Andrew Schulz's Flagrant with Akaash Singh - Marrying A Trans Woman & Uncut Patrice O'Neal Stories | Jim Norton
Episode Date: June 3, 2026We got Jim Norton on this week and it's wild, we're discussing" - He's LOVE of dirty talk - Getting caught - His start in Radio - Bill Burr's famous Philly rant - Stories of Patrice O'Neal - The Comed...y Boom Now - Marrying a Norwegian bombshell with a piece and much, much more - ENJOY! Timestamps: 0:00 Casinos Targeting Gambling Comedians 2:45 Pregnant Pro in Grandma’s basement 7:50 Dirty talking + Talking about it EARLY 11:02 Not having friends and family there 12:39 Insane childhood stories 15:07 Cheating 17:46 Dirty texts getting printed + Organic 22:23 Radio, Parasocial & Freaky women 25:23 Paraphilias, Run out of things + Pee 31:49 Being YOUNG 32:56 Dealing with shame + Gotcha culture 35:24 Tickling, Calling hotlines + C**king 40:13 Mental stimulation, T&B + I love you 43:56 Shooting up the clubs + Breast milk 46:13 P**n is HARD to do + Honesty 48:39 The Radio show + Burr Rant in Philly 52:31 Getting fired from Radio + “S3x with Sam” 58:54 Being inspired + Private 1:02:17 Getting back on Radio + Howard Stern 1:04:10 Biggest moments, Livestreaming + Rich Vos 1:14:00 Tough Crowd, Culture + Jim Breuer 1:18:10 Keith Robinson + Bill Burr mocking 1:21:28 Patrice O’Neal, Feeling “irrelevant” + Intentional 1:29:52 Evolution of comedy + Dice getting canceled 1:34:51 Comedy boom now + Dane Cook hate was fake 1:38:04 Jim trashing Steve Martin + Success as an antidote 1:45:35 Apologizing to Dr Phil + Comments being WRONG 1:49:59 Boxed in, Performative Allies + Loyalty 1:55:22 Dave Attell + Comedy after 9/11 2:01:38 Audience turning + Real Death threats 2:05:28 Early on Trans + Theo Von “controversy” 2:11:09 She got that thang, His wife + Judgement 2:14:39 Transitioning, Obsessed with jargon + Stand-up 2:20:02 Women are all the same + Safety 2:21:20 Who ‘s the bottom? Changing behavior 2:24:51 Talking about it on stage + Holding back 2:26:24 Everyone is lecturing, All insincere + Trans in sports This episode is sponsored by Kalshi. This episode is sponsored by Sesh. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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I was in Vegas one time, and I put $20 on one of those wheels.
Or I put a dollar on the 20, and they spun it, and it hit, and I won 20.
And I was like, fuck, I should have put 20 in 1,400.
And I'm like, ah, that's how it's.
That's why guys lose their house.
It's that.
I mean, it's a great story.
I don't know if it was Norm or Artie, but, like, apparently they did the gig in Vegas,
and there was, like, the most money they'd ever made on a gig.
And on the flight home, they were down 10 grand.
Yeah, of course.
They spent the whole, I don't know,
was a hundred,
I don't know if it was a million bucks.
I don't know like what these guys were making,
but like somehow they managed to lose the money.
Yeah,
I usually text and calls from Voss all the time.
His boss is a very bad gambler,
and he would call from Vegas.
He'd be there for a day or two,
and he would have blown through his money,
and he would need people to send them money.
I think that they booked acts like that on purpose.
I think this is,
and this is how smart Dice is.
I toured with Dice for three years.
I love Dice.
And he was the first comic to work to Venetian in Vegas.
Yeah.
So I remember we went,
to the Venetian before it was just
opening they'd never done comedy and he went and gambled
and he had a duffel bag full of money
and I think it was he dropped
2050,000 in cash
at the Venetian
and after that he got
a two year deal
to perform in the Venetian because
they're like oh this guy
he's going to spend he's going to perform for free
and I always wondered did Andrew do that on purpose
like he was a smart guy and he worked every casino
so if they think that you're a big a high roller
and you gamble they're much more likely to give you
So they book him four times a year.
He never gambles again and then he just cleans up.
Oh no, he did.
They were right then.
That is clever. You drop 100K at once
and you get booked for four shows.
Yeah, absolutely. And I always thought that might have been a
strategy because he went in there.
And he thought I was bad luck. He thought I was a mush.
And he was probably right so he made me leave the casino.
I was so upset. Yeah,
he was like, tell Norton he's got to go.
So I had to walk into another casino because
he was fucking down like $120,000.
I mean, what are you going to do in vain?
You know what I mean?
You of all people.
I know.
There was one escort I used to see
every time I went out there.
I would go out at night early
before the shows
and I would always see this one girl.
I forget her name.
And there was one woman
who would dress like a nurse
and come over.
Would you ask for this?
No, she just did.
Like her picture,
she had like a little nurse's hat on
and she would come over
and piss on me.
That was a great trip, man.
What's up, everybody?
Welcome to Flakey!
Today we're joined by comedy legend Jim Norton.
Hey, hey.
The sexual addict, first of all, I'm looking back into so many of your stuff,
and there's just these amazing stories because you've been talking on air for like decades.
So there's a lot.
But the one that Sam Roberts hits me up with, he goes,
you got to ask him about when he had a pregnant prostitute in his grandma's basement.
That was, you know, some we look back on and we're not proud of them.
That was, I had just gotten sober, and my buddy and I went down to New Brunswick and picked up a pregnant prostitute.
Because I would get them off at it.
My grandmother used to live in the basement of my parents' house.
But then she had a heart attack and she died.
But the bed was still there.
So I would bring.
Sometimes when you say these things, you're like, not a good time in life.
But we had her little living room down there and her fuck her, her book on Kennedy.
And we brought back a pregnant prostitute.
and she sparked up a crack pipe.
My parents were asleep upstairs.
And I think I had just gotten blown
or my buddy had just gotten blown.
And I just smelled.
I don't know if you ever smelled crack,
but it's a very distinctive smell.
It's like a medicinal smell almost.
And she was standing there
about eight months pregnant
and smoking a crack pipe
in my grandmother's,
my dead grandmother's basement
while I kind of was like,
wow, you're supposed to be a sober guy.
You're just getting sober?
I was worried my parents
were going to smell
the crack coming up into their bedroom.
So that was kind of a story I wish I didn't have to remember.
What would be the type of escort you got when you were in soap?
I didn't do it when I was drinking.
You got so at 18, right?
18, right.
So I started getting, going down to New Brunswick when I was about 18 or 19 when I first started
driving.
I never did it before that.
I would just drive down Commercial Avenue, Remsen Avenue,
George Street, kind of where the stress factory is, and I would loop and loop and loop for hours.
And find like streetwalkers?
Yeah, yeah, always, always streetwalkers.
And how old are you when you start with the streetwalk?
About 18 or 19.
And what happens at 18 where you're like, I think I'm going to fuck prostitutes?
I don't, you know, you strike out enough times, and then you just remember, I drove,
I would see that girl when I would drive by.
And it's literally, I don't know what a religious experience feels like, but the first time
somebody gets in your car and sucks your dick.
and leaves.
You're like, wow.
I'm home.
I am home.
It just felt like it was the addiction,
just kind of like,
it was like a dopamine shot.
It was like...
Same feeling from drugs?
Yeah, exactly.
Same feeling that I rush.
Okay, so you're freshly sober,
now you get this like rush.
Yeah.
And it doesn't feel like it's going to be
too detrimental.
Right, because you don't know
where it's going to go
or how much money you're going to eventually spend
or how much energy
you're eventually going to put into it.
What were you spending?
You know, back then, not much.
I mean, it was 20 or 30 bucks.
But as life goes on and you start doing better, you spend a lot of money.
I remember when Charlie Sheen said he spent 50,000 in a year, and the whole country was shocked.
And years later, I was like, what's the big deal?
What do you think the most you spent is?
I never, I was, the most I ever spent with one person was 1,000.
I never went crazy with, like, the high-priced, you know, it was just, it was volume.
I was a volume shopper.
Yeah, it was fungos.
Yeah, a lot.
Four or five nights a week.
Oh, really?
Once a day, sometimes twice a day.
Yeah, it was really bad.
It was just obsession.
Did you ever have to deal with pimps?
No, not really.
I was very paranoid.
Like, I was very careful when I would ride around.
It was like a ritual.
It was like, it was literally like I would ride around.
I would only pick up a hooker if she came to the left side of my car.
Like, it was bizarre how I would ritualize the whole thing.
So sometimes I would ride around for five hours and not get anybody.
and I would just piss into a cup
and keep dumping it out the window.
That's my life.
That's so funny.
You're like, I don't do gambling,
but I will find Streetwalker.
100%.
Yeah, I did that for years.
But it was also, like, my favorite part of it,
when I look back,
I remember I used to love talking to them on the way back.
Like, I was like, I used to enjoy the conversations after.
It was almost like I was lonely,
and I didn't know how to talk to girls.
And then after we had, like, sex,
I would chat with them.
And I always loved hanging with them afterwards
and having a conversation with them.
Yeah.
That was, I realized, like, that was kind of my favorite part of them.
But was it like the talks like, oh, you don't have to do this,
I can get you out of this, like.
Were you trying to save them?
Yeah, you do go through that where I'm going to rescue you
and show you would have relive, really, which I wasn't.
I had a girl say that to me.
She's like, you're a nice looking guy.
Why are you doing this?
You don't have to do this.
And it really affected me.
That was probably 20 when she said that.
And I still look back and go, like, that was a really important.
impactful moment.
Didn't slow me down at all.
But I made me think.
Did you ever date any of them?
Did it ever become like a relationship?
There was some that I would see after there was one dominatrix who I saw for a year who became a long-term girlfriend.
Yeah, I would fall in love quick.
I love, like I never looked at sex workers like they were less than.
I looked at them like, wow, she's actually spending time with me.
And I loved them.
I thought they were amazing.
Yeah.
So Sam said that, whoa.
He said that you love.
love the chat, like you love the dirty talk.
Like, Sam was like...
With him.
Can you explain who Sam is for people of...
Oh, yeah, Sam Roberts.
Absolute legends. You guys probably know from WW.
You know from the gym and Sam show.
You know him from Opie and Anthony. I think he was interning back.
Yeah, he would just send me voice notes about wrestling and I would jerk off.
But he said that like he would see you.
It could be seven in the morning.
You guys are on the radio. But like, once you're engaged in the chat.
Yeah.
Now, he also told me there's a story where you...
you were driving somewhere with him.
Oh, God, yeah, my road manager wasn't available,
so Sam came to help me sell merchandise.
And I think as we were driving back,
I think I was voice talking.
I think I was voice taxi, if I remember correctly,
with this one girl who I just,
once you lock in, man, it's kind of hard
because they're talking.
And I can never tell someone like,
oh, I'll get back to you.
I'm all lathered up,
but I think he was in the passenger seat.
The passenger seat was just ripping and saying dirty talk,
voice notes.
Yeah, I'm sending dirty voice notes.
But it felt like I was so comfortable,
with him I didn't care.
I mean, I knew the guy
for years. I'm like, sorry.
This is the, this is the negative side
of being friends with Jim Norton.
Once in a while, you're going to have to hear
how big is your clip while I'm flying
doing 80 miles an hour
down at 780.
Dude, that was a joke I remember
from your special,
what was it, Monster?
Was it Monster?
Maybe it's Monster Rain.
Montserrain, the,
I like a big pussy.
Like a Basset Hound?
Was it a...
Oh, a bastard hound might have been Monster rain.
poorly packed luggage
was one of the later ones.
You can see through snow pants.
Yeah, there was a lot of naughty references
to large vaginas.
When you were doing this, were you ever ashamed
to tell your friends? Like, was there a period of, like,
hiding? Or were you always open?
Certain things I was quiet about for a long time.
But, like, early on in stand-up, like, in 91, 92,
and I was still doing open mics.
And guys like Florentine,
who got me my first paid gig and Bobby Levy,
they would come and they would always, like we were all be on the same show,
and they would laugh at the stuff that was honest
and that was about my life.
And I kind of realized, like, wow, if the comedians think this is funny,
you should talk about this.
And it felt original and it was mine, so I didn't have to memorize it.
I just knew it.
So you were talking about this shit early on, open mics.
Yeah, like, you know, again, in New Jersey,
when we would do, like this hotel had an open mic.
It's funny, it's where I first met Ari Spears.
He was a kid.
His mom would bring him to open mics.
He was underage.
the time. He's been out of a long time, man.
And he was funny. You could see, he was doing
robocop. He was like, this kid is great.
But this is probably 91 or
92. So yeah, I started talking about
all this. But you limit your options when you're
talking about that stuff. What do you mean?
Certain guys don't want you to open for them
because we're dirty. Yeah.
And, you know, you understand you're
not going to have necessarily a TV
route.
You know what I mean? Like, there's no way to
make big clit, tonight show clean.
How do I?
say that in like euphemisms
where I can get that through on TV.
So you realize early on my path is not
going to be that. And then what about like friends
and family?
My parents didn't see me for seven years. I didn't
let them come because I never wanted
I saw you ever see a movie fame
there was a, it was like
it's from 1980. David Bowie movie or something
like that? No. What am I thinking about? Irene
Caro is in this one.
But there's a comedian named Ralph Garcia
and he performed and he
kills in front of his friends and then
bombs when he's drunk and alone in front of an audience with no friends.
And I always remember that.
I'm like, never have your friends there because you're going to get a fake reaction.
So I was like terrified of having my friends there.
Oh my goodness.
It's embarrassing certain things.
I never understood these guys that are like, they want to bring their friends.
I walk into an open mic, there's 40 people.
I'm like, why there's so many people here?
And they're like, oh, so-and-so is doing his first open mic.
I'm like, what?
Never, dude.
He brought 40 people to see him bombs?
To this day, if I see someone I know in like the front row or something like that,
Like, if I could, I would just remove them and put them in another part of it.
Dude, I would rather have fucking Oswald in the front row than my friends.
I hate seeing a recognizable face.
My parents come, always in the back.
I don't want to see.
I want just a, you know, blackout light, and they're in the back, and I don't see them.
I don't want to see.
My buddy Sean came with his family one time to Carolines, and they don't know.
The people just sat them, and it was right up front of my buddy and his family.
It's brutal.
I was just, you know, it's humiliating, because I know what I talk about.
That's why I don't want you parents there.
You're talking about this shit I'm talking about.
What do they say after the show?
Oh, you were wonderful.
My parents are great.
Like, they were just so happy.
I stopped drinking and fucking, you know.
Oh, so they were supportive and everything.
100% with everything in my life.
So where is this like, because all of your childhood stories are kind of insane?
Are you aware of how your childhood stories are insane?
Or did you think it was normal because that's what everybody was doing in the neighborhood?
To me, they feel very, very run of the mill.
and very uneventful.
Even when you would talk about them
and get these big reactions.
The reactions I would get from people told me,
like, wow, I guess everybody didn't have this childhood.
But, I mean, it was all me.
Like, my parents did the best they could.
But, you know, we were in Edison,
it was kind of, it was in the 70s.
It was a different time.
Yeah.
You weren't supposed to be monitored all the time.
Right.
You know what I mean?
If you and your friends snuck off
and did whatever you did or...
Yeah.
It was what it was.
Just throw a couch on the highway or whatever.
Oh, that's when I was a teenager.
Yeah, yeah.
This bodybuilder I knew you used to,
to come by, and me and his 13-year-old brother would hang out, and we would do self,
we would just do destructive things.
Like, we tried to set the couch on fire and push it onto the highway.
You were hoping a car would hit us.
We were very bad people.
We were very bad people, Stanley.
But you did push it in, right?
Oh, yeah, that went onto the highway.
And it just didn't end up hitting a car.
But, like, somebody could have died and horrible things could happen.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
But I was 13 at the time.
I mean, you didn't care.
What about the story with the ice cream on the furry seating?
Same people.
Yeah, we would ride around.
We used to take motor oil and put it in these margarine dishes.
We would find people's open car windows and throw motor oil on their dashboards.
It was just piece of shit.
Like, it really was.
It was like I was the living embodiment of Reddit when I was 13 years old.
I was a living message boy.
That was the idea of trolling.
And one time we found ice cream, a big thing of melted chocolate ice cream.
We put it all over this seat.
And this guy had like this fur back, you know, the fur seat cushions.
And we came back like five minutes later and we saw this like 80-year-old woman wiping chocolate off her husband's back.
So he just sat on it.
He sat right in it and she was just wiping chocolate off this old man's back.
And it was victory.
I felt like that.
Because it was harmless.
It didn't hurt them.
I mean, now I look.
back and I'm like kind of like oh that was not
nice to do but you're 13 I mean
no that's a great problem come on people
are shooting up schools now all we did was
I mean come on an old man's
bad everything I mean come on
that was fucking innocent
did you always know that you were like
another funny thing about
you I've always appreciated it is like
how inclined you are to cheat
and how you haven't gotten better
at it. Cheating with women
yeah like as long as I've known
you've gotten caught cheating
I have, yeah, and I've also gotten away with it a lot.
And the reason I don't...
Until, you know, well, with my wife, I've been really surprisingly good.
I mean, what am I going to say?
You've been good at not cheating.
And not cheating.
Oh, yeah, yeah, I think that's very funny.
I've learned what to do.
I'm fucking...
No, I haven't, but it was because I was...
But when I met her, I was kind of at the end of my run.
It doesn't mean it's easy or that I'm not still a fucking pervert at heart.
Yeah.
But it was like one of these things where I had...
done it for so many years so recklessly.
And I, you know, I got busted by a couple of different girls.
So I really liked that I hurt people and I ended relationships.
And I'm like, you got to fucking stop.
Guys, here's all of our dates in 30 seconds.
June 5th and 6th, I'm going to be in Virginia Beach.
And then August 8th, I'm going to be in Halifax, Nova Scotia, with S&L's Cam Patterson,
Lucas Zelnick, and Mark Gagnon, the addressshoulds.com for those.
And then also we have the Life Paddle Classic charity tournament, June 4th.
Shout out NeuroGum for doing this with us.
All the proceeds go to BabyQuest, which is the IVF charity that my wife and I work with.
Many other people work with and just helping people start families.
Very expensive process.
So it's alleviating that pressure for them.
And NeuroGum has the dad bundle, the Andrew Scholl's dad bundle that they're selling right now on their website.
And if you buy that or you just want to donate, you don't have to just buy that.
But the proceeds will be going to Baby Quest so you can help support.
Also, come out to the tournament.
It would be absolutely great.
You can sign up.
You can play.
And yeah, we're just going to raise a bunch of money for people trying to start families,
playing the most fun sport that there is.
Awesome.
I hope to see you guys there.
June 4th.
Paddle House in Dumbo, New York.
Love you guys.
Mark, what you got?
Great news, everybody.
I'm going to many, many cities at the end of the year.
I'm going to Plano, Texas, Chandler, Arizona,
in Pasadena, California, San Diego, Detroit, Michigan, and Salt Lake City, Utah.
It'll be a wonderful time, and I can't wait to see you guys all there. Alex.
And I'm doing a lot of stuff in New York this summer. We have canceled comedy. We have another
canceled comedy show. That is June 24th. Head over to cancelcomedyx.com. And then I have another
one of my tennis series that is on July 25th. And you can get that at the all loveclub.com.
See you guys there. Peace.
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You tell the story about when the dirty text got printed.
Oh, my God.
That was, and she's one of my best friends today.
That was my girlfriend at the time, who was great.
She was fucking dirty.
She would do anything.
But it didn't matter.
It's like when you're an addiction, it's not about, you know what I mean?
Like when you're a compulsive over-eater, you have a stake.
It doesn't mean that you're not going to go home and fucking pig out on junk food.
It doesn't mean anything.
Yeah.
So I was dirty texting with this woman.
and it was really fucking good.
And I saved it,
and I saved it to my hard drive
because I was going to jerk off reading it later.
Because that's the best part of intrigue.
It's the going back, the euphoric recall.
I had a 12-step sponsor teach me that.
Euphoric recall.
I'm like, fuck it, that's exactly what it is.
He's not tweedling my nipple.
He's going to recall to the AA guy.
It was such a good dirty talk session.
and it was a Saturday morning
and I was doing radio five days a week
so I was like Saturday mornings I slept in
and I just I heard
Jim
Jim
get up
and I opened my eyes
and my girlfriend was standing in the
bedroom doorway
and I just knew something was like bad
something bad
had been discovered
because she never would have woken me
on a Saturday morning
knowing that that was my weekend
and her term
her tone of voice I just knew I was fucking in trouble
she goes get up
and I'm like what
and she goes
I read your fucking conversation
I'm like what do you mean
I'm like I didn't do nothing
and then she mentioned the girls
like the
screen name or whatever
what might have been like an aim chat
I don't know whatever it
but she mentioned something
that I knew she had read it
and I'm like
she goes
you printed it
I had sent it to my printer
by mistake I meant to save it
to a hard drive
but I had printed
seven fucking
pages of filthy text
and the reason she found it
is because she was taking a college course
and had printed out a paper
to hand into her professor
and fucking got it out of the thing
and she goes, thank God I
looked through it before
because it was her paper
and me going, can I
smell it if you put it on my nose?
No. Oh my God.
And I firmly believe
that if she had handed
that in, that she would have
stabbed me in my sleep.
Like she,
because she was, she had a temper,
and she was very,
let's say, volatile at times.
And if she had also,
and she also,
there was an email address I had,
which is gone.
I deleted it that day.
But I just realized,
like, wow, man,
she almost got the mother load.
And, uh,
I don't have this more.
That would,
oh,
what is it a mother load?
What's in there?
It was nothing,
it was literally stuff.
It was just a,
volume of dirty talking
and perverted pictures. Just people
sending me shit. Like you know what I mean? It was more
intrigue than anything else. What is the
dirty talk like? Like what are you trying to get into?
And is there a moment where you
cross like the threshold
of normalcy where you're like seeing
how they're going to respond? It has to
be it has to be something she's into
talking about. It doesn't turn me on
at all if it's me
making her. Like I that doesn't like
hey pretend you're a pretend you're
this. Yeah, now you do an improv.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Which sucks for everyone.
Improv is never fun,
especially when you're fucking trying to get off.
I mean, I need organic.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Because somebody's real perversion, I think, is very sexy.
It's like, I love that.
There's a weird connection with somebody when you're being dirty
and they're being dirty
and they're like showing you things
that people who have known them for a decade don't know.
Yeah.
So even if you're not into the things they're talking about,
you just like the fact that they're into something?
Yeah.
Certain things I probably wouldn't term.
Like, you know what I mean?
Like, there's certain things I might not like doing,
but I would never judge somebody.
Like, I'm okay with you talking about anything you want,
even though certain things wouldn't probably turn me on,
but I would never shame somebody or scold them for being that way.
Or it's been better than that.
No, I'm in no position.
But, like, you know, the word sniff became like a great intrigue word.
Like, if a girl says she's going to put her ass on my face,
I'd go, all right, and she's going,
and you're going to sniff it.
I'd go, oh, this is a, I'm on to something here.
This is a fucking, she's locked in.
She gets, you know what I mean?
She understands these weird trigger words.
As you got famous, did people, did girls start, like,
knowing that that's what you're into and start kind of curating their identity around that?
I don't know, like, a lot of times you don't know them when they're coming in.
So you don't know who they are before they show up.
So I don't know what their real mentality was.
before. But you know how it is.
When you're known,
especially with radio, because it was 25 hours
a week, it was, you know, people
really know your life. And this is the
heyday of radio. That's another thing that we got
to understand. So, like, this show Opie and Anthony,
and I want to get into that a little bit too, but just
like, radio is as big as it possibly
can be, and this show was
massive and also, like, a
cult following.
And also kind of like a rebellion
against traditional radio.
And also massive in New York City.
And like Jersey, Philly, like, try to stay around the city and people see you.
Like, you are existing within the space where it's being consumed.
Boston, yeah, it was, it was regular radio for a while.
I was on regular, like, terrestrial radio for a couple of years.
This is with CBS?
This was, yes, CBS.
It was originally in Finney Broadcasting, I think, but then it became CBS, kind of bought it,
and Viacom bought the whole thing.
And we eventually got fired.
But we came back on satellite in 2004.
You know, you're talking for there's no...
We had like literally four-hour show at first,
and there was no commercials at that point.
So we would play Carlin bits
just so we could stop talking.
But your first break was an hour, hour and a half.
So on slow news days, personal shit comes out
because you have...
August was a rough month.
Oh, man, because everyone's on vacation.
Not much is happening.
And, you know what I mean?
It's like, you know, it's August 11th.
And you're like, yeah, what's going on?
Read the text, Jim.
Yeah.
Bring them out.
work off together when I was seven.
You just start spitting stuff out
because you have to fill four
and at some points five hours.
People get to know you to become very invested
in you, in a good way and a bad way.
So then these girls who are like maybe a little freaky
are like, okay, I got my guy who I can
kind of really open up to and
kind of explore this side of me. Yeah,
I think so. Have you met someone
a woman with your level of freakiness?
Oh yeah, I met way dirtier than, of course. Yeah, yeah.
Women are the same as we're not.
They're not allowed to let it all hang out
because the line would be out the door.
So they have to be more selective as to who they show.
Like, if you're a guy and you're like, I'm a fucking pig, so what?
But if you're a woman and you're like, I'm into fucking spanking and dirty,
like, you know, there'd be too many.
You'll be overrun with people willing to engage.
Oh, it's interesting.
So they hide it.
But then when they meet someone, then maybe they're a little more open with.
Yeah.
Can reciprocate.
I think so, yeah.
They think they know they're not going to be judged.
I always thought women knew I was never going to judge them either.
Like, whatever you're going to say to me,
I'm never going to think that you're a fucking piece of shit
or your less.
At least I hope that's what it was.
Was there anything that they said, dude?
Was there a girl that went to a point
where you felt uncomfortable?
Not really, no, because it was all
talk. Like, you know what I mean? It was
can I pitch you a list of parapherias,
and then you tell me if you have any experience? What is paraphilia?
A parapheria would be just like
some type of different erotic fixation.
Sure, okay. So like, for example,
acrotomophilia,
that's people with amputations.
Not my thing. I heard a cop one time
reference it we called them stump fuckers
guys who are into that
face
stunted
have you done it?
No, not my thing.
What about a wheelchair?
I never had
but I don't think I would be
inclined not to. I don't know
to be real honest with you. I've never
encountered that. But if I had
been, it would depend on what our
conversations had been up till
then. Just throwing them legs around.
I don't know if I would like that or not, though.
You know what I mean?
If I, you know, you've got a fucking puppet legs.
I got to throw one.
Like a wing shield white person.
Yes.
I don't know.
I've never encountered that.
But I never talked about it either, so I can't.
I don't know.
What about potophilia?
That would be a foot fetish.
Oh, yeah.
You know, foot fetish stuff.
I got into at one point.
It's almost like you start to, it's like you run out of things.
Like, you know what I mean?
Like, how much ass worship can I do?
And the answer is a lot.
a whole bunch.
But then you start getting into other things
and someone says the right trigger word
and all of a sudden it becomes a thing.
It's very weird.
You love the talking.
The talking I love.
So if a woman just comes and wants to get straight into the sex,
do you like that or you need the buildup?
I need the build up.
I envy people who are tactile
and just like what's in front of them,
what they feel is what they like.
They know those guys that can just climb on a woman
and put their face in her neck and go,
just pump away.
I envy that.
What an easy life you have.
To you, my friend.
I've never been able to do that.
Tweedle these.
What if you were getting fucked and he was better than me?
Like, it's just psychotic.
So it's all mental for you.
Well, almost all mental, yeah.
The physical feels good, but it's almost all mental.
What about a...
Celerophilia.
Sillerafeelia.
That's the soiling of pants.
Like peeing pants.
Peeing pants could be...
I wouldn't want somebody shitting their pants.
That'd be a bit much.
That'd be a rough go.
That's a rough haul.
So when he pulls down their pants and they're like,
ha, and it's filled with pudding.
They're like, that right.
But you like the pee stuff?
Yeah.
What is exciting about the pee?
You sound like me in the mirror.
With a pissed on to my shit.
Who are we?
What happened to you, Jim?
I don't know.
That's a great question.
I first experienced it.
as a kid. I don't know.
And I've told this story before,
but there was this bully. I used to
blow this kid. He was a bully.
I was probably...
Wait, hold on. There's been
more context, Jim.
I'm going to come back a little.
This was in Edison, New Jersey.
And I have a time frame
because of when I was...
We moved from Edison to North Brunswick.
My first day of school in North Brunswick
was Halloween of fourth grade.
So I know that anything in Edison
that happened was before Halloween in fourth grade.
So this bully I used to have oral sex with
And he would have happened first
I don't remember how it started
But I would blow him in the like the
The hallway in the apartment building
I was probably
Yeah, I was young
It was like first grade
But he was like a year older than me
He wasn't like he was 51, he was mine
Yeah, yeah yeah
So were you gay back then?
I mean no
At that age
I mean I certainly would have a hard time
Selling straight in court
Your Honor, he was my bully
He was almost fantastic
The evidence is overwhelming
It's a crime of passion
That would be a rough one to get across
But no, but that was
Again, it was, I definitely liked it though
Like you know what I mean
I enjoyed doing it
Like so I, my therapist told me I was molestab
I don't see it
Like I fell in it
I showed up for it, you know what I mean
I enjoyed it
I was thinking
It's also funny
It was funny that he bullied you, but that wasn't the bullying.
I like that part.
Yeah, that was the bonding after the beat up.
After the beat up.
That was the apology.
But I was terrified of this kid.
I remember being really scared of him because I remember him and his friend came out of a building one time.
And I was so scared.
I ran.
And I fell and I split my head open.
So I have a photo of me with a bandage on my head from October of 73.
So I know that by that time, we were already active because,
I have a date stamp on a photo of when I fell and split my head open.
But anyway, the pee thing, we were in the public pool.
And I was at that age where I didn't, like, I would go underwater and I would suck his dick.
And I didn't think anybody around the pool could see.
Like, I didn't know.
Like, that's where you're at.
So he peed in my mouth.
And I didn't care for that.
And I came up and I'm like, don't do that again.
And I went back down.
Is this all real real?
Oh, it's all real. Oh, no, this is real. I mean, trouble it.
What a weird...
You are blowing Alex's mind.
This would be a weird bit to write.
Public pool,
1974.
But he peed in my mouth and I said,
don't do that again. And he said he wouldn't.
But I went back down.
I went back down and he did it again.
So I learned a real lesson about trust.
That was...
So anyway, at that age, that was the first time I experienced that.
But I was young because I didn't feel.
think that anyone above the water could see.
Like, you know what I mean? Like when you were a kid, you hide, you're like, no one can see
me. So that's kind of these weird, vague, murky time stamps I have on when this stuff
started happening. Do you look at that period of life with grief or like victimization?
Do you feel that you were taking advantage of in that moment? Or were you just like,
oh, I'm a kid being a kid.
Both. I don't know if it was taking it. I don't like to play victim in anything.
Like, again, I enjoyed a lot of it. It felt good. Again, there's a lot of it's murky. I don't
remember a lot of it, but the stuff I do remember, I felt good doing. So, you know, I've always
told my therapist that I just kind of showed up for it. Do you think anything happened before then?
Because I'm like, first grade, I don't even think, you know about sucking dick. I can count
10 before fourth grade. Like, there was 10 different people in my neighborhood that we were sexual,
but we were all sexual together. And again, back then there was very little parental supervision.
You know, your parents were doing what they were.
doing. But yeah, I used, oh my God, these two twins, you're asking about pee smell. These two twins,
no, they weren't twins. No, they weren't twins. They're brother's sister. One was my age. The boy was my age,
and the sister was a year older. Yeah. But for some reason, they both would wet their pants a lot.
Like, I don't know what was going on in their house, but they were both pissing their pants a lot.
So I would lay behind the bushes and I would get both of them to sit on my face at different times.
She liked the way it smelled.
What? I'll be a piece.
appearing in Tampa.
See, this is why I say, dude, is a jersey, bro.
Jersey's different, bro.
So, Al, you never had experience like that where, like, you were peeing on people or getting
on.
It's weird enough being around y'all with the white boy fun, and this is next level of shit.
This is the most extreme version.
Yeah.
The honesty is so admirable.
Yeah, I'm also comfortable hearing the stories.
Were you never insecure about sharing it?
That's what I've always been, like, shocked by you, is that, like, you're around people,
especially comedians who will, and obviously you're
fucking proficient of this too. Like if someone's
going to come at you, they better be ready. But like
you never felt like they would use any of this to belittle you
or... You know, people
make fun of you for sure. I mean, but you
whenever you put something into the
stratosphere, you understand that it's going to be
used to make fun of you, but I didn't
care. I'm not sensitive about it. It's life
experience. Like, if it's got to...
You were never sensitive? What's that? Like, you were never
Maybe coming up, you know, you learn, you lose shame the more you talk about it.
The more you own something, the more you talk about, the less shame you have with it.
Because shame is the killer.
Like, you know what I mean?
It's shame for things.
It's self-hatred, which again, there was a lot of that mixed in as well.
But talking about it and making it funny, I mean, it was like, I don't care if they like it.
You start to not care because I don't believe anybody.
I know all of you have the dirty secret.
Everyone has them.
I don't care if you have a totally regular marriage,
there's something you like that you'd be humiliated if all of us knew.
That's the same for every person.
The more school teachers I met that wanted to be spanked,
the more people I realized were never what you think publicly,
you lose shame because you're like we're all...
And if anything, you're being more honest than everybody else's.
Yeah, but I don't even think I'm doing anything great.
Like, it's just I just like to talk about it and be funny with it.
it and I don't judge other people for it.
And weirdly, no one seems to judge you about it.
That's the thing. And maybe it's your comfort with it.
Like when I say nobody, I mean like, especially in the comedy community.
It's just like, oh, yeah, Jim's into like weird shit.
Anyway, where there are certain people who like hide maybe their deviants.
Oh, yeah.
And it feels like there's more judgment there because it's like, hey, you're lying.
Well, we're a gotcha culture.
We like to get people.
We like to nail people.
Gotcha, got you.
But if you talk about it and you're not, you don't care if they know about it.
There's no joy.
It's more about people's desire to punish other people for stuff.
So it's not even the thing.
It's the desire to punish.
Of course.
And the thing is just a tool that they're using.
100%.
That's all fake.
So you're doing like the M&M 8 mile before M&M 8 mile.
Like you're owning all these things about yourself.
So it's like, say whatever you want about me.
I already said it.
Yeah, it was more Jim Norton yellow brick road.
What about tickling?
Kinosmoelagni.
Interesting fetish.
never my thing.
I'm familiar with it as a fetish,
but it's never done anything for me to do it.
I might have met one woman who was into it.
And I don't, again, I don't think it's crazy,
but it's just, you know, it's just too childlike for me.
Like, you know what I mean?
Like, somebody being dirty I like,
but somebody, innocence I don't think is sexy at all.
Right.
I like dirty.
Like, you know what I mean?
Like locked in a fucking perverted brain.
But somebody being tickled and coochie cooing them.
Would you ever do, like,
like hotlines, like call up, like, those, uh, there's a name for it, telephonicophilia.
Really?
Yeah.
Oh, all right.
But like, I would see these things like 3 a.m. where it's like call for a sexy phone call or whatever.
No, I remember, though, there was, it used to be like in these, in like these magazines.
This is for the internet.
They would advertise these dirty phone lines.
So I remember there was one where you sent in money.
Like, I mailed in cash and through the U.S. mail.
And I got a code with a bunch of phone numbers on it mailed back to me.
And you would call any one of these phone numbers, and one of the women would answer.
And you had 30 days and talk dirty to you.
So I would call it all hours of the morning before.
I just wanted to work a day job, probably in late 80s.
And you would call them, and different women would answer, and you could talk dirty.
But a lot of times they were in California.
So it was 4 a.m. when it was 7 a.m. from...
Some woman got really mad at me.
She's like, you want to talk about that at this time of morning?
And I'm up on, I'm really fucking angry.
I'm like, I paid $90 for this month.
There's a lot of money back then, man.
When you have no money, $90 is a big nut for a month.
Yeah.
So I was never being on the 900 numbers, though.
Right.
I did them.
But it was never my thing necessarily because it was too much.
Ooh, what are you doing, baby?
And that performative shit never did anything for me.
Oh, yeah, because you need to be real.
It needs to be real.
Yeah, it's more of a turn-on.
If it's somebody's...
But what about the prostitutes who you know, like, their...
The goal is for them to not be real, I would imagine.
Like, how do you lock into their deviance?
That's why he liked the talking part after.
That's why I like the talking part.
But also, I didn't do anything crazy with them.
Like, I wasn't, it would have to be something like if they were advertising, like, kind of fetish stuff or domination, then I would assume that it was something that they, but anybody, I never wanted somebody going crazy and going like, oh, oh, because I'm like, look, I know the fuck I'm giving you.
It's not worthy of that.
You know what I mean?
I'm giving you a five here.
Let's keep it at a five.
Would you tell him stop if they were doing that?
No, but I would indicate that I didn't need it.
Like, somehow indicate it or just talk normal.
Like, I didn't need porn star.
Would you rather than do the opposite?
Would you rather them?
I didn't want to complete honesty.
I mean, nobody wants that face.
Some people like to be berated.
They like to be like, oh, you're fucking dick short.
I wouldn't mind that.
I would like that.
Oh, cuck stuff.
Oh, yeah.
You're into the cuck stuff.
Sure.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Have you ever watched?
I have, yeah.
Your girl?
Only with one girlfriend I did.
No, I did it with two girlfriends.
One girlfriend I just watched fool around with another girl.
Oh, but that's not.
But her boyfriend was there and we liked it.
Wait, so the two of you as boyfriends were watching the two girlfriends.
The two girls together and then we would each fool around with our own girl.
Like, we didn't swap.
But then with one girl, we got escorts twice.
And I watched her blow this escort.
and it was really hot and dirty,
but I wanted an escort
because I didn't want anybody who would get attached.
Like I didn't because it was in my house,
so I didn't want somebody who knew where this woman was going to be all the time.
But that, it hurt the relationship in the end.
Like, I realized, like, that stuff is so much better talked about
because when you see it, real jealousies can creep in.
On your part?
A little bit.
I became insecure.
The third time we tried it,
like the rule was,
whichever one of us wants to stop the experience,
can stop it without any hesitation.
but I indicated I was kind of getting uncomfortable
and she got a little annoyed at me
so that kind of blew up into more
but by then I didn't you know
first of all I don't blame her for getting annoyed at me
I was cheating and she knew I was cheating
I was in no position
to go like hey now you
easy with that nine inch penis
I just but that
but it was the final nail on the coffin
for relationship that I was destroying anyway
I was ruining it
and so you never did it again because of that
experience. Right. I've talked about it. I love to talk about it. I love the idea of it.
Like, I love when a woman will talk about ex-lovers and guys she would rather be fucking.
It's hot to me. But so many things in fantasy are okay in fantasy, but in real life, you know,
that's when things get messy. Yeah. It isn't interesting, the mental stimulation.
Like, that's what they would say about, like, Stephen Hawking's still being able to get a
boner or whatever like that. Sure. It is, yeah, it's not just a purely physical thing. I don't even know
there are that many guys that exist like that.
Who could just, like, bury their face in a girl's neck and that fuck.
There is enough of them to where...
I wish I was one of them.
Like, you're like, I wish I was one.
Look, a new girl?
A new girl? Sure. But a girl you've been with forever.
Oh, yeah, yeah. You need something.
You've been married for 20 years.
You think you're just burying your fucking head and your wife's neck?
That's different.
No, there needs to be something.
Even with a new girl.
I'm trying my best. I'm T and B right now, dude.
Touch a bus.
Are you really?
Seriously?
Yeah, I never came off.
Oh my God, you're so lucky.
And I do consider myself lucky, to be honest with that.
You really are?
Those guys that were like, oh, man, I'm too
pumpy.
I'm like, oh, man, you should thank God
every night for that.
Your life is so.
But he's only been one-women.
I haven't had very much other sexual stimulation.
So it's easy.
Oh, you met her really young, fell in love him?
Precisely that.
That's an interesting life, man.
you haven't, and you still enjoy the sex?
Great.
That's a great way to be.
Like, that's a healthy, like, that I envy.
I think it's partially because I have no other frame of reference, really.
That's exactly it.
Like, if you're raised eating broccoli, that's all you're ever going to have.
If it's sweet.
Yeah, broccoli is delicious.
But the minute someone shoves a fucking, you know,
dick in your mouth.
You're like, wow, broccoli has been lacking.
Yeah, exactly.
I feel like an African tribesman.
You know what I mean?
I don't need gushers.
I don't think about Oreos.
Yeah, exactly.
I'm just eating an elder.
Can you say I love you when you have sex to somebody that you actually love?
Yeah.
Yeah, that's the whole thing.
Ah, it must be fun.
What are you mean?
Tell us, Jim.
Tell us, tell us, tell us.
You guys.
You just ask this, can you be honest with someone that you was honest with it.
Sure, but I can't say I love you because it breaks something.
Like, if I love you, I want it to be.
dirty and you're talking about other guys
you'd rather fuck and if I just
met you I can say I love you
because it's not real it's flipped
this is like the Madonna horror complex
100% yeah wait a minute
explain this he's playing this so like you're
you do love the person oh very much
obviously you love your wife you love your girlfriends
you've been in but you're
transporting yourself to this like dirty
version when you're having sex
and that breaks the frame
yeah so whatever is the like
you know like if I was with a
a sex worker
I didn't want to call her like
oh yeah you fucking horrid
it wasn't like that it was more like
I liked it to be kind of nice and like
oh like she's she's kind of enjoying this
and being dirty with me like
and then there's been times where I said I love you
like oh man there was one
one girl we were having
we would kiss a lot
and we were going to have sex
and I didn't
and before I put it in she's like
I have condoms if you want
and when she said if you want
I was like, uh-uh.
And she was like, all right, if you're ready to be a daddy.
And I just put it in and I had sexually without a condom.
I think I told her I loved her.
It was so fucking hot.
And did you leave it in?
Not with her, but I had with a couple of other ones, you know.
Yeah.
I actually do like gambling.
Turns out.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You were shooting up the club with prostitutes.
I shot inside, yeah, a couple times, yeah.
Immediate paranoia afterwards?
The day, the next day, I think the last time I did that, it's so funny.
It was, again, these weird frames of reference was, I believe it was at the end of the year in 2011.
Because I remember afterwards, she and I were sitting around talking, and she knew who Patrice was,
and he was in the hospital at that point.
He had a stroke, but he was still alive.
So I think that was at the end of 2011 that I did that.
And I saw her a year, 18 months later.
You know what I mean?
And she was very sexy.
I remember I had full unprotected sex with her, told her I loved her when I came inside of her.
And then...
Did she have a nine-month-old kid?
Well, no, but she was pregnant when I saw her again.
Oh, shit.
She was pregnant when I saw her again, but it was like it was a year and a half later.
And we didn't have sex.
We just fooled around a little bit.
But she was so honest.
She goes, yeah, it's a client.
And she goes, he got me pregnant.
And I told him, I get the abortion for this much money, but he didn't want to do it.
And I know how much money he makes.
And now he's going to be paying X amount of money.
percent for the next 18 years. So I'm like, I realized like, wow, I would have been in big trouble.
But I was very happy she told me that. Like, she was very honest about how she got pregnant and
with who. Not the name. You were fooling around with her while she was pregnant? Only one time,
but I don't think I knew she was when she came over until she came over. But, you know, again, we had
always kind of stayed in touch. But she came in her then, right? No, not the second time. I didn't have
sex when she was pregnant. Oh. This was like, you know, and again, 2012, maybe I saw her.
We just had oral sex.
I didn't have sex.
I would never been into pregnancy.
Like the, I mean, the idea of pregnancy, some guys fetishize it.
I certainly didn't want it in my life, as it's pretty obvious.
I'm like, we're going to avoid that at all costs.
But I never, like, a lot of guys like pregnant women, they like lactating, and I just want,
that's not my thing.
Yeah, I knew a dude that would, like, find women on Craigslist and buy their breast milk.
And he was like, that was my favorite thing.
And he's like, if you paid, like, an extra $1,000, they would let you rip it from the tab.
And that was, like, his thing.
loved it. Jesus, what else did he enjoy
doing it? Like, taking toys from kids?
That's basically taking the kids' lunch.
For all of my
dirtiness, I've never wanted to steal a kid's fucking lunch.
Hey,
hey, I'm going to jerk off and eat those luncheables
for I hear your fucking kids
screaming the other room.
Yeah, that's never been my thing. With your level of, like,
profile, but also, like, being so
public with certain levels of deviance,
did you have people reaching out to you
that maybe had some
type of profile themselves that were like, hey,
keep this between us, but I would love to
explore this thing with you. No,
I wish I did. Really? No,
man, no, no other people in public
life never.
I mean, you know, there was women in porn who I got
to know. And anyway, like me, because I didn't talk about them like they were
a punchline. Like, I'd like people in porn.
I respect it. It's a fucking hard job, man.
You know, guys used, I've been on porn sets and I've
hosted the Avian Awards twice.
And the first time I hosted was with, it was
January of 2004 with Jenna
And so I got to go to Jenna shoot.
And it was like a fucking craft service.
It was like any film set you're on.
And then you go one level lower.
And it's like there's a crew and there's a director.
But, you know, it's kind of lower budget.
And then I went and saw like with that just one guy with a camera filming a woman.
And you see the different levels.
But that's a fucking hard job, man.
Porn is really difficult.
Like so to have sex in front of a room full of people with an unsexy atmosphere.
You know what I mean?
There's a director.
that's why you hear dumb music
but you don't hear the director
oh come on let's go
look this way a little bit more
I'm gonna need the pop
I'm gonna need the pop
and you're like
I don't know how these guys stay hard
or how these women stay into it
it's fucking crazy
so I've always respected
people in that business
so they kind of
they tended to like me
because I didn't think they were
you like
I didn't look at them like that
right
and I always hate people who do
because it's like
you jerk off looking at them
motherfucker
yeah so who are you
what the fuck are you
you with your fucking dumpy spouse
oh look at her
she's a whole
He married a fucking lady with skin tags on her neck.
Don't fuck.
Fuck you.
I always hated that attitude about, you know what I mean?
They always deserved a certain level of respect that they didn't get, I thought.
Right, right.
What about, like, industry people, do they feel comfortable opening up to you and telling you about their stuff?
Industry as in the business room?
Yeah.
No, not at all.
Oh, it's surprising.
No.
Really?
There wasn't, like, more honesty around you because you're so open?
Oh, maybe comedians, sure.
I would imagine.
Yeah, yeah, that type of stuff, sure.
But I mean, like, as far as at large, no, I think it made people a little uncomfortable.
Do you think you were making people uncomfortable?
At certain point, sure.
Like, certainly things.
Early on.
Yeah, or even when you're on the radio.
Like, people in the business don't want to hear that shit.
Like, you know what I mean?
It's weird to hear some of that stuff.
You know what I mean?
Like, to me, it's not weird.
None of it's weird at all.
Can we talk about how insane the radio run was a little?
Because, I don't know, it's just, as I've, like, been in the business for a while,
there's like these ebbs and flows with certain things.
And like when it's happening in the moment, it feels like the biggest thing that could ever exist.
Yes.
And it's interesting how like five, ten years could go away.
And it's not that people forget that it happened.
Right.
But like it doesn't have that same, you know, velocity.
It doesn't have that same like illumination.
Not at all, yeah.
It is a kind of crazy experience because I remember O'B. and Anthony, especially like in this part of America having like a stranglehold on culture.
Yeah.
And, like, just insane.
Like, you even think about, like, early things that pop certain guys, definitely you,
but, like, Bill Burr's thing in Philly.
Do you know that thing where he, like, was right?
But that, that's an opening Anthony show.
I was on that show.
You were on show.
I remember it happened, yeah.
And I remember it happened to him in Cleveland, too.
And Bill, uh...
Because was Bill frequently on...
This was right.
We were the first show on, we were the first, like, show of our kind on satellite.
It was October of 2004, whereas Stern came on satellite January of 6.
So we were there for about 14 months.
before and this was only when X-M and series were separate. So we had a we started small. We had to
rebuild our audience from when we got fired, but it was a very kind of hardcore show early on.
And Bill would be on the satellite show all the time. But then we started, we got this weird
split deal, which is when we were doing five hours a day, where we would do the first three hours
on regular radio and satellite together. And then the final two hours, we would walk down
the street, we would broadcast walking down 57th Street, go back to the XM studios, do the final
two hours on XM alone. So when the regular radio audience started to hear us, they knew me,
they knew Opie and Anthony, they didn't know Bill, because Bill wasn't famous then, and only the
satellite audience knew him. So a lot of these audiences and these traveling virus shows were
from Terrestrial Radio, this new K-Rock show we were doing. So they started booing Bill.
They booed Dom Marrera.
I think they booed, like, Jimmy Schubert.
Like, real Philly guys.
And Bill just did his legendary rant.
And they eventually turned it around.
It was incredible.
Yeah.
So in Cleveland, they tried doing the same thing to him.
And I remember he was having a meltdown.
He was so fucking pissed off that they were just booing him.
And I remember talking to him, and we were in the hotel room.
And it was like, you did something amazing.
And they're just trying to recreate it.
Like, they don't hate you.
They heard about the moment and they want that to happen again.
They wanted him to do it in Cleveland.
They understood that the moment was so great what he had done organically.
That's one of the first viral stand-up clips.
It really is, yeah.
It's like Russell Peters and Bill Burr.
Yeah, that clip, I remember.
It was shot like with like not a very good camera.
It looked like it was from the audience or something like that.
I think it's multiple phones.
Oh, was it what?
There's a part where there's no video.
And what I remember, it's just audio.
And then a couple of people spliced together other angles from the crowd.
Oh, they did.
Okay.
Okay, so you guys get fired.
So you're on regular radio.
Yeah, in like 20 markets, yeah.
Okay.
And would that be 20 markets?
Would that be huge?
Like, is that decent?
We were on New York.
For radio standards, I'm saying.
Very big.
It's good size for FM for what we were doing.
I mean, Rush Limbo was on probably two or three hundred states.
And Howard was on what?
Probably 50 or more.
He was big.
Howard was always.
bigger.
Okay.
But ONA had a reputation.
They had been fired in Boston.
You know what I mean?
It was like...
It seems like the radio guys that got this, like, escape velocity.
Because Charleman's the same thing.
Like, you got fired from a bunch of different markets, then finds a home that's going
to support him.
That's right.
And see you later.
Same thing with Howard.
Same thing with you guys.
So you guys get fired from regular radio.
Yes.
What happened?
Well...
Is that the sex with Sam thing?
Sex for Sam.
Yeah.
It was...
The Sam was...
Sam Adams beer. They sponsored this
thing that only they would do every year
where people go around and have sex in all these weird
places in New York
and if you had sex you would get points
and if you had anal it was a two point conversion
and they would have a spotter
from the show go whether it was a producer
or a video guy just to watch the couple and make sure they were having
sex and not lying and they would call in
right now we're in the fucking we're in the dressing
room in Macy's and he's having anal with it
like it was that type stuff
So this is on regular radio
The terrestrial radio
Just to put things in perspective
Like the things that people get
And I hate the word like triggered or offended
It's just like so overused
But like
Culturally now
I feel like we would be way more sensitive
To something
There's like no way this could happen
Yes we can say certain words now
But actual action
Like this hijinks
The radio hijinks
The radio hijinks happening back in the day
Far more insane than anything happening right now
It was crazy
And they were having sex all over
the city.
Sam Adams sponsored it.
They sponsored it.
A major beer company.
They would sponsor.
The guy, the head of the company would always come in.
He was, because they were on an ONA was massive in Boston, too.
So he was from Boston.
So I didn't go out.
I was not a spotter.
I wouldn't go out and do it because I guess it was a sometime 2001 maybe.
I'm worried you enjoy it.
Jim, Jim, you there?
Get out of there, Jim.
Shut up.
Shut up.
No, it would be more like, get out of there, guys.
But no, me and we had been,
Lewis Black and I had been arrested for the radio show
probably a year before.
We were on this bus called the Boyer.
What happened with the arrest?
Well, there was a company that came in.
This is, again, we were on W&W in the afternoon.
It was an afternoon show.
And these people came in and they were driving around
with a bus with giant windows
and half-naked girls, like topless girls,
promoting the Voyer bus.
So Lewis Black, myself,
and a couple guys in the radio show,
get on the bus.
And we're just kind of going around with them as they drive through seasonal rush hour traffic in December of 2001.
That's what the city needed.
It was amazing.
Giuliani was mayor.
They needed a break.
But there was all these naked girls just showing their kids to people.
So Lewis and I were calling in the radio show, just kind of updating them with what was going on.
And apparently Clinton was he had a route that was mapped off, President Clinton.
and we got too close to his route
so they pulled us over.
Like CNN had gotten on the bus
and done a live report
and we went on to 6th Avenue
to go back to the studio
and there was probably like 12 cop cars
all these white shirt like fucking cops
like you know high-ranking cops
and they arrested us
because we were getting too close
to Clinton's marked route.
They're afraid Clinton was going to come on.
They'll ruin every dress on the bus.
So they arrested us and we went down to the tombs and spent 27 hours in jail.
Just for being near his route?
No, no, for being on the bus.
But they didn't know what to charge us with.
They didn't know.
So the prosecutor tried to charge us with promotion of the lewdness of a body.
That was the charge.
And the judge threw it out immediately.
He said, you're wasting everybody's time to the prosecutor.
But it was just a lesson.
And I don't ever want to get arrested again.
Spent some time in the tombs, man.
27 hours, I had to shit.
and one of the guys told me to
he goes,
you got to take toilet paper
and roll it up
and shove it in your asshole
to stop the shit from that.
And I,
Pat, thank him very much.
It's a transformative moment
in their life.
You're like,
I do that anyway.
That's fine.
But anyway,
that taught me never to get arrested.
So when they did sex for Sam,
I didn't go out.
So anyway,
there was a couple,
one of the locations
they picked was St. Patrick Cathedral.
And our producer at the time,
or our associate producer
was going,
don't do it,
don't fuck.
he was right because there was a couple
that had anal in one of the
pews or the, I forget where it was.
Not the first time.
Not, what's that?
Come on, dude.
The church is going to come for you, bro.
It's fine.
I understand.
It might be a little familiarity.
Right?
It was definitely not the first time.
It was probably the first time
that the person having it done
wasn't lisping going, what's happening?
What's happening?
There'll be no consensual anal in this church.
Yeah, so anyway, there was an arrest made,
and then the Catholic League, blah, blah, blah came after the show.
Oh.
God, you had the religious institution come after the show.
That's a little different than you have some, like, fledgling business that's busting around the city.
Oh, yeah, this was...
You have the power of God.
Yeah.
They were very angry, and in fairness, we shouldn't have been fired,
but they suspended the show.
This was, like, a few months into a three-year deal.
and I was finally getting paid
and my salary was supposed to double.
At the time, I was making 52 grand a year,
like a grand a week,
and it was just about to double to 100 grand
and we got kicked off the air before.
Yeah, you already spent that money too.
Oh, my God.
I just moved into New York.
I was paying, I was living in New Jersey
with Jim Florentine and his girlfriend.
Three of us were splitting $900 rent.
We had fucking black mold on the walls.
It was a shit hole.
So we move into New York
because the prices are a little.
little lower now because of 9-11.
A lot of prices went down after 9-11.
So I got my own apartment, $2,400 a month.
I'm like, I'll be fine.
We're kicked off the air.
And I remember looking up at my, I'm going to throw myself out the 20-second floor.
I was like, I was really, I was like, I'm done.
My life is getting good.
I'm starting to sell theaters and it's fucking gone.
I was so, I was suicidal.
But anyway, we got kicked off.
Opie and Anthony got paid for the whole time.
Did you guys get paid?
I got paid for six months.
that was it. But they didn't have to pay me because I didn't
I hadn't, the contract hadn't been done yet. But they did the right thing.
They did the right thing for me and they let me go on other shows.
That's why I love Ron and Fez so much because they would always have me on back then.
Got it, got it. All these shows would have me on to promote my shows because they knew I didn't,
you know, they knew I was just the fucking the third wheel guy. I didn't come up with this.
This is such a full circle moment. So I grew up on like Cod 97, BLS, a little Z-100.
Yeah, Star and Buck Wild. Yeah. So I missed Opie and Anthony.
but I remember this story and that inspired a time in my life where I just started having sex in public in different places.
Wow.
Really?
Oh.
And I did it never be true heroes.
Look at that.
And I did it in the church.
Did you really?
Alex.
Sorry.
Well, here goes the show.
Yeah.
Now the church was it empty?
Yeah, it was up.
All right.
Good for you.
Yeah.
So happy.
I'm so happy.
It's six degrees.
Do one of details.
Yeah.
Exactly.
How many people are in there?
Yeah, but that's that's six degrees of separation.
Oh, nice.
Were you ever a connoisseur of public sex?
No.
Never a bathroom stole?
Nah, occasionally the idea of it, but I like private and dirty.
Wait, but when you hooked up with the escorts, wasn't that, like, in the car?
Brought him back.
Yeah, but I would find a desolate spot.
Oh, okay.
I mean, I liked, again, I liked private and just one-on-one.
I was never into group things, or that was never my thing.
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So you guys get back on the air, two years later.
This is the Series XM deal.
2004, yeah.
Okay.
Is this, does this begin like the heyday of Opian Anthony?
Yeah, I mean, they were big before, though.
They were big before I came on board.
I mean, before I came on, but it was only on in New York.
Opian Anthony was only on in New York.
And eventually we got syndicated to Philly, but by then I was on the show.
Is it true that Howard Stern said that you guys?
weren't allowed to talk about him.
Yeah, at one point he did.
It was, I always thought Howard handled Opie and Anthony wrong because he knew that they were
a funny show and he's like, he was accusing them of ripping him off and they were definitely
influenced by him.
Everybody was.
And they would say it.
Open would say it.
But I always thought he should have like looked at those guys as, hey, these guys are funny,
give them a shot and they would have worshipped him.
Like, because they really respected Howard.
Of course, yeah.
But it just got so.
Combative.
nasty and back and forth.
And, you know, our show, and those guys, we're not afraid of any show at all.
Like, it was brutal, and there was no one was going to say anything about Opiantha without a horrible response.
So what do you mean?
So, like, you guys are clocking every other radio show that's talking shit, and then you're immediately hammering back?
You would get word, and if Howard talked about you, you would absolutely know, because he was the biggest.
Of course.
But, yeah, at one point, they weren't even allowed to, I remember when Nicole and Nicole Smith had a show.
show and her lover was Howard K. Stern
and they couldn't even say his name Howard K. Stern
because the guy down the hall, Al would dump out.
They had a dump button on live radio.
Okay, she said one of the FCC violations.
So he would dump out every time they would say it.
So they had to reference around it.
But yeah, that was at the end of the terrestrial run.
That, he said that they couldn't talk about him.
Wow.
What do you think was the event that catapulted the show?
I mean, sex for Sam made it pretty legendary.
Them getting fired in Boston before I even came on, made it legendary.
What about with you guys during the series run?
We had some funny moments at Sirius X-M.
Like with the cult following, like John Valby, who's one of my favorite comics of all time, Dr. Dirty.
He would play dirty piano.
He was prolific and he was brutal.
But we were in the building above the Steinway.
piano place. That was our building. We were on the fifth floor, I think, and Steinway was downstairs.
So he went into the Steinway thing because he's an accomplished pianist. And he played in this
beautiful Steinway store. He started singing his fucking filthy songs at full volume, you know,
eater pussy, grab her test. And we played it live on the air and they threw him out of the
store. But that type of stuff got fans like, you don't know what's going to happen on this show and
you don't know where it's going to happen. That began. And cherry darts.
Cherry darts?
A bunch of girls would come in
and they would like,
you would have a cherry
and they would put whipped cream
in their assholes
and you would throw the cherry
to see who could get closest
to the asshole
and whoever did
would win whatever the prize was.
Got to eat the cherry?
Yeah, that was the winner, yeah.
But I think I ate all the cherries.
Sweet boy.
But like stuff like that,
like all this stuff you couldn't do
on regular radio,
which we then did on XM.
It's almost like,
I'm sure you see streaming now and how these streamers will go out into real life and like they'll interface with people.
You guys are kind of doing like an early version of that where this guy's going to the Steinway store and interfacing with real employees that are now on the radio kicking him out.
When we did the walkover, which was again, the technology then was so weird.
How the fuck could you guys do it?
Well, we had portable units and we would push a shopping cart with equipment in it.
From 57th Street, Hayrock to 57th Street, the Steinway building.
It was about a two block walk.
group of listeners would come and follow us
and interact with us and meet with us
and Voss would do comedy.
We would have Voss. Because Voss is fearless.
Like, he's the rottenest man
in the business. He's a mean little bastard.
He's also the sweetest.
So he's the nicest guy behind your back.
This is Ridgne. He's a complete
piece of shit when you're in the room and he's nice
when you leave the room. He's like, he's really funny.
He's the epitome of
like he... Also, he takes a joke well.
This is something, there's a lot of guys
who can dish it out, the second they start getting made fun of,
they get all fucking sensitive.
Yes. Voss likes it.
Voss's problem is he's greedy, so he'll always
punch himself out. And the key with Voss is
to just cover up and take
the beating, because when he's giving you a beating,
if he gets momentum, it's over.
He gets momentum and his little legs start going
down hill.
And you're in deep trouble.
There's a great cliff of you guys.
Collins on.
I wonder if it's Jim and Sam, or you're on
opening, but Collins's on. He's wearing like a Purdue something shirt.
Oh, Boilermakers, yeah.
Purdue Boilermaker's shirt. And like, Colin starts going and you guys know that Voss is coming
on the show. And Colin's like, ah, Voss, I can't do, I can't do a good Colin.
How long do you think before Voss makes a joke about this shirt? How long? What do you
think? He's like, yeah, something, you eat chicken? You need a lot of chicken, whatever like that.
Like, you guys call out what's going to happen. Voss walks in the room and then what is the
Immediately this down and goes, are you doing colleges again?
He hits one, he hits another, right?
And then he does a third and it doesn't land.
And then literally Colin goes, see, that's your problem.
You're too greedy.
He had us.
He had it.
Every time, they were on my podcast.
The people's favorite episodes of my podcast are when Anthony comes on or when Voss and Colin Ron.
Bro, the one where Voss is on and Collins on and you're there.
And you go, my dad once said, and Voss just goes.
goes, last teeth.
And it flew over your head.
You missed it, I think, when he said it.
For a second, I was like,
I couldn't believe he had just said it.
Because I'm hard to shock
with a mean joke. And it's such a funny.
I'm like, you can't not love that.
It was one of the meanest things anybody's
ever. It was such a barbaric,
rotten thing to say.
So Vost is, yeah, Vost is like a guy
who really, and he's fearless.
Rich is fucking fearless.
and he would go on and we would mic him
and he would go into these places
and do, I forget what we called.
Like stand up in a diner.
In a diner or a bus.
He just started.
Club soda candy would go,
ladies and gentlemen,
Rich Voss!
And he would just walk in
and start working the crowd.
And people, you know,
they didn't want to make it,
but they hated it.
And we would walk over
and then finish our show at XM.
But it was like that,
the homeless shopping spree,
stuff like that
where they would get all these homeless people
and just invade them all.
and a thousand listeners would show up.
But they treated the homeless people well.
They would buy them clothes, buy them shoes,
and the homeless guys were like celebrities on the show.
On the show.
Yeah.
They were loved.
Like, we would joke with them,
but they were really treated well,
and people would spend a lot of money on them.
And then once XM and Sirius merge,
they shut a lot of that down.
The antics.
Yeah, they wouldn't let any more nude girls in the fucking...
Oh, wow.
Is there a video of Voss doing this?
Oh, wow.
For last comic standing, please welcome.
Richard Voss.
Yes.
Is that fine?
Yeah.
Hey, how we doing?
It's good to see you guys.
We're going to do a little show because my career is.
This is how pathetic my life is.
He's got his headphones.
I owe my eight-year-old $6 for Girl Scout cookies and I'm dodging her.
He calls me and tries to disguise her voice, but I know it's her to go, hello, is daddy home?
Not bad.
Sir, I'm doing it.
So you can watch.
Give me a few minutes, all right?
What's your name?
Newman.
Are you too married?
Are you two married?
How unfortunate?
I got a car, and I'm not like the black guys.
Well, anyhow.
Don't get upset, all right?
Turn on BET Comic View and watch black comics tricks, white people for an hour, all right?
White people crazy.
They pay taxes.
You know what I'm saying?
We had the girl turn their back on me.
What country are you guys from?
Where are you guys from?
Oklahoma.
There's a nice little Oklahoma puffy you might want to go to on a hundred.
168th in Amsterdam.
It's called Run, Whitey Run.
I'm killing, man.
I'm loving me.
That's the best part I've worked in a lot.
How you doing?
Yeah, he's fearless.
I mean, he was just going to start working the crowd.
He didn't care.
Yeah, I mean, you've seen him go up.
I think it was comic movie or Def Jam.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I was at that taping.
He was the first white guy on Def Jam.
Yeah.
You were at the tape?
I was at that taping.
I was at that taping.
So, okay, when you're going,
what are you thinking?
Are you going like, this is going to be hilarious?
Or are you going like, I've got to support my boy?
You're rooting for him.
I wanted him, because Rich was the white comic who could work all the black rooms and, like, do really well and be funny.
Yeah. I think Steve Harvey was hosting that episode.
And Rich went up and he did great.
Like, you know, he had a good set.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, Vos was always, but he's the only comic.
He's the first comic my parents met that they didn't like.
They loved every comedian, but Voss makes the worst first impression.
He's an awful first impression.
They loved him after that.
But the first time they met him, they were like, he's not a very nice person.
What he said to your parents?
I don't know.
He was just him.
He's sarcastic.
Like, you know what I mean?
He's lucky.
He's working.
Like the first time I met him, I fucking didn't like him.
I was doing a gig with him and Vinny Brand.
And I was getting 50 bucks to MC.
And I used to love when shows we get canceled because I was so scared to perform.
Oh, wow.
So when they got canceled, I was like, oh, good.
I didn't have to do it, but I tried.
And we all got paid 50 bucks, which is all I was supposed to make.
And Vos goes, and don't think we don't know that you're getting full pay and we're not.
I was like, all right, fuck this guy.
What a dick.
He was just an asshole.
And no one likes him when they first meet him.
So maybe I just knew what to expect.
I've always loved Rich, man.
Just for laughs.
I think that was the first place I met in Montreal?
Yeah, Montreal, yeah.
Yeah.
And then, like, I'm his full-time videographer at the time.
I come in the green room and he just starts ripping on me.
Yeah.
Before hello and anything, I forgot the jokes.
something watermelon, chicken something, whatever.
It just gives me a big hug.
What's up, bro?
It's just hilarious.
He had the whole green room just crack up.
It's hard to be mad at him.
Like, he's just because he really is just like a little machine gun,
a rotten little machine gun who just fires at everybody.
And he's always clocking.
Like, Mark got hit by a classic boss line the other day.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
This is a classic.
Which is Mark.
This is Mark.
Oh, yeah.
I'm Mark Norman.
No, no.
No, we were at the cellar and, like, he just, like, came around the table.
table and just immediately on the energy, just like, oh, what you guys are what you guys chatting
about? And then he's talking with someone. And then I try to chime in the conversation. He goes,
yeah, yeah, this conversation is for headliners.
Class of class. Did he take out the dollar and ask you to get him a coffee? Yeah, yeah.
How long are you doing comedy? Four years, get me a coffee. Yeah, yeah. He rubs everyone the wrong way.
But I, the reputation preceded him, so I already knew. That's the thing for me.
I was honored in a way. I was like, oh, I get the whole show. This is amazing.
I didn't know who you.
I'm like, who is this fucking reformed crackhead with a fucking ponytail?
It was awful.
Like, I knew he was.
We all knew rich.
He was headlining back, you know, even when I was new.
But, you know, he was a guy who would shit on you in person, but he was not a sneak.
Like, he would always treat you well when it mattered behind your back.
You know what I mean?
So I love Voss.
He's one of my closest friends.
There's a, okay, so during that break, like when you guys get fired, you guys create
this show, which is the show that.
like is my kind of like entire New York understanding of comedy and identity, which is like
tough crowd, which is to me, it felt always, and I imagine this was like the inspiration for it,
but like the back table at the seller.
Yes, that was it.
That's the idea.
It's like Colin Quinn is hosting it.
You're on it, Patrice is on it, Voss is on it.
And there's a bunch of other comic.
Geraldos is on it.
Yeah, he's great.
But like to me, that was always the idea.
Like, I grew up in these village.
I would go to the cellar as a kid.
Like, and I was under, like, I understood you guys when I was getting into comedy.
And the heyday for me, for New York comedy, was you guys at the back table.
And I kind of was, like, at the tail end of it.
So I kind of just came in observing it.
Yeah.
You know, but, like, watching you guys just absolutely beat on each other was, like, a true joy for a young comic.
And, like, I feel now maybe people are, like, a little bit separate.
Maybe they're a little kinder in person.
But I don't know what it was.
but you guys, for whatever reason,
it just felt like best friends
in the back of the school bus
just ripping each other apart.
And I don't know, something has changed.
I don't know what it is.
I think it's because, like, now,
being wounded is a rung in the ladder
to climb.
Or pointing out when someone says something,
that's not appropriate.
That fucking shit-souleding culture
has become a way of climbing the ladder.
Oh, you can get points for shitting on other comics.
No, publicly, or for being,
like, if they say something really rotten to you,
you go out and you go and so and so...
He was so mean to me.
Yeah.
You see that a lot of times, like comics,
like talking about how another comedian was mean to them
at a comedy club or something like that.
And that was the culture that I kind of saw
and really admired and thought was the most awesome thing coming up.
And just handle it with that person.
Like, again, we're talking about just guys saying mean things.
But you have to be friends too.
Like, we were all friends.
I think that's the difference.
I think a lot of people now have, like, made it in different ways.
And they're all going to the cellar,
but they didn't really come up together.
through open mics, through hell gigs,
and built that camaraderie
where you could just rip somebody apart and it's okay.
Yeah.
It feels personal now, maybe.
It does, and I think that everyone feels like
there's more at stake with everything you say.
Like, my first gig with Keith Robinson
was a fucking, it was a place called KCO Tools
in Wayne, New Jersey, and it was probably
1991. And I was opening,
Keith was featuring, and Jim Brewer closed.
And I think that was my first time meeting Brewer.
Great storyteller, by the way, Jim Brewer is the,
the fact that people will,
There's certain people who don't like his political views.
I don't care about them at all.
Jim Brewer is a very, he's a great comic,
and he's a, one of the best storytellers of him.
If you just hang out with him, like we did a show,
like it was in Europe or Iceland or something,
we were randomly together on this thing.
And he was just, like, chopping it up backstage.
And, like, him telling a story,
he will act out each person in the story.
His, like, face will transform into these different characters.
It's unbelievable.
It's a gift.
And like people who think he's not a good comic because they're by your crazy.
He's a.
No, no, no, he's good.
And he's amazing.
He was,
I've done radio with him for years.
And I was just sit there and watch him talk for an hour.
Yeah.
But it was interesting.
Yeah.
It was funny.
And it was, I mean, me, I'm a terrible.
And I've just, I've talked about this.
I've just not a good storyteller.
I'm just, I've never been good.
My jokes were fast and they just move different because no, I hold no one's interest.
I really don't.
He's done a pretty good job today.
Yeah, I was supposed to say.
But Jim Brewer
has a gift for storytelling.
So anyway, Keith bombed, I bombed, and Brewer fucking murdered
in this horrible Kacio-Tools gig.
But that's how long I know these guys.
Yeah.
Being Patrice, I'm first gig with Patrice was a fucking college
where for this guy, Jamie Dukeett.
It was a nooner, an afternoon gig.
And, oh, yeah, that's probably 2007, maybe.
We did this anti-social tour.
It was, I was host it and we would have Bill, we would have Atel, Atal and Brewer, or Ardy did him.
Stanhope did a couple.
Sorry, I cut you off on a story about Patrice, sir.
Oh, that's okay.
I said the first gig I did with him was a, it was a college, and I bombed hosting.
Patrice, I think Jamie Duke, it was bringing in from Boston.
So he was like high on Patrice.
Patrice bombed as a feature.
I had a zero.
I had a zero.
Patrice might have had a two.
And then this guy, Dom Fig, went on and completely.
bombed worse than both of us.
And I had to drop Patrice back
off in the city. And he was just kind of shitting
on me the whole time in my stage
presence and the way I talked.
I'm like, fuck you. I'm like, who is this cocksucker?
You didn't know him at all that was the person.
No, again, another awful first impression.
Who likes this person?
I'm like, you bombed too stupid.
He's like, yeah, he thought he actually did really well.
So he was also delusional.
But like that, when you come up like that and you,
you're comfortable being mean
to each other. It's just your friends.
You love each other.
That's the relationship I've always had with my friends.
Yes.
And like the comedians that I kind of came up with.
But again, it was a different, like, write-of-passage,
because I remember with you guys, anybody who sat down the table,
you're going to get it.
Yeah.
There's no passive observers at the table back in the day of the cellar.
No.
And that's the worst sound you could hear with Keith Robinson,
whose laugh is just, it's very rare that a laugh makes you feel bad.
But Keith has a laugh.
Oh, dude.
It's just, you know, it's.
bad news, like when you're walking in and I'll be sitting there and you're like, oh, I'm not
right.
I know it's going to be ugly.
Do you remember some of the biggest slams that people had?
Like, I've heard lore.
The biggest one and it is, was, I mean, we gave Bill Barrett a savaging one time because
we found out he was doing comedy on a bus for the World Series tickets.
I think it was a World Series.
It might have been 2001.
I don't remember.
Or maybe, no, it might be one of the later Yankee runs.
I just don't remember.
but I don't remember what was said,
but I remember it was probably a 45-minute
savage beating of Bill,
and everybody was in on it.
It was like, what were you guys saying?
They were just mocking.
I don't remember any of the jokes.
I just remember the fact that it's weird
to see Bill just sit there and have nothing to,
because Bill's so funny and fast
and also a very mean when he wants to be.
And there was just no defense.
I mean, you know what I mean?
There was no defense.
You're doing comedy on a bus.
And there's nothing you can say about it.
But there was a guy.
named Eddie. Boss was like, what's the gig?
And there was a guy named Eddie
and him and Patrice were going back and forth, and Patrice
was destroying him. Eddie, who?
Fift? Yeah, yeah. And I like Eddie, and I'm sure
he's fine with this at that point. But, you know, we all got a beating and it was
Eddie's turn. Yeah. So,
it was so bad, it was such a bad beating
that none of us even chimed in. There was a lot of guys there too. I was there,
Vost was there, Bill might have been there. It was just a bunch of
guy watching this beat, this, this, this, this, this, this,
and really enjoying it.
And I remember Eddie just got mad.
And he goes, yeah, well, fuck you.
I do colleges.
You don't do colleges.
And Vosca goes, yeah, you do colleges.
You do P-U because you stink.
And that might be one of the purely most perfect things I've ever said.
I've ever seen said to level a guy.
That was perfection.
That was a perfect, a perfect line.
What was your relationship like with Patrice?
I loved him.
I mean, he was my friend.
friend. He was just, you know, to me, he was
just my, you know, everyone knew he was the
funniest guy. He's the funniest. He was the
funniest. He was the funniest, meanest guy. Yeah. But he also
would laugh, and he could take a joke,
and he could take a beating. Who gave
him the best beatings?
It's hard to say all of us,
because he was, he told me, he gave me
a good compliment one time. He
came in, there was a big guy who came in
and Patrice just started shitting on him
because everybody was afraid of the guy. Can we say
who it was? I don't know. He was a stranger.
It was a stranger. Oh, civilian. No. No.
A guy who was mentally off.
And I remember saying to him something about, like, you just did that because you wanted that guy to think that you weren't afraid of him and that you were there.
So I was just shitting on him a little bit.
And he said, he was, you're the only one that picks out my phoniness.
And it made me feel very good.
He goes, you're the only one that spots my phoniness.
Which I wasn't, by the way.
Many of us saw him.
But he could take it too.
Like, he knew he was the same as we are.
And I remember he called me one time.
This was like he was like 40 and he was really like he was like man I'm irrelevant like he felt irrelevant he felt like I'm irrelevant I'm off the grid he just felt like
He wasn't really? Yeah, yeah
This is before elephant in the room or after?
Don't remember I stopped into the taping of elephant on the room, but I didn't watch it
We had the same manager for many years I watched it I was there
Oh you saw the whole taping yeah I mean like I'm a huge Patrice fan this is my number one yeah
He was the greatest well time yeah but uh okay you were saying you stopped in
Oh, just that he had these same feelings every comic.
Like, I get a kick out of, and I'm sure he secretly enjoys this, if there is an afterlife,
is the fact that people will torment all of us with, what would Patrice?
I wish Patrice could see this, like when you're being a douche or about my fucking married life.
What would Patrice say?
First of all, it wouldn't be kind.
But he's still being used 15 years later to torture his friend.
I'm sure he would enjoy that.
You had the best description of Patrice, and I don't want to butcher it, but like he lived his life as if his friend, as if a documentary was being made of it and only his friends were going to watch it.
Do you remember saying something like that?
I don't, but it sounds accurate.
For like the Patrice Doc or something.
I don't know.
I saw this clip.
Oh, I don't remember it.
I mean, but he did, like his whole thing was he kind of had to be who he was in front of everybody.
At all times.
We had an argument one time.
It was at the Colin Quinn show, which was before Tough Crowd.
There was three episodes he did.
It was live on the SNL stage on NBC.
It was 9.30 on Monday, I think.
And it went out live.
And Lauren produced it.
And I think I did the final two episodes.
And the precursor for Tough Crowd was this little thing,
the segment he would have called the Town Hall.
Where there'd be like four comedians just sitting on the stoop.
But you were doing a bit from your act.
Joey Vega did it.
I did it.
Kind of like Comics Unleashed-esque.
In a way, yes.
But it was without the pleasantness.
Like Byron Allen, it's a different energy.
Yeah, yeah.
So positive fun energy.
Yeah, yeah.
Supportive sweet energy.
Like we don't call each other out,
but whereas tough crowd was like,
you just couldn't wait for someone to flop.
But we would do our little one minute or two minute bit to the camera.
And I remember I was going over some sensor.
It was talking to standards and practices backstage at NBC.
And Patrice was just taunting me.
Just taunting me.
And I'm like, I'm trying to get a bit through standards and practices.
I just fucking snapped at him.
I'm like, well, you shut the fuck up.
I know you're a comic.
And it just got like real.
So once in a while you would get angry at each other.
And I think of all the people to mediate, it was Keith Robinson.
No way.
Which when Keith has to come in and actually be the voice of Jesus,
when that obnoxious, Philly asshole has to come in.
And you're like, wow, Keith is right.
But, you know, once in a while you would get frustrated with each other.
But we were doing one of them.
And it might have been the third episode,
and I'm watching Patrice do his bit.
And, you know, he would do this thing
where he would act like he was just kind of...
Thinking of it on the spot.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Mr. Casual, you know,
Mr. Brilliant just stopped in to be a conduit for funny.
Yeah.
And I was watching him.
I'm just sitting right next to it,
and I'm looking at him, and he's going...
And I'm like, he forgot his joke.
No!
And I'm just the joy.
I'm like, oh, this fucking asshole
forgot his joke on live television.
I was so happy, but he did get it.
He recovered it, and he found where he was going.
But I remember just watching it and watching him stumble
and going, oh, this is going to be a wonderful moment.
He forgot his thing on live television,
but he recovered and he found it.
But again, he was like all of it.
He was flawed. He was just a comedy.
He was our buddy.
You know what I mean?
Like, I love that he has this respect.
We've mythologized him.
And I'm okay with it because he really was a very real guy
and a very real talker.
And, you know, again, I did hours of radio with him.
So I watched his brain work in real time.
And he was brilliant.
I mean, you know, he was a brilliant thinker.
You know, so I love that he's got this.
And I've said many times, we did a lot more benefits for him
than he would have done for any of us.
I would have been lucky if I died of a stroke,
if that fucking idiot showed up to the first show.
He would have done one Jim Norton benefit.
And then by year two, he would have been like,
he didn't have insurance?
Like he would do that.
He would not have done a bunch of
Yeah, every year they do the Patrice O'Neill benefit.
Yeah, I think they stopped.
I haven't done the last few years.
They do it this year.
They did it.
But I think that that might have been the last one for a while.
But yeah, I love that he has this kind of aura.
Whenever you die young people look at it like that.
But he was deserved of the respect.
Yeah, I mean, dies the same year that elephant in the room comes out.
Oh, was it the same year?
I didn't remember.
Oh, sure?
I'm pretty sure.
that elephant in the room was
It comes out in 2011
He died in 2011
He died in, I think it was
Yeah, this comes out in February 2011
We watched that
Like it was like a playoff game
Like we had a watch party
Oh really
Yeah he was that was the same year
So he was starting to get
The Charlie Sheen roast
Where he just kind of went off book
He was on late
And he just leaned in and kind of did his thing
He kind of roasted the roast
In a lot of ways, yeah
Yeah
And he was really funny
I mean he really was
And the stand-up was great
Great.
The bits were great.
He was a great writer.
And he had this, like, casual way of, like, talking through the audience.
You know, it wasn't, like, the crowd was involved, but it was always, like, him imposing
his ideas on the crowd.
Yes.
It wasn't him, like, asking them what they think.
It was, this is what I think, and you're going to fucking agree eventually.
And if you don't agree, you're still going to listen to it.
The entire time.
You know, I was talking to Louis recently about, like, when you're doing stand-up, how a bit becomes stale sometimes.
Yeah.
And he's like, we were just, I was out with him for seven weeks on a tour recently.
And he said, he goes, yeah, I was really thinking about everything I was saying tonight and making sure I was like, that's how you keep a bit alive.
You think about what you're actually wanting to say to the audience.
Not these are just words coming out while I think of something else.
And Bishreys would always do that.
Like everything he said he wanted to say to the audience.
You could tell he really wanted to say this thing about relationships.
So it never felt.
It didn't feel like an excuse to get a laugh.
No.
It felt like even if he wasn't on stage, this.
is what he would be telling you about.
Oh, yeah.
Off stage.
Yeah, he would talk about the same stuff on stage, off stage.
Yeah.
I mean, we would just go there.
We would be at the cellar at 2.30 in the morning playing chess.
I would be out with dice.
Again, this is between 97 and 2000.
So I would fly home from Vegas, get to the cellar at like 11 p.m.
to midnight, do a late spot.
I'd be overtired.
I hadn't slept.
And we would just play chess and just scream at each other in the street for three in the
morning.
It was great.
And this is a time where like the seller is starting to really pop off.
but it's not what it is now where there's four different rooms
and multiple shows.
There was a time where there would be,
it was just the McDougal,
and then there would be an early show,
and the late show would have people that just stayed from the early show.
Yeah, or you would just do,
I think at one point it was just,
you would do one long show and you'd get food spots.
I started there making money,
I wouldn't get paid,
I would just do food spots,
where you would do, like, the show started at 9 p.m.
And then, like, I think after 11 or 12,
you would do a 10-minute spot,
not a 20-minute spot,
and you got paid in a meal.
Yeah.
So for the first couple of years there, I was just, you know, you'd get food.
Also, there were so few comics in at the cellar at the time, I would, I remembered when Mike DeStefano got passed.
Wow.
Okay, that's got to be 98 around there, right?
I don't know the exact.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Oh, is it 2000s?
I think this is 2000s because I remember he was working at Comedy Village.
Remember the Comedy Village?
Yes, I don't think I did it, but I remember the name.
Right.
And it used to be, it was like on top of that Irish bar.
It was like around the block from...
Oh, that was the Boston Comedy Club.
Well, it was Boston, and then it turned into Comedy Village
when PJ Landers took it over.
So it was the Boston early, and then went to Comedy Village.
Anyway, but I remember Mike being there,
and I remember Mike getting passed, but it was this...
There was so few people that were working the cellar because there were so few shows.
Yeah.
That, like, a new person getting passed there was like a big fucking deal.
It was a big deal.
And now there's so many people, I don't know.
A lot of them I don't know because I'm usually on the same.
Sometimes I feel old, man.
Yeah. Like, I'll see somebody up.
But, like,
I don't know.
When I was coming up, I'm sure you feel the same way.
It's like I feel like I knew every single person doing comedy.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I knew who everybody was.
Now I'll see clips and somebody's got like 300,000 followers.
I'm like, wow, I don't know that guy.
It doesn't mean anything that I don't know him.
I'm just, I'm not on that late and I don't watch stand-up.
But there's a lot of funny guy.
A lot of people have these weird clips going around where they're like, yeah, comedy sucks now.
There's all these lousy comedians.
Yeah, there's a lot of really good comics.
There's a lot of really good comics.
Yes, dude.
There's a lot.
I mean, I think that's what happens.
When there's more, there's more good.
There's also more shit.
There's a lot of terrible comedians and hacks,
but there's also a lot of really funny guys.
Yeah.
You know, and there's not this exclusive club of just a few funny people who see it the way it should be see.
That was your guy's era.
Well, we weren't, we were just judging people on whether or not they were funny.
We didn't care about politics.
We didn't care about your views in race.
We didn't care about your views on gender.
Like, none of that didn't matter.
Because comedy wasn't important back then.
So the only thing you could really hang your hat on was if you were funny.
Yeah.
Now, important is the wrong word.
But, like, now comedy is so fucking popular that, like, you know, you're seeing this, like, intersection with all these other different things.
And, but back in the day when nobody's really making that much money doing it, being funny is the only currency.
So he seemed to be the only thing everybody cared about.
You could get busted.
Like, Dice was one of the first ones to get canceled.
I mean, Lenny Bruce, but, I mean, Dice got canceled in, like, the late 80s when they yanked Ford,
early and out of the theaters. And I believe Andrew
had a three-picture deal at that point.
And I've heard that my cousin Vinnie was originally
supposed to be Dice. Get the fuck out. Pesci's
character? I think so, yeah. Oh, wow.
And again, I believe that's true. Andrew,
I'm sure we'll tell me if I'm wrong. But I mean,
Dice had three, and they
fucked him. They paid him out just to shut him up
because he was getting so popular in doing
arenas. Yeah. And then they just
again, his gay jokes, they
didn't like, so that he was canceled before
any of us were. So around then,
they were going after people in the early nine
but back then they called it political correctness.
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Now, let's get back to the show.
This comedy boom now, does it feel much bigger than the comedy boom in the, when was it, the 80s?
I missed the 80s.
I came in 1990.
But you were still watching.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
You're a fan.
You're seeing the cultural relevance of comedy.
I came in at a bottleneck, which was good, though, because you had to be better to work.
Like, because all these places were shutting down, the clubs.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So it was a little bit more competitive, but I missed the boom of the 80s.
But I would see guys 10 years later still doing the same jokes from the 80s because they were
headlining making $2,500 a week and they didn't want to let that go.
But this boom is massive.
This is bigger, I believe.
You're in part responsible for that.
It's funny.
I just had Dane on my, and I always...
I've always credited Dan Cook because he did MySpace before any of us did social media.
and he captured
he took it the way the business couldn't control it
and the business I think eventually liked him
and you did it on Instagram
you came in on my show at Sam
or our show Sam would want to say
but you were talking about
getting people to the YouTube channel
without clips get him
so you took what Dane started
and revolutionized it in a different way
and that's a huge part of what's happening now
and good thing I waited
but I hadn't
I couldn't do a podcast because I had a...
Like a restriction deal for that.
I had a...
Non-compete.
I was not allowed to, yeah.
Until I got...
Until they left.
Until they stopped negotiating with me.
You know what I think Dane also did is I think he ushered in a new group of people that
weren't stand-up fans.
He did, yeah.
And a similar way that, like, Matt Rife, I think, is doing.
Yes.
Where it's just, like, you see a lot of, like, young women going to comedy shows, even at the
cellar.
And I think that that's a...
A rife effect.
There are other people who also have these, like,
young girl audiences.
But you see them start to matriculate
in the clubs and you're like, oh, this is downstream
from these people who really weren't
stand-up fans now making
it part of their identity.
Why I don't get the animosity?
Towards Matt or towards Day and at the time.
You guys are all making so much more
money because that happened. Yeah, you're creating
a bigger funnel to bring all these new people in
and then all these other people, like at my level
can eat off of it. It's also people who don't
have the balls to attack other guys.
Like, they becomes a safe target.
And Dane at one point was the target that you could hit
and not suffer any real repercussions for.
But it was all fake.
Like, you know, you don't have to like Dane's act.
What was he doing?
He was just out making money and doing it.
I saw him shoot a special in front of 17,000 people.
And I was like, this belongs in an arena.
Like it was, you know, say what you want about it.
He was in an arena.
I remember, like, hearing people, this is when I'm, like, super young in, right?
But I was at the cellar and people would be, like, talking shit about Dane.
and I remember Dan came to the seller once,
and all those same people were fucking...
Yeah, of course.
That's how it is.
And I was like, oh, it's all phony.
Yeah.
You know what I mean?
Like, it's all bullshit.
The second he walks in the room,
everybody's trying to go on tour,
everybody's trying to hit the road, do whatever.
Yeah, I think there was a little disappointment in it
because I think in my head I was like,
well, oh yeah, everybody's just going to patrice it, right?
They're going to keep that same energy right now
and say exactly how they feel.
And I think a lot of times people are kind of loyal to their opportunities.
100%.
I'm also a backtracking phony.
And I got caught.
Wait, wait, when, what happened?
I wrote two books, and the second one was I was angry.
Monster Rain is one, right?
No, no, no, no.
Happy endings was one.
And then the second one was, I hate your guts.
And I regret some of the things in that book because I was angry,
because this was when people were like, I Miss got fired,
and I was just so fucking sick of people getting punished for jokes and things they were saying.
So a lot of where I came from was kind of a shittier point of view.
I think the book was funny, but I wish I had been,
so I trashed Steve Martin in the book.
for doing the Pink Panther.
Why?
Because it was a Peter Seller's role
and I was just being a dick.
Right.
That was unreasonable.
Right.
Because I've always been a Steve Martin fan.
Actually, Myron, I think he's brilliant.
Fantastic.
Prider thought he was brilliant.
By the way, his book, Born Standing on.
I'm sure it's amazing.
I mean, like really
the doldrums of comedy.
Yeah.
You know, like doing a fucking gig
for four people at Knott's Berry Farm
or whatever it was.
Yeah.
Just like very cool exploration into that.
He was one of the,
he was a real pioneer
and he was original and brilliant,
but I was just being a dick in this book.
So anyway, I wrote the book.
A couple years later, I'm doing field pieces
for the Tonight Show for Leno,
and we were at the Grammys.
And this dumb bit I was doing
was I was handing people my CD
asking them if they would nominate,
try to get me nominated, you know, whatever.
And Steve Martin and his band came through.
Boss told me he's, you stole it from him.
Oh, the CD.
No, no, no, no.
The seeing CD sexually,
that I stole it.
But the, so I handed Steve Martin my CD and he goes, Jim Norton, you said some unkind things about me in your book.
Yeah.
And I was immediately the fucking, you're right.
I'm sorry.
I was being a dick.
Good for you.
But I was like, I was being truthful.
I'm like, I'm a fan.
I was just being an asshole.
And he was very kind.
He's like, no, no, you're forgiven.
And he talked and did the interview.
But I don't think they.
aired that part. But he handled it really nicely. But that's why I hate anonymity so much
because I had to suffer through the embarrassment of doing it in person.
Of doing it in person and getting pulled out like a... And I did exactly what everybody
else does. Yeah.
Oh, I didn't mean it. I mean, because I was being a dick. And he's not a guy I hated.
If it was a guy I hated, I'm okay with being confrontational. I'm not afraid of confrontation.
We've seen it. I've had a lot of it. Yeah, I've had a lot of it on the air. I mean,
you know, you can't have that many hours without a lot of back and forth.
But he was the guy that I really did admire, and I had no desire to...
He's also a comic, Jim.
Yeah.
He's felt the exact same way about other people.
I'm sure he has, but he was too smart to put it in a book.
I was just done.
Or he got successful, because I think that's the other thing.
It's like, once you get some success, a lot of those feelings kind of go away.
Yeah, and you're less angry because there's so many good things happening and so much going on for you.
And then you don't care if something.
somebody else is also successful. I think that sometimes
it exists in a vacuum where it's like
you're grinding, you're trying to get your opportunity
and you're not getting it and you see these people
getting it. It's like, well, fuck them for getting it.
And then you get your opportunity and it ends up
working out and you're like, well, they weren't that, Pat.
Yeah, they were okay. They were decent.
It's always been nice to me. Even Patrice, though,
at the end of his life, he started to feel bad
about the way he had treated certain people. Because he got some
success, man. He got some success, and
he dealt with a guy on his set. He had a show
he was doing. Now, I don't remember, we did a
movie together called Furry Vengeance.
which was, let's see, it was about talking animals
with Brendan Fraser and,
and Brooke Shields.
And I'm going to go on the record and say
it was not the finest film,
not the greatest of all films.
I'm so different types of furries.
I have a list of feelings that you're on it.
And he was very difficult on this set.
I can say to the director,
Patrice was a, he was a rough road
for that director.
But we were after, afterwards,
he was telling me that time that he had done some show
and there's a guy on the set
who was being a fucking dick.
and Patrice goes, I realize, am I that guy on other people's shit?
Yeah.
And it really affected him.
Yeah.
And I remember he started feeling like Lisa Lampinelli he had been very unkind to and a few other comics.
And I think Jeff Garland told a story where Patrice apologized to him.
But Patrice started apologizing to people.
Good for him.
But it wasn't for career gain.
No.
It was just because he legitimately felt like, ah, like, you know, you grow out of certain things and you become old.
I think even Lenin at the end of his life was doing an interview where he was going like he changed at 40.
Like you're just not the same guy you were coming up.
So, you know, he evolved as a person too and felt shitty about certain means.
Not with us, not things you say just to be funny, but things that were actually mean.
Pointed criticism.
You feel a little bad about like, eh, they didn't attack me first.
What was I doing?
Yeah.
You know, I've been a dick to a lot of people verbally.
Yeah.
And I got called out for it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's a, that's an important lesson.
I feel like that I got to learn just even doing this show like so young and like through you and just like watching other people.
And then also Craig Ferguson.
He has like a great moment on his show where like Britney Spears is going through something.
I think she like shaved her head and fucking threw an umbrella at someone.
And he was like, I'm not going to make fun of her because she's going through a mental health thing right now.
And I did make fun of someone a different time.
And I ran into him in an event and he was like, yeah, dude, that really sucked when he said that.
And Craig like pointed that out.
And then I try to keep that in mind.
We're like, we talk about people all the time, and I try not to, basically my litmus is like, if I wouldn't say this to him in person, then I'm not going to say it.
And I'm not going to say it.
Dude, yeah.
And then a joke is a different thing.
Like, I'll make a joke about whatever.
Yeah, of course.
If I'm going to really take a stance, like, I want to be able to make sure that if they were in the room, I would say the same thing.
Yeah, if I'm going to go in somebody, like, for real, I want to know that I would say that I would say that I would say that?
It's why I don't yell at old ladies when they drive poorly.
Because I'm like, when I, if that was Frances and Ganoo in the next car, would I scream, bitch.
That's why I don't yell at old people
Because I wouldn't do it to somebody
That could punch me through a fucking wall
I remember I was at a
I had said something like so stupid on Twitter
This is like years ago, we were in Miami
And I was like, I think Pete was like
Davidson was like hosting something
Maybe a Jake Paul fight or something
I don't know something happened
I said something stupid and flippant
And remember I bumped into him at like a WWE event
Who Jake or Pete?
Pete
And I was just like dude you know what
I said that this thing
I don't even know if you even remember
or whatever like that.
It was really stupid
and I'm sorry for that I said that.
Yeah.
And it was so interesting.
Like, he was just like,
hey man, I really appreciate you saying that.
And yeah, no, who cares?
Like, we all say dumb stuff.
I've said dumb stuff.
And it was just like the easiest way
of going through it.
Yeah.
And it kind of like cleanse me a little bit.
Yeah, sometimes if you mean it,
like there's the saccharine
douchebag publicist apology.
And I would like to say I apologize
for anybody who's words.
And then there's legit,
hey man, I'm really sorry about it.
that. And there's no shame in being sorry about something if you legitimately are.
Or if you fucked up, are you wronged a person or you're an asshole?
Like, it's liberating. It's okay. Because you feel like more of an asshole to hold onto it.
For what? For your ego? For something. Like, I fucked up. It's fine.
I fucked up. Whatever. I made a mistake. And an apology in a private setting like that is much different than, like I did.
This is not fucking performance. Like when the cameras were on. Did I say that, Steve?
I don't know what I was thinking. I love the Pink Panther.
You know, I stand by Peter Sellers as that's his role. But I was really, I was really, I was
A performative apology, I think, is the one we don't believe.
Yeah.
I apologize to Dr. Phil because I don't know, Dr. Phil.
Yeah.
We interviewed him one time.
He was very nice.
You were like, where the fuck were you when I was blowing, kids?
Exactly.
I could have used your hand on the back of my head.
Make me not feel like I was enjoying this so much for Pete's sake, Phil.
What would you say to?
I wrote, he was a chapter of my book, and it was a shitty chapter.
And I was too critical.
Making fun of somebody is one thing, but it came, like I said, I was in a bad place at that point.
Came from a place of anger, not like, let's make jokes.
Anger and funny, but the anger was more than it should have been.
Yeah.
So I apologized to him.
And then he asked me, what's the name of your book?
I'm like, oh, boy, I wish I didn't.
But again, I just felt like I'm not an honest person.
Good for you.
Nancy Grace, this is a clip of Sam and I, is one of our first shows where she walks off our show.
Because I had crashed her relentlessly for a long time, because I thought she was a phony,
and I thought she capitalized off dead kids.
but she was in studio with us
and I felt like I had to
I didn't attack her but I said just so you know
I had to say it
because if I don't say it then I'm just a
fucking coward who's doing
it behind a screen.
Yeah.
And I believe she knew who I was
because she was very unpleasant.
We're doing it for attention.
For attention.
It's like if I don't really believe this,
am I just doing it for attention?
Yeah, but I believe that I didn't like her.
Yeah.
And I didn't know she had suffered a personal tragedy
in her life.
somebody I think that she loved was murdered.
So that kind of motivates her worldview.
In a way, yeah, but hashtag Totemom is still capitalizing.
Well, that's the problem is a lot of people are capitalizing on shit.
Yeah, absolutely.
It's easy to call them out for it.
Yeah, and it was fun to call her out.
It felt good.
And, yeah, I don't know if that's the wrong one.
No, I didn't feel terrible about that, but I feel like I have to say, I had to say something to her and just, you know, otherwise I'm a pussy.
Yeah.
You know what I mean?
You don't want to be.
But again, you have these moments.
I'm sure you've had tense moments on this where it gets real with somebody.
Oh, for sure.
I'm not going to back off on this.
For sure.
I don't want to.
It's almost like those are the more interesting discussions.
Like anytime I would go to like press or do podcasts, I almost like wanted, I'd almost rather start every interview with like, what do we, what do you think we disagree on?
Ah, yeah.
You know, like, because it's like, let's just get there.
Sometimes it's pleasant trees and all this other stuff and you can tell like they actually want to get to something.
But like, I'd rather talk about the thing you think we'd think we'd.
disagree on. Because one, you maybe like
feel like I have a certain worldview
which I don't. And if I do have that worldview,
I would love to defend it. Yeah, of course.
Right? You tell you why I feel the way
I feel the way I feel. Exactly. I don't mind being
hated for the way I feel about the world. Yeah.
I'm just kind of like one of the cool things about
being a comedian. Yeah. It's like if we actually
feel it some way, that's fine. I think maybe
what can be like grading is
to be, to receive
like criticism for something that I don't actually
believe. It's you realize when
when people start talking about you,
Yeah.
Like, we were, you know, I was getting trashed on message boards in 2001.
So it's like you become...
So this is pre, the internet exists, but this is pre like Reddit.
Before any of that stuff.
Yeah.
But you learn, you become very immune to it after a while.
Where people are saying, oh, no, what's he saying about me?
Yeah.
You learn not to give a fuck about that a long time ago.
Yeah.
But I realized people were so wrong.
Like, they would say things.
They would think they know something that happened or they would think they know my
motivation for doing something.
Right, right.
And I'm like, I'm the person.
So I know the truth.
Yeah.
And I'm like, wow, you really think you're right, but you're a, like, you couldn't be more wrong.
So how'd you do with that?
It made me angry, but it also changed how I viewed other people.
And I became much more like, well, I mean, because I realize what an asshole you are,
if you always think you know the answers.
Yeah.
Because so many people had said things that were incorrect, that I 100% knew were incorrect,
that it changed the way, my worldview to the point where I don't want to be that stubborn
douchebag.
Like whoever coined the phrase identity,
Politic, whoever coined that phrase is fucking,
but I think we talk about it.
It's brilliant because people's identity
becomes wrapped up in these things.
And in proving you wrong.
Well, once your identity is wrapped up in it,
you have to defend it with everything.
It has to be, yeah.
And my identity is kind of wrapped up
in just the things I've talked about
and light, which is not always great.
I mean, we had, I was on fight.
I did Fallon one time when it was still a late show.
The Tonight Show, they didn't want me.
Like a five minutes.
it's set or as a guest appearance. Yeah, I remember
seeing something. He was a nice guy
and he was still a very nice guy, but
his show is not interested in being
in the Jim Norton business.
But I told the story, a true story.
I'd gone to like some transsexual bar the night
before and left my wallet
at the bar. So I had
to go back and get my wallet
from this fucking...
Damn.
Don't you hate when that happens? You gotta go twice?
Shucks. But no, I think
I had already... I think I had already
you know, had I been relieved.
So there was no desire to go back in.
I was like, whew, get my wallet.
Toilet paper stuck to my dick.
But I think I told that story on his show and panel.
And it was just like, that's not always a good identity to have.
Like when that's your identity, because that's the type of stuff you talk about,
because that's the life you lead.
Yeah.
It's not always helpful.
Helpful meaning like the internet now can kind of like frame you in a specific way or box you in a specific thing.
In a way, in the business itself.
like the business is filled with fake allies.
They're fucking fake.
Oh, yes, they are.
These fake allies.
And I've come to like, like I watch all these comedians getting called Nazis.
And it's like, you know, you progressive fucking babbling fake allies, the guys who are called Nazis,
they're the ones who have been nicest to me and my wife.
Like, they're the ones who have welcomed us and been nicest to it.
So I've got a really strange view of this now that I've seen it.
For the listeners, your wife is trained.
Yes. But I've seen so many people who are like these fucking, these real public allies. And then you're like, hey, you want to come on the podcast? I'm not bad love to, but I'm bad. And it's like you don't want to be close. You don't want to be helpful. And they're not obligated. Don't get me wrong. There have no obligation. No, but it's performative. It's all bullshit. And they attack Rogan. And it's like, it's annoying because like I know these guys before they did podcasts. And I see how they've, he's the same guy. It's the same. It's the same.
same fucking dude it was.
Also, you know him.
Like, just go talk to him.
You know this person.
You know this person.
Call him.
Go have a conversation with you.
And also you just went on the pod every time that you asked him to go on the pod because
it was good for you.
Yeah.
And all of a sudden, you're like, whoa, hey.
But this is a unique thing that like, just talking to you over the last few weeks,
it was interesting.
It's like, you seem to be very grateful for the people that have helped you get to
where you are.
Very.
And I think they're, I'm not saying that there are other people that aren't grateful,
but I think that their North Star is opportunity.
and it's not like this opportunity would not be possible
without the people that helped you out.
100%.
And nobody, again, nobody owes, you know,
to quote Rocky 3, you know,
friends don't owe, they do because they won't.
But nobody owes anybody anything.
Like, you know, guys we had on the radio show,
they helped our radio show.
They were funny on the radio show.
So it was a two-way street.
I feel like I owe so much to Charlemagne,
so much to Rogan, so much to everybody.
Yeah, and I owe a lot to Dice.
And I owe a lot to Opie and Anthony, too.
And I've always been very public about how much those guys did for me because they changed my life.
I mean, didn't you shout them out on your special?
I used to bring O.B. and Anthony to my specials, and I would always insist on them standing up and me pointing them out.
I thought that was such a cool moment.
Yeah, HBO wanted to cut that, but I really fought for it.
They're like, yeah, they're not national.
And I'm like, I have to.
Sometimes the narcissism that allows you to be successful in the business of entertainment can kind of like frame your worldview, like,
this was all supposed to happen.
And there's so many lucky things that happen
and so many incredibly generous people around you
that allow that luck to proliferate.
Yes.
And yeah, if you're not like a complete fucking narcissist,
you can show gratitude to those people.
Yeah.
And be loyal to them.
And there are a lot of people where they're in a club
and they just, they don't want touching you
to risk the club they're in.
Or they're afraid that if they have you on
or you have them on,
that it will damage the club.
that they're a member of.
Because they don't really feel like they're in the club.
Maybe not.
They don't have the confidence that they're in.
They don't have the confidence.
What they think is that they're a guest.
And they're like, if I ruffle one feather, it's not going to happen.
And like, one of the coolest things about the internet is like you get to kind of create
your club, man.
You get to have your people that support you and fuck with you.
And you're supposed to have the freedom to do whatever the fuck you want because
of that.
Yes.
And otherwise, we're just back in that same system that we're all annoyed with where we're
like basically begging for an opportunity.
Yeah.
But now I'm in my 50s
and I'm begging people
to come by my podcast.
So there's a humiliation.
But you kind of like the humiliation, you know?
I do, but it's funny.
I wish I could jerk off to.
No, I'd love to, but I'm busy.
But I can't.
Some reason, that just doesn't motivate my balls to move at all.
I wish I would turn me on.
Believe me, I would have a lot of great fodder.
But, you know, you know who is a real person.
Like David Tell.
I had said to Atel one time, I'm like, hey, man, I would love to have you on.
He was, I can't.
I'm on the road for the street.
Then I saw him at the cello like a month later.
He goes, oh, hey man, I'm back.
So if you want to...
The man.
That's how you know a person is being real with you and genuine with you.
It's not you following up eight times with the same fuckhead.
So yeah, you develop...
I don't trash people because nobody owes me anything.
So no one is wronging me.
They're not wronging me.
I'm not being wronged.
I'm not a victim in that.
But you just make a mental note like, oh, all right.
I hope you die in a fire.
Dave is such an interesting character
Because he's one of the few people
Whose mythology exists while he's alive
Yes, and it's 100% deserve
A hundred percent deserve
He's also a really
David Tell we're talking about
David Tell and he's a generous guy
He's good to every comedian around him
And I remember we did
We went to the Pentagon
It was with Bill and Jim
We were doing that tour
The USO
The social tour
Yeah
It was this time was Bill
Jim
Dave and myself.
Yeah.
And they had us to go to the Pentagon
to talk to wounded warriors.
And none of us knew what to say
to somebody who lost the limb.
Oh, fuck.
In a thing, we were just supposed to make them feel better.
But Atel was great.
He was walking right up to people.
Wow, what happened to you, man?
What the fuck is that from?
And they were so happy.
That someone was treating them normally.
To talk to him.
Yeah.
Oh, man.
I was over in Desert Storm.
And, like, he's such a real person.
And it was so genuine.
We were all like,
Atel has been funny at some of the worst
periods. Like when
Mani from the comedy cell that got sick, Dave
made me laugh in the hospital room.
I was devastated. He made me laugh.
He made all of us laugh when Patrice fucking died.
We were trying to raise money.
He was on the air. And he goes, come on
people, chip in. We got to pay for a purple
suit and a giant coffin.
He's the fucking funniest
guy in the world. So he would
always make me laugh in terrible
fucking moments. Moments where I
just was not, you know, I was
kind of personally devastated. But
Dave is deserved. His legacy is deserved.
I'm curious in that vein,
what was doing comedy in the city
right after 9-11 like?
The seller was closed.
I was living in Jersey at the time.
I was right over the bridge in Cliffside Park,
and you could smell it.
Like, you could smell the burning
whatever for months after it.
And I think below 14th Street, Manhattan,
was closed to traffic.
So the seller was closed for a while.
And I remember when we started going back,
And we didn't know how we're going to talk about stuff.
And on Opie and Anthony, like, they kept those guys home on 9-11.
So I just kind of called in and we were talking through what had happened in the morning.
And the way that O&A started making 9-11 funny was people were writing these fucking melodramatic, drippy shit songs about the towers and the pain.
So we were getting copies of these songs and trying to guess what they were going to do to rhyme or how they.
they were going to ruin this and mocking these songs.
So it was a way in.
So you're not mocking 9-11.
You're mocking the songs, these like performative works.
And they were awful.
And it let people kind of step back into it.
And on the stage, we were all at the cellar talking about our daydream.
Like we all daydreamed.
What would I have done if I was on one of those planes?
All of us had stupid daydreams.
I forget what Patrice's was.
But the end of it was he would have then walked out and got into a cab and said,
take me to Brooklyn.
Like, it was such an asshole.
But none of us were kidding.
We were all being legit.
And Keith had one,
which was just childlike in its stupidity.
So I remember, I went on stage,
Keith was hosting,
and I told his,
and that's not how every comic got back into it,
but I just remember telling the audience
how stupid, I just wanted you to know
how stupid your host is.
And I talked about what his fantasy was
to stop 9-11.
And guys were kind of working through it like that
and talking through it like that,
giving our own day,
day dreams on stage and people related to it.
Because you weren't shitting on the victims.
Right, right, right.
You were talking about what you thought you would do in that circumstance.
And everyone thought, what would I do in that circumstance?
Yes, I remember exactly that moment.
Like, what should we do?
I was in high school.
Yeah, how would I handle this?
Yeah.
Yeah, we thought it was like an attack.
So we were like...
We kind of...
No, meaning like, we thought it was an invasion.
So we're like, do we get guns?
Like, what do we do?
You have this like hubris as like a 17-year-old kid in New York.
You're like, yeah, we've got to get the couch on fire.
Throw it at the town.
That's how we're going to stop terrorism.
Yeah, let's get our mouth tinkled in and go back for seconds.
I remember being in high school, I was like, all they had was razor blades.
Like, we could have fought these guys.
You know, we could have took to you.
Well, they thought they had bombs because they said they had bombs,
and that was why they opened up their cockpit doors, because they were told that they had fake bombs.
So they everyone thought they had an explosive device.
They got to lead with that.
Yeah, you have to open with the bombs.
raises it was what you really had.
But then the pilots were trained to open the door and negotiate.
That's why they opened the door.
Right, right.
Just so they trained them differently after.
They also said they were going to land.
They bombed will land.
We'll hostage you guys and get money.
Yes, yeah, they didn't fly.
Yeah.
It's just such an interesting time as far as, like,
comedically in New York, like these tragedies and how comics come back from it.
Like, I remember hearing stories about like Gilbert Godfrey doing something.
I think he did a roast.
Yeah.
He did a roast like a week later or something like that,
and he did a 9-11 joke.
It might have been a month later, but it was one of the Comedy Central Rose, wasn't it?
Yeah, it was within a close time frame.
He's taking a flight, but they're going to make a stop over at the Empire State Building.
It was a really good.
And everybody got mad and butt hurt.
You know, all the fake.
It's all fake.
I can't even get mad at it anymore.
The anger's all fake.
It's all pretend.
And it's rewarded now.
It's interesting.
Like, when you saw it on like a forum back in the day, maybe it was rewarded by the
community, but I don't even know if there was like up votes or anything in it.
Like, now you have the most reward for the most.
performative response or whatever it is.
Yeah, like the outreach.
It's all dopamine. Everyone's chasing their own dopamine.
And I know that because I've seen people I didn't like getting in trouble for like,
usually for language stuff.
And I never contribute to it, but I've watched it and enjoyed it.
Yeah.
I'm like, wow, I'm happy that's happening to that person.
It is a weird thing because it comes for everybody and I think like before you're there,
you don't think that it'll come for you.
Sure, of course.
Come for anybody.
People like, you can't be canceled.
So anybody, because canceling is not a rational thing.
It's not based on real things.
It's arbitrary and it's random.
And it's based on the mood.
The punishment is meted out according to the mood of the crowd,
according to their perception of the person to begin.
So it's all fucking arbitrary and bullshit.
So anyone can fall victim to it.
You said an interesting thing.
I think, I don't know if it was Opie or Anthony,
but they said that eventually the audience will start entertaining themselves.
Yes, and turn on us.
And they did.
and we kind of knew,
I think it was opi who actually said it.
Can you explain what that was?
Like, you're saying,
in these forums it happened?
Well, yeah, the fans were very hardcore.
Like, they were really, they were great.
I mean, they were animals.
A lot of them are really funny.
Like, a lot of the people that hate me the most today,
I know on some level don't hate me.
They've been following you for fucking three decades.
And I'm still a part of their life.
Like, I'm still, I mean, you know,
their screen name is still something that I said.
Yeah.
And then they, even if they hate me now.
Yeah.
But eventually you know that, again, people are not just going to be autistic in my favor.
People are going to somehow, that can turn on you in a dime.
And then after a while, they're just making each other laugh.
And a lot of them are really funny.
And what am I going to do, pretend that I am above it?
No, you're a comedian also.
You can appreciate the funny.
Some of it, yeah.
And some of it's mean and just shitty and it's not meant to be funny.
But again, I've said a lot of fucking horrible things in my life.
I mean, a lot of horrible things publicly about people,
about tragedies and about deaths and about pedophilia,
and I've mocked it all.
And I'm in no position to pretend that I am not completely fair game to be made fun of.
Yeah. Outside before the pod, you mentioned you used to get a bunch of death threats.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Why?
Because of stuff we would say on the air.
Like, you have to use a fake name at the seller.
I started doing that because of guys calling in,
and I remember a couple of guys.
I would get emails all the time.
and I'd always have people that say they're going to kill me
but they would do it under their real name
and that's when I stopped responding
because I used to go back and forth with emails
fuck you you, like I was, I didn't, you know,
but then a few of them use their real name
and when they're threatening to shoot you and using their real name
I'm like, that's a guy who has a problem.
Yeah.
And then I told the Roy story
when the guy who sued me
and I've told the story before,
but I got sued by a guy who challenged me to a duel for defamation.
Long story, he was a lawyer,
challenged me to a duel.
He said, we'll go to South America, we'll get guns.
It was 2008.
He sued me.
It went away.
One of the old-fashioned duels, like you take 10 paces to turn around?
That's what he was suggesting.
But during the pandemic, he dressed up like a FedEx worker
and went to a judge's house and killed her adult son.
He was going to shoot her.
He wanted to kill Sonia's son-in-law from the Supreme Court.
He was a crazy, he had cancer,
at stage four cancer.
So he shot, he was going to go kill this judge.
And he wound up shooting himself in the woods.
So, like, that's a guy who I had it back and forth with.
He put me in his manifesto.
So you learn, like, there's real people that you're interacting with and listening to you.
So, you know what I mean?
Like, I was always paranoid about the seller being hassled.
And I didn't want to just be there randomly every night and have some fucking lunatic.
Did you read the manifesto?
Yeah, he said I look like Gallum.
And I, that's good.
I know.
That's good.
I know.
And I even said, I had no defamation case.
But yeah, he was a real piece of shit.
But I'm glad that his demise happened,
but it's unfortunate that somebody innocent had to get it too.
I mean, you know, a great stroke of irony is in that manifesto
if he was like, this guy used to blow me in a pool
and then he just never talked to me again.
And he used teeth one time for I pissed to defend myself.
And then he mocked me.
He victimized me by making fun with me.
Yeah, he was that was, but he realized he had.
There are people watching you who you don't know what they're thinking and you don't know who they are.
Yeah.
So you have to, I mean, there's real life psychopaths out there.
Yeah.
It wasn't me thinking I was important.
It was me getting enough death threats from enough different places.
And most of them are lies.
Almost always lies.
Yeah.
But you're only worried about one person.
Right.
Did you get stuff for your wife being trans?
Oh, it's been all positive.
I can't believe.
No, but like, like, did you have any, like, maybe more conservative leading?
That's the tricky thing.
Because they've known this about you for decades.
They've known about...
Over 20 years.
So it's not before as a trend.
You were early on it.
Before it was cool.
Yeah, I really was.
You were there before the surgery got good.
Yes, I was.
I mean, I was fucking...
You were like those Russian astronauts.
Yeah.
I was back in the days where you would tip the wig like a hat.
Good evening.
How early did you find that you were into the trans stuff?
Teen stuff.
teen stuff, or maybe even before that I saw.
And the story I've told is its truth was it was a star,
a woman named Salka, she was a trans porn star.
And I saw her when I was a teenager, my friend's porn, his dad's porn collection,
or whatever it was, or magazine.
And it just hit me.
I was like, oh, I don't know why, but it made sense.
It just made sense.
There's certain things that you can't say exactly why,
but there was something about that that I just was like,
I understand this.
Was there any point at that time where you were like, okay, am I gay?
Of course.
I mean, as I was getting dressed this morning, I was just saying that into my socks.
But no, of course you wonder.
It's amazing how stupid people are.
Like, so many people will go, just come out of the closet, bro.
I'm like, what closet?
You're in a public fucking relationship.
A closet, it's a fucking, it's a glass room.
Penises and vaginas all over it.
It's talking about.
I'm not secret about this stuff.
And I'm not being dishonest, but I won't claim, yes, I'm a homosexual and I'm not.
Exactly.
And I mean this very genuinely.
But I'm definitely not straight.
There's no way you're in a relationship with a partner who is a penis and you're a heterosexual.
That's where all that fucking jargon nonsense has to stop because you're losing people.
No one is taking you seriously.
That's a good point.
No one thinks that you're saying anything real.
Yeah.
When you just throw fucking phrases and terms at people.
Yeah.
You know, it's not, I don't know exactly how to describe it.
And I'm okay not knowing the answer.
Yeah.
But the idea, like, you know,
three guys, and I'll say this, like, the idea of being sexual with any of you, and this is the
truth, is as awful for me thinking it as it is for you. Thank God. Like, yes, 100%. But you know,
if you had to rank us, though. What's that? You had to rank us. I would always go with the money.
But I mean, I'm not a fucking idiot. But the idea of being physical or sexual with my friend,
like, it's repulsive to me. Like, you know what I mean?
and people misinterpret sometimes my life
with the way I view them
and it's just not that way.
But do you like dudes that look like dudes?
No, no, I've never liked masculine energy.
I don't like masculine energy at all.
I just don't think it's sexy at all.
You know, like with transgender,
depends on the person, really.
There's been plenty of trans people I've been with
and I hate when sometimes trans people get mad at me
like, you're fetishizing.
I'm like, I fetishize every person in my life.
Why is that I think I am?
Yeah, why is that like a pejorative?
I don't know.
It's just one of these things.
What's the difference of being attracted to something and then fetishizing it?
I guess if you're only attracted to it in the dark, they consider it a fetish.
But you're in the light.
Oh, are you kidding me?
It's a spotlight that I turned on.
I didn't get caught.
I fucking turn the light on.
I'm like, hey.
Because again, I just, you know, I get sick of guys getting outed who got caught with a trans person.
Just admit it, you're fucking pussy.
Just shut up and admit it.
Admit who you like.
Especially if you're in your 50s or your 60s.
at this point. Just come out and say it.
That always annoyed me, but I would never
ever out a person.
Right. But you've heard it, and you've heard the
whispers, and maybe even trans girls in the community
have said certain things. If you want to
know who fucks trans people, they'll have sex or
they'll tell you. Immediately.
Because they don't care. They're having a good time
chatted. They don't mean it for public consumption.
Of course. And I also hate this
fake thing from men
who are so, like a lot of people
if they're not attracted to it at all.
And I hate when people go, you're transphobic,
if you don't like transphobic, no you're not.
You're not transphobic if you don't want a penis in your face.
Yeah. That's not transphobia. That's just who you are
and that's your life. Yeah. But I
also hate when straight men, like I
was on Theo's podcast and I love Theo
and we were joking about something
and I showed him a picture of my wife's
dick.
Yeah, but he had led into it saying
somebody had showed him a picture or something,
but it was like, she wouldn't believe me, she would care, I wouldn't
do it. She doesn't.
And he was funny with it. He was Theo.
He was like, oh, yeah. And, but
all the comments of people.
Like, dude, that's fucking disgusting.
I'm like, shut the fuck up.
You watch porn.
What do you look for small dick porn?
No, you don't. No, you don't.
You're not that shocked by a penis.
You stop pretending and role-playing.
What did they think was wrong with it?
They just...
But they were just white knighting, like virtue signaling.
They're like, yeah, fuck that shit.
That doesn't offend me.
But it's the fake shock.
at a penis.
Like, again, you don't have to like it.
I believe that you don't like it.
I think that you're straight.
I think that you...
The idea of doing something like that
probably disgusts you, and I'm fine with that.
But it's this whole, like, whoa,
bro.
It's like that.
It's like, shut your face.
I thought the shock was showing nudes
of your wife.
Like, that's...
That's kind of what I was...
That's a fair point.
But I know her well enough to know, believe me,
she's fine with it.
She would not be...
Does it work as well the penis when she's taken the hormones?
I mean, I spent a lot of money on immigration lawyers, and you wouldn't do that if it didn't.
Okay.
You know.
You got to call up Trump like, we need to get her out of here.
This thing isn't working like it was in Norway.
Hey, I, you know, we did it really legally.
It was a frustrating process, but you learned a lot about immigration.
We did it 100% by the book.
Weren't you living in like Montreal for a year and nobody knew or something like that?
15 months I went up there during the pandemic.
I heard that they were going to close the border, so I just drove up one day.
I can't be without this.
No, not at all, please.
I'm addicted.
Come on, folks.
Get your tickets.
But no, I had fallen in love with it.
At first it was just about, you know, a sex.
I was attracted to her.
How did you guys even meet?
She's not from here, right?
She sent me an email because I had always talked about this stuff.
It was like a Facebook message.
Because I'd always talked about this stuff in interviews.
Right.
And most, you know, a lot of messages from, hey, I'm so happy you talked about this.
It's nice to hear somebody to be honest.
And she sent me a message and we just started talking.
But then she wasn't allowed to come and visit because they thought she was just going to live here illegally, which she wouldn't have.
Right.
But again, immigration can be tough sometimes if you're under a certain age.
I think you're going to live.
So we just had to talk every day.
and we became very close over the next couple of eight months,
and then I finally book gigs overseas to meet her.
But I kind of started falling in love with her through talking to her,
like before we ever had any intercourse.
Where did she grow up?
She's Norway.
Norway.
So getting to know each other.
Yeah, we definitely talked to her.
I mean, there's a lot of Skype sex talk.
But it was also like you just became a real relationship.
And it wasn't just somebody who I was going to have sex with.
So I just fell in love with her.
So did she embrace your deviancy?
Was there judgment of any of the shit?
She didn't judge it at all.
She's still a wife at the end of the day.
Like there's a certain point in time where they're like,
we're not doing anything anymore.
There are certain differences and there are certain complete similarities.
She's been very open.
But my ex-girlfriend, who was biologically a woman, was not at all thrown off by.
Like I said, the one who was a dominatry.
She knew all my secrets.
But she's in the biz, though.
She was when I met her, but then she got out and then just changed her life completely.
Right.
She got out.
And she said she went back to school or something
Went back to school
Started making film
Like you know
And then she's a hustler man
She works her ass off
She got into the restaurant business
Like she did so much with her light
Like you know what I mean
Like
But no she didn't judge any of it either
I couldn't have been with somebody who judged it
I'm bored with somebody who judge
I dated a woman once
And I was so attracted to her
But there were certain things about my past
And she's like you can never tell me that again
And I remember in my mind going
I will never be with this person again.
I wasn't angry and I wasn't offended.
But I'm like, I'm not going to ashamed of this shit.
Yeah, you felt the shame.
Like, she wanted me to.
Yeah.
But I didn't feel ashamed.
I was more annoyed.
Like, how fucking dare you?
I know you're dirt.
Well, she feels discomfort.
Yeah, she was very uncomfortable with it.
Right.
Not that my wife is proud of my history.
I mean, but again, we all have a history, right?
No matter how nice a girl.
You and your wife are a little bit different, but you guys are rare exceptions.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
That's a rare exception.
I'm curious. Do you ever, at what age did she transition?
I think she was about 15 she started. But in Norway, it's a different process.
You have to be diagnosed before they give you anything.
I think you have to live in that lifestyle as a year, dressing that way and living that way to see if it's legit for you,
or if you're somebody who is just stumbling into it because you don't know who you are.
Like that's what I mean? Like right now when you see, because whatever the, the,
the personality of the day is people will accidentally stumble into.
Like people in the 90s, it was emo.
And in the 80s, it was devil worship.
And there were the people who legitimately are emo.
But then there's people who weren't.
We're so tribal that sometimes we can adopt certain trends
that can have negative impacts long term.
So you have to give people a little bit to make sure.
And there's a social contagion, even if there's a contingent of people that are legitimately assertive.
100%.
And there are real trans people.
I've known a lot of them.
And I've known them for years.
And I know who they are.
And they're real. You're a real transgender person.
And then you have somebody else who comes in by no intention.
And they think they are, but they're a little confused.
And oh, yeah, that. And they think they fall under an umbrella in some weird way.
Well, there's also like a social award for it.
Like, you know, if you're like a straight white person in Hollywood and you go,
well, I'm actually non-binary, it's like your way out of straight whiteness,
which might be like the bad guy in progressive ideology.
I'll tell you what there's no reward in the business for.
being a white guy who blinks a lot who marries one.
Oh, there is no Hollywood reward.
But I knew there wouldn't be, and I'm okay with it.
Is it ever a strange feeling seeing photos from before the transition?
I mean, Grant's a little different because she was a kid.
Do you guys have childhood pictures up in the apartment?
I think she has one, yeah, and it's very...
What is it a feeling?
Disconnect. I can't connect that to the person I'm married to.
Not because I'm angry about it, but I just see...
So you have a very...
problem with her past too.
I don't judge it.
I'm just like, I really understand it.
But it's never,
like a bad thing. It's just hard
for me to, in my mind, marry
those two people. Because I didn't know her when she transitioned.
I knew her after she transitioned.
But she's very logical
about this stuff. And I respect her
brain a lot. Like,
she's more conservative about it than I am.
And she's actually changed
my opinions in certain ways. What do you mean by that?
Meaning that she's like, again, people,
be diagnosed and everybody who goes in for it is not exactly, she thinks that you should have
to have a diagnosis because she did and to get on hormones and to have surgeries. There should be a
certain age. And I think you should be a certain age too. Just so you've worked through maybe
making a mistake. 100%. I don't think it's irrational to say that. The problem is we just can't be
shitty to people who say they are that. Like that's another problem. It's like you force trans people
into this position because you treat them fucking horribly
and you're cruel to them and then you wonder
why they go hey fuck you if you don't honor my pronouns
you're fine so there's got to be a
balance there like you got to at least be respectful
and treat people with dignity
if you want them to to be logical
and walk through this slowly
yeah that's how I see it
with all due respect does she still have the peace
does she
and now is she planning on
cutting it off
not with Jim's money not with my money
and if she does hey I'll miss her
I love her as she is.
I don't want her to change anything.
Yes.
And some people, again, there's trans people who say,
oh, then you don't really love her if you.
No, that's just not true.
I love her as you are.
Wait, well, you only really love her, what?
Yeah, I love her how she is is how I love her.
Yeah.
So if you marry somebody and they have a vagina and they go,
I'm going to transition and get a dick,
you don't love them if you don't want that?
I mean, come on, stop.
People get so obsessed in the jargon.
It's silly.
Oh, that's interesting.
Wait, what?
Not because I'm like, what if you're with someone and they gain some weight or whatever?
Same thing.
Get by.
Get the road, fatso.
Do you?
There is a reversibility with that, whereas like some type of gender race I'm in surgery is not.
Oh, yeah, that's right.
But she doesn't want to do it.
She likes how she is.
Is there like a hierarchy or scrutiny within the community when people get like the full surgery or when they keep the part?
Good question.
I don't know.
I mean, that I don't know the answer to because my interaction, I've known so many trans people over the years, but I've never gotten involved in activism.
I just, and there's nothing wrong with it, but I just live my life.
Like my job, I've lost a lot of fans because of it.
Really?
Yeah, I'm okay with that.
Like, but I don't preach about it.
Like, I don't know why they would go anywhere.
Like, I've never messaged.
I don't lecture.
Like, people, I don't.
So you talked about these stories for decades.
For years, yeah.
It was never an issue.
And the second you marry one, now it's like, oh.
Oh, I thought he was kidding.
Knight.
No, you didn't.
And my material is still good.
Like, I mean, I try to be funny.
And when I talk about it in my act, I don't, I don't lecture.
My job is not to change your opinion.
Yeah.
My job is to live my life and give you my, here's the report.
Here's what's going on.
Yeah.
Do whatever the fuck you want.
And make them laugh.
Make you laugh.
Because if you're lecturing, then you're not doing stand-up.
Yeah, it's awful.
Who the fuck wants to get?
It's awful.
Who wants to go to laugh and hear some boar standing up there scolding them?
Yeah.
I want you to laugh at like what I laugh at in my life.
Exactly.
Right.
It's an interesting paradigm.
Are there any things relationally with a trans woman that are different than a biological woman outside of the obvious?
No.
The nagging.
The fucking, I didn't go shopping this week.
Can we just order food?
It's exactly the same.
Can she pick a restaurant quickly?
No.
No, she can't.
No, she can't.
No, it really is the same personal relationship I've had with anyone.
anyone updated. Any woman I've dated and Nikki, there is no, I'm not like, whoa, this is a lot.
Again, like you said, the obvious and the challenges, and you have to worry about when you're
going to travel, you have to think about, can I go to this destination? Is this safe for her?
Oh, really? Yeah. And when you're out in public, you're like, is somebody going to say something?
Am I going to have to? Has that ever happened? No, not really. A couple of looks or comment,
but very rarely, and I can't even think of a comment I've ever heard.
Are the countries you've avoided? I won't go to the Middle East. But again,
only with her I wouldn't.
Because again, this wouldn't be good.
Because, like, her passport still is male.
No, it's female. Because she's from Norway.
Norway used female passport.
Yeah, Norway is different, and she's got a female passport.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, for a long time.
So she's good there.
But even if they had to change it, I wouldn't like it.
But, you know.
And it's a little crazy.
But does she bend you over?
No.
Oh, no.
And it's not out of masculinity.
I'm like, I just, I'll wind up in the hospital.
It's for safety.
You got to understand.
You're blowing Alex's mind right now.
But he's probably just like a little scared to ask questions, but you are with an absolute open book.
He's probably one of the most unique individuals in comedy in that way.
So you could probably ask him anything.
Circumcised?
No.
Unclipped.
Wow.
I am.
You're a European.
That's right.
European.
Yeah.
She's an unclipped gal.
You know, typical we are, the white picket fence, the wife with an uncut dick, and how it is.
Well, I don't think women should get circumcised, so I'm with you.
Yeah, so she did.
Oh, yeah. Yeah, I wish people didn't either.
No, no, I just mean women specifically.
Oh, yeah.
No, no, but I'm actually trying to push for clitoral circumstances.
I believe very strongly in that.
I'm like, enough with this pleasure of shit.
I'm a big proponent of lopping that clit off and get to work.
And now, is your relationship open?
No.
Oh, so you're not, like, still sexual addict?
I mean, I am.
I still watch porn and all that stuff, but I'm not sleeping with anybody.
But you got to fight it, right?
Yeah, yes and no.
What if, like, an ad comes up for, like, you know, some dating service or some shit?
I mean, I look at the ad and I can get turned on by it.
But, again, I was kind of running out a lot of my behaviors when I first met her.
Because I just, as they say, you run out your string, whatever.
You just kind of, like, after a while, you know what I mean?
I still love dirty talk, and I still love, like, watching porn and stuff like that.
but as far as actively
fucking people and all,
like, you do enough of it.
You're like, I've done it.
Do you miss vagina at all?
Sometimes, sure.
I loved it.
I loved it. I love vagina.
Yeah.
But, you know, married guys, a lot of times
will, like, say to me, like,
you don't have any,
like, you guys are only up on me one nothing.
I mean, that's how I look.
You know, one more than I do.
And we don't.
We all miss vagina.
Yeah, we're kind of zero to do.
Of course.
I mean, we all miss many vaginas.
I have that in common with every married guy.
I miss 99.9% of,
the pussy's on her. I miss them. I miss seeing them. I miss seeing the panties, pictures. Are they
big? Are they small? Does she have big lips and small lips? You know what I mean? It'd be funny.
If you guys were all just filed out and I was still talking, it's the clip big.
And what about her? Like now she's got a public, you know, persona. Like, do people hit up
her? Is that? I'm sure sometimes, yeah. But she's pretty clear. She's not, you know, she's very
fine being married. She's way more traditional than a lot of people would think. She's much more
like just wants to be a married person.
It's funny how people will see our relationship
because she hasn't been on the podcast for a while.
We did one together because I was allowed to do it contractually.
And then I started doing mine.
She was getting a little shy publicly.
But people will say like,
oh, your wife is full.
And I'm like, no, she's home.
She's doing good.
And everything's fine.
Like, you're reading into the relationship wrong.
Are there cultural elements that make things tricky?
Like the fact she's from Norway?
Does it add a ripple?
Or does it make it easier in any way?
No, because they're very much.
open over there. They don't care that much. I mean, the citizens are a little, I mean, they're
conservative too, but yeah, no problem. We don't have that big of a cultural difference. Again,
if she was like from Turkey or somewhere, like, you know, somewhere maybe a little more religiously
or Islamic, like there might be a little more difficulty, but, you know, she's just from a
Scandinavian country, so. Right. No one cares. So interesting. Have you ever talked about
on stage and seen disbelief in the... Yeah, and I try to get into it, like, especially now where I'm
giving shocking information.
So I'm not trying to go, like, guess who I'm married to?
I'm just, I have things to talk about with it, so I have to let people know.
So every time you're on stage, you kind of have to acknowledge this.
I've done sets without mentioning it, but I have bits around it or jokes around it.
Where I tie in the, I'm working on the thing where I'm talking about, I hate the no military
because of it, they're all mentally ill argument, especially when it comes from religious people.
And I talk about the mental illness that is in religion.
and it annoys me a lot.
So I have to set it up properly
to get into that bit or that concept.
Is there ever a moment where she's really acting up on something
and you're like, well, maybe you guys are mentally ill?
No, it's never been crazy like that.
She's actually a better arguer than I am.
Yeah, yeah.
But you're better at cutting people's legs off.
Yes, I am.
Do you have to hold back?
Because it's your wife at the end of the day.
Yeah, yes, you do.
You have to watch what you say.
We both said mean shit to each other.
that you kind of she's better at stopping the fight
your level of mean is
better than most
yeah but I've also
I've also
I've dated women who are good at it
like my ex before that was good at it
and she's good at it
my ex before that was talking about some guy
being good looking and I was really mad at her
I'm like you fucking bitch and she's like what
did nobody ever tell you you're not an Abercrombie model
I was like
has the cultural conversation around
transgenderism been helpful that
like maybe when you were doing jokes about this like 20 years ago it's like oh you're a deviant you're a weirdo
but now it's like oh i'm actually progressive no because it's become lectures no one talks about it
nobody wants to listen it's not fun yet it's not fun everybody's lecturing now it's like but when
you do it at least the audience is aware of what this is you don't have to explain it's so interesting
it's like initially initially when you're doing it it's so out there provocative right that like
it fills in your identity as this like deviant in way right so
So they don't even take it seriously, probably, right?
It's just like, oh, it's just like a cartoonish backstory.
The things that have happened in your life are like so insane that you can almost like separate them from reality.
And then it becomes more open and progressive, but now people are white knighting about it.
So it's like it's hard to be funny about it without.
Yes.
Like the audience now feels like they should embrace it, but maybe they don't know where they are emotionally.
I think people who are progressive like the fact that at least I talk about it and I'm in the real life with it.
And I think the people who are conservative like the fact that I'm not trying to lecture them and tell them they have to feel any kind of way or scold them for being who they are.
I mean, that's just my take on it.
It's not my job to do that.
It's not my job to, but I tell every audience.
And in Texas, you notice the reaction to the religious stuff is different.
In the city, they love it.
It is what it is.
But no, the conversation has not been helpful because it's not a real conversation.
It's different people standing over a red line lecturing each other and saying this is what it is.
And if you don't agree, this is what's wrong with you.
Nobody is actually talking about it in a real way.
And like being, okay, let me think about what you're saying.
Let me hear, you know, is that transphobia or is that just logical pushback to where progressives became unreasonable and infuriated?
Nobody is doing it like that.
How long you think we live in this?
Oh, it's never going to change.
I mean, you know, we were talking about this since political correctness.
And me and Colin, we're talking about this in the early 2000s.
It's going to change.
It's going to swing back.
It swung back a little.
It did.
Because the generation now is rebelling against their parents.
And their parents are fucking like, you know, are very...
Delicate.
Delicate with language and, oh, my God, you shouldn't do that.
So these young kids are like, fuck, hey, let's get some Hitler videos and drink and laugh.
It's a rebellion.
It's also insincere.
It's as insincere.
It's as...
All bullshit.
this whole fucking fuck you
everyone's a Nazi and it's all bullshit
I thought we had a few years where it was like
I thought we were past it
there was like a couple year run where I was like you know what we're
past it let's have some fun everything's good
and it's almost like the pendulum swung too far
nope it's exactly it but here's the problem
it's like saying we're past heroin
it's a drug it's a drug it's not a
real thing it's people getting high
and getting stoned on punishing
and on arguing that will never go
away yeah because it's too seductive
trans issues racial issues
religious issues, it's all excuses to do
what we really want to do, which is
fucking get the dopamine of shaming
and fighting. That's it.
So these are all just peripheral
things we grab onto as our
sword, but it's all bullshit. It's about punishing people.
The trans issue, I still feel that pops up
every once in a while. It's like no trans in
sports. Yeah, that's a rough
one because there's a physical advantage
to being born in a male body.
It's not a more, it's not like you're less down as a person.
You're not a morally inferior
person, but there is a physical difference. I mean,
I don't know how people can pretend they don't notice that.
Yeah.
I'm curious, where does your wife stand on that?
She's against it.
Really?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, she's against it.
So who's fighting for it?
There are people who, because I think people are saying that,
they're saying that if you're against it, you're transphobic or you're not against trans people having rights.
And it's just a biological thing.
It's like, that's like saying that if you're a middleweight, you should be able to fight a bantam weight.
There's no anger behind saying that they should.
But I also want to see trans people be able to do sports.
I also wish that there was either open divisions
or another way to figure it out
because I think that a lot of those people
are genuine and they just want to compete
and they're not trying to hurt girl
like they're just real people trying to compete
but we don't have an answer for it yet
Oh, what's that New Olympics?
The Enhance Games.
Yeah.
Oh, okay.
You allowed to do steroids?
Yeah, it's encouraged under like medical supervision.
Oh, yeah.
There you go.
Jim Norton, everybody.
Thank you so much for being.
That was awesome.
It's fun, man.
That was great.
Thank you so much.
