Fitzdog Radio - SOLO - Episode 1112

Episode Date: October 2, 2025

This week I go solo and talk about my wild freshman year in college and my adventures this week in Alaska. 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

Hey, welcome to Fitzdog Radio. I'm your host Greg Fitzsimmons. We decided to go solo this week. It's just me, just me, talking. Maybe this is the show, you know? Booking guests is a big part of the effort of this show. And I don't know, do I need? do I need guests? You tell me.

So we're going to give this a shot. We do this once in a while. I like to just catch up with you guys, let you know what's going on. I'm here in L.A. I think it's October 1st when you hear this, and it is fucking heaven. I went in the ocean yesterday, rode some waves, played golf today, jumped in the hot tub. I mean, you can shit on California all you want. It's good living. It is, you know, the people are not bright. You feel smarter than most people. You feel a little old and a little unattractive,

but you make up for it by calling yourself an intellectual among a very low bar. Among a not, and I feel like I've gotten dumber out here, but uh who cares you know what am i going to be miserable somewhere else i don't know anyway um just in connecticut this weekend i did the um mohegan sun casino and ticket sales the first night little light and i'll tell you why this is a comedy club that is in the middle of nowhere in Connecticut. And also that weekend, uh, that night was, uh, Adam Sandler, Nick Swartson, David Spade, Rob Schneider, and they're playing a 15,000 seat arena. I'm trying to get 300 people to come into my little fucking club. And, uh, so that was rough. That was rough. It definitely puts,

it humbles you a little bit sometimes when I think about, um, you know, Swarton being a a guy that I used to bring on the road to open for me, and now he's playing fucking arena. And it's like, I'm not jealous, but it just makes you think about the way this business plays out. And Nick is an extremely funny guy, and he works really hard, and he's super focused. And he deserves everything he's got. Same with Spade. Same with Sandler. But it just seems disproportionate. Fifteen thousand versus 300. It's a little fucking weird. So I met Swartson for coffee the morning after the show and i got to tell you one of my favorite people in the world he's just such a smart funny we talked about politics a bit we talked about uh gossip comedy gossip

there's always a lot of that and uh and then i did the shows i'd be driving through connecticut i flew into boston and uh i got picked up at the airport by the, uh, the opening comic kid named, uh, Dan Hall. And, uh, Dan Hall, very funny young kid out of Boston, keep your eye out for him. And we drove and it's through, and we drove through, you know, the mass turnpike, which is like, if you, if you want to talk about foliage, it's like, that's foliage 101. And the leaves had started changing. And I looked up, I'd been looking at my phone. And then I looked up and I went, oh, look, they're kind of orange and, and a little bit red. And then I was like, And there's a video of a Russian couple having a fist fight in a pigsty.

And that won. That beat out the foliage. Because what is foliage? You're looking at dying leaves. You're looking at a tree dying. It's almost kind of like, why don't we do that with humans? Like in the casino, pointing at a woman. Look at the hair.

Look at her hair. It should change colors. It's gray now. look look at that guys it's it's it's all falling out like the leaves on the tree it's shedding you got that guy's got one arm and it and you can hear the run if you listen you can hear the you can hear the rustling of the leaves yeah that's what they sound like because they're dead they're dying you know what they really sound like if you listen really up close this is what they sound like,

Ah! Oh! Had a woman in the crowd in Connecticut. And I go, I forget how I found out, but she said she was 22. And I said to you in college, and she goes, yes.

And I said, well, she's in Tallahassee, Florida. I go, shouldn't you be at school? And she goes, well, I'm just home visiting my family. And so I, stupidly, not checking my thoughts in any way, blurt out, did somebody die? To which she said, yeah, my father. And that was awkward. And then the woman next to her said, yeah, he was my twin. Her father was my twin.

And then there was about five other people with them. And I toasted the father, uh, tried to. to make a joke about it and uh she was very sweet they were very game and i thought to myself what better way you're you're spending five or six days in the house with your family who knows what kind of relationships you have you're sad you're going through the will pictures and then you go out one night and have some laughs at a comedy club and i said to them i usually feel pressure to make the crowd laugh i go i feel i go i am going to crush as hard as hard as as I can tonight.

And I dug deep. I was doing old bits, and I kept looking at this girl, this 22-year-old girl that had just, my daughter's age, that had just lost her father. And I would do a bit, and I,

and I would, I didn't want her to see me looking at her, but I'd glance over, and she was laughing, and, uh, she was arm and arm and arm with her aunt. And,

uh, and I felt like once in a while, like I don't do stand up to make people feel good. I'm not one of the, I'm not Ellen. Ellen always goes, I do it to see the smiles on people's faces. No, you don't. No, you don't. You do it for the money. You do it because you're a narcissist. You do it because it feels powerful. You do it because you can control other people. I'm not saying her, but in general, that's what comedy is.

I love that I make people feel good, but that's not why I do it. That night, that's why I did it. and I felt like grateful that I had the talent and the experience to be able to not fold in that situation, in that moment. Anyway, so it was that. We had a bunch of friends come up. My buddy Pete Scott drove up from New York City with his daughter, Liza. So great to see them. They fucking rented a hotel room and came to the show.

show and then my my old friend, kind of old girlfriend from college, Liz came. And I'm unclear whether or not I took her virginity. I don't like that phrase, took. Taking someone's virginity doesn't sound consensual. She gave me her virginity. She offered it up. But then I thought, I said that on stage and she said that I didn't, which made me think one of two things. Thanks. Either I wasn't first, and we were freshmen in college, or maybe we never had intercourse. I honestly don't remember. But I do remember that she was one of my favorite people and was all through college. And we had a whatever.

We had a two-month little relationship, but it was one of those things that turned into a friendship. And I was so happy to see her. And I was so happy that she doesn't look old. You know, because what's worse than seeing an X and they're fucking gray and wrinkling? You're like, oh, my God, I look like that. Oh, but she looked great. She looked great. I should post a picture.

We took some pictures together. And she knew Pete from Atlanta. So anyway, we went out to dinner, which was nice. There was about eight of us. And I was a sport. I picked up the check, which. was fine until I looked at the receipt. I'm never the guy that sits at the table and looks at the receipt, you know,

and with the bifocals on, you know, that guy, with the bifocals. But I looked at the receipt later, and I realized, like, when we got there, they started bringing out platters of, it was an Italian restaurant, antipasta, cheeses, little dips, all kinds of stuff. And they go, this is for the, the table and nobody ordered it and we're like okay i guess that's like an italian maybe because i was the headliner and the club had called the club to make a reserve the comedy club called the restaurant to make the reservation so oh that's nice little gratis thing and then uh then i look at the bell

because the bill was a lot it was a shitload everybody was drinking and uh having desserts and fucking appetizers and entree, steaks, and I looked at it later. None of that was gratis. They just brought it to the table unsolicited and then charged me and the platters were like $40 each. Anyway, it felt good to pick up the check. I sell my pins. I got my little pin money and I spent it on some friends that I really appreciated making the effort that they came up. especially Liz i hadn't seen so many years and my my dorm freshman year i got to tell you something one of the best years of my life if i had to pick the best years of my life it's the freshman year college top five i had a collection of nerds and i was like the alpha because i had i started

partying when i was 12 and you know we grew up outside new york city i spent a lot of time in the city I was very like I had traveled the world. I took a year off after high school and I traveled all over Europe by myself for six months. I was like a pretty, I wasn't your typical college freshman. And I had kids on my floor that were like one kid was from a farm, a sheep farm in Ohio. Eric, we called him the hick. He had no, ready for this? No sheet on his mattress the entire freshman year.

All he had was a wool blanket and a pillow with no pillowcase. and that's how he slept a big fucking guy and he just slept in his underwear no shirt nothing and so the hick the hick and i so i i introduced him to partying and i i could drink this six foot two guy under the table and so we came home one night late three a m and we get to the stairway and i whip it out and i start pissing in the stairway of the dorm because i was an asshole i mean i was just i was out of control I'm freshman year I was nuts So I'm pissing and then he pulls out his dick and starts pissing and we're laughing What we don't realize is the staircase is directly above the security guard station

For where people walk into the dorm and show their IDs and the urine is dripping Into that booth So the cop comes we're not cop whatever campus cop comes running up the stairs I fucking take off dick in my hand I'm gone. I run up three flights of stairs. And then the hick, who's a little slow on the uptake, maybe a little drunker than me, just stood there with his dick in his hand and got busted. So they bring him down to the office. They write him up. They take his ID. And then they start grilling him. For two days, they're bringing him. He won't give me up. He won't say that he was

with me. He just said, I don't know who the guy was. And they're threatening him with like, kicking him off campus and all this shit. So he never gave me up, never did. And they gave him like 80 hours of community service and all this shit. But that year, that year, the Red Sox played the Mets in the World Series. And he was a big Red Sox fan. And my father came up to Boston with three tickets for the World Series. and I ate my dad said you can bring anybody you want. I said, I'm bringing the Hick. And I brought the Hick to the World Series.

And my dad was friends with a couple of the players because my father's radio station used to announce the Mets games. So we had season tickets, and he was friends with Keith Hernandez and Rusty Stobb and Wally Backman. And so after the game, we went back to the clubhouse and got to meet the players. And it was a great fucking nice. and it was my thank you to the heck for for not giving me up and then the other kid on the floor

that I remember was it was a guy from Rhode Island and you got Rhode Island is very Italian there's some real and there was a kid and he called himself the Turk like what's your name and he said the Turk and he had on a black overcoat a mullet that was gelled back a thin mustache and me and another kid were running down the stairway like the first day of school and we ran into him and he put his hands up in front of us. He was a big guy. And he goes, hey, somebody's going to get hurt and it ain't going to be the Turk. And we fell down on the ground laughing. And he was one of my favorite guys from that point. The Turk. He had a he had a hairdryer that was, it was a Holt 45-shaped hair dryer with a trigger.

So it looked like you were committing suicide as you blow-dried your hair because you're the Turk. And then there was a door, freshman year, everyone's got their names on the door. And I see this door that says, should I say the guy's name? I'm not going to say the guy's name because he got in a lot of trouble. Let's call him, let's call him Chris. Brownstein. He wasn't a Jewish name, though. Brownman. Chris Brownman. So I see the name Chris Brownman. I go, well, that's fucking weird. I said when I was, when I was about six, we moved from the Bronx to Cherry Hill, New Jersey, which is a little suburb of Philly. And we lived there for two years. And I became best friends with the kid who lived around the corner named Chris Brownman.

who had jet blonde hair and didn't see him hung out for two years, moved back to New York, never saw him again. Freshman, I see the name. I knock on the door, door opens, kids standing there with jet blonde hair down to his shoulders. He's a surfer dude. I go, Chris Brownman? And he goes, yeah, I go, Greg Fitzsimmons. He goes, get the fuck out of here. And we hugged, and we were like, I haven't seen you in. in 12 years since we were little kids. And so he had crank, which is like a form of speed. We snorted crank all night and met up with another kid he knew from the other dorm and

stayed out all night, got all the kids on my floor drunk. We had fake IDs. So we went to the bodega and bought beer, tequila, got everybody drunk. And we became like best friends back again at school. and until he started making fake IDs, which back in the day, people made fake IDs by cutting out a big poster board, and it would say Pennsylvania, name, adjunct, you know, like it was a driver's license, and then the face was literally your face, and they took a Polaroid, cut it out with a box cutter, laminated it, and he sold 150 of them on campus.

And then every local bar and liquor store noticed all these Pennsylvania IDs all of a sudden. And long story short, 6 a.m., the FBI knocks on his door, handcuff him. Federal charges. And that's it. That's the last we saw of him. Got kicked out of school. Did not go to jail. His father was a big wig in Pennsylvania.

And I forget he knew. He got him out. He got him out. didn't see the guy again for 10 years and then i was at a network for a meeting and it was in the comedy department and i saw chris brownman on the door i knocking the door it's him now it's blonde receding here big hug and then we didn't really hang out again that's the end of that story kind of a false ending but that's my experience with him uh who else had sex

the third night of school on the 50-yard line of the football field with a woman, a woman. She was a woman. She grew up rich. Upper West Side, no, Upper East Side Jewish woman named Rachel.

Father owned 113 shopping malls. And yeah, we had sex. The third, oh my God. It was great. Oh, you know, it was so easy. Freshman here was so easy. Everybody was having sex. And I just really enjoyed it.

And I didn't know Jewish girls before that. I just wasn't around them. And BU had a lot of Jewish girls. Let me tell you something. I married one. They are the best. They are very open sexually. They're comfortable with their bodies.

You can talk about sex. They would walk around naked. Just walk around naked. I was like, wow. you know like after sex which was you know i'd hide under the sheet i was like in a pg 13 movie with the with the sheet draped around me like i'm at a like i'm at a toga party you're walking around bare naked unbelievable and um then there was a crazy thing that happened the second week of school i'm coming home again it's like 2 a m drunk walking up the stairs to

my dorm. I was on third floor of the dorm and I walked past this girl who has her arms around two other girls and she's crying and they're hysterical. I'm like, what happened? And they said she was sexually assaulted. And I was like, whoa. I said, well, who did it? And they said, it was a guy and he had on a sweatshirt that said, you know, let's just say Colgate Academy on it. It was very specific sweatshirt. Big guy. He took off. So there's another guy there named Jeff who I'd never met before. And we, we said, all right, let's go find him. We ran out to Comav. B.U is basically on an avenue, Comav. And so he goes one way. I go the other way. And we said, let's find the guy. So I run up and sure enough, I come across the guy and I see the sweatshirt and he's with another guy.

and they're fucking huge. Turns out they're on the football team. And I said to the guy, I said, hey, you. I said, they want to talk to you back at Sleeper, Sleeper Hall. And the guy pushes me, and the two of them take off. So I break a bottle, and I run after them, and they run into another dorm that has a door that you have to get buzzed into. So the security guard is behind, like, bulletproof glass,

and then there's a door he has to buzz you in when you show your ID. So I run in as they're running in, I said, don't buzz them in. I go, that guy just assaulted somebody. And then they came at me. I'm not making this up. I held the bottle up and I held these two fucking jocks up while the security guard called the police. Police show up and it took like, you know, it was quick. It was like five, six minutes.

But I was holding up the bottle a whole fucking time. cops came arrested the guy uh took a statement cut to and i had to give a statement girl was interviewed cut to uh three days later i the girl decides not to press charges she's a freshman it's the first week of school and she just decides you know that's her prerogative whatever happened she was willing to uh not move forward with pressing charges, whatever happened. I don't know. But the guy then pressed charges on me for assault with a deadly weapon. And now my parents are called. They're being told they have to come up to Boston, that there's going to be a hearing, that I'm going to be kicked out of school.

So I go to the girl. I said, hey, do you know what's going on here? And she was very grateful to me that I had tracked the guy down. But she, so basically, long story short, she, through the director of the dorm, said to the guy, I'm pressing charges on you unless you drop them on Greg. And the guy dropped the charges on me. And I would see that motherfucker around campus,

and I always thought I was going to get jumped. And then my sophomore year, I lived with the three, biggest football players on campus. They were my roommates. We got put together and we ended up becoming really close friends. And they were like, oh yeah, yeah, that guy was, that guy was going to come after you. And people talked him out of it. Anyway, so that was fun. That was a fun thing that happened. All right, let's get to it. And then I could talk about freshman year all night. So much crazy shit happened. But I did not gamble in Connecticut. That was fun.

fun to not lose money. What a great feeling to not have a bad feeling, which is what I realized. That's what I told myself. I said, how do you feel when you blow three, four hundred bucks while you're trying to earn money on the road? How does that feel? And I thought it feels bad. It feels dark and empty and regretful. And I said, you can avoid that by not gambling at all. So I didn't. And, uh, you know, I, I did jokes about it. I talked about crap. I go, I don't play craps.

I think crap must have been the worst curse word available when that game was invented. If they invented it today, they'd have to call it motherfucker. Hey man, you want to play some motherfucker? Now I'll be at the cunt table, but I'll see you later in the motherless horror pavilion. Yes, jokes like that were told to great acclaim. Um, yeah, it's like, I gamble enough. My career is a fucking gamble. Do you know the odds of making a living for 35 years and stand-up comedy are?

Do you know what the odds are of raising a family and not having your kids become total fuck-ups? I win. I already won. Put money in the stock market. If that's my gamble, I don't need to do. You know, even life, I was thinking about life insurance as a gamble. You sit down with the agent and you go, I bet I die. And he goes, we bet you don't die.

And then you pay him. Every month, you make the same bet. I bet I die. You write that check. And then one day you die. And they're like, fuck. And your wife's like, yeah! All right.

Doing some jokes for you guys. I've been dealing with my insurance company. My daughter had an appendectomy about four months ago. And we had to go through a lot, you know, emergency surgery. The bill was fucking 60 grand or something. And now they're telling me that I owe them like four grand as my co-pay. I literally, you're not going to believe this. I pay $40,000 a year.

for health coverage for my family with Blue Shield in California. It's, and it sucks. That's my, I go, I call them, I go, what's the $4,000 for? They said, well, the hospital bills a certain amount, but the insurance company only pays what they see as customary and something. In other words, they don't pay the full amount, and I pay the difference. So, all right, how about this? I don't think my bill next month is customary. I don't think I should pay the whole bill. Why should I pay the whole bill when you don't pay the whole fucking bill? How about that? Blue Cross. Now, I'm sorry, Blue Shield. I don't know if Blue Cross is any better, but I got Blue Shield. And yeah, it's just chaos. All these companies, they're just taking more and more money from poor people. I'm not poor, but I'm not rich.

you know middle class people get fucking killed and they just keep raising rates and nobody doesn't and it's all happens during chaos all this chaos that's happening right now with the government they they want us fighting i don't care if you're on the left or the right you are angry at the other side and you're you're you're being distracted from big picture shit like the pharmaceutical industries and the health insurance companies fucking us over there should be universal health coverage. We're the only advanced nation in the world that does not have health coverage for people. It makes people go bankrupt. It makes you broke. It makes you scared. And it makes people not go to the doctor as much. So they live with pain because they're afraid of coverage. What the fuck is that?

Come on, people. Anyway, I am, um, I flew back and I flew coach. And here's the thing about coach. You can't sit in coach and talk to the person next to you and brag about your job. You can't say how well you're doing. You're in coach. You know, like people meet me and they go, what are you doing?

I say I'm a comedian. And then they're looking to be like, oh, good luck. Good luck to you. Like, if you were good, you'd be up in business, wouldn't you? And I feel like that about it. I see a guy working on a spreadsheet next to me. go you're making that spreadsheet for someone else that's not your spreadsheet you're inputting info

into someone else's spreadsheet and you get that look you look at each other like uh like you're at a bus stop you look like it's like you're sitting on a bench next to someone else at a bus stop and you just kind of go on like well here here's us here's where we are we're waiting for the bus and then you walk by people in first class and you just look at them like, what are you doing? Look at this lady in a fucking Packers jersey with cheap jewelry.

How the fuck did she get in business class? Then you see the black guy and he's looking at you like, what are you looking at? Yeah, I'm in first class. I mean, I don't know. We had a fun Sunday Papers this week, we're talking about

Assamese twins that got married and somebody asked them about having sex and the one who didn't get married the sister said that she's asexual and I just want to look at her like no, you're sexual now. Yeah, that's your pussy too. And I thought, well, maybe, and Gibbitts pointed out, maybe they split the vagina in half

and the married twin gets the first five inches of the vagina and the asexual one gets the back. Something there? I'm trying to think it's a new material. I need some new material. Bad. So I'm going to Alaska tomorrow. It's my second, it's my third time in Alaska. And I'm a little worried.

I'm staying in a hotel that has no restaurants. and there's nothing to really walk to in the neighborhood. And it's supposed to rain and be in the low 30s all week. So I'm playing some theater. I'm playing actually two or three different theaters over four nights. If you want to go, go to my website and check it out. But I'm excited. It's, you know, last time I was there years ago, not last time.

time I went was years ago. And I met a guy in a bar late and he goes, hey man, you want to go up in a plane and look at Bear Island. I was in, I think in Juneau. And there's an island off of Juneau called Bear Island that has a very high concentration of bears, black, brown, I don't know. I said, yeah, I want to see some bears. I go, how much? He goes, give me a hundred bucks. I'll take you up in the plane tomorrow. So I go, all right, what time? He goes, 7 a.m. tells me where to go. I go to the air strip. I meet him. We go out to the field where the planes are. And his plane is fucking old. He told me it was in 1948s. I want to say Stinson, if my memory serves me, which is a wooden prop plane. And so he goes up and he spins the prop and it won't go. He keeps doing it. We're going

15 minutes. He can't get the plane to start. I'm like, well, dude, I'm out. I'm fucking out. I'm You can't get the thing started. How are you going to keep it going? And so, no, no, no, don't worry about it. And the guy was drunk the night before. I'm like, I was young at this point. I was probably in my 20s. And he's like, come on, we'll do it.

So I said, fucking, I got in this plane. And we took off and we went through a mountain pass. And the wind grabbed the plane and fucking threw us around. He's like, don't worry about it. I mean, I want to picture him with a cigar clenched in his teeth with a scar front of his neck, but I don't really remember. And so, but I do remember he took us over the ocean and he took us to Bear Island and we saw a shitload of bears.

He zoomed down real low and that was pretty cool and that was a hundred bucks. And then I went to, when I was in Juneau, I went to this coffee shop and the barista woman was there and she was making a cappuccino and she was steaming the milk and the milk went crazy and the steam burnt her shirt and she ripped her shirt off and uh ran in the back in her bra and the guy that was ringing me up goes that'll be an extra six bucks straight face fucking nailed it i laughed for about five minutes i look she was a she was a burn victim when we were laughing i feel bad about that but it was a it was a good moment in alaskan comedy Um, I'm thinking about how we're going to have a civil war. I think I talked about this briefly briefly on the podcast. And I said that we should just have civil war reenactors fight it out. Like just, you know, Saturdays from one to five in Williamsburg, Virginia, whatever all, whatever fucking fields, whatever towns host civil war reenactments. Just that's the fighting.

that takes place and whoever wins then the other side the other side has to or maybe it's like maybe if you look at the states like on the on election night when you look at the board and what's red and what's blue it is exactly the same as it was during the last civil war none of the states nobody switched sides it's exactly the same so i thought well maybe then we'll split it up like play a giant football game and any of the teams that play in the northern leagues. You know, they got the northern and the southern teams. You know, Dallas plays with all the Florida teams

and the Packers play with the New England Patriots, and they pick their best players. And we have a 10-hour football game. And whoever wins, the other side has to, like, if you're the red team and you win, then everybody on the blue team, not the team, but the whole country, everybody who's in those states has to get, has to undo their sex change. And all the, everybody in the red states has to get vaccinated.

Like every policy that each side represents, that becomes law. And that, that's the civil war. Is there something here? I feel like there's a bit in there somewhere. You let me know. my battery's dying on the camera so I think I'm going to wrap it up I will say this I'm very excited about I'm doing a benefit and it's coming up what date is this thing it's going to be there's a thing called the pico union projects and on October 8th they have a theater the pico union

it's in downtown L.A. It's going to be Bill Burr. It's going to be Laura. It's going to be Laura Eitlinger, Dana Gould, Wendy Leibman, a couple other comics. A lot of, it's all Boston comedians raising money to house and feed the homeless. Go to my website, fitzdog.com, get some tickets and come out. Also, as I said, I'm in Fairbanks this week. I'll be in Vegas at Brad Garrett's, October 13th through 19. We got another benefit show for Best Buddies, October 30th at the Comedy Store in L.A. also coming to the Den Theater in Chicago, Lafayette, Louisiana, Phoenix, San Francisco, Hasbrook Heights, New Jersey.

Go to Fitzdog.com, get some tickets, come out and say hi. All right, this is a short one, short and sweet. Hope you enjoy it. We got a great guest next week, and then we'll reconvene. Thank you. All the best. God bless America. Thank you.