Mean Boys - BONUS #11 - Leaving The Tribe (feat. Keith Carey)

Episode Date: August 20, 2019

 Listen to Tom's new podcast Leaving The Tribe: http://soundcloud.com/user-754160303    Get a Mean Boys Ramones shirt: meanboyspodcast.com/merch    Download the Himalaya app and follow Mean Boys: itunes.apple.com/us/app/himalaya-…d1275493456?mt=8    Fill out our tour sheet and get on our mailing list: bit.ly/2vZBsQV    Support the show on Patreon: patreon.com/meanboys    Enjoy our new Discord server: discord.gg/5KWf32m    Fuck with the new Mean Boys subreddit: reddit.com/r/meanboys    Subscribe to our YouTube channel: youtube.com/channel/UC0hvkj7TOPzMdJbKIh1L_hw    Send us an email at [e-mail] or leave us a voicemail at [phone]    Follow the show on Twitter: twitter.com/meanboyspodcast     Follow Keith on Twitter: twitter.com/keithtellsjokes    Follow Connor on Twitter: twitter.com/connormcspadden    Follow Tom on Twitter: twitter.com/gossgoss6    Like us on Facebook: facebook.com/meanboyspodcast    Follow us on Instagram: instagram.com/meanboyspodcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Fuck, poop, my butthole. We are grown-ups, yeah. Checking on the mics. Oh, shit, we check the mics. Okay, we're the mean boys. Check, check, check, senora. Check the fucking mic. Check, check, check, senora.

Podcasting at night. I guess, I don't know. Hey, everybody. We are back from Tom Goss' album recording. Yeah, we are. All right. Thank you, guys. It was fucking from Tom Goss' album recording. Yeah, we are. All right. Thank you, guys. It was fucking great.

So much who came out. I watched Tom probably collectively pace 20 miles in the front yard, fretting over whether anybody was going to show up or not. Oh, man. I bet. I got there when he was gone for a minute, and yeah, I was like, dude, there's got a great crowd. I don't know.

He's fucking shitting his pants about it. You guys are incredible. Yeah. He fucking slaughtered the whole night. If you weren't there, strap the fuck in. It's a really good album. Laid waste to the crowd. It was beautiful to watch.

It was hilarious. Got to see a lot of old friends, meet some new friends. Yeah. Shout out to Gina. Came back. Saw Gina one more time. What up? Sorry, your mom's still dead.

Yep. After her crazy appearance, it was great hanging out with her. We met her last year. Fed me soup. Yeah. You know, we saw Alexis, of course. You forgave her, it seems like. Yeah, I kind of forgot about that.

That's not usually what I think of first, shockingly. She's got a trump card on that. She's got a thing that supersedes that in my memory. Yeah. Fucking yeah. Alexis, thank you for coming. Everybody. Genuinely, there's so many people I couldn't name.

Everybody. I know, but it was cool. We, thank you for coming. Everybody. Genuinely, there's so many people I couldn't name. Everybody. I know, but it was cool. We all had a good time. I'd done stand-up comedy in like a month because of the writing. So I did a lot of Jeffrey Epstein stuff I wrote on the plane. Yeah. I was fucking terrified to get up again because I haven't gone up in a month either. And I was like, I don't want to disappoint you guys.

But you guys are very nice. We did. And I try to give everyone a show afterwards too yeah okay so look i i i knew i was gonna give you like a c plus in the stand-up comedy department but i listened to the stories i made a little joke yeah i answered questions i told embarrassing stories about you so i did my best to give you a full show with the other 30 after show he used every part of the charm, Buffalo, dude. I worked the merch booth, which I never do. Yeah.

I always say, no, I did the sound or something. No, you never say anything. You just disappear like a vampire when it's time to sell merch. Yeah. And then I go, but Keith, you're so good at it. Yeah, I can count to 20. Yeah, man. You're fucking.

We saw way more merch when you do it people want to buy stuff from you you should do it while i go outside and talk to a guy but the dead kennedys tom would be the best at doing it but he would also accept a handful of beads like the indians who sold manhattan yeah sometimes i just say what do you think is fair yeah you know and uh you guys are very gentle samuel andrikus came out to the show. Oh, yeah. Buff Instagram guy that DMs me of notes. Our one inexplicably jacked fan. He's a scientist, and he has huge muscles. Yeah, he's a ripped scientist with a very attractive girlfriend.

I'm like, what are you doing here? And he loves talking to me. What do you need this for? I'm internet buddies with Samuel. Yeah, he hits me up every once in a while. Sam's a good dude. He comes to the show. Fuck, I forgot why I brought him up.

Oh, yeah, he Venmo'd me another $4 because he only had $16. And I was like, what kind of fucking George Washington I cannot tell a lie shit is this? Red Jackalry of the highest order. I had forgotten about that $16 three seconds later. So thanks to all you guys. Congratulations to Tom. The album is still, as of yet, unnamed and unreleased dated,

but the crack team over at Radland Records I hear is working around the ironic Garfield clock trying to get the album out in time. Oh, yeah, of course, which brings us to Kyle Clark was at the show. Yeah. Big ups to Kyle. Big ups to Kyle. I love Kyle. It's always great to see him. Mostly you love making fun to Kyle. Big ups to Kyle. I love Kyle. It's always great to see him.

Mostly you love making fun of Kyle's ice cream cone body. I do. I love Kyle the man as well. He was hanging out outside with two other tall, chubby dudes in button-up shirts. And they were talking about, I think, Once Upon a Time. No, no, no. Somebody goes, well, they're rebooting Jay and Silent Bob. And you go, of course.

And I just went, three fat men in button-down shirts are talking about them rebooting Jay and Silent Bob outside of a bar in where? Chicago? What are the odds? 1,000%? And then I hung out with those guys for like 20 minutes. And then I wore out my welcome with them. They were cool.

It was good to meet them. I think that concludes the shout-out portion. Yeah, Tom is still fucking en route to somewhere. I know. All our flights got delayed because we flew out of O'Hare. Yeah, it was a fucking nightmare getting out, which is our roundabout way of saying we're not putting out an episode today.

Sorry about that. Let me just note that our roundabout, if this was a group discussion, would not include a song. If that would be my... If I was going to choose a way of saying that, I would have vetoed a song. Well, go cut it out, I guess.

No, I won't. Go cut it out and put in a somber declaration of failure. I just think it's funny to put parliamentary podcasting issues onto the platform itself. Point of order, I'd like to speak to the merits of our theme music. Yes. As with everything on the podcast, it's okay when I do it. But I get furious when other people try to join in the fun.

You go by Nixon rules. It's not illegal for the president. I eat pineapple and cottage cheese. And then I scream some stuff about gay people. And I demand my closest advisors agree with me about everything. Yeah, that honestly tracks pretty across the board. Yeah. But we're going to put out another episode soon as Tom Gizek will be catching up on the bonus as well.

Because we have a lot to talk about. So this, what you're listening to now, is a special main feed on the meme. It's an episode of Leaving the Tribe. There's actually not a way to make it sound like it's exclusive. It's just a good episode of Leaving the Tribe, Tom's podcast. It's really Tom. Tom is having a moment right now. He really is.

It is that we didn't want to put nothing out. And I know a lot of you guys have gone over and listened to Leaving the Tribe. You guys have been pretty stoked on it. If you haven't listened to it yet, give it a shot. Listen to it. It's so different than what you'd expect from tom but it's also tom at his core sure he's a remarkably good interview i i've known the dude for years i fucking live with him i was taken aback at how like good he was at this

show i know man he'll surprise you like that yeah and this is a very uh it's a very new direction and it's a very bold and powerful direction for tom i'm trying to think of a similar career shift to compare it to there really isn't one you know we're someone you know someone's like a funny guy the only guys i can think of now that are people that used to be something and now they're pedophiles which is not a great choice you know what you can do you can do robin williams this is this is goodwill hunting yeah this is tom's goodwill hunting yeah it's a podcast it's not your fault it's funny too i'm sure oh it's yeah we we crack wise we tell lots of jokes and funny stories some you've heard on mean boys a couple of there's i forget what it is but there is one my mom's story that i tell on here that i think i've never told anywhere before wow dude definitely not on mean boys so if you if you're a if you're a completionist

on my terrible childhood this is the place to go yes cry a little bit in this episode wow it's uh tom's good man and that's why I can't do it. And look, if you've checked it out already, I get it. If you don't want to check it out and you're waiting for us to come back and say cunt and call Tom retarded or whatever, we'll be back next week. But it really is worth your fucking time to take a couple hours and listen to this episode. I'm not doing a good job plugging it, but what Keith said. Yeah, no, it's all right, man. We're tired.

Yeah. I'm trying to think if there's anything else we need to discuss Not a lot else really to plug You know, same old, same old, Patreon, Discord, Mean Boys, Reddit You guys know what to do Watch the television show Lights Out with David Spade Oh yeah, thank you guys for all your nice tweets and whatever That really does feel very cool

Now look, here's the deal You're never going to get your boring co-workers to get into mean boys it's just it's too weird it's not that we're so crazy and out there but it's like it's just not that relatable however if you can let's call it spade pill them into watching basic cable their favorite yeah uh and uh then we can get the water cooler discuss about what the funny lizards are doing this week. You know, you can trick your normiest friends into dipping their toe into Keith and Connorville with this show. Yeah. So, look, we really need I'm going to say about five hundred thousand of you guys to do that. No pressure. No. But I mean, if you tell two friends and they tell two friends,

if everyone who listens to this show, watching the show, we're only 495,000 people away. Now, look, I'm telling you, let's literally tell two friends and tell them to tell two friends. We're going to fucking, we're Herbalife in this shit. I think if we, what if we could do the first successful pyramid scheme? It's like pay it forward, except don't really pay it forward. Just pay it all back to us. Pay it, become Bernie Sanders for making people watch the television show I write for. Welcome back to PonziCast with Keith and Connor.

Do some grassroots back-breaking labor to prop up this panel discussion show. You have an exciting opportunity to get in at the ground floor of a pyramid. It's true, yeah. And you know what? We may respond to your Instagram DMs if you help us out. We will, yeah. A hell of a reward. Go take a look at the Rob Schneider thing, and then maybe we'll chat.

Yeah, so watch the show, and then maybe we'll chat. Yeah. So watch the show, and that's it. Enjoy this week's episode of the Mean Boys Podcast featuring the Leaving the Tribe Podcast with Tom Goss and Keith Carey. And at one point, I was living with my buddy Ryan, who's a Mexican dude who I'd known since junior high. And we had this little one-bed bedroom we split in Anaheim. And she, you know, calls me one day.

She's like, hey, I'm really, you know, I'm really fucked and I just need somewhere to go. So like, can I come, can I come stay with you guys? And Ryan, understandably had a pretty, pretty know your family in this house policy. Cause like he's Mexican and my stepdad's a Nazi and my mom's not a Nazi. So he's like, yeah, hard pass.

And I was like, look, I can't do anything. It's a one-bedroom. I split with him. I can't kick him off the lease. I can't ask him to leave. And she's like, I'm going to tell this story. I may have to have you cut it out.

But she's like, well, I could just call the Aryan Brotherhood and he could just be gone. Yeah, I was like, well, that's my friend. And she's like, yeah, I could just call the Aryan Brotherhood and he could just be gone. Yeah, I was like, well, that's my friend. And she's like, yeah, no, I get it. But, like, me and your brother need somewhere to stay. So, like, I'll just, you know, I'll call up Brad and Brad will come, you know, bring his gloves. And then Ryan will be nowhere.

You don't have to know. You just go to work and when you come back, we'll live there now. Hey everybody, welcome to Leaving the Tribe, a podcast by people who are part of a group, a way of thinking, a structure, whatever you want to call it, and decided to leave it. And about how they got there, this episode is with my friend, one of my best friends, Keith Carey. And it's a truly phenomenal episode. Please follow him on social media, at Keith Tells Jokes on Twitter and Instagram.

We talk about a bunch of stuff. You'll just have to listen to see what it is exactly, but it's fucking great. I want to give a quick shout out to the guy

who helped put the art together for this podcast. He hit me up. He was like, hey, do you want to help with your art and i go yeah that would be great and almost and very quickly he was able to put together uh the very cool design and gave me a bunch of options it's uh it's called full 90 design they're a small company that they provide professional quality graphic and digital digital design as well as a brand consulting on an affordable budget.

And if you're interested, email full90design at gmail.com. I met this guy out in D.C., and he's very good at what he does. But as always, follow me at uh at goss goss six i know that's a that's a hilarious uh a hilarious plug for what is about to be but this is this is both one of such a funny and such a a heartfelt episode and i'm trying not to give too much away one because i want you to listen the show and two because keith is right behind me as I'm recording this intro because our roommates are asleep and I don't you know it's weird to be sentimental

while your back is to a man so I can't I don't want to give too much vulnerability away but fucking great I can't. I don't want to give too much vulnerability away. But fucking great. Once again, these are the episodes of why I wanted to do this show.

Follow him. Follow the show on Twitter and Instagram at LeavingTribePod. And did I want that to be the handle? No. did i want that to be the handle no i wanted leaving the tribe or tribe pod or anything with a full kind of phrase but that's what was available and uh i'm uh so give us a follow um if this is up on itunes if you're listening to itunes leave an itunes review uh tell a friend if you enjoy the show and you think other people you know would enjoy the show. Tell them. That's how I get guests that I wouldn't normally be able to get.

That's how I keep doing this is you spread the word. And I appreciate all of you for listening to this. And once again, I can't tell you enough how phenomenal this episode with Keith Carey, my co-host on my other podcast, Mean Boys Podcast. And yeah, I guess there's not a ton else to say

other than this was, this is a great episode and you're going to enjoy it. Thank you for listening. Here's the show. My I think is definitely everyone else's worry. Oh, yeah. It's always, yeah.

Check out the mic with me. You want to play? Sound Yahtzee. Yeah, let's play a game called Who's Yelling. Yeah. It's been so funny seeing on the Mean Boys, like Discord, like the episodes where Connor's not there, like just the audio is always fucked. Yeah. And it's always my fault because I always try and run it.

Right. I'm trying to, I should try to get a little bit Better about that stuff Yeah, and same, I think just doing it more Will help make us better at it For sure Because I've literally only run the recording like four times ever Yeah, no It's all about practice

Yeah And hopefully this doesn't sound like a practice We just got back from your fucking Your show Which was a lot of fun because you had a very drunk heckler this doesn't sound like a practice. We just got back from your fucking show, which was a lot of fun because you had a very drunk heckler. Dude, this fucking lady just went apeshit. I have this bit I'm working on about a billboard basically saying

if you have a baby, you shouldn't get an abortion because, well, I guess if you have a baby, you definitely shouldn't get an abortion. If you're pregnant, you shouldn't get an abortion because your baby could cure cancer. And it's like a line that you say and then it's setting up for like a two-hit punchline right after. And I said it and she just goes,

yes, he can. Like my fucking unborn theoretical child is Obama. She was very adamant that your baby specifically could cure cancer. Well, first she said cure cancer and then she said my baby could save cancer. So I think she loves cancer. I think this lady is horny for cancer. Well, first she said cure cancer, and then she said my baby could save cancer. So I think she loves cancer. I think this lady is horny for cancer.

And then you change the subject. You were talking about, like, demons and shit. Yeah. And she goes, your baby. Like, she just kept bringing it back. I was like, it's not a fucking real baby. You were doing a bit about a fucking exorcism. It was, like, generally.

And she was like, no, no, no. Talk about how your baby's a, your ball sack is a doctor generator. This is, like, show in la that i like but it's like a very you know kind of like chilled out like laid-back energy la show as soon as i struggle on those because i'm like uh you have this a little bit too right yeah i'm a very loud very kind of momentum based comic like that's kind of just how i operate yeah and so sometimes in these like quiet la rooms it's like somebody blessed me by teleporting a fucking baker's field heckler yeah into that room and i was like oh god this is perfect this makes me not have to think for fucking five minutes yeah no it was it was pretty fun watching you deal with her yeah it

was pretty fun she loved you oh she's great i don't know i don't know i don't think she knew she she did not know there was a comedy show happening no and my favorite part too is watching the other comics on the show who are all good comics but slowly realize oh that's about to be our fucking problem yeah and as we were leaving i heard her start being a problem again yeah well you you got off stage and then she she was still like pointing at you. I love you. This is not some white girl wasted. This is like a 45-year-old Latino lady or something.

The funniest part, too, is I wasn't even doing that well. It was like a mediocre set. You were killing when you started interacting with her. Yeah, but up until that point, I was doing fine. She acted like it was showtime at the Apollo out of fucking nowhere. She was a fucking riot. On the off chance you're that lady and you're listening to this, thank you. That was a lot of fun. Yeah, I'm sure that lady's listening.

Oh, yeah, she seemed like a podcast enthusiast. She just likes getting sloshed to vodka and fucking, you know. Just screaming at her podcast. That'd be bad. Jesus. You're the voice in my head. Your baby's special. You have a special baby in your wiener.

Wiener specifically. Yeah, it lives in there. Just a whole baby. That's the future. Men will start popping babies out of the decks. Oh, hell yeah, dude. Like seahorse style? Like we raise the children inside of us, then we just cum babies?

Yeah. That's going to make facials in porn really weird. Yeah. Cum on my face. The first, look, the man will carry the fetus. Okay. In all of the abortion green terms. And then just kind of like kidney stowing it into a uterus.

You just don't know you're pregnant. You think you have to take a really bad piss. You piss out a baby. Dude, somebody did that recently. They're like, I'm waiting for kidney stones, and now it's a baby girl. Was it a dude? It was a couple.

Okay, well, I think only one of them had the baby. Yeah, but they both had the kidney stones. I got sympathy stones. Total weird tangent that I promise we'll do this very serious podcast. No, it's supposed to be. No, I know, but I promise you it's very stupid. I'm just imagining a version version of avengers end game where the avengers show up and thanos is like oh i gotta stow these fucking stones and he just eats

them and then later he's gotta piss out the infinity stone oh shit how'd they get to my dick i like to imagine every time he's about to crown the time stone it goes back in time and he has to do it over and over and over it's like when when you have a phone charger that won't quite charge right. Yeah. Like, was it Prometheus' rock? Fucking just like for all of time. Sisyphus. Sisyphus.

Yeah. Prometheus was the alien from. Kablam. Which one was Prometheus? What do you mean? What Greek shit did he do? Prometheus, he gave fire to humans. Oh, what a cock.

He was like a god, and he taught humans, like, I guess fire was of the gods, and he gave that to humanity, and the rest of the gods were pissed off, so they tied him to a tree, and crows ate him forever. Like, crows would eat his, I think it was like, it was something specific where they eat his... I think it was like... It was something specific where they'd eat his liver and his eyes or some shit and then every day

they would grow back and then the crows would come back and eat him again. You know, I think it's just great that someone's feeding the birds out there. I think that's...

Brett will make them choke and die. And this man... This man understands bird diet. Man, how lucky are you if you're those birds? Yeah. Like, you think those crows

are flying off to tell other crows, yo we found the hookup dude do you think what you don't want to be really funny is i now i want a spin-off show from uh prometheus where it's just the crows and because i don't have to go around all day looking for food they're just like i don't know what the fuck to do with myself i just get depressed and start killing themselves yeah i went a totally different... No purpose in life. I went a different direction and just pictured the crows from Dumbo.

I thought I'd seen everything until I'd seen a man die. We'll split it down the middle. You said just racist crows having an existential crisis? Yeah, yeah. Oh, Lord, I'm sad all day. This is going to be pretty awkward in the context of what we're going to talk about. Yeah, I mean, it's fun to have a riff up top.

It breaks the tension. Oh, I agree. Yeah. It's so, I have to acknowledge it just so it's acknowledged. Acknowledge it at all. It's so weird. So me and you, we do Mean Boys together. We do.

And we're best friends. Yeah. And doing a podcast with you as a very specific thing where it's like, okay, I'm going to call you retarded and you call me gay and then Connor will come in and call us both fat and gay yeah well and then i know but then i also have like real serious like i probably have the most like in-depth like serious conversations with you of any person in my life yeah and that is but it feels weird to do a podcast where we're not doing like where we're doing that and not just doing like i don't know what if the fudge dork was the devil or whatever the shit we do well i'd say there's like three or four people that maybe want to do this show.

Yeah. And you're one of them. Thanks, man. I'm glad. Another one was Jace. Right. And we talked, you know, I mentioned on the podcast how we went on this long road trip and talked about religious trauma and fucking weird. Right.

Shit like that. The other one was you because I, you know, and we've talked about this in great detail how I distrust groups immensely. Yeah. We've had more fights about like the concept of groups. Right. Than most couples do in every fight in their entire relationship it is a thing we all like a 30 year span we do always debate and i feel like we've gotten closer to understanding each other's point of view on it to some extent we fight about groups the way

a husband and wife would fight if one cheated on the other we have had we haven't got into a blow out in a while it's been a while It's been a while And I feel like some of those blowouts were because we needed to have a fight about something else Yeah And like we needed to address other tension in our friendship and we hadn't Most of the time Because that was like early friendship with us We were in that weird place where neither of us wanted conflict

So instead we would just take weird aggro shit into like other conversations sometimes Sometimes, yeah Not like super often I've had relatively little tension with you. Yeah, yeah. No, but there was definitely, there was also a period. I'm thinking of one in particular.

Where it became a little too clear, a little too late. Like, oh, we're fighting about something now. Like, I thought we were just doing weird fucking white trash Play-Doh out here. Was this in New York? No, no, no. This was out on the back porch.

Okay. We can talk about it off mic. Sure, sure, sure, sure. I don't want to blow up any of my spot. Sure. Yeah. No, that's fair. But yeah, no, well, it's...

Yeah, no, you're one of the reasons I wanted to do this. It is weird. It's weird for me to talk like a human being to you on a podcast as well. Yeah, I feel like we put on our game face a lot when we do podcasts. Yeah, yeah. Well, it's because it's our home field. We've got to defend it. It's nice to be able to just fucking talk to you.

Yeah. Like I said, we fought a lot about the group shit. It's something that I've kind of, you've touched on very little on me, but how do I say this? You've had a batshit insane childhood. You've had a Batman villain's childhood. Yeah.

It will never stop being funny to me how many people I tell about sort of what my life was, and they're like, it's amazing you're not a bad guy yeah oh no I've been one of those people and I that always makes me feel weird why not even weird like it's like and I understand what they mean yeah and it's coming from a very sweet place but I think there's part of it that's like I don't know bad shit happens to everybody and you're either a good guy or a bad guy like For sure. And there are ways in which my upbringing has made me a less good guy than I want to be.

Yeah. You know what I mean? There are things that I consider character flaws and behaviors I've done and sort of patterns I've put myself in that are entirely you could tie back to shit from my childhood. Right. But I think everybody has that to a degree and you've taken it i'd say to like a human being level and not a you know a stray dog demon level which is i mean the bar is so low like it's like if i'm not on heroin and or a nazi like i'm doing pretty well

yeah yeah i mean yeah i mean you're killing it. Yeah. No, I'm crushing the garbage. Yeah. I am definitely not on heroin. Yeah. I'm also not a Nazi. But yeah. Yeah. Well, but your stepdad was.

Yeah. My stepdad was a Nazi. This dude, my mom married when I was, gosh, I was young. I would have probably been like eight. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I was eight because I was living with my dad when I was seven. And there was a whole custody battle.

And my mom and the Nazis somehow got me back in a court of law. Wait, I didn't know. Okay, I didn't know that your mom was already married to the Nazi when she won you back. You know what? I don't know if she was officially married to the Nazi when she won you back. You know what? I don't know if she was officially married to the Nazi, but they were together for a while. They might have been, like, technically. There was some weird shit where they were, like, technically married, I think, but not, like, married-ass married. They were married on paper kind of thing.

Gotcha. But, yeah. So, yeah, from when I was eight to when I was about. You know, the one place where the court will notice. From when I was eight to when I was about 16 is when my mom was with the Nazis. Then he would pop back in periodically, but that was like... And I've had a lot of stepdads and a lot of sort of like, you know, people kind of rotating it out of my life. But he was probably the longest running stepdad.

Right. The longest running father figure, I guess. Big old air quotes on that. Sure, sure. In my life. So you were living in Seattle with your birth dad and then you moved. Yeah. So basically I was living with my mom when when i was a kid uh obviously uh like

my dad lives in seattle my mom and my dad split up when i was like three like i was real little yeah my mom moved to california she kind of got strung out on drugs for a while um and then at a certain point she uh like she was so fucked that my dad basically took me back right like i went up to visit my dad was like I'm not sending him back. This shit's fucked up. And I was up there for, like, a year. And then there was this whole, like, courtroom saga. She got sober for a little bit.

She won custody back. I think my grandma paid for, like, an expensive lawyer for it. Sure. Yeah, and then I ended up coming home, and then it got pretty bad pretty immediately again. That was one of my first questions. How quick after you got to your mom's where shit went from? Because with your dad, tell me if I'm wrong, he was a fairly normal guy. Yeah, my dad is a weird dude, but he is not villainous weird.

He's like eccentric. Yeah, he has a lot of fucking lizards. And he's into Captain Beefheart and shit, but he's not villainous weird. He's like eccentric. Yeah, he has a lot of fucking lizards. And he's into like Captain Beefheart and shit. Right. But he's not fucking. Right. So when you actually got back to your mom's, how quick before you go, something's weird? Or did you not even notice because you were a kid?

Here's what's weird is my mom, my mom sort of, she spun it in a very specific way to where she very much made my dad the bad guy and really planted the idea that I was kidnapped. You know what I mean? This was some great thing. So for a couple of years after that, I was like, oh, thank God I came home. You know what I mean? Like I consider my dad the bad guy and I was like, I want to be home with my mom. And I think it was like two years later when I remember being old enough to kind of like piece together everything. And I literally remember telling my mom, like, hey, I want to go live with my dad.

And then having to have that awkward conversation. Yeah, it's a weird feeling when your dad goes, no. Yeah, I could imagine. Yeah, and there were a lot of factors to that not a small one being my mom wasn't gonna let it happen yeah I could imagine he was at least slightly disheartened from how the whole first thing went down

yeah I mean me and him have talked about it in sort of like abstract kind of ways but I think neither of us are fully prepared to have the full conversation about it yeah maybe maybe i'm just not and maybe i'm projecting that onto him me and my dad don't really talk a lot right i don't know it's weird it's i i this is the thing i trip out on a lot and i wonder if you do too i i'm not saying this to be shitty but i wonder if you maybe have a

different relation to this because of the mental health stuff you've gone through and you're sort of like the fact that you've left reality and come back a few times right like i always trip on the idea of like how reliable is the human memory and like how much of what you remember actually happened the way you remember yeah no it's uh it's it's pretty well there's also there's also there's also for me it's just like what's interesting for me is the just the things i can't believe i don't remember right no same yeah you know i mean you were in florida when my friend came to the show yeah and she was telling me like do you remember that series of texts i was like what series of texts it was like well you were texting me when you were you were having a psychotic break and you were like my my room's on fire and then i texted you like okay is it on fire is it the psychosis i was like i think it's psychosis and she was like well why don't you shut your eyes i go that's how i know

it's psychosis it's still on fire when i close my eyes and you just had no memory i didn't remember it at all which is insane i remember things being on fire now i'm like oh yeah now i kind of remember that phase right yeah there was like a eight month phase where things would just be on fire randomly but yeah so it's like wow if i can't even remember that yeah how much do i remember of like that guy I was mad at six years ago? Am I remembering it right? Was I actually the asshole? Yeah. And I think it's also I think and I think, you know, from different places, people also, whether you're crazy or your parents are trying to, you know, hold on to you or point someone's a bag.

It's also very I hate using this term, but it's the best one for it. There's a lot of gaslighting that happens oh 100 for i think both you know from i guess for it's a little unfair to say mine was gaslighting because i think they would say anything to keep me from from from reacting to yours was almost like medically advisable gaslighting like it was some of it was not all of it but like yeah i can see the. I'm like, I don't know, what do we say to him to make him stop punching himself in the fucking soul? Right, right. Well, yeah, and that thing especially is compounded by the fact that I was dealing with drug addicts, and drug addicts are great at fucking manipulating the story and sort of rewriting the narrative.

They'll believe whatever they need to to keep the thing going. A hundred percent and to make sure that they are not the bad guy and that it is all outside forces and oh i wouldn't i i would have gotten to you know pay my bill on time but this thing and this thing happened and the whole world's out to get right right you know which is which is honestly a mentality that i can find myself slipping into sometimes yeah the sort of the pity party kind of victim thing because i was sort of trained from that from youth like to be like, oh, that's...

Yeah, the universe is out to get you and everything that happens is an outside force and has nothing to do with your own actions. Right. No, it's very easy. I mean, I do the same thing sometimes. It's been something I've been actively trying to be more vigilant about.

Right. You know, fighting against. It's improved for me. But yeah, it's very easy to slip into that. been actively trying to be more vigilant about you know fighting against and it's improved for me but yeah it's very easy to slip into that yeah you can end up rewriting your whole narrative and then just kind of missing life on it's own terms yeah yeah well that's

I'm trying to just like disconnect from my old narrative if that makes sense because all it does is really just confuse people right you know that's kind of like i have this podcast and i'll talk about this kind of shit on this podcast right because i'm doing it and that's why i want very specific kinds of guests who've had not the same but kind of like the experience of being kind of relatably lost yeah you know i'm just feeling completely like isolated and weirdly trapped in this like reality nobody will totally understand around right right

and it seems foreign to most people yeah and just the idea that the fact that there are people who have can relate to that the way like that that kind of made me maybe feel less it did make me feel less alone and you were one of those people because you had fucking psycho childhood well likewise man we always talk about this that like we came from very very different levels of trauma but i think we sort of took a very similar trajectory out of them yeah yeah well similar and then similar in ways and not so so like similar in others and that's you know but I kind of want to get to that stuff later. There's some people who maybe have never heard anything about you.

That's a fair point, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And I just kind of, you know, we don't have to get it. You have a zillion crazy stories. No, no, no. We can talk about whatever you want. I mean, you know the stories. I know the stories.

You know what you want to talk about. We can talk about whatever you want. Yeah, yeah. you want i mean you know the stories i know the story you know what you want to talk about we can talk about whatever yeah yeah you you know you're not to that's a bullet bullet point on but there's there's the there's the fun the head kick was you were trying to stop your mom yeah i tried to stop my mom from escaping the house while we were trying to detox her and she uh roundhouse kicked me in the head yeah they were on drugs there's a fun classroom story oh yeah my mom my mom has been addicted to everything and i think yeah i just want to i want to double back to a thing we were talking about absolutely absolutely just because

like between my comedy and mean boys and you know even this stuff like whenever i do like a serious interview podcast i talk about this stuff a lot and i guess it's just a thing i want to say sort of clearly and publicly like we're talking about about sort of wanting to escape your narrative and stuff. I love my mom now, and me and my mom are okay, and my mom is sober, and I forgive her for all this shit. Yeah, and that's a big thing I want to talk about later in the podcast, too. And she knows about this stuff, but sometimes I feel bad. I feel like, because it is a weird thing where our career, we've chosen a thing where we do have to re-talk about and re-litigate our trauma over and over. Yeah.

And I just want to make sure it's clear, like, I am, I wouldn't say over this shit, but like. You're okay. I'm not as angry as I was. Yeah. And I'm sure we'll talk about that later, but I just. Yeah. I feel like, I feel like it's like a weird disclaimer I have to put on stuff about my mom now. No, I think that's a.

Just because, like, I've talked about her so much on so many things. Yeah, no, I think that's a great disclaimer. But she is, I mean, what's. I've met her. Yeah. We did a podcast with her. And what's weird is, you know what's so funny is,

and I'm all over the place, so if I get on too many weird tangents, feel free to... No, no, this is great, man. We were talking about, you know, I know the premise of the show is like leaving the tribe and sort of like leaving a group or whatever.

Yeah. And I was thinking about it because there's not really... I've been tangentially part of tribes, but, you know, I was religious for a little bit i was you know i was around a certain type of person for a little bit even like weird you know less serious social things like i you know like i was a punk for a little bit i was a nerd for a little bit i've done all these kinds of things the one sort of like attachment to a a an ideology that i shook ever really was my mother yeah like that is the

tribe i left is sort of my own family weird right yeah well no and that's i absolutely think that counts yeah you know what i mean but i was thinking about it all day today when we were telling me we're gonna record this i'm like i don't really like i don't have a good i ran away from the mormons story you know what I mean, or anything like that. No, and that's the other thing you realize, like, most of these stories, because I've talked to other, I've recorded a couple of these, and I've also just talked to people one-on-one who've expressed interest in doing the podcast, or I've asked. Right. of it is rooted in family, you know, whether it be, you know, religious or ideological or, you know, there's a zillion different things it could be. And one of the reasons I wanted you on, despite, you know, the biggest reason is just that

we've talked about this kind of shit so much. A hundred percent. Yeah. You know, and another reason is that, you know, i don't want people to just think it's about religion you were raised a very certain way yeah and when you're raised the way you usually follow the tendencies yeah and there's on paper you know like people you people have told you like it's crazy you ended up as good as you did and it it is mind-blowing. You could very easily be on drugs and beating your kids and fucking, you know, jerking off on a socialist flag. I don't even know if that's a thing.

No, and that would be fine. I don't even know if that means you love socialism or hate it. That's a great point, too. Yeah. No, and what's funny is that I feel like a lot of the people who say that to me are comedy people. And none of you. You're all so fucked up. Well, not even that.

It's also a very good point. None of you knew me before comedy. And I was much closer to that. So. Is something wrong? No, no, you're good. You're good. So, like, there's a sort of lost period of my life where

like i kind of like high school wrapped up i'm an adult i got a job or whatever i dropped out of high school i wasn't going to college and i was sort of like i'll just go be a fuck up like i had vague creative ideas and that i wanted to be like a writer or an actor or something really a writer that was kind of the only thing that made sense to me but i was very much like i will die when i'm 25 i was fucking getting drunk every night i was you know fucking with pills like i was a i was a fucking mess right like i very well like i have i i didn't go down the full path of what sort of my life could have been but i definitely tiptoed down with it yeah you know i finger popped it but i didn't like full-on fuck but right i uh so it's like you know when people are like oh how did you not end up like a fuck up the answer is i did i just got over it yeah you know which

is i mean everyone everyone everyone fucks up to a degree right you know i mean it's it's you did i fucked off for several years yeah that's most people call that college yeah i would say yeah it's true i guess i guess i did that i was like 20 to 24 i'm like i fucked up for four years yeah i guess i have no concept of college as an entity because it was just never an option for me right right but yeah you were you were i mean what's what's interesting here's one that's specifically specifically interesting, is you're like fairly woke, if that makes sense. I would say so. You know, like you say horrible things.

Oh, mercy, yes. But you wink and go, I'm 100% kidding. Right. Whenever actually some serious shit goes down, you're the first person who goes, that's not okay. Hey, man, what the fuck? Like, you butt in there. Yeah, and that's a tricky space to occupy in comedy because it's like, you know,

we've talked about this before with Mean Boys, but I do stand by this. I don't think that hateful people and offensive people should have the monopoly on offensive comedy. No, and I always repeat that to people, and I give you credit for saying that. I appreciate it. Yeah, and I've talked to Connor about the same idea.

Like, this is not the exclusive thing, but it is an ideology I subscribe to. I completely agree. Yeah, no, I completely agree with that. Liberal people created offensive comedy. Yeah, exactly. That was the whole point. Yeah. And everything's gotten so screwy.

Everything's so confusing now. But, sorry, back to your point. So, like, I'm quote unquote woke. Yeah. I mean, you are. You know what it is? I roll that because it's like it feels weird to be like, I am woke. You're not woke.

You're progressive. I'll take that. I'll take that. Yeah. Woke feels, it's like it's been overused to the point where I, like, woke is what people who pretend to be progressive say. Yeah, I'm a liberal person and I try to learn and grow with shit as it evolves socially and try to understand the experiences of groups of people that I'm not part of. Right. In a way that I didn't used to, in a way that, you know.

That's something you actively do. I always see you looking up different facts about different groups. You'll quote shit, and then I'll look it up, and I'll be like, oh, that's accurate. You stay on top of that shit. And what's interesting is you have a line in your act where you go, I had racist parents, and a lot of people, I'm going to fuck it up. You know, sure, they're racist. I grew up Hasidic racist.

Yeah, that's the line. Which is one hysterical line. Yeah. I mean, it's true. And what's funny is that that joke is slightly exaggerated. Sure. In that, so my stepdad was a weird deal where he was a, so this is the line I was told and then sort of as I found out it was kind of bullshit.

He was just like a, like a burnout fuck up who went to prison for like six years for armed robbery. Uh-huh. And supposedly that's where he kind of like

joined up with Nazis and like he got a big old fucking swazi tattooed on his stomach. And then he got out and he would always kind of be like, ah, I'm not really a nazi anymore but then if you talk to him about any of it for 30 seconds dude was a nazi like right like profoundly right like the the n-word got thrown around a lot like you know it was the jews got blamed for shit like it was

it was yeah i mean you know and my mom was never really that on like, my mom is racist, but my mom was never, like, a Nazi. She was just sort of, you ever know those people who they date somebody and they just kind of take on a lot of the personality of the. Sure. Yeah, my mom was like that. She was like the Venom symbiote for a lot. So, but, yeah, I mean, I was definitely surrounded by that kind of shit a lot growing up. Yeah. And those sort of ideologies.

And I also, you know, I grew up in Orange County, which is a very white place. Yeah. Very, I mean, there's a lot of Mexican to it, too, and Asian. Very un-black place. Yeah. There's really, there's a lot of Middle Eastern. There's a lot of everybody but black, pretty much. Yeah, pretty much.

Yeah, which is weird. I never really thought about that. It's the one group that's not in. I mean, yeah. There's a lot of everybody but black, pretty much. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, which is weird. I never really thought about that. It's the one group that's not in. I mean, yeah. There's reasons. I've looked into some of it. It's not worth getting into. Yeah, I know.

But it's like, yeah, no, it really does have everything but black. But it's incredibly segregated. Oh, yeah. In how, even more so than L.A. Yeah, yeah. Where L.A. is like block by block. Yeah, but it's city by city. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. man's land well the asian you know you know asians don't have irvine like it did just like yeah but it is very much you can it's some game of thrones shit yeah well it's even even like okay so garden grove is typically like vietnamese yeah and like filipino right and then irvine is more like chinese

japanese japanese korean feel like it's it's super well i think i think a lot of that is that irvine and like sort of south korea is a lot of that is that Irvine and South Guinea is a lot of Asians who came over here to go to school and to get jobs in the tech sector. Right. Sort of like upwardly mobile, like young Asian people versus a lot of Garden Grove is like people who came over here after the war. Yeah. No, 100%.

It's why you'll never find better donut shops in the world than in fucking Garden Grove, California. It's great. Because they all came over here after NOM and just opened donut shops because it was the cheapest business yeah fucking rock yeah yeah yeah what was the first the first thing you remembered as a kid where you heard you went do you remember the first time you heard like someone your house say something like that's that that sounds kind of fucking fucked in terms of like yeah Yeah. You don't have to quote it word for word. No, no, no, no, no.

You know what's funny is it was just. I talk about this a little bit in my act, but it is a thing. It is like looking at shit from the outside. You think back on certain key moments and you're like, well, that was fucking terrible. But when you're in the middle of a situation like that you don't have a lot of frame of reference for what is normal sure so a lot of shit that i you know probably if you showed me a fucking tape recording of my childhood i'd be like well that's a problem that's a problem that's a problem yeah but it just kind of turned into that white noise of like

another day of being nine you know what i mean because right you don't know, you don't really understand how wrong it is, I can remember one I can remember sort of the last big one more than the first one if that makes sense not even the last, but this is like sort of the one I was I was like 15

and I was stuck with my stepdad and at this point me and this dude, his name is Brian just for the sake of not having to keep with my stepdad. And at this point, me and this dude, his name is Brian, just for the sake of not having to just keep saying my stepdad. Sure. And I'm stuck with Brian. I was living in Florida at the time

because we got white people rich because someone died with $20,000. So we bought a house in Florida. It was like during that big short era where they were just giving fucking white trash boats and shit. Yeah. But we were living in Florida and my mom went out of town

because her dad was dying. So I'm stuck with Brian. We hated each other. Yeah. And we went on this wacky adventure on a motorcycle where he was like, oh, I'm going to take you down to downtown Disney. We're going to go see Kill Bill. I'm like, great.

And instead, we went to downtown Disney. He dragged me to see GWAR, which what kills me is that in any other circumstance, I cannot tell you how happy I would have been to see fucking GWAR. I've never seen GWAR. GWAR is the great, it's Mean Boys the band. It's just, it's car knock. They're a metal band who wear like crazy costumes. They have puppets

that shoot blood. I was thinking of a movie called GWAR. No, we went and saw the band GWAR and I was a fucking dick about it. We got into big fights and we left like ten minutes in. But I remember we were driving a motorcycle out and he's hammered drunk at this point. I'm a fucking dick about it. We got into big fights. We left like 10 minutes in. But I remember we were driving a motorcycle out and he's hammered drunk at this point. And I'm on the back. Yeah, it's pouring rain.

It's fucking middle of Orlando. Jesus Christ. This Asian dude just kind of like pulls out in front of him. Not even like a cut him off thing. It was just the Asian guy's turn and he's driving back. And I just remember Brian just going, you four-eyed fish fucker. Jesus Christ. And then I remember Brian just going, you four-eyed fish fucker. Jesus Christ.

And then I remember this so specifically. I just went, whoa. And he turns around and goes, no, because Asians fuck fish. And then keeps driving. And I was like, that's not even an accurate stare. They eat a fish? Yeah. You know, maybe I'd buy that you thought they prayed to one.

But, like, they fuck fish? Are you thinking of Shrek? Because that seems like it would do that. I broke Tom. That's so fucking funny. Four-eyed fish fucker, man. But then, oh, here's a fun real fucked up one I remember. This was when I was a little older.

I was like 18. And I sort of had like kind of split from my mom. Like we weren't really speaking, but we would talk every once in a while. And she was doing real bad. She was kind of all spun out on meth and shit. Right. And at one point, I was living with my buddy Ryan, who's a Mexican dude who I'd known since like junior high. Mm-hmm.

And she, we had this little one bedroom we split in Anaheim and she, you know, calls me one day and she's like, hey,

I'm really, you know, I'm really fucked and I just need somewhere to go so like, can I come, can I come stay with you guys? And Ryan,

understandably, had a pretty, pretty know your family in this house policy because like, he's Mexican and my stepdad's a Nazi, and my mom's not a Nazi. So he's like, yeah, hard pass. And I was like, look, I can't do anything.

It's a one-bedroom. I split with him. I can't kick him off the lease. I can't ask him to leave. And she's like, I'm going to tell this story. I may have to have you cut it out. But she's like, well, I could just call the Aryan Brotherhood, and he could just be gone. Yeah, I was like, well, that's my friend. And she's like, yeah, no, I get it.

But, like, me and your brother need somewhere to stay. So, like, I'll just, you know, I'll call up Brad, and Brad will come, you know, bring his gloves. And then Ryan will be nowhere. You don't have to know. You just go to work. And when you come back, we'll live there now. Wow. Yeah, and I had to go to my buddy Ryan and be like, I tried You don't have to know. You just go to work and when you come back, we'll live there now. Wow. Yeah, and I had to go

to my buddy Ryan and be like, I tried to like slow play and I'm like, hey man, how would you feel about moving out so my mom can move in?

And he was understandably mad and then later I had to be like, just so you know, here was plan B. And he's like, well, I'm calling the cops. I can't believe I've never told you that story before. No, you haven't. I can't believe I've never told you that story before. No, you haven't.

I can't believe. Yeah. Wow, that's fucking nuts. Yeah. Are you still friends with this guy? With Ryan? Yeah. We were really close for a while. We became less close after I started doing comedy just because we got busy with our own

shit. Yeah. Yeah, I still see him every once in a while. He's a dude I like very much. He might actually be listening because he's a Mean Boys listener. So, Ryan, sorry, buddy. Yeah, that's fucking... I have not heard that one.

Yeah, that's a thing that happened. I have not heard that one. What did you... How did you even respond? I said, don't kill my friend. That's the thing I said. I was like, hang on, I'll figure it out. We'll get you a motel.

And to be fair, I don't think she would ever actually do that. Sure, sure, sure. But it was, I mean, she could have done it. She called in the Aryan Death Squad one other time. Yeah? I told you about this. I know that you... Oh, yeah.

She was dating some guy, and she ran off with Brian. After they were broken up, but they would still see each other sometimes. Sure. And all of a sudden, it was midnight, and she hated this guy she was dating. She wanted him to move out, but he was homeless and a poker addict, so he was like, I'm going to stay here. And then all of a sudden, I looked down at the gate. a poker addict so he was like i'm gonna stay here and then all of a sudden i looked down at the gate at one point she had to drive to hawaiian gardens to i think give somebody a thousand dollars so they wouldn't break this dude's thumbs like yeah it's insane

but i looked down at the gate and i just hear screaming and i see my mom brian and then a guy uh who will remain unnamed who is is putting on the gloves of a murderer. And I know this dude is the guy who kills people. Yeah. And they got in and he tried to get in to murder the guy. And I blocked the door and I called the cops. It was a whole thing. Right.

Yeah. No, you have told me that story. Yeah. I mean, I guess one of my questions, when you're fucking, you're seeing all this kinds of shit. Right. You know, you're hearing them, you're hearing all sorts of slurs. You're seeing, they're casual, you know, death threats, you know. Right.

Which are, it's bad when death is part of a moving plan. It's like, all right, well, first we'll kill your buddy and then we'll get the U-Haul. Yes. it's like all right well first we'll kill your buddy and then we'll get the you all yes but like how much of it was actually in like you know and we're talking about memory and stuff how much of it did you actually like embrace and how much of it was just like you said that white noise like how much of like the actual racial stuff that i embrace not embrace but even like retain and i mean process while it was there were definitely chunks of it that like you know it it's so funny because i feel like i always kind of knew it was bullshit right but there were like i was i was very much the kid for a long time where i was like

well i don't think all black people are you know fucking drug addicts and murderers, just a lot of them. But, like, you know what I mean? I was sort of, like, I guess woke for a scumbag. Right. And I had no, and it's not like I had a black friend to be like, hey, what the fuck are you talking about? Like, you know, they weren't around. Right. And, like, you know, a lot of shit, like, you know, I also was, like, sort of, like,

right around when I was, like, 13 is when, like, you know, Bush 1 happened and, like, 9-11 happened and a lot of that like you know i also was like sort of like like right around when i was like 13 is when like you know bush one happened and like 9-11 happened and a lot of that sort of stuff and my mom very much was trying to like sort of like politically influence me into like thinking the right was you know the way to go and the conservative was good like she very much trained into me that like liberals are bad i genuinely i remember having this thought i remember being like i don't really know what any of this means exactly, but I know my mom doesn't like the blue ones. So I don't like blue. You know what? So this is such a dumb thing.

I remember the first sort of political fight me and my mom got it. As I started to think John Kerry was an all right dude. And it was a hundred percent, not a policy, not a speech he gave, not anything about him. It's that green day endorsed him. So I was like, well, we're green day endorsed him so i was like well where green

day goes so must the nation right yeah and that's why you like john carrey and that turned into a time fight with you and your mom yeah and that turned into all the i remember she tried to use some sort of weird pamphlet to convince me i actually loved george bush i forget how that worked exactly but yeah yeah that's uh that's but yeah but that was about i mean you know like and i think that's pretty par for the course for most kids is like you know you sort of get in your teenage years and you kind of like you know you either reject the ideology of your parents or you double down on it right and sometimes you circle back you know and it sure yeah and it's funny because it's

as i'm getting older i wouldn't say i agree with any of the things that my mom thought in that way. I don't even think she agrees with a lot of the things she used to say or think. But there is a part of you that starts to understand how people get there. Yeah. Does that make sense? With all the misinformation. With the misinformation, with sort of like... The desperation that comes with being an adult when things aren't going well.

Yeah. with sort of like desperation that comes with being an adult when things aren't going well yeah well and even like you know and we were you know we're talking about like sort of like these white power fucking morons and these type of people and like what's interesting is like i you know poor like i i knew a lot of kids in high school too who got drafted into like these fucking nazi things like oc is a big you know neo-nazi place yeah there are a lot of pockets of that and you really look back and you do understand how they got there where you're you know you're in economically not well off person I know Orange County is a very rich place but I was not living in the rich places there you know it's there's there's it's not 100% rich like there's a lot there's a there's weirdly a lot of diversity yeah and all of the white

diversity there is bad no matter what that like it's the only place that showcases every bad kind of white person that's a really fucking accurate within like a 40 mile stretch you will you will there's there's white trash. There's neo-Nazis. There's bougie Newport people. There's fucking art people who can't make art out of Laguna Beach. Like there's right. There's every.

It really is a microcosm of the worst white has to offer. Yes, but there is. But, you know, I would see these kids kind of like get drafted in the same thing. My mom would talk about where it's like, well, we're fucking poor and we're Americans and we should be getting ours. And these fucking Mexicans are getting theirs. We're not getting ours. And they're taking care of these fucking foreigners and da-da-da. And I guess I never embraced any of it.

I always kind of knew to some extent on some moral level even I couldn't articulate that that wasn't right or true. But I could never figure – I couldn't argue with people's logic on that. You know what I mean? You just instinctively. I instinctively was like, well, I don't want to be a fucking Nazi. I think there was enough popular culture telling me, I think Indiana Jones good, Nazis bad was probably enough to fucking drive that point home.

Did they ever try to recruit you? Not in any serious way. Like I said, my set that was not involved with any of the real like kind of organized right like hate groupy shit at least as much as i know it seemed more that he was you know the nazis he hung out with were just his fucking shithead friends sure sure i think it was similar situations where like they got into it because they were in prison and i don don't know, when you're in prison, you kind of you pick a fucking team. Yeah. Like that's your deal. I did have like kids try to bring me to like fucking like, you know, like white power punk shows and shit and try and get me into like, you know, this kind of what you would now call alt righty shit.

But at that point was just Nazi shit. Yeah. And it just I, you know, I never I never was like a huge like well jeepers i don't want no part i was just like yeah no thanks i'm gonna hang out listen to the clash like it was just like it just didn't appeal to you it did yeah it didn't really do anything for me i didn't really get it it just was not something i was also i think i was partly helped from becoming a a white supremacist by the fact that i was cripplingly depressed. So I was like, I would much rather think of new ways to kill myself. Yeah, it's interesting because being poor, white, and depressed is their demographic.

A hundred percent. I'm shocked. Honestly, if somebody would have tried a little harder, they could have probably got me. Yeah. Because I was a kid. I desperately wanted to be loved and to fit in somewhere. And I did not have have i had no concept of home or place or i mean i went to i went to 17 different schools between kindergarten and dropping

out of high school right right and on top of that like i we moved constantly you know stepdads were in and out i always make the joke my family has no last name like my my core like i'm you know my last name is carrie that's my dad's and i have a family on that side but my core family unit we have no last name my mom has had like seven different last names all my brothers have different last names than me so i felt sort of feral from youth you know what I mean? Like I never felt connected to society or to the world in any meaningful way. And I felt really fucking lonely because of that. Yeah, a lot. So I think, you know, when religion got to me, I got hardcore into religion for a little bit. Right. You know, when, you know, I mentioned, you know, like when I got into like the the punk scene like i got hardcore into that for a little bit when i got into anything i got into i got really ham into for like a little while and then either i'd leave and i wouldn't be friends with the people i was friends with from it anymore or i would just feel isolated from it i just had a hard time locking in with a

group you was it one of those things where you go, you do a thing, and you go, maybe this will fill the void. Yeah. And then after, and you're excited about it first, and the excitement's gone, and you go, oh, the void's still there. Yeah, no, 100%.

Yeah. Yeah, you sort of think it's going to be the thing that fixes the problems. Right. And then you realize you're the same guy no matter what you're praying to or what's on your fucking T-shirt or who you're hanging out with.

Any of that shit, it really doesn't fix the underlying issues. And, you know, I forget who I was talking to. I was talking to somebody about my life and I was like, yeah, I was just depressed and shitty. And they're like,

yeah, that is a totally normal reaction to the life you were living right no it is it's completely fair right i guess you know so this is this is when you're going through these different phases of religion and punk because basically it sounds like you did they they just did a bad job recruiting you yeah that's what i'm saying if somebody would have actively put in the muscle to fucking turn me into a Nazi, I would have probably been a Nazi for six months. Yeah, because that's what they look for people with. The void?

Yeah. They look for people with depression, with anger, which maybe you just didn't come out. Were you an angry kid? I was just talking to somebody about this recently i i always kind of directed inward more than i directed outward same here i i did have like more anger problems than i do now it would flare out in weird ways and i had i had a lot of like what a misplaced anger too sure like a lot of like i had a lot of real ugly anger like especially towards like women like

when i got a little older that i had to like spend a lot of years kind of working through and sure and i never you know never hit anybody or anything like that but like just internally like i felt a lot of like anger and weird directions before i could be like no you're angry at these people who hurt you and these people who fucked up your life right right but um but yeah no i was never i was never terribly angry maybe that's why that world kind of never really appealed to me yeah because it's a very anger it's well yeah it's a it's an angry world and it does seem like the sort of the overarching philosophy of white supremacy is we have been wronged or robbed of our birthright as white americans so let's go get ours right from insert group here sure whereas i feel like

i always just was more of the uh well i have nothing because i was born with nothing and i deserve nothing like that was always kind of my read on right sort of life as a concept yeah and and uh yeah i i wonder i wonder how much that had to do with it where it's just like well sort of life as a concept. Yeah, and I wonder how much that had to do with it, where it was just like, well, he doesn't seem to have the energy to yell. Do we need another fat guy on the squad?

Let the Mexicans have him. Did you have friends in high school as a kid? Because you're talking about always moving you're talking about this chaotic home i i didn't really i it's funny because i mean i i would you know pretty much every new school i would go to i would end up finding the weird loner group you know how at every school there's like there's the cliques that make sense there's like the dnd group and there's the you know the kind of cool kid group and there's the skater group.

Like there's all these different sort of quadrants. Yeah. And there's always that one fucking junk drawer like table. It's like the kids who hang out in the weird alley behind the school or like the stairs who are like a goth, a skater. Yeah, they're all one. A rejected lacrosse player. Yeah, they're one fucking.

A vague talking shoe. Yeah, they're one dork from every circle where it's like, all right, well, there's the fucking kid whose braces made him look weird. And there's the fucking autistic one. And here's the girl who's too fat to be emo, but too sad to be fat. Like, you know what I mean? I would always kind of gravitate towards that table. I mean, of people, you know, from growing up that i am still friends with

or like had any kind of long-term friendship with i don't think i really made any until like beginning of high school like i kind of started to have a couple people who i'm like okay like i can stay in touch a little bit because that's kind of also when like social media became a thing. I got lucky in that respect. Right. I was in freshman year of high school when Facebook happened. Sure.

So I would move, but I'd be like, okay, the three people I hung out with at the weirdo table, maybe I'll still talk to one of them every now and then. Right. But in general, for a long time, I was very much the quiet kid. I just didn't really want to fuck with anybody i didn't want to uh i didn't want to get close to anybody because like i'm gonna be leaving anyway i think yeah like i you know it's one of those things where like

consciously i don't know if i ever would have put it in those terms as a kid but like subconsciously i think that's what was happening for sure you know and uh and yeah i mean that was hard because as i got older i tried to actively like forge connections and relationships with these people and make friends and like you didn't have the muscle i didn't yeah i didn't have the muscle and then i would get furious when my life happened and i had to move again you know like the longest i went to a school for was a year and a half i went went to the place where I went in freshman year. And I remember that was the first place where I felt comfortable enough. Like, I'll be here next year.

So I will stay and like know these kids and like actually like try to give a shit about anybody and try to like. I don't know, invest in that. This is also part of my life. And then we left halfway through that year to move to fucking Florida. And I've never, that might be the angriest I've ever been in my life. Because I was just like, we're throwing the only shred of normalcy I've really ever understood into a fucking dumpster. So this Nazi can go to motorcycle school. That's why we moved to Florida. And the funny thing, didn't even end can go to motorcycle school that's why we moved to florida and the funny didn't

even end up going to motorcycle school just went there and started cheating on my mom with amputees that's a thing that happened in florida sounds like a bit real story no i yeah sorry i feel like i spiraled away the fuck out from whatever the original question was no i mean all of that no you're that that that happens a lot on this podcast where any story that ends with so then he started cheating on my mom to fuck amputees in florida keith i'm not mad at you for talking on the podcast i know you ended the story with and then he started cheating on my mom with amputees in florida it's it's which sounds like a sadness bad limb so can i tell you what the funniest part of the phrase cheated on my mom with amputees in florida is why the s in amputees because that means

one was not enough yeah once you, the fun don't stop. Yeah. Yeah, and if you pop off a leg, even better. Right. This is weird. I don't know why I needed to know that information as a kid. Yeah. My mom gave me a real graphic rundown on some of the shit that was there.

Both your mom and your stepdad just loved telling you all of the details of everything yeah boundary is not a another thing we've had which i think is part of part of how i ended up the way i did in some of the good ways uh-huh i think the fact that i sort of have like no like sort of like very little shame filter in terms of like should all say because i know it's funny which has been great for me to watch that yeah i have a lot of shame and guilt and you're pretty shameless and guiltless i well that was i mean and that was like a thing like shame in terms of like saying fucked up shit or like you know right right like leaning into being the bad guy in like a bit you know what i mean it's like stuff like i think I got from my mom. And, like, you know, to a lesser extent, I said, really, my mom.

That's her whole thing. She'll just... I mean, you've met her, so you know how she operates. Oh, yeah. Like, when she went on Mean Boys, and she's like, no, I just hate Mexicans. She knows what she's doing. You know what I mean? She knows the way she's presenting it.

It's not funny that she thinks that, but it's funny the way she's presenting it. Yeah, not funny that she thinks that but it's funny the way she's presenting it yeah the lack of awareness yeah exactly yeah she presents it like it's a yeah no i i know exactly what you're talking about uh but guilt and shame are actually like things i weirdly felt internally so much that i think i sort of developed the, what we jokingly refer to in the house as the partylicious persona. As I got a little older to sort of compensate for. Yeah? Yeah, where I was like, if I'm this guy, I'm not ashamed of shit and, like, you know, embarrasses shit. But secretly, I was ashamed and guilty.

I've struggled with guilt my entire life. Everything that has ever happened bad around me, I somehow feel like is my fault. Sure. Even shit that definitively is not. It should have happened when I wasn't technically alive. I feel like it's my fault. And part of that is that, you know, my mom would say crazy shit like,

it is your fault that this all happened. Like, I mean, it was literally direct messaging I received. But, yeah, there was some part of me that was like, well, if I'm, you know. Did you have the fat kid at school who would just eat whatever weird shit? Yes. Yeah, I was that kid. I believe it.

Yeah. I was that kid where I'm like, well, I can either be the sad boy who smells weird because his fucking laundry's not done. See, that was more me. Yeah. Well, I was like, I can be that kid or I can be fucking the kid who who's like give me your pizza and i'll put it on my sandwich and i'll make a pizza sandwich you know that was peanut butter and jelly pizza sandwich yeah you get it yeah you get what i'm about yeah no that i mean that all that all makes sense and then so here's the era that i'm like i know the least about with you because there's a fucking.

Yeah, there's a ton of ton of chaos as a kid. Right. And basically you're saying the main reason you didn't end up more like that is you were too depressed and no one actively tried to. Yeah. Like it was just around you. But even the shit you were taught, was taught so poorly you you didn't have to retain it it was like being a civilian in vietnam i was just like i'm gonna fucking keep my head down and just ride this shit out right yeah but then after after you're done with high school

after you mean you drop out you you drop we're both drop out yeah i dropped out when i was uh i was 18 because i had a job and i was thinking i fuck this yeah how quick did it take before you moved out you know and i know you talked about you told the the ryan story earlier but how quick did it take before you moved out of my mom's house yeah um it was probably i moved out when i was like 19 barely yeah yeah like 19 and a couple months. So, yeah, basically, you know, I was kind of living... Yeah, I was living with my mom. She was trying to get sober

and sort of, like, off and on with it. She was dating a... She was working at a homeless shelter at the time, and she was dating her second bring-home homeless guy. At one point, she cheated on one of the homeless guys with another homeless guy, which... Subjectively. I don't think you ever told me that.

At least they had all their limbs, man. But... Fucking... But yeah, but I was there for a while. And honestly, at this point, I was... This is probably the angriest and the shittiest of a person I ended up with. Sort of that 18-19 range. Because I basically went into like...

Well, you know know my mom was making active efforts to try to fix her life right and it wasn't working great but she was doing her best little improvements and I was angry and hateful and the way I was like well you know what I'm going to do is I'm just going to

fucking ride this for everything I can I was living on the couch I was living completely rent free I was living on the couch. I was living completely rent-free. I was eating all the food. I got the fattest I've ever gotten. I weighed 320 pounds. Oh, wow. Yeah.

And I was like, you know, I was working, and then I got fired for, like, attendance stuff because I was showing up late because I was drunk all the time. And I was just a piece of shit. Were you drinking with other people? Yeah, I would drink with other people. I would also drink alone sometimes, but I was mostly drinking with other people.

You were mostly going out and partying. Yeah, I would go fucking rage with Disney kids, party hard, and all my dumb shit. Ironically, the one squad of friends who I managed to stay friends with were church kids, and we all fucking went insane. Yeah. Yeah, we were all just

like well god's gay let's get into jagermeister like that was a thing we did at a certain point but uh i remember this is uh oh i think i told the story i mean boys but i'll tell you here too uh and this is a racial trigger warning a word's gonna get said i was uh i was arguing with that homeless guy and the homeless guy had the audacity to be like, you're mooching off your mother. And you're taking her for a ride. And I'm like, aren't you a homeless guy she brought home? We were arguing at one point. And then he just goes, you know what you're doing?

You're being a nigger. And I was like, no. Like, I didn't know how to respond to that. And that night I packed, like, a bunch of my shit. And I just laughed. And I remember walking down fucking lincoln boulevard nana heim and i'm just like god damn it i'm fucking i'm never going home again i fucking hate these people wait did he just call me the n word why'd he do that and i did i always thought that was very funny yeah no that's a weird that's a weird decision he'd choose. Yeah. And I get what he meant, but it was a weird way to phrase it. Yeah.

Yeah, that's the weirdest way you could possibly phrase it, I'd say, in that situation. Yeah. But you were, so you were, when did you actually move? You said that's really So yeah no I left I left that night Oh that was actually That was the night I left Wait that was actually

I thought you were saying That like a dramatic No that was the night I left I I left I went and stayed I went and stayed at Ryan Oh it was

I remember it was the Third of July That was the actual night It was the third of July Cause the next I went and stayed at Ryan's house the next morning. We woke up early. We got, I don't know why I remember this. We went to, it was when the Simpsons movie came out. So the 7-Elevens were Quickie Marts.

So we went and got a box of promotional Crusty O's cereal. We ate that at the 4th of July parade in Huntington Beach. And then, yeah, I panicked for a while. I went and stayed with a friend of mine for a few months and then I was just kind of bombing around then I got the place with Ryan and then kind of a string of like weird apartments and shit after that but yeah that was the night

I left my mom's house I realized that was the breaking point yeah that was it because you say and I was also at the top of some escalation there was one point like i i got me and her got so passive aggressive this is the same house where the roundhouse kick with the detoxing happened yeah so we were in a real fucking like hostile situation i started just

smoking in the house because i was just like fuck you lady what the fuck are you gonna do and at one point we have these full wall windows and she goes you fucking piece of shit faggot and I'm like whatever chain smoking and she just grabs a fucking shoe and she whips the shoe at my head and I just out of the way and it shatters the full

fucking second story window and I look at the window and I look at her and she goes fuck that was dumb and she goes, fuck, that was dumb. And she just left for three days. That's right. Every story just evolves with, I feel like every story ends with just either you, your mom, or your stepdad just going, well, fuck, and then just walking away.

I mean, I think that's, yeah, most of our stories, it is just we realize the futility of our own tiny rage. Yeah. So it's getting furious, doing something to shoot ourselves in the dick, and going, well, we shouldn't have done that. Now what? What did you, like you like so you're okay you're at this point you're 320 pounds correct you're moving from place to place occasionally

kicking your friend out so your mom doesn't kill him right you know you're going what changed what changed in me yeah um a lot of stuff i mean it got a little worse before it got better how much worse did it get well 330 pounds no i mean i mean weight wise i kind of stuck it out around 320 i mean i you know i kind of just i i spun gears for a while i lived with a few craigslist tweakers and then i ended up uh dating this girl and i I moved in with her and her mom. It was a bad relationship, but I was in it for like three years. I mean, comedy generally helped. Yeah. Because comedy gave me some sort of...

Comedy gave me the concept that I could do something of worth even if it wasn't of monetary worth. Uh-huh. Because I really always kind of subscribed to the thing of like, well, I'm never going to be anybody. I'm always going to be fucking poor white trash and I'm always going to be a fuck up. Right. And it gave me the ability to forge.

Because we were talking about narratives earlier and how you sort of like, you were talking about shedding your narrative and trying to sort of like walk away from it. Right. It was a hard thing for me. It was hard for me to not let my entire life be defined by where I came from.

It's, yeah, it's super hard. and then you get enough distance and you're like it's it's weird like when you have you hit the point yet where and sorry i don't mean to cut you off no no please i'm just curious have you hit the point yet where you go like i i can talk about that guy but that guy is so far removed from me where it almost feels weird to talk about. Yeah, no, 100%. Some of these stories even feel very strange where I'm like, oh, that feels like a fucking dream almost. Right. And it's like, well, me telling you these stories now almost feels like I'm misrepresenting myself. And it's like I was a different person.

Yeah, you feel it's a different life. It's that weird. You feel like you're lying even though you're telling your own story. Yeah, you feel... It's a different life. It's that weird. You feel like you're lying even though you're telling your own story. Yeah, we've bonded about talking about that feeling all the time. It's the strangest thing, though. Yeah.

And I think it's because as you get older, you always try to, like, look at things in the past and sort of, like, find different angles on them and different, like, shapes of them. Right. But stories that happen to you when you were a child, you only remember them as a child's perception of what was going on.

Right, right. Yeah, but... I was saying something and then I got lost. only remember them as a child's perception of what was going on right right yeah but um i was saying something like i lost you were talking about how it got worse before it got better yeah i mean i mean we got i got in this terrible relationship i was feeling pretty i was pretty close to suicide at that point yeah um and then yeah i mean comedy helped a lot i think some of it is just that i fucking some of of it is just growing up. Like, I wish there was a more profound answer, but I think I just... It's always... This part's always a little bit muddled. I think this is also the part...

These points in your life is the part where you stop... I feel like your brain kind of shuts off a lot in order to grow. Yeah. Like, it almost needs to go... go like it goes half on autopilot like it's weird to talk about like the actual process of your of your brain changing if that makes sense because people ask me all the time too like how come you're not still trying to stop 1970s killings from happening. And I'm like, well, I don't. So I don't know.

I would say this. I would say I can sort of track it to a couple specific moments. I think starting comedy, you know, it's very cliche, but it is true. It made me feel, you know, A, like I had something of worth to offer the world because i got lucky and then i was kind of good at it right and b it made me you know that sense of like family and community and like sort of like acceptance within a group like was there sure in a way that i had never had from something else and definitely never from anything positive yeah and it doesn't hurt that a lot of comedians are scumbags too that. They're less judgy about shit. Yeah, here's all these damaged people who are not terrified and who almost like, you know, I would tell other people the stories from my past and stuff, and they would get sad.

They would get devastated about it, which fed into my own fucking self-pity party and all that shit. And then to be able to tell it to people and people are like oh my god it's fucking hilarious like that's like it's sad but that's the funniest shit in the world that that happened and i'm like that is pretty fucking funny and i will say too because i don't think every scene has this i think every scene's a little bit different the oc scene at that era loved personal dark material. If I would have literally started comedy, or if I just lived 20 miles north or five years earlier or later, I don't think I, I don't know if I'd be alive.

I definitely would not be where I am. Yeah, there was something very, because I feel like I got, I feel like I was one of the last people in that era to start up before it started changing. Yeah. Not to get too inside baseball here, but we've talked about the sea change. And I think the door opened with, you know, I came through the door and I was like, okay, these are all the people. Connor was one of them. And then you and Anna Valenzuela were the last came through the door and I was like okay these are all the people like Connor was one of them and like you know all these

people and then like you and Anna Valenzuela were the last two through the door right right and now that there's not still good comics there but it was like a very specific era yeah they're newer it's a different scene it's not it's different and there's some very talented people but it was very it's very but really what it boils

down to for me is like not even so much like the you know comedically there was a lot of value to that but also personally just like going to max blooms every friday and being like oh here are people who like i am learning how to connect with on a human level yeah and i am learning how to it was also a new group of people it was sort of i guess what you feel when you go to college you know where i'm like i get to decide what my identity here is. Sure. I get to decide who I am.

And I honestly, I think there's sort of two pivots of growth to me, because I think that was the first sort of escape out of just this dark, shitty trajectory I was in. And then about, I would say, two, three years into comedy, I'm going to be vague here, so as not to, but you'll know what I'm talking about. I, you know, I got, I panicked a little and I think this happens to a lot of comics and I became kind of a dick. And I became like sort of terrified of losing status in this sort of family I had found. Right.

I wanted to be a cool kid. And I fucked over a really good friend of mine. Uh-huh. In a really serious way. And I think once these sort of ramifications of how bad I had fucked up that very meaningful friendship became. Right. That was sort of, and this is like, you know, four years ago. I'm like, okay, this is like you know four years ago i'm like okay this is like

where i need to really grow i'm like all right you have you are no longer sad boy keith who is a victim of his fucking childhood you are your own adult man now yeah you have found your own life you have chosen your own tribe you have chosen where you are you are now responsible for un-fucking the person you are right you know and like and it was that thing you know we talk about filling the void with a thing and then realizing the void is still there it was that moment of being like okay the

ugly shit that is still in my heart that is left over from all that shit I went through is still here and I need to actively confront it or I'm just going to be the same kind of broken person I would have been outside of comedy it or I'm just going to be the same kind of broken person I would have been outside of comedy but just I'm funny too yeah you know and that that is a process that it's harder to explain in detail because I fucking feel like I'm still doing it you know

yeah no I talked to people I knew when I started comedy who are like you know like man you were a fucking asshole and now you're like a cool dude and i'm like man you should have met me five years before that i was an even shittier person right you know and i and i like that i think that i think that you know if your life story can be measured in people who knew you five years ago surprise you're not as much of a dick as you were you're moving forward in a good way you're becoming a better person yeah i mean even i've even i've i've i mean i've told you i think i told you i think it was like the end of last year, maybe the middle of last year, where I was like, I feel like if you blew up as blew up, you would be a little snappier at points. Oh, 100%. Oh, I'd go crazy if I got super famous. You'd be a dick sometimes, but I think it would be like regular famous person level

of dick. Right. I think if it happened a year before that, I think you would have burnt every bridge both internally and externally and set your life on fire. Oh, you're not wrong. Dude, I almost managed to do that with half a basic cable credit. Are you kidding me?

Do you know how hard I almost ruined every personal connection in my life off a Snapchat premium appearance? But even that, like, I could, I mean, I don't know if it makes you feel better, but I can, like, I could, I mean, I don't know if it makes you feel better, but I can, like, I could see the growth in you and the little, like, little, little, and it's all, you know, it's little things. It's little actions. It's little corrections.

The difference in you let little things go, I think, helps you when big things go wrong you became become a more level-headed person i think it does work that way where it's all about like there's a term i learned when i played hockey now is this the widest way to get into a point i'm making about the feudalism of life and dude we're talking about orange county hockey and our feelings. We filled out white people bingo. But, like, you know, it's not. They're like, don't worry about the big thing. Win the little battles. Yeah.

There's nothing we can do unless you win the little. It's in every sport. Yeah. Win the extra inch. And I see you fighting, like, in terms of just, like, in terms of, you know, not, there are little things that you could, oh, you could gain an extra inch out of that, but you don't, because you'd be a little, you'd be a little, you know what I mean? Like, you've done little things you're not looking, used to, when things were not going well, you used to turn into this weird raccoon.

Oh, 100%. And you don't do that as much anymore. It takes a lot more for that part of you to come out. Yeah, well, and that's the thing. I've sort of figured out about myself recently because I looked at some of the ways I've acted. What I've noticed is that in you know, in comedy it's like I go a little crazy when things go well.

That's when I kind of go apeshit. And I think part of it is because, you know, growing up I've, everything I ever loved I lost. And then I would try to love new things and then I would lose those things. The concept of stability, the concept of anything existing tomorrow was a very foreign concept to me I lived

like have you ever had like a weird like have you ever had a weird pain that like sort of comes and goes yes and you spend all day stressed out about when that pain's gonna come like a toothache when I was younger. But you understand the maybe maybe like I had I had a rotted out tooth and it would just hurt blinding pain and then it would stop and then it would start at random periods. Yeah. So it ruined the rest of my life because it was like, well, I can't even all I can do is think about, oh, God, is this going to be when the fucking tooth hurts? Right. And so, like, I think I sort of treat like i learned to treat any happiness as a time to be afraid right because i'm like all right at some point this is gonna fucking catch on fire

so i think sometimes when good things happen and this is also affected non-comedy things like this is affected personal relationships this is affected like you know my you know romantic situations like that i freak out and i'm like all right well how I not fuck this up I don't care what I gotta fuck over I don't care what I gotta do wrong I just need to make sure that this lasts for another fucking day and make sure nothing takes away what I got and I think it took a long time

for me to realize that that is I experienced a very hardcore version of it very young but at the end of the day, that is just how life works. It is a series of ebbs and flows. Everything dies. You get a whole bunch of new shit.

Life constantly evolves. And being able to just roll with that and let it carry me in a non-negative way because i think i was just rolling with the punches in a very downward spirally nihilistic way for a long time right and to be able to sort of utilize that same muscle of like life's just gonna happen just fucking ride with it and do what you can but in a positive way is the thing i'm still trying to kind of learn how to do and i'm getting better at at it, but it's hard. You know what I think? You know what I think? From my experience, I think the difference between rolling with the punches good and rolling with the punches bad is simply are you working towards something

while you're rolling with the punches? Exactly. You know, if you're rolling with the punches, but you're just kind of just rolling for rolling's sake, you're just getting hit a bunch. No, 100%. You know what I mean? I mean, you can genuinely compare it to, you know,

what I was doing before was just trying to walk face first into the ocean, and now I'm boogie boarding. Yeah. I was like, I don't know exactly what I'm going to do, but I don't know. I got a thing to float on. I'm figuring it out. Right. But I'm going to do but I don't know I got a thing to float on I'm figuring it out I'm going to aim it at a wave I'm going to aim it towards the shore

and we're going to see if I catch this thing yeah and we've referenced boogie boarding complete white people bingo blackout all of Orange County their heart grew two sizes on the completion of the bingo. It's, yeah, no, it's, I didn't realize, I thought, I don't know why,

I thought you had like a group you felt like you belonged to before comedy. Not really. Not in any meaningful way. I don't... Like I said, there were kind of groups I sort of fell in and out of, but nothing ever felt permanent. Right. Everything was bullshit because nothing lasted.

Yeah. You were there because you hadn't found the next thing yeah and i was like well this is around and i'll fucking hang out by it until you know the the weird wave of my life pushes me away from it and then i have to go somewhere else right i think i just sort of like isolated from connection because the idea of connecting the people terrified me yeah and you connected you connected with was it the was it the feeling of loneliness that helped you get through that or was it just you felt – you kind of just fell into being okay with connection, if that makes sense? You're talking about like learning how to actually connect to people? Yeah. I think loneliness, I think that, I don't know.

I just honestly, like, as soon as, like, you know, it takes a long time to, like, I think that if you sort of, like, have a more stable, you're in one place life, a less sort of transient life, I think you find your people a little easier. Sure. You know what I mean? You find the people that understand how you see shit or who like the same shit as you or who you become your sort of core group that you kind of build off and you sort of like figure out, you know, socializing there. I think I had a hard time doing that for a long time. So when I finally found that group of people i think i jumped real hard into it

right you know and i think that i think that kind of helped like i think i sort of went head first into it and uh i i'm totally losing track of what i'm saying sorry it's been a long day no it's it's it's fine you're just you were saying that it took you yeah yeah, when you found your groove. Yeah, yeah. And sort of what made me okay with doing it is, you know, it's like anything you're terrified of. It's immersion therapy. You do it and you're less scared of it. I mean, we've even talked about this with you with certain stuff, you know. Oh, yeah. No, it's funny.

It's funny. Even within, because we've talked so much about the idea of groups. And you know what it is? The idea of groups is terrifying to me. The idea of close acquaintances is still pretty scary. I mean, you're my business partner as well as podcast co-host and roommate, best friends. You know, I mean, tell the listeners how hard it is to get a hold of me. Dude, Tom has like 930 unread text messages on his phone.

It's fucking infuriating. But it is such an interesting dynamic in our friendship, though. Yeah. I feel like the reputation is I'm the easygoing can talk to everybody you know fun boy party guy of the crew and i feel like sometimes you and connor don't i don't mean this is a negative thing no sure and i feel like part of it is that i am i get weirdly nervous about articulating it uh-huh but i feel like sometimes i'm like i don't know how to explain how fucked and alone i was for so long no i i and i've and i hope that explains some of like how i because i feel like sometimes

you guys are like well you're just groovy all the time like no i would work really hard to be groovy no i i i i i think you get it i get it yeah it's i don't know it's the thing that i've always thought is kind of funny about the dynamic that we all fell into. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think, yeah, no, you have come from, you know, you've come from further. And, you know, that is something that I do. I do remind myself is like, yeah, you've worked really hard to be in a position where you're just like, I just want to enjoy life now.

Yeah. You know? Yeah, I feel like sometimes you're, and then this is some of the fights we've gotten in before about philosophical stuff, is that your internal pessimism runs up against what seems like almost naive optimism to me, like from me. Uh-huh. You know, I think we used to feel like we me uh-huh you know i think i think we uh we i think we used to feel like we had very opposing world views right and the reality is i don't know if

i'm that optimistic about life or the world in general i'm just choosing to try to live a more optimistic life because yeah i did the other thing for a while and it sucked ass and that's kind of that's kind of what i mean my my you know i and what's interesting is we came from very different i feel like comedians they feel two different demographics when i'm realizing even just from the short duration where i've talked to people either on the podcast or off the podcast we're gonna do it is i feel like comedians typically come from two different places, complete chaos or order to the point that has no room. You're pretty much a vessel for other people. Right.

With how, you know, and I think you're more the first one, and I was more raised the second one, and then it broke me into complete chaos. But it wasn't, the chaos wasn't external, the chaos was internal. Right. But I come from more of, you know, it was incredibly orderly, and it was all about what I could do for other people and stuff

with the with the buddhism shit and then later the mental health shit where it was just like oh he's gone yeah now uh so I feel like I have kind of I have different toes in both worlds that makes sense uh but I definitely you know uh and I a lot of it, a lot of it for me is just like, I couldn't get better until I acknowledge like all of this and it sounds meaningless, but I was like, all of this is nothing. All of this is meaningless. All of this has no inherent meaning or, or, or goodness or badness or, or real heart and soul.

And then I got to that point and it released all this pressure off of me that makes a ton of sense though i because i there was but from both from a lot of different angles i was i was under a lot of i had a lot of pressure i mean a lot of different directions and a lot of different things and i i think it kind of broke me a little bit. Yeah. And I think once I was able to go, oh, all of this is bullshit, it kind of relieves some of the pressure. Right. And then you go, okay, it is bullshit,

but now I get to kind of put my own meaning on everything. Yeah. You know, and I think that's, you know i i do kind of fall into like i think that's what what you know proper i think nihilism executed correctly is all of this is nothing but that's not a bad thing this gives me room to breathe and discover and you know be an adventurous nihilist don't be you know i mean yeah because it's it's all carbon and bullshit but that doesn't mean that there isn't things to explore within the bullshit yeah exactly nothing means anything so go see which nothing

is the coolest yeah what bullshit kind of you know there's a lot of ways bullshit can be interesting yeah sometimes the bull eats a lot of ways bullshit can be interesting. Yeah. Sometimes the bull eats a lot of corn. Sometimes it's... I hate this. You know what it was? I got too sincere for too long with you, and I was like, I had to fall into Tom's shtick. I know. I love it.

I think we both have done that a couple times in this episode. Yeah. We're like, I got too real. Whackity schmackity doo. Yeah. Yeah. It's harder with you and Connor. Yeah.

To just kind of like have a conversation because even when we talk as friends we do kind of throw in these kind of weird all right it's been it's been seven minutes gotta throw in something about 9-11 or else 100 you know but yeah no i mean it is it it yeah that is really strange i mean it's a muscle we've been doing this for years. Honestly, yeah, this is the most opened up I've felt on a podcast. Oh, really? Yeah, this is good, man. You're actually good at this.

Thanks. No, that's it. Look, man. my my podcast experience with you is is the fucking shoulder pants mcfucking mcvandam academy and shit so the fact that you are also like a compelling interviewer and like emotionally disarming is no i appreciate terribly surprising but a little surprising i appreciate it i appreciate it man i'm not i'm not, I'm not, I don't, yeah. It was just, it was just fun. That actually was funny to me.

I'm not, I'm not. No, I know, I'm fucking kidding. I'm throwing, yeah, I know you are. But yeah, I mean, it's, it's, once again, we've had all those fucking long, long ass discussions about shit around this. Yeah. You know, and I think i've kind of told you

why i feel a certain way and you know it's also you know feeling that way and kind of trying to embrace that definitely does feel like jumping off an emotional cliff right and it's being in free it's being in free fall for a second you You know, whereas I'd say, I mean, you were raised where. Tell me if this is a misassessment. You were kind of raised where nothing had any meeting. There was only survival. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah.

You know. Yeah. And what do we go? Yeah. And then we go through waves. We're like, you know, oh, we have a house for a little bit. We're doing pretty good right now. But like, it's like, yeah, but we, we have a house for a little bit and we're doing pretty good right now.

But like, it was like, yeah, but we're not gonna. Like, it's all gonna fucking fall to shit again. Yeah. It's, what do you think? Like, if you were to talk to yourself now at that age, at like know 15 yeah you know you get home from your your your stepdad calling someone a a fish fucker right and you go to your room or you know a vague hole i don't know where they had you sleep but that we were actually in a house there that was when we actually had a little bit of money yeah so i had a room but what would i mean what would you tell yourself i don't know i i always struggle with the like i've been asked this kind of thing a

few times like you know this sort of this rhetorical thing i'm like what would you know go back in time and talk to yourself and i always struggle because it's like part of me is like I'm not saying I'm the perfect version of who I want to be right now, but I like the guy I am. Right. I like how everything ended up, all things considered. Yeah. And I'm like, I don't know if I guess. It's not. No, I know the answer.

We're not on some butterfly effect shit where you say the wrong thing. No. the answer we're not on some butterfly effect shit where you say the wrong thing all of a sudden you're you know no but i but i do believe in the theory that you learn from pain and you learn from mistakes and you and that i maybe i needed to like i owe a tremendous amount of as much of the shit i don't like about myself for my life that i owe to my past i also owe a tremendous amount of as much of the shit i don't like about myself from my life that i owe to my past i also owe a tremendous amount of the shit that i do like about myself sure to that yeah the fact that i'm adaptable to any situation the fact that i don't judge people who come from you know fucked upbringings the fact that the fact that i'm funny i learned to be funny from my mom i learned to be fast from my mom i learned to not take people's shit from my mom you know what i

mean like i learned i learned how to insult people from my mom which is my most profitable fucking skill set yeah absolutely i guess if i could tell my like myself as a kid anything, it would be like that... It would be that somebody... People will love you and you deserve that. And I think there's part of me that would tell myself that my mom does, even though she doesn't know how to do it without being a fucking lunatic

I uh yeah I mean I think that's the that's the biggest thing I remember thinking didn't exist is that no one would ever love me and why would they bother and uh

I don't think that would change a lot of the shit I had to go through I don't think that would undo any of it but I I don't know it would have made it suck a little less yeah it's I mean I'm happy you know

that now it took a really fucking long time it took longer than it should have man I still I'm happy you know that now. Yeah, me too. It took a really fucking long time. Yeah. It took longer than it should have, man. I still, I mean, that voice still exists in my fucking head constantly. Right. You know, and I've gotten better at knowing that it's bullshit, but it's hard, man. It's, and it's not, you know, it's not even like, I can't blame all of that on the way I was raised. You know, it's like my mom, my mom tried her best to like, you know, to make clear that she loved me.

I mean, it was just, you know, you're dealing with two people. You're dealing with a normal person and you're dealing with a fucking, you know, a bag of drugs with legs. Like, you know, it's fucking, fucking it's it's two different things but that's just the thing i it took me like a like decades to accept the fact that i was a human being worthy of love and that was was there something that happened that helped you realize that or i um sorry i don't know what i'm trying to think of like a specific i mean if there isn't one that's okay no i mean it's you know it's it's much like the you know

the when did you when did your brain change thing it's a gradual, it's much like the, you know, the when did you, when did your brain change thing. It's a gradual process. It took a long time for me to love myself or to even like myself. Yeah. And to not, you know, beat myself up over shit I didn't do and beat myself up over shit I did do wrong. You know what I mean? And to not, to not like think that i was stuck being in the worst version of myself yeah and you know just the worst parts of me um jay said something on the the first

episode he quoted i think it was hemingway okay. Okay. And the Hemingway quote was, and he was talking about a different thing, but I guess the Hemingway quote is something along the lines of falling in love, it happens very, very slowly, little by little, and then all of a sudden at once. Yeah. And I don't know if that's accurate for what. No, and that makes a ton of sense.

Yeah. Yeah. No, and that makes a ton of sense. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it does. I mean, I looked for that approval and that validation and, you know, real weird shitty places and from weird shitty people who were bad to me. And it just took a long time for me to. You know what's funny? What? I've told this story on.

Mean Boys before. But it's. It's one of the. It's one of the. Biggest sort of. I guess like. Turning moments. Because you know.

I guess in comedy. Kind of like. Comedy sort of created this. This sort of like. Avenue where I'm like. Okay. I feel accepted by a group of people and I feel like you know

like liked and like relatively safe. Some value. Yeah. And I was also like when I started comedy I was in this terrible relationship and that ended and I and I I broke my ankle wrestling at my

friend's house And I remember fucking I I was I had a Shattered ankle Yeah I had not gone And sought medical attention

Right So I'm just laying on my mom's couch Just like Well I can't walk or anything And I literally was like Well someone take me to the hospital I put it on Facebook Not thinking anyone would actually do it

Because who could possibly give a shit And fucking Connor Of all So I'm going to take him to the hospital and put it on Facebook, not thinking anyone would actually do it because who could possibly give a shit? And fucking Connor, who I was not friends with at this point, really. We had spoken like five or six times. Yeah, man, I'll give you a ride. in comedy and really in the sort of like the second half of my life who was like really kind to me for no ulterior reason and outside of like this is not cool like i put on my comedy guy persona to go be outside this is i'm wearing sweatpants my fucking ankles broken yeah i don't you know and that uh like that meant that meant a lot like that you know be and then you know shit like that would happen more and more like you make these friends who you slowly start to realize like oh this is

we're not just co-workers yeah in this weird art thing like people are just like you know it's it's it's no one it's like you know i almost you know it's it's no one it's like you know I almost like your friend said it's like your friend Ernest Hemingway said it's like your boy E-Dog said it is like it's a it's it's a million tiny things

I think that it is the cumulative effect of a million little examples of that the world does not have to be cruel and hurtful and hateful and empty. Yeah. And even if it is, all the people in it aren't.

And not everybody thinks you're bullshit or is going to hurt you. Right. Yeah. And it's, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, shit, dude.

Fucking, what is this bullshit where you're making me feel shit that's what did you want to happen to me I don't know sorry man I got all feelings no no yeah I had to break the tension because it was

I mean all that was – I mean, yeah, thank you for all of that. Yeah. Yeah. I'm glad. So do I do my plugs now? I'm excited to do the plugs. Plugging it up.

You can catch me in an upcoming court settlement against Ramsey Bedali and the California tax board. Fuck, dude. Yeah, man. I don't know. I will have, you know, I do plan on having return guests at points. And I feel like me and you can talk about this for I mean we're gonna be talking about shit like this probably for most

of our lives yeah you know that just isn't that a weird thought like this is a closing thing that like the idea of like people that I will just know for the rest of my life is such a weird foreign concept to me it's very weird and I'm

just now making peace with like oh I'm gonna fucking yeah I'm gonna know you until one of us is dead yeah i'm gonna know connor until one of us is dead i'm gonna know even like my girlfriend until one of us you know what i mean like i'm gonna know these people now that i'm around like like no one can take my life away from me now yeah and it's uh it's it's at once a very cool feeling and a very overwhelming kind of terrifying thing. Yeah. Yeah. No, I completely get that. As someone who...

What I'm saying is no, I will not do the podcast again. Well, I'm glad you came on once. Yeah, man. And yeah, this was really great, man. Thank you for doing it. I don't know why before the show you were like, I don't know if I really fit into what the show is. I'm like, yeah, you fit in. Literally, you kind of helped design it.

Yeah, but I mean, I didn't have a clearly defined tribe. You know what I mean? Right. I mean, a family is a tribe. Yeah, that's true. A family is a tribe. And,

and also you, you were, this was a more of a leaving episode. Yeah. Well, you know what I mean? I've done left, you know,

this is a leaving and found. And that's, I mean, that's the thing. That's the thing. I'm very curious about this podcast. Cause I have, I don't know if you've noticed some trust issues.

Uh, or it's like, you've noticed, some trust issues. No. Where it's like, you're part of a thing, you leave a thing, and then, you know, you just kind of, you either connect with individuals, you connect with a group, or you just fucking die on a rock alone, and you're okay with that? And I was very okay with, you okay with being a lone dead rock guy. Oh, Kurt Cobain. Swish. But I'm trying to grow the ideas and possibilities before I decide.

I'm trying to live a little before I decide whether or not I should retire in the woods. I fucking love that, though. I'm trying to live a little before I decide whether or not I should retire in the woods you know I fucking love that though yeah it's trying to say yes to shit and a lot of that has been your influence on no and watching you fucking you know re-engage with the world has been a really cool thing to watch yeah because I think you know we talked about it earlier that you and me we came from very different places but I think we ended up in a very similar situation where we're like, well, I don't trust any of this. And everything is bullshit and it could all fucking go away tomorrow. So I'm not going to get too close to any of it. Yeah. And I, you know, it's funny.

You know, this is not me trying to take an I told you so lap. But I've spent years being like, hey, champ, hey champ you could you know talk to girls and wear pants that fit like you know and just like you know engage with you know life on a positive level without being terrified of and you know you're doing that and it is really cool to see and it does seem like yeah it's been in a pretty brief window that i've been i've been doing that but that's what i'm saying though but i'm but know what, though? You've done a little bit at a time. Sure. I'll start with the shoes. And none of it is changing

who you are as a person or having to change your entire worldview, but it's like, okay, I'm tiptoeing a little further out of the cave of my comfort zone and trying to... Not that there's anything wrong, I guess, with sort of kind of drawing in and being an internal person, but... Yeah, and that's still's anything wrong, I guess, with like, you know, sort of kind of drawing in and being an internal person, but...

Yeah, and that's still... I also, I think no matter what, I'm always going to be that way to a degree, but I'm trying to explore. There's an interesting thing being private in between isolating because you feel trauma has made you unable to connect. Yeah.

And I think that's a difference I had to figure out. Yeah. And I think it's something I've seen you working through a little bit as well I'm trying to, I'm trying to get a better grasp and that's one of the reasons I'm doing this podcast to track it and get other people's opinions on this shit

because weirdly enough we're not alone on this kind of shit no, no shit, yeah what are your plugs? fuck you, you piece of shit. No, no shit, yeah. What are your plugs? Fuck you. Fuck you, you piece of shit. Of course, listen to the Mean Boys podcast.

I host a very popular podcast called Kill Tony. I'm the number one rising comedian. Yeah, listen to the Mean Boys with me and Tom. Fucking, you know who I am. I'm kidding. You don't know who I am. Most of them probably do.

If you came over from Mean Boys, you get it. If not, listen to Mean Boys. I have an album on iTunes called Forever Nap. At some point I'll have another one called Partylicious. Yeah, and you're on Twitter and Instagram. Yeah, all the shit that Keith tells jokes. Yeah. Well, fucking thank you again, man.

Yeah, no problem. This was a really good episode. Yeah, this was... This was both very funny and it's both very funny and very... You got me in some feels a couple times.

Yeah, I got myself in some feels, man. You ginormous bitch. No, I'm kidding. Whatever, faggot. Love you, dude. Love you, too, buddy. All right.