The Comedy Cellar: Live from the Table - Brian Volk-Weiss

Episode Date: April 17, 2020

Brian Volk-Weiss

You're listening to The Comedy Cellar, live from the Table, the official podcast of New York's comedy cellar, coming at you on Sirius XM 99 Raw Dog. This is Dan Natterman. Noam has decided that I will be doing the intros whilst we are in lockdown. Noam, of course, is here, coming to us from an undisclosed location

in Westchester County. We also have Periel Ashenbrand and Brian Volkweis, who has been with us once before. And this is his second time on our podcast. He is a comedy producer and manager and has his finger on the pulse of all things stand-up. How is everybody doing? I'm good. I mean, as good as can be expected. How are you, Brian? Brian, do you have a... I'm back. Thank you for having me back.

It's our pleasure. Can you hear us in real time, Brian? There is a delay, but less than a second. Okay. Well, okay. That's odd because typically we don't have a delay. You're coming, you're joining us from Los Angeles,

of course, with the speed of light and all. That's not too far. But in any case, by the way, Noam, just to update you, the Comedy Cellar GoFundMe is almost, is closing in on 100,000.

Nice. Yeah. Louis C.K. is giving $30,000. Wow. And Romano, well, Ray R., I assume that's Ray Romano, just kicked in five. Yeah, it's probably Ray Romano. Who knows?

I wonder who the anonymous donors are. I do think it is kind of fascinating. Dan is monitoring this very closely. Well, I wasn't, but then they did that video that the Comedy Cellar staff did a video. Can I play the video? Yeah. Yeah. I don't know if the whole video you need to play it, but just a little bit to give the listeners an idea of what the Comedy Cellar staff made a video to thank the donors for this GoFundMe. And the video goes a little something like this. It's some kind of be our guest from Beauty and the Beast.

Oh, wait, I did it wrong. Hold on, I just want to make sure. I think I might have done it wrong. Let me just double check rather than having to do it. Okay. Okay, so let's try it now. Start something like this. To all who have donated, it is with deepest pride and greatest pleasure that we thank you tonight.

And now we invite you to relax, silence your phones, as the Comedy Cellar proudly presents our gratitude. You're the best, you're the best And there's none who can't attest When it comes to generosity You're miles above the rest If it's Borscht or Halloween

We will serve you anything Try the hummus It's delicious When you're done We'll clear your dishes Hear some jokes Have a laugh Maybe goof off with the staff

And the evening here Is never second best And after we shut down All right, I'm not going to play the whole thing now, but it gets even better and better and better. It's on YouTube. It would make a normal person cry. I bet you Dan probably didn't even break a sweat.

Well, no, I was moved by it. You really don't know me at all quite honestly um but uh yes it was uh it was and i i do think it has something to do with a recent quite noticeable bump in the gofundme money i i don't think that's a coincidence well louis apparently gave me the extra twenty thousand000 yesterday before the video came out. So I think it probably has more to do with a bump in his online sales. Maybe. Well, but also there were several other new donations today. Maybe it has nothing to do with the video, but I do think it's interesting. I think, you know, I do wonder whether people are donating. I'd hate to see money donated to this fund, reduce money donated to other worthy causes. But, you know, I don't know. In other words, because this is sort of a trendy, cool thing to donate to.

When does it end? Pardon? When does it end? When does it end? When does what end? The GoFundMe? The GoFundMe. I don't know. The goal was 50,000.

It blew through that weeks ago. I mean, I don't think it ever ends. Yeah. I mean, they can just keep extending the amount. There's probably a 30 day window or something on this just by default. I might be

confusing it with Kickstarter, but that's great. Yeah, we'll blast this out. And I'm embarrassed I didn't know about this. We'll definitely support this in a big way. That's great. Oh, you know, that's wonderful of you. You should nothing to be embarrassed about. I mean, Dan is right that in this time, I mean, there's so many worthy places to put your money if you want to help people in need. The Commissar staff is, you know, it's like I told somebody else who gave money. I said, well, it's not your immediate family. It's our immediate family. And you take care of your immediate family.

But for somebody like you, you have another world that's your immediate family that probably needs help so that we get but there there is a there is a um it's not a go fund me but it is a charity called comedy gives back i believe it's very familiar with them and yeah we're uh we we have we have donated yeah very good zoe uh no it's a long time. Yeah, I donated to them too. Jody Lieberman and one other person organized it. It's for comedians that are not working. So they've raised a lot of money. I know that. Yeah. No, they're amazing. They're both great.

So Brian, you're always a thoughtful guy. What are your observations on all this going on in the world? I mean, my opinion is, as I always say, I have a communications degree from the University of Iowa. I am not a doctor or a scientist or anything like that. I think we're in the middle of a huge dip economically,

and I think it's going to bounce back reasonably quickly. And the thing which I find very interesting, we talked about this at Lunch Gnome, I go to CNN and Fox every day and Drudge, so I look at everything and BBC and a lot of other things and pornhub but go ahead yeah yeah they're actually very statistically accurate um by the way i bet they are all jokes aside but anyway um i there's there is such a staggering focus by the media on negative and very very little attention, not even to positive.

One of the things I've noticed in particular is there's a lot of articles that will have a headline that is just raw negative. And then the caveats of that headline don't even appear until the fourth or fifth paragraph. The best example of this I've seen is in the LA Times about three or four weeks ago, the headline was, 18-year-old Los Angeles resident dies of COVID-19. And in the fourth or fifth paragraph it mentioned he was in his second year of leukemia treatment in a facility where half the people in the facility either had COVID-19 or were dying of COVID-19. So as you know 99% of the people that go on the latimes.com don't open the article and of the people that open the article i'd argue 50 don't get the fifth paragraph so that's a hell of a caveat uh to a headline that

just says an 18 year old died of covid 19 so that's the first thing and then the second thing is that i also find very interesting there's big, there's a lot of talk of, by the way, I'm still not sure who and what to look at. He's frozen. What did you just say, Brian? You froze. You're not sure what? I'm not sure what to look at.

So that's very ironically. Put it in gallery view. Yeah, put it in gallery view. What's that? Put it in gallery view. How are you it in gallery view how are you looking at it right now what is your screen uh chat okay the top right corner you have like speaker view or gallery oh okay that's better all right all four of us yeah yeah yeah that's okay that's much better and am i supposed to look at the x in the middle like uh there's

another view where you can get rid of perriel but i'll tell you about that later i uh but but the last thing i was gonna say is there are all these articles that say um this is the worst fall in the stock market since 1988 but then nobody's talking about the fact that, you know, the world's been doing pretty well since 1988. So yes, there was a bad day in 1988. But then the funny thing is, three days later, it would say, this is the best day in the stock market since 1936. But that's on page three. So yeah, it's... Well, Brian, haven't you ever heard of the old expression, if it bleeds, it leads? I have. I have. Yeah. I want to add, because I agree with Brian, it's not the first time Brian has said something exactly along the lines of something I think is true and I've

thought about. But I think what we're seeing is what we've spoken about on this before, which is that all journalism now is sold a la carte based on a clickable headline. And it's forced every credible news outlet essentially to become a used car salesman and and do whatever they need to get the sale and they can't they say they won't do it it used to be you buy the new york times and you get the whole paper and it'd be a big headline but then you know this you were buying it for the substance of the paper that you could rely on now there's so much coming at you you click the headline that looks so so an 18 year, yeah, so they have no choice, especially the Los Angeles times,

which I saw a headline is going broke. I didn't read the headline, but so I don't know how we get out of that eventually, but it's terrible trend for drugs. I would say there's two ways to get out of it. One is I think there need to be. And again, I know people are like,

Oh, freedom of speech, freedom of speech. But as you know, the obvious argument is always, you can't yell fire in a movie theater without going to jail. Clearly, freedom of speech can have rules and laws. And one of the laws I think should be, there needs to be a connection between a headline and the article that it's based on. I can't tell you how many articles I've read where there is almost not only no connection

between the article and the headline, frequently the article is the opposite of what the headline said. And I would argue, I don't know if that should be legal in a, you know, as you were saying, in a non-physical newspaper environment. But the other thing is, and obviously this is also tricky as hell to do as well, how do you finance the LA Times without financing it,

but changes the way it was financed for the last 150 years as everything has changed? Because I think once that's solved, and I do have a theory on that, but I think once that issue is solved, then once they're flush with cash again, a lot of these problems go. I don't agree with you on that. First of all, I don't think you could pass a law

which could, what are you in for? Oh, I said an 18-year-old died of coronavirus and I didn't say, oh, I got six months for that. I don't see, I just can't see that. And you'd have to revise the First Amendment jurisprudence to do it. But I do think that people who have lived through the time that I have might have observed that so many of these intractable problems end up being terrible somehow. I can remember when Netscape was going to gobble everything, or Microsoft was a monopoly.

It's like, how can anybody ever compete? How can anybody ever compete? It seems to me that somehow they will figure out some way. Los Angeles Times may go out of business, but there's just too much market for news. And somebody clever will figure something out. One example was Napster. You know, and we thought that's it for the music business.

But then Apple figured out, well, we did 99 cents a song. Now they're flushing cash again. So actually this year, to your point, they broke the high watermark before Napster. So again, it took 11 years to get ahead of where it had been, to be sure. But again, to your point, it did happen. Yeah. And the problem with an intervention by the government is that once they jump in, that becomes the static reality forever. You can't go out of business. If it's not working, they'll say, we didn't spend enough money on it. They'll double it. There's no way for it ever to become obsolete or just nothing ever goes away

once they do it. So I think that culturally, we learn more and more. Like I noticed my kids were already learning not to trust headlines. We will become ignored in some way and we'll become wiser. But yeah, but it's very depressing. And they do it the opposite way too. We talk about on this show where they don't put something important in a headline. Like there was a whole article about Cuomo and stuff in New York and they buried the lead in like the seventh paragraph and said, by the way, experts say that maybe 50 to 80% more people died than were necessary. And the headline didn't mention that at all, you know? So anyway, go ahead, Dan. Sorry. Well, you, you, you said it. I just. I think the solution is caveat emptor. I think that people need to be trained to read carefully and be skeptical and compare different sources.

And because of social media and the Internet, we have more voices being heard. And a lot of those voices are going to be wrong. But the cure for bad speech is more speech. I'm of that, of that, of that mind. You know what bothers me more? And,

and Brian might, might agree. I know Perry will won't. We're living in a time when really keeping an open mind does not get you a lot of admirers. Yeah. You are really suspect. If you, like I saw, I don't like Tucker Carlson.

Everybody knows I don't like Tucker Carlson. I really find him distasteful. But he did a monologue the other night, I heard it, where he was going through a lot of statistical evidence. And I said, he seems to be making sense to me, you know? So I sent it around to a bunch of friends. So what do you, where's he going wrong on this?

And not a one of them was able to take a breath and listen and tell me, you know, where, like, it's Tucker Carlson. And then it kind of, like, the stink rubbed off on me. Like, now all of a sudden I'm pro-Tucker Carlson or something. Because, God forbid, I thought he might have made sense on something, you know? So first of all, bullshit, bullshit okay that's not fucking true i totally have no problem keeping an open mind he was making these like grandiose claims like we should follow science and then not offering any scientific evidence at all that was contrary to the point

that he was making. Are you crazy? He gave statistic after statistic. Can you please let us in on what exactly his monologue was? He was going through... Also to finish, I just didn't have it in me to get into like an email argument with you, but I'm totally happy to go head to head right now. I don't have the, I don't have the data, but it was like, you don't have the data.

No, I mean, I went, I, we can do it. We can do it on Saturday, but he, he went that the models and don't forget,

he has a little credibility here because he was the lone voice on Fox crying alarm about this. So he didn't come into this as a virus. At a party. I mean, that's not getting enough attention. This guy took Trump aside at a party. And that's what got Trump to take this seriously. I didn't even know that. Tell us about that. It's crazy. There was some party at his stupid house in florida trump's and and literally tucker was like hey dude can i talk to you for a minute bro and trump was like sure and tucker was like hey man i think this is i think you should pay attention to this and trump started brian once again is is frozen oh no tucker in my. I just assumed he was another Fox lunatic and yeah he

literally may have gotten Trump to take this more seriously two to four weeks earlier than he would have and thank God they were at the party together. So good for him and so he's going going through the stuff that the models, the Washington City model, that a lot of things is turning out to be drastically unreliable, more than I heard somewhere else today. There's a certain minimum the model has to meet to be considered credible. The entire range of variables has to fall within 95% of what the model's predictions are. And we're falling outside that.

And he's also talking about how few people are dying who don't have other conditions. We didn't realize. And how the death rate for healthy people is maybe lower than we thought. All the people who are asymptomatic. And he's saying, well, maybe now it looks like maybe we don't need to be reacting as harshly as it has been. Right, except that all evidence is to the contrary. No, no, listen, this is the bottom line, Perry. I'll go on to something else. I say this with all due respect.

If that had been a monologue by somebody that you, one of your heroes, whoever they are, you would not have had that testy, petulant reaction to it. First of all, don't be condescending. What I ought to do is simply send you the transcript of something without telling you who wrote it. Because I think it's the only way that you'll be able

to just take it in and... That's not true. Let's move on to things comedy. And I'm being condescending. Can I add one thing to that? Let Brian add. Sorry, Per sorry perry oh no no go ahead i uh like a week ago on instagram i posted uh i had just finished watching tiger king and i post i go i go listen i'm not saying trump is bad or trump is good i'm not saying

the tiger king whatever but to, the show was very interesting because it really shows you had this. Once again, Brian Frozen. Oh, can you hear me now? Yeah, I had this. Yeah. The Tiger King been born to wealthy parents. He probably could have been president. And had Trump been born to poor people, he would not have been president. So it wasn't pro-Trump or anti-Trump. It was basically saying Trump had assets that this very charismatic lunatic at a tiger farm did not have. I got eviscerated by everybody. Republicans, Democrats. The Democrats were mad I said something that wasn't, fuck you, Trump.

Can I curse? Cursing over? Yeah, yeah, go ahead. Please do. And then, yeah, my Republican people were like, well, you know, are you anti-capitalism? Why shouldn't parents help their kids? And I'm like, I didn't say that. I completely support parents helping their kids in capitalism.

But it was literally lose, lose, lose, lose. Yeah, that's the climate now. Yeah. By the way, Noam Yeah, that's the climate now. Yeah. By the way, Noam, you should know better than this millennia by Tucker Carlson. Try to find a more palatable source to avoid these problems. Listen, there wasn't one. And one thing about Tucker Carlson is that he does have a certain batting average of coming

up with something thought-provoking and interesting you know and you know if that's two out of ten times i hear him speak that's fine i just don't i just don't write somebody like he's not stupid i'll give you another example pat buchanan who uh some people might not remember was like really an anti-semite in the 90s and um pretty much detested racist anti-semite white i don't know everything yeah really you know a white cheerleader in a certain way or like whatever an archie bunker type but anyway at the time that nafta was uh being debated he basically predicted everything that was going to happen, that we're going to gut the manufacturing class, that everything's going to move offshore, everything that actually happened. He was very, he said that just because that we shouldn't be a slave to GDP, other ways of aggregating. And I remember at the time thinking, you know what? I don't know enough about economics, but there's some sense to what he's saying here.

And I have even conversations that people remember, friends of mine about this. I'm like, but where is he going wrong? Because it seems to be some clear thinking here, or at least it's not ridiculous. And because it was coming out of Pat Buchanan's mouth, nobody would listen. Like, yeah, I know he's an anti-Semite. I'm not saying he's not an anti-Semite. I can't stand, you know, but let's just, you know, take this on its face.

And boy, was he right. I mean, boy, was he right. Everything he said, you know, everything he said. Anyway, is comedy ever coming back, Brian? Wait, Brian, my understanding is that you actually started a production yeah it was uh you know we do one leg in the comedy world and one uh leg in the toy world uh so we started shooting a show

uh that we actually just locked this morning uh we started shooting about two and a half, three weeks ago that we, and this was our giving back to the toy store community, where basically we had all the toy stores all over the world, primarily in the United States. We're doing 50 episodes. 44 of them are in the U.S. The rest are in Japan or Netherlands or other countries. And they film themselves in the stores. The employees who got COVID or couldn't come to work because of COVID, they film themselves at home. And then, you know, my production company is, you know, everybody's working from home we we we evacuated i don't know what's wrong with brian's connection but uh was that you freeze up every now and again oh sorry you said we evacuated yeah we evac we started evacuating our office on the 29th of february so we had all of equipment, all of our staff working from home

before the California quarantine started. So everybody was, you know, able to work. And I didn't want to let anybody go. And I wanted to make money for all these toy stores that, you know, we're obviously not having people come in. So we just started shooting. And I'm very biased. And, you know, also I don't want to come off as like an egomaniac or anything. But I think it came out pretty good. And, I mean, if you saw what SNL did or the eighth episode of Tiger King, I mean, you really can shoot now. And, again, it doesn't look like a Scorsese movie, to put it mildly.

Everybody will just talk amongst yourselves whilst Brian... Brian, it doesn't look like a Scorsese. And then after that... Are you connected by DSL or a cable? No, this is Wi-Fi. Wi-Fi should work. Well, maybe I don't see any bars or anything. Oh, there's Wi-Fi on your phone? No, on my computer. I don't, it doesn't say anything about signal strength, but you guys look good. Brian, whose idea was it to send everybody home two weeks before the quarantine? Was that your decision?

It was actually, not to brag, but closer to four weeks than three weeks. And it was absolutely my decision. I was at my son's baseball game. Can you hear me? Yeah, we got you now. I was at my son's baseball game and my son is four. I don't know if you've ever been to such an event, but very boring. So I was looking at my

phone and I saw that South Korea was getting hit. And that is a NATO country, a democracy. It's not China and Iran, who their governments are full of shit all the time every day every hour so the minute I saw that South Korea was getting hit I pulled my kids out of school my kids didn't go to school the next day and we started evacuating our whole building

Ryan you're like a soul mate because I really because I had my kids out of school basically the first week in March I was I was fighting with the school board I said what are you waiting for you got to shut it down they were out of full two weeks before the rest of the the rest of the school while the schools are still in and and they'll tell you everybody's calling me crazy we bought a refrigerator we

stocked up on food we have mass lysol everything i bought basically towards the end of february now noam would you say this why do we think it's not going to happen here look at like what is china that we like what's the difference but even fauchi was saying at that time well noam is this an example of a broken clock being uh right twice a day or do you really think you know something analyze i thought you were gonna i thought you said about brian um i'll take that i mean there's no downside like that's my wife hi hi even fauci as late as i sent you that uh video even fauci as late as i think february 29th was was was down was downplaying this saying you know this is is not something Americans need to be overly concerned with. Listen, my outlook, it cost me under $20,000 to shift everybody from the office to their homes and my, and it cost me nothing to pull my kids out of school. But as it relates to the company,

I just said to myself, I'm like, listen, for 20,000, for less than 20 grand, I can be completely protected and bulletproof if the worst happens. And hopefully the worst won't happen. And who cares? It was less than $20,000. Unfortunately, the worst did happen. And, yeah, why not prepare for the worst? But Noam did not close down the comedy cellar, however.

He sequestered himself. No, we actually closed a few days before they closed. closed down the comedy cellar however he he sequestered himself but kept no i we we we actually closed a few days before they um shut everything down and but i was i was i didn't know what to do because the staff i mean i was checking people the staff really wanted to work we're going to all court all sorts of measures of uh with thermometers and and disinfecting between shows with all kinds of stuff. I don't know if it wouldn't work. I spoke to some high-level doctors at NYU,

and I asked them, what do you think I should do? And they're like, no, the CDC said it's okay. You should stay open. And finally, I emailed Yasha Mount, who I know a little bit, who wrote an article in The Atlantic about why they should close everything down. And I asked him what he thought on a moral level the right thing to do was. And he said that he thinks I should close. So I did give the order to close after that. He convinced me.

And then, as it happened, two days later, the governor closed. But that could have been 10 days later also. I had no way of knowing that. So, you know. And I will say in your defense, and I'm not trying to be funny, and just for the record, I am a card-carrying Democrat my whole life. I've only voted for one Republican, and it was Arnold Schwarzenegger. I had to vote for him.

But that being said, you do have the worst mayor possibly in the history of mayors on like the history of the world maybe in the history going back to the Greeks with democracy um that man is a bozo uh he should be arrested for what he was doing with COVID uh I mean and I'm not a huge fan of my governor, but he did rise to the occasion, shockingly. But my God, what de Blasio did was, I mean, truly, I mean, I don't know if you've seen the dates. On March 3rd, he was telling people to go to movie theaters and parades on March 12th was bragging about going to the gym which by the way not only was he bragging about going to the gym the two things about that that cracked me up one there was no one else in the gym because his

own constituents know that knew that was idiotic but two he was in the gym from 830 a.m. to 1030 in the the morning on the brink of the worst epidemic, possibly the worst thing to happen to this country since Pearl Harbor. What's he doing in the gym at 10.30 in the morning? And like kind of bragging about it. Yeah, absolutely. Go ahead. Yeah, it takes a lot of courage to be a business owner in that city.

And I'm not just blindly sitting here defending you, Noam. I have no reason to do that one way or the other. But I'm just saying, if your mayor is saying, it's tough. I mean, that's tough to go against that. Yeah, well, and, you know, as he was saying that, I think it's that March 3rd, there's the same tweet from the mayor of San Francisco. What's her name? London something?

Or her last name is London? Not sure of her name? London something or her last name is London. Anyway, she's fantastic. And she was saying, get ready for school closings. Be very careful. You know, so people are trying to find some ideal ideological score,

ideological points here, but I don't see any connection of liberal or conservative to people who are wise or stupid about this, including in other countries. Who's more liberal than the Swedes? They're letting it rip. This is not an ideological issue. This is a wisdom issue.

The mayor didn't... Our governor, we've spoken about this so many times already, but the governor who has a really good bedside manner, and I really like him, he blew it too. At the time when they told us to, when they shut events of larger than 500,

I was emailing people and saying, well, there's only like 15, 20 events in all of New York City that are going to draw more than 500 people, but there's millions of people meeting in groups of 50 or more. And if one person gives it to, if 10 people give it to a group to 50, it's the same as one person give it to 500, except the 50 are closer. So maybe it's even more likely. I don't know, but it made no sense. And then they said half capacity, but they didn't say spread your customers out six feet between tables, which would have made some sense.

This is half capacity. So everybody just piles in half capacity in front of the stage, and the other back half of the room is empty. So there's absolutely no sense, no benefit. It was just stupid all around. The results were predictable. Brian, Brian's frozen again. My wife has a question. This is what I don't get, right? This is, it was an instinct that you made the decision to pull the kids out of school, right? No one was following all the articles and data and he was trying to be logical about it

right so my whole thought about it was like why wasn't the mayor logical like that why wasn't the governor following the same steps that we were following and thinking like this is this is the mistake you know go ahead go ahead brian my take on it is and i don't think this is exclusive to this century or whatever i I think it's always been like this to a certain degree. Politicians inherently should take the job with the understanding and the realization that they may have to sacrifice their careers for their constituents. And I feel horrible, I don't remember her name, but that mayor in San Francisco is the only person I'm aware of who did that, who basically was like, you know what, if I'm wrong, well, just fucking don't reelect me. I'm in charge.

I'm making this decision. And if I'm wrong, I'm wrong. Don't reelect me. All the bullshit you just talked about, Noam, oh, less than 500, oh, half capacity. Those are politicians trying to straddle the fence, which in many cases, for a politician, that's the right move. But when you're dealing with a medical epidemic, something that our species really hasn't dealt with in 98 years. You don't do that. You have, and you, first of all,

you have to take a worst case scenario outlook and you need to possibly sacrifice your career to do that. But going back to your question earlier, nice to meet you, by the way. Juanita, Juanita. Nice to meet you, Juanita. Did you go to West Point? Who goes to West Point?

We have a friend that went to West Point and sent us some T-shirts. Very nice. Part of the show. Quentin Watts. But go ahead, go ahead. And again, not to get all whatever now, but, you know, I've been asked by a bunch of people, including my wife, you know, how did you know?

How did you know? And, you know, why did you do this? And my answer, I didn't really completely understand it immediately, but what I basically have concluded, and who knows if this is And my answer, it took, I didn't really completely understand it immediately. But what I basically have concluded, and who knows if this is true or not, because you really don't know what your subconscious is doing or not doing. But my grandfather was smart enough, you know, to get out of Austria early enough before the Nazis came. And he was out, and everyone thought he was crazy, because he got out two and a half years early which gave him enough time to get his American papers to get to the U.S.

His whole family died in the camps and I was raised by this guy listening to these stories. So I had the benefit of those stories where I guess if you want to find some sort of pass for de Blasio, he probably didn't. Well, also de Blasio. You probably didn't what? That's the only reason I can think that I was so aggressive so early at doing all these things. I mean, luckily I own my company and I can do whatever I want to do.

Had I not had that ability, there's no way I could. Everyone thought I was crazy. I can read emails now from my staff. This one editor, I've worked with her for probably 16 years. I mean, if I started reading this email to you, every single person would start crying.

She thought I had lost my fucking mind. She literally said, I thought you finally went crazy. to you every single person would start crying she thought i had lost my fucking mind she literally said i thought you finally went crazy and like yeah like i was texting everybody buy food buy food buy food almost nobody replied to me and then come to come towards the end of march people were like yeah and i'm not saying i'm not bra about this. I'm just trying to basically be like, why did I do what I did? I think because I listened to a guy whose entire family were put in ovens

who also got out early. That's my theory. As you said, Brian, the downside risk was relatively mild for you, $20,000 and some criticism, which is something, but the mayor's down side would have been great yeah in my opinion a politician needs to be willing to self-sacrifice for the right cause so this is what i think about i think there is there is that we talked about

there's the roy scheider as a sheriff you you know, doesn't close the beaches down. Because it's true. When you have all that pressure to stay open and all the consequences that you're going to be responsible for, bad consequences, it does wear you down a little bit. And you will end up being slower maybe to react than if you have no downside risk. At some point, though, New York was just looking ridiculous. We were the hot spot, and we were the only ones not reacting. Ohio had shut down their schools. I mean, everywhere you looked.

And you're paying for it now. Yeah. And to Brian's point about the politicians, I said at the time that, you know, the politician needs to say, look, we have to do this. We may be overreacting. And if we are overreacting, we'll never know we overreacted. But the risks are too great. And that's it. And just to make it clear for Perrielle, when I say you will never know that we overreacted,

meaning that if you do it and it works, people say, you see, you did it for no reason. Nobody died. And you can't ever prove that it was the steps you took. By the way, though, I will say this, though. You would have known because when the Chinese numbers start coming out, I don't know if you've heard, if you've seen the great story about the urns that were sent to

Wuhan. Yeah, apparently 4,000 people died, but for some reason they need 35,000 urns. Like that's, that seems like an odd, an odd number of urns for less than 10%. A Chinese saved is a chinese earned but you would have seen it you would have seen what happened in italy i mean our americans have better dna than italians well i can't mention that there is some some we're younger we're younger there is some uh well we are younger and there is some speculation that there might be some genetic vulnerabilities to this. As you know, some people get sick, and they barely notice, and some people get sick, and they wind up in the ICU, and we don't know why.

And they talk about, I think, what is it, ACE receptors or something? Whatever it is, there's obviously some people seem to be biologically more vulnerable to this. Is that not a reasonable notion? It's a reasonable notion, but at the end of the day, you said it yourself. We don't know. So when you don't know, you shut down and you protect. And what's the excuse of what's going on now? I mean, in New York City.

I mean, the subways are... It's crazy. It's so crazy. I mean, what the fuck is de Blasio doing? Like, really? It's the governor, too. There's nothing that de Blasio could do that the governor couldn't do.

Sorry, Brian. No, it's the same with the federal government. Sorry, sorry, sorry. I'm going to shut up. Sorry. No, nothing. Don't shut up. I mean, I've seen videos of what's going on

on the subways there and have been talking to people. I mean, you're from, we grew up together. Brian's from Queens originally also. Like, I've been talking to people who are lifelong New Yorkers they're like I'm scared to go outside like it's

insane bonkers absolutely bonkers they should have been shut down a month ago let alone two weeks ago especially with the people are still outside in the city. They just closed the playgrounds recently, like

a week ago. Yeah. No one was showing slight, I don't know if it's annoyance or skepticism or perplexity. It's just because I'm talking. Well, that is a factor, obviously. No, no.

I wasn't making faces. It seemed to be. It would be interesting, obviously. No, no. I was not making faces. It seemed to be. It seemed to be. No, no. It would be interesting, by the way, we do have a control group of sorts. Norman mentioned Sweden a few minutes ago. From what I understand, a lot of Swedes are staying inside,

even though it's not mandated by the government. But they do have a far less social distancing policy in place than we do. And so we do have sort of a control group and perhaps we will know whether or not we reacted excessively. They live more spread out. Los Angeles lives more spread out. That's got to be a big factor. I mean, New York is piled in on top of each other, probably more like China. I don't know about Italy. But the density of New York has got to play a factor. It's got to be a factor in it. And by the way, the flip side is, so we started out from this total testing debacle, which

obviously was blamed all over CDC and it says we're faulty and the WHO gave bad information and the FDA wouldn't let the private labs and blah, blah, blah. This was what, the second week in March. And here we are in like two or three weeks and we already have a 15 minute test, which is being distributed around the country. We're doing a hundred thousand tests a day day this is remarkable flexibility from a capitalist system that and i think nobody is fully appreciating yeah think about think about how little i know my business how little i can accomplish in three weeks well i know the kitchen took eight months to renovate the kitchen eight months for a job that really should have only taken two or three weeks if I had no regulation and no red tape. Eight months. They built the Empire State Building in 13 months.

The Empire State Building in 13 months, right? So, you know, and I guess because somehow it would bleed into somehow forgiving Trump or whatever it is, we're not quite expressing enough appreciation for how quickly things are turning around. We do need to find out if those tests are any good. The AVID test? I think they are. Because I do know that there's a lot of, remember Pete Lee got tested and tested negative and he might've been negative, but he seemed to have all the symptoms. So we don't know, but there are,

there are false negatives. So pardon percent. Sure. That I had it. Uh, and I, I would say half my company's had it. Um,

I had a shoot in France in early February. All of us were saying separately, I've never been so sick in my life. I mean, I was out for two days. I am never fucking out ever. I've known for over 20 years was out for three days. And we all described it the same way. I mean, I can show you texts from like February. I mean, when it hadn't even really been anywhere but China, like we were all like, I've never, you know, I've never been this sick. I've never been the head of our record label. I mean, he, somebody put a joke,

one of those baby on board signs on his door saying like plague zone, avoid. He was out for four days straight. What was that sign? Basically it was like an elephant was standing on my chest and I'd be like walking around and I felt like an elephant was standing on my chest I couldn't breathe and like I have a driveway that be able to run up and down it 20 times before being out of breath and like walking up it at half speed uh you had thought i had just run up it and down 50 times at full speed guys i couldn't breathe well brian you know there's an antibody test that's coming out very yeah the downside is is that your wife will have to see

all the other antibodies you have. Uh-oh. That may not be worth it. So what else? So there's a big question everybody has. Brian, you probably have insight. Are the comedy clubs

coming back? Yeah, of course they are. You know, I was talking to this guy, Gnome, about six months ago. You know, we were having lunch. You may know that guy.

Yeah, I know him. He has a great story. And by the way i've been quoting on you quoting you on this on a couple interviews that i've done uh when i get asked this a 9-11 it went down a bit and then it you know it came back 2008 2009 it didn't affect you that much so yeah i i i would predict uh sometime before July 1st, it'll be back. And my guess is before September 1st, it'll be the way it had been. And if history is any judge, my guess is it'll come back even stronger

because everybody's going crazy being stuck at home. Now, by the way, Brian. From your mouth to the Jewish God's ears. Brian, if you fuck up this prediction, then it erases the credit you get for your prediction to close down your company. Fingers crossed. Fingers crossed.

July 1st, I think you're being more optimistic than is warranted. I think that even if we open up, the last thing that people are going to want to do is pile into a comedy club i think that will come eventually of course this isn't going to last forever i do think july 1st is a bit uh pollyanna major caveat and i'm glad you said that major caveat and i'm not trying to be funny or a jerk uh everything i just said i believe in, and I think I'll be proven right, with the exception of New York, New Jersey, Louisiana, and maybe Connecticut. So, yeah, you're absolutely right.

When I said that, I was primarily referring to California and then the majority of this country, but not the tri-state area and not the state of Louisiana, which came very close to out de Blasio on the stupidity level chart. Well, as it so happens, me, Noam, and Perry, I live in New York. So obviously, you know, we're more concerned about what happens here. So as far as the comedy seller is concerned. I think you're probably four to six weeks behind california that's not so bad kids are gonna go back to school in the fall mine all of well i guess yeah i think so because i've been hearing stuff about like there could be a second wave i listen i i think there's gonna to be a second, third, fourth, fifth wave,

and it's going to happen simultaneously with the technology getting better to treat it, and also our antibodies and all that stuff getting better at handling it. But yeah, I mean, listen, I mean, it's a horrible thing to say, but we're going to just have to get used to it and deal with it the way our species has in the past. But the bad news is people will die. Could be me. I mean, I could be one of the people that dies in the second, third, or fourth wave. Could be any of us.

But the good news is the history of our species, if you had to go through this, would you rather go through it today, 1918, 500? It'll be another one of these. You know, we're lucky it's today and not 100 years ago. Well, a couple of things are going to happen. First of all, and this is happening every day, right? They're going to get more and more pinpoint accuracy into kind of like the actuarial table of who is at risk for this thing, your blood type, your age, your pressure. And it's going to be a group of people who I think it's going to be clear to them that their risk is really negligible. And those people will then start going out and having a good time as they should. Also, one of these drug therapies,

like the Ebola drug or the hydroxychloroquine, one of them may work. And that can also knock down the CFE, is that what they call it? CFR? Case fatality rate, to the point where people feel, eh, I'll give it a risk. So, you know, even before a vaccine, many things can change. And if people were in high risk, they'll stay home, you know? The most awkward thing will be multi-generational homes. It's like, well, what do you do

when you have a high risk individual at home and you're sending the kid off to school? Because anybody who has kids knows there's no way you're going to get the kid not to pass it to you. There's just no way. So that's awkward. I don't know the answer to that.

Another thing that could change is our knowledge, as Brian alluded to earlier, of who's already had it. Yeah. So that will also. So if there is a second wave, which I think most people acknowledge that there will be, it shouldn't be quite as devastating as the first one. I'm not sure. Give me a second. Go ahead. The context of this issue is this.

Our civilization, if you basically look at reading and writing, it's about 4,000 years old. I mean, our species is much older, but basically what we have today is directly connected to events that were about 4,000 years ago. Just to go play off of your antibodies joke, Noam, let's just talk about syphilis for a second. Over the course of 4,000 years, syphilis was a death sentence until about 100 years ago. And a really nasty, horrible death where you go insane before you die. Now it's a joke, right?

So this, what happened there is going to happen with this. Just, we got to hope the technology and the antibodies do it as quick as possible. Yeah, that's exactly right. So like if there is a drug which can treat this even before a vaccine, then it becomes like the treatment for syphilis. Nobody's scared about getting syphilis anymore

because they know there's a cure for it or a drug for it. If there's a therapy for this, and it might be, you know, and then it changes everything. So I don't know. I don't know. On the downside, we found out today that these PPP loans will not give us money, will not lend us money to pay comedians, which is our biggest human cost because they're 1099. So that's kind of a, that's a monkey wrench, but I'll have to negotiate that. Well, that's more our problem than your problem, but we do appreciate you being concerned with us. What do you mean? I have to pay you? No, no. You're saying you're getting a loan from the government to pay the waitstaff and the bar staff. Yeah, but if business is slow and I cannot borrow that forgivable loan to start paying the comedians as well as my staff,

then we may not be able to open without losing a lot of money or I thought as in the comedians take a pay cut, which is not something I want to do. I thought that you meant that take a loan to pay the staff now while nobody's working. You meant this, this is. No, they're getting, they're getting unemployment checks and, and, uh, there's another check. I forget what it's called, disaster check or whatever it is, and they have that fund. My staff is – I think they're – nobody's doing great, but I haven't heard horrible stories. They seem to be hanging. It might be early in this yet, but how long has it been, a month?

A month, yeah. Because a lot of these people were equipped to take two, three-week vacations. Comedians are not unreasonable people. If we see a full crowd when you come back, we probably wouldn't really enjoy a pay cut. But if we see that business is off significantly, I think we would not be unreasonable in working something out to keep things going

if that's what was necessary. I know. The committee isn't very reasonable. It's very unpleasant to ask anybody to take less, but it may be inevitable. If it comes to that, I don't know, but, um,

I don't know that it will, but, uh, in any case. I just can't believe this is fucking happening. Oh my God. I just can't believe this is happening. So bonkers. So bonkers.

It's just like, what the fuck? Well, we've never, you know, if you, if you lived in the 1800s, this would be,

uh, every year there was yellow fever and cholera and scarlet fever and this and that. And you took it for granted that every few years a bunch of your friends would die. And your kids, half of your kids would die. And you got used to it. You're like, okay, well, that's how life is. We got used to living without this kind of thing going on. I'm more interested in how we would have handled this in 1985,

before cell phones were all around, before Zoom, before Netflix, before like when we were already in the modern mindset that this isn't supposed to happen, but we didn't have all the technology, which is making this not nearly as bad as it could have been if you just shut in with nobody to talk to and nobody to see. You think that we would have stayed in for that in the 70s and 80s? I don't know. Much worse. We still have telephones to call our friends, I mean, but you're right.

It would have been more difficult. Yeah, just sitting there. What would you do with yourself? Have you gone outside this week, Dan? I took a bike ride today. Yep. With a mask? With my mask.

On a city bike. And I, you know, city bike, Lord knows what germs are on the city bike. But I try not, well, I didn't, I don't think I touched my face until I got back home and washed my hands. So, you know. And you took your clothes off? You take your clothes off? I don't go that far. No, I don't go that far. You should go that far.

Maybe I do, but I don't. I was thinking that once the 15 minute test comes out, Dan, if we can coordinate the logistics, you can go to the doctor, take the test, and then if you're negative, I'll wait downstairs and

pick you up and then you can come socialize with me in my home. And that sounds like a nice set. That sounds like a nice offer that, uh, yeah, but you know, assuming those tests are, are, are dead on accurate and we don't know that they are, I'll take that risk. If you have no symptoms and no fever and you, and you get a negative result on a test, I'm going to take that risk. That'd be great. I have a nice meal for a change because I've been eating, you know, I mean, crap. Where do you live, Dan? Pardon?

Where do you live? I live in Manhattan. I live alone. I have a bachelor's life. I don't cook very well. So it would be nice to have a wonderful meal. So hopefully that'll happen. What are you going to love, Dan?

Keith Robinson said that Chinese processors are very cheap right now. It's not my joke. I think this has been an instructive episode, by the way, not roaring with comedy, although no one did manage to slide in an antibody joke. I have a question, because

I would like to know, Noam, what you're going to do if I take that test and I offer you physical evidence that I do indeed have it, which he's been telling me I don't, despite the fact that... I mean, that you had it in the past. No, I mean, it's happening right now. Oh, right now.

I mean, I still- If you had it, you'd be lucky because you're okay, and then you could be hopefully moved past this. That's not necessarily true. Well, I mean, okay. What I was ridiculing you for was the notion that you've been diagnosed via cell phone. And someone who told you that you had it,

you actually say, I have it. My doctor diagnosed me. She did it over the cell phone. Your doctor got diagnosed over the phone. What are you talking about? What do you think telehealth is? So what do we need testing for?

Well, I mean, I think that there are, I mean, there's certainly value in being able to get tested. But I think that when you lose your sense of taste and smell, and you have numerous other symptoms that are consistent with COVID-19, then a doctor can diagnose you with it. How do you feel now? I feel much better, but I'm on day like 22 and I'm not allowed out to my, like I'm not allowed near my family

for like I think three more days, she said. Wow. Noam has never said you didn't have it. He said there's been no formal diagnosis. Noam said you don't have it. He said there's been no formal diagnosis. Noam said you don't have it, please. That is- I don't- I'm going to say you didn't have it.

Right. I'm going to go on record and say, personally, I think it's 60-40 against, but I'm going to give Dan three to one odds. You want to take those odds? No, but why do you think that? If she didn't have no sense of smell or taste? Or you think it was psychosomatic?

That is ridiculous. I mean, that's- I'm going to acknowledge that the sense of smell and taste is a very, you're a unique symptom of this. So you can't just say you probably had the flu because that's not a typical symptom of other things. So I'm just going to have to say, just a gut tells me that it's just too convenient that she had it.

It's just too convenient. Most of what Perrielle says you dismiss. And so this is in keeping with that general philosophy. Now, 60-40 is not like I was 95-5 on Jussie Smollett, if you remember. I mean, 60-40 is not like I'm going to be shocked if you had it. I mean, as I always say, when statistics like this come up, you wouldn't get on an airplane even a 1% chance of crashing. That's right.

60%, I would say he thinks that she has it in many ways. Yeah. Talk about your toy collection a little bit. What would you like to know? Well, I mean, you're seeing you're wait you go first perry i'll tell us about yours go ahead sorry tell us the toys you've been playing for the last three weeks along with our family i think my parents watch this um first of all they've designated um vibrators essential items on Amazon. Did you know that?

All right. Let him talk. Let Brian talk. I wasn't talking about that. Go ahead, Brian. Oh, those weren't the toys. I think that was de Blasio's first legislation after this hit. His priority is right.

Because you do have a love, a deep love and affection. I mean, as indicated by your upcoming project as well, of vintage toys, right? I do. I am a big toy collector. That is my biggest and possibly only hobby. And how long have you been doing that? I mean, basically the oldest parts of my collection started with the toys I played with. There's about 10 things in here that go back to my Queens days. But the first time I bought a toy that I didn't play with and I just put it on a shelf, I think I was a junior in college, like 96. So are your kids allowed to play with those, or is that...

There's very specific and finite things in here. Yes. And they know what they are. And listen, my kids are bonkers, but for some reason they're actually very respectful. And they only play like I have those McDonald's transformers from the nineties. Like that's okay for them to play with, but no, they're never behaved anywhere but in here it's very strange well i want to say we're gonna we have to wrap it up but i want to say something about uh i'm really happy to have met brian and um i my quiet i've noticed that there are a lot of

empty suits that get hired and rise to the top of a lot of important positions for companies. There's not a lot of empty suits who have started their own business and have become very, very successful as Brian has. And he's a very, very, in my, I mean, I know him a little bit, very, very unusual, very, very smart, very, very clear thinking. And to me, it's absolutely no accident that he's as successful as he is. We didn't talk about how successful he is and all the other stuff that he's done. I was going to say, for the record, I do not feel very successful. You're kind to say all that, but just I...

You're quite successful. And you've done a lot. I mean, you turned a toy thing into a thing on Netflix. You turned an interest into classic movies, into a series that's highlighted on Netflix. You took people who nobody else wanted to sign, and you made million-dollar specials out of them, right? I'm not exaggerating it.

It did occur. And on top of all that um insight you also had to have all the interpersonal skills and the give and take that that's required to actually get something from the drawing board to actual uh execution which any businessman knows is very very very hard it's not so and you did all that and you do it again and again uh i'm impressed anyway. Well, he seems like a bright fellow

just talking to him. Thank you. Thank you. That's up. I have to go. It's five after eight and I have my next show coming up. All right,

everybody. Thank you for having me back. I don't take that for granted. I really appreciate it. Come on, come on regularly. I'd love that. Yeah,

no, this is fun and feel better, Periel. love that. Yeah, no, this is fun. And feel better, Perrielle. Thank you. Wait, where can we look out for your upcoming series? You know, we're actually negotiating. I was just going to put it on YouTube and Amazon Prime and then put it out everywhere else that we do our stand-up specials through

when they don't go to Netflix or whatever. And we're negotiating right now. I can't say who, and I don't know if we're going to be go to Netflix or whatever. And we're negotiating right now. I can't say who, and I don't know if we're going to be able to close or not. But, yeah, even in a week I should probably know better. But at the very least, YouTube, Amazon, Cluedo, Tubi TV, everything like that. It just occurred to me because of what you said, negotiating. This kind of fell out of the story, but in the last week in February,

I was supposed to sign a lease for the new Comedy Cellar space on the street. I pulled out of that and everybody went fucking nuts. My lawyer was upset with me. Their lawyer. I said, listen, I'm not. You pulled out of it because of covid or

you pulled yeah because of covid i said i'm not signing anything till i see how this covid thing we we had that with a house same exact thing yeah so well hopefully um that's not dead and and hopefully that'll come back but we don't you know that someday maybe yes maybe no but i'd be in a i'd be in a real bind now if i'd sign that without picking on it and having to put up all that money to build but would this qualify as some sort of act of god some would there be a way to get out of it had you signed that lease i don't know the answer to that but i but uh who wants to who wants to test that i don't know yeah that would have been um that would have been but you still have to pay the rent

around the corner at the village underground every month. Yeah. That's bad enough. I gotta go. Be safe. Bye everybody. Thank you. Feel better.

Suggestions to comedy seller at podcast.com. If you have any suggestions or comments or criticisms and Perry Perrielle, of course, is going to give you our Instagram. What was the email address? What's the email address? Podcast at ComedySeller.com. Instagram is at LiveFromTheTable. And we thank Brian Volk-Weiss.

And we will see you all on the next episode. Bye-bye. Night.