The Comedy Cellar: Live from the Table - Bonus Episode 6: Lolita

Episode Date: May 3, 2023

Noam Dworman, Dan Naturman and Periel Aschenbrand are joined by psychiatrist Dr. Larry Durlofsky. They discuss Lolita, Brooke Shields and parenting.

This is Table Talk, the bonus episode for Live from the Table, the official podcast of the world-famous comedy cellar. I'm Dan Natterman, host of Table Talk, along with co-host Periel Ashenbrand. Hi. And we have with us Larry Terlovsky, who is... Derlovsky. Derlovsky. Derlovsky, I am sorry. Larry Derlovsky. Doctor. Doctor. He's a board-certified psychiatrist. He was with us for the main episode.

He decided to stick around. He may or may not actively participate in the bonus episode, but he wanted to stay. But first I want to discuss with you, Perrielle. I watched the Brooke Shields documentary Pretty Baby on Hulu. I watched part one. There's two parts. I only watched the first part. Did anybody else see it?

It was actually quite interesting. I mean, I was a kid when Brooke Shields was coming out. I didn't realize Did anybody else see it? It was actually quite interesting. I mean, I was a kid when Brooke Shields was coming out. I didn't realize what was going on. But looking back on it, it's actually amazing and kind of horrifying how adults were sexualizing her as a even as young as 11 years old. But the documentary opens with Mike Douglas, remember him, the Mike Douglas show, saying, you really are an exquisite young lady to Brooke when she was about 15 or 16. Which I don't know how that was perceived at the time, but in 2023, I'm like, that's kind of a creepy thing to say to a 15 or 16 year old girl, you know. And of course, she was in Pretty Baby and she played a child prostitute. And she had to make out or kiss a 29-year-old man, which is unbelievable. Like, would you ever let that happen?

Well, she thinks that was okay, though. She did an interview with Terry Gross in which she said, I don't know who that was, the 29-year-old guy, but he apparently was very nice to her, and it was not. But it sounds horrible. No, it's insane. I was talking to you with Danny Cohen before the show. They could have just cut away as they were about to kiss. There was a movie years later, State in Maine. It was a movie, I think David Mamet wrote it,

and Alec Baldwin was like a guy that was into young chicks. And there was a scene where he was kissing, about to kiss Julia Stiles, who was, I guess, a teenager at the time. This movie's from the 90s. So they didn't show them kiss. They showed them kind of approaching each other and then it cut away. So between the, I guess, Pretty Baby came out when the early 80s or late 70s? Yeah. And the late 90s, opinions, I guess, shifted, and they didn't show a grown man kissing a teenager.

That would never happen today, right? I mean, you would never be able to do that. No, like I said, even in the late 90s with the state in Maine, they didn't do it. So things have changed a great deal. There was another thing where she had to do a scene where she was a teenager and she had to be she was i think it was endless love and she was had to be having sex and showing ecstasy showing like you know facial expressions of ecstasy and she didn't even know what that was

right so the director twisted her toe who was the director of it was it franco zeffirelli i forgot but he twisted her toe that so that she would grimace and simulate sort of an ecstatic facial reaction. I mean, the things that women and young girls had to endure in Hollywood is just unfathomable. What about Lolita? Yeah, sure. Banning books, I mean. Well, in the movie Lolita you're talking about?

Did they just remake that? They did remake it, but did they show any kissing between Lolita and who played Jeremy Irons, I think? Yeah, Jeremy Irons. And who played Lolita? Dominique Swain, I think it was. But I don't know if they showed them doing anything together. But there's still the attraction of this man to a young girl. Do they comment in any way?

I mean, is there any, you know, Lolita sort of made it seem, am I right? No, I think. Or did the book make it seem that he's a sick, sick man? No, he was in Nabokov's book. Nabokov? Nabokov? Nabokov, I thought I thought it was it might be you're dying for me to be wrong

nothing would give you more fucking pleasure than if I was pronouncing that wrong the Humbert character I don't know if he was, I never finished the book I actually was assigned it in college but like most things in college I didn't actually do the assignment

which is why I wound up a comedian. But you wound up in law school. Yeah, I know, because I was in Wharton and anybody with decent grades got really well paying jobs on Wall Street after Wharton. I did not because I had bad grades. I had bad grades because I was in quite not well in college. You know, I just was very, I was depressed and I was, you know, and I just, I was not functioning on all cylinders.

Not that I am now, but. Too bad that you didn't have to know him around to tell you to snap out of it. To start being a man. But I didn't get good grades, so I didn't get a job on Wall Street, but I did get good LSAT, so I was't get a job on Wall Street, but I did get good LSAT. So I was able to get into law school.

Well, thank God, because we would have been robbed. In any case, I probably would have gone to the comedy anyway, because that's really what I wanted to do to begin with. But the point is, is I didn't finish the book, but I read most of it. I don't recall Humbert Humbert being portrayed as good or bad. He just sort of was. There's a lot of him describing it. I guess he married a woman

because the woman was Lolita's mother and he wanted to be close to Lolita. And the woman discovered that in his writings that he was into Lolita and she was horrified by it. So I guess in that sense, yes. It was portrayed in a negative and she was horrified by it. So I guess in that sense, yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it was portrayed in a negative way. Yeah, it was definitely not okay.

Can you ask your friend, ChatGBT, how you pronounce... So Nabokov was horrified? As far as Nabokov is concerned, I don't know how he felt about it. How Nabokov or Nabokov felt about his main character. He knew it was wrong, the society frowned on it, but I don't know if Nabokov... They sexualized a lot of people.

I don't know if Nabokov was into little girls or not. No. I don't know that he was or he wasn't. I just remember... I mean, to write a whole book about a dude that's into young chicks. I mean, you know, I don't know. That's a little odd, don't you think? I guess that's a fair point.

I remember reading a paragraph of whoever the guy is that likes young girls. He's talking about it as if it's an okay thing. I mean, there's just like, you know. I get that, but there's a lot of that in the book. That's a whole lot of it, too.

...the name of who was a Russian-American novelist, poet, and translator. Is this Chachy B.T.? You say his name. Vladimir Nabokov. All right.

Nabokov. Oh. I was called him Vlad. Myself, I always said Vlad. That sounds closer to Periel's pronunciation. No, she said Nabokov. No, I said Nabokov. It's Nabokov.

We're all looking at how to pronounce. Whatever. In any case, yeah. So I don't know what Nabokov thought of young girls. It's quite possible he found them erotic. Well, if, you know, if the idea is if he wrote about them that he was into them. Well, I don't know. I think it's an odd thing to write an entire book about a dude.

He did write also a lot about chess and butterflies and he was really into both of those things too. In any case, Brooke Shields seems to have come through it quite well. I don't think Brooke Shields was necessarily traumatized, at least not irreparably by the whole thing. She's come to see my band very often on Monday nights.

Has she? She's a very nice lady. Very nice. I've met her here at the Cellar. She's a friend of one of the comics. Two famous movies are Brooke Shills and Al, the woman who plays Jean Grey, Fanky...

Famke Jansen. Famke Jansen comes. Yeah, she comes up. Why don't we get her on the podcast? Well, we could try to get Brooke or Famke would be amazing. I mean, it would be unbelievably amazing.

But I only saw Brooke here once. In any case, she came through it with wealth and fame and perhaps some trauma, but I don't know how severe. But, you know, it's just really more a comment on society at that time and the message that was sent to young girls. She can't have an orgasm unless somebody grabs her toe. I think the most destructive thing is not what Brooke Shields suffered, and I don't know what she suffered,

but the message that's sent to young girls that all you're good for is to be pretty. Right, sure. I mean, that now I think has started to change a little bit, but certainly that is the message that you got, certainly in her time and even, you know, when I was growing up and even when I was in college and in grad school and, you know, going out into the world,

starting to be a writer. We'll ask our psychiatrist if he thinks that it's better or worse now, but again, you don't treat children. You don't treat adolescents. I was thinking about all these young women, you know, the musical stars that are so hyper-sexualized and even, you know, dating back to Britney.

I think it's still pretty messed up out there. But that's the hip-hop. Britney in her original video was in high school, remember? She was in high school and hit me baby one more time. Or oops and oops. Baby, baby, I get on my knees. I get on my knees. What am I saying?

You've lost the love and feeling. But she was like twiddling her pencil in class, daydreaming, and she was a high school girl. But this is the hypocrisy that I was trying to talk about. What's the hypocrisy? I love it when Prell the hypocrisy that I was trying to talk about. What's the hypocrisy? That. I love it when Prell talks hypocrisy. Go ahead. Well, because you got so angry before, but you thought I was trying to twist your words, but I wasn't.

What I was trying to say is that there is this hypocrisy of, you know, modesty in America. But actually, it's bullshit because the things that we value and the messages that we send are not really modest at all. I don't know if it's the same people. Some people are modest and some people are not. You're assuming it's the same people that are producing Britney Spears videos that are also preaching against promiscuity. There's a real – even Playboy magazine and these like Toddlers and Tiaras show. Like you have this thing in this country that is quote unquote, you're supposed to be modest and women are supposed to do this. There's a real Madonna horror complex.

And you see it over and over again in the media and you see the messaging everywhere. One thing we do agree on is that Brooke Shields, a teenager kissing a grown man in a movie wouldn't fly today. I don't know that a talk show host... Remember Blame It On Real with Michael Caine? Yeah, that was like 1980. And what was he, like, with 16-year-olds or something? Yeah, 16 or 15 even. Well, there's also that Woody Allen movie. But as far as women being sexualized,

I mean... Young girls we're talking about. Oh, it's just young girls we're talking about? Well, yeah, because the Brooke Shields documentary, she was like a teenager.

She was 11 when she had to kiss the 29-year-old. I mean, can you imagine? So, I mean, that wouldn't fly today. But, you know, other things, I guess, do fly, but...

But would anybody as a parent be okay with having their 11-year-old kiss a 29-year-old man? And you know what she talked about? She talked about that her first kiss, she thought a lot about, I guess, young girls think about their first kiss. And she was thinking about that a lot. And the actor said, this one doesn't count. Right.

That was meaningful. I just thought the whole thing was just, ugh. Well, that was, you know. Did you see the Brookshilds documentary? I didn't see. Right. That was meaningful. I just thought the whole thing was just, ugh. Well, that was, you know... Did you see the Brooke Shields documentary? I didn't see the special. This was in an interview with... I mean, kudos to him

for saying that, but... I don't know. He might have said, look, maybe we could cut away before we kiss. I don't know. Again, I don't know that Brooke was necessarily

traumatized by the whole thing, but, you know, it's a little bit... You're saying she came out okay on the other end. As far as I know she does. She's not here to discuss it, you know, and I don't know whether she would say it was all worth it because she got a lot out of it. I mean, she got fame and fortune.

Now, to what extent she feels it's worth it, I don't know. She was, in the interview with Terry Gross, fairly positive about her career. Her mother was an alcoholic as well that she talked a lot about. I didn't know that. Yeah, her mother was out of her mind. Terry Field. Right.

Well, she was a stage mother. She was a woman of limited means that was using her daughter to get to the next level financially. And to live out her own fantasies. And to live out her own fantasies. Which is a horrible thing to do to any child, yes? I mean, we can all agree on that. Yes, unless the child really, really wants to do it. And what I was talking about with you and Danny Cohn before the show

is that she married Andre Agassi, and that marriage was not good and didn't last. But Andre, I read his autobiography, and his father pushed him into tennis. Yeah, that's... His father was like an athlete, But Andre, I read his autobiography, and his father pushed him into tennis. Yeah, that's. His father was like an athlete, but, you know, he wanted his son to be a famous tennis player. He had other children, but they weren't as good.

They didn't show aptitude for tennis. And Andre Agassi did not want to. He hated it. He didn't want to do it. He was pushed into it. And, you know, if you were on the podcast, I'd ask him whether he thinks it's the fame and fortune were worth it. And I would ask Brooke the same question. I think that as a parent, but I think Brooke enjoyed acting. She might not have enjoyed kissing a 29 year old man,

but she enjoyed acting and, and, and, and all that. Where Andre really seemed to dislike tennis a great deal. I'm always skeptical of, you know, people don't necessarily tell the truth with all its nuances, even about their own lives. It's a good story to talk about how you never wanted to be a tennis player and turned out to be the world's greatest tennis player, almost irresistible story. I'm sure he had issues at times where he was really, really felt pushed into it, but I don't know if we have to just pretend like it's definitely true. Well, you may be right. I don't know. And I would ask him these questions if he were here.

There was one interesting part of the book where he says his father bet money on him. Like he would. There was some athlete, a grown man, and his father said, my son can beat you. I forgot who the athlete was. He wasn't a tennis player, but he was an athlete and a good tennis player. And and Andre's father said, my son can beat you. I bet you like 10 grand. athlete well he wasn't a tennis player but he was an athlete and a good tennis player uh and and andre's father said my son can beat you i'll bet you like 10 grand it was like a big sum of money that he bet that and this is pressure i mean andre at the time was like 12 i don't know whatever he

is um and and his father's like okay play him because there's like 10 grand instead whatever the sum was i mean that's a lot of pressure for a father to put on a kid but that's the kind of father he was he was a he was like a stage mother, except with tennis. Right. He was like Terry Shields, except with tennis. I don't know. I think you have to be really careful with doing that to kids. I think, you know, I don't know. Maybe Noam's right. It's maybe he's exaggerating. Yeah. I mean, it is a great story. But I do think it's fucked up to try and live out your, you know,

hopes and dreams through your kids. Yes. I mean, unless, again, you know, some kids do enjoy it and do want, you know, do like acting and all that. Sure. And you have to be very careful. Oh, and there's a million kids who say, why did my father let me give up the piano?

I was so good at it. Why didn't they, like, I was, I was so, I was too young to know. I didn't want like, you know,

well, to what extent, I mean, you're a, you're a, you're a parent. No, I mean,

to what extent would you pressure your children into practicing piano or guitar? What, what is that? What is the right balance to strike between, you know, I do pressure them. Okay. What's the right balance? At what, you know? I do pressure them. What's the right balance?

At what point do you say they're not interested and fuck it? I don't know. You know, you have to monitor the situation because they have their ups and downs. Like my daughter will say, I don't want to play piano anymore. And then four days later, I'll see her take her phone and put something on YouTube and try to figure out some song. So obviously, you know, she likes to play piano.

What she doesn't like is sometimes practicing because it's hard work, but they're kids. If you felt that she had an unbelievable aptitude for it? That I would force her. No, seriously? Yeah, yeah. Okay. Like David Hatton.

If she was a prodigy, you felt, and she didn't... I don't know if I'd force it, but I'd push her much harder because I would assume that if she actually has that ability, then she's going to want to play. Even if she hated it? I think... I know people are probably rolling their eyes listening to this. I think the concept of hating it is elusive.

You hate it in the moment. You hate it because somebody's pressuring you. I mean, we force them to do their homework. They hate that. I do think that there is- Is that traumatizing that you had to do your homework? Are you sorry that you were forced to do your homework? I was going to say that I do think that there is value in teaching kids that there is something called

hard work, right? I mean, I do think that especially today with all of these iPads and video bullshit and all of that, there is something, um, you know, everything's a lot easier. And so there is this idea that, you know, you don't want to do it because it's hard work. But I don't know. I think that when kids love something, they don't mind doing it as much. Well, Noam brought up a good point. No kid loves doing homework, yet we make them do homework. We feel it's good for them to do homework. I don't feel it's good for them to do homework.

And I think that there's been ample evidence proving that homework is kind of useless. Well, I guess that's another topic. How exactly do you get skillful at multiplication without doing homework? Well, nobody's saying that you shouldn't study or do it at school. But I think that the concept of going home and doing a ton of homework. So you should never write a report? I didn't say that. You should never read a book? Did I say that? Well, that of homework. So you should never write a report? I didn't say that. You should never read a book?

Did I say that? Well, that's homework. Not necessarily. I'm talking about every single day going home and doing, you know, these like worksheets. I think that there's been quite a bit of evidence showing that this is not necessarily. You're saying that if you can find it just to the six hours they're in school, that would be sufficient, or at least up through high school. Or even every single day, this homework that they

send them home with is not necessarily useful. And the amount of homework that it's getting out, compared to TV. But even if you make, I concede that point, you still make them go to school, which is something they don't necessarily want to do. So the point is, we do push kids to do

things they don't want to do, or household chores that they don't want to do. Mowing the lawn, or whatever, takingowing the lawn or whatever, taking garbage or whatever. So we do force them to do certain things. The question then is, should we expand that out to piano, to extracurricular activities? To what extent we should encourage and or force kids to do? I think that you do. I think you have to be careful about, you know,

too much, you know, it's a, it's a balance. They let you know. I mean, I think if you're pushing them too hard, they let you know that you're pushing them too hard. It's pretty clear.

You don't want to turn your kids into like nervous wrecks either. Right? Like that's not good. I mean, that's just my parenting philosophy. Like I don't want to be a parent that puts so much pressure on my son that like he feels like he has to excel at like some crazy level and do all of this work like you also want to let them you should pressure him to do the things that you that he can do well i pressure him don't

pressure him to do the things to do the things that you know he's going to fail at. That's the sweet spot. That's good advice. If you pressure them and they succeed at it, then they're going to forgive all the pressure. Right. But what about Michael Jackson? There's another example of a guy whose father was a stage father of sorts.

He pushed the kids into being the Jackson 5, and now they gain tremendous wealth and fame from that. Well, I know. He also abused the boys. Yeah, he was physically abused. I don't know if that's a necessary part. At least according to the VH1 movie. Well, I mean, I think everybody knows that Michael Jackson

was severely verbally and physically abused by his father. I think it's fair to say that Michael Jackson did not have an enjoyable life despite the fame and fortune you know except when he was sleeping with kids your point your point is actually very well taken I think mark this down the calls that's the second time go ahead um I think that what you said is that like, you make them do the things that you know they're going to be good at. Because there is a good, like, you want to be challenged, right? And it's actually because of you that I started making my son read every single day. She thought he wouldn't have to read.

No, shut up. I'm giving you a compliment. I never said he didn't have to read. I just didn'm giving you a compliment and then you i never said he didn't have to read i just didn't first of all you have more kids than i do um i didn't really realize the value of making him read like 20 minutes every single day and it was during covid so like school was all fucked up and you were like you really have to make him read every single day for 20 minutes did you say noam says you have to do it? Yeah, well, he, yeah, I think Noam probably told him he had to do it.

And it really made a very, very big difference. And he is an excellent reader. And I really do think that part of it is from that practice. You know, I also made him go to camp in Israel where nobody spoke English. To improve his Hebrew. And he speaks Hebrew, but he didn't speak it at that native level, and it was challenging.

That's actually a big topic of interest to me as somebody who's interested in languages, how to get your kid to speak your languages. There's a lot of kids whose parents come from other countries where another language is spoken, and they don't speak that language because sometimes the parents, they resist. The parents try to talk to them in the language of their homeland,

and the kid responds in English because it wants nothing to do with the native language. So that's a challenge for a lot of parents to get their kids to speak the language. The kids always resist. You speak French, right? That is correct. I don't claim to be a native-level speaker, but I can say what I need to say. And when did you start to put energy into that?

About 20 years ago. I had come back from Montreal. Now, my parents are from Montreal, but they're English speakers. They're not French-speaking Montrealers. But I'd come back from Montreal and this was like shortly after 9-11 and I just had French in my mind. Now, at the time, I was living with a

roommate and I was trying to avoid him at all costs. Not because he was a bad guy, but you don't want to see your roommate. Like, enough. So I used to go to the bookstore. Back then, there was a bookstore in every corner and I just hung out at the bookstore all the time. So, shortly after that trip to Montreal, I was at the bookstore. Back then, there was a bookstore in every corner, and I just hung out at the bookstore all the time. So shortly after that trip to Montreal, I was at the bookstore. I saw a book, French, the Fast and Fun Way, or whatever it was.

It was Barron's. Picked it up, started reading it, and to my amazement, I was enjoying it. Now, I had taken Spanish in high school and never liked it, but as an adult, I enjoyed learning French. I bought the book. I bought learning French. I bought the book. I bought another book. I bought another book. I started buying Paris Match, which is like People magazine for Paris,

for France. And I would read through it and if I didn't know a word, I would look it up and I would write it down and I would memorize the words. But French is difficult. I mean, there's not a correlation. It's not like Spanish. French and Spanish are both very close to English because there's a heavy

Latin influence. William the Conqueror, when he came to England, he introduced French into England and it influenced the English language to a great extent. That's why English has so much Latin in it. This is a very

unique circumstance, though. I mean, I think... French is certainly a lot easier than Chinese or Russian or German or Hebrew. Dan, you have to concede that, I mean, you are likely of quite exceptional intelligence to be able... Most people, I don't think, without living in France...

Well, I think with a sufficient degree of studying and interest, you know, I'm not a dummy, but motivation is a big factor as to why I was able to learn it. Why were you motivated? I just really enjoyed it. I'm not sure. I can't tell you why. French women?

I cannot tell you why. I really, really, really enjoyed it and still do. Do you like French girls? I started trying to study Hebrew. I mean, yeah, but not any more than other girls. But I have studied Hebrew, but I find it so difficult that I always give up. And then after a year goes by, I forget how difficult it was, and I try again. I'm like, no, no, this is impossible.

So here's the thing. So I've never really, you know. The way to learn a language is to immerse yourself. The easiest way to learn a language is to immerse yourself in that language, in the country, ideally, where everybody. That would be the best way. And there's that age thing, too, that your brain is still malleable. Right.

So language acquisition is at its peak when you're younger. So it's much easier to teach a child another language than it is to teach another language. It's the best age to learn to kiss, too, by the way, but go ahead. Eleven. And you're right that the kids are resistant, but I have seen it done countless times. I mean, my mother, I learned to speak.

Sorry about the language, no. Yeah. No, I was good at kissing from a very young age also. I mean, my mother taught me how to speak Hebrew, and my father didn't speak Hebrew. And I know plenty of parents. I mean, the twins, they speak. Lenka and Lazar.

They speak Serbian fluently because their parents. That was their first language. Oh, really? I didn't know that. At home, that's what they say. Oh, at home, right. But then they also go to Serbia every summer. And so I do the same thing.

You asked a question and now you're on your phone. I'm sorry. He does that. I'm sorry. Obsessive compulsive disorder. Go ahead. So, you know, my husband speaks to our son in Hebrew almost exclusively. He studies it formally.

And we spend a lot of time in Israel. And his Hebrew is, you know, it's not perfect. It is fluent. It's not perfect. It's not native level, I should say. But I think I can't stand it. You might find it boring. I don't stand it. You might find it boring. I don't find it boring.

Anyway. I like the part where she credited me for teaching her something. We're almost done with the bonus episode. But since we have the good doctor, I would like to ask one question that we did not discuss in the main podcast. And that is the comedian self-medicating with marijuana. Good question. And is marijuana a valid mental health treatment?

It's a chemical like any other. Are there valid uses in psychopharmacology for marijuana? Well, look, LSD and psilocybin are all sort of hot topics in psychiatry these days of microdosing and things like that. They all affect brain chemistry. I think marijuana, there's sort of this thing between, you know, it's a weird thing that certain states had medical marijuana. And that as a physician, you could certify that the person should get medical marijuana and that as a physician you could certify that the person should get medical marijuana and then they would go to the medical marijuana place and it was sort of like

giving them a note that just said give this person some weed because it was the people at the place would decide what marijuana they got so physicians don't know a whole i don't know a whole lot about it but there it's a dopamine pathway it's a serotonin pathway and it's the norepinephrine pathway most psychotropics that affect mood go through those pathways so i don't i don't know quite the difference between i guess sativa is the stimulatory one and indica right indica couch yeah well that's what they say i don't know if there's much difference between them in terms of their effect. I think a lot of that's exaggerated.

I don't know. Oh, really? See, I think that's really. Oh, well, I thought that that's really sort of what it's all about, that if it's an indica marijuana strain that you go to sleep. I mean, I have friends who, you know, will do it at night to go to sleep, and it kind of knocks them out. The Endica stuff.

I don't know people that use the sativa so much. I do think that through my teenage years and early 20s, I smoked an insane amount of marijuana as like to sort of veil anxiety that I didn't know that I had. Yeah, but the THC percentage is through the roof now. It used to be like 7%. Now when you go into these places, it starts at like 20%. Yeah, I know. It's really bad. I have friends who have older kids who are having very serious problems.

But that's American chemicals. Same thing with coffee. Same thing. They have beers now. Beer used to be 4.5% alcohol. Now they have beers that are 12% alcohol. Look, you can, I, you can, marijuana can fuck you up. You smoke too much of that shit, you wind up in the ER.

It happens a lot. Yeah, sure, people get psychotic. Absolutely. Because you get psychotic. And that's because the THC levels are so high? It's stimulatory, And look, people get, there's amphetamine psychosis too. So it's along that continuum,

but it's, you know, hopefully more benign because it's illegal now, folks. Well, you know, you got to be careful. You know, you do have to be careful. It's not a joke. You can wind up freaking out.

Yeah. But they're now talking about, I think Oregon, LSD is legal. There's a state where... Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah, where hallucinogens are legal.

This one quick story before we go. You know, I was bombarded in elementary school, and I guess we're roughly, you know, the same generation, with anti-drug film. Remember those films? Beep!

Johnny thinks he's cool to smoke reefer. Beep! And then you advance the fan. It was another picture. The pusher. They call him the pusher. You know, the person that sold the drugs was a pusher in those days.

The pusher says the first one is free. Beep! Anyway. Well, I was so inundated i took it so seriously um that i was in ninth grade spanish class oddly enough and this kid took out of his pocket some weed he says hey natterman i got some weed he pulls it out of his pocket and my my thought was should i turn him in for his own good? And I wrestled with that, and I didn't, thankfully. We didn't have a uniform.

But I thought, this kid's going down a very bad path. The kid's probably a Wall Street millionaire, for all I know right now. But at that time, I thought, this is so dangerous, what he's doing and what it's going to lead to. So the film worked. So the film strips worked on me very, very well. And I didn't smoke pot until after college. Did you like it? First time, yes. The second time, I smoked too much.

And I wound up curled up in a dark room thinking the cops were coming. Oh, God. It was very unpleasant, but instructive. Because it was then that I learned that our brains are not ours. They do what our brains, like any other organ, decide how we feel. Regardless of the external environment, I got a taste of what it is to be psychotic.

And that was very instructive, I thought. Is what the mind can make us think. Counter all evidence. To the contrary. I thought the cops were coming. We're going to have Freddy DeBoer on in a couple weeks, and he talks a lot about that. Anyway, thank you for listening to Table Talk,

the bonus episode from Live from the Table. We hope you enjoyed it. And again, podcast at ComedyCellar.com for comments and suggestions and constructive criticism and praise and whatever. Thank you, Dr. Derlovsky, for joining us, not just for the mail, but for the bonus episode. This is my daughter. She's calling me. What is this, sweetheart? Thank you, Perrielle.

Thank you, Noam. And thank you. Thank you for having me. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.