31.720 like an original cause you can get first editions of that. Yeah. Like the,

00:21:34.840 your guys pulling up there. That's the first, that's the birth of the English

00:21:38.140 language. You can actually touch it with your hands. You can actually own that.

00:21:41.940 The first person to ever fucking do this.

00:21:44.320 So that's the first dictionary ever.

00:21:46.160 First dictionary by, and I'm just talking out of my ass. I'm not educated, but this

00:21:49.440 is what I understand to be true.

00:21:50.960 Okay. A dictionary of the English language sometimes published as Johnson's

00:21:54.320 dictionary was published on April, 1775. It is among the most influential

00:21:59.920 dictionaries in the history of the English language. Um, there was

00:22:03.320 dissatisfaction with the dictionaries of the period. Yeah.

00:22:06.300 Yeah. There was nothing around.

00:22:08.100 It's horrible.

00:22:08.580 And I learned all this stuff about language from it. Like the letter I

00:22:11.840 and the letter J were back then were the same letter. So I, and like, when you

00:22:20.660 look at, uh, in his dictionary, the letter I is defined and it says I, when it's used

00:22:26.680 as a consonant sounds like E or I, but when it's used as, I mean, as a vowel, but

00:22:31.480 when it's used as a consonant, it sounds like J and that originally J was just an

00:22:36.780 I with a little tail, just so you know that that's hard. I that's J like this

00:22:42.960 size. Yeah. Yeah. And so when you look in the I section of his dictionary, it

00:22:47.420 alternates I and J like it alternates. Once some words start with I, some start

00:22:52.980 with J, but they're all in the same section. Wow. And it's the same with you

00:22:56.860 and V, you and V were just one word, but they had these two different, you

00:23:02.640 know? Oh, it makes total sense. Yeah. But when you get to know this stuff about

00:23:05.980 language, you, yeah, it, it gives you more, uh, you can actually have more

00:23:10.380 feelings if you have more words, but I like your, your retro approach, which is

00:23:15.060 you're looking for the words in your feelings. It's good.

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00:26:43.560 liquidiv.com. This is my, this is a hard, because that's a, that's a. No, you brought

00:26:49.560 you a hard cover of Ingram. Let's go. Yeah. It's an inscription, but don't, just don't

00:26:54.440 read it out loud. Okay. I'm going to say, okay. Yeah. I'm going to say that. Dude, thank

00:26:59.760 you so much, man. Yeah. Yeah. I read this. You sent me, and I still have it inside. I

00:27:05.120 have, you sent me like, it was in this green kind of folder that was really cool. And it

00:27:10.960 reminded me of like, kind of like, um, something that meant something like 25 years ago, 20

00:27:17.260 years ago, you get a script and it would be like, and it would be in something, you know,

00:27:22.600 it'd be like in this sort of like green folder. Yeah. It was professional binder. Yeah. Yes.

00:27:28.600 It was a binder. Yeah. And you gave it to me like that. And you let me read this whole

00:27:32.380 book, dude. Well, you read a really early version. Yep. And it took me two months to read

00:27:36.820 it because I was like, I don't know what was going on. I was probably down. Who

00:27:40.860 knows taking breaks to touch my body probably, but it was awesome. And every

00:27:46.000 time I came back to it, dude, it was just fascinating. Um, and it's a, it's a, it's

00:27:50.560 a book about, well, it's a book about a boy who's kind of neglected and then he has to

00:27:55.220 take on the world himself. Is that right? I would say, yeah. Yeah. It's, uh, it's

00:28:00.460 about a boy who grows up on a, that's what it looks like on a farm, just a

00:28:06.760 shit farm. Yeah. And, um, he lives in a cage or in a, well, he just lives outdoors. His

00:28:14.780 parents don't let him sleep in the house and he sleeps, sleeps in the shed and he

00:28:18.700 just sits on the porch steps where the animals are. He's the, his father, it's

00:28:22.940 one of these farms. His father's got like one pig. He's just trying to get a little

00:28:25.720 extra. Yeah. And, uh, his parents are very overwhelmed and his father one day

00:28:31.060 tells us, uh, the, the bank comes to over take the house. They give him a few

00:28:35.860 days. So the father tells the mother to slaughter all the meat and, and he, he

00:28:40.940 goes on the horse and says, I'm going to sell this horse and I'll come back. And

00:28:44.840 he never, he just never comes back. Yeah. So the kid's left with his mother,

00:28:47.900 who's just so weak. And, uh, she just tells him, uh, you gotta, you gotta go. And

00:28:53.280 he's like 10 and she tells him, uh, I can't, your, your, your luck's worse here

00:28:58.220 than it would be out there. Wow. So, uh, and she's just too hollowed out to

00:29:02.920 overcome what's going on with her. And, uh, and she probably thinks the best

00:29:07.000 thing she could do to save him would be to send him off, get him out there and

00:29:09.820 let him learn how to start taking care of himself. So all she tells him is stay

00:29:14.200 alive any way you can. That's like the, all the advice he's given. And, uh, he

00:29:19.260 just hits the road and I started writing it and I, I didn't know it's not, I, I, it's

00:29:24.780 the first novel I ever wrote. I wanted to write novels when I was a kid. I was

00:29:28.000 like the first thing I really wanted to be. Yeah. And then I just took so many

00:29:31.760 drugs that I feel like I burnt my brain out and it's only now really

00:29:37.380 recovering. Is that true? You're saying that I feel that way a little bit. I

00:29:40.400 used to feel that way, but, um, we're using opioids or whatever. When I was a

00:29:44.440 kid, I was doing a lot of, um, smoking a shit ton of pot. Oh yeah. And we took a

00:29:49.300 lot of acid and mescaline and stuff like that too. And I don't think that hurts

00:29:52.660 you, but, uh, it does take out the linear of your thinking a little bit, but, uh,

00:29:58.000 but, um, but your life got busy too then. Yeah. And then I became a comedian,

00:30:02.820 which I always thought was like, just, it's a free form scattershot verbal art.

00:30:08.600 So I always felt like I could, it was what I could handle, you know, but I

00:30:13.300 wanted to be a writer, you know, and then I wrote television, but writing TV and

00:30:16.520 movies is, is more like a blueprint. You're, you're, it's technical writing.

00:30:21.180 Here's what needs to happen when we shoot this, but actually writing something

00:30:25.080 that's meant to be read is what I really wanted it to do. And, um,

00:30:31.300 God, so cool. Yeah. So I started writing short stories a few years ago and I got

00:30:35.080 really back into it. And when, when Ingram kind of like came into my head, I just

00:30:40.000 had this ritual of sitting down every day and asking him like, what happened to

00:30:43.920 you? And he, and it was just a story that just kept coming.

00:30:47.060 Asking the child, the character. Yeah. Yeah. Like what happened? And I felt like I was

00:30:50.060 taking care of him by like taking an honest account, trying to just be honest

00:30:55.660 and not trying to achieve anything in writing it or trying to, you know what

00:31:00.720 I mean? Or be impressive. I just wanted to be, I just want to hear the voice and

00:31:05.080 see what happened. And, and I worried about him every day cause he has a hard,

00:31:08.580 it's a hard life that he lives. Yeah. But I learned from him because he kept

00:31:13.220 like just being curious and reporting when it stinks, but not complaining.

00:31:20.480 Yeah. I mean, there's times there's, he takes on some abuse a couple of times and

00:31:23.560 I was like, God, it's like you like, yeah. I mean, there's parts, especially

00:31:30.020 toward like the later parts of the book. So harrowing some, you're like, God, why

00:31:34.820 can't he, why doesn't he know better? Yeah. Yeah. He's, he's, he's just simple.

00:31:40.000 I mean, it's not simple. Like, um, uh, like mentally challenged. He just

00:31:44.500 hasn't had any, Dennis Rodman or whatever, or who else I'm going to say?

00:31:48.120 That's not fair. Or no, somebody else. I mean, Dennis Rodman is anything but

00:31:52.260 simple. You're right. That's a great complex dude. Yeah. He's a fucking

00:31:56.060 Rubik's cube. Yeah. All the stickers are different. There's not even one

00:32:00.140 color is the same. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Even one of those like Indian kids

00:32:05.520 couldn't put that. Forget it. Yeah. That was a bad choice. But, um, but yeah,

00:32:12.480 dude, there was times you're like, ah, yeah, you feel for him that much. And

00:32:17.160 you did such a great job of making me feel for him. Oh, thanks. I can't tell

00:32:21.680 like how I got to know him so good as I'm reading it. Well, I, I, I guess, uh, I

00:32:27.080 don't know for boys, it's this thing of getting thrown out into the world a

00:32:31.960 little bit. Um, I, I was alone a lot as a kid and out in the street, just trying

00:32:39.700 to figure out what life is. And you just become, you're kind of a Mike, a boy is

00:32:44.440 kind of a microcosm of a human ape turning into a human being. You know what I

00:32:50.780 mean? Like adapting. Evolution's right there. Yeah. Evolution from the first day

00:32:56.400 of life, especially if you're kind of left alone. If you spend a lot of time alone

00:33:00.340 as a boy, you're just catch as catch can. And then you go, Oh, I guess that's

00:33:04.840 what this is like. Right. And, uh, you, some things you get strong at and some

00:33:09.120 you don't. And, uh, and some things you learn from the worst influences too. It

00:33:13.300 just happens to be the influence that was passing through town or that stopped

00:33:17.060 and rolled its window down. It's kind of crazy the way you can get influenced.

00:33:20.700 That's kind of what happens to him in some ways, huh? Yeah. Like there's this one

00:33:23.800 part where he's got, uh, he's been working on a farm, um, like just pulling up

00:33:28.840 corn and he makes money in dimes just cause it's the first currency that he

00:33:33.120 learned to respect was the 10 cent dime. So he makes them pay him in dimes and

00:33:37.460 he has, he hides them under a tree. And when he decides to leave the farm, he

00:33:41.380 digs them up and he falls asleep in his cabin and there's this, he wakes up and

00:33:45.660 there's this guy there about to steal his money. And Ingram at this point has a

00:33:50.880 little knife and he's, he's thinking he's going to have to defend himself. You

00:33:56.020 know, he's going to have to stick this guy, but he, he, he's trying to figure

00:33:59.120 out cause he's never been taught. Is it okay to actually harm somebody for

00:34:03.700 money? Like, is it it to, to defend yourself is one thing, but to defend this

00:34:10.760 thing. Yeah. And, um, and then it occurs to him that the guy might be a little

00:34:16.980 scared, even though he's bigger than him, even if it's a kid, like it's not easy

00:34:22.300 to beat the shit out of a kid. Right. Like it's no small thing. So they're, yeah,

00:34:26.880 they're resilient kids survive. Yeah. I mean, you're going to go through

00:34:29.540 something. So, so Ingram says to the guy, uh, why don't we split it? And the guy

00:34:35.940 goes, I don't have to split it with you. I can just take it. He goes, yeah, you

00:34:38.400 can, but it's going to be trouble. I'm going to give you a hard time. I'll split

00:34:42.680 it with you now. And by it's my money, but I'll give you half of it if we could

00:34:47.080 just split it. And then they look at it and neither of them know how to count. So

00:34:51.160 they got that problem, but I didn't know where it was going. I got to this

00:34:56.340 moment in it where they're in this standoff and I was like, what's his

00:34:59.360 solution? But by following his logic and in the way he looked at life without

00:35:03.800 having been taught, he found solutions that I just came to me naturally, um,

00:35:10.800 that I wouldn't have found in life. You know what I mean? You just get taught

00:35:14.600 things like you got to defend, you got to, anybody fucks with you. You have to

00:35:17.720 hurt them. Right. You do, you know, let's split the difference.

00:35:21.160 Yeah. Split them out. I'll take half. I'll take half. I'll take half and nobody

00:35:24.700 has to throw a punch. I stay alive. And also I don't have to feel the pain of if

00:35:28.660 I stabbed you and if I shouldn't have. That's right. Which can be just as

00:35:31.540 harrowing. Of course. You got to walk around in life knowing you stabbed

00:35:34.260 somebody for a hundred dollars. Yeah. Oh dude. It was, there's a lot of great

00:35:39.480 parts, man. It's honestly, bro. It's awesome. It was so much fun to read. It

00:35:43.980 reminded me of like, I mean, this sounds crazy, but it reminded me of like a

00:35:47.620 real book. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I feel the same way to me. It's a, it still doesn't

00:35:53.580 add up to me or make sense that I wrote a book. I grew up in a world of books. You

00:35:57.880 look at a book, you're like, well, nobody, that's somebody else. Yeah. Somebody

00:36:00.700 else can do that. Not me. And I've tried, I've written short stories and things

00:36:04.820 that have sputtered out. When I got to the end, like when I, when the publishers, I

00:36:10.220 got a publisher, this place, Ben Schuster is that you're with? Yeah. Simon Schuster is

00:36:14.420 distributing it. Okay. But the publisher is a company called Ben Bella out of

00:36:17.760 Texas. Really nice people. And when I started working with them and they were

00:36:21.200 going through the book and the editorial part, they, they said it was kind of

00:36:24.720 curious that I say the end cause it's like a Grimm's fairy tale. Like nobody does

00:36:29.020 that anymore. But I asked to keep it cause that's, to me, it was crazy that I got

00:36:33.380 there. Yeah. I couldn't believe I got to the end and I was just like, the day I

00:36:38.800 finished this, I was like, I wrote a fucking novel. And, uh, you know, I, if I

00:36:43.540 wasn't me with a little bit of sense that I could probably sell something, I

00:36:47.600 don't know that it gets out. I have no idea. Um, and everybody that's right. I

00:36:52.420 haven't, I haven't had anybody read it that hates me. So I don't know if it's

00:36:56.220 good, but, uh, you know, I don't know. Folks can buy it. It's yeah. It was great.

00:37:02.540 I know it comes for, it's, you can pre-order it now. Yeah. September 20th,

00:37:07.820 20th. Not November. It's coming out in November, mid November. Okay. Uh, but

00:37:12.780 you can pre-order. It's good if people pre-order it cause then they'll, they'll

00:37:16.940 print more. Put the ranks up. Yeah. Get it up there. Get it up. And look, I'm

00:37:20.420 not even joking guys. Like I, you know, I like to read. I really, it like, especially

00:37:25.520 if for like a young man, like, um, if you've had neglect in your life or you

00:37:30.220 wonder like how a child would start to absorb the world, um, with not even, not

00:37:40.640 even being taught how to be much of a sponge in a way, kind of like, I mean,

00:37:46.400 it's just fascinating. And it was, it was, it took, I was just right there in it. I

00:37:50.580 was right there in it with him. It takes place in Texas, right? Yeah. Oklahoma,

00:37:54.100 Texas or something. Yeah. Texas. And so like, yeah, he's just like walking along the

00:37:58.320 highway and these car, like things are cars are badly things. He's never even

00:38:01.620 seen any of it. It's all fucking great. Yeah. He calls the pavement hard black

00:38:05.580 dirt. Cause he doesn't really know what, cause he grew up barefoot in the dirt.

00:38:09.700 It amazed me. I was like, Oh shit, somebody can do this. I think, I think that was

00:38:14.400 probably the, cause like, you know, you and I know each other and I knew that I

00:38:18.020 know like your comment and I know that. And then I, I, uh, I've gotten to know you

00:38:22.600 some as a person, but then to see that somebody can make this and it's a real

00:38:26.300 fucking book. I have a lot of friends that have made some okay books. Right.

00:38:31.080 You know what I'm saying? I'll buy them. I'm not reading them. Yeah. But this, I

00:38:36.380 was like, well, I love doing it. I wrote another one. I just finished a second one.

00:38:40.940 And, uh, if I can make that what I do, I'm going to make that what I do. Like I

00:38:45.360 see in the, I mean, whatever, when you get a vision of what you want your future to

00:38:50.820 be, you might get 40% of it and that's okay with me. But what I like is the

00:38:56.200 idea of having kind of like a nice cruising altitude, standup comedy

00:38:59.700 performing and writing novels. Cause I really love doing it. Um, and now that

00:39:06.300 I wrote one and the second one was a lot, it took me much longer. I spent a

00:39:09.580 year and two months on the second one because this one, I was like, wanted to

00:39:14.300 finish so that I wouldn't not finish it. But now that I know I can finish one, I

00:39:18.580 feel like I got a flow. It's really fun to do. Yeah. And do you think it's the

00:39:23.260 most, cause all I wanted to be, I think when I was a kid was a writer

00:39:26.620 probably like, I love to read John Irving. I loved once I got into his

00:39:30.900 stuff, it was like so exciting, like all the different possibilities and the

00:39:35.080 ways that like, um, who was that Irish lady that were, uh, O'Connor,

00:39:40.540 Flannery O'Connor. Yeah. Unbelievable. Unbelievable. What an imagination. Yeah.

00:39:46.400 I was like, I could be a murderer. She has this story about a, a kind of cranky

00:39:52.340 woman who lives alone on a farm. She like runs a farm and she's just tough. And

00:39:57.780 the guy next door who's black, she's every, I mean the N word talk about the

00:40:01.860 N word Flannery O'Connor. It's like fucking polka dots on wallpaper. It's

00:40:07.540 everywhere. It's just everywhere. If you like some soft use of it. Yeah. I mean,

00:40:11.400 yeah. But so in this story, the guy next door has a bull that keeps cut,

00:40:16.660 keeps getting loose and coming over to her property and she hates it. And it's

00:40:21.040 this, this justice, you're in this woman's crankiness and it's really

00:40:26.340 something to be like, instead of like this thing where we watch Karens on

00:40:30.100 YouTube and say, that's somebody else. You, she takes you inside the mind of a

00:40:34.560 very bitter and cranky person who just doesn't like the world she's in.

00:40:38.740 And in the end of the story, it's a short story. Uh, the book, the, uh, the

00:40:43.680 bull gores her to death. The, the bull gets his fucking horns in her stomach and

00:40:50.380 rips her to pieces. Oh yeah. And, and Flannery O'Connor. Which some black

00:40:54.000 neighbor males will get. If you leave your wife around. Yeah. And she, she, uh,

00:40:59.300 she dies, um, and the book stays in her head while she's dying. So you get to

00:41:06.480 like, you see the lights get brighter and you see some, I don't remember. I read

00:41:11.420 this for a long time ago. It's green leaf. It says, I, I don't know if that's the

00:41:15.420 one, but does she die with a bull at the end? The, uh, one day miss may is upset

00:41:22.320 to find a stray bull on her property. She's worried that the bull will breed with

00:41:25.680 her milk cows. That's it. Right. She blames Mr. Greenleaf. Yeah. Who appears

00:41:30.740 reluctant to confront the bull. Yeah. There it is. But, uh, uh, before she dies,

00:41:37.800 miss, Mrs. May has a moment of spiritual clarity. Uh, the story notes that she has

00:41:43.800 the look of a person whose sight has been suddenly restored, but who finds the

00:41:48.460 light unbearable. Wow. I mean, what the fuck? And this, this is the thing.

00:41:53.880 Flannery O'Connor was just a regular person in America. And it kind of, uh, one

00:42:01.060 of the reasons I, that I wrote Ingram is because I live in a world, New York

00:42:06.960 city, you know, modern culture. And, um, but this America has always had this

00:42:14.780 voice. People like Flannery O'Connor, Mark Twain, who were, or, uh, Harper Lee,

00:42:21.560 um, who were born in little places, quiet little places, people like you, you have

00:42:26.820 this kind of a voice where it's not through like, uh, Harvard education and

00:42:33.000 like, you know, reading it's, it's just that America, the American voice is very

00:42:38.820 eloquent, simple and eloquent with that sentence. I just wrote, wrote of hers.

00:42:42.520 Mm-hmm. That's not a collegiate sentence. That's like someone who lived, uh, in a

00:42:47.780 old house and walked really far to the grocery store and had thoughts like that. That's what

00:42:53.540 you grew up in some parish, you know, people from where I'm from a word parish just sounds

00:42:58.980 so exotic. It's just a different, you grew up in, in America and it made you an eloquent

00:43:04.380 person when like Abraham Lincoln, he, he, a lot of years of Abraham Lincoln's life,

00:43:10.760 he lived in a lean to with an open that he would lay with his family and there was no

00:43:16.080 wall and he'd see like a, a Jaguar come up and sniff the family and he just lay there.

00:43:22.580 And he, yeah. And then he ended up saying some of the most beautiful things ever said

00:43:27.500 just by opening his mouth. Right. I just think that America has that language in it. And I

00:43:34.300 started to hear this kid and I thought, I wonder if I can make a connection with somebody

00:43:38.080 who sounds like that. And that's a humble, I don't know that I did it, but I, but that's

00:43:42.760 what I was trying to touch. When you're listening to Ingram, help him guide you to

00:43:47.540 write the book. Yeah. That's something like that. Yeah. No. And look, man, I, you just

00:43:53.160 have such a, I mean, like, I just, you're so good at like, you're like the guy who's

00:43:59.300 like, say like your feelings and everything was like a cave or whatever. And everybody's

00:44:09.040 at the top and they're like, we can't go in there, you know? And they're, they're not

00:44:12.980 even, there's like one brave Mexican guy who's like selling fucking snow cones or something,

00:44:17.980 but not a lot. At the mouth of the cave? At the mouth. Yeah. But it's close. It's no

00:44:23.600 abierto. No abierto. Yeah. Yeah. And he says that. Yeah. No abierto. No abierto. But you

00:44:28.800 want a snow cone? That's it, right? He said, look, because it's capital. 50 centavos para

00:44:34.760 un snow cone. Pero eso no es abierto, amigo. No pase. Yeah. But then you walk up and you

00:44:44.040 have like your fucking spelunking gear and shit. You're like, who the fuck? Yeah. Is

00:44:48.540 this a psychopath? Yeah. But you go, but you're like, I'll be back. And people are like, what?

00:44:55.200 You can't go in there. Look at all the signs. There's like a million signs. You're like,

00:44:58.380 no, no, no. I've been in here. I spent a lot of time in here. I left something down there.

00:45:03.180 Yeah. I left one, a favorite pack of bubble gum down there. That's right.

00:45:07.460 Yeah. It feels like that. But you were just so good at going in there and like just being

00:45:11.780 in there, man. But also getting in there and getting in there and like seeing what the like

00:45:16.460 stalactites are that are hangups in our time or in our feelings, in our existence, in what

00:45:24.400 it means to evolve like personally, like, man, you're just like such a archaeologist of, I

00:45:31.520 don't know what it is. I don't know if it's emotions or feelings or just of existing kind

00:45:39.680 of... Well, that's what I love to try to do. What you're describing is what I try to do. I've

00:45:45.760 never heard it that way, but that's what it does feel like is bringing people to these places

00:45:53.700 and going, it's okay. You can look at this without letting it hurt you. Or you can let it hurt

00:46:03.780 and you're going to be okay on the other side. It's okay.

00:46:07.400 Right.

00:46:07.720 And having that... And because I've been doing standup for 40 years now, like I'm very beyond

00:46:14.960 taking it personally. So if I say something to a crowd and I feel them resist, I don't

00:46:22.940 take... I don't go like, oh, they don't like me now. That's one of the problems of being

00:46:26.940 a standup is you're so exposed personally. So if they don't like something, you feel like you take

00:46:34.020 it on. But I'm okay with any outcome. Like they're all okay. So if I say something and people just

00:46:39.400 go, what? I go, cool. Now we're here. Now we're here that you're weirded out. There's a bunch of

00:46:46.560 places we can go from here because I see it all as okay. I think I see every feeling is worth

00:46:52.840 worth having. Especially if you don't... Like I kind of came up with this new idea in my life

00:46:59.920 recently, which is that your feelings are like fire and you warm yourself by them. You sit by

00:47:06.280 the fire of the feeling. You don't get in it and let it burn you, but you also don't go away because

00:47:11.600 it's hot. You don't go away from it. And then you're cold out there and there's no light. Just sit

00:47:16.720 and just let it... You know what I mean?

00:47:18.260 Yeah.

00:47:18.420 So I'm trying to get better at that. I think a lot of early in life, I was more brutal about

00:47:23.240 like, yeah, look at this shit. This is fucked up. Look at this shit. And that's just kind

00:47:27.600 of messy. But I'm trying to get a little more refined at taking people to hard things to

00:47:32.860 talk about and going like, let's just sit next to this for a second. And how does it

00:47:38.060 feel to be next to this? Get used to it.

00:47:41.080 But yeah, because every experience in life, certainly feelings are... I think feeling

00:47:47.080 is living. I used to think thinking was more or learning, but I think feeling... When

00:47:54.560 people really feel, they're right on. You know what I mean?

00:47:57.960 Yeah.

00:47:58.460 Feelings are never wrong.

00:48:00.620 Ooh, yeah. They're pretty pure, huh?

00:48:02.720 They are.

00:48:03.220 Even if you may not agree with somebody's feeling or something, it's interesting to see why they

00:48:10.220 have it if you believe that it's pure from them. Well, it also goes back to that lady's

00:48:14.660 quote, to Flannery O'Connor's quote. I mean, that's more like about feeling in there.

00:48:18.260 Yeah. I finally saw the world and it was unbearable. And it is, especially when you first really see

00:48:26.960 it. But if you're willing to... Like Chris Rock, he's a good friend and he's sometimes a mentor.

00:48:32.180 He says great things.

00:48:33.200 Oh, he's the best comedian. He's always been my favorite.

00:48:35.960 I remember... Every time I've gone to him in a tough moment, he's never let me out of it.

00:48:41.580 Like I called him once I was doing a pilot for the show, Lucky Louie, that is a sitcom.

00:48:49.200 And after the... We did two shows. We did two performances of the pilot. And after the first

00:48:53.960 one, it was like, I'm terrible. And I called him up and I said, I'm really scared. I think I might

00:49:00.000 just be a bad actor. And he said, yeah, wow. Yeah, that's scary. Shit. He wasn't like,

00:49:06.320 you're great, man. He was like, yeah, well, you better study your lines. I mean, because

00:49:11.440 maybe you are. And I was like, oh, okay. And at the same time, like I shot a special once

00:49:18.880 I did two shows. And after the first show, I called him, I said, I just killed. And he

00:49:22.340 said, you did nothing. Go do it again. You did nothing. He's a guy that makes you really

00:49:28.100 look at it. And...

00:49:30.280 Wow, that's cool. That's cool to be that kind of friend. It's cool to be that kind of like

00:49:35.060 challenger too, to challenge people.

00:49:37.980 Well, just to be real. I think, you know...

00:49:40.340 So true, huh?

00:49:42.080 Like in Rocky, you know, in Rocky, one of the great things about Rocky is that it's a sports

00:49:46.600 movie where the guy loses, you know? I don't think most people even realize that Rocky loses

00:49:51.480 the fight at the end. But the big moment in Rocky is when he's talking to Adrian the night

00:49:55.780 before the fight. You know, he goes to the ring and he sees the spectacle. And he's been

00:50:00.360 training and they play the music and he went like this. But then the night before the fight,

00:50:05.220 he goes back home to Adrian and he says, I can't beat him. It's just a fact I can't beat

00:50:09.980 him. He's just in another class. I'm not even close to him. I will not win. And instead

00:50:14.500 of saying, you can do it, Rock, she goes, what are we going to do? Like she just lets

00:50:19.740 that be real. And she goes, what are you going to do? And then he decides I'm going

00:50:23.320 to pick my own victory. I can't beat him, but I bet I could stand there while he beats

00:50:28.700 me. I bet I can get through the fight to the end.

00:50:32.200 Wow.

00:50:32.620 What a great goal. And that's what he does. And at the end of the fight, Apollo Creed

00:50:38.460 wins and Rocky doesn't give a shit because he got what he wanted.

00:50:41.560 Yeah. I think if somebody is honest with you, if there's a real piece of honesty there,

00:50:45.900 then you can navigate from that place, which is pretty real as opposed to like things that

00:50:50.860 are so placated. And then you're, you're kind of in this fictional space. Like, yeah,

00:50:55.860 I'm not going to win, you know, but now you're like, okay, how can I win? How do I find a

00:51:00.700 way to do this, to navigate this?

00:51:02.560 Yeah. Or what do I do about that? I'm not going to, what else is there? It's not the end

00:51:06.180 of the world. Cause both things like saying you can do it, this fantasy is nowhere. You

00:51:11.900 don't have, it doesn't take anywhere, but all in the same with doom, I can't do anything. I got

00:51:16.600 nothing. Now, where are you? This is reality. And usually it's your feelings that will navigate

00:51:25.040 you to where is like in, like Rocky did. I can't win. There it is. But what do I, and then he goes

00:51:33.460 inside his heart and goes, I don't have to win. I just don't want to quit. I just want to do that

00:51:38.240 one thing. I'm standing there that I, because I've had a hard life because I've never gotten

00:51:44.700 anything I wanted that I know I can do. That means I can beat, get the shit beat out of me on

00:51:50.360 national TV, but I could do it for 12 rounds. Most people can only do it for eight. Yeah.

00:51:56.080 That's fucking good. And it's, it was back to like finding that thing, like finding the word,

00:52:00.860 finding how, what is the thing that you really need? Right? Yeah. Maybe he would have liked to

00:52:06.080 a one for sure. Yeah. But what does he really want? What's the real victory for him? That's

00:52:10.560 right. Yeah. What is victory? What's, what is it to be victorious? What is it to be?

00:52:18.260 Right. Like somebody might be working their butt off to make money, but it's like, do you really

00:52:21.520 want money? Do you want to, do you like, that may be it, but is that just a block? Sometimes we get

00:52:26.460 caught in with like this general goal of society, or we all get like herded into what the goal is

00:52:32.280 supposed to be without looking at what exactly it is that we want. Yeah. Which makes sense because

00:52:36.720 people coalesce so that they can survive. Yeah. So human beings are shitty animals. They're like

00:52:43.720 really a human being out in the, in the wilderness. It's done. It's not worth much, but you group,

00:52:50.880 group together and you're good. So it's kind of like all the things that are like hard about life

00:52:54.940 are because of what we're good at. People fight and attack each other, but it's, they're,

00:53:01.960 they're trying to, in a way, get closer to together. You know what I mean? I mean, in other

00:53:06.980 words, when people say you shouldn't be doing that because that's what, not what everybody

00:53:11.080 else is doing, their hearts in the right place. Cause we, we all want to be, the weird thing

00:53:16.020 is that now a lot, um, you get rejected for coming together. Like it's the opposite. It's a weird time

00:53:26.400 right now. It's like a car battery can have a polarity reversal where it, it, it gets confused

00:53:32.480 and suddenly North is South, South is North. We've done something weird where the accepted thing is to

00:53:39.740 be separate. The accepted thing is to be like enemies of each other. You know what I mean? And to,

00:53:44.720 if you say, if you move towards the middle of any issue, people start getting nervous because they

00:53:51.000 want you to, the safe places, these extremes, you know what I mean? But that doesn't, that's not,

00:53:56.500 that's not what we're good at. That's not what, that's not what got us through the ice age and the,

00:54:02.020 and the, you know, and not, that's not what it got us out of the food chain. What got us out of the

00:54:07.260 food chain was like, just put aside your shit and try to be, um, you know, try to see other people as

00:54:12.820 important to you so that you'll work together. But now it's like scary to say, I don't know. I I'm

00:54:20.400 like this guy, even though he's not like me, you know what I mean? That's that you can get ostracized

00:54:25.920 for being for love. It's a weird, it's a weird time. And, uh, I have to believe you can get

00:54:34.320 ostracized for being accepting. Yes, that's right. There is a sign at, uh, one of the theaters I did

00:54:39.840 this week. Um, it says, um, hatred will not be allowed here. Our policy towards hatred is zero

00:54:53.100 tolerance, but that's a weird, right? We hate hatred. Zero tolerance is something you're that's hate.

00:55:03.440 That's hate, isn't it? Zero tolerance and hatred are, um, opposites. Yeah. So hatred and zero

00:55:12.360 tolerance are the, are equal. They're the same. Like no hatred of any kind. It said, I'm like,

00:55:19.760 what about, I hate my dad a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. How do I even get that out of my system

00:55:24.400 before I go in here to watch a matinee? Yeah. So I don't know. I think, um, yeah, that's like,

00:55:31.700 but it's not human nature there. I have like a faith in the way things are going to go because,

00:55:37.960 and also I see it like, you know, whenever people complain about like, everybody always says this,

00:55:43.680 right? You hear that a lot. You can't say this without saying that everybody does this. The group

00:55:49.780 that behaves that way is shrinking and shrinking and shrinking. Cause if you really go out on the

00:55:54.500 street, if you get off the, if you look at people in the eyes and you see people every day,

00:55:59.060 most people are just like really eager to find each other again and to, and reaching out to people

00:56:05.860 as, as, as unlike them as they can find and wanting to find love and common ground. That's how

00:56:12.740 human beings behave. And sometimes there's a confusion that scatters them. Um, but it doesn't

00:56:20.900 last. I don't think, I don't think it can. I mean, if it does, then everybody will. And that's what,

00:56:26.540 yeah, that's, that's what'll happen. That'll be the test. We didn't pass. Yeah. Oh, the test.

00:56:31.320 We didn't pass. Yeah. I mean, it may come or it might not.

00:56:36.540 Louie, what if it comes then? We'll get into it. Some of us can do it. Some of us can nothing.

00:56:42.320 You can't, you know, we have to have a meeting though. If things get really bad,

00:56:46.400 we all have to meet somewhere. Where would we meet? I don't know. Maybe Denver or something.

00:56:54.920 Yeah. Some place where the air is clean, the water's clean still. So you have like a surviving

00:57:00.060 chance. Yeah. Altitude cures some diseases. You don't even, some stuff you don't even get at

00:57:05.400 altitude. Really? Yeah. Or the Amish, you know, the Amish have one 10th of the, um, attention deficit

00:57:13.280 disorder. Really? That regular. They have AIDS a lot though. I heard. Ooh. Yeah. Amish AIDS is like,

00:57:19.540 it's kind of, Oh no. I looked at Amish. Look. Yeah. I'm not surprised. Many folks have a money goal,

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00:58:44.520 I think ideally that all of us would like to turn our passions into a paycheck. I've always admired

00:58:51.280 anyone who took what they cared about and built something from it. You know, I enjoyed podcasting,

00:58:57.740 but as that evolved, other things came along with it, including a merch shop where you can go get

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00:59:51.480 it happen. That's Shopify.com slash T-H-E-O. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. You know,

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01:00:53.560 That's BetterHelp.com slash Theo. In the Amish, like, I don't know how, I don't know if it was like

01:01:05.460 maybe 20 years ago, somebody started recording just on people's genealogy, right? Like a book.

01:01:11.020 And that's kind of their dictionary that they'll keep it through Google where they'll go and look

01:01:14.360 and be like, oh, who is that? I've heard of them and how do I know them? And they have this,

01:01:18.000 and it's like a recurring book that a lot of different families and districts, that's what

01:01:23.580 they live in, called, like it's a lot of times it's associated with their church. And so they'll

01:01:28.040 have one, it's their Google. It's like, oh, go look and see who they are. And you can see how much

01:01:32.120 land they have or animals. You can see all kinds of things about a certain family, what the children's

01:01:36.240 names are and stuff. So they kind of have their own book. That's like a form of Google right there.

01:01:40.660 Descendants of Abe Troyer and Lucinda Summers. That's the book?

01:01:44.160 I mean, it's basically something like that because, I mean, they started off from just a

01:01:48.420 couple of folks, you know? It's, uh, all records of stuff is fascinating. Like the people used to

01:01:54.140 have to just write everything down. Yeah. Forget, you know, I was at the New York Public Library once

01:02:00.440 and they, at the New York Public Library, the big one with lions in front, they have every book there

01:02:04.920 like ever. And, uh, some of them, you can look at anything you want. Some of them you got to put

01:02:09.640 gloves on. Um, because they're very old and I, I was looking for something about Gloucester mass

01:02:17.160 and the, uh, um, it says, I don't want to describe what I was looking for cause it's just boring,

01:02:22.360 but I found this book that was like the shipping logs for Gloucester back in the 1700s. And I,

01:02:29.360 I read it and it's like an old writing and it just said on, in this winter, you know, 16 ships

01:02:35.640 were lost. Uh, there were 34 new widows and 54 orphans and stuff like that. And just like,

01:02:42.240 uh, just record keeping, but that would make you cry. You know what I mean? Um,

01:02:48.940 Yeah, dude, things were so severe back then. We're fucking man. I'm not, but a lot of us are.

01:02:56.020 Yeah, no, we, but when it comes to our feelings, we don't wait. Like we're just, I don't know.

01:02:59.880 We're just, we're softer now. Yeah. It used to be like, or we're harder. I think people

01:03:05.520 aren't feeling as much, you know, they're avoiding their feelings. I think people are

01:03:09.140 scared of their feelings, but your feelings are native. Like there's no feeling that's going to

01:03:13.140 kill you. It's just not, uh, avoiding a feeling will kill you. But, um, we do a lot, you know,

01:03:20.440 in addiction and stuff like that to stay away from feeling something.

01:03:24.360 Oh yeah. I mean, even you were talking earlier about go, you like a, like a feeling is like a

01:03:28.340 warm place. Sometimes you want to get right by it. Yeah. Like I was thinking the other day and I've

01:03:32.680 thought about this before, but I was rekindling the thought that, um, yeah, something, sometimes

01:03:38.380 I don't want to change certain behaviors just because I don't want to, uh, you, part of you

01:03:43.120 wants to have an excuse because it gives you an excuse not to, so that other things don't happen.

01:03:50.200 You know, like there'd be times where I didn't want to quit smoking because I was like, well,

01:03:53.380 if I quit smoking, then I'll have to find something else positive to do. I won't have the excuse

01:03:59.720 that. Oh, I can't do that because I'm smoking, or I don't want to feel that because I'm smoking.

01:04:04.100 Cause I would go to smoking a lot of times if I was like, I had an intense feeling or if I,

01:04:08.580 you know, felt rejected or I want to, you know, like it became this kind of like, um,

01:04:14.160 a bit of like a shower curtain to shield me from like real moments, you know?

01:04:18.960 Yeah. Well, when your life becomes a series of shit, you do, you know, I smoke, I eat,

01:04:25.000 uh, barbecue, I eat, I drink at night. I watch this. Uh, then you can avoid like a day, a day

01:04:34.820 of just being on earth under the fucking swirling sky is fucking intense. Like you're really,

01:04:42.400 if you're really paying attention, if you really wake up to the present moment, it's fucking

01:04:46.520 terrifying. It's constantly moving and nothing's promised. Everything that you've accomplished

01:04:50.760 is gone. And you're just in this, uh, and so if you could just set out a bunch of stupid tasks and

01:04:56.380 like, and like, uh, uh, habits, you know, and whatever all a ladies night at whatever it is,

01:05:02.840 you know, bowling and going to see that. And now, uh, uh, they've turned, there's this,

01:05:09.080 this screen on your phone where you don't need to even choose what that is. Uh, you just let this

01:05:16.080 feed just kind of keep you glazed over. Just serving cunt. Serving cunt all night long.

01:05:22.880 And, uh, and you get, nobody's even sleeping anymore. And you just kind of go to this thing

01:05:28.320 and you're just not, you're not feeling nothing. You're, you're, you're taking, these are fake

01:05:33.220 feelings. These are fake feelings in a safe environment. Can't believe she did that.

01:05:38.300 Right. I can't believe he said, what a piece of shit. Why are they getting on his case? Like all

01:05:42.920 these just dumb things and like, you know, just keeping it going. It, it used to be that they

01:05:48.960 used to call a thing click bait where they, they make something so juicy that people would click on

01:05:53.780 it, but nobody's clicking much anymore. It's just, it's just going by. It's just that feed. So they're

01:05:59.860 just going like, like this and, and that's living now. The thing I don't understand is who's benefiting

01:06:07.680 because if everybody's doing this, I don't know, eight different people are getting incredibly rich

01:06:12.080 and, uh, Oh yeah. And the rest of us are really going to turn into just, and the, and the, and

01:06:18.500 the phone is burning a circuit somewhere. You know, when your phone is doing that scroll, there's a,

01:06:23.640 there's a physical thing that's, there's like a little light that's burning somewhere like in a,

01:06:28.100 in North Carolina and like a data farm. Yeah. This isn't, this isn't like, it's not in the phones,

01:06:34.260 not really doing the work. There's something else that's making that there's a processor that's

01:06:38.460 doing that and take, put it on the cloud and bringing it to your phone. But there's smoke

01:06:43.160 going in the air, hot smoke. Every time you, you just go like this and everybody's doing this all

01:06:49.940 the time. Oh, in the, in the middle of the night, I'll wake up literally. It's almost like I have

01:06:53.740 to do it for like a minute to go back to sleep. I'm not even joking. I'll wake up. I'll see like

01:06:58.060 four things. I'll be like, okay. Yeah. Yeah. Racism, murder. Yeah. Just to get, just as a

01:07:03.700 blanket, like murdered, like a little, yeah. Get you back to sleep. Yeah. Someone's dead. Okay,

01:07:09.040 good. Oh, good. A little bit of racism. Finally, I was going to get a sip of water, but that'll,

01:07:13.840 that'll do it. No, it's, it's very bad for you. And, uh, and it's such a lucrative addiction and

01:07:20.220 people are, are, are convinced that that's where they're going to go to convince people of what's

01:07:24.820 right and wrong. And that's where you sell stuff. Yeah. So everyone just gave into it. And, uh,

01:07:30.880 it's, it's an un, it's like if we were all doing heroin, but somebody somehow stopped calling it

01:07:34.900 heroin. Uh, and, and the, the, the machines that make that, that make the, the run those processes

01:07:41.640 are, are, are going to get hotter and hotter and AI and all that stuff. Oh, the data centers are

01:07:46.580 getting crazy, man. Yeah. It's going to be nuts. There's, I was reading an article about, uh,

01:07:50.560 in Virginia, they, um, they want to use farmland a lot for the solar panel because the companies

01:07:57.840 that do data don't like they, you know, they have a style, so they don't want to be, um,

01:08:03.560 they don't want to burn coal, you know, they don't want to burn oil. Right. Cause it does. Yeah.

01:08:06.840 That seems bad. It seems not cool. Yeah. So nuclear, no problem. All of a sudden,

01:08:10.320 like that's no longer a problem and, uh, and solar, right. But solar is like heavy. So they've,

01:08:15.820 it takes a lot of those things which are made in China and, uh, they, they pollute a lot just to

01:08:22.700 make them. The panels? The panels. But anyway, in Virginia, there was this county where they're

01:08:28.900 trying to get these panels out cause they're putting them on the farmland. So, um, in other

01:08:34.000 words, there used to be farm fields. Right. Where the sun, the natural sun would touch the soil

01:08:40.680 and make green for, to eat and to make oxygen. It's like the most perfect thing. Right. And

01:08:48.420 they're putting these fucking black panels on over the flowers to catch the sun and use it instead.

01:09:00.620 So you and I can do scroll. And a lot of the, um, the data centers, they're, they're using up like a

01:09:06.860 lot of the water, right. They're using up a lot of like power in places. Like they're monopoly and

01:09:11.160 they're building them everywhere, everywhere. And it's happening fast. And we started to look at,

01:09:15.560 well, like we were talking with that Sam Altman guy. He's a chat GPT's like started that. Right.

01:09:20.960 And I was saying, well, do you feel like the earth could look like, bring up that picture that we had.

01:09:26.960 It was like the whole earth is covered in panels and it's kind of what we see when we watch like

01:09:31.980 Star Trek. Yes. Or like Dr. Who, I don't know if you ever watched that show, but like there's,

01:09:36.440 if you, if you look at, um, water towers, like it used to be, you go into an old town,

01:09:41.560 like in the middle of Kansas or something. And, uh, folks are still wearing like cowboy hats.

01:09:46.540 They're still driving old GMC trucks with faded side panels. Like going into a place like that is

01:09:51.980 very beautiful. Uh, when you look at the water towers now, which these faded, beautiful,

01:09:57.400 big tanks in the sky, they're crusted over with these cell, uh, cell phone, uh, things. You could

01:10:06.160 probably find an image like that. Oh, they attached them all to them now? Yeah. They're all over. And

01:10:09.300 it's like, um, they're, they're completely covered in them now and it's very ugly and it feels like a

01:10:17.020 mold. Like if you look at it, it feels like there's just this weird. And so when you look at the,

01:10:22.880 the combination of that with people on the streets, staring into a rectangle of black of

01:10:30.160 nothing, you know what I mean? A black rectangle and everyone's just going like this and there's

01:10:35.900 these crusty things. It makes it feel like a, like a creature in a way, but it's not, it's,

01:10:41.640 I don't think I don't have some idea that it's from the outside. It's like something inside of us

01:10:46.200 wanted so badly to not feel or something. It just, it started little like this feels good,

01:10:54.480 you know, with looking at our screens and stuff. Yeah. Or like television first. I mean,

01:10:58.260 it started with like theater maybe. Oh, dioramas. I remember, remember that? Sure. Yeah. Or like

01:11:03.840 stereo, stereo, uh, photos. Yeah. People used to hold up a thing. You could see fucking peeping

01:11:09.680 Tommen was good. Yeah. And like people, like a girl with like, you know, a little titties and

01:11:15.240 heavy hips and you put a nickel in. That's where it started. Yeah. Porn is the whole thing.

01:11:22.280 But, uh, that, that thing became, let's all go to a movie theater and everybody would go sit in a

01:11:28.400 theater together or vaudeville and then TV. Then we went home by ourselves to do it. And it got,

01:11:34.120 you know what I mean? More and more. And definitely gotten really used to it. Yeah. It happened

01:11:38.820 gradually, but it's become something really fucking weird. Oh yeah. I mean, you're sitting

01:11:43.900 there and you, you start to notice when you look at your screen and then when you'll come out of it,

01:11:48.680 you know, but, uh, and you're saying it's like a molten, like a crab, like a shell. Yeah. And

01:11:52.900 they start to like get other like barnacles and things on it. It starts to, oh, for sure. It's

01:11:57.160 barnacles of avoidance of like love avoidance. Yeah. You know what I mean? Oh, and maybe it's

01:12:04.500 cause we like, did you see the eclipse that happened back in a couple of years

01:12:09.380 ago or April? I did, man. Dude, I heard one of the most racist things while I was watching

01:12:13.240 it too. I hate to even bring that up. What did you hear? I was standing next to a guy

01:12:17.700 and I'm assuming the guy was racist just because of what he said. He was talking to one of his

01:12:21.600 buddies and the eclipse was happening and he goes, oh, look at that. Even the sun wants

01:12:26.700 to be a, and he said the N word. Oh my God. I was like, oh, you know, on its face, you

01:12:34.040 could take that as a being, uh, loving black people. Yeah. Even the sun, like if you say

01:12:42.300 it like this, brother, even the sun wants to be a black man. Yeah. You could take it

01:12:49.940 like that. Yeah. You could convert what the guy said and make it that now. That's a great

01:12:53.560 point actually. You know what? There was a, and that is actually most racism I think

01:12:57.440 is envious. Oh, for sure. Everybody wants to be one of those guys, man. Oh, even the

01:13:02.640 sun. I mean, some racism gets beautiful because that's beautiful. Yeah. That's poetic. Even

01:13:08.860 the sun wants to be a black man. That's what he's, what's hurting them is not that black

01:13:14.020 people are bad. It's that, that everybody wants to be one. Damn it. That's the, even the

01:13:19.720 sun. Like somebody gets so racist that they become that they, you know, I remember when

01:13:24.860 Obama was running for president and, uh, there was Sarah Palin's rallies. Some people would

01:13:30.380 yell out racist shit. Yeah. Every time she mentioned his name, they'd go, all right, here

01:13:34.380 we go. Yeah. So she said his name and this woman with a, with a real like town, you know,

01:13:40.940 a real, uh, you know, old movies with a, uh, pitchforks and torches, you know, uh, some

01:13:49.560 lady yelled out about Obama, you need gloves to touch him. And I was like, woo. But I thought

01:14:00.220 there's a few ways to look at that. Oh, it's priceless. Yes. And also like some part of her

01:14:06.040 is going, I want to touch him. Why can't I touch him? But I need gloves because he's

01:14:10.980 just, cause he's precious or like you need gloves to touch him. There's a lot of, there's

01:14:17.380 a lot in that, you know? Yeah. What do you want to touch him for? Yeah. Man, you need

01:14:21.360 gloves to touch him. You need gloves. Well, you could also just leave him alone, but something

01:14:25.380 in you really wants to touch him, but you're scared to, it's a complex thing. Yeah. Oh yeah.

01:14:31.760 The truth of that, dude. Yeah. I remember the first time a black man touched my hand

01:14:36.120 one time and it was different. Sure. How old were you? I was probably 10 or something,

01:14:46.300 nine. Why did you touch your hand? Well, I went over to my buddy's house and they were

01:14:51.680 swimming just in like this little kind of round little, I don't know if it was a pool or just

01:14:56.480 like it had tetanus in it or whatever. It was like, it's like a, it was like a something

01:15:00.980 for animals that put water in it. So we're just playing in there and swimming in there

01:15:05.160 or whatever. And this guy, this black man had come and he was kind of like tickling us

01:15:10.060 and stuff. Sometimes I think he was being okay. I don't know if he was, but that's,

01:15:15.340 but anyway, I don't know, but he, but then he lifted me up out of the thing too. And I

01:15:21.480 just remember like, also he like touched my hand and I just was like, Oh, that's interesting.

01:15:25.780 Hmm. This was like kind of interesting. Yeah. Dude. I remember I walked into a black doctor.

01:15:32.140 Yeah. This is in Nashville. This is two years ago. Yeah. I'd never walked into a room in my life

01:15:37.600 with a black doctor. Huh? Yeah. And I was like, Whoa. Yeah. And I wasn't like, you know, I was just,

01:15:44.280 I, I, it's new. It's something that's new. Yeah. And I was like, you guys, everybody,

01:15:48.200 you know, books at the same books or charts or, you know, I just didn't know,

01:15:53.500 you know, it's almost like when you're at footlocker and there's a white woman working in

01:15:57.560 there, you know what I'm saying? Like, and you're like, this is interesting. Yeah. I support,

01:16:03.120 I'm here for it. Last time I was in a footlocker, I bought these in a footlocker, oatmeal colored

01:16:09.740 new balance. I got them in a footlocker in Salt Lake city. Oh yeah. And a young guy,

01:16:17.580 I mean, I am really an old man when I'm in a retail situation. I'm just older. And, uh,

01:16:23.360 and this young guy helped me and he took me through a few different ideas and he let me try

01:16:29.540 some different things. He took the stuffing out of the sneakers for me, set me up. Yeah. And then I

01:16:37.520 tried them on. He was patient while I walked around feeling like, what are the, what's this like?

01:16:43.200 You know, he really liked, he was like my mom, like shoe shopping with me. Oh yeah. And he

01:16:47.520 was maybe 19 and I could tell he was kind of fidgeting. Like this guy's making me do a lot,

01:16:52.220 but, um, I bought the sneakers and I did something that I think my dad used to do and that I used to

01:16:58.380 do when I was, uh, I don't know when, but, um, I shook his hand at the end, just changed the money.

01:17:04.640 And I said, thanks very much. And I shook his hand and he was like, what the fuck is this? Like,

01:17:08.600 he didn't know what that was, but that used to be, it's like, you know, it's the proprietor.

01:17:13.960 It's like going to the haberdashery and you think, you know, good work. Yeah. Thanks for

01:17:18.780 your help today. Appreciate that. It was just like, what's being done with my arm? Yeah. It

01:17:23.640 is crazy though that there will be a time soon, Louie, where people were like, so we used to take

01:17:29.760 a guy's hand that you didn't know and move it up and down. You used to pump it for two seconds.

01:17:34.860 Yeah. Yeah. Some people dap. That was okay. The handshake was for real, but then now people are

01:17:42.620 nervous too. I think when they're around other people, people have wet hands and that is scaring

01:17:47.640 a lot of people. Well, when you shake hands, you take, you really connect because every finger has

01:17:52.840 a different intention in the thumb and you grip someone with the perfect balance of like, I don't

01:17:58.660 want to hurt you, but I want you to, I don't want to make you feel like you're here with me. I want to,

01:18:04.000 you know what I mean? Yeah. And then we're going to, I don't know what the shake is about

01:18:07.860 though. Yeah. Bring that up. Why did the hands shake after they touched? Yeah. I could see

01:18:12.540 them touching, you know, like whenever they try to make movies about like middle ages or

01:18:16.580 like, you know, the places of lore, like Lord of the Rings or like the future, they always

01:18:21.860 reinvent, like they do like the crap, the clasp of the, you do this thing. But a handshake

01:18:29.020 is a globally widespread brief greeting or parting tradition in which two people grasp one,

01:18:35.140 you do it. And two people grasp one of each other's hands and it is often accompanied by a

01:18:41.520 brief up and down movement of the grasped hands. Customs surrounding handshakes are specific to

01:18:47.780 cultures. The handshake may have originated in prehistory as a demonstration of peaceful intent since

01:18:52.800 it shows that the hand holds no weapon. I like that. Another possibility is it originated as a

01:18:58.880 symbolic gesture of mutual commitment to an oath or promise. One of the earliest known depictions

01:19:04.460 of a handshake is an ancient Assyrian relief of the ninth century BC depicting the Assyrian king

01:19:09.580 Shalmaneser the third clasping the hand of the Babylonian king Marduk Zakir Shumi.

01:19:16.380 So there's a picture of that down there, right? Yeah. Two guys, two kings that were probably just

01:19:24.240 fighting. And they said, Hey, let's settle it. I can't hurt you for this one second.

01:19:32.000 Right. No swords. Yeah. Cause I'm using my fighting hand. It's going to be punched with the left. It's

01:19:36.560 going to be weird. That's a good point because they both have a staff in one hand that shows that

01:19:40.060 they've been walking. The other hand would grab the sword. Yeah. That's your sword hand. Yeah,

01:19:44.140 brother. You can get close to me. It's all right. You've got my hand. I've got yours. Right. Or even

01:19:52.000 Steven, brother. So, but that gives me back to that fucking eclipse, that racist eclipse. Yeah.

01:19:58.580 Because I saw the eclipse in Vermont. Up in Stowe, Vermont, or where were you? In the center of Lake

01:20:08.020 Champlain. At the time I was dating a woman who was very wonderful. We had it, we were together for

01:20:15.680 about a year. We're not together now, but. She sounded hot. She was, she was great. So we,

01:20:22.660 we decided to, we wanted to see the eclipse totality, you know, like there's certain places where

01:20:28.740 there's like a line across America, like this diagonal line. And only if you stood in that line,

01:20:34.280 could you actually see the sun totally. Oh, okay. So it's a real hotbed to real hotbed for

01:20:41.360 eclipsing. Yes. It's where you see the actual, the, the moon totally cover the sun and you go

01:20:47.400 into total darkness. It's called totality. Any other place you'd get a little, it's a little off and

01:20:52.580 it's still basically daylight. Got it. And so, um, we decided to go and, and I looked on that line

01:20:59.660 and the place that was best for where we were in New York was, um, uh, an island in the middle

01:21:05.960 of Lake Champlain. And she's like, I have a cousin who lives on that island. It's like North Hero

01:21:11.320 Island, I think it's called. And so we went there and it was kind of like a thing to get, we got,

01:21:16.800 we were kind of just, we got there an hour before the eclipse started and we're seeing people scurrying

01:21:22.700 to where they're going to watch the eclipse. It was like the world was coming to an end. Folks were

01:21:27.820 getting coolers with stuff and folks were, you know, everyone. And the closer we got,

01:21:32.000 the more quiet the streets got. And now people were just sitting in lawn chairs all over Vermont,

01:21:38.040 like just like this getting ready. And they all had these glasses on and it was just like,

01:21:43.240 and we're the only car. It was like a, like a end of the world movie. Hell yeah. And we get there

01:21:49.000 and her cousins are all, uh, they're all carrying big baggies of cigarettes because they buy their

01:21:58.180 cigarettes at an Indian reservation where they don't sell them in boxes. They get a deal on them.

01:22:03.640 Yeah. They get a big, so they just walk around with a bag and just take it and smoking. And these

01:22:09.420 were great people. We were like right in the right place. It's just a dead end road on an island in a

01:22:15.520 Vermont, you know? And, uh, we went out into the middle, me and this woman, we went out into the

01:22:21.420 middle of this field where the, and, uh, and we could hear. So as the thing started and everything

01:22:27.960 started going, not black, but Brown, there was this Brown, the, the sun disappeared behind the moon

01:22:36.340 and every bird fucking lost its mind. Every bird was like, what the fuck? Like you could hear every

01:22:43.100 bird in its own language saying, bitch, this is fucked up shit. Like just screaming. And then

01:22:51.200 people going, and then everything was dark and cold, like really cold. And I, it was an incredibly

01:23:03.100 moving thing. And I thought, and then I heard people, there was fireworks going off. And the

01:23:07.480 feeling I had was the immediate thought I had was this is what the end of the world is going to feel

01:23:11.560 like the end of the world is going to be beautiful because it's going to bring everybody together

01:23:16.060 because you can finally just forget it all. You can finally just go here. It's you and me, brother,

01:23:22.220 you know? Yeah. Make a sandwich. Yeah. Let's just, we, let's just, I got nothing against you. Like

01:23:26.540 boxers at the end of it, like just seconds ago, I was, and now I just love you so much that

01:23:31.700 everybody's going to, that nothing that has ever happened is going to matter at all. Like Ward and

01:23:37.520 Gotti, man. Yes. Ward and Gotti. Like just fine at the end, just going like, man, I loved struggling

01:23:43.120 with you. I got to know you so well in fighting with you. I got, I saw your wounds. I saw how you

01:23:49.460 hurt me and oh my God. And it's going to be this ultimate, especially if we end it. Do you know what

01:23:55.700 I mean? Yeah. We're just going to be like, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you. Oh, thank God.

01:24:00.320 And finally, finally, I got in close enough. Uh, and we're together now and there's nothing,

01:24:06.880 all that's left is this one second. Yeah. Cause I don't think that time is like, like my sister

01:24:11.780 asked me once, are you afraid when you die, it's not going to feel like it was long enough.

01:24:16.500 Are you afraid when you die, you're going to feel like that wasn't enough life? Yes. Are you? I think

01:24:21.800 so. I'm not anymore because when I get a full moment of living, like when I feel open,

01:24:29.760 bore fucking, you know, aperture point zero eight, uh, that feels so good. I feel like

01:24:39.300 that's it. I got it. Do you know what I mean? Like when you get a real moment of existing,

01:24:42.900 I'm like, that's enough, right? Like it can be, and those moments can happen in all types

01:24:46.840 of ways, all types of ways. Yeah. Sometimes it's just hugging a kid. Sometimes it's seeing

01:24:51.840 a parent, you know, wipe a kid's cheek or something. Sometimes it's standing on a subway platform

01:24:57.700 and seeing somebody's phone is next to the track and going like, no. Yeah. Like I see

01:25:04.640 life now. There's so much in that one thing. That's so shitty. Sometimes it's reading that

01:25:08.060 sentence by Flannery in that Flannery. Yeah. Sometimes it's that, but sometimes it's just

01:25:11.460 the dumb little. Oh yeah. Just seeing somebody in their dumb little thing. Seeing one shoe on

01:25:17.480 the fucking interstate. Yeah. Just one. Fuck. That's not me. And then driving by the next day

01:25:24.220 and it's not there anymore. Oh yeah. Yeah. And you've got it on and then you're like,

01:25:30.460 oh yeah, it's getting good. Oh, but yeah. Some people used to think the eclipse was just a time

01:25:35.120 when you could use racial slurs and it didn't get it. That's right. It didn't. But somebody heard it.

01:25:39.600 Yeah. But still. Now a lot of people heard it. Oh yeah. But there is a little moment you're like,

01:25:45.720 yeah, that's life. Yeah. So I don't know. I think it's enough. I'd really ambitious to live more.

01:25:50.700 I love it. I'm getting to really love living a lot. Really? Yeah. Do you remember when we went

01:25:56.240 to Chris Rock's birthday together? You took me there. It was an incredible night. First we went

01:26:00.840 for Italian food. That night had no right to be that great. All we did was go to an Italian restaurant

01:26:07.420 and go to birthday party. Yeah. Can we say that we went to his birthday party or not? It's okay.

01:26:13.060 It wasn't private. Yeah. It was a big party. Madonna was there. Yeah. I think we can say that

01:26:19.840 we were there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We felt like misfits. Remember? Yeah. Yeah. We were like,

01:26:24.420 this is weird. Cause it was super, super famous people. And yet the center of attention, Chris is

01:26:29.200 like my best friend. So, but I, but it was like, this is not, I don't belong here.

01:26:34.340 And I didn't belong there. Neither one. So we were just like a pair. Yeah. Yeah. I was like,

01:26:38.260 I was an outcast and you were a not let in. Yeah. Of the same party.

01:26:42.140 Yeah. So we just had each other, dude. There was so much fun. And we were just standing in the corner

01:26:48.680 just going, this is so fucking weird. And looking at all the famous people there. And, uh, and, uh,

01:26:55.920 and then Chris went up and he said, he took a microphone and he said, um, uh, I, I, I feel like my

01:27:04.500 life must've been good. Cause I got all these, these, cause all these people are here and especially

01:27:08.780 the comedians who came to see me. And he said, Theo Vaughn and Louie, Louie brought Theo here.

01:27:14.480 It was like the first thing out of his mouth was that I brought you there and how much that meant

01:27:18.500 to him. And he said it like three or four times. It was interesting. I couldn't believe he said that.

01:27:22.340 Meaning more to him than all these other like big shots. It was like really, you know,

01:27:26.660 and I hope that's okay for me to share, but, but. No, I think it is. I mean, I think it just showed

01:27:30.580 that he was happy that you were there, you know? And that you were there. Oh, I couldn't believe

01:27:34.760 that he said my name, but it was also just that like, I, yeah, it was just so funny that we

01:27:38.720 were there. We felt uncomfortable and that he made it. So we didn't feel uncomfortable.

01:27:42.480 That's right. That's what I mean. Yeah. But you know, Theo, you're like a bridge, you know,

01:27:48.340 as a person, that's the way I think about you. Yeah. Yeah. Because when I first saw you,

01:27:53.600 I, it's because you invited me to be on here three years ago, something like that. Yeah.

01:27:59.700 2002, 2020, two, three or four years ago. And, uh, somebody said this guy wants you in a

01:28:08.620 podcast. I wasn't, I hadn't done any interviews for a long time. And then I was just coming out

01:28:12.840 to do interviews for the first time. I was pushing a special, whatever I was doing. And I saw a little

01:28:18.100 clip of you and I was like, and I, I'm as bigoted as anybody. Oh yeah. So I was like mullet red state.

01:28:25.660 I don't know. Fucking Southern, you know, mud flap fucking. Yeah. Yeah. And without contempt,

01:28:33.320 because I love, uh, every kind of American. So I was just like, uh, but, uh, but you reached out

01:28:41.520 with like a, we'd really like to have him on. And I was like, wow, let's meet somebody new,

01:28:45.040 meet somebody new, you know? And, uh, and then I went and listened to your standup and I just

01:28:49.740 couldn't believe how funny it was to me and how inventive and how, uh, uh, beautiful, like just

01:28:55.020 really eloquent and funny fucking shit had me laughing so hard. And then we sat down and, and,

01:29:00.800 and talked and I never met anybody like you. I never met anybody that had such sort of, uh,

01:29:05.520 open sensitivity and such honesty. And, um, and you, you're ambidextrous. You, you run all over the,

01:29:13.500 uh, you can be loved by anybody who's willing, you know, and I've gotten to know you. You're

01:29:17.960 beautiful. I love you, man. You're a great guy. And, uh, and you're an example of when somebody

01:29:25.060 brings people together, folks get a little scared of them. You know, there's nothing,

01:29:28.320 you're just willing. You're just, you, you know what I mean? You listen to anybody. It's

01:29:31.800 the way I feel. Um, but, uh, you're like a really important guy in the world to me.

01:29:37.580 Thanks. I think, uh, yeah, well, well, thank you, dude. That's nice of you. Yeah. I couldn't

01:29:43.440 believe that. Yeah. I just appreciated you bringing me over there. It's been fun to like become

01:29:47.840 friends and like, you know, like be able to talk to, it's like, yeah, I don't know. You

01:29:53.280 just, you're able to just to think without a lot of judgment of yourself. And I think

01:30:00.680 that a lot, it gives us so much information. Not a lot of people were like, I don't know

01:30:05.820 if it's bravery, if you're just missing a governor inside of yourself that needs to be there.

01:30:09.680 Well, we have something in common, you and me, because we're, we're born in very different

01:30:12.760 parts of the world, uh, different lives, but we both are broken the same way. We both

01:30:17.820 have the same problem. Oh yeah. And when you have that, uh, that's like a language barrier

01:30:23.400 crosser. You know what I mean? It really is. You just go like, oh, I get you. I get, I've

01:30:27.760 seen this, man. I've seen it. Believe me. You really see it. Oh yeah, I know. I fucking

01:30:32.860 see it, man. So, and you've helped me a lot. You've been very kind to me and helped me a lot

01:30:37.240 in ways I needed. And you're younger than me, but I, you know, you've kind of given me

01:30:40.820 guidance and helped me. But, uh, but that's the thing that makes people the closest is

01:30:45.340 that, is there common, like you were fucked up the same way. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. You're

01:30:49.800 fucked up. I'm fucked up. Yeah. Yeah. Thank God. Thank God you're fucked up. Oh yeah.

01:30:56.900 Cause if I had to look at you and think that you weren't fucked up like me, I just break my

01:31:01.360 heart. Yeah, dude, you know, dude. Yeah. I think, um, when,

01:31:07.240 yeah, like there was one time you said, oh, cause you've been through, you'd been through

01:31:11.540 like a lot of like stuff in your career. You'd had like, you know, this is when things

01:31:15.020 had gotten kind of crazy in your career with accusations and all types of stuff and, and,

01:31:19.300 uh, and accurate accusations, accurate accusations.

01:31:21.880 Yeah. Um, but, but you said, man, I feel so free. And there was something about that to

01:31:31.420 me. I think about that once a week. Cause I think about just like the little pieces of

01:31:36.100 ourselves that we like, that we try to manage and operate and we don't even know what they

01:31:41.300 are and we don't even know why they're in pieces. Yeah. It's like trying to put a, like

01:31:46.100 a, some glass together so you can get a clear reflection of yourself. Huh? And it's just

01:31:50.980 like, fuck, how did this, I didn't even break this. And I'm just so tired of cutting my fucking

01:31:56.160 fingers, trying to get a look at myself. Yeah. You know, um, you're trying to piece together

01:32:00.620 that broken mirror and cutting your fingers. That's beautiful. It's true. And, um, when

01:32:05.680 the, when life fucks it up for you, when it gets torn up, it's a relief. That's why I felt

01:32:11.760 free, you know? Yeah. Because I had, I had tried to manage these problems I had inside

01:32:17.200 of me for so many years. And I tried to, to feel like I was like a normal person or that

01:32:23.300 I was like a, what I thought of as a good person, but I was doing shit in the background

01:32:28.660 in my life that I was ashamed of. I was hurting other people and trying to tell myself I wasn't.

01:32:34.500 And, you know, those things on the edge, like using another person, but you got their permission

01:32:39.880 first. You're still using another person. You're not being with them. You're using them. Right.

01:32:44.020 That took me a long time to learn about that stuff. But when you're doing that stuff and

01:32:48.160 creating more and more problems, they just keep getting bigger and bigger. And then the worst

01:32:51.840 thing is if you're having a good life, that's successful because you're feeling this like

01:32:57.100 incredible rift between like the way you're representing yourself and who you really are.

01:33:02.440 And it's getting really, and I used to try, I think some of the early versions of talking

01:33:06.320 on stage really honestly were me trying to get out and say, I'm, I'm not, I'm, I'm corrupt.

01:33:12.240 I want everybody to know it.

01:33:13.940 Right. I'm a corrupt file.

01:33:14.820 Yeah. And, um, a corrupt file. Yeah. And, uh, but all of that is like, you can't manage

01:33:23.060 it. And so when you're in front of the world and that's going on inside of you, it's just

01:33:26.480 like a real, it's real hell. And so when it, and also when you are, uh, successful because

01:33:33.320 we live in America and there's like, you're taught it's a work working community. Like you

01:33:38.740 got to succeed. So when you're succeeding, you believe it's a perfect good. Everything you're

01:33:43.040 getting is important, right? You're getting stature, you're getting work, you're getting

01:33:47.420 money. Um, importance. People are saying good things about you. These things, you just believe

01:33:52.780 that after a while you need those things. Anyway, when life comes along and just fucking by the

01:33:58.420 grace of my own fucking mistakes, my own fuck ups, they all came back and took everything

01:34:02.960 away from me. And it was the most thing I was most afraid of in the whole world. And it

01:34:10.200 happened the scariest possible thing. And it happened like now people know about me. They

01:34:17.220 know, they like deeply know and not perfectly either. Like there's, you know what I mean?

01:34:22.080 Cause it's fantastical fame world. So they hear their own version and I'm sitting there

01:34:26.160 going like, wait, no, it's not quite like that. And all that, it's like the worst thing

01:34:29.980 that could happen happens. Yeah. And you lose everything you were working for. And you,

01:34:35.780 the people you hurt, everybody knows about it now. And also people who love you are hurt by it. I hurt

01:34:42.380 a lot of people who love me, uh, by, by mismanaging that and letting and, and willfully becoming big

01:34:49.980 enough as a famous person that the, um, that the downfall hurt a lot of people, people I love. So

01:35:00.040 it was like unbearable fuck. And you ever be saying on stage one time, and I'll let you finish

01:35:09.080 your thought. Am I messing up by interrupting you? Go ahead. Go. There was, I remember you saying one

01:35:14.520 time I was trying to find a flight to somewhere, but every flight was landed on earth. It was all

01:35:19.760 places to other places on earth and it was so unmanageable. Yeah. There was no, I didn't feel

01:35:24.900 safe anywhere in the world. And I was full of a lot of self pity. I was full of a lot of anger too.

01:35:33.000 And also I just didn't feel safe in the world. Like I also didn't feel safe inside my own head

01:35:37.320 anymore. And it was kind of like, fuck, that's craziest. That's the hardest thing. You can kind

01:35:43.280 of handle anything except for the inside of your own head when that gets, you know, you know,

01:35:48.460 because I live in a world where, like I said before, like people coalesce, they come together

01:35:55.080 and that's our strength. So when you get dejected, love for yourself becomes antisocial. Do you know

01:36:02.340 what I mean? Like sitting there going like, I hope I'm a good person. And most people's mistakes when

01:36:07.420 people are, get fucked up the way that I had, it's because of a slow self-esteem problem to begin

01:36:13.420 with. So, um, so you're just, it's just tandem. Yeah. It's like, yeah, you're just sitting there

01:36:18.420 and you're trying to like, feel something good about yourself. It's difficult. And so I, that it

01:36:22.980 was just very overwhelming. And, um, but the losses that I like, I had spent, like, I don't know,

01:36:30.300 I was, I wasn't like an overnight success. You know, I was in my forties when I got really famous and

01:36:35.820 I grew, I built to it very gradually. I worked really hard. I learned a lot. Um, I got my own

01:36:44.220 TV show cause I'd learned how to make a TV show from the ground up. Like I was a cameraman at a

01:36:48.420 local access cable station. And then now I was a director and star and I'd, I'd met so many people

01:36:54.200 and had so many affiliations and, and, and, uh, a tapestry of, uh, a life, a career. And I remember

01:37:03.060 thinking of it, like all like tentacles coming off the back of my head, connecting me with the

01:37:07.880 world. And when this thing happened, it was like someone twisted all of them into like a braid and

01:37:15.040 put their foot on the back of my head and just pulled out all the wires. And all of a sudden I had

01:37:20.800 no, nobody likes me. Nobody, everybody, you know, I can't talk to nobody. Nobody can. Everybody's

01:37:27.320 afraid of me. And I was just spinning. It was really wild. But now I look at that, that thing

01:37:36.520 as like a beautiful thing. It's like, I look at that as like God's hands, you know, or whatever

01:37:43.080 you want to call it. That that was just like a good caring thing that said, dude, you need to stop.

01:37:50.200 You need to stop. You need to stop. You need out of all this. And that's, for me, it was great.

01:37:55.980 Not for other people in my life. Some people, it was hard for them.

01:37:58.820 Oh yeah. I can certainly imagine that. Yeah. I think it's scary. I think having like a different,

01:38:06.220 yeah. I mean, I, I mean, I've run it like, I've had a lot of the same issues in my life

01:38:09.880 with just like affection and those sorts of things and trying to like never having like

01:38:14.520 any coaching on that and just having severe, like, and then you start to figure out all yourself

01:38:20.380 and you make these crazy, like, um, like this crazy Tetris of what it's all supposed to be

01:38:28.380 and how love is. And like, and then it's also like, um, I'd be like, but my low self worth,

01:38:34.940 I was always trying to fill it with like, um, things that weren't just, just impossibility.

01:38:40.860 And then, I mean, for me, I got into watching porn and that became this crazy spend. It's like

01:38:45.840 never ending thing. I missed my twenties cause I was watching porn, you know, it's like same. I was

01:38:50.020 a young kid, like really obsessed with stuff that put me in a dark room when I should have been out

01:38:55.680 in the sunlight. Yeah. And, uh, it twisted around my set and it was, that was all up behind this thing

01:39:01.540 of wanting, just wanting someone lovely and female to look at me and, and tell me I'm okay and tell me

01:39:08.440 that I'm acceptable and even more so and lovable. And I got, I had such a strange, uh, twisted trip

01:39:14.840 to that moment that I never really quite learned it. And that's my, that's my shit. But, but, uh,

01:39:20.920 those things when you're a kid, they're, they're, they're a pain. And then when you get to be a

01:39:25.560 grownup with a life and you have an effect on other people, it starts becoming a problem for other

01:39:30.120 people. So, um, but I think that if I hadn't lost all of that, I would, it just would have gotten

01:39:38.400 worse because that's why I felt free when I said that to you, because, um, I could see the real

01:39:44.540 shape of the world and I could see that nothing I had that you can't take anything away from me.

01:39:51.040 That's really mine. And that I realized I didn't have much that was worth having. I had my family

01:39:58.780 and that's private. That's a different thing for me. But I realized I need to start making a real

01:40:05.140 treasure chest that has shit in it. That's valuable. That's valuable. I need to stop

01:40:11.680 thinking about why these people turn their backs on me and, and ask myself, yeah, why did they like,

01:40:17.320 were you a good friend to them? Who are you useful to in this world? Like, that's where I started was

01:40:21.960 when I wanted to try to reach out and feel less isolated was who can I be of use to? And I started

01:40:30.180 to try to, uh, but what was easy to let go of was like fame, money and connection and red carpets.

01:40:38.120 Yeah. That was easy. That was easy. I don't want that back. Yeah. Oh, it seems like a fucking

01:40:43.140 nightmare. It's shit. It's nothing. Work is different. And what we do is public. So it's

01:40:47.860 like the hard thing was like, I wished I was a carpenter. I could just start making chairs again.

01:40:52.120 I love standup comedy. I love it. It's my life. I love it so much. And it's given me so much.

01:40:58.640 And the other thing that happened too, was that when a hard thing that happens to you,

01:41:03.660 that feels like an all, all encompassing thing, when you live with it every day, you go to sleep

01:41:09.720 going, I can't do this. I went to sleep many nights going, I, my days are numbered. I just

01:41:14.520 can't handle this. This is more than I can handle. But then I wake up the next day and I go, all right,

01:41:21.260 I'm still here. It's still here. It's like a sirens blaring and it's not stopping. And at some point

01:41:27.400 you just got to make coffee and talk a little louder or whatever you got to, you know, it was

01:41:30.820 like, all right, this is life now. And I started to have to look at it and go like, well, everybody

01:41:37.480 doesn't hate me. It's just not true. And there's people that love me and they're reaching out

01:41:42.860 to me and I should, I should take their hand. I shouldn't just sit there and be a little victim,

01:41:49.420 you know? And, uh, so after like, uh, uh, what felt like a terribly long time of just feeling

01:41:56.540 hated by everybody, I started to see people coming up on the street and saying, where are you? Where

01:42:00.840 are you? We're, we're, you know, we, we want to see you. And I thought, I want to start working

01:42:05.200 again. To me, work was like the thing. I love it. I know I have value there. So I started working

01:42:11.680 again. And then it was really hard because I lost a lot of friends for starting again.

01:42:16.000 And that's crazy to me. It was, well, it was, everyone was, I used to react to all of this

01:42:22.640 with a lot of anger and confusion, but I started to, uh, do psychedelic drug therapy

01:42:30.300 and see that everyone was acting in their own needs and everyone is doing what they need to do. And

01:42:37.520 life is really hard for everybody. It's really hard. And these times have been really hard for

01:42:44.180 everybody. The thing that ripped my life in half had been ripping lives around all over the world

01:42:50.020 and everybody was dealing. And some people were so scared that what happened to me would happen to

01:42:55.700 them. And, you know, it was a lot of stuff going on. So I had to see that. Right. And, uh, but I also

01:43:00.800 saw that a lot of people that now knew about me were like, what do you got? And I thought I'm

01:43:10.720 willing and I'll get, I was getting shit for trying again, but I'm like, that's okay. It's okay. I

01:43:16.480 don't, my, my rule with that whole thing now is I don't take part in it and I don't interfere with

01:43:22.580 it. There is a thing about me. I became a symbol for something, which is on me because I, I made a

01:43:29.500 trillion carbon copies of myself and threw them out of a helicopter and said, think whatever you want

01:43:35.340 about me. So when people started to think bad things about me, that's how they use this image.

01:43:40.380 And that's, I can't go around the world and fix that. I can't make people that are mad at me,

01:43:45.560 not mad at me anymore. I can't like, uh, I can't confront this thing on a global level. Cause I'm

01:43:54.680 not a globe. I'm one guy and trying to live that way was what got me in trouble in the first place.

01:44:00.580 And the damage is done and I can't fix that. But what I can do is be a good man to my friends,

01:44:07.260 to my, on a one-to-one, I can shake one hand at a time. I can be a good father and I can take care

01:44:13.500 of myself. I can, um, constantly try to revise what I think is right and wrong, not depend on it,

01:44:20.700 but just keep asking myself. Cause I thought I was a good guy and a lot of moments where I wasn't,

01:44:25.860 and I have to go back and go, that wasn't okay. And try to make amends when I get an opportunity.

01:44:33.040 And it was really confusing to do all that. And then, uh, you can cut it out if you don't want it

01:44:39.560 set on the air, but you, you, you told me about this program. You told me about SLAA and about,

01:44:45.280 about a 12 step approach to what I was suffering from. And, uh, yeah, I was so amazed that you

01:44:52.260 didn't have that. You didn't have some of the familiarity with it. I never heard of it. And

01:44:56.160 I didn't think it was for me at all. You told me about it. And I was like, yeah, that's, yeah,

01:45:02.700 that's not for me. And, uh, you become such a role model to me through that program, man.

01:45:09.120 You've become like somebody that like, when you talk, I listen, when you want to know how I feel,

01:45:14.920 I know you mean it, you know, when you like, um, yeah, man, I mean, you become like just a real

01:45:22.280 role model to me, you know, you become somebody that I, uh, I aspire to be able to get through

01:45:28.100 some of the problems that I have. Um, because I've seen you get through them, man.

01:45:32.640 Well, look at that Theo, because you brought me into this shit. So it's like you, if you,

01:45:37.520 if you reach out to somebody that's on the outside and, and take their hand and pull them in,

01:45:41.480 they can end up teaching you something. And it's the same for me because like,

01:45:46.740 like when we were, I loved having you as a, I wouldn't have gone into it if I didn't know

01:45:51.600 somebody. And then by the way, you took me behind this curtain. I was like, I know a bunch of these

01:45:55.740 guys. I had no idea, but I remember like, I mean, to get a specific for a second, there was one point

01:46:03.300 in my life where during, when I got into this program where I was like in what we call withdrawal.

01:46:08.520 So I was like this crazy idea to me, don't have sexual release for several months in a row.

01:46:15.680 What? Like, I mean, since I first fucking came clear liquid, uh, I've done it every day.

01:46:24.460 Oh yeah.

01:46:24.940 And then what that did to the relationships of my life and my inability to feel real feelings.

01:46:29.780 And then the, the kind of reckless behavior and the things I did with other people that came out.

01:46:33.580 Um, but there was a point where I was like, okay, so just don't like don't at all. And the

01:46:39.680 thing I loved about it, it's like a time that's so important. I remember when you were doing that,

01:46:43.440 I was like, dang. Yeah. Cause I would call you, this dude's going deep. Yeah. And you're like,

01:46:47.860 how long has it been? And I'd say like two months since I jerked off and you would go,

01:46:51.740 what's it like out there, man? And when you said that, like, I think about that all the time.

01:46:56.820 What's it like out there, man? It was like, I'm an astronaut who cut from the court and I'm just

01:47:02.760 out. And that's what it started to feel like. I got out of the gravitational pull. I got out of

01:47:07.800 the cycle because every time you want something and you get it, you just go back to square one.

01:47:14.080 You keep going back to, to just, Oh, that's my cycle has just been like for years. I was texting

01:47:19.220 women. Right. And like, let's meet up sometime and we would never meet up. Right. And it got to a

01:47:26.020 certain point in certain years. I didn't even know if we knew who each other were anymore.

01:47:28.960 Right. But we would both, I mean, almost every day. Should we meet up this week? Yeah. I mean,

01:47:33.720 for years, but just little moments of trying to get approval. Right. Yes. And then going back to

01:47:38.600 like, and the group isn't like, everybody's not like everybody may, maybe people have some perversion

01:47:44.820 stuff, but a lot of it's just like kind of pornography, intimacy disorders, like inability to

01:47:49.740 connect. It's not like, well, it's huge. Uh, when you do the steps, you learn what, how you got to

01:47:55.920 where you are and you learn what, what in your history made you this way. Yeah. And you get some

01:48:01.780 guidelines for trying to undo it. And the thing about going through withdrawal is that by not

01:48:07.900 pressing the reset button, you go to a new place every day, every day, you don't do it. You're in

01:48:13.640 a new place. You feel new feelings. And I started realizing that my feelings, my actual emotions were

01:48:18.340 coming online for the first time really in my life. And, uh, and I saw everything really differently.

01:48:24.680 And I saw that everything that had happened with me was because of me. And by the way, that's great

01:48:30.800 news. Cause that means you could do something about it. Right. And, and that everyone else is doing

01:48:34.520 what they have to do. And so I had to start like being a man about it. And I can't like prove that to

01:48:41.420 the world. I can't like do, you know, a big gesture. I can just do it in my private life. I can talk to you

01:48:47.780 about it. People can see this, whatever, you know, I have mixed feelings about it. It scares the shit out of me to

01:48:51.700 talk about it. Yeah. Um, but, uh, and that had its own thing. Like I kept thinking, I have to fix

01:48:58.480 this. I have to fix this reputation. I have to go back to where people have at least a neutral

01:49:02.840 feeling about me. And I realized I just can't, I just can't. I, I, I, and also for some people,

01:49:09.740 the kind of people I would probably would want to know it's happened naturally. Right. And dude,

01:49:13.780 I was shocked whenever we would hang out that you thought so many people thought that you were like,

01:49:17.840 like such a pariah or something. I was like, dude, Louie, like people care, but they don't care that way.

01:49:23.760 Yeah. No, I'm the last one who gives a shit. Right. And not even in a bad way, but like,

01:49:27.440 no, I know what you mean. You wouldn't even seem like that bad of a guy. You know what I'm saying?

01:49:31.040 Like, well, I don't know. Some, for some people I am. No, that's a good point. Sorry. But, but those,

01:49:35.200 no, it's okay. Those, those for, for some people I'm a, there's a, there's a, you're a boogeyman.

01:49:40.240 And that's the way that is. And it's like, if I did a movie for Marvel and now I'm on a McDonald's cup,

01:49:45.580 you can still get. And I can't really change that. I made the movie. I, I did that. So,

01:49:50.180 and maybe it's good for those people in some way. I don't know, but, but, and I don't like the way

01:49:56.020 it affects people in my life and my family. That's, that's hard. That's what I still carry. And,

01:50:01.320 and I can't, but I'm responsible for it. That's the thing. And what it helps me, the pat, my past and

01:50:08.260 the way it's still present in the air around me helps me because my life was completely unmanageable

01:50:14.460 and I had no power to change it. And now I've changed it hugely. My life is so different now.

01:50:20.940 I have real love in my life and, but I need to remember like where I was, you know, and I also

01:50:29.340 need to remember what is important, you know? So, so I'm, you know, and I'm writing, I, I, I'm writing

01:50:36.680 novels because I, I don't jerk off every 15 minutes. It's really all it is. And I don't look,

01:50:41.760 I don't look at the phone because for a long time, the phone was a gun pointing directly at my face.

01:50:46.960 So I completely extricated myself from social media and from scrolling. I haven't scrolled in,

01:50:53.840 I mean, it's a, it's a guilty pleasure about once every month I'll go and look.

01:50:58.460 Uh, but the chronic looking, I had to, it would have killed me to keep looking at it. So I got,

01:51:04.700 I'm so lucky what happened to me because of the, what I was ejected out of. And also the culture,

01:51:10.660 since this happened with me in 2017, the world has gone completely insane. And, uh, and I've just

01:51:18.540 been watching, like, I haven't had to comment about it. I haven't had to pick a side. Yeah. I've just

01:51:24.200 been sitting back going like, wow, you guys are, I mean, like I'm on the bottom of the sea, but I

01:51:28.320 look up and I see, you know, like there's a, there's still a full on fucking battleship Royale up

01:51:34.480 there. And once in a, once in a while I see a body, like a blue body float down and I'm like,

01:51:39.300 Hey man, I remember you. And he's like, Hey, and we're all collecting. And there's more people down

01:51:45.120 here now than there was up there. And it's quiet down here, you know, and there's fish and stuff.

01:51:50.400 Yeah. Yeah. It's all right. Yeah. It is. Dude, it is like, um, I don't know, having a support group

01:51:56.820 and being in a, like being able to go to meetings and share what's going on. Listen to somebody else say

01:52:01.900 something that has unlocked something in you that you never could have unlocked. Yeah.

01:52:07.020 Fuck. It's huge. It's beautiful. Yeah. I mean, yeah, it's unbelievable. It's like you could spend

01:52:13.900 the rest of your life trying to figure that out. And then suddenly somebody just helped you get to

01:52:17.800 a new place. Um, one thing I love about meetings is like, you know, there's like the structure to

01:52:22.960 these meetings, like in any other 12 step program where you get three minutes to share. Right. And the

01:52:28.540 regiment of that, it's like perfect. It's kind of like the way baseball is perfect. Like someone

01:52:33.380 figured out just the right amount of feet to make the, you know, that, that, that, that the

01:52:37.400 throw to first is always close. Yeah. 12 step meetings. I like this perfect, this three minutes

01:52:43.640 and there's a spiritual timekeeper, a guy who just says at when you're one minute away from finishing,

01:52:49.780 it says one minute and you acknowledge it, you know, thank you. One minute, right. There's that thing,

01:52:54.740 but in two minutes you can get really lost into what a guy's saying. And you get to have this

01:52:59.660 moment where like a guy's going like, you know, I keep a lighter fluid under my pillow because of

01:53:06.180 the days that my father used to come to my room and I'd want to burn him alive. Thank you. One minute.

01:53:12.580 And I like these little interruptions and cause it reminds you, yeah, you're in your shit, but

01:53:19.380 wrap it up. There's other guys waiting to talk and the world's going around and it's, you know,

01:53:25.480 that was a long time ago, man. Get over it. I'm glad you're sharing it, but you only get three

01:53:30.240 minutes. Yeah, dude. It's Monday, brother. Yeah. That sounds like a fucking Thursday. Yeah. I need

01:53:36.860 to check in some shit about what I did today, you know? Oh dude. Yeah. Even things like, I mean,

01:53:42.740 I was looking at pornography the other day, just being able to like text somebody to say that to him,

01:53:46.880 you know, just like, and then just like, how many times do I want to go back to this feeling of after

01:53:51.300 I look at pornography, I just feel like empty, you know, or I just don't feel like myself the next

01:53:56.340 day. That's been the biggest thing that helped change it for me is like noticing that like the

01:54:00.280 next day I don't feel like myself. I feel like I'm a little scattered. I feel like I still need to

01:54:05.160 recover from something. I still need to like, like put my aura back together a little bit.

01:54:09.360 Yeah. Cause you ran away into pornography. So when you, when you, you feel you get,

01:54:13.300 it's like you froze yourself and the next day you start to thaw and that's uncomfortable.

01:54:17.520 It's like feeling your leg coming back to, uh, you know, after falling asleep, it's, it's tingles

01:54:23.180 and it's bad. It's a bad feeling. Uh, you want to be in one or the other, you know? So it is,

01:54:28.240 it's hard. The hard thing about being in recovery from addiction, something like what we have is that

01:54:33.620 you can look at something like pornography, uh, but it's, you're aware now. So you know,

01:54:39.120 there's a cost to it. Yeah. You know, there's a cost, but that's, but thank God, because you get

01:54:42.880 so much of life back and being able to tell another guy, like I'm, I'm doing this because

01:54:48.300 there's a lot of shame involved with sex and love addiction, like all this kind of thing. It's

01:54:52.460 when we tell somebody and I'm an alcoholic, people have a lot of sympathy for that.

01:54:56.480 Yeah. This one's a little tougher. So you really need the group because these are a bunch of guys

01:55:01.580 who get it. And so when you tell them, um, I'm struggling not to do this, the, the, the,

01:55:08.100 the genius of that is just that someone else knows it now. That's all that it's too much for

01:55:12.940 you to carry at some point for anybody who's an addict or not life got to be too much to handle.

01:55:18.960 It just was overwhelming. So you found a way to shift away from it and thank God you did like,

01:55:26.660 thank God I had that when I was a kid. I don't think I could have handled life without this thing

01:55:31.420 that was right there to soothe me. Yeah. If I didn't have that thing, I mean,

01:55:34.460 I found pornography and then I would write when I would get home, I would go,

01:55:37.600 I would look at pornography and stuff like that. Cause it was a way to make myself feel good.

01:55:41.520 It was like, I felt so horrible, you know, and I didn't even know I felt so horrible about myself.

01:55:46.620 I just felt like a fucking cavern, you know, I felt like, I mean, I felt like I didn't even want

01:55:55.160 to impose myself on people because I didn't, I don't know. I just, nobody had time for me. Right.

01:56:01.660 And so it made me think that I wasn't worth people's time. So I always just felt like I just

01:56:06.540 couldn't say what I needed to say. I just didn't want to waste your time. I didn't want to waste

01:56:10.540 your time. I remember that feeling. Cause you would see that I was a waste. Like if I could just,

01:56:14.520 how old were you? Probably 10, 11. I mean, imagine a 10 year old kid, like look at a 10 year old

01:56:19.660 kid's face and imagine that he feels like a cavern inside. That's a hard thing to carry. And so you take

01:56:25.500 on this thing that helps you just simplify life. Right. I do this. I, I search, I search,

01:56:32.780 I push, I push, I get to ecstasy. I'm calm. Right. And then it's homeostasis. It regulates.

01:56:38.720 It's just regulating. Right. And when you, if you're exposed to sex early in life, which I was

01:56:44.180 in a way that was, yeah, you get you, that's it. That's it. That's what you got. And then later in

01:56:50.640 life, when your feelings are supposed to be developing there, they're still under this muffle thing. So

01:56:55.360 they're not developing properly and you, and you're ashamed of what you're doing. Yeah.

01:56:59.520 But when you, the thing about a fellowship, it's just so simple. It's not God. It's not something

01:57:04.900 that's better than you. It's a bunch of guys who just have the same problem and you're able to just

01:57:08.300 go, you know, I'm having this problem. They go, yeah, I get it. They don't give you a solution.

01:57:11.800 They just go, I know it too now. And you go like, now I got two souls to carry this problem and I'm

01:57:16.440 there for him when he needs that. Yeah. And that just makes it a tiny bit easier so that you can

01:57:23.920 go to the alternative, which is why do I do this thing? It's because I feel like a cavern and

01:57:31.400 the detaching from the behavior and stopping the thing I couldn't stop doing gave me the

01:57:39.240 opportunity to go, what's in that cave? What's in that? Is there something in that that's worthwhile?

01:57:45.160 Is it, is it, how bad is it? What's wrong with the cave? Is it that I'm alone in there?

01:57:50.360 Am I alone in there? Uh, it gave me the courage to sit in the cave alone and take a look around

01:57:57.460 and go like, you know, with a flashlight, man, there's like crystals on the roof. It's fucking

01:58:04.880 cool in here. You know, how'd I get in here? There is a, there's a little, there's a little

01:58:11.360 door where does that go and starting to really be okay with, I'm just here. I'm in here. And then

01:58:19.560 a feeling comes that the kind of things I used to run from, you know, like deep sadness. I miss my

01:58:24.860 mom, something like that. I won't just have it. I just want to have it now. I just want to have it.

01:58:30.240 And I've got a new habit, which is that when I get that, huh, that used to lead to an addictive

01:58:36.700 moment. When I get that, ah, I know that if I pull away from it, it gets worse. It actually only

01:58:42.580 hurts if I pull away. But if I get up to it and I go, what do you got? And I see colors and I see

01:58:48.840 beautiful things, you know, and that's the potential is to, is to welcome every feeling.

01:58:57.980 And then you don't want out. And I love my life so much now that the last thing I want to do is,

01:59:03.680 is, is, is gray it out with, I know, uh, with a kind of chronic sexual half release fake thing,

01:59:11.380 watching a sad person on a video in a weirdly lit room. And I'm, I'm in it. Yeah. I just don't,

01:59:19.540 come on buddy. And I don't even know who I'm cheering for when I was in pornography. That's

01:59:22.840 crazy. Yeah. Which team are you on? Yeah. Yeah. And you're like, ah, tie, let's just have a tie.

01:59:28.320 Yeah. Um, but yeah, oh dude. Yeah. It's like, uh, oh, that sedative and it's just a full body

01:59:35.660 sedative, but yeah, I would, um, yeah, I didn't have it, it, it, it marred really my ability to

01:59:44.700 make a lot of connections because like, I'll even notice still in my life and I still have,

01:59:49.940 I still need to go through my steps again. I need to check in with my sponsor today, but,

01:59:54.200 um, like if I'm, if I'm face to face with a woman and they say something nice about me,

01:59:59.880 I can't stay there for a second. Really? I cannot like, even so a woman looking at me,

02:00:07.840 really? I just, I can't, I just have to. What happens? What's, what makes you run away from it?

02:00:13.400 Like inside of me, it feels fucking like, it almost feels like a dirty electricity comes inside of me.

02:00:21.240 That's, or just like shows up at the front of me. It's a power. It's a weird electronic. It really

02:00:27.400 is like touching a third rail. Yeah. Love and sex are both extremely powerful and they ain't all good.

02:00:34.000 It's what I learned after like months of not jerking off. And then I decided,

02:00:39.840 I talked to my sponsors like, it's time to try. Oh yeah. I remember that big weekend.

02:00:43.600 Yeah. We were all excited. I think I bought, I bought one of those Amish fireplaces. I can just

02:00:49.640 feel some of the distant north out there, but weren't you out of town? Weren't you? Yeah. Some,

02:00:53.860 somebody, you had to be in the totality of my first jerk off. Like you had to be in that one stripe.

02:01:01.040 That's right. In the Island. Um, I was in, I was, I was out in Shelter Island and, um,

02:01:07.500 and I said, okay, you're going to visit this and you're not doing this for pleasure. You're doing

02:01:12.380 this to visit. You're going to go to the country. You left. And I did it and it was like an electrical

02:01:20.120 shock. It wasn't like this pure pleasure. And I realized that's what it's always been like,

02:01:25.000 but I've been putting like wet towels and, and asbestos and shit over my whole life so that I could

02:01:31.280 barely feel it. So I had to really, really rub hard and, and with the most penetrating fucked up

02:01:36.640 thoughts in order to find it. And I've been doing it since I was a kid. And I'm like,

02:01:40.080 I can't believe I felt that as a kid, as a child. Wow. That's crazy. Cause I really felt

02:01:45.260 it's raw strength again. And I said, I don't, my, my little conversation I have in my head

02:01:51.760 with this presence I call Wally, it's just my own thing. And I said, I don't, I, after I did it,

02:01:57.300 after I came, I said, that's no joke. And while he said, no, it's not. And I said, I think I need

02:02:05.480 some rules. I should not go there alone very often. And I should never go there without,

02:02:11.920 with somebody who I don't trust. And while he says, that sounds smart kid. And that's what I've

02:02:18.660 been living by. I've been respecting sex as a very hot fire. That's beyond electricity. Your feelings

02:02:25.720 are, your feelings are fires that you can sit by and warm yourself. But sex is electricity that you

02:02:32.160 have to deal with, with real discipline and thoughtfulness. And, uh, and so is love.

02:02:37.480 Cause that's a two way thing. You've got somebody else involved. Um, and the other thing that the

02:02:44.080 steps did was looking at my life, looking at really looking at it. And I was writing down my history of

02:02:48.680 my sex life, you know, from, it was the first assignment I was given. And I got to like, I've

02:02:54.480 blown up my life like twice really. And the first time I blew up my life, I looked at that moment,

02:03:00.060 I was writing it and I yelled onto the paper. I said, stop to myself. You gotta stop. And I felt

02:03:10.440 this huge remorse because I realized I can't hear it. He can't hear it. That happened. I can't change

02:03:17.900 it. Oh, but then I heard a voice say, please stop. And I realized it's my future self whose life kept

02:03:28.720 getting wrecked. And he said, please stop. And I'm like, I can hear him. I can fucking hear that guy.

02:03:36.000 And I can actually, I'm in this moment, but I thought, yeah, but I can't, I'm not strong enough.

02:03:43.980 And I asked the universe to, I just said, somebody fucking help me because I want to live. I want to

02:03:51.900 really live my life. And, uh, that was a big moment for me. So that's powerful. I can hear that guy now

02:03:59.160 saying, thank you, dude. And please keep it going. Cause you could still fuck it up. Like you, you have to

02:04:04.160 keep going in this better direction. So that's all just from this stupid 12 step thing that you get.

02:04:10.480 It's like a DMV fill out thing. Anybody can do it. When you go to these SLAA meetings,

02:04:15.420 they're like on zoom and stuff. There's like a hundred dudes on every meeting. It's like,

02:04:20.700 and a lot of it is young guys in like their twenties, some are 19 who can't, who are addicted

02:04:28.680 to porn because they were born into a world where they're being encouraged to go to their phone for

02:04:34.940 love and acceptance and power and money. And that's where they find sex. And it's all a dick.

02:04:40.920 They've, they've turned every human endeavor into an addictive act. And these kids are so

02:04:46.540 overwhelmed by it. Everything, the most important ones. Well, one of the, some of the things that I've

02:04:50.580 learned are, I mean, well, the crazy part is, so say I'm sitting there, I'm jerking off. And then

02:04:55.840 there's some, just because I'm jerking off on my phone, some County out in, in, uh, in Iowa is

02:05:04.280 they're losing water, uh, because they're having to run a data center. That's right. That's flaring

02:05:09.600 up a little icon. That's right. So now some kid can't even take a hot shower because some other,

02:05:15.620 cause you just need a little 40 year old kid. Won't stop jerking off somewhere in the distance.

02:05:20.420 Um, Oh, it's unbelievable. I mean, and here's one of the crazy things that we had a lady that came on

02:05:25.720 who, who told us about Pornhub and a lot of these sites, a lot of the, uh, content on there isn't

02:05:32.100 even consensual. Right. So now you start to realize, Oh, I'm jerking off to crime. Yes. I'm jerking off

02:05:39.160 to possible sexual crime. Like they found like 70% of it was non-consensual. This lady, Lila

02:05:45.040 Micklewaite is her name. She came on. It was fascinating to learn about it. Um, yeah. And if you're,

02:05:50.420 you're jerking off to anything on that site, you're supporting that. Even if, even if the thing

02:05:53.940 you're watching isn't, is consensual, it's, it's all the money's going into the same pot. It's

02:05:58.820 financing this shit. That's not consensual. And, and then also one great thing about being in the

02:06:04.980 program and I've never really talked about it this way. I've talked about it with one other

02:06:08.100 comedian on here actually, um, is that there's, we have a buddy in the program named Steve and he's

02:06:13.340 awesome. And he runs a program called Valor and this isn't really an advertisement for it,

02:06:18.620 but, um, we, we do free ads for the Valor on the, on the podcast and, and it's a lot of young dudes

02:06:26.800 in there and, you know, and, um, I'm in some of the meetings and it's a lot of dudes in there who

02:06:30.620 are just going to, uh, who are getting help. Yeah. Because it's really hard to unlearn this

02:06:34.980 shit and it, and it does make you, it gets dangerous because it does make you an unthoughtful

02:06:39.020 person. That's the way I got into the trouble that I got into because I wasn't stopping and thinking

02:06:43.520 I was like so blinded by what I wanted that I didn't. And I would just get this basic feeling

02:06:49.080 of like, this is okay. I would tell myself that, but I wasn't stopping and thinking. And I, I just

02:06:54.740 have so many, you know, like when you're in a, if you have a power boat and you're pulling water

02:07:00.540 skiers or people on a tube, that kind of boat has a elaborate system of ignition. You know what I

02:07:06.500 mean? So that you don't chew somebody up with the propeller. So like when someone's in the water,

02:07:11.760 you turn the ignition off. And when you turn the ignition on, it beeps really loud

02:07:16.540 before you start the motor. And that's before you go in gear, you have all these movements before

02:07:22.060 you're harming. And that gives everyone a chance. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. So I got all these

02:07:27.080 beeps and triggers in my life now. Like, especially if I'm looking at a moment of, of ecstasy, if I'm

02:07:33.740 looking at something that's going to make me feel euphoric, I go, you might be being selfish right

02:07:39.260 now. Like that's an automatic thought to me now. Like you might, who's, who is someone paying for

02:07:43.920 this? Is someone looking like they're okay when they're not? Is somebody saying yes, when it was

02:07:51.160 tough for them to get there? Can you just wait a second? Can you cool off? Can you take a breath?

02:07:56.360 Cause you might be going too fast. You might be so desperate to get this moment. That's going to give

02:08:01.300 you that assuagement that kind of like I'm okay feeling that you're not thinking you're not in,

02:08:06.440 you're not in it. You're not in the room with somebody. You're not in the room with yourself.

02:08:09.640 Even you're not, you're hurting yourself. You're using yourself too. So that's new for me. That's

02:08:16.000 new. And, and, and it's become an installed part of me. So I just move slower and, uh, that life has

02:08:23.920 a speed. And if you can get on the same track with it, you're okay. Like the thing I get from like,

02:08:29.600 I, every morning I look at the sky, I just look at the sky and, and the world and nature. And I just,

02:08:34.740 the, the, the, there, there is, uh, a message I keep getting, which is that you're meant to be

02:08:41.520 here. You're designed to be here. You don't even have to look at it as like some conscious being

02:08:45.900 made you. It's just that you're of this earth at this time. So chances are you match if you're

02:08:54.380 willing to be in it the way, as long as you're willing to be in reality, the way things really

02:08:58.620 are accepting what's not there. And because we're human going for it a little, trying a little,

02:09:05.440 trying to make things happen. I think that the universe, when we fuck around to find out goes

02:09:10.760 like, huh, nice. Yeah. Nice. Yeah. And so there's the little, there's an edge there that you want

02:09:17.840 to be at where you're just like, I'm here, which means I'm, I belong here and I'll, everything that

02:09:23.320 happens will basically be okay with me if I really take it in as reality. And I don't try to just like

02:09:28.080 think my way out of it, but I'm a clever little fucking monkey. And I want to try some shit too,

02:09:33.180 you know, and it means I'll fall. Yeah. You know, try, try to try to try only as high as the fall

02:09:40.860 won't break you. When you get up really, really crazy high in life. You're too high. You're Madison

02:09:46.440 square garden and all this kind of crazy shit that I was doing. It's like the fall will kill you.

02:09:51.920 And, uh, cause it's not a human height. It's not human. And there's no oxygen up there and there's

02:09:58.220 no drag on your wings and it's lonely and it doesn't have it. It's not affected by your feelings

02:10:04.100 anymore. It's just this other thing. But when I went back to work and I was like, I'm doing clubs

02:10:10.960 again. How's that going to feel? And I'm sitting in the funny bone in St. Louis and the Coke, the

02:10:16.640 machine that sends Coke to the bar is next to my head and I'm sitting there and there's the smell

02:10:24.180 of chicken wings and pizza and I'm doing retail comedy. One, you know, I was happy as fuck. I was

02:10:31.880 so happy to be telling the jokes to people whose faces I could see and whose admission prices is,

02:10:38.620 they're giving that to me as a, as a gift and they're going home happy. And I got back to that

02:10:45.220 level of comedy and it was really beautiful. That's where I live now. I mean, I do the theaters

02:10:50.120 cause I'm still a fucking pig. I still want, I still like it, but one, some of them are nice to

02:10:54.300 some of them are nice. The Ryman and Nashville. Beautiful. I'm excited to come over there.

02:10:59.120 Well, dude, I just knew I came over to your place and you were making art and you were sculpting and

02:11:02.940 sending me stuff. And then you sat me down one time with a friend when I was over there and she

02:11:06.900 had made something and you were reviewing it or she was reviewing a project you had

02:11:10.640 made. It was an anim, it was like a, some type of a cartoon. I believe it was a silent

02:11:16.140 film. Yeah. Maybe. Yeah. It's a movie that I was starting to make and we were making an

02:11:21.520 animatic with charcoal. Yeah. It was just fascinating. Like, oh, this dude is a fucking artist, man.

02:11:27.280 And that's when I realized, oh, this guy really like, he likes being an artist, you know?

02:11:32.560 Yeah. It just feels good. It's just fun. Yeah. And if you can share this stuff, it's great.

02:11:36.300 And it was just, yeah, it was, it was great. And then you said this and I was like, wow,

02:11:40.180 this dude's really in his spot. But yeah, I agree, man. Having that, like having that,

02:11:45.420 that like need for attention from women or having watching pornography or watching porno

02:11:52.520 and stuff, it's taken a lot of things, moments in my life. You know, I was on, one time I was

02:11:57.580 on a vacation and with, with, uh, with my girlfriend, instead of like spending time, I was like,

02:12:03.140 like texting some other woman or I was like watching pornography. And it took us out of

02:12:08.260 this great weekend where we're supposed to, and it's like, and that call, it's like, you

02:12:13.720 know, I can never like get that right in a way, you know?

02:12:17.480 Well, because, but it's, it's understandable because you have that feeling that if you're

02:12:21.100 with somebody, you're too much for them, you're scared to be alone with her. You're scared.

02:12:25.860 So you're finding a way, you're finding a way to not be in the room.

02:12:29.000 Yeah. And it's just that old pattern though, that if I don't try and get it under control,

02:12:32.800 if I don't try to do better. And I think even this year has been tough for me. It's just like,

02:12:37.880 um, yeah, I just feel like work's gotten busy and it just makes me scared kind of a little bit.

02:12:44.400 And it's like, you know, and then popularity makes you scared and that's kind of scary.

02:12:48.920 And then you're just like looking at yourself and you're just like, what am I even,

02:12:52.440 you, you're like, I can't even feel like I can't even, the controls feel far from my

02:12:58.240 hand sometimes. Not an, not like I'm doing crazy stuff or anything, but just like, you

02:13:03.860 know, I just, I don't know.

02:13:05.720 No, it's, it is scary and it should be. That's the thing is, it's like another electricity.

02:13:09.800 You got to respect it. It's not, it's not a small, small thing being famous and it can

02:13:15.360 go bad and it's, it's your fault because you got into it. But that's, I don't know.

02:13:21.000 It's also a human thing to want to share your work and want to be out there, you

02:13:24.220 know? But once, when, when it goes bad, you get in this predicament of like, I want

02:13:28.840 to go to each person's house and tell them what really happened and what, you

02:13:31.400 know, the little things that are, that aren't in the way that's, you know, and

02:13:34.660 that's just never going to happen. And at this point with all, to me, I just want

02:13:38.340 to get, I just, I just want to live and I want to, like, I haven't talked about

02:13:43.520 this the way I'm talking about it to you.

02:13:45.260 And we can take it out if you want.

02:13:46.320 It's scary. We'll talk about it after.

02:13:47.840 Okay. But there's so many times where I just want to come out and tell people

02:13:52.700 like, I'm fucking sorry. I'm really sorry. I hurt people. And I feel, I've felt

02:13:59.900 like in the way that it was so hard to take all of that at once, that much anger

02:14:04.020 at once. It's like, I just don't have a sorry that covers it. And so, and I don't

02:14:10.540 have only one feeling. Sorry is not the only feeling I have. And so I don't want

02:14:17.800 to say something and I'm scared of the way that I, anything I say can be used by other

02:14:23.400 people. There's all kinds of fears that come up and I'm very raw in that space.

02:14:26.680 Yeah. But that's all because I made this, I'm making these choices to stay in this and

02:14:33.060 it's because I love the work and I want to share it. So I guess like, I really wish there

02:14:38.100 was like, I could have a simple kind of watershed where I can say just yes to everything that

02:14:44.320 happened. And I'm sorry. I really am. And I'm just trying to do better. And I don't think

02:14:49.540 I can prove that to everybody because it's a private thing. It's a one-to-one man thing.

02:14:53.960 It's not a famous guy act. But I got work that I want to share with people. I have work

02:15:00.680 that I think is worthy. And there I'm like, if you don't like it, you don't like it. That's

02:15:04.840 always okay with me. When I'm on stage and I'm talking and people aren't accepting it,

02:15:10.160 like, oh, that's okay. That's fine. That's fair.

02:15:12.700 Fair enough, man. And I don't, nobody owes me nothing. I'll just, I'm trying. We'll see

02:15:18.260 what happens.

02:15:19.700 Dude, I'm kind of like in a weird way. Like, I know this sounds maybe crazy to say,

02:15:23.960 it's almost like, well, I think so many of us probably needed, we needed a guy like

02:15:30.720 you to have some of the same problem because you have such an ability to look at things

02:15:36.220 and kind of like examine them. And it's like, we needed an astronaut. Like, I know it sounds

02:15:40.800 crazy, but it's like, we needed like a Neil Armstrong, like you walk out there and report

02:15:46.080 what you're feeling under your feet because it's like so many people are struggling and you

02:15:50.260 say things, dude, that like, I mean, the rest of us just cannot put it into words. And it's just

02:15:54.860 such a gift that you have, you know, because-

02:15:57.020 Well, it's been a little bit painful because-

02:15:59.260 I know it has.

02:16:00.220 Well, because, because I felt that and when it happened, like, hey, this is an opportunity.

02:16:04.780 I can tell people what this is like and I can really, I can, I can come back with something

02:16:09.300 great to say, but I just, I'm not, I just couldn't. Like, I just couldn't do it. I was too scared and I was

02:16:15.000 too fighting for my life and also worried about other people in my life. Everything I say affects

02:16:19.820 people that love me and people that I'm related to. And I can't just decide like what's going to

02:16:25.700 fix it. And also I'm completely confused by it. I still live with this thing every day. It's still

02:16:35.320 part of my everyday life. It still imposes limits on me every day. Um, and I still don't know what to

02:16:44.840 do about it. I really don't. It's really confusing, but so I wish I could feel like,

02:16:49.940 I'm like a shitty astronaut. I'm like an astronaut who's not cut. They sent the, I'm, I'm what's his

02:16:55.680 name? Don Knotts. In that, whatever. I think he did an astronaut one, right? If he did, he should have.

02:17:03.460 I think I, yeah, there it is. Yeah. The reluctant astronaut. That's me. Yeah. It's no good.

02:17:08.920 And, uh, I'm Gus Grissom. I blew the hatch and, uh, I just was, I was just too weak, man.

02:17:16.980 And I flailed through it. You know, I said some things, uh, um, out of confused anger. Cause I am

02:17:23.500 who I am on stage. I'm pretty raw up there, you know? So I'm not like vetting what I say. I'm not

02:17:27.900 careful about it. Um, you know, but you, you, you may be the reluctant astronaut, but I think it's like

02:17:34.360 what we all are. It's like, we all just want to try and like figure out whatever the truest stuff

02:17:38.620 that's going on inside of us. That's right. And, uh, and that's the part that I think you report

02:17:42.420 back. Like, I'm just saying like, well, life will, uh, you will never choose the hard road for

02:17:47.240 yourself. Never. And you're the choices you make in life are a combination of like, uh, fear. You do

02:17:55.920 things because of what you're afraid of to avoid things. You're afraid of most things in life. You

02:18:00.820 work for financial success. Cause you're afraid of being poor more than anything else.

02:18:05.780 And, uh, you work towards acceptance cause you're afraid of being alone. Um, yeah. And sometimes you

02:18:12.160 look at pornography, you do stuff like that because you're afraid of going in and sitting with, talking

02:18:16.120 with your spouse or your girlfriend about things that are scary to you. That's right. So that's how

02:18:21.460 life, that's how a person, and it's understandable. It's like people just do their best, but when life

02:18:26.660 throws a bomb in the middle of your life and, and, and, and you survive it, you are given this

02:18:32.620 beautiful opportunity to go like, to see everything from another angle and go like, what is, what is

02:18:39.080 even breathing? Like, what is even like, why do I put a sock on? Like, what am I doing here? And it

02:18:47.760 breaks everything that takes everything away and it goes, start again. And you look back at your life

02:18:54.100 and you go, that was a fucking mess. And you're met with real remorse about your mistakes. You don't

02:18:58.960 have time to regret when you're living life, but when it's cut off and you just go, wow, that was

02:19:05.720 fucked up. Uh, and I can't even fully fix it for some people. I just can't, I just, what do I do

02:19:12.180 now? Put a sock on maybe another sock, maybe on the same foot, maybe two socks on one foot.

02:19:19.080 What's wrong with that? And you, you get, I got my sense of humor back that way. So it's just like,

02:19:24.860 this is all pretty silly. It's all pretty fucking silly in a sense. Don't you dare take life

02:19:30.040 seriously. It's like one of my big things that even as a comedian, you sort of think I'm a great

02:19:35.180 comedian. Yeah. Lighten up buddy. You know what I mean? And, um, the shows I've been doing on the

02:19:41.440 road now are just there. I call this show ridiculous cause it's back to, I just want to be,

02:19:46.240 I just want to surprise people with what I'm saying. Yeah. And I just want to, uh, be a bit

02:19:51.980 of an asshole for a little, for an hour. It's just fun. Um, but also just seeing the, I don't

02:19:58.320 think I would have seen these things if life didn't force me to, uh, so it's good. It's good.

02:20:05.460 Like right now for me, life is just so fucking good, way better than it was before.

02:20:11.140 Would it be able to live in such fucking, I mean, just to be able to like,

02:20:15.680 really face some real challenges in your life. That's pretty fucking crazy.

02:20:20.160 I mean, you walk away going like, I can do that. Yeah. And, and it's, and what happened

02:20:25.640 that was terrible was okay. And it wasn't all terrible. Some of it was so beautiful because

02:20:32.660 when you're exposed to the hardest part of life, you're also exposed to the most wonderful.

02:20:37.920 Like I was looking the other day, I don't know why this is, but the word compass and the word

02:20:42.940 compassion, like they share the first, what, seven letters. I don't know why that

02:20:47.380 is, but you get some direction out of life, but you only find real compassion by seeing

02:20:54.860 real pain and you go, Oh wow. Life is really tough, you know? And then that, that's all

02:21:00.620 you need. All you need is to understand how much life can hurt. Um, cause it's, um, well,

02:21:09.180 I don't know, sort of spinning out with what I'm saying, but it's, it's, uh, uh, yeah, life

02:21:16.720 is, uh, better now. And I also, the, what's happened to me can be an example for other people

02:21:22.380 in like in fellowship. When, when I go to a meeting in person and I, and there's a guy

02:21:28.320 who's really hurting, his life's fucked up and I approach him and I go, Hey, you should,

02:21:32.120 and he's not sure about being in this program. And, uh, and he goes, Oh, I, I ruined my life.

02:21:38.880 And I go, do you know who I am? And he goes, yeah. And I go, I'm doing pretty good, buddy.

02:21:45.300 And, uh, the fact that my wreckage can be a mountain for folks to lean on, take a little

02:21:50.720 load off. That's a beautiful gift. Um, you know? Yeah. Well, it's been awesome, man. It's so funny.

02:21:58.940 I never really got to know you as a comedian. I mean, I got to know you on stage, but I've

02:22:02.600 gotten to know you, I feel like as a man, you know? Yeah. You're my brother. Yeah. I got

02:22:06.940 to know you just by being kind and being cool. And yeah, man, I just, yeah. I hope one day

02:22:12.840 I have a cool kid like you, man, that's creative and fun and brave and fucking weird and, you

02:22:18.780 know, not afraid to hide somewhere and fucking jerk off a little, but also be fucking cool.

02:22:24.220 Yeah. Yeah. Open up, stay open. Yeah. So I hope that one day I have a

02:22:28.920 cool kid like you. Um, and yeah, I just feel really proud that, that, uh, I just feel

02:22:35.700 like, yeah, thank you for being a role model to me, man. You've done, you do a good job

02:22:39.480 of that. And I think you should know that, you know, that you do a really good job of

02:22:44.820 that. It'd be an important to people, Louie. And it's definitely been that for me. So thank

02:22:48.660 you. Thanks, bro. Yeah. I think you're a brave dude. And, uh, yeah, man, I'm excited to see

02:22:53.540 you guys tonight. So get the fuck out of here. Shit's getting fucking gay, dude. But

02:23:00.160 this book is great coming out of your eyes. There's jizz coming out because it's backing

02:23:03.820 up. That's where the gauges comes out the eyes. Oh God. Yeah. It's true. That's true.

02:23:10.900 Oh, I know it is. Yeah. Oh, I've given, I did a four part series on it online. Um, Ingram

02:23:16.440 is great. It's kind of, it's like a, uh, it's a new kind of Tom Sawyer, but it's just

02:23:20.720 good. It's written well. It's not like, oh, this is a, a big name writing a book and that's

02:23:27.460 why it's going to be good. This book is good. If anybody wrote it, it's a magnificent. And

02:23:32.920 I'm so glad that you finally get to a place in your life where you feel, um, you have the

02:23:36.540 time and the ability, uh, to make such magic like this, man. Thanks bro. So this is really

02:23:41.020 cool. Thank you. Um, all right, Louie CK, thank you so much, bro. Thank you, Theo. Yep.

02:23:46.440 Now I'm just floating on the breeze and I feel I'm falling like these leaves. I must

02:23:52.540 be cornerstone. Oh, but when I reach that ground, I'll share this peace of mind. I found

02:24:02.660 I can feel it in my bones, but it's going to tell you.

This Past Weekend with Theo Von - September 19, 2025

#611 - Louis C.K.

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