The Church of What's Happening Now: The New Testament - #187 | T.J. ENGLISH | UNCLE JOEY'S JOINT with JOEY DIAZ

Episode Date: August 8, 2022

Welcome to UNCLE JOEY'S JOINT..... It's Monday, August 8th… Today we talk In-Studio with Author & Journalist, T.J. ENGLISH, about his New Book DANGEROUS RHYTHMS! Follow him on Social Media and his Website at: https://www.instagram.com/tjbabaloo and at https://www.tj-english.com for More Info!   This podcast is ALWAYS presented by ONNIT! https://www.onnit.com This episode is also brought to you by Better Help & True Classic… BETTER HELP Visit https://www.betterhelp.com/Diaz for 10% off your first month.  TRUE CLASSIC Visit https://trueclassictees.com/JOEY and use code JOEY for 25% OFF!  Follow Uncle Joey on Social Media: https://www.Twitter.com/madflavor https://www.Instagram.com/madflavors_world And don't forget.....   The Mind Of Joey Diaz on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/joeydiaz #JoeyDiaz #Madflavor #UncleJoeysJoint #TheJoint #TJEnglish The JOINT is Produced by: Michael Klein aka @onebyonepodcast on Social Media: https://www.Instagram.com/onebyonepodcast https://www.twitter.com/onebyonepodcast Huge Thanks to BEN TELFORD for the Tremendous intro video..... https://spoti.fi/unclejoeysjoint

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with True Classic. I'm going to get you. 25% off at True Classic. When you go to True Classic.com, Code Joey. Again, that's 25% off and free shipping for over $100 with code Joey at true classic.com. Get yourself looking like a doctor at True Classic. Let's get this party started. It's Monday motherfucking morning and we got T.J. Englishness motherfucker. There you go. Tip top Magoo. What's happened, you bad motherfuckers? It's Monday the 8th of August. Welcome to Uncle Joey's joint. Today,

I'm my co-host today and my main man is my brother I love him with all my heart this guy inspires me he's a great author Mr. T.J. English. What's happening, brother? Joey, how you doing?

Nice to be out here in Jersey? Yes, nice down here in the farmland. Yeah. We can go get a pig after this. Can breathe out here. Breathe out here, you know. It's wide open, isn't it? I thought I just came from my place

in downtown Manhattan went through the tunnel, come over a year, all of a sudden the sky opens up and you can breathe. I felt like I'm in the country. It is. I picked this area because my brother lives in Morganville and I was in shock on how he had a fish company.

He still does. He would leave his house at four, go to the Fulton Fish Market, and then we deliver fish to one. And we'd be in Morganville by 2 o'clock. We'd go through his garage. We'd take showers because we'd stunk, like fish. And then

we jump in the pool and he put the fish from the day on the grill while we were swimming. And I'm like, how can you be in the world's best city in one minute? And then you're down the fucking, you're mountains. Like, this is different. It's not

like going down the shore. It's nothing like that. This is farmland. This is, I'm next to Coltsneck. And that's Queen Latifah. That's Bruce Springsteen. That's a bunch of people. But when you drive in Coltsneck, those people have horses. They got everything. You know what I found out? I didn't

not know this. And a lot of people are not going to know this. New Jersey is the state with the most fucking horses. Yeah. I had no fucking idea that there's more horses here than fucking anywhere. So it's, and I'm going to tell you the truth. You want me to tell you how I ended up here? Let me tell

a weird story that only and I've never told anybody this. Only the T.J. understand. When I was a kid, I was a Santeria kid. And I was involved. And I used to go to all the eatings and the chicken killings and shit. Do you know where they got their animals from? Marlborough.

Because I remember still being a kid and going, you go to Marlboro, isn't that a cigarette? Like it used to be a cigarette, you know? And then to add more to this, when I was about 13, I used to come down here every weekend of the Englishtown Raceway, funny cars, and then they have the English town flea market where it's everything stolen, you know, from CD platform, not CDs in those days, from A-track players to, so I would come down here on the weekends and buy limousines for the feet.

Julia Serving sneakers, they were like five bucks, and I would take them up north and sell them for 21. Yeah. You know, so it's like I have a connection to this area in the weirdest way, but the Santa Ria connection is just. Oh, man, if you get us started on that again, remember when we're on Rogan Show, I still get people come up to me and say, I can't believe you had an Aboqua ceremony on the Rogan show, you know, because we got off on that. But, you know, that's what got me into Latin music, Latin jazz, which I love,

really was by way of hearing it through Santa Maria ceremonies, the drum playing, the chanting, all that kind of stuff. And when you hear that, when they take that element of Afro-Cuban music, and they feed it into American jazz, that's my sweet spot, man. That's the music I love. Is that like Cachow and those guys? Yeah, yeah.

I have an album here that I really love. This is my all-time. Like, people always say, you know, the Bella Vista Country Club, whatever the fuck. Yeah, no, this social club. Not for me. I like this shit from the 60s that I have. Oh, yeah.

With Cachau on bass and a fucking taped in an apartment. It sounds like a fucking apartment. That's the best. You ever hear of Chano Poso? Fuck yeah. Chano Poso. Fuck yeah. The percussionist, the conga player,

he got murdered at the age of 33 by his marijuana dealer. Wow. Dizzy Gillespie went down to Havana, Cuba, and heard about him. They told him there's a conga player in Havana that plays in the traditional Santa Ria style.

In fact, he was a Babelau in a strain of the religion called Lecomi. Lecomi, yeah. Yeah. Locumee. Yeah. And so, Dizzy Gillespie went down there in the late 40s and got him and brought him to the United States and used him in an orchestra that played at Carnegie Hall with Charlie Parker and a guy named Chico O'Farrell, who was Cuban, Irish, who was one of the founders of this.

music, Latin jazz, and they debuted at Carnegie Hall and it changed the course of American music. And Chanaposo was 32 years old at the time. And this guy was perched on the edge of a mega career. And then he got murdered by his marijuana dealer in Harlem one afternoon. Great tragedy for the music. Now, Dizzy worked a lot of Cubans. He did.

He really liked the Cubans. Machito, Mario Bowser. Mario Bowser is a very important figure. in the history of jazz in general, Mario Bowser came up here in like the 30s and went to work in Dizzy Gillespie's orchestra in the 30s, and he hipped Dizzy Gillespie to Cuban music. And that's when Latin music started working its way into jazz.

All the rhythms of Afro-Cuban music started to change the direction of jazz. And that shit, you listen to that today? It's as fresh as if it was just created yesterday. That's how it goes. It sounds great. Yeah. It really does.

I didn't know, listen, I love the Afro-Cuban thing. Yeah, it's something that you can't talk about it, really. It's not like you meet your friends on the corner. Have you heard the last, Tata, it's something that I grew up listening to, and I really liked. I love Santeria music, and I still play it in the mornings on Mondays to salute the saints and shit. I still play it.

But the Afro-Cuban, it's done. And like the Afro-Cuban whole thing is, it's such a culture that I can't even explain it. Like, I'm stuttering because I cannot, it's done so much in so many ways. Like those slaves going through Cuba built such, I'm watching something on Netflix now, about a 12-episode Cuban thing. It's tough to watch at times, but it's slow. You know, it's fucking slow. But Cuba just had this Afro-Rhythm thing, and I'll tell you, my uncle's dark skin. and you know they didn't like dark-skinned people in Cuba

and he'll tell you now when he was seven, a guy made a dog piss on him because he was darker skin. You know, I talk about racism in America. Racism in Cuba's horrible. But until now, we talk, you know, once a week and he'll laugh. He'll go, I didn't know my luck would change

when that dog would piss on me. If I knew what I knew now, I would have had him piss on me even more, you know what I'm saying? But it changed baseball. It changed music. It changed... Music and athletics. Athletics, like the way people think.

Like, you know, I get a thing every once a year from some jerk off that listen to a podcast about I didn't like the racism. There was no racism. I grew up, you know, having all that around me. When you're Cuban, there's no racism. I mean, I ain't going to lie to you. The first time I saw my cousins, I fucking ran in the room and locked the door because I swear to God, And my mom was pissed at me for like a week. She's like, that's your family.

I go, they can't be. What am I adopted? I'm the only light skin motherfucker in that picture. It looked like a, it looked like the nets. When we were kids, the nets. I looked like one of the water boys. Like I was like a bullboy from my family. Everybody's dark.

Some of them got afro, some of them got light skin, some of them. It's fucking crazy. We're like cats, you know? And I think like every couple years they spit out a white one. Then you look at my cousins. They're both dark skin. I mean, you look at them and he like, So I sit here sometimes going, I don't know what the fuck happened.

I don't want to know. But it made for an interesting. You got some African in you. Oh, like a motherfucker. No question about it. No question about it. And you're lucky to have it because. I am.

Yeah, you're blessed. Nothing to be ashamed of. Yeah, you're blessed to have it. It's given me a lot. It's given me a lot. And it's helped me understand a lot. It's helping me understand a lot. When I did that 23 and me, I had a couple things of me.

But you could see that there's all the people that went through Cuba. Yeah. Chinese, Spain, African. Yeah. That's the people that went through Cuba. I've studied the roots of that music a lot and gone down to Cuba numerous times to hear it at the source. And I don't know what it is about that island. I mean, there's a lot of great music that came out of the Caribbean from Puerto Rico and Jamaica and everywhere.

but Cuba, the music from Africa and from Spain came to that little island of Cuba and started across pollination, and it got mixed in with the religious ceremonial stuff. That's some of the greatest music that's ever been created in the world, some of the most rhythmic music, exciting music, sensual and sexual music, and also sophisticated music, as sophisticated as European classical music, particularly when it gets put together with jazz. That's Cuba's greatest creation, if you ask me,

is that music, what it's done to the world, what it's given to the world. I listen to a lot of Celia Cruz. Yeah. Oh, brilliant. I mean tell you some. She's the Aretha Franklin of Tehran. Oh, you just took it out of my mind.

Like I, Rita Franklin Celia Cruz, Wakandana. She's in her own category. And in fact, I drove by the Selya Cruz gas station the other day in New Jersey. They have a stop, and I made my wife go in. I think it's Union City where they have a statue of it. They have a statue of it there, but they gave celebrities six gas stations, Gandalfini, Bon Jovi, I don't know, Einstein. And I know Sely Cruz got one down there. So I went in there and nothing, a couple pictures of it.

There's no Spanish music, but she's got a song called Bamba Kolo. Okay. She got it live. in studio. It sounds like something out of a fucking James Bond movie. Like in the 60s, I don't even, and it's precision. You know what song I'm talking about? Yeah, oh, yeah.

Oh, of course, yeah, I know. The start of it, it sounds like, dun da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. It seems like it's something you'd watch on TV in the 60s. But I was like, fuck. That music will take over your body. Yes, yes. It will possess you.

You know, like religious music can possess you. That music will possess you. It changed my life, I've got to say. You know who else he blew his mind who wrote about it in his autobiography? Marlon Brando. Marlon Brando was blown away by Afro-Cuban music, and he learned to be a pretty good amateur percussionist.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's crazy how much history, Marlon Brando. In fact, last night at dinner at a party, these guys were asking me about the Superman of Cuba. And I said to them, and Marlon Brando would go see him at night. And the article says that Marlon Brando would go with three show women, showgirls, and leave with him, you know? Yeah. And just fucking crazy shit.

Superman, does everyone know what we're talking about when you talk about Superman? Oh, yeah. I've talked about it a couple times. I've spoken about the Superman of Cuba's got an 18-inch dick dry, like flat. Like, it must have been. I heard a story once Robert DeVal went to Cuba to visit. It's in the article. And he says to the cab driver, take me to the Shanghai Theater, take me to see Superman.

Superman had been dead for like decades by then. He was so disappointed that he couldn't go see Superman. Cuba has so much fucking history. But this new book that you have, I mean, listen, your love for Cuba has, I've learned a lot from your books. I mean, I didn't know all these stories existed, you know, and with your stories and my stories, I'm just blown the fuck away. Like, I'm... Cuba blows me away.

Like, it really does as an island. I can't believe I'm from there. I can't believe the thought process of those people sometimes. I'm really proud. Like, I love my mother. And I think I'm happy that she died because my life would have been completely different. She would have made me pay for the United States.

Like, pay them back. My mother had plans already. My mother wanted me to be a Marine. My mother wanted me to fucking fight for this country. My mother had, you know, it's the patriotism level of those fucking pre-revolutionary Cubans. Oh, man. Did you see the, did I send you that video of Ricky a couple weeks ago when he got his acceptance speech? No.

In New York with Lucille Ball like 1956. Yeah. And he goes, when I came to this country, he used to clean cages. And he goes, he goes, here it is. From that night to this night. to this night in New York City on this stage, winning this award, lets you know that this is the greatest country in the world.

Like, they loved America. You know, they couldn't, they loved everything about it, you know, and that makes me really proud. Cuba had some disgusting things, you know, like when you read the Superman of Article Cuba, you know, Americans were getting off the plane just to shoot to go see this guy fuck a chick.

Yeah. You know, it was really fucking filthy. Well, it goes way back, you know. The Caribbean was the crossroads of a lot of, you know, the pirates and all that kind of shit. A lot of commerce, illegal commerce, selling of spices and coffee and all that stuff. And so those islands and the Caribbean were kind of established as a kind of place to go and engage in illicit activities that you couldn't engage in back in your home country. that was part of the tradition and part of the appeal to lure people from all over the world to come to the islands, you know, what happens in Cuba, stays in Cuba, that whole mentality. And so that became a legacy of the island that Cubans had to live with for centuries after that, you know, the idea that you come to this island and abduce it and use it for your own personal form of entertainment.

And then you go back to where you came from. Some of that was good and some of that was bad, you know. I think Superman is part of that legacy. For Superman, it was weird. In 1985, I had a Panamanian neighbor in Clipside Park. In fact, it was my friend's grandmother. And we were talking one day, and she goes, Cuba's a country that's cursed.

God put a curse on it because of all the bad things that were done now now. And I'm like, I remember watching Amistad, and that's one of the first times I actually saw. Like, I heard glimpses. Like I know, you know, Santeria, I know slaves went through there, but I didn't know it was a slave port. How many of those fucking slaves put a curse on that fucking country, you know, on the way out there were African there.

Yeah, but they blessed it too, man. They blessed it too. They brought all that great music. They brought all that spiritual vibrations through that island, you know. It's a mystical place to go and experience the culture there. And what that, what that is. island has contributed to the arts in the world, arts and athletics, there's nothing else like it that I can think of. You know, all the little Irish nation, all the little island nations are very

proud. I'm Irish, that's an island. I think there's always a mentality of people who come from an island country because you're an isolated, you're just, you know, you don't have neighbors, you're surrounded by water, and usually they're small in comparison to the land masses where the other are based. And so you have a real sense of pride when you come from that kind of a place. And when you excel, when you seek to succeed at something, when you come from a place like that, you really do it like over the top, almost like you have something to prove. You have a lot to prove, you know. Cubans are like that. Puerto Ricans are like that. Irish are like that. Irish are like that. It's so weird, the Irish-Cuban connection. Like I never live. I never

live through it. So I don't know what happened with the Battle of Boyne and how they ended up in Cuba and partying in a Catholic country. That's all great and dandy. But then I look at the culture and how it affected me as a Cuban, right? I married an Irish chick. When I was dating,

white chicks, whatever, they would come and go. Irish chicks stayed. If you listen to my love 13, 12, McNeil, Colleen Maynes, You know, I was a Moran. I was an Irish lover.

And I couldn't figure out why Irish girls liked me. I'm like, one of these girls even talk to me. There's a fucking lady who's a genius. She's beautiful on Twitter. She's a doctor. Okay, in Milwaukee. Her and her father come to my shows. I love her to death.

She came to L.A. and go, I'll meet you at the store. I'm like, this girl trusts me. Like, Jesus Christ, who trusts me? Because they're fucking Irish. and their fathers are crazy Irish dads are fucking nuts so when they see me they're like this guy's perfect like you know

this follows the fucking that's funny so I don't know sometimes a culture I'm trying to explain I'm not explaining it right like I had a friend in college she was Korean and I knew I was friends with a boyfriend and one day I asked him where's your girlfriend

and he goes she goes to the hospital every other period okay she had every other time she had a period she would have to check into the hospital for five days so one night we were at dinner after that and I don't like to talk about periods and all this shit so we were just talking and she was explaining to us what really happens to her and she says that she carried

the sins of her culture that the pain that her grandmothers and everybody endured like for years dog it sounds fucking crazy but that's what it turned into her Well, that's a big burden to have to carry, man. Her mother had a period like this, you know. I hope she got some good things out of it, too.

You know, I don't know. You know what I'm saying? It was the, look, I faint. I faint, you know. And one day somebody, some guy was telling me in college, he goes, the reason why you faint is because you came from Spanish ancestry, from Spain. And they were in a war.

And when they were getting conquered, they faint to act like they were dead. and when you can't handle stuff, you faint. That's part of who you are as a culture. Your great-grandfather might have been a fucking soldier, but that stayed with you through your jeans. That pain, my career went through a war. That's what she was saying. That pain from the war, what happened to them,

she carried that for years. And it's, I don't know, I don't know if it's hard to believe. But I see it sometimes in my life. I see what the Cubanism, the door. that opens for me, the things that I attract to naturally. You know, my daughter's Irish and fucking Cuban. She joined the school band. That's a great combination.

Okay? Guess what she's playing? The fucking drums. Right. Okay? The teacher's sitting to play the drums and go, sit the fuck down. When we go to Jimmy Florentine's house and the boys and the girls are playing, she goes in his garage and you hear, blah, blah, blah, blah.

See what that is, is like I was married to a Brazilian. when you are drawn to cross cultural boundaries, in the friends that you choose and the significant others that you choose, I think in a way you're seeking to complete some part of yourself, there's something in that other culture that you feel that you don't have, and by forming a relationship with that person, you complete yourself, right? And some cultures are particularly well suited together to do that. I think the Irish and the Cubans have enough in common that that's what draws them to each other.

And then they have the things that are dissimilar that help them complete themselves. For instance, Irish being Northern Europeans can be kind of physically uptight. You hang out with a Cuban woman, man. You're going to get loose. You're going to get loose. Physically, you're going to get loose. And I think Cubans benefit from a little more steady. Oh, I shouldn't say.

they steady emotional, but from a little more of an intellectual instinct that the Irish might have that they don't have. So they get that. That's what they get in return. I'm stupid. And my wife runs the fucking operation. So I depend on her for everything, but my wife... You know, about the Irish and the Cubans have, though, is fucking temper.

The temper that goes off. The emotionalism, the heart, where in your heart, your sleeve, responding emotionally to everything. Not all cultures understand that. Irish and Cubans have that.

It's something that's understood between them. It's a perfect combination. I don't know how like whenever I go to the doctor, my blood pressure's hot. But then we take a breather and then my blood pressure drops.

And for years I've had this problem. But I feel great. It doesn't really affect me. And I think that my engine runs out. Yeah. My engine runs a little harder than people. Like, I'm fucking passionate about shit.

And I've gotten, like, I've lightened up. Because I remember being 25, and people saying, Joey, come in. You got to, you got to. This is not good. Yeah, you're going to blow a gasket. And I remember now that you're saying that to me. One day, I was working on a dealership. There was an issue about money.

And without saying the word, I went in the back. I got a sledgehammer. And I got on one of the cars. And I said, if I don't get my money, I'm going to start breaking windshield. And one guy, you know, came out. He's like, Joey, Joey, stop, come here. He goes, what's the problem? How much?

He gave me the money. He goes, come back Monday, take the weekend off. And he was an Irish guy. Billy Solon, what's his name? I'll never forget this guy because he was white. He was rich. He was intelligent. He was Irish by name.

You know those people? He was Irish by name, but he read me correctly. And when I came back Monday, he goes, come here for a second. He goes, bro, I got to love you. I fucking love me. He goes, I fucking adore you. I've been thinking about you all weekend. He goes, I don't meet people that wear their heart on their sleeve anymore.

I haven't since I left the war. He goes, people are just bland. He goes, I love you to dad. He goes, in fact, I'm not even going to call you Joey. I'm going to call you Renegade. He goes, so he would call me a renegade every time he saw me. And when I went to prison, he sent me money, and he wrote me a letter. And he goes, you're going to be fine.

You're going to come out of your head standing on your feet the right way. I mean, he just understood me. But when he said that to him, he goes, come. my office. He goes, you fucking Cuban motherfuckers. And he goes, no disrespect, I don't want you to go off. He goes, but the passion, the heart on the sleeve. He goes, that's,

he goes, you don't see a lot of people. And I never know what that meant, but I love the same. Like, if I love you, I love you. Yeah, yeah. If I fucking hate you, I fucking hate you with everything I got, you know? When I want to help you, I'll do anything in the world for you. I'm one of those guys. And

that is a nice Cuban tradition. We're very, we're very, we're very open. I read an article by a woman who's a Cuban 20 years ago she wrote for

the Chicago newspaper and she said that she visited Cuba she had no idea about Cuban and she goes these people had nothing

but they'd always offer you a glass of water when you went to the house she goes people in the United States don't even think of that shit

she goes in Cuba they would ask you a glass of water and give you coffee she said the coffee tasted terrible that they had to use the filter

like 10 fucking times but it's a really weird fucking culture to be a part of. When I was a kid, I was really ashamed of it. I didn't understand that nobody would come to my house because of my Santeria stuff.

I wouldn't allow anybody in my house. Not to mention my mother was a fucking, you know, I shouldn't be in six and her going, if you don't start wiping your ass and you keep shitting your underwear, I'm gonna thumb-tack them to the fucking door so your friends can see it when you come over here. And one day, and she goes,

I thumb-tack it to the, to your bedroom door first and it continues to get out thumbtack it to the front fucking door somebody sees your stinky ass motherfucker man if they'd reported her to the child services agency right

they would have come and taken you away from her not even close in the 70s that was mild yeah I knew kids well let me ask you growing up in Union City you say being ashamed of it you were surrounded by Cubans right it wasn't

I was ashamed of it when I started going to school at first and I couldn't speak the language and I, you know, but my mother tried very hard to, like, remove the accent. My mom didn't want me to have an accent. She wanted me to be an American. So she didn't want me to sound like Ricky Ricardo. So it took a couple of years. Santa Ria I was very embarrassed about it.

I didn't know what the fuck we were doing here. It worked for me. I got healthy. I wasn't going to talk about it. But I wasn't going to, I liked when I was with those people. people. And then... Were you raised Catholic? Yes.

So you... Very Catholic. You were baptized? Yes. Right. Catholic, very tight with my godfather. So was I. My mother was the type of person that she'd be driving in the city and she'd see a pretty church.

She'd fucking pull over, go inside and tip the fucking guy and give him a bottle of doors or something like that. Yeah. I mean, I came from that foundation. So once I got to Union City, I started talking to people. and I saw all these bodega owners, and I heard their stories. And it gave me a sense of who I was, but it wasn't until 1985 when I went to San Francisco

after my mother had died that I became friends with a street gang, a Mario Litos. That I realized I was very proud for being Cuban. It was those Mario Littos that instilled that pride of me. No, no shit. I didn't know this. Because they were successful people. They were on the street selling drugs, the stabbing people.

But in Cuba, they were engineers, they were dentists, they were lawyers. And when they came here, all that got taken away from them. And I saw their drive to be Americans, and I saw their drive to succeed, whatever it was. Yeah, they sold nickel bags, but a lot of them were janitors at schools at night. They sold nickel bags to make, they couldn't speak English. So I saw, I got a culture explained to me. Like my mother didn't explain it to me growing up, like you took it for granted. And now I wanted to, I yearn for that knowledge, like six years after my mother died,

and these Mario Litos broke it down for me. That's amazing because the Marialitos got stereotyped and badmouthed a lot by other Cubans, by other Cubans. They got outcast. Because I guess the Cubans who'd been here for a while feared that the reputation of the Marialitos was going to bring them down. So they separate, they were like, we're not like the Marialitos.

They demonized the Marilitos. And for a reason. Well, they burglarized their homes. Let me take a short break real quick. And now for a word from my motherfucking sponsors. What's happened, you beautiful people?

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Marioitos now do your view did your viewers know what the Mario Lito is uh you know the bulk of Cubans came after the revolution in 59 60 61 then Cuba tightened up for a few years and then uh from constant pressure you know I guess uh I don't know it was some type of something happening Cuba some type of revolt. Here's what happened. It's interesting. Carter was president.

Carter was president. And Carter said Cuba's mistreating their people and he announced that we will take in any Cubans that want to leave Cuba, right? And you will be given special privilege and citizenship when you get here. And so Castro hearing this, this is the legend. he emptied the mental hospitals and the prisons and put them all on a boat boats a series of boats I mean we're talking hundreds of thousands over the course of like a week and they all left from the town of mariel which is why they were called marialitos and they came over here in a flood like hundreds of them on little boats and everything it was really desperate like an act of desperation and they

came over here and it was not easy for them to simulate. There was, it was too many of them too fast. And so they wound up living in camps underneath the expressway in Miami and, uh, and that was that. And they got a really bad reputation because the reputation was that they were criminals and that they were low lives. And, um, that was a whole generation of Cubans who landed here. That's amazing that you were, you were getting to know them. So you were able to go below the, the stereotype, you were able to actually interrelate with them as human beings and learn, you know. They reminded me of who I was. Right.

I was lost. My mother had died in 79. On November, that influx happened like six months after that. And I'll never forget it bothered me because my mother was waiting for her daughter. My mother's whole fucking life at that time was trying to get my sister out of Cuba. And here she died. So since I was alive, because I came from the States, I would hear her on the phone every day with attorneys and Congress people,

speaking Spanish, English, trying to get her daughter. And then, but my sister ended up marrying a soldier who was a commie. So by that time, my mom died, and then they opened up Marielle. I was, when my mom died, I didn't touch Cuban food for two years. You know, there's no reason to eat Cuban food for two years. I was just eating Italian food and I became a criminal. And I lost who the fuck I was. I was like lost.

And then in 84 I finally was homeless and I went and visited my uncle in California. And he started giving me some of my family history, telling me my mother murdered a guy that tried to rape her sister and I was a murderer and all. And I was like, fuck. So I almost killed my uncle. You know, I was going to step. We pulled guns on each other because it was too painful to comprehend.

and the things he was saying to me about my family. Then a year later, I end up in San Francisco. And one day I'm walking just to see what's going on. I'm living in the tenderloin, which is not the best fucking part of San Francisco at the time. And sure enough, on the block next to, there was a coffee shop, there was a topless coffee shop. You know, the ugliest women, the ugliest tits you ever seen your life.

Coffee couldn't even save those tinnies. I forgot what it was called. And it was down the corner, it was a porn shop. And around that corner was all these, you know, I went down there, and I saw, and all of a sudden I heard the lingo. What the fuck? What are you guys doing? We're Cuban.

Oh, shit, I'm fucking Cuban. And we started talking. And then they told me what they did. They sold nickel bags. You know, they, they dealt with traveler's checks. So I became, I spoke English. I was like they're leading now. I had a suit and I spoke English.

What year was this? 85. Oh, shit. So they were running that block down there. And it was hilarious. It was, I learned a lot. You know, I remember one day it was the guy that you had to pay a vig to, his name was El Puro. Nothing went on on that block unless it went through El Puro.

El P-U-R-O. Which means if I want to sell T-J an ounce of Coke, but Mike wants to stab him, we got to go through O-P-U-R-U-R-O. and he gets a taste of whatever we take from Mike. It's just like the mafia, but it's on a block, it's in a small thing. I actually like El Pudo because he was old. He was black, dark-skinned Cuban with white hair and a white beard. And the funniest thing he said to me one day was I was talking to him, and some Mexican guy comes up to him speaking in Spanish.

Excuse me, can I borrow a dollar from you? And he goes, what the fuck is wrong with you? He goes, after all the kicks in the ass, the Americans did to you. He goes, you want to speak English to me, you dumb motherfucker? He goes, California belonged to the Mexicans, and the white people kick you out of there. And now you want to speak English? Get the fuck out of here. Speak to me in Spanish, you fuck.

And I was like, wow, this guy is fucking heavy duty. You know El Pudo, you know what Cubans call, they don't call cigars cigars. Right. They call them Pudos. Pudos. I wonder if that's where that comes. comes from. Yeah, Budo they call them.

And then I became friends of a guy Bambusi, and he was a fucking engineer. He had gone to Germany and all these Cuba, had sent them there to build and now he's in

fucking San Francisco selling nickel bags next to me. And I would talk to them every day, and they would tell me about their struggles, how they got picked to play baseball. You had to go to Castro's events, and if you didn't clap, eight hours on Sunday,

10 hours, if they missed you fall in asleep forget it if you didn't go to work you went to jail for a year oh my god they just filled me to fuck in but it gave me that balls I needed at the time

I was still a shell shock from my mother's debt and just getting that education that little history reminded me oh who the fuck I was you know I asked because I lived in San Francisco with like 84 into 85 yeah same time

I was a bartender at hey that Oh, okay. I lived in the Mission District. Okay. Yeah. I lived in Virginia Hotel. Oh, Liri, maybe.

Uh-huh. It was three months. I lived in San Francisco, and I apologize to San Francisco every time I fly in there. It was three months of just, you know, going to Japan town and fucking cash and travelist checks. And my God, one of the funniest stories, though, I learned there because when I was a kid, my mother always told me about Bougarons. and she goes, you look like,

Abu Harong, and I would go, what the fuck are you talking about? And one day she told me it's a guy who goes to prison. That's what they call a guy who goes to prison. Fucks prisoners, but he lets them suck his dick. He don't suck dead dick. He's like the man in the relationship and a gay relationship, but he doesn't

take it in the ass. He just pitches. There's no catching involved with these motherfuckers. That's how you tell yourself you're not gay. Yes. No, no, I know this for a fact, because it's like, uh, There's a famous Cuban musician, Mungo Santa Maria. Yes.

And when he came to the United States, he lived at the street level. And I was told this by a fellow musician who heard it directly from him. And he was like, oh, yeah, we used to go to the meatpacking district in New York City, and I would let gay guys suck my cock. And then his friend said, I didn't know you were a fag. He said, I'm no fag. Don't you dare call me a fag. I let somebody suck.

I let him suck my cock. I didn't suck his guy. It's crazy. It's a fine line. When I was a kid, that shit was being talked around me. And I'm like, that don't sound good. And I remember I had like a guy that used to go to my mother's born. I used to go, you should tell one of your five-year-old

your fifth-grade friends to suck your dick. You could talk them into sucking your dick. It'll be tremendous experience for you. And I'm like, what are you fucking, like, what are you talking about? I don't want a guy suck. I don't want a girl stuck in my dick in the fifth grade. I want a guy suck at my fucking dick in the fifth grade. So, but that was, he had to,

Two gay guys selling coat for him on the corner, and he would stay in between the both of them. They both had a day shaving. They would put a wig on, heels, hot pants, the blouse, pillows, and the titties. And when they would fuck up, he would backhand him right on the street, like, knock him down. And he'd punch him, bah, bah, and they'd go down, they'd get back up and fix their wig, and it was like nothing happened. That's some pimp shit there.

That is white pimp, supremacy shit. That's Cuban. But you did time, right? So you know about Fifi? Mm-mm. Some Cuban friends of mine in Miami who did some time, told me, did some serious time, like 20, 25 years. Eventually, they created a vagina. They used, like, the roll of a, used up roll of toilet paper, and then they, like, dressed it up somehow.

to give it to give it flexibility and they called it Fifi and it was the hottest fucking thing in jail everybody wanted Fifi and some of the prisoners became really good at creating the Fifi and the Fifi was like you closed

your eyes and you put your dick in there and you thought you were fucking a female if you had a good imagination you use your imagination I don't have that type of imagination I really don't but do you how many years

did you do? One. Okay, if you've done ten, your imagination would have got a lot better, probably. No, I had a good imagination. I banged it out in the shower

every day. My floor was slippery, you know what I'm saying? But I didn't need to fuck something like the one, what was years ago, what the Rogan have, that you fucked a glass?

Remember, everybody bought them? A million fucking things sold. That you came in it, you jerked in the cup, come on, man. Yeah, no, I need a cup in my house for me to come on. I don't, no, no, no,

when that happens, You got fucking problems, man. I don't need that shit. You know, TJ, it's really great that, like, I get impressed. You're my inspiration, but one of the things that makes me proud to be Cuban was the last couple of years by the books that you've written. No. It's really filled in a lot of gaps that I needed because I lost my mom earlier. My dad, and they used to tell me all those stories, but when you're 13, you don't give a fuck.

and then after they die, you go, now I give a fuck. I want to hear all those beautiful stories, you know. I was telling somebody, the cop, that I lent the book to about battle. I go,

Havanaugh-octurn was one of the best $10 I ever spent in my life. It was like $10, $12 on Amazon. He goes, I think my friend sent me a copy, and I bought a copy, $12 or something. It filled in so many, all these books that I read give me pride. You know what happened? And Joey, with the Cuban experience, I think, because of the revolution of 1959 and Cubans getting

exiled out of Cuba, not immigrants, exiles, getting forced out and winding up in the most traumatic of circumstances in the United States. And then the hostilities continued, in some ways got even worse between the United States and Cuba after the revolution. So a lot of Cuban history, a lot of Cuban stories got repressed. There's so much about being Cuban that you weren't able to talk about, that your parents kept from you, that your uncle kept hidden. You know, at the dinner table, deep, dark stories. Don't talk about that.

I don't want to talk about that. So a lot of your generation inherited a kind of repression about their own history and their own culture. I meet this all the time through Cubans. No, you're making sense. I get to know that it's repressed. And so since I've been writing these books that go into some hidden history, some untold history about the Cuban experience,

I've had a lot of younger Cubans come up to me and say what you're saying. They're like, I didn't know this. This reminds me of my uncle or my aunt or these stories they wouldn't talk about. Let me tell you this. And they want to tell me their family. stories. I think I think the entire, there was an entire generation of Cuban Americans that just got cut off from, from their own cultural history and are just now starting to experience it and learn about it. And, because I was worried when I did these books. Number one, I'm not Cuban.

And here I am mucking around in, in some very, you know, emotional, controversial history, Cuban history, and I wasn't sure how that would be received, you know. And it's been very emotional the way it's been received. Cubans are really touched by it. Like I remember when I did Havana Nocturn, which came out, you know, like 10 years ago, 11 years ago. And I remember when I was working on it, I kept thinking, you know, at some point I'm going to finish this book. And I'm going to have to go in a room full of Cubans to present this book. and if they don't chase me out of that room

and they don't come after me, that means I was successful. That was my definition of what would be successful about that book. And I remember I had a moment. I went down to books and books in Coral Gables in Miami to promote the book, to do a reading, do a presentation. And I was staying at a hotel across the street, and I came a little late.

It was shining my shoes. I wanted to look good, and I was a little late. And I got over there, the owner of the bookstore said, oh, you're a little late. I said, yeah, sorry. He said, but there's a huge crowd you want to see. And he pulled back a curtain to show me, and a room was fucking full, like overflow crowd.

And it was all Cubans. And I gaffed, man. I lost my breath for a minute. Because that was the moment that I had been knowing was going to come eventually. That was the truth. I was going to have. That was it. That was the reckoning.

And I went out there, and they were so attentive and welcoming. and interested. It didn't matter that I wasn't Cuban. I think in a way they understood that it had to be a non-Cuban that was going to tell this story. And all they wanted was to be a non-Cuban who was honest and sincere

and cared and connected their heart with it. That's what mattered, you know? Show us the respect, and we want to know. And it was incredible. And it was that way with the corporation. I went back to that same bookstore and the crowd is even bigger, man. You know, authors are not used to go into events

where they have to turn people away at the door because it's an overflow crowd. The only time I get that with these books is when I go to Miami. All the Cubans turn out. They want to know. They want to know this history. I'm surprised at you, the battle book, is phenomenal,

you know, but I'm surprised it was received so well. I am too. I always surprised me to have my reasons, and I'll tell you why. Well, there's some people who attacked me and come after me. You know, there were, I mean, you cannot write about Cuban politics and not piss somebody off. Right. You know, there's two sides, and they feel very strongly, and they're well past the point of listening to each other on this subject.

They just have their beliefs, and that's it, and they would die and kill for those beliefs, and they have. And some of those people came after me. There was a lot of vicious stuff online about it, about the politics of it. But generally, I think, especially among younger Cubans, your age and younger, they don't want to fight that battle anymore. No. We've already heard it. They're over it.

They want to know the history. You know, they want to, give me an honest, truthful version of it. You know, they want to know. You know, there's a couple different types of Cubans, and I had to find out the hard way. There's Cubans like me that are titare, you know. It runs in our blood. We were doing my, God knows what my grandfather was sold junk. Not heroin, but he picked up junk from the street and fixed it and sold it.

And my uncle goes, that's where you got your salesmanship from. He goes, you got to see your grandson. Whenever I had lunch at my uncle, he's like, I can't believe how much it looks like my father. How much you act like him, the way you're a salesmanship. You know, and that makes me happy, all that type of shit. I never forget meeting a Cuban guy at an audition one day

and he goes What do you do And he was very nice No Santa Rear You know And he came to my show That night And he was great

His wife was great After the show They ran out of that And the next day Two days later I called him What'd you think of the show He goes

I was a little upset And I was little hurt And insulted My material And I'm like What did I say He goes You just

shit on the Cuban people by your life and I was like embarrassed I'm like what are you talking about I goes well normal Cubans don't act that way and they don't talk that way and I was like the Cubans I grew up with you know obviously this was a very uptight

Cuban then I went to my other Cuban's friend's house a year later for Christmas and I brought potato in Tocico an album of Afro Cuban guys when I tell you these people almost jumped out of the window when I put that music on because there are Cubans that don't want to know there was

an African in their system. They haven't gotten over there. They haven't gotten over it. There's Cubans that walk the face of the earth and they'll say to you, that's got nothing to do with me, Afro-Cuban. I'm Cuban. I'm from Spain. They don't want to know it. And you look at them and you can see the black nose

or the black ears. They got the Michael Jackson nose, but you're like, okay. And that's another Cuban. Well, that's the racist. That's the racist Cuban. That's the ones that they don't like the Afro-Cuban stuff. They like that plain Cuban. the music with the guitar, which sucks

Dick. They think they're Spanish. Yeah, they think they're Spanish. Right, they think they're Spanish. So, I knew when, I didn't, I thought the Van Nuftern was for everybody. But for battle, I thought there would be, and not until later on I thought about it. Like, when I read it the third time, I'm like, there might

be a little resistance. And there was. Even Union City. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Remember we were going to do an event there and he backed out at the last minute. They backed out. Yeah. And then my brother... I knew they were going back out. I remember when you came to me with that and like, oh they love your book in Union City we got someone that's going to put on this public event

there and I'm like really? They're going to do that in Union City I remember I said to you they're really going to do that? You're like yeah they're going to do it and I'm thinking I don't think so battle is a very controversial figure in that politics in Union City that's a that's a tough line to walk that's what they didn't like and they pulled out they didn't like a week before the event they didn't like the they didn't care about the battle stuff

they didn't like the bringing up of the old history in Union City I mean my brother who's a ex-cop in Jackson he lives in Jackson but he's an ex-cop in North Bergen he sent me messages he got from Union City cops that called me a liar they were like that kid's lying I'm not lying I know what I've just so people will know

and you probably talk about this before but Union City was one of the centers of the anti-Castro movement in the United States and this was an underground movement that was, I guess we could call in a way kind of a terrorist movement. I mean, they used terrorist tactics,

bombings, assassinations, all kinds of shit. It was a dirty little war. And Union City was one of the centers of that. Miami and Union City. But Union City was more quiet because they were looking at Miami for it. And Union City, you could run that shit.

Well, I was told by people in that movement that Union City was the more militant, hardcore. Hardcore. You know, Miami is kind of the intellectual. They formed the organizations. They raised the money. But when you wanted to carry out operations, you got the boys from Union City.

Well, looking at that book I read, I never knew that Hudson County had the most car bombs in the country in 1975. I'm not living in Hudson County. What the fuck is that shit? And most of that was Cuban-related, probably. And mafia stuff. Well, I got to be honest with you. I still

remember, you know, I told the story with Rogan with you, and I stand by it about the dirty Cuban cop. And a lot of people got mad about that story because they made him out to be this fucking hero and he wasn't. And, uh... Yeah, they gave him a plaque and

everything. Yeah, and I saw like, I don't remember all the names. But my mother was friends with that hard knock Cuban numbers bar game. There was a lot of, there was cafe alo atita

there was a guy named boyo trite I forget what his that means sad pussy that was what they called him his face looks like a sad pussy so they call him boyotrite

yeah you know there was a little and I still remember them in my mind I know a guy they called boy that's titty sad balls sad balls

no they got all those names for Cubans but I still remember that back room when I walked in from school and I was making believe I was making my soda with the cherry in it

and load nice and I still remember what those guys were saying and the hatred I still remember the hatred in their voice the hatred my stepfather

you could not mention this is part of the trauma this is part of the trauma you cannot mention Fidel in fact that's why my stepfather was a dickhead but I respected his Cubanism

because after Mario he paid 30,000 to get his brothers brought here and the third day he was walking in Union City with them and one brother yelled at the guy in the street

Kamara do you know what my stepfather did he put him right back on a plane and sent him to Q his own fucking brothers his own just for that one word just for that one word which is like a communist word Kamara whatever the fuck they say done done done talking about this beautiful fucking book I haven't finished

but what I've read is fucking just again I don't know anything about this so everything I got to read I got to read like two times. This book is the story of the relationship between jazz and organized crime, starting from the beginning of both those things, basically. It's just a quirk of history that jazz and started in New Orleans in the early part of the 20th century, right around the time the first mafia family formulated in the United States, in New Orleans. A lot of people think the mafia started in Chicago or New York or something, no, it started in New Orleans. There was a

big wave of Sicilian immigration into Louisiana and New Orleans. And that's where it started. And the music had begun. I mean, I don't know. Are you a jazz fan at all? I'm just beat with this now. I love that music. And I think you learn a lot about the United States and race relations

and all kinds of things from jazz. Jazz is kind of the window into a lot of things about the American experience. and so I always loved the music. And I knew that the Sicilians were the first to start nightclubs. They weren't called nightclubs. They were called honky tonks or dance halls or saloons in mostly honky tonks in a part of New Orleans called Storyville, which was a famous vice district in New Orleans where basically where prostitution, formalized, prostitution in the United States got started.

The French brought that over. The French brought it. Bordellos, the idea of finery and music played in the foyer of the bordello. And, you know, kind of like prostitution wasn't sleazy and in the gutter that it had an aspect of it that was like high society. And so Storreveau was into that, and they had all these fancy bordellos. and there was always a piano player playing in the foyer of the Bordello, and that's kind of where jazz started. That's one of the places that jazz started.

It also came from the plantations, field songs, and all that kind of stuff. It also came from Mother Africa. There's a place in New Orleans called Congo Square, where every Sunday all the African musicians would gather and play those African rhythms on the drums. So all of this was like, coming together in New Orleans and creating this incredible music that took the world by storm. The mafia happened to be there, working on the waterfronts, doing local extortions,

and one of the things they were good at, the Sicilians in particular, was entertainment, clubs, places where you would come to drink and be entertained. And so they were the first to combine these things. and they started, were smart enough to round up these great African-American jazz musicians like Lewis Armstrong and others who were playing on street corners and said, come to the club and play.

So this started a relationship that would exist for the next 80 years, you know, and all the mafiosi and the jazz musicians who were a part of this relationship formulated the business side of the music. And so everyone came out of that. Frank Sinatra, who I write about a lot, he's in the second half of the book.

You know, Frank was a Sicilian born into this tradition of music and the mob. I mean, everyone talked about Frank and his associations with the mob, yeah. But put it in context. Frank didn't invent it. And he wasn't the only one. He basically was inherited this, these relationships, and he ran with it.

He in some ways went farther than anyone else was willing to go. He started using, you know, the mob to negotiate things for him and to handle business for him. And even on various occasions would hire thugs to beat somebody up. That was Frank. So what it is is basically a history of organized crime from the point of view of the music business and jazz. and all of that. So, as we were just saying, in some ways, in fact, this relationship between the gangsters and the jazz musicians

became the model for the music business in general. I mean, rock and roll, certainly rap and hip-hop, that all grows out of this, you know. So it's kind of important if you're someone who has an interest in organized crime and the way it plays out in the United States, this is one version of that story. You're a bad motherfucker. I'm just, you know, I never heard this before.

You know what I love? So you got a book coming out next year, right? So now you have an idea of what it takes, right, to put a book together, get it down on paper to finish it to get it out. You might have a deeper appreciation now of what that takes? I've always loved reading. Yeah, that's true. And it's a good, it's a good, I always feel sad.

I shouldn't feel sad. It's kind of condescending, but I, I always feel bad for people who don't read. I get so much joy and pleasure out of it. And I always have. And it's how I learn about the world. I mean, I also go to places and have direct experiences, but there's nothing like reading, man. For giving you context and knowledge about. things, you know. Otherwise, I would think you'd just be a top, spinning top all the time,

not able to make sense of things. Reading gives you a way of making sense of things, you know. You know, for like a year, I went away from reading books, just had anxiety, like, and I couldn't focus. Yeah. And I was just reading, like, articles on how to get better, you know, how to get healthy and shit like that. But over the last two months, I've started reading again. It helps my stand up. Alps. My focus. Reading just settles me so much, you know.

So nothing better for me in the smoking a fucking joint and getting into a good book. When the reef is hitting and that book is hitting, guys, they ain't not much better than that shit. See, I could tell, I could tell you a reader when we first met, I'm going to tell people how we first met. Joey reached out to me after the corporation came out, or I think it hadn't even come out. No, it hadn't even come out yet. And you heard that this guy was right in this book. Yeah, I was like, what the fuck. And I don't know how you got a hold of me.

Website. Okay. So you emailed me first, and then we talked. And I got to admit, I'm embarrassed to say, I didn't know who you were. That's fine. I grew up in the era of George Carlin and Richard Pryor. And that was it to me. That was it to me, too.

That was such a high standard. Yeah, that was it to me, too. that I didn't pay attention to comedy anymore after that. Me neither for a long time. Lenny Bruce. And in the 80s, remember in the 80s, there was like a flood of really mediocre comedy everywhere. So I had tuned it out more or less.

So I didn't know who Joey Diaz was. And I got up to speed a little bit. And then you invited me to a show at the club on 23rd Street. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so I came to your show and you did a set. And it was long said. It was at least an hour, probably more. And, you know, I knew you were going to be funny because we'd spoke and I thought this guy's

just funny being who he is, you know, just. And so I thought it was going to be just you being who you are. But the act was very well crafted. At that time, yes, not now. It was very well crafted. You told the story your life, basically, for an hour and 15 minutes or whatever. there was a lot of very personal stuff in it. I remember thinking this guy is a storyteller.

That's what he is. He's a storyteller. And I do think that appreciation of storytelling is part of what comes from reading. It's one of the things that comes from reading. How do you structure something? How do you construct it? How do you tell a story? Some of that comes from the street corner and it's just natural and you have that instinct or you don't.

But if you're going to get up on stage for an hour and 15 minutes, you got to put some thought into how to structure it. You can't wing it. You can't just wing it, you know? So I knew you had those skills, and I knew those skills had to have come from somewhere other than just telling stories on the street corner. I've always loved reading.

No, I've loved reading, and I love the connection in the chapters. And right now I'm doing stand-up, and there's a couple funny jokes in there, but it doesn't connect the... I'm not connecting the jokes yet. In time, I'll find the connection. you know, you find it. But there's a...

So I remember afterwards I said to you, I said, I was really impressed with the act and how well put together it was and how well shaped it is. And you said, you know, I've been doing this act for about 15 years now. And I've been shaping that same act for like 15 years. That's how long it takes, you know, to get it to be that good. Right? It takes a while.

And a lot of trial and error. not as much trial error as writing a book. Yeah. That was fucking real. That was, that writing a book for me was something, and I had a lot of things going on. So I like to give it another shot. Yeah.

With something else. I'm sure you will. I know about. I'd like to give it another shot in time when I have more time and I'm more focused. That helped. That book I did was during the pandemic. Yeah.

There was nowhere I could go. I had anxiety. My knee had just gotten certain. I would fucking outline at night, outline it to the littlest dimension, and then we'd speak the next morning. And we'd cover a chapter and, you know, it was rough. Yeah.

When I did it by myself, though, it was rougher. I remember when you were doing that, and it defeated you kind of, right? Oh, yeah. Because, listen, it's something that anybody could get a book deal. This is what killed me, guys. I'm gonna tell you the truth. I don't want to be an asshole here.

Anybody could get a book deal. But what's the sense of getting that deal? If I'm just going to tell a couple stories and some guys are going to write the book for me, I'm going to pay you $10,000 as a ghost writer, or whatever you want. I don't know what they pay. I don't know what they go in prices.

But I'm just saying for me, I wanted to be a part of it. I didn't want any mistakes in there. I didn't want any, I wanted the reader to just, I wanted him to feel what I felt at the time. This has been very important for me with this book because right now I'm going through legal and they want you to take some stories out, blah, blah, blah, and that's fine.

But I wanted the reader to really see what a fucking mess I was. I want the guy that's reading this, not to focus on my stand-up, not to say anything about my stand-up, whether he's funny. I want you to focus on the prison, the losing of the child, the losing of the parents, losing of the father. Not only that,

now that's sad, the kidnappings, the shit I put myself through being homeless. I did all this on my own. Society didn't do shit to me, you know? But I wanted people to see

where I was in that point in my life because there's a lot of people walking around today that are at that point in their life and they don't know how to get out of that. And that's all I want to tell the reader at home that you don't have to stay in that point in your life. I know this is your situation today. But I'll tell you,

if you want to get out of this, situation. I got the answer for you. In fact, I don't have the answer for you. You have the fucking answer for you. So I wanted them to understand that there was robberies. I wanted them to know how low I got as a human

being to show them how I really got. A lot of people don't want to show you that. They just want to tell you I hung out with Joe Rogan, I'm in a limo. It wasn't that. Before that, there was this. And it was fucking real. And it hurt. and I figured out a way on how to get out of that.

And it was, you know, it wasn't easy. I mean, I didn't stop Snowton Cokedore, 15 years ago. I'm 59 years old. I'm not proud of that. But that's who I was. But this is who I am now, and it was a fucking journey and a half. And guess what? I'd fucking do it again, and I'd fucking do it my way again.

And that's it. My way. My way. Back to Frank Sinatra. Back to Frank Sinatra. You know, if the book's a hit, and I think it will be, that's the reason they'll be a hit because of your honesty. You're honest with yourself. You're not hiding anything.

Fuck, I'm not going to tell people. I was in an helicopter with Bill Burr. That's great. But let me tell you where I really was 30 fucking years ago. Most people hide shit. They're not honest about it. And that must be painful when you come to time to write a book if you're someone who's in denial about shit. And all of a sudden, you've got to put it down on the page.

because the page will expose you. Your efforts to put it down on the page will expose you, man. It's like if you're not being honest, if you're holding back, it ain't going to work. I want people to read this book. I don't want people to read that. Like, I'm not saying it wrong, but I want what's happened in this country the last seven years that I really do not fucking like. I'm not talking about cancel culture.

I'm not talking about any of that shit. What bothers me the most about today is, when some guy says that, some woman says that 23 years ago, the Supreme Court judge covered her mouth when they were sleeping.

Okay, he was in a fucking fraternity or whatever and he fucked up. Did he rape you? No. They put his dick in your face? No. So why did you release this?

What was the point of you saying that the Supreme Court, Supreme Court justice did this to you? You understand me? Now, let's say he finger-bangged you. okay when you were sleeping

he that's not a right for getting canceled I can't cancel somebody for that I can't look somebody in the eye because they made a mistake and this is where they are now so that mistake is null and void because this fucking cleans all that I'm telling you we cannot keep doing this

as Americans of discounting people the journey that they made because when you know I just saw somebody fucking right about Marky War that when he was 13, he hit some guy in the eye, and the guy locked his eye, and he did his time, he paid the fucking fine, and this is who he is today.

And you're still going there. Now, does that make him a better person than he did 40 movies? No, but he's not taking people's eyes out no more. Right. In fact, he's inspiring. Like, the judge inspired me. You know, people inspire me.

So now you can't go chopping people for who they'd were 20 years ago. You know, I think this can't. cultural thing is a phase and it's going to pass. But I'll tell you something that isn't going to pass. And there's also just a bigger problem in our society. And that is how everyone's in their own ideological camp now. Like people who are on the right and people are on the left don't interact anymore.

They have their own information sources. They have their own heroes. They demonize the other side. and that's it. And I don't know how we're going to get out of this. I mean, we grew up at a time where I grew up in a big family, family 10, right? Nine brothers and sisters. A lot of them had different political points of view right there in the house.

In fact, my mother was a Democrat and a liberal, and my father was a Republican and a conservative. I'm used to the idea of having different points of view that I might not even agree with in your circle. And that's fine. That's not ultimately how I choose a friend or judge. somebody based on their politics. That's not the number one thing with me. But now that's the number one thing with everybody.

And if you're on the other side, they're not even going to listen to you because they feel, I don't have to. I got Fox News. I got MSNBC. I got a source that's going to pat me on the back and feed me and make me feel good about my point of view. They're not going to educate me

about another point of view or someone else's point of view. I don't know how we get out of this. This is just getting more and more and more divided. And if someone comes along like Trump, who is like, you know, throwing a smoke bomb in the middle of it all, someone who's that extreme in their positions, well, we see what happened.

The whole fucking country almost broke down, had a collective nervous breakdown during those four years he was in office. Right? I saw a lot of people lose it. Everyone lost their shit. People fucking still losing it, man. Yeah, people still lose their shit over it.

And I'm like, whoa, okay. So you lose your shit and your only way of dealing with it is to go to all the other people who think the same way you do. And you all sit around in like a circle jerk and reaffirm each other's biases and positions and shit. I don't know how we get out of this. I don't know who breaks that down. You. You.

You got to write a book, another fucking book. I stay out of politics for the most part. Me too. I don't even want to. I'm a felon. I don't go to the right and I'm not on the left. I'm right in the middle. If you look at my balls, they almost hit the fucking flaw.

And that's my political views. I don't want to look at your balls. That's number one. The party I belong to. It's a simple request. I don't want to look at your balls. The party I belong to is the felony party. We don't want to talk.

I have politics. I just, it's not. not the thing I lead with. It's not... No. You know what I mean? No, but over the last six or seven years, America, a lot of people that I knew that were just regular people,

all of a sudden political fucking experts. And you know what? If you don't even know about Hudson County, how are you going to be a political expert? Last night I was watching something on 12 news. The Jersey City Democrat, she ran the light and fucking... Jersey politics are the best.

And some guy came on... It's like mud wrestling. Oh my God. She was... She was getting her car towed because she double parked. So she called, like, the Coboken police and said, you can't do this. I'm a committee woman. But the line of the night was when they called some other guy and they asked them, they go, what are the things going on?

They go, listen, this is all the part of the Hudson County machine. Yeah. They're not going to do nothing. She's a congresswoman. What is she? A committee woman? But she lives in fucking poor man housing. She lives in like $800,000, $8,000 a year housing.

So that's Jersey policy. So everybody wants to know about politics. If you don't know about fucking Hudson County and if you don't know about Cook County, don't even, let's start there. And like I tell people, I grew up in Hudson County and that was the micro. I got to see the micro of corruption.

I can't picture what the macro of corruption. Does the name Frank Haig mean anything to you? Fuck yeah. Fuck yeah. They built the hospital by his wife, Margaret He. He was an Irishman. This country, the urban areas were founded by political machines that mostly were led by Irish politicians. See, the Irish had one advantage amongst the ethnic groups, the immigrant groups.

They spoke English. They spoke English, which was a tremendous advantage. And so a lot of the other immigrant groups gave a certain amount of power to the Irish politicians. They're like, they're immigrants like us, buddy speaks. English and the Irish had a certain talent for that political leadership, you know. And so you had these political machines in places like here in Jersey. Of course, Boston had one. Fucking Kansas City, Missouri, the pendergast machine controlled the whole town.

And it was always this jovial, although Frank Haig wasn't jovial. He was kind of an uptight guy. But he ran this fucking area. He was the political boss of the local machine. He wasn't the elected official. He was the man behind the man. He was the guy that put all the pieces together. He chose who ran for office and who was going to get elected.

He chose who was going to be the police commissioner in a certain area. He chose who was going to be in the positions of power. That's how powerful he was. He was the man behind the man. Frank Haig, I always wonder about guys like, that because in his day he was the most famous and powerful person in this area. He said the, he said the name Frank Haig at the dinner table and everyone would fucking bow and say a prayer. Now the name means nothing. I mean it's on a few buildings

somewhere but nobody remembers. Is that what the guy from Bordwark Empire also? Probably yeah. Yeah they brought him in. Yeah that's right. Yeah he was in there. Because I know Margaret Hay and that was his wife who they named the hospital. No kidding. In Jersey City the hospital got torn down real quick. I just want to leave you one thing. I I know you know this story. Ricky Ricardo, friends with fucking Al Capone. Oh, yeah, yeah.

I mean, this book... He got him the job in the club, right? This book, Dangerous Rhythms, deals with this overlapping. Capone was a huge jazz fan. Yeah. He loved it. He also loved opera.

Opera was his Italian side and jazz was his American side. And he was a patron of the clubs. And he owned four or five clubs in and around Chicago. He owned a piece of them. One that's still there called Green Mill, a club in Chicago that's been there since 1908. If you're ever in Chicago, uptown Chicago, great little club.

Kind of like Chicago's version of the Village Vanguard here in New York. These are a couple of the oldest clubs in America. He loved it. In fact, he loved it so much. He once heard, he went to a club and he heard for the first time Fats Waller. I don't know if this name means anything to anybody, but I urge you. go online and look up some clips of Fats Waller. Fats Waller was a jazz entertainer in the 20s, 30s and 40s. He wrote the song, This Join Is Jump in. He wrote Honeysuckle Rose, some songs that are legendary.

And he was a fantastic entertainer. He was drunk and high most of time. And he would do facial expressions, twitching eyebrow. He was just a very entertaining guy to watch. He would fall in love with this guy when you saw him perform. And he was in some movies. So if you look at clips on YouTube, you'll have an opportunity to see him in all his glory. Capone saw him one night that this guy's the greatest fucking guy. He left there like, oh, what a great jazz musician. So the next night, a couple of Capone's underlings come to the club.

And at gunpoint, they go to Fats Waller after his set and he says, you're coming with us. And he's like, what, what, what, you're coming with us. Here's what we're going to do. We're going to take you to a hotel in Cicero, suburb of Chicago, which was kind of Capone's base of operations. We're going to put you up at a hotel there,

and over the weekend, you're going to perform at Al's birthday party. And it's going to be a surprise. He doesn't know you're coming, and he's going to love it. And so they take him at gunpoint. He's fucking scared to death. They kidnap him, basically.

They kidnap him. They take him to this hotel. He's brought in to perform at the birthday party. Capone loves it. fucking overjoyed. Fats Waller here, this is great. He performs for like two and a half days. They fucking bury him in cash. They lavish him in cash. Fats Waller leaves Chicago. He says he had like $3,000 on him, which is probably $30,000 or more today. And he had a great story to tell for the rest of his life about how he was kidnapped about Al Capone to play at his birthday

party. I love all those fucking stories, man. And then there's another one in Chicago. This is a lot more violent. I mean, the Fats Waller one is kind of a funny story. This was a guy named Joey Lewis, Joe E. Lewis, white guy. He was a type of entertainer that came out of the vaudeville days. He would sing songs and tell jokes, and he was hugely popular. And he was playing at Green Mill, which was co-owned by Capone and other mobsters. And he was a hit. He filled the place every night. In fact, he was so popular that another club in town said, when you're contracted, up. Whatever they're paying you will double it. Come with us.

And so Joey Lewis goes to the owners of the club and he says, the contract's up, I'm leaving. I'm going to go play at this other place and they said, no, you're not. And he said, yeah, my contract's up. You know, you can't hold me. I'm going to the other place. They said, no, you're not. Don't do that. You're not going to do that.

We'll give you the money, but you're not leaving and going to another club. He said, yes, I am. And he did. He left. He went to another club. He played. He played. there for a few nights and then some goons came to his hotel room about 4 o'clock in the morning with knives and blades and fucking slit his throat

stabbed him multiple times fucking brutal attack. I mean I think they were trying to kill him but he survived it. No! He never sang again because his vocal cords never fully recovered but he became an entertainer

and a pretty famous entertainer. In fact he wrote a memoir about what happened to him called the Joker's wild. It was made into a movie. Frank Sinatra played him in the movie. Joey Lewis. Joey Lewis. But that story became a cautionary tale that scared the shit out of jazz musicians for decades to come. That's what could happen if you said no to the mob guys who own the club.

That was the worst case scenario. They could fucking come and kill you. Attempt to kill you. And you know, here's what's even funnier about that. One of the hoodlums that came and slid his throat was a young, was a young 19-year-old Chicago gangster named Sam Giancana. Wow. Who would go on to be, you know, anyone who knows the history of the mob,

knows that Giancana became the boss of Chicago and also became a very close friend and business partner of Frank Sinatra. So I always wondered about that. I mentioned it in the book. It's like, here's Frank Sinatra, playing Joey Lewis, who was attacked by Giancana,

And now he becomes good friends and partners with Giancana. What the fuck is that? I mean, how do you become best friends with one guy and best friends with another guy who attacked that guy and tried to kill him? How do you do that? It's fucking crazy. Bro, you're a genius. And I love you.

I love you, too, man. I'm happy you came down here. When does the book get released? The book was released this week. Oh, right. So it's out there. dangerous motherfucking rhythms. T.J. English does it again.

Brother, it's so good to see you, man. It's been a while. It's good to be out here. Let me say something about Joey Diaz. People may or may not know, all right? Joey Diaz, you may know where is his heart on his sleeve. What you see is what you get. He's a great friend to have.

He's the kind of friend that stays in touch, even if you're in different states. You're not able to see each other. he'll call and check in on you how you're doing what's going on and all that and I treasure it man I really do we've become good friends really good friends I learn a lot from you

and I think you learn a lot from me I love you man yeah it's the Irish Cuban connection it's the Irish Cuban connection that's another thing I wanted to say before we get on all this stuff's coming into my head now we were talking about this before I come from Irish roots I'm very proud of it

I started an organization called Irish American writers and artists. I love hanging out with other Irish people. But for me, man, the great thing about the United States of America is crossing and connecting with people from other cultures, man. I love it. It's beautiful. Having Cuban friends, having Mexican friends, having black friends,

crossing over into these different cultures, learning about their culture, sharing your culture with them. This is America. To me, this is the thing I'm most proud of. We need more Americans like DJ English. I love you guys. Thank you for visiting. Don't forget to check out

Dangerous Rhythms. And I don't know what to tell you. Have a great fucking week. I want to thank T.J. English. Everybody. And now for a word from our sponsors, stay black. All right, you bad motherfuckers, I want to have.

I want to thank you for coming on today. TJ was great. I love it. Don't forget to look for his book, Dangerous Rhythms. It's out. And he's a New York Times bestseller. But hey, I'm coming to you now for a word from my sponsors, and that's better help. Like I told you in the mid row, you got to take care of your mind, guys.

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And BetterHelp has online therapy that offers video, phone, and chat therapy. You could choose not to see anyone at all. You could talk to your therapist, Larek, like I do with Dana. It's much more affordable than on person therapy, and you could be matched with a therapist within 48 hours. Listen, I'm going to get your 10% off your first month at betterhelp.com slash Diaz. That's betterhelp.com slash Diaz. The joint is also brought to you by True Classic,

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if you go over 100 with Code Joey at TrueClassic.com. Get yourself looking like a fucking doctor with True Classic. I want to thank BetterHelp and I want to thank True Classic but most importantly, I want to thank you Savages on a Monday morning.

We'll be back Wednesday to 10th. Tip-top, motherfucking Magoo. Ready to stab a cock sucker. Have a great day. Stay black and I'll see you guys then.