Chapo Trap House - 292 - Hats Off to Larry feat. Larry Charles (2/25/19)

Episode Date: February 25, 2019

Larry Charles (Seinfeld, Borat, Curb Your Enthusiasm) stops by the trap to discuss his new docuseries, "Dangerous World of Comedy".

I am super hyped to begin this episode with our guest this week, going right into it. If you are familiar with Seinfeld, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Borat, or just comedy in general, you already know who the fuck it is. It's Larry Charles sitting in the trap today. Larry, how's it going? Hi gentlemen, how are you? We're doing great. I used that term loosely, of course.

So I gave a little bit of your CV, but while I was preparing to do the show, I found out something that I didn't know, which is that you were a writer and producer on the Dilbert animated series. Correct, correct. And I was hoping you could share a little color about the genius himself, Scott Adams. Well, as I was telling you before, I believe that Scott is an engineer, and all his mentality, all his philosophy is based on that. And that was okay for a long time. It got him where he needed to go. He made this prediction about Trump, and that sort of shifted his focus

in life a little bit. And I think, you know, you start to believe your own hype a little bit, and then suddenly you sort of are stuck in it. And I think that's sort of what's happening to him now, but he's a very brilliant guy, really. I mean, he does have some like genius mindset tips that you adopted yourself. Yes. When we were doing Dilbert, he told me that he used to write 15 times a day. Dilbert will be a successful syndicated cartoon while he was still an engineer. He did that for like five years every single day. And eventually, indeed, Dilbert became a massive success. So when I was first doing Warat, when we first started like working on it, I started writing

every day, Warat will be an international phenomenon. And I did it every day for all that time that we were preparing it, that we shot it afterwards when we were editing it. And eventually it happened, but it was the only time it happened. So I can't tell if it was beginner's luck, or coincidence, or synchronicity, or he was right, and I haven't done it correctly since then, you know. So but that's what happened. Just like Sir Hanser. Yes, exactly, exactly. And he didn't even kill RFK, and he still used it, so. Well, Larry, you have a new series that just came out on Netflix called Larry Charles'

Dangerous World of Comedy. It's a documentary series where you sort of travel around the world and meet people, and the premise is basically the world is super fucked up and scary, but sometimes in spite of that, or maybe even because of it, the world is also extremely funny. Right. And you travel to various countries, and what I want to talk about is a theme that emerges is a laughter and humor, sort of a universal human experience. But like the human experience, there's nothing inherently moral or good about comedy. And a lot of the show you see we see

normal everyday people in Iraq, or Liberia, or, you know, war-torn countries that turn to comedy as a way to cope with trauma, or to even get back at the people who have terrorized them. However, for me as a viewer, the many of the funniest moments on the show were not about good everyday normal people, but the actual horrible people who are terrorizing people, they also like comedy and find things that are funny. So I mean, like, how did you feel about that dichotomy, like interviewing people who are victims of crimes, and the people who have done them?

Well, obviously you have a sixth sense of humor like I do. And so I was very curious about that. I thought it would be really, really interesting to talk to an ISIS member, and I put out these feelers and tried to get an ISIS person, which I did. I tried to talk to an El Shabaab terrorist. I found one who was a defector. So I wanted to talk to those guys because for me, we see this kind of end result of terrorism. We see the violence, you know, but we really don't know what happened beforehand. Like, what was it like growing up in your village, you know, even talking to the warlord from Liberia? You know, you hear about the rituals that he had to undergo as a child because they thought he was some

sort of wizard, and basically it was like sexual abuse, only it was done for these kind of weirdly primitive religious rights, you know. So they all have kind of interesting backgrounds. They all have faces. They all have three-dimensional personalities. We tend to, in this country, make it very superficial. They're in black. They hate America, whatever it is. But actually a lot of them are kidnapped. Their parents or their families are killed in front of them. They grow up in a war zone with trauma all around them and horror all around them. And it seemed to me to be interesting to talk to them about that and find out a little bit more, and maybe that's a way to diffuse what eventually becomes terrorism.

I mean, I think the interesting thing is that comedy is both a shield and a weapon. Correct. But they're a shield and a weapon that anyone can pick up, including very evil, awful people. So let's talk about the bad guys. You know, the terrorists, the murderers, the Nazis, the Brace-Beldons, the best granddad. Yes. The really evil people in this world. Anyway, I should say I wrote to Ted Kaczynski. I wrote to Carlos de Jackal. I wrote letters

to all of them saying, I'd love to come and talk to you. And I didn't hear it back. Kaczynski had a very tight hour. Yeah, yeah, it's true. It's true. They only get like 20 minutes outside. For some reason, I think that his humor is entirely knock-knock joke-based. I don't know why. I just think that that speaks to him for some reason. He's kind of an observational comic. Ted Kaczynski, like, the only comedy he's into, he just loves Steve Harvey. He's just like, this is the funniest shit.

The one worthwhile product of industrial society are those suits. You alluded to him already. One of the most incredible people you talk to is Liberian Wardlord, the honorable General Buttnaked. Yes. There's a name I haven't heard in a while. Yeah, that was Buttnaked. That was a flashback. Well, he comes by it honestly because he fought naked. That was his whole thing. He and his

child soldiers would disrobe before they went into battle. First of all, if you're in a battle with 20 guys coming at you who are naked, that's already pretty intimidating, you know? But he used it, again, as part of this magic because he felt if they were naked, they would be impervious to the bullets. And of course, a lot of them weren't. You spend a good amount of time in Liberia talking to comedians there, many of whom, you talk to two women comics in Liberia who experienced one of his checkpoints that involved killing a baby in front of them.

And then this guy is now reformed. And is it like a TV preacher in Liberia now? He's a preacher. He's reformed. You know, Liberians are very desperate. There's nothing going on there. It's a broken down country, post-war, no economic incentives, nothing going on, really, that sort of suggests that things are getting better there. And so he was able to get redemption. People are so desperate for some sort of future or hope that when he had redemption and found God, people believed him. There are second acts in Liberian life.

I mean, not only is he redeemed, I mean, he was willing to meet with you and talk to you on a dark street corner late at night about what do human beings actually taste like? Yes, right. And he was very willing to answer these questions. Yes. It was tough for me. It was our first night and we had just arrived in Liberia and they said, okay, but naked will meet you and talk to you. And we had to meet on this dark street. And this is where the war took place also, right? It was like battles right there. And it was dark and scary. And here he comes. And I started talking to him. And that first

question, you could hear it in my voice. I'm kind of nervous because I come right out with what his human flesh tastes like. And I'm a little tentative about it, but he doesn't hesitate to tell me it's like pork ribs. And then further, it explains in a kind of a gourmet sense that the heart should be eaten raw. It's kind of a delicacy. Ew, raw food. Yeah, exactly. He's a proponent of that. It's all in his new cookbook, by the way. Another theme that comes through is how much these people are influenced by American popular culture, again, including the very evil people. And you talk about it like, you know, what

is it? Yeah, exactly. What did you grow up watching on TV? And he brings up the TV show Combat with Vic Moro, along with the Jefferson's and Sanford and son. And were you worried he was going to say Seinfeld? A lot of people look, baked Alaska, who I spoke to, he said that Borat was one of his biggest influences. So I have to accept that when that happens. You know, I listen, I love a fan. If he's a fan, I'm okay with that, you know. But yeah, no, you asked him like, you know, did you and the child soldiers, is it funny?

And he was like, yeah, we had a lot of fun with the child soldiers. We had a lot, we had a lot of laughs and war. And he's like, when you ambush someone and they're screaming and they don't know what's going on, it's funny. Yeah, yeah. That's a theme of the, the more extreme people that I spoke to, like the, the al-Shabaab terrorists, I asked him, like when, when you were in the group, did you guys ever laugh? He said, yeah, when we drag the dead, dead bodies behind the truck, we would all be cackling. And that was, you know, this is this gallows humor that takes place in these war zones, you know. So they, there was a lot of laughter, but it's also very

dark humor, you know. And again, I relate to that in some perverse way. I get it. I understand that things can reach such an absurd level that it becomes funny. Well, if you want to talk about a perverse comic moment, I almost don't want to say this because it would be like, I don't want to spoil it, but you asked General Butt naked, what makes him laugh now? And do you remember what he told you? Yes, Bill Cosby's kids say the darnest things. Oh my God. And this was right. And by the way, this, I didn't, that was the one episode I didn't see. And it's like, there's got to be a home

dinner. Wait a minute. Bill Cosby, he likes Bill Cosby. I'm sorry, but General Butt naked is canceling. General Butt naked, I followed you for a long time. I really like your stuff, but I noticed you're still following Bill Cosby, sir. What do you think this dude? Well, I think you were going to say it follows, it followed directly his story about murdering the last child. About doing a child sacrifice. And he said they brought him a child. And for some reason,

because the child was like, you know, clean or looked presentable. He didn't want to sacrifice him. And he was like, I was touched and immediately began looking for a replacement child. Yeah. It wasn't like I'm giving up child murder. It's like, find me another child. Well, you know, people say that you can't affect things from the inside, but you clearly can. So moving on from General Butt naked. You mentioned earlier the ISIS guy you interviewed. And you know, you're trying to find, you know, what makes you laugh? What do you think is

funny? And during that interview, man, that was a tough interview. He was giving you nothing. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that was a tough interview. It was a tough one to pull off. The whole interview was tough to pull off. First of all, we went to Kirkuck, which is a really bombed out place where this ISIS prison is. And Mosul, it was the fall of Mosul that day. So you could see the battle of Mosul taking place. So it was a little nerve wracking. There's a lot of chaos in the street. We went into the prison and I had to, as part of the deal to talk to the prisoner, I had to talk to the general in charge of the prison, who was on camera as well. And he winds up being

a very flamboyant personality tells me a lot of dark stories about soldiers catching ISIS guys in dresses, pretending they had a baby trying to escape that kind of stuff. But when they brought the ISIS prisoner in, you have to keep in mind what you don't see on camera. And I just couldn't get my cameraman to do it really at that moment. There's like 20 guys with guns trained on him. I mean, he's standing there. He's in shackles. And there's 20 guys with guns around him. So I don't know how comfortable he was sort of being honest. Yeah, yeah, riffing with me. Exactly. And I tried to pull as much out of him, but it's true. He was very terse. Did you pay the Zakat tax? Maybe that's what I forgot. I don't

think they have a guide over there. But I think at one point you just was like, you know, so what's life like in the Islamic State? Is it funny? Not really. And then I think at one point you pull one thing out of him. And I think at one point he basically just says, sure, whom amongst us doesn't like to have fun. Which is great. You see, that made you laugh. That's good. I knew John Kerry was an ISIS thing. But you know, you talked to a guy, an ISIS, you talked to an al-Shabaab defector. And it's certainly like that, you know, ISIS has got to be like the most aesthetically committed to not being funny people on the planet. They're like anti-comedy, but not in the fun experimental

sense. They're like comedy is antithetical to their sort of nihilistic, apocalyptic worldview. But they don't do very much. I mean, like a lot of people in the Middle East make fun of ISIS. It's a pretty common target for comedy. And they is not... Try punching up for it. Yeah, really. And you see that they are, they're not, they're not that offended by it, apparently. So they haven't really done all that much about people making jokes about them. They kind of expected that it's good publicity for them also. Yeah.

It reminds people how horrible they are. Yeah. No such thing as bad press. Exactly. I think that's their attitude. First of all, they are master of media manipulators, we know. So they're not against giving attention. I was also interested in the contrast between one nihilistic, genocidal death cult in ISIS and another in the alt-right here in America, which would be a profile in the race war episode. Because it was interesting because unlike those Islamic terrorist groups, the alt-right,

they're not funny, but they're extremely interested in comedy and jokes. They're very, very tuned into using jokes and comedy as propaganda. Yeah. For what they do. Well, I don't know. I've become skeptical that there's really much ideology behind it. I think really a lot of it is about pissing people off. Yeah. And that's what anti-comedy is, really. It's about pissing off what you perceive to be

the power structure. And in the 60s, it was the radical left making fun of the majority power structure at that time, Nixon and that world. Now you have what is perceived to be a neoliberal establishment. And so the alt-right who feel they're the oppressed victims lash out by doing this kind of just nasty stuff to piss people off. And they think of it as humor and it's not humor. I mean like Andy Kaufman didn't make people laugh either. There is something conceptual about it, but it doesn't really make you laugh. And it is kind of a shield to protect them from being taken seriously as racists or whatever else.

White supremacists. I think at one point you do express a certain level of surprise that the kind of anti-authoritarian sort of that attacked authority and meaning, this kind of anarchic comic spirit could be used for the bad guys from an earlier generation. But like now as I was talking to Matt earlier, it's like if the establishment is like it's bad to be racist, these people are going to find something fun or delightful about being so racist. Absolutely. That's what's going on. And they will milk the shit out of it also. And that's the thing that they do. And they again, want to sort of take advantage of that in the media

and it works. It does get that kind of knee jerk reaction, which is what they're looking for. You do talk to one guy who's been something of a repeat character on our show. Pause. We love our cops. The law enforcement. I was so happy to see that in there. We love our military. They're important.

It's that boy, it's that boy baked Alaska. That boy. Yes. And the thing about baked Alaska is he is a great composer. You can't take that away. It's a bop. If you had consciously written him as a character like Borat for instance, it would be fucking genius. But the fact that he's real is just excruciating.

Well that's why I, that's one of the reasons, one of the many, many reasons I did this show. Because you can't write this stuff anymore, you know? You can't write Buttnaked's responses. You can't have somebody tell a story about a child murder and then talk about Bill Coscos' kid save the darkness thing. If I wrote that, it would be cut out of the script, you know? And the same thing with Baked Alaska, I mean he said a lot of things that if you wrote that character as you say, it would be too contrived, too false, you know?

You wouldn't wind up using that character and instead he's a real person. How did Baked Alaska come on your radar? I did a lot of research for all these people and I read about the alt-right quite a bit and I, Baked Alaska at one time had a tremendous social media following and I was very interested in people who had these massive social media followings but nobody knew. And there's a lot of people like that out in the world now. So I was interested in him. I also had tried to meet with Sam Hyde.

Do you guys know Sam Hyde? Yeah, he's on the shirt. Exactly, exactly. So he's in Brooklyn, apparently. So I was going to meet with him also, yeah, he might be in the same building. I was going to meet with him but the day that I was actually on my way to go meet with him and we called and suddenly they were pulling some kind of conceptual thing, which is like there really is no Sam Hyde.

Sam Hyde is just a fictional character. We hired this actor to pretend to be Sam Hyde. We're Sam Hyde. There is no Sam Hyde. And I'm like, look guys, I'm coming to interview you now. Who's Sam Hyde? You know? He's still got it.

It sounds like you got owned. So yeah, I didn't, I canceled the interview though, that's the thing, yeah. But I just, a few notes here on Baked Alaska, he tells you, I'm performance art and I get along with everybody. Right. I don't care what you're, I get along with everybody. And then he says of Charlottesville, it was a life-changing experience for me, but definitely not a neo-Nazi rally.

Right. And then I cut you, Jews will not replace us that moment. And no, there's a moment where he's a, he says to some old lady who has a sign that said like racist out of Charlottesville, he's like, oh, you want racist out of Charlottesville? Maybe you should get the fuck out of here. Bye. Absolutely destroyed. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, that's the thing about, he's like, he said, like he loves being a provocateur, but he's such a pussy. He can't just be like, yeah, damn right, it was a neo-Nazi rally. I'm a neo-Nazi because like, he knows that like that's a dead end. Well, he wants, you know, what's ironic and maybe delusional is he wants a career. He wants a career. And that's the thing about American comedy that separates it from all the other comedy in the world.

There is a career path to it. When you're doing comedy in Liberia, you're not going to get a pilot, you know, you're not going to get a stand-up tour. You're not going to do movies. You know, there's no, that's, that's why it's kind of a higher calling for these people. And here, if you say something that offends people like Louis CK, you're going to have an economic price to pay, but you're not going to be dragged out of your house and murdered. And that's the kind of price that these other people pay.

And that's what the stakes, the stakes are so different. Wow. The Liberian comedy seller is very different. Yeah, exactly. Well, I did a joke even about the Mogadisho improv destroyed by an improvised device. Also owned by Mitzley Shor. I apologize for that. Just two more things about Baked Alaska.

He does give you, he does open up a lot about himself because like you said, he's a fan of yours. Like considers Borat an inspiration for his own work. He says, Very proud moments. Yeah. That must have felt great. But he says, when I was growing up, my dad was never proud of me and never told me he

loved me at least until I was in college. And then he just said, I'm still worried that my parents will just not understand my art. Well, you know what's interesting. It's like, that's the delusion, you know, he, he, and that's what I was curious about with but naked or Baked Alaska, two very strange names, I just realized, you know, I thought by talking to them, you would understand them completely and understand where they were coming from and how they made the choices. And with Baked Alaska talking about the approval of his father, I mean, you had a picture of

him as a child that was very clear from the way he described it, you know, you will understand he was probably picked on, he was probably not liked, he probably didn't have friends, you know, he probably was berated by his parents, you know, all that kind of stuff that may and maybe his parents were liberals, you know, and that may have been his resentment towards them. As I understand, they were like super fundamentalist Christian, in fact, he spent time in Russia. His parents used to do a Russian adoption thing. And maybe they live in Alaska and so he has this whole weird Russian connection also,

they used to adopt Russian orphans, his family, and they would live in the house with them. So he grew up around a bunch of Russian kids, his parents thought if you adopted a kid from Russia, you have to send one of yours over, they dropped him off in Moscow, they stopped us as Trump comes in, they got the crocodile system anymore. But that makes sense, though, when you think about it as, as, you know, a guy who who wants to be noticed and wants to be liked, but doesn't really have any talent. And then you do, you do, you push the envelope by doing racism or something and people get offended.

But then other people are very happy to hear it. And now you've got an audience of people who think you're great. Yes. And it's like, oh my God, this is the greatest thing in the world. I can just keep pressing this button until my finger breaks and I keep getting this adulation from these people. Yes. Fantastic.

And I can delude myself into thinking I'm doing art. Well, and he actually further deludes himself into thinking he'll be able to transition to a more mainstream career. Do you think that social climbing, that careerism is, has a negative effect on American comedy? I think it's, it's what American comedy really is about on a certain level. I mean, the fact that that's an option, that you could become successful, that you can make money, that you could be a star, that you could have fame. All these things that sort of, that sort of feed your ego.

That's a big part of what drives a lot of people with American comedy. And again, in these other countries, that's just not the case at all. There is no career orientation whatsoever. You know, again, you're doing it because you have to do it, because you feel a need to do it, because you feel an obligation to your people to do it. Yeah. So that's, so in America, that's like a background radiation. You can't disentangle it from people doing comedy in their mind at all times.

I think it's true of almost everybody. I mean, we live in a capitalist society, whether it's called democracy or not. We know that it's really a capitalist society, and it's about accumulating things. That's why you're not going to have a revolution in this country, because poor people want to be rich people, you know, and in other countries, it's not like that. If you, there is, there's like an interesting thing that happens if you go to like the, the comments of a YouTube video, whether it's like, you know, compilations from like Twitch or fucking whatever.

American comments, they're all like in a formula. They're all a formula to obtain some sort of interaction, some serotonin boost of everyone hitting that number. Literally they're like, if you got a big ass dick, like this comment, but Europeans, Europeans, you laugh at them at first because it seems like they're 20 years behind. It almost seems like they're a little slow and like a comment from a European on like really any social media, like replying to someone, like look at a picture of like a fucking model or like a hot actress or actor or someone and you could spot the European

comments because they're always like, wow, a beautiful girl on a great day, have a nice Sunday, cheers, cheers from Helsinki and it's like, are you fucking stupid? And then you're like, well, everyone on this thing is stupid. That guy's at least, he's not trying to get anything out of it. He's not getting any fucking false serotonin boost by looking at the number go up and down. He's not like, check out my channel, I do dope videos. He's like- He's not on that grind.

He's just a fucking, he's just a town dullard, but at least he's like purely enjoying himself. There is no transaction in that. Well, if I could, to elaborate on that, one of my observations, first of all, I'm an angry person, okay? And American comedy is very, very angry, yet we're a complacent society, we're kind of a relatively safe, secure society with a lot of angry people in it. I was shocked by the lack of anger around the world, that anger is not a driving force in a lot of people's comedy.

Outrage might be, but not anger. People are not bitter behind the kind of experiences that they've had, a surprising amount of people just open-hearted, still hopeful, still optimistic, not looking to get anything out of it, not looking to get vengeance even, but really just sort of trying to use it to heal. And it was, I was struck by the lack of anger amongst, I would go into these countries angry at what I saw, but these people are used to it, I guess, and they want to change it rather than just be angry about it, which is a waste of their energy, I guess.

What would you say, like you said, outrage, what would you say like the difference between like outrage and anger and comedy would be? Well, I think seeing hypocrisy and making humor about it, that's outrage. I think you use outrage that way to do something funny, make a satirical point, point out, illuminate to the hypocrisy, that's fine, but anger is just like attack, you know, random attack and like you were saying before, a lot of it is punching down, you know, very little of it is really seeking the powerful targets, they're going for easy targets also and that's a big part of angry humor too.

It's like, you just lash out, you know, and a guy like Baked Alaska who does that has somewhat of a following, you know, but a lot of comedy, a lot of modern comedy is fueled, including my own, by anger and that's not the case around the world. It's well, here in the United States, a lot of people, and we talk about this on the show a lot, a lot of people view comedy as an engine of social change or political change. So if, you know, think of all the liberals who adulate a late night host and think, oh, you know, Seth Meyers, you know, had a tight five about Trump today and that's, you know, that's it, that's he's stunned for.

And that I think that view of comedy's art as politics is fundamentally incompatible with creating art. I think you're right. I mean, I think most comedians don't want to jeopardize their career in America by crossing that line and really taking it on full force. And so they back off. And so yes, you have a lot of humor at Trump's expense, but it means nothing. If anything, it feeds the beast, you know, and he himself thinks he's a comedian as well,

you know. And he is a lot of what he says also, I believe, is him just trying to be funny and just super not funny. He's just, he's basically just at a roast. Yeah. It's like he died during that Comedy Central roast. This is like in his head as his brain is like losing oxygen. We're all inside of it.

And now he's got the captive audience that he always wanted. Yeah. People who are forced to laugh. That really works for him. And his heckler is like Jim Acosta. Yeah. What a bad world. He's got nothing to come back with at all.

Yeah. You go over the transgressiveness of the alt-right. Do you think that the left is or can be similarly transgressive? Or do you agree with the idea that, you know, the left is kind of hamstrung by political correctness? I think that's generally true. I think the left is hamstrung right now. I think in order to be like what you guys are doing is much further extreme than what

we're talking about in terms of the mainstream left. This is the place. There's all the kind of thoughts and ideas that are needed to be injected into comedy if you want it to be truly transgressive. Right now, you know, we allow so much outrageous humor that nothing really is going to change things right now. It actually reinforces the status quo to a large degree. Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah. We have more comedy today than ever. Yeah. And that's one of the reasons I did this also. I didn't want to, I don't want to just add more to the pile of shit that's out there, you know? And so, you know, I don't want to do pilots. I don't want to do reboots.

I don't want to do that kind of stuff. And I was trying to figure out what I could do that would have some urgency and cut through and be transgressive in an honest way. When you were younger, what were your main comic influences? Well, this will, maybe it'll surprise you, maybe it won't. But I would say that Woody Allen, when I was a kid, was the most important. He was... Cut his mic.

Cut his mic. You walked right into the trap. You guys are waiting for that. We're gonna set the spider up for all of this. It's like Joe Pesci going to get made. Gonna get canceled. If only Woody Allen was here to defend me. We have the same birthday, he and I, and he's from the same neighborhood.

And he was somebody who knew nobody, knew nothing, and broke it to show business by writing jokes. And basically, that was the career path that I took. I figured, how am I gonna be, I can't tell anybody in Brooklyn that I even want to be in show business. I'll get my ass kicked. And I can't say, oh, I want to direct, that would, I would be killed, you know. But I could write, I could take, and I didn't have a camera or anything.

That wasn't an option to be a director anyway. How do you even do that? I don't even know how the camera works, but I know how to write, you know. And that was a way to, I could write jokes, and I could sell the jokes. That's what he did. And I was able to sort of follow that path. To go to a different country and a different thing that you profiled in the show that I thought made for a fascinating contrast with contemporary American political culture.

And you know, comedy in America right now is going through a sort of road to Damascus moment about the way it's treated, you know, the easy jokes, the expensive gay people or minorities or, and women especially. And like the role of particularly like an overwhelmingly male dominated field and how they treat women. You spend most of the last episode of this series in Nigeria, which is has a huge, like film and entertainment culture. It's like the Nollywood.

Comedians are huge over there. Yes. It's a big business. They have sponsors and they're all over TV. Big comedic culture. Nigeria, how should I put this? Is probably the least woke comedic culture on the planet. Correct.

And you spend a lot of time with these comedians who again are huge. They have endorsement deals. And like without exaggerating, I'm not exaggerating at all. Their material is like on stage, stadium full of people. You know what's funny? Raping a woman. And I mean, it's like, I mean, it is perverse and absurd. And like what was it like, like you talk to these guys and you see them and they're seem

like pretty smart, like, you know, definitely very self-aware people and cool people. They were. And you're right about it. Comedy in Nigeria is gigantic. Politicians cultivate the comedians to get their support. At first, you know, I had done a lot of research on it. I knew that there was a rampant rape culture. There was tolerance of rape there.

And so I knew that was going to be part of that discussion with the male comedians particularly and the female comedians to see what their response was to it because they're fighting back against it also. But what I, so first I went in with tremendous judgments about it. You know, I assumed that they were going to talk about it and I wanted to sort of be critical of it and sort of confront them about it. But as I did that, and I did do that, I also started to think about America. That American humor and thinking that, you know, not that long ago we were making rape

jokes. You know, it was not a big deal to make rape jokes. We thought it was outrageous. It was crossing a line. People enjoyed it. It was an American staple for a while. And in movies, in stand-up, you know, in television, the idea of rape in one way or another was used for humor constantly just a few years ago.

And now it's uncool perhaps, but it's not that long ago that we were doing it. And that's what I realized is connectivity. We talked about like, you know, months ago or seems like years ago now during the Kavanaugh hearings. Yeah. One of the defenses of Kavanaugh offered by columnist John Potoritz was, if you remember the film Revenge of the Nerds, like the scene where they hook up in the bouncy castle, like you couldn't get away with that today.

And back then it was a raunchy delight, just like you're describing a rape scene. That's right. That's right. You mean you can't get away with writing that or you can't get away with doing it? Well, there's obviously also nostalgia for it though, to say that's the twerp. And it's like, yeah, like it's like an entire country where everyone is just doing like Andrew Dice Clay material, but like even more offensive than what he was doing in the 80s. And not as refined either, you know, because they'll take like old American jokes.

You show it like one guy with a basket mouth just stealing Chris Rock's material and just makes it local, you know. And that really, a lot of comedians do that, obviously. I love it. That's a good. That's the material. Yeah. Some music comedians have that code, you know, that's your, you are, you are a pariah for

stealing material, but it happens all the time. It's one of my favorite things that happens in the world, like how China and China, they just made a fake Apple store, just you have all these IP rules in America and then un-stated rules and then you go somewhere else just doesn't fucking matter. His localized bid is the difference between black people and Nigerians. My God. Well, that's an interesting thing too, actually, because I was the only white person in Nigeria at that time.

And it's a very, I say in the show, I mean, it's like me and a couple of oil executives maybe or something, you know, and I say in the show, that is a good experience people to have. If you're a white person, go to an all black country and feel what it's like to be the only one like you there. Become an oil executive, go to their country and just like their natural resources. Right, that's where the rape comes from, they're raping the environment though. But what I thought was fascinating when you were talking to the male comedians in Nigeria

and you're asking them about like, you know, like what do you think about like the fact that like every one of your punchlines is just about a woman getting raped. What I found interesting is even though like the culture, like the comedic culture and sensibilities is like vastly different from where America is now, they all sort of talked about it like American comedians and it kind of so what they're like, they would say, oh, like this is awful. Of course, I don't support rape culture. Yes, I have two daughters.

You know, they would use that kind of shit. But at one point someone said, you know, like I'm using the rape in the context of pointing out how bad rape is. Yes. And it was just like, really? Right. And then I cut to the bit that he was talking about, which again, it's just a rape joke, you know.

So yeah, I mean, you're absolutely right. Their justification and rationalization is very modern, but they still use the humor, you know. They're not going to stop doing it. It's not like that. The conclusion that they reach from that is I won't do it anymore. They're not going to throw away their aim material. And that's the bottom line for most comedians.

They don't want to give up on a good joke. And you profile a comedian who is basically the host of like the Nigerian Daily Show. Correct. And he's like the sort of hip, young, sort of progressive comedian. But then like you show all his material and then when you push him on that, he immediately is just like, I don't think women are oppressed at all. In fact, like they're more strong than men. And you know, I think everyone's equal.

He said to me, he first of all, he said, let me explain something to you. And I was like, okay. And he's like, who raises the men? The mothers. So he managed to come up with a circuitous logic in which women were at fault for the rape because women were the mothers who raised these children to become the rapists, you know. And I found this whole kind of skewed logic about that, which I thought was really interesting

and I wanted to just let him play that out. And but you also profile women comedians in Nigeria and you said like they're they're pushing back against this in subtle ways, but still in a way that is sort of constrained like there's a there's a kind of they have to come at it at a kind of removed. They can't just come out and say, this is wrong and needs to stop. Right. Disgusting. Right.

They don't want to I mean, look, the women comedians in all these countries are still very oppressed and they have to navigate their way through a male dominated world. The women in Saudi Arabia have the same issues. They can only go so far. And some of them accept those limitations and some of them push push against those limitations. I talked to a guy by the way in Saudi Arabia who's known as the Seinfeld of Saudi Arabia. What's the deal with June? Comedians in cars and no one else.

That's right. No women. Exactly. His wife, in fact, is a driving activist. She's one of the female driving activists. They've both been thrown in jail since I interviewed. Oh, wait. No, I've read this.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He's actually in jail. Now he's disappeared. He's disappeared now. We don't know what happened to them. So that happens a lot too.

Yeah. Speaking of another guy who's I would say not technically a bad guy, but he's certainly a comedic terrorist and he may have been probably my favorite person that you profiled in this series. Can you talk about Boonk-Bonk-Boonk-Gang Boonk-Gang, Boonk-Gang, yeah, Boonk-Gang. Well, again, I was looking for transgressive humor and there's an example of transgressive humor in America. A young black guy walking into situations and committing a crime.

I followed him on Instagram immediately. He's like a comedian for the social media generation, ADHD, face tattoos, probably on a shitload of drugs. His bit is just doing property crimes and just yelling at and stealing from white people basically. Yeah. I mean, he'll walk into a fast food place and just pick up a tray of like donuts and walk out with them.

Back plastic bit. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He's in a plastic surgeon. That's his closing bit though. Yeah. There's one scene where he's in a plastic and he's all filming himself just on Instagram

live on his camera and he's in a plastic surgeon. He's going through like different silicone breast implants and he's like, no, bigger, bigger. Yeah. I need the D's. I need the D's. And the doctor is of course trying to sell him on this. It's like, oh, that'll be about, that's like $8,000.

You know, $8,000. It's an investment. He's like, yeah, that's right. That's right. So without the titties, bro. You know what I'm saying? But yeah, Dr. Miami. Look, bro.

Her titties right now is probably like this size. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, it's like A cup. A cup. Yeah. We need bigger than that, bro. D's. Those are D's.

D's. How much are D's nuts? D's are running about $8,000. $8,000? $8,000. For these, bro? $8,000. Dang.

It's the gift that keeps on giving, you know? It is. You're right. You're absolutely right. Yes, sir. Okay. So I'm going to hold onto these. Okay.

And then you hold on to gang shit. No, I'm sorry. I'm holding gang shit. I'm holding gang shit. I'm running off with some titties. Oh, titties. I got the titties. I got the titties.

And then of all of his bits, they eventually all just break down. And he just goes, gang, gang. And then he runs out of the front door. With the silicone breasts. The whole thing with the silicone breasts. Yeah. He steals the silicone breasts. Yeah.

Yeah. That's his thing. That's his thing. So, and that is very transgressive. And that's what I wanted to talk to him about. He's been in jail. He'll probably wind up getting killed, you know? And that to me, he's one of the few comedians that actually is putting his life on the

line to some degree. Because walking into those situations these days, with everybody being armed. Yeah. Somebody's going to, somebody's going to put a bullet on him. In Florida? Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.

Where he's in Florida or was he in California? He's, I don't know where he, where he's actually based. I can't remember. I thought you were in California. Yeah. But he may have been arrested in Florida though. Yeah. That's just where you go for that dude.

Yeah. Stay out of Florida. Yeah. He has to keep moving. He asked me about the sort of like meta social context of this like, you know, insane person screaming at white people basically. He like kind of, he didn't, he was just like, no, I don't know. Like, that's not how I see it.

He's like, he literally is like, I'm just stealing lobsters because it's funny. Yeah. Yeah. He really didn't have, I gave him more, I had more of an intellectual justification for what he was doing than he did. He didn't give a shit. He's an outsider artist. Well, that's, well, I mean, that's, that's what being an artist is and what you're acting

as is a critic doing. Exactly. You're absolutely right. He was pure. And but like coming from like, you know, doing Borat and things like that, you ask him like, so like, what's it like, you know, planning one of these, these bits or whatever. And he's like, I don't plan a shit. I just walk into like a 7-Eleven and take all of their hot dogs.

Yeah. Right. The boonking thing though, that is why like the comedy that Jen's ears watch that they're coming up with is so interesting to me because we know what millennials like, right? It's someone, they say the correct thing for 30 to 30 minutes to one hour. A horse that's sad. A horse that is depressed. Sad horse.

I don't know. Before everyone yells at me. I would. I've never seen that show. The Cheeto and Chief. Our awful dog shit, but the stuff that the Jen's ears like. The child soldiers of America. Pretty much the future child soldiers.

It's like, yeah, just a guy screaming at the top of his lungs, like waving a gun around and in and out, in and out, or just the worst. Fuck. It's all on Instagram and YouTube. It's just the worst scripted comedy you've ever seen is the other thing. It's just like, it'll be like a man and a woman. It'll be like that moment when you want to do anal and the man will be like, can I fuck you in the ass?

And one will be like, no. And then a rap song will play 10 million views. How do you guys write this shit? It's so funny because millennial comedic culture is just, it's so declarative. It's so self-assured. It's like, you know, you don't need to do this to make people laugh. You know, you can, you can do X and Y. You don't, if you think that you're blah, blah, blah, blah, blah and just forcing people to feel this way.

And then the Zoomers, it just, there's just no internal monologue, just no planning. Nothing just pure id. And it's like, what's going to happen when they're the dominant media consumers? I can't wait till they're wearing a necklace made out of my teeth. Yeah. They're going to do the findings while doing it. Well, we keep our jobs. So we want to keep your jobs.

So we're going to do whatever they want. We're just going to start getting into petty theft. When the Civil War breaks out, you're going to have to make a decision. That's true. Yeah, we have to get them on our side. I'm back in the winter, man. We've got to get them on our side.

Is this what you like? Just eating Enderman's Donuts until you cry? There is a guy whose comedy is like, he just squeezes lemons into his own eyes. Oh, god. But we're all laughing, we're all laughing, man. That's the key. I don't know if I got it in me.

OK, well, you don't have to do that. I just let him kill me. Oh, I would love to just be beheaded by a skimitar with the Supreme logo on it. That would be fucking great. That could happen. That could be arranged, I'm sure. OK, skimitar.

I've said it both ways and people have criticized me. It depends what part of the country you're from, apparently. Yeah, and in Wisconsin, it's skimitar. Yeah, right. It depends on whether the Great Lakes. It depends on whether part of the country you're from used to be under Ottoman control. Well, I screwed up.

So I meant to say jizzy attacks. Yes, that's confusing. Yes, it's a cut. Totally. Yeah, the food guy. What is the difference between the two? The jizzy attacks as you play. That's what you pay for.

Not really. It's like jizzy Smollett. Is this the same person? Talk about funny. That was hilarious. That was great. That's one of the funniest pieces of performance art of the 21st century.

That entire thing is awful. And it's like it's going to make people who already weren't going to believe like, hey, come reports, I believe. But his lie is so shitty. Like so he's in like around like generally around the river north area of Chicago, which is all just all like graphic designers who own Great Danes that they named Hamilton. And he's like, yeah, these two rednecks came up to me and said,

are you the guy from the Hitcho Empire? Yeah, I hate you for your talent. Yeah. Here's a rope that we've just been carrying with us. Another hilarious detail is that he paid the brothers with a personal check. With a check. Just like, you know, who else did that famously Jerry Springer when he was mayor of Cincinnati, he paid a hooker with a check.

Really? Yeah. Oh, King. Well, 1099. He had free checking, so he could want to throw that away. A money order costs money. Yeah, that's true. Another thing you touch on on the series is the troops.

Correct. A troop humor. Yes. There's nothing funny about the troops. Watch yourself. To troop humor and one one guy that you profile that I thought was incredible was a guy who had like probably 40% of his skin burned off in Iraq. I mean, yes, I mean, he's very like self-aware.

This is like most of his humor is acknowledging his. Yes, you know, deformity. It took a while from the get there. Yeah. But generally, he like he seemed more upbeat and happy about his life than I do. Exactly. Exactly.

This is what I'm saying. I'm way angrier than most of the people that I met. You know, I really he was again that inspiring character. He has every reason to be bitter and he's not a bitter person. It's really how does he do it? I don't know how they do it really. However, like out of everything that was in the series that, you know, like, you know, I've a dark sense of humor.

You know, this is like, you know, engineered for, you know, me to enjoy. The one like comic that I actually like had the hardest time with was the guy who does vet TV. Oh, interesting. The Marine guy who now has like this like streaming service that's all just true humor. And he was a Marine. And I got to say pretty much seemed like at least of what you showed of his

his clips, almost all of the jokes were about killing and raping people and how it's funny when someone who's weaker than you dies. And for all to talk about like humor is this like great therapeutic way to get over the traumas of war and like heal and become, you know, like connect with your humanity that's been lost. I just remember thinking about that guy like, I mean, maybe I don't want him getting that much therapy and feeling better about himself. Probably feel worse about it.

Honestly, I mean, I mean, like he was funny to talk in a certain way, but I found myself somewhat disturbed. I could understand that. More than even some even general. But what I was saying is, yes, I understand that. And he's right here. But I would also say in his defense, I suppose, he's talking directly to soldiers who've had these kind of experiences who sort of like like emergency room doctors,

they have seen so much horror that the humor becomes a way to sort of process. So he's talking to the vets and he's being very honest about that stuff. It's disturbing and offensive in a lot of ways. But the vets really do relate to it. And he connects with them in a way that a comedian connects with his audience. Well, you talk about the famous like opening scene of Full Metal Jacket. Yes. And when I saw that movie for the first time, it was like one of the first like serious

adult movies I'd watched. And I remember that scene being one of the funniest things I had ever seen up until my life, like a point then. But also terrifying. Yes. Because it's basically like a nonstop barrage of just like racist, homophobic abuse and invective. Correct.

And I guess that's Marines, Oorah. Yeah, yeah. But I think you want, you know, I think what you're talking about, though, is that dichotomy that exists in all this humor, you know, the humor that you shouldn't be laughing at is the humor that's going to make you laugh the hardest when you finally let go. And that kind of holding back that anxiety about what's going to happen, that cringing moment is what's going to lead to the catharsis. You know, and those are the deepest, most lasting laughs.

So I seek that out. And this was a show where I tried to kind of juxtapose those elements for laughter. Of course, another troupe, our friend, Pispik Granddad, how did you get hooked up with him? You know, we did a lot of research and he was a very interesting character amongst the veterans that I talked to because he really didn't fight in the American military. He fought with the Kurds in the YPG and spent a lot of time in there with the Kurdish troops and had a lot of, he used to tweet kind of humor from the front.

And I thought, well, that's kind of a cool sort of humorous. It's another venue for expressing your experiences. And when I spoke to him, he told me great stories about being out there. I mean, yeah, I remember the first time we interviewed him. We had him on the show. We interviewed him from Syria. When he was in Syria. Oh, wow.

I was calling on his iPhone. Yeah, he was calling on his iPhone from Syria and, you know, Brace is an extremely funny guy. I mean, again, in the back of my mind during this whole interview, I was like, this is fucking crazy. Well, also, I had the crazy idea of doing it at the Vet's Cemetery. Well, I want to ask you about that. You guys got kicked out of there.

We got kicked out. I shouldn't have brought him. What happened with there? Like, because some guy was like, he's not a troupe. Why are you talking to me? Yeah. Well, you know why? We had been, we had been getting, the guy, the guy, we signed the papers.

We were all done. The guy left. Then he came back to watch and just as he came back to watch, we were talking about pissing on the corpse and he suddenly was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, what's going on here? Were you in the American military? You know, because we don't piss on corpses and oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. No, you give the Muslim seabed.

Yeah. Exactly. It's exactly. No, they never do that. Afghanistan. Yeah. Hell team. What's that mean?

How would you see the photographs? You should have started pulling that guy's card. You're claiming to be a troupe. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So he was probably the wrong person to bring to the cemetery. I should have brought like a more sort of mainstream. I disagree because that was one of my favorite jokes when he made, when he said, he said, it's actually not that hard.

And he said, when you get the guys behind him, it's like, so this guy's were pretty fucked pretty bad at. Yeah. Obviously. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that was the great thing about the brace was that we really were able to kind of riff. He's one of the few people that without his material, without all that stuff, I was

able to kind of bullshit with him and it was kind of fun, you know, and it was good that we got kicked out ultimately. It was a nice part of the show. Brace is like probably one of the like top 10 or five, I guess, like funniest guys we have ever had, just like a naturally hilarious person. And I agree. The first time we talked to him, I remember like, I think I thought what everyone did when he first, because I had followed him before.

Yeah. So funny guy. But I remember just one day he post like, guess I'm doing it. And it just him in fucking Syria holding a dog. And I was always like, I was so worried for him the entire time. For as much of a parasocial connection, you have to just someone that you follow on another website before I got to know him better. And then when we talked to him, he's just, he's Brace.

Yeah. He's like, yeah, I finally got to jack off and all this stuff. And it's like, you know what? If anyone's going to go, it's got to be a guy like that. Yeah. Yeah. He was very unthibited about his, his background, how he got the name, everything. He's, you know, very, I thought he was cool and funny.

How did he get the name, Piss Pig, Granddad? He is, he lived in San Francisco and apparently they used to have some sort of festival there. I guess it was like an S&M or fetish festival or something in a street festival. Falsum Street festival. Yeah. Yeah. Some kind of festival like that. And there's a guy who sits in a kiddie pool that has a, that has a t-shirt and it says

Piss Pig. And what he basically does is he guzzles piss. You come over to his little booth, which is the kiddie pool that he sits in and you piss in his mouth. Yeah. That's comedy. That is comedy. Yeah.

Well, that's what Ridesayer dreams about every night. And Brace had the vision to go, that's a great stage name. My favorite thing that Brace posted while he was in the YPG was there's this hapless idiot on Twitter called communism kills is her screen name. And she posted this thing that was like, you know, the heat just went out in my house. It's really cold. It's so weird. I don't know what to do.

It's so cold in my apartment that even my blankets are too cold. I can't get warm. Yeah. And you remember the reply. And then he's like, yeah, I'm in a communist bunker. We got tons of blankets. It's warm as hell. It is.

Yeah. He's good. Well, Larry, before you go, one of the things we do on the show is the reading series. We read an article that I find particularly humorous. And I was hoping you could partake in this week's reading series. Of course. But before we do, no, no, no, before we do, I just have one last note about the odd ways in which, you know, comedy, humor, and fandom affect us all.

I'm wondering if you're aware of the story about Alan Dershowitz giving Netanyahu a copy of the Palestinian chicken episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm. I did not know that. I'm reading from tablet magazine here. That makes me feel great. Alan Dershowitz has sent Prime Minister Netanyahu a copy of the recent Palestinian chicken Curb Your Enthusiasm episode and suggested he watch it with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Dershowitz disclosed as much in an interview with the Columbia Current. I recently sent a copy of Palestinian chicken that Larry David gave me to Prime Minister Netanyahu with the suggestion that he invite a boss over to watch it together. And maybe if they both get a good laugh, they can begin a negotiating process. Wow. Isn't that something? That's funny. The other thing, I was in Jordan, we were doing Bruno in Jordan.

We shot in Amman quite a bit. And there are street sellers there. And again, we were the only Jews in the country at that time, which is always an interesting experience. And so there would be street sellers in Amman on the street there. And on their sheets, they would have bootleg DVDs and things like that, use books. And I noticed that every one of the street sellers had the same four items, and they were always next to each other.

It was a bootleg version of Seinfeld, a bootleg version of Curb, a bootleg version of Borat, and a copy of mine, Comfort. Oh, you're crazy. Oh, man, this Hitler guy, this Hitler guy, people say he's derivative of Michael Scott, but I think he's got his own thing. General von Manstein's army has been liquidated in Stalingrad. Well, that was from Tablet Magazine, which is a perfect set way to the reading series, also from Tablet Magazine.

I've been looking for this all week. Are you familiar with Tablet as an outlet? I have a sense of who they are. Yeah, it's like sort of a Jewish culture. Well, Tablet's the perfect name for it because, you know, what do boomers read all their articles on? Yeah, Tablet, Tablet, Tablet, Tablet and Commentary and Forward, they're all these like Jewish identity mags from like the 40s and 50s, and they like ran out of shit like 30 years

ago. Yeah, so their only articles is like just kind of shoehorned cultural Judaism into things where they're like, you know, the Jewish excellence of the Harlem Globetrotters, why, you know, Matt about you is the most Jewish show ever made, that type of shit. And then the other articles are just insane. They're just like, you know, why Israel actually begins in Poland and ends in Beijing. It's like, what the fuck? It's the only two types of things are just like hard, Lakutism, and just the weirdest

fucking cultural takes I've ever seen. Maybe it's just a crazy Jew magazine. This current article falls into the latter category. And it is titled The Jews of the Canine World, subhead pit bulls have been unfairly stereotyped as genetically dangerous monsters. Oh, it's such a bad kid and so little of it. This is by Marjorie Ingall. And this is fun because I mean, just from the offset, it's the theme of this article

is Jews are dogs, which is like, you know, that's good Middle Eastern comedy. It's a strong concept. So it begins. This is by again, by Marjorie Ingall, and it writes here, who also wrote Little House on the Prairie. Wow. Is that the same person? No, that's Laura Ingalls Wilder.

Oh, sorry. Larry, would you believe it? Laura Ingalls Wilder and Little House on the Prairie gets referenced in this article. Wow. Talk about synchronicity. Come on. Dude, that's Scott Adams. She must be related, though.

She puts it in all her articles. So she begins, I've always loved dogs that looked like pit bulls, wide and smiling faces, goofy expressions, broad chests, sturdy bodies, short coats, enthusiastic tails. I grew up not knowing about dog fighting or about this breed's vicious reputation. My terror was reserved for German shepherds. My equally frightened little brother, tremulously called them shepherds. Fucking idiot. That's a warm heartwarming anecdote there.

But after moving to New York, I came to understand that pit bulls are hated. My little East Village copy shop, where we got Josie's Bat-Mitzvah invitations, has a big, short-coated, wide-chested, flat-faced dog behind the counter. His name is Curtis. He comes when you call and accepts headpats with dignity. But when I asked the owner, Santo, what kind of dog Curtis was, he hesitated. He's a mix, Santo said. Terrier, other things, pit bull.

He clearly was reluctant. Triple parentheses, pit bulls. He was clearly reluctant to say those two words. He thought I'd recoil. A friend had her family dog genetically tested. And when she discovered it, had some pit bull lineage, she gave it away. Her kid sobbed, but what if the dog just lost it one day? What that's what pit bulls do, right?

So I like, she already copped the fact that her friend is a complete lunatic who gave away their family dog after getting its 23 and new results back. But yeah, there's just like really burying the lead there, the 23 and me for the fucking dog. And she goes, none of this is, of course, true. And she, and this is like the hook for this is a bull. Well, the dog psychic predicted that that would happen. The hook for this is a new book by someone called Bronwyn Dickie called Pit Bull, Battle

Over an American Icon, charts the evolution of pit bulls' stereotyping. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, pit bulls were considered the family-friendly est dogs, dogs that looked like them, served in the Battle of Gettysburg in Normandy. Okay, you're trying to make the case that these dogs aren't vicious killers? Don't bring up the fact that they served in Gettysburg in Normandy. They're war dogs. What, they're like holding a gun in his teeth? What the fuck do you mean?

They served. This is just like Brace, man. Come on. Don't question it. So Dickie's research was driven in part by her love for her dog Nola, a 38-pound pit bull with a caramel and white coat, pink nose, and eyes the color of honey. First of all, there's no 38-pound pit bull. That's small for a pit bull.

That's just too way too small. They're twice that size. So people's anxieties about class, race, and crime are projected directly onto these animals. Pit bulls, meaning any dog that looks the way we think a pit bull looks, have been banned or restricted in over 850 U.S. communities, as well as the entire United Kingdom. It was actually, was it King George III exiled all the pit bulls to England? Put them on an island.

Put them off in a way to the tide, which never ends. Pit bulls without representation. Well, he owed them a lot of money. He goes, there are websites devoted to the evilness of pit bulls, calling them Frankenmalers and mutants, among other worse names. What websites are these? How does this relate to the Jewish thing? Are they called Jews also?

We're getting there. See, this is why I don't understand, because the stereotype about pit bulls is that they're vicious. It's like, if it was about, if they were the Jews of the dog world, it wouldn't be you're afraid that they're going to maul you. It's that they would evict you from your apartment. Well, maybe if you have a pit bull, you will get evicted from your apartment. So check it out.

But it would be the pit bull doing the evicted, if they were the Jews of the dog world. The stereotype about Jews in the 1900s in America was that we were completely sexualized sex maniacs, and there were a lot of Jewish boxing champions. The race science is always the same thing with the race that's kept in the underclass. It was like, oh, they just have that desert strength. It's literally impossible to beat a Jewish fighter. It's not fair. Daniel Mendoza was before the 1900s, but he was a 19th or 18th or 19th century, I forget,

not up on my boxing history as I used to. But he was a British. He was a Portuguese Jew in the UK, and he was an incredible boxer. But yeah, it doesn't seem to be the stereotype anymore. No, no, it's amazing how that could shift. So pit bulls have been called Frankenmalers and mutants. And she says, right here, just as there are a zillion websites devoted to the unsavory innate nature of the Jew.

First I googled pit bull stereotypes, then I googled Jewish phrenology, which I really do not recommend, lady, you're giving us internet instructions right now. So first she googled pit bull stereotypes, then Jewish phrenology to get a good contrast. And then she speaks, of course, about Hitler and the Third Reich. Did you know that in addition to banning kosher butchery, he also banned Jewish possession of pets, what with Jews being inherently cruel. So Jewish pets were confiscated and put to death to save them and to keep Jews' pets in pure blood from tainting the blood of good German animals.

OK, I gotta say, not for nothing, this Nazi Holocaust shit is fucking wild. Well, I mean, where does it end? No one took, it's not the breed, it's the owner further than Hitler. But as you can see, Eugenics wasn't confined to Nazi Germany. In America in the 1920s, Dickie points out, the executive secretary for the American Eugenics Society was a prominent veterinarian and breeder who called for fitter families for future firesides, in which humans were physically evaluated like livestock in formal shows held at Midwest County fairs.

Oh my God, I love seeing the mayor of my town look at the underbelly of my big son. I love that image of people being at like, we're giving you the blue ribbon for you. Oh my God, I've got the biggest nephew. So nowadays, it's Marty, nowadays, people associate pit bulls with thugs. And the word thug, as we all know, is barely coded shorthand for young African-American man. Truthfully, she was going to say Jew, Larry, she writes, truthfully, I thought of pit bulls being Jews, but comparing pit bulls to African-Americans is even more resonant

in terms of the stereotype. So never mind. Never mind. Never mind the whole article. This is really a tablet has a lot of articles like these where just they're thinking out loud and then you read three quarters, but it's like, yeah, actually, this is stupid, but I'm going to keep writing. It's kind of a shaggy dog story.

Pit bulls are seen as murderers, even though, as Dickie points out, only about 35 Americans a year are killed by dogs of any type, 34 of them were killed by pit bulls, as opposed to 36,000 who die in car accidents. She says, I'd like Dickie's metaphor of pit bulls as Honda Civics. Both are pretty small, generic in appearance, cheap, and available in many places. Those four characteristics are why the Civic is one of the best-selling cars ever. But those four characteristics are also why it's the most commonly used car in drag racing, which is illegal and dangerous.

No one has proposed banning Honda Civics. Wait a minute. Jews are like, what? 2% of the population? They're the opposite of the most popular car. They're a very rare car. They're like a fucking like a like a studs bear cat or something. Well, there was, there was an unforeseen disaster on the supply line, factory mishap, but the

Honda Civic Pit Bull analogy, that doesn't work at all either. I mean, her logic is so convoluted, I can't even follow it anymore. What is her point? Did 34 people really die by bad? That's a pretty fake number. I'm just asking questions. I'm just asking questions. There's a source.

I've been banned from Facebook for 30 days for pointing out that there's a swimming pool in Michael Dick's basement. He goes, yeah, people are determined to believe that pit bulls are monstrous, despite actual pit bulls being nearly impossible to define. As with pornography, people feel they know it when they see it. She really is just pulling out of the air there. She's pulling it out of her ass, actually. So like pit bulls, Jews are incredibly popular and hard to define and thuggish.

Is this what she's saying? Well, she's like, it's just that there's one interpretation. I think the only, the only actual comparison here is that there's a lot of stereotypes about both. There's no stereotypes about everything. Everything. There's stereotypes about literally everyone. She has not made her case.

I think that's clear. She says when the city of Miami banned pit bulls, they were a dark day, by the way. Yeah. They were asked to show actual scientific evidence. And the city of Miami said, no, the evidence didn't matter. This is the kicker. They knew pit bulls were bad. After the city of Denver banned pit bulls, it soon began impounding and killing them.

Between 1992 and 2009, the city put 3,497 to death. The book pit bull contains a black and white 2006 photo from the Denver Animal Shelter showing a huge mountain of dog corpses arranged in a parade juke, a black and white photo showing mountains of stacked up dead bodies as one specific resident. You know what it is. Drop a mic. There you go. Drop a mic.

The comparison has been made, courtesy of Tablet Magazine. That could have been a one paragraph story, really, because they took her that long to get to that analogy, which finally worked. That's maybe the perfect Tablet article, because it's like halfway through, she's like, yeah, no, this isn't right. Okay. You know, maybe they're not like, maybe they're not like Jews, but like, okay, you know, you know, people's like an air conditioning unit, and by the way, the Holocaust sounds like

she thought it was going to be a 500 word article and told it to expand, you know, Holocaust is the aristocrats of Tablet articles, what a fucking good publication. All of them. All of them are so good, you know, as long as they cannot like try not to get like, Illinois Mar impeached. Yeah. Hey, gang, it's Will here, just breaking in to let you know that due to some idiotic twist of fate or a vengeful act of God, literally only the last 30 seconds of this episode was

somehow shit canned. It's no one's fault, but God's, but the literally we everything that we talked about with Larry was captured on this episode, except for us just thanking him for his time. And also most importantly, Larry shouting out his son Francesco, who is the reason he came on the show. Francesco is a big chapeau fan, he's the one who put Larry on to us. So I'd just like to say, Francesco, you win fan of the year 2019 or really like retroactively fan of all time.

And when I heard that, I thought of the time when Meghan Markle just got married to Prince Harry. And there was all these stories about how it was one of Meghan's friends who set them up on a date. And when that happened, I think virtually every woman online was grousing, you know, what are my friends doing for me? And I felt the same way. What are my fans doing for me if you're not hooking us up with legendary comedy writer

and director, Larry Charles? So again, sorry about this little, little snafu, but truly you are not missing anything other than me saying once again, thank you so much to Larry Charles for hanging out with us. And signing off. All I will say is hats off to Larry. Now he won't even look at her. Hats off to Larry.

He broke your heart. Just like you broke mine when you said we was part. He told you lies. Your turn to cry, cry, cry. Now that Larry said goodbye to you. I know this may sound strange. I want your back. I think you'll change.

But there's one more thing I got to say. Hats off to Larry. It may sound cruel. But you love me anyway.