Fitzdog Radio - Jeff Arcuri’s Overnight Success Took 14 Years

Episode Date: August 26, 2026

Subscribe to Greg Fitzsimmons: https://bit.ly/subGregFitz Jeff Arcuri joins Greg to talk about growing up on Long Island, working at a Manhattan dog daycare after appearing on Colbert, performing on cruise ships, and building a massive following through crowd work. Jeff also shares how he met his wife, Katie Thurston, his painfully awkward first time having sex, the worst opener he ever worked with, and the story behind their $8,000 Bon Jovi guitar. This episode is sponsored by PrizePicks. Download the app and use code FITZDOG to get $150 instantly in Lineups if you win your first $5 Lineup. Get 60% off your first Tempo box at TempoMeals.com/FITZDOG. Rules and restrictions may apply. This show is produced by Gotham Production Studios and part of the Gotham Network. https://www.gothamproductionstudios.com/studios/ Follow Greg Fitzsimmons: Facebook: https://facebook.com/FitzdogRadio Instagram: https://instagram.com/gregfitzsimmons Twitter: https://twitter.com/gregfitzshow Official Website: http://gregfitzsimmons.com Tour Dates: https://bit.ly/GregFitzTour Merch: https://bit.ly/GregFitzMerch “Dear Mrs. Fitzsimmons” Book: https://amzn.to/2Z2bB82 “Life on Stage” Comedy Special: https://bit.ly/GregFitzSpecial Listen to Greg Fitzsimmons: Fitzdog Radio: https://bit.ly/FitzdogRadio Sunday Papers: http://bit.ly/SundayPapersPod Childish: http://childishpod.com Watch more Greg Fitzsimmons: Latest Uploads: https://bit.ly/latestGregFitz Fitzdog Radio: https://bit.ly/radioGregFitz Sunday Papers: https://bit.ly/sundayGregFitz Stand Up Comedy: https://bit.ly/comedyGregFitz Popular Videos: https://bit.ly/popGregFitz About Greg Fitzsimmons: Mixing an incisive wit with scathing sarcasm, Greg Fitzsimmons is an accomplished stand-up, an Emmy Award winning writer, and a host on TV, radio and his own podcasts. Greg is host of the popular “FitzDog Radio” podcast (https://bit.ly/FitzdogRadio), as well as “Sunday Papers” with co-host Mike Gibbons (http://bit.ly/SundayPapersPod) and “Childish” with co-host Alison Rosen (http://childishpod.com). A regular with Conan O’Brien and Jimmy Kimmel, Greg also frequents “The Joe Rogan Experience,” “Lights Out with David Spade,” and has made more than 50 visits to “The Howard Stern Show.” Howard gave Greg his own show on Sirius/XM which lasted more than 10 years. Greg’s one-hour standup special, “Life On Stage,” was named a Top 10 Comedy Release by LA Weekly. The special premiered on Comedy Central and is now available on Amazon Prime, as a DVD, or a download (https://bit.ly/GregFitzSpecial). Greg’s 2011 book, Dear Mrs. Fitzsimmons (https://amzn.to/2Z2bB82), climbed the best-seller charts and garnered outstanding reviews from NPR and Vanity Fair. Greg appeared in the Netflix series “Santa Clarita Diet,” the Emmy-winning FX series “Louie,” spent five years as a panelist on VH1’s “Best Week Ever,” was a reoccurring panelist on “Chelsea Lately,” and starred in two half-hour stand-up specials on Comedy Central. Greg wrote and appeared on the Judd Apatow HBO series “Crashing.” Writing credits include HBO’s “Lucky Louie,” “Cedric the Entertainer Presents,” “Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher,” “The Man Show” and many others. On his mantle beside the four Daytime Emmys he won as a writer and producer on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” sit “The Jury Award for Best Comedian” from The HBO Comedy Arts Festival and a Cable Ace Award for hosting the MTV game show "Idiot Savants." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, welcome to Fitzdog Radio. It is hot, baby. I don't know where you are, but Los Angeles, California is hitting a heat wave. I'm digging it. A little ocean dip today was nice. Just ride the bike down, ride a couple waves, come home, hit the outdoor shower. Boom. Literally 45 minutes.

Beginning to end. Happy birthday to my mom. My mom turns 84 today. I'm very happy for her. We just bought her a new set of irons for her golf game. She has got a bag. I played with her in New York last week, and she had five woods, a putter, and zero irons.

And I go, Mom, where's your irons? And she goes, I guess I just kept losing them. And they're just all gone. Gone. That's what happens when you get older. You just go, I'm not going to replace it. How much longer am I going to be? How many more rounds of guys?

Let's just, we don't have to accelerate through the finish line at this point. So anyway, me and my sister pitched in. We got her some new irons. And shout out to Taylor Made. I got a buddy over there who hooked me up with a nice little discount. All about the discounts. This episode is brought to you by discounts and working the system. Because I feel like I've done a lot of that this weekend.

I went down. to San Diego with my daughter and my wife, my girls, and visited my niece, Julia, who lives down of San Diego, who we love. And so we get there and we check into this hotel. Right out of the gate, I use my Chase Sapphire card. I get a $500 credit towards two nights at this hotel, plus $150 food bonus and free breakfast every day. Boom. So now we did that. We go down to the Padres game Friday night and my niece gets us on the train. The train, it's like three stops right to the stadium and we get on the train and then I noticed there's some cops on the train and now they're checking people for tickets. We didn't have tickets. We figured it's three stops. Fuck it. So after two

stops. I was like, doors open. There cops are walking up to us. I'm like, off the train. Everybody off the train. So we got off the train. We walked the last part to the park, bought some tickets for whatever they're, they got this outfield area. It's just some grass that people stand on and watch the game. So we buy those tickets for like 30 bucks each and then snake our way down to the third baseline, score some nice seats. And watch the game. And the game was, there's this guy who's the closer for the Padres.

Mason Miller, he's tall. He's young. I think it's his second year in the league. And his legs come up to his fucking earlobes. They're so long. And when he throws the ball, his stretch is like seven feet long. And he throws the ball. And he comes in, he's pretty famous.

and they get very excited when he comes on. All the lights go down. If you don't know what a closer is, in baseball, the guy who comes in in the ninth inning to end the game, he's like your most powerful pitcher. He comes out, and he's the closer. He's the headliner. So all of a sudden the lights go dark in the stadium,

and they start playing that corn song, Blind by corn, and they're cranking it, and the guy screams, Are you ready? And he comes out onto the mound. and he throws to three batters. First guy, he throws 102 mile an hour fastball. Keep in mind, the record for the fastest fastball of all time is 105.

He throws a 102 to the first guy, strikes him out, 103 to the second guy, and a 104, 104 mile in our pitch. You literally don't even see it in the air. It just crashes into the catchers' mitt. And so they won the game, very exciting. The next day we went down to the Delmar race track, and we bet the horses. It's very fancy. Everybody gets dressed up there.

The women wear dresses and big hats, and the men wear, you know, suits or sporty shoes, and everyone looks elegant, and it's a beautiful track. And we want a bunch of money. I hit a trifecta. My daughter hit a trifect. We picked a couple winners.

Walked right down to the track. We had seats up top, walk right down to the track, stood by the fucking horses. And I snuck into a VIP area, and I stole some cookies for us. So that was fun. A lot of the people, Sandy goes a little dushy.

The people are a little like entitled to good-looking, a little overconfident, a little too drunk, uninteresting conversations that I'm overhearing. But it was a fun day. And then we went to this place called the Monarch Ocean Pub, which has got this amazing view of the sunset in Del Mar. And people go there. It's kind of an internet sensation.

The bartender gets up on the bar every night, and he writes a poem. Every night, different poem. For like a thousand days straight, he's done this. And he stands up and he reads it. and then everybody makes this toast they say here's to me here's to you here's to a great goddamn view and everybody drinks it's a fun hang got some dinner drove home visiting my cousin's baby it was just a great weekend with the family fucking love hanging out with my daughter she's the best

and and then we dropped my wife's car off it was acting up on the highway so I dropped it off mechanic looked at it, parked it out front, and then this morning some guy drove into it. And the mechanic told me he saw the guy driving down the street in traffic, and he goes, that dude is drunk and he's falling asleep. And then he hit our car. And then he took off. It was a hit and run.

Hit and run, motherfucker. So we had to go through, you know, here's how the police works in Venice Beach. They don't answer the phone. If it's an emergency, you're on the phone for half an hour. And then they tell you you have to fill out a form online. So now you have to take photos. You have to interview the witnesses and write there.

You have to write down all the information. It's like self-check kiosk at a hotel or a Waymo. The police don't do anything anymore. It's fucking over. It's the Wild West. Will they crack this case? No. Will they try? I doubt it. This is just going to be on our insurance and we're fucked. Anyway, hope you guys are having a good Monday. Coming up, Columbus Funny Bone this week, the 27th of August, Vancouver at the Vista Center for the Arts on September 5th. Then I'm coming to La Jolla at the Comedy Store, September 18th through 20. Fairbanks, Alaska at the end of September, Batavia, Illinois. Get tickets at fits dog.com.

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Also want to talk to you a little bit about how poorly I eat in the summer. I want to be going to the beach. I want to drive to San Diego. I don't want to be in a hot kitchen. And I don't want a food service that sends me a bushel of carrots and a side of beef and a knife and some salt. No, send me the meal, okay? Tempo delivers fresh chef-crafted dietitian-approved meals right to your door.

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The range is amazing. And I just, oh my God, this past week, I had Hawaiian pineapple barbecued meatballs. Okay, just open a food truck and served nothing but these. Unreal. And then I had chicken cordon blue, which reminds me when I was a kid. I would go to this fancy restaurant called Fredelinos, and they had chicken cordon blue. Anyway, I love it. You'll eat better.

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Right now, my guest, I interviewed him last week. a great dude, really funny. I saw his special. It's really good. He's been on Colbert, Roast Battle, unscripted first dates, 50 dates.

He's on a tour right now. He's had a bunch of Netflix specials. And his wife is Bachelorette, Katie Thurston. I don't think we talked about that, did we? Anyway, here's my interview with Jeff R. Curry.

Welcome to Fitzdog Radio, Jeff Rkuri. Am I saying it right? Arcuri, but I wouldn't have corrected you. It's Italian? It is. It's technically Arcuri. Arcuri. Yeah, but it's Arcuri. What part of Italy are people from?

I think it's Sicilian. Oh, no shit. Yeah. From my understanding, but. Have you gone back and looked at any relatives back there? No. I did go back. I did go not back.

I was forged in the fires of Milan. No, I was born. in New York, but I was, I went back to, I went to Milan and Lake Cuomo. Oh, that's a lot of the show in Milan. Yeah, that's nice. Gorgeous. It's one of the most beautiful places in the world. It's the reason why billionaires go there. It feels weirdly like, oh, this exists? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It was incredibly expensive. We rented a car from Milan and drove up and spent 24 hours in Lake Cuomo and it was awesome. It was like the best part of

all of Europe, yeah. So you're born in New York? Yep. You grew up there? grew up in New York to like 15 and then Chicago. Well, and then I moved to Michigan with my family. Where did you grow up in New York? Long Island. Okay. Born in Queens, but then raised in Long Island. So like, when you say New York, I'm like, that could have been Indiana.

Yeah. It doesn't matter. Long Island is just a southern. Long Island is a very interesting place because, like, I mean, the history of it is, it was farmland forever. And then after World War II, they basically came in and with the GI Bill and everything. They just started building houses. Really? Yeah, they created most of Long Island, like right after World War II.

I didn't know it was that recent. How old was your house when you were born? Do you know what year it was built? Probably in the 40s. 1942. Yeah, yeah. I don't know. I don't know. D-Day. Actually, it started construction on D-Day. I could see that, though, because they were

all, like, modern-ish houses. If you look at the grand scheme of things. But I didn't know that. I know that going high school there, there was a lot of, like, I don't mean to roll my eyes, but a lot of, like, Native American history, like all this, you know, Suffolk County, Comac was Comac. Right, right. All these, like, same as Detroit.

There's so many, like, renamed things. Detroit was Du Trois. Yeah. You know, like, you don't know that. You know, that's interesting. Well, my cousins were from East Northport, which is right next to Comac there. Is that where you grew up, Comac? Comac.

I'd say they used to play soccer in Comac. I played soccer, too. You did? How old's your friend? Older than you. How old are you? Well, I was, I'm 38. You're 38?

Yeah, he's like 50. Okay. But, no, it's a weird. There was like weird, like satanic ritual shit happening in East Northport. It was in the news a lot. Really? Yeah, they took a kid into the woods, some teenagers, and they sacrificed them. Whoa.

That was before your day. Yeah. You remember that, right? Yeah. Are you from Long Island? No. But you just know that story? Yeah.

What did they get? Like, who was it to? Wasn't like... A Wiccan God. Yeah, it was probably like... Yeah. It wasn't our Jesus. Well, no, we did most of those back in like the Inquisition.

Yeah. I know, we died during the Inquisition. Who's we? The Christians. Ah, yeah, I guess I am. I'm Irish. You've got to be Christian, right? What do you got on that necklace around your neck?

Just the... You're going to laugh at this. This is my... When I got passed at the cellar, I stepped on a ring. And I always wore it and then I got married. I'd if you'd stepped in shit that night? It would have been the worst necklace. Yeah, Esty like hugged me and then I just threw it on my finger at fit.

Yeah. And then like, you know, years later I met my wife and then we got married and I always had on this finger. So I just switched it. Yeah. I just wore this now. Right. It's like I'm weird like that. This watch has been dead for months, but I wear it to every.

Why? Where did you get it? It was just the first watch I bought myself. Oh, you should have said like my great great grandfather. No. It was the first time thing I bought myself when I did well. Remember the Pulp Fiction story? Christopher Walken was talking about

Oh no, maybe it was true romance. He was talking about how he had this uncomfortable watch. His grandfather came over from Vietnam. He was a soldier over there, and he saved his family, and the grandfather and the family gave him this watch. And to get it back to the country, he had to stick it up his ass.

And he said, for three weeks, I sat with this uncomfortable piece of hardware under my... And now I wear... It was this great fucking monologue by Christopher Walker. Is it true romance? Maybe it was Pulp Fiction. Anyway, I'm fucking tired. I've never done a podcast as early before.

I mean, I have been doing it this week, but was this us too? Like trying to work it out. Yeah, you had, I think I was supposed to have you at 11, and then I fucked up because we had a death in the family, so I just kind of everything slipped through the cracks for a week or two. Yeah. And I forgot, I booked you.

I didn't write it down. I knew we'd been talking about booking you for a while, but I don't remember having the exact date. Mia, is that your publicist? Yeah, I think that's somebody with the publicist. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So anyway, I apologize to her, and I said, this studio's booked at 11, so I said, can we do 10?

And, you know, I feel like I'm not the best version of me right now. Not either of mine, man, Thorne. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anything, I did, I've been doing like KTLA or like that. NBC I saw the KTLA interview. Yeah, and so I'm doing a lot of like these early ass morning. Yeah. I'm in and I can't do this without doing standups and then I'm still doing shows at night.

Right. And then I'm done it like midnight. Yeah. And I'm getting, you know, it's nasty because I'm not used to, I'm used to sleep until 10 or 11. Yeah. Every day, easy. Yeah. So this is rough.

But I think we're doing pretty good. I think we're doing great. I thought the whole thing about Long Island was interesting. Really? And the ring story was fucking clippable. I mean, that's definitely. the clip this week. But you know what I was thinking is like, you're Johnny crowdwork.

That's me? Yeah. Whoa, what's Matt Rife? He's Jimmy crowd work. Oh, really? Okay. Got it, got it. I feel like he deserves the Johnny crowdwork.

He deserves the primary, but. No, because his crowd work is different than yours. Like, I think he can be more aggressively. I don't want to say. mean, but it is a little more insult. It's more roasty. Sure. Whereas yours, I feel like you're just engaging people more in a conversation.

Yeah. I try and look at it as like if I was standing next to you on the street, how would I talk to you? Right. You know? Well, that's why I was thinking it would be fun is, why don't you do crowdwork on me right now? Well, that's the thing is I don't just do it. No. It's not just like.

Today, I know it's 10 o'clock in the morning. You got some kind of a caffeine drink. What if I were to tell you to just do written stand-up right now? Wouldn't you be like, oh, the context of it is awkward? I would do it. Give me a topic. No, no. Give me any topic.

That's not, that's riffing then at that point. No, I probably have material on it. No, I want written material. Okay. No, I don't know. Now that you're accepting the challenge, I don't like it anymore. I called your bluff. No, I mean, has anyone ever said that to you on an interview before?

Do crowdwork on me? Yeah. You know, they haven't, and I really wouldn't have expected it from another comic. Yeah, yeah. I would have thought KTLA would be like, do some crowdwork. Well, I was just saying I had Zach Alfanakis on my podcast for the 1,000th episode. Really? We're at like 1,300 now.

And I said, why don't you interview me instead of me interviewing you? And so for an hour he interviewed me and it was probably the best podcast. Really? See, that's the, well, first of all, it's because your fans will probably want to hear more of you than they do of us. You know what I mean? But I think it was also interesting to see the guest free of being. like put on the spot. You know what's funny about that is I have a fear of podcasts.

Do you? I haven't done any. I've really done none of them because I just don't, A, I'm not a morning person. And like, hey, can you pop in at 9 a.m.? Well, there are any time. They can be. But a lot of the times you're scheduling it or whatever. Even 1 PM is like, all right, that means I'm getting up.

I'm showering. Yeah. You know, there's that, but I also just didn't want, like, I'm like, it could only hurt. I don't, I'm worried that I'm not interesting enough, you know. that like what i yeah well my stand-up is interesting yeah that's that's it you know like that i'll find something interesting about you all right let's do that but the crowdwork one-on-one is just i think a conversation yeah it's just inquisitive right conversation like so what do you do you have a dog do you have any pets i had two dogs and what was nice is we got that when

my kids were like three okay and they lasted 16 years so like their whole life they had them They lived nice long lives And then they got demented And they used to just bark at the wall And pee on everything And one of them bit people a lot But we couldn't put them down Because we loved them so much

And then one of them bit a little girl in the face And we got sued for $20,000 Wow So it cost us 20 grand Because we didn't put that Mother fucking crazy dog down Oh my God It's like, oh it's an old dog

That's a 16 year old dog They're little ones live longer Yeah and it bit a girl. A little tiny one though, that's good. Yeah, I thought she was going to have scarring, but then we saw her, like, a couple years later, and she was okay. Where did you see her?

She's a neighbor. Oh, still. Yeah. Whoa. So you still have to be like, good morning. Yeah. That's rough. Yeah.

I had, my sister had a kid, we were, like, playing with balloons or some shit, and she, like, fell down and cracked her head open on the fireplace. Really? My family had to go through legal shit. I remember that being a tumultuous. Yeah. Yeah. She just was running around in our living room and just fell and just forehead, boom.

Yeah, it's like, did I give your kid too much fucking sugar for breakfast? That's on you. That does suck. But dog biting a child. You ever get bit by a dog? Yeah. Really? I used to work with dogs, yeah.

No shit. What'd you do? I managed the dog daycare in Manhattan on the Upper East Side. No shit. You know the trolley to the Roosevelt Island? Yeah, it's right there. Right there. I used to saw all the Roosevelt Island people would come in, drop their dog.

We'd get like a hundred and twenty dogs a day sometimes and it wasn't enough space. And you managed it. I had to manage it and the guy was, he was cheap and he hated dogs. Yeah. And I was the, like, I was more of the personality for him. Like I would have to handle unruly people. Did you clean the dogs? No, we had groomers.

You had groomers. Yeah. Any boarding, they'd get a free groom at the end of it because sometimes they, you know, but it's because they would smell like piss otherwise. And some of them would bite you? I've got a bit of a bunch. Yeah. I've had to stop a lot of dog fights, a lot of, like, pulling them apart and shit. You pull the back legs, right?

Yeah, you pull the back legs, lift up. But to be honest with you, that is the proper way to do it. There's several proper ways to do it. But you just fucking get in there. Yeah. Especially, the worst is when it's a dog you love. You know, like one of those sweet ones that doesn't bother anybody. And you're like, you'll have, like, you know, I'll have disdain for the dog that bit him.

Yeah. I had a guy, I was doing the, I was like, I was working there, 2017 to 2019. and I did the late show with Colbert, and I remember I had to work at the dog daycare still. Yeah. So I had to go and let people's dogs in at 7 a.m. the next day, and I remember one guy walked in, he's like, were you on Colbert last night?

And I go, yeah, and he goes, what are you doing working here? I go, it's one check, man. Right. That's it. And then he's come to, he just came to a show like a few weeks ago. Yeah. No, I've been doing this for 36 years, and I still do, I have a day job.

I have an accounting day job. Dude, Oh, man. That would, that, if you, if she didn't laugh, that would have ruined my day. He fucked up. That would have, that would have really ruined my day, dude. No, I would, I started, I could just picture. Can you imagine?

Yeah, I got two phones. I wear like a tie during the day in my apartment for Zoom calls. You stop the pot, give me one second, go for Greg. Yeah, yeah. I'm always trying to convince comedians. You got a 401K? I do now. I'll do an investment, like, retirement stuff.

Good. I didn't know about any of that stuff. You're making money now, but you never know if it's going to last. Yeah. The life insurance, all that stuff. My wife's adamant about it. And she wants me to do it by next week for some reason. Because you could die.

I'm kidding. She has this whole thing plan, but she says, I need my life insurance in place by the. Right, right, right. Yeah. Yeah. And then for your birthday, she bought you diving with sharks. Yeah. Package.

Mm-hmm. So you're making good money. How long you've been making decent money? I mean... I mean, if 2019 you were working in a dog place. I was. And then I got a cruise ship job, and that was decent money. I would say that was when I felt a little more secure for the first time.

It was getting $1,000 a week. $1,000 a week? It was like after it because it was contractor, so I'd get $1,500, and then it bumped up to $17.50 for a five-show contract, which is usually a week. Yeah. And then you've got to fly down to Miami and get on the boat and all that shit. All right.

So you do that. And then what's next? And then I get past the seller. Yeah. In 2022. So I was just doing cruise ships and been, excuse me, pandemic and shit. And then 2022 I got past the seller. And then that year, later on that year, like August, I started posting, like social media.

Right. I was too scared to. But then the seller kind of gave me that like, you know, did you have, were you at the store first? Like, was that your first big? No, I came up in New York. You did? Yeah. I thought so.

Okay, so you were past the seller. There's this, like, validation of like, all right, especially when you're on this show with people that you look up to. Yeah. You go, all right, I'm here. I can at least now, like, have that confidence that I'm doing well, that I'm good enough. So that's when I started posting. Yeah.

And the rest was kind of history. Because the seller, you know how many shows they do per night now? Also, they have cameras there, right? Yeah. Just use their cameras for your, yeah, that helps a lot. They look and sound like shit sometimes if they mess with them or whatever. But I'm like, that's the thing is I don't go. go into like sets going man I gotta find clips or I'm gonna do crowd work yeah it's just

sometimes like I fucking there was a guy with a flute hanging out of his pocket one time yeah the hell is that and that became a funny clip just by chance and I wasn't looking to record it you know like so there's that plus side of it but it's more just the stage time there like going up four or five six seven times a night and then you started booking headlining work out of that I started posting stuff about it and like posting clips from the seller and then it was I got an agent And then I was meeting with agents. Some of them were like, bro, let's get you into theaters.

Let's get you, bro, bro. And I'm like, I never performed for my own audience before. I can't jump straight to that. And then I met my agent. She's awesome. And she's like slowly with clubs. But then the clubs wouldn't book me because I didn't have like name or anything. Did you have an hour?

Yeah. Oh, yeah. I was at, I think at this point I was at like 14 years of comedy. I was doing cruise ships. I had five different 30-minute sets. Okay. You know, like it was a lot of that. So I was like fine with that.

I was like, I also didn't want to like sell out a comedy club and be like, yeah, let's like, I'm pushing this, this club this weekend. And then they go, great, thank you for selling out five shows. Here's $1,250. Yeah. For your trouble. So I told her, I'm like, I won't do it unless it's door deal. Yeah. So we could only do city wineries for like the first six months.

Uh-huh. Because they're the only ones giving me like 80% of the door. Yeah. And then that's really when I first started seeing money when I was like, I didn't realize how much clubs were making. So what year was that? 2020. So what year was that? Four years you've been making money.

Yeah. Or three, if it was December. I would say three years, it's been about three years since I've had genuine, like, money sweats. What sweats? Money sweats? Like, oh, fuck. Like, you know, like, when you run your debit card and close one eye? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I have money sweats because I can't find places to put it. Like, I'm trying to find funds. There's banks that are just, like, you know, enough. They literally yell enough at me. And so I got safes in the house. I shouldn't even say that out loud. Do you have bags with money signs on them? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Page bags. Like in the cartoons. Yeah, just big money bags. And no, I've done very well. I've been doing it for a lot of years, and I've always been good about saving it. So I always tell young comedians, save it now because then it compounds.

Like when I first started, I put $500 into an IRA account that compounded over the years. it's worth $12,200,000 right now. So compounding is amazing. You always see those things on the internet. There's a video like, if you put $500 in now,

and then you know you annually make 22%. It's like, well, you don't make 22%. You ever see that guy that does that? Like, he's always on a yacht with young women, and he's like really hanging on to his, like, he's probably in his 60s or 50s, but he's trying to be 25. Yeah, yeah, I know that guy.

Oh, my God. I can't help. It's a car accident. Every time I watch him where he's just like randomly explaining IRAs to like a 21-year-old girl at a bikini. And then he's like, and she's like, wow, thank you so much. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then you see her on a video explaining to me how to do IRA. That's the best.

Someone in their 20 is giving me advice on anything. Yeah. She wants to tell me about the power of now. You know, if you just think about grounding your feet and do box breathing, fuck you. You have nothing to worry about yet. You're in your 20s. Isn't that wild that most stand-up start then? What the fuck are we talking about?

You know, it's mostly sex and stuff like that. Yeah, I know. I can't look at old tapes. I'm embarrassed about the shit that I did when I first started. That's good. Oh, yeah. Do you still look at shit and be like, oh, what do you do? I can't look at old stuff.

Really? I did a corporate date in New York last Wednesday, and I bond pretty hard. And I tried to listen to the tape just to go, It wasn't that bad. Listen to the same and eight minutes and I was like, stop, stop. I did that with my special. By the way, if my agent is watching this,

it was a corporate date, but it came from my bank. I'm at UBS and they asked me if I wanted to do it. So I didn't call you and I didn't commission you because you didn't do anything. Damn. But that is a weird thing. He watches my podcast.

Really? That's okay. And I don't think he knew about this date. Really? Some people would just cut that part out, but you have the full explanation. You're just talking directly to him. Hey, buddy, sorry. Yeah.

You ever do corporate dates? I've done like one. I used to work at a bank, and I did a, one of their guys fell out, and they're like, hey, we know you do stand-up. Can you go sell these products and then do a little stand-up for a nuclear power plant? And I went, and it was like a nightmare. It was like 7 a.m. Yeah, yeah. A thousand engineers.

It was bad. I had to like tell a joke and then be like and our mortgage rates are at an all-time low. Like it was, it was, but I remember being like, hey, I'm getting paid to do stand-up. Yeah. You know, like I didn't take it away. Like, I was excited at the time.

Looking back, I was like, I drove four hours to bomb and then sell a credit card. Yeah. Yeah. We've all, we had so many shit of jobs, right? So you got some money. You're putting it away. You're married to a woman who's a reality star.

Yeah. Katie Thurston. She sure was. She's not anymore. No, no, not really. She doesn't do reality TV as much anymore. But she was just, that was the bachelor, the bachelorette. And that shit's like draining, you know.

She still watches reality TV. Yeah, people don't realize that reality shows, they shoot a thousand hours for every hour they use. Yes. And, yeah. And you're on there. I mean, it depends on the reality shows. Sometimes they take your phone because they don't want you to be like communicating or tweeting or whatever. She was the Bachelorette, so they had to lock her in hotel rooms,

and they had to sneak her food. Like, the person that she was engaged to are going to marry, they had to hang out secretly. They had to organize it all because people could see it and then know who she picked or whatever. Really? Yeah, it's all messed up. It's almost like being an Afghani child bride.

Yeah, that's exactly what she said, actually. That's what she compared to. Just being thrown blankets over and huddled into hotel rooms. Right, right. Yeah, that's not far off. So, did she get married from that show? No. She got engaged, but that's, like, what you have to do at the end of it.

Oh, you have to. I think you have to, like, choose somebody. You can't be like... How long did it last from the engagement until the breakup? Not long. Do people ever end up getting married and staying together from that show? I think there are, like, a couple. That's the thing is, that whole world, I don't know anything about.

I didn't even know she was a bachelorette when we started talking. I thought she was, like, a makeup influencer or something. Yeah. She was just cute. I'd borrow her back. I was like, what's up? And we started talking. Yeah, and that was, I had no idea.

And then now it's like, I don't care. People like make fun. I did Bobby Kelly's podcast, and he just kept playing clips of my wife making out with people. Yeah, dude. And then I didn't do a podcast for like six months after that.

I'm like, fuck that. Oh, that's brutal. Look at this, dude. Look at it. Look at it right now. Oh, my God. Has she done nude photos or anything? What the fuck?

No, I think she did. She sold like feet shit for a little bit. She did? Yeah. She have good feet? Yeah, they're great Which, you think about it, would you, like, if that was an untapped resource as a struggling male comedian growing up.

My feet? Sure. Let's just say you're, yeah, the tips of your toes or something. I do my dick. You just go straight dick? If that was a wanted thing, don't you think you would have been, like, capitalizing? Yeah. Yeah.

Absolutely. Yeah, so she was doing, I think, feet stuff for a little bit, make a buddy on that, and then we started dating and she stopped. Yeah. But did she show her face in the? the feet picks or was it just the feet? No, she didn't want to ruin the feet. Which one did you look at?

I'm sorry. No, I think she did, yeah, because she was always pretty publicly, public facing. That's why she had the popularity for her feet. Right, right. I think she did all that, but I never really, never bothered me. Imagine getting recognized, like you're on the subway

and some bird is like, by her feet? I know you! Like, they recognize her and then look at it. Look up. They go, easy. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. No. I'm not a feet guy, but I appreciate a good foot. I'm the same way. I don't have a fetish. But, I mean, look, I appreciate a good kneecap, you know? You know, I don't, you don't appreciate a good kneecap until you see a real fucked up kneecap. Yes.

So you see one of those faces. Yeah. Sometimes a Korean girl will have the kneecaps are facing each other. Oh, that. That pose? No, no. They just, they just. They're knock knee.

They're a little bit. I don't think it's just Koreans. I think that the Filipinos as well. Like they just, they turn inward a little bit. Huh. Yeah. I wonder if that is some sort of a thing, you know? Like, is that like a...

Maybe they used to cobble their feet together in like the 14th century. Maybe it's left over from that. Do you know about that? With the shoes? Yeah. Yeah. I know the shoes thing where they would make them like really fucked up. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Like tiny? Because tiny feet is. sexy, I guess? Well, I think it was cultural. It was about your wife not needing to work so you could bind her feet so it was a sign of wealth. Whoa. Yeah, it's also why Asian, certain Asians, especially the Japanese, will always wear giant sun hats and masks and gloves because being fair skinned mean you weren't working in the field. I have noticed a lot of in New York, a lot of umbrellas.

Yeah. Asian umbrellas are a big thing. Right. Like the selling them even, too. Meanwhile, what's hotter than a tan Asian chick? Yeah. Like a Southeast Islander? A tan tan, right.

Yeah, dude. I could, you know, that's nice too. Yeah. Have you ever dated an Asia girl? Dated? No. No. I mean, no.

Date. I didn't mean it like that. So now we know Jeff has been to a jackshack. I didn't mean it like dated. I've talked to. I've talked to an Asian girl. before. My buddy's dating an Asian girl right now for a couple of years. That's fun.

Yeah. Yeah. He has a joke about it because he looks like he would, you know? Yeah. So he jokes about that. It's very, very funny. But he's like, I swear I wasn't looking for her. We just found each other. He's defensive about her being Asian. It's very funny. Yeah. Well, there has been like a power thing over the years because I think

culturally people see Asian women is more subservient. And so guys would date them and then you realize once you're dating them, they're not subservient at all. They're very strong. You think that's the, the people think that's what

is going on, as guys are doing for the subservience? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's interesting. I think it's just, it's, it's this like, blanketed, what are you doing over there? Because of the fetusization of Asian women. Yeah. That every, anyone that's not also Asian is, like, you look suspicious. Like, do you love her? Like, what was the joke I heard somebody say?

Is that if you, if you just date me, that's fine. If you date another Asian woman, that's a Yes. You know, if it's just me, it's okay. Yeah, I just read a book. I figured what it was called, but it was about this black, it's told from the perspective of this black woman. And she's, she starts dating this white guy,

and then she sees pictures of his old girlfriends and they're all black. And she kind of like, she's like, and his friends are all black. She's going through, it's like that montage in a scene with just photo after photo. No, no, no, no, he murdered them. That's so funny. Yeah. That's fuck.

I guess that, you wonder, though, if that's... I used to have a thing for Latinos, because I grew up in Tarrytown, New York, and it's a very diverse town. Is it? Well, we had a general motorist plant, so there was... We had a huge general motors plant in Tarrytown.

Where's Terrytown? Is that upstate? It's like a half hour north of the city on the Hudson River. You know where the Tappanzee Bridge is? No, off... Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's where that is. And so I, because I was so skinny and pale growing up,

Because I'm all Irish. And I just loved dark skin and curves. And, like, I, you know, like. I think you still do, by the way you're talking about it. There was so much emphasis in that. I loved it. I got in character on that one. Oh, yeah.

The character was you. The feet, they're a little bit plump feet. Plump feet. Yeah, yeah. Like real toes with real solid toenails. It's not like sometimes a white chick will have that little, like, by the time you get to the pinky toe, there's like no nail. It's like a sliver. By the time you get to it?

Yeah. What happened to the four toes before that? You work on them. Again, I don't have a fetish, but I. But this little piggy likes of foot. But the pinky one, it almost looks like a clipping of another nail that you paste it on to the toe. And then they try to paint it. Uh, my, I got nothing on my pinky toe. I got a ridge, you know? Yeah. Oh. They say that we're gonna, there's, in our, in our evolution, we're gonna lose the pinky toe. Some people have said that. I literally cannot remember the last time I used mine. Rarely. Yeah. It's, it's, it's, I think if you lose it, you get your, your balance is fucked up, though. Oh, yeah, yeah. But we were in eventually. Well, your golf swing would be fucked up. You'd be slicing everything. Yeah. Yeah. That's where you go, huh? You play golf? No. I used to try. I think you came.

around the corner I was waiting for you and I was practicing my golf swing. You were. Yeah. I was a little bit embarrassed. That's fun. That's one of the cooler things to see a guy do around a corner. Yeah. You know, I used to do push-ups before shows. Really? And then I was doing a college in Texas. And like, they came in like, all right, we're ready. And I was like, seven. Yeah. Never again. I've never done a push-ups since 2016. That's the worst thing I've ever heard a comedian do before show. I hate sometimes you see the Latino guys will cross themselves on the way to the stage It's like what does that mean

Jesus can't help you now Oh one of those Like a batter getting ready to bat You don't have any rituals You have any Uh Before I go on I always have a piece of paper

With new jokes on it I'm usually just staring at that Until they bring me up That's you just kind of fixate on that So you're not Yeah I hate I hate people looking at you Or try people like You ever get the

You ever come off stage And have people there like in your team or your family, whatever, and they're looking at you to see how the show went. Yeah. I hate that moment more than anything. And then they go, I thought you were good. Yeah, oh, if they throw that inflection?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I thought, oh, that kills me. But, yeah, I, pre-show, I get so, like, I get really, like, pacey. Yeah. I look at my watch. The seller, I always have a thing. I always smack a certain part of a,

I'm very superstitious. Because you're Italian. Is that what it is? Italians are very superstitious. I'm very not good, all that stuff. I grew up with that. My mom, I thought my mom was a witch until I was like 22. Really?

She's not even Italian. She just made me think she could sense things that she just knew and she pretended it was mom instinct. That happened a lot. She had hacked your computer. Stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

She stopped wearing open-toed sandals around the house. Ha ha ha ha. I don't like it. So, all right, so you grew up in Long Island and then did you go to college? Community. Oh. Yeah. Yeah.

I just didn't know what I wanted to do because it was stand-up and I didn't know that, you know? So I was just going to like, I was like, do I like marketing? Do I like business? Do I like management? Now I have like three or four associates degrees. So if not a bachelor's. No, never. I quit.

I jumped out of community college. Yeah. Which is a rough sentence. Yeah. And then I was like. Nassau Community College? No, this was actually in Michigan. I moved from Long Island to Michigan with my family

because my dad had like a falling out with a family business in Queens. Yeah. What, his brothers? Yeah. Really? Really? Brothers and father.

So. No. You're familiar with New York. Are you familiar with Queens? Yeah. Do you remember, you ever heard of a building that has like the words flowerama? Yeah, yeah, of course. That was my dad's business.

What? Yeah, yeah. No way. Yeah, dude. That was my grandfather's and my dad ran the one in Queens. Yeah. So then what happened with the brothers? So my,

basically my dad, my grandpa remarried, my grandpa was like a piece of shit and like left my family and my dad had to raise my family. So he was Italian. Yeah. And then later on,

wait, what the fuck was that? Yeah, to say it shortly. Yeah, I've seen the godfather. But then he,

like they reconnected years later. My dad like helped him like run his business. in that location and then just one day was like I'm selling that division I'm giving your brother full control of this division

and you're let go now and he sold it for like his millions and it was just like goodbye did he give him any of the money for the sale? Not a penny so my dad was like fuck this why do you wait

20 years my life he was always shitty my grandpa was the first time I heard the N word yeah he was black you should imagine I just have the coolest grandfather there All that shit

Yeah no he was Uh In where he took me fishing And we went through Queens Or Brooklyn at the time To pick up deli sandwiches Yeah And his car as we were standing

And getting sandwiches 20 feet away His Mercedes green, no green jaguar With a car phone Dude smashed into it Grabbed it And ran away Right in front of us

and he just ran out and started screaming, you, this and that. I remember that it was such a core memory because I was like five. And I remember being like, that's a new word and I don't think I can use it. Wow. And I was like, what is this?

And I never asked about it. And it was just like, it was just icky for me forever. Because it was my grandpa. That was grandpa, you know? But yeah, he was like a piece of shit, I guess. And we moved to Michigan. And that building is still up. So your father moved without much money to Michigan.

No, we made money on the sale of our home that we had a Long Island. Okay. But not like I think it went up a hundred grand in like a year after that my mom was furious She said wait she said don't sell it we can sell it later, right right, right, but yeah we moved there my dad started doing real estate Then he started doing something else then he started doing something else just had it like a little bit of a midlife and then now he's Lays tile and he's happy you know okay good there's doing well but mom work was teacher now retired She get her pension I think probably not because she left

after she started she went back to school at like 45 50 oh wow and then started teaching in her 50s kindergarten and then retired at 70 yeah yeah wow yeah so they're they're happy so they're all set they got money for they're good i'm now like it's nice being able to do things for them sometimes like i just took them on a cruise last you did yeah alaskan cruise uh-huh great yeah so relaxing i felt fucking spry you know like people like I got to meet people and they're like, you went on two hikes? Like everyone was 80 years old.

So me and my wife were just walking around like full stride, the coolest people. But it was so nice and calm and relaxing. I just don't like cruises. It reminds me of work, like doing... Have you ever done a ship before? I did two nights, but it was like a comedy Central rented out a boat

and they put all the employees on it for like a retreat. And they hired me and Jeff Ross to tell jokes for two nights. And it was awful. I was like, I'll never do this again. I hated when you'd get to the port. We had like three different days in ports. And you get off and like the ground is just hard.

Like the grass is worn out. Like it is just tread. And the people that you're meeting are not native. They're just selling trinkets. Yep. They'll put a bracelet on you. And then as they pull it off, they go, oh, you don't want it.

It breaks. Oh, well, you owe me money for that. It's a lot of that. It's a lot of like you need to drive two hours to go into what that place really is. Right. And oftentimes you don't have that amount of time to get back to the ship. So you're just stuck at a Toby Keith's bar and grill looking at Mexican water.

Do you think they ever leave people behind at a port? Mm-hmm. They have. Really? Oh, yeah. As I've seen that happen, you know what it happened a lot is warrants. Warts? Yeah.

So many. You know what I just start talking about? Genital warts. You know what else? A lot of herpes on the boat. No, they, warrants. A warrants. because when you leave the country, you get pinged.

And so when you leave the country on a cruise ship, you get pinged to the government, hey, this guy on a warrant left on a cruise ship. All they have to do is Google when it comes back. Yeah. And then they sat at the port. And it was, I've seen it in Mexico. There was a credit card scam.

I saw somebody. They had full assault rifles, get a guy off the boat. And then it was in America whenever we landed. I would sometimes, oftentimes stay on the boat for the next trip. And so I'd get up early and watch the Exodus and the influx. and I would watch as they would usually oftentimes bring out like two or three people on a weekend cruise. They'd bring them out first to police and then they release everybody else. Damn.

Yeah. It'd be amazing if they're like because you're in a foreign country, they just handcuffed them and blindfold them and shoot them in the head. That's everybody's watching. That's kind of what happened in Mexico. There was a couple on the cruise that was credit card scamming people on the beach. They were like swiping their cards and they caught them. and the authorities contacted the carnival cruises, and they're like, you're still here.

You're in our waters, and that person's on your boat. So they had to bring them off the boat, and they had full Mexican military, drag these two, this young couple out, and I'm like, they're fucked. And everyone I worked with on the ship was like, they're fucked, dude. A Mexican prison, and this isn't even, like, a nice part of Mexico. This is, like, one of the auxiliary stops. Dude.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That scared the shit out of me when I was in Europe, We've all done a lot of traveling and shit, but have you ever felt fear of another government? Yeah, when I took a boat from Denmark to England overnight, and this guy we met was from Morocco, and he had a hashish, and so we were standing on the deck smoking hash. And great dude. And then we get to the port in England, and as we're going through, he's ahead of us, and they fight. and they fucking, there was a dog and they sniffed it

and they fucking grabbed this guy and they cuffed him and we're standing behind him like holy shit because they don't fuck around in Europe with drugs this is back in you know this is in 84 so yeah whoa

it is funny how lax their security is and shit there though nowadays I think it's just in comparison to RTSA but I'm like yeah like the things I think I can get away with and I'm like why am I thinking those things But I'm like, you could in this. It's so easy. Right, right.

I did Cyprus to Turk, Turkey. Oh, shit. Yeah, I didn't know any of that. Yeah. So we're in... A civil war going on over. Yeah, it was Turkey to Cyprus. That's what it was.

Yeah. And so I was in Istanbul, and then we went through. We had a drive through in this, like, rented van with a driver, and it broke down in the line for the border crossing. And so we had kept restarting it and then we'd push it. And then we'd get through the border. And as we get to the border thing, they were like, why are you coming from occupied territory?

What were you doing in Occupy? I was like, I don't know what that means. I was like freaking out. And then the car broke down and we had to sit outside in like 110 degree weather. And I was just like, why am I doing this? I think I'm making $4,000 on this show. And I'm genuinely fearing for my life right now.

No, my cousin, I just hung out with my cousin in New York last week. And she was married to a guy from Cyprus. And she was talking about traveling there. And she used to go all the time. and it was very at the time she said it was very repressive and then

I said and she just went back I go oh it must be much more free now and she's like oh no they got this guy what's the name Ermadon or Ermada the president of Turkey yeah it's like a real right wing Muslim nut and so she said no

it's actually much scarier for women now than it was 20 years ago oh it's scary yeah that is freaky you forget man I was talking to Jordan Jensen about it because we both had like semi-close European tours. Yeah. We both were like, it was nice to come back.

Yeah. Right. I love other people, other cultures, but sometimes you're just like it. I'm used to this and I like this. No, performing in Louisiana is as much of another culture as I want to get involved. All right, let's get to fastballs with fits. That was me being energetic but without my mouth. That's Italian.

It's very Italian. Yeah, yeah. That was my first joke, actually. I go, being raised Italian, you learn to speak in only vowels. Hey, oh, sometimes, why? That was my literal first. And dude, I was like, I'm going to be a star. Yeah, I could see it.

I could see it from that bit. First question, have you ever been arrested? No. Damn, that sucks. I'm sorry. Where did you lose your virginity? And was she on The Bachelorette? No.

No. That'd be weird. I lost it to a girl in her bedroom after my friend broke up with her. Yeah. It was, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so what happened was me and hers, we all three of us met at the same time. And then she chose him because he had a car. Yeah.

This day, I was like, I'm finally on a car. So it was like the Bachelorette all over again. It was. Yeah, yeah. Just picture a real, a fatter, ugly version of it. The Michigan version of it. Yeah, picture of pimples and a jeezer. MC Jimmy.

That's, yeah. And we, she was just, like, confessed it to me, and I was a virgin. She knew that. She wasn't. And we had sex. She, I went inside. I went inside. I went inside.

Oh, yeah, you went inside. I went in there, you know? And then I remember I just stayed still. And then I was like, this is awesome. And then she was, like, stayed like this. And then I stopped. And I was like, sex is. great. I didn't know

you go in and out. I just left it in there. I understand. Yeah. And I remember You thought it was like getting vaccinated. I thought it was like you plug it in, charge up. Right. You're good to go. Right. And I remember learning that that's, you know, wrong. So now you move it?

You never heard the song, I like to move it, move it. That's what that's about? Yep. From Madagascar? Yep. I like to move it, move it. Is they're talking about penetrative sex? In Michigan. Damn. Yeah, I remember thinking, I remember that, knowing that about myself for a while. Did your friend find out that you'd slept with his ex-girlfriend?

I think he knew. But it was just one of those messy, like, they were on again off, then me and her started dating, and then he started dating her friend. You know what I mean? I'd say you broke the brocode, though. I guess so. It depends on the, I think there's a term limit. I think that maybe after a year, was it more than a year later?

No. Okay, yeah. No, it was. That's breaking the bro code. I count the days on two hands. Yeah. Yeah, it was that. But it was like, she chose him and then she chose me.

Did you tell him you didn't move, though? Maybe that would make him feel better about it. If I didn't move. Oh, yeah, right? If I hit him up and I'm like, buddy, I didn't even do it right. She fucked me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was in her ear like, is this where it goes?

Yeah, no, I did, uh, man, I remember thinking that for a while. And then I remember, you know, pulling out and going, whoa. First time I fingered a girl, I went down her jeans without unbuckling. them because you know you're in like ninth grade and you don't know what you're doing yeah you break your wrist and i i fingered her and then i'm walking home and i smelt my finger because that's what you do in ninth grade yeah and it smelled like shit i had missed the vagina and gone right in her ass whoa second question who's the worst opener you ever had oh shit that's funny that's a funny question i i'm not going to name names no i don't want names i would say it was a random real

guy in a Midwest comedy club and he had a bit where his closing bit where I had to tell him on the last day you just please don't do it anymore he would take he goes I'm sober I've been sober for 10 years and he goes but not on weed and then he would take a weed pen and just take the biggest fucking pull and then go and then be like and then just walk off stage and so the host would have to go up and be like all right guy and then the whole room was full of really from weed it was smelled like it and I was like all right that's fun huh it wouldn't get a laugh wouldn't get applause you just did that at the end of his set

and I remember having to tell him and he's like oh I didn't know you'd be a guy that would tell me what to do blah blah blah I'm like no man but not for nothing that sucks I'm walking up to I'm walking through your weed to start my set yeah so that annoyed me I had a kid hit me up

and say it was through I don't want to say the comedy club name he'll find out with this but it was like a franchise club and he hit me up and he said hey man I see you're coming here in December, whatever. I work this club a lot. I was wondering if I could do guest spots on your show. And I was like, sure, I'll have you open.

You know, that sounds good. Do you work the club? And I get there. And the owner is like, how much time do you want Mikey doing? And I go, 15, 20? And he goes, don't. No. He's like, he's done staying up like twice. I go, he's one of our servers here. Yeah, yeah. So when he says, I ask him, I go,

when you usually work this club, you mean you literally work at this club? And he goes, yeah. And I was like, fuck, man. I go, all right, I'll give you a five on every show. And he goes, all right, I'll be honest. I was worried. I was like, max, I have seven. I don't know how I'm going to do 20.

And I'm like, you can't do this. And then he did the same thing in another club where he showed up to the club telling the owner that he texted me and I said it was okay. And I was like, you're skipping. You're trying to get a leg up on your friends doing comedy. And you're fucking, you're making a lot worse. A lot of comics would be a lot more mean to you about this. Like pretending that you texted me. Oh, that's very bad for you.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So just a lot of that stuff, just like presumption, you know, like a lot of like that type of thing. But what about you? What's like? The worst guy that ever. Who's the worst guy?

I would say I had this kid. He was like my best friend's stepbrother. And he was, he was an awful comic and he was crazy. He had like the whole spectrum of ADHD and disgusting. Lexia and all of it, but he was a really nice guy. Okay. So I said, all right, you could come open for me at this college in Pennsylvania. And so I pick him up, we drive to the show, and then he opens for me, and he closes with my closing bit, word for work.

And then as I come up, he shakes me hand, and he goes, I'm so sorry. And then I do my act, and I wasn't like, you know, I didn't have a lot of closing bits at this point. I haven't been doing it that long. Black church versus white church bit? Yes. And then I had a choir come out and sing. And so I do my set and then I get off. I'm like, what the fuck, man?

He's like, sorry, I didn't have the time. And so then we're driving home. And I had just flown in the day before, so I said, well, you drive back from Pennsylvania or New York. And so he's driving in my car and on the New Jersey Turnpike. He didn't even smoke, but he was smoking in the car. And so he flicks a lit cigarette out the window. So it bounces and hits a cop car behind us.

And we get pulled over. And yeah, it was crazy. Whoa. That sucks, man. That's wild to be like, not only when I'm going to steal a joke to fill time. I'm going to steal it from the guy who has to go up after me. He's crazy. Yeah.

I didn't even do well with it. He butchered it. Oh, that sucks. Yeah. At least do it right. Yeah, I get annoyed if, like, I always say to them like, hey, I go, I don't mind you talking to the crowd. because I don't do it in a way that's like where I'm bored

and I'm like, what's your story? Yeah. But I'm like, just don't talk to the first row. Yeah. Don't talk to the people that I'm going to, I don't want it. Because I don't want is to go, what are you eating, buddy? Or something like that. And then he's like, oh, somebody already, you know, when they're there to see me.

Oh, yeah. My features don't do crowd work. No, I don't. I just try not. I don't mind if the host does a tiny bit because I know that's a really tough spot to open the show and you got to do a little bit of it. But feature act, my thing on the feature act is you're auditioning to headline for the club owner. I'd rather see you go up and do 20, 25 minutes of killer material, rock the place.

Club owners, she's a feature act doing crowd work, and he kind of thinks you don't have the time. It does look like filling time. It does, especially if they're not, like, geeked to see you, not for nothing. They're not geeked to see you. It really is just look like supplemental comedy. But that's why I kind of get annoyed. I had one, I had a comic in a different country. I asked him, I'm like, just, because he said, you know, do crowdwork.

I go, as long as it's call and response, just not like direct crowd work, like, if you're like any divorce people, like, I don't mind that, you know? Right. And he was just, his whole set was like, and what's your story? Yeah. To the front row, to everybody. And one by one. And I was like, I think he might be doing this maliciously to be like, I'm going to fuck this guy up. Yeah.

So I said, hey, man, because my agent was there and she's like, I'm going to take him off the show. That's egregious. And I go, no. And she goes, I'll talk to him. I go, no, I'm going to talk to him. I'm not going to have my people talk to him. Yeah. He didn't like that you did this.

So I just went up to him straight and I said hey man do me a favor I go I don't mind you talking to the crowd honestly it's like some people are here for it Just don't mess with the front row yeah and he goes got it got it got it and then we start the show and he goes to the fucking second row yeah and just does what do you do what's your story look at this guy's frosted tips and I was like There's no way and I look out and he's just completely glazing over the first and going on the second and I'm like what a malicious compliance that is I hated that so much and I was just like I had never do I don't even do that much crowd work when I'm doing showcase spot the seller really anymore. I'm just trying to get the material out.

Yeah. So to do it during a feature set sucks. Yeah. All right, what's the next? Ever won any awards? Hmm. I don't know. I think like, I don't think the, like, no.

I've gotten like a brick from the Paramount in Long Island. Like, oh, you sold the show. No. That's not an award. No. I did get a Kwanis award. Oh, that's good. Yeah.

For what? When I volunteered as a kid for Kwanis. at Shea Stadium all summer. So you didn't win anything. You just showed up for some... Have you won an award? I want four Emmys. Nice.

For writing. Right. And was that for... Not Schumer. What was the show? Ellen. Ellen. That's right.

I was just listening to you talk about that. And then I won a Cable Ace Award for hosting a game show on MTV. Nice. And then I won Best Comedian at Boston University. Really? I was a comedian in college. That's why I was laughing about having a day

job before because I literally have never had a job. Really? Like I had menial jobs as a teenager. Sure. But I started doing stand-up in college and when I graduated, I was making a living and I've never had a job. That's crazy. Yeah.

Do you think you missed out on anything with that? Fuck, no, right? No. But you probably have the national ambition you always had to keep yourself afloat. No, I worked my ass off. When I was a teenager, I used to caddy. I weighed 125 pounds. I would carry two big bags.

I was a parking attendant. I was a cook at TGI Fridays. I used to rake leaves when I was like 11 and 12 in the fall. Shovel driveways in the winter. I was a scrapper. I was always working. So how did you, how did that translate to stand-up? When you started doing stand-up and you said you were making a living off of it,

was that all spot pay? No, I started in Boston, and New England had a ton of rooms at that time. Really? Like every Chinese restaurant had like a complex. comedy night at it. No way. And so I could go out on the road. I could, as long as you had a car, and you were willing to drive the headline, the headliners all had DUIs, so they couldn't get to the gigs on their own. So if you were the opener and you had 20 minutes and you could drive, you'd pick up the headline, you'd take them to the gig, and you'd get like 50 bucks cash. Wow. So I worked six nights a week.

And then, yeah, and then that was, and, you know, rent was cheap back then. It was probably paying 400 bucks a month in rent. Wow. That's cool. That's all you need is like that you were just, I did that for a while with like, I mean, I did supplemental shit. Like I'd walk dogs sometimes. But I was just doing spots like Chicago. I was just doing zanies. I'd house MC for like a month and I'd be like, good.

I'm good for like three months. Yeah. This pays great. Right. I liked that. There was so much fire under your ass to like book the next six months of gigs or three months or whatever. Right. Yeah.

There's two types of people in the world. Go. There's two types of people. in the world. Mm. White's. You turn into your father all of a sudden. Grandfather.

Right, right, right, right. No, two types of people in this world. My first brain went political. You know what I mean? My first brain went to like progressive, wanting to learn things like that. And then you go to like people who are stuck in their ways. Yeah, right, right.

My first brain, my brain goes to politics right away. the division, but is there a way to answer that question without division? Yeah, like the other day I was thinking there's two different types of people that the people that listen to the band that they're about to go see in concert in the car with you

and the ones that put on other types of music so it's fresh when you see the concert. I would say, and I'm not a big concert guy. I've been to less than three. What? Easily, yeah. I wouldn't even count some of them. Wow.

That's weird. I lie, like going and preparing, I used to go see a lot of stand-up. Yeah. That was exciting to me because I'm like, I'm going to get something out of this. But live music, like going to see an artist, probably maybe three times. But Michigan, you got Booker T and the MGs. You got the whole Detroit. Yeah.

Really? Yeah. I remember the concerts. I had a lot of fun. What are the concerts you went to see? I did warped tour. which doesn't really count. That's something more of the walking stage to stage to punk bands.

Straightlight Run was the first. That was a pretty good core memory because I went with my sister. And that was like a piano. You ever heard of that song? Sing like, no, no, no, I'm not going to do it. You don't do it. You wouldn't remember the song.

It was a one-hit wonder. How did it go? Sing like you think no one's listening. I would kill for this. Just a little bit. I like it. Sing like that song. It was popular and I went nuts for it because I was very into piano.

My sister played piano so we learned to play it and I went to that concert. Very cool in Detroit at a theater I ended up performing in like 20 years later, which is cool. But then I did like, I went to some acoustic guitar guy that my girlfriend at the time liked. It's the worst set of concerts I've ever heard. It was bad. And then I was supposed to see fucking, let me tell you this, supposed to see Billy Joel and Rod Stewart. at Yankee Stadium. Back in 1971?

No, like last year. Oh. So it was a big thing. It was my big gift instead of Alaska. What I was going to do with my parents was I was flying my parents out and my sisters to Yankee Stadium. I got a box to watch Billy Joel and Rod Stewart. My mom loves, Billy Joel, me, my sister's love.

I was so excited. He got sick. Cancelled it. Oh, I remember that. Yeah. So I was bummed. But they're like, well, good news is you still have the box. So you can use that for a game.

And I'm like, I want fucking my money bag. I don't want to watch baseball. I was there to see Billy Joel. Anyways, months, like a month later, my wife is doing a charity for cancer, like a benefit. And there was a silent auction. And she calls me. And she goes, I won a guitar. And I'm excited to bring it home to you.

And then she facetimes me with her friends. And she goes, I got a pink signed guitar by Bon Jovi. And I was like, okay, congrats, you know? And she goes, all right. And then she calls me, she goes, I was very disappointed in your reaction to that. Yeah. And I was like, I'm sorry. I don't know what you want me to say.

And she's like, I mean, you love him. We were supposed to see him last month. Uh-huh. The concert got canceled. And I go, do you think Billy Joel is Bon Jovi? And she goes, wait, what? And I was like, you, how much did you spend? Oh, my God.

Are you serious? Yeah. And she goes $8,000. I was going to say, I don't think Bon Jovi plays guitar. No, Billy Joel doesn't. Bon Jovi does. Yeah, yeah. Right, right.

Billy Joel doesn't play guitar. So at home now, hilarious. We have an $8,000 bon jovi pink signed guitar. And the worst part was, she goes, it was only up to like two grand, but then me and this guy kept battling, but I'm like, my husband loves Bon Jovi.

And she goes, and it got to $8,000. The guy finally gave up. And then I win, and I'm holding it up. And the woman comes over to us and goes, good news, Bon Jovi's going to get another guitar for us. So you both get a guitar for $8,000. And I was like, yeah, because that cost them $6,000. $100, you know.

Hey, he's going to die and that thing is going to be worth like $8,200. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You're in good shape. Forget about these retirement accounts. Oh. You got that Bon Jovi guitar. I'll say if you ever want to tease my wife if you meet her, anybody, just quote Bon Jovi to her without her going.

She'll be like, what was that? And then later on she'll get it. Like, I make fun of her so much for that because it's in our living room. I bought a stand for it to always remind her. That's pretty cool. That's a good luck. It was so sweet, but that's like my wife. It was a sweet gesture.

but so stupid. Yeah. Like so, so cutely dumb. Yeah. Finally, I'll ask you this. What is the hackiest bit

that you've ever done? And you can't include the Italians only use valves. Damn. Hackiest bit I've ever done. Damn, okay, this is good though. Can I look at my phone? Nope.

No. No. Okay, shit. Hackiest bit I've ever done. Snoring. I have a bit about sleep apnea. Uh-huh. And it's good.

It was one of those bits where I would close my clean shows. on the cruise ship with it yeah and every time I did I was like the gun got a little closer what is it dude it was a I had a girlfriend this with sleep apathy if you don't know sleep happening to turn someone you love into someone you want to watch die and then I do an impression of like I do that whole the sleep apathy impression yeah and I remember like even at the time I was probably 10 year old joke I remember thinking like oh my doing an impression of snoring right now and then I had the the big

payoff not the big pay up but one of the payoffs is uh She would stop breathing. I started to do the impression of her going, and then I'm looking at her like, was I worried that she was dead? At that point, I was hoping. Like, maybe we can both rest in peace. Yeah.

Yeah, and it's just, but it's a bit about, it's doing an impression of snoring, you know? And it kills because half the people in the crowd have the machine. Dude, don't know what I was doing. You should have seen me at the PG shows. I was jerking them off, dude. Oh, my God.

I was getting, I would give kids, like I'd write street jokes for kids, and I'd have them read them out. Like, I was killing time on these P.G shows are a nightmare. Five-year-olds just. Yeah. Five-year-olds at the show. Yeah. Front row. Oh.

Just looking at you like, you know. Oh, my God. Yeah. It was the worst. But look at you're playing theaters all over the place. Oh, yeah. And I'm doing the snoring bit as my closer, so it's working out. Don't miss that, everybody.

You can see him August 29. That's the last question you asked before you promote. I always do it. Tell me the worst bit you have. And then here are his dates. That's wild. You're the first person to point that out. I do it every show.

August 29th in Calgary, August 30th, and Vancouver. Those are all great outdoors fests. Like the comedy festival shows, whatever it was. Oh, it's part of a comedy festival? Yeah, it's like the great outdoors you've done that. Oh, nice. Is it like Bert Kreisher? Yeah, he's done it.

Yeah. No, it's not his, but he's done it. Oh, okay. September 12th, which is the day after 9-11, so I would fly day of. Cheaper. In Mississauga. Yeah, that's Mississauga. Mississippi.

That's another great outdoors. No, great outdoors. They do, like, these huge outdoor festival shows. What state is it? Canada. Oh, it's in Canada. Yeah. So it's like I did Edmonton, Calgary, and then I'm doing Mississauga.

and Vancouver. October 8th and Brea. You have a bunch of other shows, but they're all sold out. So these are ones you can still get tickets, but they're not going to last. So go right away. Is it just your name?

Dot com? Yes, sir. Jepardot.com. Okay, do it. Thanks, man. Thank you so much for being here. Likewise. Thank you.

Okay. We'll see you in New York. Yeah.