Fitzdog Radio - Happy New Year (Solo) - Episode 1036

Episode Date: January 3, 2024

I celebrate the New Year with a look back and a look forward. And a sideward glance. Thank you for all your support listening to the podcast and coming out to shows this year! This episode brought to you by BetterHelp. 

happy new year everybody a happy happy new year i hope that this next year it's so random you know every year starts every second i mean do we really have to wait on some Greco-Roman fucking pagan marker of what starts the year? I mean, it's not even lined up with the sun. A year should start at the winter solstice, December 21st. That should be where the... I don't know why it's January 1st. Why am I angry? Anyway, I hope you had a good year. This is exciting though. It gives you an opportunity to

feel like change is imminent, that you are an agent of your own destiny. You feel like this, you feel like this one, this first week of January, you feel like this is going to be the year that doesn't suck like last year. And then February rolls around, you're like, nah, this one's going to suck too.

But you give it a shot. I got, I'm a big believer in resolutions because I feel like even if it only lasts a month, you did it for a month. I know sober January is like a big new thing that people are doing. I am doing, what do I got? I wrote them down. My new year's resolutions are I'm going to do social media for one hour a day. That means replying to everybody on every social media outlet, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, and then emails to the website, and then put out a tweet or two, to the website and then put out a tweet or two, put out a video a few times. Get with it, Greg. The world is flying past you as you think you can just be funny and your career will sail forward. No, you got to be a fucking marketer. So I'm going to do it. I've given over to it.

I'm going to work with the fine folks at Midcoast Media to put out more material. I'm also going to write new material. I did my special last month, and now I'm going to spend one hour. I've done it since the first, and today is the third. I have done it every day. I'm doing an hour of writing uninterrupted, writing new material. I'm going to meditate for 20 minutes a day, which I did for many, many years. And I kind of fell off in the last year.

I'm going to exercise about five days a week, which I kind of already do. I'm going to volunteer at, there's this great food kitchen in LA, the people concerned, and I'm going to work there. I'm going to try to work there every other Sunday. And as always, I will maintain my restraints and not jerk off on Mondays. That's the key to the week. Get through Monday, get some stuff done. Then you can celebrate on Tuesday. Did you text people that you should be in touch with more, but once a year you reach out to them? Did you do that?

I did that with a bunch of people. And I called my mom. I called her in Florida. I guess it was probably 11 o'clock. And she sounded like she had a good buzz on. She was very funny. And she told me that down there, 9 o'clock, they call the Florida midnight. That's when they celebrate, 9 o'clock. And she's a riot. She had some funny stories. But I miss being drunk sometimes. It's an excuse to get drunk because when you're drunk, it's just more interesting shit happens.

You put yourself in a position where you're more emotionally vulnerable, you're more effusive, you're more emotive, you take chances, you're more effusive, you're more emotive, you take chances, you are more apt to go for pleasure, to fucking do whatever it takes to get the pleasure in that moment, which leads to trouble. I mean, don't get me wrong. It leads to trouble, but who do you want to talk to on Monday morning? Me? The sober guy? Or Doug Stanhope? What'd you do this weekend, Stanhope? Well, I was on a rooftop and I thought I could jump across and I ended up on a cable.

This midget helped me. I mean, there's good stories. I just can tell you about that I love my wife and kids. Who wants to hear that again? I do. We just went out. The whole family went out. By the way, there's no guest today. I don't know if I mentioned that.

Today, I always do the first podcast of the year by myself because that's my favorite podcast. I'm just sitting alone talking to you guys. It's a way of getting to a bunch of shit that i've been wanting to talk about but um i don't have time to on the other podcasts with guests um went out to joshua tree which if you don't know california it is out by palm springs it's a beautiful national park or is it a state park? I think it's a national park. And it's got these Joshua trees that are not actually trees.

They're bushes, but they're pretty wild looking. Just look at the cover of U2's phenomenal album. I think it might be their best album or my favorite album of theirs, Joshua Tree. And there's landscape. It's just these giant, smooth, white boulders piled up. It's right where the San Andreas Fault is. And so over time, it's pushed the earth up, and it's created these beautiful crevices,

and people do a lot of mountain climbing. We took a bunch of hikes. My brother-in-law, my wife's brother and his wife, and their two sons, one of them has a girlfriend. And then my mother-in-law flew in from New York and they flew in from South Africa, her brother and his wife. And they are just the greatest people. They're so rugged.

Like up early, want to climb shit, want to play tennis, want to do a cold plunge, want to run. It's intense. But I love them. They're such fucking great people. I married well. I married well for my wife, but double down with the family that I got. And this house, we got this house. I don't know if it's off season, but we got this house pretty cheap. It was a six bedroom with a pool, a giant brand new hot tub, a ping pong table,

a billiards table in its own setback house that had a karaoke machine. There was a giant bocce court, a giant, beautiful, brand new kitchen that we cooked in a lot. And it was just amazing. It's such a great few days. And I, of course, being a child, I organized an Olympics where there were eight of us. Well, there were nine of us, but mother-in-law wasn't participating. But the rest of us paired up. So there was four teams of two. And we competed in every game in the house that was available, including cornhole. They had fucking cornhole.

How much fun is that? And I won. I picked my nephew's fiance. No, just girlfriend, just her girlfriend. And we kicked ass. We were on fire, and that was fun. We cold plunged in the pool. And then we did karaoke night, a lot of tequila. There was a phenomenal amount of drinking and karaoke broke out around midnight. And my mother-in-law, who is 85, I think, and I don't know if I've mentioned this, but she and my mother went to the same high school in the Bronx. She knew my aunt, but I don't think she knew my mom. But anyway, so Bronx chick, marries a Jew, nobody comes to the wedding.

So she's a nurse and they have a couple of kids in New York City, my wife and her brother, have a couple kids in New York City, my wife and her brother, and raised them there. Divorced. Mental health nurse for all these years. Tough fucking job. Tough raising two kids in New York City. Just an amazing woman. And just like a lot of older people, gets a little stressed out. She has a lot of anxiety and angst, and she gets a little worked up and so karaoke night started and we got the microphone into her hand and she started singing some tony bennett and it was just so cute because you don't see that side of her very much and then we put on uh uh uh who was it? I want to feel, Whitney Houston. She sang two Whitney Houston songs.

And it was so funny seeing an 85-year-old woman bundled up in a parka on the couch singing, I want to feel the heat of your body. And then she topped it off with, I will always love you. Now, keep in mind, I thought I had the worst singing voice in the world. Just nothing. No vocal quality whatsoever. And she was smiling and she was joyous. And then she got up and she danced.

She was like dancing to disco. And I mean, that made the weekend for me. Seeing her that happy because she just lost her sister this year it's been really rough on her and um so that was that was really nice um going back to that house with a bunch of friends from the neighborhood a bunch of couples and we're gonna we're gonna get six couples rent the house and we're gonna take a we're gonna take the house, and we're going to take a handful of mushrooms. We're just going to take a handful of mushrooms and just go crazy. Anyway, thank you to the people in Milwaukee who came out. I was there New Year's Eve for the weekend and it's not an exciting place, I'm not going to lie to you, but the people are very good.

They're very nice and they're polite and they, which doesn't make for great crowds. Like there's no pushback. There's no edge. So they were good shows, but the New Year's Eve show, the actual show that started at 10 o'clock and ended at midnight was one of the worst sets I've had in the last decade because they just weren't there for comedy. It was a bunch of people that went like,

all right, we don't go out all year. We got to go out on New Year's Eve. We're 57 and we're cold. We're wearing plaid and we're going to go to this comedy show. We don't know how comedy works, but we're going to go. And so it was going so bad. I just started crowd working it up. I was just Hackey McGee talking to everybody. And then eventually I said, all right, for midnight, we're going to have a couple kiss on stage, but they're a couple that has never met before. We're going to pair up two people. Meanwhile, the entire crowd is couples.

Everybody is married or dating. It's all two people together. And so I could only find two single guys and two single women. Here's the catch. The two single women were mother and daughter. Fun. Very nice. They come on stage.

I interview everybody. I get big laughs. It's going great. And this is at about 1130. And then I say, okay, you guys sit down. Now we're going to bring you back up at midnight. We're going to give you an improv. You each get an improv sweatshirt and one of my pins and the feature act gave me each a t-shirt and we're going to celebrate with champagne. And so they sit down. I proceed to go into the toilet where I twist around.

seed to go into the toilet where I twist around. It won't even flush. I'm just being swirled around on the porcelain. Nothing. I mean, I'm talking nothing to the point where I've been doing this 33 fucking years and I was doubting whether or not I had a funny bone in my body. And I can't explain to you what it's like to be as, as I can say skilled. I have skills. I have been in front of crowds. Other than the pandemic, I've never taken off more than three weeks in 33 years. And I think I'm pretty good and I'm doing my A material.

And I mean, just nothing. And you start going faster and your mouth gets dry. I'm no different than an open mic-er who's done it five times that's in front of seven people at a coffee shop in Los Feliz. same guy, doubting everything. Can't wait to get off stage. So in my own head, not in the moment. And so I got off. The plan was to get off at like 1145, let people get their glasses full, chill out. And then we went back up at midnight and we bought the two couples up on stage, the mother and the daughter. And the mother got the kind of nerdy guy. The other guy was a little cooler. And so I gave the mom the nerdy guy. And they just kissed on the cheek. And then the other guy kissed the daughter.

And then she went in for the hard kiss. But he kind of resisted. I don't know what was going on. And then everybody just went and sat down and the whole night petered out. I couldn't get my wife on the phone. It was not a good New Year's Eve. It was not a good midnight. I went back to the hotel room. I packed. I ate some gummies. And that was it. I spent the whole weekend just in the hotel. There was a Shake Shack across the street.

I ate at the Shake Shack on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. I got a burger three days in a row, and it was fucking delectable. I love In-N-Out Burger in LA, but Shake Shack is up there. It's good. So I start watching a football game on Saturday, and I'm riveted.

I'm sitting on the edge of the bed. It's one of the best football games I've seen. Gets to the fourth quarter, and the Chiefs are up by 21 points. And the Bengals then, in the fourth quarter, scored 22 points, and then I think it went into overtime, and the whole time, I'm like texting all my friends, are you watching this fucking game? This is incredible, and nobody's replying, and I'm'm like isn't everybody watching this fucking game and so it goes in overtime and uh exciting ending and i'm just like wow that was great and all of a sudden i start everybody starts replying what the fuck are you talking about they play tomorrow the bangles and the chiefs play tomorrow and it was like a telecast from three years ago it was a

rerun that they was on like an off channel. It was on like the NFL channel or something. And, uh, so yeah. So anyway, that was my Saturday and editing my special. So got home on Sunday or no Monday. So off, got home one monday and then last night watched uh maestro with my brother-in-law sister-in-law my wife i made it about 16 minutes in i don't know if you've seen it it's uh cooper what's his name bradley cooper with a big prosthetic jewish jewish nose on which wasn't that a thing that like sarah Silverman was like, she talked about Jew face a couple of years ago and that they should get Jewish people to play those roles. And Bradley Cooper couldn't be a less Semitic person.

And he was smoking nonstop. There was not a single scene he was in that there wasn't a cigarette dangling from his mouth. He was talking like a 1940s. Yeah, you see here, guy, I'm gonna play some music, guy. And he sounded like John Mulaney's stage voice. And it was so fucking annoying. And everybody was trying to get an Oscar. Like, this was what what you ever see a movie

where everybody's just got it in their head that they're going to get best picture and best supporting actress and they're fucking milking it and, and they're making weird choices. It was just, I was not buying it at all. And so I just, uh, I left, I got up. It was a strong move. I stood up and I just walked out of the room. And I went inside and I read Three New Yorkers, cover to cover. Which I could talk, I'll talk about that later. So, but you know, I think I don't have a problem with non-Jews playing Jewish characters, by the way. I think this whole thing about people having to be gay to play a gay character,

it just, it bumps into the logic police so fast. Like, so what, then Jews can't play non-Jews? Gays can't play straight people? I mean, where does it end? Where's the distinction? I don't get that. And ironically, Sarah was in the movie, and she was great. She was like the only part of the movie I was enjoying. She's fucking, I love Sarah. But it was not uh not good but i just think what did movies all have to be a morality tale like why is it that hollywood is so sensitive to letter writers like if you go to a fucking walgreens and there's not a white a black an asian and a transsexual working you don't write letters to Walgreens about it, but somehow in Hollywood, they are so afraid of pushback about cultural sensitivities. I don't want to sound like that guy. What am I, the old white guy complaining? I'm not, but it is strange to me that Hollywood, nobody can be an

asshole if they're an oppressed person like i remember sharon stone was it was a lesbian killer in basic instinct and the lesbians went crazy why do they have to depict her as a lesbian that lesbians are killers no this one is in this movie this character that this writer thought of out of thin air happens to be a lesbian. Okay. And James Bond, guess what? Good guy or bad guy? I don't know. He's stopping the world from nuclear holocaust, but at the same time, he's not afraid to bang abroad and then use her as a fucking shield when somebody starts shooting at him through the hotel window and let her die and just walk out on the cold corpse. Good guy or bad guy? I don't know. Is he sexist? Absolutely. Is it charming? Fuck yeah, because it's fictional. It's just

a guy. It's just pretend. It's play. Why do we have to represent everything evenly and positively? Especially comedy. I'm tired of these fucking stand-ups that are these positive stand-ups. That's the whole new breed. They're fucking folk music comedians. They're saccharine. They have no balls. They challenge nothing.

They don't say anything that could be taken wrong by anybody. And it's fucking tired and i blame you guys for supporting it why are you watching this shit comedy should be dangerous comedians should be unlikable especially irish ones right i don't know does everything have to have a happy ending? anyway so the relatives are still here I think they leave

Thursday we played paddle tennis this morning and then we're going to go visit them next Christmas the family's going to South Africa they live in Johannesburg and we're going to spend a few weeks in South Africa go down to Cape Town go to Mozambique do a little safariing, go to Sun City. We've been to South Africa a few times

and I like Sun City because South Africa has no rules and they have a water park where the wave pool has waves that are, I don't know, 12 feet. It's fucking crazy. It's like tsunamis and people are getting flipped in the air and the pool is shallow and there's like one lifeguard. You know, there's no, you go on the safari, you don't have to stay in your car. You can just, anybody can go anywhere. We stayed in a tent in the middle of the park last time. I unzipped it.

Like you heard fucking lions. If you've never heard a lion growl in the wild, your molecular, you, why can't I speak? On a molecular level, you just rumble. Your fear is so intense. You freeze. You can see why they do it because the prey freezes. And I unzip the tent in the morning and there's a fucking giant ostrich head, like an ostrich in Africa. Its head was the size of two of my heads and it was right there. So we're going to do that. What else are we going to do? I guess we're going to go to Mazatlan, which is in Mexico on April 7th. there's a solar eclipse that's happening on April 7th. And my son is, uh, he

just finished a month in Guatemala traveling with his buddy. They're just taking buses around and staying in youth hostels and climbing volcanoes and, uh, and they're having a blast. So anyway, their trip ends in Mazatlan. So our whole family, my niece, my nephew, our cousins, everybody's going down to Mazatlan. And then the kid he's traveling with has like eight people coming down. So we're going to rent a bunch of houses and spend a week down there in Mexico. It's going to be amazing. And then I'm going to New York to promote my special when it comes out in March. I'll give you details of that as they happen. And then, yeah. So I guess I should talk about, well, first of all, I should talk about our fine sponsor.

This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. BetterHelp is, look, you know, do you want to stay the same in the new year? Or do you want to challenge yourself? Think, you know, like think opposite of new year, new you. Are you crushing it? I mean, do you want to crush it? This is the time. This is some momentum that you can grab onto. Use it. I know it's corny and I know it's random, but use it. This is the time. This is some momentum that you can grab onto. Use it. I know

it's corny and I know it's random, but use it. Why not? Take charge of yourself. And the best way to do it is with BetterHelp, which is online therapy. You don't have to drive anywhere. You don't have to sit in a weird waiting room. It's simple. They have licensed therapists that are matched to you based on a questionnaire you fill out of what you're trying to accomplish, what your background is. Uh, and then they find somebody with that expertise. I did it during the pandemic. I've talked about this a million times, but I can't tell you enough. I had a great experience and I really feel like this is the best way to do therapy online. And I think this is the best way to do therapy online and I think this

is the best company to do it with. It's entirely convenient and flexible and it's cheaper. It is less expensive by far than standard in-person therapy. So find out how you can do it. and therapy. So find out how you can do it. Visit betterhelp.com slash FitzDawg today to get 10% off your first month. Start the year right. That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P.com slash FitzDawg. Do it. All right. So I wanted to, I think it's all about gratitude this year, talking about what you're grateful for in the past year. So I made a list. And first thing I have down was my son graduated college, which was a very big deal. He went to DePaul in Chicago and he had to go through hell with the pandemic.

I shouldn't say hell. No, the Tootsie Warriors in Africa go through hell when they pandemic. I shouldn't say hell. No, the Tutsi warriors in Africa go through hell when they're beheaded. No, he went through a very difficult, challenging time with taking classes online and then having the next year, half the year's canceled. He's got to wear a mask. It kind of sucked, but he pushed through it. I'm very proud of him. And now he's moving on with his life. My daughter is doing amazing. Every time I think I can't love her enough, I just fall more in love with her. She's just the most awesome, unique, smart, cool chick. And she's taking her classes and she's working and she's got great friends and she's a great daughter.

So I'm very thankful for that. I'm obviously thankful for my wife. She's got a new career that's really booming this year as a doula. And she's had a bunch of clients that she's worked with, little babies, and helped the families get acclimated to their new lives, helped them to breastfeed and sleep coaching. And she loves it. She comes home with a smile on her face. And I'm really happy for her. And yeah.

What else can you say? We had a great trip. The whole family went to Ireland. My mother, my sister's family, my brother spent a week in Ireland and a week in Spain. And that was pretty magic. We tried to do it during the pandemic, got canceled. The next year, we got boxed out of getting a house because it was so busy.

So we finally made it this year. And I did a show over there. And we took a lot of hikes and had a lot of great dinners. And there was just a lot of laughs. And it was fun. I visited my mom in Florida, which was nice because she's been having a rough year since her heart surgery. We just chilled, just me and mom, for a week down in Florida. I got to do that again this year, I think.

Went to some fun concerts. Saw Neil Young. Saw the Dead. Went to Nashville with Gibbons, stayed with his girlfriend, and we went and saw Jason Isbell and Wheeler Walker Jr., both at the Ryman Auditorium. That was amazing. Had a crazy good Thanksgiving. Mom came out. We did the soccer and the cold plunge after dinner in the ocean and the dessert thing. That was great. My cousin Denny, I'm very grateful for him doing so well in the US Open. I went to the US Open this year. His dad got me some tickets and I walked the course with him and watched Denny do great. I had a great year. I'm grateful for, where else did I go this year? I wrote down, oh, I went to Philadelphia, stayed with my buddy, Dan Brickner, who I never get to spend a lot of time with. Stayed at his house with his wonderful wife and kids. And that was great.

Went to Malibu one weekend with Aaron and a couple friends. Went to Escondido, which is down by San Diego, with my wife. Just me and her. Three days. We played frisbee golf. And we, what the fuck? We just hung at the pool and hiked. And it was nice. It Went to, I went to a bunch of places. I went to Florida with Bert Kreischer. And I did my first, first time I ever was on a tour bus for like four or five days. And just traveled around, sleeping on a bus, doing shows at arenas with 16,000 people. Went to the Daytona 500. Stayed up partying with Shane Gillis

and a bunch of lunatics one night in a Florida parking lot. It was pretty awesome. I want to thank, I'm also thankful that I made some friendships. Friends that went deeper was nice this year. The couple people that are very special to me, Andrew Santino, who I feel like I just got to know a lot more and got to love more.

Annie Letterman, I got to know and love more. So I'm thankful for that. St. Patrick's Day show, it was the 15th year. Zach came down, Bill Burr, Harlan Williams. Who else? We had some other great acts on, but that was great. We did the Best Buddies Benefit show. Sarah Silverman came down, Santino and Bobby Lee, Ron Funches, Annie Letterman. And then Chris Tenney went up, who's a best buddy who's got autism,

and he did stand-up comedy and killed. That was great to watch. I did 22 episodes of a game show that's coming out, I think this month. I have to let you know what the air date is. For the Game Show Network, I sold a show to the Game Show Network with my buddy Mike Dugan. So we developed that all year. We pitched it. Did not get bought. But hey, it was a lottery ticket. I got a deal this year to write a script

with a guy named Matt Fulcheron, who's a really talented comic. Bill Burr is producing it. So we're writing the script. We're going to go pitch that this year. I shot my special this year at Joe Rogan's Club. That went really well. I'm editing it now.

A movie I shot with Doug Stanhope came out this year. It got released. It did really well. And it's called Road Dogg, if you want to see it. And Doug Stanhope won some awards for his acting, which he disparages. I think he didn't like winning. I did 24 weeks on the road this year, which is kind of exactly where I want to be. I always want to be on the road like every other week. So that worked out great. I did my thousandth episode of my podcast. So I did 49 Fitz Dog Radio podcasts this year.

I did 48 Sunday Papers podcasts this year. And then 26 Childish podcasts. The Fitz Dog Radio, I can't list all the guests that meant a lot to me for coming on but some of the highlights were Reggie Watts was great, Dave Attell Robert Smigel Louis Black Doug Stanhope

Susie Izzard Rob Corddry, Pauly Shore Tim Dillon, David Cross Kreischer, Sam Morrell it was a great year. So if you want to go back and listen to episodes, you can go to the website and get the premium membership for like, I think it's like 20 bucks a year, something like that. I did 200, I added these up. I did 237 shows in Los Angeles. I directed Zane Lamprey's standup special. I'd never directed a special

before. I had a goal at the beginning of the year to grow my Instagram up to 100,000. I am now at 99,700. So I missed that goal, but let's make it happen. If you haven't followed me on Instagram, please take a minute right now. Get me over the line. That would be fucking great. I just got a new studio, got kicked out of my old studio so they could make pickleball courts. Not making that up.

And now I'm in a new studio, which actually is way nicer. It's a giant green screen studio with a lot of new cameras. And I think you're going to see a difference in the quality of the shows. So that was what I was grateful for. And my health, of course. Nobody too close to me died. That's a nice year when that happens.

to me died that's a nice year when that happens and uh and i i just hope to sell out madison square garden this year no i really don't i've never had that hope i've never understood people who said when they were little that they dreamt of selling out madison square guard that's always such a fucking weird like i remember dane cook said that he wrote that down when he was a kid that he wanted to sell out Boston Garden or Madison Square Garden and he mailed it to himself and he still has it. No.

No, you didn't. I don't think you did. I mean, maybe you did, but why? Who would dream that? You know, it's like, and you can see like america's got talent you got all these kids that are like their dream their dream is to be a singing star why just fucking try to get a hand job like everybody else that's that's all you need as a teenager

just too too much emphasis on dream following your following your dreams. I don't want to be negative, but it costs a lot. Following a dream, you give up a lot. And sometimes it's for the wrong reasons. People do it because they want to be famous. Fame sucks. Not that I'm famous. I'm talking about the people I know that are famous. I wouldn't want to trade places with them. I've seen it up close. No privacy, no choices. You don't trust if people want something from you. Everybody's got an ulterior motive. And so just be a kid. My mom helped me follow my dream. Really? I would have loved to see my mom ask me, what's your dream, honey? Can I help you follow your dream? Yeah. Yeah. Here's my dream, mom. I want to work a three-way with my tutor and my math teacher.

Can you help me follow that dream? Can you invite them over? Give them a few shots of tequila and see what happens. Ugh, dreams. It's a job. Stand-up's always been a job for me. It's never been a fucking dream. It's like a really fun job. Dreams are for saps. Anyway, here's my dream now. Den Theater in Chicago, Illinois on Januaryuary 13th that's coming up i want

to sell this fucker out tell your friends come on out to the den theater atlanta punchline january 18th through the 20th portland helium february 22 through 24 then i'll be coming to la jolla to the comedy store tampa to side splitDawg.com to get tickets. Check it out. Get involved. Also, we got some great overheards. This one comes from Mark D'Antonio, who said on Vancouver's Davie Street, he overheard, so how was circus school today?

Is she a clown yet? overheard. So how was circus school today? Is she a clown yet? I wonder if you have to graduate circus school to be considered a clown. Like if you want to be a comedian, literally all you have to do is do it once. Now you're a comedian. Congratulations. Same as me. Same title. comedian congratulations same as me same title um but with a clown maybe you have to even though a clown sounds like the silliest job in the world some play france takes it very seriously i can remember tj miller tj miller went to france and went to fucking circus school to be a clown how fucking cool is that how about getting your kid to do that? Everybody, I gotta get my MBA in business. No, go to clown school in France. I guarantee you'll have better life. This was from Lucia Ribeiro, who's a dear friend of the show,

overheard in a thrift store, you're not a brilliant artist until you've got a drug problem. door. You're not a brilliant artist until you've got a drug problem. That's some old school thinking. I've been sober for 95% of my career. I quit a year into standup. And am I a brilliant artist? Yeah, I am. And you know what? You don't need to do drugs or drink some of the best comedians out there don't do drugs or they drink a little but you know some of my favorite Dave Attell doesn't touch his stuff

doesn't do anything um who else is great that's sober Jim Gaffigan's very good um Who else is great that's sober? Jim Gaffigan's very good. I don't know. I should have written down a list of people there. But anyway, I don't think I could.

Here's what I would need. I would have a drug problem if I worked in marketing. If that was my job, if I was in sales or marketing, I would need a drug problem. or marketing, I would need a drug problem. I would need to be high all fucking day to do some soul-crushing corporate shilling for a product I didn't believe in. This is some mail. I got one from, who's this from? Neil. Saw you in Milwaukee last night. We had a great evening. Got a pin and shook your hand and you seem like a genuinely nice guy. Thank you. I think I am. Many years ago when I and my two brothers were at Chicago's Adler Planetarium, the three of us were looking at a display about Uranus. Myself and one brother wandered off and my oldest brother didn't realize he was talking to a random

stranger. I've done that. When I overheard him say, I didn't know there was talking to a random stranger i've done that when i overheard him say i didn't know there were rings around uranus fan for life neil which by the way what what better joke when you're 12 than uranus jokes just the classic why why why is the us you was it the uss enterprise and toilet paper alike? Because they both hunt for Klingons in the rings around Uranus? I mean, it's just a fucking layup. It's like life. God sat down and he went, let me give him an easy one that's good.

He gave us a bunch of words like that. Bangkok? How about a place that's known for prostitution and ladyboys? Let's call it Bangkok. Then there's, I remember in science class, there was this, I forget, some kind of substance, and it was called fuckalite. And the teacher had to say fuckalite.

And we had to laugh because that was our job as students in front of a teacher that was saying Fuck-A-Light. There's mastication, which just means chewing, but it sounds like something you shouldn't do on Mondays. Mastication. There's your tailbone, which is called your, everybody, coccyx. That's a good one. Uvula is a good one in the back of your throat.

That sounds dirty. I want to round out this podcast by thanking you guys so deeply for supporting this podcast, the other podcasts, my stand-up, and making me feel like I have some kind of a reason to keep doing this. I love doing it. And the letters I get from you, the notes, the songs and logos we get for Sunday Papers, I never stop being grateful for that. the songs and logos we get for Sunday Papers. Never stop. I never stop being grateful for that.

And thank you for letting me be in your lives, in your ears, whatever it is that you do while you listen. I cherish this relationship with you. And you know what? I got a really nice video, the Segretti family, and they sent me one last year

and they promised me that this will be an annual tradition. It's Anthony, Perpetua, and Celine is their baby. And they just sent me like a couple minute video with them talking to me in the camera and saying beautiful things. And they're a beautiful family and they live in Brooklyn. And I hope to meet them someday when I'm playing in New York. But that's it. Also a huge amount of thanks to Midcoast Media that puts this show out every week. They do an amazing job. They're so supportive. They're so nice to work with. Pros. And that's it. We'll see you next week. God bless America.