The HoneyDew with Ryan Sickler - Corinne Fisher - CorinneDew

Episode Date: May 16, 2022

My HoneyDew this week is comedian, Corinne Fisher! (Guys We Fcked Podcast, Our Special Day) Corinne Highlights the Lowlights of the deaths of her father, a childhood best friend, a possible soulmate, and losing the love of her life all in a four-year span! SUBSCRIBE TO MY YOUTUBE and watch full episodes of The Dew every toozdee! https://www.youtube.com/rsickler  SUBSCRIBE TO MY PATREON, The HoneyDew with Y’all, where I Highlight the Lowlights with Y’all! You now get audio and video of The HoneyDew a day early, ad-free at no additional cost! It’s only $5/month! Sign up for a year and get a month free! https://www.patreon.com/TheHoneyDew  SPONSORS: Liquid I.V. -Get 25% off anything you order when you go to https://www.Liquid-IV.com and use code HONEYDEW at checkout SoFi -Visit https://www.SoFi.com/HONEYDEW to learn how you can win up to $1,000 in stock when you open an account Athletic Greens -Get a FREE 1 year supply of Vitamin D and 5 free travel packs with your first purchase when you go to https://www.AthleticGreens.com/HONEYDEW 

June shows coming up. Hollywood, June 4th. I'm at the Troubadour. It's going to be a really cool show. June 24th. I'm in Des Moines, Iowa. One night only. June 25th. Headed to Omaha, Nebraska. One night only. And back at Brea, California. June 30th. One night only as well. Get your tickets to those shows and all shows at RyanSickler.com. The Honeydew with Ryan Sickler. Welcome back to The Honeydew, y'all. We're over here doing it in the Night Pant Studios. I am Ryan Sickler, RyanSickler.com, Ryan Sickler on all social media. the honeydew y'all we're over here doing it in the night pan studios i am ryan sickler ryan

sickler.com ryan sickler on all social media and i want to say thank you again every week this show continues to grow i i appreciate all the love the support thank you so much please subscribe to the youtube uh it means nothing to you and everything to us i promise you you want a free way to help the show if you're watching watching, just hit that damn thing. It's that easy. If you got to have more, hit up the Patreon. It's five bucks a month. It's called The Honeydew With Y'all, and I'm highlighting the lowlights with y'all, and you all have some wild fucking stories. You got to go watch the promos. You got to watch. We got shit going on all over the place. Cold cases getting solved. Some getting created. Two pussies going to one pussy.

Like, it's a lot of shit. Yeah, it's a lot of shit going down over there. Five bucks a month. If you sign up for a year, you get over a month free. And you get the honeydew a day early ad free at no additional cost. All right. That's the biz right there. You know what we do over here.

We highlight the lowlights. I always say these are the stories behind the storytellers, and I'm very excited to have this guest on today for the first time here, ladies and gentlemen. Please welcome Corinne Fisher. Welcome to the honeydew for Corinne. Thank you. I'm also for y'all. Thank you.

I love it. I love it. Can I ask you first, why did you call it the honeydew? Yes. Because it is the fruit. I see it. I'm looking at pictures of it right now. It is a good, it's an underrated fruit, I would say, too.

That's nice of you to say. Yeah, I truly love it. That's why. This is so the whole thing. So these are fan-submitted pictures of a perfectly good fruit that's tossed aside. It is. One night I was having dinner by myself in a diner, and I ate my fruit cup, and I ate everything but the honeydew. You did.

I did. Oh. I even ate everything but the honeydew. You did. I did. I even ate the fucking, that red grape. I like green grapes, but I even ate that one red grape. Okay. And as I got up and I walked out, I just looked across the tables and I saw honeydew everywhere. That's literally making me very sad right now. And I was like, wow, this is a perfectly good fruit that people just, it's not that I have this hate against it.

I always say it's not like, I just don't fuck with it. Okay. And then it's like the iceberg lettuce of the fruit world. You know what I mean? It's just water. Right. And then I realized like, oh my God, that's me. That's you.

I'm a perfectly good person who's been thrown away time and time again. Oh, that got real sad, real fast. And that's why it's called the honeydew and that's why we highlight the low-lifes. Okay, I knew there was going to be a good reason. I just couldn't exactly figure it out without... But that's my favorite one, the cigarette in the... I love honeydew. I would totally eat just

a pile of honeydew. I feel like it's only good. I've researched it. There's like one month a year it's like good. Yeah, maybe that's the problem. So it never really got time to shine. Well, first of all, thank you for being here. Of course. I've been a huge fan for a long time.

Oh, thanks. You all don't even know. I know you're on the New York side of things. We are. Will you please plug, promote everything and anything you'd like? Yeah, sure. So Christina Hutchinson and I, my my comedy partner we are mainly in town right now to promote uh the comedy special that we just released on youtube it's called our special

day it's a half hour of stand-up from both christina and myself separately and then we give you a taste of what guys we fucked the live experience is like when we take our show on the road so there's some uh a segment called Seven Minutes in Therapy where people bring problems in front of large crowds and we solve them. And then there's also a segment called Sexting Theater where we do dramatic readings of people's sex messages. And this is all like, this is not produced segments.

This is literally just fans of the show in the audience who are willing to come up and overshare. And I directed the special as well. So I'm very excited about that. Yeah, congrats. Thanks. Yeah. I'm like, I have a BFA in directing.

So let's, you know, start using it. My team, actually, my agent was like, do you want to direct it? Because I was thinking of that. Are you going to pay me? Well, it wasn't even about the money. I know. Yeah, it wasn't about the money money I didn't get paid any extra um but I was so excited to have that credit because it's something that I really need to concentrate where do you have your degree from

um SVA school of visual arts all right so yeah pretty pretty good school is that your directorial debut in the profession in the professional world uh I've yeah i mean i've done some like web series for other comedians and some like off off broadway plays in new york but it's definitely the thing that i think is going to get the most attention so i was happy to do it man off okay so you have quite a range then artistically which is pretty impressive well i think what it's less of it's less that i have a range and more that i have like i'm an i sit across from comedians every week well it's like i'm an artist but i have my i really have my shit together and i think most artists don't like i for like i make a great assistant which i think almost no comedians could say that about themselves but it's it's kind of bad when you're a can be a good assistant because then people

want you to be the assistant because your shit's together. So I always say that you should have your shit not together so that the only choice you have is to do the art and no one wants you to do anything else because you will fuck it up. Amen. Yeah. All right. So some people come on, they tell a life story. Some people come on, tell an experience, whatever. I want to know a little bit about your background, of course, where you're from and how you grew up and things. But I really want to hear about this last four years you emailed us about. Okay. My life story, I don't have an interesting childhood story anyway because I had a nice childhood. So there's not,

I always tell people on interviews, I'm like, I know you guys love to suck these sad stories out of comedians. I had a mom and a dad who remained married until my dad died. We had dogs. I have a little brother who's an engineer and we grew up in suburban New new jersey union new jersey shout out to

arty lang and my childhood was not i'm sure like arty lang is at all most childhoods were yeah and um and also ray leota also from union okay so that's it gives you a sense of the kind of place that i'm coming from uh robert will arliss. And yeah, and then things got more out of control when I was released by myself into the real world because I moved to New York City when I was 17. So where's your love for the arts? Were you also, did you play sports? Were you athletic as well? Did I play sports or did sports play me? I mean, I played, you know, basketball at the Boys and Girls Club. But I mean, the sport I played, I played, you know, basketball at the Boys and Girls Club. But I mean, the sport I played,

I don't even know if I would consider it a sport. You know, you get a varsity letter for it, but I was a baton twirler. Oh, and the guard? That was my passion. No, color guard is different. Oh, it is? Color guard, no offense, is for dorks.

Baton twirling is... I'll tell you what we call them later. Baton twirling isn't popular in you what we call them later baton twirling baton twirling isn't popular in the northeast it's mostly a southern thing okay but in New Jersey

we did have a lot of twirling competition so I was lucky I just really like it it's like cheerleading but you have a stick in your hand I've never heard of that have you heard of that

at other high schools? baton twirling? yeah not in I mean not really in my area. There was a couple surrounding towns. I went to Ms. Patty's, Patty's Dolls Baton Twirling School. There was a school for that?

Patty's Dolls. Yes. Patty's out there teaching. Yeah. It was, oh God, this is like taking me down memory lane. I loved Patty's Dolls. But it was like, the school was just like this church room that they rented out, you know, on weekdays at 3 p.m. And because you just needed a place with really high ceilings because you need to be able to throw a baton.

I was just about to ask. Yeah. And I mean, it was like I think it was those kind of ceilings where, you know, when you hit it, the block moves. I don't know what that's called but that little tile yeah it's like you're not gonna break anything but it looks fucked up when you look up so yeah we went to i went to patty's dolls uh baton twirling school and uh that was the sport that i played i was also in all the school plays um edited one of the you know editors of the newspaper that you know future business leaders of America I've been an overachiever since

I was born. Alright overachiever I'm going to ask you straight up right now if somebody said thousand bucks could you go out front twirl that motherfucker as high as you could and grab that baton today? Could I grab it? Could you still do what you did at your best? Oh at my best I wasn't that good

so yes like could i catch it yes i guess just because you love something don't mean you have to be great oh yeah no i've loved lots of things i'm not good at i would also like even like there's video of me literally like going like this as i turn cover it it up. Yeah. Because it hurts to get whacked with a metal stick. With that old crutch that looked like the crutch tips on the end of it.

Those white rubber ones that are hard as shit. And I, in my high school, we twirled fire. What? Yeah. You could never do that now.

No, I think they still do it. Maybe a jersey. Yeah. It is jersey. Yeah, you just, we literally just dumped the ends in kerosene and ignited it. My favorite part of it is because I'm an Italian Jew, so I have hairy arms, and it would singe all your arm hair off.

So it was like a free waxing. I love that part. I would look forward to it around Thanksgiving. You said you weren't even that good, so you're throwing a fiery fucking baton up in the air. I wasn't that good, but I was competent. I could catch it. My parents would just make fun of me because everyone else would throw it so high. And sometimes they would drop it.

I would always throw it like two inches above my head. But I said, did I not always catch it? Yeah, right, right. It's like, what do we want? Do we want success or do we want to try to be the best at this? I was like, I want to catch it and then move on with my day. It is on fire. There's no future in twirling. What are we doing? I was like, I want to catch it and then move on with my day. It is on fire. There's no future in twirling.

What are we doing? I was just doing it for fun. What I hate about childhood is that all the things I loved had to become competitive. I love gymnastics and then all of a sudden, you know,

then we need to train so hard that I'm going to skip a period. I just like tumbling. I just like tumbling. It's insane. Violin, it's like, can anything just be fun without it having to be, I just like tumbling. It's insane. Violin. It's like, like, can I,

can anything just be fun without it having to be, you have to be the best at it and have some kind of monetary future in it. Just like have a little bit of fun. This is what I don't think I've ever had fun. I mean, also that's how, that's part of how I grew up. And,

um, my parents only took us on educational vacations. So that's why. Okay. So listen, so far your childhood sounds kind of not so great. No, it really was. Therapists always try to pry and I go, no.

I'm not trying to pry into it. It truly was. But if you're sound, you're like, man, it's always educational, which ends up in hindsight, it is great. Yeah. I would love for my daughter to be like, remember that time you took me to the Smithsonian and shit? Yes.

Remember that time we walked to Edgar to edgar allen poe's house in baltimore oh yeah i've been to a lot of edgar edgar allen poe lived various places um you know in the northeast but i uh yeah we went to his house and it's not a safe area now listen i'm from baltimore and i wanted to tell you yeah i'm from baltimore and i had field trips there quite often which all of us would be like are we even real coming down wait your accent that's baltimore i mean mine feels so southern mine i get a lot of that but mine's not as hard as like stavros and i'll do that okay hun it's not like my relatives from dc no he's baltimore oh he's baltimore okay that's interesting yeah okay so um we would go there all the time and i so you know so they would leave.

There was money around at one time. And I was like, oh, my God. Oh, no. You stole from Edgar Allan Poe's memorial? Well, I started to. It's grave. And then the fucking teacher's like, and if you ever take money from here, it's bad luck. And we were like, right back on that.

Yes. Okay, good. And we added something to it. Here you go, Edgar Allan Poe. Yeah, interest. Not a good neighborhood. Not a safe something to it. Here you go, Edgar Allan Poe. Yeah, interest. Not a good neighborhood. Not a safe neighborhood to be taking some kids in. Well, it's funny because it's a predominantly black area.

And any time the people in the neighborhood saw white people walking through, they would just shout at the white people, Edgar Allan Poe's house is this way. Which I thought was very charming and welcoming i thought it was great i was like thanks that is exactly why i'm here um all right so i don't get an email like this a lot these things that happened all in the last four years really yeah not not in the span of four years, but I can appreciate it because in the span of four years I lost both of my grandmothers, a girl who was like my sister,

and then my dad and grandmother. I mean, that was all in five, six years. Right. My grandpa also died. I just didn't even add that. I mean... In the past four years, yeah. I have a friend of mine. Her name's Carlotta Wood. She does the voiceover for the show. She's the one that announces the show for all you that ask all the time. And I still say it and you still ask.

But she came on and told me this quote she had heard. And she said, I'm glad I don't look like what I've been through. And I was like, man, oh, man. So tell me what has happened to you in the last four years do you want to go in chronological order please okay so it started in 2018 where i'm like can i do math yes it started in 2018 i was in um like a two and a half year relationship with who i still consider that this day even though i hate him and have a joke in my special about how i hope him and his wife die but separately so it's not romantic um and i mean it and it feels good to say it every time

and i'll never stop saying it even though a litigator did say you might want to stop you might want to stop saying that i said but i can't um and uh and so he that was you know during the time when so it was right after the 2016 election and and i i was dating this person before we knew trump was running against hillary clinton and when it was announced, you know, when he was selected as the nominee, I found out that the person I was, you know, dating already in love with was a Donald Trump supporter. Of course, in 2016, we didn't know what that meant yet. We had an idea, but we had no idea where it was going to go. And I wasn't like I didn't hold that against him. was going to go. And I wasn't like I didn't hold that against him. I am very open. I have another podcast besides Guys We Fuck called Without a Country where the whole purpose of it is to read

news from the left, the right, and I'll go to an anarchist website, anything, and just try to get a sense of the truth. I don't care what feels good or what you want the story to be. I truly do try to be a truth seeker in anything. I want facts. I want stats. That includes things that we talk about on Guys We Fucked, like sex work. I'm like, I don't want to know in an ideal world the effects of sex work. I want to know how does sex work really affect women and men but mostly women now um and so we started we you know we're both very into politics and i talked about it on guys we fucked because i thought it would be really interesting that two people who were so adamant about two political candidate different political candidates were were dating

and how we were going to navigate that um and it was very poorly received i was actually really surprised by him no it was poorly received by the listeners of guys we fucked like immediately they were like you because it was that that air of like you have to dump this person because he feels politically different than you. But it's not like I don't have these conversations with people before I get in relationships. For me, the two main things I need to know about you are, are you pro-choice? Because we're going to be having sex. I don't understand how you can have a partner who feels differently about that one, because that's something that could happen. So you need to know that.

And then secondly, what are your feelings on LGBTQ plus, you know, stuff? Because I have a lot of gay friends and you meeting my gay friends is more important than you meeting my parents. Like, if that doesn't go well, this can't work. And he was fine with both of those things. I took him to a gay club early on because it's like there's one thing to say you're fine. And then there's another thing to take you into a space where you're going to actively be hit on by men. And I think it really shows who you are. I just want to ask you, gay club.

So tell me, it was more men than women? Oh, yeah. Yeah. No. Yeah. There's very few lesbian clubs, sadly. Is that right? There's not a lot.

Lesbians aren't really known for like partying. I know all my gay friends tell me lesbians are like, as soon as they meet, what's the joke? They show up with a U-Haul. Like, they're just like, fuck party, we're moving in. Yeah. No, so I'm always, I was always, I was raised in gay clubs. I do credit drag queens with part of the reason that I'm a comedian.

No one's funnier. No one's more brazen. No one's more in your face. A drag queen could make any comedian cry on any given day. Yeah, and so all the, I know everything lined up, and I had never felt so understood in my entire life. That's a problem. Like I do this show where we have really deep conversations with people. People are telling us about their, you know, their rapes, their traumas. And I have I have sympathy for all these people. people, and I have empathy, but a lot of people's experiences and the way they see the world, more importantly than their experiences, don't resonate with me. People will be sitting and telling me a story like, you know when someone says something to you and you just

can't stop thinking about it? And I'm like, not really. In a way that it negatively affects you. And you keep thinking, I should have said something different. And I go, I don't really know what you're talking about. I don't spend a lot of time thinking of things that I could have or should have said. I just try to say the thing I really mean right off the bat. And then I don't have that problem. I don't know. I just always felt alien.

And now I have since learned it's apparently because I had a nice childhood and I love myself, which was a while to learn that at like 30. I was like, I thought most people loved themselves and it was a few people who were working on it. But that little information right there. I just talked about this yesterday. I'm like, is this what it feels like to like yourself? Oh, you don't like yourself? It's not that I don't like myself. Honestly, I that back i do love myself but i've not used to having good so my mind is always right when is that when's when's the other foot gonna drop right that's where i'm always at is this like i mean i feel you know what i mean yeah i mean i'm i'm not used to feeling right i'm jewish i mean i am always expecting a bad thing to happen. Positive all the time.

Yeah. I'm like, oh, this is what it's like to feel nice every day. Yeah. I'm glass half empty for sure, but it doesn't like weigh on me. It took journaling for me to finally get to glass half empty. Yeah. To get to glass half empty? Yeah.

I was always glass. Wait, no. Glass half empty. Glass half full. I was like, that like that didn't work then i was so positive before that's so funny no i am now um half full but it took it took writing and writing but it's interesting because the therapist i was talking to yesterday she goes you know just human nature we go negative first so she goes that's interesting statistically you have to have two thoughts to make a positive thought because our inclination as humans, it's just the way we're wired is something negative.

Okay, let's think something positive. But you've got to do the work to be able to even think, let's have another thought about this and let's not make it a second negative thought. Let's go positive with this. It took me a while to get there. Yeah. And I don't bat a thousand. But it took me a while to get there yeah and i don't bat a thousand but it took me a while to get there yeah yeah no i can only imagine i don't know but yeah so wait yeah the loving yourself it's just so everyone looks at me like i like they can't believe that i didn't know most people didn't love themselves but i think that's because i like took

people at their word a lot of the time. And most people are kind of walking through life and pretending and saying things as if they do believe in themselves and are confident. And I didn't realize that most of that was fake. And I'm not a naive person. I just, for me, it's just so like why, like it just seems such, honestly, a pain in the ass to lie. Lying to me is such a pain in the ass because you have to remember all these stories that you told that are untrue. It's not like I'm on my high horse being like, the truth is the best option. No, it's the easiest. It's easy.

I have other things I want to work on. I can't remember a web of lies all the time. I'm going to get tripped up and I'm gonna say the wrong thing I'm gonna have a drink and I'm gonna say the wrong thing you know I'm gonna say the lie but if you're always saying the truth then there's no other there's no mistakes to be made um yeah so I was you know so things don't resonate me whatever I was confused and um I don't even know how I got here but I always somehow get here uh yeah and uh the relationship went went on and on and it became more other people had a problem with it that's what you were saying

or no the fans were like you can't you got it you can't that weighs on you and then also it you know i have this outlet every week and it made me not want to share anything because i thought it would be really cool to share share a love story of people from two different political parties like I thought it was going to be great um and then I just ended up having to kind of hide my relationship and if we did get in a fight about politics I felt like I couldn't talk about it to anyone because at first it was fans and then it was friends and then it was family and so when you have a relationship no matter how good it's going and you can't talk about anything that's going wrong in it and at this time i wasn't in therapy yet who like the stuff just bubbles inside you um and then he started reading a lot of Reddit threads.

And that's how all horror movies should start. I mean, that's not good for anybody. Yeah. And this person that I love so much, I saw his mental health like devolving and he's a smart person. But it's like he was getting sucked into conspiracy theories. And but it was happening kind of before all the QAnon stuff and the widespread things that we knew were happening, especially on the right. And I just saw his brain being lost to politics right in front of my eyes. And I don't even know how to put it into words correctly because I haven't fully processed it myself yet because I don't think until I quarantined when I was sitting

alone for a long time did I realize how deeply that time had affected me. But it really was what I imagine like losing a parent to dementia or having someone's like schizophrenia really come to a head because it was this person that you love and this person the person I felt like I knew most in my entire life this person who finally understood me who I could say really anything to without judgment and he would get it I could come home and say the most fucked up things the craziest thoughts I had the most void of ethics thoughts I had and he would always understand and that person's like beautiful mind was just being lost to something that I didn't even feel was noble just I don't feel any part of politics are particularly noble so that was the issue it's

not like it's not like he had you know gone crazy because he went to save children from an orphanage that was on fire and he was traumatized or something like that like that i could have stayed through um but it was it was scary it really felt like there was a stranger in my house we didn't live together but he was there enough that i was a stranger in my house and to i don't it's like it's you're watching someone die or morph into another person in front of you what's the moment where you really were like all right this has to end like that you knew it was it was there was not one singular moment i this is a person that i i had to dump three times for it to finally stick.

And then one day we were just sitting on my couch watching a movie. And if the whole time you're sitting there, you're thinking, I have to break up with this person. I have to break up with this person. I have to break up with this person. I just came out. I go, this has to. I just looked over and he was on his phone, I'm sure, again, doing god knows what uh you know reading breitbart or whatever and uh and like listen i read breitbart too because i want to know what's going on but i don't like take everything that they say seriously nor do i take everything that the new york times is seriously um and uh yeah and i and then i said you, you have to go. And then it unraveled so much worse from there. I found out that he had cheated on me during the time when I was trying to break up with him,

which is so hurtful because it's like, I tried to break up with you. You begged to stay in the relationship and then cheated on me. I now, again, know more from talking about relationships every week that cheating is often a reflection on the person doing the cheating, not the person being cheated on. And I am definitely someone who, when I stop connecting with you, I can get very cold. And I know especially straight men need a lot of love, outward love that I think is that women don't need as much. a lot of like you're great a lot of cuddling that kind of stuff I'm not good at that um and it definitely gets worse when I feel distant from you because the moment I feel disconnected from someone it's there's real

it's a very hard for that to come back because I'm protecting myself at this point I'm like you don't understand me anymore and so I'm not going to share any more of myself with you. It's over. But yeah, that's like something that I'm still mourning. And he ends up marrying someone who looks just like me, who's a younger comedian. I had a lot of feminist issues with that because it felt like he was just doing like, you know, go marrying me with less opinions.

So within the span of what, two years, he gets married? Yeah. Split and married? Yeah. To a girl who looks just like you. Yeah. Enough. It's, you know, we all have a type.

Sure. You'd all be in a lineup together. Yes, we'd all go to the same audition. Absolutely. Yeah. Yes, yes. And it was weird because even though he was this Trump supporter, he always liked to date these very liberal feminist chicks.

So the first photo I saw of his now wife she was wearing you know a nasty what is it nasty woman what was it what did he call hillary clinton you know and then they made all that merch and then i forgot about it because it was so awful that i just pushed it out of my head and like the pussy the pink pussy hat and i was like this is like a even i'm not this feminist because even i make fun of these feminists because it's just like i don't know it feels too branded to me feminists is like let's light something on fire that's the kind of feminist i am let's ignite a man no you get the fucking you fired up let's murder that's your background from the batons that fire right there that's where

it is it's fire in you yeah yeah well i always say you say i was like more malcolm x than martin luther king i'm like let's really fucking get shit done i don't a quiet march no thank you um so he didn't try to fight for the relationship or anything when by the time it had come and you said by the third dumping it was out no but i mean he did could do kinds of things where like i would block him on social media so that i could heal because it's hard even when you do the dumb it's hard to see another person move on and live their life that's difficult and especially when it's someone like people never had to do that before so yeah it was breakup and if they're out of your circle they're gone maybe you ran into them somewhere down the line or whatever but you didn't see

every fucking thing they ate yeah did said after that oh i mean i was zooming in on plates to see if there was a woman's reflection in them it was bad i can't be doing that that's not good for my mental health at least you're honest about it yeah i have obsessive compulsive disorder and it really it really gets flared up uh with with breakups badly so i just you know I just ruminate over all the other things that I could have done differently, which kind of is the impetus for Guys We Fucked. Because I'm such a, I'm like at the core an A plus student.

So I look at everything that way. How could I have aced that relationship? You know, how could I have, how could I have done that? It's just like, it's constant, like win, win, win, success, success, success. To the point where I'm like, am I even enjoying this moment? And then that's how I got into psychedelics. But you know, that's a whole different, that's a happy story. So we don't talk about that here. Um, yeah. And, uh, you know, I had explained to him that sometimes we need to block people for ourselves. Not because I'm like, this isn't about you,

you know, I need to heal now because you have traumat i'm like this isn't about you you know i need to heal now because you have traumatized me um and then yeah there was just a series of like phone calls you know after i find i started dating someone else uh i was happy um i hadn't talked to this person anymore and then out of the blue he calls me to let me know that he's now in a serious relationship with this woman he would go on to marry like you don't why why exactly okay exactly it was a gas lighting call you know gas lighting is overused now but you know and the worst part was he started the conversation by going how you just want to see how you're doing i like excitedly tell him about my life this is a person

i love this is a person who i would wanted to consider a friend in the future for 30 minutes that's nice you yeah you still were there you were still there though yeah i cared like i knew i had to distance myself from this person but i was really sad about his mental health i just couldn't i couldn't do anything more about it i mean I offered to pay for therapy because I had more money than him at the time. Well, still. And so I offered to help pair him with a therapist to pay for that. But that's something that you have to really want to do. And he did go once.

But, you know, once doesn't solve it. I was there. Like, I was like, I'm ready to go in the trenches with you. I want to make this work. Like, you are my teammate and I give a shit about you. And I never really felt that way about anyone romantically before friends for for sure. But at a certain point, you're like, well, either we're both going to go down with this ship or I'm going to have to leave you on the ship to drown or swim to shore or just fucking figure it out. And I ultimately,

because I mean, at that time, my health was suffering. Like, I look at pictures of me from that time. It's like, I look older than I do now. I look, my skin is just like breaking out. I'm overweight. Like, it's, it's, it was, the relationship was killing me and i didn't even know until like two years after how bad it had gotten um i think oh actually i think the the moment when i knew knew we had to break up was i had taken him to denver we were christine and i were playing comedy works denver and we got this amazing opportunity to open for dave chappelle oh man and our uh our you know i guess it was uh our anniversary my ex and i our anniversary was around that time he's a comic

too or was i don't think he does it anymore um and we uh and i was like i took him on this trip and like the first thing is like we get on the plane i paid for everything we get on the plane you know he's complaining about where we're sitting on the plane about the amount of room that we have and i'm not fucking flying spirit it was delta like yeah it was main cabin but i didn't have as much money at that time and like so i'm like still yeah it's like who complains about seriously just like that kind of stuff like i will i will spend ten thousand dollars on someone and all you have to do is not complain. That's all I ask. I will plan the trip. All you have to do is come.

And the only thing I ask of you is that you don't fucking complain. And that seems like a really hard request for a lot of boyfriends. And you know what? Also, I have to look in the mirror because why am I dating these people? But whatever. And so, yeah, that trip, you know, kind of like the final test, like, can this work out? And obviously it couldn't work out. So right after we came home, I dumped him and I was like so mad. I was like, I can't believe I introduced you to Dave Chappelle, but it's fine. It's okay. But yeah, this is not like this. It's hard to, again, like verbalize this because I don't exactly know the answer or how I'm going to resolve this in my own life.

It's something I still talk about in therapy to this day. And it's something that no matter I was having nightmares about this person for still do sometimes like bad. Still really? Mm-hmm. Is it a recurring nightmare? Not a recurring nightmare, but just always like me having to defend myself against this person like physically you know really which is something that never happened in the relation i don't want to put that out there but um yeah just it's like it truly feels i've gotten very into woo woo as a lot of white women did during quarantine and but yeah i

will say that i've always been into Wicca since I was like in the seventh grade. So just, it's not all new. But like, I did like learn how to read tarot in the past year. Real quick, is that a Donnie Darko ring you're wearing? No, it's not. People think it is.

It's from this Australian company called Heart of Bone. Okay. But yeah, Billie Eilish made these popular. I actually just like, I work with them now a little bit, but I truly just love the jewelry. So I like, you know, it was stand up. Yeah, I like a ring because you're holding the microphone. But yeah. Wiccan.

Yeah, Wiccan. That's what you wear. And. It's not new to you. It's not new to me. And so I felt like there was, it was like they were trying he was trying to infiltrate my dreams at this point you know it's like i've cut him off on all social media he wrote me an email at one point um you know defunding his now wife because i was like not chatting with

her in comedy clubs when she would come by which is a wild suggestion man and you know and they were mad because i was talking about them on guys we fucked never never her by name him by name because he had been on the show and agreed to it and he's a public person and he you don't have a protection like that when you're a public person as long as i'm telling the truth which i was um and uh yeah and i was like well it's interesting that now's the time that you decide to protect a woman because you certainly didn't protect me mentally. And I ended that email with never ever contact me again. And I really meant it. And even though I was like, oh, it would be nice if you did really work for it. And he hasn't contacted me since. really work for it but um and he hasn't contacted me since uh but i yeah i replied with the meanest um email that i've ever written to anyone now how many how long ago was that now since that last email two years maybe 2020 early 2020 so have you have you dated again you said you have oh yeah lots of people yeah but have you had a boyfriend again someone you felt like this no no and then yeah and there's

there's the problem of course you know i mean i take i take breakups really hard because i think i really never connect with anyone the only person who I felt who I had met during since I broke up with him that I felt like I could possibly connect with on that level was a chef named Carl, famous chef, actually. He's like on all those Guy Fieri grocery games, Carl Rose and kind of a friend of the New York comedy community. I met him doing a podcast and we really connected. Like I love chefs, number one. It's like, it has been, it's very on record that it is my goal in life to date and marry a chef.

I love chefs. That's a good one, that's a good goal. I love them, I love food. All I do is watch the Food Network. And I feel like there's a couple occupations that really get along with comedians and one of them it's like chef sex worker and comedian all go together really well in a way that even musicians i've dated musicians and i thought they would get comedy they don't um but

i met him and i i never immediately connect with someone i never. Christina is a great pairing for me because we're always sitting down at the podcast table. She could find something in common with a chair. And that is a gift. And God bless her. And that's why we make such a good team. But I, week after week, stare people in dead. And I just have dead eyes. And I know that.

But just I find their stories interesting. and I think about them a lot but nothing they say resonates with me in any way I feel like we're on different planes and so I mean I feel that when words come out of my mouth they go is she talking gobbledygook like what the fuck did this bitch just say and I feel that way a lot with comedy but I think that's why you know you try you try to think like, why am I a comedian? What fucked up thing happened that made me want to tell jokes on stage? And a couple years ago, I realized I was like, oh, because when an audience laughs at your jokes, that's them connecting to what you're saying. if I continuously fail connecting with people one-on-one, at the very least, I can connect with people from a little bit more of a distant space. And that's why I love comedy. But believe me, in the process of writing these jokes, when I'm working them out, there's a lot of audience

members greeting me with dead eyes like, what? How is that a joke what is how is that relatable in any way? And so I sat down and did a podcast with this man, Carl, and I just connected with him immediately. And I get so excited because that never happens. I later found out he's from New Jersey, which is number one of the number one signs that I'm going to get along with you. I'm from New Jersey. I really love people from New Jersey. There's just some kind of an unwritten thing that we share my neighbor jen is from jersey she's got a jersey tattoo right here on very jersey of her very jersey yeah and so we connected um he hit me up

after that podcast appearance and was like i was nervous but like i would like to take you on a date is that okay i was like fuck, let's go on a date. He, we, you know, we're texting back and forth, really getting to know each other. We're both busy. I was, I had to go to like JFL Toronto. So we're just like, you know, it's in that part where you're just like really getting to know each other,

but we haven't gone on this official first date yet. And he was planning some like extravagant dinner at one of Rocco Disperito's restaurants. And you're like, wow, this person is like really fucking putting in the work. And he's like a big meat guy. I don't eat meat. But he didn't – so he was putting together like this vegetarian thing. And I was like, what – like this person gives a shit.

I love this. He seems interested. At his home? Or did you go to a restaurant? His restaurant? It was supposed to be one of Rocco Desperado's restaurants because I think he's one of the chefs who really has a grasp on vegetarian cuisine. Because a lot of chefs kind of laugh at vegetarian cuisine as if it is nothing without the main protein. protein um but that the first date never happened because when i even though we were talking non-stop for a couple weeks i'm in toronto um i wake up in the middle of the night like five in the morning one time i just i just and i'm not a person who wakes up in the middle i just woke up in the

middle of the night and i was like looking around i look at my phone it's a text from my friend the comedian ryan reese He goes, Carl's gone. And I'm like, well, you know, when you wake up, you go, what the fuck does that even mean? What? Right. What? What does that mean? And so then I finally like come out of like my sleep state a little bit more.

And I'm like, is he fucking dead? So I'm Googling, which is the good thing about when a famous person dies. You can check it real quick. And yeah, he had gone um on a trip somewhere in the northeast and uh you know died of heart had a heart attack in his sleep and his assistant found him dead how old um 42 that's my dad's age when he died yeah and so same shit i'm just there i'm in another country, which is not, I don't know. There's just, it feels, you know, when someone you really care about dies, you want to be at home.

I'm freaking out. Thank God I was on the road at that time with Rosebud Baker, who is really comfortable with death because her sister passed away when she was very young, drowned in a hot tub. Can we just... Yeah. I just talked about this. About Rosebud? Yeah. Rosebud doesn't even know I know her.

Rosebud doesn't even know that her story has affected me so much. Her story affected me before I met her. Yeah. Same. I have wanted to have her on the show, but I don't know if I could sit here and listen to it. Oh. Because my daughter's seven now and since she's been in pools and hot tubs yeah because of that fucking story yeah i'm like don't you fucking go under you don't swim in here i don't care if

there's guards on that shit yeah and well kids don't need to be in hot tubs anyway yeah i mean what our friends got a pool and it's like right next to it's a hot back and forth you know what i mean right back and forth in a cold water hot water playing i'm always out there though i will right because of that fucking story and it runs through my goddamn mind and i would like to have her on she's great she'd be great i just it ain't anything about her it's all about me like i have this story in my head like oh my god this happened and just awful yeah yeah well i mean i think laws change like i think because of because of that with the switch has to be accessible and that's how i knew because i had heard about a child drowning in a hot tub and i had heard that that

changed laws of where the emergency switch needs to be and then later on in life i would meet rosebud and i would hear that story and i was like that has to be the same person it has to be. And then later on in life, I would meet Rosebud and I would hear that story. And I was like, that has to be the same person. It has to be, you know, some of the things that helped me jumpstart my day, like workouts, meditation, journaling, hydration, they all clear my headspace, give me energy. All right. And when you push your body too hard or you just feel run down, it's extremely important to stay hydrated. So making hydration a priority helps us feel better on a day-to-day basis. And what I like most about liquid IV is how easy it is to take with you no matter where you are. You just drop right in some water, you're good to go. You can put it in your pocket. There's no excuse not to be hydrated. One stick of liquid IV hydration multiplier in 16 ounces of water hydrates faster and more efficiently than water alone.

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the sundance network it was a reality show about straight women and their gay best friends which i was ultimately fired from because i my best friend and i like i wouldn't pretend to be uh in love with my gay best friend and he wouldn't pretend to have a terrible drug problem and so they were like you need to go and i was like well but why would we pretend that's like a heavy thing to pretend on television that will affect our lives and careers but which would you have a drug which would be heavy drug and also like how like it's like i'm sorry i'm like i'm not gonna be someone like it feels pathetic to me to be in love with someone who will will never and

can never love you in the way that you need to be loved that just was a foreign concept to me i go how can you even pitch that to me can i run that same thought by you about chef because now you felt like maybe chef was a possible soulmate oh yeah and now he's gone but he could love me at the time i don't i don't i'm not like can't now because he's gone oh right i mean i know i know that it's i'm grieving what could have been as my manager put it because that's the thing i it it's what's frustrating about that death and listen i was really surprised by how deeply that affected me but you know you know how sometimes you're you break up with someone who you're seeing

for two months, and that breakup was way harder than like a partner of five years. I don't know if you've ever had that experience. But I mean, they also you haven't didn't know them long enough to have all the bad parts. So you're only grieving the good parts. You're I was grieving basically a perfect, a perfect connection with someone with someone which yes in my logical mind i know it would not have been perfect and i know about the lifestyle he led and i'm sure it would have pissed me he would have pissed me off in a lot of ways and he would have partied too hard and i would have been fucking annoyed but i would have eaten a lot of good food um uh but so yeah i just i was in bed for like two months just really grieving that and i think it

was also another hard hit after um after the mental mental health loss of you know the as i say like the still greatest love of my life even though i hate him um i mean it's huge of you to still be able to say that because i don't know that i could get past to say the greatest love of my life and hate the person at the same time my mom is always mad at me for continuing to talk about him because she's like you're giving him uh power and like letting him know that you care care and i go but that's the truth and also i'm looking at it more about who you are like the power you have to be able to say look i'm going to be vulnerable enough to say this guy's the greatest love of my life but i'm going to be strong enough to also say

i can't stand them i hate that motherfucker yeah i don't think there's anything weak about saying someone hurt me i am hurt there's nothing weak about saying that no yeah and i'm really hurt and i but the part that blows me away is i don't think anyone that's ever hurt me like that i could still say yeah the love of my life yeah well i mean was it is it was yeah i mean like but the thing is it's just like yeah i mean like even though i don't i don't even know if that I think he's a good person. But yeah, that that was it. That's the deepest connection I've ever felt with someone.

And that's just I'm not like if I if I was left as the screenwriter of this story, I would have written it differently. But these are the facts. And like I said, like in all areas of life news personal relationships to me The truth is the most important thing and i'll figure out how to deal with it I want to know the truth even when someone breaks up with me. Tell me why tell me why I can decide to fix it Or not fix it. I can decide something something that I also don't like about myself or that just makes us not compatible I really I just I like answers even like i'm a hard client to have because agents love to Coddle you and I go no tell tell me did they think I was too fat? Am I not pretty enough?

Am I not good enough? What's the reason you know, what's the reason if it's because I'm not pretty enough? Well, I'm not fixed. I'm not changing my face but if it's because You know, um, my acting chops just aren't there Well, then I can go take a class and i'm happy to you know i just want to know the reason that's it even if it hurts it's better to have the real information i don't want to live i don't want to live in lies it's not it's not conducive to growth in any way even if it hurts i'm just like so tired of living people live so

often to protect themselves or to protect other people. When in reality, I think if we just let the people take the hits, we would all be a lot stronger. Just take the hits. Hell yeah. Yeah. I agree. I think that I say all the time, every little boy at least should have his ass kicked once in his life before he gets to be a man. And it would change this place for the better.

Dude, I can't believe I haven't been hit yet. You've never been hit? No, I've had a lot of death threats. I had a pretty serious death threat, though. That's crazy, though. That's way different. I had a very public comedy community where the terrorism unit of the NYPD had to get involved. What?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I just was telling this story the other day. This guy threatened to kill me with a guillotine. That's extreme. You gotta get you. You gotta put you in that motherfucker. Somebody's gotta make sure you stay. Like, that's a lot.

I said, how vintage? It's gonna be a public gathering, too. Oh, my God. I was like, there's lipstick on my teeth. I can't talk anymore. Sorry. I went to Jumbo's clown room last night for the first time. Great spot.

I haven't been there in years. That's why my voice sounds like this. Years. Is this still a fun spot? All right, good. It was super fun. I was like, I see a lipstick on my teeth. That's going to be my next traumatic story.

Where are we in life? Yeah. Well, so far you've lost the two loves. Yeah. One for sure. One potential. Yeah.

Um, and there's more loss on this list. I love, I, it's so nice to have someone have a screen of your trauma right there. Look at it. It's your bullet points. The bullet points is,

it really is doing it for me. So it's really doing it for me that's what's really doing it for me my vision's shit so it's got to be really you're just swinging and like my dad died um okay fun look how long we've been going and we haven't even gotten anywhere near your list and i'd have to respect your time so yeah no it's what i mean we could fast forward tell me whatever you want to tell me uh where are we now in life? Okay. Oh, yeah. Actually, Dad Dying is next.

Great. We're right on schedule. So, Lord Almighty. So, what is it? It's November 16th, 2020 is where we're at now. Okay, yeah. So, November 16th, 2020. We're doing rooftop shows it's covid in new york um i had my phone on silent because i was on a rooftop for

new york comedy club i get off stage turn my phone on message from my mom text message from my mom and a voicemail from my mom and the text message is like um she's a teacher so she's like she like she was like uh call me immediately it's very important and urgent and i go fuck who the fuck died you know yes of course my mom my mom notoriously has the worst poker face a poker face so bad you could see it through a text message a non-poker face so bad you could see it through a text message um and so i called her and she told me that my dad uh had a heart attack later on i would find out it was actually cardiac arrest which is there's a you know there's he like he was dead for like 20 minutes um and uh on a golf

course in new jersey uh which is honestly i'm so thankful there are so many he um he owned a baseball card store uh for many years in rosa park new jersey that i actually have since taken over it's in westchester now baseball cards are back yeah yeah i mean that's a whole other thing that i spent a lot of time doing and i'm very passionate about. But yeah, so I'm so thankful that he was in a space with friends where they could call because, you know, to have come home, my mom come home and found him dead in the house or, you know, him like dead alone in the store just like what it's even thinking of that is just like this saddest thing especially knowing who my dad was and a person who liked to be surrounded unlike me if i die alone please know i'm very happy if you find my body alone with my dog licking it weeks later just know that's exactly how i wanted to go and do not feel sadness for me but if but if my dad had been felt found like that it would have been the worst and i guess the golf course there's so many people around there right you know if you needed help there's a ton

of people there it's probably a good place to exactly and there was someone actually um in in the like club who uh knew how to do cpr so they were able to kind of start it you know people when they say they know cpr it's like okay you took i took a class two once but like i have no fucking idea how to do it like i was just got did it for like a girl scout badge um and uh so yeah they uh got the medics they came there luckily he was pretty close to a hospital and it took them he was yeah he was dead for like i mean they say 20 minutes i'm like can you even come back from that but he. And it took like a lot of time for them to resuscitate him. He came back. Yeah.

So he came back. He was in, I don't know if you would call it a coma, but like a non-responsive state for a couple of days. days and so at that time i literally just stayed in bed for two days just like unable to move crying sobbing trying to figure out how i'm gonna deal with him but i in my head i was like he's not gonna die i just don't i don't believe it i'm on computer. It's such a current move doing medical research, figuring out what they, what they should do. You know, I,

in retrospect, I thought that they should do this thing where they lower your body temperature. Again, I've forgotten what all these things are called. My memory is actually really bad right now because of my grief. So I'm, I apologize for like the stuttering and not remembering.

It's been a constant fucking problem. I like can't remember people's names. And that is a, that's a major grief response so it's so hard to do stand up i'm like an old lady going on stage with notes just because i can't fucking remember anything and i'm someone who used to have a really good memory i could like memorize the script for the school play in one day um but uh yeah and like there's do they do this thing where they lower your body temperature basically so that your heart doesn't have to work so hard. And even my mom asked in the emergency room, like, do you do that?

And the reason they ended up not doing it was because if you are responsive, they don't do it. So he had a bodily response. responsive they don't do it so he had a bodily response but later on um a cardiologist was like well was it a voluntary or an involuntary response because a voluntary response yes you don't do that procedure but an involuntary response like basically you're twitch you're jerking from the electric shocks they're putting in you that's different and it had been an involuntary response so all kinds of fuck-ups there and like i don't know i i don't want to be the person who like self-diagnosis on web md but the fact that me with zero medical knowledge came to the conclusion that that's what should have been done that's a sore spot i'm not i can't dwell on the past though you know it's not that's what happened happened and he was obviously his heart was in bad condition anyway smoker since he was 12 it's fine

um 12 yeah um so you know we're in 1951 baby uh and then uh and then so yes crying in bed for two days day three i'm like you have to get up and do something you crying in bed is not helping anyone make a game plan do something is there anything you can do so i'm the whitest the whitest white woman move my life i go to the witchcraft store in my neighborhood i can't even believe i'm telling you this i show up it's covid so you can't go inside shops i show up in sweats uh i'm a 30 how old am i at that time 30 i just turned 35 yeah i just turned 35 uh i grow grown-ass woman show up to the witchcraft store crying are you outside like i'm outside the witchcraft store. You have to call. Do you have your mask? I have my mask. Crying.

Anyone who's cried into a mask, which I think is all of us at this point. Crying into a mask. Just crying. You're choking on your own tears. It's coming into the mask. You go, oh, this is terrible. I get on my phone because you have to call so someone comes out. I'm whimpering on the phone.

I go, my dad. I need to get off. because you have to call so someone comes out i'm i'm whimpering on the phone i go the woman she goes uh i'll be right out the fucking witch comes out and she's like what's going on and so and i'm sobbing i'm sobbing and just one thing about being a new yorker for 18 years, you have no problem crying in public. I'm not even an open person. I will bawl publicly anywhere, won't bat an eyelash. So I'm outside the witchcraft store and I'm like, I had a heart attack and he's in a coma and I need to do something about it. So I needed to get one of these ceremonial candles, which didn't seem crazy to me because my dad...

No crystals for this? I don't believe in crystals. I touched the nerve. I touched the witch nerve over here. Let's not get fucking crazy, Ryan. I don't believe in crystals. I'm not a dumb bitch. We're talking about

a candle with glitter in it right now and i need you to be fucking serious i'm sorry let me dial it back all right i need to be serious a potion yes a crystal let's not be childish um it's so sad because like i literally feel exactly that way and i know it's insane um. So I tell her what's happening through gasps. And she says, well, we usually can't give these like ceremonial. Usually you can only request from one for yourself because like they take this power, you know, very seriously, as you should with anything. But I think she was like so scared by how I might react by telling me that I couldn't have a candle that she like she said, but because, you know, your dad is unresponsive and can't do it for himself. She, you know, she made some witchy reason in her head.

She was like, we'll fix it. Sounds like a sales pitch too. So they do. They I give them the information you have to give like i guess it would have i don't know what information about him i needed like a healing candle so they're like carving you know snakes into a candle and green glitter glitter healing and while the witch was working on that i actually did go to the crystal store that's how dark the times were that they sent me that i think they just wanted me to not cry in front of the store for 20 minutes while they were carving the candles

so they sent me to the crystal store so I did go to the crystal store because that's how desperate I was when crystals start getting involved you know I am no pun intended at rock bottom and so I was at rock bottom

at the crystal store and then I came back and I got the candle and I lit it and it's one of those candles and I light it because it's one of those candles and I light it because it's similar to a lot of

real quick to Jewish customs don't just gloss over what'd you get did you just did you just eye candy at the crystal store did you get something

what'd you get oh I got crystals I think I got like a tiger's eye and an arrow head oh is that those little ones I see sometimes the tiger's eye

looks literally like the orange and black pattern the same way like a tiger print rug would. What is that? It was all like healing protection. I don't remember. I can never remember what the crystals mean. I just put the rocks in addition.

I go, well, this meant something. It had purpose at one time and then, you know, you rinse it off with some water and you put it in the moonlight. Listen, I've had some moon water too. Yeah. You have to have moon water.

It's like, do I believe in it? But it's like, if the moon's out, might as well make some. But does it work? I don't know. But why not give it a small amount? Making moon water isn't going to hurt anyone. No, it's not. I drink it in the morning.

I do. Wait. You drink moon water every day? No, in the morning. I said I leave it out overnight. Oh, so when it's a fall. Yeah. Good for you.

You know what? Morning water. Good for you. Good for you. Thank you. I'm a little dialed in. Do it. I'm witch-ish.

Yeah. Yeah. I love it. Lean in. And this is not what Sheryl Sandberg meant when she said lean in, but okay. Oh, my God. I can't. sometimes stuff is coming out of my mouth and it's like I do feel this way we've left the crystal shot we're now back to

the candle I'm back at the witch store um I call it a cable shop that was nice of you um and yeah and I get it and it's you know and then I go home and I burn it and it's like it burns for like 10 days and my say I left a candle burning in my you know my sink is metal for like 10 days in my sink. I left a candle burning in my, you know, my sink is metal. So for 10 days. And like I said, like I really, I liked it and it felt right for my dad because he's Jewish. And, you know, when you, a person dies who's Jewish, you know, you'll light the candle and leave it out in memorial. So that's the thing. Like it did feel Jewish in some ways.

So I'm like, even though my though my when i am religious my chosen religion truly is wicca it's the only because it's nature-based so it's like it just feels realer to me um and again they're kind of all religions are kind of the same but uh and then so i left that and i'm praying and i'm doing everything i'm just doing doing anything i can think of sending good energy emailing like prayer groups across the country because it's like my my response to something is never going to be do nothing that's not who I am but I'm also like not a doctor like so what do I just go what do what can I do and I do believe in energy so same it's like I just had to do something because i said me crying sitting in bed crying

um is not doing anything and it's making the situation about me and this isn't about me right now and let's just try what we can do and also during that time was also reading up in preparation for like um because i again i really believe that he would come to again and how are we going to get through this as a family and he did were you allowed to visit at all did you go sit no not not at that time covid i mean it was like yeah no no no like my mom had been allowed you would have that's even more mind fuck yeah my mom that's why and that's why i hadn't gone home to new jersey because my i was like i my mom said you can of course but i just didn't think and like knowing my personality my mom's personality i

just didn't think that me sitting at home crying was going to be helpful to my mom when she was obviously under stress. So and she, you know, they have a dog there. So I was like, you can, you know, you have you have support through that. I'm like, certainly me coming home and crying all over your house is not going to be helpful in any way. And so, yeah, a couple of days come by on like the third day there's eye movement. He was responsive, you know, fast forward. He's so, I mean, and this goes on for months and months and months. So he finally becomes responsive.

I do end up visiting him like around, when did I get to visit him? I guess Thanksgiving was the first time I was able to visit him in the hospital and you could you could only go two visitors a day one at a time and that's it you had to sign in so of course it's me and my mom my brother lives in California so he hadn't been home yet at this point because they were just my mom's like no point you know you literally can't come in the room um so we would try to FaceTime and stuff and I mean I remember vividly the first walking into the hospital room the first time I saw my dad and he had brain damage, so he didn't know who I was, you know. And so obviously there's a lot of things where, you know, a lot of people have had experiences where their parents slowly forget

who they are and who the kids are. But for overnight someone to forget who you are and who the kids are but for overnight someone to forget who you are and their entire life especially the smartest person i've ever met this is a man who got um a perfect score on the math sat actually he got one wrong on the math sat but he claims that they were wrong and i think they actually it was like a mistake on the test and this is like a one of the funniest stories about him but yes so this is a fucking genius genius of a man um and i think when someone is so associated with their like when i like i just think my dad i think his mind so to have that be the loss was like that was a tough pill to swallow and i mean it was just me like going behind a curtain sobbing and then going back and like you, you don't want to sob over the person, even though he wouldn't have even processed it, I don't think.

But I mean, he was it wasn't like he was out of it. He was a human being, but like kind of like a childlike human being who was just existing. And so I was like, I'll just treat this as if I'm visiting a new person. You know, I know who he is. He doesn't know who I am. But that doesn't mean, you know, I can't fucking, I relate to people I don't know every night. That's literally my occupation. I can do this.

Um, and so it was just a lot with visits like that for weeks, you know, I'm like, uh, taking the train to New Jersey to go to the hospital as much as I possibly can. And like, I really like, I put my career completely on hold at the point I was like, I don't give a shit. can and like i really like i put my career completely on hold at the point i was like i don't give a shit um and uh visiting him a lot and just trying to jar his memory uh in different ways uh the first time uh after several visits i was able to get something out of him that connected was we were playing beatles music and he was able to continue hey jude on his own the lyrics so the first thing that came back to him was music so we were playing all his favorite he's cindy lauper um joni mitchell uh beatles

like that's his that's his music and so yeah and i i was so and the minute he continued hey jude on his own that's all i needed i was like yes're going to do this. Then student Corinne comes back and I'm researching. I'm pulling up things. I'm making playlists. I'm finding videos. I'm finding old photos. I'm like, we're going to make this man's memory come back. We can fucking do this. I know we can. If any family can do it, we can do it. So this goes on. His memory does start coming back. Slowly, he starts wrecking like me and my mom and my brother obviously and his brother are the kind of only people he ever really ended up recognizing again but he recognizes us it comes in and out um uh and uh at one point he did propose to me because that when he didn't

know who i was and i was like flattered you are the first man to ask but I don't know how I feel about that and you know I'm a 35 year old woman so my friends are like what did you say you know and I finally started talking about it on stage and I'm like it's not lost on me that the first man to propose was number one my dad and number two had brain damage so I'll work on that I'll I compartmentalize that and I'll work on that later. At twice your age. Yeah. Or more. Yeah. So, yeah.

So, that's coming back. He finally, he finally in, like, so we go through Christmas. He's still in the hospital. Mary coming in and out. He goes to, like, a rehab center. Finally in, I think it wasary 2021 um he makes it home he's in he's well enough to make it home have people in and out my brother and i kind of reschedule our entire lives to take shifts because my mom couldn't handle it on her own and to add to all this my dad's six foot six

so just a really like that's the same height as michael jordan to put it into perspective really skinny but six foot six um and so even you know he couldn't he his equilibrium's all off so even to lead him around the house you almost need two people just to be that tall and thank god my brother's tall but me and my mom are really short um and so he's home he has uh people coming uh like you know nurses coming but no one's's there full time except for the family. And my brother and I kind of just take shifts. So I'm there for like almost a week. And then my brother flies in from California to do his shift.

And during that time, I mean, it was I was crying a lot, kind of from exhaustion, because like I would have to wake up at like six in the morning, which for a comic was just. kind of from exhaustion, because like, I would have to wake up at like six in the morning, which for a comic was just, and you're dealing, and you're just like dealing with someone who you know, who you love, but it's having like, you know, there's brain damage, there's wild reactions to things. Sometimes he's grabbing your arm aggressively. I'm never scared of him because it's my dad. But you know, it's just, it's just you're, you're just constantly in a state of shock and you don't really know how to explain it to any of your friends. And I only found like one person that I knew who had had a kind of a similar experience. Her mom was in a pretty bad car

accident. Um, so I knew a little bit about what to expect, but I didn't like, I didn't know this about cardiac arrest or heart attacks. I thought either you live or you don't. I didn't know there was a part where you live and you have brain damage.'t i didn't know there was a part where you live and you have brain damage i just didn't know that i didn't i never knew that that was a thing from heart stuff i knew that was a thing from like you know head trauma um and then week two i go at the time of visit i'm dating a comic in north car. I fly out to visit him. My brother takes a shift. Well, literally the moment I land in North Carolina, I get a call that my dad went into cardiac arrest again.

And I'm like, fuck. And so there was this constant anxiety I had around about even leaving. And then it was only reinforced because literally the moment I left, I'm on a 90-minute plane. And in that time that I left, something bad did happen, which is bad for anyone, but especially bad for a person with obsessive compulsive disorder. Because obsessive compulsive disorder, especially the kind I have, is literally just thinking if you don't do things in a certain way, something bad is going to happen to someone you love. And even though logically I know me getting on that plane to North Carolina had nothing to do with that happening. It still is like your worst fear.

Is your worst like the worst part of your anxiety disorder is coming true. So then we go back to Wu because I'm in North Carolina. My mom was like, there's no point in flying back now. He's just, you know, he's we go through the process again. This time they did the body temperature cool down thing. again um this time they did the body temperature cool down thing um uh and you know and this happened right after he had really started to acknowledge where he was i think going home to his house where he lived really lit up a lot of memories he had been facetiming with his older brother things were coming back he knew i was his daughter like you know there was a lot

of memory a lot of memory is still missing, but there were pieces, there were pieces there. And, and I gotta say throughout the whole, the whole experience, the one thing that remained intact was his sense of humor, which was a really interesting experience for me as a standup comedian. meditations and trying to connect with him spiritually on the bathroom floor of this fucking hotel that i'm in uh visiting my my boyfriend i got a hotel because i'm gonna stay in his house he lived with his sister that's another part of the story though that's another that's another trauma me dating men in their 40s who don't live by themselves it's my own you have to come back for that my own fucking fault um uh and uh and then so we basically he does come come to uh from the from that stage uh the cool down but we basically we're back to one he's back to the same memory loss that experienced the first time and after that um he's in the hospital for a couple months and we're just not seeing a ton of progress. He has catheters, he's getting a ton of UTIs,

just like everything that, it's not just the heart, there's just everything that can go wrong is. And then there's a higher risk of COVID, there's just so much going on. Staying in a hospital when you're already sick is actually really dangerous because you're surrounded by sick people and people don't, you don't think of that.

But it's like, you wanna really get the person out of the hospital as soon as as soon as possible but when they need so much assistance for their heart that's also hard so we got him into some kind of i think a rehab like a rehab again it wasn't working he's getting sick he's going back to the hospital all the time this keeps happening it's just like we're all on edge every time the phone rings something terrible is happening and my dad is like i mean he's going back to the hospital all the time this keeps happening it's just like we're all on edge every time the phone rings something terrible is happening and my dad is like i mean he has brain damage but he's you know getting out of his bed crawling around the hospital floor like not being the best patient but also he has brain damage and it seemed like the medical professionals around him like were reacting like this was a completely cognizant grown 69 year old man crawling around the floor

and i'm like he has brain damage like this is not like he's doing it to fuck with you yeah right and i was just flabbergasted time and time again about how they were talking to him as if he was just someone being difficult not someone who had brain damage. I don't know. I had to make conversations with nurses about this, but whatever. And then, you know, we kind of all know that thing at this point, we've done everything. And so my mom, you know, calls, has the FaceTime meeting for me and my brother to tell me that she thinks we need to put dad in hospice. And I am like, for me, the word hospice feels like giving up. Yeah, it also scares me.

I always feel like everybody that goes into hospice is dead within like four weeks of getting in there. Well, there's some, actually, I had watched this thing, Surviving Death on Netflix, and someone was living basically in a hospice state for years and years and years, and she looked like she was fucking loving life. And I'm like,

I'm like, there was always one. Yeah. I was like, were you just like, were you like lonely? You're like, what happened here?

She looked great. Um, but whatever. Kudos to her. Uh, is he watched surviving death on Netflix? It's amazing. Uh,

it really like helped me. I was like, I was really getting into like connecting with the, the afterlife in that realm. Cause I knew I would have to prepare, you know, even if it wasn't, even if my dad had lived, it would only be maximum. My dad was only going to live a couple of years. Best case scenario, he was only going to live like two years more. So I knew that I needed to start preparing for his death.

But yeah, so he's in hospice. I had already thought it on my own. So it made me, it made me feel like it wasn't a haphazard decision because my mom and I had separately had the same thought that it's time for hospice. And I think when you think about your final days, you want them to be in a nice place. A hospital is not a nice – I'm not like an anti-hospital person, but a hospital is not a nice place. Hospice is a nice – honestly, hospice is a nice place. It was comfortable.

It was a nice hotel room. Oh, yeah, a nice honestly hospice is a nice place it was it was comfortable it was nice hotel room like as i've spent a lot of hotel room not like a facility yeah no i've spent a lot of time as a comic in hotel rooms it just felt like a hotel room he had a beautiful window with a garden like i'm like when i when i went into there i go this is what i i would want to look out the window and see this if i'm gonna die because he couldn't be home that wasn't a choice we weren't able to physically take care of him in the way that he needed to be taken care of um so yeah and then that just became like me going almost every day to New Jersey spending just a nib I mean tens of thousands of dollars on ubers um to because I just to take the train like it was so far I don't have

a car like that was the only way to effectively be able to visit him and not completely ruin the career that I had worked on. And like living at home, no one wanted me home. So that wasn't an option either. But yeah, so I just continued to do that. And honestly, hospice was probably one of the more positive experiences of this whole thing because my dad was in and out of knowing who I was. But like we had a lot of good times in hospice when

I just was like, I'm going to just treat him as again, like we're just going to make the best of I'm not going to go in and be sad and we're just going to have fucking fun. One of my favorite memories in hospice is my dad turned and my dad was always like a ladies man. But obviously you have no filter when you have brain damage so you you know just really and hard as one of the guys we fucked women who has fought so long and hard against sexual assault and then him just being like you know nice rack to the nurses who come in he would tell you know maybe not that excessive i don't want to i don't want to uh tarnish his name in the afterlife but he you he would tell all the hospice nurses that he was a porn star um and then my mom would be like randy

and he would be like i'm sorry you're right i just owned a sex shop i think so like really the funniest when i first showed up at hospice he starts yelling down the hallway come in my daughter is here come get an autograph while you can wild shit fun like a fun because and that was what was so important like even though most of randy was missing like my favorite part and the part that certainly inspired me the most was like still so alive and it was like wow so like music and and humor is this powerful then even after you've been dead they've brought you back to life two times you're that it's so strong that it comes through and it wasn't a generic sense of humor it's still like his he has like a like kind of a mischievous like i'm gonna say the most fuck see how fucked up of a thing i can say to you like it's a very he's not like a dad funny he's like stand-up comedian funny um

and so there was a lot of that we one time uh i convinced he would always try to get out of bed and stuff and again like six foot six this is so much to handle so one of my favorite memories was i told him that he was going on a date with a hot lady later that day we and he's in his like it was like a wheelchair but they lock you in with like a table so you can't get out i don't know what exactly it's called but he was in that he just would always try to get out of it um but it was better than being in a bed because you got to sit up for once better for the blood flow you know and blood flow is so important with a heart issue um and so i would have to distract him and i decided that he was going on a date i said like the limo is coming we're picking we we got i like took flowers from the vases in hospice i was like you

have to give this to your date we're changed we're changing his outfit into a new thing i'm combing his hair i made him pose for a picture like we really did it and so it was just fun because i'm like i saw a lot of people visiting hospice and they were kind of just like sitting with their loved ones and i'm like that's fine i'm not gonna i can't criticize how you decide but i like i was fucking coming in like a preschool teacher with a fucking plan every time i'm like we're gonna play a game we're gonna sing a song i interviewed him at one point wrote down the answers i'm like i don't care if they're wild i'm care i don't care that recorded um it was a handwritten interview like i was a journalist yeah

we made videos we watched a lot of deal or no deal, a lot of Jeopardy, things that he really liked because, again, like a numbers man. Mental stimulation. Deal or No Deal, he seemed to like, you know, and it's good because it's a show where you can root for people. We did get to see someone win the million. We're cheering. Oh, nice. You know, just like stuff like that. Yeah.

And then he was there for a couple of months. And like there's a couple of times like they know when right when you're about to die basically um and that's like a different state that you know hospice nurses are trained to recognize and so where there was one false alarm i take it you know my mom calls me she says i think it's time um i of course get in an uber immediately go to hospice uh i get there and my i get in my dad's like kicking around laughing i go i go who who said that he was dying i was like this he looks honestly better than he's been in weeks and then everyone leaves the room and i was like well i've already i'm already here so i'll sleep over with you because you're um during like this this final um days of death you're you don't have

any restrictions on how long you can visit family is allowed to be there 24 7 basically you just have to call and let them know that you're gonna come everyone should go to this fucking hospice yeah it was unlike any hospice story i've ever heard oh really i mean like listen can i yeah i'm sorry to be insensitive real quick but we're we're going for an hour and 20 we got to do yeah what time is it right now 109 and what time you got to get out of here i need to go we need to be oh yeah we probably need to like wrap right yeah yeah yeah yeah i don't want to i mean oh my god i can tie a ribbon on it it's it's sure we're almost done i mean all right we're moments i don't want to rush you to tell we're moments from his death this is great we have time that's great i have a bfa in directing

it's all good it's a we're moments this one was a trick so i go i basically i was like dad are you fucking with them and then i was like are you pretending to die and then we had a laugh was he i i mean again too much brain damage to get a straight answer but sure seemed like it that's actually pretty interesting and i was like you i was like you're a troublemaker and i respect it um and then yeah and then yeah, I left to see my boyfriend in North Carolina one more time. Of course,

come back immediately as soon as I land, get a call. I'd actually get a call that he's, again, this time for real in the final stages of life. I ended up being

the last person to see him alive from the family. And he was, it was the only time we're in hospice where it was really hard to be around

because it was the only time that he seemed just so sick. Just so, I mean, he was it was the only time we're in hospice where it was really hard to be around because it was the only time that he seemed just so sick just so I mean he was weak and I mean his his legs were the size of my arm truly just withering any for a big oh yeah withering withering away I mean yeah it just you know to see someone truly evaporate in front of your eyes, a really, really one of my grandmothers died like that. And I was honestly, I know exactly. I was scared to hug her. Yeah.

I felt like I would break all her bones if I squeezed her. Yeah. Just just an absolutely wild experience to have. And so, yeah, he passes. Yeah, he passed away and he was basically coughing for most of my last visit because you know just the fluids are coming up um but yeah i i kind of just knew and i before i like left i was like i'm gonna come see you in two days um but i was like if you feel like you need you need to go you can go like i'm okay with that um and uh damn we almost made it i know you love

tear porn i don't love it i know you you go and jerk off at home to this i fucking know this is not in my search i walked in and i was like you can't cry you can't give this man what he lives we know male comedians are fucking predators um and we can't give them this. I don't want, at least I'm glad to have tears than anything else. And then, and then he, and I, you know,

I said, I was very cinematic. I literally said, I love you. I gave him a kiss on the forehead, walked out of hospice and he,

I thought he couldn't respond and then right as I'm like passing through the frame of the door, I hear him go, love you. And I go, nice.

And I, you just know, there's such a, like I just fucking knew every part of this, it was like really, like I go nice and I you just know there's such a like I just fucking knew every part of this it was like really like I had called I knew that in my head I had June when as soon as he had a cardiac arrest in November immediately the the vision the thing that came into my mind was I said to myself we'll know more in June he died June 29th that was the first thought I had months before I go,

I, my family kept asking questions. I go, I just, I go, I don't know what to tell you. I just say, I said,

I know we'll know more in June. I know we'll know more in June. And we did. I mean, it was not great news, but it was fine. And I'm, and I'm really fortunate that I had a lot of time with him because my mom kind of always said,

it's like, you know, it's like, yeah, it's not the same version of him, but this is how he is at this stage in his life. And so we need to appreciate him at a hundred percent you know then i go to costa rica mourn his death during that time i'm i wake up in the middle of the night with the same

kind of carl jolt and i find out that my childhood best friend had died uh two years prior and i didn't know and that's a wrap everybody hold on sit there for a second that's a wrap, everybody. All right, hold on. Sit there for a second. That's a wrap. First of all, thank you. That's back to one. Advice you would give to your 16-year-old self, because I do want to hear that, and then promote whatever you want, and we'll wrap it up. My 16-year-old self, I say,

bitch, you keep practicing that Oscar speech in the mirror because you're going to get there. I love my 16-year-old self, and I love me now. Don't change a thing. You're going to be a Spice Girl, and you're going to win an Oscar. I love my 16 year old self and I love me now and I would don't change a thing. You're going to be a Spice Girl and you're going to win an Oscar. I love it. I fucking love it.

And don't let anyone fucking dim your light or tell you that you're too fucking cocky or a narcissist. You're exactly the way you need to be. That's that.

Great. And yeah. Promote it all. Yeah, I'm on all social media. TikTok, Instagram, Twitter at philanthropy gal. it's tongue in cheek i don't think i'm like fucking giving back to the universe guys just no one can fucking spell my name right so i had to do a word that you can look up in the dictionary philanthropy gal

and uh most importantly uh watch our special day it's uh christina hutchinson and my debut comedy special on youtube you can access it for free youtube.com slash guys we fucked without the u and fucked real real labor of love and i think even even if you don't think it's funny like it's cool that artists are making their own shit um so you know watch it give it a like and uh and then guys we fucked podcast uh it's a it's a luminary podcast but it's a you know available on the luminary channel on apple podcasts for free um yeah guys we, the anti-slut-shaming podcast. I truly, really think it's one of the best podcasts out there. And I'm not someone who thinks everything she does is great.

I really think it's a great podcast. And I think that anyone can get something out of it. Agreed. My mom even likes it. She don't fucking like anything. Well, thank you for doing this. As always, Ryan Sickler on all social media, ryansickler.com.

We'll talk to y'all next week.