Monday Morning Podcast - Monday Morning Podcast 8-23-22

Episode Date: August 23, 2022

Bill rambles about his show at Fenway Park.

Hey, what's going on? It's Bill Byrne. It's time for the Monday Morning Podcast for Monday, August 22nd, 2022. What's going on? How are you doing? Hey, how the fuck are you doing? I'm recording this on Tuesday, a day late. I apologize. I apologize to one and all. I didn't mean to offend anybody by claiming that Tuesday is Monday. I identify as Tuesday. Tuesday identifies as Monday. Yeah, I just had a fucking one of those travel days yesterday. I was flying out of Boston, Logan, and I woke up in the morning and I saw the clouds and it started to rain and I knew it was going to suck. Yeah, it fucking just one of those days. Oh my god, in your field life, raping someone's head off. Did anybody see that? Did I talk about that?

Yeah, I already talked about that. That fucking three-part documentary about Woodstock 99. It's kind of an amazing thing where nobody on any level from the bands to the promoters, to the audience members, nobody took responsibility for what the fuck happened there. I feel like all the people that snuck into the event in 1969 and 1994 should have apologized. The promoters should have apologized. And the bands should have said, yeah, maybe we should have said, hey, everybody, just remember, look out for each other out there. This is about peace and love instead of just fucking winding them up even more. Or my favorite was just everybody being like, yeah, I just felt really fucked up. So we just got the fuck out of there.

It felt like someone was going to get hurt. So I left. Anyway, yeah, it was, yeah, just fucking woke up. It was like 800 foot ceilings in like zero visibility. So I was like, wow, I'm going to guess that we're going to be delayed. I had a nice little fucking up and down flight, all right? And I'm not talking about the mile high club. I'm talking about a nice quick flight. All right, just leave Boston, go up, be in the air for an hour or so, come right down land, go through customs, the easiest customs ever, Canada. Oh, how are you? Thanks for showing up. They're not like that. I'm kidding. You know, as funny was Kenny, the lady at the at security. Is there anything better than like a fucking beautiful chick that's got a fucking gun?

You know, feel like you're in a fucking spy movie. She was going, she's like, she goes, you're working here? I said, yeah. It goes, where you working? And Kenny was like, I don't know how to say it, the Scotia bank, orita. And she just fucking broke on this big smile. And she just goes, Scotia bank, orita. Kenny was like, yeah. I didn't know if I'm saying it right. Scotia bank, Scotia bank, Ariana. Yeah, we had like a fucking one o'clock flight. And I don't know what it was. No, was it two o'clock?

Yeah, it was two o'clock flight. And I remember at some point, because I was, you know, I had the big gig that Fenway the night before was kind of not enough because I was sleeping at one point, they're like, okay, we're finally going to push away from the gate. We got to sit here on the tarmac. They're giving us a time of 418. So we'd already been sitting on the plane for like two hours. Just one of those deals. And then we we take off. And then when we landed because we were so late, there was no gate available. And we stayed on the ground for like another fucking 45 minutes. It basically took me from 12 noon to about eight o'clock at night to get from Boston to Toronto. So I apologize for not having the podcast out earlier. Okay, I know that was just a bunch

of excuses. You're probably thinking, well, hey, man, like, why didn't you just record when you were on the plane sitting there on the tarmac? Why didn't you make use of your time? You know, maybe I could have done that. I don't know. But all I know is I'm fucking here in Toronto and I got two gigs that I'm very I'm looking forward to. And I'm finally in one city for more than one night. So I rented a drum kit. I'm going to go over to the arena. I'm not fucking play some shit. Got to have a good time. And and with that, I've been kind of avoiding talking about Fenway because I don't even know how to wrap my head around that that even happened.

There's really, I don't know, there's no fucking words to put into what that experience was like. And it was it was the biggest crowd I've ever been in front of. It just went on forever. They put the stage right in center field, which was the most perfect place ever for a performer, I think, you know, that's the one thing that there's one my major walk away of that gig was if you are a center fielder in Major League Baseball, you have the best seat in the house. As far as being able to take in a ballpark, you know, it was just I was standing on stage and straight 12 noon, it just said Fenway Park all the way up at the top.

And to my right was the Green Monster, where Cal and Fisk hit the foul pole in 1975 on my left was the pesky pole. And the crowd just went on forever. And then it just went into the stands and just went all the way up into the night. And at the top, it said Fenway Park. And it was the perfect evening. There was a nice breeze. And the fans, it was they went to a comedy show, and you could take them on a ride, you could bring them up, you could bring them down. You know, if I wanted to make it quiet, they would all be quiet. I don't think I got heckled once. I couldn't believe it. I was worried because, you know, the show was supposed to start at seven, and we didn't go on until eight, because the lines were so long and people had

to like put their phones into those yonder bags, because for whatever reason, people really like to hold comedians accountable for jokes. They for some reason really like to, I don't know what, they just want to get you in trouble. And they spend all of this energy doing that. And I think it's because they can get us. And there's a feeling of satisfaction where if they sort of devoted that same sort of energy to like the pharmaceutical industry, the fucking warmongers, the, you know, the banks and all of that, they would just get nowhere and it would be frustrating where with us, they can be like, I can't believe you said that. And then, you know, you can at least get some attention. I don't know what it is. So anyway,

we had to make sure all the phones were locked up, which is, you know, fucking sucks for people coming in. But I will tell you this, it makes for a way better show because people aren't looking at their phones. And now that I think of it, I did see one guy looking down at his phone and I was going to make a joke about him checking the scores on the West Coast game and call him a degenerate gambler. Because I kind of forgot that's what was happening. Anyway, so, you know, we made like a little meat, we filmed the show, and we made like a little mini documentary about me starting out in Boston and all of that. And one of the spots we went to was Fenway Park. And I went in there and Lady Gaga was performing there that night on the Friday, I think,

when we went to film. And I went in there and I was fucking nervous. I'm not gonna lie to you, I was nervous. Like, oh, you know, this is a big one. Don't fuck this up. But when I went in there, I don't know what it was. It's just because it is a small ballpark. I mean, it's fucking huge for a comedy show. But like you go in there and your mindset is a baseball game. And it's just a little place. It's a little intimate place. It's why I think it's the best ballpark by far to go see a baseball game. And I went in there and I just had this feeling I'm like, this is going to be fucking awesome. And it's not going to be hard. It's actually going to be easy. This is going to be great. And I was walking around the park when we were shooting a few things. And it just made me

want to go to a baseball game. And all of these memories were coming back like, you know, I was doing that when I was on stage. Like, you know, I was joking. I was like, make sure you take it all in. And I'm like, you know, I can't take it all in. I'm not fucking sailing. But I kind of was able to. Because right in front of me, it just said Fenway Park. And then I had all of these memories and I would be looking around going like I saw a father and son get into a fight right there. One of the funniest fucking things I ever saw in my life. It was just, just dude, I don't know, his son had some sort of issue. Like, I don't know what.

He kid wasn't drink. He had some sort of mental issue going on. And he was fucking a big kid. And he was getting all amped up and his dad was telling him to calm down. And it was just like, and the kid just had enough of his dad and they just fucking went. And the kid connected first. And then the dad threw a fucking really tight, efficient fucking body shot, which I thought came from a place of love. He didn't head hunt. He fucking hit him in the side. This was the 80s. All right, there wasn't a lot of help for parents stressed out with some six foot four kid that was, you know, I don't know. I don't, I don't, I still to this day don't know what the issue was. Something going on

there. So you, I don't know. It was like funny, just I don't know why it was funny. It was just funny because it was like fucking sad. And, and, and the dad did what he had to do. And he fucking stopped it because it was getting scary because you didn't know what was going to happen. I don't know. You know, look, I don't, I don't, I just, it's something I saw. So I was thinking about that. And then I looked in the upper deck and it's like, that's the time I was drinking. And I literally blacked out for three innings. And when I came to my shirt, I just had mustard all over it because I'd eaten a hot dog. And when I came around, like people was, I could just sense people sort of looking at me on the side of their eye. And so I just started talking to people,

you know, to let them know I was back and I could just tell the way that they were looking at me like some I did something fucked up. Probably just them watching me eating the hot dog. Like, I mean, mustard was all over my fucking shirt. Like I used it as a napkin or something. I don't know what I remember I was wearing a blue Michigan Wolverine t-shirt and said Michigan in yellow. And then I just had mustard all over the fucking thing. When I looked along the first baseline, I was thinking like that's where I went in 1986. When Roger Clemens was, I believe, having his first Cy Young season, and he'd already established himself as this up and coming power pitcher. It was only his second year in. And I remember he had won like some

ridiculous amount of games in a row. We went to the game in like May or June or something like that. And he was already like fucking like 10 and 0 or 12 and oh and something. And I went with my dad and we had standing room only tickets along the first baseline. The first time I went to a game was in right field sat in the blue seats. We saw him play the Tigers. All of that shit. Dwight Evans gunning people down from fucking right field. So I was able to think all of that stuff while I was doing my show. But like, you know, we came down early, we did like a sound check. And I just remember thinking like, this is just going to go great. This is going to be great. Right. And then the fucking show started and like, I don't know, man, I got really fucking like

antsy. It was weird. It wasn't nervous. I was just like, I just want to fucking go, why it's got to get up there. It's got to get up there and do this. And I finally, you know, Tony V was on stage. And I was standing in the tunnel that center field garage all those years. I just saw like, what the fuck is in there? You know, I got to be in there, right? And I'm sorry, guys, it's just so much shit to try to remember. First of all, our fucking green rooms, we had we had to walk into the Red Sox dug out and go down that tunnel. And all of those years of watching them go down there, I thought you just went like fucking 20, 30 feet down and you just walked into the clubhouse. It's actually you walk into the left is the batting cages

and like exercise bikes and shit like that. Then you go straight, you make a left, you go up like three stairs, you make a right, go up another three stairs, and then you make another right. And you walked like, you know, like five feet and then a left into like the clubhouse. And I always thought you just walked straight in and like there it was. And there was a flat screen TV for Chris Sale to beat the shit out of, but it was, it wasn't like that. And so, but anyway, we were like beyond where that was just sitting in the dressing room. It was funny when we were in the dressing room, I literally felt like I was sitting in like a hotel, like waiting to do some corporate gig. And then finally I was just like, because it was taken so long with the yonder bags, kind of like

me telling this fucking story, I was like, I got to go out and see what's going on. So we went out, me and Tony V, we stood in the fucking dugout and saw all of these people coming in. And that's why I just got so fucking excited, like this is going to be fucking unbelievable. So anyway, they finally bring us around. Tony V goes up, I'm standing in that garage area in center field. And Tony immediately is getting laughs. It's going great and everything. And I'm basically tiptoeing towards the stage. And I come up the stage and had a little lounge area with like couches and stuff where the lovely Nia was hanging out. And I was watching Tony and I was just like, holy shit, this is just a comedy show. You know, it's just in a baseball stadium,

this is fucking bananas. And Tony fucking crushed. And then we did the, we showed the trailer to old dads, people really liked it. And then they brought me out and I came out to Aerosmith moving out. One of my favorite fucking deep cuts of Aerosmith. Just sounded like a badass song. You know, Aerosmith is so connected to Boston, it just seemed right to go out to that. And I don't know, I went out on stage and for some reason I just started making fun of Fenway Park, like the signage something about DraftKings. I vaguely remember doing that, like you would, just in any other gig. And I don't know, I just did my show and I had, I still can't believe it happened. Still can't believe it happened. Everybody fucking laughed when they were supposed to laugh.

I never got heckled. It was absolutely perfect. And I felt like I was up there for only like eight minutes. I think I did like an hour and 20, but I felt it felt like eight minutes. And it was so fucking mind blowing. Like when I got off stage, I had to ask people for like 10 minutes, was it good? Was it all right? Did I do it? And they were like, it was fantastic. It couldn't have gone any better. I was like, you sure? There was one part I thought I lost them a little bit. I was like stammering when I, when I got off stage and then we went up, you know, after party was up in right field. And it was, I don't, it was little, when I said thank you to people at the end of the night, I was, I almost got choked up. It was so fucking unbelievable.

And then in the end, me and Tony was standing, you know, waiting for it sort of to clear out in the right field and people were walking out those exits in center field. We were just standing down there looking at them. And a few people saw me and Tony and they started yelling, you know, up to us and everything. We, you know, we felt like we won some election or something. All these people just yelling up and yelling down to them. And I was watching all the people walking out. And I think just watching all of the people walking out and then waving and saying thanks and they had a good time was as good a feeling as be going up there, doing the show. And then we had the after party and we were sitting up and basically it was like center field

is where we were like 10 rows up from the Ted Williams seat. And we were just sitting there, me and all my friends, like comedian friends and my friends from high school turned it into like a cigar bar. And after a while, no one was talking about the show. We were just sitting around telling funny stories about growing up in like, you know, the 70s and 80s, me and all my friends and my family was there and it was just fucking, it was an amazing night. And I still can't believe it happened. I just want to thank everybody for coming out. And it was fucking perfect. To the point, there was no hangover after the show. You know, I had yesterday off and I was really worried that like I was going to be like,

you know, now I'm on the other side of it. Now what? And it hasn't been like that at all. It's just like fucking that was unbelievable. I can't believe I got to do that. It couldn't have gone any better. And it's kind of fucking awesome that it's not hanging over my head anymore because I'm not going to lie to you. I played that gig off the whole time. Like, what are you thinking? I'm like, and I'm not really thinking about it. I'm just working on my act. You know, how do you play at baseball stadium? Well, you know, I guess we're going to find out. I just had all those stupid fucking answers. But in my head, I was like, I don't know. I don't know how I'm that was, that was what was really going on. So I had to keep that at bay by pretending to be

overly relaxed about the gig. That's basically the truth of it. And now that it went well, I can admit to you that I was, you know, I've obviously, you know, because of my lack of athletic ability, I never fucking played a game seven in my life. I have no idea what that feels like, but I feel like I have felt the closest thing of like, my feeling was for fuck's sakes, why can't the gig be right now? Why can't they just just just get me out there? And if I'm going to lose, let's get it over with. And if I'm going to win, let me just go out there and win and let us fucking get this over with in the back of my head. I'm like going like, no, no, no, no, but don't look at it that way. You got to go out there and make sure you take it in. And all of

that, there was all of that stuff. So, you know, and then meanwhile, as this thing was hanging over my head, I was having, as always, you know, I go back, I go back east to Boston for like, you know, 10, 12 days, these last couple of years. And I hit all of these places, you know, from my childhood, and I added a new one. I went to this pizza place in fucking East Boston that lived up to the hype. All right, I'm going to give you guys the name of it here at the risk of, you know, people getting mad like, dude, don't say what the fucking spot is. There's a place if you ever go to Boston. I hope I say it right. San Tarpeos is where I went. You know, there's all of these places, you know, Linwood Cafe, Cape Cod Pizza, Town Spa. There's one that I still have to go to

called Pleasant Cafe in Roslindale. And then all these places, they just have these little personal size bar pizzas. And that's sort of the Boston style pizza. And it's funny, like, I'm saying these places because, you know, New Yorkers will come up. And they'll be like, hey, you know, I went to Boston, the fucking pizza sucks. And it's like, you know, it doesn't, you just don't know where to go. And the reality is, is this is even in New York City, the reality with New York City is there's only five or six places to go. However, there's like 15,000 fucking places to buy a slice. And those five or six places in New York are so fucking good that the reputation is through the ceiling. And I know Chicago's the same way. And I still don't know

where to go in Chicago. You know, everybody makes fun of it. You know, I remember John Stewart said it's not pizza, it's fucking lasagna, the deep dish style. But there has to be a reason why it's so popular there. So I would imagine in Chicago that there's like five or six places to go. So I went to this place, San Tapio's in East Boston, with club soda Kenny. And we were, because I was in Saratoga Springs, New York, the Saturday night, I did, what did I do? I did Wednesday two shows. I did giggles on Friday. I did Nick's comedy stop, which is where I started my career 30 years ago, over 30 years ago. And then I went to Saratoga Springs on Saturday. And then Sunday night, I did Fenway. So I was

beyond ready. So anyway, before we went to Saratoga Springs, this place East Boston's right near Logan Airport. And we swung in there and ended up being like bigger size pizzas. And the crust was a lot thicker, was a different style. It wasn't that classic Boston bar pizza. But I'm going to tell you that anytime I go someplace new, I always get the plain cheese, the margarita, because I, you know, you can hide behind your toppings. I want to see, does your sauce have the fucking zing? You know, with the cheese or whatever? I sound like fucking Dave Portnoy right now. And this place totally lived up to the hype, man. It was fucking delicious. And what I find with all great pizza places is they understand that the

job of the cheese is to fucking compliment the sauce. That's where you go to the next level. All of these fucking idiots that think the cheese is the star of the show, you know, that's the starting quarterback, you know, to the point they literally stick cheese in the fucking crust. They don't know how to make pizza. Anybody else where, you know, the tomato sauce, the pizza sauce that they put on, and it's got that zing, that tang to it, and then the cheese just fucking seamlessly blends into it. I'm getting hungry right now. It was absolutely fucking delicious. And I've only known like the South Shore places. And when I was really young, you know, I lived up on the North Shore before I came down South, but I was too young. You know,

I moved in like the mid seventies down to the south, my family moved down to the South Shore, so I missed out on all those places. So anyway, when you go up to Boston, you know, go to those fucking places. And if you find some other ones, let me know about it. Yeah, I'm trying to see. I got a whole bunch of this marble head house of pizza. That's another one I have to try out. I'm sort of determined to go to every one of those little bar of pizza spots, you know, over the years when I go to Boston. And so if you guys have like your spots, that's, that's the really cool thing I think about living in Massachusetts is every two to three towns, you know, has a place as a little bar, a little hole in the wall looking like a dive bar type of

place that just makes a fucking outstanding pizza that everybody in the, you know, the area like that's your spot that you go to. So I got to do a little bit of that when I was at Logan airport before, you know, waiting on the delay, you know, I got to go to, it was a Kelly's roast beef that they have there. There's also Bill and Bob's roast beef. I had Kelly's roast beef. It was fucking delicious. Although the bar tended to fucking annoyed me when we showed up, you know, we're standing there and it was just like, what do we do? Do we sit down? We can talk to him. Do we order from you? Like, and he's like, God, do we order from you? And then I said, yeah, or do we have to take like a picture? Do we take a picture of this thing here? You know, because they have that little

fucking bar code looking thing on the table. And then the guy just goes like, you know, okay, you guys are asking me two different things right now. He does one of those things. And I was just like, I can't remember what I said to him. I said, yeah, we're trying to fucking test your memory, you douche. I fucking, I think there was somebody else earlier that day. Oh, I know, we went through fucking TSA. And for whatever reason, I wasn't, you know, pre-checked. I thought it was, I always am. I walked by the lady, I showed her my ticket, whatever. And then there was this fucking guy at the TSA thing that he was one of those sing-songy cunts. You know what I mean? Where he'd be like, you don't have the right idea. No, the right ID

or whatever, blah, blah, blah. And he was like doing that, but it was like totally passive, aggressive over the top. You know, everything was like, go fuck yourself underneath it. And I got up there and like the way he said that you're not TSA pre-check, I was looking at him like, is this guy fucking with me? Like, why would you say that in that happy tone? Like, hey, you're going to have to go to the back of another line. Like, I just want a car on the price is right. So I was looking at him like going like, all right, is he just fucking with me? Does he know I'm a comedian? So he's trying to break my balls. And I just sort of sat there. And then I realized he was serious. I was just like, okay, all right, no worries. And I just kind

of went over to the other line. And then I was standing there thinking about it. And I was like, I don't know, maybe I'm wrong, but was it me or was that guy like really thrilled to tell us to get the fuck out of that line? So maybe that's what it was. So then I go to the fucking roast beef gun. He's like, okay, you guys were asking me two different things right now. Like, shut the fuck up. We asked you two really simple things. How the fuck do we order a fucking sandwich here with this new Buck Rogers technology, where I just point my phone at the thing. I don't take a picture because I always end up taking a picture of the fucking thing. That actually happened

earlier in that week when we fucking calling up to make sure that we had, I was trying a different pizza place. And we're like, do you have just calling over just making sure you have a record of our order? And the guy goes, I don't. It's like, well, we ordered online. And the guy's like, well, I don't have a record of it. And it's like, well, can we just order through you? And he's like, actually, no, you cannot. We have a company that handles all our orders. It was like, you're at the place. You speak English. We speak English. Can we just order two fucking pieces through you? And he's like, Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. You can't. It's like, well, that's what the fuck was I don't know what the fuck that was. I have a problem. Can you help me? No, I

cannot. Who says it like that? Don't you usually just go, you know, unfortunately, I can't. I know this is a crazy system. I don't own the business. This is the way they run it. It makes no sense to me. I apologize. You know, no, I cannot. Hey, I'm hanging from a cliff. I got two fingers left. Is there any way you can help me up? I cannot help you up. Unfortunately, you got it with your hand that's dangling from the cliff. Can you reach into your pocket and get out your phone and call the park ranger? We outsource helping people falling from a cliff. Anyway, anyway, I don't know. Maybe this is just the fucking shit I was holding in to do with, you know, so I wouldn't freak out and do the gig. So I know I just babbled for a half an hour. People, I did stand stand up at Fenway Park

in front of almost fucking 40,000 people. It was like 38,000 or 39,000 people. It was the biggest fucking crowd I've ever been. It just went on for fucking ever and they were all amazing. Oh, and I also forgot, you know, it was my 35th year high school reunion and there was a bunch of people I went to high school with were hanging in a bar that was inside of Fenway Park somehow. I don't know how that works. And the security guy took me up through the back way and I walked in through the back door into the crowd, literally right into my high school reunion. And I got to see like, you know, I can only do it for a minute because it was, I had to do the show and there was, you know, it was super fucking loud and it wasn't just the class of 87 there. It was,

it was just, you know, a bunch of people also going to the show. So I was only able to be in there for like 10 minutes, but I got to see like 20 or 30 people that, you know, some of whom I, you know, I don't think I had seen since I fucking, we graduated, man. And it was just great seeing all of them. I had a really cool graduation, graduation class, like I had a real mellow grade that liked to party and a bunch of funny fucking people in there. And I got to see a good, you know, I feel like 20 or 30 of them before I dip back out again. It was kind of like the perfect night. All right, I'm done babbling. All right. I know that you guys are probably rolling your eyes at this point, but it was fucking, it was an experience that I will never,

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the Fenway gig. I was thinking about all the gigs that I did that led up there. I remember when I was living in New York, you know, after I did stand up for three and a half years and moved down to New York and then I came back and I headlined spaghetti freddies. Which to me is one of the worst names ever for a fucking restaurant. There's just something about it rhyming. It's just silly. It just doesn't make me feel like you're going to take anything seriously. Spaghetti freddy, like they just get a fucking, you know, reaching to the pot with a big spoon swirling around and then pull out a bunch of spaghetti and then just fucking throw it, like hang on to the spoon and just zing it across the room. There's your fucking spaghetti. So I played the basement of spaghetti

freddies on route one in Norwood right next to that golfing driving range and there was a Howard Johnson's across the parking lot and I did fucking stand up there too over the years. I think if you go up route one at some point, every restaurant had an open mic or something like that or Nick's Comedy Stop. Like Nick's Comedy Stop, I remember had, oh fuck sorry, tired here. Nick's Comedy Stop had like these satellite rooms. They had their downtown main room and then they would have them like in Chinese restaurants or there was like this fucking like nightclub ballroom looking place out on Framingham on route nine. There was one in Randolph's like the Holiday Inn. There was the Maui in Brockton Mass with the highest fucking stage ever. It was like you were standing on top of a

refrigerator box except it was solid. I remember that you were way up in the air on this little fucking postage stamp of a stage for some fucking reason. Like your feet were like five feet above the heads of the people sitting down on the front row. I don't know why and the room wasn't even that big. They just had you up there. I don't know why. I felt like you were in Superman talking to Lauren Green or some shit. Anyway, and then they had the Cowloon in Saugus, another Chinese restaurant. Just all of those gigs came back but I remember when I did Spaghetti Freddy's. They had a function room down in the basement. So are you on in here? I fucking went when I tell you dude like there was like eight people in the crowd. There was like and I knew

like six of them. It was like you know my family members came out and a couple of their friends and then there was like a two top of strangers and I'm trying to play this fucking gig by just looking over everybody's head because I actually am related to 80% of the crowd and I still somehow had like a decent set but I just remember I just remember being really embarrassed. I don't even wait. I don't even think it was embarrassing at that point in my career because I wasn't selling any tickets. I think that the victory was as shitty as this gig is. I am headlining it. I've worked my way up to headlining the basement of a Spaghetti Freddy's

in Norwood, Massachusetts. So I think I on some level I felt like my career was still moving forward while at the same time I was also thinking like are you really headlining on a gig like this or you more just sort of going on last and I still think I had an okay set and I don't know yeah there was just a lot of those moments that I guess should have been like humiliating enough to make you want to think about doing another job but like if you love doing stand-up that never enters your head you just sort of look at them as just funny stories to tell your friends. Yeah I played a place called Spaghetti Freddy's basically in front of my family members and a couple people I went to high school with and this random couple.

Oh my god I just remember too like the fucking I remember across the parking lot between the driving range between the two places was a driving range that other place was a Howard Johnson's and I remember playing the lounge area and it actually ended up being a guy actually killed it was a crowded bar and no one was fucking really listening and I went up there and I improv something that got people to pay attention and I was actually able to get on a little bit of a roll and did like five minutes and I got off stage and there was this comedian Greg Carey who I had not seen in like 20 years who showed up to my gig in Queens New York with Tommy Yamato and it was so great to see him another guy who was always nice to me just

like Tony V and would help you out and everything was not you know some of it just it was just when I started and stand-up stand-up was in a nosedive it was like in a free fall coming out of the 80s where all of a sudden people just didn't want to go out to comedy clubs anymore and it was it was like a housing bubble except with stand-up and all of these rooms were collapsing and the work was not really drying up as much as it was coming back down to like the level that it should have been at and a lot of people were getting squeezed out so there was a lot of bitter headliners and Greg Carey and Tony V would never like that because they were both funny guys so they weren't like nervous they they knew that they were going to be fine I guess

I don't know why they're just good people I have no idea so anyway um yeah I remember a fucking bomb in there I'm just gonna be telling stories the whole fucking time all of my early day gigs like route one to me is an amazing like highway because when I'm on the north shore that's all like my childhood when I was really really young and some of the places that I played not just the kaolun or giggles if you kept going up north I remember um um I remember Alan the monkeys which was uh had dame cook it was a sketch group they'd all do stand-up and then they do sketch in the end it was dame cook bobby kelly al del benny and um oh my god I'm old what was the last

kid's name it'll come to me um and I opened for them they booked themselves in like this fucking elks club or some shit like that because they had won the bcn comedy riot at stitches and they were trying to headline their own show whatever and like we were all young and we didn't know how to promote shit and there was like fucking like five people there and I remember all of us we were just like they were like embarrassed but they were also like laughing and I was laughing and it was kind of this fun moment because we were all so young and it felt cool to me to be doing their gig because everybody else's gig that I was doing had been doing it like 20 years and they were like legends of boston comedy and we were just a bunch of young punks and as much as

nobody showed up it was still I was working you know a show from these people that were part of my graduating class and uh long story short whatever it was just it was comedy death but like we all supported each other and laughed at each other's jokes um yeah all the way up there rob steen used to have gigs up there all of these guys I just remembered all of these fucking gigs all the way up to like I remember working bars in like revere um remember dick door these had like rooms all over the place like fucking drake it and danvers and all of these fucking places over the years and I think uh I don't know just driving around waiting for this fucking giant gig I just all of those memories came back it was just a really

really cool time so I apologize gonna be an old billy reminisce here um I don't feel like I've been even remotely funny on this one let's um let's get to some of your questions babe we can get to some comedy here um all right what do we got here uh all right boston bill I'm in boston for the first time to see your show I think the stereotypes are dead on and dead wrong lots of meatheads absolutely I am a proud meathead I was always I was joking with somebody was talking about how massachusetts has the boston area has some of the great universities in the country you know Harvard MIT and even like boston university and like but barely anybody from massachusetts goes there we have a bunch of like free free agent smart kids

from around the world that come in there and um you know as much as you know we liked good will hunting we all knew that there was really no smart kid that came from a broken home that could figure out a math problem that had like sentences and triangles in it you know I mean that's just next level fucking math or whatever and no one ever said deal like apples okay other than that it's a great fucking movie lots of meatheads but they seem oddly smart and are always very helpful I was trying to talk to someone stupid for the experience well aren't you a fucking cock sucker you just went up there and you were trying to talk to somebody dumb so you could just have an experience of

talking to somebody's dumb dumb I talked to a guy dropping lots of ours and other various letters for a few minutes and he was really intelligent but tell me why is mass whole a thing um well part of it is just a simple thing that if you travel what you'll quickly realize is that you know especially as a comedian if you're having a bad set and you need a laugh and you don't have a local reference to identify with the people just make fun of whatever state the state you're in borders and you'll get a laugh like if you're in Wisconsin you make fun of Minnesota or Illinois right if you're in Iowa you make fun of Illinois but what's north of that Minnesota if you're in North Dakota you make fun of South Dakota or Montana if you're in

Montana you make fun of Idaho you get the deal that's all you do because so like mass whole comes from you know Maine Vermont New Hampshire Connecticut Rhode Island and New York I think that that's where it all comes from basically a Maine doesn't border Massachusetts but you can drive through just the bottom corner of New Hampshire and you're out of Massachusetts and into Maine within like fucking a half an hour and I just think uh I don't know we go up to different states well you know what we go up to fucking Lake Winnipeg Saki or Sugarloaf Mountain skiing or fucking you know getting drunk on a boat and we act like a bunch of fucking assholes probably I don't know I grew up in Massachusetts so I have no idea where that comes from but like um I will tell you

that there is a brilliance to the meatheads that are in Massachusetts and um I find my New York friends begrudgingly have to admit how funny the average person is that walks around Boston they're just like I can't explain it I mean and I don't even know if that's still like a thing but it was when I was growing up where there was so many fucking people that are a thousand times funnier than I will ever be and I'm not being humble I'm being dead serious like they fucking they're way funnier than I'll ever be but they don't even know that they're being funny they literally just live in their lives and I've always said like some people tell the story that's me and some people are the story and the people that are the story are like

I don't know what the deal is like they just the shit that they say and the stuff that they do like um they just sort of like fearless like just the kind of people that would literally you know I don't know like the amount of fights I walked away from because it's like I don't want to get the shit kicked out of me and then also I'm not fighting you here I'm not fighting you I'm not going to get into a fistfight in the men's clothing department at Jordan Marsh I'm not doing that but other people would and they it would never dawn on them how fucking hilarious it was to get into a fistfight at an anchor store in a mall you know or at a sporting event or in a fucking you know a line waiting for like pizza or something like that because they were just wired

differently you know and like you know I went to a Patriots game one time like a fucking preseason game and two of my buddies went down to get a beer and when they came back one of my buddies was laughing his ass off and then my other buddy his fucking the collar of his shirt he had a t-shirt on was completely ripped and he had a bloody lip and the other guy was laughing his ass off because he like started the fight and the guy whatever he said this dude thought my other buddy said it and suckered my buddy and then my buddy won the fight and then they were going to get kicked out and somebody else said no no no they didn't start it the other guy started it and the security guards just believed them so they let you stay there's no

fucking I think I just told this I can't remember my head spinning I might have told this story a few podcasts ago but like I mean they let him go back to his seat with his shirt ripped in a like an actively bleeding lip like they would never let you do like everybody would be gone there's a fucking judge in a fucking courthouse at half of these goddamn ballparks it was just sort of like I don't know what it was it was just a I don't know it's just a very I don't know what the word is it was just fucking weird there was just always fights always something stupid going on always somebody trying to steal something that was so ridiculously big and awkward and that they would get caught and then they had

to go to court people forever had fucking broken hands from getting into fights and then they would just show up to work with the broken hand and a fucking black eye drinking a Dunkin Donuts coffee and uh and you'd be like to what happened yeah you know I got a fucking fight you know standing outside a leech man I was trying to put a lamp in the back of my mom's station wagon I see this guy he's fucking eyeballing me I was like buddy if you're gonna fucking stare at me you could at least fucking help me out or why don't you just fucking take that look somewhere else so next thing you know we're rolling around on the fucking ground like that was like and they're telling the story and like they're not trying to be funny they're just saying what

the fuck happened so I don't know and somewhere in that I don't know I think the mass whole thing came about I don't know all right uh experts and eggs oh this is a fucking cool email here actually you know I read this one before the park is here dear bill I'm with you on the experts problems I'm a lab scientist with 35 years of experience I've worked with not for the FDA I've consulted for drug companies and food companies and over a half dozen different concentrations what you would call an expert but most of the people in my field should really be called know-it-alls a lot of these experts often change sides and their recommendations routinely follow the interests of who's writing the check I gotta be honest with you I don't know how the fuck people

live their lives like that that you would literally change your opinion on something because you now work for somebody like you know people are given this food to their kids how could you knowingly say something wrong or not even give a fuck about what you were saying the almighty dollar uh science requires questions real science welcomes questions answers them gladly and says we don't know when something is unknown yeah that's why science is way more interesting to me than religion like what are they always saying religion like that's not for us to know but for him to say and you'll find out when you die can we have some more money please how refreshing would it be in like religion

hey father what happens when you croak uh you know what I don't know I have no idea I have no idea if you go to a happy place if you're just dead if you get punished for being bad I have no fucking idea you know I don't you know I don't get any of that shit I don't get anything about religion I don't get the whole fact that like what if you are a good person and then something so fucking horrible happens to you as a kid you end up being fucked up and then you just live a fucked up life and then what you go to hell for the rest of your life because of something that happened to you when you were a kid it just doesn't make any fucking sense and it's just like why does bad things why do bad things happen to children why do they see domestic violence why do they get beaten

why do they get molested why does all of that shit happen and then like there's no help for there's no help for those kids and then they go out into the fucking world and you know then they start acting like an asshole and then you die and then god's mad at you when he made the fucking child molester to begin with but then he blames and says oh no it was the devil it was the devil and you listen to the devil the fucking so-and-so so now I'm going to burn you forever I mean it doesn't make any sense as opposed to science which goes like okay this is the x factor this is the answer we're going to try to go back to the birds to the question or here's the question and we're going to try to work our way out to the answer and all

of this shit has to fucking check out and when it all checks out then they have the answer but then they're also still open to the fact that in the future they might realize that the way that they got to the answer there was some fly in that ointment and that needs to be adjusted so that they can come to the new right answer right I don't know anyway when all of a sudden eggs were considered bad for you okay so people who didn't hear the other podcast I was like in my lifetime eggs have been good for you bad for you good for you and now I feel like they're starting to come back around where I'm starting to hear some chatter that they might be bad again so this person says when all of a sudden eggs were considered bad for you there was little pushback by academics

who should have been questioning why suddenly the egg was bad where were the studies and tests well there were very few and they cherry picked the information to say the cholesterol was bad but science had known about different types of cholesterol and eggs shouldn't have been considered a problem so basically they were good cholesterol people ate eggs thousands of years before all the heart diseases were as prevalent as they are now and of course we found out that the sugar industry paid off groups like the FDA to recommend low fat high carb diets can you imagine working for the fucking FDA and they come in there with that suitcase full of cash and then you go out there and fucking send out all this misinformation that causes people to have fucking heart disease

it's unfucking believable why aren't they held accountable who is in the FDA who are these people yeah no fucking idea I guess the FDA needs to start putting out fucking food specials so people can hold them accountable is it wise to be skeptical of experts in a lot of sponsored fields oh it is wise to be skeptical of air quote experts in a lot of sponsored fields experts are increasingly losing their expertise there's a great video of a lifelong environmentalist farmer slash old timer who talks about dealing with young experts who don't go into the field or believe anything unless it's in a book that's been peer reviewed i.e. signed off on by those in charge all right so i'll give you the name of this thing um allen savoury savoury a l l e n s a v

what is science um checked out that one out if you can and i'll tell you one of the worst things is that they're gonna make mushrooms that help me so much just on two trips uh that those things will eventually become legal and the fucking pharmaceutical industry i guarantee you will immediately one of the first things they'll do so it tastes better is they're gonna put fucking sugar in it like they do with fucking those goddamn gummies and all of that stuff like like i don't know shit about science and all that but i can tell you right now weed is i'm since it's become legal is probably way more worse for you than it was back in a day when you had to smoke an entire bag just to feel a little fucked up um and from what i heard the

other day like all modern medicines are part of the the mushroom coaching tree and that they're going to go in and for profit fuck that up and make taking mushrooms now have side effects that need to be treated by their fucking drugs it's so fucking evil and none of them get held accountable and they're literally killing people and fucking with nature you know the fact that a group of fucking people can go out and like change like you have biochemically engineered food they're literally fucking with the food supply um it's a terrorist act i believe and nothing happens to them um anyway fucked up story yo bill thrill um my brother and i are both vets and we have a running joke about how poorly vets are treated another thing that's nobody

has held accountable for i hate to make light of a fucked up situation but it gets us through exactly it's called gallows humor you know you're making a joke not because you don't care it's because you do care and you don't want to feel the pain and for some reason these fucking literal larry's out there don't understand that how can you joke about something like that because it's painful you fucking asshole that's what comedy is or can be it's like a fucking topical anesthetic for your feelings so you don't actually feel the fuck that fucking pain and you're a moron because you're sitting just stating the obvious what just happened is sad thank you um anyway i just this person says i just read a crazy story

about a vet in canada who called the ptsd hotline i can remember what the d post traumatic stress i don't know what um anyway the person he spoke with didn't give him guidance or direct him to mental health options get this instead they offered him medically assisted death jesus christ the guy said i laughed my ass off at the absurdity of this and my heart went out to the vet i completely understand that reaction because what else are you gonna do what else are you gonna do um i remember reading in that uh that book johnny karstens lawyer wrote and just how mean and cold his mother was and anytime johnny would try to do something nice for her to try to get the loving emotion from his mom that he so wanted she would be even colder when he

would try to get that from her and she would be so fucking mean all he could do is just then retell the story to his lawyer and then he would just start laughing because what the fuck else are you gonna do um yeah so you hear something like that you know you love your buddies you have a bond you served and the fact that someone would say that is just so fucking horrible what else are you gonna do other than laugh so anyways he said i laughed my ass off at the absurdity of this and my heart went out to the vet i honestly think that they should have a public execution of the person who took that man's call the only way to protect the sanctity of life would be to publicly murder the person who disrespected it right bill so see that underneath that joke there's in those

last two sentences is his real emotions about how much the person cares and then there's the anger underneath it um that was actually a great lesson in comedy that whole how comedy can work so he has to laugh at it to to keep it bay the pain that then turns into murderous fucking thoughts um i relate to that on obviously much lesser level um i can't believe someone did that well how about you know yeah we can't solve the problem how about we help you kill yourself jesus christ all right let's hope this one's a little more happier than that all right old school home remedies all right hi bill i know it's been a while since you talked about home remedies from older generations i'd like to submit something my my grandmother's

swore by she would tell us grandmum grandchildren to never ever swallow bad spit basic saliva was okay for this woman but if you have what she would call what we would call these days as a logie yeah if you get fleming all that she worked in the yard a lot with her plants and in her garden constantly spitting never had allergies and she lived to be 98 she claimed that everything we cough up our hack up was all the stuff that caused disease as i approached my mid 30s i'm more inclined to believe she was on to something keep spitting bill love you and love the podcast um all right that is the podcast i apologize if uh for being late and also that i babbled um about family park i still cannot believe i just can't believe that that happened and um

i am i i don't know that how long it's going to take for me to actually process it because it the crowd was so fucking big and i had to make sure that i didn't lose them but like i'll tell you in the end when i said good night and everybody stood up like i will never ever forget that it was fucking unbelievable so there you go here's your inspiration for the week all right you can suck it reading out loud and you can suck it math and you can go to summer school and uh but if you follow your hat and you go where you're supposed to go you're going to be just fine in life so don't let anybody scare the shit out of you you're going to be fine all right that is all and with that go fuck yourselves football season is coming and so are the Tampa Bay devil raised there are only eight

games out i'm just sitting there right now i'm like the old guy muppet on the muppet show just fucking i this is my my worst thing i'm gonna get out of this i'm not gonna sit here and just root for the yankees to lose i think that's just a really fucking bitchy sports fan thing to do even though i know all the yankee fans would do that i just think it's bad karma and all of that um the red socks are out of it at this point i think barring an amazing comeback i'm still going to watch them but i'm also going to root for erin judge to break roger maris's steroid free home run record i really hope he gets it um so that's it go fuck yourselves and i'll check it on you on thursday