The HoneyDew with Ryan Sickler - Tony Hinchcliffe

Episode Date: October 28, 2019

My #HoneyDew this week is Tony Hinchcliffe! Tony tells stories about his crazy mafia childhood, being poor his whole life and finding out that his estranged father, who was married with another family when he got Tony's mom pregnant, ended up living nearby the whole time. It didn't take Tony long to figure it out and blow the lid off the whole thing! I love sitting and listening to people I admire share the struggles they've dealt with, how it's impacted their lives and how it's still with them today. Tony goes deep. Subscribe, download and review! Sponsors: Hurry to http://upstart.com/HONEYDEW to find out HOW LOW your Upstart rate is. Head over to http://bit.ly/MYBHoneyDew to double your cash on MyBookie!

This episode is brought to you by Upstart and MyBookie. More on that later, let's get into the do. You're listening to The Honeydew with Ryan Sickler. Welcome back to The Honeydew, y'all. We're over here at Studio Jeans, doing it at your mom's house. I'm Ryan Sickler. Ryan Sickler on all social media.

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And if you're new to the show, this show is about highlighting the low lights. I always say this is the these are the stories behind the storytellers. And today's storyteller, I'm very excited to have here for the first time on a honeydew. Tony Hinchcliffe. Hey, welcome to the honeydew. Wow. Look at that. There's that audience. I make exactly. I'm excited to be here. You hear it? Yeah, they sound good back there. Sounds like there's applause coming from that little closet. Well, I'm very stoked to have you on here. Before we get into anything, please plug, promote, whatever you'd like.

Well, I mean, I have my own live podcast that's all about stand-up comedy and the people trying to do it. That's called Kill Tony, and we do that live all around the world, going to Australia in the middle of October and traveling the world with it and selling out shows and having a lot of fun. It's a big, crazy live experience, so if it's ever around your city, go check it out live. TonyHinchcliffe.com to catch all my stand-up tour dates, and I'm just happy to be here.

I'm happy to have you, man. I know we had you on the Crab Feast before, and you told some great stories about growing up and your childhood, and I would love to dig into some more of that stuff. Let's do it. So just tell everybody originally where you're from, and go ahead and get into it. Well, here we go. Okay.

So I'm originally from a place called Youngstown, Ohio, which, especially when I was growing up there, was famous for being extremely dangerous. Crime? Yes. At the time, it was the crime capital of the country. It was the murder capital of the world when I was growing up there, per capita. I hear you on that.

Which means this was the late 80s, early 90s. Wow. It was just unbelievable. A murder a day, at least in a city with like, I don't know, I don't know, 40, 50,000 people. A murder a day. A murder a day. And so and I grew up. See, a lot of people will stay there from Youngstown, but they're from Boardman or Gerard or one of these very, what I always considered rich suburbs of Youngstown. But I was from the actual like most ghetto part where

nobody anywhere around like my lifestyle lived. Like it was very, you know, just extreme white trash. Like I was one of the only kids around my not only was i one of the only white kids around my neighborhood i was uh i was the only white kid that had like shoes and socks on and like a shirt like it was like very ratty like exactly how you picture like a lot of those like you see those like new world star videos where there's like a giant fat guy walking with a midget who's walking with like someone with like weird butt cheeks or something like that was my entire that was your street that's what i thought like normal life was like for the longest time

and my whole world was just a world star video and how many how many brothers and sisters two brothers two sisters but they're all much much older than me how what's the so the closest sibling is 12 years older than me and then 14 16 and 18 years older than me you share the same parents no i have a different dad than all of them all right yeah which is which is its own crazy story because my mom was married to their dad still while she was banging my dad who was married to another woman and they had kids together wait so all right let's go back to this for one second did the did the older siblings live with you in youngstown or were they at the age at

that point where they were pretty much out on their way a couple of them were out actually i'm such white trash that my mom and my oldest sister were pregnant at the same time is that true dude yeah there's pictures of my mom and my oldest sister like back to back just like you know they thought it was the coolest right yeah like you believe it oh my god how old was your sister when she was pregnant well Well, she was, if she's 18 years older than me. Oh, that makes her 18. She was 18, exactly. Oh, hell yeah, dude.

This is real Youngstown shit. You can't even get pregnant after 18 in Youngstown. I mean, she'd have to be 18. You're pregnant. You're the one in your mom's belly. And my mom had her when she was 18. So you're an uncle to a nephew that is the same age. I'm an uncle to a niece that is like two months younger than me.

Oh, younger. Yeah. All right. You got it right. Age. Yeah. Holy shit. Yeah.

I mean, real. I'm like Italian, but I'm super white trash at the same time. So it's a fine art. You know what I mean? So they were mostly out of the house, and the other ones were pretty much going off to college. One was, but I guess one was, I don't know, 12, and another was 14, and another was 16.

But I mean, they were, you know what I mean, by the time I'm three, four, five, six, they're all gone. Yeah. So your mom was married to their dad right your other two so now they weren't really i guess they were yeah i guess they were sleeping in different beds from what i've been told like and it's the same i guess on my dad's side like that's old school but was he married to your dad so both married both cheating on their spouses you're that love child not only were they cheating my friend but they were cheating on each other they were cheating on their significant others for 11 years before my mom got pregnant with me 11 years 11 years it

wasn't like some one night stand no one knew no one well i mean like i just didn't give a shit yeah i don't think they gave a shit like my older brothers and sisters from what i understand didn't even like their dad he was a very heavy drinker or whatever. So, like, my dad was, like, the cool guy that would come over and fucking make spaghetti and fuck my mom. And everybody was just happy about it. They're like, oh, that guy's cool. Makes spaghetti and fucks our mom oh man so yeah so they i guess what so do

they get married hell no your parents never got married oh no i'm a super bastard i'm like the original bastard like being a bad like game of thrones made that shit cool but for the first 29 years of my life i wasn't cool at all so fatherless all right that's what i want to ask you so your mom has you yeah she's in youngstown and where's your dad also in youngstown or yes here's what's crazy is that yes my dad was in youngstown but this is where things get really messed up because my mom actually lied to me and told me that and she got the siblings to go in on it with her and she told me that my dad worked a lot and he worked out of town I think they said he was a truck driver

something to like let my little boy imagination run wild with a rationalize why he only visits like once every when I was a little baby I remember he was there a lot this is also what they remind me of and then as I got like I don't know maybe two or three maybe it was like once a month and then it was like you know once every couple months and it sort of spread out so when i was young they told me like oh you know his you know they gave me a fake last name they're like oh his name's joe smith and you know he works a lot and is your his hinge cliff his name? No. No, Hinchcliffe is the first guy's name because my mom wanted me to have the same name as my older brothers and sisters because that's like our family. You know how like trashy families are like, we stick together no matter what.

We're not half brothers and sisters. We're real brothers and sisters. Say it again. Like it's like normal super trash shit. So Hinchcliffe is the guy that was leaving when your dad would come over and make spaghetti and fuck your mom. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. That's who you're named after.

Absolutely. I'm named after that fucking idiot. Hey, I love that there's spaghetti in the fridge and your pussy smells like pasta. This is incredible. So you all have the last name Hinchcliffe. Yeah. Are you close with your dad's kids from that marriage? Well, by sort of like crazy coincidences and stories, yes.

I ended up getting close with them. Not one of them, but the other one, yes the i think that the son from that side has like an issue like a jealousy issue do they know who you are and what you do i mean it's kind of hard to hide they do they do now and uh it's sort of crazy because well let me just tell you the rest of the story so that you can understand so they my mom told me that that was the story like my dad travels a lot my dad works a lot and then i think it was like either, I don't know, first, second, no later than third grade. I was on the school bus one day and I noticed that across the street from my one buddy's house who we were picking up, I looked across the street and in the driveway was this, you know,

white, I think it was a Bronco or a Ford something, but whatever it was, pretty sure it was a Bronco. And I would see this white Bronco and it looked a lot like the car that my dad would drive when he would come and visit. I'd always be waiting for him and he'd always be late. So this arrival of him coming to see me was always a really big deal. And I noticed this car across from my buddy's house, and then I noticed it again, and I noticed it again. So I took mental note of it and the license plate, and the next time my dad came and visited, I matched it up. How old do you think you are at this point?

Again, this is like no later than i mean second or third grade i would say nine ten that's really good okay right around then and yeah they were very shocked when what happened happened which is after my dad left that next time after i matched it up i mentioned to my mom i go hey uh i noticed that dad's car is in this one house's driveway a lot when we pick up Jeff Lewis on the school bus. It was that close? Yeah, literally right across the street. Well, from my buddy who was, yes, only seven, eight blocks away. You're on the same bus route.

Exactly, same bus, same school. And my mom turned pale white. And she sat me down and she told me everything then. She decided to stop the lies then and break down everything to this 10-year-old boy. That's a lot. Yeah, it's a lot. That's how someone like me gets made. You're wondering, like, whoa, what the fuck's wrong with him? There it is.

Horrible, horrible horrible the worst kind of childhood trauma you just find out that your mom who's been raising you has been lying to you for 10 years about who made you and how you were made and the fact that you know you're you don't have a normal life at all and you're a super bastard and you're not even related you're completely related to your brothers and sisters and all this crazy stuff. And that's when you also find out then that your dad has this other wife and family or other woman and family or whatever. Two kids and a wife.

Holy shit. And they're old school Italians, so they don't want to get divorced. And where do those kids go to school? They were much older, too. They had already grown up. And actually, they went to the same high school that I went to. But they were there like, I don't know, 12, 14 years before that. How old was your mom when she had you?

She was 38 when she had me. Okay. Yeah. So in her 20s, obviously, young 20s when she had your other siblings. Yeah. Got it. Okay. So what happens when you hear this?

Well, I mean, it was very traumatizing. There was a lot to it. Like, you you know they told they she ended up calling him he ended up coming back and this and that he's like i'll walk over right oh my god that is so funny oh my god oh it hurts it's hurting the back of my spinal cord right now that is like one of the greatest jokes i've ever heard in my life oh my god that's so funny i'll walk over yeah he was right fucking there the whole time this asshole so yeah it was a lot to handle and they told me you know and here's the here's the real here's the here's where shit gets really interesting, as if that wasn't crazy enough of a story,

is that at the time in Youngstown, there was a lot of organized crime and a lot of, you know, this is old school stuff. This was a long time ago. This was, you know, right as, I guess, you know, Goodfellas just came out and like all this stuff sort of really being, what's it called? You know, not showcased, but glorified. And it was a crazy time because it turns out that my dad was involved in some of that stuff. It was just a natural thing. You know what I mean? You're friends and you have a restaurant and all this stuff.

And you know what I mean? It's just a natural thing, much more common than we can sort of imagine, especially back then, especially in Youngstown. So what was your dad's profession? What did he do? He was a restaurant owner. Okay. Owned a restaurant. Right. And what about your mom? Well, my mom actually, she ended up running the running numbers she ended up running an entire illegal lottery because that's basically what my dad did for her instead of child support he's like all right well you can run the entire let you work i'll let you run the entire fucking youngstown numbers yeah exactly

and i think my dad was more into like running the entire gambling like betting on sport like i mean running all these people that were just betting and all this stuff. So both your parents were on the other side of the law. Exactly. So one of the things was is they didn't want me sort of

talking about who my real dad is because he was sort of famous in the city. It was for my own safety. it was for their safety they didn't want his super italian you know reputation to be messed up because if you have a if you make a a kid you know as an italian who's married with another woman it's like all this shit that they that they're that maybe his bosses wouldn't like to know that and that's messed up and so it's like they're basically like,

shut your mouth and don't tell anybody anything. But that was almost impossible. And that was almost a massive challenge to me. I mean, you just got all this new information. Don't you want to tell everybody? Exactly. Especially imagine a year or two later when at that point it's boiling up

and you're making friends with your friends' dads and moms and they ask questions. What's your dad do? What's your dad do? Right. Yeah, I never see him around well. Well, how often, now that you've discovered the secret, how often are you now seeing your dad?

More, less? No, it's less. It really started to ruin things. Every time I would make a discovery or say something or leak something, it always just hurt our relationship. It's great now, but, yeah, back then it was rough because I was also getting in trouble a lot, and I would do dumb things.

I would make really, who would guess, that I would make really over-the- top bad jokes that i shouldn't have made like i remember um i remember one time uh in school there was this teacher who hated me and he was so mean to me and uh but and then one day i can't remember what the joke was exactly like someone was we were just crap we had all just found out what like pedophiles were like we had just found out like we're like 12 or 13 and literally we just think it's the funniest thing and we end we end up like i end up making this joke like and we're all cracking up too so it's like me and a group of guys, and we're just dying of laughter. And I'm like, yeah, my dad molested me all the time.

And we just thought it was the funniest thing. But this teacher who hated me heard that, Mr. Gil Martin. And he decided to make an example out of me. So he's like, well. As if your dad's molesting hadn't already made enough of an example. Right. He's like, well, I'm going to teach you a lesson. You can't joke about things like that. And I'm going to teach you a lesson, dude, because any time you make a joke about a parent or someone molesting you, I have to report it to the Children's Services.

Oh, shit. And so Mr. Gil Martin, thinking he was a badass motherfucker, thinking he was going to break me and teach me a lesson about life, right? He doesn't know who's about to show up either. Guess who's about to come walking over. I'll be right there. Let me get my flip-flops off he calls he called the children's services

and they called my mom and she's freaking out and they end up having to call my dad they have to call him and this and that and you know i explained to my dad and he's no dummy you know what i mean like he knew exactly what the hell happened he'd be laughing just like we are about the pedophile stuff and this and that if he was here today you know sitting here watching and because he gets it so i told him i'm like we were making jokes we were all just laughing about this dumb thing no one ever no one i didn't say really that you molested we were just just making, we were completely kidding. And I think he knew exactly what was going on there

and that Mr. Gilmartin wanted to make a fool out of us and teach me a lesson. Well, long story short, Mr. Gilmartin didn't show up to work again after that. Is that true? Cut to about cut to a month or two later and my mom and i are at the local grocery store and guess who's stocking cantiloup no yep stocking honeydews yeah mr g Mr. Gilmartin. That would be the perfect job. Over there just making sure they're ripe and putting them down. Nobody's buying these fucking things.

With a little produce apron on. I mean, no pride left whatsoever. He's probably like, I had tenure, goddammit. Yeah, I mean. He went from teaching to stocking the shelves. Yeah, man. Wow. He knew what he did, too.

He knew what he was doing. He fucked up. You don't do that. What kind he knew what he was doing he fucked up you don't do that what kind of stuff did you later no you definitely don't fucking he'll never do it again i promise you that what kind of um like what kind of stuff did you know your dad got into like what was he doing owning a restaurant little italian spot yeah and was it frequented by all those guys or was it a front um i think maybe a little bit of both back in the day now he's legit you know what i mean now i think that they've got that whole thing you know what i mean that's that's just old school stuff i can talk about it even

that's how safe i feel about it but i can even talk a lot about it but uh you know now it's just a legitimate little italian restaurant with unbelievable food he's an unbelievable chef really i mean un-fucking-believable so he's just incredible in ohio is he still in ohio yeah still in youngstown and he's just that type of guy where it's like you know he can make literally i mean like his peppers in oil like mean, something that simple is just so. Right. You know how the best stuff's just simple. A bagel or a little piece of pizza.

It's like always, even the fucking, I tried the Popeye's spicy chicken sandwich. And I'm like, oh, this is a lot of hype. All right, I'll wait in line. Took Jeremiah because we're both secret fat asses. And we waited in this line. And the whole thing's nothing. It's just a chicken breast with two little pickles and it was unbelievably delicious but my point is is like

the best things are so simple whereas they're comparing it to chick-fil-a which is a fair assessment by the way the thing is delicious but chick-fil-a has all these different things on their chicken sandwich whereas this hype machine just has these two little slivers of pickle and one doppel of spicy sauce anyway and he can make unbelievable stuff too you know the best pastas and this and that he's got an unbelievable gift his son who uh i don't communicate with um is like one of the big bigger chefs executive chefs anywhere he works in vegas at a very, very, very, very, very fancy place. He started as the executive chef

and went on to own it and then own a chain of restaurants. They're both really big into that. I think part of him trying to be an amazing chef and run places is him trying to impress his dad, which is probably a never-ending

uh fun thing that i never had to worry about i'm out to impress mom i was gonna say so are you super tight with mom then super tight and what is 10 year old angry tony what do you start getting into? What happens when you start finding this out? And also, do you find yourself wanting to go to your friend's house more often that lives right across the street just so you can be there and see? Or is it the opposite? No, it was the opposite. That whole street sort of became like a haunted land to me.

I didn't enjoy those parts of the bus trips anymore. It was just really depressing. I didn't realize that was the emotion. Every day you're going by, Monday to Friday. Yeah, it was so close. And you don't have siblings your age you can even relate to or talk to about this shit. Well, I mean, it was pretty open discussion

when it would happen. There was always one month. Your sister's nursing and shit. She's like, listen. I'm about to graduate. I got a baby on my titty. Yeah. It was a thing that was

pretty openly discussed when you could discuss it when they were around. But it was very different, man. Very different. It was weird. Some of my friends, closest buddies who I would tell, would tell their parents and their parents would say that's not true

Tony's lying to you that's not his dad that's impossible I know that family I was going to say he's entrenched in that community for years exactly so like one of the weirder parts was just like I seemed like a liar sometimes

as a little kid to some of my best friends who literally are looking in the eyes of my mom. Right, exactly. Why would he lie about that? Maybe he'll lie and say we did something or you know what I mean, whatever. So it was sort of a very just weird way to grow up. Yeah. Killed him.

Killed his career. Killed his career, bro. Once a stack of cantaloupes, you're dead. to grow up. He killed him. Killed his career. Killed his career, bro. Once you're stuck in cantaloupes, you're dead. And, yeah, I think it wires you differently, and it makes you a weird person, you know

what I mean? And that was a real misbehavior. I mean, a real bad scene. That's what I want to get into. What were you doing? How were you acting out? I was doing everything. I was doing absolutely everything.

They had special contracts made for me to where if I do one more thing, the school, yeah. Really? I mean, you know, they had like, your school had like what, like conduct grades, right? You'd start off with like 100 points and you get like five point demerits or whatever

if you do something bad. No, you didn't have that. No, we just, you started with zero and you earned what you got. Oh, so your thing went up. Yeah, ours went down and I went into the negative many times. And that's a weird thing because it's a quarterly thing.

I was just getting in trouble every single day, almost every single class. Every teacher hated me so that I had no leeway. Right, that and everything. I was trying to make the entire class laugh at the teacher's expense. I would wait until they said something or you know god help you if there was any penis joke i could make or hint to or a butthole or anything stupid as a kid i would find it i would latch on and then i would start my strategic planning like i would ask the

teacher a question i know i'd always you know look interested that maybe this is like i always want to turn in a corner i always wanted the teacher to think that that's exactly the whole setup if they think a joke's coming it wasn't even worth it to me i'd be like nah the window the window's closed let's move on but like if i really thought like oh tony you have a question i like oh you idiot. And then hit a home run. But that was that. I just lived for that. I lived.

You spent a lot of time in the principal's office and stuff. I used to eat lunch in the principal's office because I would get in so much trouble in the cafeteria that by the time that everything, a lot of times when it came together, there's like, I'm in the yearbook eating lunch in the principal's office. Are you serious? Yeah. That's great. They just knew it. Like I was like a highlighted. I'm sort of a sad as this sounds. I'm sort of a legend.

Yeah. In Youngstown. Have they embraced who you are now? Like you ever hear from teachers? I'm waiting for it. I'm waiting for it. Yeah. I'm waiting for it.

The principal of this of my high school now was my history teacher at the time, and I loved him, and we hit it off. He got me. He was one of those guys that would let me be funny at the beginning or end of class, and he got it. He was a very way ahead of his time dude, and now, obviously, he's moved on to be the head of the entire school and uh so we communicate once every few years i'll give him a call we'll talk for three minutes i'll just tell him hey things are going great man thanks again so happy for you know you being one

of the good ones and blah blah blah and um yeah so that part's cool but during the school parts i mean it was just horrendous. These teachers absolutely hated me. They don't care if you don't. It's just like on a sports team. You know what I mean? If you don't have a dad there, you're nothing. They don't care about you.

They care about their their job and what people think of them. And, oh, Mr. Witherspurrow is here. So we're going to put in Billy Witherspuro, even though Tony is an elite second baseman. You should see the range on this kid. Turning two like it's nothing. Five-tool player over here. But you got old fucking one-armed Billy Witherspuro over here.

With a dad. Yeah, with a dad. It's like, oh, you don't have an arm, but you have a dad. Okay, I guess you could play ahead of me. So, you know, that part's tough. All that stuff was tough because all these parents, they want to be parents. You know what I mean? They want to be there for their kids.

And they were there every game and every basketball game and every baseball game and every wrestling match and all these things. And it was just like, maybe my mom will be there, but probably not. Because she was really depressed too. She got involved in a hit and run car accident right after I was born. She got T-boned at an intersection by a guy who had just stolen a car. Oh, shit.

And she just got slammed. She was going through a green light and the next thing you know, she's rolling eight times over and over again. Slammed eight times? Yeah. Holy shit. She had a degenerative spinal condition from that which left her very depressed and a lot of pain so she would basically be sort of just chilling and sitting up in bed chain smoking cigarettes

drinking iced tea waiting to yell at me when i got home every single day because the teachers had already called in what I had done that day and yeah and yeah I got you know I got beat up a few times real good got taught a lesson about getting my shit together your mom gotta get the belt dude your mom hit you with a belt after that car accident absolutely impressive that's impressive she would summon the demons. She was disciplined. Definitely. Definitely. And, you know, you just learn. You learn life a different way. You got to think backwards to see what's ahead of you sometimes.

And that was one of the things that happened there for sure. So how does it change as you get into high school and you start getting a little older, driving are you finding yourself leaving more escaping what's happening well really i just wanted to like i just at that point once i started to get older older come around the corner like 14 15 16 17 i really just wanted to be normal i didn't i was you know i was looking for some type of structure i wanted to get into a good college and i college, but I was doing nothing to do it, but I wanted that, you know what I mean? And I wanted some normalcy to life as I saw it through my close friend's viewpoints.

And during this time, your dad, does he come to see games? Does he come to nothing? No, nothing. Not even holidays you're seeing him? Holidays I would. And that's one of the interesting things about my relationship with his two kids. Okay. Is like, I think a lot of the anger that they held on to was the fact that their dad would be missing for three hours every Christmas day.

And they never knew why. And every, I don't know you know whatever you know just little holidays he'd be gone for two or three hours and i think he would come to your mom's and hang out with you yeah yeah and my mom since he didn't really know anything about me one of the interesting things that they would do is uh is he would always get me the best present because he wasn't there, and he obviously had more money than my mom. But the way that he would do that was because he didn't know anything about me or what I liked.

He would give my mom extra money, and she would get the best present from him, and she would put it outside. I found this out later. She would put it outside around the corner on the front stoop, wrapped, and he would get out of the car, pick up the present, knock on the door, and come in. This is all stuff, dude. That is a fucking fucked up Santa Claus right there.

I know. I know. I mean, how much on your mom, too, to even do that? Because your mom could have simply said, fuck you, you go buy your son a present and bring it over here. She's a legend. Wow. She wanted to make him look good so that I didn't feel as bad,

so that there's at least some. Man, that's unselfish. Yeah, it's incredible. And she's just a machine. It's shit like that that blows me away, and especially being a parent, And she's just a machine. It's shit like that that blows me away. And especially being a parent, it just continually reminds me to try and be that better person because it matters to your kids in the long run.

Like you're eating a shit sandwich. Yeah. But a good friend of mine told me one time, don't nibble on it. Just eat the whole shit sandwich at once. That's right. Just get it the fuck over with. Put it in a blender and take it down in a shot glass hell yeah

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I'm glad you brought that up because I was going to skip over this. So fast forward now. I'm, we'll say, geez we'll say eight maybe 19 years old and i'm bartending at another italian restaurant in youngstown never worked for any of my dad's italian restaurants oh he had more than one no oh well he multiple over right yeah he did have two but not at the same time um but this was at a place that wasn't his and it was a fancy italian joint one of the other few fancy italian joints in town and i was bartending at the age of 19 which tells you something about youngstown i was gonna ask about that and there's a high school

reunion going on and it is the urslan high school i I think, I don't know, either 30-year reunion or something crazy like that. And I'm bartending, I'm bartending, you know, I'm busy. So like an open bar, one of those high school reunions, and it's like you're just slinging drinks and whatever. And I come up to this one lady who's waiting for a drink at the bar, and I'm like, hey, what can I get for you? And she looks at me like she is seeing a ghost do you look like your dad by the fucking ghost not only at the

time did I look like my dad I looked like my dad that she fell in love with the 19 year old fucking exactly the same guy and I mean is this her first time seeing you? It is her first time seeing me. And yours as well? My first time seeing her. I had no idea who she was. There's no Facebook or any of this shit. I would find out immediately because the first after I go, hey, what do you want to drink?

She goes, is your father blank and blank? I don't know how to make that. I mean, no hesitation right i'm only 19 oh yes one italian bastard coming up here here you go this is uh yeah that's her response is he your father. I remember it like it was yesterday. It was one of those moments where it was like, ah, you know, just this. This is a woman who heard rumors of her father perhaps having another kid.

And 19 years later. Probably defended the shit out of him saying there's no way. Those are just dirty rumors. He never admitted to it. He denied it to the core you know what i mean this and that but then all of a sudden here he is she's looking at a blue-eyed version of the man that she fell in love with fucking whatever 30 years before whatever it was and i just told her the truth i go yep that yep, that's my dad, and you must be.

And it was just on like Donkey Kong. Oh, man. Was she friendly? Very friendly. She was absolutely awesome. She was the one that was the finishing touch on me getting to meet my other siblings. She probably felt bad for you. Absolutely.

You're a kid without a father, and she's got two kids. She must know what that's like. Absolutely. And they had their dad. So he would disappear on christmas for those three hours but she didn't know either then right i gotta i gotta like your mom that was in on somebody left the fucking pizza dough god damn cooler i gotta go get more dough or else we won't be able to make the pizza on the fucking always on the holiday

you know christmas day is one of our busiest days i gotta get the dough you know i mean whatever dumb excuse i'm sure he would come up with annually for having to not be there on Christmas for a few hours while he came over and would play fucking a train set or whatever. We'd do a coloring book and then he's just gone. Yeah. And I wouldn't change things for the world, though. As silly as it sounds, like I feel like a lot of people are like, oh, OK wouldn't but like yeah i mean i definitely wouldn't you see you know what it is i mean you see these people with little perfect american pie lives and they come out boring as fuck like and also like twisted as fuck yeah most of those people that have the perfect life have i mean

you don't even have to dig that deep right yeah yeah they just start crying all the time for no reason it's like oh you've never felt pain before that's why you're crying all the time i live this right my dad's house is right there right yeah and he's not here there it is watch this baseball i'm gonna hit it with a fucking baseball and he's not here. There he is. Watch this. Baseball. I'm going to hit it with a fucking baseball. And he's not going to throw it back because he doesn't play catch with me. So how do you fucking continue to work this? All I would want to do is talk to that lady, especially if she was nice to me. I would be like, oh my God, can we please talk?

I mean, it was. There's also, you know, it's again. How did it change things for you, though? It really didn't. With her? It changed things with her because I didn't know her before, and now I know her, and she felt bad. Does she want you to meet her kids? She wanted me to meet the whole family,

and then once she went to my dad and was like, you motherfucker, this fucking kid hasn't had a dad, and you've been telling me that this wasn't real, and blah, blah, blah, blah. Now he's got to meet your whole fucking family. You better introduce him to the whole family and meet his grandparents, but great aunts and uncles and cousins a shit ton of them and uh you know that's when i got to meet my sister and she was really cool and it was uh

it was really awesome it was one of those cool things now here's the catch is that my mom, who takes great pride in raising me and this and that, is naturally, obviously, a competitive person. And I think she was very happy that I was getting to meet my dad's side of the family and all this stuff. But she was also, as a person who tremendously loved my father, you know tremendously loved my father uh very sort of like um cautious about this you know this woman but also she's working for him all this time and his wife doesn't know that either right wow oh yeah yeah she was out of the loop everything was just a secret right well i mean yeah and you know you watch very mafia exactly you watch the sopr The Sopranos or any of that. And what do those wives know? What do the everything and nothing? Right. Yeah. Mostly nothing. Mostly fucking nothing. Like, I mean, you know, look at look at Henry Hill. Right. And good fellas. Let's say that that the brunette chick that he's banging at the end who he's doing all that cocaine stuff with, let's just say that that's running numbers instead of running coke. And there you have it.

I mean, like, what the fuck does she know? Nothing. He comes over, he fucks her, he does the deal, and then that's it. And I think that was more along the lines of the type of thing that was happening back in my day. the lines of the type of thing that was happening back in back in my day but yeah i think i think it i think it gives you a certain amount of uh i don't know what i mean there was a lot of depression that followed right out of high school and a lot of a real low i hit extreme did you go to college yeah where uh ohio state but only for like uh like a few months i mean really hit bottom i had a really great job i mean a job that paid really well at ruth's chris steakhouse as a food runner and i

was making like i don't know four or five hundred bucks a night at the time 18 years old columbus ohio yeah i didn't live on campus i lived off campus which was a really big mistake because i was just at a giant big screen tv and i was smoking cigars and drinking a you know a ton of whiskey and what absorbing art for the first time in my life is really what i was doing i was smoking a lot of pot i didn't realize that art was even like a thing like my older brothers were always sort of like oh that's pussy shit. Movies are for creeps. You know what I mean?

Like it was weird. It was just weird how I was introduced to art. I never really, it never really hit me until sort of like right after high school. Hit me before Man on the Moon between eighth grade and freshman year of high school changed everything sort of but i still really wasn't absorbing art i just knew that something about that like i became obsessed with andy kaufman i was already obsessed with jim carrey obviously like everybody my age at that time was but that movie really like flipped a switch for me I started going to libraries and researching Andy Kaufman and and then you know I'd go off on these tangents about the comedy store

and about this and that in the history of comedy but I still didn't really think of it as a real option or anything like that and um you know hitting that low low in Columbus again. I think that really helped me too. What are you doing during your low lows? Really, it was almost like I was almost like a heroin addict, but I was just smoking pot and drinking. Staying in, only working. Oh yeah, staying in, only working, not being able to really do much.

No dating, no social life. Now had just broken up with my high school sweetheart, and that was sort of heartbreaking. Really missed her, and really, really liked her at the time, and just trying to plow through it. Like it was a real, real rock bottom. I mean, real depression. And all this small circle at the same time.

Everybody still lives where they were living the whole time. You don't ever run into your dad or cross paths. I mean, how does that even, you ran into his wife. How does that not even happen in that little area? I know. Well, he doesn't really do anything like that. It's just restaurant, home. That's it.

He's at the restaurant all day, morning, tonight, and home. That's it. Sleep, get up, do it again. He's a machine. And so none of that happened. And plus I was in Columbus at the time. They're still up in Youngstown. And yeah, and then that's it.

I go out, I visit my brother in LA. He was living out here. What was he doing? He was umpiring baseball games and being a bartender. Is that what he moved here for? Yeah, well, I mean, that's what he was doing in Columbus. Just to get away? Yeah.

So he moved out here just to get away because the weather's beautiful, he said. And I came out to visit, fell in love, went back, saved some money, came back, and he let me crash on his futon for a couple months while I started stand-up, and the rest is history. So you never did stand-up in Ohio anywhere or anything like that, all here?

Yeah, I started at the comedy store the first time I was ever at a comedy club. I signed up for the open mic at the comedy store on a Sunday and was lucky enough to get pulled out, and I had prepared months for my first three minute set and uh I blanked out when I hit the stage yeah yeah but I but I talked about it so it really helped I didn't know I had no idea what I was doing but I did the absolute right thing I literally go like uh oh wow um I uh I forget what I was gonna talk about and like everybody else the first 12 open micers obviously at the super competitive comedy store were all doing these jokes one after the

other with no nothing felt real but you know what i mean they're doing jokes but mine felt totally real and had no jokes you know i just kept milking it it was it basically is still my style sort of to almost just do crowd work sort of with myself like if I want to have fun like really just talk about how I really feel really in the moment in that moment I couldn't believe it I had prepared for months for a three minute set I have notes and notes and notes I sat at a park once a day for three hours a day preparing for this moment. Now I can't remember anything. The whole room's dying. Comedians

just like, what a fucking idiot. You know what I mean? Because they could feel how real and raw it was. They had never seen me before. Couldn't possibly get away with having this set twice. So it really cracked the room and I fell in love and that was it. The rest is history. I've been there almost every night since that I've been in LA hanging out at the comedy store that's awesome yeah and

you know I think a lot of my stuff in my childhood a lot of it helped me get through the uh through the rough patches of doing becoming a stand-up comedian because the way I looked at it was this is better than anything right struggling to become a professional stand-up comedian because the way I looked at it was this is better than anything right struggling to become a professional stand-up comedian is the easiest shit I've done in my life I'm with you on that including just existing or going to school or trying to fit in and or play baseball it's like wow you don't need to have a dad show up to be able to get a spot at a comedy club this is perfect see you later billy withers spurrow go to the haha you got one arm you can hold the mic um you had mentioned earlier you

said it's good now your relationship with your dad what at what age and what happened how did all that shift and did you steer that is? Is that something that just came about? It's something I've always steered. I'm the one that always reaches out. It was never bad, though. That's the interesting thing, is I've always been respectful, and I fucking get it.

You know what I mean? I fucking get it. He was fucking my mom. He never would have guessed that she could get pregnant at 38 or that he'd get her pregnant at 38. They probably had a pretty good pull out method. He probably fucked her, shot on her tits and then shoved it back in a little too quick with a little too much semen on the little tippy top there one time.

That's just me hanging out, just trying to fucking keep balance. Let's do this. Shoved it back in. Probably thought she would get get an abortion probably thought she would take care of it from the gist of it from what i heard which is definitely something that's one of the things that i wish i wasn't told as a kid like my mom told me way too much when i broke the news at 10 or 11 like one of the things was like yeah you know your dad wanted me to get the abortion but i didn't i'm like all right that's enough like that's enough stop there that's a shit load for stop it i'm 10 lady i didn't need to know that can you give me just a few years on some of this i know you want to be the cool mom be the honest one but but yeah so you know i and i always i always i always there's

again maybe it's just the like you were always ready whenever it was gonna happen basically you were ready to talk to him or see him whenever and always ready for things to be cool and i've always you could have been that kid in high school that went over and trashed the house yeah with his car fucked with his business. It's the opposite. I probably tell him that I forgive him once every year or two, even though it's unsolicited advice. You just drop it on him.

We're just talking about nothing. We talk about nothing. We have nothing in common. How's the restaurant? Oh, good. It's been busy. Not so busy. How's the comedy thing? Oh, good. It's been busy. Not so busy. How's the

comedy thing? Oh, good. Just did a crazy show in an amphitheater with Dave Chappelle last week. I have an arena with Rogan coming up this weekend. Yeah, I don't know who those guys are. I know, right? Sounds good, though. Sounds like it's good.

You ever see Dice out there? I'm like, yeah, Dice is actually one of my friends. He calls me Tony when he sees me. Says, hey, Tony, what's going on? Oh, that's so cool. All right, well, you know what I mean? Like, it's like nothing. I got to wrap it up, man.

I got to do it again. But I'll tell him sometimes just because I think he plays it cool, but I feel like it's got to affect him in some way, you know, all that stuff. So I just always let him know. I'm the opposite. I never started a fight with him about it. I never complained about anything.

But when did you actually have their first conversation about it? Oh, that was almost immediate. You know, once she told me everything, he came over and started doing damage control not tony can't tell anybody about this don't tell anybody about that don't tell your friends but again i couldn't i that's the part where even though i respected him and loved him and this and that like i couldn't not tell people like it was just it got to the point to where it was insane kids i was hanging out with hundreds of days a year.

I wouldn't just lie to them. I would tell them, yeah, my dad's this. They've cheated on my mom. My mom and dad cheated on each other's significant others. That's how I was made. Back then it was sort of embarrassing because kids don't get that. They're not like, oh, wow. Were there any other kids like you in your school that you could even talk to about that?

No, because here's the crazy part is Youngstown was so dangerous that I had to go to the private school because just simply no white kids went to the public school. No white kids went to the public school. Well, my mom paid for it with the running numbers money that she made from the job that my dad got her. But the kids in the private school, again, that was from mostly suburbs, and they mostly all went to this private school in the super dangerous neighborhood because of tradition, because their parents went there,

and their older brothers and sisters went there. It was it was not a brilliant decision to be sending kids to the school anyway, because even though it's safe, it's like the. You know, it's like that area right between North and South Korea where nothing happened. Yeah. The school is just like there's shit going on on both sides of it. And I guess it was safe, but not outside. Not outside the building it wasn't safe. So you were a wrestler. You were a high school wrestler. You were fucking good though, weren't you?

I was pretty good for my level of experience. I mean, Ohioans are really tough. A lot of them get started at three, four, five. Like Iowa. Yeah, exactly. I had to really learn quick. I don't really have the best build for wrestling, so that was sort of tough.

You look like you have that lanky leg rider build. It's actually the opposite. I'm lanky, you're right, but it was one of those things to where I liked being more unorthodox. I had a crazy head arm, crazy fireman's carry, good hip toss, just fucking. You're like a praying man. Exactly.

Right, it's one of those things. Very deceptive. I'd have to use my brains. I had a great, great coach. Did that help you with the anger? Say it helped me too. Oh, one-on-one, you get to just, you either take the beating, and, help me too. Oh, one-on-one, you get to just, you either take the beating,

and that beating never hurt as much as the shit you were suffering in fucking life anyway. Like, I don't care. Or you just took it out on somebody, and it felt fucking great. It's one-on-one. Took a lot of good beatings. Luckily, you know, again,

sometimes it's good when your dad's not at your sporting events. You know what I mean? Imagine that's the one he shows up to and you're pinned. I'm just getting pinned. I'm like, dada! No! It's not always like this.

He's just walking out like, no, come back. So, yeah, I mean, that was great. And having all the interest here. One of the cool things that I think I've really noticed in my life is I've had an unbelievable line of mentors, father figures, really like a dream list. If the child me could have drawn it up, I mean, it's crazy what's happened. And I think a lot of that's just sort of those types of energies like of the universe or whatever. I,

maybe I ate too much mushrooms last week and I'm not making sense, but like, it's like, you know, what are the odds that the guy that had to deal with this while all my friends had normal dads that were there and at their events and caring for them and eating dinner with them every night and this and that, what are the odds that,

you know Rowdy Roddy Piper shows up in the comedy store and the night that I'm working and makes friends with me what are the odds that Dave Attell is at that Starbucks that I'm working at when I very first start stand up and then he sees me that night working at the comedy

store and we build a friendship and Jeff Ross with the thing and then he's watching late night when I'm there and we become friends and Rogan out of nowhere you know I'm doing an Ice House Chronicles podcast and he asks Red Band who that kid is and he tells them all he's been a new paid regular at the comedy store takes me on the road but like Chappelle working with him and all these cool there's a lot of them you know Ralphie May absolutely loved me we were very close and so many of these amazing people and I'm leaving a lot of

great ones out Brody Stevens another one really took me under his wing taught me so much shit that changed my career changed my life changed my attitude of thinking from from instead of being such a person who loved dwelling on the negativity and being overly competitive in stand-up he opened my mind to just being more positive and uh you know i mean that was his mantra right enjoying the process all these things so he really helped you not just with comedy, but that's a lot of childhood shit that's that's there for that. All that. Absolutely. Wow. Time, big time. And all these guys really took interest. You know, I have a really great relationship with. It's always funny to me how the degenerates usually help the other degenerates. They we get each other. Yeah. Support each other. Yeah. That's great. I didn't know that about Brody.

That's awesome. There's times to where I can pinpoint exact gigs that I wouldn't have gotten, that I would have fucked up had I said what I would have said if I didn't have that tweak of be nice to people, Tony. You've got

to be nice. You can do the jokes when it counts, but offstage, you know, you don't need people to fear you. Let them, let, let it build to that. Pick your moments with that, but it doesn't have to be a constant. Don't be an asshole to everybody and everything, you know? So he really drove that into my head. I mean, over years and for no reason, he had no reason to. Back then, it wasn't even, you gotta remember,

back then it wasn't even like this huge comedy boom. Nobody really, right. Yeah, it was nothing like it. So it was literally like, you know, I mean, this guy must be right. He's in The Hangover.

He's in, you know, they're making another Hangover. Cut out a funny people. Right, exactly. And I believed it, you know, and it really did. It helped me a lot all those guys did rowdy rowdy piper taught me stuff that I can't even believe you know what I mean again that's he taught me things that exactly had I not done certain things I know which things I wouldn't

have gotten uh from having great advice from a mentor like figure like that. And I trace a lot of that as a yin and yang to my crazy childhood. It's like definitely can't be a coincidence that I had that wacky, you know, no dad stuff. Very, very aware of it from a young age. And now I have I don't know, there's something about me that draws people want to help me help myself. So it's now I have I don't know there's something about me that draws people want to help me help myself so it's really cool I don't know yeah it's great what um when you first moved out here to do comedy what was that like well that's a fun thing because uh I was I'm I'm one of the all-time most broke starting out comedians ever so like I had nothing I mean nothing

absolutely nothing and I was living on my brother's futon he lived in Burbank in a one-bedroom apartment and that's how it started so I would get I had a bicycle at the time and I would um I would get on I would ride my bicycle to the train station at Universal Studios take it to Hollywood Highland and bicycle to the comedy store and bicycle to all these open mics yeah and but I didn't want people to know at the comedy store that I was that I had a bicycle so I would park next door at the Ondas uh in their fancy parking lot because I felt like if people knew that I had a bicycle that they would make fun of me or something like that.

And so that's interesting. And then it began. The bicycle broke and my brother basically gave me a timeline to get the fuck out of his apartment. And so it really began. I moved into a small two-bedroom apartment that five comedians were living in. I was on a beanbag and a couch and sometimes just the floor. You know what I mean?

It was a real struggle. Then from there, because I really couldn't even pay that rent, I was working at the comedy store as a door guy and working the phones during the day. And back then, the comedy store, not only did they not pay properly, but they would cut your hours unapologetically, which is fine because who cares? Because that's not what I was doing it for anyway. I didn't care at all. But at the same time, I wouldn't have enough money to survive, literally. So I couldn't really afford that. And at that point, I ended up getting a car that was given to me from my brother and I's friend who had an extra 92 Ford Taurus.

And he gave me the car and I used that as my new lodging. I slept in that car. You did? Yeah. Where would you park to sleep? I would park right behind the comedy store in the alleyway. I'd have everything folded and nice in my trunk, and everything's clean and organized.

And I would work a shift at Starbucks sometimes to start from like 7 to 11 a.m. And then I'd work phones at the comedy store trying to sell tickets to people who called into the comedy store because back then they didn't even have a freaking website. Really? People would just call and they'd be like, are you guys open tonight? I'm like, oh, an unbelievable show. You never know who could pop in. Like, you know what I mean?

And again, back then it was no one. Like if I said like Chappelle could pop in, you know what i mean and again back then it was no one like if i said like chapelle could pop in i would be the biggest liar on the planet because there was no chance chapelle was realistically popping in but i'd say it i'd sell tickets because i always looked at it like hey these people we need these people here i mean it was freaking empty man there was a period where the comedy store could have collapsed at one point easily and so i'd work that shift and then i'd work at the door once the door would open up i'd get off phones and i'd put on my t-shirt and i'd work there until 2 30 a.m and then i'd sleep in my car from like 3 to 6 30 and then i'd shower at the comedy store go to starbucks and do it again the next day damn over and Over and over and over again.

All the while learning and writing and absorbing information and learning how to improvise late night with Don Barris and all these other crazy things that were happening. And everything that I learned, it was in those hours of late night at the comedy store and really struggling. Again, store and really struggling uh again especially monetarily like i was surviving one of the one of the crazy habits i have now is i spend vast sums of money on food like me too i am admittedly a disgusting animalistic pig i've had sushi like five times in the last three days yeah okay you got me. I'm scary, dude. And it's not shitty sushi either.

And by the way, I'm not not ordering too much. I'm ordering way too much. Right. I have a serious problem. And I think that stems from this period of time, which is I was surviving off of a footlong every day, $5 footlong, six inches for lunch, six inches for dinner. You did? $5 pizzas. And I would just eat that over the course of the day and stuff. Yeah. I would

load up my Subway sub. I mean, just with stuff I don't even like. Yeah, sure. Mushrooms, tomatoes. Yeah. Raw onions and the, they're like, really? You want all of it? All of it. Cause this is, these are my only nutrients. This is my one shot to have anything yes lettuce yes spinach yes yes yes sure absolutely and it was like my only food so you know every single day five dollar foot long luckily working at starbucks helped me with my coffee budget because I could just get coffee from there but I also back then needed a pack of cigarettes to be able to write and to really feel like I was you know in the zone so that was a big budgetary thing and those were some of the best days of my life though I was about to become a professional comedian and writer and I had nothing but singular focus on what was happening I was fully aware that I was blowing by my peers who did have money who did have a

comfortable bed who were waking up and flipping on their tv and they had laptops so they'd go scan the internet and this and that while I literally would snag a newspaper from the Starbucks, literally have to read over news stories. Didn't have to, but again, this was just part of my writing process. And I would sit there with a pen and paper behind the comedy store and write. In your car? No, there used to be like a little school desk type of thing there. Before it was fancy with benches and fancy lighting,

little school desk type of thing there before it was fancy with benches and fancy lighting there was like one little trashy dirty school desk that i was happy honored to get to sit in honored to have the opportunity to work at a place that so many greats have worked and you know when i got there again it was a very toxic situation there were not bubbly young door guys that were promising. It was a bunch of angry, bitter guys in their 40s and 50s that thought the comedy was never coming back. They thought the comedy store was about to be a parking lot. They would say these things, and I would get mad at them. And I saw that it was just all there for the

taking I'm like these guys aren't fucking working they think everything's negative they think everything's toxic so they're not putting any effort in they're not getting any better they think they're you know they're not learning anything from anybody they just called that guy a hack and they think that guy's

a hack and this and that so they're not you know what I mean they have no hope and that excited me and i think that's one of the things not a lot of people talk about is like you go to an open mic and you see how much people suck and that should fucking fire you up it should it really should because it's like wow i just started and i'm already second best. I'm second best already. What the fuck's going to happen next week if I'm second best my first time? That guy's been doing it four and a half years. And I'm right on his heels.

Same set. Right. And I'm right on his heels with nothing. See, I think about it all the time. If I didn't have the situation I had growing up and i i can tell you're the same way especially you say i wouldn't change a thing but that adversity it builds everything i don't think i'd be here if one of those things was possibly different you know um so you're right you know for me it was my own mother telling me she hated me and i'm a loser i was like there's nothing any fucking critic or comment anybody out there could make that's gonna hurt or bother me any more than

that shit ever fucking did and any psychiatrist or psychologist would agree with you any one of them i mean there's in in the teachers that told me that making fun of people is never gonna get me anywhere that's why that's why like, I mean, I'm not going to say what it is, but the customized plate on my obnoxious 2019 eight speed Corvette has to do with roasting. Like it.

And there's the reason why is because that's what that car represents to me is I, I did this just by making fun of people. This is just from making fun of people money. Not my podcast, not stand-up comedy. This is writing on the last six or seven Comedy Central roasts and doing two seasons of roast battle and doing private roasts and writing for corporate roasts and all these things it's like that that that is because they told me that if they were like yes

make fun of people i'd be like fuck you nerd i don't want to make fun of it now it's not cool now i'm never making fun of anybody again because fucking you know mr girl martin told me that to make fun of people that would ruin it for me instead it's the opposite when you're told when you're told that stuff as a kid and you know what i mean all that to me it was like well that must be it was fuel yeah that must be the most exciting thing right exactly and you know, again, the Corvette, the How I Eat Now, the Nice Apartment, you know, all these things. It's all, I can't imagine how miserable people that grew up with money and grew up spoiled and never had to worry about anything. Like, what do you appreciate? What a boring, numb life you must live yeah

oh you always had the new toys really well i mean what with them what and i know what it is those are the people that end up doing hard drugs right yeah those people with fucking perfect little lives all daisies and roses they had the n64 when it came out they had the new playstation when it came out how do you chase that you know how do they chase it it's fucking disgusting hard drugs that lead to serious addictions and serious problems later on in life that's just something that i've noticed but like you know not all of them are like that some of them just stay boring and just live boring lives but some of them try to chase those dragons instead of having anything of any real satisfaction or growth or anything like that you know what i

mean well said yeah i love it though i wouldn't again well i'm proud of you yeah look at look at what you've done for yourself your show kill tony is so fucking successful i love seeing rogan and ron white all these guys talk talking up when they're on the show and you guys aren't even there. I think it's fantastic, dude. Yeah, we're having a blast, man. It's really exciting. Yeah, we've had Redman on. We've had Jeremiah on. Oh, cool. Yeah. Well, we're helping

a lot of people there and it's a fun thing where we bust a lot of balls on that show, but there's also a lot of heart and a lot of care and we're trying to help people and give them big opportunities too so it's fun to have a chance to be mean and also give back at the same time and help people you're doing great things dude thank you for coming on here i really appreciate opening up about all that thank you of course

that's one of the greatest laughs i've had in my entire life is your I'll walk over. Oh, my God. Thank you. My mom's going to listen to this and she's going to fucking die of laughter. I'm honestly afraid that you might kill my mom with that line. It's unbelievable. Will you please one more time promote anything you'd like? Kill Tony every Monday night at the Comedy Store. It streams live

on youtube we're doing our biggest annual event uh coming up in just a couple weeks it's kill tony mania out of san francisco and uh we are going to new york dc australia brisbane melbourne sydney um and so many other great places tonyhenchcliffe.com a lot of fun stuff happening a lot of stand-up dates too um you know i don't know if you guys know this but the netflix isn't exactly kicking down the door for straight white males to do one hour specials right now so my my stand-up comedy is extremely uh well worked on right now because i have no outlet for it um so it's it's a very fun set if you haven't seen me uh perform on the road and do a longer set i highly recommend that because i'm

one of the top young rising comedians in the world so that's the truth that's the truth brother you your dad might not say that but i god damn it i will yeah uh i am ryan sickler on all social media ryan sickler.com we'll talk to you all next week