Monday Morning Podcast - Monday Morning Podcast 9-19-11

Episode Date: September 20, 2011

Posted in PodcastPlay AudioBill interviews Tom Green

Some people say the metaverse will only be virtual, but one day firefighters will use augmented reality to navigate burning buildings faster, saving crucial seconds when lives are at risk. Doctors will use the metaverse to visualise scans and make quicker decisions in A and E. And though woolly mammoths are extinct, in the metaverse students will go back to the Ice Age to visit them. The metaverse may be virtual, but the impact will be real. Learn more at meta.com. I have a big time guest on my show, the one and only Mr. Tom Green. Thanks for having me on, Bill. This is cool. Thank you for coming in here and thank you to Patrick Melton of the Nobody Likes Onions wonderful podcast for letting us come over.

That's probably why the quality of this sounds so well. We set up multiple microphones, there's mixing boards, mixing consoles, computers, lots of computers. Yeah, and you were saying to me, you were like, wow, you thought that this was my stuff. You were like, oh wow, you really updated it. I thought you just sat in your underwear and did this. Because I saw a video of you doing your podcast before and you were just talking into a mic on the couch. Yeah, it sounded like a maniac. That's how I usually do it. But then this is much more elaborate. So were you nervous that you were going to be coming over to my place and I was going to be sitting there in my pajamas awkwardly interviewing you?

No, I was looking forward to it. Yeah, absolutely. I'm sorry we didn't get to hang out more in Montreal. I was only there for two nights this year. It's so crazy Montreal, isn't it? There's a thousand people in a room talking to each other and I was only there for two nights this year. Did you have fun in Montreal this year? Yeah, but there's always that person you want to go talk to and as you're walking over there is like nine people will come up to you and they'll just be like, hey, I got a room in the Yukon Territories. You ever make your way up there? You want to do that room? You're like, talk to my manager and then trying to head over.

But Jesus Christ, Patrick, what are you doing? You're bumping my guests out of the way. That's exactly what happened. Then I turned around and then you were gone and then I was gone and then I left the next day. Oh, I took it personally. I was like, that's son of a bitch. That's why I'm bringing it up. I didn't want you to think I was being a douchebag or something like that. We got a lot of fun hanging out this year. You did my podcast at the Smaud Castle. We've been hanging out up at my place, having some barbecues and stuff. You have very good barbecues. Look at me. I think I'm going to have another one this week actually. Maybe Friday you around?

No, actually, Friday of this week? Oh yeah, I'll be around. The life of a comedian. Yeah, absolutely. See, most people have the barbecues. I'm in town this weekend. Well, good deal. I'll be all of it. Well, the main reason why Tom is here is because I'm hyping his big time stand-up date in Boston, Massachusetts.

He's going to be at the Wilba, as they say in Boston, the Wilba Theater September 30th. And Tom is taping two shows for your first stand-up comedy special. Absolutely. So this is huge Monday morning podcast listeners in the Boston, New England area. Tom Green, September 30th at the Wilba Theater. How excited are you to be doing this, your first special? I'm excited. You know, I mean, because I've been basically touring now like this for a couple years. The real deal, man. I check out your website.

You're not letting those guys dip in once a month. You're doing like two, three road dates a month, huh? Yeah. Yeah, I'm having a great time. And this TV taping on September has been sort of set for about six months now. So I've just, it's like a goal I've got. You know, I got to get exactly the way I want it to be by September 30th in Boston. How are you feeling? How do you feel right before the, right before you're taping?

What are you thinking? I feel good. I feel good. I feel good. I feel as good as I can, you know, it's never going to be. You're going to kill it. I saw, I saw Tom, not this Montreal, last Montreal, this first time I went up and I saw, I always been a fan of your stuff. So I saw Tom's doing stand up. Is he going to do like, you know, sort of Tom Greenish kind of stuff? Is he going to be doing like, like what I've seen you do?

Are you going to do the stand up? And you went up there and I was totally blown away because right off the bat, there was a little bit of anger underneath your stuff. And then there was also some conspiracy theory. So within five minutes, I was totally on board. Oh, well, that means a lot. Oh, yeah. Obviously. And, you know, I mean, it's, yeah, you know, it's cool. And then that was, I was just really getting started then and I've just kept writing.

And, you know, it's interesting when you have a, you know, it's being documented and you know, people are going to see it. It really gives you, it's nice to have that goal. And that show in September has been the goal. September 30th has been the goal. So, you know, I'm really just trying to refine everything and I've made a lot of adjustments. Are you doing, are you doing the Facebook? I do talk about that still. Yeah.

That's still one of my favorite lines. And that's a big sort of, I'd say a big theme of, one of my bigger themes of the show is just a lot of that addiction to this crazy technology. Yeah. And putting all that stuff out there. Like I'm totally paranoid about, I had somebody today on PayPal. Just I get this email from PayPal telling me that they want my federal tax ID number. Yeah. And I'm just like, and I'm just supposed to believe that this, you know, you see these frigging kids, they can break into like the goddamn Pentagon.

Yeah. And find out who killed Kennedy or whatever. And I'm supposed to believe that this, this email. Yeah. They said, either send your federal ID number, your social security number, or just, it's just all that stuff where you can basically be me in 10 minutes. And even if it is them, like, that's just shit I would rather do over the phone. Yeah, exactly. Because even though somebody on the other end of the phone could be totally dishonest, no matter what, somebody can get to you.

I try to limit my exposure. And I never send that stuff over email because I, you know, you know, that she, you know, it's like when you go on the internet and like, you'll, you'll be looking at something, you look at like mop handles or just something stupid. Then all of a sudden, like the next day you're on YouTube and the entire like borders are stuff that you already looked at. And it was like, that was like a, I thought that was like a private, private search. That porn stuff keeps popping up in the email. I figured there was a reason it was suddenly popping up. I joined that site. I do get that a lot.

Well, let me ask you this. Considering you came from like a background where you, you did a lot of like TV and that stuff kind of out of the gate. Don't go in more like the, do basically doing what I'm doing with you right now, hosting and stuff. Did you do stand up before you got into? I did when I was, when I was a kid, when I was 15 years old, I got up on stage at Yuck Yucks in Ottawa and I just fell in love with it. And I did it for about three or four years. How did you have the balls at 15 to go up there? You know, I was a heckler.

I would go down to heckle, actually. That's hilarious. And we got, we'd get kicked out. I mean, my friends and I would go down there, you know, it was, they had a restaurant license at the club. So you could go at 15 years old to the comedy club in Ottawa. And it was, it was, you know, sort of as a loophole for us. Because we felt, wow, we're hanging out in a bar, you know, and at 15 we thought this was cool. We can go down to the bar and there's all these older people and there's adult themes and we're sitting there, you know, drinking a Coca-Cola.

Right. And, you know, being totally hyper, just insane people, me and my friends, when we were kids, we were just nuts. And we just wanted to be, you know, always making people. How pissed were the comedians get that these snot-nosed 15-year-olds were up there? Heck, that would have driven me nuts. Yeah, I think it did. We got kicked out and banned from the club. The day that we found out that they had an amateur night, we were, I think we were like, they mentioned, there was an amateur night.

Call in and leave your name to be on amateur night. And then that night we got kicked out and banned from the club. Was it something when you were going down there, you were doing just for the hell of it? Or did you already know, like, maybe I want to do this? I think it was sort of a, sort of a, it was sort of right on that moment of realizing, hey, this is when we realized, hey, it would be cool to be able to get up on stage and tour the world and be, you know, this, you know, road warrior comedian. And that was something that was always on my mind even before that. Yeah, then the road seemed awesome before you did it. I was just, I thought it was the coolest thing when someone was like, yeah, I got a week in, you know, Tulsa.

Yeah. And you're like, wow, that sounds badass. And the first few times you do it, it is pretty exciting. But once you've, I found sometimes though, like, when I come home for too long, I start to get itchy and have to get back, get a craving to get back on the road because, you know, sometimes. You've got the disease. Yeah, you know, you've been doing it too much when you get back to the airport and you go, ah, home, the airport, you know? Yeah.

Okay, I'm going to go grab a Starbucks, buy a magazine, sit and wait for the, yeah. But, but yeah, it was, it was, it was something I loved doing and I stopped doing it when I was a teenager too. And I started that, my show and the public access station when I was my 20s and I just sort of focused everything on that. Yeah, and it was such like a brilliant, like, the foresight to do that. Like, I mean, I would, I would think just if I started to stand up at 15, I would just think I was so ahead of the game. And then if I did, you know, three years of that, I would feel I was so invested in it. Why would you stop doing it? What actually happened?

I was in a rap group and I've told you about my rap group and we got, we got a record deal when I was 18 years old in Canada, a Canadian record deal with A&M Records. And it was this big thing up there for us. You know, we moved to Toronto and recorded this album. And I actually had a show, one of my first sort of real shows. I've been doing amateur night and featuring middle spots for a couple, couple years, a few years. And then I had this show in Montreal that I had booked and I had to cancel it to go do this record. And I was so embarrassed and ashamed with myself that I canceled this show that I just sort of was a little bit embarrassed to go back to the club for a while. And plus then I got caught up in this rap thing.

Do you have that thing where you think the whole world cares about what you're doing? Like everyone was sitting there going, can you believe Tom Green can't see this spot? He doesn't deserve to be a comedian anymore. Exactly. I was just sort of so paranoid about it. And I got caught up in this rap thing. We toured around with that for a year or so. And then I went back to school.

Was the rap thing serious? Were you joking around? Kind of. No, we were doing funny stuff, but we wanted to be doing like Beastie Boys kind of thing. But the stage show was really ridiculous. Every show we'd bring like a hundred loaves of bread and just basically throw bread slices at the audience. We have bits where we put laundry baskets on our head and do this sort of strange performance art, sort of slow motion dance sort of thing.

So it was definitely had a lot of weird, strange stuff. Now how do you get out of something like that? Because I've always been, especially when I was younger, like bad with confrontation. So you were in a band and at some point did the band just get put to the side? I'm doing a TV show or did you actually sit down and just say we have creative differences? Well, we had a record deal and we did the first album and the album, you know, sold all right. But the record label dropped us after a couple of years. You know, we got a letter in the mail and we regret to inform, you know, and called us.

We regret to inform you that we will not be doing another record. And so I read that and I sort of, I remember it was like one of those, one of those moments in life where I was just sitting there going, oh my gosh, my dream of becoming a rapper is dead. What am I going to do? So I went back to school, I took television broadcasting. You didn't even think to go, I'll just go back to stand up. You didn't even think to do that. You thought they still cared down at the club?

You know, you know what it was, I think even when I was doing the rap group, it was sort of on the radio in Canada. We'd go to Toronto and we'd be on much music. We'd do all the interviews and go on the shows and stuff. And I was 19 at that time. And I just knew that, I mean, basically everything for me was revolved around the David Letterman show, basically. I grew up watching the David Letterman show and that's all, and Monty Python and SCTV, but really it was David Letterman. It was watching him yelling out of his office with a megaphone and messing with people on TV. That was just to me seemed like the, you know, there was nothing better than that in the world that you could possibly ever want to do.

Kind of like you going down to the comedy club. The first thing you did was mess with the comedians on stage. So maybe that really... Yeah, there was some sort of inner desire to stir up shit or something like that, but I can say that, right? It's a podcast where you say shit, right? Oh, don't believe me. I say cunt on here all the time, so it's fine. This is probably the classiest 15 minutes I've had on this podcast.

I told you, I was trash at fatties all last week. Yeah, maybe it's too damn fucking serious or something like that, right? Yeah, I sat next to this tub of shit last week, you know? I was flying out to Phoenix. He was just spilling into my goddamn chair and he ordered more food to become even fatter. The murderous thoughts that were going through my head and I don't know. Some people agreed with how I went off. I don't know.

It's considered like a disability. I want to get your thoughts on this before we go through everything. Absolutely. There's a guy that says, do you love White Castle burgers but hate their two teeny tiny booths? What's a steam, steam burger fan to do? Here's what one self-described, not humongous, but a big guy, White Castle fan did. He sued them under the Americans with Disability Acts. Because the seats weren't big enough to hold them?

He couldn't get himself in the booth. So a devoted 290-pound White Castle fan is steaming mad about the fast food change, which he says repeatedly broke promises to make the booths in his local eatery bigger. So he would go in there, order that shit food and then complain. That's the reason he's 290 pounds. Yeah, in a way, he's actually right. You're gonna fatten people up. You gotta have room for that expansion.

They should just have bean bags, right, with just a giant table. Covered in mini burgers in grease. Yeah, dude. I know people don't want to be fat and that type of thing, but I go off on everybody on this podcast, believe me. I trash women like you can't believe. It's disgusting, the level that I trash women. I trash fat people.

I trash bankers. I do all of that shit on here. And just fat people. Just, you know, you take it to the point where it's a disability. You know what I mean? Yeah. Like you're fought in a fucking war or something. Yeah.

You ate a box of fudgicles. There was some woman on TV yesterday on Dr. Drew, 790 pounds or something like that. She's the Guinness Book World Record holder for being the fatest woman on the planet. And she actually said that she was, I think, maybe she's 700 pounds. She was 630. Dude, you're like as big as a walrus. She was trying to get on Dr. Phil. She was trying to get on all the shows to talk about her weight for help.

And nobody would have her on. So out of desperation, she called the Guinness Book of World Records, found out how far off she was from the record, over eight so that she beat the record and now she's getting on all the shows. She said this. She admitted it. You know, talk about rewarding bad behavior, right? She basically gained weight so that she could get on Dr. Phil.

And it worked. That's like the fat version of how Kim Kardashian got famous, right? Exactly. Yeah. Rather than go out and blow somebody on camera, you know, she went out and she went down on some double dogs and somebody should have filmed that. You know, I got to give it to her. You know, she actually achieved a goal.

Well, listen, I'll read the, you know, she had a goal. She went for it. So anyways, this guy's blah, blah, blah, blah. He said that there's, he always orders the number two combo meal and he got an unpleasant surprise. He went to this one. They have stationary booths. I'm not a humongous, but I'm a big guy. I could not wedge myself in.

I got to give this guy credit for saying wedge. He's at least admitting that he's a tub of shit, right? Mortified and in pain from smacking his knee into one of the table support. Kessman limped out of the restaurant and later penned a complaint to the corporate headquarters. How did White Castle respond? He said very condescending letters and then they added insult to injury. And each letter was a coupon for three free hamburgers, but the cheese was extra. That's very passive aggressive of Satan.

You need to go on a diet fatty. Um, yeah, like I, what do you feel about that? I don't, I don't buy that. You know, do you think it's a disability? You've eaten yourself into a disability, but like, yeah, no, it's frivolous. Yeah. Don't you have, you have like a fantasy. You wish you were a judge just for shit like that.

So you could just slam, get that shit out of my courtroom. Oh yeah, absolutely. Yeah. No, it's, uh, you know, it's like the guy that got the, you know, the person got the coffee spilled on their, on their lap at McDonald's and made $14 million out of it. Right. Oh yeah. Burned up her.

People sue anybody for anything in this country. What's this country coming to? Now, do they do that up there in Canada or do people just take it on the chin? Yeah, they just go to another restaurant where they have bigger booths. Are you enjoying as, as a Canadian, the American dollar kind of going down a little bit after all the years that we've made fun of your monopoly currency and called it that type of stuff? You know, Americans were arrogant. You know, we're like Yankee fans, like we've never achieved anything in our personal lives,

but we're attached to something that's doing well. Well, no, I'm not happy about it because I live in America and, you know, I love this country. It's been good to me and I live here and I work here and you want to see it do well. But it is interesting, you know, to see that, you know, because you used to, you'd go home to Canada. Ever since I've been living here, I'd go home to Canada. When I first started my show on MTV, Canadian dollar was 75 cents. It was worth 75 cents. Now it's a dollar four.

Okay. Before I'd go home and, you know, I'd go to a Starbucks. I'd pull out an American 20. I'd buy my coffee and they'd give me $25 change. It was awesome. Wow. Yeah, they'd be paying you to buy there. You go to McDonald's.

You get a big Mac. They're paying you to buy their stuff. I went up there. I gave them a hundred bucks to America and I got like 80 something back. Yeah. Yeah. So it's interesting, but it's nice to see that the Canadian economy is doing really well right now.

That's cool. You go up to Toronto and they're building everywhere. But it really kind of puts it in perspective of how things are really kind of getting bad down here. You know, it's making me want to get a gun. Yeah. You think that's crazy? I'm surprised you don't have one already. Well, you a gun guy growing up or no?

Not really, no. When I was 20, not easy. I thought you guys all did that stuff. I know it's ignorant. I thought you guys played hockey. You shot caribou. Well, if you live out in the country and you're a farmer, which a lot of Canadians are, but if you live in the city, which I did, it's not that easy to get a gun when you're in the city.

You can't just go buy one out of a, you know, the trunk of a car or something like that. So when I was 21 years old, I had this, a friend of mine and I had this idea that we really wanted to get a gun. We were kind of curious actually to see how hard it would be knowing that, you know, you can't just go buy a gun. But they'd sell them at Home Depot, you know, you can buy them. But, you know, you'd have to, we were kind of curious, well, how much, how much is a gun? How do you get a gun? So we actually filled out all the paperwork, right? You know, we fill out the paperwork and you have to go to the police station.

You have to submit a, you know, a form that says you want to get a hunting license. And then you get called by a police officer. They interview you. They ask you why you want to get this gun. We said we, even if you want to get a rifle, we were getting a rifle. Oh, you can't get a handgun. That's actually, there's no way to get a handgun really. Unless that's a much, much more elaborate.

What is, what is the, we were buying 22s. If you get caught with a handgun in Canada, you know, what is the sentence that you get? Well, people have handguns, but it's just, it's a, I think you have to be considered a collector. No, but if you got it illegally. If you got it illegally, I mean, you know, you'd probably, you know, getting the same kind of trouble that Plaxico Burrus got in for shooting himself in the foot in the nightclub in New York. You know, it's, you know, you know, it's not in the culture up there though. I mean, there's not that many people have them to begin with. So it's just not something that you think about that much.

That's amazing update. Like you guys, you don't really have that level of violence yet if you lose in the finals. Yeah, exactly. There's a danger that they're going to, yeah, that they're going to burn down the city. Well, Vancouver, people in Vancouver are pretty, pretty crazy to begin with. I mean, they're, you know, they're, first of all, I think. Well, what about Montreal? You're a Canadian's fan.

What about those guys? Like they won a series. Well, when it comes to hockey, I guess why I'm saying people in Vancouver, when it comes to hockey are pretty crazy, just like Montreal, when it comes to hockey. And I think there's probably a pent up anxiety up there because you're not going out there and, you know, occasionally shooting people and things like this. You don't, you haven't, you know, there's not a, you don't really get your, you're, you're. Get that out of you. And then hockey game, losing a hockey game is the perfect excuse, you know. It's because you guys are so goddamn polite all the time.

I think it was just builds up. It was a lot of young people who had too much to drink and, you know, you got to look at it like, you know, hockey is about as big as football, baseball, basketball, hockey and religion all combined in this country. Yeah. You know, in, in, in America, in, in Canada, it's everything. And so to get that close to winning the Stanley Cup in, in Vancouver and then have, have Boston take it away. Boston. Yes, sir. Boston.

September 30th. I'm coming. I'm not from Vancouver. That's right. Boston. September 30th. And the tickets are going to be really well priced here, like $20 and under. Yeah.

And I am giving Tom Green full five stars straight across the board, just like the, the reviews you got in the Edinburgh Comedy Festival. Yeah. Which is one of the most prestigious comedy festivals for my listeners out there, the Edinburgh Comedy Festival. It's like three weeks over in Scotland. And that's no joke. It's like who, who's who a comedy and you got some of the best reviews. They have five stars. You don't just get five stars and those Scottish people, they don't laugh.

Half those guys, they're funnier than most of the comedians. The average Scottish guy walking down the street. So if you killed it out there, man, that's a major, major feather in your comedy hat, as they say, man. Thanks. It was exciting. It was great being there and, and I had a, had a great time. It was, it's pretty cool to just be able to sort of immerse yourself in that city. Have you, have you been Edinburgh?

Yeah, I did. I didn't go to Edinburgh. I went to Glasgow. Glasgow. Yeah. It's just, it's cool to be over there in front of a completely different. Yeah. Thing, you know, I went, I did, I did a little quick tour.

I did one night in London. I did one night in Ireland and I did one night in Dublin and then I did Glasgow. And I stayed a few days in Scotland and it was, it was awesome, man. I like, you know, what's funny is I hate soccer in America, but when I go over to Europe football, as they call, I immediately get into it. It's just so hard to watch it in America because people don't give a shit. Yeah. So it's so quiet.

Yeah. When you're watching it, there's no excitement, but I even like, you know, sometimes if I'm bored, if I flip through and I stumble across one of those Premier League games, I can't not watch it. You know what I mean? Like, you know, they start singing the songs. Yeah. It's kind of like what happened in Vancouver, right?

It's, it's like, it's kind of fun to go to a soccer game and after breaks out, you know, riot breaks out and some police cars get burned and it's adds to the whole thing. Hey, do you think if you guys lost the gold medal game to the U.S. in Vancouver, do you think they would have rioted at the Olympics? Well, enough of a cohesive. People talked about that and how much of a embarrassment that would have been on the world stage. That would have been the worst thing.

So once those people got shot over there in that place. Yeah. I don't know anything about history. Yeah. Israel. Yeah. There was an Israeli. Yeah.

In Germany, was it? Yeah. Munich. Munich. Yeah. Munich games. That's right. Yeah.

They made a movie about that. Yeah. Yeah. It would have been like that. It would have been like that. But you know, the Canadian version without guns. Yeah. I don't think it would have happened as much there at the Olympics.

Just because I know, no matter how well we do, Canadians will always consider American hockey inferior. And I know it is. Because you know what? I started playing out here. I don't think we think of that when we think of Boston Bruins or Detroit or some of the rich. You really are a diplomat.

I got to give that to you. You're very, you're very good. We got to sell some tickets in Boston, man. Oh, no, this has nothing to do with Boston. This just has to do with trashing the country on a whole. I was trying to even it out. People are going to come out to show my fans are very loyal. And if I tell somebody that I'm an Ottawa senators fan anyway, I'm Ottawa senators fan and Phoenix

coyotes are my teams. Oh, there you go. Well, you say that they moved up to Winnipeg. No. Phoenix. They moved. Yeah. No, it was, it wasn't Phoenix that moved to Winnipeg.

Atlanta. What am I talking about? Atlanta moved to Winnipeg. I'm what I'm saying. Winnipeg moved down to Phoenix. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. They, you know, it kills me about the Phoenix coyotes. They have a nicer arena than the Boston Bruins and our original 16. Dude, the Bruins went to Home Depot and they bought 20,000 cinder blocks. And they built them in a fucking square. It's, it's just, it's just a stadium. And I went to that, that coyotes, I don't know what it is. They had character was awesome, but the worst name ever.

It's like jobbing, jobbing center.com. Okay. Stadium. Yeah. It's, it's, it's awful. But all right. So let's, let's get back to talking about some of your comedy stuff. So you were talking about how Letterman and fucking with people was, was just something

that you really like related to. And I, one of the funniest bits I ever saw as far as man on the street. And the first time I met you, I talked to you about this was that, that one you did where you were out on the street and you somehow got that guy to hold that light for you. Oh yeah. And, and you wouldn't let him put it that any, just the sense of urgency every time you would go to set this light down. This, you guys, if you've never seen it, you got, is it up on YouTube?

Yeah. I think it probably, probably if you type in hold the light, I think it might be called. I'm not sure if it's on YouTube under that name, but that's what we called it. He just gets this random guy. He goes, can you do me a favor? Can you just hold this light? He's filming something. He just makes some part of his camera crew.

This guy's got stuff to do the whole time he's trying to leave. You keep this guy there for like 15 minutes. Finally, he's just going, I got to go. I got to go. And he's setting the light down. And as he's setting it down, you just go, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. He fucking lifts it back up. And he's going, I got to, every time he would go to set it down, he'd be like, no, no, no,

no. That the sense of urgency. Yeah. That you created this world that didn't even exist and the guy totally bought into it. Like, if you actually wanted to use your skills for evil, like you could have really been like a con man, the three-card money. I don't know what, because you got, you suck this dude, so into your world. He just, the guy wanted to leave.

And you got this little, stupid light. All he has to do is set it down. And back then, and I don't know if it's as much the case anymore, but back then, you know, cameras, video cameras, were so rare. You know, that was an early piece. That was something we shot way, way before I was on MTV. And so, you know, the idea of somebody coming up to you with a camera and putting a microphone on your face, and now, all of a sudden, you're doing an interview.

Right. It was sort of very jarring for people. And you could sort of mesmerize people a little bit with that. Right. And they didn't know how to respond. That's interesting, because now that everybody, like, half the fans, they know how to actually make a movie and edit it. I'm on television.

I don't want to look bad. And so, you know, we had a lot of bits that really played into that. Like, I was talking to someone earlier today, actually, about this bit where I put poo on the microphone. Right? We, on MTV, we spread dog crap on the, on the, on the head of a hand, of just a handheld mic. And I go in and interview people like a reporter.

But, you know, of course, the mic is right under their nose, and this shit is right under their nose. I remember that. I remember that now. Yeah, it was in New Jersey, we shot that. And they're smelling the shit. But because the camera's in their face and they're being asked a serious question about Pete Sampras or some political question or something, they, they don't want to look

like they aren't intelligent and, or say something, or act like they don't know what's going on. So they just sort of plow through it and ignore the fact that there's a piece of shit right under their face. Yeah. You can't get away with that anymore, though. If you were to do that kind of stuff again nowadays, because I think now people, they are so educated to being on camera and then also that, that the second somebody just comes out of nowhere with the camera and it's like, oh, they're going to try to make me look like

a tool. Yeah. And the other thing is now you know that people are going to see it. See, back then, if somebody filmed you, okay, the most it would air would, and even in that, maybe an unlikely scenario would air on the local news once and never be seen again. Now, if someone comes up to you with a camera, it's going to be on everybody's Facebook. All of your friends will see it. It's on Google.

Your name's attached to it. Everyone who you know will see it. So forever, forever. That's what kills me. Like you think of some of the most embarrassing moments of your childhood. Like I think of some of them and they still embarrass me. Thank God like they were never filmed. Like some of these kids like, how do you make a comeback?

Like some of the stuff that you hump a dead moose. How do you make a comeback from that? No, but you know what I mean? Like, like they got, they got some kids on there. Like they got this one kid that beat the crap out of the other kid in Australia. And the one where the kid throws something, the big fat kid throws something at the kid and then the kid throws his skateboard. Oh, I love that.

And that guy cries like a woman. Yeah. Like it sounded like that, that Whitney Houston song. That's on that from that Kevin Carstner movie. It's just like, you know, you caught him right as he was in that awkward age of where he was the size of an adult yet still had the voice of an eight year old. And it's just, there's no comeback to that. Like that guy could play rugby for 20 years and he's still going to get shit.

You know, when he walks into bars, somebody just got to bring it up about like, that's, that's the one thing that I actually have empathy for kids today. It's just like the most mortified, mortified you could ever be. And it's just going to hang with you. Oh, yeah. Back in the day is worried that your parents were going to show home movies to whether the hell you're going to marry or something. Yeah.

And obviously they show it to them. I've been thinking about how glad I am that they didn't have, have all that when our parents were kids. You know, imagine if you'd seen your parents in these embarrassing positions. Getting shot in the ass with a BB gun. How little respect we would have for them. They would have had no control over us. You know, as our children will have no respect for us. You know, you know, let me ask you, how did you, how did you handle like fame the first time it came around?

Like, cause that's, that's a really weird thing to suddenly, you know, you're doing these little movies, you're doing your, your, your show and that type of thing. And then all of a sudden, like it just explodes. It was a, cause you, you're very like, it's funny. Like it was listeners, listen to you. You're, you're very intelligent. You're very reserved. You know, when you're, when you're not doing your thing.

So I was wondering how you handled like, and then when you go on stage, you do that crazy stuff. No, no, no, no, no. Don't put it down. You have dog shit in the mic. That can sometimes people think that you're like that offstage and just the way that they approach you. Oh, it's Tom. I got to be crazy. Yeah.

Did you, you must have got a ton of that. Oh yeah. I mean, first of all, it was completely exciting. It was basically when MTV picked up the show was essentially the dream coming true. I'd been working on my show for 10 years in Canada, basically trying to, trying to just get out of my parents basement basically. Right. And so, you know, it was the most exciting thing that could ever happen. You know, all of a sudden you were on Letterman and going on shows and, and it was amazing.

But yeah, it was certainly a little overwhelming at first too, but, but, but totally positive and exciting. How long did it take you to adjust to that? Just like, I think the thing that was the weirdest part about it was, was, you know, as things progressed and, you know, I was right in the middle of the show. The show was, you know, the hit show on MTV. Right. I got sick. I got cancer right while all that happened. Right.

I got sort of sucked into all this tabloid stuff. It was, it was sort of, and it was the first time where I'd sensed any sort of negative stuff too. You know, like all of a sudden, because the show was so big, because I was, you know, talking about cancer and ex wives and all this stuff, you know, it was like, it was like, I was sort of bounding myself in a position where suddenly I went from being this underdog kid with a public access show that everyone's got to see to somebody that was sort of defending himself, you know. Right. It was, it happened so fast that I don't think I was able to really absorb and adjust to the new reality, you know, of what it was. So I had been in this position where every time I went on a show, I'd be like a maniac, you know. Right.

I wasn't actually like the, like, you know, more reserved, as you say. Right. Reserve was the last thing anybody would have referred to me as. I was going on Leno and getting drunk and, you know, coming on dressed as like with a deer carcass on. Right. And Jay was just completely freaked out. Who's this kid? What's going on?

This is crazy. And then all of a sudden, you sort of start getting a bit of a backlash from just being maybe just too. Having too much fun. Having too much fun or something like that, you know. I think it's inevitable. Yeah. It's inevitable. I'm trying to think of somebody.

So adjusting to that, that was more of the thing that was hard to adjust to suddenly going, oh, wait a minute. I've got to maybe be a little bit more reserved now because people are going to say, why is that asshole putting a deer carcass on? And so it's sort of an interesting thing. That's why, you know, you know, you sort of, that's why I love about doing stand up. You get up on stage, you're on stage for an hour. There's nobody is expecting you to be reserved. You're on stage with a mic and let's go, you know. I also think it's a great way to show, to define who you are.

I mean, obviously it's an enhanced version of who you are, but it's also the great thing about stand up is like, I don't know how these actors do it. It's like, you know, you book something and you book like that dream role and then you're that guy. Yeah. You know what I mean? And then, but the great thing about stand up is if you're a stand up comedian is after you leave the show, you then can put out a stand up special. And they get to see an hour of you being you as a comedian as opposed to being on a radar or Riley or whatever, you know, the fucking characters. That's why I'm excited about putting this down on television and having, you know, my first stand up special recorded and available for people to see outside of his people that come to the show. Because, you know, you have an hour, you're talking, I'm talking about personal things.

There's no editing. There's no hiding behind any sort of writing or story or character. Well, it's great to see a guy who actually should be doing one doing one because with the technology now, there's so many people putting out specials that they're not really specials anymore. They're just they're, you know, it's it's like, I don't know, it's just an unbelievable amount of, you know, when I started, I'm going to sound like an old man here, like half hour specials were given out to a. Yeah. A list comedians and they pulled from their best hour. And now, you know, feature acts can get half hour specials. Yeah.

And I don't know, it's been good in a way because it's caused guys to write more and that type of thing. But I'm really looking forward to seeing yours. Like, you know, I'm telling you, man, like that that face, I remember, like, I don't remember a lot of stuff. I remembered how you weaved that stomp dying to say what line, but I don't ruin it because your specials coming out. But like I said, September 30th. It was certainly very inspiring. My first time at the Montreal Festival when you came to the show and you had some very nice things to say to me about it after. And it's the kind of things when people do things like that, like, like you did when you come out and you say a nice thing about the people.

I had no idea. And it pushes you forward. So I appreciate it. I had no idea what you were going to do. And it had everything. It had the stand up and then it had that that that no, no, no, no moment was when you spilled the water and you overly freaked out the water, the water. And I started dying laughing. And you also look like you were having fun.

That's a huge thing for me when I'm watching comedians is I always tell the story. I remember the I saw this comedian Gary Valentine, Kevin James brother. I saw him one night at the com the comedy cellar in New York City. And it was during the mid 90s. It was the total hangover of, you know, you know, stand up being on every channel so the clubs were dead. And it was, I don't know what the hell time of year it was. All I know is he went on stage in front of like six people in this club and everyone's just dying a miserable death. And I remember he went up there and had the best fucking time and delivered his and he had like he's high energy.

Yeah. And it shouldn't have worked. Yeah. High energy should not work in front of six people. But he went up there and he was so goofy and silly and just didn't give a shit. And he went all out. He was killing in front of six people. I haven't seen that sense.

I've never seen it ever done. And I remember that there's just certain sets where like I learn, I learned stuff from and and I remember that was something that that stuck out to me. But if you go up there and you're having fun and you don't give a shit in the right way, like you don't go up there. Like I don't give a shit. Fuck these people. I'm not giving them a show, but you just don't care that there's only six people there. I mean, he was killing. He had one lady had her.

She had her head down on the table because it was so ridiculous how much it was so ridiculous. Yeah. You're watching a guy almost by himself. Just going full out and like as a comedian, he had me dying laughing. That almost became it was awesome. It was awesome. So then I remember like just knowing that when I saw you up at Montreal, it was just like this guy is really having a good time. And there was eight people at my show in Montreal.

No, no, no, no. You're huge up there, man. You jam packed the place and it was like you were having a great time. And and I could also tell right out of the gate that you see, I didn't know you'd ever done stand up before, but I was like, this guy is either a natural or. But either way, he's really taking this seriously. You know, as comedians, we see a lot of guys who go from TV shows who then become stand like soap stars. Yeah. And they'll just rape people.

They'll go out and I'm famous and they'll go out and they'll just take their money. Yeah. And maybe host the show with some real comedians and they go up there with their fucking scrubs on because they play a doctor on the show and they eat their balls. And they just rip people off and they do one little trip around the country and they steal everybody's money and then that's it. So I'm not saying I thought that, but I'm just saying it was it was I didn't know what to expect. Honestly, when I went in, I was like, this is the guy I've seen do sketches. How's this going to translate? So I'm going to say it a zillion times.

September 30th at the. I think I'm saying this like, like this is actually like a live podcast, like people are just tuning in. But September 30th, Boston Mass at the Wilbur Theatre. It's going to be two shows. Tickets are read at twenty twenty dollars and below. So definitely come out and check out his special. Anything else you actually was mentioning as speaking of your house. You finally took the studio and everything out of there.

I did. I did. I did that. I did my web show on Tom Green dot com on my website for five years. And I can't believe you used to bring like fans of yours into your house. And that's just unbelievable. Not as much of that. It wasn't really open to the public. Oh, OK. It wasn't.

We had we actually had a couple of real because really it was more. I mean, I know I have bleachers in my living room. You've been out there. You've seen the they aren't there anymore. But for those who didn't see, he literally had a TV studio in his living room. He had the desk. He had the two chairs next to it. And then he had he had bleachers and like full lighting grid, professional level cameras.

Yeah. Drum kit for a band if they want to come in. The drums are still there. You can still play drums when you come up. It's a great kid, by the way. Yeah. But but yeah, so it was fun. I had so much fun doing it.

But just I guess touring so much and getting I'm getting that out of my system on the road. And then when I come home, I just kind of want to just relax and want some quiet. Yeah. Absolutely. I did last night. I was working down Largo. Have you been down there?

You got to do it. I've heard about it. Yeah. You got to do it. I drove by that thing a million times. It's right down in La Cienega. And it's unbelievable theater. It's like 300 Cedar come out, you know, the Oriental rug is there.

Like you're actually going to be doing some sort of art as opposed to telling dick jokes like me. But and like it was like, I've been wanting to be able to sell tickets out here forever. And I actually did a couple of shows out there and made a little bit of money. And the dream was always to sell out a show, kill, say thanks to everybody and then get to drive home to my own place. That's where it becomes after a while. Take the dog out.

Yeah. And then it's quiet, picking up dog shit. Like that was that was the whole night. Go down, kill, get that rush and then go home and take my dog out and then go to sleep in my own bed. So I totally know what you mean. I mean, how much traveling did you do while while you were doing the TV shows as much as the grind it was?

I've always been envious of people who had a TV gig because it's stationary. Well, when I was doing my show and MTV and stuff, we did a fair amount of traveling. I've always been on the road because we we'd like to get out of the city and just go explore and find weird things in rural America in the middle of nowhere. And so we were always and usually, you know, it was it was more productive if we get out on the road filming the bits because you'd be sort of invested in it. The whole crew would jump in a van and we were a couple of vans when we were on MTV and we'd take off across Kentucky and we just filmed for a week and come back with a lot

of material. I'm trying to think of a show that I saw that did what you did before. I mean, I saw plenty after like Jackass was a hardcore version of it. You know, they would mess with people. Not like obviously the stunts they did was unique to their show, but how they would go out and they would like, you know, like one of my favorites was when Johnny Knoxville had that whoopee cushion. He went to the yoga class and was just like, I could I would be so embarrassed to do that.

Even though I knew people were watching laughing like I don't I got this weird thing where I'm on stage. I don't get embarrassed, but I can, you know, get stuff like that. I don't mess with people. Yeah. When I'm in public lesson, like drunk at a game or something like that. But then, you know, I like I see a lot like a through line right through the borat and all that type of stuff.

Like that's all goes back. I was I was inspired by Candid camera and Letterman. Oh, there you go. Yeah. So that's the lineage as far as like how that goes. I always love just real stuff, you know, and also skateboarding videos, you know. So I think the thing is, is, you know, when before my show there wasn't video cameras didn't exist, right?

So in order to make a TV show in the 70s and 80s, you know, you pretty much had to get a TV deal. So you had to go through a more traditional route. You had to go do comedy and then get a TV deal and then you get access to the cameras. We're here. We just went and got some cameras and did what we thought was crazy. And so I mean, that was a real watershed moment for the way television has changed, you know, and in a lot of ways people say and it's gone downhill now because, you know, it's it's

not structured anymore, you know, right? But you know, I think it's coming back though. There's like some sitcoms are coming back and I'm finding that all the reality shows now are so structured though, they're as structured as the honeymooners. You know, I mean, it's it's all it's all assisted reality. I took a meeting one time with a guy from one of those reality shows, one of the seedier ones where they just have like those, you know, all those flusies in there, the horse, right?

Yeah. And I like just go about shooting that and he goes, I go, do you just turn the cameras on? He goes, no, no, no, no. He goes, you know, first of all, you keep them, you know, liquored up. It was really, you keep them liquored up and then you'll say like, OK, I want you to fight with her. I go, what if they say no?

He goes, I think you just go, listen, I got another 10 broads out there that'll fucking do it. But it was really he's all like excited. I felt like I was like confessing to a crime. Well, what show is this? Real Housewives of Beverly Hills or toddlers and tiaras? I can't watch that. Like my girl watches those Real Housewives.

Those girls are so fucking sad. Like you just see it in their eye. I don't know what they did with their lives, but that whole thing where you're 50 and you're still trying to look fuckable with your yanking your face back. It's like you should be like you should be beautiful like a mom. Yeah. You know what I mean? And dressing elegant.

You shouldn't be dressing like a 21 year old. It just makes you look it's like the guy with the two pay. You know what I mean? Still trying to wear a tank top. It's like put a sport coat on. Yeah. I don't know. They're so big.

And the weird thing is, is there, I don't know if they're truly who the hell's is that? That's mine. That's yours. Okay. I thought it was package. All right. So now we're even who's the new guy. Okay.

There we go. The those Real Housewives is that they're, I don't know if they're front and that they're rich, but they look like they're filthy rich and they're, they're bored. Yeah. That's sad. Lost look as they're sitting in like hot tubs in Aspen. Now their husbands are committing suicide. You know, I mean, really, really are upping the ante in order to get ratings these days.

You know, he's going to come back. It's like a soap. I don't think he really killed himself. He fell off a cliff. He'll come back with Tupac and it'll be the biggest show in the history of television. So what, what, as far as you're doing stand up straight up now, like is there any TV movie stuff that we need to know about stuff that you got going on? Obviously just ideas that I'm kind of trying to put together, but nothing that's on the

immediate horizon, but I'll come back when we're ready to talk about it, you know, and absolutely. And as far as, uh, so once you tape this thing, right, get it in the bag and all that, then you immediately going to go out and start writing the new hours that is that the game plan? I'm looking forward to that. I'm looking because right at the last six months, I feel like, okay, I've really figured out what I want to do now with this show.

Now I'm refining it, refining it, refining it, but I'm sort of tired of refining it now. It's like, I just want to just put it to rest and, and, and then start fresh with a, a new idea. You're right where you want to be then. You're right where you want to be. Well, listen, if you want to, uh, if you want to go hit some rooms when you're going to put together your new hour, cause, oh yeah, I'm, uh, I'm going to tape one, the beginning

part of next year. We're still working on a date, but there's a couple of things that I, you know, with each special as you go along, you try to do something a little different. So people aren't like, this is the same shit, you know, um, so if you wanted, there's a bunch of, there's a bunch of cool stuff I got. I can't recommend Largo enough, you got, you got to go down there and check that out. But, uh, I really want to thank you for coming down, man. I've been a huge fan of yours and, uh, I'm really, really looking forward to seeing your

hour because I mean, I saw it over a year ago, so I can only imagine what you're doing now. Once again, for the final time, Tom Green's first standup comedy special is going to be taken, uh, taped live at the, uh, I guess not tape live live on tape, right? That the Wilbur theater in Boston, Massachusetts, two shows, September 30th, um, where can people go to Wilbur theater.com Wilbur theater, I think Tom green.com will link to it. And I think ticket master to, uh, tickets, so ticket master. So please friend of the show, Tom green, people of Boston, stand up, get your balls

out there. Go to the goddamn show. This guy's going to be great. Uh, that's the podcast for this week. Hope you enjoyed it. Had a great time here. Thanks Bill. With your time.

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