Duncan Trussell Family Hour - Dean Delray

Episode Date: July 8, 2017

Dean Delray tells the story of how a surprise visit from God in the form of Quentin Tarantino launched his comedy career. If you want to obliterate whatever satanic excuse you're using for not following your dreams then this is the episode for you.

It's Macy's friends and family. Get an extra 30% off great gifts for her just in time for Mother's Day when you use your coupon or Macy's card. And take 15% off Beauty Essentials or shop specials she'll love while supplies last. Plus Star Rewards members earn on every purchase except gift card services and fees at Macy's. Sign up today at Macy's dot com slash star rewards. Savings off regular sale and clearance prices, exclusions apply. This episode of the DTFH is brought to you by Squarespace dot com.

Go to Squarespace dot com and use offer code Duncan and you'll get 10% off a brand new website. If you live in New York City or if you're going to be in New York City we've got a live DTFH on July 18th. Our guests are Aubrey Marcus and Emile Amos. Take it to her at DuncanTrussell.com. That's Grandpa Ghost by the Black Diamond Boys, a 70s heavy metal band that were incinerated in a terrible crematorium accident. They tried to record their entire album laying down in crematoriums and something happened.

Somebody pulled the wrong switch and they were all instantly incinerated. That is the only track in existence attributed to the Black Diamond Boys. Everything else was incinerated in that horrible accident. It happened 20 years ago to this day. Let's have a moment of silence for the Black Diamond Boys. Friends, we have a glorious podcast for you today. If you're somebody who may be confined within a self-created mental prison, if you have invented some boundaries separating the you that you are from the you that you'd like

to be, that boundary is made of something like your age, your sex, your current skill levels in this podcast because for you, we're going to dive right into it. But first, some quick business. This episode of the DTFH is brought to you by Squarespace.com, whether you need a landing page, a beautiful gallery, a professional blog or an online store, it's all included with your Squarespace website. Go to Squarespace.com, use offer code Duncan, and you will get 10% off a brand new website. I use Squarespace for my website.

Anytime I update this podcast, I go through Squarespace and it works perfectly. Not only can I update this podcast from my computer, but I can also update it from my phone, which is essential. Like if I'm traveling and I realize that I put the wrong link to the wrong episode up, I can easily go into my phone, go to Squarespace, do all the editing that I need. They also have seamless commerce tools and they're just an incredible company. I don't advertise anything on this podcast that I don't use and I use Squarespace every single week and it has to work perfectly because if it doesn't, then my entire podcast would

fall apart. So if you're thinking about starting a website and you don't want to go down to the website district and risk getting your head cut off by a pseudo web designer who's going to not only decapitate you, but suck your spinal fluid out of the hole in your neck, then go to Squarespace.com today. No longer do you need to risk coming into contact with a pseudo web designer who will disembowel you and your family. You can just go to Squarespace, do it all yourself, be in control of your dream, make

something beautiful and show your support for the DTFH. Squarespace.com, use offer code Duncan, you will get 10% off, sign up for a year, you get a free domain name. A huge thank you to those of you who have been subscribing to the DTFH on Patreon. If you're dying for some episodes that you haven't heard, there are new episodes up at Patreon.com forward slash DTFH for as little as $2 a month. You can have access to even stranger content than what is available on the main feed. It's a great way for you to support the DTFH.

We also have an Amazon link. If you find yourself thinking about buying something on Amazon, for example, if you're a music producer or a podcast producer and you want to take it to the next level, I cannot recommend more. The Focusrite Scarlet, which I'm now using in place of my old sound board. Holy shit, it's incredible. It's an amazing bit of audio magic and you can get it at Amazon.com. Just go through the link, which is located at DuncanTrestle.com.

Someone texted me or tweeted at me complaining that they couldn't find the link. It's there. Just scroll down when you go to DuncanTrestle.com. It's in the comments section of any of these episodes and it's all over the website. All you got to do is click on that link. It'll take you to Amazon and anything you pick up doesn't have to be the Focusrite Scarlet. They will give us a small percentage of.

Thank you guys who continue to use the Amazon link. Also, as mentioned in the beginning of this episode, if you're in New York, you can go see a live DTFH on the 18th of July with Aubrey Marcus, one of the coolest people on planet earth. You can get tickets at DuncanTrestle.com. Okay, pals, today's guest is a supremely funny comedian. You may have seen him in the movie The Long Shots or Quentin Tarantino's Hell Ride. He's got a fantastic podcast called Let There Be Talk.

And he's a goddamn inspiring, hilarious human. I hope that you will reach in to your astral chest cavity, rip it open like you're pulling open a giant clam and allow that balled up glowing orb of spiritual light to go spraying all over Dean Delray, wherever you may be standing at this very moment. Welcome to the DTFH. The wonderful Dean Delray. Welcome, welcome on you, that you are with us, shake hands, no need to be blue, welcome to you.

But I gotta tell you, man, there's something, there's something I really love about what you're doing with your life, because you are, I guess you're 50, 51, that's not something you tiptoe around, no, in all your interviews, you're completely open about that where like a lot of people feeling that like ages stigmatized, they try to hide that shit that lie, they'll just lie about it. Usually like a lot of comedians will reverse their age by like nine years or seven years or who knows how much you never really know, you just know they've done it. I don't do that in 42, I lose track of how old I am now.

Yeah, me too. Remember when you'd ask your parents and they were to go, I don't know. And you're like, oh, come on. And then when you get older, you're like, I don't really remember. It's simple math. All I have to do is like, yeah, I know, it is, but you just, when someone asks you real quick, you're like, how about when people ask your phone number, you're like, oh, my phone number.

Yeah, well, fuck. Yeah, right. That's a lit, but you know, this is a, this is a thing that in the past has been incredibly stigmatized to the point where the idea that somebody your age could dive into the world of comedy and be successful at it and start getting a name for themselves is kind of unprecedented. You know, but any, but you're doing it. Yeah. You're fucking hilarious.

You are an incredibly hardworking comedian, a great joke writer and you somehow overcame whatever that mental thing that pops up in a person's mind that tells them, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, I'll shout, not enter this space. Yeah. You weren't right into it. So I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about that process, how you overcame, were there internal blockages? Was there like, how did you get past the, the, the boundary you created inside your own

mind and the boundary that maybe people told you there was that you could never cross? Well, you know, I came in pretty naive because the reason I started comedy, I always wanted to do comedy my whole life. But when I was young kids, there was no kids doing comedy. It was like, you know, yeah, like prior in those guys and Carl and and Cheech and Chunk, they were like adults. Yeah, that's right. So, you know, there wasn't like, now there's like camps and, you know, YouTube videos,

you can learn and open mics and safe spaces like coffee shops. But back then that I didn't know of, there wasn't like any kids doing comedy, you know? So, you know, in like, oh, six, I believe I was at a show at the Laugh Factory, J Davis had a show called Life at the Party and Louis CK came on and he was on in the middle. And this is back in when he was shooting Lucky Louis. So it might be oh five around there, whatever the date is. This guy came on and I was like, whoa, I had stepped out of comedy. I'm a huge comedy fan.

But I dropped off around the nineties with Chris Rock and Seinfeld and Martin. And from then on, I'm not really paying attention to comedy until around oh five, Jay's doing a show and I go in and I see Louis and I'm like, who the hell is that guy, man? Oh my God. Yeah. And, and, and right away I thought, man, you know, he's an older guy. You know what I mean? At that time we're talking oh six.

So I don't know what he is now. So maybe he's in his 40s then or, you know, early 40s, but I was like, I got to try that. You know? Yeah. And in the, in the comics that I love are older guys. Me too. Yeah. Marin, you know, Louis, Burr, Burr's like one year younger than me.

You know, Chris Rock, Dave Chappelle. So I came in naive thinking like, oh, there's no, seriously, I thought there was no age discrimination. Right. All these, you know, not thinking, yeah, they've been in the game like 20, 30 years. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? What I was thinking was everybody seemed that age to me when I was watching comedy

on stage. Right. Once I got into it and started going to the store, I went, oh, everybody else is in their 20s and those guys are in their 40s and 50s because they've been in so long. Right. My point is I went in pretty naive thinking, I'm good. And then when I got there, I realized right away, oh, there's definitely some age discrimination going on here, especially with agents and managers, you know, they were looking at me

even though I was two, three years in and doing pretty damn good and watching other people get managers and agents, they were just stepping right by me, you know, realized right away, I got to do this on my own. And that, that's what's so cool about it, man, because it's like every single person who stepped by you fucked up because they're using some weird metric that is completely wrong now. This is part of what's beautiful about the age that we're living in right now is that we don't know everything's different now.

All the old methodologies that were developed around a technology that is now becoming obsolete or differentiated to the point of becoming obsolete. All those methodologies, they don't work anymore. Who the fuck knows who's going to like what or why people are going to like what or what's going to like suddenly grab the attention of some certain amount of people. And so I think that what you're doing is just incredibly like, it's just ballsy, man. Ballsy. Well, that's great to hear from you because, you know, as much as I'm working my ass off

stuff, sometimes you sit around and you think, no one's noticing, you know what I mean? They're like, oh my God, I'm working so fucking. But people are noticing you. Yeah, yeah, but I'm saying, you know what I mean? As far as like you go through long periods and be like, wow, man, this is like. The mind fucks with you. The mind fucks with you. And I've been, my mind's been fucking with me in like the last year, you know what I

mean? Because I'm not looking for fame. I've already made it in my eyes. I'm a 51 year old man past at the comedy store, working in a lineup of some of the biggest comics in the world. And I mean the biggest. I've opened for Dave Chappelle, Louie Burr, Maren, yeah, it's all been it's all been amazing. So I've already made it.

So I need to keep myself driving to, you know what I mean? Like, like some people, I want to be on TV and movies. And in my mind, I'm like, I already made it. So I've got to keep working hard, even though I've made it in my mind to where I didn't think I was ever going to be. But don't you see what's happened to you also, which I don't know if you noticed this or not. You're like doing a Merlin, you're reverse aging, you know, like, you know, like a reverse

age, like, because you came to the comedy store older than you are. Yeah. That's the other weird thing. Like you, you, the person I'm sitting in front of slim in shape, like you're in shape now. The person who came to the comedy store, that was like a bigger person that so you've like, not only did you dive in to what some people claim is one of the most difficult career paths on earth, but you also somehow simultaneously took on the like meat body of like an athlete,

like some kind of long distance runner or something. I think when you're happy, you truly reverse age. I think so. Yeah. So I was pretty miserable selling motorcycles out in the fucking valley. You know what I mean? Because this motorcycle chapter of your life, it happened after 25 years of being a touring musician.

Exactly. So that's kind of a weird thing. You get off stage, now you're selling motorcycles. That's how old are you when you're doing that? Let's see. I started a comedy at 44. So it was, you know, from like 40 to 44. So you're kind of having your midlife crisis and you're selling motorcycles.

Yep. You're, you're not touring anymore. You like it. And so you're, you, you, my mind would be thinking to me, shit, dude, you, that's it. That's it. You're going to sell motorcycles. You're going to fucking. That's what was going on.

I thought, you know, when you're on stage for 25 years and nobody can really fathom what happens to you, I can't even describe what happens to you because you get off stage. It's like, to me, the illegal downloading really wiped out my music career because it doesn't wipe out the giant rock star. I always tell people like, you know, it doesn't phase them. They just, like you think you stole music, but then you pay 500 for a ticket for a concert. You're just paying for the records you stole. You don't think you are, but that ticket would be $100 if you didn't steal music.

So that doesn't touch the rock stars. It touched all the people that are like kind of the blue collar musicians for their whole life. You know? So when I stepped off stage, I thought, what do I love? I love motorcycles. That's what I'm going to do. I'm going to sell motorcycles and I'll be happy and it'll be great.

And quickly, it was a down roll spiral into some mad depression. You know what I mean? Like, oh my God. All of a sudden, I was making more money than I've ever made my whole life selling motorcycles, but I was spending every nickel on it to fill this hole. And I was like, oh, I got eight bikes. I got 10 watches. I live in a great place in the Hollywood Hills.

My life, I think it was all bullshit. It was all bullshit. It was just demons. And it was just, it was, it was, that's how bad I missed being on stage. You know? So you're like kind of festering there selling motorcycles. You've got the accoutrement of someone who's doing OK, which is terrible for a depressed person.

Terrible. Because then you just like, no one even knows. It's like. Yeah. You've made it. Oh, you're doing great. The Heart of Christ uses this example of a golden birdcage, but inside the birdcage is a bird nobody's feeding, but everyone's like, what a beautiful birdcage.

But inside it's just this like, yeah, desiccated, dying, trembling thing. And that's like what happens to a lot of people who get material success, but aren't feeding their hearts. So bam, you're in the fucking Simi Valley. Is that where it is? Van eyes. Van eyes. You're in van eyes.

You're in the armpit of LA selling motorcycles and van eyes, man. And you're thinking back to the days of getting on stage and performing. And then God walks into your motorcycle shop. Can you talk about that a little bit? What happened there? Yeah, man, I'm there and these people come in one day and they said, hey, we work for Quentin Tarantino and we're doing a motorcycle movie. You know, part of the grind house, you know, how they did, uh, they did death proof.

Yes. Planetaire machete and they're doing this movie called hell ride. Right. It's Larry Bishop, Michael Madsen, Dennis Hopper, Quentin Tarantino producing Tarantino was supposed to act in it, but he backed out in the last minute. But anyway, they said, could you help us out? And I said, sure. So I'm kind of advising them on what motorcycles to use, what clothing, that kind of stuff.

And then they asked me to audition for a role in the film and I get the role. Is this the first like audition you've had or did you try acting before that? I've never, I was in the doors movie real young as like kind of a side musician. Wow. And I got cut out. I was so bummed, but I didn't act or anything. I just had like one line is back in the day and they dressed up, dressed me like Paul Williams.

Remember that guy? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Like a white leather outfit on with like fringe. That's fucking cool. I tell you what, that was pretty wild, man, cause they shot that film at the Olympic Auditorium and I was in the scene where, um, where he takes his dick out and that, that's the famous

Florida scene. Yes. And so I remember the producer saying, Val's going to come in and you got to call him Jim. Wow. And we're like, hell hokey. You know what I mean? Like we're laughing. Cause the reason I got the part was I was a band and they wanted band looking guys.

Right. I had long hair and shit. Sure. And, uh, we're like, that's so dumb. And we're in this kind of like green room, supposed to be a backstage and, uh, Val comes in and, and we're like, whoa, we couldn't even believe it, dude. He comes in. He's got a bottle of Jack.

He's like, all right. Yeah. Hey man, what's going on out there? And we're like, what the fuck? We couldn't believe it actually. I mean, that's how hardcore he looked like. Acton's fucking weird. It really is.

People drive themselves insane. Like people, I, I, you know, your Daniel Day Lewis is like dropping out. They say he's doing one more movie and then that's it for him. Like, cause I don't think they can, I think they drew, I think they put themselves into like a pretty expert, experientially painful place. And then when it's done, you don't just get better from that. Like when you've been acting like someone, you're not for fucking a year or whatever hanging out with people, you, you're, you start shattering yourself inside a little

bit or something, but who fucking cares about Val Kilmer? So you are, you go, you're in the doors movie, but then you audition 30 years later, 30 years later for Quentin Tarantino's hell ride, hell ride. And you get the part. I get the part. I play a role of a guy named Ape shit. And one of the greatest days of my life is the first day on the set because I absolutely worship Dennis Hopper.

Yeah. There's no better guy ever to hit the screen than Dennis Hopper. What's your, what's your favorite Dennis Hopper movie? Apocalypse now. No doubt. That's the one. One hundred percent. That was the most incredible.

One hundred percent. And that, I like, I'll just, I will just go back and watch Dennis Hopper interact with Marlon Brando just to, just to like cleanse the palate sometimes. I haven't done it in a while, but I got goosebumps, man. Look at that. It just, it is some of the finest filmmaking of all time, of all time. And to make that film, when you think about it, to be in a jungle that you thought you were going to be there like six weeks and it turns into like two years because of the

storms that wrecked the sets and the Brando just throwing away the script and making up his own stuff and Hopper being blackballed from Hollywood and Coppola taking them in and letting them do the film and, and the whole thing, man, it's a war saga, you know, are people going to watch it all the way through, you know? And so I get to the set the first day and there's, there's a photo I'll show you. It's in my Instagram. I see Hopper walking solo and I'm like, it takes all of me not to just ask one thousand questions, apocalypse.

Now, you know, he's the only guy that's worked with Brando. James Dean and John Wayne. Yeah. Okay. He also directed the most iconic biker film. He also did directed Colors, which was the first hip hop gangster movie. He directed that. Yeah.

Okay. No shit. Yeah. Yeah. He also did the most iconic David Lynch film, Blue Velvet. You know, he's been, he's the guy did everything. He is like the epitome of the ultimate actor. Yeah.

When Colors came out as a side note, my mom was dating a cop in North Carolina. Wow. And I think he took us to see Colors or like he played, I remember he like played the song for my mom. It was really. Colors, Colors. I am a nightmare walking, psychopath stalking, keeping on my jungle just the gangsta.

So I remember like living life like a firecracker, quick as a fuse. Oh my God. But I remember sitting in the car and he played that for us, this cop, a North Carolina cop and the look on his face was of such sadness and dismay and fear. Yeah. As though that song were the indication that we were like teetering on the precipice of a race war. Like he really thought like that's it, man.

Because when Colors came out, that was right around, I don't know where it landed with like NWA or when, but that was right around. Right in the hip hop ground zero of that gangster hip hop, not the early New York, you know, uh, rapper's delight and stuff. None of that cool kid. This is like the ground zero. And if you look at it, it's the ground zero of crack, you know what I mean? That's really, uh, when crack starts hitting like Oakland and Venice, you

know, that part of Venice, that's when the CIA starts flooding everything with crack apparently, right? Yeah. Well, that's what snowfall is supposed to be all about, you know? Yeah. So I'm waiting to see what that's all about. Yeah. Now they're saying that the CIA is flooding fentanyl everywhere.

I just saw that. Yeah. It's so fucking weird, man, that we've got some dark nefarious group of people who apparently like to like bring like drugs into the country to poison itself. I don't get that. That's a really bizarre thing. I guess it kind of makes sense though, because like drugs make a lot of money for the government.

Yeah. But anyway, man, so you Dennis Hopper, yeah, walking by you, the legend. It's insane. And this is like, this, this is not, this is a huge moment for you. Yep. Because this is like your first like real movie. Like, oh, oh, 100. But you got to think, man, all the way back to fucking, um, to, uh, reservoir dogs,

you know, Pulp Fiction, uh, you know, Kill Bill one and two. Yeah. Now I'm working on a Tarantino production. Yeah. I mean, you're talking about, like a lot of my buddies always say, dude, you're like, uh, Forrest Gump, man. You've lived like 10 lives, you know, that's what it sounds like. Yeah.

Yeah. You bounced out of this motorcycle thing. Now you're like, you're, you're on set with your favorite actor of all time. Absolutely. Yeah. So I wait a couple of days and I finally, he and I just sit down, uh, in between one of the scenes and it's snowing around and I was like Apocalypse now, dude.

I mean, you know, I know people ask you about that, but it's just unbelievable. You know, and he told me one of the great stories ever. He said that when the set, first of all, he said, a lot of people think we were just, you know, uh, taking acid out there and just doing our own thing. You know, we're in our own world. He's like, yeah, we weren't messing with that, but when the, when the storms blew the sets down, they had a long time to rebuild the sets. He said that they actually, um, set up like early paintball style setups on

their guns and we're doing some speed and getting out of their minds and having their own war games. Yeah. Crew against, you know, like, cause it's shit little crew sitting out there and they were like having their own war out there. Pretty rad. Right. It is rad.

I know. I never know if people, if they just make stuff up or whatever, but I was like, that's a great story, man. We weren't doing acid. We were doing speed. Yeah. We're doing speed and shooting each other with paint in the middle of the jungle. Yeah.

In the seventies, like rigging up. He's like, it was like a paintball situation, but you know, way pre paintball. I didn't come out to like the eighties or whatever, but. And that's seventies speed. Yeah. Did he tell you what kind of speed they were taking? No, I just probably pill form, you know what I mean? Like, uh, like what were those back there?

Were there some dexadrin and shit stuff? What were those called? They were like, uh, like, you know, black beauties or whatever you took and you just got all jacked up, you know, and then you get a good delusion going on. I don't know if you've ever stayed up for more than two, three days, but you get into another, uh, headspace that's happened to you. Oh yeah. I've been, you know, uh, I've stayed up.

I used to like try to stay up and see what would happen with the mind. You get a good delusion going. Oh, you do. What's an example of this happen to you? There's some weird stuff when you stay up for a long time where you're kind of just floating through, uh, life, like doing stuff, like going to the liquor store at seven a.m. Cause you're up, you know, and you're seeing real life go on, people

commuting to work, getting coffee, and they're all showered up and ready. And you're just like this, this transient, uh, that's been up two, three, four days of floating around. Like, you know, you're like a full outlaw in the world of like, you should be nine to five and, and you really feel people's vibes of like this guy hates his job, you know, that kind of stuff. Oh yeah. You think that you have to stay up for three days to achieve that stay?

No, but you can really feel it is what I'm saying. You know, you can feel the, um, you're like, you know, like early hippies when they just stepped into that whole thing of, uh, step out, you know, uh, tune in, turn on, drop out, you know, but you feel that when you're up for a long time, you're just kind of like your mind is in a different state. Your woke is, and you see the ebb and flow of society, the rhythm of society. The, it's almost like these people have tuned in to some kind of trance beam and they've been completely drawn into a kind of terrible dance that they think is

normal life. You've managed to like, I guess the beam can't affect your brain anymore. Cause of like the level of drugs you've been doing or lack of sleep or whatever. So now you're not getting hit by this conditioning ray and you're looking at this insane society that you're supposed to be part of. And you realize, my God, every single person that I'm looking at is fucking miserable and they're doing what they're doing, not cause they want to do it, but because they're in a form of invisible slavery.

Yeah. And then you become the lizard king. You're all slaves. You're all a bunch of slaves. But it's kind of true. Yeah, it really is. I think my entire life I've always battled to not be in the nine to five. Since the day I started, you know, because my mom, my dad left my mom and I

saw she had to work her ass off to feed me and keep a roof over. And I know that that wasn't probably the life that she wanted, you know, of just like slave jobs and stuff. And I was like, there's got to be more to life than that. The boss, she had a boss. Yeah. What do you remember their boss's name? I don't because she's had, she had a few different jobs, you know,

but I do remember. I got a good boss, you know, sometimes people are like, oh, my boss is great. I've got the best boss. When people were excited about their boss, oh, he's teaching me so much. Oh, she's wonderful. Or, you know, dad comes home and he's like, oh, fuck, man, the boss is really hard on him today. Oh, that's why when those people at like the coffee shops call me boss or something,

I take it as an insult. I don't want to be a boss at all. That's the worst thing you could be. They go, hey, boss, what it would be today. It's like, fuck you. Don't call me boss. Call me, call me asshole over boss. Oh yeah.

Call me cunt. Anything. Being a boss sucks, man. Like any, even like anytime you, it just sucks. Like the, the, the structure is really fucked up, man. Like when you have to be in charge, you're in charge. And then people would go to leadership school, you know, that kind of stuff where people learn how to be leaders.

I'm going to be a leader. I'm the leader of my group. I'm the head of my group. And on the 17th floor, cubicle nine through 15, I'm the leader of that particular. Dude, can I tell you something? Yeah. I saw this chilled me to the bones, man. It was so fucked up.

And I really mean that. It's, I can't get out of my head. I know it sounds ridiculous. I went into, there's a new Chipotle that opened up. Right. So like I went into this Chipotle and like a Chipotle in New York. I think it's kind of, it's not necessarily going to work. Yeah.

Because the food here is so good. Right. That no one wants your fucking like corporatized, like supposedly healthy fart bomb Mexican. That's all suburbs geared. Yes. Right. So opening one in New York is already a risky proposition, but I went in there

and this particular Chipotle, not doing that great. Right. It's been open for a few weeks. No one's go, why would you go? There's like, like literally three doors up. There's like the most incredible Spanish food that's like, the rice is perfectly cooked, the chicken, it's amazing. It's just great.

There's, there's like, it's, and also a lot of these like restaurants in New York, you walk in and it's like, you can feel the years, you know, you feel, there are, there's a spirit in there. They're haunted. They're alive. So like, I'm not going to go to a fucking Chipotle. You got to your goddamn mind for probably less than your shit food. I can get like something incredibly better.

So this poor Chipotle, it's not doing great. And so I walk in, man, and it looks like they've shipped in somebody from Chipotle corporate. Yeah. So you walk in and everyone who's working there looks at you and they go, hi, hi. Oh, welcome. Welcome to Chipotle. Welcome.

You come in and you're looking around like, what, why are you? I just don't, I mean, I thank you for greeting me, but I know you don't mean it. And then as you're standing there, getting your food, I turn around and look and there it is, like someone like Pennywise the clown or something, like this boss, this woman emanating authority and trying to radiate a kind of benevolent optimism, but she's really cracking an emotional invisible whip over these people in the food line. And she says to the guy in the front of the line, what are we doing, Gerald?

And he's like, we're greeting customers and getting food out within 40 seconds or less. Oh, I was just like, oh, my God. You know, like you just think like, fuck, man, poor Gerald. Yeah, you got to fucking all over a paycheck. Yeah, all over a paycheck. And you know what I mean? It's like, you're like, I know my coming in here and getting Chipotle, I become

complicit in the terrible fucking dance that we're all doing here. But can you please not? It's like, it's like it's bad enough that I'm eating meat. But if you could make meat, somehow like dance for you before you eat it, you know, like, you know, if you know what I mean? I'm a little chicken. I love you. I'm yummy.

I'm so yummy. Yeah, yeah. Eat me, eat me. They did that point because it was really gross. Yeah, fuck bosses, really spooky, no offense to the bosses out there. Well, you know, I think that owner of Chipotle, I met him and I tried to get him on the podcast and he came from such a great organic world. And then that that's exactly to what happens, you know, when people have

success, they ruin it with rules and everything. Because, you know, that guy was just kind of a cool college guy that loves San Francisco burritos and wanted to have something like that in Colorado. And he opens it in Colorado and it has success. And he opened some other ones. When I first, when Chipotle first started opening, I was out on tour with the wall flowers opening for him. And I think we were in Chicago and we went into one.

It was pretty early on. And the people came up and they were playing incredible music. Right. I remember they were, I was like, listen to this music. And I said, Hey, who picks the music? And they said the owner, man, he's really, he's really into music and he wants to make sure the right music. I go, this is great.

And they go, Hey, aren't you guys the wall flowers or whatever? You know, I was with a couple of guys and they gave us these one year cards to eat as much as we wanted for a year. That's pretty cool. Yeah. And they go, we just want, you know, help the music community, bands and stuff, you know, they're on the road. They can, there's only like 10 of them at the time, you know, we couldn't

really use it a lot, but it was like, cool. You know, they built one there at the Beverly Center and I was down there eating all the time on it, starving as a musician. That's cool. It's really cool, man. You know, and then later it just turns into like, you know, they sell to McDonald's for a minute and he buys it back because he doesn't like what they're doing. And he kind of gets a little lost, you know.

Yeah. Well, that's what happens, you know, that's what can happen when you start duplicating your fucking thing all over the place. You can't, it just, all the half, like you, whoever this guy, I have no doubt that whoever started Chipotle is a wonderful person. I'm sure the original Chipoles were fucking cool. Yep. Cause goddamn, what's better than great fucking Mexican food, right?

So no doubt, whatever, I'm sure it's great, but it's like, inevitably, you're not going to be able to keep track of all the people working here. So you've got to hire corporate managers, right? Exactly. And these corporate managers are people. What do they call it? They call it human, the department. What's human resources?

Human resources people, human resources, like oil, like human resources. So we're going to harvest some human resource. Vampires would say the same thing if they were eating humans. I'd say these are our human resources. So like these people have been trained in corporate psychology. So there's like, they're like just trying to make people connect to what they're doing, but it's really hard to make people connect. To what they're doing.

When a person who's working at Chipotle is fully aware of the fact that the amount of money they're getting paid for the work they're doing versus the amount of money that the company is profiting from the number of Chipoles out there is infinitesimally smaller, right? So no matter what, if you're a worker who's getting paid minimum wage, there's a piece of you that knows this fucking bullshit, man. This is bullshit. They don't need it.

They could do better. They could do better than this. I don't need to be treated like this. Like, you know it, no matter where you're at, you know it, you know it. You know, there's some fucking dude, not to say the guy was running Chipotle's like this, but maybe some people under him who are taking in a quarter of a million dollars a year and who are like, you know, I don't know, not to discharge Chipotle, sorry, anyone who works at Chipotle or whatever.

I don't mean to diss you guys. It's just there's something so noxious about the whole corporate spider web, man. There's something so incredibly like horrifying about it. I just can't get it out of my fucking head, man. It just reminded me of when I used to work at an Applebee's, you know, and the way that you like, you go into the Applebee's and you got to like, in the more, my boss had a, had a cane and he would come out in the morning and make us all stand in front of this whiteboard that had him, what our food sales were.

Right. I was the worst waiter ever. Yeah. Yeah. And he'd be like, and look who's at the bottom again. Oh. Duncan. Yeah.

It was the fucking worst. You know, that comes full circle with how, why I got so depressed working a job. Because once I was working at Harley, it was something that I absolutely loved motorcycles, but quickly was realizing the, the, the format of bosses and, and other people with small power. It was bizarre how these, these people were just evil. Like, you know, a guy would go out of his way to make sure I couldn't make the sale, you know, because I was making more money than him.

You know what I mean? Cause sales guys make commission and I was killing it because I loved what I did and they hated what they did. So when you're making like a hundred grand a year and they're making like 50 because they're too lazy. They don't want to do sales. They just want to be an hourly boss. Right.

They start to hate you and this weird shit happens, man. And it always happens, you know, with guys get a little bit of power. They're like, I go, Hey man, this guy wants to buy this bike, but he needs to get some chrome rims to make it happen today. And he was like, Oh, well, you know, you know, the procedure, man, you need to, uh, you need to fill out the forms and then turn them in and I'll see if we have the parts. I'm like, fuck all that, dude.

The guy's here. He's about to spend 30. Let's just get these chrome rims on the bike and fucking get it rolling. You know, and, and anything to sabotage me, you know, and that all comes down to weird boss shit, you know, and that's something I never dealt with before ever of weird boss shit. Because when you play music or do a comedy, you're the boss, you know, of yourself.

That's right. Yeah. And, and that's, I mean, and there's a lot that goes, goes along with that. Right. So being the boss of yourself is fantastic until you're eating your fifth Chipotle meal in a row, because you've got no money, you have no idea what money's coming in. You don't know what's going to happen to you.

You could easily end up, you know, on the streets, you know, and that's, that's the reality of, so the kind of decision we find ourselves faced with in this particular time period in human history is this weird perplexing choice between do I go into the normal reality tunnel of day to day life, wake up in the morning, get in my car, go to some job that I'm not really connected to. Cause I'm just another fucking human resource. I'm a pixel and some massive screen that makes the shape of some demonic capitalist pentagram and no, and any pixel can be replaced.

I'm certainly one of them. They don't care. They don't care. Also, the other thing is the, the, the, what we call professionalism is actually, um, a kind of practiced, um, it's like you practice to be a sociopath, right? Cause it's like a person comes in, you're the boss. You can't really get too connected to the workers, right?

You can be nice and professional. How are you today, Dean? Good to see you. Okay. Well, here's what we need to do today. I hope you're doing well. Okay. But if you get too into it, you doing all right, man?

How you been, you, you feeling okay? Yeah, any kind of feelings, then, then you, it's going to make it really hard. Cause you're at some point you're going to be like, Hey, Dean, I'm really sorry, but unfortunately we're having to do some layoffs in the department and I gotta let you go. You can't do that anymore. So we, we call it professionalism, but it's really, it's a kind of boundary that you create between you and your brothers and sisters so that you don't get

emotionally attached to them when you have to financially put them to sleep. So to speak. So this is the choice. Do you dive into that world where every fall safety, fall safety, fall safety, fall safety, every two weeks, every two weeks, you're going to get that fucking paycheck, you're going to go to the ATM. It's going to get sucked into the ATM. You're going to know how much money's in your account.

You're going to know how much money's coming. You're going to know what raises you're probably going to get. If you do a good job, you're going to know that you've got a 401k and a retirement fund plan. You got your health insurance, man. You're okay, man. You're doing okay. You're doing okay.

You're with a team. You're working together. Everything's okay. So you're on this big raft floating through time and you're like kind of taking care of it. And in that way, I get it. But man, simultaneously, simultaneously, when you're standing there in the fucking 7-Eleven, getting your coffee, and Dean Delray comes in and he's been awake for

three days, emanating a kind of satanic energy. Some little PC was like, what the fuck is that? What the fuck is that? What is that? It's not all bad. I don't think that's all bad. What is that like? Or you're just like, ah, look at him.

Look at that loser. Because you're in condition to that level. So it's a very terrible decision that we have to make. You know, but this is why I love your story, dude, because you dove into this motorcycle job, you get this Quentin Tarantino movie, right? And then that leads to more movies. Right? Yeah, yeah.

I end up getting a part in this movie called The Long Shots, which, by the way, Ice Cube starred in, who's another person that I absolutely worship growing up. Don't you find this stuff really weird? So one of the things when I contemplate the universe, I think it's so hilarious is that God seems to have, like, does dad jokes, right? So it's like, OK, OK, OK. So let's take the guy who toured for 25 years and started working in a motorcycle place, which is going to be a motorcycle salesman.

Then he accidentally, the Quentin Tarantino people wander and it's already like. I always say, like, I feel like life is already laid out for you. And, you know, when you're born, I truly believe this. There's a thread that you're supposed to be on. And like, if you get off it, you get knocked back in it somehow. Like, I got off it and it was like somehow like, nope, you're supposed to be performing, you know, and the longest route ever to get to stand up. You know what I mean?

It's funny to me that the movie that got you in to stand up was called The Long Shot, right? It's, you know, it's that kind of stuff where it's like, come on, dude. Like, if we if we're riding a screenplay. Yeah, yeah, no one would believe it. And like, yeah, let's make it to the movie where he learns to do comedy. We'll call it The Long Shot. So like, shut up.

That's fucking cheesy. It really? Let's not do that. We'll call the movie something else and that's how it gets into comedy. But like, so you're doing this movie, The Long Shot, and is this this is. Is this the first time you really started hanging out with comics or? Yeah, well, I knew Jay Davis, but I didn't hang out with comics, you know, but so it's a football movie and it's like a kid's movie.

It's rated G, you know, and the part I roll is this guy land is this guy who's in the bleachers with other guys in the bleachers. That classic, you know, you're in the bleachers like, looks like he got it in the nuts, that kind of stuff. You know, like you're watching the football game and you're doing commentary jokes here and there and they just pop them into the film. So it's me and then earthquake, who I didn't know at the time as a comedian, Garrett Morris, which is full circle for me now because the reason I wanted

to do comedy was Saturday Night Live, the first three seasons. And then Michael Collier. So there are three comics and then me in there. And, you know, I said, I wanted, I said, I always wanted to do comedy and earthquakes like, man, you're too old, dude. He said that to your face. Well, he was just like, you know what I mean? Like, oh, come on, man, you know, like, because I was like 40, 40 at the time,

43. And I'm like, you know, yeah, I think I could do it. I always wanted to do it. I love comedy. I go see it. And he's like, ah, man, kind of like being an old dad, isn't it? Because like, you know, if you have a kid when you're 40, you're the guy, you know, when by the time he graduates, you might not even be alive. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean, that's just the truth of what's in our food.

But that's a whole other thing. But, you know, I think what happened was after a couple of months, we're riffing, you know, like the director would be like, just, just riff stuff and we'll just grab it. You know, so you're like, oh, man, you know, you're just throwing stuff. And, and these guys are kind of laughing. And Quake said, I mean, maybe you could do it, you know what I mean? I think after two months of on the set, you realize I'm kind of funny and I'm just riffing on people and stuff.

So he goes, when you get home, just look up some open mics and start hitting them. And then if you do it, I run a show at the Comedy Union on Pico. And in a year or so, look me up and come by. So I get home and I step on stage. That was December 6th, 2009. Wow. And I go on stage and I never left the stage. That's fucking crazy. I've done over 3,500 spots in the seven and a half years.

And then a year later, I walked in and I said, Hey, Quake, it's me, man. Dean, I'm doing comedy. He said, come by. And he was like, he goes, Oh man, I didn't think you're really going to do it. Because if I did, I would have gave you some real advice. You know what I mean? I go, Yeah, I'm doing it. He put me up and had a great set.

And he was like, wow, man, all right. And I kept going for, you know, and I've been doing it every since. Dude, I want to talk to you about this now. Yeah, because here's the thing. This is a this has become a kind of popular. It was for a second, you know, became a like a mild trend on YouTube. We're like, there were some actors, like the guy from. That showed dirty jobs and like some other people.

They were doing these like weird, like graduation speeches where they're telling people not to follow their dreams. Oh, yeah. You know, when that started happening, there's like a few people that were like, they were doing that. There was it's not going to work out. Right. It's not going to work out. You don't do it.

Find something, find something that you're good at and learn to love it. Right. Don't find something you love and get good at it or some shit like that. And I've always found that to be. One of the most and I when I I don't mean to insult Satanism, but one of the more, I guess I could say demonic things I've ever seen, which is that how could you feel OK telling the world to ignore its instincts

and that it's towards whatever the thing is and to just become part of a system. And the fact that you as somebody who is successful and have achieved the miraculous state of success following your heart would then tell people not to do that. Yeah. And and and and placed that like under the banner of responsibility. That's just always felt very fucked up to me, man. But but also when I think like,

shit, maybe people are going to hear this podcast and they're going to look at where they're at and they're going to think I hate this life. I hate what I'm doing. Yeah, I know I want to do something else. Maybe I don't even know what it is, but I know I don't want to be here. And I'm going to go for it. And then they go for it, Dean, and it doesn't work out.

What do you have to say to them? What do you what? What's your what? How do you feel about that, man? Like you are when are you like a pied piper? Are you going to lead people into like what if someone's listening to say, fuck this, I'm going to throw away this this career I've built up to follow my dreams like Dean did because fucking Dean that where he's out there. He's at the comedy store.

He's doing stand up in New York. He's chilling with fucking Bill Burr and like he did this stuff. He's 51. Yeah, I could do it. If he's doing it, I could. What do you have to say to those people? You can't you can't be stupid about it. You know what I mean? Like people ask me all the time, like, hey, man, I'm thinking of just moving to LA and doing like you did.

And I'm like, yeah, yeah. I mean, if you really think about that, sit down with me for 10 minutes and I'll show you the exact work I put into it. And if you look at that work and you actually think you can do that work, then I say, yeah. But if you're just looking at like some key snapshots in my life and think that there was back doors that I just walked in and magic people gave me stuff, you're out of your fucking mind.

Right. Because a lot of people look at that. And I say one of the biggest insults I always hear is when a guy goes, man, how'd you get somewhere so quick? I mean, you're funny, but, you know, what they're saying is you're not that funny. And they're bypassing all the fucking work. Yeah. And I said, you know what? Just comes work with me for five days, five days. I want to see you tap out, you know what I mean?

The amount of work that I've done in the seven and a half years is just people just wash that away. They don't want to they don't want to think about that at all. They just like, ah, he met a couple guys at the store like Burr and Marin, and the next thing you know, he was out torn with him and made. And it's like, really, really, that's that's what you think happened, you know? And yeah, this is the evil of the movies because there's the musical montage where a person decides what they're going to do and then the music plays

and like cut to like two years later and they've made it. Yeah. And that's what they think it's like. They don't understand. Oh, man, if they could just see the open mics, you know, the two, three, four open mics, I do a night riding around. By the way, all the spots on the motorcycle, rain, heat, wind, sand, slight snow, all the bullshit I wrote in to do these spots. The abuse I took from other comics of like, you know, this old dude,

you know, sitting around all night, just put them on last. He won't be around anyway. Who gives a fuck? The five dollars every day I paid to get on stage, you know, five dollars for stage five minutes and then getting late at two and going, hey, I paid for five. This kind of bullshit, the, you know, the sitting around night after night after night, hoping to get on on an open mic, you know, writing jokes, booking podcast guests, editing the podcast, putting up the podcast, you know,

it's just seven days a week, 24 seven, you know, and all of it has to be balanced because too much of one thing, then you eat a dick on stage or bad podcast cast because you didn't listen to the guest or whether it's all like full focus all the time and, you know, it's so fucking hard. So for somebody just to think, Dean Delray did that, I could do that. You have to sit down with me for five minutes and I'm marking my phone. Every spot I've done, everywhere I've gone, you can look at it and go, can you do that? Can you sit outside of the lab factory for four hours in the sun to sign

up for an open mic the following week? Can you do that? You know what I mean? Can you not have hundreds of thousands of dollars of credit card debt and kids or a marriage that you had that you didn't care for? You know what I mean? Everything has to be in place. I never got married.

I didn't have kids. I don't have credit card debt. First, those are the three things that are going to wipe you out right away in art, you know, right away. As soon as you go and you try to do something of chase your dream, someone knocks on your door and goes, Hey, child support, or you didn't pay your credit card for those, uh, that shit you wanted. You don't even care about now in your garage, you know.

Okay. But what about those people? What if someone's hearing this and like, yeah, man, I've got fucking credit card debt. I just left a shit fucking marriage, Dean, but I want to do that. I want to work that hard. What do you say to them? Well, I started at 44.

So I love, somebody said this to me last night. They said, you know, man, you know, you're just working ass. I just, you know, I sit around, I go, you're 25. I didn't even sleep when I was 25. If I was 25 right now, I would be a superstar because I would have extra, you know, extra what I need, you know what I'm saying? But if you, if you're going to do it and you have all that stuff, it's even going to be harder, but you could still do it, but you would have to

figure out how to pay your bills. So you got to work a day job, then you got to go out at night and do these open mics and you know what I mean? It's like you're out till two, three in the morning. So for most people, they'll just tap out because it's like, whoa, I didn't think it was this hard. I thought you just went to the store, you hung out, you got on and then eventually you're just past conversation with Marin conversation with Burr.

Yeah, that's what I thought. Yeah, I thought you just rub shoulders and talk football with Burr and then you're out on the road. It's like, yeah, but here's the thing, man, when I think about you on your motorcycle in the rain, going to do an open mic, what the, the feeling in your heart, when you're pursuing a thing like that and it's raining. Yeah, I remember when I was fucking in those days and I remember walking down the street, my car had been like fucking towed, you know, you're like

doomed, you're just perpetually, you're just, you're doomed, but I can remember the feeling of freedom and the feeling of like, when you kind of like come to that place in your, in yourself, where you love something so much and I don't mean love, like you feel love for it. I mean, like you just, this is what you're doing now. This is it. This is what you do. And you've made this weird, this thing clicks.

Like, all right, well, I'm going to die for this. Like, I guess I'll just die for this. Like, I'll probably die. I'll probably be, I'm probably fucked. Like this isn't going to work out. I'm probably, yeah, when I'm looking at the numbers here, I'm going to say I'm fucked, but I'm going to do it. That feeling of like, ah, okay, okay, you stop expecting anything except the

fit you're doing the thing. Come on, man. That's a way better feeling than when you just fucking convinced a four top at Applebee's to get a third round of margaritas, right? It's true. Well, that's, that's the drive because once I started doing it, I was like, I'm never going back to that Harley shop. I'm not, I don't care what it takes.

And the drive from that of, of, you know, is like fuel and also, uh, other people, when I was starting of like, you're old, it ain't going to happen. All that was fuel in my tank. Like, like, like, like Bukowski, I got a full tank of fuel, you know, on bar fly, you know, that's, what? If it would have been easy when I started, I would have tapped out. I would have been like, yeah, this is easy. There were, you know, no challenge.

Everything I've ever done has been completely a fucking writing songs. Dude, when I played music, I never even knew how to play an instrument. I had to fucking get a job, buy an instrument, learn the instrument, then learn to write songs, then find three, four other guys that want to do the same thing, and then travel around in a van with no fucking money. You know what I mean? So the drive that you get from something being a challenge for me is what it's about. I mean, this is why I like the word jihad because it's a holy war.

And it's like, and obviously it gets used in the people who are, it's a politicized word, but the essence of the thing being like the moment you decide to start fighting for what it, for God, or for the universal truth, or the moment you start fighting for the thing that is your true north, then you experience the glory of battle. You know, it doesn't have to be on a battlefield. Everything's a battlefield. Right. And when you are, when you're that, dude, you've become, you feel life.

And this is the, this is the paycheck because it's like, this is why I get so not upset, but annoyed by these, like, don't follow your dreams things. Right. Now, certainly we have to work hard. But the don't follow your dreams. Things imply that success is measured by a paycheck. Success is measured by security. Success is measured by some kind of material indication from the world that

you have, that you have talent or that you're whatever, whatever. But that's not, I don't think that that's true success, because if that were the case, then a lot of people who had those kinds of things wouldn't be sucking back Benzos and not like taking Ambien to go to sleep at night. I think that the paycheck is the feeling of clicking in to the groove that you were talking about, that thing that maybe in the beginning of this incarnation before you popped out of the vagina, you were like, all right, all right, let's give this one a shot.

Let's do this. I'm going to be the fucking artist that maybe doesn't achieve any kind of success at all. I'm going to be an artist that overdoses on heroin in a fucking bathtub, like Jim Morrison, only no one will ever know the fuck I am and my music sucks. You know what I mean? Yeah. And the clicking, I'm not saying do that, guys, I'm friends, but what I'm

saying is don't get confused about what the paychecks are. You know what the paycheck is, but simultaneously, right? We can't trick ourselves, can we, Dean? It would also be easy to get into some romanticized version of life where you're pretending to be a thing that you're not. How do you tell the difference? How do you know, Dean? How do you, well, I'm asking, how do you know if this is what you're supposed

to be doing? How are you certain, you know, how do you know? Do you know for sure this is it? Yeah. As soon as I stepped on stage the first time to do comedy, I was like, oh, this is like, like rock and roll was great and I loved it, but it doesn't come anywhere close, anywhere close to comedy. But dude, weren't you saying that you're struggling now with like, yeah, so come

on, how does that, that this year has been the worst for me? It's, it's hilarious because you got to think I got ran over by on my motorcycle, almost killed, then I got diabetes and then a strange thing happened where I was featuring for all kinds of people and then I wasn't getting any feature work anymore because the guys, uh, the headliners are on TV now and stuff. So they're not going out. Right. And I wasn't getting any, uh, headlining work.

I got no manager, no agent, you know, for seven years and all of a sudden I'm like, wow, this is, I felt like I was going backwards all of a sudden. And I also, I told you I had lost weight and all of a sudden I wasn't getting a laughs and I realized, oh, maybe the jokes weren't that good. I was just a fat comic and they're laughing at the cadence and the fat, you know what I mean? And everything this year has been harder than all the years, which I thought would be opposite.

I thought it would get easier as I went and also some weird things were going to where, um, as I quit sugar and caffeine, uh, it didn't help my brain. I thought my brain would be clear and better, but it's more scrambled and cause I'd been on sugar and caffeine since I was like one or two years old. Right. Now my brain's all fucking over the place. You know what I mean? Which should be the opposite I thought.

So I've got all this, you know, diabetes ran over on the bike. My brain's scrambling. I don't feel as funny and, uh, and, and, and anytime I'm like, fuck man, am I even any good? You know what I mean? Because yeah, I got big laughs for a long time, but now it's different. You know, but I realize there's got to be light to the end of the tunnel. You know what I mean?

It's part of the journey of like you're eating dicks right now. It'll get better. You know, hopefully. Well, how many years you've been doing it? Seven and a half years. I mean, that's part of the process, man. These ebbs and flows, I can remember, uh, my, I can remember being at Jason, you know, Jason Tebow, I was starting comedy.

I can remember sitting with Jason Tebow. I don't remember where we were. Someone's apartment. And I think I'd bombed 17 times in a row or some insane amount of times. Yeah, that's nuts. Right. Like that happens. Brutal bombs.

Right. Like not, not like, we're like, you know, just silence and people are looking at you like, what's wrong with you? What's wrong with you? Yeah. I don't remember how many times in a row was enough. That I was sitting telling him, I don't know, man. And I started, I started crying.

Like I was tearing up. I'm like, I can't, I know, I was doing something and I'm not doing anymore. I don't know. That's exactly where I'm at. I'm like, what am I doing wrong here for real? Cause I'm like, wait a minute. And even old bits stop working and you start going to those like a parachute. Like, I'll just do these old bits until I get the stuff going again.

And then they're not working, you know? And I was having just a full blown meltdown in the hallway at the store with I was talking to Kristen Spicer and I was just like, I don't know, man. I mean, seven years, no manager, no agent. Uh, I mean, I've done 3,500 spots. I've done a shitload of movies and stuff. No one's looking at me and look at, I'm never saying I want to get famous or anything. It's just, I want to keep working.

So as the work starts to go away, I start to freak out. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, I'm at the store like three, four nights a week, but there's got to be more. You know what I mean? I got to go out to the road. You got to have balance. You got to be on the road to do an hour and figure out how to get good. Yep.

You know what I mean? You got to go eat dicks on the road and be like, all right, you know, battle it out. And if I'm not getting that, you know, then it started, I started getting super depressed. I remember Judd Apatow was standing there and he goes, what's the problem? He was just, he was over here on it. I said, man, I just fucking, I worked my ass off and I just, I'm going backwards and I don't know why. You know what I mean?

I just don't know why. I really didn't know why. I still don't know why, you know? And he's like, that makes no sense. You know, you got no mandatory. That makes no sense at all. And a couple of weeks later, I get a call and I get a role on love. That's so cool.

And, and, and let me tell you, not only do I love the show. Love, which was really good, which was amazing. I was like, oh my God, I'm going to be on something I love. I needed that at that point. It's only a few lines. Yeah. But I needed that more than anything on the planet at that time. I actually was crying when I got the call.

I couldn't believe it. You know what I mean? Yeah. And right now I, I get fucking, I get tore up from it, you know, because that guy listened, you know what I mean? Yeah. And he was like, find him anything. And then when I got there, I was, he had me just riff, say whatever you want.

And I was making people laugh, you know, on camera. And, and, and he's like, let's try this one. And people around me are like, God, he's giving you all kinds of fucking flow. This is great. And I, and I, all that work, you know, I was like, oh, I only, I don't care. It's not about being on TV. It's not at all, but it was just about, all right, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm here. I'm in with some other guy, you know, I'm working and then I got a manager

like two weeks ago from that. Yeah. And listen, I always tell people your manager is not going to change your world. Not all of a sudden you don't just stop working like, all right, manager, you get me the work now. Right. You get the work and the manager might have nuggets once in a while. That's right.

It's not about to have it. It's just, I just needed that at the time to feel like, because after a while you're like, fuck man, you know, this is the Lord. This is why the Lord's prayer is still one of the best prayers. Yay, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death. Fear no evil for thou art with me. It's like, because that's part of the process. Yeah.

We go into the valley of the shadow of death. It's actually human incarnation is like the valley of the shadow of death. We're gonna fucking die. Yeah. But that dark night of the soul, man, that happens in a career and a relationship and anything, it's like a test, isn't it? It really is. It's a test.

And it's like, this, I think people probably heard this story and they're like, wait, what, you shut up? It's how just fucking walks up to you. Yeah. Come on, Dean. We're not putting that in the script. No one's going to believe it. You know, it's gonna fucking believe it, you know, and yet that happened and that happens.

Yeah. So, but tell them, but what, so, so do you know now? Are you, I'm asking you, is there a, do you feel certain that this is, that this is the thing? Like even in these dark moments, are you certain? Or do you have moments where you lose all faith? I don't, I don't ever have that dark thing. I talked to a lot of comics, you know, when I was coming up and I remember taking a car ride to a gig with two comics.

And they were like, yeah, you're pretty fired up right now, man. You really like what you're doing. Yeah, man. But, you know, tell you, look at us, dude, it's all bullshit, you know, and they were just throwing this bad, bad negative shit at me. And it all goes back to what I said to you before. I've already made it, man. Yeah.

It doesn't matter what you say or what kind of feelings I feel alive. That darkness, I feel alive because it's something that I'm doing. Working at Harley, I didn't feel alive. I just felt like a fucking shell and I was throwing, you know, problems. I was throwing money, trying to fix problems. And those feelings to me, at least I feel alive, you know, and that's at 51 years old, you want to feel alive, you know, and that's how I fucking feel. I'm like, you know, when I fly to New York and somebody says, what are you doing here?

Like one of the comics out front, immediately I know I need to work harder. Don't they realize I'm here to do comedy? If you say, why are you here? I said that to you, Dean. And when I said that, I, because I just, I know, no, but I'm saying in general. I know, I'm saying, yeah, but I knew you were doing comedy. And maybe other people are asking you that. I just figured you were here.

Like when I said, what are you doing here? What really what I'm saying is, I hope you're moving here. I like you. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's what we want. It's like, I keep any time comics from LA come here from the store. It's like, there's a weird connection. You get people in the store where it's just like very nice. It's a team.

It's like, we put it on a team and, you know, you got, you, you got transferred to another team or whatever. You, you know, I take it too. It's like, I, I don't, I don't want to, I feel like I've hit a ceiling in LA and I need to keep growing as a comic. And the way to do it is to keep coming to New York and LA back and forth to, I don't want to be an LA comic. I don't want to be a New York comic.

I want to be a comic. That's right. That's right. That's good. That's all you don't want to be. Yeah. Or a store comic or an input, whatever. It's like, you just want to be a comedian.

Well, listen, and this is the God's honest truth at any point. And this has happened. I've seen it. You could be working in a room and you could be working nonstop. And somebody new comes in and work is book in the room or the room goes out of business or the room, uh, you know, changes, whatever. And then you're not working because you put all your chips into one room. Don't do that.

Don't do that. You need to spread it out, man. Dean, holy shit. Yeah. What a great journey you took us on today, man. Thank you. You are a really, really cool guy. And thank you.

You're an inspiration to me, man. Thanks for having me, dude. When you asked me to do it, I was so fired up because I love you. And, and I, I look at you and I look at Ari. Those are some real, real dudes. I look at their careers and go, this is the route you take, man. Don't try to be famous and be TV guy or whatever. Be a comic, be a comic, be a comic, do comedy, do comedy, because that's what you

like to do comedy and some, and here's the other thing. You know, sometimes, like I just took a month off. I just started like when I saw you at the stand, I'm going back and it feels so good to be on stage again. It's like, oh my God, I'm, oh God, I like, I go fucking crazy. Like, you know, like you were saying, I got, I get off caffeine. I get scrambled. It's like, wait till you stop doing comedy, man.

But it's good to remind yourself. Yeah. It's good to be like, wait, what is this? Let me see what happens if I don't do it for a little while. And then you start, you just, I can't even explain. Right. The insanity that will sweep into your life without that. So, but anyway, what I'm saying is we do comedy for comedy.

That's it. That's it. And because, and why do we do comedy? Well, because we love it. But what does love mean? Does that mean we enjoy it all the time? Fuck no. No.

No. Does it mean that every day is like, ah, this is the greatest? No, we do it, but we, but neither is, if you think love and enjoyment always meet, then you don't understand love. If you meet an old couple and they're 90 and they've been together for a hundred years, you go every day, great. They go, absolutely not. No way.

Absolutely not. But, but that is, I think the moment you free yourself. The main thing is like, know where your paycheck's coming from, man. That's all know where your paycheck's coming from. Are you getting paid from the world? Well, we need that a little bit, but just know that there's another paycheck. Right. That, that, that, that comes from somewhere else.

100% man, happiness in your heart. And as cheesy as that sounds, I've become a dead head in the last couple of years. And I, yeah, I said, I said, uh, I'm 51 and I'm a full blown dead head. Now proof there's midlife crisis. Dude, let me tell you something good. Becoming a dead head is the sign the midlife crisis has ended. My brother joined the fucking dead is the ultimate. That's a different podcast.

I'm dude, it's so funny. If I show you my, all I've been watching on YouTube is interviews with Jerry Garcia. Yep. And, and, and now I feel, you know, I'm even trying to go further in, in my comedy, as far as like jamming, like riffing, let's see where the hell I go here. You know, getting lost. That's why I eat it sometimes. And I'm like, okay, you know, that, that fire on the mountain jam did not work.

Well, that's what I love. Like you see his interviews with Jerry Garcia and, and he'll just say, like, one thing that's beautiful about him is he's so honest about everything. And sometimes we'll be like, yeah, man, sometimes, uh, our fans know that some nights it's not going to be good. Yeah, yeah. Cause they're up there, you know, just opening the fishing nets. They're all there for the journey.

Yeah, man. They far as they, as they always say, we follow the music. That's what we do. We follow the music. And as long as you're following the music, you're going to be fine. Yep. You might not be, you might, you might fall the music into another incarnation. No, like the music might take you out of this life all together, but follow the music.

The only, the only one thing about listening to too much dead, it takes a little bit of anger out of you. So your comedy gets a little soft. They're like, wait a minute, I'm not as angry. I need to be angry to get this joke. You gotta watch out. Yeah, can't get soft. So I, I, I balance it with some dead Kennedys.

There you go. I love it. Dean, love it. Dean, I love you, Dean. How can people find you? Uh, my podcast is let to be talk, uh, uh, Dean Delray is let to be talk. I'm on Twitter and Instagram, Dean Delray. And that's R-A-Y-D-E-L-R-A-Y.

All the links in the comments section of this episode. Thank you, Dean. You're the best. Love you. Thank you for listening, everybody. A big thanks to Squarespace for sponsoring this episode. Remember, if you go to Squarespace, you can use Doferco Duncan to get 10% off a brand new, beautiful website.

Don't forget to use our Amazon link. If you want to go deep, subscribe to us on Patreon by going to patreon.com forward slash D T F H. Hare Krishna, everyone. I'll see you soon. It's Macy's friends and family. Get an extra 30% off great gifts for her just in time for Mother's Day when you use your coupon or Macy's card.

And take 15% off Beauty Essentials or shop specials she'll love while supplies last. Plus, star rewards members earn on every purchase, except gift card services and fees at Macy's. Sign up today at Macy's.com slash star rewards. Savings off regular sale and clearance prices, exclusions apply.