The Joe Rogan Experience - #1338 - Roy Wood Jr.

Episode Date: August 21, 2019

Roy Wood Jr. is a comedian, writer, and actor. He has served as a correspondent for The Daily Show on Comedy Central since 2015.

We good? Roy Wood. Yo. Junior. How you doing, man? Pleasure. Pleasure to have you on here, man. Man, appreciate it.

Fun of these guys alive. I don't know about that, man. You are. Just trying to pay bills, bro. You're one of the funniest guys out there, man. I'm very excited to have you in here. And we were talking shit about Apple and electronics. Apple's fucking you out here.

So, got the new MacBook, right? And the new MacBook with the new OS or whatever it is, it doesn't fuck with the old versions of Final Cut. The old video editing software I used to use. New MacBook goes, you got to buy that shit again. I'm like, my nigga, I just paid for that shit, hundreds of dollars with my last computer. You're telling me my old software ain't no good? I just paid for that shit, hundreds of dollars with my last computer. And now I got to get it.

You're telling me my old software ain't no good? And you could make the software work with the new OS if you wanted to, but they don't to get you to buy it again and all that shit. So dirty. So now I'm having to learn Adobe Premiere. I was pretty good with Final Cut, but I'm having to. You're swapping out. Yeah, I got to relearn a whole new thing. And if I'm going to do that, then I may I gotta relearn a whole new thing and if I'm gonna do that

then I may as well relearn a whole new piece of electronics but to do that means I have to gut everything that means you have to gut the Apple TV

you have to let go of the iPhone you have to let go of the iPad my girlfriend the whole house that's how the companies get you

so everybody in the house even my son he had a Samsung he had a Samsungsung tablet i was like get that shit out of here we gotta get you an ipad so we re-gifted that and then got him so it's like no man people get fierce about that mac versus android shit as much as they do about like republicans versus democrats i want something where i don't have to keep paying for the same shit over and over again every three four years years. Apple makes great shit, but they fuck you.

The interface is so smooth. It's so nice. I can check text messages. I can do whatever I want on my MacBook. Yes. I can talk to my television. I can one-click and all the Apple Pay and all of that stuff. It's beautiful.

But in three years, it's time to pay up again. I almost switched over a couple years back. I bought a Pixel when the Pixel 2 came out. But then when it came out, I couldn't get text messages. And I had to email Apple and ask them to take my email address off of the iMessage database. I'm like, take that email off so that I can't get iMessages anymore. And it still didn't work. I went online to try to figure out

what is a way, how do you get out of this? How does this work? You can't. And unless you switch over to text message for a long period of time beforehand, like switch your iMessages to text messages on your Apple, on your phone, or unless you buy a new number.

You got to kind of buy it. If you're going to get a Samsung phone or something, you got to get a new number. What got you? When did you make the switch to Apple in the first place? I've been with Apple forever, forever. But what was the genesis? At some point, you had to have had like a Sanyo 59. That was my old flip phone.

Shout out to Sanyo. I remember when I was in radio back home in Birmingham, I was gifted an iPod Touch. Oh, yeah. And I was all Android phones, Android everything. And I had an iPod Touch. And at the time, all I had to play music was a mini disc player. So I could only hold like five hours. I mean, this is like 01, 02.

And I had a five-hour mini disc. And I go, fuck it, I'll carry around an iPod Touch. And then it made more sense. Why am I carrying an iPod Touch and an Android phone when I could just have an iPhone that does both? And that started the journey. I started with iPhone 1. But before that, I was using MacBooks. I was using Mac forever, even before they had an iPhone.

I used to make my own PCs. I used to go to the store, like go Fry's, buy a motherboard, buy hard drives. So you never had no time for that. That's a lot of time. You got to want to do that. For me, I wanted to find out how to do it. It was cool to play games on a computer that I put together myself. But then you knew how to, so you're building the games as well?

No, no, no. You're not buying a floppy disk and all that? I'm not definitely not building any games. I would just buy video games games just play them on this but even formatting it and doing everything i would have to call friends that really knew what the fuck was up and they'd have to talk me through shit there's some things you have to do in the bios and you know the irony of all of this is that i still have an aol email address as much as i bitch about it really yeah i really? Yeah, I do. And you know what?

I don't understand email slander. It's like, motherfucker, I'm sending you words electronically. Does it matter? It's AOL. What company? What is it? Is my email more ghetto?

Does it come with chicken grease stains when you open it in your laptop? No. It's the same words that if I send it from gmail now i have a gmail account so that people will take me seriously when i email them about business ideas but i still have an old school aol email that i've had since college and i'm like it's fine it's a one it's one of those things though when you just don't let it go and just think about you've got mail you remember just think about it. You've got mail. You remember when you first heard that?

You've got mail. You were happy. You were like, oh, someone wants to talk to me. It was very exciting. Someone wants to talk to me. And then you get older and you realize, well, please leave me alone. Who the fuck is this now? You've got mail.

Yeah, it was exciting. It was like a new thing. That was 96. That's when you got online? Yeah, yeah, 95, 96. We had an old CompuServe account at the house. And that was how we got online. And then we started getting the AOL disk and all of that shit.

We had a Compact Presario computer. Ooh, I had one of those. I had one of those. I started out with one of those old macs that was like a beige box remember oh yeah the apple 2e yeah i don't remember what number it was but it was 95 94 somewhere around there i know that might be like the og macbook where the keyboard and the cpu was its own little like heavy unit no you had a keyboard that you had a plug-in a monitor that you had a plug-in and it was like a tower it was like a beige funky looking tower it was slow as shit it was 14.4 modem come on yeah 14.4 i remember when i got 56k i couldn't believe it look at the speed

uh wasn't that jamie it was a monitor didn't have the floppy disk built into it i don't think it's hard to remember i remember it being there was a an actual tower and it wasn't the joint where the whole computer was like the monitor itself where the computer and cpu were all together no but man i thought i was living in the future i couldn't it was something like that jamie bro my older brother had yeah that one on the far right that was it my older brother had— Yeah, that one on the far right. That was it. My older brother had a MacBook, man. He had an old-school Macintosh in the 90s, and he had a Microsoft Flight Simulator, and you couldn't tell me shit. I'd go to his house for five hours. We'd just fly Cessnas in real time.

Like, I get it now. I get why people will sit down with a flight simulator and fly in real time from la to san francisco have you seen the new ones they have oh it's unreal but i would need i would need to buy a pc and then i know i wouldn't get shit done have you ever used the htc vive no oh boy what's that what is that virtual reality we have one here oh the whole helmet sit down joint dude my kids come here and they battle to the death to see who gets the VR. They fight each other, punch and kick and shit. It's amazing, man. You put this thing on and like you're in another world.

You're fighting zombies. You're in the ocean with whales and shit. I went to a Samsung event and they had some AR type experience where you put the phone on. And it's fun. But then I just, I don't know, in the back of my head, I can't get out of my head how goofy I look to someone else. So it's almost like something I got to do alone. Yes, you look goofy. You look really goofy when you play.

There's a boxing game, though, that you can get a great workout in, like a legitimate great workout. Because this dude comes at you, you see him, he's throwing punches. And every time he hits you, you see a bright white spark. You feel like you're getting hit. It's wild, man. You're moving around and bobbing and ducking punches and throwing combinations. Your feet start hurting. Your hands get tired.

Is that going to catch on for real, Joe? Or is this like the Nintendo Wii when it first came out? No, it's going to catch on. And they swore, you're going to lose calories with the Nintendo Wii. And then you're just a fat bastard on the couch learning how. I learned how to bowl sitting down with the Wii. You can get in shape with this, for real. Like, if you wanted to do multiple rounds of boxing with this thing, you would get in some serious fucking shape.

Because it feels real. When you put that headset on, and that dude's in front of you, and he comes towards you, and he's got his hands up, and then he starts throwing punches. Like, oh, shit. And you're moving around, and he's swinging at you. You see the punches flying over your head. It's awesome. Now, this isn't. He's swinging at you. You see the punches flying over your head. It's awesome. Now, this isn't something that's predictive in a sense. Or is it like different types of workouts or different types of sparring sessions?

Because eventually you can predict if you knew the patterns. It's still a workout. Yeah, it's a good workout. But either way, you're fucking this dude up. That's the whole idea. The whole idea is to keep it on him. It's not like you hit. You don't feel anything if he hits you.

You just see the spark. Well, that's an X. They'll have a vest that vibrates and then yeah then it gets electrolysis and yeah yeah yeah there's a haptic feedback vest you wear there's a place called the void you go there and there's a star wars game and uh the stormtroopers are shooting you and they hit you in the chest you feel like that shit hurt does it hurt or is it like just sensation just a sensation it's like laser tag or something like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly like it.

It'll get worse. Yeah. They're doing these warehouses now where you go into a warehouse and it's all virtual reality. And so they have everything planned out. And like you're walking across this beam. There's fire to the left of you and fire to the right so you feel heat. It's all this crazy shit. Oh, now that's dope.

They have it set up to make it really sort of mimic whatever sensation you're supposed to be experiencing. That I would be all in for. You know, when I was listening to you coming up, you started talking about the sensory deprivation chambers. And I'm like, that's always been something that's in the back of my head. You want to do it? Do you have any time today? You can do it. I don't know how much time I have after.

Let's see. Okay. I know it's a mind fuck. It's a little bit of a mind fuck. Yeah, but it's one of those things where I go, when I get a house, I'm getting a grill, and I'm getting one of those goddamn Joe Rogan boxes. That's what I call them. Getting one of them Joe Rogan boxes, and I'm putting that shit in my fucking man cave.

Yeah. Everybody should have an isolation tank. It's a fucking beautiful thing to have, man's just it it settles your mind like nothing else yeah that's that's the thing that i always struggle with is just too many i got too many tabs open of course at all times most comics do yeah and the only thing that slows me down is video games and puzzles. Puzzles? Yeah. What kind of puzzles? Like putting pictures in puzzles?

Jigsaw and Sudoku. Oh. Those are the three things that I can do that I know immediately the moment I start the activity, everything closes. And I'm focused on that one thing. It's the only thing that I can do when I need to get my mind off of stuff. I was dating this girl one time. And you're in the middle of an argument, and so you're trying not to be a dick in the moment.

So I just start doing the puzzle and just trying to stay calm. And then she walks over and just starts undoing the puzzle as I'm doing the puzzle. Oh, my goodness. Oh, fuck. Oh, my goodness. Undoing the puzzle. Oh, the anger. That's a sign.

That's a sign of someone's intentions. When someone's undoing your puzzle, like. Oh, my goodness. Undoing the puzzle. Oh, the anger. That's a sign. That's a sign of someone's intentions. When someone's undoing your puzzle, like, oh, you're one of those people. Because it's like, this is my place. This is the one place I can go and just de-escalate, de-escalate. No, no, no. Yeah. Yeah. That's bad intentions.

That's like seriously bad intentions. Someone trying to undo your puzzle. Yeah. That's something shitty. Kids will fight to the death over that. It's my safe place. It's like when weed smokers say trying to undo your puzzle? Yeah. That's something shitty. Kids will fight to the death over that. It's my safe place. It's like when weed smokers say, you fucking up their high. Right.

I understand that now. Yeah. Yeah. That's the one thing I've never done. You're not with her anymore. No, no, no. No, you can't. No, I crashed that.

You can't. I'll take responsibility on that. Yeah, puzzles, that's my thing, man. Puzzles and a little bit of video games. And batting cages I'd love to have more arrows in the crib that would be amazing

but you need a lot of space you need like LA yard I'm in New York right now there's nowhere to put a fucking you live in the city? yeah there's nowhere to put a fucking

do you like living in the city? no why are you there? cause it's a daily show it's I gotta work so that's where the fucking job is did you think about

commuting? I thought about it at first but then I had a kid the same year i got the show so i needed to be closer so we got to harlem so harlem is at least a shorter commute to the studio how far where's the studio studios on west side hills kitchen on the water so it's like 53rd 54th street and we're like in the 130s so it's not too bad no it's subway yeah it's closer than bro, 54th Street, and we're like in the 130s. So it's not too bad on the subway. Yeah, it's closer than Brooklyn, which was where I was originally when I first got to New York. Did you take the subway from Brooklyn? Yeah, I tried to be a city boy.

The problem is that I've gotten more done career-wise in New York in four years than I did the eight years I was in L.A. How so? Because of the show? Yeah, it's just New York. There's more of a hustle mentality. Really? Yeah, I think so. I think that I'm more prone to run into comics that are going, going, going, going, going. And so when you're around that, it makes you want to go.

It makes you want to write because you see so-and-so working on a new bit and doing all of that. And I didn't see as much of that in LA. Now, granted, you don't get to do as many sets in L.A. because of the logistics of the city. But I just felt like there was more of a go-go-go mentality that just rubs off on you more. But because of that, you don't get to socialize. All of my friends are in L.A. So a lot of social relationships have suffered because New York is go-go-go.

And you're trying to get the next career thing done. and then you also got to go home and be a dad yeah that's it's got to be weird raising kids in la or in new york too rather i talked to um gaffigan about that he's raised all his kids in new york city yeah and they're in like manhattan or they're in jersey where they're in manhattan he's been in manhattan forever yeah i don't i don't know if that's something not for the long run how old's your kid now he's three now so yeah he's young enough so that yeah it it will leave him come on back out to la roy either la or i would go to atlanta atlanta's great some shit atlanta's a good move nate bargassi's showing us the recipe what's he doing well you know he's i know he's I think he's got a place down south. In Atlanta?

No, in Nashville, I think. Oh, no shit. Yeah. Listen, those are both great cities. If you're traveling on the road all the time and you just need a base, you know? Look, man, I have a buddy of mine who lives outside of Nashville. He fucking takes pictures of his yard. It's all green.

I hear birds chirping and shit. You know? It's fucking incredible. Yeah, you need yard, man. I grew up with a yard. And, you know yeah you need incredible you need yard man i grew up with a yard and you know so that and then family and it's just it's a i feel like new york is a great place to go but it's not the best place to start necessarily yeah it's a hard place but i mean like guys start in la people can start anywhere i mean it's better starting and it's better starting there than like a place that doesn't have much of a scene like maybe phoenix phoenix has like a little

bit of a scene but oh yeah my first nine years were all southern i was a road guy out of alabama i started in tallahassee and birmingham where like in those days like in 98 open mic was once a month per city wow so every week if you wanted to get on you had to get on the greyhound and go to another fucking city dude that's commitment so that's the only way and then we started creating stages like in the panhandle like from fort walton over to jacksonville you start meeting you know you form a little freaking network and this guy's got a monday night at a shithole this guy's got a tuesday night at another shithole and looking back on it it was all trash stage time that's the best you could do until you move it is amazing though how many guys have crafted careers just doing that

like the will the will to do do time and to find spots and to find a place to work out i would make the argument that i'm better off now as a comic 20 years in having started on the road instead of starting in a major market just because I feel like when you're a road guy you meet every version of what your career could end up being when you're young because if you're if you're San Fran if you're a big city comic you're only hanging with your peers you run into the big wigs every now and then but it's some high and by bullshit at the comedy club and then they go on their way but when you do a weekend with ron white and you get to watch him properly night after night after night that's a fucking tutorial yeah and that's a fucking gift and then you can do a weekend the very next weekend with a guy who's been doing it 30 years, hadn't written a new joke in 15, burnout, alcoholic, hates his kids, hates his wife.

And once I got to L.A., you start seeing, well, no, I know to avoid that because I'll end up like that dude. I know not to do that because I'll end up like that. There was a comic. God damn, I can't name names. There was a comic. He won custody of his child. that there was a comic god damn i can't name names there was a comic that used to he won custody of his child and the one thing in the court order was that she could not be around the comedy club so you know what he did he fucking brought her around the comedy club so as his

feature i watched his seven-year-old while he would go out and do his set. Oh, Jesus. Yeah, but that's the life. Did he lose custody of his kid because of that? I don't know. I haven't seen him since. Fuck. You can't bring your kid, seven-year-old. I brought my kids when they were like nine and seven outside a comedy club, and I let them peek in.

It was at the Improv in Irvine. And I said, because we were all down there having dinner together, i did my show and uh they they were like right around the corner i said come on let me take you backstage i'll show you what it's like and the show was about to start and i had my daughter like come on peek out peek out there she's like oh my god look at all those people i want to run on stage i was like go run on stage should i no don't run on stage come back and yeah that's safe that's safe but to have them listening to your shit, no. What that taught me was the importance of how important it is who you end up with as it relates to your career. Oh, yeah.

Because it can choke your career. Because a lot of the guys that I started with, a lot of road guys, they're not doing it anymore. Or they're doing it at the same level that they were in 98. And a lot of them, I can point to dating the wrong person who attacked their psyche and their self-esteem in that three, four year window. Because I feel like every year you get another opportunity to skip a level, right? And if you don't skip that level, you go back down two levels. And so these guys are trying to go from here to here and you're with someone that's attacked. Why are you doing that? You shouldn't be doing that. You know,

there was a guy that used to take me on the road with him down South, um, kind of on some mentorship type shit. And we would go do gigs. And if it was within four hours of the city, his wife would roll, of the city, his wife would roll. His wife would roll and both kids are in the back seat, car seat age. It's like nine o'clock in Georgia and we're just riding together

to a fucking gig. We would do the show and then in exchange for an opportunity for stage time, I would drive this family back home and then I would go home and sleep in my bed. But we didn't spend the night.

The family would stay at the hotel while we did the show and then we would get back in the car and drive the fuck back home and then i would go home and sleep in my bed but we didn't spend the night the family would stay at the hotel while we did the show and then we would get back in the car and drive the fuck back home knowing what i know now he was fucking chicks on the road and the only way she was comfortable with him still doing stand-up was if she got the role interesting and that's got to be stressful he fucked up he fucked up but he tried to have both he tried to save both he tried to save the career and tried to save the marriage yeah and i think who you deal with outside the business is as important as how you handle yourself in the business i understand that one i understand her more than i understand the lady who's undoing your puzzle i don't understand that i don't

understand that mindset that's a different mindset a woman with a solution that makes sense yeah she's trying to figure out a problem a solution is probably you still want to do comedy or i'm coming with you that makes sense you shouldn't have a three-year-old in a car seat for eight hours on a wednesday night no no no just cruising the freeway yeah but if that's the proposition she presents to you in order for you to continue doing your career, then, you know, you either got to take it or leave it. Comedy is a tricky one, man, because in order to do it correctly, you have to do it almost all the time. You got to be up all the time. I got a good situation where my kids are in bed by like, you know, eight o'clock on a weeknight.

And that's when i leave it's perfect yeah i kiss them good night you know and uh my spots at the store usually around 10 so uh i just roll in you know yeah i'll hang out my wife for a little bit then i'll drive into town it's perfect but when do you eval sets because that's where i start running into overlap in time is figuring out the execution of comedy versus the preparation to do comedy so reviewing the sets watching tapes well a big one that out yeah a big one for me is the drive there and home so it's 35 minutes uh to the store 35 minutes home so that's when i'm reviewing material i listen to recordings so i have a bluetooth on my phone so i i do that through the speakers of the of the car and um that helps a lot

that helps a lot that's gigantic you know like uh it also puts me in the mind i feel like the more sets you do right the tidier stand-up is but the more focus you put on your set like it's almost as good as like a half a set like listening to a full set is like doing a half a set that's how i think about it feel like the same way you find all the extra you found all the fat to trim yeah you find the fat to trim and you also find like a spark like oh why did i say that oh there might be something there and then and then you got to write that down and then and then i spend time just going over scribbles like right here you know like straight pride parade like okay little scribbles you know what i mean like

okay what was i thinking there oh that's right that's right that's right and then i'll start adding stuff together and then i spend time just straight out writing the straight out writing time is almost always when everyone's asleep so like when i come home from the store it's like midnight or something like that everyone is the the best time. The best time. Spark up a joint, fire up the old fucking laptop, and that's when I write. There's a time,

the thing that I struggle with the most in writing is consumption. Chappelle says something years ago in a magazine about how every comedian needs to understand how their joke machine works. And identifying the stimuli that you were encountering during a time when you're having a creative high in the writing cycle. When ideas are just popping and coming to you, document what was happening, what was going on during that time, and do your best to recreate those situations and scenarios to inspire writing when you have writer's block. So I know for me, it's stuff that bores me or stuff that annoys me,

be it reading, magazines, TV, whatever. So I have to find time to watch shit that I don't like or can't stand because I know my mind will wander into a place where I can write some stuff. But to physically just sit and consume television, and that's what I have to start doing on the go. I get it now. I used to think these people were stupid, and now I'm one of those people who walks around staring at the fucking phone

watching my DVR on the train or something because I have to constantly take in so that when it is time to write that there's something worth writing there. I had a conversation with Theo Vaughn about this last night where he's burnt out and he had to cancel some shows. And I said, what's going on? And he said, man, he goes, I just been going too hard, too hard, too much, too many weekends, nine shows a week, over and over and over again, seven, eight, nine, ten weeks in a row he goes i just i need to stop he goes i'm not taking anything in recovery he goes everything i'm put i'm just

putting everything out he goes i had nothing i had nothing to say everything seems fake when i'm saying it like i feel i felt you know that you know you're laughing you felt that spot where you feel like everything you're saying feels fake yeah like you're just bullshitting yeah i i'm trying to i'm still working on a lot more stuff that has more teeth to it and i'm starting to become obsessed isn't the word but there's something noodling at me about veterans and the trajectory of veterans when they come back from war and all that shit and i was trying to work on a bit about Vietnam and started watching this Ken Burns documentary that's on Netflix right now. And it's like it's fucking great.

Like they they interviewed North Vietnamese soldiers as well. I ain't never I never my life see no shit like because normally Vietnam is always told from our POV. And they're sitting down with just straight up via con. Yeah, we was trying to get the motherfuckers we set them up like unremorseful in the sense of speaking about the war from their perspective and going and and it tells the story from both sides and so it changed it altered how I want to tell the joke and that's the stuff that you have to do from time to time to make sure that your jokes aren't weighted to one you know to one side that's black belt level material man if you're gonna make some jokes about war

and vietnam and soldiers and soldiers returning you're just you're entering into the trickiest of balancing beams that's where the reward that's that gabby douglas double triple whatever i'm sorry simone biles pardon me yeah i said simone biles yeah what did she do i don't know something they'll make a legal and competition next year because black women did it you're like don't you do that shit no more bitch it's like when surya bonaly was figure skating and she did a backflip on the ice and they were like yeah no more backflips they said no more backflips yeah they were like no more backflip yeah they were like no really yeah but everything they do is dangerous french chick did a backflip and immediately the ioc was like no more backflips it was too amazing it was too good wow maybe they're worried about like those bmx dudes you know like those bmx

dudes they started doing double flips and then they started doing flip triple flips yeah a bunch of them started crashing and breaking their necks oh that fucking snowboard shit that's insane crazy yeah snowboard freestyle you're stuck on that thing too it's not like skis where your legs move that one in the snowmobile were they coming over the handlebars of the snowmobile and coming back down i'm like no man yeah no anything with bmX bikes or motocross or any of those crazy white dudes that are doing flips. It's all just, how many flips can you do? Landing on your front tire. And the wrecks, man. I spent an hour one night just watching wrecks.

Just watching guys try to do flips and land wrong. It's like, dude, you're just picturing nerves getting ruined for life and spinal cord it's all compound fractures there's a birth of big air 30 for 30 where they talk about when they started that shit in the 80s in oklahoma and they were just doing it for the love like it's just a dude with a ramp in his yard and just word traveled no email no nothing just word of mouth there's a dude with a ramp so when we're in town to do that race, we're going to go over to this dude's yard and do more dangerous shit.

You had to be like a trapeze guy. Before there was motocross and bikes and shit, what did you do? If you were a crazy person, you had to be a trapeze guy. Yeah, what were your options? You didn't have many. With skateboarding? Skateboarding wasn't really,

they weren't thrashing like that in the 80s. No, they were just rolling around like assholes. We're on the sidewalk. Move it, pedestrian. The craziest shit they did is get in a pool. We're in the bottom of a pool. This is nuts, man. We're on the edge.

The shit they do. Like kids, like in general, athletics-wise, like the stuff they're doing, like you see it in jujitsu and in MMA. The kids that are coming up now, they're so advanced, and they're all doing flying triangles and flying arm bars on each other. It's like, God damn. Like, humans are evolving. So I came up playing baseball. Is there a, are there certain maneuvers?

Like, in baseball, before you turn, like, 15, I think, they try to limit you throwing breaking balls. Because it'll fuck with your. The elbow? Tommy John and all that shit so are there MMA moves where you just as a child you just you're not allowed to do this yet you have to be a grown man leg locks as a beginner they generally try to get you to stay the fuck away from leg locks because leg locks I don't know if you're familiar like um heel hooks there, there's techniques that you do that are going against the edge of your knee. So, like, here's your knee. Your knee bends like this, right?

They're going against it this way. I'm trying to bend it, yeah. Or back that way. And it just, there's not much give in your knees, man. And so when you get a heel hook, it's like your leg is, like, in front of, like, wrapped around a guy. They've got their heel, like wrapped around a guy. They've got their heel like trapped like this. And they're pulling on your knee sideways. And your knee just gets ripped apart.

And it's very, very common that guys get knee injuries from being overzealous and not like giving a guy a chance to get out of a technique. There's a heel hook right there. See that guy screaming? Look at his fucking face. Bro, I i'm telling you it is some fucking horrific pain you get your meniscus teared apart your fucking ligaments pop you know it's it's a terrible terrible feeling and yeah that's a pass there's not much room for like in an arm bar there's like your arm is locked out you can kind of take it a little bit before you have to tap but with your knee the moment you feel pain it's too late your shit's yeah look at that

right there whoa look how bad his knee is ripped apart that's dean lister dean lister is a fucking gorilla that dude on the bottom he's like one of the leg lock pioneers in uh jujitsu he's fucked up many a dude's future walking i'll say this about mma it's definitely leveled bar fights oh yeah a little bit more now i've seen some scrawny guys like really fuck up big dudes that know what they're doing yeah yeah like it and you'll just see the dude and it's funny because there's all the shit talking before the fight and then the fight starts and then of course the big dude is like tapping and the scrawny dude is still going i'm like dude there's no ref you're yeah you're at a bar like this isn't you don't get to tap out you get your shit broken yeah there's a lot of people that get

in fights that don't know what they're doing it's strange it's like imagine if you challenge a guy to a basketball game you've never played basketball be ridiculous like i know how to do it i've watched it on tv but there's a lot of people that'll do that with fights. But the consequences of a fight are way more grave than the consequences of a basketball game. Somebody kicks your ass in basketball, you just look like a fool. Somebody kicks your ass in a fight, you're getting fucked up, maybe permanently. Maybe your face is going to be scarred up for life. Man, I ain't no fighter, man. I'm 0-1-1 lifetime. 0-1-1? One draw? What happened with the draw? Teacher showed up.

I got in a fight. I got in a fight in the eighth grade at a Stop the Violence rally. No! Yeah, it's real shit. Because I figured that'd be the best place to talk shit. What's a better spot to talk your shit than at a stop the violence rally because presumably someone will come in and go hey man right let's not do we brothers and i'm yeah mario brown slapped the shit out of me mario brown where you at mario mario brown is uh

air force retired but still we're cool We're cool to this day now. But on that day, he slapped the dumb shit out of me in the gym in front of everybody. That's the worst. You take your L in front of everybody. Ooh, that's a hard one. That's a hard L. Yeah. I thought I was going to get off on that one wrong.

I didn't know how to fight at all until I learned how to fight. I was terrified of fights. I didn't know how to fight at all until I learned how to fight. I was terrified of fights. I never, never, never was the guy. I was just trying to get away from everybody. Because I grew up in different places. We moved around a lot when I was a kid.

So I didn't grow up with a bunch of friends where everybody knew everybody. I was always the new kid. So you always had to. Always. Always. And so then when I was 14, I was like, all right, fuck this. I moved to a new city, new town. And I was like, I got to learn how to fight.

So I started taking martial arts. I just became obsessed with it. Do you teach your kids? Yeah. Yeah, I teach them. But they're not into it anymore. They were into it for a little while. But they like doing other stuff, mostly gymnastics and shit.

But are you teaching them? Did you think to take? Because I'm trying to decide with my son, you know, how to approach self-defense. He's three. He's three. I know it's early. But it's not a bad thing to get it to be a part of his body when he's really young. My daughter started when she was five. But the question becomes about teaching proper conflict resolution.

But the question becomes about teaching proper conflict resolution. Because also, I'm wired a little weird in the sense that I feel like because he's a black kid, he's not going to get judged the same if he throws the first punch. So I don't want him in a position where he might get expelled or some shit, you know? Right. But if you got to get a motherfucker off you, go on and bend that knee sideways. Yeah. If you got to. Yes. Well, that's the beautiful thing

about kids learning jujitsu too is that also they're really used to conflict because you have conflict in the gym all the time not conflict in a negative way but when you're sparring you know you slap hands and you just do it and you go full blast you're trying to get each other as hard as you can and you can do that in jujitsu because you're not hitting each other you're just choking each other and getting an arm bars and then when someone gets you you just tap and then you move on to the next thing and the the thing about doing that is then you're not worried about conflict it doesn't seem as scary to you like for me until i started learning martial arts i was fucking terrified of everybody i thought everybody was going to kick my ass like fuck

it was like every i'd see some dude that bullied me i'm like shit and i'd go around the whole opposite way of school i'd walk the total way around the school to get to the bus you know those how much longer was that oh 15 extra minutes i didn't care i had to walk 20 extra minutes home if i didn't want to cut through the south park projects because there was this dude spencer that was always every week, going to give me the damn business. Those people can ruin your lives. Every week. Like, they would sit on the porch and watch me walk in the corner store, and then would come up and take my fucking Nihilators and Laffy Taffys.

And mind you, I've set aside lunch money. I ate less at lunch so I could eat candy and chips on the way home, and they would snatch that shit right out my hand. Only thing that saved me growing up i had a good ass basketball goal so all the gangbangers in the neighborhood would come to our yard to shoot ball so i essentially learned every every terrible person in my neighborhood shot ball at my house so you can't fuck with me because then you won't be able to shoot ball oh that's nice so i don't know if my mom did that by design i know she did it to keep me from going up to powderly park to shoot ball where you know

that's where all the bullshit would go down but all the bullshit came to her house but out of respect to my mom and my dad like they never started shit and i just walk around the neighborhood perfectly fine now at school i can still get fucked with but on the walk home it was gravy that's very nice once she got the basketball that was good that's very nice yeah it's hard a kid who's really mean who's like bullying you in high school and junior high school that could fuck people's whole lives up sometimes people never recover from that shit you know it's a natural inclination that people have to fuck with someone who's scared and weak too just you see it in animals man you see in dogs we are animals that's what we forget we like clothes and automobiles of civilizers no it's still i'm trying to take your woman and reproduce and i'm trying to fucking spread my genes and i'm going to take your food like that's

yep the basic of bullying is that yeah it's nature and it forces you to overcome because almost every fighter that i've ever met professional fighter was fucked with george saint pierre who's like one of the greatest of all time told the story on the podcast about he was uh driving his range rover when he was world champion through montreal and he saw this homeless guy and the homeless guy was his bully in high school and he realized he was like whoa and he's like what's going on man what are you doing and like talk to the guy and try to make amends with the guy and help him out a little bit but it's like fuck man this is his bully in high school and you realize like most

people that are causing pain and inflicting pain on people, they're in pain, man. That's why they're doing it. You know, it's like victims, you know, the victims of crimes oftentimes perpetrate those crimes on other people. That happens when kids get abused at home. They get beaten at home. They're the ones who want to beat kids up at school. You know, they want to dish out that violence on someone smaller than them because they're getting it dished out on them by someone larger. So they can feel some power. Yeah, man.

I mean, that's the constant victim narrative. But on the other hand, families of people that grow up that are martial artists, all the kids know how to fight. They're the nicest, friendliest people. They don't worry about it. It's not the thing that fucks with their head. For me, I knew I didn't know how to fight. So it was scary. So every time someone would fuck with me, I'd be like, gotta get away i can't fight i don't know what i'm doing some dude got me in a headlock and threw me down on the ground

and was gonna punch me in the face i'll never forget this like i forget what was happening we were talking we like i said something he said something stupid to me i said something stupid back to him then he just got me in a headlock and threw me on the ground and he held me like that he was gonna punch me i was like nah i'm not gonna bother i'm just sitting there going god damn it i'm helpless locked up in a headlock with this dude on top of me going fuck and the only is only his mercy that he didn't punch my fucking face in or he didn't want to get suspended or whatever and i remember going that's it i'm gonna learn how to fight this is ridiculous do you do you ever run into the people from your past who have a revisionist history on y'all's relationship and they not too much because the only people that i'm friends with

from back then i'm actually good friends with that i was friends with when i was growing up like a couple of buddies but most people i don't i've run into some never bought a ticket to your show and came up to the merch table by the time time I was in high school, that's the only people that I still am in contact with anymore. I had already gotten balls deep in martial arts my first year of high school. So by halfway into high school, I was already crazy. I was already competing and traveling all over the place. But I do run into people that have fake stories. I run into people that tell me things

that happen remember that time we're at a party you kicked that dude in the head i'm like dude i never kicked anybody that never happened a hundred percent definitely never happened i never went to a party and beat anybody's ass never happened with that memory or do you correct them i correct them i'm like i never fought anybody some dude was telling me some story about some guy told him that one time we were on the street and some guys across the street were talking shit and i went across the street and kicked both of them in the head i'm like that never happened never happened i'm gonna guarantee it never happened because the last time i was in a street fight i was like 15 i'm like this never happened this is not a true story i'm the opposite man people come to me with shit that i

don't remember i just let them have it that it if that's your memory of us in college fine whatever it's weird though right when you know it didn't happen when you definitely know like i know for a fact i was never in any street fights outside of high school i had a professor from college accused me in a face this is in a facebook thread of something there's some article about me and like all the other alumni commenting on it. And one of the professors, I remember in 1994 when you said this thing to me in class and stormed out of class. I'm like, I didn't enroll until 96. But I didn't say that. I just I literally just apologize.

Like because she's clearly been mad at me all of this time about something that I didn't even do. And I'm just like, there's nothing I can say. That's your narrative. Fine. You know what? I'm sorry for the shit that I didn't do. Whatever. Look at Roy Wood, all peaceful and zen.

But then she replies under that. Well, thank you. It means a lot. And whatever. So in my weird, arrogant brain, I've freed her of her anger or whatever the fuck it is she thought I did. That's very cool of you. That's a great approach. I just don't feel like going back and forth.

That's a great approach. It's so much easier to evade. I'm more of an evader and a schemer than a fighter. I'm not going to argue with you and go back and forth. But what I will try and figure out a way to do is over the next two years, diabolically dismantle anything you stand for and believe in. Like that's, that's my approach to think like there's a comedy club owner.

God is my witness. Before I die, I'm opening a comedy club across the street. Is this in San Diego? No. I've heard the stories. Where is this in san diego no i've heard the stories where is this one uh can you not tell uh it's someplace someplace it's one of the carolinas you know we have such a complicated relationship with them because we need them and we don't want to do it i don't want to fucking run a goddamn comedy club but we need one you know to have some guys dealing with a bunch of

maniacs like us day in day out every week coming in and telling jokes and getting drunk and smoking weed in the green room and all the chaos it's essential to the art form yeah the existence of the comedy club is essential 100 you ever get scared that the young people don't really go to clubs don't really fuck with clubs Yes Yes I do It's gonna change The business model

Like in the next decade Well One of the beautiful things About comedy clubs though Is that we all use them Like even if you're doing arenas Like you use comedy clubs You use comedy clubs

To exercise Like Chappelle Comes in all the time And does the belly room That's a 70 seat room That dude just strolls on in It'll be half intimate yep and he'll do 40 fucking minutes and that is so critical man it's so it's so important to get that work in that's why i don't like when a lot of the vets attack the as they call them instagram comedians or the vine or not vine anymore but you know what the

fucking saying yeah they get mad at them because the club will book them and they'll go well the live show is trash it's terrible and it's true for most of them it's not the greatest performance because they haven't had the chops yet yeah but they sold 300 paid tickets and everybody ate and drank what do you think is keeping the lights on for your 30 selling capacity as to come back in next year yeah and the next year to go from 30 sold to 40 sold they're not making no money off of you but if these ig comedians can come in and at least help keep the lights on, I think in the greater scheme of comedy, there's more good than bad. I agree. That comes from that. And I also feel like there's a level of ignoring the tools that they've been able to use to get

an audience in lieu of the fact that they don't put new standup on TV anymore and let's it's contest shit. Comedy Central just started with the live at the cellar shit but other than that i mean it hasn't been a lot well no one's even watching tv anymore i mean the numbers on regular tv programs are so low now like if you're doing a set on conan like what is what did we win over this right like the numbers are like less than 400 000 people watch it a night yeah that's a lot that might be live plus three yeah on top of that that might not even be just live that might be live plus dvr over the yeah next three days it's crazy so no one's watching anything anymore if you can get onto a stage the way i feel about instagram comedians or youtube comedians is if you're doing stand-up

you're a comic you might be a shitty comic and you might be a famous shitty comic because you're doing stand-up, you're a comic. You might be a shitty comic, and you might be a famous shitty comic because you're famous from Vine or whatever the fuck it is, but you're a comic. It's whether or not you decide to become a real comic and actually do the work and put in the time and then one day be... Look, I hope we see these YouTube comics and they're fucking terrible,

and then you go to see them seven, eight years later, and they're murdering. They're crushing. Great timing. Great premises. I i'm like we got one we got one we need more this is a hard gig think about what you had to do when you were starting think about you traveling around all those fucking things getting on a bus to do open mics they had an open mic once a month that takes a kind of grit and resolve that most people don't have this shit is like hazing where the old heads feel like well they didn't suffer the way i suffered therefore your success is invalid i don't take

that because you didn't do it the way i did it this is the only way to do it the game evolves the points of access it's like it's like comedy is like to me it's like a fucking grocery store and you've been in line you've been in line. You've been in this checkout line, and then a new checkout line opens, and then all these fuckers just cruise through that checkout line. You're still stuck in the same waiting to get a tonight show set line, and the Instagram line opens, and people just start whisking through to success, and you don't know whether or not to change lines or stay in this one. The beautiful thing about comedy is you don't have to get out of the line you just open up a new line open up an instagram line open up a youtube line you can do all those things they ain't been waiting in line as long as me so why do they get to leave the store you know you have that jealousy that little piece of jealousy when someone has not been in line as

long as you leaves the grocery store before you that's comedy now it is but it's wasted energy you can't think about that you can't like you should think about that the same way you think about someone having success in some field that has nothing to do with yours like if someone is a nobel prize winning scientist like fuck i could have done that yeah but you didn't it's really the same thing i could have thought of that app it has nothing to do but some people are like that some people see someone with like a startup some internet startup and it makes a billion dollars and they get angry they get angry because but don't go go fucking do something don't worry about what other people are doing it's a giant

waste of your energy yo i read a book um rebel without a crew i think it's um i think rich rodriguez i think is i think is his name and a filmmaker, and he made the, I can't remember the name of the movie, but it was the prequel to what became Desperado. Oh, Robert Rodriguez? Yes. That guy? Yeah. And he talked about just shooting that shit guerrilla, and for essentially pennies, less than $10,000. Shot a whole ass film, and walks through how we cut the corners and then you think of how they shot paranormal activity for well like fifty five thousand dollars fifty

or sixty thousand dollars the first paranormal activity was dirt cheap they shot the first saw for a million dollars in 30 days in one building whoa every and every scene in the car they're just shaking the fucking camera and jump cutting. Billion dollar franchise. Getting rebooted now. Like that. Like when I see shit like that, I don't get jealous. I go, well, fuck.

I need to go and fucking gorilla some shit together and learn. So that's why I started trying to learn video editing, audio editing, and all that shit, man. Yeah. No, it was inspiring. I love when I walked in the green room when i saw you fucking with that software i love when people are hustling when they're doing things like that learning new things and you're like you know what fuck this final cut pro shit i'm gonna learn adobe premiere they keep fucking with me making me buy a new version every year yeah now to be fair adobe makes you rent the shit but i think there's a way to yeah microsoft does that too now with like office yeah the whole office suite you pay like 80 a think there's a way to yeah microsoft does that too now with like office yeah the whole

office you rent it eighty dollars a year there's so many crooks for the access to it just crux crux and then you can't use the old version of office with the new and if i send you a file that's like office 03 you can't open it with the new off like it opens as a text file with no form like they do it to fuck you i barely use office i use it i have it but i write with right room for the most part do you know what that is no is that script software it's no it's um it's a software that turns your whole screen black and then turns the text green and you can't access your browser you can't do nothing you just have green software have you ever seen it no right so it looks like

some old ms dos coding type action yeah on uh on my windows computer i use uh i use a program called scrivener and i do most of my writing on that and there's a distraction free option there that's what it looks like that's a matrix yes i write like i'm in the matrix that's how i write when i'm on my my mac because I think they have a version of that. Don't they have a version of that for Windows? I think they do, but I've never really installed it. I just use... Yeah, I need to play around with that.

Yeah, it just says Mac OS. It doesn't say anything about Windows. I heard a story that they wrote the first Independence Day movie in three days in a hotel room. Makes sense. It's so stupid like just focusing in like that that type of shit would just help me focus have you had a lot of coffee or some adderall or something like that you could write a dumb action movie in three days easy you could go crazy now gorilla style shit man is that's how this podcast got started this part this podcast reaches some stupendous number of people every month and started out with a laptop in my living room because i was bored me and my friend brian because uh i had just gotten back from colorado

and i'm i was like yeah i can't believe i'm back in la this is fucking terrible i'm like well let me do something and so i just started doing like q a's on like a like a laptop talking to people on you stream god yeah that's the one thing i wish i could have back i wish i had taken youtube more seriously you take it seriously right now though i do now but not in 2005 when it first came yeah but just content just start rolling now see that's the same thing you were complaining about before no i'm just it's the wish that i had done something that's what your career is is that man i've had it done this sooner then there's two things i would have done sooner i'd have taken the internet more seriously and i would have taken some more advice and not gotten on tv for 10

years i don't think any i don't think any comic can do it though i think it is impossible to be a working comic and stay off of if you stayed off of television for 10 if you started your career and just never did shit no festivals just crush crush crush crush yeah you become fucking legend that by the time you finally decide you're like a college quarterback that just stays in college for years and years and years and never enters the draft. And by the time you do, then everything is stratospheric. But there's too much money.

There's too many offers. Well, you know who did that? It's Joey Diaz. Joey Diaz didn't do any stand-up comedy on TV until like 15, 20 years in. Yeah, he was crushing. But Joey also, I think, is from a different cloth where he wasn't seeking that out either. He was never tempted by that. Well, he was seeking it out either. He was never tempted by that.

Well, he was seeking it out. They were scared of him. He was talking about eating ass and taking in the muffler and all this chaos and going to work. Taking in the muffler. Yeah, he talks crazy. But I think I have a different perspective. I think I have a bunch of old sets.

For me, when I was on TV TV I was doing comedy like five years Four years They're terrible Yeah But the good thing about it is They exist And it lets you see Like look

This was In the beginning I was fucking terrible But just keep going You just keep working at it You keep working at it You get better You know like

I'm not under any illusion That I didn't used to suck I try to talk about it As much as possible I was terrible When i first started if you're okay with that being out there i don't give a fuck dude i've been digging in the crates i've been digitizing a lot of my old vhs shit trying to you know just for posterity and going through some of my old fucking tv set they're all terrible like the Letterman set is probably the only thing. The Letterman and Def Jam set in 06.

Those are the only two that I'd still, to this day, would go, all right, I still stand beside those jokes. Everything before that. Premium Blend. Star Search. Last Comic Standing. Apollo. Comic View. All of it.

I'm like, bury that shit. My biggest fear is becoming famous famous whatever the fuck that is and then bet just rolling out some sort of remember when fucking thread of just here's all the black comics that used to suck 20 years ago and just going no but that's who you were that's that's part of the process yeah i like i like the process i don't care i'm fine with it the problem is that the gatekeepers that decide stuff they only want the newest shiny thing so if they see you too soon and you're that's the only problem roy that's the only problem you don't need those fucks you don't need gatekeepers internet the internet has no gatekeepers they have people that have podcasts they get you on their podcast you do your own podcast you put out a lot of content

no gatekeepers but the problem with is that it takes comics discovering that because the problem is a young comic is that you inherit the goals of your predecessors so as a young comic especially as a road comic every road comic is trying to get on tv so they make you believe tv is where you need to be going don't fuck with that youtube shit little nigga i tell you right now you got to get on goddamn letterman you get on letterman and then you get the show i got on letterman and there's not a knock on letterman and it's worth as a credit but the worth of a late night credit in 2006 versus 1996 it's not the same currency no there was a deflation in the currency so it got me more rooms it got me more

money but there was no ray romano fucking here's your career choose your career here's your kevin j like yeah it doesn't work like that but the only but you're chasing what somebody else wanted and the game is always moving the school of fish are always so you have to be ahead of that curve and it's just didn't listen to the instincts yeah it's hard to see where it's going though if the people from your predecessors the the guys who were successful when you were coming up where they were headlining you were middling for them that that was the goal the goal was the tonight show the goal was yeah but i don't think it's that hard to see the future not necessarily see the future but see the trends of where people what people are paying attention to i'm quicker to read fast company than i am

a variety or hollywood reporter because where tech goes that's where people go where people go they want to laugh so you figure out a way with that to integrate laughter into whatever the new tech of the new like this tiktok shit whatever this i don't know what that is i've seen it but i don't know what it is you better fucking figure it out really cause that's the next one is it the next one

that's the one I almost brought up to you we should maybe we should do a TikTok account I don't know we should think about it somebody probably already got my fucking name

I don't think you'll like it I don't think you'll like it I won't like it it's music it's musical vine in a way like it's it's music sketches

but it's still funny it's entertaining so Tom Segura does it like it's music sketches, but it's still funny. It's entertaining. Tom Segura does it, like, all the time. He's into it. He's, like, ironically doing it, but yeah. But he does some funny shit on it. He does some funny shit on it. Because Tom Segura is self-aware that he's a guy that shouldn't be on TikTok.

So his existence on TikTok is what makes it funny. He knows how to do that shit, but he's ahead. He's ahead. He's ahead of that curve. So the other thing I think compounded guys like me from my generation is that Dane Cook was one of the first that was like, all right, fuck TV, what's over here? And so many people shitted on Dane out of jealousy that you ignored the fact that his MySpace move was some fucking bullshit. It was huge. It was huge for everybody. I remember I read People Magazine. There was an article about how he had like 200 000 or 300 000 myspace friends

that's crazy i remember thinking that is crazy how does he have so many friends yeah but he was using that and talking to people online constantly and rather look at him and see how he did it you stand in your checkout lane and go, fuck him. He got out of the store before me. Well, I shifted and I started promoting on it. No, I didn't. I'm just saying a lot of comics like me just didn't. You lean on what you're told because you look at older comics as mentors instead of realizing that maybe they don't have the shit figured out either. And you should be trusting your instincts.

He was the first guy, right? He was the first guy to really make it through the Internet. On the digital side, yeah. 100 yeah 100 right i'd say that i can't think of anybody before him because i can't think of anything before that other than yahoo chat rooms no he was the first guy he was the first guy and the first guy for sure that became famous from my space because my space was like the first platform about social networking shit yeah his uh his album sold like two million copies or something crazy like that. Yeah, dude, retaliation.

Oh, my God. If you stop and think about how nuts that is today, like today a big artist, like if Eminem puts out an album, how many does he sell? I'd say 400 first week, maybe three, two, 400 first week. Let's give it a year. I'd say depending on what week you're releasing right now, you could be number one with like 30, 400 first. Let's give it a year. I'd say, depending on what week you're releasing right now, you could be number one with like 30,000 sales. Whoa. Yeah, 40,000, 50,000 sales.

Boy, they just gutted that record business, didn't they? That is crazy what happened with the internet. The internet took out porn and took out music by the knees. I used to have a fucking neighbor. He lived right down the street, like two houses down from me, this crazy porn dude. I used to have a fucking neighbor. He lived right down the street, like two houses down from me, this crazy porn dude. I used to do jujitsu with him too.

He was all steroided up and maniac, had wild eyes. Dude was just crazy. Like coke? Yes. It was coke and steroids and he was just fucking up a storm constantly. I'd pull in,

it was like past his house and he's always had these fat Mercedes parked in his driveway and all these hot girls in their underwear walking around. It was hilarious. This dude was all these hot girls in their underwear walking around. It was hilarious. This dude was a maniac. But then the internet came around.

The internet just gutted his business. Just gutted it. And they repossessed his house. I'll never forget, man. Damn, right? His fucking house got repossessed. And I remember seeing it in the real estate section. I was like, fuck, man.

That dude lost his house. He had a fat fucking rolex with diamonds all over it porn got really fucked over but you know you want to talk about the people selecting what they want to see that's what's what's a bigger focus group than people who want to fucking jack off right and they've decided i would rather see somebody in the hood in their house with no lighting and just terrible fucking camera work and that's as interesting what it was it is that porn became free and they just used ad clicks and they would just pirate everyone's porn say if you were a porn producer and you were making a bunch of porn they would just take your porn and put it on like whatever website and then you you would have to get a lawyer to try to take it down.

Yeah. It was like some limewire to the 80th power. It was like way worse than got the entire business, but you don't think the free side and like the amateur porn. Oh yeah. That's part of it. I mean, that's bigger now,

but in the beginning, yes, it was just porn clips getting chopped up and nobody paying $40 for a five hour DVD. You know what I noticed? Not that I, I was doing research recently. You know what I noticed lately? I was doing research recently. You know what I noticed?

There's a lot of like stepmother porn. It's a lot of like stepmom, horny stepmom porn or stepsister. It's all like taboo stuff. It's also a lot of getting caught porn. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Yeah, like the wife walks in, you're in the middle of getting your dicks like,

what? And it cuts right there. It cuts the moment she walks in. Yeah, like the wife walks in, you're in the middle, get your dicks like, what? And it cuts right there. It cuts the moment she walks in. Yeah, there's a lot of that. We did a story on racism and porn for Daily Show. And so we were shooting up in Chatsworth or whatever. And what I did, I learned so much about the porn industry. I didn't know that they would just have a fuck house where it's like an eight-bedroom house.

And every bedroom is this individual studio set up for whatever genre of porn there was like at least five different genres of porn being shot in that house and we're out in the and mind you i still have this image that if you're a porn star and you're working with a porn studio there's some bread there's got to be a little bit of money and one of the um porn stars was is it actress what's the fucking word now porn actress yeah so one of the actresses her car is blocking someone so i go out just give me your keys i'll go move your car in this car i have to be the most filthy saddest fucking like to the point where I'm like, if this is what fucking on camera gets you, there's got to be something else out there. And you want to talk about people that need to see where the curve is.

I think if you're a woman and you're cool with doing porn, you're probably better off just doing it on some self-starting shit than even dealing with any of these L.A. crooks in the first place. Yeah. If you could figure out a way to get an audience. la crooks in the first place yeah if you could figure out a way to get an audience i know there's a lot of dudes who uh they they run these companies that girls use where they just uh people pay to see their videos like like someone will ask you like uh if you're a porn actress they'll say hey i want you to use this dildo and cover your tits with whipped cream and i'll give you 150 bucks and then on- On some live stream, like private Skype type shit. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

They make their money doing that and they'll do that like all day long and rake in thousands of dollars. Yeah, that's like the food videos where you sit butt naked and eat some food and you go on like a virtual date with the person.

Yeah, I think it's- Butt naked, food eating? Sometimes naked, sometimes not. And like you haven't been on Skype? There's a lot of that in asia yeah a woman's just looking straight at the camera so anyway today do you talk to her do you have a conversation back to her it's sometimes it's just a straight video and you don't get to interact with it because there's multiple people watching the feed concurrently

or if you want to pay a little extra yeah one-on-one i will sit here and pretend to be on a date with you and we can and that's just that's more feeding loneliness than some sort of erotic desire but there's not a lot of money in it no kalifa was talking about that shit a couple weeks ago what was she doing she said she only got like 12k for the year she only did porn for like a week right didn't she do like a year or something like that but i think it even was whatever it was it should have been more than 12k so that's all she deserves what i'm saying is i didn't see the points i don't know whether or not no i'm sure she did a great job she put in a solid effort i'm just kidding if you're someone that wants to do porn you were coming off better just setting up your webcam like joe rogan yeah day one podcast you and brian with a laptop

and a microphone and just turning the webcam on and just doing whatever the fuck you want to do yeah with yourself then dealing with the industry yeah and the record industry is becoming similar to that too i think so too but i think that it's hard for them to find an audience that way there's so much porn like i had a joke i was doing for a while about why are they making new porn like who is jerked off to all of it like this there's no way anyone has seen it all but yet they keep making new porn it's like it's crazy like there's no demand like there's no demand for new stuff there's plenty like you would have to be some kind of crazy creep to have seen every porn that has ever existed. But it's no different than MMA.

There's people innovating. Yes. There's people innovating in porn. Back flipping and POV and new scenarios. Taking chances. Breaking their necks. Yeah. Yeah. I think the cam thing is the big thing.

Girls fuck on camera. You know, they'll have their boyfriend come over and they'll fuck him and suck his dick on camera and you pay to watch i think that's that's the big thing and they do private shows and like the guy could tell you know you could tell the girl hey i want you to do this to him and they'll do it on camera very strange you know the funniest shit though so steve burn and i um we were in pittsburgh and three things lead to another and we end up at a strip club and it's a weekend. And so apparently I didn't know this, but porn stars tour strip clubs and they'll go to a strip club on the weekend and dance and sell whatever pocket pussy or whatever vagina mole they have. And all of the strippers fucking hate them. They hate them.

Really? Yeah. Like, some of the strippers are cool because, oh, they bring more people into the club. But for the most part, the men are saving their tip money to tip the porn star that they came to see. So it's like being a seasoned comic, and then the Instagram comic comes in who's never stripped before. Like, yeah, you fuck on camera, but it's not stripping. What I do is an art. What you do is slutty behavior.

Because there's a beef between strippers and prostitutes. Because some strippers will suck and fuck in the back of the club, and it fucks up money for the rest of the strippers that are playing the game straight up. Right. the rest of the strippers right that are yeah that are you know playing the game straight up right so there was this weird tension in the strip club while the porn star was on stage and i could not stop laughing because it was comedy and that's part of why like stripping to me is performative it's in a weird way it's comedy and stripping it's damaged people entertaining strangers so there's more of a synergy so i don't really get anything out of watching the stripper because in the back of my

head i know you're thinking about groceries or some other shit but it was hilarious as a comic to watch two different same but different type of performance like the magician versus the stand-up versus the juggler and how they all kind of don't really like one another for one reason or another because they all think what they do is superlative to the other guy's craft and it was it was god damn it was fucking hilarious that is a inside scene that only strippers can really appreciate what you're talking about you know what i mean yeah like for them they're like yes those bitches ruining it coming over here a bunch of fucking whores there's um there's a couple of strip clubs that i used to go to in birmingham

where like you know the club will close at two and the police would leave and then at three the club would reopen and then it was open season and it was whatever you wanted to do and then you would see strippers in the parking lot yelling at the other strippers who were choosing to stay for the 3 a.m. session, saying that y'all are messing it up. And that's why nobody comes before two is because of what you're doing. And so it's just a. So at three, it became like a brothel. Yeah. Yeah.

It's insane. Isn't it hilarious that you could fuck anybody you want for free? And there's not a law about it. But as soon as money gets exchanged, you're a criminal and everybody's mad at you. If you're just a slut, no one cares. But if you want to fuck people for money, that becomes a real problem for people because people desire sex so much. And there's so many guys that cannot get laid but they've got some money and if they find out they could pay for it like people are like no you can't you can't pay for it

you could pay for everything everything that's legal everything else that's legal you could pay for except sex you could pay to have someone cook for you you could pay to have someone rub your back you could pay to have someone cut your hair you could pay to have someone mow your lawn you could pay to have someone take out your trash you could pay to have someone cut your hair. You could pay to have someone mow your lawn. You could pay to have someone take out your trash. You could pay to have someone clean your house. All things you don't want to do. You can't pay for someone to suck your dick. You can't.

And someone could do it for free. If they like you, there's no problem. It's very strange. Or in exchange for college tuition. You can't even do that. If you made like a deal, like you suck my dick and I'll give you a house. People go, hey, you can't do that. That's prostitution. Very strange, right?

I mean, think about all the things we do that we don't want to do, but we do it for money. Everything's fine. There's no issue. Even think, like, you know, I grew up doing terrible construction jobs I'd never want to do. You know, it might be better to suck a dude's dick for a thousand bucks than to- Lay drywall. Fucking carry cement bags all day for $400 for a whole week. Jeez, at least you got that.

I used to work day jobs. I used to work day labor when I was on the road as an emcee so I could make more money. Like, the one advantage the South had was that the comedy clubs back then were like five, six-day runs. Oh, so you would work during the day on the runs? Comedy House Theater in Columbia, South Carolina, used to be a six-night room. And it was Tuesday through Sunday. So I would get to town Monday night.

And Tuesday morning, I would go to a day labor spot, get a job assignment, and work the whole week, nine to five. And then at night, go do my little MC bullshit. Kids need to hear this. Kids coming up, kids need to hear this kids coming up they need to hear this that's important you got that's real hustling dude why am i gonna sit here in a hotel all day and do nothing when i could go make a quick like minimum wage was like five and a quarter like you're only making 40 bucks but but that was extra money. Yeah. I counted on that little extra money, and we used to work cement fucking, oh, my God. There's a Quick Creek factory in Columbia, South Carolina, and I've worked there. I worked there two weeks at a time.

Anytime I played the comedy club, I worked at the Quick Creek factory. Wow. So did you have to call them up, or did you, how did you get that gig? You show up at six in the morning with your with your driver's license and you sign up and then you sit in the lobby and you watch the morning news until your name is called and then they give you your job assignment wow and so you bring boots you bring a hard hat because you don't know what you're going to get you might get something with a keyboard you might just be outside holding a stop slow fucking stop stick while they pave a

road and that's your gig for eight hours. Wow. And you just stand in the fucking Carolina heat and just fucking five 25 an hour. I'd love stories like this. Dude, that was my first 10 years was just working day labor, weird jobs to make extra money. Um,

and if, if the gig was under five hours, I would drive back home. Like I wouldn't even stay so that I could go. At the time, I was still working morning radio. So if it was within five hours, I would do morning radio, get off the air at 10, be on the road by 11, five hours, nap, do the show, get back in my car at 10 p.m., five hours back to Birmingham, sleep at the station, wake up at 6, watch Rinse Repeat. Whoa. sleep at the station wake up at six watch runs repeat whoa i can't lose the radio gig because that's too that was too much of a good get right and i was doing prank calls and i was using the

prank calls i was taking my prank calls at the time and sending them to other morning shows this is website radio online which kind of breaks down It's almost like Billboard. It's almost like Nielsen or some shit, but for radio. And so I would go there and I would look for other local morning shows that weren't syndicated in cities where I wasn't performing. And so I would send my prank calls for free to these morning shows and go, look, I'm a comic. Here's some free prank calls we do in birmingham they're not going anywhere else you want to air them in omaha the guy says yes he's not he doesn't have shit else to play on the air so i would send the prank calls the guy would play the prank calls for

a couple of weeks a couple months and then i would call the local comedy club and go hey i want a feature in your room i'm on the radio and i know i can get on there and this is when the belief that radio still could bring people to the show so i would call local comedy clubs in cities where my prank calls were airing and use that as leverage to get booked as a feature instead of an mc and so that's how i was able to kind of jump a level because i was a feature that was coming in town with the pre-plugged in media access and all of that shit dude you're a hustler you're a real hustler i love hearing shit like that that was i really do i love hearing the driving part i love hearing the getting the day job part

kids need to hear this all you fucking kids listening to this right now they're thinking you want a business a job in show business this is what comes with it and that's why you're so good man that that hustler mentality that's so important that's so important you just network you find people that you can that are as driven as you yeah and then you just figure out ways to work together and do shit but comedy is so so many motherfuckers are lying bro they're lying how so and you lie you get the leverage and like it's like so the way i got hired on radio so at the time the thought was that this is 2001 i'm out of college and if i can get on the radio then that'll give me more access in the city and I can host my own comedy night by hosting my own comedy night.

I can offer money to out of towners who also have comedy nights and do swap out. So I needed to get the radio gig. So at the time they were doing some sort of contest or some shit. Who's the funniest in Birmingham or some shit? And I missed the window for the contest. And so I knew, the long story short is that I go to the radio station. I asked the guy at the time, Buck Wild, who was hosting 95.7. Not the same star on Buck Wild, different Buck Wild.

I don't know any Buck Wilds. Okay, perfect. Not the same Buck Wild. Oh, different Buck Wild. Oh, okay. So I say, hey, man, I'm a comic. know any buck wilds okay perfect not the same buck wilds oh different buck wild oh okay so i say hey man i'm a comic i have a degree in journalism it's a perfect fit fuck with me and he goes nah we're done with that we're not gonna have a comic i go okay cool now i've done enough of the comedy club in birmingham to know that on black weekends the black radio station hosts the black comedy night on Fridays

and they throw out t-shirts and all that shit so I go to the comedy club and I told Bruce Ayers I said hey I just got hired at 95.7 um and they want me to open for D.O. Hughley this weekend and he goes okay that's fine I'll go back to 95.7 I go yo I know you don't want to fuck with me but I'm opening for D.O. this weekend, yo, I know you don't want to fuck with me, but I'm opening for DL this weekend. Do me a favor. Watch my set. If I'm funny, put me on Monday morning. He goes, you got a deal.

So I get to the comedy club that Friday and all I have to do is keep Buckwild and Bruce Ayers apart so that neither one knows what the fucking lie was. Either one knows what the fucking lie was. Right. And Bruce came backstage and you just, as long as you act like you belong and you act like the truth is the truth, people will kind of merge in with that shit. And Bruce came in the room and goes, okay,

buck wild, you go out and throw the t-shirts and then you bring up Roy. And I went out and it was seven minutes, but I fucking crushed, like just when you need that one set to go right in every syllable, every fucking comma is perfect. And I demolished in front of D.O. Hughley and I walk off stage and book wild says, see you Monday morning. And that's how I got radio. It's just what we're going to do. Not fucking book me. I'm already not really working the comedy club. I'm already not hired by you.

What is the penalty for this lie? Is this lie? Will this lie send me to jail? No. Fucking lie. It's a hustle lie. Yeah. I'm not saying load your resume with 50 different credits that you don't have.

But if you've performed somewhere else outside of where you're from, you have performed across the country. Yeah. What you basically did is like the comedy version of a subprime mortgage loan. Yeah. Like he sold a house to someone who really shouldn't be buying a house. But it worked out and he kept the house. Yeah. That's amazing. Check Kite, man.

I came up, man, because I got arrested when I was 19 for credit card fraud. We were stealing credit cards in college and buying jeans and all of that shit. So my first two years of stand-up, I was on probation. Oh, wow. When you have that, I could have gone to jail or this shit could be a lot worse living in the back of your mind forever. Hustling, people call it hustle i just like no this is i have no choice i have to fucking do this i knew a dude who was one of the original credit card fraudsters his name was international sal international sal yeah yeah yeah man he was a

dude who used to uh come to this pool hall i was at and uh international sal was like uh he was a real nice guy but he was a famous loser at gambling and that he would he would make millions of dollars on credit card fraud he had they had an organized crime empire and this is what they would do back in the day remember they had this transparency like they would run your card they would put it on the machine and go yeah shoot shoot yeah but the carbon the carbon they would take those carbons people who worked in these department stores would take the carbons and sell them to him he would take those carbons make a totally new credit card out of that car with some sort of machine and then they would distribute them to these guys they would buy goods with this stuff and then they would sell the goods and then guys would come to him in the pool hall with paper bags filled with cash.

And all he wanted to do was gamble on pool, and he could never win. And when I'm telling you never win, that guy was playing with dirty money, and he knew it. His head was fucked up. He would be staring. The nine ball would be in the hole, and he would be like a foot away from it, and you'd see his hand shaking. Just shank it.

Just fuck it up and hit the rail and bounce it off and people go no he missed he missed i can't believe he missed an international sal could never win he could never win but he was one of the original dudes did you find something from him something very weird just happened what happened uh so i'm typing i'm typing international sal right and i hit space bar right and two things come up credit card thief and pool player but when i click the search for that nothing shows up huh like for instance credit card thief and it just brings up a bunch of other stuff about credit card thieves and other people well it honestly it might be because of us is it i've not i've never looked it up before but the search might exist because of us. I've never looked it up before. But the search might exist because of us.

Because I know I've talked about international Sal before. All right, okay. And him being a credit card thief. He's dead. My friend's mom was actually taking care of him when he was in hospice. He had cancer. He died of rectal cancer, man. God damn, Sal.

Yeah, it was bad. It was bad. Sal Butera? No, no, no. God damn, Sal. Yeah, it was bad. It was bad. Well, Sal Butera? No, no, no. Sal Butera is a famous pool player. This international Sal was not a famous pool player. Sal Butera was a good one. International Sal couldn't win.

But he was one of the original credit card fraudsters. He went to jail for quite a long time and then got out and was doing the same goddamn thing again. What's crazy, though, is that when you get arrested, especially for like some white collar shit like that, like what they don't tell you about getting arrested is that the first thing they do is try to pin other unsolved shit on you. So before you even like get a mugshot or anything, you just go sit in a room and they go, here are all the mugshots of other people we are looking at for similar crimes. Do you know any of these motherfuckers? we are looking at for similar crimes do you know any of these motherfuckers then you get a handwriting sample and then a as in like there's and that's when you find out like oh i was just a petty fucking teenager that just took a credit card to get some jeans and then you start realizing like oh there's an entire fucking syndicate of shit happening in this city that i didn't know anything about they're trying to fucking pin on me and that's when the fear set in because like

in your head you're like all right well i know i probably won't go to jail i hope i don't go to jail oh shit i might go to fucking jail for some shit you didn't do oh and they don't care they do not care and that's when i decided you're already a criminal and that's when i got into comedy that was the fucking depression like that was the fucking moment like oh shit well joey diaz went to jail for armed kidnapping that's how he got into comedy he robbed a dude over some coke with a machine gun taped him to a chair and shit and then when he was in jail he learned how to do stand-up that is the best cold open to a biopic when joey diaz gets his biopic it has to start

with duct tape yeah he's friends with the dude he kidnapped he took pictures together didn't he put it up on his instagram he took pictures with the guy he kidnapped he's like 31 years ago i kidnapped this cocksucker now we're friends that's the beautiful thing though man it's a redemption and being able to make a mistake and get back in the mix well some of the greatest most disciplined people went to jail because they were like bernard hopkins one of my all-time favorite boxers he's one of the greatest middleweight champions of all time and bernard hopkins spent like six years in jail for armed robbery and he learned how to be disciplined when he was in jail and when he got out of jail he not not only did he have like a

drive that other people probably couldn't comprehend but he knew what would happen if it went bad again. He knew what would happen if he slid back down that road again. And apparently, like the corrections officer said, when he was getting out, you'll be right back in here. And he was like, the fuck I will be. The fuck I will be. And he turned out to be one of the greatest boxers of all time. There he is.

Joey's with the guy. 32 years ago, I made a mistake. So what? It's not where you start. The guy I kidnapped showed up to my show. 32 years ago, I made a mistake. So what? It's not where you start. It's where you finish. The guy I kidnapped showed up to my show. 32 years ago, I made a mistake. So what?

That's beautiful, man. It's not where you start. It's where you finish. That is crazy. You know, that's what the whole redemption is about in China. You know, do what you can with your second chance. That's why I just tried to grind, man. All this shit is a gift.

I could have been in prison. This culture today does not want people to have redemption it's interesting this culture today wants people to be in trouble for things they did in the past and you have to be who you were 30 years ago yeah we all go to church and ask for forgiveness every sunday for an opportunity to be forgiven for what we were that week well the idea that no one that no one gets a chance to redeem themselves it's a terrible world like that's the one of the best things about christianity is the idea that you have redemption you you confess your sins and you you move on i just think that it's all new and i think there will be a i think it's all new i think there'll be a market correction at some point, because as a society, we are obsessed with who you were.

Credit reports, rental history, drug history, employment history. If I can sit down with somebody, I want to know your dating history. So I can Twitter is just racism history or your bad joke history. It's it's it's an opportunity for the first time as a society to audit your past behavior when all we do is judge who you are now based on who you were that's what our society is established upon so that's why it doesn't feel so out of pocket to me that people are doing it's like oh it's a new way to see if you and me i can literally search your name plus a word and see if you said the word and then i will fucking yeah it's no different than a

fucking bankruptcy sitting on your record from i like how you described it as a market correction because i think that is what's going to happen we're going to understand that what we're doing now is kind of unsustainable like going back and judging someone on some shit that happened in high school or whatever it was and and trying to look at words you said when you're trying to make a joke like what happened with kevin hart and he apologized for it many times and then he's hosting the oscar and they're like look 10 years ago he said this he's like look i'm not gonna do this i'm not gonna do this again i already apologized for those things i'm gonna move on sorry and the oscars got fucked they went up having no host now did we get fucked did the oscars get fucked or did stand-ups get fucked?

Because the Emmys don't have a host now either. Good. Good. Listen, comics shouldn't host that shit. That was a comic's gig. That was a gig. I love Sebastian. I love Sebastian.

But Sebastian made me cry when I was looking at this fucking Video Musical World Award. He's going to host it. The VMAs, yeah. He's hosting that shit. And there's some thing. That's what comics do. We host. We go get the shit.

We make the jokes nobody wants to make. Sebastian sold Madison Square Garden out four times. What the fuck is he doing hosting the Video Music Awards? He won a Sell It Out 6. I don't think that's going to do it. Why else do it? Why else do it? Let me show it to you before you cast any judgment.

Go to Sebastian's page. There's a thing where he's asking Jimmy Kimmel how to do it why else do it let me show it to you before you before you cast any judgment go to go to sebastian's page there's like a thing where he's like asking he's asking jimmy camo how to do it it's like don't get out get out of course they're forcing him to do a bunch of shit that's not good that's not a brand for him right no it's not a brand for anybody terrible no there's certain who else is gonna roast that shit who else is gonna show roast that shit? Who else is going to show up? He's not going to roast it. He's a nice guy. Sebastian's not going to roast shit. Look, if you got. In the first promo, he roasted himself for even being there in the first place. Yeah, that's okay.

But if Ricky Gervais roasts people, like if Ricky Gervais was hosting something, that's different. Yeah, that's a totally different. And they all get mad at him and he goes after everybody. That's his brand. He is cutthroat. Yeah, shit's on everybody, including himself. I don't know. I've always enjoyed comics being able to have that to just go to whenever.

If you look at the history of the Oscars, it's almost always stand-ups. A lot of times, I just don't give a fuck about award shows. See, there it is. See, that's the truth. That's the real truth. It's not even the award host. It's why the fuck are we doing this thing? But that's like I would see Chris Rock prepare for these award shows.

I'm like, you're Chris Rock. You couldn't pay me to come anywhere near one of those stupid fucking shows if I was Chris Rock. Chris Rock walked out at the NAACP Awards and did a Jussie Smollett joke. I saw it. Nobody else is going to give you that. You see how you're laughing? Look at you enjoying that shit. That's different.

No other comic is going to give you that. That's true. What is the worst possible thing that can be said in this room full of black people that hold him and that show sacred? Yes. And he fucking said it. He went right to it. He went right to it. I don't think Kevin would have done that.

No, Kevin would have done that. Kevin would have done that at the Oscars. Eddie Murphy would have done it. Did you see Eddie Murphy when he did that? When he got that award? He went after Bill Cosby. Yeah, a little jab. It was just a quick little silent jab.

But it was great. Yeah. It was great what he was talking about and then making him give him back his awards. Yeah. Yeah. Wait, does who come back from that? Oh, does Jussie Smollett?

You can't, right? Yeah, you can come back from that. Really, it's Jussie Smollett. You can't, right? Yeah, you can come back from that. Really? Black people are the most forgiving genre of people. R. Kelly still sells tickets. Not right now. Oh, not right now. Not right now.

Not right now. Not right now. He did come back hard, though. That is amazing. R. Kelly sold tickets the entire time. Everybody saw the piss tape. He had supporters at his arraignment in Brooklyn. Yes, I saw it.

Big fat ones yeah black aunties out there that's my baby so if you're telling me justice moley can come back and tell a lie on the street of chicago and he's not as good as r kelly he's not as good as r kelly but he can get cast in some jesus movie and redemption and it'll parallel and he's not admitting that anything happened the problem is that the people that could give him the redemption are some of the people whose trust he betrayed right that's the problem admitting that anything happened. The problem is that the people that could give him the redemption are some of the people whose trust he betrayed. That's the problem, is that you start looking at the Lee Daniels and the Tyler Perrys and maybe the Ava DuVernays and the people that are in that world of black cinema that could get him back in into whatever this crossover mainstream world is. So it's about earning that trust again. But I think there's no, and I'm just saying from personal experience, you know, there's no group of people more forgiving than I think black entertainment.

I don't think they're ever going to forgive him for calling himself the gay Tupac. I don't think gay people will forgive him for that. And that's for gay people to decide. I know Tupac fans are different. What the fuck are you talking about? What do you mean I'm the gay Tupac? Like, what the fuck did you just about? But he's not the gay Tupac. Like, what the fuck did you just say? Yeah, he's gone.

But then you sit down on somebody's couch and you go, yeah, that was the old me and the new me now. And then you come out with your wife. You do some selfies on Instagram kissing. Yeah, but he's not going to have a wife. He's going to have his boyfriend. Husband. Okay, fine. Whatever it is, come out and be happy and normal in some level of attrition for what happened.

He would have to explain the whole thought process for putting on the hoax, why he kept a noose on his neck, who was talking to the cops while he was holding a subway. Yes. You got to get drunk through the mud. Yeah. Come on out, get this dragon, and then get back to work. And nobody's going to care. Five, ten years from now, nobody's going to care.

Is he a good actor? I thought he was fine on Empire. Empire wasn't my cup of tea after a couple of seasons. But, I mean, it was a fine show. It was entertaining, well-acted. I never looked at him and went, oh, my God. It's not like I'm looking at some self-produced Netflix movie where I go, how the fuck did this get online? He's still saying that he didn't do anything, right?

He's still saying that he actually got mugged. I haven't kept up with it that's one of those stories where after he got clear the first time i quit clicking the links and then the city of chicago started suing when the city of chicago decided to sue him for the cost of the investigation i'm done yeah there's just certain shit i don't click on anymore and just as molly stories. I just, is he in a new movie? I don't want to read it. That's the only thing I need to know. Yeah, I get it. I think, I honestly feel like there is a way back.

Marv Albert was biting people on the back. He's wearing a dress. So there's a way back in entertainment. There's always a way back. Do you think there's a way back for,'s his face From the The fucking What's his name The The Matt Lauer

Is there a way back for that guy Oh I don't know about that one That's white women Fucking around White women That's Justice Mollet was lying On two Nigerians

On the curb That's That's a different layer What did Matt Lauer do He just got laid Matt Lauer was locking Motherfuckers up in the room You can't be curb. That's a different layer. What did Matt Lauer do? He just got laid. Matt Lauer's locking motherfuckers up in the room, bro. You can't be just hitting the

cha-cha. That's the narrative, but apparently all those executives had that button. They all had that button to lock the door. But did they use it

to grab the ass or did they just cha-cha bring that ass home? I bet they did. I bet a lot of them are sweating out right now. They don't have the time but they lock somebody

in the room. Is there a way back for Matt Lauer? I don't know if it is. It's a long road, bro. You know what the back for Matt Lauer? I don't know if it is. It's a long road. You know what the problem with Matt Lauer is? I was talking about this last night. No different from Smollett.

Has he owned any of it? Here's the problem. He doesn't do anything. He doesn't do anything that a regular person can't do. He just talks to people. He doesn't do anything. He doesn't sing. He doesn't tell jokes.

He can't paint. So he's replacing them. He's not making motorcycles. Yeah. What do you do that's so awesome? He doesn't do anything that everybody't sing he doesn't tell jokes he can't paint so he's replacing not making motorcycles yeah what do you do that's so awesome he doesn't do anything that everybody can't do everything he does anyone can do he's talking to people that's all he does is like hi i'm matt lauer with good morning america whatever the fuck the show was today today so today's show hello how are you he's just talking and he's talking as bland and non-spicy as possible but in the in the so you think he's because they replaced him was it uh was carson daily was that kind of who they used for a while on today i don't know why i'm asking you i know you don't

watch this shit in the morning carson daily me and my girl had this carson daily had that one show that was on forever yeah last call like one o'clock in the morning that no one watched, but it stayed on. Yeah. For years. He's been part of the morning show for a long time, too. What? Yeah. Does like special interest pieces.

Yeah, he's been in the mix. Oh, I didn't know. Yeah, Last Call. I thought you were making that up. No, no. Matter of fact, they just turned Last Call over to a new host. They gave it to Lilly Singh. So there's, I don't know.

I don't know what it is. Because here's the thing. For there to be a path back, there has to be what does redemption and ownership of whatever you've been accused of look like? Right. whole redemption conversation is it about your truth or is it about the truth of your accusers or is it about what society perceives you as right or the combination of those things correct because if you don't believe if you don't agree with what your accusers said to you then you're already fucked because that's part of the redemption is respecting their truth. Even if it's not true to you and it's not what you believe happened and what went down when you hit the shot.

Like you did to the teacher. Correct. Similar. Correct. It's just, hey, I'm sorry. Right. Now, granted, I don't know if Matt Lauer would be saying that sincerely. I was sincerely like, look, what can I do to show attrition to move back?

Because now, even if you've had that with your accusers, society at large still gets to decide. Because the same way society decides who wears the crown, it gets to decide who to take the crown from. Sure. And there's shit you can do about that. Right. So, I mean, that's, in a fucked up way, that's the game. It is the game. I hope he saved up enough money.

He saved up enough money. He was making ungodly sums of money. Well, then fucking go spend your money. Just relax. Go spend your money. But that's ego. But that's ego in feeling like, I deserve to be. You took it and give it back.

God damn it. I'm entitled to the fucking employment. It's awesome you get used to that gig of being that guy who's on TV. Hello. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the Today Show. Today we have Tom Cruise. I'll never forget him and Tom Cruise arguing over whether or not

Brooke Shields should take antidepressants. That's a real clip. So crazy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're arguing over it. It's so strange. Him and Matt Lauer and Tom Cruise. And Tom Cruise is telling Matt Lauer he's being glib.

You're being glib, Matt. You're being glib. Because Matt, you know, Tom Cruise is like, he's a Scientologist. And they don't believe in pharmaceutical drugs. They don't believe in antidepressants or psychiatry. There it is right there. There's the two of them arguing. And Matt Lauer's got that.

I'm thinking, because I'm holding a pen and pieces of paper war of the worlds that's early aughts yeah man okay it was a big deal it was a big deal it fucked uh tom cruise's career up for a long time there's people like this guy's a fucking nut why are they talking about somebody else's business though um because he had talked about it publicly he had talked about the mistake that she's making by taking uh antidepressants okay saying yeah then that's that's then that's all in the game well psychiatry psychiatry is the enemy of scientology they have all these um they have big signs that psychiatry kills and it's like someone with like an electric fucking shock thing on their head going ah it's like in hollywood like they're

they're on this crusade against against psychiatry it's like a big part of what scientology is the thing that makes me laugh is that i don't see a lot of southern scientologists i don't see a lot of scientology florida the big things in clearwater oh they got that's the number one headquarters in clearwater that's my sister got one there. That's the number one headquarters in Clearwater. My sister lives down there. She lives real close to where the headquarters is. It's fucking weird down there, man. Everybody just, they're all walking like they got a secret. Do you think in this society, do you think Scientology will be the last religion created?

When you really think about how recent Scientology is is it's like the 1940s or 50s somewhere like it's roughly the same age just like i don't know like a united airline delta airlines like it's not an old religion we have videos of the guy who made it yeah yeah will that be the last religion that is like created no because every other religion is like old school you know centuries and millennia's old but no there'll be new ones the interesting thing is they're probably the last ones to get tax tax exempt status because their tax exempt status is being questioned right now like there's people that are very angry about it but they did it because they they all started

lawsuits against the irs and they started thousands of lawsuits the idea was that they were going to sue the irs into recognizing them as a legitimate religion and the way to do that was just overwhelm them with litigation and that's what they did right they're still doing that's what they did they then they achieved tax exempt status a long time ago. They're, they're very, it's a very strange. Did you ever read, um, going clear? I saw the, this HBO thing. Yeah.

Yeah. It's the, the doc is great. The book is even crazier because Lawrence Wright goes into depth with all these different people that were like, as they were realizing that it was horseshit, like as they were getting like the, the ninth level of doom papers,

it opened up and it's handwritten nonsense by a retard. Like that, that guy who wrote it was a, he was self, level of doom papers they're opening up and it's handwritten nonsense by a retard like that that guy who wrote it was a he was self he was like self-diagnosing all of his his own personal ailments and dealing with them himself and then trying to like pass that off as like a way to live amongst all these people that were paying attention to him but all of it started for him from himself diagnosing is it is it natural for scientologists and i'm only i only know what i know from that doc and leah remedy fucking lifetime shit is it natural to not be like the way a christian is just openly christian just hey how you doing the lord loves you i'm here to tell you about jesus i don't

really feel like you get that from science like normally when i like and watching that doc i didn't know the dude from chicago pd used to be like the gritty yeah detective guy yeah so oh damn i didn't know you used to be a scienceologist like you never find out that somebody was into that shit until after they're out of it now i think people keep it tucked it's not like mormons where they're riding the bikes and you know what the fuck the deal is. Right. Yeah. Now they keep it tucked in. But I think back in the day they used to talk about it as openly as possible. They would proselytize. They'd try to get you to join.

But how? Just try to get people to come. Just try to get people to come to these events. Try to get people to come to these free workshops. All these different things on anxiety. Different things on the mind, Dianetics. That's what he decided to write about, Dianetics. And it's like the science of cleaning your mind and avoiding all external influences that are negative and that are ruining your perspective.

It used to be commercials for that in the 80s and 90s. Yeah, man. I bought it. I bought a Dianetics book and I got it on a list. With the volcano exploding in the commercial. I remembers yeah man i bought it i bought a dynex book and i got on a list with the volcano exploding in the commercial i remember i bought everything man i bought tony robbins shit i bought all kind i bought book of five rings i bought fucking art of war i bought everything i was just trying to figure out like what's the best i was into psychology when i was young because i was fighting all the time and i was always scared so i was trying to figure out

there's got to be a way to like overcome these mental hurdles like this that was like for martial arts competition the big thing was the fear it wasn't your physical ability wasn't as much of a hurdle as the fear you know if the the fear of competition was terrible so i was like this but sometimes i feel confident and it'd be great And other times I'd be fucking terrified. And I've got to figure out how to be consistent. So I started getting into all that kind of stuff. And then when I came to LA, it was like in 94, I saw a Dianetics commercial. I said, fuck it, I'll order that.

So I got this book. Find the way, the questions you seek the answers to. Here it is. Can words said during an operation harm you later? Page 182. Is it possible to increase intelligence? Page 122. I was like, oh my God.

It was a good ad. Yeah, look at that. Dun, dun, dun. Dianetics. Bro, I'm going to be like a fucking volcano. I'm going to take over. Yeah, I was thinking that I was going to be able to figure out all my mental problems through this book.

And then I got on the list. And every week, I got some new workshop to go to or this. and then i got on the list and like every week i got some new workshop to go to or this i just pile this is mail mail just mail this is the 90s that's all they did was just mail you shit and but oh my god i got so i'm onto this it wasn't until i moved and one of the reasons why when i moved i didn't forward my mail i contacted all the companies because of dianetics I'd get so much shit from them Really? That was the fucking

That much shit? It was so much shit It was like letter after letter More than like the grocery store? Also it started freaking me out That they knew where I was Like it bothered me It bothered me

Like it bothered me That I was on a list I was on a list of someone Who bought the book But didn't go to any classes And they knew where I was. Like, maybe I could get him. Maybe if we just knock on his door, hey, do you want to clean up your brain?

Hey, come on. We've got the solution. Don't you want to be a volcano? That's scary, bro. Yeah. That's scary. Well, a lot of people get sucked into that, man. I met quite a few people that were Scientologists.

I was into some of the, I call it the you can do it motivational stuff. I remember in high school, our JROTC commander, he used to make us watch this guy. I think his name was Bob Mowad. Mowad? survived like a terrible white phosphorus grenade accident or something like like got fucked up real bad in vietnam but was now doing motivational speaking and once a month we would watch videos of this dude and like it just starts in a way like if you're getting to one you can kind of start getting in line with the next and the next and i think before you know it that's when you're into dianetics land before you realize like you can find someone that's meaningful with a meaningful message and then as you progress more and more it's like all right i agree with less and less of each author that i'm starting to fuck with and so it ended up bob mullat and then like i think dave ramsey

i started falling in love with financial shit yeah yeah well when i was 21 and i was first starting to do comedy that's when i was really devouring as much of it as possible because I was trying to figure out how to not be so lazy, how to be motivated, how to get shit done, and how to find the correct path and think about things correctly. And so that's when I really got into it.

So it's like the mind exercise. Mm-hmm, yeah. I would follow all this personal power. You had workshops that you would do, little notebooks and shit, fill out and things to talk about and things to concentrate on like if you did do it it would help you but really what it's all about is just getting your shit together and moving just go do something like what you did by taking a job when you would show up at a gig and you'd be working there tuesday through sunday and then take a day job and work nine to five that is

more hustle and more hustle mindset than anything you're ever going to get out of an Anthony Robbins book. That is like just doing it. Just doing it makes you do more. Like do more hard shit makes you do more hard shit. Understand that you want it bad so you're willing to put in the work and do things you don't want to do. It's what makes you have that confidence that you know how to push through

and the mentality that I'm the type of dude to get shit done. I'm not going to waste my day just sitting around a fucking hotel room. No, I'm going to go to work. I'm going to work all day. I'm going to drive five hours and keep that radio gig

and then drive five hours and spend 10 hours of the fucking 24 in a day in a goddamn car to do gigs. Forward focus. Just to do gigs, to keep that radio gig those things are every like i had a guy on yesterday this guy dan crenshaw he's a congressman who's also a navy seal we're talking about uh mentality i'm like when you went through buds is it do they teach you how to think or do they show you by example they don't teach how to think they just show you they harden you through all that work and through all that work through that insane hell week all the

shit that you have to do when you're going through buzz training the six months of breaking you down and building you back up they teach you you could do anything just by by making you do anything so you will understand how you can pass your limits. What you thought your limits were are no longer your limits. That's what I feel like is missing from a lot of people that are getting into motivational this, motivational that. They ain't doing shit. You got to go do something. That's the number one thing, right? It's fucking action.

Take action. Do you believe that people that aren't as successful as you think they should be are qualified to be motivational speakers? No. No. There's a lot of that. Yeah. Most people who are doing motivational speaking should stop. They should stop.

You're just robbing people. You're not even motivating yourself. I want to wake you up at 3 o'clock in the morning and go, come on, man. We're going running. I want to see what you do when you're tired. Let me see how you push yourself. Come man get up get up again tomorrow get up again tomorrow get up again tomorrow the next day get up get up get up get up keep going how long can you maintain a positive attitude where's all this teaching you're teaching people you can't do

shit yourself they you need to show people that you could do it the best motivational speakers to me are guys like david goggins because that that guy that that's in that fucking that coin right there that guy does it every day and he's got videos he just did a hundred mile race the other day put up uh the results on instagram you can see him showing up 22 hours after the race starts he finishes 100 miles like those type of people those are motivated have you ever you ever seen Goggins' Instagram page? No, but this is insane. Bro, he's a fucking animal.

This motherfucker got abs on a coin. He's an animal. You chisel him. He's got the world record chin-ups in 24 hours. He did some preposterous number of chin-ups. What's that? I believe he was beat recently. Somebody beat him?

I think so. Not for long. Yeah, he'll probably come back. He's probably going to come back, yeah's but it's those type of people those are real motivational speakers because they're actually doing something there's a lot of people that are teaching you motivation they don't have a business they don't they're not their business is motivation like it's a weird business it's like yeah it's like teaching someone how to drive a race car and you never drove one but see that's where and that goes back to the whole for for me, the whole New York versus LA thing in terms of comics.

You just be around other comics that are just doing. Like when you see Dave Attell, like you'll see Dave Attell in February. You'll see him do 20 minutes, right? And then you'll see him in March. You'll see him do a totally different 20. And then you'll see him three months later. him in march you'll see him do a totally different 20 and then you'll see him three months later and he's taking two pieces of the five minutes from those first 20 and put it with a new killer fucking 30 and i go what happened to the 20 oh yeah that stuff wasn't tight enough and it is

but this joke this isn't and when he breaks down why that joke that you love doesn't even fucking matter to him because it was to get to this like that you can't teach that you can't explain it but you can show it and then i can go home and go fuck i need to write i need to go back and look at my old shit and figure out a way david tells one of the rare guys that became an alcoholic sobered up and got better right like usually the guys who are drunk are fucking hilarious and then they stop drinking and they get boring yeah he got the opposite he became a way better comic tighter and just punch lines and people say that about eminem they say that once he sobered up and went clean

he's better no that it was worse yeah that's what usually happens so it happens to everybody happened to kinnison happened to bill h. It happened to Bill Hicks. It happened to everybody. I never had. Not necessarily Hicks. I never had alcohol, a love for alcohol. Like, I'll drink here and there. But I used to get pissed in my 20s when I would go on stage drunk or tipsy or whatever the fuck. And then after the show, people would give the liquor credit for me being funny.

And it used to offend me. So that's why I stopped drinking. Wow. Who the fuck gave credit to the liquor for're so funny when you're drunk this was funny you should drink more or you know in these road rooms they'll sing you shots right because you're on stage with jack and they've associated that as part of the so also you lose control of the audience at least i do when i'm up there drinking because they send a shot someone else sends a shot and now it's a fucking big it's a it's a pep rally instead of a performance yeah when people are sending you shots that's a disaster that's a disaster because then everybody wants to send you shots but then what am i doing in my performance that made someone think it was

cool to do that and that that would make this experience better for everybody you're doing a burt kreischer you turn it into a party take your shirt off but that ain't my style and holler i need y'all to shut the fuck up so i can get this chiseled shit out of my mouth so i so it totally changed how i you know and also alcohol makes me sleepy and then it was too much driving in the 20s and stuff so i can't be drowsy hit at home so i don't know it was just never my thing yeah it's a tricky one man because like one drink will loosen you up two drinks now we're getting a little silly three drinks now you're kind of drunk you know and you could still do it but is it as good as one drink no it's not but once you get one drink and you get happy you want another drink fuck it i'll have another one

and then next thing you know it you're a little drunk and you're on stage like i'm at that age now i can't remember what comic did a joke like this but maybe a couple of them but we're before you drink you have to look at your schedule for the next day and a half right to make sure you have the bounce back and recovery and all that shit yeah it's not just can i go out friday it's what am i doing saturday and sunday well you're a goal-oriented guy it seems like for goal-oriented people the the alcohol is one of the biggest impediments you know the craziest thing the only thing i've never been able to make proper time for in my career is exercise really yeah why not i'm not good about exercise i because hire a trainer you've got money because it's that's still i don't have time there's the time

and so in my brain it's well i'm when i I was still living in LA, I had a trainer. And I got to New York. And then it's must do this, must write, must watch the video. If I exercise, I will be too tired. And then productivity will go down. When I know deep down, when I exercise, I'm more creative. The brain juices and shit work more. But it's the only thing that i've never been able to

like properly regiment in my life well this is how you fix that force yourself like we're in august okay we have uh what six more days seven more days of august something like that what is today 10 more days say the 21st so we have 10 more days of august do you just say at the end of this fucking month i am going to have a trainer, and I'm going to work out three days a week with that trainer, period. This is how we're going to do it. Write it down, and then just get it done. And force yourself.

For one month. For one month. For the month of September. For that month, you have to work out three days a week. And you write it down, and then publicly state it so that you can't back out of it. Put it on Twitter or put it on Instagram. Take one of those shirtless pictures of my gut just profile show everyone let them clown me but if you do that you'll force yourself to do it and next thing you know you've done it you know like i

have this dog that loves running and so i make sure that if i don't take him running he's he's always a pain in the ass he's dropping the ball on the table, trying to get you to play. He's a very energetic dog. So that motherfucker makes me run five days a week. Five days a week, I get up. I'm like, come on, bro. Let's go. Let's go.

He goes crazy. He starts running around in circles. And then we go hit the trails. Is this the dog that you saw? What was it? Was it a snake or some shit you ran over while you were jogging one day? Like, I know you ran into a bunch of- Oh, that was a different dog.

Yeah, that was a different dog. Yeah, that was crazy, man. I jumped over this log, and as I was jumping over this log, I'm like, that's a rattlesnake. It was fat, dude, like my forearm. I was like, fuck. It's one of the biggest snakes I've ever seen in terms of rattlesnakes. It was big, like six feet long, big. Yeah, that'll hit you.

That is a big fucking snake. And it was just laying flat out on the road like a stick. Just warming. Yeah, and the dogs went right over it. They didn't even notice it. It was just completely flattened out. I was literally in the air over it before I'm like, oh, my God. Yeah, that was a different one, man.

I've killed a bunch of rattlesnakes man always seeing those fuckers there was one in my neighborhood real recently where there's a video of a bobcat and a rattlesnake duking it out in the middle of the street like down the fucking mile from my house man it's crazy freaking coyotes out here man there's a lot of weird wildlife out here you know california's got man, there's a lot of weird wildlife out here. You know, California's got weird wildlife. There's a lot of shit out there. A lot of bobcats and mountain lions.

What do we have down south? We just had squirrels. That was the only real... That's it? That's the only real pest. Chupacabras? Yeah, that shit. You guys have coyotes now. Coyotes are everywhere.

They have coyotes in every fucking state. 50 states. Rednecks probably eating them, my fucking coyotes. Oh, yeah, for sure. People eat coyotes. There's someone eating a coyote right now. Right now, someone listening to us right now. Coyote jerky.

Not bad. I guarantee you one of your listeners knows a person that makes coyote jerky. Probably, yeah. I'd try that shit. My friend Steve Rinella, who's going to be here tomorrow, he cooked and ate a coyote on TV. He wanted to see what it tasted like. Oh, look at this fucker. He was on a trail near San Diego a week ago.

What a size of that fucker. God damn it. It's all curled up and ready to go, too. We're too sprawled out as a society. Yeah. Well, these motherfuckers are everywhere, too. And we need them, by the way, because that's why there's not as many rats and rabbits and shit.

It's a whole beautiful ecosystem out there. Have you heard the number of rats they've found out are in L.A. recently? I just saw a story about it last night. It's disgustingly scary. They're all at the Comedy Store. 12 million, over 12 million. They're all at the Comedy Store. All 12.

And if they hit, there's about 1.5% of them that have those disgusting diseases. And instead, if it hits over 2%, it starts spreading into people. Oh, great. And so it's very close to that good times it's a bubonic plague you gotta move bro you gotta move to the mountains yeah man move somewhere you can't fuck with rodents bro yeah genetic code too simple they can fucking reproduce yeah sisters and mom is that sisters and fathers and yeah no problem they have no problem there's no mutation is that Is that true? They don't have like ingrained problems?

No, that's why they can. Really? Three months gestation. Jesus Christ. Get me pregnant again. Three months. Get me pregnant again. Did you ever see that documentary on Netflix?

That rats documentary? No. Woo. You ready for that one? That's a good one. Write that down. That one's going to freak you out because it details. They catch some of them and they just run some tests on them.

And this is in suburban Atlanta. And they find all kinds of crazy fucking diseases. And they have Manhattan. They show all these rats scrambling over garbage and into the sewer system. And they show how smart they are, how they'll send the young rats to test out poison. And then the young rats will eat the poison and die and then the old rats like okay we get it and then they're smart adaptive yeah man they're they're clever i mean they're the most prevalent mammal in any city you know if you look at any

like just sheer numbers and just we're gonna that's a hustler right there there's more in new york city than there are human beings i think there's more biomass of rats than there is biomass of human beings so it means the weight yeah just the weight yeah just the weight of volume that's true sure volume i might have made that up but the the biomass of uh i mean just the sheer numbers it's there's not another animal that you can think of that's like that. What's the estimate of anywhere between 8.4 million in 2014 all the way up to 33.6 million rats

in New York City? Jesus. That's more than there are people for sure. Tristate's what? 18 million? God. God. R, rats. The documentary's amazing, man. They're vectors of diseases.

They've always been. They've always been carrying diseases. What's the number of rat, what's the rat infestation looking like in countries where they eat rats, though? Interesting. What's the disease fucking numbers? Not a lot of countries eat rats.

You know what's the weirdest shit? You ever seen those temples in India where they feed the rats? The rats are everywhere. Dude, that'll give you the heebie-jeebies. These people are drinking out of bowls of milk that the rats drink out of. They scoop it up. They have all these rats literally running over their body and skin.

And the rats are sacred? Or is it just we respect this as your grip? They feed the rats. They feed them. Look at this. What do you got here, Jamie? Rat temple. What is this?

Rat temple? speed up ahead so you can see what it's like when all the rats and the people are interact yeah oh there we go they put out food for the rats and the rats you could pick them up i mean the rats have zero fear of people and in fact they're like they get along with people so this is like a temple that you visited in india and fucking rats are. And everybody treats these rats with respect. Very strange. It's coexisting. Yeah.

So the reason why rats are scared of people, they recognize that people want to kill them because they carry diseases. But in India, they just got a totally different vibe going on. So look, like those pigeons are hanging around those rats. In New York City, rats hunt pigeons. You ever see rats kill a pigeon? Yeah, I've seen that. And drag them away.

You're like, whoa. Have you seen the video of the pelican that ate a pigeon? Swallowed. Yeah, rats hunt pigeons. You ever see rats kill a pigeon? Yeah, I've seen that. And drag them away. You're like, whoa. Have you seen the video of the pelican that ate a pigeon? Swallowed. Yeah, swallowed the whole. I saw a pelican eat a duck. A whole duck. Pelicans are low-key assholes. Assholes.

Dinosaurs. Look at these fucking rats, man. They're everywhere. Well, that's where we're headed. Rats are pelicans. That's where we're headed. With fucking rats in New York. You think so?

It's just got to be normal. I mean, people are going to try and stomp them out and poison and trap and all of that. But at some point, you just got to go, all right, man, you're going to live here too. Well, they're maintaining right now, right? You can still go to a restaurant. You still go to the movies. You still go shopping. It's all normal.

And there's millions of rats running underneath your feet under the ground what's what's the plan what's de blasio's plan you don't have a plan for people definitely have a plan for rats it's a fucking plan what kind of plan is he having dude take care of his corrupt cops take care of his uh all the problems with the streets take care of all the crime take it they don't have rat problems i'm a rat plan i thought they had like all these studies and epa motherfuckers how much money do they have how much money does de blasio have like how much money they have to spend on things like rats they probably don't have any budget it probably doesn't present as much of an ominous threat as crime or bridges and you know tunnel shit and fixing all you know infrastructure probably it

would have to be a pandemic disease which as jimmy was saying can happen it's there we have medieval diseases showing up here now that are particularly trash and shit in hollywood or in downtown la with all the homeless people it's fucking crazy because people are literally just shitting on the street just shitting everywhere the the homeless situation in downtown la scares me more than the rat situation what's the numbers oh it's you need to see hundreds of thousands have you ever driven through skid row yeah bananas right yeah because it's close to fashion row there's are you into fashion no but i was over there one day for some shit there's thousands and thousands of people just living on the street thousands

thousands like a like a whole gigantic theater sells out and all the people pile out onto the street but that's where they live that's what it's like it's like like people going to the verizon center like 7 000 people you'll find in a few streets and they think the solution is some sort of hostels or something that they're going to start trying to do good luck these people have accumulated they've like they've become accustomed they've that's their lifestyle like that's not what they want for sure but they're accustomed to being. Like they've acclimated to that world and they've lived in it, many of them, for years and years and years. And they go to places and shelters where they get food. They sleep out on the street.

They have a whole community of people that are out in the street. They're all doing drugs. And most of them are psychiatric patients. Half of that stuff. A lot of them. That's the thing that really fucks me up With the homeless population In this country Is that Half of vets

And then on some Mental illness shit Maybe some of them Their family just can't Give them the care they need But if they got the care They need Maybe they could be

A little more level enough To at least be under a roof With a loved one Or somebody That can afford to You know Yes To take them in

No no I think you're absolutely right And in the 1980s They changed So some of them Have problems that are sol and in the 1980s so some of them have problems that are solvable yeah some of them but some of them don't have anybody to help them get through the problems i mean and then things deteriorate you know they get worse and worse and worse and as you get older you lose hope and then you say this is me this is who i am now

there's there's like there's there's like this weird thing with the homeless as well where I feel like as a country, we're quicker to help people in groups. In a weird way, it still fucks me up and it's going to come out wrong. But if there's a natural disaster, the amount of money we will pour into relief and support for a particular area after the hurricane or the tornado or whatever and that's fine if that same type of outpouring happened just once for the homeless coast to coast it would change so much fucking shit bro yes but if people aren't fucked up in a group at once right then it doesn't it doesn't resonate Like when you see a single homeless person or the news just shows you the row of tents, you don't see the person crying with the rubble behind them and they've lost everything. It doesn't, for whatever reason, it doesn't connect the same.

No, you're absolutely right. We need, like if something like Katrina happened or a giant earthquake, then we would realize we have to do something. But if there was no homeless people and then all of a sudden something terrible happened and there was 20,000 homeless people wandering around downtown, we would immediately go,

oh, we got to fix this. Yeah, but it's simmering. It's a slow sort of effect. It's simmered and simmered for decades and decades. I mean, you think about how much money we spend on other countries, right? How much money we spend on aid, how much money we spend,

and we don't fix inner cities that have been impoverished since the fucking 1800s we don't ever go in there and try to solve problems we don't look at it i've been saying this forever like if you want a better country the best way is to ensure there's less losers and the best way to ensure there's less losers is give people more opportunities and fix places where you have no chance. I mean, how many people that grow up in neighborhoods where they have no chance get out? It's like it's a tiny, tiny fraction of people that want to become successful and happy. Most of them are trapped by the environment that they find themselves just by a random roll of dice. They wind up and they're in Detroit and they're in the worst neighborhood in Detroit or they're in the South side of Chicago or they're in Baltimore or wherever

the fuck it is. And then no one does anything to fix it. No one does anything to change it. But if there was no place like that and all of a sudden the disaster happened and then there was a place like that, then there'd be an outpouring of contributions and people would want to do something to try to fix it. Yeah. I just think that we live in a society where it's just the people in power know that if you help the people that you've been oppressing then you run the risk of facing their wrath once they have power do you think that's what it is to some degree why would i if i have an opportunity to make something better and people are labeling me as the fault for you being in that situation in the first place, then I run the risk of losing power because those people are going to come get me.

They're going to vote me out of office. So it's about aligning your views and choices with the people that's going to keep you in office. Yeah, I guess, man. I just would think that in today's day and age, people would be more forward thinking. And they would think, look, we've got a lot of problems with the environment. We've got a lot of problems with climate control. We've got real issues in this world. But we also have problems that have been here forever that no one's done a goddamn thing to fix.

So these new problems, like, oh, the ocean's rising what are we gonna do like it's not gonna affect all these inner cities these inner cities that have had these same problems forever if you looked at the problems like murder problems in this country like the the places in the inner city was where you have like gang violence and murder and drug trafficking and the same fucking problems over and over and over again, year after year. Go ahead. There's no effort. What do I gain if I'm a politician and I'm in power? What do I gain by helping those people?

Well, you get more people that do well and you have a better economy and you have a safer society and people look at you like you're a real leader like wow mayor would do they look what he did sure if they give me the credit or unless it gets politically spun the wrong way or some shit yeah but i mean and then i'm out that's the case with every single thing a mayor or governor does we're just like i don't know i just think where like politics like that is concerned we are more inclined to vote and do things that serve our own interests first politicians are more inclined to do to enact policies that serve their best interests and we're more inclined to vote for things that serve our best interests so

the two things work against each other and for it to work for the system to work you have to vote for things that are for the greater good, even if it means sacrificing your own position in the process. And that's what I think a lot of politicians don't do. But I think in this day and age, trying to help impoverished communities, now there's an awareness of how long stuff's been going on. Do you know who Michael Wood Jr. is? Is that his name? Michael Wood Jr.? Yeah.

He was a cop of Baltimore, and he came across this paper from the 1970s that was detailing rap sheets, all the problems in the area and all the different crimes. And he was realizing, this is in the 2000s, he was like, these are all the same places with the same crimes that we're handling now. So here we are 30 plus years later, the same exact crimes in the same exact places. And he's like the feeling of like futility, the handling this, the fact that no one gives a fuck and that this has been this way forever. And nothing's being done to do anything other than just continue the process of arresting people, letting them out, arresting people, letting them out. And then it's just chaos. I'll give you a good example of self-interest.

So in Newark, New Jersey right now, they are facing water contamination levels that are higher than Flint. And there has been cover-ups out the ass that's where i was born so well i go get your shit checked your parents do like it's in the past i think it's like past eight years or so they're starting to they're starting to pull at the threads now and figure out oh what the hell is this what's going on with the water and it's all these people getting fucked up the people who covered it up those are people in office who could have made the decisions that you that you're saying to not fucking let fucked up water get into the water table so if a corporation says hey man motherfucker don't worry about that

dirty water here's some money and some campaign promising that's what happened i think so i mean you gotta unravel the story we gotta see how it unfolds but if there is a cover-up a cover-up only happens if someone has more selfish self-serving intentions in mind yeah like the the core base of a cover-up is to fuck over somebody who doesn't deserve to get fucked over yeah so off that alone the choice you're making isn't for the greater good of the society or the pride or like the way ants like you know what ants do that's so dope when it's a flood you ever seen the fire ants make the float yeah that's what that's what we have to be but we're not going to be there because nobody wants to be the ant on the bottom that might drown and can't get back up to the top in time yeah we don't we don't do that

well i think there's also a sense of futility like there's a lack of resources to handle everything so you just just take take what you can handle what you can and keep moving and then just get the fuck out of newark i mean that's how people look at it people look at those neighborhoods like a place to escape not that it's anything that could be fixed yeah that's what i that's what i struggle with with birmingham in terms of going back home and trying to do things that feed the neighborhood positively because i feel like i never had that growing up like you know there were a couple of people and you your bo jacksons and your charles barkley's they come around and you, give a high five to a kid or two. But to be able to do things that create opportunity so that the feeling of hopelessness or whatever isn't always there.

Or if there's one thing that can be like Big Sean did something that was dope in Detroit. He put one hundred thousand dollars down on a recording studio and to help underprivileged kids have access to just fucking just record just to do something that makes things better so the problem is that in the process of trying to give a fuck it's stressful and there are people that are pushing and working against you and you could easily just go to sleep in your bed comfortably at night and just not care. But I try. I do as much as I can back home.

But the idea of getting the fuck out, I'm always torn on because it's like I'm gone. If nothing else, I can pay my bills till I die. And I think my son could go to a decent Division II school and be fine. But if I'm not using my gift and all these advantages to try and help and better other people somehow, then I feel like I failed the city or I feel like I failed where I came from. for so i'm trying to figure out how because i don't i've never what i've never seen is someone that gave back or attempted to put back into without it costing them something in the process as well right i see what you're saying like you you'd have to make a big sacrifice in order to help and you'd have to take time that you don't even have time to work out so how the fuck do you have time to go and save birmingham yeah yeah that is a problem i mean you have bandwidth right you have a certain amount of bandwidth in your in your brain and how much of it can you dedicate to

charitable things how much can you dedicate to your career your family yeah it's the constant process. I mean, I think it's the job of people who are running cities and states and the country. But it's about how much resource, how much resources they have and how much they delegate to fixing these problems that have existed forever. What I've learned, man, is I learned a shit ton. is I learned a shit ton we shot um we shot my comedy central pilot in Birmingham um this summer which was not an easy feat in terms of the logistics of it just because Birmingham's not a it's not Atlanta it's not a bunch of fucking cameras just laying around but you start seeing how different entities of at the state level and the local level, even the county level, all have to get a little touch. All have to have a hand in it somehow so that everyone feels like they are all part. You have to please too many people at the same time to get anything remotely done.

I don't know. I can't speak for the rest of the country, but I know in Alabama, that's generally how it is. I think that's generally how it is with all politics. I mean, everybody wants a little bit of credit. Everybody wants a little bit of a say in it. I'm fine with the credit, but just help. Yeah. Give you the credit, but help.

Do this logistical thing to help. That's the stuff where nobody wants to really, or you're not sure if anybody really has genuine intentions on helping. Yeah. Because not everybody's happy for you at the crib. That's the saddest shit ever when you think about charitable organizations and you find out how much people are making to run those charitable organizations. Red Cross and shit. Yeah, and how little of the money actually goes towards the charity.

You're like, Jesus. I know there's going to be some red tape and bureaucracy, but it's like Red Cross, isn't it some insane number? How much of money from Red Cross actually goes towards the actual charity itself? I'm going to say 10%. That might be generous, but that is a crazy number. It costs 90% of all the money that comes in just to deal with overhead sticks and moving stuff around and that's why that's why i kind of like gofundmes

because you can just find a motherfucker and be like here yeah here's a hundred dollars yeah when there's real problems what do you got jamie what's the number let's guess well i type that in and it's like stories come about the ceo has been serially misleading about where the 91% of money that it says goes. I don't know. Oh, so it's less than 10%. It's 9%? 91%. 91% goes somewhere other than the charity.

So it's 9%. No, no. I think they're actually saying 91% goes to the charity? We're very proud of the fact that 91 cents of every dollar that's donated goes to our services, is what he said. What the fuck is services? What are services? Rent, gas, food. Yeah, come on.

Sign it. Did you see that dude that De Niro's suing some lady that worked for him that watched 55 episodes of Friends in a week? No. Yeah. She embezzled money, allegedly embezzled money, used his miles to fly on her own personal trips. She was making $300,000 a year, but the big story, the clickbait title was he sued her for $6 million after a wild friends binge she watched 55 55 episodes of it in four days that's 2008 so that's dvds

in 2008 that is hilarious so they're still going after it 11 years later? 10, about five, six. Oh, she began, she was his assistant in 2008. And then, okay. She began as De Niro's assistant, and she now is being sued. So she basically got to a place where they're working together for 11 years. 11 years of employment, De Niro Robinson rose to vice president of production and finance, according to the suit, which lists her 2019 salary at $300,000. She finally left the company in April after being suspected of corporate sabotage, said the legal filing.

She embezzled money and she went crazy. You know what? That's seven hours a day. That's 14 episodes a day. That's doable. It's doable. Four days. I binged 24 in like a day and a half.

The whole season. Yeah, a whole and a half the whole season yeah a whole season back in the dvd box set days it was also a good show it's just funny that out of all this shit that this lady did apparently allegedly the 55 episodes of friends are the ones that became the headline that everybody had to click on because that's the funniest shit also watch 20 episodes of rest of development one day and some other shows. So she's just sitting around watching TV while she's working for them. What is she supposed to be doing? I was like, maybe she's doing research. Maybe she's waiting around for something to do.

What De Niro project needs friends as research? I'm looking for cast. I don't know. What De Niro projects are even around? I mean, well, De Niro's probably trying to figure out where all his money's going because he's getting divorced right now so he's probably yeah man he's getting divorced there was a some public spat at a restaurant where he yelled at his wife i wouldn't have to do these shitty fucking movies if you weren't spending all my money yeah oh i see that and i always feel bad for people like the cubs um the second baseman, Ben Zobris.

He's been like, I don't know what the physically unable to perform. Like he's basically been on the disabled list the entire season while he goes through and deals with his divorce. Oh, God. Like divorce is some serious shit. Even to go make millions of dollars playing baseball. I can't right now. I have to go to court and count my cash and make sure that my shit is. So his disabled shit is just dealing with the divorce.

Yeah. It's not even a real injury. No, it's not a real injury. Well, I guess technically it's mental. You know what it is? That's a girl taking apart his puzzle. Yeah. Yeah.

She took apart his puzzle. That's what she's doing. She's taking apart the puzzle of his life while she's forcing him to go through. I think it was like infidelity or something. Yeah, of course. Somebody cheated. I had a buddy of mine who he had to pay for his wife's lawyer. You don't even think about it that way.

If you're married, you go, well, who's paying for her lawyer? Well, bitch, you're paying for her lawyer. If she didn't work, you pay for the general of the opposing army to try to dismantle you financially. And he didn't have a prenuptial agreement so he went to war for fucking years years and years and years and they were trying to drain him and the lawyers are smart man they know that the real settlement is great but what the real money is is in legal fees leading up to the settlement they just drag that shit out for a couple of years hundreds hundreds of dollars an hour. And next thing you know, you've lost millions of dollars. And this guy busted his ass 12 hours

a day forever, lost almost everything. Still to this day, how about this? He's been married for, I think he's been married for 14 years to a new woman. He was with her for 12 years. he's been married for 14 years to a new woman he was with her for 12 years and he has been paying her alimony longer than they were married while he's married to a new woman and didn't even have kids with her so he's been paying her for 14 fucking years i'm talking six figures every year she doesn't do shit she lives in a fat house in the palisades the whole thing is bananas did you see larry king it's getting divorced yeah i don't know his head this is his eighth wife yeah love it i hope he gets another one i hope he gets another one and he's like a skeleton and they have to like walk him out there in an exoskeleton i can't prove it,

but I feel like the divorce lawyer industry is tied to the wedding industry somehow. Somehow. They don't have to be tied in like legally. They know. They both benefit from one another. Of course. Yeah, of course. Look at that.

Perfect relationship. How did it go wrong? I just want to know what the arguments were about. Well, apparently that was infidelity as well, no way i can't believe she'd cheat on him on her side or his side her side apparently she had a year-long affair pre-knopping that one i know she looked fucking hot 20 years ago when they got married because she's like 59 now so when they first started shacking it up she was in her 30s probably looking smoking she's pretty pretty lady you know you think that's an addiction love the same as any other drug sure of course yeah most people because when you talk about

getting married seven times yeah it gets a little wacky. He's had marriages that lasted less than a year. Then he'd get divorced and marry another one. I would get married, I think, once. If I do it, it'll be once. If you do it. I got one in me. One. I got one in me.

I almost proposed to a girl in 03. That was one of the biggest mistakes. Almost. Almost fucking made. How'd you get out of it? I found out she was cheating. Woo! That's nice. That's biggest mistakes. Almost. Almost fucking made. How'd you get out of it? I found out she was cheating. Woo, that's nice. That's a relief.

Yeah. It was back in the day when you share cell phone plans, and she kept pushing us over our minutes for the month. I'm like, who the fuck are you talking to? So the next month, I requested the full itemized call log. Back in the day, Sprint would send you your entire call log for the month, and I just went through it. And then I could see the patterns of when I was asleep or when I was on stage.

You could just see that when it's all in front of you, it's easy to just see that. Oh, yeah. When I go to work at 6 a.m., you call this guy. Wow. Yeah. And it was real easy to track down. Did you confront her? Yeah.

I was a little extra about it, but I was young. I was fucking young. I called Sprint, and I basically turned my phone into her phone. Oh, shit. And then I started texting the dudes from her phone. How many guys? It was two guys. And so I tell both guys to come over at the same time.

So that those two guys, which is so catty of me. And of course they show up. She calls me, curses me out and boom, bam, relationship done. Oh, so you told them to come over while she was at home. Correct. But you weren't there. Correct. Oh, I like it.

No. That's devious. But in the bigger scheme of things, if one of those is it came over and hit her or done anything stupid, I'm liable. Really? Yeah. Hell yeah. No. Come on.

You're not liable for someone causing violence. The police will charge you with murder for somebody they shot. No. There are laws. Not that. That's not law. If I deceive two men into showing up to the fucking house, you got to remember, my brain is going, don't go back to jail ever again.

So in my brain, I'm going, there's something that could have gone south somehow. I don't think you would have gotten in trouble for that. Either way, I wouldn't want to get beat up by some psycho dude who's jealous or whatever. I don't want that. Some psycho dude jealous that he who's jealous or whatever. I didn't want that. I was just hurt and angry. Some psycho dude jealous that he's the other one who's cheating on you. Yeah, and I had my little $700 engagement ring from Zales. I took it back.

And this is when I learned that if you return an engagement ring, the salesperson loses the commission. They take the commission back out of their next check. The salesperson got upset? He wasn't upset, but he spent like an hour trying to talk me out of returning it yeah he said man just go think about it man go think about it did you tell him just walk around the mall she's fucking two other dudes that's ultimately what i had to do once i told him that he processed it with no fucking just took the l no pushback yeah it was a seven hundred dollar ring his cut was probably going gonna be like what 70 80 dollars what's the cut didn't want to give up that 80 bucks and i respect it he's fucking hustling

he's selling jewelry in a mall yeah you don't want to fucking lose your fucking commission yeah those are bad decisions being made buying jewelry in a mall it's crazy though it's more like it's like joey though we're like she and i are like cool now oh really yeah oh that's cool like like she's married like it's all oh wow it's all love well that's good look people grow and learn that's hilarious though that you did that yeah that was that wasn't my finest hour but like i said i'm not a fighter i figured out a way to diabolically construct a situation that tears down your entire fucking operation. Yeah, that was a good move.

Yeah. That's a learning process, too, for her. It's like, damn. How can that be so obvious? I mean, because what I'm going to do, drive over and cuss you out and go, you cheating on me? No. No. We're going to all know about each other.

Yeah. It's time for us all to meet. So, hey, man, come on over to the house. Hey, man, you come on over to the house. Meet me at 11. Don't come the house. Meet me at 11. Don't come too soon. Come exactly at 11. Wow.

Call Sprint. Wouldn't you want to be there? No. No. Some explosions you just got to walk away from. No, man, I don't want to be there for that one. Nah. Just wear goggles.

Nah. I've never. That's something I've never lived down. Like, and then, it was just ugly. It was just one of those things where you just go, you know what?

Maybe I shouldn't have done that. Her mom's calling me the next day. Her mom? Will you just talk to her? Talk to my baby. Oh, boy. No, man, I can't. Like, it was,

dude, it was full-blown, bro. I'm sending pictures of the fucking ring and all types. Oh, you got extra. Yeah. It was not my finest hour. But don't you think that, like, those brutal breakups and all the chaos of infidelity and all that kind of nonsense like it gives you a better understanding of relationships when they go well it gives you it's all like life lessons like you don't get to be you don't get to be a seasoned grown-up human being without getting your heart broken a few

times without having a bunch of things going and disappointing in your work life and then then you become a person with an understanding of all the variabilities that you're dealing with in life i think the problem though you know with love is that it also can be corroding in a sense where if you've really been invested and you've really tried to love and then it didn't work i think like i feel like if you've been in love a couple like i also feel like people get married sooner there's something more pure about it but people get married later it's more honest yeah you know we're like it's like this blind love we're in love we've never been done dirty oh my god the sky is falling versus you're a grizzled vet you've been cheated

on you've cheated so you know both sides of that coin so you know how it feels and you know both sides of that so when you enter into a relationship it's more pure but because you have these battle wounds and these battle scars i don't know if you love the same as the couple that get married in their 20s it still depends on who you're with and how much you appreciate them it also depends on where you're at in your life like if you got married now you're with and how much you appreciate them. It also depends on where you're at in your life. Like if you got married now, you're a successful man. I mean, you did all the grinding and the hustling, but someone would be entering into your life now where you're already made it.

You're successful. You're established. The hustle of getting to there is now it's just about maintaining, which although difficult, you have the confidence that it's going to happen, that you don't have in the beginning. That early days hustling when you were taking those odd jobs, who the fuck knew where your life was going? That's one of the beautiful things about it. There was gigs I was headed to where I didn't have gas money to get home. And the gig I was going to was the gas money to get home. So please don't cancel and please don't pull some black promoter shit and don't pay me. I literally need those $40. I have no way to get home so please don't cancel and please don't pull some some black promoter shit and don't pay me like i literally need those 40 i have no way to get home wow and

sometimes you don't get paid if you don't get paid on the way home you stop at a daily work spot and you do some yard work or you whatever yeah you go do some daily work real quick for the day you miss a day you miss a shift at the radio station call the radio station hey man i got car trouble in kentucky i can't get home i'm gonna miss the morning show sorry and then you go do some day job get your 40 and get home that's but that's a real life experience that you just can't pay for that's so valuable the fact that you did do it even though it was horrible when it happened like the resolve that you did you it even though it was horrible when it happened like the resolve that you did you develop from being that person who figures your way through all those problems so like so if you got married now like you're a different person like you you could you'll figure

shit out better now it's like yeah yeah yeah you also you also learn how to communicate way better so that it doesn't devolve to a point where either you are being malicious to each other. Yes. Me and my girl is way better communication than anything I could have imagined with anyone. Right. In my 20s. Yeah. Because of those experiences and learning.

Yeah. Yeah. That's the part where you try to fucking correct. But then there's always a piece of you it's like do you ever find i guess i can't ask you this as a married man but you find yourself sometimes looking at past relationships like jokes where you go oh i know how i could have fixed that one oh yeah for sure yeah even with the knowledge you have now of relationships and love yes i can look back on stuff that i fucked up and go all i had to do was this this boom and that joke would have hit yep that would have been

damn yeah so that eats like the way like when you do a tv set and you forget one part of the joke and now for the rest of your life that's the set yep that's who you are but there's a piece of you that's going fuck I should have done that but that's part of the beauty of growth it's like you have to leave behind these poorly finished projects

to appreciate the one that you're going to put out next that's going to be the best version of it I look at every fucking special I ever did going ugh

even if they were successful I just go ugh I don't have nothing to do with them I can't watch them I fucking get disgusted I look at every fucking special I ever did going, ugh. Even if they were successful, I just go, ugh. I don't have nothing to do with them. I can't watch them. I fucking get disgusted. My first two specials should be combined into one. Like, I can literally look at the material and go, oh, that segues with that.

Yeah. Cut that out. Put this in there. Yeah. And then there's old specials that I said, ooh, I'd like to have another crack at those ideas. Because those are good ideas. I just didn't implement them correctly. So why not?

Move on. You got to move on. You have to move on. What? If the idea is still valid and worth being told? You get trapped. You get trapped in old ideas. It's out there. It's done.

New shit. Find something new that resonates just as well in the future as this stuff does to you when you're looking at the past. I don't know. I feel like I have some unfinished thoughts from the last special. Of course. But that desire and that hunger is what makes you a great comic. Like that, it's not done.

Oh, I got to do more. Oh, this has got to be better next time. Or make it tighter. Make this better. More punchlines. Less fat. All that's what that discomfort and angst is what makes you an artist. That's why I like trying to do stuff that has some teeth or some edge or some opinion to it.

Or treading on stuff that, I don't know if you should go there. No, let's go there. Let's figure it out. There's a joke in there somehow. When you can navigate those waters successfully, it's like, fuck, man. You get on the other end with a big laugh. Dude. It's whitewater rafting.

And there's just rocks coming and you're going left, right, paddle. There's a guy calling out how to do the joke and you're just navigating your way down the rocks. And if you make it, it is the most rewarding dismount. Yes. That for me is better than just something more yeah something more mundane like i just i can't do it yeah yeah when you see people that are doing the same mundane shit over and over and over again you they don't know what it's like to have that thrill they're they're basically getting on a fucking seesaw every day the same seesaw over and over there's no thrill

in that no you're not four anymore. There's too many good thoughts out there. That's why I love talking with Neil Brennan. Neil Brennan is one of those perfect comics that I can go, hey, man, what do you think about this? And he'll tag it darker and take it to a place that I wouldn't have even considered. And you start noticing, like, there's only, even if you have a bunch of comedian friends,

there's only certain friends that understand how or which way you're trying to go with the bit, because someone else might give you a tag that drifts off into easy land, and I don't want that. Right, right, right, yeah. No, Neil's a great joke writer, and his shit, like, I like watching him work out premises, because, you know, you can tell him, like, he's put some real thought into those ideas. Yeah, it's a thesis statement that just happens to be funny.

Like, he's really breaking shit down. I like the ones where I know that it was an argument that he had with a girl. That he's bringing it to the stage to try to work it out and make it funny. Then he's bringing it to the stage and trying to work it out and make it funny. Because if you have an argument with a girl and then she comes to see you at a comedy club like a month later and that argument gets relayed to the audience and it's fucking hysterical, you win. That's how you win. You win and you fucking slam dunk. That is a fucking grand slam that shatters windows in the parking lot. I've never had the courage to do it.

in the parking lot i've never had the courage to do it i've never had the courage to perform argument material in front in front of in front of somebody i was dating never done it no it's hard you gotta you gotta take a chance and then being really mad at you when you get off stage like i give you example like wilson vince is another guy that i like talking to out of new york and the premise the joke premise is that there are no hit video games set in Vietnam. Like, that's how much we don't want to

explore Vietnam. That's true. It's on World War II, right? And Middle East. It's just the hits. We only want to discuss the hits

where we won. That's a good point. There have been games in Vietnam. Of course, there's some video games in Vietnam, but as far as hit, popular,

Twitch level ninja shit, none in Vietnam. Of course, there's some video games in Vietnam. But as far as hit, popular, Twitch-level ninja shit, none in Vietnam. And then I told Will Savin Supremacist, and he goes, and he says, that's because if you're playing a game based in Vietnam, you can't win even if you want to. Even when you win, you still lose. And it's taking that thought and figuring out how to weave that but like that's what i mean where a friend can help me yeah work through an idea but then somewhere come the trick is to come around the back side of that and make sure that you're reinforcing and uplifting the people that chose to fight and like i'm trying to it's a whole world that i'm just obsessed with i don't know it all boils back to the whole Trump draft dodger thing and the hypocrisy that if we agree that the troops are fucked and they're treated horribly, then how is draft dodging bad?

And that being the thought. Especially for Vietnam. Correct. It's a war we all agree was a terrible war. We didn't know it at the time. And some people chose to go, but a lot of people were threatened with jail that they didn't go so if you did not go based on revisionist history was that not a solid decision in terms of avoiding and so it's about getting that thought through without disrespecting the heroism of what happened. Tricky waters.

Fallen trees. Whitewater rafting, baby. A lot of rocks. So I haven't figured it. Those are the basic Lego blocks. And I have to figure out how to get down the river without fucking hitting a jagged. Do you write in essay form? Do you write things out with a computer?

Yeah, once I have the ideas together i just go loose on stage um i'll go i'll just run a bit a couple times on stage without any structure without any real structure just bullet points here are the four points i want to make yeah do that for a week listen to the audio the stuff that's hot transcribe and then from that transcription start filling in the blanks of how to flesh out the thought and the point a little bit more like like. But then some stuff requires research. There's a bit that is a bit that I'm working on now about how how the most important person, the most important character in a civil rights movie is the white person is the evil white actor you cannot have a powerful civil rights movie without a white person being evil

so these actors are never honored they're never nominated for shit like a civil rights movie is only as powerful as the white actor is evil because that captures what was fucking happening back in that day right so i need to like sit and physically go to box office mojo and look at the last 10 years of civil rights movies versus civil rights movies versus white savior movies and pull actors and pull examples and then look at that and then go to their imdb and look at their trajectory post-civil rights movie to establish a pattern of, if you're a white person, you do evil. Because my argument is that you're risking your career.

If you're not an A-list actor and you're playing a racist, you may not do shit else. Because for black people, if you say nigga, it's too real. So we can't see you as a fucking Romulan in a Star Trek movie years later. We're unable to process so so that joke i have that idea and i'll just work that thought a couple of times but now before i put it on stage again i need movies i need examples to back up the thesis statement so that's what i'll

start writing and really start looking at all of these examples and i also have like it's in the same ballpark of that it's about how like people call like Green Book like a white savior movie and how this movie is about white people doing a good deed for black people back in the day. And black people don't like white savior movies because, you know, it avoids the pain and the struggle and all that shit. and the struggle and all that shit. And I feel like white savior movies are just reactionary to powerful civil rights movies because nobody wants to be portrayed negatively. So if there are enough civil rights movies that play white people as evil,

it's inevitable that a white person is going to write a movie about, remember the time we drove you around to play the piano? Like that's, it's inevitable. We fed you chicken and we drove you so don't just say all that don't just show all those evil things we did let's also acknowledge right the time we drove you around and i think if i go back and i look through the history of the box office over the last 20

years i guarantee you i'll be able to find an oscillation between powerful civil rights movie and white savior movie and when you write that out, you're just going to write bullet points and then just run it on stage? No, now we'll do bullet points of all the movies. And then, so the next stage is I'll write all those movies out

and I'll go on stage and do half of those movies one set. The next set, I'll do the other half of movies and see which ones resonate the quickest with the audience. Because they're not all going to be timeless classics.

Right. Some of them are going to be deep in the woods, but likeissippi burning or like right like malcolm x and driving miss daisy yes those are two perfect examples of conflicting films in the same year so i need iconic examples like that where everybody knows the movie correct what i haven't even seen it yes so that's trial and error so that just has to go on stage a couple times. And then once I know what the movies are, then we write it. Then you verbatim that shit and really fucking get it worked out. That's black belt level comedy.

That's black belt level. It's like you have to have like this is not something that's obvious in front of you. You have like a scaffolding and you're trying to construct this and figure out a way to squeeze the most juice out of it. That's that's that white water rafting that's it's so it's so rewarding when that gets pulled off i just feel like if you look at every genre and it's not to defend a white savior movie as much as it is to just show why the fuck it happens yeah this is why like black people in the 90s like boys in the hood in the 90s that was the era of shoot. In the 90s, that was the era of shoot-em-up, bang-bang hood classics.

And somewhere around 95, 96, black cinema became much more positive and reinforcing. And there was Waiting to Exhale and Poetic Justice and Above the, no, not Above the Rim. What's the other one? Love Jones and Love and Basketball. Like there were all these more positive black cinema that was in direct reaction to not wanting to be perceived and portrayed constantly

in a negative light so I could probably go deep into the fucking weeds race by race on cinema like I could do all the Asian movies and end with crazy rich Asians as the counter to that.

But it's not necessarily Asian savior. Like, there's no way. I don't know how to connect that. But I believe there's a way with all of these cinematic movies to connect it all together. And at that point, you probably got a 25-minute bit that you know needs to be chopped down. To 10. To 10. Yeah.

But that's how you build all of it. You build the whole house, and then you just start chopping off. And when yeah but that's how you build all you build the whole house and then you just start chopping off and when you do that are you writing it out do you do you ever write things out while i was asking an essay form because one of the things that i found that has a great benefit as i write things out not trying to be funny instead of just writing it out in a way where i'm trying to be funny i just write it out like i'm writing an essay like i'm writing an article for a magazine and then in doing that i'll extract chunks that are funny because i find that when i'm trying to write as a comic i'm trying to write setup punchline it's too

defining it's too limiting but when i write in an open form then funny ideas are in there and i just come out and pull them. Do you think part of that is having the advantage of the audience being with you immediately? Like when you have your audience, you're afforded that opportunity to be. Because it's weird because the way we build material now, I don't think that's how you did it when you first started. Was it more about just the joke, the joke, the joke? Yeah, you had to be you

had to gain their confidence right that was the thing is like you had to start strong you had to have a good opening bit you couldn't fuck around too much they had to have confidence in you like this guy kind of wastes my fucking time you know they just see if you're on a show when you're in a when you're an amateur i mean there's fucking 10 other people before you you have to grab them you gotta grab them you gotta grab them and show them that you have something. But then once you become an established comedian, the other problem is you're working with a bunch of other established comedians. Like, say, if I'm working with you, and then there's Joey Diaz,

and all these other fucking people that are going on that are murdering, and then you go up with some bullshit new stuff, that stuff has to be ready. Having an established audience is great for a couple minutes and then you better have some shit yeah you know it's almost like they have there's more expectations so things have to be more tight but some people don't do that some people don't do clubs anymore where they're working with a bunch of people they don't do like the store or the improv where they're working with a bunch of people. They don't do like the store or the improv where they're working with a bunch of people. Instead, they do their own shows.

They do their own shows only. They have the same opening act all the time and the people are there to see them and it's a low bar. They don't have to worry about it as much. I think that's a mistake. But I think the essay form, I started figuring that out maybe 10 years ago.

I started writing things in essay form. I originally used to do it as blog posts. I would write blog posts and I'd take those blog posts and i was extract ideas from them and then make it into comedy but i feel like the writing without the limitations of it needing to be funny is where i get the most ideas yeah and then you also have the most truth in there as well yes because i'm not just trying to bullshit people for a laugh i'm trying to find out like what is it like if that premise of the White Savior movie, what is it about white people making these movies? Are they trying to defend something?

Are they trying to exonerate themselves? What are they trying to do when they make that movie? Is it just a feel-good? Is it their distorted idea of how to bring everybody together? Is it to show that some white people were really good back then, even in the bad times look yeah great movie hey good job michael you know good job will like everybody did a great job in this movie like what what is it that that's the the motivation you could find you know you find those those gems of humor those roots of humor in that yeah that's what i'm that's what i'll i'll try that. I'll try writing it out more before putting it on.

I just like writing that way because I don't have to do anything. There's no expectation. It's just thoughts. Just spill the thoughts out. And then you get absorbed in the writing. And then in that absorption, you're a funny guy. You're always going to think funny thoughts. Those funny thoughts are going to come out.

When you're talking about something, you're like, what the fuck was this guy thinking? And then you go on this whole rant about this thing that maybe if you didn't give yourself the opportunity to sit in front of a computer and just stare at the screen and stare at those keyboards, you probably wouldn't have come up with that premise. Also, once I have the joke in a decent shape, even if it's kind of loose,

I start watching myself on mute perform. I go from audio to once the joke has structure to video and then just watching myself on mute and just seeing body language and just seeing, does this look funny? Does this look? That's interesting. I've never done that. Does this look funny? Does this look? That's interesting.

I've never done that. And I think you just have once. Once I identify what my comedic strengths were, it's quick spastic movements, but not a lot of stage talking. Walking the stage doesn't work for me. I'm not Chris Rock. So operate in like a three foot box to either side of center stage. And if it's quick in head, but no body. if i take my head one way then bring my shoulders instead of bringing my head and shoulders at the same time on a turn as if i'm while i'm contemplating a point something as simple as that for me helps jokes

and then i can go back and listen to the audio go back and watch the video and see where i'm getting laughs just off movement. And I haven't said a word yet. And for me, it's quick movements and facial expressions. Those are the extra little I call it the extra season. And that's the shit that, you know, once you kind of get the joke in a good place, where can we add a little season? And is it a vocal inflection? Is it coming down on this part?

Is it looking this way than looking that way for the like almost borderline performative like on some acting shit but just looking and finding places where the emotions can change and not necessarily on this line i do this thing but it's just oh this part is funnier if i'm not as excited here like Foxworthy says some shit. I was watching Bring the Funny and he told one of the contestants if you started at 10. What's Bring the Funny? It's a competition comedy show. Is it a new show? It's Last Comic Standing

but with sketch comics mixed in there as well. So it's not strictly stand-up. It's sketch and variety acts and all of that type of shit. But the same shit. You go out in front of three judges. Somebody crushes your dreams and then you talk shit about it behind their backs once you're kicked off the show uh but he told somebody once you started at 10

you have nowhere else to go so i try to keep that in mind in terms of just not being too big too soon with the material just shifting gears it's it a fascinating process, and we discussed this on the show many times before, that there's no books that can tell you how to do it. The only way you get, like one of the things that's really cool about this conversation is young guys coming up, young girls coming up that want to learn how to do comedy can listen to your process, and they'll get an idea of the map ahead. They'll get an idea of the road because there's no courses you can take that are ever going to prepare you.

You have to find established comedians and listen to them talk about how they do it. And in a sense, what we're doing is we're laying down sort of a course for the up-and-coming class, for the people that are starting out now that don't really have anyone to show them how to do it. They can cut a lot of time out by listening to a guy like you, who's explaining the mistakes that he made, and then the good choices that you made, and then your process. I tried. One of the tricks that I had early on was to just avoid topics that anybody else was talking about. And then even if the joke wasn't the funniest i got credit for being original and i don't know if this will work for every comic but i know coming up

early 2000s in the back half of the def jam era to be a black comic that wasn't talking about fucking and sucking and weed and you ever been so broke like i just i didn't touch none of that shit yeah so to a mainstream booker it was just oh wow he did a joke about suicide okay right yeah right yeah book him well there's such a set tuplet jokes like it was just weird off-brand shit but still finding funny in that there's such a temptation to pick on tried and proven tried and proven subjects because you know they'll work you know you're scared in the beginning right yeah you start you i feel like you start as a weird image like my early my first two years of comedy was this weird martin lawrence doug stanhope hybrid child like i don't know it was terrible it was very terrible but i started noticing that when the first thing I needed to do was the first objective when I got on was to write all the road bookers say you got to get a TV credit, get to get a TV credit and then I can pay you more.

All right. Well, the only thing that was booking people on a regular was comic view. So BET's comic view became the path. But then I didn't get Comic View like two, three years in a row. And I looked at the material I submitted versus the material that was being performed. It was guys doing better versions of the same topics as me. So, all right, this year we're going to try doing different topics from everybody. So I watched Comic View for a whole year, kept a log of every topic that was touched on for every episode and just never did jokes about those topics. Wow. So you actually wrote it out? Yeah.

Comic View came on every night, though. You remember back in 2000, 2001, Comic View came on Monday through Friday, and it was six comics an episode. So every week, you had a cross-section of what 40 motherfuckers were talking about. Wow. For 12 weeks.

And that's a shit ton of comedy. That's a shit ton of topics. And you'd be surprised there was a lot of repetition and overlap. So by simply not talking about that shit, it's enough to get you a little bit more. It's no different than what's happening now with the alt scene.

You're just a different delivery. You're a different cadence. You have a different look. Being different is almost as important as being funny now. Yes. I don't think that one, I don't think that being different should be prioritized over being funny. But if you're different and you're fucking hilarious, then you get it.

Yeah, people appreciate it, for sure. Just like any other genre of art, whether it's music or cinema, anything. Being different is rewarded. That's why I've always liked Emo Phillips, man. Really? Yeah, I used to like Emo. Emo, I just wanted to do the thing and the cadence was never typical like that shit just i was like all right that's

at minimum it's different so he's challenging himself so i'm gonna try that so that's why i like theo vaughn yeah theo Vaughn's got Theo comedy. Like, you see Theo comedy, you can't imitate that. Like, the only way that shit works is if it comes out of Theo's mouth. It doesn't even make sense coming out of someone else's mouth. Theo gets a laugh on, he gets a laugh on the setup, and he gets a laugh on the pause. Yeah. And the pause is that anticipatory, like, they already know it's going to be good. And here it comes. Here it comes.

Ah! Yeah. Like, he's good, man. Yeah, he's real good. And I watched that guy turn a corner, man. About two, three years ago, he just hit his groove. He went full mullet. Well, he had a mullet before, but it was, he just found that groove.

Like, whatever it is that made him, he found what it is. He found the frequency, and then he just hit into it. And very, very, very original. You'd never hear him talking about stuff that other people have talked about. There's a New York guy like that, Mark Norman. Mark Norman has a way. Sure. I love Mark Norman.

Pivoting. He's coming on soon. He's on here in a couple weeks. He's great. I think Norman just knows how to pivot in a way where you think it going this way and it's just a basketball crossover very good writer very good writer well listen man i gotta wrap this up but uh this was awesome i really appreciate it i'm glad we finally did it thank you so much it was awesome thank you joe i've enjoyed your work for a long time so i'm glad to have you on here man i'll let you know when the vietnam joke gets worked out

let it know let us know need some time. All right. Bye, everybody.