The Joe Rogan Experience - #1524 - Ron Funches

Episode Date: August 13, 2020

Ron Funches is a comedian, actor and writer. His podcast "Gettin' Better" is available on Spotify. On September 5, his live stand up event "Awakening" will be streaming on YouTube and tickets are now available here: eventbrite.com/e/ron-funches-awakening-tickets-113410704470

hello ron hello joe how are you i'm good man you're good you got double water bottles one water one protein shake oh you're not fucking around no i knew you know last time i wasn't aware how long i would be here now i'm prepared i'm gonna settle in i'm not gonna be hungry my wife got me all set up nice protein shake make sure that your blood sugar doesn't drop maintain energy levels. You are a man who has done one of the most difficult things a person could do. You lost a ton of weight. Yeah, and didn't maintain keeping it up.

That's the harder. Right, that's the hard part. Yeah. Yeah, the momentum of losing the weight is good, but most people, they get to a point and they want to take a break. And then once they take a break, then it all slides. Yeah, it's a bit of both. Sometimes I want to take a break, but then I take a break then it all slides yeah it's a bit of both sometimes i want to take a break but then i want to get to that next level so then next get back on it well we're talking about gucci main before we started the podcast gucci is the guy who's done that yes

he's maintained and looks fucking amazing and took it to the next level fella yeah at one point in time when he had burr tattooed on his face. The ice cream cone. Yeah. And now he's shredded. Yeah. He got rid of that ice cream. Well, you were saying it was the lean, right? Yeah, for sure. Yeah, codeine will put a lot of weight on you. Look at the difference, man.

That is crazy. Well, he wasn't too fat in the other one. Yeah, that's kind of like him mid-losing weight in that one. You can find some real chunky pics of him. Yeah, he's kind of like him mid-losing weight in that one. You can find some real chunky pics of him. Yeah, he got thick. Yeah. And now he's shredded. Yeah.

Shredded with inspiration. Yeah, me and my wife all the time, we look at him and his wife, the pictures they take, what they do. And I'm like, I want to head in that direction. What do you do for working out? I have my trainer about three days a week, sometimes two days a week. And then on top of that, we'll do, you circuits, back, chest, whatever, whatever, legs. And then the other days, I'm always just trying to make sure I hit the treadmill twice a day for two miles on an incline. Twice a day?

Yeah, yeah. Really? You do it twice a day? Yeah, in the morning and night. I don't do much otherwise. Especially now, a lot of my stuff is sitting in front of a computer podcasting playing games on twitch and stuff like that so i feel like oh i'm gonna spend sitting up that long i gotta start the day treadmill in the day treadmill that's discipline i like that it is i hate it so it definitely is discipline but you like the results

yeah i like how i feel i like the compliments you Yeah. I like how I feel. I like the compliments. You know, I was just doing this thing the other day and Jake Johnson, the guy from New Girl, I'm in a cartoon with him. And that's like, you know, he's like a leading man, dreamboat-y guy. And he's looking at me, he's like, man, you're looking fucking good, man. You got your shit together. You're about to lead your own show. And I hear shit like that and I'm like, okay, I better get on that treadmill again. Yeah.

Yeah, that helps, helps right it really does yeah the positive feedback and positive energy that's one thing that i like about what you do you are very positive like you're you're very warm and friendly like all the shit that you do online you're all smiley and positive and friendly it's cool it's it's got it gives off a good vibe like when i look at your instagram posts or read something that you post it's like ron is on the good path yeah i try to you know because it's just it's so easy to go the other way and and you caught up in what other people are doing and what you think you should be doing which i battle all of that too so i don't ever try to act like oh i'm just'm just like, oh, everything's great. It's like, of course I go through shit all the time.

But like, I think I choose to support my friends. I choose to support positive things because that's what I can control. And that's to me fighting against that negative as opposed to like just joining everybody in the fray. Yeah, what do you mean by like, how do you feel? Like when you say like, you feel that too, like you feel the draw to the negative.

Oh, I mean, cause we all like, you know, we just want things, you know? So I wanted a Netflix special. I want to be a lead in a show. I want my own show, you know? And I've already do a lot of great things, but, and that's why I have to balance it all. Cause I'm like, oh man, I'm in such a great position.

I do so many wonderful things. I what always helps me actually is talking to people like you or talking to people like Bert, talking to any comedian that's been doing it like 20 years plus when I'm at like 14 now. And when I talk to them and then they are like, oh, hold on. Slow the fuck down, man. Like you look at where you are and what you're doing for how long you've been doing it. You're fucking aces, man, so chill the fuck out and play it out. Don't freak out. And that always, having faith, that always helps me out.

Well, we're all stalled right now, unfortunately, because we can't work. But stand-up is a long haul. At 10 years, people start taking you seriously. You know, if you're really precocious, people start looking at you at 7, like, damn, this motherfucker's good. But at 10 years, they go, okay, that guy's a pro. Or she's really got it. She's legit. 10 years, usually.

So 14, man, you're cooking. You know, 14, you got things happening. You know, you're putting together, like, real sets. You get off stage, you're like, that's that was legit that was legit it's fucking it's a long road to get good at stand-up you know it's like that acdc song it's a long way to the top if you want to rock and roll i was on stage or not about to go on stage rather at the uh improv once and there was this lady who was on stage. And you could tell she's real recent.

And she was just eating it, just eating shit up there. And me and the DJ were just like, whew. And I just looked at him. I go, it's a long way to the top if you want to rock and roll. And then the DJ played that song as I went on stage. It's a long way to the top. It is, man. It's a fucking long way.

Yeah. No. And I agree. And that's why I had to change my mindset very early. Because, you know, I came from not having money, not having anything, and having my son really early. And so I was like, I need to make it. I need to do this. And then, like, I remember I got on Conan the first time, and they were like, oh, what are you promoting?

You've got to promote something when we introduce you. And the only thing I had to promote was an open mic that I was doing in Portland the next day. And I was just like, this is always going to be a part of this. This is always going to be here. There will be highs, and then there will be another day. And so I got to learn to not fear that next day and just be like this is i mean this is just my life and that's what helps me through all of this quarantine stuff that's why i'm back doing weird zoom shows i'm doing my own live stream show september 5th and people adapt yeah exactly yeah exactly yeah

the best out of so far i've seen is andrew schultz andrew schultz has adapted the best because he's really figured out a whole new kind of a format. He's figured out how to do these 10-minute chunks on a particular subject, like rapid fire with images behind him and his style of comedy. I'd be calling it quarantine comedy because it's like there's no one in the room but him. And it's high production value, And it's without network notes. And it's him being able to distill his voice without anybody telling him what to do. So then when you watch it compared to things you're seeing on TV, which now, because they're forced to scale back, start looking very similar. You're like, why the fuck would I watch this? Yeah, it'd be so much more fun.

Yeah. Yeah. Schultz is so much funnier than those guys. Those guys are forced to do TV kind of comedy for the internet, and that shit is not good enough. TV kind of comedy is okay if you have TV kind of restrictions. You know, those restrictions that they have for language and content, then you can get away with it.

But if you're forced to compete in that internet realm, like the internet is wild, man. Yeah, it's the wild west. It's a fucking full-on wild west. This show, you could never do this fucking show. No one would ever allow me to do this show anywhere else. The only way it would have ever worked is to have no one telling you what to do. The thing about those feelings that you get when you see other people doing stuff and good things happen to them,

you're like, ugh, I want that, that's fuel man that's the key is like how you harness that fuel you can pour it all over yourself and light yourself on fire which a lot of people do like you know yeah we see it all the time all the time or you can just go i'm gonna work harder i'm gonna fucking just buckle down i'm gonna stay focused and i'm going to work harder. I am going to fucking just buckle down. I'm going to stay focused. And I'm going to somehow or another be my best self, be the best version. Yeah. I never deny jealousy. You know, to me, that's like, that's just lying to people when you say like, oh, I don't get jealous.

When I was a very young comic, I would read Patton Oswalt's The Spew. And I think he wrote something. He wrote, jealousy is a map of where you want to be. And I was like, oh, if I just look at it like that, that's a lot easier for me to swallow. That's a wise way of looking at it. Yeah. You also, one thing that for me, when I first started doing stand-up, I was real jealous. And I also didn't like comedy anymore.

I didn't like other people's comedy because I would be jealous. Like I would watch someone kill and I'd go, oh, why didn't I come up with that joke? Oh my God, he's so much better than me. Oh my God, he's killing, shit. I want to be like that. And then I realized like, oh my God,

I've stopped enjoying comedy and now I'm not a fan anymore. And one of the things that switched with me is I realized that I had a very weak perspective on it. Instead of being inspired and instead of being, like, energized, I was, like, wishing that they would do badly. Which is a real common thing. Like, you see someone who's doing much better than you and you actually hope they fail. Yeah.

Well, you see, a lot of people people once you see them start succeeding a bit i've noticed in general you stop seeing people champion them you know they stop they're like oh well you've made it as far as i wanted you to and they call you a sellout oh my god you sell out but i love being inspired that i've never had like i've always been inspired by comedy i've always loved comedy and i i sure there's comedy i love more than others like I've always been inspired by comedy I've always loved comedy and I sure there's comedy I love more than others but I've always learned to go like well that's not for me you know I respect their craft I respect

the way they put that together but that was not for me but I always looked at it like rap where it's like man you look at like the old death row records or then they always were sharpening each other by how good each individual was and i look at comedy the same way where it's like oh if i see amazing set i'm not like trying to steal that joke

or trying to that but i'm going like oh fuck i gotta raise my game yeah well that was one of the best things that we had at the store absolutely we were all working together and you know we'd have a show on it'd be you and me and burr and, you know, and Eliza and Whitney and fucking Ali Wong and bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. These shows were fire. It was just, and you had to warm up in the back. I'd be in the back. I'd be jumping up and down on cushions and shit and shadowboxing and touching my toes

and taking deep breaths. And you gotta, you know, you gotta get your body charged up. You know, I miss that. I miss that a lot. I miss that a lot. breaths and you gotta you know you gotta get your body charged up you know i missed that i missed that a lot i missed that a lot i missed that feeling of being the main room green room get ready to go on whoo and just the hang man yeah it's the hang oh truly i mean that's for me especially because i was still always looking at it as like oh i'm got the young guy on the totem pole here and it's cool that now you know it's one thing the original room is awesome but when you're on these main room shows you know it's one thing the original room is awesome but when you're

on these main room shows you know like oh they're putting me on here because they also think i'm a part of a draw and so be on that with you guys but being younger in the game than you guys and being like oh fuck i have to follow ally joe joey diaz you know whitney i have to follow them all and then i don't have the credits that these people are going to care about. It was the thing I've learned to crave. I mean, like, because when I got them, I was like, they are on my side because I'm fucking good. They don't know anything else. They don't know what I've done.

They have now figured out I'm good. And that I miss so much. I was there once and I brought you up and you said something along the lines of Joe reminds me of that teacher that got arrested for having sex with a senior

or something he's like that cool teacher that you find out he tells you all the cool stuff he tells you how the real world works and then you find out he was having a relationship with the teacher's aide. I was crying. I was crying. But it's like those kind of moments, man.

It's like the camaraderie of the store. One of the best things about the quarantine is being able to do this podcast and have guys like you on. And have all of our friends come here and just sit down and just at least spend time together yeah and have some fun and talk because i miss that so much man you know i look i i love my regular friends and i love my family i love my neighbors but they're not comics they're not man it's fucking different you know yeah my wife is funny as shit she's funny she's she says mean shit to me like to be funny like funny shit makes fun of me it's fun it's like we have a good time but comics are a different animal man you know and if you're not around them for a while like you go fuck i wish i could just have someone who just wants to fuck around and talk shit

Yeah, just have some fun. Yeah. Yeah, someone who's not getting their fill and hurt Everyone's so goddamn sensitive, you know make fun of me, please Please You know, let's talk some shit Yeah, no, I'm That is what I miss the most is this just being in the back seeing my friends and and those are things we took for granted so much as well because i just be like all right well i'll see you tomorrow and now i don't see nobody ever when we were shutting down in march and i was

thinking like you know what man i'm just gonna buckle down work out a lot right you know come june whenever the fuck this is over i'll come back guns blazing you know and then when i realized that there was going to be a second lockdown and then there was going to be no return and here we are in august and there's no site it's not going to happen it's not going to happen till 2021 there's there's no way i was like fuck like this is terrible this is a terrible feeling. Like, I never would have imagined that I would have to worry about comedy clubs going under. But they're going under all over the place, man.

They just can't stay open. It's crazy. Yeah. No, I mean, I was in the exact same boat. I think most of us were. We were just like, okay, well, I can last. I'll put it together. Just treat it like I'm in a short-term prison sentence and just work out and get my GED and just get it all together.

Become a lawyer. Yeah. Go over my case. Yeah. And then, yeah, same thing. That second lockdown happened and something happened in my brain where I was like, okay, I'm going to have to just. Because before I was like, oh, no Zoom shows, nothing like that. I don't like how it's fucking with my rhythm. I don't like how I'm not getting feedback

but after that I was like, you know, I just kind of have to adapt and Go with the flow and hope things change and know that things change in time no matter what but if this is how it is I got to stop fighting it and start just just like you know finding my lane in it so you know i'm just trying to do that now yeah um you have a podcast luckily i felt bad for dudes who didn't yes for the folks the guys and the gals that didn't have podcasts i was like oh like you got no way to keep in touch with people yeah i mean and that was exactly the reason why i started my podcast because I was like, oh,

I'm like, everything I'm doing is a guest in other people's shit. Like, I'm a guest in everyone else's home and I don't have a home

for people to come hang out with me. Yeah. And so, I've been thinking that for a long time and that's the reason why I started my podcast

and when all this stuff happened, I was like, I was very happy because I've always been in two minds when it comes to comedy I love specialists I love people who are just like I do stand-up straight stand-up I'm gonna be the best fucking stand-up in the world like I love being that competitive but I also have this part of me that's just like I love new challenges of all types and so I got into voice acting regular acting all that stuff and when this thing came down I was like oh fuck actually

you know just like in business it is good to diversify because voice acting is saving my fucking life right now yeah yeah as a person in show business you must have as many forms of revenue as you can really have and you have to save for a rainy day you have to do those two things i've been real lucky that i have weird taste i meant it weird shit so i have you know cage fighting commentary and then i also have the podcast and i also have this stand-up thing which is just on hold indefinitely you know you could do it right now i mean have you thought about doing one of those uh drive-in movie shows i talked to a bird about it. He made it sound interesting. Yeah.

He loves it. The way he sells it made it sound fun. You got to realize he's drunk, though. Yeah, I do. And I realize it's... I do realize that. He's like, horns, yeah! He likes horns and people high-beaming him.

I'm like, what? I'm like, explain. He's like, dude, I'm like, explain. He's like, dude, it's like a UFO. I'm actually, I've been talking with Chris Titus, because he has his own little production studio. I shouldn't call it little, because he has his own production studio. I don't have no fucking production studio.

He has his own big-ass production studio, and he's been shooting his own specials, and he's doing a reunion of the tightest show through it and so i reached out to him and i'm gonna do like a live stream show where we have 10 people in the audience and then we'll be live streaming it out on youtube on september 5th if people want to get tickets to that ronfunches.com don't stop my promo joe sorry sorry ronfunches.com so there's 10 people in the audience yeah so what do you do you test those folks? Yeah. How do you do it? Yeah. Well, you know, there'll be, not like you, where I took the full test, but it'll be temperature checks and waivers, and they'll be wearing masks.

They'll be wearing masks, and they'll be socially distanced. It can be done, man. You know, Texas is doing that with restaurants. You can go to a restaurant in Texas. Everybody wears a mask. Simple. They space the tables out. Everybody wears a mask.

Good ventilation. Server wears a mask. And-hmm. Simple. They space the tables out. Everybody wears a mask. Good ventilation. Server wears a mask. And they're not having any problems. You know, with this draconian laws they've instituted in California, this is the only state where you can't go to the barbershop. Do you know that? I did not know that.

Every other fucking state in the entire union, you can go to a barbershop. You can go to a hairdresser. You can get your hair done. I don't have an issue with that. Obviously, I'm bald as fuck. But I just think it's crazy. The restrictions that the state's put on businesses, it's forcing people

to flee. That's part of what's going on here. That's one reason you're leaving? Yeah. I just think there's too many folks here, too. I think as I get older, I realize there are drawbacks to high population areas. There's tension in high population areas.

And when things go south, when natural disasters or what we're dealing with with COVID, things along those lines, it's just a bad place to be, man. It's just not safe. It's not healthy. It's not wise. I like calmer. I like a little calmer. Because my problem is not getting up for things Like I have a friend who lives in New York City, and he loves it because like oh

I love the energy of the city everything happening moving man. Yeah, I don't need that. I got a lot of energy I need chill. I need downtime. I need I need a place where I get You need space you need a fortress of solitude. I need relaxation I need to balance and whenever I'd go to places that were more rural, that was like nature and trees and shit, I always feel better. I understand that. I mean, that's one of the reasons

why I like where I live in the Valley. Because I like being, I've always been outside of it. When I started comedy, I started comedy in Portland, Oregon, but I lived in Salem, Oregon, and I would just make that 45-minute drive because I did like

going into a thing doing my job and then leaving that there yeah coming back home yeah that's how i always felt about hollywood like i lived in north hollywood when i first got here and i just kept moving further out then i moved to encino and i'm like i gotta go further out and then i went way out yeah man yeah that is true like this lifestyle is so weird if it will get you so wrapped up in other people's information and partying and doing and that's one of the reasons like i love like i got my little small town canadian wife and my son who you know that that's who's been my balance the whole time is that i started comedy my son was already three years old so he one was like you need to be feeding me with this. And B, I don't give a shit about your jokes

or hanging out at all. So, you know, I would like to be here and have you hanging out with me. So that's always, I think that's one of the reasons I've been able to be as successful as I am is that I was like, I don't give a fuck about hanging.

I don't give a fuck about, and there's a lot of fear that comes to that, right? Because people are always like, oh, I want to be part of the group. I want to be part of the clique and if i'm not hanging i'm not part of click and i was just like well they'll know i'm fucking good at comedy yeah they'll like me from that you've never had a problem with that i mean that's one of the things about the store it's a real meritocracy you'll hear people say like oh you know like there's cliques there and they don't accept you i think think that's horseshit. If you're funny, nobody gives a fuck if you're gay, straight, trans, white, Chinese, black, fucking Puerto Rican.

Nobody gives a fuck. Are you funny? Yeah. And if you're funny, you're in. That place is 100% inclusive. If you're funny, you're in. It's you're accepted for the kind of heat you bring. When you get on that stage and light that place up, you don't have to hang out.

You don't have to be one of the, you know, one of the people that parties and drinks. They don't give a fuck. They know you're funny. Yeah. I mean, I've seen you murder. You know, when you can lay it down the way you do, you're just accepted. It's just how it is. It's a beautiful thing, really.

you do you just accept it it's just how it is it's a beautiful thing really it's like that the the art form of comedy we all know how hard it is to get to that 14 year spot like you're at and you know there's a lot of people that have 14 years and not as funny as you they're for whatever reason psychologically they've not figured it out artistically they're not true to themselves whatever it is they've never found that and i think I bet having a child and having that that intense responsibility you know when you're starting out you know being an open mic or and also having a child like whoo that is that is extreme that's an extreme amount of responsibility yeah I agree and I've talked about it with the other comics i know that our parents because we'll make fun of of the laziness of other comics because they'll be like

oh man i gotta do this set at midnight and then i got a meeting at noon how am i gonna do and i'll just be like well before i came to this set i helped my son with his homework i gotta get him up on the school bus at 6 a.m and then you know so like i don't have any fucking sympathy for you yeah well one of the things that i loved before the store closed down was my schedule was basically i would put my kids to sleep they would go to bed at like you know 8 30 9 o'clock and then i would go over my notes and then i'd have a set at like 1030. It was perfect. And then when I would come home, everybody would be asleep. So I'd just hang out with the dog and write.

You get a chance to come down and not have anybody talk to you. Nothing, man. Just quiet. That's balance, man. Yeah, that's what it's up. For me, that's so big. Balance is so big. You have to have it.

You can't just be all about it. Because I think, do you know who Miyamoto Musashi was? He's a samurai from the 15th century. He wrote this crazy book called The Book of Five Rings. It's all about strategy and how to be the best at whatever you do. And one of the things that he said is like, you have to have the same, you have to do all things with the same intensity and energy. Like you can't just be a guy who has to kill people with a sword. He was excellent at calligraphy.

He was an artist. He wrote poetry. He believed that you had to have a balance as a person. Otherwise, those flaws would show up in your sword fighting. Oh, that's amazing. i love that that's i've always that strikes me hard because i've always believed that in my comedy from the day i started i was always like oh i can never let my life get far away from my persona that i present on stage i can you know always we turning ourselves up to 11 or whatever but i go from just my experience and my love of comedy i go oh when people get too far from their persona in any

general way and they're lying to you it just starts falling apart and it starts showing in their act and it shows in their life and i've always that was is what gives me material because i just talk about whatever is active in my life as opposed to being like, well, this is who I am. Because if I did that, I would have been stuck when I was 23 just being like, I'm the fat stoner guy. Right, right, right, right. Yeah. Yeah, you could get caught up in your act, right? Yes.

Look, there's a lot of examples of that, even successful ones. Like Kinnison. Kinnison is a great example. Bobcat up until very recently yeah he um on this podcast talked about how hard it was to kick and people like hey man do that scream thing he's like fuck you i'm done man you didn't want to do it yeah he um he got stuck he got trapped emomo Phillips, he's another one. You know, I mean, Emo's like in his fucking 60s now.

He's still got to do that weird sort of thing that he did when he was 20. That was kind of cute. You know, when you're 60, everybody's like, man, is you having a stroke? Like, what's going on up there, buddy? Yeah, and that one does still hurt me because he's such a tremendous joke writer. Yes, amazing joke writer. But I do see that. Yeah, it's like you have to kind of, you can't just go up there and start talking. does still hurt me because he's such a tremendous joke writer yes amazing joke writer but i do see that yeah it's like you have to kind of you can't just go up there and start talking

can't just be yourself yes yeah which is one point when you know that's why i'm learning as you get into it people start caring less and less about like oh that's a crazy ass joke he wrote and they want to know more about like who is who are you right yeah yeah doug another but we were talking about kennison he was the guy who got really caught up in it because his thing was partying like he couldn't go anywhere without partying it's like guys would line up giant lines of coke for him be like oh here we go and his heart would be beaten out of his chest and couldn't you know couldn't sleep for a week and this comedy comedy was suffering real bad. I always point to him as a great example for comedians of someone who was so good for a short period of time

and then was so bad afterwards. He was so good around like 85, 86. That was like the louder than hell days. Like, dude, he was revolutionary. Nobody had ever seen anything like that, this short, fat preacher go on stage screaming and talking, screaming, you ever been married? Look at me. Look at me.

Like, this is marriage. Oh, oh. Like, I was married twice. That's how fucking dumb I am. And you would see him, and it was like this force of nature, but with great material, great insight, great points. And then all of it went away and then it was like cheerleading it was like weird like i remember he had this bit about

drunk drive and he's like we're gonna drink and we're gonna drive and we're gonna pull it off you know why because we do it every fucking night and it's like what yeah and then he was killed by a drunk driver yeah which is crazy yeah i hate that I always hate when people use their charm and they use their tricks to push apart false premises. You're just like, you're fucking lying. I think he was just trying to do it just to be— I mean, his brother wrote about it. His brother, Bill, wrote a book called Brother Sam. It was a really good book for someone who's a Kennison fan.

Really interesting. He talked about it pretty openly about sam just stopped writing his material fell apart and he just became like a shadow of himself like a good open mic or doing a kinnison impression with like shitty material it's sad it is but it's a lesson for us yeah you know like you gotta stay fucking game. And then there's also the problem when people know who you are. They come to see you. You know, it's Ron Funches. Oh, we're going to go see him.

And, like, we're excited to see you. And everything you say, I'm happy to hear. You get your crowd. And the problem is if you're only doing comedy to your crowd, you could really delude yourself. Oh, absolutely. But I think that's why people who are good like to go around to all the different spots. I love to go around and do house parties

and the comedy store and my shows on the road. You do house parties? Sometimes. Like what kind of house parties? You know, they do dumbass mansion parties and shit. Really? Yeah, there's a lot of weird, rich comedy producers and you're just like, I don't know what your life is, but I will take this money for this event, and then I'll probably not see you again.

And you do it at the house? Yeah. How many people? Well, you know, this was way before. Yeah. It'd be like a couple hundred people. No shit. Yeah.

In the yard or something, or inside? Sometimes both, you know? Wow. Yeah. Yeah, well, there's a lot of comedy comedy there was a lot of comedy in la and strange places yeah i got invited to a lot of yard shows guys would show up hey man i'm doing comedy in my backyard best fish taco doing the taco restaurant oh yeah yeah yeah you want to kill cliff want one of these what is it sure grape cbd Delicious. Good for you. No THC.

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Do you take CBD at all? Yeah, a bit. Yeah. I get some to my wife whenever her back is hurting. That's one of my daily things. That's just something that's so good for you. CBD is so good for you. Just anything you can do to reduce inflammation.

Mm-hmm. Fantastic for the body, for the brain. I didn't even know I had anxiety until I started taking CBD. I'm telling you. Well, maybe you didn't. Well, it's relative. I mean, I didn't have anxiety compared to people who have anxiety.

But I took CBD. I was like, man, I feel really relaxed. And I was like, oh, okay. I see what's going on. Yeah. No, I like a good CBD. I'll just smoke just a straight CBD sometimes after a workout or something. Yeah, I would say I'm going to do that. And then I like a good CBD. I'll just smoke just a straight CBD sometimes after a workout or something Yeah, I would say I'm gonna do that and then I grab a regular joint. Yeah, well, I'm saying I'll mix them up, too Do you ever smoke weed and then work out?

Yeah, my trainer hates that but yeah Why does your trainer hate that he's always like I can always tell when you're high and you smoking weed he's Dutch To me. Yeah yeah I had a Dutch kickboxing trainer for a while they have a different way of talking the Dutch way yeah yeah they don't understand America they're just you're so fat what you don't have to be what are you eating my friend it? It is very simple. What kind of foods? Dutch is a weird country, Holland. Because, you know, like, I don't know if you know this, but they have some of the greatest kickboxers of all time.

All came out of Holland. Real weird. Like, a few guys went over to Thailand, started training in Thailand, and fighting in Thailand. And they brought it back to Holland. And then Holland became, like, this gigantic kickboxing epicenter that's crazy i didn't know that i didn't know the baddest motherfuckers of all time come from holland yeah a place known for like weed shops yeah red light district and mushrooms that's why i go that's one of my favorite places to visit yeah yeah four times i've been to amsterdam i've never been i've never loved it and it's not even you know you can get just as good if not better we

here in california for sure but it's just the vibe it's just the lack of anyone ever being like oh you dumb stoner none of that like i remember i was sitting in a coffee shop and a guy tried to sneak a beer in and they kicked him out. No drinking. And I was like, I like it here. Yeah. It's funny what we chose to allow and not allow. Yeah.

Well, where I'm going in Texas, you still mean Austin. It's legal. Essentially, they've decriminalized it to the point where the cops won't arrest anybody for weed. I mean, they don't want you selling large quantities of it, but it's still not legal. It's still not legal statewide. It's the dumbest thing to make illegal. It just makes zero sense. I see the argument for making alcohol illegal, but I would never agree with it.

I think people should be able to do whatever they want. Yeah, I'm with that. But the argument for weed being illegal is the dumbest just personal responsibility if we but we have so many arguments that we're not really good at it yeah so well look at what's happened with covid yeah that's the best i mean if you look at what we're so bad at it america is so bad our response to covid and how we've handled it and allowed it to spread. We're the worst. Yeah. I mean, you know, I'm a big pro wrestling fan and that's the thing that's been making me angry because it's just as much as I miss comedy.

I miss I used to go to my wrestling shows with my friends and my buddies. the Japanese wrestling that I love and seeing that they have full crowds all sitting there and mask just hanging out because they are Good at handling their fucking business. Yeah, like that's when it cuz when you're just sitting here you're like, oh, well, we're all Falling apart is just how it is. But then you start looking over at other countries. You know, well, no They figured some shit out. Well, this virus is so sneaky, man. Even Japan has had a resurgence recently. It's so weird, man. It's the weirdest fucking virus. It's just like New Zealand even had a resurgence.

New Zealand had over 100 days with zero cases, and then they just got a, I think it was four or something like that? Got it, and one family got it. One family. They're trying to figure out how that happened. So they shut down the city where they're at, sort of, like stage three or something. One family got it. One family. They're trying to figure out how that happened. So they shut down the city where they're at, sort of. Like they, stage three or something. One family. Yeah, so one family of four has it.

Sneaky fucks. What have they been up to? Maybe they got some bad tests, but probably not. Yeah. They're trying to trace how it happened. It's such a weird, weird, weird disease, man. I know so many people that have gotten it now. I think I know about nine people. And so many people that have gotten it now i think i know about nine

people and so many of them have different symptoms i know people that got it and they just got a mild headache and they felt like shit for a day and then they were fine and i know other people that like michael yo who's on death's door you know but his when people ask me about that there's extenuating circumstances like if you listen to Michael's story, he was worn the fuck out flew all the way to New York did shows did morning radio Did TV flew all the way back and then got in a car with his family drove to Vegas hung out with his wife's mom's family Hung out there for a while and then drove all the way back home same day and then had auditions the next day and then how Additions the day after that and then boom it hit him. His immune system was compromised. Yes.

He was wrecked. He was exhausted. And low vitamin D. Vitamin D seems to be one of the big factors, gigantic factor. There was a recent study that Dr. Rhonda Patrick sent me yesterday that I have to go over. But one of the things that she said was that in a series of studies they did where they showed people in the ICU for COVID, more than 80% of them had insufficient levels of vitamin D. And out of the people that were in intensive care, only 4% had sufficient levels of vitamin D. Got to take your vitamin D.

Do you take vitamin D? Yes, I do. Do you? How much do you take? I take vitamins. How much do you take? I don't know. Just whatever's in the bottle.

Oh, one of those things. Yeah. Multi-vitamins? No, it's a full. Wait, yeah, the D is in the multi, yeah. So the full C, then the multi, B, something called arginine that I don't know. It's an amino acid. Yeah. I do know that, but I don't know what that means.

It helps build muscle. Okay. I'm glad I'm taking it. Yeah. Branched chain amino acid's a really good post-workout. Yeah. Take it after. Yeah, I'm supposed to take it after really good post-workout. Take it after. Yeah, I'm supposed to take it after my workout, but before my, yes.

What kind of protein drink are you drinking in that thing? This is just like some bullshit. This is like Metrex, just regular. Actually, I need to figure out a better powder because I just got on it and just got the basic, oh, this tastes chocolatey. I'm pretty sure it's not great, but I'm sure you can tell me some good ones. Yeah. I find hemp to be the best protein powder, the most easily digestible.

I have zero problems with it digestion-wise. Like, if I drink whey an hour later, I got to stay the fuck away from people. Otherwise, I'm going to be farting. I don't tend to have a problem with whey, but I always have less of a problem with hemp that's that's always yeah yeah it's the most digestible for me i mean it's just easy it's also something i can eat literally i can drink it rather literally an hour before a workout i have zero problems just take it with a little bit of coconut water mix it up you know it's just simple easy you know um i use the on it kind but there's a lot of good hemp powders out there and it's uh it's a very uh absorbable you know it's very bioavailable

form of protein in terms of plant protein the two best um i find plant proteins or pea proteins really good and hemp protein i think hemp protein is a little better, at least in my experience. Okay, I'm looking to some hemp protein. But Metrex is delicious. It is delicious. It's like you're getting yourself a little shake. Yeah, that's what I do in the morning when I have my favorite breakfast. I get a rice cake that has a little bit of almond butter and a little bit of apple butter.

And then I have a shake and I go, ooh, I'm having shake and cake for breakfast. It's just mental games. Yeah. When you first started losing weight, how much did you weigh? 360. Wow. Wow. So you lost well over 100 pounds.

Yeah. Let's see. Right now I'd be 130, 135. Wow. That's amazing. What's the ultimate goal? I'd like to be around 200 and just keep staying in the lane and just keep putting on muscle a bit. But, yeah, I'd like to lose, like, another 15 pounds.

Nice. Yeah, you could do that. Yeah. Just focus. Yeah, I mean, you're at the home stretch. Yeah, and that's been the fucking, yeah, that's what sucks. Because then I'm like, why can't I have a cookie? And then I have one, and then I realize why I can't have a cookie because then i eat the whole fucking box of cookies so yeah i can't fuck with pizza no if i have one slice of pizza i just the glutton in me

goes off and i just want to eat that whole thing that abstain do you miss traveling i do yeah actually i do i was talking with that with my wife a couple days ago because we were watching some 90 Day Fiance. What is that? You've never seen it? No. Oh, it's just a show. Actually, it's a whole complex of shows where people from other countries meet people in America and they have to get married within 90 days once they move to America. But then also we've been watching The Other Way on the recommendation of Eric Griffin where Americans move to other countries

for their significant others. And that's been insane and beautiful. It's been beautiful to watch together. Why is that? It makes our relationship look so much stronger. I go, baby, we never said we should start over. I never lied to you about a gambling problem that I had. It just makes us look a lot better when we're watching those relationships.

But they're at the airport a lot, and I would go, oh, that's PDX. Oh, that's da-da-da. She's just like, oh, why are you getting so excited about seeing these airports? I think I just fucking miss the the whole process i just miss knowing oh i'm going to a new city new people are going to see me i might meet some new friends like you know i miss that have you been writing i've been writing a bit yeah yeah um go ahead what's i'm sorry what's your process uh my process is usually from like if we're talking about from start um i kind of work on this little grid where i just break it down into um love hate and fear and then i just kind of get stoned or just sometimes not stoned at all and i'll just

play some instrumental music and i'll just write about what i'm scared about what i'm just play some instrumental music and I'll just write about what I'm scared about what I'm pissed about what I'm in love with and then I didn't take those topics and try to figure out jokes about what's going on in my life that's interesting have you always done it that way yeah love hate fear what what uh where'd you get the inspiration to do it that way I think I just got it from a writing workbook from when i was in like an english class in high school really yeah it was just about how you would brainstorm writing a um paper it's a great idea yeah i mean it helps me get the basics down so instead of like oh i'm writing this joke about this it's like okay i'm writing about my wife because i love my wife or i'm

writing about my son or i'm scared about covid or i'm scared about this or you know the more specific i can get about what exactly i'm scared of or i'm scared i'm afraid of uh you know or what i'm in love with and just the more specific i can get the better the jokes are and so it's a lot of work that way and then sometimes at two in the morning i'll just be stoned and something will pop in and I gotta go chase down a notebook yeah the stoned ideas that just pop out of nowhere are the weirdest ones like what that's not even my idea that's the universe giving it to you but I usually find that they it doesn't give it to me if I haven't put in that earlier work right all right yeah it'll give me a gift for putting in the shitty work of trying to figure out this how the fuck am I gonna break this down and then in the middle of the night some

completely joke some other other left field joke will just pop in it'll be fully formed set up punchline everything and I'm just like I was just always I'm just like thank you yeah it is crazy like that right it is crazy that that, right? It is crazy. That put in the work part is what, you ever read Steven Pressfield's The War of Art? It's a great book, a real small book too. I used to, I buy stacks of them in the old studio and I'd just hand them out to guests,

like especially comics. I'm like, trust me, just read this. Because one of the things it's about is about establishing the laws of your work, like the way you work. You're a professional. And you show up every day as a professional. And you sit in front of that computer or that notebook. And you call upon the muse.

And whether or not the muse is real, if you do the work, it acts as if it's real. Yeah. I agree. Yeah. I believe with that all the time yeah um i've been talking to myself lately just like then that's what's been keeping me with my health and my writing and my meditating and whatever is just like figuring out who i am and what works for me and then being like you follow those fucking rules. Don't break your rules. Whenever you break your rules, shit doesn't go right. Even though it might look cool, it might look amazing. It might be like, oh, well, this time if I break my rule, it's fucking, it looks like it's going to be dope and I'll get a bunch of money. Never works out.

So just don't break your fucking rules. And I'm just, it's still, it's hard, but I've been working on that. It's just like, oh, I got to eat well. I got to work out. I trust my intuition. I'm the leader. I'm the fucking boss. I don't let other people lead me.

I lead, even if I don't know where I'm fucking going. I lead, and I just follow those rules. Have you had that issue with like representation, like agents or managers trying to tell you what to do or guide you into a way that you didn't think was you? Oh no, no, not for me.

I, I've been truly blessed in that. Truly. But I think I have like one of the best managers in, in the fucking world. Like she, she's amazing. She's married to the game.

She's my name's Melanie. But true at Brian posain's wife and she's been my manager since before i moved out of la like she paid my fucking rent when i couldn't afford to pay my rent like she's looked out for me every step of the way that's awesome she's there's been there's been fucking like this show is going to series. They are making an offer on you. This will give you a bunch of money, but it's not the right project. Let's fucking pass. Wow.

You know? And that was, like, in the past. And, I mean, that happened a couple of weeks into COVID. We were both scared shitless. I know she was scared shitless about that 10%. A guaranteed season. And she was like no this isn't she's like this was she's like you've already done parts like this three or four times you you you can do this this will be there for you we're shooting for bigger things for you

and just like her belief in me and and drive for me have always been there like i never ever feel like she's ever sold me short so that she can get a check ever that's huge that's huge it's rare yeah i do i do know that i have many friends that have really bad managers that give them terrible advice to take projects that are just short-term financial gain for the sacrifice of long-term career options oh my manager if she sees the word exclusive in any contract she's just like we ain't fucking with them you are not exclusive to anybody you are dating around that's great that's that's great attitude man that's what's interesting about today's climate it's like you don't get a lot of real managers anymore.

You almost have comics who have two agents. You have your agent agent and then you have your manager who's kind of acting as an agent instead of acting as a manager because they're all desperado. Or maybe they don't really

have faith in you so they just want that money. They don't really think that you're going to be that person who has a long career or that you could keep accelerating and they don't believe in the development yes yeah yeah i feel like yeah my manager's always been there she's always kind of seen me two years ahead of where i've been at like i'm i have that story about recently but i remember when i first was in portland and there's

this commercial that reached out to me and they wanted me to play a roach in a fucking bug spray commercial and I was broke as fuck and she was just like no she's like because we don't know what you're going to be in the next couple years and that commercial could be around forever smart woman and so if you need the money that

bad I'd rather just give you the money wow good for her man yeah she's dope and I have many friends who like they just are tremendous tremendous comedians tremendous joke writers one friend who comes to mind immediately and I've always told him I was like you need you need to dump your manager and get a better manager because you're doing you're doing your part and I don't see why you're not getting more money you're not getting more chances you're not advancing at things they're not putting you on these

talking head shows like you're doing your part and I don't you're fucking like you know he opened for me once I was like dude you're fucking crushing me and I'm the one getting the bigger check like what the fuck is that like get your get your business in order and I've always um i think from having a kid i've always been very much into the art and very much into the business yeah it's just it's hard for people to find someone like your manager that that is dedicated i got real lucky i found mine when i was an open micer i've been with the same manager since 1991 or some shit something crazy like that yeah that's insane yeah i was like three years in the comedy when i met him and i've been with him and then he's basically not not retired but steps

back and then my manager chandra she took over 10 plus years ago or more might be more than 10 years ago now and uh they're just the best in terms of like seeing the big picture and the same thing you're saying about your manager just looking at the business in terms of like where do you what do you really want to do like what's going to make you happy like there's things you can do for money but what's what are you here for yeah like what do you want you want you want to like walk away from everything you do going that was great i enjoyed that that's what i wanted to do like a special thank you good night you want to go we did it we nailed it high fives all around that's how you want to be able to achieve those moments and get those feelings and i think i know

this is unrelatable to some people that are listening to this but i think that way with everything and maybe you don't have a manager for whatever your goal is in life but you kind of have to think about it as your own manager you got to think like what do i really want to do and are the steps that i'm taking are the things that i'm doing right now are they moving me closer to that and if not what the fuck do I have to do different than what I'm doing yeah I mean to me that's I have that manager I also have my vision board I have my shit that I do on my own I am oh yes Joe what's at the top of the vision board my show get my own fucking show about my son being a single dad of a son with autism making it a fucking

dope ass comedy what's what netflix should do that that seems like a perfect thing you would think that seems like a really good idea for a show i think so we found a spot we're working on it okay all right you gotta keep mum we'll talk later is that just more um i want to be a lead in some movies. I want to do more. I always see myself as like this Rick Moranis, Billy Crystal type of unconventional, charming, leading man. Maybe you need a buddy.

I could use a buddy. Yeah, you need like, you know, Christopher, like Chris Farley needed David Spade. Like the two of them together, they played off of each other. You need a buddy. I do need a buddy. Who would your buddy be? I got to think about that. Think about that.

That would be fun. Think about that. Maybe Bobby Lee. Bobby Lee. He seems crazy for a buddy. He's crazy as fuck. He might be a problem. If he gets too successful, he might sabotage, go back on pills.

Bobby Lee's so wild. He is. He's so wild he is he's so wild he truly is I knew Bobby Lee in the early days when he'd like bring a knife to work

I just all sweaty and shit we were at an airport one time and he just goes oh the the courtesy phone's calling for you

and I was like no I don't I've been here too Bobby I didn't hear anything he's like no no no it didn't he's like spent the whole time trying to convince me and he halfway does and then I just go sit down, Bobby. I didn't hear anything. He's like, no, no, no. It didn't. He spends the whole time trying to convince me.

And he halfway does. And then I just go sit down somewhere else. And I go, oh, he's a fucking high school bully. He's just like to fucking play around. Not like beat you up, but like prankster. Like he just fucks with you all the time. No, I love Bobby. I'm not saying like he's trying to beat me I'm saying

he's just a prankster who fucks with you all the time and it's like money no money nothing like he just is that's who he is and I love it he's a guy who needs a god damn special I've been yelling at him forever now he has

an excuse there's no comedy you know now he's got an excuse but Bobby Lee is absolutely the best stand up comic that does not have a special

I mean he is as legit a headliner as has ever lived when that guy is crushing when he's in the the OR crushing you're like the fact that he doesn't have a special

is criminal criminal yeah Bobby the fuck I mean he's just unique he's just him crushing you like the fact that he doesn't have a special is criminal criminal yeah bobby's the fuck i mean he's just unique he's just him and that that's to me is the definition of someone you want to give a special to yeah i've known that dude forever known him for a long time back when he was crazy but it's nice to see that he's gotten his shit together he's calmer and more stable doesn't rub his balls on you as much not as much but not nearly as much yeah i got a picture of him standing in the middle of the hallway with

his pants down and his dick tucked in between his legs it's like the like that's bobby lee we've all seen that. You said you meditate? Yeah. Like what do you do? You know, nothing like, you know, nothing special.

Just sit around doing 10 minute little meditation. And when I get up in the morning, um, sometimes they're guided. Some, a lot of times they're not. Uh, but I talked to, I don't know,

you know, who Donnick Carey is. He's a writer. He's a tremendous writer, wrote for the Simpsons, wrote for Letterman. And, he came on my podcast and he just told me about this thing that he was doing, this acronym that he was doing every day, Mr. All. He would just meditate, read, art, write, exercise every day.

That was like part of his rules. And so I was like, oh, I'm going to try to adapt that into my rules just as a way to keep that going. So that's part of what i do meditate read art write exercise every day that's awesome yeah i mean that's a beautiful thing if you could structure your life like that and make sure you follow those principles you'll get you'll just get more out of your brain yeah and then you're surprised about like for all the times you're bored and you're like oh there's too many hours in a day you're like if you gotta go through all those fucking things you'll be like fuck half the day is gone yeah i don't understand people that say there's too many hours in a day you're like if you gotta go through all those fucking things you'll be like fuck half the day is gone yeah i don't understand people that say there's too many hours in a day like

what are you doing like i want a hundred lives i want to live a hundred separate lives so i could just do different i would i i literally don't do things because i'm scared i'll get too into them and then i will have less time for all the other shit that i'm already obsessed with i'm the same way i i mull over the decision for an extended period of time because i know once i make the decision i'm all in and that was like you know i started playing video games on twitch and doing these little comedy nights on twitch where i show old videos and make fun of people because that's part of things that i missed was that not just watching comedy i always i miss it being in the back of the room making fun of this punch line or this tag and then be like oh that's good you know i miss that so i've been doing that on twitch and playing

games with people and but it took me a long time to decide to do it because i was like oh once i do it i'm anything i'm stand up acting whatever if i choose to do it i go full force yeah you get into it right yeah and then it becomes a part of your daily routine and then you're trying to get better at it yeah podcasting yeah man you the twitch thing thing seems like you could eat up a lot of your day just fucking around on twitch you can do you have a good chair that supports your back i got a solid chair i could use a better chair i I could definitely use a better chair. What about the chair you're in right now? Do you like that one?

It's pretty nice. It's very good. Yeah, it's solid. I like these. Good for the back. Yeah. Ergonomic. You need something ergonomic.

Yeah. You don't want to develop back problems because of COVID. You know? No. Like all the people that are just sitting down all the time. Yeah. Well, that's why, again, the two treads of days just make sure keeping myself upright moving so when you do this meditating thing you do it every day 10 minutes

you start your day this way do you go to a place like quiet place in your house where no one's around you usually do it right there in bed make up the bed get everything together sit there meditate for 10 minutes usually try to do it before my son wakes up before the neighbors wake up because their family doesn't seem to be as structurally strong as ours oh you got wacky neighbors and they like yelling at each other oh that's a bummer all day and then the wife when you know they had a fight because then in the morning the wife will come out in the morning going i love you i love you i love you he's like he's not saying it back lady

oh no yeah they're not doing well there's a trap that some people get in that fight break up make up trap because it makes everything so exciting that's the problem high school yeah yeah that's why i like you know know, I got married on Friday. Super chill. Super ass chill. The wedding was so chill that I was like, this is going to be a great marriage. We just got dressed. I got my son dressed and went off with my friend.

She got dressed with her friend. We met together at the place. The guy just went over his dumb spiel. And then we talked to each other, went home, took some pictures. We ordered in from one of our favorite restaurants. We watched 90 Day Fiance and then we fell asleep and had sex the next morning because we knew we were going to be there. Did you get married during COVID? Yeah.

Oh, wow. No, this last Friday. Oh, well, congratulations, man. Thank you. Thank you so much. That's why you're so excited about it. Let me talk to you in a couple of years. Well, let me show you a picture of her. I've seen a picture of much. That's why you're so excited about it. Let me talk to you in a couple years.

Well, let me show you a picture of her. I've seen a picture of her. She's beautiful. Congratulations. It's one of the things about being talented. Yeah. Yeah. You get boxed above your weight class.

Oh, way. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I was like, oh, if I didn't do comedy, I'd never even see you that's cool though that's a bright spot you'll always look back on the time you got married and go damn

we got married during one of the weirdest times in the history of the United States yeah man leaning into what's solid when shit's all falling apart that was actually like

we got engaged before it of course but I was like oh I'm pretty sure I was a little gun shy because I got married when I was in my 20s.

And obviously that didn't work out too well. And I had my son. And I remember leaving my home there. And I was like, this will never happen again. And it still will never happen again. But I was still a little gun shy. Because I was like, oh, we were in the good times. We'd go to Nice.

We'd go to fucking wherever. And sure, we'd hang out at home. Or she'd go on set with me it's an indie movie in oklahoma and we still have fun and so i knew she was a good woman i knew that i could trust her but especially when the shit goes down and everything's going bad and she's out there like okay well what do we do what we need to pull back on what can we you know purchase less of and and then i thought i might have to go out of the country for this role for a few months and i was like oh shit i'll leave my son with her and i had no worry and i was like

even you know when he was with his mom i would be worried you know but with her i know she's got him i know she loves him i know she's got his best interest at heart and i was that really was when it clicked in and i was like oh this is my wife like this is my person that's beautiful i love stories like that thank you that's amazing congratulations yeah she's special she's a special person i think because she's a little small town canadian lady so she doesn't know how hot she is you know yeah that could be a problem here yeah yeah oh she's figured it out she's figured it out a lot of guys you know try to hit on her every fucking day but i'm not worried good for you good for you i wonder when this is gonna end the the lockdown when are we gonna get back to normal are you

gonna be one of the first in line for a vaccine? Are you going to wait it out? I got to wait in the middle. I got to be somewhere in the middle. As a parent of a child with autism, vaccines scare me in some ways, but it's still obviously. Do you think that vaccines cause autism? I don't believe they cause autism. I believe they can accelerate certain things in people who maybe are predisposed to having it. And I can only just tell you my I will tell you a personal story and people can choose to like it or not.

But I just remember the day that we got my son his first vaccine vaccinations and he had been developing normally and just been chill and been talking and doing all the things pretty normally. developing normally and just been chill and been talking and doing all the things pretty normally and then we got him the vaccine and me and my ex-wife and we just remember he just kind of like was out of it and we even because me and my ex-wife were big potheads we were both like oh he's look how stoned he looks look how fucking he looks so stoned and he's out of it but he fucking never came back and so that was a moment where i was like you know i was like i don't know if it caused it or that but i've always like this is that's the story i can tell you wow it's not the first time i've heard that you know i have uh a friend my friend johnny i'm in a very similar situation i don't't, yeah, I don't know.

I know how adamant the people that make vaccines are that vaccines don't cause autism, and I know it's a fiercely debated issue. And in fact, Dr. Peter Hotez, who is an expert in vaccines, who actually has an autistic daughter, is adamant about the fact that there's apparently different environmental factors that contribute to autism and they think it all of it takes place during the womb but i don't know there's yeah i'm not i can never be like well vaccine gave my son autism i would

never say that but i will just tell you that story yeah the the thing is if that story if that was the case how much do you think would ever get out that all these people who have this similar story all have a case against the pharmaceutical companies i mean mean, just wrap your mind around the legal troubles. And I'm not saying that vaccines cause autism, but what I am saying is if they did, there would most certainly be an effort to conceal that. Yeah, absolutely. Most certainly.

Absolutely. That would be a crazy lawsuit because, I mean, how many children are autistic in this country? Do you know? I don't know, but I know it's a lot. It's a lot. And the question has always been, are there more now because fathers are older, mothers are older, environmental factors, or that we're diagnosing it now. We didn't diagnose it

before we didn't understand it before I mean the first I even heard of autism was Rain Man mm-hmm remember the Dustin Hoffman movie that was the first time I ever heard about I didn't even know what it was I never met anybody who had autism so I saw that I was like huh what's going on there yeah same same to me I never thought about it never had any second thought about it at all and then till my son was diagnosed and then had to become much more aware about it and it's still a thing that um i get hit with because i'll i'm just a dummy because i'll be like okay my son's got his high school he's doing well and he's going to his classes and then they have to

actually sit there and they go like okay you know he's getting a certificate but you know this isn't a real he's not a real high school graduate and i'm like oh oh what you know i don't know he's a high school graduate i want my son to go to college and then i have to sit back and go like oh wait fuck i have a we have a different road we have a. And actually, this lockdown and everything has really been helpful in going through that and just being like, well, everything's fucking weird and different. Because I'd always been like, well, no matter what, my son wants to go to UCLA, so I'll pay him to go to UCLA,

even if it's just life classes or whatever. But now I've been thinking about more like, okay, let's just figure out a way for him to be more independent on his own physically financially whatever he can do he might not go to college he might go to college but you know again if I make my show I'm like I'm like well he's got to be a consultant on this show he's got to do this he's gonna do that I just want him to have a good life, basically. Of course. Is there anything that helps him? Like, does anything alleviate some of his symptoms?

I mean, just the constant therapies that he's been in. Like, he's been at, he's diagnosed when he was two. He's 17 now. So he's been in school since he was two. so he's been in school since he was two just doing different you know from pre-kindergarten therapies through voice um voice therapy and i just think it's been that constant right now he's getting a lot of social skills therapy where we he was before everything got locked down he um was doing this thing called the miracle project which is awesome they just take kids from with different backgrounds and teach them social skills,

take them on different outings. And my son was doing a play, which unfortunately got canceled because of it. But they sent us a tape of the rehearsal. And it was dope because it was the day I found out I wasn't getting this role. And I was real upset. It was on my vision board of, like, I want to fucking get this role. And I didn't get it. And I was pissed off. I'm doing the same thing. I'm like, fuck Hollywood and I was real upset. It was on my vision board of like, I want to fucking get this role. And I didn't get it and I was pissed off. I'm doing the same thing.

Fuck Hollywood. They don't understand. They don't understand how good I am. And then I just watched my son and all these other autistic teenagers do their own production of a play. It's the silliest thing I've ever seen. My son is singing the SpongeBob theme song. Another kid is singing a Drake song. son is singing the Spongebob theme song another kid is singing a Drake

song and just seeing them go from being these awkward in their shell you know looking down looking at the floor and then the moment that they're actually interested in something you know my son hears this song play or they know it's their turn to

say their line them light up and fucking just nail their line and be fucking great at it and i was like man that's what art is that's what fucking that's what i love is i don't give a shit about money about it i mean it's nice to pay my bills but i like this feeling that i get from it and of watching my son get to do it and it just makes me feel good i'm sorry this is a rambly ass story no no no that's not rambly at all man you're expressing yourself that's not rambly at all yeah I mean sometimes you need to

be exposed to different things just to put it into perspective just how fortunate we are and how fortunate you know how easy we really do have it and how good we really have it and sometimes you know when you have ambitious goals and you have, you know, your eyes are on the prize, you've got a vision board and you're like, fuck, why isn't this happening for me? Sometimes you've got to see some struggle. You've got to see people that just aren't doing that well to realize like, oh, I'm all right.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I've been made very well aware that i'm fucking doing extremely well extremely that's one of the best things i think uh about covid initially i mean it just took too long it's been too fucked up now but initially i felt like one of the good aspects of having this thing where you're forced to stay home and everybody's worried about a disease is like you you realize like hey family friends loved ones this is what's important all this other bullshit is like when when the world is falling

apart the the love that you have for your family and your friends that's what's important yeah yeah it felt good like that for a couple of weeks and then then everybody felt like they started tearing at each other they Yeah, they got scared. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, God, social media is so fucking terrifying now. Just dive into this pit of animals

eating each other. It's like, whew, everyone's so angry. There's so much anger. And then also, it's like the worst timing ever, right? Trump and then the fucking elections are coming.

So there's all this chaos and Joe Biden can't talk and the fucking elections are coming so there's all this chaos and joe biden can't talk and the fucking you know november's around the corner it's like oh my god and then everything's still locked up and it's like oh my god and they're talking about dropping down the unemployment check to 400 bucks instead of 600 and then they want the states to pay 25%. The state's like, we don't have the fucking money. I'm like, oh, Jesus. Yeah. It's fucking nuts.

It's fucking nuts, but then it's overwhelming until you just go to the basics of it. That's something I always believed from when I was very young, and I think it's something as a young African-American man, pretty early, where you just go, nobody's got my fucking back. I got to take care of me. No one's got my fucking back. The government does not have yeah no one's got my fucking back the government does not have our back not at all it's not possible not we have one bit grossly overestimated their ability to actually like manage something like this yeah which is in

turn why like i've seen what we see in that social media of us eating each other and going at each other especially anyone of that is considered of any stature i mean i see it happen to you all the time right with people coming at you for one thing or another and i laugh about it because i'm just like it's just fucking joe the fuck who cares if he doesn't like video games who gives a fuck like i don't care the problem is they don't even listen to what I said. Yeah, yeah. They took a chunk of what I said and took it out of context. I love video games. That's the problem. Yeah, yeah.

I'm an old school Quake guy. Yeah, and I even talked about in that same clip, and we wound up putting the full version of it online because someone had taken like a 50-second chunk of it. But I even talked about there's people that do make a living at it, a lot of money. There are people that do it. Yeah. But I'm saying for a lot those people that do make a living out of it. A lot of money. There are people that do it. Yeah.

But I'm saying for a lot of people that waste, if you want to do something else, like if you're trying to do something with your life, you can find things that will waste all of your time. And that's one of them. Yeah. Well, I mean,

I like streaming and I like playing games, but it's also a reason why I do the comedy and I do other things is because I think at the very base of it there's there's no stability of trying to make your living off of someone else's product right you're playing someone else's game you're doing something it's not yours you know so at any moment that can be taken away from you and so that on that small level is what i i believe in what you were saying completely but i think the reason why people attack so much is because the people who we're told are like supposed to be our leaders are obviously not and then people are just looking for leaders so if you have a big platform they're just like oh you're a leader you're you know and that i had people do

that to me i was um when when the whole ge Floyd thing was happening and Breonna Taylor was happening. And then some one guy in particular just kept DMing me and being like, when are you going to talk about it? When are you going to talk about it? When are you going to make a post about it? And what he didn't know is I was going through my own personal shit. A friend of mine had committed suicide that very week in a home that I had lived in three years prior. And I was fucking dealing with that and dealing with my own life. And so I was like,

you know, who gives a fuck when I talk about anything like, and I have no obligation. I have no obligation. And so it pissed me off. But then I thought about it and I go, Oh, he's not fucking mad at me.

You give a shit about me. He's scared. Yeah. He's scared shitless. And he's looking for someone to lead him and he was hoping it would be me but there's also people look for an opportunity to get upset at you for not complying like that there's a narrative where you're supposed to be discussing whatever's in the news whatever's going on you there's a narrative that you are

you know you're a person who talks so you should be discussing these things yeah you're a public figure so you should you should lend your voice because they think you should this is the dumbest fucking thing ever because you're just like well how do you assume i think about black life i'm a black man i would like my life to matter so it makes why do i gotta go around talking about it for fucking all day you know it makes that's gumming up the works takes up too much fucking time i agree with that completely you should be able to talk about whatever you want one of my favorite follows on instagram is little duval oh yeah and little duval through all this craziness he's just maintaining being little duval and having fun that sounds like him always always always light-hearted having a good time, always laughing. His Instagram is like one of the most consistently happy thing.

And like that shows his character, like through all this, he's maintained his sense of humor and his perspective. Yeah, that's power. That's power. Why would you ever let someone take that away from you? We're here to have fun. We're here to have a good time. So no matter what the circumstances, I'm going to have fun we're here to have a good time so no matter what the circumstances i'm gonna have a fucking good time i learned that in my sets long ago when i when i was like well you guys might

not have a good time tonight but i will yeah sometimes you have to right you have to go internal i am really interested to see like how we recover from this i'm really interested to see because we're in such uncharted territory this is uh this is new waters and it could go good or it could go bad i mean every single republic every single empire that has existed before the united states has crumbled all of them they all crumble eventually my my fear is the ones that are strong why we are falling apart are dangerous they're dangerous societies that are strong, why we are falling apart, are dangerous. They're dangerous societies that are dictatorships, like China. If China somehow or another becomes the way they're controlling Hong Kong, controls the United States, we got real fucking problems on our hands. Now, I don't know if that's really possible, if this is just like some fear.

We see bits of it all the time right yeah in business you see the way that um what these so-called independent enterprises refuse to speak on certain things because there's just so much money involved you know when it gets to that point you are owned yes did you ever see that thing where the world health organization guy won't talk about taiwan won't even mention taiwan he's in an interview because China does not recognize Taiwan. They believe Taiwan is a part of China, and Taiwan thinks it's independent. So the woman interviewer was asking this guy who works for the World Health Organization, Taiwan has done a wonderful job of handling this.

And he's like, click, and he just disconnects. And then he comes back. Like you could see him reach over and disconnect it she goes we seem to have uh disconnected he goes but now we're back so what i was saying was that china well um china's done a wonderful job uh you know there's no no need to talk about that any further so let's keep going so he would not even say the word taiwan and like this is the world health organization like you won't you won't say the name of an actual country? Like, really?

That's bananas. Like, well, I can't trust you. No. You won't even say Taiwan? What the fuck else won't you say? I mean, there's been a few of those things, man. What do you see? And you go, God damn.

So many businesses have a vested interest in China and keeping relationships with China. And while COVID is happening and the economic downturn, they've been buying up shit left and right. Oh, yeah. I mean, because, again, as a big gamer, Tencent is big in the game industry as owners of just about everything. And that's one of the biggest companies in China. What do they make? Everything. Like what games?

I think they own Fortnite now. They own a bit of PUBG, I believe. They own percentages of just about every company. God damn. And China owns them? Yeah. Wow. I don't know how i feel about that like when trump was saying he's gonna ban tiktok i was like oh i want to see how this plays out yeah yeah that is actually i was like oh this that's that's positive

in a way it is it is it is, right? It is. It is. But then Instagram came along with Reels. Yeah. Like their TikTok ripoff. I don't know who's using that, though. Is anybody using Reels? I'm going to keep an eye on you.

I'm a little busy. I need to pay attention to that shit this week. Yeah, we've had a busy week. Do you TikTok? No, man. No, no, no. I figure you shouldn't be a comedian over 30 on TikTok. That seems to not go well. a busy week. Do you TikTok? No, man. No, no, no. You know, I figure you shouldn't

be a comedian over 30 on TikTok. That seems to not go well. It seems like it doesn't go well. Mm-mm. Someone just got a special off doing it

basically, though. Who? That Sarah Cooper just got a Netflix special. What? Oh, is that? You sent me that. Yeah.

That's the lady who lip syncs. I wonder who that is. She lip syncs Donald Trump's speeches. Oh, okay. That's going to go good. I'm excited me that. That's the lady who lip syncs. I wonder who that is. She lip syncs Donald Trump's speeches. Oh, okay. That's going to go good. I'm excited for that.

There's many things that are viral that I understand. That is not one of them. I have watched that. I was like, she's just saying what he's saying, but she's doing it. There's nothing else to it. But she's a stand-up? I don't know no what does she do she just do that yeah she just hosted jimmy kimmel like two nights ago

what i saw that that's why i was like because i looked her up and i go oh i don't know who that is maybe she's not good but then i saw the jimmy kimmel thing so then i go oh maybe this whole time she's been grinding and i just did not know. I thought as far as I know. What does she do? Is she a writer or something? Yeah, she's a writer. Oh, so a comedy writer? Google says she's an American author and comedian based in New York City.

First book, A Hundred Tricks to Appear, Smart and Meetings, was published in 2016. She's a writer. Okay. Maybe. Who knows? I mean, listen, she might have a fucking Netflix special that turns out amazing. Either way, she gets a good check. I'm happy for her.

Somebody told me Seth Meyers' Netflix special was very good. And he's, I don't think he's really a stand-up, right? That's not his background. He was an SNL guy, and then he hosted that late night show. But I talked to people that said his special was very good. I haven't seen it. That's not his background. He was an SNL guy, and then he hosted that late night show. But I talked to people that said his special was very good. I haven't seen it. Me neither.

So there you go. I just want to see Sam Jay's. That's the only one I want. I haven't watched it, but I want to. Which, who's? Sam Jay. Do you know her? I do. Yes.

Yeah, she's a writer for SNL. I know who she is. Powerful black butch lesbian. Yes, that's right. That's right. That's right. Yeah. Great joke writer. Yeah, I've met her at the store, I believe. Yeah. Yeah, yeah's a writer for SNL. I know who she is. Powerful black butch lesbian. Yes, that's right. That's right. Great joke writer. I've met her at the store, I believe. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Oh, there she is. Yeah, looks a lot like me. Looks like my sister. Yeah, the Netflix. Actually looks like my tougher brother. The Netflix thing is so interesting because they've basically taken over the stand-up comedy special now yeah i mean it used to be comedy central it's really the comedy central the like

getting people to watch the streaming online comedy central specials it's just not the same yeah i know and then they geo block that shit so oh? Yeah. Oh, no. So if you're in the UK, you can't watch it? Mm-mm. Oh, no. I don't know why that's a smart decision. That's a terrible decision. Who made that one? Someone higher than the people I talk to, I guess.

So your special that you did for Comedy Central, they geo-blocked that? Yeah, they geo-blocked that. And then they put it out. So now, actually, it's out on YouTube for free right now for 30 days. So I was stoked. I was like, oh, people in Canada and the U.K. can finally see it. And then I was getting messages being like, no, we can't. Oh, wow.

Yeah. That's stupid. It's not the best decision. Just not to confuse what we were just talking about, she does not have a stand-up special, according to the press release. It's a comedy special that will be full of vignettes dealing with issues of politics, race, gender, class, and other subjects, short interview sketches,

and more shenanigans. Oh, so it's a writer. She wrote something. A sketch show event. Yeah, but it was weird to me that things were going viral because she was just lip-s syncing things the president had said. So it would be like the president's voice and it'd be her lip syncing it. And everybody would be like, this is amazing.

And I'd be like, she's just saying the words with her lips while he talks. Like, I'm missing something. Well, you know, we are around comedy a lot. That's what I always have to remember is that my palate is, you know, more refined. I think it's also like there's a gene for certain things. You know, like I don't have that Grateful Dead gene. People love the Grateful Dead. They love it.

They love it. I listen and I go, okay. I don't want to be mad. I just, you and i are different it's okay it's okay yeah no need to be angry yeah i had no love i didn't know i don't you get it no i couldn't tell you a song trucking got me that's a good one got the chips well you said you didn't like them but you really got into it i try to sell it i don't want to tell you and touch of gray they had some cool ass nike shoes they put out recently i want it yeah but they oh yeah

then they went up to like 1200 real quick yeah so i was like that's that's out of my covid price range for sure yeah it's a lot of white people that do acid. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Rich White Yuppie's one of those shoes for sure. For sure. What do they look like?

Oh, Jesus. You know I want those. Oh, those are pretty trippy. The green ones? Come on. They do look pretty trippy. Mm-hmm. Really weird.

Put those on this comedy store stage. Come on. Mm-hmm. What's up with the bear i think that's their logo a bear yeah i've looked into it one time because i didn't know either he's named after the they're like engineer who was one of the guys that developed lsd i think something like that what yeah i'll pull up his name again just a second to show you one of the guys but albert hoffman synthesized lsd right but up here so he's like a second to show you. One of the guys, but Albert Hoffman synthesized LSD.

Right, but I'll care. So he's like a guy who worked with Hoffman? When I looked it up, he said it hit somewhere in the range of like four million hits of acid he was responsible for. Something insane. Wow. I wonder how many ideas can directly be traced to that guy's work. A lot of ideas will come to you through acid. I've never done acid.

Want to do it now? Mm-mm. Okay. You should try microdosing it. I'd be up to it. It's interesting. I like mushrooms. Owsley Stanley.

He is a clandestine chemist, an audio engineering clandestine chemist. He was a key figure in the San Francisco Bay Area hippie movement during the 1960s and played a pivotal role in the decade's counterculture. So he supplied the acid. Probably worked for the CIA, this motherfucker. Five million doses. Oh! Stanley was the first known private individual to manufacture mass quantities of LSD by his own account between 65 and 67.

Only in two years, he produced no less than 500 grams of LSD, accounting to a little more than 5 million doses. And his professional name was Bear. Oh, interesting. So that's why. So they're just like tied to LSD, the dead. That's why you got to list that. And he's the engineer that engineered the music. So that's why they say you have to be on that shit to understand the sound.

Yeah, that's what they say. I mean, everyone I know who does acid loves the dead when they're on acid. He developed the whole, it's called the wall of sound, sound system. He developed one of the largest. I thought that was Phil Spector. That's a different thing. Oh, he has called the Wall of Sound sound system. He developed one of the largest mobile public. I thought that was Phil Spector. That's a different thing. Oh, he has his own Wall of Sound. Yeah.

The Phil Spector case is one of the creepiest Hollywood cases ever. Oh. I remember when he got arrested, and then I didn't really know who he was, and I did a deep dive into who he was after he got arrested for murder and apparently just that was his thing like pulling guns on people but uh when you see him in the trial with all his crazy wigs on you realize like this crazy motherfucker was involved with some of the biggest bands some of the best music and he was a psychopath like the entire time yeah but i think um especially back then even now our type of businesses can

kind of hide those people right they don't i've always hung out with as long as i've done comedy like oh that guy's a drug dealer this guy does but not that guy's jesus just to clarify too his wall of sound is a production formula to make records whereas the engineers was an actual like wall of sound of physical sound amplifiers speakers that was touring around the country to Oh make noise to blast in your face oh okay so he had called the same thing okay so he had developed something for touring that they called the walls okay yeah I don't know jack shit about music. Do you play any instruments?

No, never. Played a piano when I was very young, but no. Yeah, that's another one of those things where I feel like if I got into that, I mean, start playing guitar or something like that, like how long, that seems like a long road. Yeah, you got to choose. It has to be your passion. Whenever I picked up an instrument, it always felt real foreign.

It never felt at home at all. Yeah, but it seems like a dope thing to learn. Yeah. Like, I wish I could shred. I just wish I could play something on a piano. It seems like, you know, people just fall in love if you could play the piano. Right, you'd be sophisticated. Mm-hmm.

You just sit down someplace and you just start playing the piano? Right. You walk into a hotel and there's a hotel lobby. There's a nice bar there with a piano. You're like, let me sit down and play you a melody. Yeah. And everybody starts gathering around you. Yeah.

They think you're cool. Mm-hmm. That's a thing. But that's like that scene in Animal House where the dude's playing the guitar at a party. And remember that scene? Sort of, yeah. Do you like that scene in Animal House where the dude's playing the guitar at a party. Remember that scene? Sort of, yeah. Do you remember that scene?

It's a little... You could tell I was blanking. I know what you're talking about because it's an old joke, but I'm not a big Animal House guy. Yeah, he steals a guitar from him, smashes him over the head with it. No, he didn't smash him over the head with it. He broke the guitar. He breaks the guitar, yeah. No, he didn't smash him over the head with it. He broke the guitar.

Yeah. This scene. Can we get a little volume? John Belushi's listening to this guy playing this horrible folk music. I can't do it for you. Yeah, I know. YouTube will have an issue. Google those words, you'll find it.

Bam. Back in the day, when this is what everybody wanted to do. Sorry. Did you ever see Animal House? Yeah. Probably when I was young. Don't remember what to call it.

It's a classic. That's what... It seems very slow now, what to call it. It's a classic. That's what... It seems very slow now, though. It is. That's the problem. There's a lot of those movies that just don't hold up. I tried to watch Porky's the other day. Yeah.

I was like, this is a rape movie. I saw two things get announced yesterday for the projects. Maybe they won't get made. But Three Men and a Baby remake. And then a potential Fresh Prince reboot but a drama not a comedy what yeah what why can't they just come up with new ideas i agree with that listen how about a show where there's a comedian who has an autistic kid sounds great does it come out soon yeah it should be like a netflix thing or maybe Amazon Prime. They do a good job.

You ever seen The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel? I have not. It's very good. Especially the first two seasons. It kind of soured for me the third season, but it's a pretty good representation of stand-up. I mean, not perfect, but pretty good. Pretty good. Like, close enough where you go, huh.

That's just funny hearing that you watch that show, because I don't think anybody would think that you would watch that show why is that because it's just funny like joe rogan just going like you know what i like marvelous mrs i like a lot of girly shit i do well then you gotta get on that 90 day fiance i don't know if i can go that far think about it I like Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt yeah that's my shit that's the optimistic and charming come on that's a funny

fucking show though right that's a good show they got like 8 seasons yeah that was a good one and so bleak that's the type of shit I like when you can take bleak things and still be so funny the bleakest I mean someone who got kidnapped and forced into a sex cult in a fucking bunker And then 15 years later she gets out with a super positive attitude and is facing all the modern world's issues. Yeah, fucking great

She's such an amazing actor. Yeah. Well, it's a Tina Fey show to that too that lady she figures shit out she sure does so um this vision board this ultimate vision board the ultimate thing is a show and movies and stuff like that is there anything that you have made manifest that's actually happened because of this vision board yeah yeah my house was on was one of my first major vision board things I put that when I didn't have a house living in my apartment and what it does for me is just kind of it focuses me it gives me a direction instead of just being this guy who doesn't have his hands on the rudder or the or whatever the fucking thing that steers the boat and so like I was like oh I want to get this house and so in order to get the house I had to stop just like not paying attention to my money. I had to stop just buying random sneakers every week. I had to start being like, OK, I need to build my credit. I had to pay these old bills from these things so that i could get to that ultimate vision

of getting the house and then we end up i have had my house for two years now i fucking love it i put that i wanted to be on reno 911 in there and i taped that i don't know if i got cut out or not because it's you know six minute quibby thing but um a lot of things i put on my vision board end up happening that's interesting you say that you had to go and, like, redo things that you fucked up. Like, what made you, what brought you to that decision? Was just that if I wanted to move in a lot of ways in my life, the same with my, like, dealing with my ex-wife and things like that. I had to go to therapy. I had to start.

I wasn't trusting anyone i was like anyone who wants to hang out with me just because i have a little bit of money or because i've been on a couple of shows or doing that and which is so ridiculous like no most people don't even fucking know me you know so but that some people did and then sometimes that would happen people would be hanging out with me just because they thought I could introduce them to a fun party or someone else cooler than me. And I had to stop looking for that and being so worried about that. And I had to go undo just a mindset. I think this rapper, I also really like Waka Flocka Flame.

Many people talk about this. I just changed my mindset from a survival mindset to a thrive mindset of like, oh, I am OK. I am okay. I am fine. So I can go ahead and just take care of this business. I'm going to get more work. I'm going to get more jobs because I've proven myself. It's not a fluke.

You know, it's not a one. It's not a mistake that they made in hiring me. They, you know, I'm, I'm going to be here. What made you like,

what, where, where did you come up with this idea to sort of correct your mindset was it just like realizing personally that the way you were looking at things was wrong or did you read something or it was just mostly that things in my life were getting better but i wasn't getting happier i had more money i had anything I could buy video game wise, all that stuff. I was having a bunch of sex, but I wasn't happier. I was still lonely. I was still like not doing all the things I wanted to do.

I was chasing things just for money, you know? And so I had to just kind of take a step back and go like, okay, like don't just chase every single thing you see. Figure out what you really go back to like when you started stand up and like, what do you want? And all I wanted when I started stand up was to be able to pay my bills and do the things I want to do. And that hasn't changed. Was this a gradual process? Yeah, for sure. For sure. Like a couple of years.

So you just realized, was it like you were sitting at home? This was not from reading anything? It was just from you recognizing that something was wrong? It was me recognizing something was wrong in me and me watching the people around me. Me watching people with more success than me. Me watching, just seeing that like, oh, okay, I feel this way and I have this little bit of money, but maybe if I get more money, I won't. But then meeting people with millions of dollars and being like, oh, holy shit.

Like some people still don't have their shit together, no matter how much money they have. And some people know exactly who they are and they know what they want. They are happy within themselves and i want it to be that that's it's very interesting that you recognize it and made the adjustment you know that's a sign of a strong mind you you were you were able to recognize that the current patterns that you were operating under weren't, weren't, they weren't fulfilling your needs. So you had to like assess, but then also move forward and make a change. That's very difficult thing to do. Yeah, it's difficult, but that coincide with weight loss. Um, it's probably a little bit after the weight loss, but that's the weight loss kind

of gives me the motivation for it. You know know like my whole life has been motivation for every other step i take you know like i came from just being a college dropout with a son who when i was 20 he was diagnosed with autism i was 23 i didn't have any money my ex-wife was more of an albatross around our thing like you know i have full custody of my son so it was just like i had to figure this shit out and once that we had a little apartment and everything i was like okay well i fucking figured this shit out i get my health together and that was a big one because my my doctor even told me she's like you know there's so many people i tell all the time just diet exercise diet exercise you need to lose weight you need to get better you're gonna die i tell this to the people all the time and you go you know how many of my fucking patients have done anything about it and then she says you that's it you're the only one that i know that

i've talked to about this who's just done it through diet and exercise so you have a and she's just like you have a strong fucking mind so i took that that to heart. And I was like, well, fuck, if I can do that, if I can lose 140 pounds, fucking throw it, you know, I would work out, throw up. And, you know, I give this more to my trainer. He would just be like, all right, you threw up. Can you breathe? All right, let's get back at it. You know? Yeah.

You know, where a lot of times people would throw up and they'd be like, okay, well, that was enough for today. You know? He would never push. He told me day one. He's like, you're where a lot of times people would throw up and they'd be like, okay. Well that was enough for today You know, he would never push he told me day one. He's like you're you're a very strong man And we're gonna just unlock What you've been covering up with bad decisions That's uh, it's so true what your doctor said and it's so interesting when you think about the goals that people have Like one of the major goals if you asked Americans like what do you want to do besides be successful have a family have a career they want to lose weight

but what I said the beginning of this podcast you've done one of the most difficult things a person could do because you didn't just lose weight he lost a fuckload of weight and he kept it off and that to me is so it's such a it's the craziest thing. It's because it's like, it's not like gaining weight, right? Like gaining weight requires you got to eat all that food. Like you got to really get after it. Like if you really want to gain weight, man, you got to fucking put on that, you know, you got to be there to eat.

You got to get it done. People have no problem with that, you know? But the not eating, you're literally asking someone to not do something. Just don't do something. And it's harder to do than to do something. And then the exercise is maybe even harder to

do than to not eat. Those are two really difficult things to do that you need to do both of them in order to really get your health in order, in order to really lose weight. And everybody knows knows it yeah everybody knows it but nobody does it yeah and then they always want to know what's the trick what's the trick what's the trick no fucking trick pro there's no trick trick is to walk through that door especially with exercise it is just like a door like yeah and that's what my wife said to me oh she was like oh you went from she's like you

were a guy who didn't exercise and now you're a guy that exercises. She's like, there's no part of you that gets up and goes, oh, this is hard. Why am I doing this? She's like, this is what you do because this is what you do. And the hardest part is making that transition because you go through that first three weeks and you're just like, I fucking hate this. Why the fuck am I doing it? You're looking at, you know, back when we could go to gyms, you're looking at other going oh well they're fucking attractive and this and that and i'm not yeah and i'll never be like that you know and you just gotta get rid of all that i hate that i hate it when i see that in

comedy because i just mostly because i'm used to i go i know where it comes from and i had that in myself when people were like i don't exercise i don't know and they're so fucking proud of it you know i'm just like well okay we'll see you in 10 years when you change your fucking mind or you just aren't successful so you know that's the thing yeah that's the only thing I would tell young me like everything I've done I'm like well that's my process

and I'm glad everything I wouldn't change a thing the only thing I would have done is told young me like hey motherfucker if you want to be successful you just gotta be healthy you just got to be healthy so just get get at it it's just better for your brain too man you think better yeah i i am very fortunate in that i got into exercise and working out very very young and i've never not done it but for me if i don't do it i don't think right. I'm just, and I think it's also, it has to be because I've been doing it so long

that my brain has this requirement to burn off this energy. And that also the kind of exercise I do is so intense. There's so much aggression that if I don't do that for a few days, that shit stores up and then I'm not the nicest person. I don't do that for a few days, that shit stores up. And then I'm not the nicest person. I don't like me. If I don't work out for four or five days, I don't like me. I'm not that nice. I can get edgy real quick.

But if I work out every day, I'm the nicest person. It's like real simple. The body has requirements the mind has requirements if you don't give it those requirements it starts to malfunction yeah it's something i've thought about since i was very young just as our society that we've kind of mislabeled a lot of words like work work and play and what those things mean and i feel like a lot of things that we consider work aren't work at all they're busy work they're like a waste of time they're just you spending time in a place for a set number of

hours whereas what I consider real work is getting yourself better exercising reading meditating to me that is work that is how you actually get better at things and and that's just kind of how i look at like this is my job i work in entertainment even if i didn't work in entertainment wouldn't matter but the fact that i do my main jobs are fuck stay ready keep material going make sure i fucking look good and just have a positive attitude and if i keep it that simple everything else is fine yeah that work that that making sure you do that work for some people, it's just, it's an alien concept. They never really developed that habit. But if you do, if you just, I swear to God, anybody listened to this, like, Oh, I don't think

I could do that. If you just started just left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot, just do it. Please just get going. Just get going. Once you get get going it's so easy to keep going it becomes momentum so much harder to start from from a standstill position but once you're doing it and you kind of like hey i worked out every day this week hey i worked out every day this month or hey i worked out four days a week for the past six weeks like fuck man you got some momentum now yeah it just feels good and especially you know when i was 360 it's not like i was going around doing box jumps and tire pushes and all any of that shit i was walking i was walking and walking and walking and doing some light bicep curls or

whatever you know it you it doesn't matter where you start did you go all in right from the jump when you said all right i'm gonna lose weight did or did you vacillate? No, once I, you know, again, my MOLA decision and I make it. So once the decision was made, it was more like, okay, it's out of my hands. I will do what my trainer says and that's it. And that's been the craziest thing because he'll then, like recently, he'll talk about other clients and he'll be like, oh, you know, you wanted him to do this. He didn't want to do it, so he didn't do it. And I go, oh, I never comprehended that I could tell, you know, you know, like I never even thought that I could be like, yeah, I know I'm tired. Fuck it.

You know, I thought, oh, I'm paying you. This is your job. So I just listen to you, you know. And but I think, you know, so that way it's just me having a good attitude about it. I don't once I was in it, I was in it. And then later came the thing of like, oh, I have to mentally now undo like the fact that I still want these things. You know, it was easier to just be like, okay, well, I'm not doing it because I need to protect my health or I'm going to die. But once I got down to a healthy way, it was like, okay, now we have to deal with the mental aspect.

I went to like overeaters anonymous for a couple of classes and i didn't like that what is that like it's like alcoholics anonymous basically it's the same book even that they read from yeah so i think they just need to get their shit changed and get their shit together because it doesn't match up because they read you these like things like oh i reached my lowest moment. I lost my family. I was living in a train. And I was like, well, no, I can't relate to that. My lowest moment is that I took a bite of a donut and then put it on top of the trash

and then came back and got it and then had to put it deeper in the trash. That's what I need to work on. Yeah, it's a different kind of addiction, right? Mm-hmm. Yeah, you don't really lose your life the same way you know you know it's slow it's slow you lose your life in a weird way you lose your physical life yeah you start telling i just remember mentally the change of being like well

you know i just don't want to do that i don't want to i can't physically go scuba diving they won't let me at my way so you know I'm just not interested in any of that you know and now I'm just like I want to do anything I went to pro wrestling school for a few months Jamar Neighbors has me going to clown college idea so I'm up to anything

clown college? what is that? talk to me I don't know much about it but he went Jamar is so crazy and so I don't know much about it, but he went. He went. Jamar Navers went to college. Jamar's so crazy. Yeah. And so I was talking to him about acting class. And he was like, man, I think you would kill it at clown school. What the fuck is clown school?

Like, what do you do? I bet you there's a lot of water bits, some prop work. A lot of nose honking. Yeah. But I bet you there's some tumbling stuff, too. So I'd be interested in that. But yeah, went to pro wrestling school. Tell me about pro wrestling school.

Like, was this because you want to go full David Arquette? Great reference. Never go full David Arquette. There's a You Can't Kill David Arquette documentary. Yeah, I know about it. I just watched the trailer for it. I'm like, this motherfucker is killing himself. Yeah, he's out there doing death matches.

Getting hit in the head with light bulbs and shit. Like, okay. Yeah, insane. No, I didn't want to do that. I've just been a big fan of two things my whole life, comedy and pro wrestling. I decided when I lost the weight, I was not aware of what my body was capable of anymore.

I would still be pushing myself up off of things, and my trainer would be like, what the fuck? You're much lighter than you think you are. Oh, that's funny. And so I decided to go to school. You developed habits. Yeah, old habits. So I decided to go to school.

It would be like, okay, let me throw my body around. Let me do as many fucking squats as I can. Let me see what I can do. Oh, did they make you do the body weight squats? Oh, yeah. Like Carl Got body weight squats? Oh, yeah. Like Carl Gotch type workouts? Oh, yeah. One day they were just mad at us,

so they made us do like 375 squats. Oh, that's a fun day the next day, huh? It was a fucking bathtub day. That's what it was. An Epsom salts day. Oh, so much salt. Oh, my God. Body weight squats will fuck you up.

Anybody tells me they need like a gym to work out, I'm like, listen to me. Show me that you could do 200 body weight squats. You don't need a gym to work out. You could develop amazing leg muscles just body weight squatting. Yeah. I mean, squats, sit-ups, push-ups, burpees, that's a workout. Fuck yeah, it is. You ever do those Hindu squats where you lift your heel up at the bottom and then push up?

No. Tremendous for the quads. Yeah. Hindu squats are interesting. You start off like this, right? And then you drop down. You put your hands behind you as you drop down. And as you drop down, your heels go up.

And then you push up and come back up to here. And then do it again. Oh, so it's like a sweep yeah sort of yeah but it's uh the thing about it is here i'll do one real quick the thing about it is as you're going down when you go down your heels come up like down here my heels are up yeah you're up like this so it's like it really works the top of your quads like your quads where it touches the knee tremendous amazing exerciseendous. Amazing exercise. And it's just body weight.

Yeah, especially when I was on the road and couldn't find a gym. I would do squats all the time. Yeah, but Hindu squats, Hindu push-ups, regular push-ups, and a chin-up bar. You're good. You're good. You don't need anything. But if you can get other shit in there, too. They got you kettlebells? You do shit like that?

I need to get some kettlebells i don't currently i mean i was going to the gym a lot you know so i had everything there at home i just kind of have up to 50 pound dumbbells i need to get i've been trying to buy bigger dumbbells but the fuck they're so expensive right now i tried to buy some 65 pounds they want to charge me 700 700 700 for a pair that That's crazy. Yeah. Is that real? Yeah. Is that just because everybody bought them out? I think it's all quarantined up and then the shipping and the weight of the shipping and all that shit.

I don't know. 700 bucks for a pair of dumbbells is hilarious. Yeah. So I'm on, you know. You got to go prison style, bro. I'm looking for Craigslist. Get some rocks. Sticks on them.

But I need to get some bigger weights for sure. Trying to get jacked? Yeah, man. I'm trying to get as healthy and put together as I can until like 40, 41, 42, and then cruise it. Just cruise it from there. Still maintain. I just turned 53. Okay.

Well, yeah, see. Yesterday. Yeah, I know. Happy birthday. Thank you. I thought about buying you something, but then I remembered. Then I recalled. Yeah.

What could I get him? A hug is sufficient. I don't need anything. Well, man, for real, though. Happy birthday. Thank you. You're fucking... I think I, you know, I texted you the day I found out about the thing. Just about, just your level of ownership of your own shit.

The longevity. The how many. Because I go back and I look at my podcast. We're just two years deep. And I'm like, oh, man, we've made it so far. But I could still do so much. And then I go back and I'm watching old episodes of you. And it's like, episode 560.

You know? And I'm just like, man, there's a longevity. There's just this part of like, this is what I do. This is my shit. And I told you directly, the fact that you own that shit and it's yours and you licensed it and them is a huge inspiration to me. So I just wanted to make sure I tell you that. Thank you, brother. And like I said before, I really love what you do.

I love the energy that you put out. I really do. Because your energies are consistently positive and friendly. Like, I love that you do that. And you put that out. And, like, you say hi to people. I hope you're doing great. And I know it's sincere.

You know, and you have a big smile. It's like, that's giant for people, man, to have a place like that where they can tune in and get just consistent, positive vibes. Because it's great. It's all, I mean, you know, shit gets weird. But for me, it's great it's all i mean you know shit gets weird but life's for me it's been so much better my life is gravy compared to my childhood and things i went through you know single mom and she had abusive relationship and all this other shit and just never had structure or knowing you know a lot of things were up in the air in my household

and now that i do what i literally do what I want to do for my life, I know my passions. Sure, I don't get everything I want, but it's like, man, I can never. And I get to work with my fucking heroes, you know, and I never lose sight of that. And when Wanda Sykes is like, oh, you're fucking why aren't you in theaters yet? You're fucking get in theaters. And I'm like, you know i i'm still a fan first and so it's easy for me to be happy for people because i'm like fuck this is dope and success to me just begets other success i don't look at and go oh i couldn't get that i go oh something's coming for

me too yes yes it's it's It's just about maintaining that positive mentality. And that is really putting out positive vibes, like what you're doing really does change people's lives. It really does. You know, I mean, maybe you don't feel it yet, but I guarantee you there's a lot of people that look to you for that positive inspiration. They look to you for just happiness. And they're just like, you give that to to people man, and then they get it.

It's like a little seed you give them and it grows inside of their body. I just got an email from this guy I'm doing this thing with. And I didn't know too much about him. I knew he was referred to me by this other guy. We're doing this project together. And then he sends me this email um basically after we're done with this thing hey man i just want to let you know like uh i didn't tell you this before but because of you and listening to your podcast i used to have this terrible job i quit my job i moved to this new

place i started from scratch i started doing jujitsu. I lost weight. I got a way better job. Now I have a family, I'm married, I have a kid. I'm a different person. And it's because of listening to your podcast and realizing that you can change your life and you can do the things you want to do. You just got to push yourself and you just got, and feeding off the energy of hearing someone say that, that's actually done it and recognize like, there's no difference between you and me. There's no difference between me and the next guy. It's just I've done it and you can too. That's what people need to hear.

You see someone like Kevin Hart and you go, that guy's an alien. Like, I just, I'm not like that. I can't do it. But you're not. That's not true. He's just a dude. He's just a dude who's positive, who works hard. And if you do that too, you will get successful. You will.

You will find your fucking groove. People who haven't done stuff are the people who tell you you can't do it. Because that's the reality that they've lived in. I've never met someone who's truly been successful who turns around and goes, Oh, no, but you couldn't do it. Because they know. They know. It's fucking, it's just putting in the work and then it well, no, but you couldn't do it. You know? Because they know. They know. It's fucking,

it's just putting in the work and then it just, it might take decades, you know? I was 23, I was showing, again, on Twitch, showing these old videos of mine. I showed my special

and then I had somehow found this set of mine from when I was three years in. And so I showed, we showed it and we were making fun of it. I go, look at me. Look how I'm dressed.

Look, you can tell, like, these are my only good pants and they aren't good but man if you didn't have that you wouldn't appreciate where you're at now that's so important like that's that's a there's a message for people that are struggling right now like this struggle fucking enjoy it suck it in take it in first of all it's fuel because it's going to inspire you to move forward and and become more successful but also like man you're going to look back on these days the suck that you're experiencing right now will be delicious in five ten years you're going to look back on it's going to be amazing you're going to enjoy it yeah no i get text messages i got a

text message the other day from my ex-wife sister just being like oh i'm so proud of you look at you and you're in movies and this and that and you're amazing and you you're doing so well for your your your son my my nephew and then i was just like this is so cool coming from the lady that used to call me the n-word that's amazing do you still talk to the ex uh no not really sometimes just you know keep her up to date to what's going on with her son make sure that their relationship is is still strong uh but me and her no you know she just she i understand if i was in her position, I wouldn't like what everything turned out. She ain't never been the niece.

I don't know what that's like. Yeah. As much as you like to see some people succeed, there's a, there's a certain amount of satisfaction in knowing that you've bypassed all the pitfalls that other people have fallen into yeah especially if you had some non-non-fun relationship issues with them yeah it truly is i still you know i still try to it's my you know my son's mom so i always have a love for her and i want her to be successful and I want her to be happy but I'm very

I know I won laughter oh it's awful laughter it's awful to take happiness and other people's failures like that but yeah but that was their choices and yeah it's like also

you can learn a lot from other people's failure truly as much as you can get out of people's success man look at someone who you know that's just sabotaging their life left and right and you can learn from that too the thing one of the things that you were talking about that i think is so important is like taking ownership of your fuck-ups taking ownership of the things you did wrong and trying to rectify that trying to just you know you don't want to repeat those patterns recognize them you know develop development getting better evolve i think that's a thing you know through especially social media lately that we we don't we don't allow people to evolve we don't allow them to change we hold them to the same

statement that they made 10 15 20 years ago and if someone's an asshole today, that's fine. I understand that. It's okay to not fuck with people. But to judge someone over things they did 10, 15, 20 years ago, obviously case-by-case spaces. But you're denying the existence of evolution. You're denying that people change and that people can get better. And I just always believe in that because I've seen it in myself.

I've seen it in my friends and the people around me. There's so many people that if they truly, some people don't want to change and they never will. But I've met a lot of people who weren't the best people

and they pulled their shit together because they had to. Yeah, I agree wholeheartedly and I know I've grown and become a better person too and through all that hard work and I almost don't fault people that feel that way because it's it's fucking hard today man you know and it's less hard for us because we had this advantage that we were kind of we're moving you know we already had momentum when this shit hit and we were in a business where you know we're very fortunate that when you do well and show business you can make a decent amount of money you could save some of it you could put it aside but there's so many people out there that have no hope and i understand the

bitterness and the anger i understand it all i get it i mean this is a fucked up time it's a fucked up time where like half the country can't work yeah and uh when you have that you're going to have just a dystopian perspective on everything and that's what you have with people today and uh i just want us to come out of it i really do and when we come out of it man i hope we look back and just appreciate where we are if we get to a point where we can all gather and go to comedy clubs and go to restaurants and movie theaters and normal shit like we used to do sporting events you can go see pro wrestling live all that shit man i just hope we really enjoy it yeah and maybe we will i mean maybe maybe it'll

be like we'll be better because we'll recognize like hey man this could all go away now we know it can all go away yeah just learning to um myself to respect the audience more and to yeah i'm clearly nothing without an audience i'm nothing nothing and sometimes i didn't always go into like every show being like i need to give these people you know yeah i'm sure you know sure uh and so i'm just trying to be more aware of that and any chance i've had although it was great like i was like okay i did this one show where they there's a little stage and a screen and people can see you and i was like oh it felt so good to get on stage again and i want to be grateful for it and they asked me to come back and then i slept through it and i was mad at myself at first but then i was like no this is like getting back to normal yeah that's funny i did some stand-up i did a weekend

the houston improv but i was like man i can't catch covid i gotta get out of here i did you know one weekend and i did all the right things kept the fuck away from people wore a mask did my shows got off get out of there i didn't take pictures didn't hug anybody but i was still like but what if i got it and what if i give it to someone i love yeah it's just i got really high uh the next day and i got real paranoid i was like what if i have it what i have it i'm gonna give it to people yeah and then i was like i can't do this yeah i went through the same mindset because i had a couple of gigs on on the docket still and um but i went to that same thing like oh i want to do stand-up so bad i want to perform i want to fill that feeling of people applauding when i enter a room but i just fucking have that same paranoia like oh what if i give it to someone and you know

i'm healthy and that's fine but i give it to someone and they give it to their grandma and their grandma dies because they went to hear me do some dumb bullshit jokes i can't i don't want that exactly exactly but at a certain point in time like what do we do if this is normal forever like what if covid doesn't go away and this is just the deal this is just how things are then. Then what do we do? Do we decide then? Well, fuck it. Let's just have comedy clubs. People are going to get it. They're just going to get it.

There is no cure. There's nothing you can do. Do we just live like this? I don't think so. That doesn't sound good. That doesn't sound good. So the question is always like, are we living like this because we're waiting for them

to develop enough hospital beds and waiting for them to develop some sort beds and waiting for them to develop some sort of a treatment that's responsible, that really does work well. Is that what's going on? Because if we, I mean, we're all hoping for a vaccine, but if there's nothing, if it doesn't happen, let's just imagine it doesn't. What do you do? At some point in time, we're going to have to say, fuck it.

We're going to have to get back to work and get back to life. Yeah, that'll be a weird life i don't want that and then i hadn't thought about that until you brought it up damn but now i am thinking about it and it's like a horror movie well here's the thing man there's more than one version of this disease right now more than one there's a one in india that's so different from the one here that if they develop a vaccine for the one that's in North America, it won't work for the one that's in India. And it's possible that this thing is going to morph like the common cold or like a lot of other viruses and spread all over the place.

Well, if they don't have a disease prevention, if there's no way other than keeping your body healthy, keeping your immune system strong. We're not going to live like this. We can't just live like this forever. We're living like this temporarily. This is the idea. So we have to, like, that is a possibility that we need to take into account.

It's interesting. It means life's going to be different. It means a lot of people are going to die. A lot of people are wearing masks. A lot of people with fucked up teeth that are going to be real happy. I'm okay with the mask thing because that's been with me. I got used to that from Japan from when I went to Japan for two weeks. I was like, oh, that's fine.

When you went to Japan for two weeks, was it COVID or no COVID? Pre-COVID. But a lot of people just wear masks. If they're feeling a little ill, you wear a mask. Well, that's a polite thing over there, right? Yeah. Well, that's why they they did an amazing job They got to a point where like I think the entire country only had a thousand deaths, which is amazing

But especially if you because people consider the size of Japan that it's not like super populated But if you consider that most of the population in Japan is in just very dense areas Like Tokyo is everyone right on top of each other. And they never locked down. They kept working the entire time. They just wore masks and they only had a thousand deaths. It's pretty amazing. I have a buddy of mine who's a political commentator and he was like, you need to look at this.

Sent me this article explaining all the things Japan did. They did just basically they follow order. You know, they're polite. follow order you know they they're polite you know if you go over there like i was i've only to tokyo once but it's like amazing how different their culture is like how polite they are and how they avoid you know like on the streets like everybody there's no garbage everywhere nobody picks up their shit you don't even it's rude to walk around and eat yeah you're supposed to go take it to the proper place yeah get rid of your trash and then go about your day it's crazy yeah they have they just have patterns of behavior and

patterns of like they're just the what they accept or what they expect rather from society from people and they all agree yeah truly discipline yeah if no one if you haven't gone and you ever get the chance to travel go it's fucking amazing i can't wait to go to other countries again oh i want to go to some weird places i can't wait once this shit is if if this shit ever lifts up i got i just want to go i want to take in as many weird cultures i want to go to bali i want to see what that's like i want to go to indonesia I want to go to Bali. I want to see what that's like. I want to go to Indonesia. I want to go to a lot of the Pacific Islands. I want to go to the Philippines.

I want to go to a lot of places I've never been that I've just seen in videos. And I want to go to Egypt. That's the thing I've been kicking myself in the head about. Why didn't I go see the pyramids? I need to go see that. I'd like to do that. Every person that I'm friends with, Schultz went. He went right before COVID.

Everybody that I'm friends with that went there, they're like, bro, they're like, this shit changed my life. Like, it's so big and so crazy. Like, what the fuck is this? Who built this? How did this happen? What was this culture like? And the fact that you got fucked up Cairo right there next to this ancient

civilization that's so far more sophisticated in their structures like that's one of them things where I think perspective shifting places are very important to go to just because it just gives you we're so used to like Los Angeles or Boston or wherever you're from. You're used to these cities and this is how people live. And then you go to Chichen Itza and you go, oh, shit. Like, what were the Mayans doing? You know, these motherfuckers were doing this shit 1,500 years ago. Like, what is this?

How are they doing this? Why were they doing this? What was life like back then? You realize, like, the pattern that we're in is just the pattern that we're in it doesn't mean this is the only pattern that human beings follow just like just like you were talking about japan that's a different pattern they're on a different pattern their pattern they got into this really disciplined pattern being polite wearing a mask our pattern is fucking chaos but more but also our pattern is more creative. That's the weird thing about our pattern.

Over here in America, we do a lot of wild shit, but, man, we create a lot of good shit. If you think about all the movies and the art and the comedy and the music, all the shit that comes from this one continent, wild freaks. Yeah, I mean, it can only come from a lack of structure and from chaos and things going on. That's why we have so many forms of art that are created here.

That's why jazz is created here. That's why hip-hop is created here. Stand-up comedy invented here. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It is. It's like that is what's interesting, right? It's like you've got to kind of have both of those things.

You've got to kind of have chaos, but you've also kind of got to have some discipline too that's why i think that's one of the reasons why america's done so terrible with this uh this covid reaction we're the worst at it all the fucking big countries we are the worst yeah it's crazy when you really look at we don't the rest of the world is just like we don don't want Americans right now because you're in an underdeveloped nation medically. You're fucking idiots. You guys don't listen. You want to have a big protest where you don't wear masks. We want our fucking freedom.

Thousands of people march down the street saying, we don't want to wear masks. Bill Gates is the devil. Fuck Fauci. People are crazy. They're wild people. But they come up with some good shit. Right?

Such a conundrum. Take a part of me. I love America. Look, there's a fucking American flag behind me. There's a reason for that. I love America. Genuinely. I love the concept.

I love the concept of, you know, I'm the grandchild of immigrants. My family all came over here from Europe. I love the fact that these people, we're like the ancestors of these people that decided wherever they were, they just didn't want to be there anymore. You know? No, not me. Come on. I was going to get to that. Come on.

Yeah. I was going to get to that. Or. Or realize, hey, you know, that is for sure the most fucked up part of America. Right? It is. The most fucked up, for sure. How it was started. S slave owners that wanted to be free

but it's also um there's a beauty that people don't see i think that a lot of there's a lot of like in everyday white people that i talk to there's a little bit of fear of this just like this black anger of people being like not only the black lives matter that we want you know reparations we want everything back we want um you know which would also be great it'd be fun but to me what's so beautiful about america is this level of forgiveness that's built into our structure to the fact that we can have that history that you know horrible history and then there's no other country that freed those people and then they live there right next to their oppressors you know and then and there's forgiveness and there's balance and there's like oh well we

just want to continue to be a part of this lifestyle and we want to succeed and have our own freedoms like you we're not trying to then take over and now white people are slaves it's this beautiful thing that there's this like forgiveness there and that they want to see at the table yes yeah yeah and also the amount of creativity that comes from that culture yeah and just stop and think of that right like? Like through pressure, diamonds are created. And just look at the black American community and think about all the different forms of art that not just originated with black Americans, but were mastered by them to a point where like, like even rock and roll, like jimmy hendrix is the greatest guitar player of all time i mean you go and look at stand-up comedians i mean there's there's so

many musicians so many so many artists so so i mean that's the crazy thing about art right like so much of art is this dynamic expression that comes from pain yeah yeah I mean that's to me the beauty and the alchemy in art is to take your traumas take your pain and then to turn those things into your successes and your and the reason why you have finances yeah it's amazing yeah and I'm hoping that through that I mean this obviously racial relations are in this really strange upheaval right now. They're in a bad spot! They're in a bad spot, but they're also in a spot where there's a potential

for growth. When you see these Black Lives Matter protests, the thing that gives everybody hope is that people are together walking down the street in unity and that they recognize that this is this is

a unique moment to make things better this is a unique moment to take a stand to talk about things to recognize that there's problems and out of the the brutal murder of one man this eruption that has existed all throughout not just North America but it spread throughout the globe it's crazy time and through crazy times oftentimes on the other end of it, you get a better world. Truly. Truly. Yeah.

I choose to look at those positives because police brutality is not a new subject. Oppression is not a new subject by any means. But the reaction to it, the amount of allies, the amount of times where I see, I get so excited when I see all these young white allies, these people, these millennials that people kind of make fun of. And they're the ones in the fucking streets. The first. They're the first to come and be like, no, this is bullshit. We don't do this anymore.

And I love that. To me, that's tremendous progress. Because, you know, there was Million Man March years ago. Years ago. When I was a child, there was a million man march years ago years ago when I was a child there was marches about this type of things and before I was a child you know that's the thing I talk about yeah my mom was out in those marches getting bit by dogs and sprayed by fire hoses and now we've reached a point where I sit at home playing video games and I send my white assistant out to protest for me that's and I send my white assistant out to protest for me.

That's true progress. You sent your assistant out to protest? I did. I can show you a picture. Did you test him after he came back? Hey man, before you come back to my house, I'm gonna have to swab your nose. I trust her.

She's pretty safe. It's hard to be safe. It is. But she's fucking, yeah yeah she's really particular thank you for being so safe that she did that she did she protested for you put it on airplane i'll find no worries no worries all right man well let's let's wrap this up and uh tell everybody where they can get your podcast social media all that shit i got a lot of things going on. My podcast is called Getting Better with Ron Funches. You can find that wherever you find your podcast.

Even the name, Getting Better. I love it. Yeah. It's not about becoming the best. It's not about we are the best. It's the fact that every single fucking day we're trying to get better. And sometimes we fall back, but we usually try to move forward. And that's what it's about.

Great guests. Conan's been on there. Stone Cold. Steve Austin's been on there. Yeah steve austin's been on there yeah it's a good guest nice that's nice and i got my live stream event september 5th people can get tickets for that awakening yeah comedy event september 5th 7 p.m pacific uh 8 p.m mountain you get all of it you know know that you roll the rest of them and that is Combustion Live yeah that's

Chris Sides' company it's gonna be live streaming on YouTube you can go get tickets at RonFunches.com beautiful other than that I'm in a Netflix show

called Hoops in a Disney Plus movie called The One and Only Ivan both coming out August 21st if people wanna check oh Quibi would love it if I mentioned my game show.

Oh, you have a game show on Quibi? I have a game show coming out on Quibi called Nice One on August 21st. I came up off of it at midnight. People know me a lot from that show. And this is me basically kind of stealing that idea and then me being the host. Good job. Thank you. Keep kicking ass, Ron Funches. Thank you very much, sir.

Thank you. Appreciate you, brother. Appreciate you, too kicking ass, Ron Funches. Thank you very much, sir. Thank you, Joe. Appreciate you, brother. Appreciate you, too. Bye, everybody.