Mike Birbiglia's Working It Out - 36. Gary Gulman: The Joke Nerd Summit You've Been Waiting For

Episode Date: April 5, 2021

These two comedy nerds discuss the elements of math, science, art, and music that go into constructing the perfect joke as they trade collected wisdom about writing from Steve Martin, Mary Karr, Robert Lowell, Philip Roth, and Anne Lamott. They also dig into the rule of 3s, growing up in Massachusetts, the difference between “book smahrt” and “street smaht” and how Gary turned tragedy into comedy in his hit HBO special, “The Great Depresh.” https://donate.hki.org/

Hey, everybody. We are back with a new episode of Working It Out. This is a very exciting episode today with Gary Gullman. But first, I want to send a quick shout-out to all of our friends who came to the Worldwide Comedy Pizza Party. This is unprecedented. We're doing two encore performances in case you missed it. We're doing April 16th and 17th because the Friday and Saturday shows sold out so quickly

that we decided, well, why don't we add some a different weekend? So April 16th and 17th, Friday and Saturday, 9 p.m. Eastern. Tickets at burbigs.com. Today on the show, we have one of the greatest living comedians. He has many, many comedy specials and albums, the most recent of which is something of a masterpiece. It's called The Great Depresh. He speaks very, very honestly about his bouts with depression in very funny and very honest ways.

We get really into craft in this episode. We get really into working out jokes. It's a very good interplay of true criticisms of jokes, which is so fun to do. And I love Gary Gullman. And I hope you enjoy my chat with the great Gary Gullman. You know, it's funny. I was re-watching The Depression.

It's like such a good special. It's so timely, course now oh thanks uh because i feel like we're all even people i've struggled with mental health for a long time i feel like even people who aren't struggling with mental health previously are dealing with it perhaps for the first time yeah and it's like it just feels like gosh it, it's like, first of all, how are you holding up? Second of all, what advice would you give for people struggling with mental health and depression issues right now? I mean, I've been very grateful that my health has stood up. up. My mental health has stood up during this because any type of interruption to your routine and the way you go about your day and a lot of the things that I used to maintain my mental

health were interrupted or changed. So I can't go to the gym every day. So I had to make adjustments. And I mean, the thing that you can do right away is get out of the house. And if you have a loved one who is suffering, drag them, drag them out of the house and get them moving a little bit. I think that's the quickest thing. But outside of that, I think it's it's very very important to speak with a professional about these things and to have somebody who can guide you through. The great thing that I always say is there's never been a better time to be mentally ill than right now as far as the treatments go. There are so many treatments and there are new things learning every day.

So I can remember it at my worst just thinking, don't give up right before bipolar in the 1920s and there wasn't a lot you could do with that. And it must have been very, very frustrating and very sad for her family to watch this vibrant woman fall apart in front of their faces. It's just tragic. I think about that with my sleepwalking all the time. It's like, I sleepwalked through a second story window, crashed through it, broke through it, ended up in the emergency and it's emergency room. And it's like, sometimes I think, well, 50 years ago, before there was sleep science, before there were sleep studies at the hospital and a wing, you know, where they study these things, they would have put me in an asylum and said, like, I think that's it.

I think that's it for him. Yeah, and there would be kids touring your cell that was set up just for you, and they would say, this is the man who sleepwalks. And it would be oh gosh it would be tragic because everybody would just say well i'm glad that's not me it's so funny because that's in some ways your special and and sleepwalk with me have that in common which is like you're confessing something to people so that they feel more

comfortable expressing that about themselves. And I can only imagine that from your special, because it's so good, is you must have had such an outpouring of people sharing their stories with you. Maybe it's too much. I would say that it's at a very manageable level so that I can I can I mean, some of the things and I'm sure you get these two, some of the things are just heartbreaking. And if I were to respond to every one of the most heartbreaking, it's it's just really it's difficult. I remember our friend Chris Gethard, before the special aired, I sat down with him and he showed me some of the things he was getting. And I've gotten similar things.

I do my best to respond, but it takes a lot out of you. Yeah, Chris Gethard, of course, did a special on HBO also called Career of Suicide where he talks about depression as well. And yeah, I've toured with Chris a lot over the years. And yeah, he gets an extraordinary amount of people. A lot of people come up to him about depression.

They come up to me about sleepwalking. It's like a big convention of mental health awareness i know i know i i i think about that that it's it's a comedy show that ends up in group therapy yeah when when i would do the the meet and greets which i i mean that that seems to be one of the bigger sacrifices we'll have to make. Those meet and greets were so, so special after the Great Depression aired where I would connect with people. And some people were in tears or would hug me. And it was really, it was so moving. One of the things that hits me when I'm watching,

and I just jotted these down, these jokes down today when I was watching the spash. Do you call it the spash? No, no, because there was this expression that the Mary Tyler Moore staff used to have when they were writing and they used to say Nakamura, which meant like gilding the lily. Oh, sure, sure. Yeah, it's too much. Yeah, it's too much. But for some reason, the word was Nakamura, which I think is funny the i'd love to know the origin unless it's racist yes yes um um you and i both grew up in massachusetts we have this a lot of stuff in common where you comment on this thing that when i you know when i saw you do the joke i just go

oh he you know he got there first which is the thing that comics have when we watch each other is we go, ah, Gary got there first. There it goes. There it goes. That. I know. Oh, it's, it's yeah. It's a difficult part of being a comedian. But the, but the one that got me was in middle school. You got the water fountain and kids push each other's heads into the water fountain and they call it a prank. And today it would be called a felony assault. I was like, oh, that's that's a perfect joke. Oh, thanks, man. I appreciate that.

I mean, that's one of those things that had, I mean, I don't know if we've discussed this, but I have kind of a part store or a warehouse of jokes over the years that they don't fit into a joke on their own, but they can fit into bigger jokes. And you go to those, And that was that was one of those. It was just I I needed something to describe the the tension and the stress of being a kid. And what was what was going through my head a lot was was trying not to get hurt all the time. It's so funny because like that thing you're saying is, uh, the thing you're describing as you have these sort of joke pieces or parts of jokes or observations and they're in the notebook. I always call it just like, yeah, I've had that in a notebook for 10 years, but it sounds like you and I, uh, have that in common where it's like, where I don't think most people when they're watching you would know that that's how you're arriving at your construction.

I forget who it was, but maybe it was Steve Martin in his Born Standing Up where he said you'll somebody told him, I think you'll use everything. The banjo you play, the magic tricks you'll you'll use everything. And I think that is a similar feeling I get when I think about just how much work we put into our writing and the idea. I mean, I'm just grateful that I have a good enough memory because I'm not especially organized as far as knowing what's in every notebook. I just know what I have so far on a million different topics and I can draw on that. And occasionally I'll have over the years typed it up. But the other thing is a lot of these things you're carrying from notebook to notebook. I know. Right. So I have instances of certain jokes and notebooks

from the 90s, but they're still making their way into notebooks in 2021. When I was thinking about your jokes, I had like a very open ended question, which, of course, has no answer, which is do you view jokes as art or science or mathematics or even music? Oh, man. All of those things, right? I think that I think there's science because there are literal formulas. And then there like I was thinking about this today and I don't know. I think I know why, because I'm I'm writing a book and I was using the rule of three within the within the book trying to give some symmetry to the it's not three examples but just three three things and I thought but in my joke sometimes I like to to subvert or or short circuit the rule of three by if you have a savvy enough audience they're

expecting a third one you slip it in on the second one and you get a you get more of a surprise on the on the laugh um because that's that's that's the science of it is trying to figure out what everybody is thinking and not not say that although there are comedians who you know what their punchline is going to be and they still make you laugh. So then there's music because there's rhythm. There's math because there are certain aspects of it that are similar to a geometrical proof. I'll put a nerd alert warning on this episode so in case there are no

in case you're not a nerd this might just be gibberish to you yeah um if i were to guess what your process is because we're friends but i don't i'm not inside your process but but i'll tell you part of my process we're we We're friends from the comedy cellar, and so I watch your set sometimes, and you watch my set sometimes. But, like, when I'm at the cellar, what I'm trying to do is figure out how few words I can use to convey a humorous idea and then figure out how many words I can use to convey the same idea

and then figure out the sweet spot between those two versions. Yeah. Is that close to your process or is your process different from that? I think I'm doing the same thing that you're doing, except that I don't have the concern about the fewest number of words. Eventually, but the sweet spot is what I'm looking for eventually because we know that certain sentences and certain words and certain jokes with in-jokes can be,

the J.P. Buck from Conan always says those are speed bumps and they're taking away from the overall laugh that you're getting. So this sounds like math, but we're doing it at this point. These things that we used to consider and write, we're doing it intuitively, which is the key, but it takes however long it takes to get to that point. I'm going to have to put an extra nerd alert on this part of the show right you have crossed a line you're in massachusetts where we grew up uh they would

call you the thing that they would say about people like me he's he's book smart book smart yeah yeah you're book smart g, but you're not street smart. I'm street smart. I'm street smart. I know how to break into things using a credit card or a brick. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Stepping away from my conversation with Gary Goldman to send a shout-out to our friends at Helix Mattresses, or as my daughter calls it, the Hewix.

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And now back to the show. So we do this thing called the slow round. And so one of the questions we ask is like, do you have a memory on a loop from childhood that isn't a story, but it's just in your head sometimes? People don't usually believe this when I tell them, but when I was eight years old, my mom, we had this toy catalog that I think came from Sears. And it had, it was basically Playboy, but for toys. It just had these great photographs of really great toys and yeah and and i recall i recall this exact thing by the way yeah the sears catalog sears

catalog is a major part of my childhood yeah okay so the the toys and and it would come out every christmas but this was the first year that I had access to it. I don't know why, and I would bring it into my room. And one of the things I wanted, but all these things were way out of our budget. But I wanted a, it was a set of bunk beds that looked like an old-timey circus cage for a for a lion and and i was just like oh my gosh i would i would be a lion but then some days i'd be the lion tamer and i just wanted that and then there were there were just things like the lego collections that were were they were probably thirty dollars but were just incredible an entire city and with the with the cars and they were probably 30 dollars but were just incredible an entire city and with the

with the cars and they were first starting to introduce the little lego people that was a big thing so i just i would make lists and adjust them and and i had really gotten so excited about this magazine i would look at it every day and one day I came home and it was gone. And I asked my mother where it is. And she said she loaned it to this woman, Wendy, who lived across the street. And her daughter and I were like best friends. And she also had a younger son. I would play with him. And I was incensed that my mother had loaned this. And also I felt like these kids were going to get the toys that I wanted. And it's it. Anyhow, I said, well, I want it back.

My mother said, well, we'll ask Wendy for it. And I I called up Wendy and I and I yelled, give me back that toy catalog or I'm calling the police. Oh, my God, no. And I went over. Oh, my gosh. And she brought it to the door and she was British. And she said, here you go, love. And I said, thanks.

And I ran back to my house. And as I was doing it, I'm like the worst little kid in the world. I'm stealing toys. And it was just I can't get the story out of my mind because it's a combination of jealousy and rudeness and impulsivity. I mean, yes, it's a kid, but at the same time, I don't like that kid. It's so complex. It's so funny because you're writing a book, and the book that I would recommend to you as you're writing a memoir

is Mary Carr's book, The Art of Memoir. Yeah, I read that. as you're writing a memoir is Mary Carr's book, The Art of Memoir. Yeah, I read that. I read it last January before the pandemic. Yeah, it's terrific. Yeah, and the other thing that I read at the very start was Bird by Bird. Oh, I've never read that one. Yeah, that is terrific terrific and that's by anne lamott and so that's that's a terrific book about about writing and i mean mainly you just

want to get over the idea that you are or for me that i am so bad at this every day. Yeah. And everything I'm reading is just crap. And you find out that, no, this is all part of it. You have to, it's that Shawshank thing. You have to crawl through 500 yards of shit to find any daylight. That's fascinating because it's like, I was asked that recently, you know, what did you fail at during the pandemic?

Someone said to me and in an interview, I read that in The New York Times today. And yeah, and I go I go everything I go. I fail at everything every day. I mean, I write hundreds, hundreds of pages of garbage. Hundreds, hundreds of pages of garbage. I can't tell you how many jokes I go through that are complete failures. Oh, I know. I know. It reminds me of this poet, Lowell, who said that poetry is this thing where you write a thousand bad poems for every good poem and you can never find an ending and that is the thing i can never find an ending to a joke it's heartbreaking there is no

true ending to a joke though if you know i know i know because that that was a great lesson because the way i think about jokes is like you have your setup which is something that's true and we all agree upon you have your punch line which is your right turn into something that's surprising but inevitable. And then you have theoretically a tag and then a second tag, which is an elaboration on the idea. It's a flourish on the main central idea. on the main central idea. However, you look at someone like Stephen Wright, one of the great comedians,

and he defies that structure entirely. So he'll say a setup, and then he'll move on. Yeah. He'll say a setup and a punchline, and he'll move on. He'll say a setup, a punchline, and then he'll go tag, tag, tag, tag, tag. And then he'll be into a nut. Then you'll realize you're zooming out into a larger story that you didn't even know that you were in.

Yeah. I mean, that man, he changed everything, I think. I mean, I just, from the first time I I heard him, I. I just remember thinking nobody, nobody can ever do this. I mean, he's singular. He's the reason I do stand up comedy. Wow. I saw him live.

I mean, I've never met him. I've never met him. Oh, yeah. I was in the same the same green room with him one time, and I wanted it to be organic. If I met him, I'd rush him, and nobody introduced me to him, so I never met him. Yeah, I know that your early stuff was more concise like that, and now you're his storyteller. But I figured that he was an influence. Yeah, definitely. Well, it's like that thing.

It's a quote that's been said by a million people, but I think the Miles Davis version is famous. It takes years to figure out how to sound like yourself. Wow. Oh, my word. I love that. And I feel like I started out in comedy trying to sound like Stephen Wright and Mitch Hedberg. And at a certain point, I go, wait a minute.

I'm Mike Perpiglia. Oh, I know. And it took like 10 years to figure that out. But it's important to have those sort of training wheels. I used to ask myself, well, how would Paul Reiser go about this joke? What would he include? How would he deliver this? And it was very helpful early on.

And eventually you've shed it. But you're usually the last person to know. Somebody will say, oh, that sounds like you. That is very Berbiglian. Yeah, yeah. I never think about it that way. And there's definitely a Gary Gullman type of joke. Is there a way that you would describe what a Gary Gullman joke is?

Oh, no. I mean, because it's I always feel like it's a it's a combination of the different things that I that I fell in love with about about comedy. But I would say that it generally It generally squeezes out all the juice or eats all the meat off the bone. But again, that goes to the fact that I needed to build and act and fill time, and I didn't really have that much access to stage time for a really long time. I used to say this from the first year I started doing comedy. I would say that my career is a function of how much stage time I get. So I would go on. I had this friend named Randy Vera, who I went to college, and he was a guitarist.

He would play at bars in Boston in that alleyway near Nick's and near the Comedy Vault. And he would play at bars in there. And when he took a break, I would go up and perform for people who weren't, weren't listening. But I was convinced that that was, that, that would count towards my, my, my internship or my, my, there's that thing, apprenticeship, my apprenticeship in, in comedy that I needed to get on stage as much as possible. And I used to say, if, if I needed to get on stage as much as possible and i i used to say if if i were to get on stage every night nothing could nothing could stop me but i think that you weren't wrong like i think that there's a lot of truth to that yeah yeah yeah like getting on you're saying you're getting on stage in an alley basically

in between a music act in an alley? Sometimes it was outside, but usually it was just in the basement of a bar. And this guy was playing music and it was just people standing there and they were all talking. Yeah. Because that's what people do when the musician is on. Sure. And so they didn't stop when the musician was off. And I would go up there and I would be yelling.

But I just knew that I at least needed to get that feeling of saying these things out loud into a microphone in front of strangers. And whether they laughed or not, and they never did, it didn't matter to me at that point. And I think it was probably helpful. So this is just material. If you have material, I would love to bounce stuff back and forth. Oh, I'd love that. Okay, great, great, great.

Yeah, I wrote down a few things. So this is just like, I don't know if you get to this stage where like, I did a version of this joke on the Frank Oz episode a couple months ago. And then I've since had another thought on it. And so I've been rewriting it, which is that a few years ago i went for my annual checkup and in in middle age your your uh medical checkup is much more involved in your 20s it's like a sitcom like and in your 40s it's like a mini. There's a lot more drama, sound effects, oxygen machines, heart rate monitors. The first episode ends with a cliffhanger. There's a test of some kind. In episode two, you get the results, but they're inconclusive.

You start to think, there's no way there's going to be seven episodes of this. And the doctor's like stick with it till the end you're like i'm trying you know at a certain age at a certain age your annual checkup becomes your semi-annual which becomes your quarterly and then one day your doctor is your roommate and then you're dead oh man i i love this whole thing and i mean you know this analogy jokes are really hard to pull off sure they're they're really hard for whatever reason i just it's it i always thought of that this this joke that became like a formula which is what's next yeah and whenever i tried to write a what's next,

it always bombed. So I just abandoned the entire formula, but the, the analogy joke is really tough, but it's a great analogy. I think you can go further with the specifics. Like I immediately thought it's single camera. There are no words to the, there are no words to the theme song. It's just, it's, it's. But that, because I also think you should get more specific maybe with an 80s sitcom. Oh, that's very good. Because a current good sitcom, actually there's some overlap with drama, right? Right, modern family. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, there's a laugh track in the 80s sitcom.

Yes. And there's no laugh track in your life. And I also wonder if you... That's hilarious. I mean, I just want to pause a moment to take in how funny an observation that is within the joke, which is there's no laugh track. And if there was, that would be unnerving. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And also, I just I really enjoy over the years watching you examine this,

this stuff that I'll tell you who is great at it was was Philip Roth the author was really great at examining aging from a from a different angle and and was was really beautiful at writing about it and it's it's always interesting to see a comedian who started off really young talk about being a an adult and then talking about being a father and and then talking about the aging process which I mean a lot of my ideas about how a 50 year old man because I just turned 50 over the summer how a 50 year old man behaves is is based on the comedians that we watched get older when we were yeah when we were kids and it's a's a different, my favorite joke about turning 50 was Todd Glass who had this joke where he would say,

when you're a kid, somebody would say, they would make fun of 50-year-olds, I'm 50, I can't believe I'm 50. And he says, he says nowadays somebody says they're 50 and they say, hey, what's up?

I'm 50. I'm in a band. We play every Wednesday. You should check us out. Stepping away from my conversation with Gary Gullman to send a shout out to my favorite underwear, MeUndies, which I found listening to podcasts. And then I tried it and I said, this is fantastically comfortable. It's like they pulled clouds out of the darn sky and made it into underwear, socks, bralettes, and loungewear.

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First-time purchasers get 15% off and free shipping breathe or not that's up to you me undies has a great offer for working out listeners first time purchasers get 15 off and free shipping to get your 15 off and free shipping go to me undies.com slash for bigs that's me undies.com slash for bigs can my voice get more excited than this i think not and, back to the show. Hit me with some jokes. Well, I was thinking that when I get back on the road, I will have to address the elephant in the room, which is the pandemic. And so, I mean, I feel like I should have something to start out with. And I was thinking of this joke, and basically I want to know what the best candy to use in this joke was. use in this joke was but i i said i knew i knew people were going to be resistant to wearing masks because i remember sitting on planes as the the pilot or the head flight attendant would tell us

that there was somebody on board who was allergic to peanuts and that we were not we were not allowed allowed to have anything and these people couldn't maintain their willpower for a two hour flight without a blank, without a Mr. Goodbar or a Nutrageous or Butterfingers but the thing is that everybody knows what's coming when you

go into that and so the You're sort of searching for a punchline that I'm not even sure you need to finish the joke. I feel like the joke's done. It's just so, it's so funny on its own. I,

it's just, it's like these people can't make it. Uh, yeah. I mean, they can't make it two hours without a Mr. Goodbar and you know, newsflash, we're going to be wearing a

cloth on our face for a year. Yeah. And but the reaction to the people sitting with me and they just assumed because I was a man of a certain age that when they rolled their eyes and went, that I would be as as insensitive to the peanuts, but it's just, it was quite obvious to me. Yeah. It's almost also like the, it's what you're describing, the sort of the rolling your eyes,

but you not reciprocating. It's almost like you didn't give them the eye rolling high five. Oh, I love that, man. That's great. My joke about that, and you can have it if you want it. I haven't done it on stage. It's just something I think. All of us just think jokes these days.

I know. I say it as though it's my joke. Meanwhile, it's an inner monologue. We were raised by people who called themselves the greatest generation. And in our lifetime, nothing like that has come along until this virus that asks us to wear a piece of cloth on our face. And the greatest generation is like whoa whoa whoa i don't know i don't know if i want to make that kind of sacrifice oh that's wild that's so true yeah i i mean i am fascinated by the greatest generation because my my father was

of that group and i i remember it just you could never complain in front of in front of my my dad because he had it so hard i i remember like wailing over stubbing my toe and and he said something like uh are there nazis at the door my gosh the way you were carrying on i thought there were nazis at the door um so i have this joke which i it occurred to me when i was re-watching the great depression i might be in your territory with this joke so i i might have to pull it back but you're the person to ask, which is when I was in high school, I joined the wrestling team and I've never been much of an athlete. I've always gravitated towards sports where you can sort of blend in like Mike's playing soccer. Wait, well, I think that's Mike.

Meanwhile, I'm lighting fires in the woods. But what's I think what's most painful for me about being a bad athlete is that I actually am competitive. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, that's so interesting. Yeah. Which is my Achilles heel. But I'm competitive. So I'm a fierce competitor who loses which is my Achilles heel and I lose so basically I have a sprained Achilles heel which I think is too much of a mixed metaphor

but this is the part that I thought was dangerously close to something you had which is I feel like the loser is the part that I thought was dangerously close to something you had, which is I feel like the loser is the unsung contributor to sports because someone has to lose for someone to win. And I've been willing to do it for 42 years, and it's not easy. You got to get out of bed every morning and put your pants on one leg at a time. The first leg, it doesn't go on because you folded it weird,

so the leg part is inverted, but then you punch through it like a karate class, and then the left one has a pen in the pants pocket, so it's like splotchy and navy blue, and then you start to put on a shirt, and you realize it shrunk in the pants pocket so it's like splotchy and navy blue and then you start to put on a shirt and you realize it shrunk in the wash so your belly's protruding which is all just foreshadowing the metaphor of the wrestling match you're about to lose and then then and then the final line is losing doesn't happen in a moment it happens all day like you need to understand that when you see a kid lose a wrestling match he also missed the bus i i can't get over the

sentence it's so good a competitive person who loses gary i can't tell you. I can't tell you how much I want that line to work, but it hasn't it hasn't cracked the bat with an audience yet. Yeah, I've thrown it up on stage and it hasn't quite connected. And I want I'm going to keep trying because I feel like there's something there. Yeah, that's I mean, that's the crux of the joke to me. And then examining the the mindset of losing. It's something that hasn't been examined. There are documentaries about teams that that win. So but there are there are iconic losers. There's the, the 80 Soviet hockey team. That's right. And perhaps you can investigate your kinship with iconic losers. And, and just also the, the, there's the, what's that expression? I show you, show me a good loser. I'll show you a loser. It's,

it's just, that's, that's, that's nonsense that there is a grace to losing and there is – like I was listening to this thing. I was listening to Kevin Garnett's biography and he was talking about being congratulated after the 2008 championship by Kobe Bryant. championship by Kobe Bryant. And Kobe in that moment was already talking shit about what was going to happen the next time and in the next season and enjoy it while it lasts. And it's like being a being a maniacal competitor is it has to be exhausting and and it's not comfortable but he would win a lot imagine having that type of having that type of competitive streak and and frequently losing and and not having that that that that outlet that's right yeah there's there's one other thing which is there's another piece of this wrestling story which i'm hoping to put in the show, which is there are three starting positions in high school wrestling.

There's the I hump you, there's the you hump me, and then there's the who humps who. That's called neutral Greco-Roman because the great existential question posed by the Greeks was indeed, who humps who? And the Romans answered that

question with everybody! And that's why it's called Greco-Roman. Oh, I love that! I wrote that this week! I'm excited about it, because it's part of a story that's working about wrestling, but the Greco-Roman thing I came up with this week, and I was like, oh, if that works,

then that's going to be a really good puzzle piece for that story. Oh, it's a great joke. And also, it's one of those things where you go on at the cellar and sometimes somebody does a joke about Blockbuster. And you're like, shoot, I can't do my Blockbuster. Nobody is going to follow or be before you with a Greco-Roman wrestling joke. Maybe catch as catch can. But tell me this, the losers thing, you have a great line about losing in the Great Depression.

And I'm trying to remember what it is. I think you're talking about the one where I talked about that Vince Lombardi line, winning isn't everything, it's the only thing. It's the only thing, yep. Yeah, and I said, well, what about collage? Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Stepping away from my conversation with Gary Gullman to send a shout-out to Freshly.

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Stop stressing about dinner. Go to Freshly.com slash for bigs for $40 off your first two orders. What else do you got for jokes? Do you have other jokes? What else have you got for jokes? Do you have other jokes? I had this other one about, it was about the last time I actually did a live show was with Colin a week or two after you performed in Connecticut.

And so when I was, I stopped off at Whole Foods before I went down there to get some snacks. And the new thing at Whole Foods is to ask that. I mean, they probably got this from from Trader Joe's where they they make you their friend. And the woman said, what are you doing tonight? And it happened to intersect with this decision to try and lie less. Oh, my God. To not just tell lies just because it's simpler and easier, but just to tell the truth. But I didn't want to say that I'm performing at a comedy show

because of all the questions that that brings about. So I just said, I'm going to a comedy show and thinking it will end. And then she says, who are you going to see? Of course, yes, yes, yes. And I said, you wouldn't know him. Yeah, that's very funny. You wouldn't know him if he was buying $17 worth of sliced mangoes from you. But the other sentence I had that I thought would be helpful was,

I'm not one of these guys who needs to get recognized. Like I've heard of comedians who will ruin their, like famous, more famous than me, who if they don't get recognized, it could ruin their day. And then, but I don't feel I'm in that category, but I'm also in a category of, I don't, I don't need to get recognized. I also don't need to not get recognized. I don't need any more reminders of the, of the, this thing that I've, I've dedicated 27 years of my life to, and I'm a virtual unknown.

seven years of my life to and i'm a virtual unknown that's very funny it's like that well first of all i'd like to unpack the lying thing you make a proclamation to lie less why i'm curious why because i certainly like when people ask me if i sit in an airplane what do you do and i always say say, like, I'm a temp. You know, I'm an administrative assistant. I always say I'm a chemist. Yeah. Oh, a chemist. It's too hard to answer questions if I said I was a chemist.

But nobody has a chem question. Oh, that's interesting. That's smart. But so why did you want to lie less in the first place? Kant. Oh, okay. Imates yourself. And I remember studying him in college and he said, under no circumstances should you lie. And I said, what about if you're hiding Jews, should you lie? And then he said, and then it was like, not even if you're hiding Jews. And I thought, well, that's a must lie. But then I thought, all right, unless I'm hiding Jews, I'm not going to lie.

And then or whatever the equivalent of hiding people under under oppression is. And then I said, why do I why can't I just accept myself and be myself and I'll tell people that I'm I'm doing this. And I'll tell people that I'm doing this. But it's exhausting to have to tell people you're a comedian in these circumstances because they just make you feel the way my family makes me feel. Or they'll say you make a living at that. And it's just – I wind up feeling insulted. But it's usually around – my lying usually is to keep me from having conversations about what I do. I'm trying to find,

like I think what you're describing about lying is very relatable because I feel like that's a self-examination that all of us go through. But I think that the part of not being recognized, I don't think it's relatable. Like when you describe the hiding jews in nazi germany like to me i'm like okay i get it even though i'm not jewish i get it but like the other stuff it's like like i feel like it's almost like uh it's almost

maybe this is a is is even a worse version or maybe this is maybe this is not as good as what your version is is like so she says who are you going to see and i i said colin quinn and she had never heard of him and i thought that was a relief that's great you know yeah because clearly she just doesn't have taste in comedy if she doesn't have taste in comedy then she's not going to know who gary gallman is she wouldn't know gary gallman is if he was buying nine pounds of prunes at her register i love that i i mean because it's so petty but it actually is sort of a a swelling of that feeling of I don't really care for her taste in comedy. Yeah, yeah.

She doesn't. Yeah, I love that. That's really helpful, man. Thank you. Because it also contextualizes you with Colin also. I think people know who Colin Quinn is to some degree. He was on Saturday Night Live. Also, I think people know who Colin Quinn is to some degree. He was on Saturday Night Live. You know, so it's like, it's just, we know that he's a well-recognized comedian. He's been on Broadway, et cetera. Like, it just has just a certain contextualization.

Kevin Pollak once gave me a piece of advice that was really smart when I opened for him, I believe in maybe Baltimore years ago when I was starting out where I was talking about sort of not being famous or well-known. And he goes, you know, you have to do a little bit of work for them because they think you're famous because you're you're on the stage. Oh, wow. you're famous because you're you're on the stage oh wow and and so and so so you need to say he goes like when i talk about you know working with tom cruise and a few good manners and that i go look don't get me wrong you know i'm in the movie too but that's tom cruise that's blah you know what i mean like he yeah he he he places the audience in the exact you know and that's blah, you know what I mean? Like he, he, he, he places the audience in the exact, you know, and that's actually where I ended up writing this joke for Thank God for Jokes years later,

where I say I was hosting the Gotham Independent Film Awards. And in the room, it's like Matt Damon and John Krasinski and Emily Blunt and all these people. And I go, look, I get that you came here to see me tonight. But I also know at some point this week, you told someone who you were going to see tonight. And they said who? Ha ha ha! Oh, I love that.

Is there a nonprofit that you want the show to contribute to this week? Yes, Helen Keller International. They give children vitamin A supplements that cures blindness. And it's very efficient so that it doesn't cost a lot, like a dollar or something, to give a single supplement. And over time, it cures blindness. Oh, that's incredible. Yeah. That's amazing.

Well, I'll contribute to them, and we'll put a link in the show notes so people can contribute as well. And Gary, thanks a lot for doing this. I can't stop talking to you. Well, we are like-minded, and we love comedy, so this has been a pleasure. It's always nice to see you,

and I can't wait until we can see each other in person again. Bunch of nerds sitting around talking about jokes for two hours. Working it out because it's not done. Working it out because it's not done. Working it out

because there's no That's going to do it for another episode of Working It Out. Gary Goleman, holy cow. I love that guy. You can follow him on Instagram, at Gary Goleman. On Twitter, at Gary Goleman.

Try to see him live, because he is absolutely one of the best. Our producers of Working It Out are myself, along with Peter Salamone and Joseph Berbiglia, consulting producer Seth Barish, sound mix by Kate Balinski, associate producer Mabel Lewis, thanks to my consigliere Mike Berkowitz, as well

as Marissa Hurwitz and Josh Upfall. Special thanks to Jack Antonoff and Bleachers. Further music, as always, a very special thanks to my wife, the poet Jay Hopestein. Our book, The New One, you know this by now, but if you don't have it, it's a real labor of love. Love, we wub you, and we wub this book.

I flubbed that line, but I wubbed how I flubbed it. That's a callback to the Sklar Brothers episode if you didn't listen to it. Our new book, the new one, is at your local bookstore. As always, a special thanks to my daughter Una who created our radio fort. Thanks most of all to you out there who are listening to our show. And you are telling your friends. And you are telling your friends and you are telling your enemies we we're just here working it out see you next time everybody