The Downside with Gianmarco Soresi - #114 The Disgruntled Clown with Roy Wood Jr.

Episode Date: December 13, 2022

Roy Wood Jr. joins to talk the downsides of following a comic who purposefully pissed his pants, single dad Thanksgivings, bringing too many white people onstage to do the Soulja Boy dance, dating with children, and why life is like Lego’s.  You can watch full video of this episode HERE! Join the Patreon for ad-free episodes, exclusive content, and MORE. Listen to our live weekly show on AMP, every Tuesday at 4 PM ET. Follow Roy Wood Jr. on Instagram and Twitter Visit https://www.roywoodjr.com/ for all the latest! Follow Gianmarco Soresi on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, & YouTube Subscribe to Gianmarco Soresi's email & texting lists Check out Gianmarco Soresi's bi-monthly show in NYC Get tickets to see Gianmarco Soresi in a city near you Watch Gianmarco Soresi's special "Shelf Life" on Amazon Follow Russell Daniels on Twitter & Instagram See Russell in Titanique through February 2023! E-mail the show at [e-mail] Produced by Paige Asachika & Gianmarco Soresi Video edited by Spencer Sileo Special Thanks Tovah Silbermann Part of the Authentic Podcast Network Original music by Douglas Goodhart Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

i hear you i hear you situation i'll deal with after the podcast you ever like walk into a situation like oh yeah let's do this medium in the back of here you're like fuck i gotta argue i remember one year fuck it had to be like oh five but it was the year before the big flood in cedar Rapids and I was playing Penguins that's how I remember all of my comedy dates based on natural disasters that eventually destroyed those clubs it was the year before Cedar Rapids

got flooded in the big Mississippi River flood in the early aughts and I was in a fucking shouting match with this girl I was dating at the time as I'm walking to the stage I'm in a fucking shouting match with this girl I was dating at the time as I'm walking to the stage I'm in the showroom like it's full blown

motherfucker you don't fucking listen to me give it up for Roy Wood as he makes his way to the stage like as my first foot hits the first step to get on stage that's when I hit end call. Oh, my God.

Hey, how y'all doing tonight, Cedar Rapids? What's going on? Like an angry father trying to, like you're in a shouting match with your wife, and then you turn to your kids. Hey, buds. What's going on? I see that with, I shouldn't say the name, but some big comedian. Like, I'm hosting.

He's dropping in. And I'm like, how do you want to introduce me? He's like, whatever you want. And I go on stage, give it up. And he's like, hey, everybody, how are you? And I'm like, liar. That's not who I saw. There was, fuck.

And I try to get intros right. And I was drunk. There's one or two that I wish I could have back. Fucking Joel McHale. The honorable and respectable Joel McHale. It's probably like my first year in L.A. And I can't remember what I said. I either introduced him as,

as great can near or Chris Hardwick. I can't remember, but either way, either way, I did not say Joel McHale. Like I wasn't even like just free. So like you were given permission to just freestyle, but just for no matter what,

get the name. Right. Yeah yeah and i was fucking way off i was fucking russian missiles landing in poland did he what was his reaction to that was there oh he just walked past me no handshake like it was like get the fuck off the stage bro like he wasn't a dick about it, but he could have been way meaner about it. But he was just, you don't get the handshake. If you get the name wrong. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The handshake is the reward from the headliner. There you go.

I will touch you and make people think we are friends backstage. He didn't give me that at all. I had, I used to host a lot. And, you know, they wouldn't have the lineup. It was an unpaid show at the comedy shop, The Lantern. And I was on stage. I always tell them because I'm terrible with names, terrible with names. I say, please, I have to know the lineup.

And so, I mean, this is bad. And I'm hosting, and it's one of those, I don't know who it is. Then in the back, they point to the guy. He's going next. And it's too i i met him he's indian and i met another indian comic at the same time i met them both i remembered i knew i knew one of their names it wasn't the one who was there for some reason my brain freaks out i know it's not the other indian man i met i know this i didn't mix them up i literally just not the other Indian man I met. I know this. I didn't mix them up.

I literally just said the other person's, I don't know what happened. I short-circuited. And I apologize every time I see him. He remembers. He remembers. I didn't even mix them up. I just truly, I didn't know what to say. One time at UCB, didn't remember the sketch team name, so I said, everyone, make some noise.

They go crazy. By the way, it was this. And I ran off stage. By the way, he was introducing my sketch team. So as a good friend, no idea. And you actually, you had one job to do that night. Barely any stand-up you just had to introduce it was really a fail but that's why i would never i don't have any pride

about someone fucking up my name someone fucks up my name i'll go up there and i'll correct it my name is joe marco cerezi it's long i don't i i don't know i don't't. I'm Ron Wood, Roy Woods, Ron Woods Jr., Roy Jones Jr. Just go up there and be funny. No one gives a fuck. It's not. I remember on the road when I first started, knowing what I know now, these guys were being a little dickish. But I would open for hitliners.

My first nine years of stand up was just the south and the midwest I didn't fuck with the coast like unless it was an audition or some TV shit or whatever but like bread and butter was five nights a week four cities in five nights so you open for a lot of weirdos

and a lot of guys that are on the other side of their career and their last bit of respect is bullying you like it's the only power they have left in life and these motherfuckers some of them will give you an intro card that has say it exactly like this, read this line, pause, then say this line. And the card is tattered and brown, and it's from hands, every hand that's ever touched it, it's the same card. You have to give it back at the end of the night,

and then he gives it back to you the next night. Instead of just making multiples of these to give to comedians every week, if your intro is that fucking important to you. But these guys would just so i can read every credit don't skip over anything whatever yeah and that just stuck with me like it's on some ptsd abuse shit where just now anyone that i'm bringing up hey what do you want me to say and then i will go in a corner and attempt to commit it to memory so it feels natural and then if i can't i pull out my fucking phone and i'll just read your shit

like it's 1998 in tallahassee bro because i don't want no fucking trouble with you in the green room because i stumbled over some shit these credits get old sometimes you're like it's the tonight show uh before johnny carson whoever hosted that Yeah, but they want you to say it. Yeah. There was a guy. I can say his name because he's passed, and I'm not speaking ill of him. Oh, wait, no, it wasn't him. This dude's still alive.

That's Kip Adada. Kip Adada was mad at me one time r.i.p kip adata kip adata got mad because like i've i didn't get his intro wrong i was opening for kip adata who's like one of those carson legend era yeah like leno open for him type shit. Like he's OG OG vet. And I open for him. I don't fucking know him because I didn't watch TV when he was popping. And I don't say that disrespectfully.

I'm just saying your stretch where you, when you were in your prime, I was still watching Transformers. So you're just another headliner whose intro I will get proper and show you respect and read your shit the way you want me to fucking read your shit but before I brought him up

it was the night that Michael Vick I was opening for him in Atlanta at the punchline and it was the night that Michael Vick and the Falcons beat the Packers on the road in Lambeau in the playoffs which had never happened before in history Packers don't lose at Lambeau in the playoffs, which had never happened before in history. Packers don't lose at Lambeau in the playoffs.

And the Falcons went up there and punched them motherfuckers in the mouth. So before I brought up Kip Adada, I announced the final score of the game. Ladies and gentlemen, before I bring your headliner up, this just here, Michael Vick and the Falcons have defeated the... Motherfuckers are fucking patting it. Fucking chaos. Give it up for Kip Odada. And he was fuming.

And, ooh, that motherfucker was mad with me. Like, if it was Sunday, so it was the last night of the week. He would have fucking fired me. He was going to for sure fire me, but it was Sunday, and he couldn't. So, fucking last night, I made it, motherfucker. But, you know, I get it now. You throw off the energy of the room, you create a pep rally, and then you bring up a headliner

whose style doesn't necessarily play into that. Then you're setting them up in the wrong place. You know? Yeah. Like the role of an MC. I was at Stand Up New York, and I was closing it, and the host brought up an audience member

onto the stage to teach her how to twerk. And I said, oh, fuck me, dude. Jeez, is that a college show? Fuck. And they had to escort her off the stage. She didn't want to leave. And I said, oh, fuck me, dude. Jeez, is that a college show? And they had to escort her off the stage. She didn't want to leave. Once they get a taste of that stage, and they're twerking too? It goes wrong 60% to 70% of the time

when you bring an audience member on stage. Yeah. Outside of a hypnosis show, maybe. Like, I don't really know when you need that. Like, I guess the magicians, but just a regular comedian bringing just gin pop up the fuck for. conference and you know speaking of following chaos yeah there was a college conference for the listeners comedians like to get booked at college as you perform at these big fucking nfl combines where there's like three 200 300 schools and like you know a handful of reps for each school they like you they bring you to their school the next school year and there was a community it was the year of soldier boy and crank that soldier boy dance or whatever and so if you're

a college comic you know it's it's easy you can have material and this guy's a he's a comedian that's respected in the game so he has material but it's a college show like it who wants to come up here and do the soldier boy come on up here and the joke is basically white people can't dance like that's essentially the game yeah just bring white people up here and ask them to do current dances and then we all laugh at you and you get attention that you didn't get at home and everybody feels entertained and you'll book an extra 10 to 15 schools and on the low end that's you know 1500 2g's a pop so that's we're talking about twenty thousand dollars here would you bring a white person

on stage and embarrass them for 20k absolutely but he brought on too many motherfuckers on the stage and there's a part in the soldier boy like, like every other fucking line dance, where you have to take, like, three steps to the right. You hop three steps to the right while looking to the left so you don't know where you're hopping to. And this fucking girl hopped right off the fucking stage, bro. She fucking failed. Like, it's just one. I can see that in the news.

Like, 20 white people perished tragically at a college conference cranking soldier boy and then you see the stage collapsed she fucking fell and it was a whole like one of them oh my god momentum dead yeah and that was his closer that was his closer and at these college conferences there's a countdown clock on the stage and if you disrespect the clock you're essentially you're like labeled unbookable and all of this shit so he has to respect the clock

he has to fucking go goodnight she just fell off the stage goodnight I gotta go I gotta respect the clock so he goes off stage the emcee comes on and brings up the next motherfucker. There is an injury. This isn't soccer.

You don't just keep playing while the motherfucker's on the ground. She was okay in the long run. But in that moment, no one knew. That's so funny. Thought she was fucked up. So imagine being the comedian. Fuck a Green Bay Packer, the Falcons one and Lambo intro. Imagine walking up and there's just literally like 20 people huddled around a moaning fucking white teenager.

And you got to do your jokes. And the clock is running. And you're not going to get this. There's no stoppage time. Your bit is also getting white people on stage to dance. And no one's volunteering anymore. They've seen what happens. There's a million fucked up ways to be brought up on stage, is my point.

That's the problem with those college ones. I had a good friend. He said, like, I bombed it. I was like, how'd you bomb? You're a great comic. He said, the person before me did jokes while on a pogo stick. And I was like, oh, well, then you just did less. That's all you did.

Like that last guy who hears it without the cool tricks. You just go on autopilot on a college show. They're not going to remember. No one remembers comedians they hate. They just remember the ones that made them feel a negative emotion. You're just not funny. That's fine. They'll just leave.

Yeah. They'll Snapchat you to your friends and TikTok you, but no one fucking knows. No one knows who you are. Lie about your name. I saw one guy. It was Apica, which won the conferences. I'm like, he just does impressions. And the whole thing was like after the show, I'll do an Instagram story where I'm The Rock.

And I'm like, The rock smells that stacy sucks and then you put that on your story and he cleaned the fuck up there was a group that i opened for fuck how long ago was this? 2015? 2016? Maybe? They're popular YouTubers. They're really good. The Fung Brothers. So what I started learning with like Instagram and YouTubers and

the sketch, internet sketch as they like to fucking call them and slander them. College kids don't care. They just want to be entertained. We're the ones that are all stick up our ass about the art and the performance and the structure of the show.

Why am I opening for the Fung Brothers? I've been on Star Search. They have not been on Star Search. Don't give a fuck, man. Them kids don't watch this. I go to a college show. I'm Kip Adada I'm the fucking OG from the fucking

I did Letterman who fucking dinosaur and I'm like bitch do you know who Letterman is I go up I do my time I do the best jokes I have at that particular point in my career and I feel like I did really well Fung Brothers go up and you wouldn't

have been able to follow it you wouldn't have been able to follow it regardless of the structure of it there were some jokes it was a lot of crowd interaction and i also distinctly remember at some point they had candy and they were throwing candy like it's not the act it's not like it was gallagher but i just remember sitting in the back of the state in the back of the room and i was going oh there's just a whole nother plethora of shit that i could be doing here at these college shows that i because you're literally their first live entertainment for the most part so it was like oh it doesn't fucking matter at a college all this art shit that's for the clubs and the road and for grown-ups but at a college just fucking if

you want to get on a pogo stick all right yeah you're not gonna have a long career like most comedy clubs have a low ceiling the fire coats you know college is you're performing into high ceiling venues so go ahead pogo man get your money just become pogo man and just never leave the college scene and just become that guy there's comedians making droves of money doing shit that we would never do as club comics but somebody's gonna fucking fucking do it, so fuck it. I remember I lost a comedy contest at Florida State. I didn't go to Florida State.

I lied. I went to Florida State so I could get in the comedy contest. I went to Florida A&M, and I lost the comedy contest to a guy who pissed his pants as his closer. He left a puddle, and he was like third out of 10 comics, and this is a puddle of piss. It was real. He left a puddle

and he was like third out of ten comics and it was just a puddle of piss. It was real. He did it? He really did it. It wasn't like that.

He fucking drank a lot of water pre-show and like fucking let that shit marinate about being scared in a haunted house

or some shit. It was something where he didn't need to piss. I mean, that's impressive. It was something where he didn't need to piss. That's impressive. It was a bit where he could have just described, if he painted the picture properly with prose, we could have imagined him pissing his pants.

Sure, yeah. That's not easy, though. I think I said on this podcast once, I used to be more of an actor, and there was a time that i wanted to be scared in a scene and i want to know what it was like to piss myself and so maybe i didn't say you're looking at me terrified no you never told me i went into the shower in my apartment in philly i was deep into acting but you're clothed clothed and i remember trying to piss myself just in the

shower in the shower fully cloth the shower, fully clothed, just to feel like what is it for the body to go to a place where that happens? And it took a while. I definitely could not do it on stage mid-bit. You did it on stage mid-bit, and you're not going to beat pissing on stage. There's just nothing you can do. You can't follow that.

There's no joke. There must have been water on the stage. You went just nothing you can do. You can't follow that. There's no joke. There must be water on the stage. You went up after that? Yes. Six more comics went up after that. It was like one of them big rugs on the stage. So it's just a big wet spot in the rug and everybody's just performing. So everyone else's performance is watching

you perform around the wet spot. So even when he left the stage, his show was still about him. Yeah. You're not going to win. The only way you could win is if... I would have to... You'd have to abandon the set

and just riff off the circumstance. Yeah, and just be in the moment. The second one, no way. The first comic has a chance to maybe ride that piss to glory. The second comic, what can you say? It's still here. Could someone get this, please?

Or shit on stage. Yeah, you got shit on stage. You got to outbant you. By the end of the stage, it's covered in piss, shit, and cum. Pauly Shore was in Birmingham one year, and he went off stage to take a shit and took the mic with him.

Kept doing bits from the bathroom. Never stopped performing. It's his audience, so they respect. Sure. It's not like this is a showcase night at an improv. This wasn't his SNL audition. Yeah, this is Birmingham on a Friday night. These people are here for Pauly to be Pauly.

This is what they fucking want. And he goes, I'll be right back. And he just took the mic with him and just, you hear the toilet lid clank down? And he just fucking does this. I get, you know, I started stand-up in New York and sometimes I hear about, like, kind of real road stories. And I feel like it's a it's a segment i'll never have as a comic like performing like your stories about i saw you do the one about uh uh this like booking a show in advance you sell the the booker got some drugs and they'd

sell the drugs so they could pay the comics yeah dope boy shows yeah yeah dope boy shows yeah you do shows where essentially if a drug dealer has all of his product either stolen or confiscated by law enforcement if you're a drug dealer and you have no money you have no product and you need money to start shit back up again the quickest way to get front money is to do a rap show or a comedy show like where i'm from down south that's what most dope boys would do real fast just hey i got some comedians coming the tickets are 20 the show is in a month you book the comedians you tell the comedians you're gonna pay them you pre-sell tickets you take the pre-sale money you buy dope you flip the dope but you have to flip the dope by showtime so that you have money to pay the performers and then you're back even with yourself and then you can continue your crime criminal enterprise

and that works perfectly fine if you can flip the dope before the show and so these guys they have bought a bunch of dope with the pre-sale money and they hadn't flipped it yet and when we got to the show they were like can we pay you in dope or can you wait a week for your money but we also don't have the money to refund the audience because all we have is dope so some of us stayed some of us left you know like fuck this this is you're you're never gonna fucking send me the money and it turns out they ended up western union and the comedians who performed they got paid wow they eventually did get their fucking money like they were like honorable fucking drug dealers that's nice

but yeah like shit like that but the the difference though i think where because i've thought about this like i've always told comics like the the biggest mistake that i feel like i made my career was staying down south too long like i was nine years there's nothing in the first nine years of comedy in the south in the midwest there's no lesson that you couldn't have learned in the first four. Yeah. You've learned them all. You've seen them all. Get to the coast.

Because if you're going to be miserable and broke, be miserable and broke around other people that are driven. Because the way I compare it is like, you had a comedy classroom, though. I don't have a proper classroom. You had other students classroom, though. I don't have a proper classroom. You had other students. You had classmates. You had really great instructors who were the best of the best every fucking night, who were fucking, like, always elevating.

And the right that you earn in New York and L.A. and San Francisco, Chicago, maybe I would even say Denver and Minneapolis, you work your way up to being able to work with the best of the best and see that every fucking night. Every night, if you want to, you could see a fucking PhD-level comedian do seven minutes and then see him the next night with the adjustments they made from the night before. Yeah. I'm opening for a guy called the disgruntled clown.

This is not disrespect to disgruntled clown. I'm just giving perspective because that's the type of act that would never get booked in New York. And it's also, it's niche. It's a road act. And so the whole thing, it's a guy who's just, he plays the, he assumes the role of a clown. The guy kicked out the circus because he was too real for this shit or whatever. And so for 45 minutes, full makeup, full costume, he performs as a clown that's fed up.

Like imagine a clown that's a drunk at a bar after a show. And then plays goofy pranks on people in the audience. And he has a following. But if I'm trying to better my joke about gun control, I'm not getting anything by watching The Disgruntled Clown. And even if The Disgruntled Clown or any Southern road act that hasn't been on TV in a while, if I'm opening for you four nights in a row, four cities,

I can watch you make a couple of adjustments, but you are who you are. I don't get the gift of watching 10 fucking different comedians, 10 different styles every night. So low key, I feel like the road, starting on the road, is like being homeschooled in a way, because you only know as much as your parent. Like a homeschool kid is only as good as the parent where you have multiple

instructors. It's just this week, this is your guy, angry guy who Leno used to open for, who does not want you to bring up the fucking Atlanta Falcons at any point before bringing him on stage ever again. And there's lessons to be learned. The one advantage I would argue, though, that I had

is that I was able to have more intimate moments with the PhD-level comics once I had them in the city. Because I'm with you for three four days we sooner or later we gotta talk motherfucking like you can't just run out of the club like that all that unapproachable shit at the cellar table bullshit before you get past at the cellar don't look them in the eyes and don't talk to him and all of that fuck that hello george wallace yeah my name is roy i'm your feature I'm here to pick you up and take you to all of the fucking gigs. Yeah.

So you would have those moments. But there are just a lot of guys that, a lot of comedians that just use the road in lieu of pursuing whatever it is they're really passionate about, but they're no longer passionate about comedy. it is they're really passionate about but they're no longer passionate about comedy and to watch that four nights a week is not was not helping my growth the aggregate i would say the aggregate of that is probably net negative because for every real moment with like george wallace or theo vidal or you know deal, Adele Givens you know these are people that

all did me real solids on the road and I got to know them on a level that I wouldn't have had I been a city comic you're opening for a lot of people that are just fucking drunks they haven't changed a syllable of their act

in fucking years and they're still getting booked ahead of you and that shit is demoralizing that's what blows me away though i would get so bored i struggle i struggle fine-tuning so that's that's where i get to people who do these same act for especially just doing 15 especially they'll hop around i mean i worked lol i still work lol sometimes and like there's some older comics and you're like, don't you, are you bored? You're bored or you're afraid of trying. Now imagine opening for that motherfucker in Paducah, Kentucky on a Wednesday night

and he's doing an hour and then y'all have to ride together to Clarksville, Tennessee the next day. And then you have to do five hours to charleston west virginia the next day what the fuck do you talk about what knowledge are you soaking up what game are you getting you're flying blind essentially but like there's guys man there's just so many guys who i feel like could have been great but they just didn't the cool thing the one advantage to being on the road early is that you get a sneak preview of every possible ending to this career like the great ones and tommy davidson and sinbad's where oh wow you've been working

three decades four decades in sinbad's case like you've been working forever and you're still loved in generations I remember opening for John Witherspoon and a table was a granddad father and a son like that when you when you get that three generational fucking career and it's not a lot of comics that break that barrier like that shit I'm like oh cool but then i also turn around the next week and could be opening for a guy who's in the middle of a custody dispute with his ex-wife and he promised the judge that he wouldn't bring his fucking eight-year-old daughter to a comedy club because that was part of the custody agreement and then i walk in backstage and there's a fucking eight-year-old and hey kid watch my

daughter while i'm on stage so now i'm fucking feature act slash babysitter for the whole fucking weekend so it's it's that shit man yeah you know um alcohol suicide, womanizing, people who fuck the waitresses, disrespect the staff. I've seen it all. And you don't get all of that in New York or L.A. when you're starting. And I think that's where a lot of the monster asshole comics come from. They're just ones who just never got the primer on what the decorum is when you're out when you're in middle America

I can't imagine doing this with a kid stand up comedy I just can't even imagine you can't do it you can't do it without a good fucking co-parent that's the trick. You have to have someone

who really understands what you do and why you do it. I lucked out in that regard. But then also the Daily Show gave me a level of stability job-wise. But like

road-dogging like I was early on i don't know like i know guys i open for them five kids and i know this is five nights 800 i know what this fucking run pays yeah you know all right you work your way up then you might get 1200 or something like that You know, all right, you work your way up, then you might get $1,200 or something like that. In my fantasy, the kids are helping with the merch table. Like, I'm immediately employing all of them. Oh, you want to see some comedy? Fucking go to a Miss Pat show.

Miss Pat, when they're not in school, Miss Pat put her daughters to fucking work. they be folding shirts and taking pictures and passing out qr codes for mailing lists i tell my girlfriend and she she's a manager at mosaic but when she's on the road she becomes she becomes towel towel gal yeah that's nice yeah yeah the kid thing that is it's very feels overwhelming. I have seen, here's a lesson that you can't get in this city. I have seen what being in a relationship with a person that doesn't support you does to a comedian to a comedian's psyche over time because you can see a guy two three times and then the fourth time you work with him you're like oh she doesn't like what you do and you're trying to make it work poor fucking bastard

and then year five you found out he quit the business and now he's like doing something that's completely to the left. That's not even entertainment adjacent. Yeah. And then three, four years later, you find out he's divorced and then he's like trying to get back out on the road.

But now, when you quit for a year, it's like a three year regression. It's gotta be, it has to be awful dating. Like, I sent Tova, I was like, I booked eight weekends next year

at all the House of Comedies. I was like, hey, baby, they're four-day weekends. We could go to some. And she looked at all the cities. And she's like, nah, I think I'm good.

And I'm like, and then I start looking at cities, you know, outside the glow of I just got booked. I'm like, oh, yeah. I don cities, you know, outside the glow of I just got booked. I'm like, oh, yeah. I don't really want to go to Fort Wayne either. Oh, yeah.

I guess going back to Edmonton for four days isn't that exciting. The mall's cool for half a day. I used to do day labor. If I was anywhere, like back in my younger days days if I was anywhere more than two days fuck it I'll pick up a shift I got shit else to do what kind of job could you get with with just a day do you fucking construction bullshit sometimes you look up and get a keyboard and you fucking work in some bullshit office or some shit but usually it was construction. You can go. It's not good money, but if you just need money today, you can go to, at least in the south and the midwest,

and I don't mean day labor in the sense of standing on the corner in front of a Home Depot type shit, but you can go to a temp service and just go. You go at 6 in the morning morning you sign a fucking sheet and as people call and go i need three people i need four people like whatever job you could just call a service at six in the morning just send me two dumb motherfuckers to do this thing it's very basic repetitive shit like i remember in columbia south car I worked for, in those days, the club in Columbia would book the emcees for two weeks straight. It was a six-night room, which was like a rarity in the business, let alone the South.

It was a comedy house theater. It was a Tuesday through Sunday room. And they would book their emcees in two-week blocks. So you had Mondays off. I'm not driving all the way back to Birmingham on a Monday monday so fuck it i'll just pick up a shift so i would come in town sunday night and they would give me the hotel the hotel would let me check in early because it was you know all with the comedy club yeah which is another thing young comedians most comedy clubs have a deal with the hotel so you usually can get in town a day early and they're not cost nothing. If you know how to fucking spit that game on the phone.

Um, and I remember I worked, my assignment was a quick creep fit. There's a, at least at the time there was a quick creep factory and they just processed instant cement. And my only function in life for eight hours a day was taking five-pound bags of Quikrete and putting them on a pallet, three by three in a little staggered lattice formation. You stack them eight high. Another guy comes with a cellophane, wraps it, a fucking forklift dude.

He's getting the good money. Make sure you get you a forklift, licensed Youngblood. That's what they'd say to you. They'd give me advice. You take the pallet, put it on the back of an 18-wheeler, money make sure you get you a forklift license young blood that's what they'd say to you like you're giving me advice you take the pallet put it on the back of an 18 wheeler you fill an 18 wheeler 18 wheeler pulls off a new one pulls in wash rinse repeat you do that for eight hours you get lunch for 30 minutes at noon and then i would go home at 5 30 back to the hotel pick the

fucking little fucking balls of concrete out of my hair that it mixed with the sweat, brush my hair, put on my bullshit suit, go to the club, bomb, go home. Bomb with your new pork ruff material. Bomb, go to bed and wake up at 5.30 a.m. Can you talk about like that transition from the road comic to now here? Did you have something that made you move, or was it just couldn't do that kind of life anymore and decided to move? I had a good year in 2006,

just in terms of accomplishments and shit. like just in terms of like accomplishments and shit. I had, I'd already done one or two colleges. I'd already done one or two college conferences the year before. And I did. Okay. Okay. Meaning I booked maybe 15 schools,

maybe 12 schools, which in those days were paying the G a piece so that was awesome I was still doing morning radio as well during this whole time so that was it was enough like I was doing well to live in Birmingham my rent was 575 off Alford Avenue

god damn I miss that fucking apartment and then at the top of 06 I do a NACA and I book 93 schools whoo 93 Jesus Christ

a record at the time Cristela Alonso broke it I think she broke a hundred I'd have to text her to find out the exact number but that's insane it was just one of those fucking gigs bro just in the zone every fucking joke was just perfect i was on the perfect night on the perfect show on that night in the perfect spot in the lineup

on that night like just every what you want at these conferences these kids come in on thursday you don't want thursday because all the schools aren't there yet you want friday but you want friday late enough in the night where every school is there and checked into the hotel so you don't really want that seven o'clock show you want that nine o'clock show sweet spot is the ten o'clock show but early in the 10 o'clock show because they've been traveling all day they're tired so if you can perform anywhere in that conference on a friday night between 8 30 and 10 30 you have the best statistical chance of fucking it's set up for you to succeed, it's essentially lottery system and connections with who your agent knows within the college.

A lot of that dictates who performs when. Well, last year, your guy got the sweet spot. My guy never gets the sweet spot. Get one of my guys. So it's that shit that your people, your reps have to navigate. So that's February. I booked 93 schools for the next school year. So I know for sure.

This is 06. I know for sure fiscally 2007 is straight. I'm playing with house money. So bills are paid. And then Montreal comes around in June. I do the Montreal Comedy Festival, which is essentially the AAU-NBA draft combine. Fucking, it's the thing. Magical fucking set.

Just everything fucking lines up. As I'm coming off stage, guy comes up, shakes my hand. Hey, how you doing, brother doing brother Eddie Brill David Letterman that was fucking amazing what you did three months later I'm on Letterman so at this point it's August and I've done Letterman. Now, backstory. So there was a Southern chain. This is a thing that a lot of the Southern clubs would do to comics, especially black ones, where at this point I've done,

I've done all the black shows for comedy. I've done BET's Comic View. I've done Showtime at the Apollo. I've done Live at Hollywood. The only thing left was Def Jam. I've done BET's Comic View. I've done Showtime at the Apollo. I've done Live at Hollywood. The only thing left was Def Jam. I hadn't done Def Jam yet. On the white side, I'd done Premium Blend. I'd done Star Search. Comedy Central's Premium

Blend at the time. And I'd done Star Search and got to the semifinals. These bookers were always saying, we can't promote you from feature act to headliner because you don't have credits. You don't have any credits I can use. Every credit I brought them, every year of my resume from 01 to today, I've been on television every year of my career.

Even if it was only once, I've been on television every year. I've been on television every year. So from 01 to 06, I had a sustained record of being on TV that year, more so than the headliners you were booking ahead of me who hadn't been on TV in a decade. There's no disrespect to them, but if you're saying credits and relevance are the thing that matter, I went and got what you said I needed to get, and my fuckers kept moving the goalposts. I booked Letterman, and there were a couple of clubs.

One day I'm gonna fucking name names. So there were a couple of clubs. There was a chain that was essentially 60, maybe 70% of my road work. Proper club work. Not counting counting colleges but just when i work a club 70 of the time it is this company that company did not want to promote me from middle act to headliner we're talking about it you know this is a this is a nice little bump we're talking about going from 500 a week to maybe 800 a week to maybe 900 a week, which is a lot of fucking money.

And I've been on fucking Letterman. I did it. I did what the fuck. There is no more, at that time, there is no credit more pristine than David Letterman. You could argue Leno, but Letterman was more picky. So it was like, oh, young Letterman, because Letterman hates a lot of people but he liked you

so so I go to this company and I go it's time if I couldn't move me up and they wouldn't move me up and so I said well then if I'm just gonna fucking be broke or if I'm just gonna just fucking

work and not be happy I'll just do it just fucking work and not be happy, I'll just do it from somewhere else. And at this point, the Letterman Heat's got me some meetings with CBS and I think I'm going to get my sitcom and go on my Ray Romano journey. So fuck it, I'll just leave. And I got the colleges to back me fiscally. So I'll just fucking dip.

And it was the best thing I could have ever done because what happens in the South, and this is something that I'll give New York and LA, these clubs don't necessarily do, but in the South, these bookers want you to feel like you owe them for booking you. You know, like they're the ones doing you a favor. Like you couldn't go out

and just create your own fucking stage at some point if you really had the gumption. If you really sat and looked at the business model, you could do what they do. But like this idea of, oh, I need them. What if I don't book no more colleges? And then I can't do no more shows for that company. However, you'll figure it out.

You're fucking running in fog this whole fucking career. That's the funny thing is that you get to this point in your career, you still don't know what the fuck you're going to do. Sure. Not at all. It doesn't fucking, oh, you're on the Daily Show. Yeah, well, my boss just resigned. I don't know what the fuck I'm going to do.

I don't know what the fuck's going to happen. And I have a kid now. Yeah. Kick off an exciting football season with BetMGM, an official sportsbook partner of the National Football League. Yard after yard, down after down, the sportsbook born in Vegas gives you the chance to take action to the end zone and celebrate every highlight reel play. And as an official sportsbook partner of the NFL,

BetMGM is the best place to fuel your football fandom on every game day. With a variety of exciting features, BetMGM offers you plenty of seamless ways to jump straight onto the gridiron and to embrace peak sports action. Ready for another season of gridiron glory? What are you waiting for? Get off the bench, into the huddle, and head for the end zone all

season long. Visit betmgm.com for terms and conditions. Must be 19 years of age or older. Ontario only. Please gamble responsibly. Gambling problem? For free assistance, call the Connex Ontario helpline at 1-866-531-2600. BetMGM operates

pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. This episode is brought to you by A Real Pain. From Searchlight Pictures comes one of the buzziest films at Sundance Film Festival, A Real Pain. Written, directed, and starring Oscar nominee Jesse Eisenberg alongside Emmy Award winner Kieran Culkin. Witness a hilarious and moving story

about two mismatched cousins as they tour through Poland to honor their beloved grandmother. The adventure takes a turn when the pair's old tensions resurface against the backdrop of their family history. See A Real Pain, only in theaters November 15th.

Well, before we reach our end, I did want to talk about, you know, I was home for Thanksgiving. And I had lots of divorced family, so I had my traditional second Thanksgiving with my father on a Friday. That's interesting. How did you do that? So you do both? You don't, like, oscillate?

Growing up, did you oscillate? Did your parents, like? Well, so growing up, so there was a brief window where we tried all together. The all together Thanksgiving. No matter what. We are a family even though we're in a hut. So my mom had married my dad's former lawyer. Jesus.

And I get this. I found this out recently. So my dad cheated on my mom. He's got a lot of cheating. And I found out that my mom says that my dad might still think that it was his former lawyer, my stepdad, former stepdad technically, was the one who ratted him out. So my mom said that my dad thinks my stepfather ratted him out about the cheating to this day she never told your dad how he just doesn't believe the story i told the

story on here and then my mom said we might have a new segment where my mom corrects all the stories i tell so she she said what happened was she was with my dad. Dad's a good looking guy. Businessman. Runs his own company. And a friend of my mom at like a dinner party said, hey, I don't know how to say this, but my husband reads people pretty well. And he's convinced that your husband's cheating on you. And my mom said that she. Her husband reads people. Like her husband spent time with my dad and like, you know, said like, I think that guy's cheating on you and my mom said that her husband reads like like her husband spent time with my dad and like you know he said like i think that guy's cheating on her and told his wife and his wife told my mom and my mom was like i totally like shot the messenger i left the party immediately

she was like i gotta leave so she called she had no idea she she has no idea. No idea. So this is what's amazing. So my mom called my dad and said, someone saw you at dinner with another woman. We need to talk. Bluffed. Based on this person's husband's suspicion. And you fold it. And my mom said, she said it was like a pinball machine. It was like, oh, this makes sense.

This makes sense. This makes sense. It all seemed to click. And my dad said, so she said, someone saw you at dinner with another woman. Or I did. And my dad said, I'll be right home. Fuck. And fucking.

That's it. That's it. And that was it. There was no. He went home. He said, he said, he said, he said, I'm Italian. That motherfucker talked without a lawyer. I'm Italian. It motherfucker talked without a lawyer. I'm Italian.

It's like the police. He got called in for questioning, and he fucking answered too many questions at the police station. He said, I'm Italian. He said, classically, which he said, I'm never going to change. Like a very, like that's, if I were to, his character description, that's his. I got a fucking guma.

It is what it is. So, yeah, okay. so you tried thanksgiving together so yeah one time we did a big thanksgiving together and it was like the dynamics because my stepfather he grew up in ohio my dad would never hit would never hit uh as punishment for kids or anything my stepfather was different and he would never hit me my stepfather never hit me but he had kids. My half siblings. So you know, they mixed their mashed potatoes and peas

and my stepfather, he'd say, present your hand and then they would and he'd give them a slap on the hand and they'd cry. I don't know if it was

from the pain or just the shame but then my father had a problem with it. By the end of Thanksgiving everyone's screaming at each other. You don't fucking do kids like that.

Yeah, yeah. And meanwhile, there's this other thing. My dad thought that he was the one who told my mom that he was cheating so he could get with her. So I already hate you just off the strength. Yeah, yeah. Custody, all sorts of, I mean.

Yeah, I mean, the lawyer broke bro code. I get that. But I can see why your dad will forever hold that part instead of just respecting the fact, oh, someone's going to treat her right and maybe that's good for my boy to have another man in the house. Sure.

They got divorced too. But yeah, my dad, I think when I was a kid, my stepfather for sure was the enemy of my life. He was the bad guy. And my dad was the greatest person alive. When I went to his house, he was a bachelor.

He had girlfriends throughout the years and eventually remarried and divorced. He was amazing. I loved him. He bought me whatever I wanted. He spoiled me. He hung out with me because he didn't have any friends. Then as I got older, you see why so many of the problems are because of him i didn't know about any of the cheating until i was 18 19 20 and i was like oh that's why all these relationships ended suddenly why did my

stepmom leave all of a sudden and then you're like oh because he was cheating while she was pregnant yeah gotcha and she's like, whatever happened? Don't talk about her. Yeah. She's old news. Yeah. And so now I do the Thanksgivings all separate. And my mom's in LA, so I just went home. I had Thanksgiving with my stepfather, which I'm sure is a slap in my father's face for me to do the main meal with my stepfather.

But it's peaceful. It's a full meal. Friday we go to my dad's. My sister's taking care of the stuff she gets. She thought oven ready meant it's already cooked. So I have shows that night. I'm doing shows in DC. I do it every Thanksgiving weekend.

And so we get back, she puts it in, and it's like, oh, it needs three hours in the oven. We only have an hour and a half. She's way off. And so my girlfriend's there, and we say to my dad, you know, let's just have the sides and the stuffing and have a good meal. And he's like, no, we have to have the turkey. We've got to have the turkey. So we wait an hour, hour 15, looking at this turkey, looking pretty pink.

And then we, my dad takes it out and he says, he says, the outsides are fine. He's cutting the turkey. Bitch. Cutting the turkey

is pinker and pinker the deeper he goes and he's like, no, this is as cooked as it can be. Fucking medium whale turkey. And he's taking bites and we're not, we're not, we're not touching this be. Fucking medium whale turkey. And he's taking bites.

And we're not touching this shit. There's no way. Medium rare hour and a half turkey. He says, me and my sister, my girlfriend, my dad. And my sister's trying to placate my dad. Like, oh, yeah, it looks good. And she turns to me like, don't eat it. Don't eat it, whatever you do.

And she turns to me like, don't eat it. Don't eat it, whatever you do. And it was just a very classic single dad Thanksgiving. You know. Yeah. I'm trying to figure that out with my kid. Like, this year we did the, he was with me and my mom. Like right now, because he's six.

So it's like, all right, here's one grandma and presenting the other grandma. So we got like two fucking things. But I don't know. Wait, these grandmas are who? One on my side, one on her side. Okay, got it. But it was never anything that was really discussed. It's just like, my mom, she's the chill grandma that doesn't really do shit. She's not going to play with you, but we'll talk a little.

They'll talk and read and play piano. She's just more laid back. Yeah. Her mom is like, let's go walk. Let's go to the park let's go play what are you into i'm gonna get down on the ground and play with you so he likes that shit too so it's like i don't want to deny him one over that because i think that's stupid too it's to be in any type of relationship where it's my turn yeah so you gotta fucking respect that it's my turn with him

yeah and then you just fucking sit the kid on my turn with him. Yeah. And then you just fucking sit the kid on the couch with an iPad for three days. Yeah. When he could be rocking out with the other grandma and some of his cousins and all of these other, like, just mix it up. Yeah. Now, forgive me. Are you still married? No, no, no, no.

We're not together. Oh, you're not together. Correct. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's like, but it's like one of those things where as you figure out like as a father i'm trying to figure out okay well he's how much of whatever is next for me do i let him in on and when do i let him in on that because i don't want him to just see me just dating regular motherfuckers like i don't think that that's I don't want him to just see me just dating regular motherfuckers. Like, I don't think that that's, I don't know.

I do not know how you do it. I don't know what purpose that serves from an educational on some man school shit. And if I'm his instructor outside of how to treat a woman and how to be cordial and do show affection so he can see affection and love it. Like, yeah, you can see normalcy, but

like you just said, he's going to start putting it all together on the backside. Of course. And if I'm doing anything wrong now, he's going to see it. He's going to fucking notice that so-and-so is completely out of it. Because when you stop talking to someone, you don't talk

to your kids about that shit. Son, I just want you to know that she's a skank. Holes be lying, son. And sometimes you got to get them to fuck up. You got introduced to a lot of people. Oh, I mean, my dad, he slept with my kindergarten teacher. He dated her briefly. While you were in kindergarten?

Or were you like in second grade? Maybe first grade. But then my mom told the school that she got fired so like that was intense she

he there were a lot of women her home was on the warpath yeah but again like I'll learn a detail like my dad fucked her

during nap time and then it's like okay maybe she should have been fired like I always learn I always learn somehow it always goes back to it was justified in fact but he i had a lot of women in my life i i i've had so many women break up with me as you know my dad's partner letting me down because we would have a relationship and they would come to me i remember one very distinctly this woman she came over we played monopoly all the time and she kind of sat me down in the car you know that's the little private space outside the home

in the car like hey i got a new job i'm gonna be really busy uh so i don't think i'm gonna be around here much anymore show market i'm like oh we're still gonna play monopoly and she was like oh yeah we'll play monopoly then a year later i see her at twain reed with with a new man and a baby in her arms oh how did that how did that fuck with you or did that fuck with you at all as an adult in your relationship with women well my girlfriend says that i'm a perfect boyfriend, which has been nice. So no, not at all. No, it's deeply. I think I just knew very early on what it was to have a loved one who then was no longer a part of your life at all. And so I feel very adverse to when people talk about they break up with someone

my girlfriend and I do fight about this where someone breaks up with you have an ex or whatever and then you're like we don't speak anymore we're not friends we have no relationship I find that childish you're telling me you love this person you're telling me this person

was like a part of your life and you met their family they knew was like a part of your life and you met you met their family they knew your ups and downs and your journey and the way you've decided to deal with the fact that you no longer are are fucking or having a romantic relationship is you can never speak again to me because i i witnessed what it was like to feel family like that, where these women were my family. They were my mother figure. And then because my dad and them broke up,

I no longer had them in my life at all, felt insane to me. You felt insulted by them. Insulted or just a loneliness, an emptiness. My sister's mom, who was my stepmom, when she left, my dad said she was a little bit crazy. And she had a fucked up family. And that's why. And it turns out he was cheating.

And it was a bad relationship. All sorts of reasons and i don't know what hole that left there was this woman who was my stepmom who introduces my stepmom who i i i remember when once a a kid at school made fun of her and i almost as close i ever got to hitting someone and then she vanishes my dad no longer wants to speak about her. I have no way of talking to her. She'll text. Once you get a phone, she can text me on birthday,

you know, happy birthday. I still think about you. And I didn't respond for years and years and years. Cause I was like, well, there's no relationship here. Yeah. And now as an adult,

you know, during COVID, she sent food supplies and I'm going to go to my sister's graduation in December and see her. And as an adult now, I'm like, let's push past these awkward feelings I have and try to have a conversation with this woman. But I think it's just that I had family that vanished without explanation. Yeah. And it's a different kind of a breakup.

For me, if I'm speaking about some of the exes that I don't talk to anymore, and some of it was me being a piece of shit and not being a good fucking dude, and other ones, it was just fucking circumstance. Like, I'm moving to LA, and you travel 20 days a month here in Birmingham. The dynamic was she traveled Monday through Thursday.

I traveled Thursday through Sunday. And we had tried and tried, and this is just living locally, to make it work, when we'd have one or two days in Birmingham. And then when I left to go to L.A., I knew I was going to lose those couple of days, and I can't afford at this point to just keep flying back for fucking date night, and you can't fucking fly. So it just ended up being a thing that ended once i moved to la we kept in touch here and there for a while but i think ultimately even in the

relationships where you're where you were the catalyst for the breakup i think it's still natural to miss the person i think it's still natural to still miss that love and for me a lot of it's been rooted in i believe that to some degree because you never stop loving i believe you never stop loving a person i believe that you have a finite amount of love it's infinite but as you break up as you have breakups over life i believe that certain parts of your heart become partitioned for other people that you know you can never be with you know you can never do anything with so a guy like me i never stopped mourning that yeah so to be in your presence, to talk to you, any of that shit, I'm still missing you in real time. And that fucks with me.

And it's also in disrespect to whoever the fuck I'm with now. Because this will never work. So it's just, it's. But that's the challenge is that disrespect, that feeling, which I feel like is the way that we've just set up this is where i start going like tear down the patriarchy the religious roots that make us believe in this sense of like you only have this kind of love for one person i don't even mean sex yeah sex is whatever that's that's i i just think that like i've grown up in a world and I've been the victim as a kid at least of these very like with someone all this intensity. Or you hate them.

And then when people get divorced and they share custody, I go, oh, I wonder why it's a bad fucking custody arrangement. Maybe it's because the whole society has been set up to force people to stay together i mean that we still live in the system that wants just you stay married forever and then you die as a unit and you produce and so so if people can't have healthy breakups then good luck with the healthy fucking divorce yeah i i think that and that's something that i've had to kind of come to grips with with my own breakup is this idea that you know without even getting into the dynamics of what it all is now but it's something that works for both of us is something we've had conversations about no matter what she still comes first

i never stopped loving you and we have a kid so i don't have the luxury of never talking to you ever again yeah that's gone and he is my priority there's nothing more important to me than him and him having, my son having, the best possible circumstances to be set up to have a decent life. So in order for him to be good, that means she got to be good. So you're an ally. I'm never going to be your enemy. I'm never going to fucking work in opposition to you. I'm never going to be one of these, I can't stand my son.

My son, my money, they just be tripping. I'm never going to be one of these i can't stand my my mama these bitches be tripping i'm never going to fucking be that now try having that realization and then explaining that to someone new who you're dating who is entrenched in all of the me me me and i come first and why did why why are they calling that like that hasn't happened, but that's the general thing that happens. It's, it's, it's women want to know where they, where am I in your AP top 25 poll rankings?

And I can't, I cannot say with distinct clarity yet that you're above my son. Yeah. You're not above my son. And she's team son. Therefore, she's above you. Sure. Yeah.

Yeah. And I'm not, we're not, but. But that's why dating with kids feels, it's so much deeper than just, if I'm dating someone with a kid, I think I would have to have an open enough heart to someday love that kid and my dad would date women with kids

you gotta fucking love her too you can't love him and not fuck with her so don't even fucking come around me with that shit like that and I ain't even been in no fucking real shit this year but my brother asked me some sideways shit one time about like yeah i'm a run home kid and like just like squeezing in like 30 minutes of fatherhood in the midst of chaos but wouldn't you just see him in the morning oh shit you got to go you don't even understand the dedication that's happening here. Yeah. You're assessing my schedule when it comes to him?

Yeah. No, I'm sorry. It's 11. I don't want to keep you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We can, yeah. What else? What else?

Sorry. No, no, no. We got deep there. This is what I really, I am curious, just because you're an ambitious guy, how did you, I always think to myself, I love kids. I love kids, no doubt. But the idea of putting someone ahead of myself is really tough to wrap my head around. It's tough.

It's tough. There's days that you have to balance. Did you know before you had a kid, did you go, I'm ready for this? Fuck no. No? Fuck no. No. Fuck no. It was one of those things where you have the kid, though,

and I'll say this, I would not be where I am career-wise in the last seven years if I did not have a child. Yeah. Having a child I've heard that. opens up a fucking partition in your hustle

that you just didn't even know was there and i say that you know with regards to women as well i think the difference might be a man's impulse to remain present versus going out and providing. You know, I had a conversation with someone a couple of weeks ago just about the concept of male paternity leave. And so she was saying that the problem is that it's called maternity leave and not parental leave because women's maternity rights and being able to be off months and months to care for a newborn and your job not tripping on that shit or trying to fire you or diminish you during that time,

women will only get rights in childcare when men start fighting for the same rights, which means a man has to detach from the hustle, that hustle impulse that makes him get right back. I got to go. I got to get right back to it. I got to get out there. But like that, so when my son was born,

I did not take maternity leave. And so the debate was, you know, it was a mild debate, but just, you know, was that the right thing to do? You're setting a bad example for the women in the office who will then feel like they need to come back really fast from when they have a kid. Because your men set the bar for office expectations, which I understood. But at the time, my son was born in the middle of Trump, and I was still in my first year at The Daily Show. So, you know, as talent, I was like, this is the time. I can't take two months off during a Trump primary because I need to shine so I can get

another fucking contract. Yeah. So I can keep providing. My son was born. I was probably, you know, I probably took two weeks. I was back to it. And then I would steal the weekends. I canceled like road gigs and I would go back.

Because they weren't even living in New York with me yet. Because I was like, I might get fired. Sure. Don't fucking come to New York. Stay the fuck out there. And when I feel like it's solid and I feel like I'm not gonna get fired then we'll do the full New York family fucking thing but like that impulse to just fucking go get it and attack and attack and attack and attack

I wouldn't if I had a kid I wouldn't. Now, of course, you have to have balance, but I think the balance, to a degree, it gives you, it forces you to just exist in the world. A child, as a comedian, a child forces you to have periods of your life where you just exist, and you're not completely plugged into your career. And then that shit becomes fertilizer

for your creativity down the road maybe not now but in a year or two or another year or two you know there there's a lot of lessons that you get from just being with your child life lessons and stuff um this one i'll tell you off air but like just i've learned so much just building Legos with my son and how so I have all of these scripts that I've

sold over the last couple years for various TV shows and I get partnered with various people and some are good creative partners and some are fucking terrible fucking terrible and it all just comes Some are good creative partners and some are fucking terrible. Fucking terrible. And it all just comes down to fucking Legos. Like the idea of like where I feel like I'm weak.

I feel like I'm not a good leader. Like that's been the thing that I've been trying to work on this year. Is that once you get beyond just being funny and you're talking about having a show and have any staff and being in charge of people you have to be a motivator you have to fucking be an emotional triage you have to understand what and you only learn that from parenting because kids make make you play guess the emotion. I've been doing that for four or five years. And now he's finally old enough to communicate what's wrong or what's going on. I have to figure out a way to get him to open up. But like with Legos, if you ever build Legos with children, it's essentially to me, it's a perfect allegory for leadership in that.

To me, it's a perfect allegory for leadership in that the child understands that you're in charge and you're giving the child agency to build and look at everything or whatever. And when there's instructions, my son and I can build. He's six. We can build Lego Technics, which were for like 12 year olds, you know, and outside of like a little bit of just dexterity because some of the pieces are just too small for his fingers. We cranked that bitch out in an hour and a half. Like, it's a three-hour build, but the both of us together looking at the instructions and putting this shit together. Crank it out, no problem. Same child, and you put us in his room,

and it's just, hey, we're going to build something. What are we going to build? I don't know. Let's just build. And we pour all the pieces onto the ground, and we just start putting shit together. Now he's reaching over, and he's fucking with my pieces. He's got a piece that I really need,

so now I'm trying to trade a piece to get the piece that he needs, but he doesn't want to do that, and I'm building what I want to build, and he's going, well, I have a way to improve that, but that's not but he doesn't want to do that. And I'm like building what I want to build. And he's going, I have a way to improve that, but that's not what the fuck I want to fucking do. And now I'm looking at your thing. And bro, if you would just move the door this way, then you wouldn't need that piece.

You're creating a dynamic where you need a very odd piece. But if you move it this way, you get an even piece. It's more even. That's mine. I want to. When there's no clear direction. No one follows. And so from my child, I learned that as a leader, it's my job to give a clear mission directive or a clear,

this is what we're here to accomplish. These are the ways that I believe we're going to do it. Now, who's going to do these things?'s not what are we doing what do we do like it's no different than having a script outline before you start writing a script versus just writing off the dome and if you have someone that you're you have a writing partner that you're writing with you have a script outlined well then that motherfucker can go right act two while you write act one and then you come together and those two pieces are going to interlock perfectly because that's what we do with

the legos i tear the fucking bitch in half tear the instructions in half yeah you do these pages i do these pages and if i can see how connects. And it connects perfectly every time because there was instructions. There was something clear in there. And that is part of whatever's next for me is going to involve being a good fucking leader. I did morning radio for 12 years. I was not a good leader. I was a good radio host. I was a good comedian.

But when it came to the actual office politics, being a leader of people, I was not good. Do you think being a leader can make you less funny? Because if you're a leader, you have to keep things in line. You have to keep people focused on the goal and is is is not the great comedian the one in the back of the room going this leader fucking sucks because comedy is against the rules yeah leader's job is to set the structure i'll agree with that i mean as a parent you are a leader so that's like the first that's the first step but yeah you have to set up the structure for how things are going to get done so you definitely go from left brain to right brain yeah a little bit like and it's it's not

fun but then it's like okay well do i want to run something or do i want to be a part of somebody else's thing if you want to run your thing then you gotta fucking have people skills you gotta be able to communicate you gotta be clear yeah and how you communicate with people and that's probably one of the skill sets that i for sure when when the fuck would i go work on that without a child sure and i had to learn that just by happenstance because we just did legos for years and then one day i looked up and fucking having some issues with this project i was working on i'm like oh shit this is like legos i didn't give them no instructions no wonder they don't know what

the fuck to do that's why everybody arguing get everybody on the zoom call all right my fucking you do page 12 through 14 you do page 15 through 20 and that's it that's what you do don't worry about what they're doing on page 12 your job is page 15 so that i don't know it helped it definitely helped um you figure out you figure out the moments i'm not going to sit here and act like fucking parenting it's like this always beautiful thing doesn't mean you don't love your child it's just stressful the stress of providing that's not a good stress but it's necessary if you don't want to be the guy that has to bring his child backstage and make the feature act babysit him because a couple things went wrong

because you didn't focus when you had the chance. I think a lot of comedians think that their window is going to stay open. Your window closes. So I operate with that paranoia to a degree, which is good for both. That was the good scene that george carlin documentary you're like goddamn he had low points after the big high point you're just like oh what the fuck

yeah yeah so you know i i don't know man i just feel like having a kid it for sure helped more than it hindered you're never never going to, again, this career, you're always running in fog. You don't know what the fuck. You kind of know. You know where the next base is, but you can't see the whole thing. You ever seen baseball played in fog

where it's just like, just like football even in a fucking snowstorm. You know the end zone's down there somewhere. I can see a little bit in front of me, so I'll just worry about this. And so you just get varying degrees of fog density throughout your career. And so a kid can add some, but it makes you more adept to navigating the unknown. Well, as we go to the end, we like to do one

You Better Count Your Blessing. You better count your blessing. So we do one thing that we're grateful for to round this out.

I'll start it off. I went to this LCD Sound System concert last night with Russell. I'm not a concert guy. You're not a concert guy. But I got perfectly stoned and perfectly drunk. It was like the perfect amount of crowded. And I've listened to a lot of LCD

and it's not my jam per se, but you add the lights and and the stone you had the lights and the stone and i'm i'm in yeah and then we got home we played some without the lights i said nope i need the lights i need the lights to make this so loud and it was so uh uh you know i was i was glad you invited us oh yeah to kind of your world yeah yeah i was glad you invited us to kind of your world. Yeah. Yeah. I was glad too that you did it. My blessing. I'm doing this new show. Titanic.

Off-Broadway. And we get to do Seth Meyers this past week. And I got just lovely notes from people I haven't spoken to in a long time that you kind of forget and then you're like just really thoughtful nice notes that i've been reading from people all week that have been a nice little you know you don't know who's seeing these things and it's just nice to to get those um but yeah. Yeah. Tivo, any blessing you want to share with us? I'm thankful for The Daily Show. That was a good run for Trevor Noah.

Yeah. Yeah. It really was dope to be included, for him to include me in all of that. Just in terms of what that show means to a lot of people. But then also to be able to live in New York and pay my fucking New York rent. Because of that show. I'm also very fortunate because I've aged out of a lot of the college shows. I might need to go learn a pogo stick at some point

to fucking perform I guess you go into college just talking about the importance of having kids to 18 year olds and you're like what the fuck is this they would walk immediately

I'd pull out that bag of candy Fung Brother style immediately you're so cynical at this point you just go out there and just start throwing

I don't need the mic they just want candy they want like those big lemon heads like fucking bullets and slinging them no no this I'm blessed to still be working man you know and I'm thankful for that

there's a lot of upheaval I'll just leave it at that in the comedy community over the last year and a half. And to be able to still be working and be able to at least still feel like I got my head on straight and fucking be able to pay my bills,

like that's a huge fucking blessing. A huge blessing. It's not something I take for granted, so I try to wake up every day and bust my ass and keep that train moving and uh this is going to come out december 13th is there anything you'd like to plug um i got nothing to plug man you know um i'm getting back on stage slowly i took last year kind of off from the road and it's been kind of a ghost in new york too because yeah no i haven't seen you around i i'm switching from talking about the world to talking about myself and i've got to sit down and really excavate what about myself i actually want to talk

about like first i need to talk about what what can i talk about about me that i've already worked through in therapy let's start with those bits sure so that i'm not on stage unpacking yeah yeah that's i don't know if you've ever seen a comic unpacking for real on stage that shit is awkward but that's what's weird sometimes you talk about yourself and you're talking about revelations you had five years ago but now you can talk about them with clarity. Yes. And so in a way, I sometimes think of jokes like, you know how you're seeing, you're not seeing where stars are at right now. You're seeing the light having traveled.

That comedian's comedy is like that. You're not seeing who they are now. You're seeing like four years ago what they've discovered. Fuck, that's great. Well, that's great. um well that's great well uh yeah go see roy wherever you are and russell your show yes it uh well technically if it's december 13th it's opening tonight we've been in previews it's opening eight shows a week at the dale roth theater um and also uh upcoming uncle function um this week, this weekend, December 17th, Saturday,

December 17th at Asylum. I have a quick question for you. Please. Voice maintenance. What's your fucking routine? Eight shows a week, ain't no punk shit. No, I've been doing just like some in the morning honey and tea.

And then I've been extra vitamin C, but I i've not he was a singing major too i did go to school for for singing so um muscles already there but it's but it's like it is there's like singing and they're screaming so it's like uh i'm early on We've only been doing it for like two, two ish, two, three weeks now. Um, so, so far good, but, um,

yeah, I, I, it doesn't make me nervous. I quit being a singer. I went to college for musical theater and singing maintenance. And I don't think I had like the, the,

the, the body for, to be a singer, but, but the maintenance of it was a nightmare. Is it's a nightmare. The, the,

the people who use the fucking, they use the thing. They have the thing. They all have them. I might get one because everyone has one. I think it's pseudoscience. I know, I know. But what is it? It's not...

I almost said a humidifier. It's not that, but it's like, you know, you put it on your... And then steroids, you know, like there's... Everyone does it. It starts with a P. Everyone does it. Oh, really? Everyone does it?

Prednisone. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I know that because i lost my voice in 2018 oh my god that that performance the c-span thing yeah you can youtube that gang you want to hear me do jokes for exactly 13 minutes with no voice and did you almost not do like i mean it was gone your voice was my voice was gone and i got sent to the broadway dude shout out to dr kessler he's since

retired so I can say his name now like you go in his office and it's literally every Hall of Fame yeah fucking Streisand fucking share every bro every Tony if they've won a Tony they've been nominated for Tony if they've won a Grammy they've gone to dr. Kessler at some point and I just got to I didn't know about this fucking guy and Trevor is like I have a guy for you and I'm like it's 8 in the morning

I'm not talking and he fucking gives me the honey and the tea and some sort of Vicks steam inhaler thing do this all day da da da da and then he's like what time is the show sort of Vick's steam inhaler thing. Do this all day. Da-da-da-da-da. And then he's like, what time is the show? I'm like, 8 o'clock. What time are you on stage?

10 after 9 at exactly 8.47. Take three of these at 9.02. Take two of these at 9.07. Take this, swallow this, put this lozenge in your mouth. You will have 20 minutes. Oh, my God. you will have 20 minutes oh my god yo this motherfucker wow yo there's there's a whole nother level of medicine out there and i'm up because like that was a sweet fucking lick i can't miss this check yeah and i remember the fuck it got me straight because it's like if you try to press through it then you fuck it up worse and then you can't talk

for another fucking four months three months or some shit and he gave me like just all types of shit and this is the type of shit that apparently Broadway motherfuckers just every night ah shit can't cancel

it's Broadway the play will fold if we miss more than two nights so yeah so i'm like trying to never be in that situation again so the preventive maintenance of vocals is something i've become a little bit more and i've had like scratchy incidents since then of course but could soldier through them but that shit that 2018 c-span that shit was not fucking funny bro and literally the moment i got off stage like thank you good night fucking cinderella type shit bro i had my fucking voice and then the clock struck 9 23 fucking sure as shit.

Yeah. Gone. It's not fair. These Broadway 8 performances is too much a week with what they give you. It's too many. But, yeah, back in college, it was like, it was talked about like steroids were. Like, you know, like, did you hear? They did the thing.

Yeah. They got the shot. And then the Julie, everyone talks about Julie Andrews, poor Julie Andrews. Because you know what happened with her. So she, her singing career was stopped because she got nodes. And this was back when

the removal surgery was not very precise. So she couldn't sing after that. She can still, she can still do something. Kind of, but she lost most of her ability. And like, so it's known,

like in singing worlds, it's like that's the thing you get scared of. I'm trying to yell on stage less. I'm trying to get a little more Sam Morrell on stage because I like to yell. And then if I do that every night, if I start headlining, doing the two shows, three days in a row.

When I did the last night show, because two shows Saturdayurday two shows sunday that last thing i have that big scene where i scream and it's just like gotta be careful yeah yeah so um i like i watched like those old theater fucking like those arenas of like dice clay uh-huh. And like even early Doug Stanhope, where a lot of his shit was screaming. You watch Stanhope now, and he's much more subdued.

Yeah. I don't know if that's just alcohol and drugs leveling him out over the years, but like a guy like Dice, who just, ah, ah, ah, fucking Kevin Hart.

What about Kinnison? Yeah. Russell has like a Kinnison, like he can seem to yell in a way where I'm like, oh, that would, I would lose my voice in one of those yells about Kinnison? Russell has a Kinnison, he can seem to yell in a way where I'm like, I would lose my voice in one of those yells. Kinnison, you know the same Kinnison? I mean, just. What are y'all doing?

And then the worse the act got, the more he had to just yell throughout the whole goddamn thing. Singers are like, oh, you yelled from your diaphragm. I'm like, I don't know what the fuck that means, man. I'm just screaming. I got to get with you. I'm going to learn some of that voice maintenance shit.

Yeah. Throat coat tea ain't shit. For me, I'm headlining in Miami December 15th and 16th at the Villain Theater. And then my girlfriend's making us go on a vacation, but then I'll be back in New York December 23rd. And then headlining Comedy Zone Jacksonville. Hey, Duvall. Hell yeah. December 29th, 30th, and 31st New Year's.

Hello, Fred, if you're listening. I doubt it, but I'll send this clip just as to him. And I guess Russell and I,'re gonna go we're gonna go make some babies now I feel like I'm convinced sure thank you Roy

this is hey thank you boys The Downside 1, 2, 3 Downside Downside You're listening to The Downside

The Downside with Gianmarco Cerezi