The Joe Rogan Experience - #1476 - Patton Oswalt

Episode Date: May 19, 2020

Patton Oswalt is a stand-up comedian, actor, voice actor, and writer. His brand new special "I Love Everything" is now streaming on Netflix.

Hello, everybody. I have an announcement. The podcast is moving to Spotify. I signed a multi-year licensing agreement with Spotify that will start on September 1st. Starting on September 1st, the entire JRE library will be available on Spotify as well as all the other platforms. Then somewhere around the end of the year, it will become exclusive to Spotify, including the video version of the podcast. It will be the exact same show. I am not going to be an employee of Spotify. We're going to be working with the same crew doing the exact same show. The only difference will be it will now be available on the largest audio platform in the world. Nothing else will change. It will be free. It will be free to you. You just have to go to Spotify to get it. We're very excited to begin this new chapter of the JRE, and I hope you're

there when we cross over. Thanks. All right, we're rolling. Patton Oswalt, how are you, fella? I'm good. How are you doing, man? It's good to see you. I wish I saw you right here. I wish I could give you a hug. I wish we weren't in the plague. I don't know. It is weird. It is very weird. I've been trying to do your show, you know, this for so long. My schedule is always insane. The drive for me is restrictive because I'm usually shooting something or doing voiceover or something. So it took a plague.

I know. We see each other like ships passing in the night at the comedy store. That's my relationship with you. Exactly. I see you in the parking lot going in or I'm going in. You're coming out something. God, how much do you miss just going in with a notebook of stuff and just trying it out to see if it works? It's making me appreciate everything. The downside of it. I mean, I can look at the negative yes i miss it yes i'm frustrated but the positive side of it i appreciate

everything i appreciate comics i appreciate just being able to talk to you i appreciate to be just having my friends that i can communicate with and just talking shit to each other and making each other laugh and saying horrible things over text messages i appreciate that i appreciate that if this comes back if we get to do stand up again ever i just feel like comedians are going to be so much more social and just happy to be with each other and appreciate the being around people where you can run jokes and they're honest enough to either tag something brilliant or tell you dude dude, it's just – I know you think it's funny. It's so lame. Don't run down that road.

It's so – like I miss that so – because I'm trying to sit down and write every day. I don't know what your process is. My process is to write general ideas and then work them out on stage and then work them out with friends just sitting and actually writing it no matter how detailed i make it i don't know if it's funny or not to like get it up there yeah it's a weird disconnect isn't it yeah my process is very similar i i write like an essay form and then i extract stuff out of that and i turn that into bits that's my work occasionally i don't write it at all occasionally an idea just comes and i and then I extract stuff out of that and I turn that into bits. Occasionally I don't write it at all.

Occasionally an idea just comes and I start going with it and then I build it up on stage. That's rare though. Most of the time it comes from an essay. Yeah, and I also miss the deleting of stuff where you write something down or you have to, then your mind is awesome and you go up on stage and the beginning part's great and the end part's great and you're like, this whole middle section, thought i was gonna be george carlin and it's just i could

lose all of that this bit and this bit and that's what it is yeah it's a weird art form where we're i think the only art form that i'm aware of that you must have an audience in order to fully create it you can't it doesn't get created in a vacuum no and i logged on to some early zoom open mics to watch them i logged on hopefully thinking maybe they'll be and i five minutes and i'm like this is oh god this is awful i mean it's so bad for you doesn't it like when you watch someone who's really terrible it makes you think i'm never nothing's funny i can't do comedy it doesn't exist or you watch someone who you know is great but they're trying it over zoom and their mouth is dry talking 90 miles an hour and you're like maybe maybe we shouldn't be doing this at all and people are going to record those sets too

those those sets are going to record those sets too. Those sets are going to be recorded. You have a mix of people coming in live in person with you and then people doing it over remote, right? Yes, yes. Most people are coming in live and I test all those people. They come in, they get the test. Yeah. But if you get the test and you're negative

You can still get it, right? Well, you could get it Right after you walk out the door It really depends on what you're being In contact with and what you're doing if you're smart But Thankfully everyone's Honest

No one said, hey I don't feel so good, maybe I shouldn't do this That would be weird We've been real lucky Everybody's been negative but we tested a lot of people uh dan who is uh tim dylan's producer he had a false positive and so we had to give him a second test and we gave him a no swab and it turned out he was negative but it's it's iffy stuff you know it's uh until we really can tell. And then what are you going to give up for them to know? Are you going to give up contact tracing?

Are you willing to do that? Are you really willing to have something on your phone that shows who you've been in contact with and who your phone has come near and whether or not they're negative or positive? Like, ooh, that's a slippery slope. I don't like it. And also, are there ways, and ways and this is again i know so little about internet testing level are there ways if you get tested that they can go oh you actually had it and you recovered from it yes yes yeah we do those two yeah yeah there's uh two different when you do an antibodies test there's one line that shows where whether it's an active virus and there's another line that shows that it's just the antibodies of a virus that you got and recovered from.

And a lot of people that recover from it, apparently, they didn't even know they had it. They had no idea they had it. Yeah, I have a couple of friends who were convinced they had it back in January. They had every symptom that they talk about, and they just thought, oh, well, it's flu season, I've got a shitty flu. they recovered and probably but they don't want to go out and get tested right now because they don't want to go out so but a couple of friends feel like i had it so everybody thinks that everybody thinks that but here's the thing like all the old colds are still around like the common cold the flu all that stuff still around The flu's different every year, still around.

It's like you most likely didn't have it. And, you know, it's obviously a really fucked up disease if it gets you. If it really gets you, it's really fucked up. And it varies so much. It's so hard to feel confident one way or another. It's so hard. Like I vacillate. I go back and forth all day long. Like there's parts of my day where i'm not worried about it at all and there's parts of my

day where i'm like fuck what if this mutates you know right or what if i just did something that i thought was safe and but now i've met the new strain and in two weeks ago remember how we told you to do this you actually need to be doing and it was and also the thing that freaks me out is they don't know what the long-term after effects are for this even if you recover from it they're thinking that there could be long-term uh bronchial issues respiratory issues they don't know yet yeah they really have no idea i was reading about this article in the times today about children that get a particular type of inflammatory disorder that's causing. One kid was like 14 years old. He got heart failure.

It's very rare. Out of all the people that have gotten it, it's like less than 200 people that have got this disorder. Most children, when they come in contact with this disease, don't have an issue. But some of them do. And this one particular kid, basically, he was 14. He was having heart failure. And they don't have an issue but some of them do and this one particular kid uh basically he was 14 he was having heart failure and they don't know why they don't know like it's not necessary they used to think it was just a respiratory disease and now they're like well what is this so it's like these are new things they're trying to figure out as they go along again we're talking about this now because we're going through this. I just feel like and again, I don't like to predict the future.

If we do get to go back doing comedy, I just feel like I'll never talk about this on stage. The last thing people are going to want to see on stage is my funny COVID story, which is going to be just a variation on everyone's funny COVID story. So there's no real you know, I'm not going to inflict that on an audience well if you go up 10th at the store on a wednesday night it's covered bro yeah someone has covered it way better than you yeah move on let's move on yeah i think it's one of those things it's going to be a real problem for comics you know i mean yeah i i hear what you're saying but on the other hand someone will come along like a tell, or someone will come along and have the perfect take on it, and you're like, oh, well, there it is. Yeah, that's checked off.

Or on the other end of the spectrum, like Joey Diaz will come up and do the rawest, most personal, uncomfortable, but also brilliant take where you might actually have a unique story, but after hearing Joey, you're like, where you might actually have a unique story. But after hearing Joey's like, yeah, I don't need to share mine. Exactly. That's an interesting thing, right? Yeah. Someone's going to have a crazy story that you're going to go, well, I don't need to know.

Yeah. Someone will nail it. Yeah. And hopefully someone who's, I think first dibs go to people who caught it. Yeah. Let it. Yeah, let them, yeah, if a comedian actually gets it, maybe they get to do the bit first. Yeah, like Michael Yeo. Michael Yeo almost died. I didn't know that.

Oh, yeah, he got it real bad. Yeah, he actually was here in studio the week before he went to New York. He was burning the candle at both ends flies to new york with no sleep does radio does all the promo shows does everything does stand up at gotham flies back with no sleep drives the next day to vegas and home from vegas in the same day with his family kids screaming then he has auditions for the next two days, stressed out, burnt out. Boom, then it hits him. And when it hit him, he felt like shit.

Then his friend, while he was suffering, one of his friends who was a doctor told him to take Advil because he said he had a headache because he gets migraines. He takes Advil. Boom, it goes off the deep end. And then he gets it real bad.

And he was in the hospital for a week. And the doctor, you know, they were talking about putting him on a ventilator. This is the early days of the disease, very early. This is like beginning of March. I think end of February, beginning of March, I think somewhere around there. But early, early when they didn't really know. His doctor's wise. His doctor says if we put him on a ventilator, his lungs are just going to give up and he could die his doctor says if we put him on a ventilator his heart is just gonna his lungs are just gonna give up and he could die so they don't put him on

a ventilator then it turns out in new york city and they don't know if this is a correlation or causation obviously but 80 of the people they put on the ventilators wound up dying and his doctor yes yeah yeah could be that they wound up dying because they were so far gone they were going to die anyway. Could be they were going to die because of what this doctor said. Because if you put people on a ventilator when their lungs are working and then their lungs don't have to work anymore, they give up. That's what his doctor was essentially saying. Was going to happen to him if they put him on the ventilator. So they didn't put him on it.

They put him on that hydroxychloroquine shit and didn't he didn't react well to it it made him feel worse um so he got off of that and then slowly got back to feeling better and better and to this day he's been out of the hospital i think a month and he can only do like two chin-ups he's a really strong active like like really healthy guy normally uh he could only do like two chin-ups he's listless as very little energy just feel still feels like he's still struggling he came in he looked great he looked totally normal i would not know if he didn't tell me but he still feels like he's got fatigue yeah i mean i i'm sure the body battling that it's like okay you need to shut down for a

little bit we can build you back up you cannot go back to whatever your regimen is let yourself wind down another thing he had was a vitamin d deficiency and i didn't know about that until uh after i did a podcast with dr ronda patrick and she was talking about studies that have been done in new orleans and indonesia and several different studies. One of the things they've shown is the people that are in critical care or in the ICU, there's a large percentage, in some cases over 80% of them are vitamin D deficient versus the people who have sufficient levels of serum vitamin D in their body. Those people, it's less than five percent so it was four percent of them that were in the icu the people with sufficient vitamin d and more than 80 percent

of people with deficient vitamin d is not just a vitamin apparently according to her it's actually a hormone and it regulates many things in the body and most people are deficient from it and in the united states more than 70 percent of people have insufficient levels of vitamin D, and 29% are deficient to the point where it actually can cause medical issues. Real big deal. My doctor is like, take here, you take this vitamin D every day and go walk in the sun, get some goddamn vitamin D. That's the best way. The best way is the sun. It's number one.

Yeah. But if you can't get in the sun all the time, vitamin D supplements do work. You know, and I've seen people argue this, like really the best ways, the supplements are bullshit. Like, no, they're not. They're okay. They're just not as good as the sun. Don't be stupid.

Like, look, I get my blood tested. I take vitamins and I find out what my serum levels are. It works. You take vitamin D, you get higher levels. It's really simple. The sun is for sure better though. no one's going to argue that but for black folks it's even harder because you know their their bodies are designed with all that melanin to you know they evolved in different climates and anybody brown anybody who's got a darker skin they're used to warmer climates

so they're out in the sun all the time so the body's protecting itself from cancer with the melanin but unfortunately it also prevents you from absorbing vitamin d as easily that's why people that live in places where it's really fucking cloudy or super pale because they're basically like a sun like a like like a solar panel for vitamin they're just sucking as much in you know so it's tricky for everybody but it's particularly tricker trickier for people with tan skin or darker skin like you got to get that vitamin d and it's so important and it's one of many factors that they think are is that play with people that get really sick from this disease vitamin d yeah well that okay that's another thing talking about the

disease it just i've i reread guns germs, and Steel about the Spanish flu and the way that diseases, you know, rewire and reboot your body to benefit themselves and stuff. It's just, it seems like we're making the same mistakes at the beginning of the Spanish flu epidemic and that there's going to be an insane spike, which is where all of the real death and destruction happen with that if that spike is coming because of all of these half measures and all of these i'm not wearing a mask i'm you know like that defiant i'm going out i'm put you know and we're just we have to brace ourselves for this other spike that's coming it could happen but also what could happen is we could get an education on how to boost your immune system. I mean, one of the things that's really driving me crazy about this is there's nothing proactive about what we're being asked to do. Everyone's being asked to shelter in place.

But somehow or another, it's okay to go to the grocery store. It's okay to go to Target. It's okay to go to a lot of places. But it's not okay to go to some places. And I feel like people need to have the ability to take their own chances and need to have the ability to protect themselves. Like, you need to give people the opportunity to work, especially in situations where, you know, you're dealing with people who their entire life could fall apart over these couple of months where you tell them they can't work. And there is a way to test people. There is a way to sanitize. There is a way to be safe. There is a way to be smart about this. There

is a way to keep your immune system strong. And we're only looking at keep away. We're not looking at the whole spectrum of possibilities that we can do here to move on. Obviously, anyone should be allowed to take their own risks, except that in this case, in this scenario, you taking your own risks tips other people who might not want to take that risk into those areas. And I absolutely understand that someone's life could fall apart in two months if they don't work. That's, you know, I think that's more of a symptom of there not being the social safety net that we have to have out there for these kind of situations. We're sort of seeing that in a very stark way. But what I'm saying is if we don't follow these harsh – because the other scary thing about the Spanish flu is it kind of – the way we got over it is it kind of just burned itself out. And we need to burn it out of the population that way, and it sucks that that's right now the only way we have to do it because we clearly don't have the testing capacity that we need to burn it out of the population that way and it sucks that that's right now the only way we have to do it because we clearly don't have the testing capacity that

no it's so weird it's all these back and forth like everything you say is right but we don't have the stuff to implement what you're saying like it's so frustrating well we don't have the stuff to implement what i'm saying right now but But we do have the information as far as things you can do to boost your immune system. Make sure you get better sleep. Don't eat this. Don't do that. But then you've got people that... Look, you know how many kids relied on school for food?

It's a huge problem. Right now, that's a giant problem. Because there's a lot of poor kids who literally relied on school in order to get their meals in. And now their family has to scramble and figure out how to come up with more money to feed these kids when they can't work. Like, it's all madness. These kids relied on school for food. They relied on school for shelter, for like a safe space to actually talk to a responsible adult some of them come from very bad home situations like and it just again all we do

is cut money for schools yeah which is where such a big part of the population is alive because of what the schools provide and it i don't think it has to – I don't think it should come down to a billionaire's whim of what they want to give money to or not or your local church. There should be some kind of structure so that people can have some dignity and not have to beg. And there's also stress that goes on to the living under the stigma of, oh, he's got to get the free lunch or, oh, they've got to get – like like they're still we're so anti-poor in this country we treat poor people like they have a disease or something or they or that they've done something wrong and that can really fuck with kids psychologically growing up it really can and one thing that i would hope out of this is the shock of all being so vulnerable will make people a little bit more humble and hopefully hopefully dash some of the

flames of materialism that have gone through our society during these soft times and people just getting really into shiny bullshit and just recognize like boy we live in a very finite finite state we don't have much time we have a very fragile very fragile yeah and we're waking up to that we we we existed in a goldilocks period in this country you know from essentially from world war ii on to here where there's a there's an instagram page uh history and they had this uh this really sobering post about imagine if you were born in the year 1900 and then it goes on to what would happen by the time you're x years old the spanish flu starts by the time you're y years old world war ii and it just goes on and on and on and shows how fucking horrific it was for people who were born 120 years ago we're just we got lucky we hit

a nice sweet spot where the the waves weren't there it was nice and calm it wasn't too hot out and then we got cocky except it feels like now especially gen z is repeating a version of what people born in 1900 went through because they a lot of them remember oh my god it was 9 11 and then now this they they actually remember a lot of yeah australia was on fire australia this year started with australia on fire that's how we rang in the new year and it's gotten so much worse do you ever see the size of the burned area of australia it's fucking crazy it look it it i don't even your your mind i think some people's minds shut down about that um they lost half a billion animals half a billion and that's going to start becoming a typical summers that is going to become the norm

if a radical drastic change isn't made. But maybe, you know, you were talking about how, what if there was a shift in consciousness in terms of knowing how fragile and how precarious everything is. I think it'd be really cool if America switched to, I don't mind America flexing its might and saying we're number one, but it would be so cool if we changed that flex to the way a small-town gangster flexes, and he goes, look, everyone here, if there's some old lady that's about to get evicted, I pay for it.

Every one of my five blocks is taken care of. That's the brag. Yes, he drives a nice car and wears a suit, but it's that brag of my flex is no one in this country goes hungry, doesn't get medical care. And that's what we flex to the world. Instead of flexing, look at our billionaires. We have like 20 crazy rich billionaires. It's amazing. And we like, instead of that, the brag should be that no one in America is, is, you know, in need and is desperate and is dying. That should be the weird jock flex.

That would be cool if we could shift to that. It's funny that you think we need a weird jock flex, but it's an interesting motivation, a weird jock flex. Yeah, but a jock flex can be used for good. You know what i mean like instead of using it instead of directing it back on yourself direct it outward and make that the thing like hey you know like could you imagine if if there was a high school where all the jocks all the alpha jocks were like no one gets bullied in my high school if i see any bullying going on shut that down like what if that was their flex i bet there's more of that today than you'd believe i bet there's a lot more

than when we were growing up. People are aware of it now. Well, also especially because I think people are aware that kind of the nerd, fringy, weirdo kids tend to end up running the world. So that's all. Like, they've seen enough examples of those guys tend to run things. So, yeah, we're good. Yeah, there's definitely that.

Well, one thing that we are realizing from this is that you know there's a lot of people that have that libertarian bent let the market decide you know we need a small government this and that when something like this goes down you realize oh you need structure you actually need a pandemic response team you need people to figure out a way to get food to folks you know we need to we need to plan like this can happen again it's very important again visit any third world country after an earthquake and look at all the crumbled buildings with no rebar and go do you really want no building inspectors and no regulations on it like is that what you're fighting for because

it'll all fucking crumble dude i've had that argument with people that stupid libertarian argument i'm like look my dad's an architect. My stepfather's an architect. I grew up on construction sites. You have to have inspectors. If you don't have inspectors, man, you're fucked. These guys are... There's a lot of dirtbags out there making houses.

They're bad people. They're cutting corners and stealing money and watering down the cement. Like, get the fuck out of here. You can't let the market decide. It takes too long, too. If you buy a house, it takes years before it starts fucking up if they do a shitty job. It's like two years in.

The inspectors are there to protect the people that are actually doing it correctly. Because a lot of times, the people doing it correctly have got to go to subcontractors. Yeah. Subcontractors supply stuff. And those people can be sketchy. So if you don't have the inspector come by going, going oh this dude just ripped you off with substandard cement fuck see because i have that guy's got 900 things he's got to do every day yeah so you need the guy in there checking stuff out going just doing it so that shit doesn't collapse on you well the world

is really complicated and people love simplistic answers and simple that less government answer the left we don't need cops we don't need cops you know i'm an anarchist oh oh you've never been robbed i guess you've never been robbed you've never seen a guy with a gun like get the fuck out of here you don't need cops of course we need cops stupid what are we gonna do all get together and put out the fires we don't need firemen let's save our tax money no you need government you need it it's important it just has to be effective and good and sometimes sometimes, like all systems, it has to be tested for flaws. And I feel like this experience has been a great test for our system.

And it's flawed. It's fucked up beyond belief. Especially with distribution of food. The food supply chain is falling apart in front of our eyes. I know. It's 2020. I know. That shouldn't be happening nobody planned

for this we plan they plan to make as much money as possible by selling as much food as possible every single week and then they were basically spending all that money and investing all that money and distributing all that money they didn't have enough money for a couple of months off they don't have enough money for anything to go sideways everything has to maintain well that will weirdly enough that might be something that comes out of this is what if people in the private sector start thinking more like people in show business or comedians because comedians act like every day is a rainy day except for a few idiots that we've seen and i remember coming up as a comedian um i i started comedy as the boom ended so i was very fortunate what year did you start 1988 me too yeah 88 where did you start boston i started in dc ah me and me and dave chappelle

went up on the same night for the first time no shit that's wild it was 14 i I was 19. Wow. Yeah. But so then, okay, maybe you saw this then. At the end of the boom, there were a lot of comedians that for a time, you could be not great and make a hundred grand a year because there were clubs everywhere. And these guys spent money like, I'm going to make a hundred grand a year forever. Like this will be my base. And then suddenly I was watching headliners getting cars towed. I saw a guy get his house repossessed. I came in and goes, I don't know the place to live.

He had to go crash on someone's apartment because they weren't. And then I was told by a younger guy, whatever you make, half of it you don't have. Just save it or put it away. Pretend like you're making half of what you're making and live on that. That's how you live in this business. That's very wise. Which is what I think that's how the world should be. Act as if

there's going to be this happening again and save for it. It's hard to be a baller like that though, dude. If you want to be balling, if you want to like bling bling, if you want to let everybody know. Then make the baller move to do that. Make that the baller move. You can't say you want to let everybody know, then make the baller move to do that. Make that the ball.

Yes. I'm not saying you have to look, dress in sackcloth and have, you know, shoes made out of rope, but I'm saying dress nice, take care of your needs, not your wants,

your needs. And then the baller move is, and I'm ready if shit goes south. Sounds like somebody hates fun. I don't know what the fuck you're talking about, Patton. I can't have dinner. Why can't I have that? You can't.

Why am I sick the next day? You can't have both. No! The thing about comedians is we're all childish. Childish and impulsive. Well, sometimes the thing that makes you very successful in comedy is to still be in touch with being a child and being over emotional and oversensitive to things that's where some of the best material comes oh for sure yeah and it's

like you can maintain childhood like childhood instincts or childish notions while still being a responsible adult it is possible you can totally do both yes it can it can be done like i have a friend and he doesn't have kids and he said to me he goes i forget sometimes that you're a dad because you're such a fucking child and i'm like yeah but i'm actually a responsible father. Yeah, exactly. Look, I still get all wound up about the new comic book releases or some viral thing that's been lying. Just like a goddamn 20. But then I'm also like Alice, vegetables and chicken and have a little bit of mac and cheese. But you got to eat all those first and then whatever you have. You're like, there's still that.

Then you got to be the. And I think a lot of people end up being bad parents because they don't want to be uncool. And being a good parent means you're kind of uncool. Yeah, you got to get them out of you sometimes. You got to establish boundaries. It's tricky because you love them and almost they're like your little friends. But they're like, can I just do something? Like sometimes my daughter has this cute little trick.

She'll ask my wife first. And then she'll say no. But then she comes to daddy because daddy's the big softy and i'm like i don't see why not and then she's like dad says it's okay and then like alice uses that so brilliantly where she will because because um my wife meredith is such a great mom but she's very she was raised with very responsible parents and very not strict but just like if i say this will happen she's she's consistent both ways if i say we're going to the beach on saturday it will happen i will not flake out if i also say no ipad for a week you will not see that ipad i

won't flake either way there's always consistency um and i'm the flakier one so my daughter just like you my daughter knows to come to me and say can i be when i'm like i guess so and now although now she to her well to our credit she's done it so clumsily that now we whenever she asks something we text it hang on let me text mommy and i can see her face like damn it like and i'm like hey you can't do this to me you know are you noticing that people are through this nonsense or at least taking a little bit better care of their health or recognizing that this is this is a real thing they need to invest in have you noticed that i have noticed i've noticed it myself that unfortunately a lot of this um a lot of the

lockdown means you got to eat a lot of processed food because it lasts longer. And that's how you make your food dollar stretch in a lot of ways. And you see the immediate effects of not having fresh food and organic stuff in your diet very, very quickly. And what I also especially hope is that people, including me, who, again, sometimes I forget my fucking privilege, and you go, oh, this is how people who don't have a lot of money are forced to eat and live and maybe make things better for them. And there'll be less stress and anger and depression across the spectrum, you know? 100%. Yeah. across the spectrum you know 100 yeah i mean that's that's what you were saying before about a flex for the whole you know like we're taking care of that is that is something that's really

missing in this country in a big way is that we'll we'll spend a lot of money fixing up other places that we've blown up all over the world but we'll spend no money trying to balance out Baltimore or South side of Chicago or Detroit. Right. It's like, or we will do that. We will do it. And sometimes I'm guilty of this too. We will do it.

If there's a photo op and our name can be tagged in it. In other words, it's that thing. It's why I think a lot of, um, political campaigns get hurt when celebrities try to do it. So instead of celebrities using their platform they use their voice and their face so it's like me first for this person but it's me

for that right and then people go i don't even know what they're talking about but whatever they're talking about i don't support it yeah well that's a problem right especially if someone's annoying and they're attached to this presidential canyon like oh that guy would you uh like like whenever i've supported people now i try to use my platform and not my voice and i've been i remember when i was at i was at sundance when they had the woman's march the day after um trump was inaugurated i think it was January 21st, I was at Sundance. I was a judge on the short film panel, and I begged the organizers. I was like, please, please, please don't have the march here in Park City. Do not have photos of celebrities in front of the Vivian Westwood outlet in Park City, Utah, because all that is is going to be fuel for the other side. Amplify the marches that are

happening in Charlotte, in Tuscaloosa, because all those were happening, and half of the marches that got filmed were the ones where there were celebrities there. Yeah, that's a terrible idea. It's snagging at everything we were trying to do. What are you doing? It drove me crazy. it really annoyed me but and also it annoyed me because sometimes i've been guilty of that you because we're in this business because we're narcissists and so part is i want it to be me supporting this person whereas it should be your platform and your audience supporting that person and that's a very delicate line to cross which i fumble all the time we're at a point

now where it's like who who the fuck would want to be president right who the fuck would want that job even if you have some good ideas like you have to go way out on a limb to take that job so who are we getting you, we're getting young people that are idealistic and they get kind of Tulsi Gabbards and the like. They get kind of pushed aside by the machine because they're not willing to play ball. And then you get to the ancient dinosaurs of the system

like Biden. And then on the other side, you have Trump. We have this chaotic scene where the economy is imploding. Everybody's fucking terrified of this new virus china might want to go to war with us i mean who knows what the fuck is happening with that and then we have these two to pick from you're like this is madness this is the best we can do we're we're china's main trading partner they're not going to go to war with us unless we cut off trade so i think that's think that's a nice paranoid thing.

It's terrifying. But I don't think that'll happen. I don't think so either, but it still scares me. Here's me being hopeful. I think that we're living in this age now of, you know, like this all the time. Everything is just being this all the time, everything is just being broadcast all the time. And there's no such thing as like digging up a pass anymore because everyone just puts their, puts their life out there. And then you can just go digging through someone's Twitter

feed or YouTube history, whatever you want to do. So there's this wave coming up like, uh, the, uh, Octavio Cortez and, and, and people like that that are like yeah it's all out there i don't care about that here's what i want to do and i think a generation is going to come up that that will go oh yeah i tweeted out stupid shit when i was 18 yeah i don't you know when was that tweet from 10 years ago it doesn't count whatever she was being an idiot i was being like the standards are definitely different now than they were even five years ago but there's a generation of people putting luminol on people's online history that that will die out and and it'll turn into if it was something horrible a week ago yes let's talk about that if you dug up something someone

did 10 years ago everyone's going to go yeah you should see this shit i put it like that won't that won't land the way that it is now yeah i think our expectations of people are different we don't we're not under the illusion anymore that these aren't real people because we want them to be presidential or we want them to be a representative we're not under the illusion anymore that they that they're not real people it's almost like when they had to admit that wwe was fake it's like okay now we could just enjoy it for what it is you don't have to have these arguments with your your friends over whether or not it's fake you have to think about the wwe that everyone keeps um forgetting

is yes it's scripted but it's scripted mayhem and destruction they are scripting out these people, these men and women going in the script, you're going to fall 40 feet onto a table of glass. Yes. We scripted that to happen, but it's still a person doing that. Like there's a level of, of, of adrenaline junkiness and,

um, athleticism that goes beyond, I think athletics. Yeah. So when people like, like yeah wrestling's fake yeah no shit these people it's like when you watch a jackie chan film that's a scripted film too stick around for the end credits he just got his skull knocked open yeah they literally punched a hole through his skull doing a stunt so you're you're you're dismissing something

uh your definition of fake needs to be tweaked a little bit in this case. Yeah, it's another way of looking at it. It's definitely scripted. It's not like they're risking it all because they don't know what the outcome's going to be. It's different than an actual athletic event.

But it's still pretty badass. As far as what they're able to do. I mean, they don't get nearly enough credit for it either because while they were doing it before the the lockdown they were doing it 250 plus days a year traveling all over the country throwing each other on tables different time zones a bad jet lag bad food no right no sleep like these people that have to be in peak physical condition under the worst conditions to maintain that. And also think of the years when the WWE was this struggling, basically mom and pop

operation trying to launch itself. And they had even less resources than they do now. But those guys were still doing that over and over and over again it's brutal and mme is the same way those guys there's no money there's the travels brutal the like the the amount of matches they have to do is brutal oh mma yeah yeah it's um it's all brutal it's it's did you ever watch the video where trump was on the wwe have you ever seen that yeah well he loves we've all seen it because he loves for tweeting but it's so it's so strange to think that the current president used to be on the wwe he was on an episode of the wwe he was in a match he well okay he when he pardoned lagoyevich the former host of game show, just became president and pardoned one of his former contestants.

Yes. Philip K. Dick would read that and go, yeah, I'm done. Can the cancer hurry up? I'm done. I don't need to live in the world. It's so strange. It's so strange. All of it's so strange.

My most conspiratorial thoughts are that this is this is ai and that ai is slowly bringing us deeper and deeper into into the the hive into the matrix and the way they're doing it is by disconnecting us from each other making social distancing the norm cover your face with a mask don't touch anything everything you're going to do virtually and slowly but surely it's going to lead to this new way of life where you're you're you're no longer at risk by going out there and making yourself susceptible to all these biological nasties you're going to stay home you're going to plug in or what if the ai knows that eventually it does have to unplug us and let us

see that we're in the protein pods it's like that's going to freak them out so let's make this fake reality so fucking insane and awful we'll have trump be president we'll have this virus so that we do unplug them though oh thank god okay good fine i'm okay with i'm cool being in the protein pod good like actually they're making it so that we'll be happy when we're shown that we're living in protein pod wasteland. At least there's order in the universe, and it's not just completely ridiculous. I mean, I've had those arguments with people about

there's a very strong case to be made for Cypher's character in The Matrix of like, no, plug me the fuck back into this. Hang on. So I'm nude with no muscles, atrophied muscles, hairless in a jagged wasteland of radioactive slag or I could be in this world

where I have a nice job and I eat a steak and marry someone. Can I just live in this? I'm fine with it. Morpheus, who the fuck are you helping? Why are you dragging us out of these? the machines aren't trying to kill us they're just like look you guys and by the way the machines like you guys fucked up the earth we're doing the best we can for you guys we could have just let you all die in the wasteland but instead we found a way so that you can live like the machines aren't doing anything that nefarious

right right they're just letting you have a better existence than your real one yeah and it's indistinguishable it's also it feels it feels better it actually does people always miss that line where um smith says you know when we first did the matrix it was just flat out paradise and you guys couldn't handle that and you rejected it like we literally had you where probably the first version of the matrix everybody could fly and orgasms lasted three months and you could just eat all the chocolate you wanted and then people like no and then i want a goddamn cubicle job so then i guess they want cubicle fine okay

give them that i we tried to be nice well I think we evolved human beings evolved with this need to overcome adversity we evolved with this need that's why we like puzzles when we're just sitting around bored what do we do? The family gets together and you play puzzles, you play games

you try to solve things and figure things out because I think it's still in our RNA or in our rna or in our dna that the ones who thrived were the ones who solved puzzles and pushed against adversity yeah when you don't have that at you have a memory of dying if you don't do that yeah we do crave that you know we need to have that a little bit. That's why I think a lot of the people that are out protesting, yeah, they're protesting because I don't have a job. I need money right now. But also like what you were saying earlier, let me decide to take a risk.

There's a part of us that will push against that even if it's deadly and even if it's selfish because it's part of what made our species you know we took the risk i'm gonna flop out on land yeah well there's predators out there i just i'm gonna push we're also deeply distrustful of people who tell us what to do because we know that when people have the power to tell you what to do when they didn't have that power before and that's what's going on right now in the state there's new power right the governor has the power to tell you what to do when they didn't have that power before and that's what's going on right now in the state there's new power right the governor has the power to shut businesses down the mayor has the power to shut everything down when people get into that position of power i know we don't ever want to think that and we want to think that all of their all of the reasons why they do things are altruistic they're great people they just but there's just human instincts just

like the human need to sort of overcome adversity there's a real human instinct to control people i mean it's the reason why cults exist it's the reason why we're very very careful and how we give out power and we're in a situation like even the way like the mayor phrased it something like if we all wear masks this is the way we can get back some of our freedoms like i don't know who the fuck his pr guy is but hey man that's the worst thing you could say you don't have power over the general population's freedoms that's not in your fucking job description so when you say shit like that we can get back some of our freedoms people are naturally going to get very upset

because it puts them in the position like oh i've seen this before i know what this is now there's a person who's got power over me and so that's part of what these protests are it's not just simply like i want to be selfish i want to put my grandma at risk because i want to be able to make a living again and i'd rather have the old people die off than lose my business it It's also, hey, I don't like you telling me what to do because I don't think you're any different than me. I think you're just a person, and a person that has power and new power, like the power to tell people you can or can't do something,

that's a very tricky position. But it's so weird how those are the kinds of statements that we push back on, and yet there are other more blatantly controlling statements that we will absolutely accept. You know, if you would look at some of the stuff that Trump says to his audience, basically mocking them, like holding up a Bible going, boy, you people sure love this. Like, you would think they would go, I think he's making fun of us, but they're just like, yes! Like, it's just weird how what one person will push against you would think oh that that's a critical thinker but then they'll turn around and blindly accept something else that's an interesting case you know like women you were so rightfully suspicious and cautious about that statement and yet that one got no review from you and you just went great

i don't know what you're talking about in particular because i didn't see trump do that but the thing about him like mocking a bible even if it's offensive it doesn't stop people from doing anything what what this what these orders are they're stopping people from making a living and it's that's that's never happened before yeah he's not stopping anyone from doing anything but the way that he held it up in the way he said it is this thing that you believe, I really don't believe it. And I'm just going to use you to get the power that I need. I never saw that. I've never seen that.

It was at one of his rallies. And he was like – and again, it was his way of going, isn't the Bible great? But he was saying, well, you people sure love this. Like the undercurrent was all i gotta do is hold this thing up in your mind like you can barely yourself from hiding it it was like you talk about like bad pr like such clumsy statecraft right there like why are you doing that well it's way more confusing than that is some of the other bad pr he's gotten away with like the stuff that he said about mccain and said, like, I prefer my soldiers that don't get caught.

Like, didn't he say something like that? Like, better soldiers that don't get caught? I prefer my heroes to not be caught. Something along those lines. It would end a political career on the spot. End it. And how about the other family of the soldier that had died, and he had been in some sort of a dispute with the family and openly dismissive about that situation?

Yes. I thought it was fascinating when then they asked because the father went up and said, what have you sacrificed? And then the interviewer was talking to Trump and wasn't trying to do anything gotcha. Just like, what happened? Like, how do you answer that? Like, what do you say? And like his brain fritzed out. anything gotcha just like what how like how do you answer that like what do you say and he like his brain fritzed out he couldn't phrase it in a way of he was like i've built great buildings i

mean i've made i've been very successful i've made a lot of money and like like that he that's the closest that he could get to embracing the idea or the concept of sacrifice yeah i mean it's not it's an alien concept like what like he literally doesn't understand what but it was like maybe part of the reason that people keep them around is it's um oh my god he's asking questions sir you're listening to everything you nosy bitch we're not talking to you hey listen i'm just i'm just i'm promoting my album on joe rogan i'm not gonna buy any stuff from him okay speaking of which you are here to promote something tell us about it well let me really quick i just want to

feel like one of the reasons that trump has been able to stick around in office and he's gonna have his full term and maybe have a second one is as horrible as it is it is it is a fascinating psychological study of a soul in torment that we get to watch for free every week when he gives an interview or does a rally yeah there's some where you get to go back and watch this thing like i gotta go look at this thing again this all can be avoided you know if he had a coach like legitimately like it's like it's all bullshit right like someone's you're basically representing bankers and you're you know you got a bunch of special interest tugging at you and you've got your agenda but the way he interacts with the press

like he needs to be coached if he had a coach like someone who's like very socially astute maybe even a comic someone who could say look man've got to show some humility. You can't get a joke across. There's a few guys that can get a joke across if they're cocky like Dice Clay or someone along those lines. Or Andy Jeselnik. Yeah, Jeselnik can do it. But you better have some really

fucking tight writing. Yes, exactly. Jeselnik, his writing is tight. That's tight writing. Not a single wasted letter in those jokes. No wasted space. Yeah, brilliant, brilliant, brilliant pausing timing. Trump would never accept a coach.

That's not in his nature. He's like, no, no, I got this. That's why he was like, I'm going to do these coronavirus press conferences every day. Remember, he was going to have Fauci do it. Then he realized, wait, he's on TV and I'm not out of the way. And that's why he was going out there just yammering about whatever. About injecting disinfectant. Yeah.

And then they had to like, they had to like get him to stop doing it because like we're trying to get a story about Biden. Get some traction. And you keep taking all the air out of the news. We need you to sit down for a couple days so we can get this going. And it's amazing. Everybody needs a coach. Everybody does. Everyone does.

He could use a coach. He could use someone who just explains, like, this is where you trip on your own dick. And if you just don't do that, look, you already have all these people that are on your side no matter what and he's publicly said i could go shoot someone in the street and you know x amount of people would vote for me no matter what and he's right he's right he would he would shoot someone in the street and they you would the spin would begin in before the body hit the ground yeah we didn't know if that guy was armed maybe he was we don't and then then they would fill the air with verbal chaff and then you would never get to the truth right it would be like trying to drive through smoke i don't know where the fuck i'm going

i'm suddenly lost i just watched a guy shoot a guy and now i'm thinking of 20 other things yeah it's it's a weird time man but, but it's an opportunity. I'm not looking at this like, let's look at the positive side. Because look, it's negative for a lot of people, particularly people that have lost people and people that have lost their own health. But there's an opportunity for us that haven't to restructure and just rethink this thing and recognize what it really is. Because you just run around with momentum thinking well i'm in the business and i gotta do this and i gotta do that and hey this is what i do and you know maybe not like i haven't been on the road in two fucking months

and part of me is like boy i feel really healthy you know yeah i i feel like as good as i've ever felt like and it's steady it's like the same every day there's not these big ups and downs when i come home on sunday and i fucking crash and i try to get back to the thick of things on monday it's like you're taking west way less damage to your body also spending more time with my family being around walk just walking through the neighborhood and when you don't have to go anywhere, sometimes you just enjoy the moment. Enjoy the moment of being alive, a human being in 2020 and being one of the fortunate ones that isn't sick. Yeah, and maybe look at the idea that everything doesn't have to be constant growth.

You're allowed to have ups and downs. The only thing that actually follows the idea of constant growth is cancer. Constant growth is not a good thing. The only thing that does that is cancer. In a way, we're feeling the effects of this. It's almost like an economic form of cancer where every quarter's got to be bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger, and now

here we are. I know. Isn't that insane? If you have a business that makes the same amount of money every year, it's a fucking failure. Even if it's a lot of money. I know. It's such a ridiculous way to approach anything. But the fact that that's the core thing that structures our society is economics. It's one of the most important values, the most important factors in what we do.

That's the reason why we get up all fucking day and we work all day from you know nine to five plus over the whole reason for that is economics and it's all structured in this weird way where these companies are supposed to somehow or another make more money every year it's yeah i don't know i mean again i thank god i'm a comedian because comedians we can actually embrace that you're gonna have some off years it's yeah i don't know i mean again i thank god i'm a comedian because comedians we can actually embrace that you're gonna have some off years it's not it can't be growth all the time right some you know years you're gonna do uh you'll do carnegie hall and then then you're gonna work the clubs for a little while and you'll then you'll be on an upswing again like yes you know we say

in this business long enough it's up and down and up and down but the whole thing is fun because you're doing what you like to do a lot lot of this corporate stuff, there's no joy. It's just this death rictus moving forward, consuming everything you can. It just explodes and explodes. You know what's also great about our business? You put out specials, and then you become a beginner again. Yes! That's so valuable. I feel like such a fraud every two years.

I feel like such a fraud every two years. I get to the point where I feel like I'm a killer, and then right afterward, I'm a fraud. I have a fucking flimsy act for months, for three, four months. It's just garbage. And I'm out there just slinging it at the store, trying to piece things together, trying to. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Again, my special drops tomorrow on Netflix. And after tomorrow, I have a blank notebook.

And if I ever get to be on stage, it'll be like when we see each other at the comedy store. Seven to ten minute chunks. Just, oh, I don't. I guess. Shit, I thought this was going to be something, folks. I'm sorry. And you feel, like you said, you feel like an asshole if you go back to your old stuff because you're like we've seen that shit why don't make us pay to watch that again also you know the process you know you can do it you've done it before you know you can there's some times where i i honestly in the first

couple weeks especially after a special i'm like boy i might have hit the fucking bottom of the well i might not have anything left yeah there's been especially after the last one annihilation i was like maybe i'm done doing stand-up maybe i shouldn't do stand-up anymore and then somehow this thing happened but there's always that feeling of like i think that might be my maybe it's time to retire and then you get the itch because it was always there i see myself dying like like George Carlin in a hotel room in Vegas somewhere in between shows. I don't think I'm going to quit. It's too much fun.

And I miss it. I miss it so much. He stuck with it. That guy had crazy highs and crazy lows. He had all the highs of Occupation Fool and Class Clown. Then I saw him in the 80s at the Warner Theater. And he was kind of flailing a little bit like yes lost his way and then he he was trying out these new concepts some worked

some didn't he ended with the seven dirty words because you know i gotta end my show then he came roaring back with that um the one about the earth uh the earth is not dying we are right it was this you know because i think he thought maybe i'm done like maybe i'm a relic and no he stuck with it and then he came roaring back and you can always do that i got a chance to see him in at uh hampton beach casino in uh new hampshire yeah when i was i mean i i think i was 20, something like that, 20 or 21. And I took my roommates to see him and he bombed. Yeah.

It was a weird time for his career. It was one of those weird moments where he had this routine that he was working on where he would basically say, fuck everything. He would say, fuck Israel and fuck comedy clubs. He had this list of things that he was saying fuck to. But I think he was just going through a lot of weird stuff in his life then. There was some substance issues that he had had. He had money problems with the IRS, owing too much money to the IRS.

There was a lot of shit that was going on in his life at those times. And also, I think that he was a little bit freaked out by you know he had opened the door him and prior especially in terms of language and subject matter and now here's people like sam kinnison and andrew dice clay coming along and and chris rock that are pushing it even further in both good and bad ways and he's like do i even fucking like right why do they need me like like i think there was a couple years where he felt like am i john wayne at the end of the searchers i've rescued everyone and i've helped progress the world but i don't belong in the world and then i'm just going to walk away into

the desert there's always that moment of like sometimes your bravery helps bring about a world that ironically you don't belong in anymore and And it's such a weird, I mean, I feel like that's what happened to Joan Rivers at the end of her career. She broke so many goddamn barriers for women and for talking about certain subject matter. And then at the end of her career, she suddenly saw all of her stuff get parsed by this new generation. That's like this, this generation that's attacking her and parsing her stuff.

You're enjoying the freedoms you're enjoying partially because of the shit that she did. She laid down barbed wire so you could run across it and then pointed her for not using the correct language. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. Not just not the correct language, but deciding what she can and can't joke about. And I love the fact that to her dying day, she didn't give a fuck. She was like, I'm not apologizing for

shit this is what i do i make fun of things and i'm gonna make fun of you and i make fun of me and i make fun of my family fuck you and she she held on to her guns forever man forever she never never let it go never let it go never shifted fearless that will happen that'll happen to all of us at some point there will be another wave of podcasters that won't understand the stuff that you and marin and people like that did podcasting wise and we'll do it and look back at you guys like what are you even talking about it's like the reason you're doing what you're doing is because of the shit that we laid down like and it'll happen to me as a comedian. It's happened to, um,

filmmakers, everyone's shitting on Martin Scorsese for going, not a fan of the Marvel films. He wasn't, he never said, don't go see them. He's like, they're not for me.

Like you, you wouldn't have your Marvel film. If Scorsese hadn't done his movies, all those movies are what made the guys who direct your movies. You like go, I want to do that right like you he gets to be he gets to have any fucking opinion he wants well

and also what's wrong with not liking certain things like I have very good friends who like things that I think are terrible I still like them like you're allowed that if you don't like I have friends who hate Marvel comic movies. I fucking love them.

I love comic book movies. And I have friends like, I'm not watching that stupid shit. That guy's definitely going to live. Nothing's going to happen. He's the hero. I'm like, listen, man. I get it. I understand how you feel a certain way.

But the other thing about film to think about a guy like Scorsese, where he needs to be put in much a much better perspective, is that when you think about some of the stuff that he did in like the 70s, what movies had only been around for like real movies for like 40 years like king kong like in the 30s and then here you go 40 years later you're talking about some of those scorsese movies or the coppola movies like apocalypse now like think about how crazy that movie is when you really stop and think about when it was actually created and how what a short time films had even been made like that yeah and and how crazy the execution of it is it's like well when i when i hosted the independent spirit awards the year i hosted it in 2014 it was the 50th anniversary of john waters' first film, which he made when he was a teenager in Baltimore. It's called Hag in a Black Leather Jacket, and it's about an interracial wedding being decided over by a Klansman. It's a Klansman marrying an interracial couple. He shot it on his parents' roof in Baltimore in the 60s, and I told the audience, like, this is the 50th anniversary of John Waters' first film.

Any of you guys are like, are we pushing too far? Are we going too far? He's already done all that work for you. Fucking go for it. He was an openly gay teenager in 1960s Baltimore shooting an interracial wedding on his parents' roof with a Klansman doing the ceremony. So just do whatever the fuck you want.

It's okay. Just fucking go for it, you know? That's so perfect. Yeah, yeah. It's so beautiful. Yeah. But getting back to what you were saying, the reason, it's weird, you brought up,

I have friends who love stuff that I hate, but I don't give a shit. The reason my special is called I Love Everything is when you get to age 50, there's still stuff that annoys you and stuff you don't like, but you're like, but I know where this is coming, or I know 50 there's still stuff that annoys you and stuff you don't like but you're like but i know where this is coming i know why he's acting that way or i yeah i don't i'm not a fan of donald trump i think he's fucking horrible but i also know about his childhood and how he was

raised and i know why he is the way he is he grew up in a monster factory and it was really well run monster factory and it made an incredible monster. I know why he is the way he is. So you can only go so... Hatred is a luxury for youth. When you're young, you can go, this is bullshit. And then you get to 50, you're like,

it's not for me, but I don't care. Okay, fine. You know what I also think it is? I talk about this often. You have children. You have a child. I have daughters. And when I think of it is, I talk about this often, that you have children, you have a child, I have daughters, and when I think of people now, I think of them as babies that grew up. And when I was younger, I used to think, if I knew you now, I'd know, I think, oh, Patton has always been this

Patton. But now I can see, because I've seen little babies become little people and i go oh okay you just got terrible input terrible feedback bad epigenetics a lot of shit wrong here you're a victim of circumstance as much as you are you know being an asshole you're you're actually you're the reason why you're an asshole is because you're a victim so the case and a lot of a lot of times yeah and sometimes people can become an asshole obviously some people can become an asshole because trump had a lifetime of systematic abuse but also people can become horrible from from having one bad day one bad day can set you the wrong direction yeah so you but it's not till you get older where you suffer all those blows and setbacks and reversals of fortune that you go, okay, let's maybe give someone a little bit of breathing room. Yes.

Even if they're being horrible, think about why they're doing this. That's just how it is. Well, also, it's not beneficial to anybody to be confrontational and to be angry about things all the time. Even though it seems fun when you're young, as you get older, you realize it's a terrible way of using your resources. And it also doesn't create any harmony. It just makes the people on the other side fight back harder. There's no middle ground given. There's no compromise.

There's no forgiveness. There's no equanimity. There's no moment where you feel like this is a human being, and I'm a human being, and I make mistakes, and they make mistakes. And let's figure out how we can be nicer to each other. I mean, that's what everybody would like. That's what everybody would like. And it's the fucking hardest thing to do, and you're going to fail a lot of times trying to do it. Yes.

Because otherwise otherwise the only other option is the person who's pissing you off actually wins and takes over space in your mind and stops you doing the shit you need to do yeah if you're living a then-centered life or a spite centered life then that runs you that other person runs your life and think of all the jokes and albums and movies or whatever you were going to do that you never did because you were focused on them that's really common you know and there's a lot of people that are doing that with trump there's a lot of people that follow on twitter while just go their twitter feed it's just just railing about trump all day and i want to go over their house and you can't anymore but hug them and go hey man you gotta stop paying attention to this like you're how much

time do you have in a day how much time is spent on things you hate and how much time is spent on things you love you need to figure out a way to shift that for me hating trump has become like a glass of wine i indulge in it every now and then i enjoy it when he does something really crazy and also every now and every now and then you need to check in and go just want to remind you this isn't normal this shouldn't be happening let's not get used to this but then also yeah i promote other people's stuff i signal boost other comedians i retweet really funny tweet like that also has to be fun because you're right there are there are people that i love whose twitter feeds have just evolved into can you fucking believe yes yeah i could have a bit about, in my special,

about how I don't have any Trump jokes because he's made comedians obsolete. How do you write a joke funnier than the shit he's doing in front of us? You know, it's like, he's doing this crazy, and you walk up, you want to hear a joke I wrote about this? Everyone's like, no, I'm just, I'm watching this. I'm good.

Well, it's all the things, too. It's the tan and the hair and the madness and the not willing to admit that he's ever wrong. And it's like, Jesus Christ. You know, someone put this out as a joke the other day. It was like a little graphic, but it is true. You know how he won't wear a mask? Yeah. It'll rub the makeup off.

Oh, yeah, for sure. And I'm not saying that as a joke. He can't put a mask on because yeah he takes it off he'll have this weird and he knows he can't do it i bet on the first day he tried to do it went no we can't do it sorry yeah well why didn't pence wear it in that that one time remember when everybody was wearing at the mayo clinic and he didn't i feel like trump bullied him i feel like trump was like you're not gonna go out there with a mask are are you? You make me look bad. Yeah. So, like, all right.

You know, I'm terrified. Wouldn't it be nice if there was someone who was running for president that really made sense? Someone who you're like, yes. Like this. Okay. This guy's all right. Or she's the best. We can get behind her. This is it.

We got one. We have a person who's moral and ethical and although flawed their hearts in the right place we can do this usually like well weirdly enough that's now what the the trump line is is he is an oaf he is vain he is mean but he gets shit done like guys this isn't the movie pitch black and he's not riddick okay we don't need this you know i'm voting by the way now i'm embracing the um yeah i think i think biden is a don't need this you know i'm voting by the way now i'm embracing the um yeah i think i think biden is a little senile you know what i'm voting for i'm voting for his cabinet that's what i'm just voting for the team he's gonna bring in i could give a fuck about him

he might not even survive i mean he looks so bad but all trump does is it's just it's just uh uh grifters around him. And they come in, grab whatever money they can, and then they bolt. There's no plan. There's no team. Well, he's also the big alpha, right? So he needs everybody to kind of kiss his ass. He keeps saying, like, the true big alpha never has to say he's the big alpha.

He's Paulie in Goodfellas. Paulie never moved. Because he didn't have to move past. He just knew. But Trump has to keep telling people it's like what you know like whenever a comedian tells you how dangerous and edgy they are like folks you're like he's not he's not edgy or like you shouldn't have to say that he's gonna have nonsense he's gonna say nonsense i've already heard before yeah like david tell never tells the audience, hang on. That's just how he thinks. Exactly.

He tries to be edgy, which makes him ten times edgier. That might be the lamest thing comedians do is tell you they're edgy. I used to see that all the time. It's the worst. There was a guy, he would go on stage, he would sit backwards in a chair, and he would go, welcome to the inside of my mind. No! No!

That man needs some mushrooms. Oh, so bad. You need to just wake up after it's over and go, oh my god, I gotta change everything. Who am I? I'm so glad for all the LSD trips I took back in the 90s because you come out of it and just go,

oh yeah, okay, maybe I need to like like just anything to shrink yourself in the universe yeah and make you more secure with like oh this is actually vast and i'm tiny in it knowing how tiny you are actually gives you more strength and freedom because you're like if everything i do is insignificant then i can do anything like if it's ultimately all crumbles just do whatever you want well sometimes when i get really high and i feel real vulnerable i feel like there's almost like there's magic in the world whereas like when i'm sober everything seems sort of it's like standard everything's just as it always is i'm accustomed to all these paths. And I'm accustomed to getting in my car and driving. But when I'm high, the whole thing is magic.

It's like this is madness. This whole thing is crazy. And there's possibilities. Yes. Too many. Both good and bad possibilities. But they're there. That's what I like.

That's when people say they pot make some paranoid. I'm like, that's my favorite part. Because that paranoia i need it it's for me it's giant it helps me a lot it really does it's it's responsible for a lot of my activity you know like some people say that it makes you lazy like it's not i'm not getting lazy i'm getting i'm getting scared and then because of that i go i go i gotta go gotta do something yeah it was i remember um harlan ellison who was very anti-drug very anti-drink but he was putting together an anthology and he had philip k dick story faith of our fathers in it he was like i've never

advocated the use of psychedelics or drugs but my god if i could write on this level maybe i i would totally gobble them because he's he's operating on a different level right now. Yeah. Well, I think people are scared of him because for rightly so, because we've all heard stories of people losing everything, lose their mind. You know, we were talking yesterday about this this O'Farrell theater sign that Hunter S. Thompson had given this couple on their wedding uh anniversary or their their wedding day he stole from from san francisco he stole this off of geary street nofero yeah he stole the sign outside and it was a sign that said you know if you are uh scared of sex acts or whatever it's on the there's a guy i follow on instagram the jack uh understand underscore lope

and he's a hunter s thompson enthusiast and he posted this the hunter gave it to this couple along with 20 hits of acid and the woman uh took all the acid and was immediately checked into a mental institution and never got out so on the day of their wedding hunter s thompson ruined it there's the there's the photo. I don't know if you could see it. You could see it there? Yeah. Oh, there you go.

So, but the story is so quick. Scroll to the story, Jamie, on that side. Yeah. So you can see where it said, gave it to his friend along with 20 hits of acid as a wedding gift. The bride took the acid, was committed to a mental institution, never came back. acid as a wedding gift the bride took the acid was committed to a mental institution never came back by the way look i'm i i am very for people if you want to experiment with psychedelics but i'm also very for set the correct stage for it also don't take all 20 you fucking crazy bitch take one hit what the fuck one see what where it goes but also even if you do one don't do it on

the roof of a building with tom petty's free falling playing on a boom box like maybe lie in a hammock somewhere at the setting the first time i did acid was uh the night that bill clinton won the presidency this is in 92 and i was in matt weinholtz apartment in san francisco and matt Weinhold and his roommate, this illustrator named Derek Robertson, Marvel illustrator, great comic book guy, did Transmetropolitan. He illustrated Warren Ellis's Transmetropolitan and The Boys for Garth Ennis. They owned every action figure in the world. And they had them all on little shelves. The walls were nothing but action figures. I'm sitting there and, you know, the patterns in the table started to melt had them all on little shelves. The walls were nothing but action figures. So I'm sitting there and the patterns in the table started

to melt and move a little bit. And then that Fleetwood Mac song, Don't Start Thinking About Tomorrow, remember they were all dancing to that on stage? When they were the Boars and the Clintons. I looked over at the wall and the figures weren't going crazy, but as the music played, they were all just kind of subtly, just kind of

bounced, like they were in line outside of a sound, like just kind of bounce. Like they were in line outside of like a sound check, just listening to music. And it, it gave me this thing of such absolutely like, Oh, like everything in the world is like bouncing to a better beat right now. It felt really, really good.

It was the perfect time to take, take LSD. And on that note, Oh, that is a, that's a good note to end on, isn't it? Well, you have to get at two, right? You got something else going on at two? Yeah. Sadly, I gotta go. That's a good way to end it. Tell everybody

your special, the name I Love Everything. Is that it? Tomorrow, I Love Everything on Netflix. Yay. I'm gonna watch it. Oh, and also, this has nothing to do with me. Doug Stanhope's special Also drops tomorrow Which I wanted to

Include Is it on Netflix as well? I think it's on Vimeo Okay Beautiful He's dropping a special On the same day And I wanted to give him a plug

Because he's a friend Oh well you're awesome I love that guy too I'll contact him I'll get that out there So Thank you Next time I see you

I hope I see you in person I don't want to be looking At you through you, I hope I see you in person. I don't want to be looking at you through a screen. Stay healthy. It will be in person because there's so much I want to talk to you about, and there's some books I want to give you. Beautiful. All right, man. Well, thank you, my friend.

Good luck with your special. I appreciate you. Thanks, man. Bye. Take it easy. Bye. Bye.