The Downside with Gianmarco Soresi - #184 Allah's Brimstone with Dina Hashem

Episode Date: January 30, 2024

Comedian Dina Hashem shares the downsides of a having a devout Muslim mother hire a private investigator to find out if you have a boyfriend, getting death threats for a throwaway joke about XXXTentacion, and the difficulty of translating roast jokes into Japanese. Gianmarco also thinks he discovered the origins of religion.  You can watch full video of this episode HERE! Join the Patreon for ad-free episodes, exclusive content, and MORE. Follow Dina on YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, & TikTok Watch Dina's special, Dark Little Whispers, on Amazon See Dina in a city near you: https://linktr.ee/dinahashem Follow The Downside with Gianmarco Soresi on Instagram Get tickets to our live podcast recording in NYC on March 4 here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/744000544657?aff=oddtdtcreator OR come to our first live podcast recording in LA on March 14! https://www.ticketweb.com/event/the-downside-with-gianmarco-soresi-hollywood-improv-the-lab-tickets/13295123 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 E-mail the show at [e-mail] Produced by Paige Asachika & Gianmarco Soresi Video edited by Dave Columbo Special Thanks Tovah Silbermann Original music by Douglas Goodhart Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. Welcome to The Downside. This is Joe Marcus Horazy. We got a full house tonight. Full house, full couches. Russell Daniels.

Hi. Okay. Still exhausted from the stairs, I see. Russ, I saw you last night. Yeah, it was fun. We got wild. Two hot toddies. Two hot toddies. Sugar high and a little tipsy.

Yeah, it was late. It was late. We pushed it. Yeah. We pushed it. Yeah, I didn't get home until like 1.45. It's too late. It is.

We're here. We're joined by our producer, Paige Asachika. Hello. Hello. Welcome. Hi. How are you doing? Doing good.

Good. You said you got a bad haircut? I got such a bad haircut. What do you mean? I mean, look at her. I never put my hair up, and that is a sign of a bad haircut. You're wearing it differently. Yes.

What do you mean? What happens if you put it down? If I put it down- What does it look like? We'd have to turn the cameras off. What happens if you put it down? If I put it down... We'd have to turn the cameras off. Yes, nobody should see it. It looks like I'm a middle-aged mom. And that is not the vibe I'm going for. I am 27.

Some parts of the country, you're a middle-aged mom now. Did you have a new person? Yeah, well, so I went to this hair salon in Chinatown that I'd been to before but it's one of those places where you just get whoever is available yeah and i was just going in for a little trim and it ended up being like taking off maybe like four inches of hair and it was super choppy so i you knew right then and there was a problem well actually when my hair was down in the salon

like it looked okay because they had like styled it uh-huh but then when i got home i mean this whole subway back home i was just like i don't feel good about this like i think it's gonna be not what i expected and then sure enough when i got home looked in the mirror did a full inspection it was not what at all what i expected so you were fine with it got home, looked in the mirror, did a full inspection. It was not at all what I expected. So you were fine with it when they showed you in the mirror? Yeah. Because I think I was just like, I was just trying to get out of there. I just felt like I had a bad feeling about it.

And then when I saw it, I uncovered all of the different choppy layers. Did you cry? No. You didn't? No. Because I had had a bad- If Max had been here, would you have cried? No. Do you just live life? Totally. just live life wearing your hair up forever now what are you how long is this i mean like i'm sure it'll grow out

just fine i know it will but like in the intermediate i'm trying to find ways to like do something different with it or to like camouflage it a little bit yeah sure but it's fun because then i'm like kind of exploring different um hairstyles i wouldn't have you can take the headphones with you keep them on for the rest of the day thank you thank you i appreciate it we're also joined our our guest today i recently saw her at carnegie hall wow uh i was i was going to see uh jessalynick one of my favorites of all time, and she killed it there. And she just got back from Japan,

and she had a flu three weeks ago, but she's not contagious anymore. Dina Hashem, welcome. Hi. Thank you. I'm never sure whether to talk until I'm announced. It was my fault. Yeah, it was your fault.

Well, the goal, what I was supposed to say is, join in in the beginning if you feel free. And I don't know if the listener likes it. I don't know if the listener, my view is the listener goes, ooh, who's that new voice? Mysterious voice. I think people do like it. They try to figure it out. Yeah, but he didn't tell you that.

So, yeah. All right, we'll bleep it. Okay. When I say your name and come back. You ever get bad haircuts? Oh, yeah. I wanted to ask if you have cried during a haircut before, because I have. During? Yeah. Well, to be fair, I was

like 12, but I've also had traumatic haircuts since that. The first time I cried, this woman at the mall, I've got a lot of terrible mall haircut experiences, she gave me bangs without ever having said I wanted bangs. She just wasn't listening. She was like chatting, which I hate. And she just gave me bangs without ever having said i wanted bangs she just wasn't listening she was like chatting which i hate and uh she just gave me like straight across blunt bangs my mom was

with me and my mom actually my mom has um just spent her life embarrassing me in public but this was one of the times where actually i was glad she did where she like started screaming at this woman i sort of felt bad but like my mom has been precious about my hair forever. My hair was down to my ass forever. She's like, the only way a man will love you is if you have long hair. And so,

once the bangs were cut, she just flipped on this woman and I also was deeply upset. Of course, it takes a long time for bangs to grow out. Another time, um, Wait,

can I ask real quick? You had hair all the way to your, where you said? My ass forever. Oh, my God. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, she wouldn't let me cut it. Would she comb it at night and, like, whisper secrets?

Like, it seems like that's what a controlling mother... Yeah. You need to be home so I can comb your hair. You couldn't possibly sleep over somewhere. Well, that was also true. I wasn't allowed to do sleepovers. So you nailed it, actually, in a weird way. Huh?

Yeah, no, she, like, braided it for me. Like, it was a strange thing. I had a devouring mother, and she was also very strictly Muslim. So in my head, I couldn't separate, is this a Muslim thing, or is this just her being crazy thing? Have you been able to parse that since? Did you have a lot of crazier Muslim? That's a tricky game show to play.

I think it was a little bit of both. Because here's another crazy thing involving the hair. My friend, I would never have friends over to hide how crazy she was. But one time my friend opened a cabinet in the kitchen and found my chopped, braided hair in a sandwich bag. Oh, my God. Oh, my God, about this memory. Oh, my God.

So your friend was over And was like I'm hungry you want a sandwich What's this one Is this a Muslim sandwich I guess Oh my god Yeah I just Remembered that I can see the braided hair Did you know that

Your mom was holding on to it I think so yeah Was she grossed out Of course, yeah. I don't, I mean, I never had people over, so like it was just probably the last time.

Is it gross? Oh. What? What? What? Say it. Tova. Oh, I can't.

Oh my God. This is so gross. Okay, well sometimes, sometimes I have, because I'm so hairy, I have a little belly button lint, and Tova goes, boop,

and she puts it in a little bowl. Like for later? I'm like, it's for a snack. Just like, oh my gosh, look, it's almost a sweater. It's a cute little thing. Wait, you have a bowl that's like with all of them? It's not a lot. It's just a little.

She just thinks it's cute. It's like Goldmember's sandbox. Where's the bowl? Are we near the bowl? Where is the bowl? You're looking at like gold number sandbox. Where's the bowl? Are we near the bowl? Where is the bowl? You're looking at me like your friend. Where's the bowl? It's in one of the nightstand little drawers.

She just goes, boop, puts it in a little. Man, that's one of those things I would never think to ask permission to share, but I feel like she'd be like, how could you possibly? Well, it's done. Listen, we all do weird things. It's your body. It's your lit hair. Yeah,

yeah, yeah. I'll say 10 more worse things than that for her sake. So, I just, I just want to talk about your mom now. Oh, I mean,

we could do that. Sure. Oh, hey, how long do you have? Well, let's, let's hit this music.

This is the downside. One, two, three. Downside. One, two, three. Downside. Downside. You're listening to The Downside. The Downside.

With Gianmarco Cerezi. Welcome to The Downside. And if you are a first-time listener, check it out. We've got a lot of episodes. If you want to join the Patreon, you get bonus episodes, live episodes, and my comedy special, The Rats Are In are in me patreon.com slash downside all of it's run by page page also helps with don't tell i do there's someone who comments on every don't tell video i don't know if you see it they just go hi page i'm glad you noticed that too because it really freaks me out they just go you don't know them no no but it's consistently on every video and i'm it could. Just like, hey. It's cute, but where's the follow-through?

Where's the sending? You want more? Where do you look? I don't know. If it was sweet, it just, I don't know, it's creepy to me. People don't know this page actually writes every Don't Tell set herself. No, no, no. I don't claim the bad ones.

Uh-huh, uh-huh. Well, I love talking about parents on here i have a tough i have a tough dad tough well you talked about yelling in public yeah your mom was a she she let loose oh yeah like she would complain we could not go to a restaurant without a scene happening she would complain all the time. Yeah? Yes. Did she do it for... My dad got it to get free shit. Oh, no. No, it wasn't.

It was purely the principle. And also, this wasn't her fault, but it was also equally mortifying where she had this weird choking problem where she would just choke a lot. And so, a lot of the time, she would end up choking at the restaurant and just making a huge scene. And I should be concerned about her, really i'm just embarrassed like what what what's wrong with her throat i think it's called epiglottitis or something it's like literally there's like a flap that shouldn't be there or something and just sometimes she'll just start choking like we'll just be talking and she'll just start choking and it's like almost need to call the ambulance sometimes we did and it's not it's not even something lodged in her throat. It's like choking on air.

Sometimes it's food, but like... Oh my god, choking on air. Have you given her the Heimlich? My brother has. That triggered another memory at a restaurant. Yes, I think it was the macaroni grill. Oh! Just this beautiful opera singer. Sometimes, I don't know if they still do this. Have you been to the

macaroni grill? A long time ago. I'm trying to place it in my mind. They would have an opera singer and it was just... You did that. That was my dream gig. Singer, waiter. I was a singing waiter, not an opera singer at the Macaroni Grill. I was like, you've triggered a memory for me. I was an opera singer for five years

at the Macaroni Grill until this one woman choked in the middle of my aria. So it was you. How old were you then um oh i don't know maybe 15 or definitely old enough to be embarrassed um but yeah he had to give her the heimlich the whole just record scratch like it happened so many times in my life like i feel sort of bad for her now i guess and as an adult i'm like oh i should have been more compassionate but it was only mortifying um but a lot of the time, she was also just being rude to waiters.

That's gotta be, for the waiter, it's gotta feel good after they've been rude to you to watch them choke on air. Yeah, that's karma. I've shared before, my biggest embarrassment from my father, he was a yeller, temper.

We were at some Italian place in Potomac, Maryland. There's a woman there. My dad was looking sad and she said to him, what's wrong? And he just said, I'm depressed. And she said something crazy like, when you get to the gates of heaven, Jesus isn't going to ask why you're so sad. She meant it in like, she didn't say it in quite that tone. She meant it at like, cheer up. Cheer up. You're going to heaven. You're going to heaven and Jesus will want to hear about nice things. Don't be such a bummer when you meet Jesus.

No, that's not real. And my dad just turned around. This is a fancy restaurant. Everyone's wearing button downs. He just went, why don't you go fuck yourself? And I'm just. It's kind of amazing. It's so many of my memories are just it's that feeling of of anxiety like i gotta get out of here i'm so embarrassed and it it's

it's it's it's stayed with me i don't yeah yeah that's so but do you now do you find it funny now you're like oh i had a cool dad oh yeah a real cool dad this podcast mostly is me talking about my cool dad i know i think he just he was so confrontational and so and also like he hit on women and all these things and i think i was always so uncomfortable when it would happen whether with women or or yelling both these things i feel the same feeling of like, get me out of here. I don't know

if this person, oh God. And when he was, he used to be a very good looking guy. He was older, he's still good looking. But there was a time

when like the advances were welcome. And now he says, he says like, hey, you're looking real great tonight. And I'm just like,

this woman doesn't want it. You're an old man. Is this also while your parents were still together? No, no, no. They were divorced. He was with other women, to be fair. So it still wasn't good. I've done a little bit of research, but your parents, were they born in America? No. I'm the only one in my family born here. So I always felt extra alienated from them. My brother was born in Morocco. Yeah, my mom is from, I don't only one in my family born here So I always felt extra alienated from them Even my brother was born in Morocco

Yeah, my mom is from I don't really know her whole story to be honest We had such a bad relationship that I just don't know so much about her I should probably find that out pretty soon Just in case, you know It's hard though What do you do? You go back Is your mom, would she disclose?

If you sat down and said, hey mom Oh, she would love it No oh she would love it no she would love it oh for sure i'm like i'm trying to work on a bit about it where i like really don't really even know where she's from like i don't know where she's born and it's too awkward to ask now like when you go too long without knowing someone's name you know what i mean like um it's not fleshed out yet um but john mulaney says something i think it was an snl monologue he's like do we do we even really know our dads and in a way since you were mostly raised by her you know she's filled both yeah role like certain things some would would have with her father you also have with

your mother yeah i think that's just the thing about i barely know what my dad does for work right same thing yeah same um so uh she's from like i want to say france you know actually recently i did ask her because i wanted to know if i had french citizenship because she has it sure oh my god that'd be sick and then she goes i mean this is so emblematic of how insane her life is she was like actually i think i was born in international waters. So I think I was closer to the Moroccan border. So I think it's Morocco. She doesn't even know where she's from. My dad always claimed, he's like,

next time there's a war, son, we'll become an Italian citizen. And I don't think that's true. Why? Because I don't think our blood, I don't think we're close enough to Italy. He's not an Italian citizen. Why during war?

He's just like, because my father was almost drafted for the Vietnam War. Oh, I see. So in his mind, it's like, we'll get out. We'll get out. We'll be Italian. You all see videos of like,

in Italy, there was a fascist rally recently. I'm like, Dad, I think you forgot my mom's side of this whole thing. I can't go there. Your parents were born here? Yeah. Oh, yeah. were born here yeah oh yeah parents born here yes um i i would love citizenship somewhere else right oh my god and then i looked into it because i was like okay morocco okay cool i guess that's okay but then of course because fucking bigoted islam you i can't as a woman i can't unless I'm like married to a Muslim guy or something.

I think like that. That's part of the immigration rules. Yeah. And Egypt as well. Yeah. My dad was Egyptian. And so even for that, I can't get that.

wow. Yeah. You were just talking about bigoted Islam. I, uh, okay. So, so you,

you said your brother's five year old. Is that what you said? Yeah. I didn't even say that, but you knew that. Really? I think you said it. I definitely didn't. No, I don't think so. I don't think she said that.

I had a feeling. Wow. Look at that. Or I heard it on some other podcast. But so your dad, your parents got divorced when you were six? Yes. Do you remember that? Totally.

It's probably one of my first memories. It's really sad i remember him leaving and i my mom was like hug your dad and i was like no and did you say no because you didn't want to or you were you didn't want to acknowledge what was happening i don't know i think i just yeah i just didn't oh i probably knew somewhere if i was had that reaction that's your first memory that's tough it's fun. My first memory, I went to my dad's bathroom somehow and I must have

tried to play with his razors. I was a depressed kid. And I just, I remember this memory of me going in the living room and there were multiple adults and I just had blood all over my hands

and I was like crying. I didn't know how it happened. And that's all I remember. That and my uncle, I was crawling under his legs and I spilled hot coffee on my back. And your that's like that's all i remember that and my uncle i was crawling under his legs and he spilled hot coffee on my back and your brain's like let's start remembering right this is good first early memory no you know i don't know like it's like my stepfather's i remember things in kindergarten but like that i was like five so i don't but i don't really no traumatic

no early trauma no i don't i remember seeing a vagina in fifth grade or in when i was five in kindergarten i remember seeing a vagina in kindergarten my first memory was sophomore year of high school i saw my first nipple i remember i remember the thought of like what is that kind of thing you know what i mean? You saw it in person in a book? In person, in the classroom. This girl was not wearing underwear. And she was like, tie her shoe. And I remember thinking, what's going on down there?

I was like, that's not what it looks like. I remember being very confused. Your parents didn't cover anything? Well, I don't remember. This might have been like a preschool. It might have been like a thing. You know what I mean? know i don't remember where it was but that's an early memory is being like what is that i guess it's like because you have a brother i have sisters yeah so like i just you know it's and i don't know if he was born at that point either because he was

four years younger you know so um yeah but i'm trying to think of traumatic like i my brother but he would have been two so i would have been like six at this point he hit me in the head with a like a decorative duck like that my parents had and i cut my it cut my eye open and they had to take me to the hospital so like it like he like i remember he was like kind of like a you know establishing dominance he was like a toddler like he was like kind of like a like reablishing dominance at two years old. He was like a toddler. He was kind of like reeking. He really had weird anger things when he was young. And I remember coming down the stairs. In my memory, I was just coming down the stairs,

and he just was there with his duck, and he just goes, boom, bashed me across the face really hard. It was premeditated. Yeah, he was just down there waiting for me. And he hit me hard. But yeah, maybe he was a little older but that was that early injury page you got one mine wasn't traumatic my first memory um was my mom took me to go see christina aguilera my favorite pop icon when i was like a toddler and a toddler

yeah i wanted christina performing like genie in a Ball. I was like, what the fuck is that? No, no, no. I had like a full-on like Christina poster hanging up in my room probably for like five years. And then Destiny's Child opened too,

which... Destiny's Child opened? Yes. Opened for Christina Aguilera. Wild. Wow. Iconic. So shout out to my mom.

I guess I had such a wild night that she didn't make me go to school the next day wow damn which is pretty cool like that's that's a really cool thing to do as a parrot i do think that's cool because yeah you get to be a little you get to be like hey we can break the rules together yeah it's a nice thing you want your parents to be a safe place yeah you win that was the best first memory. Not a single razor blade. Not a single razor blade. Not a single razor blade or vagina.

And then when your father left, what was the communication like? Did he stay here in America or did he go? No, he immediately fled to Kuwait. He lived in Kuwait my whole life. Wow. Which, another mystery that I'll probably never, never really know the truth behind why, why he really did that. I remember in a high school, he was visiting and we went to the mall food court and like, just out of nowhere, he was like,

you know, I left, right? I was like, nah. And he's like, cause I didn't, cause your mother was cheating on me with your stepdad, your current stepdad. And I just didn't want to be there and see another man raise my kids. And at first, it was just such a crazy thing to tell me about my mom, which I already hated my mom for other reasons. And then he told me that. And then I hated her even more for so long. But then years later when my mom was like, let me tell you stuff that happened. She sat me down.

And then she was like, no, he was cheating on me with this like babysitter or something. I was like, so then I went back to hating. Then I started hating him, and then, like, I had to, like, I always had to, like, switch my mind, like, who's the reason for how fucked up I am? Like, forever I was my mom, and then I was like, oh, it's my dad,

and now he's dead, and so I've settled on, like, my brother, maybe? Like, it just keeps, like, going. Do you remember the babysitter that it would have been no no i have one fond memory of a babysitter i had who i loved and i remember actually your dad did too no it definitely wasn't her but like actually that's another traumatic memory that's triggering where i loved this woman and my mom one day she yelled at her and fired her and i still don't know why and i was so sad i should probably ask my mom about that.

But anyway. I hear that. I mean, how long was she your babysitter? I don't remember. I was so young. I don't know. I have a lot of those. For me, it's my dad's girlfriends

and they would be part of my life and then vanish entirely. It's a similar gist of like, what does that do to a person to have these little micro connections? Yeah. Banish. It's traumatic.

So your mom just yelled at everybody and anybody. She had emotional issues. And like the more I learned about her life and like stuff my dad did to her, I was like, oh, this totally makes sense that she was out of her mind. And like, I don't, I found a way to not blame her for things. Cause I was like, oh, instead of blaming her, I'll blame my dad. Cause he fucked her up so much that she took it out on me so yeah that explains like the

bouncing of blame. Was your brother, did he get Scott, did he escape all this? Was he treated differently? Yeah no I mean as a man like he didn't have like any of the shit that my mom gave to me like he was just a free agent like it didn't matter what he did but for me everything she was literally spying on

me all the time like once i literally found out she hired a pi to follow me around like like how old were you oh my god okay well um i was 19 um like i was dating somebody i was working with and my and i was so good at this point of covering my tracks with everything i was a probe at this age so she calls me i'll. I was a probe at this age. So she calls me. I'll never forget this phone calls. I was at the gas station with my then boyfriend. And she calls me.

And I always knew when she found something out by the tone of her voice, she was like, you have to come home right now. I was like, oh, fuck. What is it? What could it be? So she comes home. I come home. And then we're in my bedroom. I'll never forget this.

She's like, I need to see your phone. So she takes my bedroom. I'll never forget this. She's like, I need to see your phone. So she takes my phone. She goes through every contact of a male name in my phone from A to Z. Everyone, who's this? Who's this? Who's this? Everyone, I'm just like a friend, coworker, whatever. And then she goes back to G and goes, now tell me who Gabriel really is.

And that's my boyfriend. I'm like, oh my God, like how, how? But of course I'm just lying. I'm like, it's just a coworker. I don't know, I don't know. It's just a coworker. And she's like, you're lying. And she found out somehow

that we had spent the night in a hotel together. Like, and I just, it racked my brain forever trying to figure out how she found it out. But like, it was like a whole scene. Like I like ran away. It's the first time I ever like ran away from home. How do you think

she could possibly have known? Well, I figured it out many years later. Many years later when I had already like, you know, moved out and like our relationship

starting to chill out. She's like, she's like a different person. I feel bad saying bad things about her because she's so cool now. Yeah. But like, so this is at the point where she's starting to become like a normal person again like we're

okay and she's like you know what i i uh your stepdad i found out he's cheating on me because uh i hired a private detective to follow him and i was like and it clicked in my brain that's the only way she could have known if she hired someone to follow me around because she only brought it to me like three months like after the hotel thing happened so i was like what explains the delay how did she not know immediately it couldn't have been her following me around so maybe like he was like building his case or something he's like i got it your daughter's a slut what are the rules with private investigators? Like, what did your mom say that she was investigating you for? I don't think you need a reason.

That's such a weird job. Just to follow around a 19-year-old girl and be like, you know, like, what? How is that legal? Do you know what I mean? Like, it's very weird. Also, how much is it? I mean. That's another thing.

We didn't have money. Yeah, that's. Maybe it's not. Maybe it's not a great private investigator. That's maybe thing We didn't have money Yeah Maybe it's not Maybe it's not A great private investigator That's maybe why Sure sure It wasn't Sherlock Holmes

It was a guy on the corner Like hey you want some work? Hey you already like Following young women? That is creepy Yeah But it's I remember when my mom

Was going through A second divorce She got paranoid That there was Software that could Read her typing But the problem is Once you start

Thinking that way On her computer or phone? I think computer But once you start Thinking that way It's very easy To not know What's real

What's So they got divorced now They're divorced now Was that tough? You knew this guy For a long time Oh my god No it wasn't tough at all easy to not know what's real what's what's so they got divorced now they're divorced now was that tough you knew this this guy for a long time oh my god no it wasn't tough at all which is so i mean so here's another my stepdad and i had a fight when i was literally like six or seven and didn't talk the rest of my life no way no no way please i love a good stepdad six or seven till now people don't believe me when I say this.

I believe you. Wow. We had a fight. So I didn't have my own bedroom when I was young. We had a two bedroom apartment. My brother, of course, got his own room. And I got just a sectioned off part of the living room. So it was my area.

And I think I got home from school. And I caught him in my area snooping around. And I yelled at him. I was like, what are you doing? It's my area. And then he goes, you can't talk to me like that. And then he stormed off and we just never talked again. Whoa.

It's my fault, right? I should have been the bigger person. Oh my God. Let's sit down. Let's sort it out. So you went to holidays? Did you like family things and you just saw him and you just didn't interact?

Well, we didn't like do that stuff. It was Hanukkah weird? We didn't do family stuff like i just had such a broken we never sat down at dinner together like you literally just walk by you never he would come home from work i would say hey mo he would say hi dina every day every day of my life hey mo hi dina why do you think he was snooping in your area oh i think he was just like bored i donina. Why do you think he was snooping in your area? Oh, I think he was just bored. I don't know. I don't think he was doing anything malicious the way my mom was.

She was snooping for malicious reasons. No, I think he was just having fun. That's wild, though. So you'll never, if you never see him again, here's a question. Will you go to his funeral? Oh, my God. Probably not. Sure. Is that crazy crazy it is a little wild i mean maybe if my mom went and she would probably be like could you come with me and i

guess for her sake i would but i don't even know if she'd go but your mom never tried to like intervene and be like you need to make things right or like you know because they were always fighting like they were constantly fighting so it was they were constantly fighting. So it was never even, like, yeah. Wow. And was your brother your confidant, ally in any of this? No. No. He didn't understand.

Like, every time me and my mom would fight, he would take her side. Like, he was so protective of her, which is good. But, like, also, like, I wasn't a human then. Like, he would never see, like, I also am a person with feelings. I also can be a victim. It was always, like, you need to shut up and, like, do everything she says. But because he didn't have the same rules applied to him,

so he didn't understand why there was a problem, and he never thought to ask or, like, just think about it. You know what I mean? Yeah. Did you grow up with other Muslims to, like, be able to compare and contrast, like, oh, this is a religious thing, this is my mom thing? Unfortunately, no. Like, that's why, like, now, like, I try to sort out, like, what was what.

Sometimes she would have, like, a reasonable thing, and I would still think she was just being crazy because of the religion. Like, I think I was, like, seven or something, and there was a new neighbor. His name was Anton. We were friends. So I wanted to just go over to his apartment and my mom was like, well, I have to go meet his parents. And I was like,

you're being so embarrassing. Like, no, you can't do that. But in retrospect, that's normal, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's not crazy. But I couldn't separate what was her being crazy and what was normal.

We also stressed, the way your mom sounds, sounds like you'd be stressed for her to meet anybody that you knew and then yell or to be weird exactly yeah yeah um my dad came to the comedy salon the other day and it was one of the most anxious experience of my life really he's so just unhinged and i i think he would know better not to yell at anyone i don't know if he knows better enough to not like say a weird compliment to someone or oh yeah and at one point he started filming with his phone and

i was like put your phone it was awful feeling it was an awful they didn't take his phone no because he came in with me like he just came in with me to the back he wouldn't sit for a whole show you know he's not gonna do that so i say, maybe you need to give him one of those bags. Yeah, yeah. He wouldn't do it. He'd go, what? No, I have work, son. I can't.

I put my phone away. But you're not close enough to just be like, here are the rules. Don't heckle. Don't film. I just, yeah, but he'll forget. He'll just forget. And yeah, that's all. He just doesn't know better.

I just see him, I think the sympathetic way I try to view it now, it's very condescending, but it's like if you brought like a slightly untrained pet. You know, when I see someone with a dog at a coffee shop, I'm like, I get it. I think I'd really like your dad. I've brought my dad to a steakhouse.

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milk we all love and enjoy every day with 3200 dairy farming families across ontario sharing our love for milk there's love in every glass dairy farmers of ontario from our families to Your table. Everybody milk. Visit milk.org to learn more. So, you grew up in New Jersey. Mm-hmm. And when your dad was so far away, how often did you talk to him? We talked on the phone once in a while, and he came to visit once every few years. He would just to like a hotel and we would see each other but fun awkward um i don't i guess i got awkward as i got older because i would like i had realized like it was fucked up you know like everything that stuff he did to my mom and just like not being around i was like oh you're actually kind of fucked up so

like but when i was young it was mostly fun um yeah it was like more of an exciting thing and because i had like blamed my mom for everything it was like oh thank god that sane person is here like to me he was like the reasonable sane person even though he was equally religious but i just he wasn't there to enforce it so it was just like my mom's the crazy one. He's the cool one. And then later it flipped. But it was fun. Did he have another life in Kuwait? Did he get remarried there?

I don't think he did. He had a previous marriage before my mom. Because I have a half-sister who I don't even talk to. It's odd that I... Is she here? No, she's in Egypt. Wow. I met her once when I visited Egypt.

There is sort of the beginning, I guess, of seeing my dad in a different light because I saw him, the way he was treating her. I was like, oh my God, thank God I didn't grow up with my dad because like we went to this like street fair or something. And like she talked for a minute to some guy, just something totally harmless. I forget what. And then my dad yelled at her for talking to this guy and it started hitting me like oh my god my life would suck if my dad had lived here or if god forbid I had lived

in Egypt like something I have to thank my mom for so much is the reason that I like my dad didn't whisk me and my brother away to Kuwait when they divorced is that my mom like she didn't have any money and and my dad likes he he fucked up the sale of the house specifically to fuck with her. And so the only way she got to get custody of me and my brother is that she married, she made a deal with my stepdad so that he would get a green card

and so that she could tell the court she had an apartment, a place for the kids to live, so that she could keep us here. So if she hadn't been able to do that like i might have just had to go with my dad and like have a totally different life so she rushed that marriage to happen to keep yeah yeah wow do you do you ever like envision what your life would have been like if you were there i mean i'd probably have killed myself already yeah like i mean i just don't know like i would have been subject to all the Islamic rules.

Like, I just, I wouldn't be anything close to what I am now. Sure. I can't even imagine. I don't know. Like, yeah, I don't know. So when you were growing up, you really, you had no, did you, I mean, did you go to a mosque? Did you, like, see other? Well, no, that's the other weird thing is like you it sounds so

strict right but like my mom just had no time she was working all the time to even take us to like mosque or like put us in muslim school or anything so i was also weirdly isolated and that i only i didn't have any other muslim friends most of my friends were actually asian and so i did have some like people who sort of understood because they were first generation as well and like i had one friend who had a really really strict vietnamese dad so like that was the closest to somebody who like understood what i was going through um but i only knew one other muslim boy in school he sat in front of me and he was so weird but my mom had drilled it into my head that i had to marry a muslim man so i'm like seven being like trying to get to know this kid like this is gonna be my husband like do you like math oh i don't um so yeah i didn't even have like people to really

commiserate with even though i grew up in a very largely like um uh a lot really large indian population i think the town i grew up in is the most amount of indian immigrants and there was so there were a lot of like muslims around just not really where i went to school for some reason so it sounds like like does does uh does the religion hold any nostalgia any you know like like tova my my girlfriend grew up khabad and like you know she's not bad anymore but it still has like oh i have some fun memories of the dances or this celebration. What are the fun? I honestly don't know much about Muslim holidays.

Well, I mean, in theory, there are things that should be fun. Like Eid is like a big feast after fasting for Ramadan that's supposed to be a fun thing, I guess. But we also didn't have any like family here like my only family was my mom and my stepdad my brother so there wasn't even the opportunity to have like a big get together or anything anything close to that so no I mean there were no fun Muslim memories it's really all it's just it's wild to think because to hold on to that stricter religion in America without the community to reinforce itself. It's like,

well, this is not gonna, it's not gonna work. There's no way. No, I started, no, I like immediately was like,

I don't believe this, but I could never say that out loud. Um, but maybe if there was that I could at least like, yeah, have maybe see the good part of it. I didn't get to see the good part of it. Sure.

Yeah. Do you remember when you stopped believing? Like, did you ever? Yeah, it was almost immediate. I feel like my whole life I was part of it. Sure. Yeah. Do you remember when you stopped believing? Like, did you ever? Yeah, it was almost immediate. I feel like my whole life, I was like, this doesn't make sense. I feel like I'm eight being like, what? It doesn't make sense.

I guess high school was when I really was like, okay, I think I'm done. Like, officially, I think I'm officially done internally. But I struggled with it forever. I was like, it was like, okay, if I'm going to internally, but I struggled with it forever. I was like, it was like, okay, if I'm going to be, if I'm going to be subject to all these rules that are going to make my life worse,

then I really need to know if God is real. Cause otherwise I'm wasting my life with all of these things and I'm going to have a bad life. So I want to know if this is real. So my whole life I was just like reading things and trying to figure it out. And, uh, I just landed on no, but as I get older, I like, I sort of shift. real so my whole life i was just like reading things and trying to figure it out and uh i just

landed on no but as i get older i like i sort of shift like i don't think i'll ever be subscribed to any of the like main religions but i can see myself being like oh maybe there's something sure sure did you ever when you were young like oh i've always i've never i never was raised with enough religion to believe in one particular thing i don't think there was ever a time where I was like, Jesus. Yeah. Jesus, and he died. I have no connection to Jesus. No connection.

I see him up there, and I'm like, no. I don't feel anything about it. We have a friend of ours, and he's so funny. He's got a great sense of humor. And you'll ask him, if you say to him, so if you were to have dinner with someone, living or dead, who would it be? And he's like, Jesus H. Christ. Not as a joke. I have some things I'd like to ask him about.

And I'm like, what the fuck are you doing? We were thinking David Bowie. Like, shut the fuck up. Jesus Christ. Jesus H. Christ. That's a good answer. I don't know. I think that's a pretty good answer.

What am I going to ask him? I don't care what he says. When you said, love thy neighbor, did you mean that America's immigration policy is okay, though? There's just people where I'm like, I think from an early age, and I don't think it means I'm smarter. It just means that I have some brain that is self-aware where I go like, yeah don't actually believe in in this equality for all just through the eye of a needle a camel going through a rich person getting into heaven like like i knew early on like that's insane yeah you all are hypocrites you didn't go to a religious school right no i like there was echoes there was a there was a cross at the assembly and we said my father

thy king become but but but we didn't say Jesus, though. Okay. Because I went to a Christian school from preschool all the way through high school. That's intense. And when you're young, when you're literally an infant and being told all these things, and I, like, when I was in high school, I volunteered at a Catholic school, and I sat in on a preschool class because i was just doing like teacher's aid stuff and what the teacher was saying to these children who were probably

like three or four years old it was like it's the effect of like you're going to go to hell if you don't believe in jesus christ so when i saw that that was really like oh i was brainwashed from such a young age and of course you're going to believe the adult in the room because they're the authority. Like, they're not going to lie to you. Or like, why would, you know, somebody of that age lie to you? So, you know, by the time you're in eighth grade or seventh grade or whatever, you go to the communion or confirmation classes and go through this whole thing. And then you go to this like weekend where you're like confirmed and there's this whole like emotional spiritual bonding thing

and then you go to high school and then eventually you find out about stuff happening in the real world sure and then you form your own opinions or at least is my story but like the the rules didn't necessarily like the the bad rules of rules of Christianity didn't necessarily apply to me. But it was more so, like, okay, well, if God is real and he's condemning people for being gay or for believing different religions, like, that's not somebody that I want to think of as, like, the ultimate creator. Yeah, yeah, yeah. like that's not somebody that i want to think of as like the ultimate creator yeah yeah like you know says can dictate whether or not you go to hell just because you love a love somebody who's the same sex sure yeah that didn't make any sense to me so um again like the rules didn't really apply to me but i was just like i can't stand behind something that like um i guess takes away rights

of other people well that's why i think it's interesting where the catholic church like the pope has become like a little bit looser and i do think these movements are essentially a degree of like guys if we're gonna keep this thing going exactly a this thing going, a lot of gays right now. We got to, can we at least say they're not going to burn for eternity? I'm not saying they're good. If we want to keep the lights on at this castle that we live in, we got to loosen up

so we can still get all the money. We might have to sell one of our candelabras. No, we can't. No, let the gays be a part of it. That's what I'm waiting for with Islam. I feel like it's the religion that hasn't had the chilling out period yet. It might be starting, but still, if you're Muslim, you're fucking hardcore, right? Well, I'll be frank.

I would be... A, I don't know the grand scope enough. And of course, I'd be hesitant to know. It certainly sometimes seems like, like, I don't see the same, but I don't know. I don't know what the Catholic Church

equivalent of being Muslim is. what else, like, to be frank, like, there's, most of the people in the world who are still killing people

for religious reasons, they're the Muslims, right? We're still doing that. It's like, you know? Don't look at me! I know this isn't the best time to be saying that um sure i don't separate from that statement i would say that people still have reasons that are equally as they're equally as nonsense or

equally selfish or whatever everyone has their own reasons they can label it religious they hate our freedom like there's a degree of Saying I'm gonna kill someone Because they don't follow religion To kill someone Because they hate our freedom As George Bush would have said

Like Oh yeah I mean I can separate It's the same It's like the same thing You're just lying About why you really wanna I

Okay but I don't But there's a lot that aren't lying I will say that Okay I'm just saying like- You speak with authority. I'm not going to challenge you. Yeah.

I'm going to go- No, no, no. There's tons of bullshit. There's all kinds of political reasons people do things and our government's going to be like, it's because they hate our freedom. I know all that's nonsense. Sure. But when you're killing the cartoonist because of drawing the prophet, you know what I mean?

That stuff is still real. I get the threats from the Muslims overs over the jokes i make like i see i i see it like i see the the power of the religion is still so strong in a way like i mean there's definitely like christians who are gonna still be like you know don't say that like so i'm not saying it's specifically only that i feel like in america you feel some more that christian energy of of those those Christians that would become the thing that would kill someone over a cartoon. You feel it bubbling. Yeah, maybe, but have we seen it a lot? Can you think

of examples of people murdering people? Abortion clinic bombings. I mean, I don't know the specific ones, but I get what you're saying. But I just see the same flame there that could boil over the direction we're headed these days. Well, yeah.

It's interesting, though. Trump has become the replacement for some of these people. That is the religious energy, fervor. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's not always connected directly to religion. It's just kind of like a blind anger kind of thing. But certainly if we're talking about Palestine,

when people like, I think one of the things people in Israel, they do say, they go like, well, look how LGBTQ friendly it is here. And it's like, of course, it doesn't excuse any actions. Of course, of course. But that's what they would take. I think that's why there's the hesitancy to be like, yeah, it does seem a little strict on the gay rights thing. Right. I mean, that's such a,

the logic there is so infuriating. It's like, you don't kill civilians because you disagree with their beliefs. It doesn't matter what they believe. Of course, yes. So that's always a distraction, all of these arguments. But the problem is,

there's always these fucking things going on where it feels tough to have a dialogue in general because immediately any Islamophobe will latch on and become excited that you're now that you're now criticizing something so i don't i don't know how you talk about it uh certainly from my perspective but why do you think this hasn't been a cooling like i i don't know how things cool i don't think things can cool when they're not in uh uh bountiful circumstances no i no i think that is a lot of it i think it's that you know this country and

others have fucked with the middle east for so fucking long that i mean there have been plenty of people who have tried to gain power and who have been in power who have tried to institute more progressive policies and not run in fundamentalist regime. And fucking America always finds a way to take them down and install the more strict fundamentalist leaders because it benefits our empire's interests. So it is really frustrating. And that's the part where the Americans criticize. I'm like, do you understand?

We fucking... It's our fault. It's our fault. It's our fault. Every time there's an attempt to have that chilling out period, it's like, we're like no no no we like making deals with the with the terrorists like our government loves terrorists they do and so i think that's a huge part of it unfortunately but i don't know i really don't

know what it is about it that makes people so fervent like even people who i mean people convert to that religion more than any other one it's like there is something about it right like it's like sort of cool but it's yeah when it makes people so fervent i just don't know i don't really know but politically that's i would say that's why there hasn't been so let's see i'm just trying to think i want to i want to go to if i want to talk about japan but oh well let's i am so know, you tell me your life story, and then I think about the whole, you talked about threats that you were getting. You get threats for,

what do you get threats the most of, separate from the incident? You said Muslim jokes, you get people that write you? I mean, some threatening, more so like um um how dare you you're going to hell hell you will i think a fun one was um you will suffer all those brimstone or something i don't know just like comments like that there's a whole race war happening and in the jihad joke on my instagram right now which is great for the algorithm of course so i don't mind i once saw i once on a train i felt like felt like I saw the evolution of religion

in a microcosm. There was a guy, there was an attractive woman sitting down, and it was just me, her, and this guy. And this guy started hitting on her. Like, hey, you want to go out sometime? And she was like, I'm not interested. And immediately he was like,

in Islam, you'd be wrapped up. You'd be wrapped up. You'd be covered head to toe. And I was like, I just in islam you'd be wrapped up you'd be wrapped up you'd be covered head to toe and i was like wait i just witnessed you got rejected and became a fundamentalist like like you wanted this woman she's dressed attractively she wasn't into you and now you're like you should be covered like he he like started his rejection that's what he turned to in that moment he did and i was just sitting there and i felt nervous for her so as we as we got to the stop i did this thing like this is my way to try to diffuse i act like i'm confused and i'm like

like looking for a map and like got in between them as if I was confused looking around. Oh, okay. That's nice. Yeah. No, that's the right way to do it. And then you hit on her? And then I hit on her. She said, no. I said, I said.

You had a wig on you. You had a wig on you. You'd be making Shabbat dinner right now. you'll be making Shabbat dinner right now. When you, I feel like I probably first, when I first started standup, what year did you,

you got, went viral and a lot of backlash for one joke that was on Comedy Central Presents. Was that what it was called? Or from The Cellar? It was this week at The Cellar. This week at The Cellar, which was an era of comedy. I wish I had been around

and I'm very envious. 2018? Yeah, 2019 was when it happened. And you just get booked and you get paid what, a grand or something?

It's horrible but I mean after taxes and paying everyone like, I don't know, $600. $600.

But you had truly a joke that was not about the person who was killed. It really was a joke. Is it XXX? How do you say it? XXXTentacion. Tentacion. Who had also been, he beat somebody.

Hey, I think he's a great guy. Great guy. I'll say it he uh he he did some some bad things but he was shot and you had a great joke about venmo it was a very good joke it was a fine joke it was a throwaway joke meant to make 600 that's what it was for yeah uh-huh i i i know you've already you you've talked to a million people about the trajectory i'm more curious about like the the literal security part of it. So it started when it first posted,

did it seem like, Oh, it's doing well. Oh my God. Was there 10 nice seconds in there? It was, it happened so fast. They posted it.

First of all, I didn't know they were going to post it. I didn't get the memo. So I see it posted. It was like, Oh, that's cool. They decided to post one of my jokes.

And then I just slowly, slowly, I see a few comments on twitter that are like that's fucked up and i was like oh that's funny and then more of it like you should have posted that like okay whatever and then instagram it i mean it just suddenly like there's this one really big news account, I forget what it's called, that catches it. And people tell me they caught it because of the other comedian that posted angrily about it. But I don't know. There was another comedian who posted about it angrily?

Oh, I mean, this is part of the whole thing. Is it, it's a comedian in quotes? Well, I don't know if I should say his name. We can bleep it out. We'll bleep it. Okay. He's theep it okay he's the one who he's the first comedian who posts like this is fucked up comic central shouldn't post this blah blah and uh i don't like that at all yeah no again no i know and then um from there

this other big account post news account posted and people tell me like if he hadn't posted i probably wouldn't have gone to that account then it wouldn't have probably it would probably it would have gone crazy without his help i'm sure but still stupid that he posted and i also dm him so after the big account posted it starts going insane and now like i'm like flooded my inbox is flooded uh my accounts are all like just sort of breaking like i can't even see messages anymore and i do there are this many fans of this guy i didn't know i didn't know but apparently whenever anyone said anything fucked up about him or just even lightly criticized pitchfork put out an article about the bad stuff he did and like same thing happened to them like

there they got spammed with like threats and everything so apparently whenever anyone said anything negative about this guy this happened which i didn't know because i didn't know who he was until a week before i made that joke um but yeah no it's like my inboxes are all broken i'm getting so like i at first i still think it's kind of funny like i don't know how to handle it because i i start i put i decided to post something oh my the video the joke got taken down people were reporting it so the joke got taken down i think so um oh and also eventually okay no eventually my my my reps are like should we take it down and i'm like i i think we have to just because i want this to stop like i'm so overwhelmed that

i'm like i just wanted to stop whatever it takes to make it stop and so i post a like a thing on instagram a note um just trying to diffuse the situation because oh i remember my since i didn't know about sorry i remember things in the wrong order because i haven't thought about in a while um i remember my lovely friend dan perlman who was just at my side this whole time i rocked just helping me through this. And he like is looking into the rapper because like, I didn't know anything about it. I'm like, he, it sounded like he was like a saint,

like the way people were talking about it. I was like, Oh my God, I just made a joke about like a saint of the community. And so Dan starts doing research. And I remember him texting me and be like, okay, he beat up his pregnant girlfriend.

He beat up a gay guy in jail. And I'm like, Oh, thank God. Thank God. And so I in jail. And I'm like, oh, thank God. Thank God. And so I post, I think I'm the smart one. I posted a note that was like, listen, I said it's tragic that he died.

But like, I don't know if you guys know this or not, but he wasn't a saint. You know, like he did these things, like not that it matters. I still, it doesn't mean he deserved to die. And I don't know that people are coming back with like, they're his lawyer. They're like,

he didn't do that. That's not true. She lied. I'm like, who did I think I was that these people didn't already know all these things? Like I was so naive about it. And every inbox would be like, Hey,

I'm sorry. I read that article you posted. My bad. My bad. Like I was, it was so foolish that I did that. Actually, Stifus Sounds was trying to help me too.

He called me. So many people were calling me, me giving me advice it was like the most close i felt to the comedy community it was like really nice all the people contacting me i never would have expected um so he calls me and i told him that i posted that no he's like what have you been doing i was like i posted this no and he's like you said that like it was the totally wrong move yeah and i thought it'd be cute because i was having people calling, people thought I was white. You know? So that didn't help. People were like,

stupid white racist bitch posting it. And so I was like, maybe it'll help if I let everyone know I'm not white. Just keep adding like notes being like, just FYI.

It's like, in the note, I'm like, oh, by the way, everyone calling me a white bitch, just so you know, please switch it to Arab bitch.

And then all the dms started changing to you terrorist bitch oh my god go back to where you came from oh god um it was actually funny over the years they're seeing the insults adapt to the environment like when covid started the dms were like i hope you get covid the times wow uh okay so yeah so then like everything's going crazy i'm like vacillating between this is funny and oh someone's gonna come kill me oh so that got doxxed as well so my address got posted um which would be by the way if anyone if anyone wanted to dox me, I imagine it would take a minute. I've been on the internet for so long.

It's so absurd that this is allowed and that our addresses are just publicly available. In other countries, that's not allowed. You can't just look up someone's address. Really? Yeah. Okay, wait. So I used to have a job in college. It was a really dumb-

Doxing people. No, no, no. It was the head of the xxx station fan club dark web yeah but um no i i um worked for a superior court and i would remove the addresses of the judges that worked there um so that people couldn't dox them just from like doing the whatever it was like true people or like spokio all those different things like you can just so people know you can opt out of those websites but it does take a lot of time it takes a while and you have to like sometimes you can do it pretty easily where you

just like kind of verify your information and it'll like opt you out other times you have to write them an email being like please take down my address like somebody's going to murder me otherwise my god um but it just depends and like some of the websites are kind of defunct or don't have any customer service so it's impossible to remove it i went through i went through all that every website yeah so when you were doxxed like was that did you have any things happen like did people leave anything? No, thankfully no. My phone numbers also went out. Oh my God, this is so creepy. One of the first things that happened was,

first of all, I didn't... Okay, so Viacom provided security for me after the doxing because they don't want to get sued if something does happen. So I had security posted outside that address. It was technically my mom's address that people doxed with. Oh, wow. I was living in an apartment, but the address was hers because my mom's address that that people doxxed with oh wow i was living in an apartment but the address was hers because my name is on that in a way you got revenge on your mom you followed me well now everyone's following you that is karma um but i heard

she was already cool at this point so it was not good um so did she move did they bring her to a hotel no they just had security posted outside the house for two weeks what are they like two two dudes literally just one guy sometimes two guys they would rotate it was 24 hour shift wow i know i mean just so many absurd details at one point i'd stay with her just in case and my brother did too because he was a cop so he had a gun yeah um so i was there and i was like i was just scared i was so i didn't know what was real i was like if i go to the mall like there's gonna be teenagers they're gonna recognize me they're gonna they're gonna try to kill me like this is what's going on in my head sure sure so to sort of like ease

myself out of this like insane headspace i have this the security follow he's following me everywhere so i'm like i'm gonna go to the mall and so he's like goes to the mall with me like and we're just he's like i'm like i'm sorry if like hang out with me while i'm shopping he's like i'm used to it with my life like i'm just it's just so insane and um you should like have hung out with the president's kids and talked about what is your life like now. Yeah. I would see groups of teens in the mall

and I was scared. I was trying to hide my face. And after a while, I was like, oh, this is sort of not real. It's just an internet thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's so weird too to imagine trying to explain to your mom, like, wait, why do

people want to kill you? You know, you're like. She keeps going, XXX. Yeah, you're like, it's such a hard thing to, like, try to explain to someone, too. It was. Like, they really want to kill you? Like, is this, like, it feels so crazy. Well, I was going to, my plan was not to tell her at all.

But then the doxing happened. And then she'd be like, why are these people outside the house all the time? Like, we had to tell her at all but then the doxing happened and then couldn't she'd be like why why are these people outside the house all the time like we had to tell her yeah um but yeah no i mean she was surprisingly cool about it but she was very scared as well when you got on stage how long of a break did you take from performing it was definitely it was definitely long enough where i was like shaky maybe like a couple months i don't remember exactly i had to cancel shows i lost money i had to cancel stuff oh i was supposed to do this um airbnb was doing this thing like one of those experiences or whatever i forget what you call it and one of them was like oh we're gonna do you want to be one of the comedians for this experience where someone can stay in new york

and like hang out with a comedian go to a show it was me and nori davis and someone else i forget and right before all this happened we were like shooting the promos for it and then that happened and then they were like it's probably not an idea to invite strangers to hang out with you right now so like that got canceled and that was a good amount of money that i lost i had to can't i i was getting specific threats about shows i was supposed to do like if you go to the show i'm gonna come kill you so i had to cancel all this stuff can you imagine you win that airbnb thing it's like here's your comedian and her bodyguard oh people trying to kill her well that'd be cool that's a better experience right i'd be thrilling yeah yeah have you ever gotten in like like i don't

think you've had that level of like have you ever had like a thing though you've been nervous about where you remember we got one comment here that said uh there we got some comment about someone throwing a grenade into the studio for something a while ago you didn't tell me that there was one scary comment we got one wait do you just something go through the window you never told me that about what is some some episode that bothered someone really really we never we never looked at it no i this is my first time hearing about it i feel like there was one time where someone said like it was something like these liberal cuck boys let's see how they would handle like a bubble bug grenade that doesn't feel real yeah like i do i have my face out here

yeah you should maybe take that down It'd be pretty easy For someone to find That's what I was Like at what point Will you take Take that down People don't know That's when you know

I made it That's when you know I made it For now He's just face in the window Facing the street I was getting like a fat head A bunch of comedians

We're getting those big Cardboard heads Oh It's just a big So we put it on the window Everyone at the bridge Sees it Oh

And my handle's there We can tag you in it sometimes You probably should take it down It's a good thing, it's promo It's fine As you said, listen, no one came actually And you don't live here, it's just a studio So once a week they could kill us

The rest of the week I just feel like you got I don't think certainly it still happens to a degree but but this was like during the height of when people would just get fucking everyone would pile on yeah yeah it still happens now but at least the internet has become more fractured where yes you know i remember i got in trouble for a joke on tiktok and it was so funny how it didn't it didn't affect me at all because way TikTok works, it doesn't build in the same way that a tweet going viral will. Yeah, this was at the time when it was still scary for something like that to happen.

But now it's kind of like, oh, yeah, if you don't get death threats, you're a loser. It's normal now to just accept it's part of being online that you're going to get threats. Didn't you share a message once where it was like someone who made the threat and then later said like hey i saw your work i'm a fan now oh yeah there's those that's the best part now is sometimes people years later will send me a dm like i'm sorry i said that or like that was fucked up with me or like actually i saw your jokes you're pretty funny or like somebody even at the time somebody would send uh something fucked up and then i and then i would like post a clip or something they'd be like I saw your jokes. You're pretty funny. Or like somebody, even at the time, somebody would send, uh, something fucked up.

And then I, and then I would like post a clip or something. They'd be like, Oh, she, um, just like commenting on like my ass or something like, so like that would help turn people around as well.

Just being like, Oh, I like her ass. Nevermind. Um, so there's a lot of, there's just a lot of fun things like that um where it would go from i want to kill you to are you are you around what's up i love your joke uh in your special on amazon

dark little whispers the about the 15 year old oh yeah yeah messaging what do they say uh i'm gonna i'm gonna rape you and you were like, you didn't know if you doing a comeback to that would count as you sexting a... Oh, yeah. It's like I respond, you wouldn't know what to do. Like, is that sexting a minor thing? I wonder what the rules are. When you said it, I was like, what are the rules? That is...

Yeah, there's a shocking amount of young people saying vile things. Oh, for sure i mean my brother he's he's uh he's older now but when he's a teenager he was a redditor and yeah and gamer and like the things they say are insane yeah it was so many young people i realized that was that also helped calm me down when i realized a lot of these people are like kids not that a kid can't do something crazy they're definitely mentally unstable he's so like but yeah and that's why i don't honestly again i don't who knows if i'll ever have kids but i do think i think it would be a real struggle with the internet and privacy that if i had like a 15 year old son and he's on reddit or whatever i and if you know how do i know

he's not messaging fucking this crazy shit? And then suddenly you go like, well, we need to be stricter. I don't know. It's just so easy when I'm younger to be like, I'd be a liberal, loose parent. And then you get older and you're like, I don't want my kid to get into some fucked up shit. Be like a crazy alpha whatever, you know, that.

Yeah. That's his name, Andrew Tate. You know what I mean? Sure. Weird things that people get into. The entire universe is in the palm of their hand you're supposed to like be cool about it i don't i don't get it either but then you figure it out i just remember like i think about the age that i realized you could use the internet for porn and it's

probably like 12 13 it's like that's crazy yeah i had it was just there but i wouldn't want to i wouldn't want my dad to be like hey hey son, let's. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No. Um, I saw you at Carnegie Hall. It was amazing. Oh,

thanks. That was a lot of fun. Was that, do you feel like that room, I mean, it's not made for comedy, obviously. Did it feel good

or did it feel too big and expansive? It actually felt great. I was warned, I was talking to Ronnieonnie chang who had done it before and he was like just so you know like don't worry when you lose if you're gonna lose laughter because it's just it's not your fault it's the room so i was like i had that in my head but then it was totally fine like the crowd was just so fucking hot and good and like you i almost was expecting them to be sort of just uptight because it's the carnegie hall but they were so

cool it was one of the best shows that i've done with him i think it's that degree especially with comedy where it's like tickets are more expensive so you really want to see you really yeah or really want to see anthony justin so you love comedy i think that helped yeah yeah um but yeah it was it was just so fun it was just i just kept like being freaked out that i was like clit like in carnegie hall but yeah yeah everyone's people have been i mean mateo's been there that stuff like that's been said there before but it just felt like weird yeah and then tim dillon was right after you guys so it's like warming up the space yeah yeah exactly um and uh and i i was saying when you came in you went to somewhere

I've always wanted to go Japan yeah Japan but this is the downside don't brag too much what was shitty about Japan? I mean definitely the flight definitely the jet lag coming back

but about Japan itself you liked it? I don't know it was the best I've always wanted to go I studied Japanese in college. Really? My whole thing was I wanted to go teach there. Stand-up was just this accident that derailed my life,

but that was one of my first plans is I was going to go teach English in Japan. How good is your Japanese? It was really good, but because I never practiced it, I lost all of it. But being there sort of jogged some of it back. I did a little bit on stage. It was so fun to impress people on stage they just did not know at all

that i could speak at any of it so that was fun how did you drop it like at the beginning like yeah the beginning and i was like and then um that was the only that was the only thing i could say but i posted that clip and i was getting ds like, did you do a whole set in Japanese? Like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sure. Please book me back. Um, but I mean, it was just really, just really magical. I, I don't know if I could say a lot of bad things about it for your sake.

I just want the food. So I, Oh, just the food. Sushi is my favorite food. It's the only thing. It's, it's in my rider.

It's all that's in my rider. I'm a sushi all the way. Do you do omakase a lot? What is omakase? Oh, stop. Oh, you're not a real sushi. You're not really a sushi fan. Okay, but let me just say, I eat a lot of sushi.

I'm bad at knowing things. Okay, omakase is when you go and they give you like a 12 course, like one piece at a time. Oh, I did do that. I did that at Nobu for my last anniversary. So I do do that. I mean, I've done like a five, but the Nobu one was the 12th. Okay.

The full thing. Okay, okay. That's like the only real sushi you get here. Like if you just go to takeout, like I can't eat regular sushi anymore, not even since Japan, but just after doing my first omakase, you have sushi

in a takeout place you're like oh it's not real fish they're giving you like rubber yeah yeah not real sure sure i still like it though yeah yeah but yeah what are you getting what's your role um if i'm gonna do a role i like uh i like the spicy tuna spicy tuna yeah it's not real it's not real i like it. Spicy rubber. What was the comedy scene like in Japan? I guess there isn't really one. Like the club that we did is the only actual comedy club there, Tokyo Comedy Club.

It was really fun. Mostly expats in the crowd. But I don't really think, I mean, I guess I don't know what the Japanese language scene is like. There's probably other shows happening, but, um, that was the only club there.

Um, and yeah, it was, did you, were the, did you see any comedians there that started in Japan? I've just been in Japan. No,

no, I don't think so. There was someone there. Her name is JC Corey. I want to say who apparently was in New York for years, but i never ran into her but she moved back there and now she just does there um it's just so seeing other countries where stand-up started later like i there's some there's some instagram i count and it's in it's in china and it's stand up there and it's like comparable to stand up in the 40s or 50s here just in the level

of like truly borderline women are shopping a lot and the crowd's going nuts and I'm like I gotta learn Chinese right now yeah that's what I was told Japanese comedy is like as well it's more slapsticky, physical

it's less just just what we do. But apparently Osaka, which we went as well, is more the comedy capital of Japan. And there's a club there called Aero Air for laugh out loud. No.

Yes. No. So it's spelled how? R-O-R. I think it's them. So it's okay.? R-O-R And they're making They're saying it I think it's them So it's okay Yeah yeah yeah

Do you see where the joke is? Now I do Wow Okay Yeah I can't I won't even say that No

I'll say the R-O-R Yeah That's a That's a I wonder if it's like nice I didn't get it at first I thought it was like a translation Wow Okay You thought I thought I thought I don's like nice I didn't get it at first I thought it was like a translation Wow okay

You thought I thought I thought I don't know what I thought I didn't get that it was like They were making the joke Sure sure sure Yeah now I get it

That's a racist joke So much to tell them Yeah I think I guess they know I think they have a sense of humor About that maybe I don't know honestly Maybe it's run by white people

I don't know I didn't get to go there But no apparently That's the place for like japanese comics so next time i go i will try to try to check it out but um did you kill it was a good set um kill strong they were like so polite the crowd was like so polite it's that type of crowd where they're like laughing too loud might be like you know obscene that's totally why it didn't kill um but no no it was really fun they had a good time with me and matt koff doing sets and we both had a really good time yeah that's great yeah that was her trip um but yeah the sushi was

unbelievable just everywhere unbelievable the best meal we've ever had every day we're like this is the best meal no this is the best meal it's all like 20 like it's it's unbelievable i want to go have you been once once yeah i was there for like two weeks or so i'm japanese that's what i thought yeah um but like i'm fourth generation so i my connection to the culture is like very limited um but so it's funny being in japan as a japanese person who doesn't speak japanese is just like you're so frowned upon like a poser yeah i mean i wasn't even trying to blend in but i stuck out like a sore thumb because like i didn't dress like how they dress it's like a lot of flowy at least in summer it's like a lot of flowy linens or like cotton dresses and just

stuff that we were pretty covered um i'm out there as a dumb american from california wearing denim short shorts saying lololol and they're like what are you saying um but like the the denim shorts was just like everybody's staring at you at that point because it's like you're basically just naked like interesting because you went in the winter i didn't get to see that yeah people don't like wear short shorts it's like that's a very american thing to do so then i think people saw that or like people saw what i was wearing and they're like oh you're not from here which makes sense like uh-huh and obviously i don't speak the language so that was the other thing too but um one one thing that does suck about Japan is that they don't have trash cans anywhere. Oh, yeah, that's a bad thing.

You have to carry your trash with you, like, in a plastic bag, and then you take it with you until you get home or to your hotel or whatever, and then you can throw it away. You have just, like, a big, like, see-through bag or? Or whatever, you know, like, if you go to 7-Eleven, they give you a plastic bag. Where do you put it down? If you go to a restaurant, you just have to a plastic bag where do you put it down if you go to if you go to a restaurant you just have to put it under the table you got trash yeah you gotta

like carry it with you all day why is that just i don't cleanliness they're really clean it's really clean there yeah which is also the thing that doesn't make sense it's like you would think it would be dirty well actually that's like a thing like if you notice sometimes well in jersey the path train has no trash cans but the platform is clean all the time it's actually a thing when you don't have trash cans it becomes cleaner which is really that weird yeah that's weird that's interesting i definitely see a lot of people they miss the trash can and then they don't fix it yeah that's interesting because i get very frustrated when there's no trash cans anywhere. It was annoying. My pockets were full of trash constantly.

It's a coffee cup hanging out. Do they have the vending machines there with the quote-unquote used panties in the back thing? Oh, you know, I didn't see any of that. What? It's just there. That's like,

I watch a lot of anime. I'm cultured. There is a thing where like, oh, you go to a vending machine and you get, there's more like things that I think an American sensibility would be like, that's pretty perverted. But it's like, no, it's just a vending machine with used get, there's more like things that I think in American sensibility would be like,

that's pretty perverted. But it's like, no, it's just a vending machine with used panties. Are they real? I don't know. Or is it like a,

you know. I imagine there's some store and they go, and it's like they weren't worn. They weren't worked out and they just tapped

maybe for authenticity and someone goes by, I don't know. I'm sure it's there. There's a neighborhood for like everything. Like if you have a weird thing,

there's something there. A whole neighborhood for it. Like in Akihabara is the weird neighborhood with all like the real nerds for anime stuff. Like every shop is weird.

Akihabara? Oh, that's where I'm going. First thing. On the corner, they have the maid cafes, you know, so there's girls dressed as maids on the corner

like trying to get you in. But I didn't go. And, like, for sex work or just? I asked the crowd, actually, if it's, like, a sexual thing. And, like, on paper, it's not. But, like, they're definitely getting off on something. There's overtones. Yeah.

There's overtones of them in a maid outfit saying, come inside. Yeah. It's a little. Would you go to Japan? Yeah. Yeah? Yeah. We'll do a downside there. Okay. If you are a downside listener and you live in Japan? Yeah We'll do a downside there

If you are a downside listener and you live in Japan Please write us I don't know How many people would it take to write To say yes we'll do it Was it like a show where any people were like I love your work Oh actually specifically because Of my roast stuff

There's a big roast battle scene Literally the guy there was like, you're like a legend here. I was like, oh, can I move here? I hate roasting, but if that's what it takes. You hate roasting? Well, it's just kind of like a drag

having to write the jokes. You know what I mean? You're so good at it. Oh, thanks. That one famous battle. The one. You know how to go viral. That's for sure.

No, I don't. For better or for worse. You do. Not these big to go viral. That's for sure. No, I don't. For better or for worse. You do. Not these big pops have never been threatened for a joke. That's true. You had that joke. I know it's awful to say, but can you do the one about the motorcycle accident? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

She was battling a guy, I'd say in his 30s. Yeah. Comic. road comic. What'd you say? Dave's mom died in a bad motorcycle accident. She died the way Dave lives, an unrecognizable road feature. Wow. Man, that's really good. I really road feature. Wow. Man, that's really good.

I really like that. Incredible. I think it would be fun if you go to Japan and you're so good at roast battles and they're so new to it that even in a second language you can craft roast jokes.

I mean, that would be really hard. A good roast joke is so dependent on a mastery of language. Yeah, but I feel like I could just get it translated. Sometimes I think, like, what if I just translated my whole set into Japanese? I think it would be okay. I feel like I've talked to comics who, like, speak Spanish,

and I'm always like, I'm like, you gotta milk this. And they go, like, they go, it must be harder than that. Because I feel like I know so many comics who do speak another language but they're like not well enough to do that. I think it's just,

just the structure of where words go and what a twist is. I guess it would be. I just imagine just memorizing like here's where the intonation belongs here

even though I don't know what I'm saying. If I could just memorize the words and the intonation. Like in Japanese it would be like it would be like an unrecognized road feature

your mom became after the motorcycle accident yeah which lives like you like anything you're right I guess the surprise would be different

yeah oh interesting I think a lot of it I'm just gonna try I'm trying to get out of here but god you were some of those roads

you I wasn't doing stand-up at the time when they were in their real heyday I was doing it when I was putting in the work I'm still going to try. I'm trying to get out of here. But God, you were, some of those roasts, you, I wasn't doing standup at the time when they were in their real heyday. I was doing it when I was putting in the work and no one was seeing it. It was slowly unraveled. But I love roasts.

You like it? No, no, not doing them. Oh, just okay. But like, if I'm watching,

like, it still gives me the feeling that all standup did when I was 15 where I'd be like, whoa, God damn, that exciting it is exciting to watch for sure like i'd rather watch a roast battle than a regular stand-up show i would

say that there's been a couple roast jokes i wrote for other people that i was able to use in my act in a different way years later i remember like oh like four okay that's a tough thing it's hard you can't reuse those jokes. It's like all this work and then you can't use those jokes. But if you remember them during, if someone's heckling you, if you remember them in a moment

and can use it, you look like the biggest fucking genius. Right, right, right, right, right. Oh, I love that. There's a couple clips that I have where I just use an old bit that I kind of retired and the audience is like,

holy shit. Oh, that's so fun. To delete people. Three beats in a row. Yeah. To think you're quick. That's amazing. Yeah. Yeah, that's so fun. To delete people. Three beats in a row. Yeah. To think you're quick. That's amazing. Yeah.

Yeah, you don't understand. I don't. You just say other people's words. Can you make your announcement at the end of this yet? No. Jesus Christ. All right, let's go to our next segment, This Gotta Stop. This has gotta stop.

This has gotta stop. Do you have phones? You're okay? Yeah. Sorry, I was loud. You got a This Gotta Stop? Yeah. This Gotta Stop strollers on the subway they're getting bigger the last week i can't

get around these strollers and it's twice now that they've had a double baby stroller one baby in the stroller and so it's taking up all the space i feel like the the thing itself is getting bigger these strollers for parents they have so many compartments and things they're storing under there and it just takes up so much space on the subway and i know it's not convenient for parents to not be able to take it on the subway so but it's a better i i feel like i i part's getting bigger though like because the baby's the same size. But I think it's the combination of the thing itself, the apparatus, is getting bigger. And I also think that sometimes parents are so focused on their kid, they're not being very thoughtful of everyone trying to get on or off.

And it's hard. I'm a bigger guy. So I'm like, what are we going to do here? Someone's got to move. Someone's got to help. You know what I mean? And I can't push people when this thing is blocking. So I just feel like the last week I've been running into strollers so much.

Not running into physically, but it's been annoying me on more than two occasions. That's a lot. There could be like the overhead bag can only be this big. Yeah. I just feel like they're huge now.'m gonna be on the lookout for it i had this person in a big bag underneath the thing and it was a two-seater and also the kid wasn't even in it they're sitting on their lap so i'm like this just giant thing that's that's i know you're gonna use it you're going somewhere and then you're gonna put them in so you can strap them in they're not have to worry about them you know

what you should do it's just a giant thing you should do if it's big enough sit in it yeah hey you don't mind we gotta make these smaller yeah um my this has got to stop i feel like there's i saw something it was on twitter where it was like a picture of the titanic sinking and everyone in the water was filming it on their phones yes and i also saw another video it was like a new year's countdown in a different country and everyone was filming the ball drop with with their phones and there's this reaction of like society's so broken today everyone's filming on their phone no one wants to see this and i will tell you i to a concert recently, and I don't go to a lot of concerts, but it was the one I saw a postal service. And I found myself

at different moments, like filming and making a little movie that I will never see again. Maybe I put three seconds on my phone, but you know what? It was part of the experience that I had. I was a little director i didn't feel like i was not i wasn't feeling it i wasn't connected i was just engaging in the thing

that i happen to use a lot to engage in the world yeah and i i had fun he's far away so i'm sometimes looking at the screens i'm looking there sometimes i'm filming and i think there's just this general sense of like get out of your phone and learn how to enjoy it. You're not enjoying it. You're not feeling it. And I think you can still enjoy something and film it. And at some point, people will get tired of it and they'll stop filming it. And we don't need to look at it as a particular harbinger of doom and and disconnectedness yeah also that the video

where it was like everybody filming the fireworks or like at new year's that was totally ai oh it's ai yeah all of the lighting looked the same it was just like repeated like you know 100 times over um so that was fake we're we're getting real close to just being able to say that about literally anything i posted a picture of meryl streep and martin short and someone said you can tell it's ai meryl streep's hand looks fucked up and someone said she's just old and i'm like but i'm like we are we're already entering a phase of like just everything i did share i did share something where someone said a picture was AI and it was not. And that's on me.

Yeah. That's on me. Wow. So, Paige, do you have a discussion? I do. Tell us. Whenever, this is going to stop. Whenever I go on vacation with my boyfriend, people are like, oh, like, do you think he's going to ask you? Like, do you think he's going to ask you? Do you think he's going to propose?

I was like, no. Or people will be like, what's a special occasion? Just because I want to go travel? Yeah. This has got to stop. There doesn't have to be a special occasion to go travel with your significant other. You hear that, Tova? We're just going on a vacation like everyone else.

Yeah. That is annoying. like everyone else. Yeah. That is annoying. That is annoying. Yeah. And it's also just like, you know, a stereotype, I guess, too. Or I think that's why I'm bothered by it, because it is like, oh, I guess this is like the natural expectation or progression of life. Like, you have to do these certain things or do these certain milestones to feel like you've lived a full life but like what if i'm not saying that you know i don't want to get married but like

what if i didn't want to get married you know of course the the pressure and the assumption that marriage is the goal is so deep yeah and so constant and you brought it up last night didn't you russell i didn't bring it up first our friend brought it up first you know who does it the fucking married people and there's just a feeling where there's a degree of like hey when are you going to do the thing I did

I'm never the first to bring it up I didn't ask you when I asked you a different question but I didn't say when but like douglas q just got back from his honeymoon so he's like well now that i did it aren't you fuck are you doing it soon that's not how anything works i try not to because i i i try not to put any sort of pressure on people about that because it's weird you know like i it is it is a bizarre thing people just assume that everyone wants to do that yeah or

you know but especially from strangers too like one time i went on a like a snorkeling boat in hawaii with max and there was like a father and son who were also on the boat and we were talking just making small talk and like oh like so what do you like what are you guys here for like did you guys like you're on your honeymoon i'm like no like i can just be i can just exist and have a nice time with my boyfriend without there having to be a particular reason for it and if it's in a a romantic place then so be it but like that doesn't have to be the default thought that comes out of it i think part of the problem is people are just bad at conversation so they go to these very basic things yeah because you couldn't just be like so you guys just hanging out you know yeah yeah there's like three categories of things you can talk about it's one of them it's the same with with crowd

work too where it's like you're just like what do you do for work because it's like what else do what else you say to a person yeah uh what would you rather they say to you just like what do you do for work because it's like what else do what else do you say to a new person yeah uh what would you rather they say to you just like hey you guys israel palestine pick one that's a better conversation though it is that is more interesting certainly then to get out of it you're like uh will you marry me uh do you have this gotta stop i guess mine was more abstract that's fine that's great it can't be abstract um i it's gotta stop? I guess mine was more abstract That's fine, it can't be abstract It's gotta stop that children need 18 years of care

because, right, just as humans like it's not right, other animals they're born and they're good to go I would have one if it didn't require 18 years How about 5 years? 5! But we have human growth hormone like why can't we just give start giving children hormones

that will make them just just develop faster and that way more people will have them right sure i i just i 18 years is a long time in my mind though i was just imagining if five was it the thing about just walking around the streets of New York and how many just homeless five-year-olds you'd see just rolling around. That's why we need medical science to make it so that they could be fine. I don't want to endanger children. I want them to get pills to make them adult faster. Yeah.

Also, it feels like it's getting older. Because now kids live longer with their parents. And I'm sure back in the day when our lives were shorter, they probably were free at like 11 or 12 to go out in the world. You know what I mean? So now it's getting, because we're living longer, it's delaying them from leaving. Well, we'd have to change child labor laws

if we're going to separate them from their parents. We're already doing that. Child labor is a big problem again. That's a good sign. That's a good sign. That's a great sign. This is a very weird memory. I remember I went to a summer camp once. I must have been like 10, 11.

And there was a counselor and he was like, you know, people are going through puberty earlier than they used to. One day, babies are going to be born. They're already going to have pubes. Sir. And I remember at some point, to. One day, babies are going to be born, they're already going to have pubes. Sir! I just remember at some point sharing this information with my stepfather and him being like, what the fuck

are you talking about? I just remember an age where I would just, anything a slightly older person said, I'd take as God's will. Zach. I remember my stepdad going, what the fuck are you saying? And in my head I was i was like you square you don't even know

our final segment you better count your blessing you better count your blessing uh something something thankful we've said a lot of negative things You got a blessing, Russell? Yeah, mine's really simple today My blessing today is that the last two weeks I was here That escalator was out Today It was working

It's nothing worse than making that track All the way across the city from Inwood Down here And then having to climb those stairs So, thankful the escalator's working again um that's my blessing today amazing page do you got a blessing um mine's kind of dumb but i do like i do like the idea of like as a female presenting person um that you can kind of like change up your style and it can really be drastic. Not saying that like,

you know, men can't do this too, but I feel like there's a lot more room to work with as a female presenting person. What, what are you, what are you like? I'm thinking about my hair specifically,

like that can really just change up a whole look. It can be like, you know, one day I could be wearing something more masculine and like kind of go with a whole different vibe. But the next day I can wear a masculine and like kind of go with a whole different vibe but the next day i can wear a dress and like you know dress up and be this whole other person so yeah i i i wish i don't think i'd ever wear like a like a harry styles like dress skirt i'd feel i'd feel strange but i wish i could yeah could. You could. It's tough as a comedian.

Imagine walking into the cellar and just wearing a... I mean, I'm going to get... But the thing is, and I feel like I don't take advantage of this enough, is that we are stage performers. I agree. We have license to just do whatever up there. I never take advantage of that. I dress like shit.

I could be having fun with what I'm wearing up here. Sure. I think if you did it in your real life a few times first. Look, this is me doing it. Okay. This is me doing it. Yeah. You know, I've said it before.

I would like one, two, or three nails painted. Oh. I'd like, you see? What the fuck? What the fuck? Russell's face. I like, see? That's the thing that I want. I think about it a lot. It's not I like see that's the thing

that I want I think about it a lot it's not that it's not the act of doing that I think it's the sometimes other people

that you meet that have done it you know what I mean yeah yeah because it's sometimes performative yeah where it's like

yeah but I'm a performer but I mean like it comes from a place of like oh well Harry Styles did it. So like, I'll get the girls too if I do this thing.

Yeah, that's what I'm doing. To get the girls. No, no. I said, let me get some blue nails. But I think that's what Russell's talking about. Sure. Where it's like other people who have done this particular thing where it could give a bad impression of other people who try to follow suit.

I've always noticed it. Like, it feels like they're they're like really like it's they want you to notice it which is fine just like yeah in every conversation what do you have okay yeah and i'm trying i'm trying to think of a a blessing and i i wanted to do one specifically dina do you have a blessing while i i didn't know about this one just something i'm thankful for yeah yeah um i guess i don't know i still have japan on the brain i guess i'm just thankful that we have the technology just i could just be like i want to go to japan i could just be there in 12 hours it's crazy

was there was there like a did you get to talk to a lot of locals we did we had some interesting conversations oh well you know what's funny is matt obviously he's the biggest person in japan so uh wait matt coff he's he's tall he's really oh the biggest i thought you meant like he's oh not like no no no i just had no idea physically comedian um they're just fun interactions one time we were walking in like i guess the time square area and these two i guess salary men perhaps came up to us he came up to matt and just goes where are you from like he was gonna say narnia or something like and it was just like america and then i guess he was drunk his friend was like shooing him away um which is how we went we went to a tapas restaurant it was the only restaurant we went to that didn't have

an english menu most places did so these very nice men helped us like translate the menu so we could order from the waiter who didn't speak english he was like the nicest guy just so very polite but then out of nowhere he's like yeah i used to live in america it's too woke like we just didn't explain and we didn't expect this very polite man to have these very right-wing opinions he was like the men can use the women's bathroom. We're like, whoa! Imagine being so upset about it. I'm going to go to Japan.

I'm going to go to Japan. I will give a shout-out to this is a blessing. It's not just a shout-out. Patty Shore Caden was a sign language interpreter at my Zany Chicago show. This clip did very well. Patty Shore Caden was a sign language interpreter.

My Zany Chicago show, this clip, did very well. Viral. Yeah. Some people were annoyed about it. I responded. My thoughts of what I thought the video did. But Patty Shore Caden, fantastic. Just played along.

It was one of these I just like I walked there and suddenly there were two interpreters for the whole headlining set on stage and I didn't know anything in advance

and they just you know we had a couple moments together and it felt nice and they were very into it I watched it

it was nice thank you and then some people said you're never supposed to interact with an interpreter ever oh wow I said

because there's not to butcher the argument the argument is that they're saying the whole point of this is so that a deaf person can have the full experience, the normal experience that another audience member would be having. And if you're, this person is not your prop, they're not your comedic thing, to which I said, I literally talked to the audience. Why would I not talk to the person?

It would be inauthentic and not a real performance if I didn't interact with sharing a small stage that normally is just me. This is a scene partner now. And obviously, in this particular case, the interpreters were down to clown. I would never constantly... And also, when I said the word Nazi,

the sign language for Nazi is... And what, I'm not going to say anything? I'm not going to say anything. And she kept doing it. And I had this funny thought, because in Italy, there was, recently people have said there was some fascist gathering and all these people doing the Heil Hitler salute. And I said, what if they actually were all interpreters? They're all just learning. Someone said the word Nazi, and they went,

oh boy, this is going to make the news. And that's my thought. So thank you, Patty. Thank you, Zanies. And anything you want to plug? This is coming out. January 30th. Wow, look at you.

Thank you. I think. Anything you want to plug? Just to watch my special Dark Little Whispers on Amazon Prime. And it was Dark Little Whispers presented by Sam Rill? Is that the way that you... Oh, produced by. Produced by Sam Rill.

Was that the full title of it? They had a thing where they can't put that on the title for some reason. I like, though, that you put his name... I don't like it when it goes, Sebastian Maniscalco presents... Oh, I wanted that. You wanted that? I wanted the name as big as possible

just to try to help, but it wasn't allowed. I watched it. Paige watched it. Russell does no research for guests, but he would love it very much. Paige, anything you want to plug? Just go see the Downside Live in LA,

March 14th at the Hollywood Improv Pete Holmes will not be the guest We know that for sure But we're working on finding a guest I just know Pete Holmes said he's not available That's not available On to the next Okay

Gutenberg is closed You missed it if you didn't see it It's closed on Broadway And then I'll have another announcement soon as closed. You missed it if you didn't see it. It's closed on Broadway. And then I'll have another announcement soon. But follow me on Instagram at Russell J. Daniels. There's a big announcement coming soon. Not that big. It's fine.

Could you work? Okay. Alright. You said the 30th is coming out? Yes. Okay. My announcements. I'm in Seattle this weekend. It's sold out. Too late. San Jose, February 4th. Could be sold out. We'll see. I will be in Sacramento February

8th, 9th, and 10th at the Sacramento Punchline. Definitely not sold out. So get your tickets to that. Go to The Downside Live. If you're ever visiting New York or in New York, I have a show. It's called The Silver Lining. That's my new material show where I have guests.

Dina did it recently. Very fun. We got a clip coming soon. Dina said I could use her part in the beginning. Thank you, Dina. Oh. The dating thing. That's right.

Yeah. And, you know, hopefully if you didn't get along with your parents, you get along with them now. Yeah. But even if you don't now, hopefully. Hopefully they get along with them now But even if you don't now Hopefully they didn't hire a private investigator To follow you around This is The Downside 1, 2, 3

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