The Adam and Dr. Drew Show - #2043 - The Narcissism of Cyclists with Paul Mecurio
Episode Date: October 7, 2025Comedian and writer Paul Mecurio joins Adam and Dr. Drew to discuss whether society has reached peak Trump Derangement Syndrome. They also share their mutual disdain for cyclists and their na...rcissistic habits before Paul tells the incredible story of how he left a career in investment banking to pursue stand-up comedy full-time.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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Recorded live at Corolla 1 Studios with Adam Carolla
and board-certified physician and addiction medicine specialist, Dr. Drew Pinsky.
You're listening to The Adam and Dr. Drew Show.
Yeah, get it on, get on the children and addiction medicine specials.
You.
Go, Dr.
Oh, go.
I'm chewing.
The great Paul McCurio here, Inside Out with Paul Mercurio.
Paul McCurio.com, M-E-C-U-R-I-O.
Also, Instagram and X, it's at Paul McCurio.
My dear friend Paul McCurio, man, welcome.
Where do we know Paul from?
That's part of the setup.
Yes, I understand.
He's an Emmy and P-Buddy award-winning comedian, writer, actor,
known for his work on The Daily Show with John Stewart.
He's saying Emmy and P-Body?
Yes, you didn't have to say that.
I knew where it's going to get my balls busted.
No, I mean, he did Emmy and Peabody and it didn't come across like a, as good as it could have sounded.
That you said Peabody?
Yeah, he said Peabody.
And also, of course, now the late show is Stephen Colbert.
Oh, were you just out here getting an award then for the Emmys?
I was with the show, but, you know, I don't personally get the Emmy.
The show got the Emmy.
So I was just out there, you know, kind of picking people up and, you know, I was a driver for, no.
Yeah, I came out with the show.
It was pretty cool.
But it was great, and everybody was really great in the theater.
Like, you could really feel like people were, like, I don't know what was to win.
Oh, they weren't nuts.
Oh, yeah.
It was pretty crazy.
It was like, you know, pretty surreal.
Yeah, well, the timing was right and the audience was right, for sure.
Yeah.
In L.A. and in the industry crowd, for sure.
And now, and everyone's that sort of at the, well, I don't know.
I don't know if we're at peak trump derangement syndrome or we're just sort of holding, holding steady.
I don't know where we're at.
I said, we're almost peak.
Do you think so?
I don't know.
I don't think there's that.
I don't think there's that.
That's what I think.
But how do you get, I think it's stepped because it's just what it is.
It's like, how's your Alzheimer's gone?
Well, it's stable for now, but it's going to keep going.
It's stable.
Yeah.
Wait, did you just ask me about my Alzheimer's?
Oh, yeah.
Okay, sorry, it's stable.
And then you just keep repeating yourself.
That's right. That's right. Yeah, I guess. I mean, maybe all the ice stuff now has gotten it to the next sort of strata. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I would say. Yeah. Yeah. It seems like there's always something and there's always going to be something. Listen, whether you like him or you don't like him, he's like your hangary dad. Like he's just always irritable about something. You know what I mean? Like that's the thing. Well, I, you know, it's a weird thing, which is I,
I don't care about anyone's temperament.
All I want to do is get shit done.
That's all.
But that's where I come from because I come from a world basically of football coaches
and job construction foreman.
And that's all they were.
It's like, let's go.
Let's go.
What are we doing?
What are we doing?
What are we getting done?
And the fact that their bedside manner was always kind of shitty was neither here nor there
to me.
I just assume that's who they were.
That's how those guys are.
That's how those guys are.
They're like, you know, a general patent or something.
That's just who they are.
They want to win a war.
So then later, you know, my daughter was like a good volleyball player in high school.
But she's like, ah, I don't like the coach.
I'm not coming back next year.
And it's like, what do you mean you don't like the coach?
He's mean.
Who cares?
No, I don't deal with that.
But don't you want to play volleyball?
It's like, not for a mean guy.
It's like, I didn't know he had a choice.
Right, right.
And now we have a society of pussies, is what I'm saying.
Now, who's like, he's mean.
Right.
Well, you've got to tell your daughter is when you go for a job interview,
I don't think you should ask, sweetie, the guy you're interviewing with, like,
are you mean or are you nice?
Because I work better if you're nice.
Like, that's the real world.
Like, people occur, people have stuff to do.
And you also open up an issue for me.
me that's been like the whole big thing with like transgender and a lot of these issues like
sometimes i think politicians and even we who talk about this a lot in the media forget like
the average guy who's a plumber a carpenter an accountant he's just trying to get through his
fucking day right like he's trying to get you know how am i going to pay for her braces i need a
great job i got to take my nine-year-old who's a pain in the ass to soccer my boss just doubled
up on the amount of work I got to do. And so here's a newsflash for everybody. Most Americans
aren't drilling down on these issues in a way that maybe we do and certainly politicians do.
They're just trying to get through their friggin' day. And sometimes people need to hold on to that,
like common sense. Like there are five things that people generally care about, right? Are they safe?
Are they not getting hosed on taxes? You know, are there streets, not, no potholes. People picking up
their garbage and like they don't have the luxury of sort of going through the machinations of
you know all of these social issues and I think we forget that sometimes well I mean I I guess
it's sort of like okay let's do an analogy here oh um you know Ferrari has an F1 team but they
don't make their money off the F1 team they make their money off of selling Ferraris you know
I mean, but they might sell more Ferraris if they win an F-1.
And I think sometimes certain politicians, like I'm over here with Gavin Newsom, he thinks
his entire thing is an F-1 team.
It's all that's the subject.
And it's like, no, you've got to move units.
I'll give a better example.
Ford.
Ford will go to La Ma.
Ford will race at LaMah.
But Ford sells Falcons and Pintoes and Granados.
You know, they're here.
They don't make money off of going to LaMont.
They make money off selling Ford trucks, you know what I mean?
And like, someone needs to say to Gavin Newsom, I know you love all the window dressing shit.
But let's get nuts and bultzy here.
Your gas is six bucks a gallon.
So stop telling me you care about the little man.
The little man is getting reamed by these gas prices.
It hits poor guys so much harder.
I mean, gas is perfect because you don't pay more and you don't pay less.
just pay six bucks. It doesn't matter what your bracket is. And to rich guys, it's neither here nor
there. It's just, it really, you know, Jimmy Kimmel lives in California. Gas is six bucks a
gallon. He doesn't care. He shouldn't care. Why would he care? It doesn't make a difference to
him. But his gardener is getting fucked. His gardener is screwed because he drives a big Ford
F-250 that's filled with equipment
and he gets nine miles to gown
and he has to come from Seamy Valley
because he can't afford a house
near Jimmy's house
and now he's getting screwed with that
and all I want is a little more of that
and a little less about the transgender
being able to participate in high school sports
but it's like he thinks he's running
an F1 team not a Ford factory
right thank you right and and I think
part of what's happened in our culture is
These politicians listen to the loudest voice in the room, not the voice with the most common sense, right?
Like a couple of episodes ago, I watched you guys, and I think, Drew, you would just come back from San Francisco.
You're talking about San Francisco versus L.A., and San Francisco's kind of gotten better, and L.A. and the homeless,
and certainly have the homeless problem here in New York where I'm based.
And that's a perfect example of another issue of, like, you know, deal with a homeless in a way that's humane to them, but gives me a better quality of life.
or I'll give you an analogy, all right?
And I mean this sincerely.
If you ride a bike, especially in a city,
go fuck yourself, okay?
Those bicyclists are the biggest assholes.
I hate them. I hate them.
They want it both ways.
The worst thing that happened to the city was we put bike lanes in.
So now I, here's how I'm going to get killed in New York,
not by gunfire, not by a stabbing, and not by a car.
An asshole on a city bike who's looking up
and going the wrong direction on 3rd Avenue is going to nail me.
and I'm out, okay?
I've had so many close calls in that fucking lanes.
We all hate it. We all hate it.
By the way, there was a time when you had the outdoor dining and the bike lane was
between the restaurant and the outdoor dining and you'd go out and go, excuse me, wait,
boom, your hand would get blown off.
Drew, yell at Paul.
I got to yell at this door one thing.
So go talk to Paul.
Hey, but I want to, before we get into more to that, I want to, Adam, you know Paul's story
as a business investment banker, right?
Okay.
Well, I just want to make sure people.
All right, let's keep going on bikes.
Fuck you, let's do it.
All right, let's talk about bikes.
You want me to talk about how I kind of came into this?
I wanted to make sure that story got told,
but now I don't know if Adam knows it.
He may need to hear it too,
because I think it's the world's greatest story.
All right, I'll wait until he comes back.
All right, so back to bikes.
All right, do two minutes on bikes again.
So, yeah, people don't know.
So out here what they did,
there's a street that runs up.
The freeways don't work here, period, don't work.
So people have to get off and go on the surface streets.
So the parallel surface streets, they knocked them down to two lanes, like Adams Avenue, two lanes because they put bike lanes in there.
I've driven down that street 35 times, never seen a single bike on there, number one.
And number two, you can't get an emergency vehicle through because the traffic is so horrible on there now.
So what have you done?
Right.
What have you done?
It's brutal.
And the reason I'm, this is so, it's because God forbid you do anything that's in violation of any traffic law even slightly.
and they're up your ass. Meanwhile, they're blowing through in those ridiculous bike shorts where they look like sausage casing.
They're blowing through red lights. They're going the wrong direction. And here's one other thing, and this is a New York thing, but you don't have to know New York and live here to get it. We have subways, right? Don't take your bike on the subway. It's a light. It has pedals and a seat. You somehow figured out how to make an already disgusting trip being on a subway even worse by having your handle by.
up my ass. It's not a moving bike rack.
It's not a food. I don't go to the airport and check my car in the overhead, okay?
How about the bus? In California, the guy drives the bus.
That's to get off the bus and go get the thing and hook it up to the front rat.
Well, you're just sitting there. It's a bus.
And why is this relevant to what we're saying? It's because the few have, we service the few
to the detriment of the many
I feel like, where's my thing?
Like, I don't want my kid
trying to cross the street
and he's got to like dodge bikes, right?
Like he's in Vietnam, dodging bullets.
And yet I don't have a say
because if I say that,
then I'm anti-climate.
I'm anti-bikes.
I'm anti-shorts.
Whatever the anti-fuck is that there.
The whole thing is flipped
on some level in this country.
And it's not a right or a left issue, right?
It's just generally like, hey, how about the people in the middle?
How about us?
The ones that don't have the most extreme voices, we kind of count too.
I was just saying to Adam, we've got to get the young people to realize this,
because this is incumbent on youth to use their energy so they can have fun,
they can reproduce, they can find jobs, they can do the things they want to do,
as opposed to just smoking weed and lying back and saying, this place sucks.
I will say, I'll say this, though, there is something.
you can learn from from watching cyclists because I was watching I used to walk in my neighborhood
and my neighborhood was quite busy with cyclists and there'd be a there's a four-way stop sign
and there's kind of a longish little bit of an uphill leading to it and then whatever but the cyclists
would blow through it they just blow through it and as you alluded to Paul I mean they're just
there's no recognition of stop or red or anything.
They blow through everything, right?
It's the same thing as the florist on the side of forest lawn.
They get to break the law.
Yeah, you can't blow through it in your car.
Now, so I started, you know, I was really studying it.
Like these guys who are riding around Locke and Yada, California on a Sunday,
these are law-abiding citizens.
These aren't renegade outlaw cyclists.
These are probably white-collar dudes, family dudes, square dudes.
These are guys who do not break laws.
And they don't drive that way either.
But when they're on their bike, stop sign be damn.
They literally blow.
They become unicorns.
The first guy is kind of the canary.
He slows a little.
He looks.
And when that guy blows through, the next 15 guys just blow right through it.
Right.
Okay.
So what is it?
Why? Why? Why does the guy who is super law-abiding, and he's a taxpayer and he's a good citizen, why does he thumb his nose at this rule with the stop sign and with the stop light? And the answer is, do you know?
It's the ring of Geige's. Go ahead. The ring of Geis. This is a Platonic, a Platonic.
He said, he said, some of the best people, if you had this, this powerful ring that
when you twisted it, you became invisible.
That law-abiding citizen would suddenly have sex with the queen and kill the king.
Uh-huh.
Right.
The ring of guy.
Yeah, but killing the king is a bad thing.
I'm just saying.
Going through a four-way stop sign, it's not inherently killing a king.
I'm just saying when you become a unicorn, when you have zero gravity.
You can get a ticket on a bike.
That's not the, you can get a ticket on a bike.
Okay, okay.
For me, it's, for me, it's a little bit more sort of, they think that this bike is just
this little thing that's innocuous in relation to the rest of the world.
They're kind of in a hurry.
And I think the third component is it's kind of fun.
It's fun to Bob and we.
All right.
Hold on.
You guys are both wrong, although there's elements of what you both say that,
are correct.
All right.
These guys are out on a Sunday in La Cognada, so they're not messenger service guys.
You know what I mean?
They're just, they're out trying to, they're out for leisurely.
Stay in suburban Los Angeles for a second.
Yeah, well, that's what I'm saying.
I'm in, I'm in La Cresena.
I'm going, I'm walking the dog and I'm seeing these guys blow, middle-aged white guys,
blow right through stop signs.
This is the more important lesson we need to learn here.
they created through their own sweat and work this momentum.
Yes.
They burnt calories getting up to speed.
As a matter of fact, sometimes a little uphill going up to it.
Now, putting the brakes on is scrubbing off your own energy.
Yes.
In a car, you know, you move your right foot.
The car accelerates, you know.
Yes, technically you pay for the gas or if you plug it in, you know, you
pay the electricity, but there's not that one-to-one, like I literally created this.
And when you're applying the brakes, everyone knows that like on a bicycle.
When you're putting the brakes on, you're basically taking your own effort in energy and
throwing it away.
And then it's going to take much more to get back up the speed again.
So their energy becomes really important to them.
And I would say sort of globally, if you knew where your tax dollars were going, you know what I mean?
And like, oh, we're going to build a bullet train for $34 billion.
You'd be over my fucking dead body.
I'm not going to do.
They want me to pay for that pylon that went down into the earth 80 feet, but there's no bridge and there's never going to be.
You'd be like out of your mind about it.
You know what I mean?
And you can sit in your car and it doesn't really.
really feel. But if somebody said, you know, you put the brakes on and you owe me 10 pushups
in your car, people be blowing through with those. So it's their energy. It's their inertia.
It's their calories. It's their effort. And they're not, they don't want to scrub it off.
Yeah. They'll do anything they can not to scrub off their own energy. And also, they're
putting themselves in grave danger because if somebody blows through that stop sign or God
forbid doesn't whatever you're toast even with that at stake they will still not do it yeah
and that's the lesson it's their energy it's their money it's their capital that they're wasting
yes thank you yeah important that's why nobody can take care of a business like the owner
the business owner same yeah yeah yeah that's that's that's the way that's the way it works i mean if you
own a business but but these same guys will then work
out in the gym and they'll get on the treadmill and they'll do sprints where they run really
fast for a while and then they slow down and then they run really fast again and couldn't you
look at this bike thing as a workout in the sense like you slow down and then that sort of adds
to your workout you know I would I agree it doesn't mathematically make sense if you're
there for a workout but they're when they get ahead of steam and they're moving they look at it
is retarding the process of now putting the...
I'm going to undo what I just did
by applying the brakes, essentially.
Yeah, but here's my thing.
That's not my thing on a Sunday when I'm in my car.
I don't know you.
I don't give a shit about your workout.
I don't give a shit about how much energy you expended
and you don't want to slow down.
Because guess what, guy on the bike?
There are other human beings in the world.
Whether they're in a car, they're pushing a baby carriage.
they're riding a Great Dane or they're riding another bike.
And so that's the problem, too.
And I don't know what the psychology is, but it's like suddenly, when you get on a bike,
something that I think that bike seat has some magic power that goes right up your ass
through your spine and into your brain that says, I'm the only person on the planet right now.
I think we sort of made them into like hometown heroes.
Yeah.
And they feel a certain amount.
of immunity. Yeah, they're unicorns.
Because they're elevated. They're using the bike lanes. They're climate.
Right. They're better than you with your gas-guzzling SUVs. And that meets non-enforcement
really of rules for them equals a narcissistic sort of jailbreak, which is what we're
experiencing now.
Lisa is not a chick-think thing thing.
The bison? No, no, it is not a feminine.
One of the rare times that Adam has not blamed this on a female brain.
No, this is a male brain.
This is a male brain thing, yeah.
And then there is the guys who I see on YouTube who ride the wheelies and come up right up on everybody and do the swerving actions on whatever.
Which I'm not a fan of, but if somebody opens their car door, that's kind of on you.
Because you're chasing them riding a wheelie on a mountain bike.
So I feel the same way with, I tell you all the time, it's like, I don't mind if a guy's speeding.
I don't mind if a guy's going 30 miles an hour faster than the posted speed limit.
But if somebody changes lanes and you're coming up on them and this very rapid, you're not allowed to flick them off.
You're the one who's, you've chosen this life, which is fine.
And I like it and I respect it.
You got to get out of the way, but you're not allowed to get.
angry at the person who changed lanes because your rate of speed was three times faster than
everyone. And so they thus cut you off, but they only cut you off because you're going 90
and a 55. And if you can ride a wheelie behind all of God's creatures, but when someone opens
that car door and you go to the ground, it's on you. You're not allowed to get angry at that
person who opened the door. All right, quick break. Paul's going to stay with us. We'll be right back
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Did you know Paul's story?
Oh, well.
I just don't know if you know or not.
Your impulse to talk to me as I'm walking out the door.
There's a craziest thing.
No, no, no.
I didn't want you to tell the story.
I was going to have Paul tell his story
while you were out of the room.
I didn't know I'm logging about it.
Well, you go, Adam, you know, Paul's story?
I'm not in front of a microphone, Drew.
I know.
I needed to know whether it was something I wanted you to hear or not here.
You see?
No.
That's what I was asking.
Okay, sound good I know.
I know Paul's story.
But, and I think it's the greatest story, I just said.
Well, then let's tell it.
All right.
It's just the short, the shortest version of it.
Go ahead.
I mean, he's a, he's a merger of acquisition lawyer on Wall Street.
Tim, tell him this story.
Are we back?
Are we back from commercial?
Yes, believe it or not, we're back.
Believe it or not.
Are my parents done arguing now, so I can focus on this.
Yeah, so I kind of didn't plan on getting into comedy.
I went to law school.
I was in New York doing mergers and acquisitions at a firm called Wilkie Farr and Gallagher.
And I started writing jokes, you know, like there's a hobby and, you know, just, and by the way,
mergers an acquisition, M&A, and some people say, well, exactly what is that? I kind of know
what it is. And I analogize it to, like, when you eat, you have like a salad and a steak and you chew
that up. And like, that's the acquisition. And then a couple of days later, you take a really
huge shit. That's the merger. And I'm the colon. It all went through me. And so I was just
writing these jokes. I had started making short films, one and got into the HBO Aspen Comedy Festival.
and one thing led to another.
I'm writing a lot of jokes,
and I meet Jay Leno at a private function
that we were invited to.
And I was working all-nighters.
I'm a young associate.
I have, like, no extra time.
But I had these jokes.
I go up to him after he's done
with a whole packet of jokes.
And I go, look, I don't know if you need jokes,
but I'm never going to use him.
You can, you know, have them.
And he's like, okay.
I think he was that whole thing.
And then he takes them,
and his head moves around, you know,
I like Jay, but it's like there's like a loose Macy's Day parade balloon
just getting caught in the wind.
And a couple of days later, my phone rings,
and it's Jay Leno, is Paul there?
And I'm like, there's no way Jay Leno's calling me.
I figured he'd throw him out.
So I thought it was my friend David pulling a prank.
And I'm like, because he likes to do impressions
and he knew I met Leno.
And I was really busy.
I was really funny there.
He goes, not really, is Shay Leno.
I go, David, I know it's not Jay Leno.
I go, David, stop.
He goes, it's Jay Leno.
And then I actually said to Jay Leno, you do a lousy Jay Leno.
And he goes, it's really me.
And I'm like, oh, shit.
And then a couple of days later, he calls me and he said, I'm going to do one of your jokes on The Tonight Show.
And he paid me 50 bucks for this joke.
And it just blew my head off my shoulders.
And then he said, go try the jokes out before you send them to me.
And I said, how do that?
I go to open mic nights in the city.
and then I started to go to open mic nights
when I'd sneak out of work on a dinner break
so I'm working all night
is doing M&A deals.
Did he know you were a big Wall Street guy at that point?
Yeah, he did.
And by the way, he busted my balls on the first set of jokes.
He goes, by the way, I read your jokes, what do you do for a living?
I go, I'm a lawyer. He goes, I knew it.
I go, why? He goes, you write like a lawyer.
You're too wordy. He goes, I get to the punchline already.
You're writing a joke, not the Magna Carta for Christ's hate.
And then I start going to open mic nights
and I start living this secret double life
where I'm a lawyer by day, comic by night,
and I'm getting in a town car
that we would charge to one of the client's accounts,
and I'd go to the Bowery,
and I'd work dive bars in my little, like, Brooks Brothers suit.
And end of story here.
One night I go to the place.
One of the places I worked was called Downtown Day Route 2.
Wow.
So, yeah, they were either franchising these shitholes
or somebody blew up one.
And I'm waiting to go on stage,
and there's a guy on stage playing blown in the wind badly,
like it was poets and folk singers.
And this plane, just playing.
And then all of a sudden, there's a scuffle at the pool table,
two guys getting a fight.
One guy cuts another guy,
press the side of the next with a box cutter.
That guy runs out of the bar.
This guy's bleeding and drunk.
He's screaming.
He's screaming.
He caught me, man.
He caught me.
Cops show up.
He caught me.
It's blowing.
And then the guy just keeps playing.
Like he said, you're getting off with nothing, right?
So I'm about to leave.
I get up to leave because I'm supposed to be next.
and I hear the emcee go, all right, how about I hand for so-and-so?
All right, you guys ready for some comedy?
Wow.
So I go on stage because I think I have to go on stage.
I had taken my jacket off so I wouldn't look so corporate.
I pulled like the shirt tails in my shirt out.
And I'm on stage in my white Brooks Brothers shirt, my suits and pants, whatever.
And I'm doing jokes, nobody's paying attention to me.
And then I say something like I always wanted to be here at downtown Beirut, too.
I always wanted to follow a slashing.
which I thought was a pretty good line, okay?
Well, the guy who got slashered me say that
and he had all these bloody cocktail napkins
because he was running around the bar screaming drunk
and he goes, hey, you make a fun of me?
I don't think of any shit from you
and he throws all the napkins at me.
Wow.
And they stick to my white shirt, right?
And now I have like a great fruit-sized blood stain on my shirt.
And then I keep going, nobody's paying attention.
He turns back to the bar at one point.
He goes, hey, what are you doing anyway?
I go, I'm trying to tell jokes.
He turns back to the bar and he goes, hey, everybody, shut the fuck up.
This guy's trying to tell jokes.
And the whole place shuts up.
You could hear a pin drop.
End of story.
I go back to the firm.
I was gone for three hours.
They couldn't find me.
You turn into a 12-year-old, no matter how old or educated you are.
And I thought, I'm just going to walk around with a file folder and nobody will notice this grapefruit-sized blood stain on my shirt, right?
I walk into the conference room, the senior partner's there, and he says to me, where have you been?
would have you have a blood stain on your shirt like that, like that fast. And I didn't have anything to say. I was frozen. And another guy goes, what kind of shirt is that? I go, it's a Brooks brother shirt. Why? He goes, I know how to get blood out of a Brooks brother shirt. He goes, club soda, let me choose. And another guy goes, no, Armani, that's the shirt you want. I go, are you guys like remaking American psycho in your spare time? Why do you know this? And so, and that sort of became the beginning of just this crazy life. And then eventually I left and left full time to do this. So my question. My question.
I just got a timeline question.
You were doing, you were doing like matinee stand up or you were coming back to work at midnight?
At midnight.
So when you do a MNA, yeah, so you get a dinner break when you're a young associate at like six at night.
And all the other associates would go to dinner and I would just get in a car and I'd go to a club.
And then you come back after dinner.
Yeah.
Because of the time difference like in Asia or something or you just work all night?
You just work all night.
No, you work all night.
You pull all-nighters.
That's what you.
I was doing a lot of hospital-tender offers.
You just can't let up.
You just got to go, go, go.
So you just, I literally, my average night was I'd get home at 11 to 12, midnight, on average, on average.
And then you would pull all-nighters.
Wow.
And so as long as I got something done by the morning.
And so, but the problem was I would go in these open mic nights, you pick a number out of a hat to get to her and when you're going to go on.
So if I got a high number, I was there for like two or three hours.
Did you end up dreading the emanate?
stuff? I mean, I did. It was like, it was like, but then you went to IB, then you went to
investment banking, right? You went on the other side. And then I went, and then I went to
investment banking. Was that to give you more time for, for the comedy? No, it just, I just,
they were paying them more money than lawyers. We were working as hard as the investment
bankers, but the lawyers weren't getting paid as much and they were paying bonuses to investment
bankers. So I went to that side while I was still doing this. He tells us the story of
being in a friend's house who's now an IB and he's got this huge mansion and Paul
is now left, let it all go.
And he's in the bathroom, sweating,
like, did I do the right thing?
Oh, right.
So then it became, yeah,
and it became like,
I started to have all these doubts
because we owned an apartment
on the Upper West Side.
My wife, now my wife,
that my girlfriend, we sold it.
I moved to a rooming house
and new Rochelle for $327 a month.
And I was living with two ex-cons,
two recovering addicts,
and a 300-pound phone sex operator
who sold Herbalife Diapriott.
product store to door. Those were my neighbors. And I just started to live the life of a comic.
And within six months, I was in a deep depression because I was like, I made the biggest mistake
of my life. Like I was, it was horrible. And I went to a friend's house who I just been
working with. And he literally bought like a mansion in Greenwich, Connecticut. And I walked in and I'm
like, I can't be here. I was freaking out. I could, I could have had this. I could have had this.
and I end up in his bathroom with the door lots sitting on the toilet seat.
My head and my hands going, what have I done?
What I've done?
What I'm done?
And everybody thought I said, I just pretend that I was sick.
And then I got audited by the IRS because I thought I was hiding money.
Oh, sure.
And are you married your wife then?
No, we were dating.
Did she stayed with you?
Jesus Christ, what's wrong with her?
I got to talk to her.
That's a good woman.
Exactly.
What does her boyfriend think about it?
There's you go write it down, Drew.
It's a joke.
Paul, it's great catching up with you.
The podcast is called Inside Out with Paul McCurio.
You can check out Paul on YouTube as well.
Website, Paul, and I'll spell it out, M-E-C-U-R-I-O.com.
Love the stories.
Love getting caught up, Paul.
You guys are both on the podcast.
It was great to have you guys on.
I want to come back because.
Last time I did it, I was like, don't worry about this COVID shit.
And Paul was like, really?
I go, fuck you, Paul.
Don't worry about it.
And he was very welcoming of that idea.
And I was sort of right and sort of wrong.
But we should revisit it.
I'm going to be at Seoul Jolz and Potsdown, Pennsylvania.
And that'll be, I think it's tonight and tomorrow night, but I'm not sure exactly.
We can never get our plug thing quite figured out.
Sometimes we do.
Things about that club.
It's fun.
at that club.
This is,
uh,
let's see.
Oh.
It's like in two days from where this air is,
I think.
Oh,
this weekend.
This weekend.
Oh,
okay.
Sorry,
screw that up.
I thought this was Aaron on Friday.
It's Thursday,
right?
Yeah.
Okay.
Sorry.
Rodney's and Drew
going to be doing some stand-up
at Rodney's in the city.
Adam is making me go do four minutes.
Kat Tim's going to be there as well.
Where?
In New York?
Yeah.
Rodney's in New York.
Thursday, Thursday, tonight.
Oh, my God, I am going to come and heckle the shit out of you.
Oh, my God.
Yeah.
I was afraid of that.
Come on out.
We're doing a live pod for the other one.
We're doing standing for the late.
So do a little drop-in set or something, Paul.
That'll be fun.
Absolutely.
So, until next time, Adam Crowell for Paul McCurio and Dr. Drew, say it.
Mahala.
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