Fitzdog Radio - SOLO - Episode 1104

Episode Date: July 17, 2025

SOLO PODCAST! My 1st born has left home this morning for the Big Apple. I am sad but also stressed because the guy from Airbnb moves in at 3:00. Watch my special "You Know Me" on YouTube! ⁠⁠http://bit.ly/FitzYouKnowMe⁠⁠ Twitter: ⁠⁠@GREGFITZSHOW⁠⁠ Instagram ⁠⁠@GREGFITZSIMMONS⁠⁠ ⁠⁠FITZDOG.COM⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi, welcome to FitzDog Radio. It is an exciting day for Bill Burr. Holy shit. Bill, this is a solo podcast, by the way. Don't wait for a guest. There's no major show runner coming at the end of the show like Phil Rosenthal or Larry Charles I put out the word to Bill Lawrence who's been on the show several times in the past. I want him back He's he's the best and he's got a bunch of shows going on he's got a lot to talk about so

The call is out to Bill Lawrence, but it's on Instagram. I lost his number. Everybody else got an address book that just deletes info, and you still have the person's name, but there's no number or email address, and you're like, well, there clearly was one,

and I've gone to the Apple store, and they're like, no, you're dumb. That's how I feel. I feel like they're saying you're dumb and I'm young. And so anyway, so we got some good guests coming up. The podcast's been going for 14 years, still pushing along every week. Unbelievable.

I like when I do a solo one, it's fun. There's no annoying guests sitting there taking up half the talk time. It's all me, baby. Anyway, Bill Burr, who used to open for me when we started in Boston, and who is a dear, dear friend who I absolutely love, and not just his comedy which is amazing but he's just a good fucking guy with ethics and morals

and principles and he's fun to talk to on the phone. We have a lot of bits we do on the phone and sometimes we I'll get off the phone after 30 minutes and my wife will be like, how's his wife, how's his kids? I'll be like, I have no idea. But we screamed in a South Boston accent for 27 of those 30 minutes. Anyway, he played in London,

and I think the Odeon, which is where I saw Elvis Costello many years ago, and he had the pretenders come on, I believe at the end of his show, and they did a few songs together, which is pretty amazing. I think Chrissy Hind is the most badass rock chick of all. Why do I have to say chick? Badass rocker, period, front person, lead

singer, guitarist, writer. Read her biography. If you ever get a chance it's insane. She grew up in Dayton, Ohio in this little shit town and just kind of like made her way over to London. I think she was a college dropout, made her way over to London. She was working in a secondhand clothing store that was owned by that guy, Malcolm, whatever, who created the Sex Pistols. Crazy story. Like I think she was she was friends with Johnny Rotten, like way before this, not way before, but before the Sex Pistols came into being. Malcolm McLaren, is that the guy's name? And first album for The Pretenders, first one out of the gate, first fucking song, Precious, kicks you right in the balls and says there's something new, there's something exciting that just happened in rock,

and it is the pretenders. And all the musicians are world-class. I don't think any of them had been like big successes before. The drummer, definitely not. I'm trying to remember his name, but he's a great rock drummer, and Bill Burr sat in and played some songs with them live. And it's just like, Jesus Christ, Bill, could you make the rest of us comedians

feel more lazy and uncreative? He just finished a Broadway run of Glengarry Glen Ross doing his podcast, doing his stand up, fucking starring in it, it's crazy. I mean, enough, Bill, what the fuck dude? Take a fucking rest guy. No, I'm happy for him. It's amazing, he enjoys it.

He enjoys what he's doing. Passionate! And then I see the haters. Like I looked at some of like Chrissy Hind actually posted about Bill and said that he did an amazing job and he maybe missed his calling in life. It was unbelievable. And then of course I read some of the comments and it's like, Bill's a libtard. It's like, Jesus Christ,

can somebody have a political opinion that's different than yours without you rolling up your sleeves and getting your phone out and taking the tone that you somehow are on the same plane, the same plane, the same level, the same fucking arena as this guy who's talented and brave and thoughtful. And I don't give a fuck if you agree with him.

You're not allowed to comment. Stupid shit. Why am I even reading? I don't even know why I read it. I don't know why I'm getting riled up about it. It's just amazing to me that somebody with no platform at all, why do they have no platform? Because they've chosen to not have a platform or

this guy is choosing to. And what's the amount of two? He's got 38 followers and he gets to Call Bill Burr names Shut the fuck up Loser Tired of it. I won't have it won't have it anymore Anyway, I'm actually my main mood today is not anger at all. It's sadness. Well, it's sadness mixed with excitement. My son, my only son, a plane at 10 10 a.m. He's probably there

now. He's got a place up in uptown. He's uptown with his buddy and I miss him. I already miss him. I was very there. Not gonna lie to you. There was there were some tears for a couple hours this morning. I don't know why it felt different. It felt like, you know, going off to college is like they're going but but they're coming back. You know they're coming back. It's four years and they'll and they'll be back and this time it feels more like what if this is it you know what if like this is the move and then he's never home again I mean he's 24 what if Christmas and a couple vacations a year and maybe a visit to New York is it maybe that's it that's hard for me and my wife and my daughter.

We're a very close family and we really lean on each other. We have a lot of joy together and it's hard. I just I walked around. I took like a two-hour walk after he left. I had on the velvet underground. I was just walking around Venice Beach, feeling very emotional about everything. But mixed with the excitement that this is going to be one of the most exciting times of his life, and this is gonna be a time when he really grows.

You know, this is a time, just, the kid grew up with fuckin', he's a California kid. I mean, me and my wife are from New York and he's always spent a lot of time there, but now he's moving there. And you know, he grew up out here and eating In-N-Out burgers and, you know, going to the beach, skateboarding, Now he's moving there. And he grew up out here eating in and out burgers

and going to the beach, skateboarding, a big skateboarder, I don't know, it's gonna be a change. So last night we got, as a final night, we got some in and out burgers and we watched America's Funniest Home videos, which is what we did every Sunday night, their whole childhoods.

We would go, we would sit in front of the TV. This, you know, instead of watching, these were the first memes, or as my friend Tom O'Neill said the other day, memes. He called videos memes. And we used to sit there as a family when they were little for

years even though when they were like way past the age to watch it we still watched it. Tom Bergeron was our favorite host. No offense Bob Saget, rest in peace. But Bergeron is the right amount of corny and laughed and then got up this morning I made him my famous pancakes to send them off. And we were watching AFV and it was so fucking crazy because, well, first of all, here's what's really crazy is I began, it freaked me out. I began getting videos on my Instagram feed

about fathers and their children, like kids coming home from the military to see their parents, and moving moments with parents and young children. It was like, all right, what the fuck is going on here? America, world. Anyway, so we're watching AFV, and one of the videos they showed was this little kid,

and the father was asking him about the wishing well, and the kid had a penny, and he said almost exactly what my son did. We were at a wishing well when he was little and I actually ended up doing this in my act but I gave him a penny and I said oh and you take this penny and you throw it into the well and you wish for anything you want. So he took the penny and he threw it in the well and I said what did you wish for and he goes to throw the penny in the well and I said, what did you wish for? And he goes, to throw the penny in the water. And I thought, how do you get more in the moment

than wishing for what you're doing at that moment? Like little kids are like little Zen masters. And I just started thinking about the shit that we used to do. Like this is a kid, this is a magic kid. We almost, he almost died when he was nine months old. He got spinal meningitis and went to the emergency room where we stayed for like four days

and they didn't know what was gonna happen. In and out, just massive fucking antibiotics and just this little tiny fucking baby. And I remember when they finally told us he was okay and I just don't think, I know I never felt that relief. I will never feel that moment of powerful relief like I did then. Like our world was all hanging in the balance.

And he came out and I almost felt like since then, he's been a tough kid and I felt like, I think I've always felt a gratitude for his life since then. You know, and just, I was thinking about, just like him being little. And we used to play backgammon and listen to the 2000 year old man, because my father and I listened to the 2000, if you don't know 2000 year old man,

obviously everybody does, but it's Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner. And they have, I think they made two or three albums of the 2000 year old man. So we used to listen to it and he fucking loved it. He got it. He's always had a great sense of humor. He gets it.

Love the Marx brothers. My kids, we had this like six DVD Marx Brothers collection and we just watched them in rotation when they were little kids and they laughed the rest off. And then Mel Brooks, he loved. And so we were out and it was Halloween one year and he was probably about seven or eight, probably eight, maybe nine, eight to nine. Anyway, we're walking around, he's dressed like a little tiger, and we get to the street around the corner from us. And Mel Brooks' son lives in our neighborhood. He's our neighbor.

And so we come around the corner and I go, Owen, it's Mel Brooks. And he goes, someone's dressed as Mel Brooks? I said, no, it's Mel Brooks. He's here. He's walking around with his grandkids. And so we walked up to him and Owen got very, I said, Mr. Brooks, it's an honor.

I've been a huge fan of yours since I was a little kid. Owen loves you. He goes, who, this kid? He goes, yeah, he goes, yeah, he goes, what does he know me from? And I said, 2000 year old man. And then he goes, what do you know from 2000 year old man? And then Owen says, I love a nectarine.

It's a half a peach, it's a half a plum. I'd rather eat a rotten tangerine than a ripe plum. That's how much I love, what do you think of that? That's how much, anyway, he did this little thing and Mel Brooks was laughing his ass off and we got a we got this famous picture of Us together that we have framed somewhere. Maybe it's here anyway So yeah, so he's gone he'll be back I'm gonna I'll see him soon But a lot of a lot of things of things are gonna change around the house. Sundays, he would come by and do his laundry

and we would play darts and we'd go down to the beach and play paddle tennis, watch a movie, eat a meal. And so, even though he wasn't living at home, he was only about 15 minutes away. And he, you know, it's crazy, it's like, I play him in paddle tennis. I've been playing paddle tennis for 25 years. It's a sport, it's like pickleball, but for men.

It's with a real tennis ball, with a hard paddle, and it's faster, and it's harder. And we go down to the beach and we play it. And the kid already kicks my ass. He doesn't kick my ass. He can win a set off of me, which is ridiculous because he hasn't played that much. I taught him to play years ago

and he just, every sport I've ever taught him, and I've taught him everything. We did a lot of sports together. I taught him how to golf since he could walk. I taught him how. We did a lot of sports together. I taught him how to golf since he could walk. I taught him how to play football. There's a lot right across from the house and we used to run plays for hours when he was little, growing up.

We had a basketball hoop in the driveway and we played one-on-one until he could beat me. You know what it's like when your child beats you? It's such a mixed feeling. You're proud of them and you feel old. And I guess there's some Oedipal feeling also of like, you know, your child being, you know, more powerful than you. Like wrestling. We used to wrestle like, I'm saying used to. I've wrestled in a while because at a certain point I was trying to take him down and I couldn't and he got me in a headlock and I was like I never want to be in

this position again ever. You know because there's something subconsciously accepted, it's implicit that you can beat him if need be not that I ever did Never laid a hand on kid in my life but if I needed to I need him to believe that I could win and He was probably 18 when he realized I couldn't maybe 19. I don't know he realized I couldn't. Maybe 19. I don't know. That's a weird moment. But we play, I mean, we used to wrestle like fucking crazy. And Frisbee, we've played thousands of hours of Frisbee. We just, it's just kind of our language. I think sports was kind of our language.

Why I keep saying past tense, he's not dead. We're still gonna play frisbee for God's sakes Anyway He was a soccer player was he is a soccer player still playing he's got a he's already got it got into a league in New York City. He's got a game on Sunday He's got a party Friday night in Brooklyn and then he's got some other thing going Saturday night He's he's all he's all locked in He was a great soccer player in high school He was a captain of the varsity team in high school and they were undefeated

They lost in the playoffs, but they were undefeated in the regular season. And his senior year, he was also captain of his club soccer team, which they were undefeated as well in the regular season. He was fucking stud. He played some club soccer in college, and so he wants to keep playing in New York. What else? In college, he had a radio show which was kind of a nice thing because my father, as you guys know, my father was a radio guy in New York and obviously I'm sitting in front of a microphone right now. And then when he got to college, Owen got his own radio show for a few years, him and his roommate. And we used to tune in on Sunday nights here in LA.

We'd tune into his DePaul college radio station, which is actually voted the number one radio station in the country. And so I don't know, he may do something like that. He's got some interviews with some radio stations in New York I set him up with. He's got some irons in the fire. We'll see what happens. But you know, he could have stayed here. He had a nice apartment with a good buddy. Had a waitering

job where he was making bank. It was like a very trendy, cool restaurant on the west side where he's bringing home a ton of money and a girlfriend. It's about to be a doctor. Come on man! You got a lockdown here and now, but no! Putting it all on the table. He's rolling the dice, going to New York, going for it. Yeah, I think he'll do fine. He's always accepted life on its own terms. And I think New York will give him a lot to play with, to challenge him. Like when he was in college, this is a funny story. When he was a freshman, he gets to college, and he's like, and we drop him off at school. And we meet his roommate and he is clearly gay. And and then his it's a quad. So there's four kids in the room, all gay.

All black. And then we start to call him from home and say, how's school going? You having fun in the dorms? And he's like, he's like, yeah, everybody's gay. He was on the gay floor. Like just somehow. I don't know if he wrote something in his college essay that they said this kid is a homosexual student, and they put him on that floor. And you know what?

The kid never fucking complained. I would call him up on a Tuesday night, and I'd be like, what are you doing? What do you got going? And he's like, oh, we're deep conditioning our hair and watching Real Housewives of Orange County. And he would go out to the bars. He'd go to Boys Town, which is the gay area. It's I don't know. I was like, Fuck it. I hope he

is gay. I'd be fucking great. I'd love to have a gay kid. That's like, that's like a special. That's an HBO special for me having a gay son. I'd love it. Meet his gay boyfriend, make fun of them. But no, he wasn't gay, he just was. And then he stuck with that kid his sophomore year. Same roommate, kept the guy. And you know, he's just a good kid.

He came back from college. He got fucked in college because he, halfway through his sophomore year was COVID, so he missed that, got sent home. Following year was all study online, so he did not go to Chicago sophomore year. Junior year, they had to wear goddamn masks, so he couldn't connect with anybody.

So it was kind of like, it was a very tough time for him to go to college and I you know, I wish he'd gotten more out of it. I wish he'd gone at a time where he was more you know in person basically. He got back he went to he saved us some money. Went to Central America for six months and just traveled around by bus. Him and his buddy Gabriel, they just like they took these little buses they call them chicken buses because like lots of people the passengers have like chickens

in their laps just like local small-town Mexican buses and they you know stayed in these amazing youth hostels that were like eight bucks a night and they were on the beach with fellow travelers. They met these twins. I think they were in Guatemala. I think Gabriel met the twins and then they invited them to stay and then Owen and Gabriel went to their town in Mexico, figuring it was like, you know,

some working class little house that wouldn't have room for them. Turns out it's like a mansion, and the father is the mayor of the town, or the uncle, maybe the father, I can't remember. But they got there for Christmas, they stayed there, they stayed up till six in the morning, dancing with the mayor's wife to a DJ.

And then I think they left and the twins came with them. It was a crazy adventure that he'll always remember. And no problems. I think they had one run in with the cops that they gave him 30 bucks and we're good. Mexico's fine everybody. Jesus. We met up with him on the final day of his trip down in Mazatlán and watched the solar eclipse, the full eclipse, and then came home and now he's just been saving up his money. He's heading off, going to New York, going to New York. And basically he's this exact same age I was when my father died, which was the year I moved. I grew up outside the city and then I went to college in Boston. Why am I talking to you guys like you've never heard my podcast?

I don't know. So I went to college in Boston, went to Harvard University. Well, BU, right across the bridge. My father died, came back to New York a month later. And I was very depressed. My father died suddenly, and I went through a lot of pain and depression. Little agoraphobia. Didn't leave the apartment much more

than I absolutely needed to. But New York City to me, from my bedroom window, I could see the whole New York City skyline and the George Washington Bridge. And it was so romantic to me. Both my parents worked in the city and we were there a lot. And to me, New York is the most romantic, interesting, rich, emotional, powerful city.

And every time I've, literally, I still, when I fly into New York and I'm driving into Manhattan, I still look at the skyline and I get goosebumps. I still feel like the infinite possibilities that are New York City. And people go, oh, the city's shitting. Shut up. You don't get it. Don't are, oh, the city's shit. Shut up. You don't get it.

Don't come. We don't fucking need you. New York City is, and I know I defend LA as well, but New York is my home. That's my heart. And I'm so happy that my son is gonna be in that world. I came to, I think of that Joe Jackson song, Steppin' Out Tonight, and the cab driving through

down Fifth Avenue in the rain, and the cab drivin' through down Fifth Avenue in the rain and the traffic lights. My first apartment where I was on a six-floor walk-up in Little Italy on Mulberry Street, and my landlords were the Rago's, Gladys and Tony Rago, and they were subletting it to me. And they had, it was six floor walk up. And I got to know everybody in the building

because it was all Italians. This was like literally like where, you know, De Niro grew up and, did Harvey Keitel grow up there? No, I don't know. But it's a romantic place. And so everybody kept their doors open on every floor as all these women, these older women,

and they would leave their doors open and you'd walk up and they all called me Kevin. And I corrected them for, I don't know, the first six months I was there, I saying no it's Greg and they'd say okay Kevin and they'd give you a plate of pasta because they were still cooking for their kids even though their kids had moved out there's always extra food and there was Tony and then there was Tony girl and Gladys and Tony lived around the corner in a condo on the ground floor because they got too old to walk the six flights of stairs.

And their son, I won't say his name because you'll know why in a second, he bought them a condo, cash, around the street. He's in construction out in Jersey. And so they were all sat, they were just basically taking this rent control department that I think I once got an envelope from the city for them and they were paying $328 for, it was a one bedroom that they illegally knocked a door through to a studio next door. And they were paying like $328 for the whole thing. And they were renting it to us for a thousand.

And that was, so there was me and I had a girlfriend at the time and then our friend George were staying there. And it was like, the intercom didn't work. So, and so if somebody came to that, this was in beeper days before cell phones, so if somebody came by my house, they would page me, and then I would go to Tom O'Neill,

my friend Tom O'Neill lived down the hall, I faced the back of the building, Tom faced Mulberry Street, so I would go through Tom's apartment to his window, and I would take a sock with the keys in it and I would throw it down six stories and they would catch it and then they would let themselves in and walk up the stairs. And then there was the diner around the corner, Bella's that we ate in every morning and I'd read the New York Post and roller

bladed. I roller bladed around the city for like nine years. Like, you know, I'd go from the Upper West Side to the Village on rollerblades. I'd grab onto the back of delivery trucks and I'd get pulled up and down the avenues and went to acting school for two years where I just learned about myself. And anyway, I'm just bringing this up to talk about what happens. Anyway, I'm just bringing this up to talk about what happens. What can happen at this age, in this place, and the people that you meet, and the people that are all going for it. That's the thing about New York City.

You can't be mailing it in because you won't last. You won't be able to make your rent. You won't be able to afford your fucking laundry bill. You gotta work. You gotta know people. You gotta figure the city out, you gotta figure yourself out, and when you do you could, they say if you can make it there, it's such a cliche, but you really can't make it anywhere once you make it in New York. And so when I'm going to see him in, this is the first place, my first writing jobs were there. I wrote for Bill Maher on Politically Incorrect.

David Tell when I was just, when I'd just come to New York, I'd been there for a few years and I got to be friends with the Tell and he would be, he wrote for Saturday Night Live and I would meet him at a coffee shop at like two in the morning, and we'd go through his sketches. Not that I added anything, but I think he just wanted to bounce shit off of me. And that was such a thrill to me,

to even be two steps removed from Saturday Night Live. I don't know, so I'm gonna go down to, I'm gonna go to Philly. I'll announce my dates in a minute, but I'm gonna do some shows in Philly and Pittsburgh and Philly and where else? Jersey Shore. So I'm coming to New York. I added like five days to the trip. I got my wife a flight and we're gonna meet him in New York the first week of August. So I know, whatever, I shouldn't be so upset. But it's different. I'm gonna visit him. I'm not gonna, he's not living here, but I'm gonna take him out. Go to Barney Greengrass and

get the locks on a bagel. Best in the city. I'm gonna take him down to Keen's Chop House with my nephew Rowan and maybe take him down to Keen's Chop House with my nephew Rowan, and maybe take him down to Astor Place Haircutters where I used to get my haircut when I was a teenager. It was eight bucks. It's probably about nine now, maybe 10. And, you know, see what he's got going on. See if he's figured it out by then.

I think he will. So I've got kids, I've kind of talked about this before but having kids, people think it's so expensive because now that he's moving out, he's still on my health coverage. I'm still paying for his cell phone and family vacations and you know probably his flights to New York like he's still gonna cost me money but

there's a little bit of a breath now my daughter's 21 and you know you're not paying for everything but the truth is having kids doesn't have to be expensive having shitty kids is expensive having good kids is free because good kids just mean you spend a lot of time with them. You know, like an expensive kid is one that you have a nanny for every day and you send to, you know, a private school where you're paying, in LA where you're paying 40 grand a year, if not more, for a private school. I got friends that are, mortgage their houses

to send their kids from K through 12 through private school, they're fucking broke now. And so that can be free. You know, you go to the beach that can be free. You know, you go to the beach, that's free. Even formula, you don't have to buy it. Breast milk, breast milk's free. You don't have to buy them a crib, they can sleep in the bed with you.

You don't have to buy them fucking crazy electronic toys. Give them some blocks, watch the Marx brothers with them over and over again. It's cheap. You know? Kids went to public school, they loved it. I think it was good for them, for the most part. There's downsides.

You know, like they have to be with kids of other races, which, you know, in a private school, you just fuckin', you buy that right away. You buy that away from them. Yeah. Oh, I wanna talk about, we have a house cleaner, and she is Guatemalan, and she helped babysit Owen when he was a kid and so she's been with us for 24 years. Now she cleans the house and we love very stressed out. She cried a lot. I cried too. I've been crying

a lot this week. Talking about what she's going through in LA. She's in hiding basically. We told her she didn't have to come here. She said it's safer there than it is where I live downtown. She was just two blocks away from when they raided MacArthur Park a couple weeks ago and she said every gas station, every laundromat, supermarkets, the ICE are there and they're just harassing you. If you don't have ID on you they throw you in a fucking truck into a jail cell and send you out of the country and people are petrified. She's had friends picked up and she has kids that are dreamers.

I think they were born here, but she's not legal. So they don't know what their status is. Jesus Christ, nobody's worked harder in this country than immigrants. Like figure out a way, yeah, throughout the criminals, great, all for it, I'll help ya. But you're gonna take hardworking people, even if they don't get thrown out of the country,

what you're putting them through right now is cruel and it's un-American and it's shitty. So, and it's bad for the, by the way, bad for the economy. Who the fuck is going to do all this work? Construction work in LA alone, Pasadena, there's nobody to do the work. Look at the, look at the, the produce is all dying on the vines all over California. That's your food, people. Hotels, you wanna go to a hotel?

You wanna go to a restaurant? Who's gonna take care of you? I'm not talking about all Latino people, I'm talking about immigrants. Recent immigrants largely do these jobs and I don't know who's gonna take over. You think our people are gonna take over? Oh, we'll take everybody on Medicare

and we'll make them do the farming. Do you know how long? First of all, people on Medicare are on there for a reason for the most part. Well, Medicare, no Medicaid. Why the fuck do they name Medicare and Medicaid almost the same goddamn thing? So annoying.

Medicaid are people that largely are incapable of working for whatever reason. Maybe they got mental health issues, maybe they got fucking, you know, inoperable backs, whatever. They can't work. They're not gonna go in a fucking field and pick grapes for 12 hours a day for almost no money. It's just, that's not a plan. I feel like a lot of Trump's plans are the first idea that crosses somebody's mind that they would say during a meeting

and then get a dirty look from people like, why are you wasting our time? But that becomes policy right away. Anyway, I don't wanna get into, what are we gonna do? Talk about how fucked we are, how fucked FEMA is because they're taking funding from FEMA for border protection? Relax.

All right, I think we can probably move on. We're gonna keep this short, it's just me. Doesn't have to be a big hour long podcast, hour and 20, whatever people are used to. Let's just talk about, you know, who we are. Who are we, people? I took a Waymo the other day for the first time, which was crazy. It was just so weird to be masturbating in the back of a car with nobody driving. I mean, no. They call it Waymo because it was Waymo come in the back seat

when I got out of it. No, I've never taken a Waymo, but I don't think I will. I get angry every time I see one. I look at it like how a Jew would have looked at the Gestapo. Maybe not that severe. But I look at it as the enemy, I look at it as autocracy, I look at it as as corporate America taking jobs from us, and then I see those little carts, I don't know what city you live in, but in LA they've got a lot of these little food delivery carts, it's like how much did it cost to pay the fucking guy to ride his bike or his electric bike and drop the food off. How much? Come on, America.

Who are we? So I'm driving down the 10 East, 10 West, late at night. I drive back from the comedy clubs, midnight, one in the morning, streets pretty empty, and I fly, I got my new Mustang, I go 100, 110 miles an hour, and I realized like the other day somebody drove past me, and then I started following him, he came by in a Corvette, and he was zipping around, going around people, and

then I started to. And I realized like, I'm that guy. I always wondered if that guy, when you see three sports cars in a row zip through the highway really fast, I always wondered, do they know each other? Are they friends? Is this like a field trip? Did they plan this? Or is it one asshole who speeds and then the other guy goes, hey, I'm an asshole too and I'm that asshole now. I'm the guy, I don't weave, I don't cut anybody off, but I drive fast and the road's pretty empty

when I'm driving. I don't have to defend myself. I've drove Prius for enough years that I no longer have to defend myself, okay? Bombed at a club last week. There's this club in LA and it's like, it's in Santa Monica and it's very, it's very precious. It's very politically correct. It's very diverse. You know, it's very diverse. It's run in a way that the audience can know that they're safe, that they're in a safe space, which is not what comedy should be. And I was bombing because I just realized

how aggressive and cis white male I come off. And it made me feel very self-conscious. And I've been in this situation before aggressive and cis white male I come off. And it made me feel very self-conscious. And I've been in this situation before where I'm in front of a crowd like that and you start to feel almost ashamed of, and even though I'm not ashamed of who I am, in that context you start to redefine who you are

like a child. Like I felt like, ugh. And then I just went, no, no, I'm not the problem here. And so I just dug in and I started doing abortion jokes and I started doing jokes about, they were slightly racist and slightly homophobic in a way that there's context. Comedy has context. I am a straight white older guy. That's the joke. So when I say things like that, it's funny because you can't say things like that. I don't

know. I don't need to explain it to you guys. You know what comedy is and they don't. And I fucking dug in and I doubled down and I bombed even harder. But I was enjoying the bomb, knowing I'd never go back to this club again, that I don't want to and that I was making sure they would never ask that I'm wrong for this room. And then maybe I'm not right for every room, but I'm gonna do

what I do no matter where I am I'm not gonna tap the brakes because I know I think I kind of know who I am you know because you are. I'm white. I'm male. I'm Irish. My family is outgoing. We're Catholic. We, you know, like all those things that can put you in a box. I'm from New York.

I'm not tall. Like all these things that define you that you didn't choose. And so much of your life can be taken up and just fulfilling the dimensions of that paradigm instead of exploring what's possible. And how much of us really is an individual? How many of us are Republicans that started out as Democrats? You know, how many of us are Republicans that started out as Democrats? You know, how many of us are Jewish that started out Protestant?

How many of us made seismic shifts in our identities, in our lives, philosophically? And so, when I look at this chapter of Owen's life, I see it as this is the diving board. This is the springboard for him to go into being out of California, being out of his family's sphere, being in a new place where people don't know him and he can be who he wants to be more and that he can make choices that he doesn't have to live with for the rest of his life. He can cycle through some choices and some identities

that is not in the comfort of being in LA or in college where everybody knows you. And I've seen him make choices throughout his young life that show character and show independence and show, he has a lot of empathy for people. He's very caring and he's very supportive. And I know he'll never step on anybody, but I wanna see him push himself and figure out who he is.

Find the fucking man. This is where he finds the man in himself. I don't know what age you consider yourself a man. I know I wasn't until my dad died. So maybe I need to die for him. Do the right thing Greg, die so he can blossom. So I support him. Whatever happens, I think he knows that. I think he knows that me and Aaron and his sister support him. Whatever happens, I think he knows that. I think he knows that me and Aaron and his sister support him in whatever he wants to do, whatever direction he wants to go in. I'm there. Unless he wants to be a comedian, then I'm fucking out.

He's out. Done. I do not support that. All right. Here's my comedian schedule. Batavia, Illinois, the Comedy Vault, July 25th and 26th. This is a brand new date. It's kind of a last-minute fill-in. Pottstown, PA, Soul Joles on July 31st, Point Pleasant, New Jersey at Uncle Vinny's August 1st and 2nd, La Jolla at the Comedy Store August 29th through 31st, then I'll be coming to Denver, Connecticut, Vegas, Chicago, New Orleans. Go to FitzDawg.com, get some tickets, come out and say hi.

I want to thank Midcoast Media for producing the show and editing it and uploading it and putting the social media posts up for the most part and always be in there for me. So thank you to them. Thank you to you guys for listening. If you like the show, like it, comment, spread the word. Let us know you love us. Who's us? It's me.

It's just me. All right. Bye. Alright, bye.