Breaking Bread with Tom Papa - Episode 281 - Spike Feresten

Episode Date: September 9, 2025

Today Spike Feresten joins us at the table! He's written for your favorite shows including Late Night with David Letterman and Seinfeld - and he's here to talk all things comedy! Tom talks with Spike about his many interests - collecting cars, playing live ball tennis, and designing watches. Enjoy!  Check out Spike's podcast Spike's Car Radio.  Text PAPA to 64000 to get twenty percent off all IQBAR products, plus FREE shipping. Message and data rates may apply.  ButcherBox is offering our listeners $20 off their first box and free protein for a year. Go to ButcherBox.com/papa to get this limited time offer and free shipping always.  ------------------- 0:00:00 Intro 0:01:02 TomPapa.com 0:01:57 Patreon Shoutout 0:02:27 Pressures of Spike's bread  0:03:10 Seinfeld stopped Tom from golfing  0:05:00 Collecting cars  0:10:10 Paul Newman's flat loafs and Tom's fascination  0:15:29 Comedy writing vs stand up  0:17:00 Playing tennis, live ball 0:25:50 Writing for Letterman, Seinfeld  0:30:50 Writing "Soup Nazi" episode and working with Larry and Jerry 0:40:10 Seinfeld bungalow and Hollywood magic  0:42:00 IQ Bar ad  0:44:05 Butcher Box ad 0:45:41 State of comedy in Hollywood 0:48:48 Fox late night show and cancellation  1:01:02 Colbert cancellation  1:06:12 Podcast - Spike's Car Radio 1:07:20 Personality of people who drive specific cars  1:12:10 Uncomfortable moment  1:14:32 Tom & family past Seinfeld and Spike driving Porsches 1:16:05 Father forcing fist fights 1:20:02 watching Friends and old Seinfeld episodes  1:22:35 Designing watches  ------------------- Tom Papa is a celebrated stand-up comedian with over 20 years in the industry. Watch Tom's new special "Home Free" out NOW on Netflix! Patreon - Patreon.com/BreakingBreadwithTomPapa Radio, Podcasts and more: https://linktr.ee/tompapa/ Website - http://tompapa.com/ Instagram -  https://www.instagram.com/tompapa Tiktok - https://www.tiktok.com/@tompapa Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/comediantompapa Twitter - https://www.twitter.com/tompapa #tompapa #breakingbread #comedy #standup #standupcomedy #bread #seinfeld #latenight Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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the Ed Sullivan building. Yeah. What a big operation. Massive. But Seinfeld, the number one show, that's got to be skyscraper. The diehard building, it's got to be. Yeah. And they walked me onto the lot into this tiny bungalow.

And I'm like, this is it? This is where you make this show? Where the hell is everybody? I always say, but it was just the, you know, it was just the producers and the creative team. And it was really chill. It was really nice. That's why show business works, though. It's the illusion of show business is always right.

I remember I was shooting something and I got to go on the set where Tom Brocault would do the nightly news at NBC. I forget even why I was there. I've shot there. Yeah. And you walk behind the desk of Tom Brocaulte's nightly news. It's got to be made out of marble. And you just walk and it's fake. It's the balsawood desk.

Yeah, it's balserwood. And there's like shit underneath it. Yeah. And that's like this. Oh, yeah. this is why show business works it's breaking bread hey everybody today's episode is brought to you by the good people at tompapa.com wow it's really hard to get these guys we feel pretty lucky uh my tour dates i'm going heavy starting in september we're doing a whole bunch of days we're

going to erie pennsylvania we're going to pittsburghorgantown west virginia then we're off to Canada. We're doing a bunch of shows in Regina and Winnipeg and then, ooh, St. John's and Moncton, a bunch of places up there. Big shows coming up in Philadelphia, New Jersey, a whole bunch all the way through to the end of the year on the Grateful Bread Tour. Go to tompapa.com and look up all of those beautiful tour dates. We'll be doing book signings. There may be some pugs involved. We're very excited. Also, if you're not a member of the Patreon yet, you really should join. It's a great way to support the podcast and we get extra bonus material, a lot of it's silly, a lot of it's fun, and we were really starting to grow that.

We're interacting with the fans a lot more. So if you get a chance, go over to patreon.com, look up our podcast, Breaking Bread with Tom Papa, of course, and join up. It's a great way to support us and expand the community and have some fun. And that's it. Yeah, I'm just going to do the podcast now. here, Spike. I'm excited to be here, Tom. I missed you. I know. I've been wanting to talk about bread with you for quite some time. Have you really? Yes. I have to say, it's not a joke. I have to say there's a little pressure on me when I was making this bread because Jerry always busts my balls about the bread.

Why? How good is it? What's with the bread? And you're such a direct link to Jerry. I'm like, this better be good bread. If you tell Jerry. Why would you let him harass you? Why would you? about bread. When he's doing the same thing with cars. Right. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Because anything that I do, he's going to bust me on. Yes. He did. He ruined, he stopped me playing golf. He did? Jerry Seinfeld stopped me playing golf. That's unfortunate. I called him once. I was starting to play golf because there's these celebrity golf things or whatever. So I started getting into it. And I kept it a secret from him. And this is when we were working together a lot. Yeah. And I called him left a best of

I said, I just want to admit, I've been hiding something from you. This is a voicemail message. I've been golfing. I'm sorry I hit it, and I just wanted to let you know. And he called me back, and he called me back while I was on a golf course by myself, just hitting balls. And he said, Tom, I got your message. It's totally great that you're playing golf.

I don't think you should have hit it. I think it was perfectly fine. As long as there are some other great comedians that also golf, I think there's nothing wrong with it. Let's see. Bill Cosby, no, he didn't golf. George Carlin, no, wasn't a golfer. I'm sure there's someone. I hung up. It was a long list. And I hit the next one into the woods. I got my clubs. I put him in the car and I went home. Bob Hope. Is he not considered? Bob Hope would be a good one. Great comedian golfer. Yeah, well, you know, you think it through and you're David Spade.

But what Jerry says things with authority, you tend to think it's true for a while. Yeah. My first thought was he was going to talk about the amount of time that it takes to play golf. Away from writing. Away from comedy. Yeah, away from writing. Yeah. He's wrong about that.

You need to go back to golf. Yeah, you're right. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I'm allowed to have other parts of my life. He does a lot of driving. He does a lot of driving things.

No one's harassing him about that. Here's a question I had for you. Yes. We didn't get to my bread questions, though. Okay, but let me do this one first. A lot of people collect cars. The people I know who collect cars, you know, it's a very expensive hobby and very passionate. Did you start collecting cars?

You were in the Seinfeld orbit. You write Soup Nazi. You start getting success in show business. Is that when the cars come, or did the cars come before all of that? No, it was a lifelong obsession. from age two. Oh, right. Yeah, and not the collecting, the driving.

Uh-huh. You know, I had the same question for my mom a while back. I said, what is this stupid car thing that I'm involved in? She sent me this thing, loves cars, like in the little diary of me as a kid, which I think there were only like three or four entries. Right. Which is loves cars, age two. Yeah.

And it just kind of followed me through life, but specifically I wanted a car to, drive away from my house when I was 18. Like, I really wanted to get out of there. It was that age of parenting where you, I think it was good. You hated your parents. Yeah. And you didn't want to be under their control.

And they tried to, and you just drove away. And that was it by. Just waving. Yeah, that it represented freedom to me. Yeah. And even from age 16, like, I can get out of this. I can just drive away. So that, the car was always very, and then, you know, on the weekends, I grew up at a small

time of Massachusetts, we would drive into the woods and drink beer and listen to music on the radio. That was Friday or Saturday night. Yeah. Right? If we were lucky there was a concert at Madison Square Hall, we could tune in on the radio. You know, there was that cars represented fun and still do for me. Yeah, freedom. Yeah. And do you think that, do you think that being obsessed with cars made you successful because you wanted to get the best cars you could, because I've watched some of my comedian friends, Jerry Aside, who get into it. And I really, I really, truly believe they became better at their job because they wanted more cars. Yeah, totally. That's the carrot. Right. You want to buy something nice and you want to drive around it and you think it's

going to fix your life, but it doesn't. But you just, the next one will and you just keep going with it. I don't know that I'm really obsessed with it. I just really enjoy it. Just love it. And, you know, I'm trying to think where it kind of follows me. I think it was on David Letterman. You know, it's back before there's an internet, really. So if you liked cars or you like, like the world of cars, you were kind of embarrassed about it. You're like, you know, I'm kind of one of those guys. Not far from a pedophile, but I like cars instead. And there's a group of us we get together. You know, you talk like that. So whenever you, you'd meet someone who also like cars, which happened to be David Letterman, somehow he heard I liked cars. And I didn't really

know much about them. Every time I'd go up or bring stuff up to his office, he'd say, hey, check out, do you see this ground effects rabbit, Volkswagen Rabbit, in the back of Auto Week? And I was like, no, Dave, but I didn't see that. What's on a week? You should look, it's $3,000 you should buy it. How old are you now? No, I'm working for Dave, so I'm in my 20s.

It's this funny thing where you don't know if, did you just, as a boss, tell me I have to buy this? You should buy this. And, you know, Dave, you know, let me drive a lot of his cars here at Santa Monica Airport when I first got hired. I mean, I think I'd been hired for two weeks. Wow. And Lori Diamond came in and said, you know, when you're out in L.A. for the Emmys, Dave wants to come by the airport and drive his cars.

And I'm like, what does that mean? Was he the first airport? Why are their cars in an airport? What are you talking to? Was he the first airport guy? I think so. I think he was. They were having trouble at Cinemotic Airport getting people to put planes in the Cessna hangers.

Right. So I think he was one of the first to put cars in there. Wow. And I think he's, you know, Jerry called him to get a hangar down there. in the day. Right. And I called Jerrypack in the day 22 years ago and now I have a little hangar down there. It's so, it's the coolest thing in the world. It's lovely. It's a lovely open space. Yeah. And they're trying to shut it down to build condos and the rest of it. Are they really? Yeah. The whole airport? The whole airport. There's a hundred small businesses down there. It's,

you've been down there. It's like no other place in the world. Oh, it's so. My son takes flying lessons down there. There's lots of pilots, lots of different flying schools. It's amazing. And, and they say they want to close it for parks. There are already seven parks there. You don't need more parks. You don't need more parks. The oceans, a stone throw away. And, you know, with the fires that just happened, we saw how you need that there. That, you know, that was a staging ground for the west side and for Altadena flying in stuff. So without that there, you also have that issue. Right. Oh, and it's just the coolest. Yes, it's the greatest. Just going to those little hangars and seeing these. Yeah. And it's not, like, if you saw my hanger, you wouldn't go, oh, wow, how beautiful. It's like, it's, it's, it's, it's,

It's a, you know, corrugated doors with a padlock on it. You open it up. You got some crap in there. Yeah. There you go. That's what's amazing about it. It looks so nondescript. But then you walk by and you're like, whoa, wait.

I think I just saw a car I saw in a movie. Is that Harrison Ford on his way to crash on a golf course? It is. All right. I'm sorry to interrupt. But that question has been on my mind a long time. What about the bread? Okay.

This has a tangential comedy relation. Lorraine Newman's brother, Paul Newman. Right. Different Paul Newman. That's unfortunate. He's a sourdough breadmaker. And he's been sending his experimental sourdough loaves to our house on a weekly basis. They're very good.

But they don't have this upright, like they're not as tall or as big as that. They're not as puffy. They're kind of flat. Yeah. Yeah. What's he doing wrong? Well, I don't know the guy, but he sounds like a real. loser.

There's a couple things it could be. He could be using the wrong flour, so it doesn't have this malleability. It doesn't form like a good structure. So if you don't have, like when I'm mixing the dough, I can feel

that it's going to be good. Like you feel like there's elasticity to it. It's fighting you a little bit. Yeah. And when I shape it, this is going to, it basically just has good structure. And then you score it with a razor and it's just the release of the steam of the water that's in it that creates this little. But what makes it rise in general? That little guy.

That's beautiful. Yeah. I'm eating that. There's a lot of moisture in it. That's what makes it rise. So that's the steam kind of comes out. But the structure of the bread, if it has good structure, if it's, firm enough,

uh, when the steam goes, it's like, you know, think of like a, like girders. It's just going to, if it's very loose,

and the strands are very loose. The gluten strands are very loose and wavy. It's, the steam will come out. Yeah. It has nothing, no structure. Wow.

So it's going to be flat. When did you start doing this? Because honestly, you've got me thinking about doing it too. Every time I look at the sourdough loaf, so I think of you and I go, Tom Papa is a sourdough guy. Why? And I think I spend like 10 minutes thinking in my kitchen. Why does he do this? What is it about it?

Yeah. Now I'm seeing this. Some real thinking behind this. Yeah. It's a fascinating thing. It's fascinating because it's very intriguing, very visceral. But it's also historic. Like there's some DNA, like this is the first. It's the reason bread is always the thing for centuries, you know? So there's just like this lineage of it that you just, you just know and feel and you can't believe that you're kind of participating in it. And then it's just great to eat and make. But I have a friend of mine that I have the line of bread products that are coming out. This company, Nambay, like, approached me to design bread stuff. And one of the guys I'm working with on it sent me his loaf last night. He made bread. I inspired him to bake bread.

Really? And he sent me and he had a really good, beautiful loaf. And it was his first one. And the way he told me about it, just the story. morning, he was like, when you lift the Dutch oven in the first step and you open it up and you see that it rose, I couldn't, I, we were, my wife and I were just so, and I was like, he's hooked. He's hooked. Yeah, yeah. It's not just like, some people like, yeah, I made bread. Other people like, and then it, ha, no. And it really got him. I've been watching Paul's evolution and it's

really exciting. Yeah. And he goes, I'll stop dropping him off. I go, no, you won't. This is great. I go, let me give you feedback, because I love it. I love eating it. And it disappears so quickly off the table. I have teenagers, and we put it in the center of the table just like this with a knife. It's gone. Gone, I know. 24 hours.

I'm that guy in my neighborhood. I just keep delivering to people. My neighbor, I just, I say, this is yours. Oh, great. I bake this for you. Thank you. Your little bag is over there. Oh, this is so exciting.

Yeah, this was totally yours. I finally get something for going on a podcast. Yeah. I text my one neighbor. I say, yeah. I just go to the street, and that means meat at the street, and I give you bread. Oh, wow. Yeah.

And are you going to start charging for this? Is there any, like, hope to open up a brick and mortar, like a little shop? I would love to do, like, a pop-up, like, around the holidays or something. Yeah. And just, but I don't know how to do that. We'd like to thank the good people at Quince for sponsoring today's program. If you spend a lot of time cooking at home, it's time to elevate your game. When your cookware actually feels good to use and is thoughtfully made and looks beautiful on your counter,

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And their Japanese Damascus steel knives make prep feel way easier and more precise. I love having quince in my lineup. I've got these good ceramic frying pans and sauce pans. They're very cool. They're good in your hand and they clean easy, which is another very cool thing. The best part, everything at Quince is priced way lower than you'd expect, 50 to 80% less than similar brands. Go get it right now. Refresh your everyday with luxury you'll actually use. Head to quince.com slash Papa for free shipping on your order and

365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. That's Quince, Q-U-I-N-C-E dot com slash Papa, P-A-P-A, for free shipping and 365-day returns. Quince.com slash Papa. I would need someone that knows all the things to do that. Look at all these people working for you. I know. Someone here must know something. They can definitely figure it out. Selling something.

We all have chat GPT. Yeah, look what you've done here. Yeah. You've got to figure it out. I do really, I would like to do it. But, you know, there's another part of the baking journey. Yes. Where bread is cool and it's like the good root and maybe you do a pop-up.

But the thing I think that people really love is getting cookies. I think if I start going into cookies, I could be the white famous Amos. I think that might be my future. All right? You know what I mean? Sure. Why not? Yeah.

I think it could go that way. It can't be as hard as comedy. Do you think comedy's hard? You've been in, you wrote for Letterman, you had your own talk show, you wrote on Seinfeld. What I do is. is hard. I think what stand-ups do is harder. I think I would put it a little under stand-up. Just the craft of it? The craft, the hours. The hours? Yeah. I mean, you have to get people to say yes and hire you and do all that stuff. That's part. Yeah, that's fine. But I can do that from my offices,

you know, wherever I might be, I can make a phone call or a text or to get an act together, like over the age of like, I don't know, 30. You got to, now you're leaving the house. house at 10 o'clock at night and doing stand-up on a Monday night, right? And writing and performing at night. See, it's the performing at night part that I just like. It's just the hours. Not doing that. Well, let me. But also just the amount of time you have to put in to get that hour. Right. Yeah. Yeah. It's a lot. So I can write. I can write something in a couple of weeks. Right. And then refine it over the course of a, you know, a month or so. But it's not like the act. What are you doing at night that you want to be home so bad. Really? Yeah. I like to sit on my couch with my little dog. Little dog is the only one that

pays attention to me in the house anymore. Right. And watch TV shows. That's enough. Yeah, one or two. And then it's a competition between the phone and the TV show like this. Right. And some of that. That's a good night. That's a really good night. But I'm playing, not golf, I'm playing tons of tennis right now. You are? Because tennis is fast. I play every week. I mean, every day. day pretty much. Really? I'm off. Did you play in the past?

No, I did not. You just picked it up. I was a baseball player. Right. And I picked it up over the pandemic and got hooked. But it's in two hour births. So I can play either the end of the day or before the day, 630 to 830 or I can play tomorrow. I'm playing five to seven.

Really? Joe's a big tennis player. You are. Yeah. Fantastic. Loves it. Do you play live ball? Yeah.

Yeah. That's. That's what we're doing. What's your rating? Wow. So he's up there. Is that good? Yeah, yeah. What's live ball? Well, we don't have time for that. It's essentially, there's a guy. There's a doctor in Pacific Palisades who years ago realized that doubles tournament tennis was kind of boring. Wouldn't it be fun if we put a wireless speaker up and played some classic rock songs and instead of having two on two, we have six or seven people on the court

and play kind of a king of the court. What? Two people are on the winning side, two challengers. If you don't beat them, the next two come in. The next two come in, and it's very aerobic.

And you have a pro there instead of us serving, you have a pro off to the side feeding balls to one side, the challenger side. It's like the savanna bananas of tennis. Exactly. The savanna bananas of...

Exactly right. They have no dancing. There's some. There's some. They break the rules. There's a lady I play with who does a victory dance when she wins and goes to the other side. But you play a live ball, right?

Yeah, yeah. It's great, because it is great exercise and then also, like, works, except for the server with all your tennis. It's crazy. Wow. So right away, I lost 16 pounds. Really? I can go home every night and eat two of these if I want.

Nothing matters anymore. There was a study that said that tennis is the best thing you can possibly do for your fitness and your skills and your balance and your mind and everything. It's, like, it blows everything else away. I got a couple, are you? sick? Is there something wrongs? Oh, really? Because you lost so much weight? Yeah, yeah. That's great. And just had to keep pounding calories, which I do all the time.

And, you know... Amazing. I just love the game. If you're... If he's a 4-5, he's a very good player. What are you? I play between 40-4-5, but toward the end of 4-5. Right. Trying to be a 5-0. I know that's the goal. That's the goal? That's the goal, right? To be a 5-0?

Who gives you this number? They won't let you in. I'll answer that in a second. They won't let you in to the 5-0. Oh, unless you have some sort of like D1, D3, D2 college experience. So it's very hard for us to break into that. So elitist. Consistent, yes. Wow.

And then there are different groups. I play with three or four different groups on the west side of L.A. That, you know, they allow all of us to kind of call ourselves what we want to call ourselves. Oh, really? He's a four or five, but I'd have to talk to his coach. Right. It's a three eight. But yeah, we let him believe.

What's the lowest number you could be? I don't know. Two-fives or something? Like a two-five? Three. Yeah, like if you just are walking on a tennis court, whether you're Sears and Roebuck racket, you're a two-five-three or something like that.

You can't hit a ball back. That's my wife right now. Yeah. I don't think you can be a comedian if you're doing this. I think Jerry's right. Tennis, you can because it's fast. It's just done. Here's why it's better than golf.

At the beginning of the day in golf, if you screw up, your whole day's ruined, right? True. You can embarrass yourself in a point in tennis, and then it's amnesia. You forget about it, and you're right back in it, and you can still win.

Right. You just focus again. Are there people who are aggressive about it that are like too into it? Me. I'm sponsored by Babelette now. He knows who Babelette is. You know Babelette.

Oh, yeah. What's Babelette? They, you know, Alcarez, Nadal. Right. Ferristin. They sponsor the great tennis players. They're the world's oldest racket manufacturer and string manufacturer. And they sponsor you? They do. Whoa. Not because I play well. Because you have a podcast. Because of my show. Great podcast and stuff. Oh, really? So they send me whatever I like. You know, equipment and the rest of it. It's fantastic.

That's amazing. We may. We'll talk after the show. Wait a minute. You can produce my new tennis podcast. He's leaving my show. Breaking rackets with Spike and Joe. Jeez, Louise. Let's drill down on some stories about Tom Papa. What was really going on there? Why was he making this bread? What's really in the bread?

Wow, that's amazing. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think I could get into it. Where am I going to go? I've got to find a court. These courts are everywhere. You don't have to find the court.

You have to find the live ball madams. Live ball madams. Once you have a live ball madam, they text you. Right. There's a game. There's game Friday night. Three to six. You want to play.

Someone so's playing. It's going to be good. Oh, I do the whole thing. They just. We might be on one of the same lists. Which one? Sandy's list. I'm on Lola.

You ever get Lola? Lola? Yeah. Kaczynski? Yeah. Yes, she's someone I hit with all the time. I love Lola and her husband, Chris. That's unbelievable.

Amazing. Where are you playing? You told you. He's really into it. Lux Hotel? No, I got hooked into it through. I was playing a Chevy Hill. Right.

Yeah, yeah. That's where are my coaches. You play, if you're playing tennis, it's much like the card thing. Yeah. And the pedophile thing. It's really tight. Really tight-day group of people. We know everybody.

It's a small world. Yeah, yeah. One of these car guys, I know, Doug DeMurro, who's got to cite cars and bids. You wouldn't know him, but he's like the new Jay Leno. Uh-huh. He heard that I played tennis and challenged. me publicly to a match. And I was on the court Saturday here in L.A. and this kid I know who plays for University of Oregon said, hey, my girlfriend is teaching Doug DeMurro in Nantucket, how to play tennis.

And I go, what's he working on? And it's so crazy how everybody, and I happen to be talking to Doug. And I'm like, hey, I hear you're working on your backhand. Sounds like you worried about it, buddy. He goes, how did you know that? That's amazing. Everybody in tennis knows everybody in tennis. Like everybody in comedy knows everybody in comedy. Yeah.

Really funny. That is really funny. Yeah, yeah. I, uh, it sounds like the people play a lot on the weekends. It doesn't sound like it's right. No, we play all week long. You do? Whenever you want.

Do you play just by yourself? No. You don't, you always do this kind of live thing. I do. I work out with my coach a couple, uh, yeah, couple hours. You never just do one-on-one traditional tennis? I'm going to, yeah, soon. Oh, yeah.

I got to develop a serve. Live ball is a little bit of a crutch. Oh, because you don't have to serve. But it's fun, right? Right. The idea is fun. I don't really want to stare across the net at you and then sweat it out. Well, that's what I was asking about, like, are there aggressive guys?

Like, John McEnroe kind of guys are just, like, get too into it. Like, if you have pick up basketball, there's a guy who, like, just shoves everybody. There are guys that smash rackets. Right. The ladies are generally well-behaved. Of course. And not like the men. Right.

And the men can lose it. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, I don't lose it like that, but I will go home. And when I walk through the door, my wife is, I was like, you didn't play well, I can see it on your face. From the time you leave the house and come back, how long? Sundays, I play four straight hours in the morning, and then I come back and do two hours in the afternoon. That's my biggest day. The rest of the week, it's usually just two hours. It's either the front of the day or the back. of the day and maybe with a lesson in the middle if I have time. Right.

Writer's hours. Wow, you love this. Yeah, yeah. Are you writing anything now? Yeah, yeah. So you can write while you're doing this? Yeah, of course. During this madness.

That's the whole idea of being the writer. Again, the premise of the stand-up and the stage. Yeah. You're right. There are many benefits to that, too. You can make a living with just a microphone doing stand-up. Yeah. You do a little writing during the day.

Right, right. You know. You did stand up for a little bit. I did. I remember. Barry Sobel and. Yeah. Yeah.

But I was, I was just approaching it after the late night show. And I really like, I like writing stuff and putting it in a prompter and going out and doing a monologue. Right. That really appealed to me. The stand-up, while I, you know, respect it, just wasn't me. Right. It's just like, I'm too old to try and do that right now. Right.

It's just not what I want to do. Yeah, yeah, yeah. When you did the, when you did your show. Yeah. Was there always the performer part of you? Because everyone knew you as a really great writer. But all of a sudden you were the host of this Fox show. Yeah.

And, you know, I always understood, like, of course, the thing of being a great talk show host is you're kind of the gatekeeper for all the funny that's coming through all day long and figuring out and how to produce it and write it and all the rest of it. But was there other attempts or? Did you go perform as a young person? I think it was largely because of the success. I had gotten a couple of my dream jobs. One was writing for Letterman, which I did for five years.

And then, you know, working on Seinfeld. I'm sorry, what years were the, was the Letterman? 90 to 95. 90 to 95. A couple of NBC years. Those are good years. Yeah, it was fun. It was great.

And then a couple of CBS years. What was your main thing on Letterman? Were you a monologue guy? Were you a guy? Yeah, I did monologue. I did everything. Yeah, top 10 and the rest of it. Right.

So Letterman was 90 to 95. And then Seinfeld was, you know, the only other show that I wanted to write for. You know, it's kind of at a time like, you know, I was working on Dave and I'm like, now what? I worked at S&L. I worked at Dave. I tried The Simpsons out, but I don't want to write for cartoon characters. But, and, you know, that staff of writers is so incredible. It was very intimidating.

Was it? Yeah. I didn't know if I was going to be up for, you know, being in that room. You were in the room, though? I did. I wrote one episode with them. Right. And I think I wrote an episode of George Carlin's short-lived show on Fox with Sam Simon.

But I just preferred working with people. That's really what it came down to. Right. And I'm sorry, I just want to stick on Simpsons for a second. Because you are in these other rooms. How was the Simpsons one different? They flew me out. They gave me an episode, I guess, as a tryout.

and they flew me out and I was a lemon writer. I didn't know anything about half hour scripts. You were ahead. And I sat in that room and I had, honestly, I just had no idea what they were doing. They were just taking notes and they sent me home with 22 pages of notes and they said, stitch it together.

It's like, okay. Oh, geez. Yeah, it was crazy. Yeah, it is crazy. But it was much like, you know, it's just so, it was very intimidating. Yeah. It's almost like, not to belabor the tennis thing.

You get on a new court, you're playing somebody else, you're out of your element and you just start to shut down. That's exactly what it was like. Yeah. And they'd all been together for so long. Yeah, it's George Meyer. It's all these guys I absolutely love and respect. And they're just jamming, you know, and they're fast and they're super funny.

And but they're doing this thing. They're building this house that I don't even know how to build yet. I just didn't know the structure. Right. I didn't understand it. And, you know, that was fine. But, you know, I left New York without a job. I just wanted to get out of New York.

I'd been in apartments for a bunch of years in Boston, New York. And I just quit Dave. And I, you know, the agents called and like, what are you going to do? And I go, nothing. I'm just going to move to L.A. and moved into the Chateau-Mermont for a couple of weeks. And then ended up renting Gary Cooper's mother's house, which was so really. By Runyon Canyon, it said, Gary Cooper's mother's house, $2,500 a month.

And I went, knock, knock, I'll take it. They go, it's yours. It's insane. Amazing. Beautiful arts and craft house. I lived in a house that Bob Hope's assistant lived in. Yeah. And I wanted to, I never did it, but I wanted to get a little plaque and put it in the front door and said,

Bob Hope might have dropped someone off here. They should put a plaque that says the soup Nazi was written here because that's what I did there. But yeah. And then I, and then I think it was George Meyer. somebody called me up gambling process and said why don't you do a submission for jerry and i did again a second time and and they hired me and you know that show it was you know it was the only other show i wanted to write for on television how long it had been on i think at that point let's see we did nine years so it'd be six years six years it had been on for six years i came in on season seven so you did seven eight and nine

i did seven eight and nine but at the time there was just no other comedy on show that it really in the half hour space that I thought was funny other than in the cartoons, you know, The Simpsons and the rest of it. Right. And then that show just, you know, explodes into something huge, right? And that's, that's a ride. It's a huge ride. Wait, it exploded in like seven? Like, well, yeah. Or was it big already? No, no. Well, this, this, yeah, the show is exploding at seven for sure. My first episode is the soup Nazi, right? It's so crazy. And I thought I was getting fired for it because I thought Larry was not happy about it. And then, you know, I've told this story before. If you've heard it.

But there's one forum on the internet. The new internet. A new internet. It's brand new. After the episode airs, it gets this worst episode ever. And I went, I knew it. I knew it. I suck.

I went out. You didn't feel like it was hitting when it was. Oh, no, I thought for sure. For sure. During the taping? 100% on it. No, during the taping, it went really well. It was the night, the OJ verdict came in.

That afternoon. It was a shocking day of entertainment. Whoa. The OJ verdict comes in. The world is in a state of shock. And it's like, all right, let's go to the stage. And I'm like, oh, my God. What's going to happen?

But the show does really well. And the laughter in the audience was really big. And I thought, well, maybe this mood I thought we were all collectively in. Maybe this is a distraction. I guess I have it wrong. because I wasn't in the mood to laugh, but obviously these people are. But then when I watched it,

and this is just specific to me and maybe other writers, someone once said that, you know, there are two kinds of comedy writers, the comedy writers who love everything they make. And the comedy writers who hate everything. That's me. When I think about that, I go, I guess that's me.

So when I watched the episode in the edit room, with Larry, again, sitting next to Larry, and I don't know him that well. I just know him as Larry David. Right. Right. It's your first episode. Yeah.

And you get to sit in the edit. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. With just him and the editor. Jerry's not in there. Speak when spoken to. Right. No, not then.

Yeah. Just to help Larry and help him remember. And, you know, he's giving me access and showing us, you know, just how to do this. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So, but I remember, and this is me processing this completely wrong. Larry goes after we watched it down after a couple days.

of editing. He goes, all right, I can't watch this anymore. And I thought, because it sucks. Yeah. But I didn't say anything. But I went, oh, I just still remember the chill. Like, fuck. You know, I'm going to get fired by these guys. I so love and admire and whatever, it's been good. Yeah. I'll go back to Massachusetts and write elevator music or be a school teacher like I thought I was was going to be. Yeah. And that's, you know, that was my last kind of, uh, that's, could have been the last time I really watched the episode, except for the night it aired when I watched some of it and then quickly went to see, I hope I'm not right about this. So shit, I am right about it. Larry was right about it. It sucked. I'm sorry. The timeline from edit to air.

It's a three or four weeks. Three or four weeks. Yeah, yeah. Got it. Yeah. That's a long time to walk around with that. But you're not fired. I still walk around. He didn't fire like that. Yeah, I know. No, no. But you're not fired. You're still walking around. Yeah. And we would have these big breakfast together in the morning with Larry at the head of the table and all the writers and all of the, you know, funny Jerry foods. I'm sure you know, the lactates and the different cereals and the rest of it. And we're all eating breakfast and it's kind of quiet. And I'm like, all right. Nobody's talking about the episode. This is the day after it aired. The day after. The morning right after. And then Carol Brown came in, Jerry's assistant and said, you guys aren't going to believe what's

happening in New York. Everybody's talking about the episode. And then Jerry walked in, boy, did I get a lot of phone calls last night. Jerry, come in, look. And we were all over the New York news because everybody recognized this guy. The super Nazi. And it was the complete opposite experience of what I thought was happening. Amazing. Tells you everything you need to know about my psychology.

To this day, everything I think is happening. Something else is generally happening better and it's not so bad. Right. Yeah, right. Holy cow. So it just starts, it just, I mean, that thing was gigantic. I mean, that was like a career, that was like a career making episode. Right.

It'll be an epitaph. I mean, just like literally, I know you forever. And just hearing you just, in the beginning of this interview, just saying something, Soup Nazi, you're like, oh shit, right. Right, right. But it's a lot of it's Larry and Jerry. So, you know, the very first pitch session, I didn't pitch that idea. And they said, what else is happening in New York?

And I said, oh, this is this guy selling soup called the Soup Nazi. Larry's just like starts laughing. Here's your episode. And I walked out bewildered. Like, what are you talking about? I wasn't pitching that. I was just, you know, marinating in my failure of the previous pitches that I made.

Yeah, trying to get out of the room with something. And then, you know, Tom Gamble and Pras were like, congratulations, we heard them laughing. Let's get to work. And you're like, on what? You know, so it starts, you know, and ends with Jerry and Larry and the writing staff. And me with some sort of fuel to put into it and kind of shepherding it. along. Yeah. But it was really, you know, it's a group effort. And that's what made those episodes

great, you know. You had this amazing writing staff wrapped around you. And didn't he, I remember Jerry saying something about, like they would send writers to New York during the break just to gather, just to get, because they knew that that's where the stories were. That started right after that. That started right after that. Right. I think Dave Mandel and I both came from New York. He was at Saturday Live and I was at Letterman. And we did come in with a basket of stories very specific to our lives in New York. Right. And I think they, correctly thought, why don't we go there? Yeah.

Where it would never happen now is, you know, we'd get a private jet that NBC would provide. Right. Put us up at the four seasons. Oh, really? Just live for a week. Really? Yeah. Oh, that's amazing.

Can you imagine that happening right now? Oh, my God. There's no way. There's no way. There's no world. They send you on a private jet. You sit at the four seasons to gather stories. Yes.

And it was a good life. What a, oh, you nailed that. And I thought that's what network television is. My God, this is great. Right. It was. It was at the time. Yeah. Not really. No, it was just that show. Yeah.

Yeah. Watching Larry make fun of network executive pitches and stuff. I just, oh, I didn't know I get to do that. Right. Yeah. It didn't help us when we left that show. Yeah. How did you ever get comfortable around those guys? Oh, yeah, yeah. Was it quickly after that?

Do you feel like a made man after that? No. You still have to prove yourself. Yeah. Yeah, you got to do something else. But you got a little more comfy. No. Never got comfy.

Not really. Really? No. What was the most intimidating part of the two of them? Working with Larry and Jerry? Yeah. I'm just knowing how good they were at what they did was a very intimidating thing. It was kind of a double-edged sword.

Like you knew you could get the script maybe 70 to 80 percent and that when you handed it to these guys, it was going to go to 110 or something. Right. You know, that's rare. A lot of times, scripts get ruined. Yeah, they go the other direction. They go the other direction. Right.

But at the same time, when you're starting from the beginning and pitching an idea, yeah. You know, who you're looking across at, you know, and they're both, I mean, you know, Jerry, he's a great lapper. So I've gotten more comfortable around him, pitching him ideas and stuff. But Larry... He's a great lapper, but only if he thinks it's funny. Yeah, yeah.

And he doesn't, he just gets. gives you, huh. He'll give you the golf speech. Right. He doesn't hold back. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

And Larry, you know, I'm still pretty intimidated by Larry. Yeah, I think the world is. But I love him. Of course. So much respect for his writing. And I really relate to his instincts as a writer. Yeah. And I would listen to him when he talked about stories and just go, right, right, that's like me.

But then I would go, he probably doesn't like that I just said that I feel like I'm like him. Yeah. He doesn't like that. Are you a Yankee fan by his chance? No. No. You're a Red Sox.

You're a Red Sox fan, right? It's a very funny thing right now because I am a Yankee fan. So I listen to the games on the radio all the time. And they're gearing up for the George Costanza bobblehead night. Yeah. No, I know. And it's so funny to hear them repeatedly going. And if everybody, and because,

The name of it is the George Costanza taking a nap on George Strybrenner's desk bobblehead night. Right. That's the name of the whole thing. Yes. They have to say it the whole time. They don't just say George Costanza Bobblehead Night. No. It's George Costanza taking a nap on Steinbrenner's desk night.

We used to sleep under our desks. I think that's where that story came from. I may have it wrong. But I know because, you know, at any moment, Jerry or Larry could open the door and look for you. And if you put your desk. Facing them, you could go down like this and sleep, and they would open the door and go, I guess he's not in here. So we were doing a lot of that. Was it as much fun as I think?

Like, it's exploding and you're on this lot and you're in this hit show. It's as fun. It was great. It was really great. But, you know, it was mostly because of the culture, like the culture of any show, like I'm sure this show right here. It trickles down from you. Right. So, you know, Larry and Jerry were very chill.

Yeah. I couldn't believe they were running the whole operation out of the bungalow that they were in. Right. Like Letterman was 14 stories right on Broadway. The Ed Sullivan building. Yeah. What a big operation. Massive.

But Seinfeld, the number one show, that's got to be skyscraper. The diehard building, it's got to be. Yeah. And they walked me onto the lot into this tiny bungalow. And I'm like, this is it? This is where you make this show? Where the hell is everybody? I always say, it was just the, you know, it was the producers and the creative team.

And it was really chill. It was really nice. And everybody was great. And you guys got great presents at Christmas. Did we? That's what I heard. Everyone got bicycles or something. There was a lot of money flying around.

Yeah. Yeah. There was a lot of money flying around there. That's why show business works, though. It's the illusion of show business is always right. I remember I was shooting something and I got to go on the set where Tom Brokaw would do the nightly news at NBC. I forget.

I didn't even why I was there. I've shot there. Yeah. And you walk behind the desk of Tom Brokaw's nightly news. It's got to be made out of marble. And you just walk in, it's fake. It's a balsawood desk. Yeah, it's balserwood.

And there's like shit underneath it. Yeah. And that's like this. Oh, yeah, this is why show business works. I used to hit, when he would be rehearsing in the afternoon, I used to hit record on the three quarter inch tape because he'd be in the camera. He stopped doing this. But he'd be in the camera like playing with a comb and combing

his hair. And then just staring down like this and we'd record it and then put lasers coming out of his eye on a plate of bacon and put it on the show that night. We had so much fun with it. It's amazing. Yeah. It was good. 30 Rock was great at NBC. It was really fun to have that show there. It was really a fun vibe going on there. Such a special place. Yeah. Yeah. So special. We'd like to thank the good people at IQ Bar for sponsoring today's program. Ike We love IQ bar around here. The great snack and hydration sponsor. IQ bar is better for you.

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So go to butcherbox.com slash Papa to get this limited time offer and free shipping always. That's butcherbox.com slash Papa. Don't forget to use our link so they know that we sent you. It's a great way to support the podcast and get great food for yourself. TV has completely changed. There's no flying in jets to go gather stories. network show and all that. Right. You know, you see, I'm sure you know lots of very funny people who don't have work right now. Yeah.

You know, scraping and clawing. Where do you think the state of comedy is in entertainment? Like, there was a, I think when someone was just telling me at the time of Seinfeld, there was like 20 network comedies on the air. Oh, I think I was talking Leanne Morgan about it. She is a multi-camp coming out on Netflix. And that network television is just like, you know, Fox has one show. And that's not coming back, I imagine.

No. But there's always funny. What do you think of the comedy business for television? Do you have any gauge on that of where we're headed? It feels like it's okay. I mean, you watch the studio. Yeah, I loved it. Right.

What's that goof. ball drama show they call a comedy on FX. That's not a comedy. That's not a comedy. No, no. But there are funny shows. Comedy is just kind of evolved and I think into a kind of single cam and dramatic format. And then, you know, there's also the sillier sketch stuff that seems to pop up all over the place now.

You know, I think it's alive and well. It's never, I remember way back, everybody said comedy and television is dead. there's this new thing coming out called cable television. Cable, what's that? 200 channels. There's no more ABC, NBC, Fox, and the rest of it. Right. There's never been a point, and I think I've been in this business for 36 years

where the business has not been evolving into something and we're all effed. Right, right. And the creative community tends to find ways. You know, you can sit back and be defeated or you can figure it out. Right. So, you know.

And adapt. I have a project right now. that we're just putting together and putting the finance together for it. Oh, you're not going to pay for it. We'll pay for it and license it to you. And just do it ourselves. Shane Gillis did a version of that on Netflix with tires. Yeah.

It's a good model. You know. What did he do? He shot it. I think he shot it with his own money. Uh-huh. And then sold it? Yeah, then sold it.

And now it's turned into a hit. And, you know, he's got a big piece of that. Yeah. It's a funny show. It's always sunny. Started off with a very kind of inexpensive model. like really inexpensive episodes. So they were kind of flying under the radar at Fox

and able to make season after season and own a big piece of it. Right. Yeah. So you're doing that. I think so. I think that's, you know, one way to do it. What's my part?

What's your part in the show? In the show as an act? Oh. Do you golf anymore? You have to be a really good golfer someone who's been applying themselves for years and not easily talked out of the sport. Oh.

We were going to talk about late night, though. That's where we were getting with that Seinfeld story. Yeah. And the reason I jumped into that show was because I had done these two jobs that I really wanted to do, Seinfeld and Letterman. And I remember asking myself, what's the thing I'm most afraid of? And it would be putting myself out there in front of the camera, but also getting back to kind of my early late night SNL routes, like talking about topical stories and doing

sillier, stranger, comedy. Right. You know, it was a big Monty Python fan growing up. Yeah. But I just, you know, Seinfeld was fantastic, but I wanted to go back the other way to stuff that really left the audience,

the studio audience, going, what am I looking at you? This is weird. Yeah, so I called up Mike Rosenfeld at CIA, my agent, who's still my agent now. And I said, all right, here's the thing we want to do. I want to do this. They go, there's no Fox late night show.

Let's be the Fox late night show. Right. Fox was not as evil as they were, as they are right. currently, but they were, but they had this big, big fat hole. Yeah. And, you know, we started meeting with people and, you know, it's just one of those weird things. We just catch, uh, uh, we, we meet with Fox TV studios.

They were excited because they were meeting with the soup Nazi guy. Right. I said, I want to do this late night show and here's how I think we can kind of evolve it a little bit and have a little more fun with it. They go great. We just sold a show at the network yesterday and they're in love with us. we're going to call this executive up right now. They do.

They go, yeah, come in. And in a minute later, we have a deal. We have a pilot deal, right? Right. So they give me Tom Arnold's set, the best damn sports show. Oh, right. And I shoot, I think I shot like six 20-minute episodes where I'm going to interview my friends. Right.

My friends. Jason Bateman, not my friend, but I knew him. He came in. Jerry came in. and I don't remember who the other four shows are. Right. And do a couple of really cheap comedy bits, late-night bits, and then we'll put them together.

So we do that. We stitch them together. We send them into Gail Berman, who is running Fox. Yeah. And about a week later, I'm driving through Beverly Hills, and Gail Berman calls with the team, and they go, congratulations, you're a late-night guy. Crazy.

That's crazy. I almost crashed. I was driving a Volkswagen Passat. I know the exact block. And I'm like, what? I never expected to hear from these people again. Yeah. And what they're saying is like the ultimate at the time dream come true for me.

Like beyond anything I could have comprehended. Yeah. Like when you're making it, you're like, this is a fun exercise. Yeah, but the odds of this hitting. No. And they're just like, you know, we love what Conan did. We think you can do the same thing for us. Amazing.

We'll be in touch. Bye. And then they hang the phone up. Well, that's kind of the. And I'm in shock, right? And I'm telling my friends the next day, I'm going to be the Fox late night guy. And they're like, okay, Spine. Whatever, Spike.

What kind of drugs are you on? I can't really talk, but it's the truth. And the production team calls up. We're going, you know, we're going to the Beverly Hills Hotel. What's the fancy place there, the polo room? The polo, yeah. We're going to have a big celebration, big party, which we do. At the polo lounge?

At the polo lounge. You're just all of a sudden at the polo lounge being celebrated for your show. He's the guy. I know one knows that I'm sitting around a table like this. Can you believe it? It's unbelievable what you're doing. Two days later, Gail Berman announces she's leaving the network. Oh.

Or was released. I don't know which it is. I still don't. Yeah. And we've all been there in that situation. Yep. You have a piece of development. You've shot it.

You have a promise. But we all know what happens when the new guy comes in. Everything the other person developed is gone. Yeah. My first sitcom was that. Right. So what calls CAA? What does this mean?

He goes, let me get into it. Oh, let me get into it. For the next 12 months, after having that moment, for the next 12 months. 12 months. We're hiring Pita Legory. He's finding his way. He's focused on prime time, not late night right now.

Don't worry. But we haven't been thrown out yet. Yeah, you're not dismissed. Like, I think it was a year before he calls and goes, All right, I watch this. I like it. Let's do a new pilot. Jeez.

Yeah. And even that's an uncertain, yes. And you're just like, okay. It's better than what I thought was coming. 12 months. Which is like, bye. Bye. The waiting is the worst part of this whole thing.

Yeah, especially after you won the lottery. Yeah. And now there's a problem with your ticket, sir. Was there an announcement in the press and all? No. There hadn't been. There's just the phone call in the Volkswagen position. sought that only I heard.

And all your friends are like, yeah, right, Spike are now. They're affirmed. Later on told me, until I saw you on television, I thought you had lost your mind, that you had a separation with reality, you were on drugs, and they weren't lying. Because it didn't make sense on paper. Yeah. Why would they put me on? But we do another pilot.

I think Jerry must have been in that. I don't even remember at this point, but we do another pilot, and then we give it to Peter. and Peter Chernin. And then it's just quiet. And they go, we really like this. We're going to start testing it. We're going to start showing people. We'll let you know.

We'll let you know. We'll let you know. We'll let you know. And then it's quiet for a couple of more months. And all they're saying is they're doing every once in a while, there'd be a little bit of research and some other stuff. All right. And then I get this call that Peter Ligori is going to be doing a presentation in Las

Vegas for the affiliates on a Tuesday morning at a casino, know, at like 9 a.m. He wants you to come and maybe meet with these affiliate folks. And I go, great. And they go, wear a suit. Everybody's going to be wearing a suit. So I'm backstage with him. He goes out, he starts talking to these folks.

You know, before he's like, he goes, you know, these are the folks in charge of late night, these little station groups. They're individual business owners. If they like you, then, you know, it'll be a good thing for you. And I go, great. He walks on stage. He talks for a second. He goes, now I want to bring out a new late night guy, Spike Verreston.

Just like that. we picked up his show to series. That's how I found out. He didn't tell you backstage? Didn't tell me. He just assumed you. Yeah. I remember I had some.

I was going to speak to these guys who owned the station group. So me and Jeff Cesario had written about a page of material. Right. So I had a page of material kind of memorized and ready to do. Yeah. But I didn't know what it was for. It was cool.

It was really cool. It was really cool. It was really fun. It was the beginning of the insanity of being at the helm of a show. I mean, because this business is legendary for never hearing no. They don't tell you no. They just stopped talking and returning calls. And two years later, you're like, I guess it didn't happen.

Yeah, yeah. But I've never heard of, you also didn't hear yes. No, I know. I did. I heard two, they were two, and they're great. And I love the memories of them. The Volkswagen Passade is still one of the greatest moments of my life. Yeah.

And so is that one. It was super fun. Because I'm walking out and doing something in the middle of your, you've succeeded announcement. That's a really good energy. Usually you get the call and then you call your wife. You call your mom. Guess what? They're like, we don't care, but good for you.

And now you're telling jokes for all these affiliates. Yeah, you get out and you tell jokes. And Cesario had worked out a bunch of great stuff that all worked. Jerry had the opening joke. What better place to announce a late night show than a Tuesday morning at 9 a.m. in some weird casino, which crushed. It was a perfectly calibrated joke. Right.

And then we were off and running. Amazing. Well, the reason I asked the question in the beginning of like, did you have any kind of on-air presence or did you want to do this kind of thing? Because when you did show up, as out of the blue as it felt, and like, oh, the guy who wrote the thing is, Spike is, he's hosting his show. Yeah. You looked the part.

The camera loved you, and you embodied and fit in the roster of late night people. Yeah, yeah. It was really kind of... I don't know that I ever felt that way, but... Yeah, I'm sure. I had been, you know, in high school, I was in plays. In college, I was in plays. Right.

I was doing extra work on SNL and in sketches and stuff. Right. I just know that I loved it. Yeah. I always felt I just liked this. Yeah. And I want to do more of things that I like. and hopefully get paid for it.

Right. Yeah. How long was it on? Three years. Three years. Yes. I got to do stand-up on it. Until we had a similar moment to Stephen Colbert's moment, which just happened to him.

Yeah. What's your take on that? Well, before, I mean, having had it happened to me. Right. We were doing this bit called Little Bill O'Reilly. So we had this kid, this kid. And it was just this little kid doing direct quotes from, like, Bill O'Reilly. I remember that.

know. And it was a funny bit. Well, do it live! But he was this high. And it's, you know, went viral, whatever that meant back then. And it was the number one clip on Hulu. And I knew Roger Ailes knew about it. And Bill O'Reilly kind of knew about it.

I remember he was supposed to be on some morning. He was supposed to be on the view one morning. And they said, well, we come back, Bill O'Reilly's going to be on. We're going to ask him about this. And it was little Bill O'Reilly. And I was in the gym going, holy fuck. And they came back and they did not mention that sketch. and I went, oh, and I called Mike the producer.

I go, we're in trouble. And there was one version of that sketch that had some really, they were a little too close to the sexual harassment that he had been accused of doing that got him fired, right? And it was a rough cut, and someone at the network sent it to Fox News. And it was shortly after we were taken off the air. Really? Yeah.

And then, you know, you go back and you go, hey, remember that meeting a year ago where, you know, sitting with some Fox executives and they were like, you know, I know George Bush is funny, but to make fun of, but why don't you be the guy

that goes after Obama? Right. And I was like, well, I'm not going after anybody. I kind of reluctantly poke fun at folks who kind of step in it. Yeah. What would the take be there?

Because he's not really making news weekly to the other guy is. I'm not political that way. I'm just... Who's asking this of you? I think it was, I think it was, uh, Ligori and, uh, some of the other Fox folks. Yeah. But what he was, what he's saying in the moment and he liked the show and he liked me. And I think what he was trying to do was communicate very tactfully what he had heard from the power center, which would have been Roger Ill's. Right. Right. Hey, tell your guy to calm down. Right. Meanwhile, I had hired half the daily show writing staff.

because they're great writers. And they're like, boom, boom, boom in the monologue. And I'm like, great. These are great jokes. You know, I loved it. So it was never destined to stay on that long. And it wasn't until after we were canceled that I heard from New York Magazine that they said, you know, we heard the real reason you got canceled was your Fox News stuff, your Bill O'Reilly stuff.

Right. Which now fast forward to the Stephen Colbert thing makes perfect sense because all of the excuses you're you're hearing about Stephen Colbert from the network. They're losing money. I heard all of this back then. You did? Yeah. Absolutely.

Absolutely. You know, it's any show, any production, any feature film has issues like this. Right. That's not why. They're all losing money until, yeah, there's always, right. There's a list of things they have ready to say publicly. This is why we're not doing this. Right.

This is why we're not doing bad girl. This is not why. This is why we're canceling Stephen Colbert. they're losing money. But if you know anything about television, especially with respect to Stephen Colbert, a guy who's succeeded for a network like that is not taken off the air in that way. That is not the way that goes off. That guy or that show goes off the air. Right. It's something different. It's Johnny Carson. It's Leno. It's, you know, even David Letterman.

There'll be a moment where the network will sit down with you and go, so what are you thinking, Tom? another year, another two, another three. What are you thinking about? We have this other fella, Spike First and behind you. We're not going to give them the show, but what are you thinking? And that's the moment where you know the writing is on the wall. Right, but they're respecting you enough to say... You've done a great job for this network.

We would never in a million years cancel you overnight. And use the word cancel. Right. We're going to give you some time to make this announcement to your audience. and however which way you want to do it and you just let us know. And even that timetable is kind of open. That's how it works.

Right. That's how we all know it works. That's how you know CBS and Paramount is full of shit right now. They're full of shit. Yeah. Yes. And if you go back and look at what Stephen was saying,

especially, you know, the words bribery and Paramount and CBS. Right. While they're making this deal. A few weeks ago. Right. Wow. They're putting together this deal. right before and suddenly he's gone.

Like, to me, that's exactly little Bill O'Reilly and some comment that's a little too close to the sexual harassment accusations. Yeah. You see what I mean? Yeah. And they're just like, just get rid of this guy. Just go. Yeah.

Just get rid of him. Is Jay Leno right? About. He says that you don't talk politics and come down hard on one side because you're not splitting the audience, but is he also right because, and he says it's because people want to escape. I think he's talking, I think he might be talking about his stand-up. I watch him. No, he would talk about that with his late-night show. But he did political comedy. But on both sides, he would always keep it, you know, he was very careful.

And he just came out recent, just the last week to say it again, I just think that, you know, you don't do that in that space. Right. If Colbert had played by the rules of just that kind of comedy, let's take his stance out of it. If he had just split, would he still be on the air? No. You've got to do your stuff. show, whoever you are. I mean, I understand Jay's point, and I think it's kind of muddled up in, I mean, this is such a unique comedy situation. I've never seen a situation like this before. You know, I remember writing Dave's monologue and going, all right, the elections are coming up, so get ready for six weeks, the Clinton jokes. Right. They were just going to do that. And then

nobody's going to think about politics for the rest of the next three years. It's whatever, oh, Madonna jokes. Yeah. Jeff Galooly or some dumb. Buttafuco, buttafuco. You know what I mean? It's whatever stories in the paper. That's how you're kind of writing. But now we live in this crazy, hyper political interest age that it's never been seen before. I've never seen it.

And if you're doing a late night show, how can you avoid that? You have to talk about whatever's happening. And you have to find the humor in it. Wherever that lies, again, like reluctantly poking fun at, whoever is. making the news. Yeah. And if that one guy's making all the news. Right. Yeah. And so, you know. Yeah. I don't know how you could avoid it because you end up being not relevant. You end up being like, you know, you're just not talking about what's going on. Why am I watching you? Yeah. You wouldn't have changed what you, when you didn't when they said go poker at Obama or do this other

stuff. I would call Fox executive Preston Beckman and say, do not send this to Roger Ill's. Riley, please. They're not going to think it's funny, you idiot. You fucking idiot. And I say that with no love, Preston. Zero. Zero. Oh, my God.

Yeah. But I don't know. I mean, with everything that Fox News is doing now, I don't know that I could have. It was always an issue for us. Like, you know. Yeah. But, you know, I asked David Cross if he would go back to Fox. And he goes, you know, I don't think I asked him on the air, but this is what he was, it was so insightful.

He was like, if I applied that rule to all of the companies I work with, I would never work again. Yeah, no kidding. Everybody's got blood on their hands. I know, I know. I remember when something happened and, yeah, and everybody was like outraged with Equinox gyms for. Oh, yeah, yeah. No, right. Yeah.

Yeah, he was donating a lot of money to Trump. Right. Right. Yeah, that's when I left SoulCycle. Right. Yeah, yeah. And then you're like, I bet the tennis racket manufacturers have something somewhere. They've got something somewhere.

Are you enjoying your podcast? I love it. Yeah. Spikes Car Radio is, you know, these things are like therapy sessions. Yeah. I already feel better than I felt an hour ago when I walked through your door. I feel great. That's good.

I like that. The show is lovely. And we, of course, love to have you on. You know you were one of the first people I asked to come on the show. Yeah. And I'm ready, willing, and able. I was gone a lot of the summer. When we did your last one, it was the day that the world was closing down from COVID.

Oh, that's right. I came in and we made a funny joke about, can we shake hands? And it really was like all happening. Oh, we got to play that back and talk about that. It was pretty wild. It'll be interesting to see how much of it we had right and how much of it we had wrong. Yeah. It was all like I literally was in the car driving to you and hearing.

the reports like, what is this? And I walked in like, hey, Spike. Did you hear what I heard? That's tremendous. You do, it's all about cars. You love cars. Cars and entertainment. Cars and entertainment. And now tennis. Can I run some cars, can I run some cars by you and you give me snap appraisal? Snap of the people who drive them. Okay. Huey Lewis. Lamborghini. Oh, God. Give me the personality type of who is driving these around on the 405. Lamborghini. Lamborghini guys in our community are the guys we always have to watch

because they're always causing trouble. They're always the ones that ruin every car show. So we'll have a nice car show. The Lamborghini guys show up, open shirts, gold chains, playing right to the stereotype, revving engines and doing burnouts. And then we're all in trouble. Yeah. Perfect.

I can't get too far into it past that, but trust. They're the brother that we have to watch. They go, look, stop. Right. Yeah, stop. Great cars, though. Prius. Well, the Prius is a great car.

I know a lot of people hate on the Prius, but it really is the beginning of the whole electric plug-in hybrid movement. It's really the car that got us there. And my wife got one. And I mean, I don't know, just a workhorse of a car that I actually kind of respect that's good for a laugh if you just want to use it as a punchline. Right. Yeah, you can. You can use it just like that.

But I do have a lot of respect for that. I always find the drivers of them out on the road to be a little, like a terrier, like a little feisty. What you're noticing is gig drivers. There are a lot of gig drivers on their phones, making deliveries. Making deliveries, you know. Right. You know, making money, but on their phones and driving on their phones. And now that I've opened your eyes to that, you're going to see it everywhere.

Yeah. They're responsible for a lot of trouble on the road, a lot of traffic. I was just back east and driving down the Garden State Parkway back and forth a whole bunch of times. That same aggression is Honda cord drivers. Yes, for sure. Young people who. Trying to prove them. trying to prove souping it up. They don't have the Lambo money yet. No. But they're driving like

they're in a Lambo. That's right. Yeah. Anybody who needs to try to prove themselves, it's a problem. And that's definitely one of those cars. That's funny. Mustang guys, BNW3 series. Yeah, I have to show you what I can do. No, you don't. You really don't. That's really funny. That makes me laugh. Ford F-150. Well, it's a workhorse. They sell one like every three seconds in America. Yeah. Yeah. Great pickups. Insane. Do you ever drive a pickup? You ever have a pickup? You ever have a pickup I drive a Bronco right now. Oh, yeah? My wife has a Bronco.

Yeah, I would. But the times I've kind of had them as test vehicles, my friends will throw pool equipment in the back of them. I won't notice while I'm driving around. Then I look like the pool guy. Oh, really? Yeah, yeah. That's funny.

Yeah. But I like a good pickup in the right space, like the right city, the right place, is for sure. L.A. not really. L.A. is not it. Tesla. Hmm. Well, very controversial. choice right now. We have one. I have one. We have a model Y. You have the Y. Yeah. And when the shit was

hitting the fan with Elon, we even got all the bumper stickers. You did? But my kids were weirdly against it. It's so hypocritical. They're like, yeah, but the lease is enough for three years. I can't get rid of it just yet. And your mom really hates everything the guy stands for, but she loves this car. It's a great car. They're great cars. They're great cars. They're really good. I have the S, it's 2015. Yeah. It's a 10-year-old car. I've replaced the door handle.

Yeah. And the tires. It's flawless. It's an insane formula right now. Yeah. I don't think we'll ever get another one, and there's plenty of options to replace them. How about the Rivian? Rivian's great.

They're just a different idea. They're much bigger, and they're not like your Tesla. Yeah, they're bulky. Tesla, you know, also, again, you have to sidestep all. of the fascist crap and the insane drug addict, but this guy really brought us into the electric car age and made it and got us there. If you open my garage door, there's a Tesla and a VW bug. Right.

So that's good. I'm all in with the Nazis. That's right. That's exactly right. You know? Yes. Back to the companies. But electric cars are here to stay.

And, you know, that Tesla's in trouble, not just because of Elon, but because there's so many other options now. Everybody's got them. Right. You know, and we're selling more of them than ever. We do a thing on this program called an uncomfortable moment where we dig in on people's past and stuff like that. And sometimes we uncover some uncomfortable things. And, you know, you're a big car guy. You say you're a big car guy.

But I don't know if this is in Santa Monica. are you really just all in on on Segways? That could very easily have been me if I had stayed in college moved up north. Wow, that's pretty good. Can I have a copy of that?

Yeah, absolutely. I'm going to post that. What's on the tablet? Just another picture of me in perpetuity is just going down to infinity. It's me looking at myself on the Segway tour in Beverly Hills.

I would have thought the Segway would have made it. Didn't it? I don't know. There are some tours. Like you see, they tour around Boston. Yeah, but now there's one-wheelers and stuff. I don't know. We ride a lot of electric bikes at my house.

You do? Electric motorcycles, yeah. I love that stuff. It's great. You have like the one without the stick? I don't have anything with one wheel. I'm not into unicycles. But I have electric motorcycles that I ride.

Electric motorcycles. Yeah, unregistered kind of off-road motorcycles that I ride around Brentwood. Wow. Yeah. We're the white trash family in our neighborhood. For sure. Go carts and rifles. You love it, though, and you're doing it.

It's good. So you're in a Bronco and electric motorcycles? Yeah, I'm a Ford Bronco. I have some Ford motorcycle. I mean, some electric motorcycles. I'm in those. And then, you know, Porsches. Do electric motorcycles have a fake noise so people know that you're around?

No. You're quiet, you're stealthy? They sound like that. Because when I would... It's mostly for wheeling. Do you wheelie? No. You're not part of the wheelie community?

No. Okay. Because I had bikes for a long time. Yeah, yeah. And being able to let them know you were there, let the car know that you're behind them. It was sometimes very... They've got horns. You can beep if you want.

Right. People have their AirPods in anyways, so they're not hearing crap. Yeah. Yeah. Just buzz them. One of the... I'm telling you this to Joe, because he has a one-year-old. Trying to win you back.

girl. He doesn't want you to leave for the tennis show. Damn it. This was a real dad moment when I really felt like I knew I was in a dad. I used to have motorcycles. I used to have motorcycles. I was a guy. And now I was a dad. And I was here in L.A.

And I loaded up my parents came to visit. And we put them in the minivan. We're going to Malibu from the Valley. And I'm driving. My wife's in the car. My parents, my kids in their car seats. And I'm already exhausted and like pulling out of the driveway. And it's Saturday morning.

And I'm just like, let's do the thing at the beach. And I'm just, you know, I load the whole car and I'm driving through the canyon. And I see Seinfeld in a Porsche coming the other direction. Zoom. And I'm like, son of a bitch. And then here comes another Porsche. It's Spike. Zoom.

And then another friend, Zoom. I'm like, you bastards. That's it. That's all we do. It's not about the collecting of stuff. That is our golf. To bring this all back to golf. Yeah.

That drive is it. Right. All that matters. That drive, windows open, a little bit of music, some friends, we chat, we have coffee, we do the drive. Right. I feel like you were on vacation. Right. That's the whole thing for us.

That's it. That's the whole thing. And that story of you with your family. Yeah. Makes it even better. It was like a cartoon. Like you can see them. So clearly in the windshield.

Yeah. Oh, man. Love it. Oh, brutal. Do you ever get in a fist fight? Yeah, one. You did? My dad made me fight somebody when I was a kid.

Made you? Yeah, yeah. This kid in my neighborhood, his name was Michael Stil, who ended up being a friend of mine. But I guess he got in a fight with my younger brother. It was not that young. He was probably ninth or tenth grade. And he came back. that night at dinner and he had like a black eye or something.

And my dad said, he goes, you know, he lived by the godfather code. Everything was, he had no parenting skills whatsoever by dad. It was all based on the godfather. And when someone lays hands on the family, he literally said that, you have to defend them and take care of it. You must stand up for the family now. And I go, what do you mean, dad? He goes, you need to go fight Michael still.

You can't let this stand. otherwise people will know they can walk all over the first. I'm just like, what the fuck? And so, you know, my brother Wally, I said, when did this fight happen? He's like, like two weeks ago. He goes, don't worry about it. We're already friends. We played baseball today.

My dad wouldn't let up. He goes, you got to take care of that thing. You got to go take care of that thing. And I'm like, all right, so we're going out one night after dinner and Michael's going to be there. And he says, go take care of that thing. and Michael still's there and I'm just like, I guess I got to go punch this guy

I played baseball with this morning and I walked up to him and punched him in the face and he said, what the fuck is that? He attacks me and then my friends went, yay! And I was just so confused like, what just happened here?

Yeah, I went back and said, I punched him, I gave him, good job, son. The Ferrisons will, no one will mess with the Ferrisons. No one's going to walk on the Ferrisons except Fox, years from now

Roger Ailes it's just going to cancel you out of nowhere good job yeah that was the only real fight I think I was in I've been chased plenty of times right punched a few right

cops and stuff cops yeah the first year you know I was living with a bunch of BU kids and we threw a party and they just went around and arrested everybody who threw a party as a freshman and we were thrown into the back

of a like a paddy wagon And we were singing songs like Swinglow, Sweet Chariot, and fucking around with the guys as they stopped at every party at BU and threw people in. When they came out, they took us into the cell and put me in a special cell. And the guy goes, hey, big mouth. Punches me right in the face. And I went, wow. Wow.

There's an education. Yeah. That's an education. And you should need to control your wise assery around the Boston police department. Yeah. That cop was later arrested for, he put his fist. You remember Hurricane Gloria? Yeah.

Way back in the day. Everybody stay inside, Kenmore Square. All the kids went out. And apparently this cop took his fist and put it down a girl's throat. What? Trying to restrain her. Officer Martel was his name. Oh, my God.

I haven't forgotten. Yeah. This is my revenge. This is the revenge. My revenge podcast. Ain that Martel. For some reason. But, yeah, I remember getting popped there.

Oh, wow. And then some Northeastern students beat us up once. Right. Yeah. You didn't swing back? There were about 25 of them. Mm-hmm. And there were two of us.

I don't remember what we did, but I know we did something. And that was a school where they were training police. Oh, geez. That's where you went to study law enforcement and stuff. Oh, boy. We made some wise-ass comment to the wrong guy. and then 18 guys stood up. Oh, my God.

Yeah, it was bad. It was brutal. You talk about how you think comedy is going to be okay. Yeah. You adapt and you find new ways and places and to make it. I don't know about traditional models. I mean, I don't know anything about that, but I know funny people like you or, you know, you just, you're doing something.

Yeah. You know, you're making something. Right. We're doing this show. Yeah. It's making some people laugh occasionally. Yeah. Exactly.

Do you ever, do you secretly, some people watch shows late at night to be able to fall asleep and my wife is one of them? Do you secretly watch friends before you go to sleep? Why would you ask me that? Because I know there's a friend Seinfeld rivalry from back in the day. Look at the way he looked at there going. This is going to be my clickbait YouTube short. I can honestly tell you. I've never really watched the show.

I've seen pieces of it here and there, and what I've seen I've liked. It's not, I don't have any issues with that show whatsoever. Right. You know, there's a lot of Seinfeld I haven't watched. Yeah, I was going to ask that one since, that one's a joke, but this one, honestly, when Seinfeld comes on, which is, it's always on.

Well, if you don't, if you travel, it's like every time you turn TV on in a new city, it's like, there it is, there it is. You've been around Jerry, right, when people ask him about the show, and he says, I don't remember. Yeah. Yeah.

That's happened enough to me that I occasionally will now watch episodes that I've written and go, okay. Oh, really? So I'm prepared for the moment when I'm asked about it. Right. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, right, right, right, right.

Yeah, yeah. Just to kind of remember it. But by the time you finished an episode, you were living with it for so long. You just don't go back to it. I always felt like that's why Jerry and I were able to be pals in the beginning was that I didn't really know the show.

Yeah. Yeah. Because I was young, young, comic and there was no like, you know, you had TiVo maybe, like started to come in. But I missed so much of it. That's right. Yeah. I wasn't, I wasn't totally freaked out. I hadn't, I hadn't seen it because I was working Thursday nights at Letterman. So I hadn't really seen it when I was asked to do a submission for it. Right. But I bought Jerry's book of standup. It was a paperbacked book. Oh yeah. Seinfeld standup actors. And I, you know, was reading a line. Sign language? Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. Learning those rhythms. And that's how I, that's what I kind of took what I, had experienced in New York and applied that to it. Right. Right. That's great. And they didn't care. Yeah. I have a watch question. Okay. You also love watches. I do. Or did? I do. You do? I work with a watch guy. I design watches now. You do? Yeah. Really? I'm wearing one that I designed right now. Oh, really? A field dive watch. Oh, nice. I'm happy to get you one. Are you? Yeah. That's wonderful. But go ahead. and ask, what do you go? I lost my, I lost my, I have this watch. What is that?

IWC. Very nice, very expensive. It's my only nice watch. Yes. It's not that expensive. I bought it a long time ago. It's thousands of dollars. When you,

when you, this is hundreds. I have a friend who gave me a website for all fake watches. Right. And he said it comes in the box and you get all of the same.

stuff and you can get like a Rolex for $300. Yes. What's your take on that? Well, do you want to answer the question? It's not real every day of your life? Would people know? By the way, it's a valid question. And it's not about will other people know.

You know. We get asked about like, or I get asked all the time about fake speedsters. There's a Porsche from the 58, which is really nice, very expensive car. They're beautiful. You see them. They look like almost like your Volkswagen, but a convertible, right? And there are a bunch of companies that make replicas. Right.

And people go, should I get one? And I always say the same thing. Like, you got to know something about your personality. Right. And you have to understand after like three weeks of you saying to everybody who goes, God, that's a beautiful car. What is it? Actually, it's fake.

It's what you're going to be saying three or four times a day. Yeah. Are you going to then leave that conversation going, I'm a piece of shit. I'm a piece of shit. Yeah. Right? the fake Rolex, which is kind of a punchline, right? Right.

Dave used to do that show, and Times Square buying fake Rolexes, Paul, what were you doing this weekend? Right. Yeah, I was walking through Canal Street with my daughter, and she was so upset because she has these sunglasses. Yeah. And she didn't realize when she bought them

that it has like a fake Gucci or something on it. And she was just laughing at how, during this walk, how bad she started to feel about herself watching people sell fake all the things stuff. Yeah. I'm of the mind that you, you know, to buy the best quality item that you can afford and be happy with that.

Right. Because the, you know, the appreciation is not any different. I mean, you know, your IWC or any nice watch or any, you know, you can have a $50,000, $100,000 watch. After a week, it's just a watch. Right. You know, and no one, and I find it divides more people than actually, you know, I've had very nice Rolexes and I've not had single conversation about them.

Right. And I'll wear something that's $300 dive watch and I'll tell them the story of this affordable quality company that I like. And I have a really nice conversation about it. So, you know. What about used watches? Yeah, the pre-owned marketplace is great. Again, it's like if you're buying for yourself, you're buying to commemorate something.

Right. I find those purchases, watch purchases, to feel good. Right. If you're buying for some other reason to project something out to the world, that can be a very empty experience. And then the fakery is another level of deception that can really backfire on you. That's what I was saying to my friend. I'm like, well, why would you like buy like this fake Rolex? Yeah. And then be attacked for your Rolex. That's right. That's great. Lose your life over a fake Rolex would be fantastic. Yeah. No, you're exactly right.

But they are beautiful. Like there are really nice watches. And like when you start to like get into. to like old time pieces and pocket watches. And like there is a beauty to it and a craftsmanship. There was a story in the Wall Street General last year about how Wall Street brokers were now wearing sub-200-dollar novelty watches. They were just given up with trying to show everybody. They don't care anymore that they have all this money.

Right. And they just wanted to wear something fun. Right. And it was what I was saying. Like it wasn't even Seiko's. It was like a Snoopy tennis watch. It was something fun. Yeah.

Like, you know, I do have a lot of nice watches. I frequently wear the sub two and $300 stuff. Swatch Omega's, swatches, swatches. I just like them better. I don't worry about them as much. Isn't it funny as a writer? Because as you say that, like the same thing, like with wine. Like if somebody tells, if someone gives you me a bottle of wine, it's one thing.

But if someone gives it to me and tells me a story about it. Like this came from this vintner and this guy and he had this thing, this special place. And there's like a story. If there's a story attached to you, watch attached to it means so much more. Exactly right. Isn't it amazing? Yeah. And I have a friend who I play tennis with who bought this really expensive, beautiful watch.

And he goes, I'm going to buy another one. I go, that's a mistake. Don't do it. You bought this watch to commemorate this success. It's the first watch you've ever owned. It was his first watch. Yeah. I go, that's a really special thing.

I go, if I were you looking at your age, I might just wear this for the rest of my life and just be happy with that. Yeah. Because you're about to split your enjoyment of a thing, and then you're going to eventually lose all of it. Right. That's really true. It's really true. These things, these little things, these little rewards for achievements that we've done or something that's happened or you're, you know, you graduate. Those have sentimental value. Yeah, they mean something. It's kind of like the car thing too. It's not just about having a garage full of stuff, but when you have something that you worked hard to get and then you're out there driving it, it's right. You'll know. It's about you. Right. And you're not thinking about the, you know, the outside world. Right. That's nice. I think it's a great place to end on. Do you have anything you want to ask me?

I've got so many bread questions, but we'll talk about it after the show. I'm a little nervous for after the show because I feel like I'm excited to talk bread and you're going to go all tennis with Joe. You're right. You're absolutely right. Thanks, Spike. This is great. No, it was fun. Thank you. All right. We got it, kids. I have a watch question. Okay. You also love watches. I do. Or did? I do. You do? I work with a watch guy.

I design watches now. You do? Yeah. Really? I'm wearing one that I designed right now. Oh, really? Sheffield dive watch. Oh, nice.

I'm happy to get you one. Are you? Yeah. That's wonderful. But go ahead and ask. What do you got? I lost my, I have this watch. What is that?

IWC. Very nice, very expensive. It's my only nice watch. Yes. It's not that expensive. I bought it a long time ago. It's thousands of dollars. When you...

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The reglements the concourse so plagues. When you... This is hundreds. I am a friend who get me a website for all fake watches.

Right. And he said it comes in the box and you get all of the stuff and you can get like a Rolex for $300. Yes. What's your take on that? Well, do you want to answer the question it's not real every day of your life? Would people, would people know? By the way, it's a valid question and it's not about will other people know.

You know. We get asked about like, or I get asked all the time about fake speedsters. There's a Porsche from the 58, which is really nice, very expensive car. They're beautiful. You see them. They look almost like your Volkswagen, but a convertible, right? And there are a bunch of companies that make replicas. Right.

And people go, should I get one? And I always say the same thing. Like, you got to know something about your personality. Right. And you have to understand after like three weeks of you saying to everybody who goes, God, that's a beautiful car. What is it? Actually, it's fake.

It's what you're going to be saying three or four times. day, are you going to then leave that conversation going, I'm a piece of shit. I'm a piece of shit. Yeah. Right. The fake Rolex, which is kind of a punchline, right? Right. Dave used to do that. And Times Square buying fake Rolexes Paul, what were you doing this weekend? You know? Right. Yeah. I was walking through Canal Street with my daughter and she was so upset because she has these sunglasses. Yeah. And she didn't realize when she bought them that it has like a fake Gucci or something on it. And she was just laughing. how during this walk, how bad she started to feel about herself watching people sell fake all the things stuff.

I'm of the mind that you, you know, the buy the best quality item that you can afford and be happy with that. Right. Because the, you know, the appreciation is not any different. I mean, you know, your IWC or any nice watch or any, you know, you can have a $50,000, $100,000 watch after a week is just a watch. Right. You know, and no one, and I find it divides more people than I.

I actually, you know, I've had very nice Rolexes, and I've not had single conversation about them. And then I'll wear something that's $300 dive watch, and I'll tell them the story of this affordable quality company that I like. And I have a really nice conversation about it. So, you know. What about used watches? Yeah, the pre-owned marketplace is great. Again, it's like if you're buying for yourself, you're buying to commemorate something. Right.

I find those purchases, watch purchases, to feel good. Right. If you're buying for some other reason to project something out to the world, that can be a very empty experience. And then the fakery is another level of deception that can really backfire on you. That's what I was saying to my friend. I'm like, well, why would you like buy like this fake Rolex? Yeah. And then be attacked for your Rolex. That's right. That's great. Lose your life over a fake Rolex. It would be fantastic.

Yeah, no, you're exactly right. But they are beautiful. Like, there are really nice watches. And, like, when you start to, like, get into, like, old-time pieces and pocket watches and, like, there is a beauty to it and a craftsmanship. There was a story in the Wall Street General last year about how Wall Street brokers were now wearing sub-200-dollar novelty watches. They were just given up with trying to show everybody.

They don't care anymore that they have all this money. Right. And they just wanted to wear something fun. Right. And it was what I was saying. Like, it wasn't even Seiko's. It was like a... Snoopy tennis watch. It's something fun. Yeah. Like, you know, I do have a lot of nice watches.

I frequently wear the sub two and $300 stuff. Swatch Omega's swatches. I just like them better. I don't worry about them as much. Isn't it funny as a writer? Because as you say that, like the same thing, like with wine, like if somebody tells, if someone gives you me a bottle of wine, it's one thing, but if someone gives it to me and tells me a story about it, like this came from this ventnor and this guy and he had this thing, this special place, and there's like a story. If there's a story attached to your watch attached to you, it means so much more.

Exactly right. Isn't it amazing? Yeah. And I, you know, I have a friend who I play tennis with who bought this really expensive, beautiful watch, and he goes, I'm going to buy another one.

I go, that's a mistake. Don't do it. You bought this watch to commemorate this success. It's the first watch you've ever owned. It was his first watch. Yeah. I go, that's a really special thing. I go, if I were you looking at, you know,

your age, I might just wear this for the rest of it. my life and just be happy with that. Yeah. Because you're about to split your enjoyment of a thing and then you're going to eventually lose all of it. Right. That's really true. It's really true. These things, these little things, these little rewards for achievements that we've done or something that's happened or you're, you know, you graduate. Right. Those have sentimental value. Yeah, they mean something. It's kind of like the car thing too. It's not just about having a garage full of stuff, but when you have something that you worked hard to get and then you're out there driving it,

You'll know. It's about you and your feelings. And you're not thinking about the outside world. Right. That's nice. I think it's a great place to end on. Do you have anything you want to ask me? I've got so many bread questions, but we'll talk about it after the show.

I'm a little nervous for after the show because I feel like I'm excited to talk bread and you're going to go all tennis with Joe. You're right. You're absolutely right. Thanks, Mike. This was great. No, it was fun. Thank you.

All right. We got it, kids.