The Doug Stanhope Podcast - Ep. #110: Amsterdam Comedy Podcast Swapcast

Episode Date: November 13, 2015

Swapcast with Amsterdam Comedy Podcast featuring Doug Stanhope, Gregory Scott Shapiro, Jonathan Groubert , and AJ.Recorded Oct. 28, 2015 Amsterdam Hilton with Doug Stanhope (@dougstanhope), Gregory Scott Shapiro (@gregoryshapiro), Jonathan Grubert (@state_we_re_in), and AJ. Edited by Ggreg Chaille (@gregchaille).Donate to Chaille here. I appreciate it and anything helps stock the liquor shelf while Doug is away.LINKS -AMSTERDAM COMEDY PODCASThttp://bit.ly/1Shw77DJonathan Groubert - (@state_we_re_in)http://www.pri.org/people/jonathan-groubertGregory Shapiro - (@gregoryshapiro)http://www.gregshapiro.nl/AMSTERDAM HILTON (John & Yoko BED IN)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilton_AmsterdamHerman Broodhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herman_BroodOtto & Georgehttp://ottoandgeorge.com/Closing Song, "Hey Dude" by The Mattoid. Available on iTunes.Doug's DVD/CDs are all available at DougStanhope.comSupport the show: http://www.Patreon.com/stanhopepodcast

This is the Doug Stanhope and the Amsterdam comedy Swapcast. Yeah, that's right. And if you've not heard the term before, it's anytime, because every comic has a podcast, and they all have comics on their podcast that also have their own podcast. But they only put it out as one or the other. If you both have a podcast, why don't put it out on both of your fucking podcasts as a swap cast? I coined the term, and you should steal it and use it. So I'm Jonathan Gruber.

I'm the journalist. I'm Greg Shapiro, the comedian with the journalist. And over there is AJ. AJ is our swap cast guest. He is a mutual friend that I know from Bisbee and you now know from stand-up comedy. In Amsterdam. And you're our guest in a way

and in a certain way we're your guest. That's the Swapcast. Trademarked Stan Hope 2015. Open share. Open source. The Amsterdam Hilton was made famous with uh the uh john and lovin that's right the bedding the bedding the bed and you had the same view that they did yeah not the same room probably a better room yeah you got a balcony actually i can tell you that it's

not the same room because i remember seeing it and they just had windows from behind the bed whereas you have what you've got like half the room has windows on two sides. You've got like 90 degrees worth of windows. It's beautiful. Yeah, no. We upgraded because I asked if they had a smoking room. And they go, no, only the junior suites have balconies. It's a non-smoking hotel.

But if you have a junior suite, you have a balcony. And I go, fucking upgrade me. I don't care how much it costs. Nice. And also, this hotel is famous for one other thing. You probably haven't heard of him. But there's a guy named Herman Brood. Brood't care how much it costs. Nice. And also, this hotel is famous for one other thing. You probably haven't heard of him, but there's a guy named Herman Brood,

Brood in Dutch, Herman Brood, who was in the 70s and the early 80s. He was actually a pretty famous rocker. He was married to Nina Hagen for a while.

He was probably the Netherlands' most famous punk rocker. He jumped off the top floor and killed himself. That's right. It was his greatest work of art. He was indeed a visual artist, a painter.

And his works are actually... Yeah, ended up a Pollock. If you will. Splatter art. Yeah. Actually, his art's not that different. In real life, it was a bit splatter. Oh, gosh.

Jesus. Oh, I don't know. Can we make that joke? Oh, wait a minute made it's the doug stanhope yeah that's the doug stanhope podcast can take all the credit for anything that you'd get in trouble for actually it's very funny because we were researching this to talk to you doug i also want to talk to you aj because i think you got quite a story yeah but we were researching this to talk to you doug right on your wikipedia page it has categories of comedy on there and one of the categories that was on the page and i shit you not because i i didn't make this up it cringe comedy uh cringe humor was actually a uh uh i might still be it was a website and a bunch of guys like Robert Kelly, I think, ran it.

They toured with cringe comedy as a name, so I think they coined cringe comedy. How do you feel about that term applied to you? I don't mind it. I thought you were going to say death comedy, like death metal. There's also cringe comedy as well in the Netherlands. For the wrong reasons? Yeah, exactly. Well, no, I mean, there are people who deliberately try to shock the audience.

But in my mind, yeah, the jokes are secondary. Yeah, no, I cringe at that. I get emails from new comics that try out their material, new comics that like try out their material and it's just yeah just saying the words in a row you know uh retard cunt this right baby and it's like a checklist right there were some things that you said i because i saw your act the other day a few things you said that made me cringe delight i mean with to cringe with delight but i cringed. Nevertheless, I mean, I knew what I was in for. Well, let's say it this way. I will ask the actual question here.

Go ahead, do it. For people who don't even know Doug Stanhope, you know, you even referenced on stage the other night what people come to expect. Your own fan base comes to expect from a Doug Stanhope show. I mean, do you, how much do you feel like you need to pay that off? And what can we expect from a Doug Stanhope show? I mean, do you, how much do you feel like you need to pay that off? And what can we expect from a Doug Stanhope show? Oh, that's the worst question in the world. No, no. I'll go back to the first one.

What can we expect? No, this whole tour. What can we expect? Just go on YouTube and look at my old shit. No, I know that. And it's going to be like that with different topics. But do you, I don't know, do you feel like you've got a niche

that you need to break out of? No, no, I don't want to break out of it. It's just finding more topics to talk about that I give a shit about. Because the older you get, the more you've done 25 years now, every topic that I'm passionate about, I've reworked, twisted inside inside out try to fuck at a

different angle and then try to have new stuff to be angry at or have a you know a good point let me let me be clear on this i mean i found myself laughing my ass off at a phrase like fuck kids with cancer all right but inside the but it was really inside the bit it's it's about vanity right and this silliness i don't want to i'm not going to burn material but yeah there is a point to that bit about you know how our vanity of you know personal appearance is how high up that is. And using kids with cancer, sure, it starts out coarse, but that's what makes it funny. If I just made the point, then I'm a fucking orator. No, no, I realize I'm pulling it out of context.

And if I just throw out the terms fuck kids with cancer without it being in the context of your actual act, it sounds even worse than it is, of course. Right. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so let that lie but here i'll be recording this for a dvd soon i hope and then then you can find out what the point of fuck kids with cancer yes that's right but but i think the thing is is when you i mean

when i when i walked out of the show afterwards uh i had something of a sense of guilty pleasure after walking out of it, because on the one hand, many of the things that you said, of course made perfect sense. That's the reason why they were funny. There was a universal truth to them. You know,

yes, this thing that he just said that I feel very uncomfortable repeating actually makes a lot of sense, which is why it was funny. If it didn't make sense, it wouldn't be funny. It would just be course, but because there's a logic to it,

it's funny. But how do you want people to feel when they walk out of your show i don't give a shit i really i i i play to amuse myself because i the cliche that i'm my toughest audience or my toughest critic i am because i fucking i don't, if I'm not having fun, and once I've said it, I'm not having fun anymore. So every night I'm just looking for something that's funny to say that I've never said because I know the bulk of it is shit I've already said over and over again to different audiences. Do you really not care what people think when they won't go to the show?

Look, I understand as an artist you need to please yourself. That's a healthy way of working in life, not just in this. Well life not just generally if you're having fun it comes across to the audience so if your act is so fucking tired that i mean a lot of times i just i start getting silly with things and just adding nonsense descriptives i uh just anything to amuse myself because if i if i'm bored up there you're going to be able to tell. And that's why I drink. I hate to use my own catchphrase. Because if I had to go up sober and listen to my fucking act again,

at least drinking gives me some perspective or some balls to go in a wrong direction that might fail. But it still makes it different. I have to call you on this a little bit because, you know, when I watched your act, it was very, very well crafted. I mean, it's not like you just went up there and said what was on the top of your head. I mean, you did actually. The first like 10 minutes, that was shit

that was off the top of your head. I did more than 10 minutes. Yeah, yeah. That was great. That was the impressions that you were left with for that day and the trip over and stuff like that. But then when you finally got into the material, this was well crafted stuff. That was great. That was the impressions that you were left with for that day and the trip over and stuff like that. But then when you finally got into the material, this was well-crafted stuff.

First of all, are you a stand-up as well? No, no, I'm a journalist. I'm a journalist. I'm a journalist, so I'm the audience, really. You know, I come to it as, you know, the person who's sitting there receiving it. I don't know how Greg feels about it, but if I can do even a minute, much less 10, of riffing on whatever's going on in the news,

in my life, in the day, in the moment, it makes the rest of your act feel fresh. Yeah. You carry that momentum into, all right, I've said this shit before, but I'm already on a roll of actually talking about stuff that's off the top of my head or that I thought of right before I went up. And that carries into the act. Well, what do you think people are feeling after they've seen your show?

I don't ask. The question was, what do you think they're feeling? I mean, it still sucks if you die a miserable death and you get shitty tweets. That doesn't make me happy. But I've had great shows where the audience fucking hated me, and I did exactly what I wanted to do. And I killed me. And I'd rather walk out of a show having killed my girlfriend if bingo was high-fiving and laughing and oh my god and i wrote that down and that's funny and my managers happy

if i was booed off stage i'd rather be booed off stage doing an act that's making me have fun than get a standing ovation for just blowing through some fucking phoned-in garbage. It sounds like that's happened. Like you've gotten booed offstage, but triumphantly. Yeah, I'm sure it's happened. It's been a while. Yeah. You know, I'm sorry.

I'm going to jump in and bring a bit of a parallel because for listeners of this podcast, one of the recent episodes that we did was with the brendan burns and uh i don't know maybe there's some comparing contrasting but you know one thing that he he said was you gotta i think he said you gotta do the the gig you gotta do you know it's like 25 years you know that it might take did he say 25 or like he think he said like 15 20 years you know that that you do the gig you know until you find out what you really are doing or the purpose or what you want it's different for everyone and you you get those emails a lot but like how long before you really found your voice

and people tend to give answers like what worked for you is that's the well yeah 15 years well no for me it was probably nine uh that's different for everyone what you felt like you knew what you were doing well i i felt like i had a voice not i found my voice but i had actually a i had opinions because i started at 23 and my opinion was I want to get pussy. And that was all I – I'm trying to get laid after the show, and that's success. So, yeah, when I actually started having opinions and saying – I would write to get a laugh when I first started. I didn't care what I was saying. Will this elicit laughter?

So there was no opinion to it. It was just dumb. Even if I disagreed with it, if I thought it would work, I'd do it. I didn't give a shit. Just dumb fucking hackney kind of. And then I started trying real shit

and it felt a lot better. You say, this is really interesting to me because the other thing that I observed about all this was when I watched you up there sort of crawling the stage. You a long show by the way a lot longer than other comedians i've seen maybe a good good solid hour longer even and i thought to myself this is a guy who kind of needs to be up there no you don't need this mode of expression? No. It didn't seem like a coincidence.

Tell me. I've done, when I finish this tour, I will have done 31 dates in a year. So I took 7 months off, did 10 dates in Canada

over 2 weeks, and then another 2 months off, and then did this tour. Well, then the natural question is, why do you do it? If you're saying you don't need it, and you don't really care what the audience thinks, what do you get out of it? Well, I'm not really ready to retire financially at 48 years old. Is it just for the money?

A lot of that time, I got a book deal. So I was writing. So I had to take that time off. And this is the end of the run of this material. I've played this everywhere they speak English, and now I'm going to have to start over from scratch as soon as we tape this. Right. But what do you get out of it, then?

I mean, I'm saying what I observed. You're denying it, everything that I've said. You're telling me you don't need this shit. I don't care what they fucking think. My point is, seven months off, I never thought, fuck, I need to get on stage. I've thought, I need to get out of town. I need to get on an airplane.

I need to go somewhere. I need to fly. But I never felt like I need applause. So what do you get? Why do you do it? Other than money. Money. Really? it's just money. Yeah. Interesting. But I still have to, I have quality control.

Like, it's not like I'm just going to go out and sell the same bullshit. If I'm going to sell the ticket, I'm going to write the material and put in the effort. What do you think, AJ? Is he telling the truth? Here. in the effort. What do you think, AJ?

Is he telling the truth here? Well, when I first met Doug, uh, I was crashing at his place in Bisbee, Arizona, Bisbee, Arizona. Right.

And, uh, how did we meet? Okay. So I was in the army. This is not an odd question for me and my friends. Like, how do I know you anyway?

So I was in the army and, friends. Like, how do I know you anyway? So I was in the army and I was familiar with Doug's comedy and a friend of mine from high school actually dated, my friend Tracy dated gay cousin Eric. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, this sounds familiar. And you had been to Thanksgiving with her.

So I get stationed at Fort Huachuca, which is in the ass end of Arizona. It's not too far from Bisbee. And I saw the sign for Bisbee, and I thought, that sounds familiar. How do I know this? And I said, well, maybe it was Stanhope. So I look up. Sure enough, he lives in Bisbee.

I send him an email. I said, hey, I've seen you in all these states. My friend Tracy dated gay cousin Eric. Small world, huh? It is. That's unique and weird. And so within a couple hours, he had sent me an email back that said, come to the show in Tucson this weekend. Find me afterwards.

Come to the house. Watch football. We'll hang out. For about the next six months, I was there at least three or four days a week. And for the listeners out there, my listeners, that's because he dropped the right name, Game Cousin Eric. So all you people who keep randomly emailing me saying, hey, can I come over for football? Can I come to the Super Bowl party?

No. If you're in Bisbee anyway, you can drop me an email, and if I'm in the mood, maybe we'll have a cocktail. If I'm home and awake, but don't come to Bisbee to watch football. It's not going to happen. And now back to the story. So one morning,

I wake up. I'm hungover. I go into the kitchen. I'm making myself a little breakfast and Doug, I'm quiet. He doesn't know that I'm in the kitchen. He's watching infomercials on television at seven, eight o'clock in the morning. As one will do. And he starts prank phone calling

the mesothelioma law line saying, excuse me, I think I've got the mesotheliomas and I need to talk to someone. And just with like the biggest. What is mesothelioma? What is that? It's a type of cancer caused by asbestos. And you're flooded with commercials in the States.

Do you have mesothelioma or someone you know has died? Call the law offices of such and such. I was. In fact, that's one of my T-shirt ideas is to. I want to make a series of disease t-shirts but with flowery like graphics a juvenile diabetes but it's all bubbly happy 1960s font with flowers like you're promoting diseases and mesothelioma would have the s with a big dollar sign in it just say mesothelioma cha-ching those are those tiny adorable little tumors yeah yeah yeah in the abdomen so i'm calling evidently the law offices

of james p sokolov mesothelioma yeah yeah and just with and pranking them hard he's got the biggest most childish grin on his face and just just killing himself and he hangs up eventually he keeps him on the line it's a game to see how long he can keep him on the line it's like 15 20 minutes eventually they hang up on him they hang up on him they hang up on him they caught okay yeah and he's just chuckling to himself and i come out of the kitchen where i've been kind of peeking around the corner, and he goes, oh, shit, you heard that? Like, it was all for himself. It was an audience of one, a set containing one member.

An audience of zero, really. Yeah, exactly. But what did you think, because this is obviously story worthy, so what did you think when you thought to yourself, shit, he didn't even know I was here. He just did that for himself. What did you think? Well, at first I just wanted to know where the fucking hot sauce was for my eggs.

But then as I thought about it, I was like, oh, yeah, this makes sense. But AJ. Yeah. And this is why I was so thankful that you had podcasting equipment that you were willing to travel with. Because AJ's got stories. Apparently, as Brian said, stories that are not even publicly available for telling. I wanted to get your backstory first. You don't want to follow him.

No. So let's get your backstory. Greg. Ask your questions to Greg. Greg Shapiro. Oh, funny. Okay, sure. Right, because I name checked you at the show as a local comic.

That was actually, that was really nice afterward. Well, you have the name Greg Shapiro, so I thought someone was fucking up Rick Shapiro's name. Or George Shapiro, which I get a lot, from Seinfeld, the producer guy. But you're an American? Yeah, and I came to take a job here for one summer with Boom Chicago Comedy Theater. And yeah, I mean, 20 years later, I'm still here. We just came to Amsterdam for just one summer

to try things out, and we never left so we I've gone native we as in like wife kids yeah I'm actually married to a Dutch person woman now now she used to not be a woman you got me thinking all these transgender things but no

we it's a bunch of us that we knew each other from high school actually we grew up outside of Chicago, moved over here to try to do a second city anywhere but Chicago. And yeah, it's an improv comedy theater. Are you still doing that or are you just doing stand-up now? Right now, I've actually bridged that sort of gap because I started doing improv. And that's when the improv community, there was no crossover in those Venn diagrams. There shouldn't be. I'm all for segregation when it comes to sketch comedy and stand-up.

Yeah, yeah. But I mean, yeah, stand-up comedy, comedians really looked at improv as just like, oh, what a fucking hour-long whack-off, you know, masturbation session. And then – Good comics do. And then, yeah. and then good comics do and then yeah

and indeed a lot of improvisational comedians were like well we just don't do stand up that's just the same

every night I mean there's a ring there's a bit of truth of what you were just saying you can't just like do your act every night and go home

but here's the thing that everybody wants to know Greg yeah that I'm going to tell just to sort of make things smooth things along

faster and that is he is an american stand-up comedian and professional presenter who makes a living doing this in a country where english is not the first language that was never going to be my question the english but i would is is it big enough to to make a living over here? It is. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And actually, I mean, you know, Seth Meyers started out over here, actually. Other names like, you know, Jordan Peele. T.M. Peele. Really happy to see how well Jordan Peele is doing. Yeah, like Baron Holtz and Jason Sudeikis.

I know, but they're over there. I'm saying the Netherlands, I don't even know what the population is. 17 million. All right. Yeah. So you can use enough towns. You can tour around. Yeah.

What's his name? The guy that picked me up at the airport. Misha Viertheim. Yeah. This guy picks me up at the airport. They go, this comic, he's a really cool comic. He's going to pick you up at the airport. Right.

And then I hung over so I don't talk during the day normally. And he's making all these jokes. And then I show up at the club and his DVD is on display, is in a display case. And they go, yeah, he's one of the bigger comics in the Netherlands. In this country. And you're the fucking guy. You make that guy pick me up at the airport and you have his fucking DVD in a display case. Jesus.

It was just an Uber pop. Actually, you're not supposed to talk about it at all. Pretend like you don't know who he is. Some of them have water bottles in the car. He has jokes. But you don't just do that. You do other things. You'll do corporate presentations and things like that as well.

Honestly, yeah. And I'm working on my own. I'm trying to make something like a daily show for the EU. And, you know, that's with this production company. And we're doing, you know, I'm hosting an app and co-hosting a podcast. And it keeps me busy. You are, like, one of the busiest people I know. Thank you.

I asked him, like, how many meetings do you take a week to keep your career going? And he was like, oh, I don't know, not many. Like, five. I mean, that includes includes you know yeah fine dude you're busy yeah you make this shit you make this happen that to be honest that's like your greatest talent is your ability to sort of like make work happen all right like i can't do that uh you almost just said he's not funny yeah no i'm not yeah in fact oh the huge what was funny to me the other night was that you were looking for, this is when you were riffing about touring all over Europe,

and the Misha Wertheim reference was like, that would be analogous to me performing across the street from, I don't know, what's a well-known comedian here. You're funny, Greg. You're funny. I know, I know. But then i think the connotation in your bit the other night was like uh well i use michael mcintyre as a reference in the uk and that killed and so now i'm in the scandinavian countries and i'm trying to like

ask people like well all right what's a comedian that is opposite of me that's huge that would sell out in an arena russell peters would probably work anywhere in the world there you go yeah yeah but yeah so last night after i fucked it up the first night in amsterdam when i'm asking shit i didn't i didn't i asked someone for a reference and she gives me geert ootsen okay and nobody yeah she's like you so i never heard of him i didn't i didn't fact check this is some girl hennigan's hanging around with okay but she's from here before i just google searched him and he's this old guy and the the image that comes up on google is him doing the five fingers thumb to the nose yeah and i go yeah that seems like the guy but fucking nobody at all

anywhere knew who the fuck i was talking about yeah yeah yeah and uh well anyway that's how my name came up in the doug's day and hope show uh although it was aj our gentleman over here who was the one who said it right yeah he's the one that yelled right well he wanted he did if he wanted to name check you man yeah that was great. I was sinking lower in my chair. The laugh from the comics in the back was nice. Well, let me get to this moment as well. So, you know, there were moments that you were trying to come up with an example from the audience. You, what do you do for a living? Yeah.

And that was also a couple times. Again, as a bit, I don't have to go into the audience exactly i did anyway because it's kind of fun yeah just to ask them hey what do you do it doesn't matter what they do the bits gonna be the same but rather than make up a bit it breaks it up yeah it's any little thing that breaks up my fucking voice and lets the audience go, ooh, something might happen here. Yes. Sorry, I was off the mic. And it ends up being more self-referential as well, that you're commenting self-aware, you know, as you go.

That was that moment to me when you were riffing the other night. Did you ever talk about the doubling? Hang on. I want to get back to you're not funny. Oh, let's do that. No. I'm the Michael Meyer of Dutch comedy. No comedy yes michael mackintyre my point was the fact that you are this industrious yes this is my point is generally the most ambitious comedians are the least talented that was the joke i'm not

saying you're not talented i'm explaining why i made that reference because generally don't you find the guys that have the slickest package and the best website and they're making calls all day long are the fucking shittiest comics and the best comics are the guys you can't fucking the other shapiro yeah rick shapiro yeah i think he's brilliant to watch right But I would never want to fucking tour with him. He can't fucking. In fact, the last time I did work with him, I was over here at some music festival. And we're all sitting there. I told him, hey, the shuttle is going to be up front in 10 minutes.

And then we're waiting outside 20 minutes later. And I go beat on his door and he's sleeping. I haven't even packed. I just talked to you. Half an hour. He's that much of a fuck-up. The last time that he was touring

in the Netherlands, he didn't make it. That show did not happen. Otto and George, who died a couple years ago. Do you know Otto and George? Fantastic a couple years ago do you know Otto and George fantastic he had such a

puppet act but a horrible ventriloquist but filthy you ever see a black vagina it looks like a wallet the lady spread her legs a bus pass and some change fell out miss you dropped your visa you can't talk to the nice people like that George and some change fell out. Miss, you dropped your visa. I don't know.

You can't talk to the nice people like that, George. Shut your fucking mouth. Your lips move. Your jokes stink. You're a crack addict and you don't show up for gigs. This is the puppet yelling at him. In front of industry at a Chicago comedy festival. You're a fucking loser. You're a nothing.

You're a crack addict and you don't show up for gigs. Listen, George, let's be nice to the people. You know what? I hate black guys with tattoos. Hey, look at my tattoo, brother. Hey, look at my tattoo. I can't see your tattoo. You should have done it in whiteout,

you filthy circus ape. Okay, George, we can't talk to the nice people. That was i i remember cringing so that's cringe so that's cringe we bring back to it so we've answered the question watch me what makes dutch stand up cringe yeah that's done well i he was that he was that guy like a rick shapiro where uh they co-headlined me on a triple X rated bill with Otto and George because they could not headline him because he might not show up. So they had to co-headline in case he doesn't show up.

They know another triple X rated guy. That is so nice that we have coined the term Swapcast today. And that's the first time I've ever heard of co-headlining, which is to segue into another of your themes, a nice way to deal with people with mental... Well, I saw coming up at Toomler, I saw... Fuck, what's his name?

Dave Fulton and Phil Nicol are co-billed. Yes, yes. So that's co-headlining. Co-headlining, sure. Co-billed, I don't know how you say that, but their names are together for that week. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Come see these two guys.

It's not like they're doing an Abbott and Costello act. Two separate standouts. Co-headlining. But anyway. How did you meet AJ? Ah, I was hosting me? Yes. Greg Trippio.

AJ is our guest today here on the Doug Stanhope Amsterdam Comedy Swapcast. I was hosting an open mic in the city of Amsterdam at a restaurant with no lighting, no stage, and barely a microphone. But we turned it into a pretty good, it was a great crowd. Oh, that's why you get so much work here. Yeah, exactly, yeah. Because you'll play in a fucking subway. Oh, yeah, I work seven nights a week. No, no, but he will. Let me just jump in here. Yeah, exactly, yeah. Because you'll play in a fucking subway. Oh, yeah, I work seven nights a week.

No, no, but he will. Let me just jump in here. The dude is fucking fearless. He will play any place, any time. If people are willing to sit down and listen to him, the dude will stand up

and start doing stuff. I am happy. I just recalled today I performed stand-up in the business class section of a 747. Holy shit. And it was actually, it was not not bad it's so quiet up there

how did that how did that happen um that's a fucking great story i've seen joey coco diaz where they tricked the lady into letting him get on the mic with joe rogan he started singing it's raining it's pouring my love life is pouring me to tears, and they let them go. But how did you pull that off in business class? It was this thing with KLM, you know, and another example of how it kind of pays off. Every time, you know, you want to get out, they keep pulling you back in, and this is great.

Okay, KLM. It's a pretty big company. Real Dutch Airlines. Exactly. And they wanted to do this promo. Don't worry. I'm a Delta man. I have my Delta Ticac just sitting out.

So we're partners. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. You chose the right ones. And anyway, with Boom Chicago, that's the comedy, a lot of corporate stuff they do. And they wanted KLM. Wait, this was a gig? This was a gig.

Holy shit. Yeah. I thought you just stood up and did it and went, hey, anyone want to hear comedy? It's an eight hour flight. That would have been a thing. And that was with me. And I, by the way, this was, you know, going from a shitty restaurant doing stand up or open mic to a train they've had us do.

This was, this is a theater company and it's based on improv and it's all about yes and and they end up saying yes to the most preposterous outlandish things, you know, like in the middle of a wedding passengers getting up and doing it. No, no. Wait, so you're doing,

I'm saying there's been so many down. I'm confused. Yeah. The airplane, let's stick with the airplane. There have been so many gigs that when they said we have this KLM seems to actually want to hire you and Pep Rosenfeld from Boom Chicago you know do it your your duo act on a on a plane I was like no no no I thought

Flight of the Conchords doing their thing with like the intercom but they said no no it's gonna be an upgrade package and I'm'm like, okay, keep talking. Everyone in that, I was like, how are they going to want to watch me instead of A, sleeping, or B, watching the in-flight entertainment, which is honestly better than anything I can provide. Yeah, that's comedy against your will is horrendous. I know. And I was like, how much are they paying me? And the free flight back to Chicago, like, no.

Yeah, where were you flying to? Straight home to Chicago for Thanksgiving. Amsterdam to Chicago? Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. How much time did you have to do? Exactly.

Yeah. 20 minutes. Wow. But the thing was, everyone in that business class on that flight was upgraded. And that was the promo. What would happen if we would interview these people before and after, and every one of those people had to sign an agreement before, and that was part of our deal. They have to sign an agreement before they go in.

You have to watch this comedy show. Amsterdam to Chicago is probably 11 hours. Eight or nine hours, actually. Yeah. All right. Yeah, it's long. So, yeah, well, backanta is is 10 for us exactly it's a long fucking flight yeah long haul and if you i can't um i can't name a comedy comedian

bad enough that i would not take the upgrade the worst comic in the world right i would i would sit next to a screaming baby yeah to get up to first class for a 10-hour flight hell yeah yeah yeah uh and so being the michael mcintyre of dutch comedy um i was i was happy to sign up actually and um yeah um i was ready for this just to be the worst gig and it'll be another great story and we get a free trip back to Chicago. Were they into it? They have no idea how I'm into flying. I fly for no reason. I just fly around

and just get status and so I'm intrigued by it. When did you have to go up? Early in the flight? Early. Right away. Basically we hit cruising altitude and uh and that was yeah curtain up spotlight and um yeah and it was like a special theme it was like a

christmas thing as well a christmas holiday getting ready for what time was it it was uh taking off at what 11 12 and then so daytime comedy already terribletime. Already terrible. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And yeah, we had like, you know, do we bother to close the windows and put lights on? Not really. Where did you stand? In the nose of the plane facing like backward. Oh, yeah. Okay. So like the pilot is behind you.

No, no, no. This was the 747. So they're upstairs. Oh, you're on the upstairs. No, no. We're downstairs. All right. And the pilots are upstairs

Yeah, the pilots are I've only like three times ever flown First class international Okay Yeah, no, I'm picturing it now So yeah, it's the very If you can imagine Yeah, it's 747

The pilots in first class are upstairs They have the pods where you can lay down flat Yeah, I think so, yeah. Did anyone go to sleep during your sleep? No, this was business. This wasn't first, right? First is upstairs, right? These people,

you're in the front of the plane, so they can only look at you. They got clockwork orange into comedy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We propped their... Thank you, AJ. That's exactly the analysis we were looking for. Beautiful.

All right, let's get back to AJ. Yes. He is our guest. I'm going to make a cocktail. But yeah, tell me your story on how you met AJ. Oh, that's it. Yeah, AJ was doing comedy, you know. At the Drover's Dog.

At the Drover's Dog in Amsterdam. Which is what? That's like a bar, right? It's a restaurant. Yeah, Australian. All Australian. How long was it before you dropped my name? That was none of the time, actually.

And that was extremely uncalled for. That's your friend. We talked a bit about military stationing. We talked more about your studies at that point. Yeah, because I came here to study and you asked me how I got here and I said, well, since you're an American, I said, yeah, I'm here on the GI Bill.

Yeah. And you said, well, how did you get the GI Bill? I mean, obviously you're in the military and so I told you a little bit about how that happened. And we can get more into that. Yeah. Here comes Doug. Because Doug, you see,

Doug has been intimating all along that our friend AJ over here has incredible stories to tell that he's been through something. Oh, yeah, yeah. Why? What time are we at? I don't care.

We'll get to it. I want to hear it. First of all, yeah, there's going to be torturing children in a little while. We're near the Hague, so all this war crime stuff coming up, if you want to transport me to the Hague for processing, we can do that. Are you serious? Oh, yeah, sure.

Yeah, no, we're serious. But I still want to know how he got from Section 8 clinger getting out of the fucking military because he couldn't stand some of the shit they made him do over in Afghanistan or Iraq or wherever it was, into Bisbee throwing up gin all over my driveway after he got so drunk he told us all these stories. I spilled beans and my stomach. Yeah. And then he got into comedy.

I haven't seen him since he left. Oh, I'm going over to Amsterdam to go to school with Extreme Elvis. Somehow they ended up in the same school. That's another story for another time. Footnote? Yeah, footnote. Ask Doug about Extreme Elvis. Continue, Doug.

All right, let's go back to where are we? Are we in Iraq or Afghanistan? Well, okay, so I joined the Army in 2005. Ten years ago. Yeah, ten years ago. And went to basic training, which was ironically my first stand-up gig. I was forced by a drill sergeant to do 10 minutes. Private Joker.

Yeah. How did that work? Hang on. I know I'm pouring a drink over here, but how do you get forced to do – All right. Well, whenever – when you're in basic training, there's lots of different modules of training that happen and different teachers have to show up. But because it's the army those people are also doing other things and when those people show up late for some reason

you have a classroom full of 18 19 whatever year old privates and drill sergeants and the drill sergeants are bored so they say somebody get up and tell a fucking joke or you're all doing push-ups until we laugh so somebody has to get up and tell a joke so i just would stand up and tell a joke but the only jokes i could remember were uh from like the old truly tasteless jokes the black cover white letter those books those books that everybody had yeah right. Right. Yeah. My buddy Kenny and Boy Scouts. Dead baby jokes. Yeah. And so every joke I told was a dead baby or a child molestation joke.

And there was one drill sergeant, drill sergeant Zipa, who thought I was the funniest motherfucker in the world. And he hated it because I could make him laugh and he didn't want the new privates to see him as other than the scariest motherfucker alive. So anytime I opened my mouth, he smacked me upside the head. And except when we were waiting for something to happen and he needed a joke. Tell me one of them jokes, Private Adrian. Segway that into torturing children. All right. Where can I?

Well, child molestation and yeah, we'll get there. So yeah, we're out on a field exercise and there's uh uh i'm in the wood line with my squad and we're just starting to make our lunches we have those shitty field rations and i'm waiting for my food to heat up and uh drill sergeant's a peeks his head out of the tent and says, let's get over here. So I run to the to the tent and I go inside and it's just filled with officers and like senior level enlisted people. There's a captain, another captain, a bunch of African-American female training sergeants and the drill sergeants. We're still in basic training here, right? Yeah, this is in Oklahoma. Warrant officers and stuff.

Oh, yeah, all those guys. And so I get in there and I'm, you know, standing stiff at the position of attention and Drill Sergeant Zappala says, hey, tell us some of those jokes you know. We're bored. And I was like, Jesus Christ, man. And there's women there, there's officers. And I was like jesus christ man i and there's women there there's officers or what

and i was like uh joe sarin i don't think this is very appropriate tell the fucking jokes private roger so i say all right well my name's uh private first class so i just flew in from the wood line and uh boy are my arms tired. Tell the fucking jokes, private. And so I do 10 minutes of dead baby and child molestation jokes. Yeah, truly tasteless. I win over every one of the African-American female training sergeants. I even win over the Puerto Rican executive officer who barely speaks English. And most of the drill sergeants are playing with their phones.

But drill sergeant is on the floor rolling around holding his sides. Like a little too much. And I know something. Finally he can let himself go. Something weird is going on. And the captain, the guy in charge, is completely stone-faced. And I finish up. And I was like, all right, well, I'm done., is completely stone-faced. And I finish up and I was like,

alright, well, I'm done. You've been a great audience. I'm gonna go enjoy my lunch. Before I can leave the tent, Drill Sergeant says, hold up, Private. Make sure you wish the captain congratulations on the birth of his new baby daughter. Ha!

Ha! Oh! So, to recap, new baby daughter. Ha! Oh! Oh! So to recap, dead baby jokes. Dead baby jokes and child molestation jokes for ten solid minutes.

And for the next ten minutes, the captain regaled me with a whole tirade about how I should be gang raped in prison for the rest of my life and how I was the worst human being ever and uh to which I just said yes and that was your first review that was yes that was my first that was uh any uh any extra feedback you could give me would be very welcome thank you

captain and uh and then I went outside and ate my cold food and uh yeah so then uh a little bit more than a year later, I went to Iraq. I was going to say, we've got to be around the 30-minute mark. We should take a— We're well past it. 51. Oh, fuck. All right, let's take a quick break, and then you can throw in—

Do you have a sponsor? No, no, no. We're waiting for sponsors. Let's take a quick break. I have my wrong notes. I have notes for my show instead of notes. Do you need to do a sponsor? No, but we always throw in a fake one.

I'm sponsored by Kinley Bitter Lemon. Can we just pause it? Sure. Stay with us, ladies and gentlemen. AJ will return with his story after this quick break. Hey, faggots, listen. We have merch. We have a donation button.

And I don't like to ask you to do that, but we just got some fucking numbers where we could actually do some advertising. And I don't want to do it, but Chaley could actually make really good money if I start doing advertising. I'd rather you buy some merch or donate when I say that, because i hate to be the

guy that says you know what uh yeah no i'm gonna turn down that money that's i would not even take that would be for chaley we just get drunk and talking to microphones this is not like this is a lot of out of my day but we we got to keep fucking Chaley in business. So, yeah. Yeah. Buy merch or else. Stamps. What?

And now back to the podcast, as I'm saying. We'll find him. He'll ride down. And that'll be a wild one. And we're back. The Doug Stanhope Amsterdam Comedy Swapcast is brought to you by Delta Airlines and KLM Royal Dutch Airlines. And now back to the podcast where AJ is about to torture children. All right. You go to Iraq. Yeah.

What year? 2006. October of 2006. And your basic training was 2005. Yeah. Yeah. So right after basic training, I went to my unit that I was going to deploy with, and I was in field artillery. So I trained to help shoot giant cannons, giant bullets at things that we couldn't see.

Artillery. Artillery, right. And I was the guy who did the trigonometry to get those bullets where they were supposed to go. But in training, our unit, our brigade, our larger unit, sucked. And so we got taken out of the rotation. What was your record? Our record was seven doctors without borders and zero terrorists. But that's actually good to hear that if you fucking miss, the army notices and stops you. Yeah, they put you in the back of the line.

Yeah? Wow. Yeah, so we were sitting around Fort Riley, Kansas, waiting for a new mission because we couldn't do the one we were supposed to do. Is that like getting sent to siberia that's like getting sent from from the major leagues down to uh not even the b league the bisbee killer term i think yeah yeah exactly but i'm sorry i have to ask another basic question how did you get into this because were you national guard and then it's like whoa what am i doing no i was in i was in university. I was studying philosophy and religious studies. And I completely burnt out on school.

I got depressed. I skipped classes, skipped work, watched Band of Brothers until I lost my mind. And then I enlisted and left after dropping out of school. So it's Tom Hanks' fault. Yeah. Yeah. I was just thinking the same thing it's from that movie right no it's like fucking bill murray yeah stripes it's stripes it's stripes

it's stripes his cab yeah yeah yeah yeah rem in that video he just parks his cab on the bridge fucks up traffic and joins the military yeah and if you put on everybody Hurts and Stripes at the same time. Yeah, they sync up like Pink Floyd and Wizard of Oz. Sorry, AJ, continue. So anyway, yeah, so we're sitting around waiting for a mission. And some super scary dudes in civilian clothes show up. And it turns out they're from Special Operations Command. And they ask for all the people with security clearances. And we go to an office. And they say, OK, we're going to tell you a thing.

If you don't like it, you're free to leave. And if you stick around, we've got a job for you. to manage a government black site for detainees in Iraq that get grabbed by special operations people. And so before you go any further with this shit, AJ, because I just want to make sure that you will not be prosecuted for what you're about to tell us. Because as soon as you say black ops and guys in suits, because what's about to follow now, I'm sure is going to be fairly amazing but unsavory and maybe even illegal. And I don't know if you edit this podcast at all, but I would edit out his last name when he said private.

They'll figure it out. Yeah, no, as long as I don't give... I think we should edit out his last name. Let's just call him AJ. If you want to, yeah. Yeah. I signed some non-disclosure agreements, but as long as I don't tell certain dates and

places, we're good. We got us a regular Edward Snowden on our hands. Much poorer. Look, dude feel if you feel comfortable continue yeah so uh and yeah so a couple people left and uh but the rest of us got a bunch of training from some military police and detention center specialists and all that stuff and training in what oh man like uh how to do forced cell moves like if you've got a prisoner who's being unruly how to like put on all the riot gear and beat the shit out of them and take them from one cell and throw them in another one and like the supermax

in denver exactly to do cell extract exactly and uh And you're in Kansas still at this point. In Kansas, yeah. We got Arabic language training. Yeah, all kinds of stuff. Basic jujitsu, like, you know, all the things that we might need. Yeah, how to touch people on the face so that they bend to your will. All that crazy shit. And, yeah, so then we get this training training and then we have a break for a few months and then we deploy

and we get to a place in Iraq I'm not going to say where and it is it's not Iraq anymore it's the Islamic State can I ask is this a place we've heard of without mentioning names

with a little bit of digging right just a little bit Yeah. Is this a place we've heard of without mentioning names? With a little bit of digging. Right. Okay. Just a little bit. All right. Yeah, and it was a base hidden. It's not like we have listeners in Iraq going, was that here? Was that my hometown? Draw my name. Give a shout out to an area code. Yeah, no. Yeah, no. So it was a base hidden within a larger base.

And it was on a flight line so that we could have the helicopters and planes come and go whenever. And yeah, from day one, we got trained up by the unit that we replaced. a 50 cell unit everything um uh solitary where it was uh like jesus i don't know like six feet by four feet room and a concrete bed and nothing else and everything we not a shitter no wow no and uh so the way you you treat the prisoners Hate to call back my locked up abroad bit. Yeah. Yeah. Exact same conditions just outside the walls. Yeah.

And everybody who was interred there was on a randomized bathroom, shower, and food schedule. So the people were completely divorced from time they had no i they never knew what time it was they never knew what day it was they had lights on all the time lights on all the time they could be in las vegas for all we know oh well in the casino part of the same thing part of what we did was when we were bringing people from the flight line to the place we talked about places where they couldn't possibly be so a lot of it was like joking around like man cuba's cold this time of year but you know like complete mind fuck from day one and you're doing this yeah every day but all right because knowing that you're

doing stand-up comedy now i used to do fraud telemarketing before i did stand-up comedy is that what you call the infomercial prank calls no no no no i actually we rip people off on the phone fraud telemarketing yeah boiler room scam hey you won a big prize bullshit but i was as creative in it doing a bad thing as I am doing a good thing now. And so I wonder if you were like, Oh yeah, it was a performance opportunity. Yeah.

When you, when you know, you know, you're fucking people and you're like, I can be good at this. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

That's scary. No, but actually that's an excellent question, which was AJ, while you were doing this, you were doing it, I think to the best of your ability, right? Absolutely.

And were you taking, and I'm not, without judgment, were you taking pride in the job? Yes, to a point. Because no matter what you're doing, you know, like, you still want to be good. He completely bought it. Yeah. That was my line. Cuba, that was my line cuba that was my line and he fucking bought it like the green room of torture camp he's like everyone's going aj you're fucking man i want

to be as good as you yeah so uh yeah and then we we would bring them in from the from the flight line we would fly out on helicopters in the middle of the night, pick up dudes whose houses had just been blown up by Green Berets or Navy SEALs or whatever. By good artillery people. Yeah, by people who could do what they were supposed to. And we would hogtie them, throw them in a helicopter and take them to where we were. And they would get the heavy metal music at deafening levels and strobe light treatment uh there was and the fucked up part the part that like this is we're just getting to the fucked up well yeah the philosophically fucked up part was you know after a while it started to get

to me that you know not only were we doing this but there was a lawyer a military lawyer on site and a military psychologist on site all the time like checking against these things they were always like spot checking like are we are we crossing a new line are we just getting close is this because this was at a time where the lawyers rewriting the hippocratic oath and and yeah and so they were there to make sure that we were, you know, getting close to the line but not passing the line. And so these guys would get processed. They'd get their jumpsuits. They'd get thrown in a tiny cell.

And then the mind fuckery would begin. And of course, when you say processed, we don't mean anything like due process. No, no, no, of course not. It was they were in a hole and they were staying there as long as as long as it took. As long as it took. Yeah. How long were you there total? I was there for three hundred sixty six days.

And who's counting? Yeah. Wow. But give us an idea of do you have any idea why? Did any of these guys like get let go what what is the yeah well what it was was this was uh the mission for our particular group involved foreign fighters so they want i.e all fighters well they were in a foreign country well yeah well they wanted to round up the the non-iraqis who were fighting for al-Qaeda or one of the militias.

Okay. Like mercenaries, basically. And take care of, well, you've got people coming from all over the world. Jihadis or whatever. Because this is like spring training. Al-Shabaab. Right. This is spring training.

Sorry, I'm just reading this fucking ISIS book. I'm trying to drop in some knowledge I memorized. For them, this is spring training for what they're going to do in their home countries when they get back. And that's just who we dealt with. And, yeah, so they get their jumpsuits. They get thrown into a cell. The feedings are randomized. The showers are randomized.

The bathroom breaks are randomized. And that's how we lived for the time that we were there. we lived for for the time that we were there um and yeah we had a room that had leather couches and a big screen tv i've seen dark man two or three about 15 times because there's nothing to do when you're waiting to feed muzha hadin except watch terrible shitty movies that you can get in Iraq. But you also watched some terrible shit. Yeah. You broke. They broke you.

They didn't just break them. Yeah. In fact, they empowered them. If they did get out, they're fucking fighting with ISIS right now. Or were they co-opted? Those guys, they don't just sit around and do nothing like they had interrogation sessions they had polygraph sessions all this stuff and the was there waterboarding too this was after waterboarding so waterboarding was not going on right at this time they had to be more creative than just dumping water over people's heads with

washcloths on them. Yeah, they advanced their game. Yeah. And you didn't have to take part in this. No, we were... As far as I remember, you had to supervise. As a supervisory and control situation where we're either sitting outside the rooms or watching on cameras from a close-by area. So I'm going to, sorry, draw draw a parallel this just jumps out at me

but nuremberg when you've got guys i was only following orders i wasn't dude i was just the manager right yeah the question was i think that the question that you're leading to here greg is what's going through your head the whole time you're doing this are you thinking this is okay at some point well yeah i know the story i'm i'm guiding them at first everything's cool because you're dealing with bad guys or the associates of bad guys who know shit that we need to know you know before i got there zawahiri mr big name he had been captured and they showed us the freezer where they kept his dead body for a week before CNN knew what happened and all that stuff. Zawahiri or Zarqawi?

Zarqawi. Zarqawi. Zarqawi was killed in 2006. Right. So... BAM! Fucking knowledge from that book, baby! Do you remember that? Motherfucker knows it's Mujahideen. Yeah, Zikari. Bin Laden's Zikari didn't get along no no they were not bosom buddies no that's why because he wouldn't follow orders that's right

right right so uh yeah so we're rolling we're rolling up his network he's they cut the head off and now they're trying to roll it up um And yeah, so we've got all these bad guys, quote unquote bad guys, and they were doing crazy stuff to him. Such as? There was one guy. Graphically? There was one guy who had been some sort of colonel in the army and he was an old school dude. And his interrogator was a woman, an American woman. And she worked with a Iraqi woman who was an interpreter.

And they – we got this dude. The first day he got interrogated, they put him in a room where half of the room was wallpapered with images of Iraq and America before 9-11. and America before 9-11. And then the other half was wallpapered with images of bombed out Iraq and all the horror of 9-11. Yeah, afterwards. And they handcuffed him to a chair and made him sit there.

And these two women sat there and ate hamburgers and drank Coca-Cola and read glossy women's magazines and ignored him for two hours by the end of the two hours they didn't say a single word to him they called us we picked him up we put him back in his cell 10 minutes later he was crying like a goddamn baby and spilled his guts okay okay what the yeah that's some yeah and you have some new world torture right there oh my god yeah i was just thinking that today how great it would be because they're all the news that we have on cnn 24 hours is fucking isis this and isis that yeah and i

thought it would be great to capture one of those jihadis jihadists and force him to have fun like bring him to disneyland make him drink make him go to titty bars and see if he can ever go back to his jihadi life yeah okay here's a fucking this room put him in this room at the hilton and go this is yours for a year and see if he returns to the jihad. Yeah, man. And yet I'm also – But that's what a lot of these dudes, all these fucking Saudi princes, they have amazing lives. Double lives because they come over to the West and they indulge in anything that they dare to indulge in because they have a lot of money.

And they do all kinds of crazy shit. I mean the Sultan of Brunei who's supposed to be a devout Muslim. I mean he has whore festivals of Western women brought over. Beyonce is singing and it's not on our tour schedule on our website. It wasn't on my t-shirt, the Beyonce t-shirt I got. I mean somehow they've managed to compartmentalize this somehow. So they can go back to it is what I'm saying in their minds. At what point did they break you like because again you have some creativity going

into this like hey i'm a i'm a higher mind i can fuck these people over right but like over the course of however long i was there yeah however long i was there we'll be safe about that what were the events that started to break you down where you're like, this is just fucking inhuman? There was... Not the Coca-Cola and glossies. There was a super nice old guy that we brought in and put into a cell. And he and I kind of bonded in a way.

Uh-oh. And he's starting to be human. Yeah, I was just nice to him he was kind of nice to me and uh and then one day uh one of the interrogators comes to me he's like hey did you hear about the the new guy and i was like no what it's like yeah he used to be an iraqi general during the iran iraq war and uh in the 80s in the 80s and he he cooked and ate one of the children of his enemies and this guy was like this sweet grandfather figure that I would like purposefully try to interact with because you know I was looking for a taste of normalcy right and then after that you

know anytime he needed to go somewhere he would he would complain about the food or like can i get more food can i get more food and now you've got i'm sorry food you're thinking yeah and i would say look i'm sorry we were we're fresh out of baby today we can't have like and that's actually say that to him yeah and what how did he react to that and he like at first he didn't quite get it because he, you know, like the English-Arabic barrier. But then he started to understand and then the whole relationship with him and the other people changed. Because he had kind of cultivated this nice relationship with other people. But about the same time, we brought in a couple of kids.

Like a couple of kids who were... Kids? Like 11, 12. As prisoners? As a couple of boys. Yeah, as a couple of kids like a couple of kids who were um kids like 11 12 just a couple of prisoners boys as yeah as a couple of prisoners and like orange jumpsuits that went past the ends of their fingertips and they're rolling their pants in my dad's jumpsuit yeah and they were they were paying for it to work they were paying for the crimes of their of their fathers yeah and they they were old enough to be around when the fathers were planning things and so they heard things and so they were fair game on in the minds of the people who are running this place and that really really got to me like it still gets to me i'm i'm trying to you know i'll make you drink you got

fucking deep appreciate it um i mean aj when you saw that they were bringing in a bunch of kids and you saw these kids sitting there i mean what went through your head um at first it was just it was business as usual but then like interacting with the like well i couldn't participate in the heavy metal and the strobe lights and all that stuff. And every day I would interact with these kids and they would ask, you know, when are we going home? When are we going to talk to someone? When can I see my father? When can, you know, and we could see what these kids did because there were cameras in every cell.

So we could see that they were like trying to play. They were doing pushups. They were praying. They were doing all the things that that kids do. And and it just it it. Yeah, it ruined me. And then when I saw one of the one of the interrogations of the kids who – they maximize things psychologically. So there was a gigantic man, like bodybuilder.

And if I remember this right, it was – they had Australians? Yeah, it was – Americans couldn't do this? Well, I don't know if it was a legality issue, but it was like coalition partners. So we had all sorts of people, special

operations people from all over the globe participating in this. So there's this kid and he's backed up against the wall and there's this fucking gigantic monster Australian dude just screaming at this kid trying to break him to get the information in what language in english okay in english because that was the thing like the point wasn't to be rational right the point was

to reach an emotional threshold was there a translator at this point? Once the kid broke, then they would bring in the translator to get the full story. Because I'm imagining if you're watching this, then you're thinking like, come on, there has to be some separate protocol for these kids. Yeah, I mean, it seems like there wasn't. No, there wasn't. It was just the psychologist and the lawyer who were making sure that if this popped up on CNN somehow that the blowback would be manageable. And I stood outside the door and while this Australian dude just laid into this kid for 45 minutes or an hour until he was just a puddle of flesh and tears. hour until he was just a puddle of flesh and tears. And then I put him back in handcuffs and took him back to his cell and threw him in there. And, and, you know, we waited for something to

happen. And at that point, you know, I went out and, and I smoked a cigarette and, and I thought like, I, I need to do something, you know know like I need to call see the first thing that came to my head was I need to send an email to Seymour Hersh at the New York Times and tell him exactly what's going on and then I remembered you know my friends who were there working like the people that I worked with every day who I who I knew and loved and I knew they had my back and and I knew that if if I blew the whistle and and it came down that not only would I ruin my life but I would ruin the lives of my friends and so I made a decision in that moment not to say something and that's that's the worst part of the whole thing is and well that's the penultimate worst part the ultimate worst part is now when i look back on it i don't

know that i would have made a different choice if If you're being brutally honest. I think he is. Yeah. That's, I mean, that's deep. I believe that's the level that Doug Stanhope was trying to get to. How did you get out of this, man? Yeah. And what point was this? Because you mentioned like 366 days.

Yeah. But this was after that? This was halfway through. Oh, boy. So you had like a whole half a year left of days. Yeah. But this was after that? This was halfway through. Oh, boy. So you had like a whole half a year left of this. Yeah. Well, there was a cycling going on because the different branches of the military have different deployment times. unit to take care of us and then i went to a different place and did security for special operations people who were doing direct action missions out in the in the community and there's

a whole separate group of uh fucked up stories of that of you know british troops beating a dude to death behind me while i'm on a machine gun looking out into Indian country or um there was a dog who ate a dude's face sounds like sounds like this is going to be a two-parter let's take a break have a cigarette we'll get back with part two of the Doug Stanhope Amsterdam comedy podcast podcast of funny comedy we're yucking it up here. AJ, thanks, man. We'll hear more from you in a minute. Thanks.

Hi. This commercial is actually something that we recorded after the fact because we go, this has to be in the podcast. We'll be back to the podcast in just a second. But what happens when they fuck sheep yeah so you've got these detainees and uh it's a culture that values uh sex within marriage but there is this whole tradition of uh hadith in the in the islamic culture which are these the sayings of the prophet is the sayings of the prophet outside of the Quran, right? Yeah.

We're talking about fifth base or? I'd call it the ace of base, but that might be offensive to some of our Scandinavian listeners. All of them. But yeah, so they have all these rules about which animals you can and cannot fuck. Is this in the Quran? This is outside of the Quran. It's in the Hadith. It's in the Hadith.

Sayings of the Prophet. Yeah. Which I cannot confirm, but you're saying that, but there must be something there. Go on. Yeah, well, I'm working on a master's in religious history. So you know. Yeah, I'll qualify that.

Yeah, so we've got these guys who are unmarried that are detainees, and we have to take them on their bathroom breaks and they're squatting over a hole in the ground. your entire load blowing adult life from the age of 13 on fucking a goat there are colors of viscous fluid that come out of your dick after that you cannot find in a box of crayola crayons it is it's horrifying i've seen more naked arab men than a Japanese businessman with a fetish it's it's horrible I don't want to see another dick with baby shit golden yellow brown golden's mustard coming out of it for the rest of my life what is this like goat vd what is that yes it yeah and yeah some of my buddies who who didn't have the security clearance who were working in the towers the guard towers um the the little iraqi boys with the the goat herders and the sheep and stuff would come up to them and tell them and they would talk and they would trade cigarettes and stuff.

And they'd say like, Oh yeah. If you're going to fuck a goat, fuck this one. Don't fuck that one. This one doesn't kick. That one kicks. And,

and this one's nice and tight. And this one's, this one's no good. This one's played out. Yeah. This is a slut goat. You don't want to mess around with her, but this one is okay.

Yeah. Rank insanity. You've been fucking all my friends goat you make me look like an asshole i found out you're fucking all my friends all right let's get back to the doug stanhope podcast all right we had we had to take a quick break for uh cigarettes they're always for cigarettes and uh this uh podcast is sponsored by cigarettes on the Doug Stanhope side of the Swapcast and mineral water on the Amsterdam Comedy Podcast. Mineral water. It washes the greasy fats from your mouth.

And to be honest, it's not mineral water. It's from the tap, which is healthier. They probably put minerals in it just to trick you. When we left, this is not a two-parter we're just gonna get where is this is just a long fucking podcast so uh when we last left you aj had his back turned while british soldiers hello Hello. Hello. No, no, no. Hey, that was a special guest star.

Some guy from the front desk asking a weird question because I keep my door open in my hotel. You have moved now from Iraq to a different place in Iraq? Yes. Yeah. From Iraq to a different place in Iraq? Yes. Yeah. And I'm staying in some houses that are reserved that had previously been reserved for Saddam's best political friends and visitors. of them had a pool that was now filled with disgusting scummy water and uh yeah we had uh brits british special forces guys and uh army rangers cia the iraqi guys who were being trained by the cia delta force green berets all these fancy motherfuckers so you've been upgraded yeah we we definitely got upgraded yeah it was nice yes and

greg shapiro did a 20 minute set during an interrogation it was very is a great gig actually i can't believe it you would not believe how many people broke when shapiro closed i'll tell you everything. Everything. But somewhere else in Iraq. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, there was one day I was working, and I'm in a tower. I'm behind a machine gun.

I'm looking out into Indian country. I'm sorry, Indian country? Oh, yeah. You're in Asia at this point. Let's not get... Yeah, that's just some of the nomenclature of the place when you're looking out into... Yeah. You're in Fort Apache and you're looking out for the engines. That's what everybody liked to say.

So, yeah. Facing out, the Brits come back with uh with their latest group of uh captures and such and uh one of the guys that they got had killed a british soldier and so they decided to uh interrogate him with uh with their fists and uh he was in uh like a little wait i know this story he fell yes he fell several times in a one-story building where there were no stairs and uh yeah and he uh he didn't give up any information but he did give some blood to the cause He didn't give up any information, but he did give some blood to the cause. And yeah, so I listened to the wet thumps and screams of justice.

And then when they got to a point, just before the point of no return for this captured fellow, they threw him in some sort of vehicle and took him off to uh to the hospital and uh that was uh tuesday well i'm glad to hear they control themselves yeah well they're you know crap yeah so uh yeah but what when i was at this new place um i wasn't the lowest guy on the totem pole but I was pretty close to the lowest guy on the totem pole. So when details like kitchen duty came up, when it's time to peel potatoes and wash dishes, I would have to do this. And it was a 24-hour detail. So I'd be washing dishes and peeling potatoes and cleaning the, the, the dinner room for 24 hours. And, um, one day I was, uh, I had a dinner break and I'm sitting in the,

the dining room area. And, uh, there's a group of Navy SEALs sitting there and they're eating their dinner. I'm eating my dinner. There's a big screen TV in there and it're eating their dinner i'm eating my dinner there's a big screen tv in there and it's there were several channels but the one they kept it on uh was something they called kill tv and that was the uh helicopter and uh uh helmet camera footage from people who were out on missions like live live yeah yeah like that uh the the what do you call it before gopros bluish shit where you watch they yeah there's a that famous footage where they killed the journalist accidentally yes it's like that from the helicopter or from uh guys who have cameras on their helmets and whoever, like you're watching this thing,

but there's somebody in a control room somewhere. That's extreme sports. That's a GoPro on the end of your fucking M16. If you play paintball or that, that bullshit with the little plastic BBs and you think you're a badass, uh, you can go fuck yourself because, uh,

there are guys out there playing this with real bullets. And it's still a game to them. And that's the scary part. Yeah. So I'm sitting there and I'm just, you know, eating my food, enjoying the time that I'm not washing dishes. There's a group of Navy SEALs eating their stuff. And some other guy comes in. He might be Delta Force.

He might be CIA. Whoever he is. He stops at the table of the seals and he goes and and he goes to one guy he's like hey man what what's your dog's name because every team has a dog handler and he goes oh yeah his name's uh you know blah bitty blah the arabic word for yeah shadow you're saving your they're saving the dog's name now let's let's let's keep him protected yeah yeah sorry yeah we'll go with yeah otis milo whatever uh benji um some of the names have been changed to protect the innocent dogs it is dogs not cool yeah yeah of the angels my dog's name

is spuds mckenzie okay um and uh yeah so he goes oh yeah it's spuds and uh he goes yeah My dog's name is Spuds McKenzie. Okay. And yeah, so he goes, oh yeah, it's Spuds. And he goes, yeah, that dog's a bad little motherfucker. He kind of, he saved us last night. And he's like, yeah, he's a good dog. A little bit of a pause. Yeah, did he shit out an eyeball? Because he ate that dude's whole face. Did he shit out an eyeball?

Cause he ate that dude's whole face. And the Navy SEAL is just like, he's just eating and he stops and he kind of looks up and he goes, no, I didn't see him shit out an eyeball today. I'll check later. I'll check later when I take him for a walk. Wait, he ate whose face? Some Mujahideen or innocent bystander or whoever was around when they went out on a mission a few hours earlier. And this was a dog that I was kind of, like, friendly with, too. Because, you know, I'm out doing things and they would walk the dogs feed the dogs and i was kind of you know like again looking for something nice he will eat meat

yeah he'll yeah well we had a a friend uh that had his dog uh had an uh was getting his leg amputated and our idea was after they amputated it we were going to do a video of a cooking show we're going to we're going to trick the vet into saying we're doing this as a uh a documentary and film the amputation and then put matt becker in a chef's cap where he prepares the leg like like a cooking show bakes it presents it and then feeds it to the dog and the dog would have eaten it and of course someone's girlfriend said

no fucking way and it ruined what would have been a fucking a billion hits on fucking YouTube but these dogs were great they were so well trained when they heard the helicopters going at night they would like start freaking out like tails wagging barking because they wanted to go work and part

of the training of these dogs was like they would get guys dressed up in the clothing that the mujahideen would wear and they would like attack the dogs in this clothing that smelled like your typical iraqi yeah and then and so they you know like they don't sell that scent at duty free with all the perfume and colognes they sell they do not sell muzha hadin yeah there's no eve saint lauren for the for the summer evening oh de alpo no so this dog that i was friendly with i found out ate a face i knew some old dude who's a surrogate grandfather who ate a baby and but this is stuff that you're now talking about like this story is something you're talking about on stage we skipped the whole part about how you became a comedian since i've fucking known you and you disappeared to amsterdam weirdly

and now you're doing stand-up comedy and we're doing a podcast yeah but you're doing this in your stand-up yeah i've i've done a story marrying up the the grandfather and the dog and about you know with comedic elements about, you know, what happens when you're in a foreign place and you look for something that reminds you of home. You're looking for just like a little bit of familiarity that you can latch on to, to make you feel normal and about how, you know, if something looks familiar, you don't actually know anything. But AJ, you're sitting here across from us and you appear to be a normal, well-adjusted human being with what we call the standard moral compass, understanding the difference between right and wrong. Yeah.

So I'm going to work under the assumption here. The fact that you're talking about everything that you did yeah in in iraq is basically this is a confession oh yeah you don't feel good about this yeah no absolutely i've i've got uh i've got uh two different therapists a psychiatric doctor uh over here in amsterdam here in amsterdam yeah i've got a life coach that helps me get through the day. I've got a whole bunch of pills. And who's – I'm sorry. Well, you mentioned the GI Bill.

So you're studying in Amsterdam with the help of the veterans. Yes, George W. Bush is paying for this podcast right now and me me being over here studying uh history history of religion as a master and for the help that you're getting you just mentioned uh from therapy to yeah so uh yeah this stuff kind of broke me and the united states government has a if you break it you bought it policy and uh i've got a little bit of a pension and free healthcare for the rest of my days. And yeah, George W. Bush, wherever you're painting a shitty portrait of someone, I raise my vodka and soda to you.

You're fifth. Let's all raise a vodka and soda to George W. Bush. Here's to George Bush. There you go. You broke it. You bought it. That's a great line to end on isn't it i i took it to amsterdam so and now you're you're like a comedian now and i'm assuming that's part of

your therapy yeah it's it's definitely therapeutic to talk about these things in a in a public forum exactly where i was just going yeah and yeah i've done stand-up comedy. I've been doing it for a little while. And I've got a show, a half-hour show coming up in the beginning of December, December 3rd or 4th at the Podium Mosaic for anybody in Amsterdam who wants to check that out. I'm not sure what it's going to be titled. Something like War Stories or Not a hero story, something like that. You break it, you bought it. You break it, you bought it. That's a good title.

Yeah. We kind of just coined that for you accidentally. You break it, you buy it. Now you have to incorporate that line into the end in a clever way. Yeah. Donald Rumsfeld said it. You break it, you buy it. Thank you, people.

I'm taking it. So, yeah. Thank you to neocon assholes everywhere in America. Well, you know what? They say all great comedy comes from pain. And so you have a whole future to look forward to. Thank you, Amsterdam Comedy Podcast. Thank you, Doug Stan podcast thank you doug stanhope join team stanhope and i thank you and my therapist thanks and aj beep thanks you you gotta get a stage name now

so you can tell this shit for real chelsea uh beef aj chelsea aj manning I don't know I can guarantee you six people that will be at your show and they're called seal team six they'll be laughing their asses off at all the wrong spots all the way to the private flight home thank you thanks everyone

alright hey play the mat toy. Hey, dude. What you gonna do with theailing harpoon in your hand? Gonna go and harpoon my lady, she's rubbing noses with another Eskimo man Here I go Hey dude I guess you just hoppooned your lady down Hey dude, I guess you just harpooned your lady down

Yes I harpooned her, I caught her doing hanky panky around the Eskimo town I got her doing hangy pangy around the Eskimo town Yes, I harpooned her I got her doing hangy pangy around the Eskimo town Here I go again La-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la- Hey dude, what you gonna do? I gotta go now! Hey dude, what you gonna do? I gotta go now! Gonna wait till Ruska It's a good time to go when there's not that many mosquitoes around

Gonna wait till Ruska It's a good time to go when there's not that many mosquitoes around Then I'm gonna go to Finland Gonna get myself a reindeer farm by the Volga River Gonna go to Finland Get myself a reindeer farm

by the Volga River Gonna get myself a whole herd of beautiful Finnish ladies Just making love all night long in the midnight sun Whole herd of beautiful Finnish ladies Just making love all night long in the midnight sun Down south in Finland Sun always shines And Eskimo people are having so much fun

Down south in Finland, tunnel-less giants and Eskimo people are having so much fun Down South in Finland, tunnel-less giants and Eskimo people are having so much fun Down South in Finland, all the rules are hacked, man, it's underway Down South in Finland, all the rules are hacked, man, it's underway Don't start to think that I'm a loser, I'm so low I'm not a little baby Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh Right on, baby