The Downside with Gianmarco Soresi - #187 Bottom of the Barrel Days with Laurie Kilmartin

Episode Date: February 13, 2024

Comedian and writer Laurie Kilmartin joins to share the downsides of dropping out of college and getting into standup comedy during the comedy boom of the 80s, witnessing the death of late night television after being a writer on Conan for 11 years, dealing with grief by writing jokes about your family, and preparing to be an empty-nester. Thank you to our gracious hosts at Spotify Studios, where this episode was recorded! You can watch full video of this episode HERE! Join the Patreon for ad-free episodes, exclusive content, and MORE. Follow Laurie on YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, & TikTok Watch Laurie's new special, Cis Woke Grief Slut, through Comedy Dynamics See Laurie in a city near you: https://lauriekilmartin.com/tour-dates 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. You're listening to The Downside with Gianmarco Cerezi. Welcome to The Downside. My name is Gianmarco Carezi. I am in the Spotify studios in Los Angeles. This is, this is, thank you Spotify for this.

Russell is not here because I'm in LA. And whenever I'm here, I try to, I try to get someone who I can't always get in New York. We'll introduce her later, but she's here. Hello. Hello. I told her I, but she's here. Hello. Hello. I told her I like this mystery intro thing. And I have stuff to complain about. I'm very annoyed. I'm very upset.

This is all public. I'm not going to say names, but you can track it down. There is basically, you know, with Israel and Palestine, there's certainly been a lot of liberals who all agreed on a lot of things all at once. Suddenly have something new that's quite contentious. Bottom line is there was a comedian, Jeffrey Asmus, who is one of my, I think, one of the most talented comics.

Do you know Jeffrey? I don't think I do. Oh, you love his jokes. Just a brilliant, brilliant, dark, smart joke writer. And basically, he called out a booker of a particular comedy club in New York of ill repute to a degree. Well, that could be any, actually. Sure. But certainly one of the ones leaning towards the bringer shows and ultimately the booker performing quite a lot. I never seen a booker slash comic work in theory, a club booker.

I'm sure you've seen many versions of the booker slash comic. It's tough. I mean, I understand taking the job, you know, and I because I want my spots. So I get it. But it's I think it's a lot of work that you probably aren't expecting. And it probably cuts into your ability to perform to your best. I've always said if you if you want to make a lot of become a booker, if you want to make a lot of friends quick and enemies over time. Forever.

You can't i don't i don't know it's it can't be a fun life to be a booker because i think a lot of bookers want to be uh friends with comics yeah and that's one thing i think them to be basically everyone's treating you differently because they want to be booked right and at your club yeah and uh it's really hard to maintain if you've ever booked a weekly show or a monthly show, you really kind of start to conceive of how many people are asking you on a daily basis. That's one thing I like about Patrick from The Stand is he just moved to another state. So he doesn't he just doesn't via email and has no contact. I'm glad you like that about Patrick.

It's also impossible for me to get up in front of Patrick to get past at the stand. But you see, that's the point. Right, right, right. It's like, every booker has some comics who would credit them with so much and another series of comics that would just go,

they never... I know. So. None of us hate the same bookers. Yes. And none of us love the same bookers. Yes. Right.

And, but this, this is beyond that. That's one thing. And none of us love the same bookers. Yes. Right. But this is beyond that. That's one thing. And if you're an adult, you can conceive of me not working at the stand. I don't – this is a different – so. It's their loss. You would crush. They would love you. I can't believe it hasn't happened yet.

But this was worse where – so basically this booker was was really going hard in the paint with uh what i would call i'm gonna try to be a non-biased about this part propaganda and ultimately some that was quite islamophobic just really just brutal right in in terms of what was said and and listen, a lot of people, they were passionate, they posted a lot of things. And Jeffrey Asmus basically kind of called them out on social media to a degree

and said, I will no longer be working in this club. And it came out via a podcast that they all did together that this booker had written The Cellar, had written Gnome written The Cellar, had written Gnome at The Cellar. And this is all public, so I'm not, this is in a podcast. Yeah.

Basically saying, like, I was disappointed to see Jeffrey still booked at this club. Oh. Given blah, blah, blah. And I believe the words were harassing, even though it's like a post on an instagram and and being pro-palestinian and to me it offends me on so many levels right right right one none of us are making enough money at these clubs that that to mistreat us you know know, I'm just sensitive.

Yeah, right, right. It's a very precarious position. It's so hard to work these clubs. It's so hard to maintain a career. And when people are working secretly behind the scenes and doing something like this, and listen,

if it's for a reason of this comedian blocked the door and jerked off in front of me, sure. I was just going to say, I can see complaining about a rapist or a pedophile or a sex offender. Which rarely is the case.

It's never the case. It's like contacting you. Can I get that guy's number? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like that kind of behavior, definitely. But when it's material or this kind of stuff, that's real sneaky. Well, the thing we're supposed to do.

The thing we're supposed to do, the thing we're supposed to do. And I think this is part of we're the way that we talk about political disagreements or being comics are supposed to do this. Yeah. And that's what tough crowd was, by the way, it was everyone smashing in with their opinions that uh often were either ill-informed or just loud or something and some kind of and colin moderating you know

did you ever feel because you wrote for tough crowd did you do a lot of episodes as well i did a few but not a ton was there when you look back on it now see i i i by the way i'm here with laurie kilmartin a phenomenal stand-up comedian a writer most recently wrote for conan for many years but also uh i i like your work so much because it is it is it is the balance and i think the struggle of being generally progressive, but edgy and the struggle of I'm sure you struggle with not trying to pander and not try to like just, hey, we all agree. Like, but still to be offensive, but not hurtful. I don't even know what words to use. I don't know. I want to be annoying and still get a laugh.

Yeah. know what words to use i don't know i'm i want to be annoying and still get a laugh yeah um do you ever you ever have any jokes that like we're getting applause and you're like oh and now everyone just we all agree yeah we all agree with the thing yeah no they don't applaud my jokes that's not true you said uh what was it about trans women and the special that I just saw? Oh, yeah, yeah. That joke. It's like it's out of my head now, but I love trans women and their fresh troops in the war against the patriarchy. They know a lot of things we cis women don't know because they lived in both worlds. Like they know how much we're supposed to get paid. Yeah.

That's valuable information. Tag, tag, tag, tag, tag. I think what I love about your work that I try to do, I think, is you have the progressive view for the wrong reason. You know what I mean? Yeah, right. No, it's very selfish. It's always because it benefits me. Yes.

Same with parenting. Like if I do the right thing, it's accidentally, but I often do the wrong thing because I, yes. Sure. I feel like most of my jokes make me look like a narcissist and they should. Yeah. Of course. I love, I just love narcissists.

I mean, I was a Seinfeld to Larry Day. Yeah. So, so this, this, this book I wrote, just saying, disappointed to see this person on your lineup. So this book I wrote just saying, disappointed to see this person on your lineup. And also, as a Jew, there's this degree of like, and this was happening with UTA firing people and all these people firing people expressing pro-Palestinian views,

where I'm like, guys, do we remember the stereotype of Jews running Hollywood? If you are actively making that true and using your power unethically and secretively and Jew to Jew, you are contributing to the overall picture of this thing. I had a meeting with a rep, and I'm ultimately not with that rep. And someone came up to me after an older person's like, and was like, so Israel, how do you talk about that on stage? And I,

and I felt like, I know what you're saying right now. Yeah. You are, you're looking for, you're, you're talking to me about something very not part of this meeting. And this is bad.

Yeah. Jew to Jew. This is bad. Right, right, right. so i hated this on so many levels i i i called out this person i didn't like the way they practiced this club to begin with because they took over from another booker um and ultimately kind of implanted

themselves as the the host at a time when i was like hosting once in a while so there's no no this is my selfish reasons it was just less money and it was a weird thing of like you're taking over this club to give yourself host spots you're one of the hubs of the city yeah you are breaking down the system of a of a healthy environment for comics to build and grow but i survived it's fine yeah and then healthy system is always debatable when it comes to stand-up comedy. Sure. And how we grow. But yes, I see what you're saying.

Sure. None of the systems are good, but I think there's certain scenes that like there's poison and there's clubs that are working a little bit better and a little bit worse. Yeah. I was someone who worked at LOL for three years, four years, five years. I, you know, we made a whole episode about it and we like censored everything and then it closed so now it's like oh we can just talk publicly talk shit about this but um the last thing i'll say is that this this this person as a booker when you're a booker

of a club in new york you get to go to a lot of the cool events and i them. This is very bitchy of me. They came up to me at JFL at one of the cool galas with all the cool people and said, you know, being here makes me realize I'm not good enough to do this professionally.

As a hobby, that's great. But, you know, I think I'm uh i'm gonna book and run a comedy club huh and i and i could feel that politeness in me wanting to go no and i i held strong is that what they were asked waiting for so a week later this this video pops up on on my instagram and it's a clip they're doing on stage where they go like so i talked to a comic recently and said like i should quit stand-up comedy i'm not good enough and they didn't say anything and i'm and i'm and i'm watching and i'm going oh my god oh my god and then they keep going

with more details and i'm like oh this isn't about me it's about someone else you have been doing this to multiple comedians all of them have been silent oh my god and so that is so strange yeah you ever have a club stop working with you yes yeah i mean what reason specifically no one ever tells you yeah that's that's the thing they don't tell you that's why when it's public i'm like call it out because yeah you rarely get to see this thing and this is like a text was read and acknowledged by the person who sent it so it's like then you can't you can't be a booker then right how was it resolved was it uh they did a show together i mean it's it's i don't think it was resolved in the sense of jeffrey hasmus doesn't need to work this yeah club right right i don't think he did really yeah so it's fine and and uh gnome uh just very

publicly like doesn't doesn't let himself be influenced by public opinion or by like that yeah for whichever which way you know he's he's engaged publicly as as an owner of a comedy club and that's kind of his take yeah and i think I think that's good. I admire that to a degree. Yeah. Oh. Soloria. Yeah. So good to see you.

You have a special out. I do. By the way, for people joining, this is The Downside. If you're a fan, join the Patreon. Patreon.com slash downside. Bonus episodes. Live episodes. My clean comedy special, The Rats Are In Me.

And this is a place where we complain. This is a place where we don't have to be positive or thankful. We can just bitch and moan and talk shit. And as I'm doing right now, as I think when you're, when I'm in LA,

I suddenly, you see New York with clarity and you're like, yeah, fuck that. And then you go back and I'm like, oh, fuck. Of course. Oh no, now I want it. Now I want a spot at West Side Comedy Club. Yeah. with clarity and you're like yeah fuck that and then you go back and i'm like oh fuck of course oh no now i want it now i want a spot at west side comedy club yeah oh uh so

you started in san francisco i did yeah in 87 in 87 yes please don't tell me that's when you were born i get it i'm old and I've been around a long time. What the fuck? That's funny. It's not. It's actually very hurtful. Hmm. You, what was it like?

Well, how was stand-up different in 87, in that era? Like breaking in, were there less comedians? Way less comedians. in were there less comedians way less comedians yeah way less comedians yeah i mean it felt like a lot at the time like at the holy city zoo which is like the the kind of iconic san francisco club that everyone kind of went to when you started um you would have like maybe 25 people on open mic night. Okay. And that's not a lot anymore. No.

You know? And that was everybody. You just had to show up before I think 8 o'clock. And then she would put you on a list and you hoped you were early rather than late. But that was it. And so you studied drama for six months at UCLA. Yeah. And did you, did you just hate acting?

No, I wasn't even, I mean, it was just, I was barely doing the prerequisites. I was, uh, I had other stuff going on.

That's, you know, possibly a dramatic special, a one person show. What? Don't want to get into it. Okay. But dropped out and was going to go back.

I was like, I just need to get my shit together. I had an disorder right so i'm like let me just fix that my mom did too oh okay so i thought it would be a quick fix but i'm still working on it um but uh at the time i was like i'll go back next year and then i didn't and i started uh you know trying other things and i i stumbled into stand-up comedy at some point. And then I was like, oh, this is it. But did it seem like stand-up comedy, even though it is difficult in the sense that it's oversaturated,

the path is more clear. You go, oh, this is how you can make money. You can do some social media. You can do this. Like back then, did it seem like this is a viable career path no to me at that at that time i'm like if i could just figure out how to kill then i would have everything because i was so uncomfortable speaking public speaking um and the idea that you would write your own joke and then it would work and like the whole process was so much to me you know yeah and the idea i thought if i could just kill figure out how to kill then i could that that would be enough and then i'll figure out what i want to do

um was killing back then softer than what killing is now no let me tell you something when i was starting dana carvey was working comedy clubs yeah that guy murdered so hard on Brian Regan levels. Yeah. Like early Brian Regan, you know? Donut Lady Brian Regan. Sure, sure. Because he did all of the characters they ended up doing on SNL,

a lot of them, he just did them without obviously any makeup. He would just switch his, you know, move his face around and move his posture around. And back then you could play different races

and get a real big pop. Uncle Carlos was, I don't think he has an Uncle Carlos. He's from San Carlos, maybe. You know what, I have no idea. Maybe you could ask him one day, but it was Scarface, basically. It was him doing Al Pacino pretending to be Cuban.

So it was like two levels of cultural appropriation. To be fair, Al Pacino was also pretending to be Cuban for Scarface. Exactly, so yeah so uh so he had that he had that guy and then his brother Scott who was uh you know looking back an autistic psychopath in his act and uh the church lady somehow they all came over for dinner like he would have them individually in his act he would do a little bit and then this is how he closed and he would bring all the characters over for like thanksgiving dinner and they were

started interacting with each other and people could hardly breathe they were laughing so hard so that to me i was like how is this how is this one person he's so so tiny, Dana Carvey, right? He's like 5'7", weighs 100 pounds. And at that time he was so young. Like he looked like a child. And I'm like, how can this guy create this? And I kept seeing him. I would follow him all over the Bay Area, two different clubs, food bars, the punchline Rooster Teeth Feathers.

And it was the same all the time. Yeah. The way he destroyed and i was i it was it's still it's i rarely see it was it i because i've my not theory but but when sketch and improv came along i feel like it created a home for charactery stuff and in a way like stand-up lost like i feel like if jim carrey had been alive in my era he would have just become a ucb sketch comedian he never would have done stand-up comedy clubs and i feel like there's been this separation i think that's true i have some character my co-host uh russell daniels is

a really i mean just a brilliant uh sketch performer yeah and i don't know if he'd do stand up but i think he'd be so good and And it's just, you don't have that anymore. Yeah. There are very few people who really do a full-on character anymore. What you're describing. Yeah. Three characters coming back. If they did that,

unless it was amazing, we would judge it immediately. I think so too. Yeah. Like I used to do, I used to do my ex-boyfriend who was Russian. So I had a Russian accent.

Yes. Ready to go at all times. And I would do my ex-boyfriend who was Russian. So I had a Russian accent. Yes. Ready to go at all times. And I would do my mom, you know, and then when I moved to New York, a comic, a female comic said Letterman hates it when women comics do their mom. So I was like, all right, dropping, dropping it. And then I started doing my boyfriend quite a bit on stage. And then I don't know, I guess now it doesn't feel necessary for a white comic to do any accent, even a white accent.

You know what I mean? Sure. I'm so bad at it. I'm so bad at impressions that sometimes I'm like, thank God, because then I'd have to navigate what to do here.

You would be so tempted. I saw, I'm not going to name a name, I saw a comic recently and they they were someone on tiktok they saw basically a disabled person on tiktok talk about making fun of their disabled sister and within their dis and it's a very funny it's a very funny concept and but basically they did they did a disabled person on top of a disabled person. And it was offensive because it was so accurate. And it was just a thing of I can't – I'm not able to do that, so I don't have to challenge myself with the question of when is it good enough to get away with the thing.

Well, I have noticed like first-generation comics, like in the 90s, you did your mother's accent right like that was a very common thing for comics who who came here for wherever joe coy at the osc at the golden gloves he slipped it in in that first two minutes i was like you son of a bitch he said he did the moment he said i remember as a kid my mom i was like ah here Yes. Well, we could talk about him in a sec, but like, I think now that's almost, when I read people like critiquing comedy and it's comics maybe within those circles, they think it's almost making, you know, like we, you don't do that anymore as much. Do your mother's accent or do your like kind of make, you know, sort of make, making fun of it.

Again, that's not my world, but that's what i've observed and it just seems comedy just moves so quickly you know different places i feel like well you see maria bamford do it it's so astounding of a transformation yeah i just think again i do have sometimes i i worry that i have a lot i write a lot of scenes in my stand-up there's a lot of like yeah just line to line to line yeah yeah yeah and i'm not a good impression i mean i wish i was and so it's more about the intention yeah right that's my limitations that i operate within it maria so like she she changed she changes character so completely but it's so it's so little movement you know like she doesn't like

go crazy with the face or anything like that. It's just like a few just turns in her body, but they're so precise. Yeah. Um, that to me, it doesn't feel big, but sometimes when people like make a big deal about the, you know, they stand differently or, you know, it's like, all right, you took acting classes or something, you know? Um, it, and it seems a little more cartoony than what comedy seems to be going towards now, which is less of that, a great deal less of that.

Sure, sure. So, you know, it's my mom who seems to like stand-up. She's gotten into it since I really got into it. It's been nice. She goes and sees stand-up on her really or is she like she's uh gotten into it since i really got into it it's been nice yeah she goes and sees stand-up on her own oh nice but something she's your mom uh she's i believe she's older than me that's all i wanted to know god if i get that wrong i'm so fucked she listens to this fucking podcast god damn it she looks great fantastic um i believe you uh we got got some oyster company. I kept wearing their shirt.

I got it at like a vintage store. Yeah. And they sent 50 oysters to my mom's house today. It's one of those things that's cool, but now we have 50 oysters. Do you have even 25 friends to invite over? Basically, I'm going to go back to the place. In 10 minutes, me and my two openers tonight for Irvine are going to just eat these oysters. Probably throw up on the way.

She, my mom, hates normally. Yeah. She goes, I hate when comedians talk about their kids. Yeah. And I don't think she's, you know what? I think she saw you actually a long time ago, but she wouldn't remember the exact, but I remember there's a feeling of like, oh, you'd like what you're talking about with your kids.

Because to her, she goes like, I don't want to hear about putting on diapers. I feel like she's seen a lot of bad parent kid comedy. Well, I feel like when it's actually about the kid, that's when people check out. But when it's about you being terrible that's what that's when people check out but when it's about you being terrible at it you know even indirectly i think that's a little more interesting you know so many comics have the so my three-year-old the other day he said bitch where's

my cheerio like there's so my three-year-old said cunt and that's the joke yeah is that they said and sometimes they said something too complex and you're like they did not i know they did not say that it's like that tweet where the woman said her daughter with the con forever yes uh-huh like mommy no more kids in cages i think that was adina manziel who said that oh my god three-year-old say mommy no more kids in cages they would say mommy more kids in cages if they said anything like that. They'd say, Mommy, I want to try the cage. That sounds fun. When you had a kid, what year was that? 2006.

2006. Did you, in your head, talking about your... I talk a lot of shit about my parents, and I'm lucky in the sense that they don't care. Maybe I'm unlucky that they don't care because they're, they're not involved. I don't know. Yeah. But I, I talk about my family free range. What was it like when your son was of an age where he could go, Hey, you talked about me

masturbating. That's, That's embarrassing. Well, sometimes I mean, I try to word it so like I have a bit about my son being circumcised. I have a bit about thinking about circumcision and contemplating it, right? But I never say in the bit if I did circumcise my son or not. And so I kind of, I try to leave it a little vague like that. So I love people walking around. Is her son circumcised or not? What a mystery. That's, you'll have to listen to his podcast in 10 years. Can I tell you, some people, parents, they call my podcast and they're like, they want to cut something out that's like sexual. And they go, I don't want my son listening to that someday.

And I want to grab them and say, your son is never going to fucking listen to you on a podcast. Are you out of your mind? Are you out of your mind? Your son's going to be sitting around like, let me go listen to my dad do a podcast from 20 years ago. See what his thoughts were. Never. Especially because if you are a comic, your child has so much video of you they can access. They're never going to get through it.

Like if I had one, you know, my dad had appeared on a podcast. It would have been one in 2012. And I would listen to it over and over again because that would be the only time he'd ever done it. But we are putting out so much shit. Yeah. Our kids are really just going to try to get away from us and get our voices out of their heads instead of dive into them after we're dead. Yeah. to try to get away from us and get our voices out of their heads instead of dive into them after we're dead yeah i like i once in a while i'll google once i googled like my mom and dad because they got divorced when i was a baby yeah so it's just like it's something an article about them their marriage i was like oh interesting but that was it yeah right right photo album once right

right there was video maybe i'd watch it for a second. But a podcast? Get out of here. Oh, my God. No. So did your son ever say, did your son ever have a problem with any joke? Did he ever go? No. I told him, you know, I start with the truth and then I make stuff up, you know? And he seems to, like, be okay with that. Like, he goes on the road with me and he I make stuff up, you know, and he seems to like be OK with that.

Like he goes on the road with me and he'll watch stuff. I saw him at JFL. Oh, that's right. Yeah. But I did have a joke that would have him in the joke masturbating. Right. And so I said to him, I go, hey, there's a joke. I, you know, it's working pretty.

I mean, it's a dick joke. Right. So it's going to work. Yeah. I mean, it's hard to give up a nice, solid laugh. But I said, I'm doing a joke about you. I don't think you'd like it. I just can't imagine my mom ever having to have that conversation with me.

Well, he's 17, too. So this is not anything you ever want to discuss with me. And he goes, well, what's the joke? And I go, because I have told, like, for him, he's like, wait, I've heard so much shit. If you don't want, if you don't think I'd like it, how bad is this? And I go, watch it tonight because we were at the Sacramento Punchline. And he goes, I think if you can't tell me now, maybe you shouldn't do the joke. Wow.

That's mature. Yeah. I was like, that's correct. So I'm going to wait until he moves out. Because you can't give up a good dick joke, Gianmarco. My first, this is weird, but my first girlfriend, or my first girlfriend who we ended up having sex for the first time, I remember in the beginning I was like, so do you want to? And she said, if you can't say it, I don't think you're ready for it. True.

And I'm like, that was very wise and true. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I was like, to where the fuck? Yeah, I just, I hear some people who go, my sister doesn't want me to talk about them. Or, you know, if you had a son who said, I don't like being talked about, it would be devastating. That would be tough. But I can see a child saying that if you have violated their boundaries and, like I said, you know, kind of like that. I read a tweet somebody said about how they're starting to talk to kids of mommy bloggers.

I saw the same tweet. Oh, yeah. I'm sure our feeds are... Very similar. I'm sure we might have more videos of people dying suddenly. You liked that tweet today. Every time I go on Twitter right now, there's a video of someone dying. Oh, my God. I know.

And I always watch it. Did you watch the head video? I didn't. So this is coming out a little later. I'm sure the news will have completely moved on because this is now just standard. Some guy whose dad worked for, he was a government. Yeah, federal employee. Federal employee cut off his dad's head and made a long YouTube video where he presented the head in a bag.

God dang. And then talked about how biden is destroying the world and and now we go through the cycle of everyone will say it's a the right will say it's a psyop and all these things yeah and again i saw it i saw the tweet saying this had happened and youtube had left it up and i go to the replies and i'm like i know what i'm doing i know what i'm doing right and I know it's bad. And I know it will do something deep in my brain. Right.

And I saw it for a second, you know, and I closed it. And I was like, God. Was the father alive when he started? No. All I saw, I believe it was just a, you know, typical vlog. But at some point he just brings it. It was in a bag. And it was just it was just a you know typical vlog but at some point he just brings it was in a bag and it was it was obscured but like wow you know in the movie seven where they don't show you what's in the box yeah when when brad pitt goes what's in the box i didn't see that movie but i trust you

you know that moment though oh his girlfriend gets like his girlfriend gets beheaded and that's this big moment and this he has a box and he's like what's gets beheaded and that's this big moment and this he has a box and he's like what's in the box and that's more artistic when you don't see what's in the box you don't want to see what's in it yeah oh the internet's destroying us i think i had the we had the option to see the daniel perlman beheading at some time and i was like i think i never want to see an actual beheading i think i saw that one and you saw like part of it and then it cut to them holding the head bad yeah oh man this is what they like facebook back when they used to try to moderate this stuff

facebook they would talk about these people whose job it was basically to filter the videos oh it sounded ptsd yeah and it would be people like this one article is you know some general who probably killed 10 people in his own time but like eventually started having breakdowns after work like he couldn't handle but that's what it is. And once AI starts making realistic things. Well, wouldn't that be a great use of AI is being able to track that instead of having humans do it? Sure. But then what happens, I think I come out on the other end where I had so many early TikToks get taken down. And I was like, well, it's my dad's head.

I can do what I want. But because they said you're bullying and it was a joke at my own expense and being a comedian trying to like build something on social media you you also see the other end of uh blanket censorship and then you got kids going unalive myself and sags. And you're like, what are we doing? What are we doing? I know. It's so stupid. It's so infantilizing. But at the same time, then you look at Elon Musk and you go, the F word has gone up in usage 10,000%.

And you go, well, that's not good either. Right, right, right. And I don't know what the solution is there. Yeah, me neither. I think no heads, though. Yeah, I think that's a baseline. But then, what's her name? Kathy Griffin is going to go, well, this is art.

And that's where it goes. She did not post that. Did you know somebody else posted it? She just was screwing around with the photographer and held it up, and they made just a funny picture. Was there a prop lying about? Possibly. I mean, you don't have one in your house? Oh, you're right.

You're right. You're right. Mine is of Hillary. Oh, that's right. But yeah, so she wasn't trying to post that. Somebody else did. Oh, man. Oh, that's right. But yeah, so she wasn't trying to post that. Somebody else did. Oh, man. This episode is brought to you by Dyson OnTrack.

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With opening moves, you simply choose a question to be automatically sent to your matches. Then sit back and let your matches start the chat. Download Bumble and try it for yourself. So... But, yeah, my son doesn't make too many complaints, you know. And I try to talk around him and deflect it back to me. That's what's interesting to me anyway. I'm like, I'm the star of this show, not him.

My life was ruined by his birth, not his. So let's make it about me. That's how I go. Were you never married? No. You know what's funny though? Because I was just Googling your ex and there was a Valentine's Day flyer

and it said real life husband and wife. And it listed you two in the flyer promo for this Valentine's Day show. What club? I don't know. I mean, it was some. But I swear to God. And I checked it. And I was like, are they saying to other people?

And it was you two. And it was billing it as husband and wife so all the husbands and wives would be like let's go she was right he was right but it was very funny to see that as a promo because it was while I was researching and I think I listened to your like WTF

and you were like oh no we were not married yeah no we weren't when you split up did you join custody? I talk about, for people joining, I'm a big divorce. Yeah. Aficionado? Aficionado, yeah.

Multiple divorces in my family. And I love talking about custody. We, it was messy. Sure. You know, thankfully we weren't married. It was messy. Sure. You know, thankfully we weren't married, but we ended up going to mediation. And just stuff came up in mediation where the mediator was like, what?

And kind of heavily encouraged him that that i would have custody monday through friday and he would like have every other weekend and said you probably given what you've just told us you're probably not gonna get what you want which is full custody you wanted full custody yes yes with with uh somebody he was had just met uh-huh and um so i'm like who's like i was introduced to this person the concept of this person in the meeting i'm like the concept yes of this person i'm like so who's this woman that wants to raise my son that you just met and I've never heard of? And the mediator's like, what is this conversation? Yeah.

And so the fact that that was so sloppily done was pretty much her saying, what you're asking for would never happen. So mediator, this is not a legal, is it a lawyer trained? This is just to try to come to agreement without going to court. Right, right. And you're both splitting the bill for the mediator. I think the mediator was free. I think it was like a city service.

Yeah. Oh. It was very cheap. I did have a lawyer, but he did very little. And we went in with her. And then I guess he wrote something afterwards or some something like that that codified it that's fascinating my my dad at least with my little sister like i i my whole life has been like i learned his version of things and then later

gradually learned other versions right and then all you know i questioned the other versions too i think it's all skewed i I know. I tell my son, I mean, that's what I, you know, I try not to comment on things and it's like, he's going to come up,

he's going to see both sides and then his own side. But when you were dating this guy. I was headlining the River Center Comedy Club and he was my feature. Oh my God. Toddry saw the whole thing went because he was working another club yeah it was thanksgiving weekend you fucked your opener

my feature it was he was not the mc that needs to be stated clearly wait that's that's the code that's the degree yes okay i don't i don't fuck someone who does raffle announcements at the end of the show all right please um so you did every other weekend something like that yeah because you know i thought the other day so my my to get really nitty-gritty it was a two-week cycle if we're starting on a monday it would be at my mom's monday tuesday wednesday dad's thursday friday mom's saturday sunday monday tuesday wednesday thursday dad's friday saturday sunday and i look back and i go my mom never had a friday saturday sunday together and i go that prevents trips it prevents It prevents the full experience of a weekend.

And I feel like my mom, she got more real estate. But while I was at school, my dad got the more fun days. And it also fucked up my weekend because I would go from my dad's on friday to my mom's on saturday every other weekend so my my fun time was broken up with this split yeah and i think that also made me like oh if i do a sleepover friday night then i lose that time with so they weren't flexible with uh no switching it out i think i could have liked to i i it's hard to you didn't know what you could demand. Yeah, I didn't know what I could demand. And I also think like looking back, my dad was just I was antisocial and my dad is hyper antisocial.

And so I look back and I go, wow, I shouldn't have spent so many Fridays watching Seinfeld with my dad. I should have been doing sleepovers. And I don't think he guilted me or made me feel bad. But it was like it was my dad. I felt like I didn't see him that much. Yeah, we were very close. should have been doing sleepovers and i don't think he guilted me or made me feel bad but it was like it was my dad i felt like i didn't see him that much yeah we were very close we were hyper hyper dependent until my little sister came along and like i think they became hyper dependent and i was the i i then saw like why this was a problem right but. But, but I look back at a custody agreement. I'm like that weekend split was not smart. No,

not at all. And so were your, like, I, I always wonder like how my son sees everything, you know? And I'll, I guess I'll find out,

you know, cause he's still in the middle of it. Yeah. Um, how old was he when you split? Three. So he doesn't, yeah. Was he like at the mediation?

No, no, no, no. It was just the two of us, yeah. Sure. But, yeah, I mean, I hope, you know, I hope we're doing, I hope he's okay. I feel like he's okay, you know? But you just don't know what people with with married parents are fucked up i mean like everyone ever could be fucked up yeah

yeah yeah yeah i don't know man it's it just both my my dad spoke ill of my mom and vice versa but my dad my mom did her best i look back i look back now at this age and i do see my mom is like doing her best but she married a guy who was like super strict and he was he he my stepfather right he was difficult and she i don't know. My mom and I are much closer, so much closer now. Yeah. I never wanted a stepfather to butt in, you know? Did you have any guys? I had a couple of relationships. And, you know, at the end of the, you know, they were always like the third thing, you know, number one was my kid. Number two was comedy. And well, I guess they were the four things. Three is my job at Conan, right?

Sure. early at. So I really had nothing to give anyway. But I didn't want, I just didn't want anyone else's, I didn't want anyone else in there. And in fact, somebody I couldn't verify, like somebody who could be, who could end up being, you know, go wild. And then I'd have to kick them out. And I didn't want that drama at all in my life, especially for my kid. See, what's funny is it's because with my dad my dad was the dater and he he was the trauma right right you know there were so many this is again learning as i got older it was like oh that woman left because he cheated not because she had a traumatic childhood he never said bitch but he would go oh she had a lot of trauma when she was younger and she's not crazy, but intimating.

They had kind of gone off the deep end. Right. I listened as much as I could, son. Yeah. Yeah. And that's for me. That's what I look at as the most, I think, traumatic or like bad thing of my childhood was like women i was close with and then vanished from my life yeah and not having any kind of relationship and i don't think you know i know some of them now i know my my half sisters she was my former stepmom and like we don't have a relationship she's sweet

she's kind but it feels awkward to me yeah right right weird feeling yeah and right. It's a weird feeling. Yeah. And that sucks. And now they'll see a comedy show. There's a rare thing being a comedian is I create an avenue where they can go see me. Right, right, right. And I can go, thank you. But they're an audience member. Yeah.

You know, so it's, that was the tough part. Yeah, I bet. I, yeah, I had a very different upbringing than my son has, you know. They stayed together to the end? My parents, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. So, yeah, even the comedy thing isn't the weird part to me. It's the one parent or the other parent hardly ever together, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so he, you know, I guess guess he you would know this more than i he has two selves he's he's two children he's the child to the mother and the child to the father and um my mom the most toxic thing my mom said was something like whenever she picked me up on my dad she'd be like you're she intimated like i i had was a different person at my dad's or I had like started dressing like my dad

in a way where she was like calling out what probably was true. You know, I come from my dad's and I'm wearing a wife beater, as we would call it, and like shorts. And I'm sure for her, she was like,

oh my God, I'm picking up this creature that's changed. But for me, it was like, it's me, I'm me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And for her, it was like, it's me. I'm me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And for her, it was like.

You're just, you're trying out selves, you know? You're trying out attitudes and ways to be and stuff. Did you ever try, like, family nights? Like, oh, we'll all have dinner together. We have done that. You know, they come and go. Yeah. There's a lack of consistency that's really frustrating to me.

They tried. I mean, truly, when I was a kid, they tried once a month or something. They'd bring a present. I think my dad was really big. Like, Pavlovian will bring a present. He'll associate this with good things. Yeah. And it was like number three.

They got in a fight and they left before the appetizers arrived. And I remember the appetizers coming out as my dad left or something like that. Right. That's the thing. Like, ideally, you would be able to provide like to say, this is what it would be like if we got along. And you could have had this life, you know, had we gotten along. You don't. And I hope you can create it anyway. You know, like I hope my I hope my kid can have a really happy family life and not have something that's split between two households. This is the horror I think of.

I know so much this is why like having a kid would be so because i know well enough that even if i went into a divorce or a split custody with the best intentions i've seen so intimately how the kid makes it impossible and makes the problems intractable and ultimately these two people unable to like countries that will never get along. And there seems to be no solution. And I see now with my friends, some of them are starting to get divorced finally. Right. And when they talk about it, I'm like, I'm seeing this. And you're talking about your ex like they're evil. Yeah.

And I get it. And I also know how they probably think you're evil. And there's no, the kid is only going to suffer. I know. It's tough. It is hard. And also that person might be evil just to you because of who you are and be perfectly pleasant to everybody else. So let's talk something about even more traumatic writing for late night

television. What's late night? Is it, does it still exist? No, not once you left Conan, it was over. No,

we had, we had Ian Carmel on and he kind of shared his thoughts about the, the end of late night. I am. What did, what did he say? Oh, he,

he was very trying to be polite to not be like, well that i left it's over but yeah that said it's it's looking rough i as i love jokes i love monologue jokes good monologue jokes i still think weekend update like i think they do i think it's one of the few shows that i'm like some of these jokes are really good jokes yeah really good one-liners yeah and i enjoy watching it and hearing the audience go oh my god and they really they push it yeah they push it in a way that even other aspects of the show i don't think push but i think they have kept that yeah yeah sharp yeah um you've written for Craig Ferguson. A little bit, yeah.

Conan. Yeah. Conan would be like the one. Conan's the one. And how many years did you write Mollet Tricks for that? 11 years, yeah. And did you do that?

Did you start writing? If you could have just been a stand-up comedian and just done road stuff, would you have just done that? Or did you like being in that writer's room? Did you like the monologue? Oh, I loved I loved being in the writer's room. I loved I loved writing jokes. I loved it.

And when I you know, when I moved to New York, I before that, I was just living with my parents and doing road gigs. And it was so fun. Yeah. And then I'm like, I got to do something. So I moved to New York and then I'm like I got to do something so I moved to New York and then I had a day job from then on yeah so when I was doing I was doing like html coding and kind of like early internet stuff yeah um and then I switched over then I got a writing job a tough crowd so I just kept the same hours so it it wasn't like I was ever a touring only headliner. When I got to New York, you almost had to drop everything and not go on the road at all and just focus on getting

like, start over. Like now I'm going to be a 15 minute New York City club comic. And so I just focused all my energy on that kind of left roadwork except for a few clubs behind um and then you know i started when when i started writing on i guess more on conan um i started using hiatus weeks to like you know do headlining work and stuff i always did comedy um throughout the whole all of the time i had a writing job right now is like the first time I'm like free form out there. If I can hate it. Really? But it's so different now too.

You have to do so much self-promotion. That's not fun, you know, but you're great at it. Yeah, I think, but it is, it is the work. I think I've been trying to reframe it. I mean, listen, it's, it's so much work. It is. It's so much work. It is. It's so much work. And now it's like I have many people on a team.

And I think I've tried to reframe it for myself as, oh, this is my TV show. What I put together, whether it be promo. Can I do promo that feels like, oh, this is a cool advertisement. Like, can I do promo that feels like, oh, this is a cool advertisement. Yeah. If I'm going to make a flyer, let's come up with a funny idea to make it feel more creative. Yeah. Right, right, right.

But it's a slog. It is a slog. And if you, I think, like, these two months, I hired a publicist and someone to help me with the web stuff. And that's been a great relief. You know, just to have, like the LA Times did a, Julie Seabod did a big article on me yesterday. And I was like, oh, I got to make a, I got to make a graphic out of it. So like that's when I, and then Melanie did it for me. And I was like, ah, I just posted. Sure.

This is not bad. Sure. If you could have someone go, oh, here, it's all done. Here's the hashtags. Sure. Oh, okay. I'd love to be able to do that, you know, get to that point where I just do 10% of it. But now I'm like opening up iMovie, it crashes, you know, all this stuff where I'm like, what, a 30 second video would take four hours and then 15 people watch it.

and then 15 people watch it. Of course. But I think what I see sometimes with older comedians is sometimes they get these social media people. This is so niche. And they don't do, they're not doing a good enough job. I would love, and I never will, I would love to get kind of comics that I admire and go, you, this is what you need to be doing. I see some, especially some comics with a wealth of footage that exists.

Right, right, right. You know, I could take, you know, I'm like, give me everything from your last comic standing and I'll show you 40 clips in there. Right, right there right that you can gradually post on snapchat on youtube shorts on tiktok on on reddit and like you have a wealth of footage right for exploitation but hiring an overall social media manager that isn't top tier they're not going to do it well and it's going to be posted poorly and the cuts are going to be bad and the captions will be misspelled or they won't be timed out right yeah and there'll be three hashtags on tweets i see people with

hashtags on their tweets oh my god and i want to scream right right and i go i know you're paying someone 500 to do this and they're just copy pasting this on do this, and they're just copy-pasting this on every single platform, and they're not, every platform's its own beast. I know. That's the other thing, too. I mean, it's just so overwhelming. But you have the footage. You have the part that is the art. Yeah, that's true.

I have a ton of jokes that I could be clipping out. Yes, and maybe I'll get this special all clipped out into the 60 clips that it is. And then maybe I'll have enough money from extra road work that I can hire someone to, you know, go through other stuff. And the socials they pay. YouTube pays. This is very business talk. I apologize to everyone listening.

It does pay? Not this lady. When you break through on YouTube. The YouTube pays. We you break through on YouTube. The YouTube page. We'll talk after. Okay. Writing monologue jokes. I've never written.

I don't know if I. I think I'd be frustrating writing for someone else. I think I'd just be jealous. I'd go, I want this. Did you ever get to. So you would. For Conan, for example. How many jokes would you write for each day?

I would say, you know, for Conan, for example, how many jokes would you write for each day? I would say, you know, between 25 to 40. You know, maybe closer to 40. But it would also depend on the news stories. Sometimes the news stories are so great, you're like, they're falling out of you, the jokes, you know. And other days, you know, there's a mass shooting. And then it's like, so many. Cancel the guests.

We have an all mono hour. Then you're like Googling penis to see if there's any penis studies. You know what I mean? There's some bottom of the barrel days. For Conan, would they give you headlines to work with or would they just be like, you let us know? We had writer's assistants and interns that would find headlines, but we also did it, the writers, we did it ourselves. And that actually ended up being really valuable because I think it's basically that's the

setup is the headline, right? But you need to because I think it's basically that's a setup is the headline. Right. But you need to rewrite it. So it's a joke setup. So sometimes like the interns and they're like really young. So they're just doing what they're told. They would just grab the headlines and then, you know, you'd be like, OK, I'll reshape this into a setup and then then do the punchline later. But, yeah, we would write our own setups to

premises were you did you get ever frustrated about the limitations of what you were allowed to joke about for conan at least when it was in the later slot like was it did you ever feel stifled more it was more um the stifling would be just by what the news stories were, especially after Trump became a prominent feature of a lot of stories. You know, he was just exhausting. And Obama was hard, too, though. You kind of had to make fun of the coverage of Obama and not Obama himself unless he really went off the rails, which he never did. You know, did that feel frustrating? Did it?

I mean, I I certainly feel like I grew up watching the heyday of liberal fawning. I look back at a lot of a lot of the especially with Trump being around and I go like we a lot of comedy. It's really toothless. And there's a lot of just respect for just the people who happen to be in power in the democratic party and we're not you know it's pr or it's just it's so exhausting with with the trump stuff i don't know i look back on it all and i i go oh it was really pandery and we weren't critical enough no i mean know, different like Mitt Romney was always fun because he was

just so rich and dingy and good looking and not connected. And that's the perfect person to make like he had horse dancing horses in the Olympics. Sure. And then it was where, you know, I had an old Facebook page that I just got a hold of, like I just was able to log into it and I would put all my old, this is like in 2010, 11, 12. A lot of jokes up there, you know, because this is kind of pre-Twitter really. And so many Chris Christie. And I think you know where we go

with Chris Christie jokes. It's not a place we go now. Though sometimes, unless he says enough of a bad thing, then it opens up the flood it does but yeah so i was like oh this is such a snapshot of what was acceptable back then um yeah so it you know different different people are fun to make fun of and some are just misery you know you have to have to move around so many different i think it's about chris christie and

all it opened with was so chris christie was on cnn so they had to pull the camera back and that's that's how it started and and then it went to another thing but it always got a laugh and we but we struggle we struggle with with like body positivity until we disagree with them. And then we say all the things that we were absolutely thinking already. My feeling is if they're an awful person, no holds barred. Go for everything. And don't take it personally if they're describing you're not an awful person. But I can see how people are. It doesn't work to.

it doesn't work to what I found fascinating because I have this podcast is you know I'll have women guests on and I get a quick window into the horrifying nature of the comments

women get online and I see it because they're on my video talking about her and I go like Jesus Christ shut i mean like crazy right also not even there's the vicious ones and then there's ones of like people saying someone wrote let's just say years ago and they wrote like wow you you you're you have a lot of guests of size on the podcast what are you doing what are you saying lot of guests of size on the podcast what are you doing what are you saying why are you why are you saying this thing how could you think that this is worth sharing and and i don't oh that's great yeah i think didn't mark maron say he had to turn off his the comments because the comments were so

bad to the female guests yeah but my father my dad he's one of those guys again i luckily i can talk about my father he doesn't listen to this podcast but like he is one of those people who like he'll just he'll he can't seem to not make a comment right about like a woman's weight and it's often when he's like dealing with his own yeah worried about his own weight and he said stuff to me about my weight here and there yeah um but why do you fluctuate or yeah i used to not not anymore yeah um now that i'm in la but i i yeah there's one there's one time he saw me for a birthday he was my birthday and i had a cheesesteak to celebrate my birthday and he was like so put on a couple pounds and i snapped i stopped i i mean i mean the bad i said i'm gonna lie down in the road and let a car kill me

but we would be watching um so you think you can dance and one of the judges was was like you know just a compared to the dancers was larger yeah and was also but she was also the woman who was loud on the panel that but she was also the woman who was loud on the panel that was her role on the panel and my dad would just make comments and my sister who uh you know thankfully is already anorexic so it's fine but she she's happened to she my sister's just genetically blessed and eats garbage and is thin so but he'd say these things i'd be, what are you doing? And he just, it was like, in his gut,

he just said it. It's just part of his nature. Yeah. You couldn't lecture it out of him. I don't know why guys do this, why guys feel that need. I do know. I think it's ultimately deep down they worry that if they make it acceptable, then more women

will not be uh to their desire and will ultimately they'll lose control it's all about the ultimate i feel so cut off from all that now you know because i guess because i'm old and so i don't i'm not really trying to even get a guy or get that guy especially of course i'm i'm excited for for like the next phase where I'm alone. Yeah. You know? Like I want to move to Europe. Like I have...

You want to move to Europe? Yeah. Where? I don't know. I did a tour there. There's a lot of comedy. There's so much you can... Like I got to pick a city

that's kind of cheap that I can, you know, get to a lot of places from. I don't know where. I don't speak any languages. You don't speak Spanish. Yeah. But I mean, I'm sure I could resuscitate it in myself.

But high school Spanish. If you were to go to London to start your Spanish career. Yeah. So I guess I don't really take those comments to heart, I guess, really, about appearance. I'm like, I'm just glad I'm not I don't really you know take those comments to heart I guess really about appearance I'm like I'm just glad I'm alive I know enough comics my age or from my age group that died you know and so I'm glad I'm here and I feel like I'm still funny so you know come I don't care what you say although somebody did do you ever watch do you watch attack on titan no i don't oh it's this anime and well if you guys i grew up in anime like i was more dragon ball z when i was younger okay so somebody because i have kind of a gummy smile and somebody called

me a titan and i was like i can't really come back from that. Well, now the comments are all going to have gummy smile. That's okay. I'll take it. Do you – your son's 17 now? Yeah. Like when you have a kid, I feel like you must fantasize about what's coming up, this moment of – like do you have – do you think it will live up to it? Do you think you'll feel lonely? Do you think – I have no idea. Like when to it? Do you think you'll feel lonely? Do you think? I have no idea.

Like when he, he went away for Christmas and I was wildly lonely and I was so looking forward to being alone. And then he was gone and I just was waiting for him to come home. It's a problem. You know what I, what I think it's going to be like and what it will be like will be so different. And also he might go to community college here and not leave home at all would you want that then you can't go to europe i sure i can he'll be 18 yeah see you later feed the dog see ya yeah when you go on the road do you have like an opener

you bring frequently i don't um no i sort of just do i just show up and Work with whoever's local Do you? More recently I've This guy, Liam Nelson And his friend, Ty Colgate And it's been nice Like we've found a little bit more of a vibe Because I need it

I was just feeling lonely Yeah Deeply Just like Sona's on long plane rides Just like, I'm really sad Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah I've It's just like, I'm really sad. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I've been doing, I mean, I've just also been going hard on the road.

Yeah. In a way that is, I need something. I need, I'm just a lonely, I'm an introvert. And I like, if I don't have someone to go out with, I struggle to go out. And I just, I go, oh, I'll be in the hotel and I'll just write all fucking day. And then by 4 p.m. I'm like, I think I'm going crazy. I think I'm losing my mind. I mean, I would, I'd love to, again, I need to be making more money, but I'd love to be able to bring an opener because they get paid so little you have to supplement.

Do you? You must, right? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Now I'm finally, I finally have door deals now. That's great. We're rapidly, it's rapidly moving towards, okay, now I can, like, I think this weekend is like, I said, oh, now that we're selling out, I'll figure out the plane ticket. Oh, that's.

And we'll build and build and figure, you know. That's awesome. Then I look at the Maria Bamberts of the world and I believe Jackie Kayson says she gives one third. And I go. Yeah. Oh, boy. One third.

One third. Yeah. education says she gives one third and i go yeah oh boy one third one third yeah but that's the only way to have uh uh basically a headliner open for you yeah one third yeah i hear 10 i go that's still pretty high too i'm yeah but i want to be you know you you look and you go oh i want to be a giving i'd love i'd love to be able to do that. Now, I wouldn't even require, you know, I have a 10-seat hookup with my future, so I wouldn't even want to see them. It's a danger zone. Yeah, I would like that

one day, but I don't have that right now. Sure. I do when I go on the road because I'm, I love the alone time. I love being in my hotel room. I bring a robe. I bring a heating pad. I bring a lot of stuff to make it feel like a little vacation. You know?

Yeah. One thing that you mentioned when we talked about things that you were tired of talking about, and I wonder if this is a more unique way of looking at it, was about people go, how do you write jokes about trauma? Right, right. Which was, you know, that i don't need to i don't need to ask that do you ever worry uh because you know famously um as your mom was was uh ultimately passed away from covid you were really sharing that experience on on. And I'm someone certainly, my dad had a quintuple bypass.

And I know as it's happening, the experience was very unique. For example, we got there, my dad, whose will is not, I'm not dependent on my father's will, thankfully. That's not a concern of mine. If he said there's no money, that's okay. But we got there and my girlfriend who had never met my father, my dad was adjusting his will to leave a third to his new girlfriend who is now his ex-girlfriend.

Oh, no. to his new girlfriend who is now his ex-girlfriend who who has who had like comically large tits like comically large tits your dad and and so my girlfriend was had to film on my dad's phone on my phone my dad like reading his will because like two next to me and my girlfriend and we're all in our covid mask and it was just just a as it's happening i know as a comic i'm like i will be talking about this that is insane and how old is your dad that he still makes these sort of decisions 69 that is bananas yeah yeah and he's my dad he was a gorgeous guy yeah and and i think the kind of good looking that i think um allows you to not challenge your right character and like let me tell you my dad's my dad's childhood was fucked up right in a way that i can't fathom i had depressed parents i the way

i described it once when i tried writing a play was uh my fam my parents they had the who's afraid of edward albee like who's afraid of virginia wolf edward albee level fucked up parents yeah and i had the survivors of that as my parents right so they were depressed and they were fucked up and so i wasn't abused i wasn't hit right but i had the fucked up parents who were and so it's a different kind of of trauma of sorts but so i you know i feel sympathy in the sense that like the horrors my dad experienced as a kid are unimaginable right right um but yes he's still like that and And these... But okay, so as... Do you hope he changes?

I'm far beyond hoping. See, my mom lived with me and she was depressed. And I kept hoping she would change. I realized this after she died. Like I was trying to... Like she was... Her colors were black and navy blue. Like that was what she emanated

you know and i was trying to get some yellow in there and i didn't i didn't realize it till after she was gone and i'm like i i what was i doing that wasn't her at all sure and so i was always unsatisfied with her because she was just like such a downer and always saw the negative side. It's like, yeah, for 83 years, dude, I think I was going to like flip the pancake and she would be a different person. Part of me was hoping for that, I guess. My father, it feels like he's not and he runs a company, so it's not like like he's not there, but it feels like he's not there when it comes to personal growth. Do you have siblings? Yeah, I have a sister.

But your mom lived with you for the last four years of her life? Correct. I hear that. I could not live with my father. It was really hard. Was it assumed you were the sister to take that burden? I think so. It was really hard. like don't no republican talking points with my kid she was actually not bad about that like we didn't have fox news and she listened to the radio in her room but um yeah she didn't really talk to my son about that kind of stuff and he was too young in your special would she have turned

down the vaccine i don't think so uh-huh i i think she would have been okay with it yeah but you know she's not here to dispute it and sure but maybe not she would have gone the second booster uh no i honestly when i when i heard when i hear and i knew about it before i saw the special and i just go like it would never i mean it couldn't my father i would be that youtube video holding his head. And they go, was he a government official? No, he was just difficult. If you had a kid and a girlfriend, the mother wasn't that involved. And your dad offered to watch your child every night so you could do stand-up. I'd have to witness it. I feel like my dad, for all his flaws, was a very loving father and very like, I think he would be able to connect to that.

Yeah, he'd be a good grandpa. But I'd also be like, what did you feed my kid? Like you let my kid, like he spoiled the shit out of me. the shit out of me. To me, that was never, I never thought about any of that stuff. It's more the day-to-day living with a parent when you're a grown-up. That's really, really hard. That I really needed the help. But also, I think it's nice that I have no connection with really my, what do you call them?

Extended family. And like, I think there's a loneliness to that. Like, I had grandparents. I knew them. But like, they weren's a there's a loneliness to that like i had grandparents i knew them but like they weren't a part of my life yeah and in a way i think that makes you feel more connected to community oh yeah my son you know had her for four years when he was young so he has deep deep memories of her you know and always will yeah the fact that you that you make so much comedy i mean specifically about both your dead parents you have literally a whole special about your dad dying do you ever feel like turning it into comedy or turning it into art or turning it into content, depending on how you're feeling,

that it's a voice. The artist in me goes, this is me processing it. This is me expressing myself. The cynic in me goes, this is me exploiting it. This is me not fully feeling it. This is me turning it into a setup that i then have to solve for the punch line as opposed to feeling sad i i i felt both of them i felt i mean i felt my dad die completely and then i kind of was like so shocked by that response you know in addition to being shocked at him being dead and with all of it yeah that that led to a ton of jokes just because i was like before this i was

just a dumb comic and now i'm like i'm in this weird this crazy world where my dad died and i'm wailing and i can't you know like you you do float above and watch and go, who is this person? I'm in a horror movie now, you know? So, and with my mom, it was different feelings, but I, they were all there. So I don't, I don't feel the difference between noticing and exploiting, you know? There's a dark thought that I think is like... So I right now have this chunk about my dad's heart, this whole surgery. Yeah. And I'm proud of it. Yeah. It's a good chunk. It's dark and twisty.

I know that there's sometimes I have a thought, the dark thought of, oh, I need to film this if my dad died if my dad died i'd be lying if i said there wasn't the passing thought of like fuck do i pretend he's still alive so i can do this chunk do i you wouldn't be able to i know i know that no you should film it no no yeah yeah i you know i plan to but it's such but like that's what I mean like with the tying of and I think I expressed it to my girlfriend and she couldn't

help but put it also in the context of our relationship like do I ever think about not breaking up because I talk a great deal about her and our relationship and that's the art that I make that's just what I do it's not a choice it just that's because I talk a great deal about her and our relationship. And that's the art that I make. That's just what I do.

It's not a choice. It just, that's literally where the funny thoughts are that I talk so much about these people in my life. And in a way that means that my relationship to them is tied to, I don't know. She just expressed the feeling of like, would you ever not break up with me so you could do the night terrors bit on film?

Their absence is just as strong a presence in your life as their presence. So when if you did break up with your girlfriend, that would be as much a part of you as having her. Yeah. You know, in who you are as a person processing it and a comic. Same with your parents. Yeah. in who you are as a person processing it and a comic, same with your parents.

It's, it's, but yeah, in terms of like, I, you know, when I, I did a, like a JFL gala and my mom was 82 and living with me and I had a bunch of

jokes about how I wanted her to die, you know? And, and you could only tell those, like I can only have the, the exhaustion in my voice because they're real and they're true. And I would not have been able to tell them after she died my voice would have changed sure you know what i mean like you

can't even fake it yeah so yeah do you know if you feel the chunks done about your dad get it on tape sure and then you know if he keeps living you'll have new stuff about him. And when he's not no longer, you'll have a whole new Vista too. Yeah. I think, I think my girlfriend, she, she, she gets art,

but I think the way she took it in a way that where it was as if I was in human. And I tried, you know, for a moment, because I can see how from an outside perspective, it sounds like you're worried about losing your chunk. It was more like I expressed it more like, no, this is what the trauma.

This is this is what I get from the trauma of this challenging childhood is this art. And that's it's not just like a money or it's it's it's I don't know. You have to understand what art is. You have to understand what art is. You have to understand what art is to the artist. Right. It's not just a piece of furniture or something I should inherit or I deserve. It's more like this is my. Well, I would, I know, but when that person that you're talking about is no longer in your life for whatever reason you your opinion of that material changes too sure

and now you're you are an explorer so you're like what's new you're always what's new yeah and what's new is heartbreak what's new is grief what will be new one day especially grief i don't know about heartbreak and that will be what you will be uh you know crawling towards sometimes i just think i'm like you know what stand-up comedy what would the world be if we had never invented filming you know like like it would just be of the moment and you had to be there i think there was something when they started like making audio recordings like there were some people who were like the same way people do with ai now yeah where it's like this is bad yeah right right right and imagine if if we never

had recorded... Same with photographs. Sure. Yeah. And they might not be wrong. Our last two things. So this has got to stop. Did we put this in the email?

Something that's got to stop. Something that you're tired of, exhausted with. Let me see. I think I wrote down one that... It can be personal. It can be big.

Let me just see if I put one here. This has got to stop. Okay. I kind of touched on this, but I, I, this has got to stop. People who go, I need to do this thing because what would my grandkids think of me if I didn't? They have to frame it in this way well let me be frank I wouldn't give a shit what my grandparents did right in any situation I think if I found out my grandma had been a Nazi I'd go whoa that's not

good but it's still my grandma and like I't. Sometimes people have to like frame their moral decisions. Yeah. In a way, this to frame it, what my grandkids think is almost the atheists. What am I going to say to God at heaven's gate? Right, right, right. It's like you have to create this metaphor. And just like the God one, your grandkids caring about what you did is equally fantastical and not going to happen in my opinion. Right, right, right.

But it's so my this guy's not just like, what are my grandkids? Your grandkids aren't are barely going to give a shit about you. Yeah. Let alone what you decided in this one incident. Do it for yourself. Yes. Yeah. I mean, if you're related like you, if you're not adopted, like if you're genetically connected, you'll be looking at them for like facial features.

Yeah. But that's about it. Uh-huh. Yeah. Yours reminded me of something I can't stand is when people go, history will not be kind to a person. No, history is not kind to anybody. Sure. And these people that are acting this way don't give a shit. They don't care.

They know it won't matter. History will not be kind to Chevron executives. Do you think they care about history? Yeah. They don't. Stop it. I see that so much. Like, that's the ultimate condemnation.

Yeah. In 200 years, they'll write bad things about you. We need to deal with them now. Yeah. And how many enemies and how many vile villains have lived in the past 200 years? We don't even know their names. You'd have to go down a Wikipedia hole to even read the unkind words that history says about them. You have to be a massive demon to be remembered as a bad person, even 50 years later. And again, I think it's just a degree of like, no, if you want to do something,

you got to confront them now while they're alive. Yes, yeah. Unfortunately. Right. But this idea of like Trump's legacy will be whatever. It's like he's doing what he's doing.

It's right now. Yeah. I'm sure it's only probably a couple years left. Yeah. And he's enjoying his dinners. Yeah. So if you want to, you got to doing. It's right now. Yeah. I'm sure it's only probably a couple years left. Yeah. And he's enjoying his dinners. Yeah. So if you want to, you got to. Yeah, do it now.

I don't know, Kathy Griffin. So, and then our final segment, we say a blessing, something we're, something specifically we're grateful for. And I'll start with my mom's boyfriend right now. Great guy. He's so good. His name's Dan. He's so good at, I feel like when I visit, I see my mom or my sisters are there.

He's fine with being like, oh, they're having their family moment. I'm just here. They're talking as a family. He just socially seems to navigate the ability to be like, let them have their family moment. And I'm just here and I'm quieter. I'll go work. And then he's apart.

He's just, he's this very, really a kind of my mom. She made a good choice. She made a good choice. And I think there was one time my mom, she was like, I think some guy where she was like,

I think I'm going to marry this guy. And I was like, not until I meet him. You're my mom, she was like, I think of some guy where she was like, I think I'm going to marry this guy. And I was like, not until I meet him, you're not. And she was like, I don't have to introduce him. I was like, actually, no, I would like the same way that a parent gives a blessing for a wedding. It's not necessarily like I'm going to go, don't you dare marry that man. But I'm going to now see this guy every time I see you. So I'm going to meet him before you get married and it was like a moment of like you listen to me old lady i i'm a part of this i

wouldn't want to marry somebody my son didn't like of course and i think it's just red flag in her mind it was like you know she's dealing with her own shit and and but i'm like no the same way that you would want to meet someone i was gonna and but i'm like no the same way that you would want to meet someone i was going to get married i would like to meet this person too and again i don't know if they're going to do this but he's great and it is it is a very it is i it is great to visit my mom and go this guy being here is doesn't make me uncomfortable so that's really awesome yeah let's see i'm that i am grateful my son has a situation with a like a teacher coach authority right and he came up with a plan on how to do it and then we did like i said well what if he says this and he said i'll say this

and what if he says this and i'll say this and'll say this. And what if he says this? And I'll say this. And I'm like, that is solid. And I've been worrying about it for months. And I'm like, should I interfere? Should I? I don't know. Should the mother interfere in this? Or is this something I let him do? And if he does it wrong, well, listen, you know, like all the possible things that could affect him. And in the meantime, he came up with a pretty simple plan. And if the person, you know, says, well, sorry, you can't do it, then he's ready to walk. And he's okay with it. And I was like, wow, that's really cool. Sure. I was so proud that he did that. And he told me he was excited. And, and it was a relief to go, oh, he, you know, he, he can handle this sort of conflict. And before he couldn't, he was really afraid, worried about talking to this authoritarian figure.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he seems settled in a way that he wasn't before. Sure. He was worried. And I felt like, oh, that's a jump. That's a leap into adulthood i guess yeah that i'm pretty excited about just just being ready to walk ultimately if you're not ready to walk you're not going to get what you want because they got you right they

got you and per per the way we started this i think like with with some comedy clubs and with some bookers as i've gotten older i go and I'm in a privileged position now, of course. And I worked hard for that position to be able to do other things. But it's like I'm not free unless I'm willing to go, oh, this behavior bothers me. I'm ready to not get that thing. And when you don't, you're not going to get it because they know. They can tell. Yeah.

Ready to walk. That could be the title. So, Lori, tell people this is coming out on uh came out january 30th no oh this is this episode's coming out february 13th okay so uh if there's anything you want to plug but tell people about your special okay where they can find my special uh you can get to it at lauriekilmartin.com and it'll take you to all possible avenues whichever one is your pleasure and it's about an hour of stand-up that's excellent thank you you like chio marco liked it and he hates everything so i paid full price full price baby no serious yeah is there a not full price i don't know i actually i don't know but i mean i thought maybe

you got a screener or something like that i reached out to you your publicist didn't reach out to me oh that's right i set this up nice thank you i like i i like the full price so pay full price um but no it's it's you know it's it's my club act and you know it's weird i feel like sometimes people want like a one-person show out of a comedy special and it's like no i'm a stand-up comic and i work clubs and so you know that's what it is but um i'm pretty dark and you might like it if you like dark stuff these listen people like me they like the dark stuff yeah check it out and then any tour dates coming up you want to plug oh uh let's see february 13th um i will be

in uh this weekend i'll be at stir crazy in glendale arizona and then i'll be at ann arbor uh ann arbor showcase in march march also at the uh lincoln lodge in chicago march 20th um oh i have other march dates go to lauriekilmorton.com We'll put it in the show notes I always get amazed when I hear comedy clubs I'm like how did I never heard about It happens all the time I don't know these I like that name though, Stir Crazy

For me Tomorrow is No, what's Valentine's Day? 14th Tonight Wait a second Maybe it's coming out 2-12 No. What's Valentine's Day? 14th. 14th. Tonight! Wait a second. Maybe it's coming out 2-12.

Same thing. Okay. I'll be in West Nyack February 13th, the day before... No, after. Fuck me, dude. Look at my website. I'm going to be in West Nyack, I think, the day before Valentine's Day, or the day after. And then I'll be... I think it's February 15th. I'll be in West Nyack at the Big Ass Mall.

Please come to that. I'll be at the Albany Funny Bone, February 18th. I love that room. Yeah? Yeah, it's wild. So check me out. By now, I've announced the Australia tour. We'll see.

Cool. They said, you only make money in Australia your third tour there. Oh, my God. Jesus fucking Christ. What the fuck? Comedy is always, there's always levels where you're like, you're not going to make any money. But the third tour, Australia, figure out your dollar. Right now, it's not comparing well.

It's like 0.64 of the US dollar. So imagine like a tough, it's not comparing well. It's like 0.64 of the U.S. dollar. So imagine like a tough. That's brutal. So please join the Patreon, patreon.com slash downside. We will be back with Russell next week. And also the other big things coming up. Netflix is a joke. I will be May 2nd.

It's getting closer to being sold out. So buy those tickets now if you're in LA. And Lori, you're such a great comic. I admire your work so much. So thank you for doing this. Thank you. So are you. And thank you for keeping the jokes dark.

Yeah. Even if it's on, hopefully, the right side of history. Hope history remembers me kindly. This is The Downside. You're listening to The Downside. The Downside. With Gianmarco Ceresi.