The Joe Rogan Experience - #1585 - Michael Kosta

Episode Date: December 28, 2020

Standup comedian Michael Kosta can be seen regularly on "The Daily Show with Trevor Noah", and is the host of the "Tennis Anyone?" podcast. His new Comedy Central special, "Michael Kosta: Detroit. NY. LA." is available now.

Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out! The Joe Rogan Experience Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day! Um, yeah, his, um, his unwillingness to make money off of it, too, is interesting. Yeah. Yeah, Signal is, uh, you know, whenever someone new signs up at Signal, you get like this notification. I've noticed that. Yeah.

And so it's like flooding with all these people that I know that are now on Signal. I'm like, wow. It's gotten me to reevaluate privacy and everything. You know, like what is on my phone? What are these? When you go to that thing on the iphone it says you can use my location always or a while using it's crazy how many apps are just using your location oh yeah well what's going to change uh by the way this is michael costa ladies and gentlemen we're already rolling

great uh michael costa you might know him from the daily show he's also a fabulous stand-up comedian i know him from the comedy store please welcome mich Michael Kosta. Thank you for having me, man. My pleasure, brother. This has been an exciting highlight for me to be sitting here with you and be on your podcast. I can't believe what this thing has become, man. Bizarre. It must be crazy just for you.

Well, this is what's bizarre about it. It seems like it's just you and me talking. Yeah. Well, it is just me and you talking. But, I mean, how many years have you been doing this? 11. 11 years. Okay. Yeah, 11, starting in 2009.

It's, as a younger than you comic, you know, you look to the comics older than you and you say, who is doing what I want or creating something special that's unique to them? And that's what I always tried to just try to do. And then this this to see what you've made this is nuts oh thank you it's nuts so just dumb luck dumb luck and persistence that's it that's a lot of it legitimately tell everybody dumb luck and persistence and just working at it you know it's just conversations there's a skill to it it just doesn't it doesn't seem like there's a skill to it but there's a skill to it. It doesn't seem like there's a skill to it, but there's a skill to it. You realize after you do a lot of podcasts, too, how bad a lot of people are, just regular folks are, at having conversations. You see people just talking over each other.

You're like, Jesus, will you let him finish and then you let her finish? Like, fucking, you guys just talk. You just collide. Some of the worst conversations I've ever had in my life are at that front bar at the comedy store, because it's always like the weirdest comics talking at you, never listening to your thing. And I would get so frustrated. Growing up, my mom would do this game called the tennis ball game, where we were very young, and she would ask us a question. She would say, hey, Michael, how was school today? And she would hand me the ball or toss me the ball and then you had to answer and you couldn't give

her the ball back until you asked her a question and this is like you know we're like six so i would say today was good and then i would try to hand the ball back and she'd say you can't hand me the ball back you didn't ask me anything and i'd say do you like the weather today and i'd hand it to her and she would like trained us like zoo animals to do this. Wow. But it is funny because so much of my life now, what you mentioned earlier, no one knows how to talk. No. No, I have a very good friend, and she's very smart.

But her and her husband just talk louder over each other, and they don't listen. And then one of them will walk off into the kitchen. You're like, what in the fuck? And if I try to have a conversation with them, if I'm in the middle of saying, well, I wonder if what it is. They just start talking. Like they don't let anybody talk.

They just talk at you. Was your home like a long form conversation home? I don't know. Like why do you feel comfortable? Marijuana. For sure. Okay. Definitely marijuana.

Long stoner conversations. I don't know. Like, why do you feel comfortable? Marijuana. For sure. Okay. Definitely marijuana. Long stoner conversations. I don't know, man. You know, I used to do morning radio, and I used to look forward to it in some markets, you know? I think morning radio is like eight out of ten, or they're just cool people that happen to be on the morning radio. But then there's like, the two out of ten are people that wish they were comics. Oh my God.

You know those. And then they crush you when you do morning radio. If you're not like killing, they're like, I'm better than'm better than that guy yeah they get dicky and they get weird with you like they're not friendly they don't like i did this one and i don't want to say where it was but i the guy wouldn't even acknowledge that you were there right until he did a bunch of other stuff while you're just sitting there so you're just sitting there in the stage and he's talking about like some stupid stunt they're doing outside an Applebee's.

Right. You know, we got five different people to try it out, and no one could do it. And then finally, oh, so then we got a comedian is here. He's playing at the blah, blah, blah. It's Joe Rogan. Hi, Joe. How are you?

And you're like, why have I been here for 20 minutes just staring at you? It's like a power trip. I feel like they're jealous or angry that you're working the road, even though it's not like the road comic is making tons of money that week or whatever. But for some reason, morning radio, Johnny Danger, bang, bang, bang. Those guys seem mad about their life lots of times. Some of them, yeah.

And then there's a few that are excellent and awesome. Some are just cool people that happen to be doing that. Most of them are cool people that just happen to be doing that. But there's enough of those. Well, it's just like when someone is in that sort of a position where they're the one who's promoting your show, you need them to promote your show. So you get up, you go there, and they're the star,

and everybody's getting them the pieces of paper, the stuff they have to say. There's always some super young person, at least for me, they're the star and everybody's like getting them the pieces of paper, the stuff they have to say. And, you know, it's like, there's always some super young person, at least for me, when I walk in the studio that has just Googled me, right? Like I'm on air now,

but they're literally like, okay, say, say that, you know, they don't even, uh, and also people forget.

Normally you, you woke up at 5. A.M. The day before for the flight, you're waking up at 5. A.M. The next day for morning radio. And then you normally have a 5. A.m the day before for the flight you're waking up at 5 a.m the next day for morning radio and then you normally have a 5 a.m flight the next sunday or whatever so it's like i'm not saying being a stand-up comic is hard but the stage time is this awesome one hour whatever but all the other work is like 5 a.m 5 a.m 5 a.m yeah um well it fucks up your rhythm too because

your brain rhythm is off when you get up early in the morning A couple of days in a row Because you're used to doing sets Until late at night Totally If you do a late night show You're doing a 10pm show You're not out of there until 12.30

You get back to your room You go to bed It's like 1 o'clock 2 o'clock And then you have to get up at 5 To do radio It's like you're just wrecked And be excellent

And then wake up And try to get some sleep And usually drink coffee excellent and then wake up and try to get some sleep and usually drink coffee to do radio and you try to get some sleep your rhythm's all fucked up the moment i had to stop doing radio the road became infinitely better yeah that was a direct result of doing podcasts because once i started doing podcasts i was selling out without going there without having to do that i'm like oh yeah But then they would try to get you to do it anyway. They would say, we have a relationship with a radio station. We would love it if you came in.

Because you would promote the date on your podcast. So you would do what they were supposed to do for you. You would do this. So then the club would ask me to do radio anyway. They really would like you to come in. And I'm like, I'm not getting up at 5 in the morning when I don't have to on a day where I have to do shows with a host that probably is a little pissed off at you for some reason

only the ones well there's some I had relationships with that I still did for a while just cause they're nice I just wanted to come in and say hi and I still there's some I miss I miss you I'm just not getting up for you do some shit in the afternoon you know I would exactly I would

I would welcome do some shit in the afternoon you know i would i would yeah exactly i would i talk yeah i i would welcome a weekend on the road right now to do morning radio here i am bitching about it but i'm i miss that you know i mean nothing seems to be open i know texas has more things open but and i haven't done stand-up we were talking earlier i haven't done stand-up since the pandemic but i'm hoping to feel what you felt when you first went back up there, because I have to reevaluate. How much do I enjoy it if I've really enjoyed kind of not doing it right now? I don't know if you had any of that. I did enjoy not doing it.

I really enjoyed learning how to cook and having a meal at dinner. I enjoyed space. Yes. Space to do stuff. Yeah. You enjoyed cooking? You know, dinner always took on a different meaning for me when i had shows it was it was get fuel so you cannot be like passing out on stage

and off lots of whether it was la or new york lots of times it was like crappy food get it fuel in you know but now there's time to really think about dinner you know do i want to grill do i want to make stuff something and i enjoy i i think it's a much healthier way to be you know no one has ever mistaken this profession of stand-up comedy with health no but uh i have appreciated that the healthier part of that doing these uh shows with chappelle has made me wonder like i wonder how viable it is to actually do a residency in a town like Austin and continue to do it for long stretches of time.

You know, I don't know, because I kind of think you could put together an act out here. Like, we kind of were doing a residency in LA, right? At the store? Yeah. It's kind of what we did. I mean, they had this amazingly strong lineup every single night. And how often was it tourists in the audience?

A lot. A lot. So people were coming to LA and it was becoming a destination, the comedy store. From other countries. Oh my gosh. Totally. So, you know, of course, and this is a great city, so of course you could do a residency. I mean, this is also, isn't that how Las vegas works you sign a residency deal for two years or whatever

and now you're carrot top at the luxor forever so dave and i did this month and now we're gonna do january and we're even talking about doing february so we're kind of doing that right now that's so cool yeah and while it's happening i'm like okay and i was talking to donnell about this and we're like we need a workout club and we were like, we need a workout club. And I'm like, we do need a workout club. So now I'm looking at small clubs. And then I'm going to look at larger clubs too. And the idea is get everything in a row.

And then once the vaccines roll out and once treatments improve and they get to the point where it's not irresponsible to do an indoor show on a regular basis. Because right now we're doing outdoor. It's an amphitheater everybody's tested yeah it's people but people are still frustrated like you you're putting people at risk like right you're putting people at risk if you leave your fucking house okay did you take a car to the yeah yeah when when you were at the store was that your workout spot yeah okay yeah Because it's hard because it would be packed and many people there were fans of yours. And I'm not at the stage where I have 400 fans and I'm like, you can't disappoint your fans.

But also you got to work your shit out. You got to be able to do both. Yeah. Yeah. It's tricky because you're going to eat shit on a few attempts in front of your people that are rooting for you but i think they kind of understand what you're doing yeah you know one of the things that's cool is that they would keep coming back i had a friend of mine who came to see me multiple times and he was like dude one of the funnest things is watch

like a new bit and then realize like oh one, one of these days that bit's going to be good and then coming back six months later and it's killer because you get to see the baby legs. You get to see like Bambi on Ice

where it's like, there's no balance. You don't know where you're going with it, but there's something there. And if you, I found, if I just stick with it,

evolution of comedy, my brain will automatically, through many reps, trim that thing, add to this thing. And now I'll listen to it from three months ago. I didn't even consciously eliminate that line. Yeah. The survival of the fittest existed through my own joke. Yeah. But I remember I was passed at the comedy store 2008 and you were gone at that point yeah and i don't know you know i didn't see you there till

whenever you came back i forget 2014 so for six years it was when i was passed it was different man and you know that yeah it was like three people some nights. Monday night, three people. And then it threw me off guard when it became the hot spot again. It was great, though. It was great when you came back and it was like, Rogan's back, Rogan's back. And I was kind of like, so what? There's a lot of great comics here, so what?

And then you kind of see, oh, it's Tuesday night, so that, so that. So that was awesome. It was fun to be a part of yeah it really was it was fun to see you know i remember there was one time i was on stage in chicago and this was like maybe 2012 and uh and i said i was at the chicago theater it sold out it's like 3 700 people i go i go how many i had this bit that i was doing i go uh how it sold out it's like 3 700 people i go i go how many i had this bit that i was doing i go uh how many guys listen to the podcast and this fucking roar no shit it was yeah and i went i remember thinking oh shit like i didn't expect that like i expected like yeah like like a few people right 20 of the people whatever whatever the number was and then i remember

thinking oh wow yeah oh this is kind of crazy like because i don't have to do morning radio now yeah i don't pay attention too much yeah like i try to not pay attention i try to just do what i do and i i try to figure out a way to use my time wisely and the best way to use my time wisely is to not read anything about me not read any comments so then things happen you're not aware they're happening and so that's kind of what happened with the podcast which is probably good it's the only way you could do it not go crazy not go crazy right everybody goes crazy you meet any famous person they're insane and is that because there's nobody giving them honesty it's not just that it's just this the pressure of all these other people's opinions yeah there's

many things like one of the things about chapelle that's fascinating is he doesn't use any social media he doesn't use anything you know he uh he consumes right like he'll go on youtube and watch videos he'll he's interested in things but he doesn't fuck around with anything that has anything to do with him and he doesn't he doesn't post things he does he's not showing you his life but he's got accounts yeah he's got logins he's only got one and he recently started it it was for uh instagram to let people know that um hbo max was uh using the chappelle show and he wasn't getting paid for it yeah so and that worked so they pulled it off of netflix and they pulled it off of hbo max now and now that's wild huh wild i mean who the fuck can do that i mean that to me was like i mean

i i get tweets because i work on comedy central i get tweets like I don't support you because you guys haven't paid Chappelle, as if I have any fucking thing to do with this. It's like Twitter people are attacking me. It's like when people attack me because I was playing a club that Louis had played that week or something. It's like, do you think I own Levity Live in West Nyack, New York?

But I was just thinking, what talent like Chappelle can just say pull this off and they pull it off I love that he just moved to Ohio out of the whole deal he's been in Ohio for a long time as a Michigander I'm like wait you can have a career in showbiz

and this is what's fascinating about what's happening right now you guys can have a career in showbiz and not be in New York and LA well he did it on purpose he wants to be in a place where people are normal he lives in a small town he knows everybody at his grocery store he knows everybody at the coffee shop and he's like a normal resident of the community i love it and he's taking a number asking for sliced turkey breast and some woman's like that's one of the greatest stand-up comics ever lived he lives right down the street he lives

in a farm oh yeah he's a fascinating character i love him i love him i love hanging out with him he's just so fascinating comics always say that to know him and interact with him and uh that's that's awesome yeah no he's great he's always been great too i mean i met him when he was 19 so did he not then get really well paid from the Chappelle show? He must have. No, he didn't. No, he didn't. Well, he walked away from a big chunk of money, right?

And the thing that he walked away for, I was dealing with the same people at Comedy Central at the time, because that's when Stan Hope and I were doing the man show. And it was rough. There was a bunch of people that were not comedians and they were not creative but they wanted to put all this creative input into the show particularly because they had the chance to put their greasy little fingers all over it because adam and jimmy had left and then they're like okay now we're gonna mold this into what they what we want right and they gave us it was the bait and switch they told us do, do whatever you want. Swear, we'll beep it out.

Show nudity, we'll blur it out. Go wild. We want to get in trouble. They were like, if we get sued, it'll be great for the show. And Stan Hope and I were like, let's party. Wrong two guys to say that to. And then they got fearful of it. Very.

Yeah. Right. Well, here was one of them. There was a time, and I think this is available. We wound up using this, actually. And it actually wound up being a part of the promo. There was a time where we were doing these intros, and I said, I want the intro to be when the doors bust open, Joey Diaz comes out, balls naked in a pair of Timberlands with a baseball hat on,

and he yells out, let's get this party started. And he starts dancing, and he goes, ladies and gentlemen, rogan and doug stanhope and he he introduces us and one of the ladies that was an executive was literally in tears she goes how is that funny oh tell me not tears laughing when we were explaining right this is what i want to do she was like she goes how is that man show how is that funny i go how is it not funny? Like, what are you talking about? This is Joey Diaz. He's a human cartoon. But they were so opposed to him and so opposed to him being on the show and introducing us naked.

So I said, let's do two different ways. We'll do it the normal way first, and then we'll do it my way. So we filmed two. Here it is right here oh shit oh okay so we do it the normal way um it was great you know ladies and gentlemen joe rogan does damn great and then we do the second one people are literally falling out of their chairs screaming joey's dancing and i turn to her and i go like this. See? She stormed off. I was going to say, she's pissed off. But she stormed off. It's amazing.

In my experience... Oh, my God. It is. Hold on. Hold on. Start it from the beginning and give me some volume. Holy shit. Hey, watch this. Let's get this party started.

Jesus Christ. Look at him okay oh my god so but anytime talent is arguing about how to what is and isn't funny you're already you're already in trouble well you've got to leave people alone. You've got to let the funny people trust their instincts. Well, not even just, like, this podcast I would have never been able to do if I had to talk to executives. No way. I would have never been able to interview the more controversial people. Would have never been able to do 60% of it stoned out of my mind, literally not knowing what I'm saying while I'm saying it. They would have never allowed it. But that's what made it work because it was so unproduced everybody always told me everything has to be under three minutes when the internet came out

right it was like you better do under three minutes it was like and then if you've listened to all that that's what's so funny about this you know i look at some of your episodes like three and a half hours and i'm like this is and hamilton was talking about it when he was not too like the long form now people are gravitating towards these long conversations yeah there's nuance there's subtlety because we're getting so angry at everything just being 40 words headline to click like click so so what's the what's if what what do we take from? To just trust our own instincts and follow what we want to do? Yeah, you have to trust your own instincts. Also, there was no idea of this being profitable when I started doing it.

When I first started doing it, I just did it because it was fun. Because I like doing morning radio sometimes. And I was like, why don't I just do an internet version of morning radio? I'm like, no one's going to give me a fucking radio show ever. So when I do that, and I't I just do an internet version of Morning Radio? I'm like, no one's going to give me a fucking radio show ever. Right, right. So when I do that, and I've actually had some conversations with Sirius and some other people about doing something. But I was like, this is going to be too many greasy fingers. So let me just do this with my friends and just have fun.

Because that's all I need out of it. Just have fun. And Ari was one of the first people. He was like, you've got to edit it. He was like, you have to edit it. No one wants to listen to that. I go, I'm not editing it. And i ride him into the ground about this today he's like you got to make it under an hour i go no i don't he goes well they're not gonna listen i go

they don't have to listen i don't give a fuck listener don't listen right you have to just trust your instincts and just do what you enjoy doing and but don't do it like you're you don't plan like oh if i do this it'll be more profitable or more successful. Just do what you want to do. But that's what you just said is a trap I fall into. And I think maybe other comics do. I will sometimes think, well, this would be good for this down the line. But really, I'm repeating what you said just so I can make sure I absorb it.

Yeah. What gets me excited? Why did I get into comedy? And if I can follow that, that passion and enthusiasm will translate to whatever projects I do, right? A hundred percent. That's it.

Okay, we solved it. People get enthusiastic about things you're enthusiastic about. Right. It's contagious. Right. So if you, like, used to be a're enthusiastic about. Right. It's contagious. Right. So if you, like, used to be a professional tennis player. Right.

If you just did a podcast on tennis, people who are not interested in playing tennis would listen to your podcast. I have it. It's called Tennis Anyone Podcast. Do you? Yeah. Oh, Jesus. But it's okay.

It's perfect. It's perfect. Perfect plug. Half the time we go tennis, half the time it's other stuff. But people chime in. This is proving your point. All the time. Like, I don't even know what tennis is.

I don't even know how to keep score. I'm enjoying listening to this because I'm like fucking amped about it. Right. You know? So, but I have to constantly learn the hard way. Just, Michael, follow your passion and trust your instincts. And it seems to work it's a trap right yeah the trap of of not doing that is the trap of you get enticed by the industry yeah you

start thinking about maybe i can sell this show and then you bring it into a network and they go well tell us what what's what's going on what's the project what are you working on and you say this and they go why don't you do this michael what okay what if i have a female co-host a black transgender woman who uh only speaks chinese like there's gonna be some fucking nonsensical interjection yeah that they're and you're gonna think well if i want to sell it so you know uh i met with the black transgender woman and she's really cool and i think think we can work this out. Nothing against her. Like, she is a great piece of talent, but now you're out.

Yeah. And then, Michael, the show's great, but it's not great with you. And we're going to bring in, you know, another person to... I forget, one year, Montreal, Louis Black gave the introduction speech, and he told the story of when he was removed from his own sitcom and and i forget i forget the whole thing and i'm sure it's up somewhere but yeah he he got the development deal and they actually were shooting it like that's you know most people just get a development deal and that's it there's and they he got fired and they hired someone else to play lewis black i mean it's lewis black he was fired off of lewis black and it's

just like god i've pitched all types of stuff and oftentimes i'm hosting it of course that's why i'm in the room i'm trying to oftentimes there will be an inevitable question that will either come through the manager or back channels which is like would michael feel comfortable stepping off this it's like all the time yeah you know and you start to question if maybe i should step off it and that's like no fuck believe in it believe in yourself to pull this off maybe now isn't the right time but there's also a thing where we're talking about like people like to interject in conversations because they want to be heard and they want to talk there's a thing that happens in a meeting when you have a bunch of executives like that they just someone has another idea and that idea might

not even make sense but if that guy's like the president of the network he might try to shove that idea down everybody's throats yeah like michael's great okay but we want michael in a television in the background yeah and the other host in front and every now and then they call on michael and everybody's gotta go hmm i wonder like it's a terrible idea but everybody else has to chime in i've been in the room with those fucking terrible ideas i've seen it so are you just out of that those dumb meetings right now i mean because of texas and because of the status you don't have to fucking go pitch the head of a network right no i'm done i've been done for years yeah okay yeah i've been done for years so what happened with this then so who won the argument here oh that made that made it on TV. Okay, so you won, but then you won the battle.

It was one of those things where we were doing this all the time. We had a game show called Make Me Hard. This was the game show. We had a box that you put over a guy's genitals and it had a red light on it. And the light would go off whenever you got a boner. Right. So we would have stuff like, you know, like we had, uh,

like midgets eating bananas and all kinds of crazy stuff. A light would go off if they got a boner. Okay. And who's all, it was fake. It's fake. We just press a button to make the light go off. So here's,

here's, but this, this is what I'm going to get to. Boner checker or something. We had, uh, a transgender woman who is beautiful. She's fucking beautiful.

And she climbed on top of this guy, pulled out her breasts, and put whipped cream on her breasts, and he was sucking off the whipped cream. It was crazy. And then pulled down her pants and showed her cock. And they were fine with that. But what they didn't like is the word hard. They felt like the word hard is just rude and they didn't like it.

So they made us change it to make me stiff. So I was like, but stiff is, that's more offensive than hard. It's grosser than hard. It's stiff. Yeah. Like make me hard is bad. But it's that kind of arbitrary nonsensical input that you have to give into because they're the exact to give it and also no one says make me stiff so i have hard people

people say the old sign make me hard was in the background of episode one of the podcast that i did i had it behind me and brian while we were talking there was a make me hard sign behind me because we i got to keep it. They wouldn't use it. But the fact that they're okay with this person pulling their dick out, that's fine. Yeah, but not the terminology. Or they want to feel that they had input. That's all it is.

That's all it is. There's too many cooks in the kitchen. There's too many people that want to be heard, and they don't need to be heard. They don't have the confidence to sit back and go, we love it. This is great. Because they have to have an input and this is the problem with the whole studio and network environment and for the longest time you had to listen to them because you needed financing you needed a place to go you needed the union to be there with the cameras and everything you don't need that anymore especially if you want to do this so and this is my favorite

thing to do other than stand up so why would i why am i having meetings to be yelled at yeah i mean the internet has made garage band has made a lot of people be able to upload their music it also means there's a lot more shittier music that's uploaded this includes comedy and oh yeah i mean i think about i see comics now starting maybe not this year starting although there are some people who started. As soon as they get their first tape of them on a club, they upload it. It's like they've been doing it six months and now it's on YouTube. And I probably would have done that, but you couldn't even do that when I started. It was whatever, 2003 or 2004.

So I had five years probably where you could really put something on the internet and i i had five years to get better without people seeing that and it was helpful i had a long time you had a long fucking time i started in 88 so i had a long time where but there's still videos of me when i was terrible yeah you can find them yeah and i think i encourage people to look at those because if you're thinking about doing stand-up and you think like oh you look at a person that's successful and they're touring and everything no no go back to the early day it's a fucking wild grind like what you're talking about when you're talking about developing a new bit and doing it in front of a large crowd that's there to see you and they paid money how nerve-wracking that is because it's a new bit and

a lot of times new bits bomb yep add that times 100 that's your whole act right times 100 is like developing an act when you don't know what you're doing even yeah i mean you don't even have skill yet you don't know cadence you don't know rhythm you don't know the right way to introduce an idea to people you just have some random thoughts of what might be funny it might not be and it's this long brutal trudge through broken glass and snow and hail and and you gotta persevere you gotta keep going and the bombings are so ruthlessly degrading your personal self-esteem you're you're who you are it's oh oh it it's self-esteem you're you're who you are it's oh oh it it's music musicians can bomb but there's still noise in the room you know like we've all been to a shitty bar in asheville and the guy this guy sucks at fucking the guitar but there's noise there is noise to distract and when we bomb it

it's the it suck it's it's the sucking of the noise. And often to, oh man, the, you know, sweat, everyone's talking about flop sweat. But I remember starting out not being comfortable with silence. Doesn't mean you were bombing. Now I watch better comics, more experienced comics. They're very, silence is fine. As long as they're in control of that silence. And I remember as a new comic, it was like silence was like the death for me. Right.

And as I've gotten more comfortable on stage, hey, it's good. You got, you got them silent. That's good. Well, don't you think it's like tennis in a way that like the first time you ever picked up a tennis racket, I imagine you were very young, right? Very young. Yeah. Any skill when you first learn it, you don't know what the fuck to do.

Your feet don't move right. Your arm doesn't swing right. You're, I'm sure your swing isn't smooth. It's just like anything else. It takes repetition and concentration and focus and discipline, and you've got to keep grinding over and over and over again. And then you get okay good, and you go play a competitive tournament, and you lose 6-0, 6-0.

I mean, there's a wonderful interview of Roger Federer talking about his first tournament, 6-0, 6-0, lost. I mean, the greatest tennis player of all time is admitting publicly, and he's not ashamed of it. He shouldn't be. Oh, yeah. He goes, but then I—and he said, but then I took something from that. I learned from that. And I've also taught tennis forever.

But one of the most common mistakes people make when you teach them tennis is they run to where the ball bounces, right? You're not going to hit the ball there. The ball bounces and then you should be further back. But the biggest mistake everyone makes is they run directly to the ball. It sounds funny, but in every sport, you should be more or less where the ball bounces, but not in tennis. You need to have a bounce and wait for it. So you learn just this little tiny thing like that makes the biggest difference and then you can get better, but you fail. You fail all day long day long i mean tennis fail if you can be one of the greatest tennis players in the world you can play 40 tournaments a year and you lose every single week maybe you win a tournament one tournament you lose

all the fucking time so you better get used to that shit yeah and you better be tough enough to advance through it and i think that really helped me with comedy because I've transitioned over to comedy and it's like, oh fuck, I failed? Am I gonna cry to myself for three days? I want to. It feels that personal. Or do we gotta get back out there? I use you as an example of people

that were successful in other things that understand discipline better than most stand-ups. Because one of the things that does trouble stand-ups is that discipline. Like they like doing it. They enjoy doing stand-up. But a lot of times they wind up doing the same material over and over again because it's safe. And because they don't have the discipline to like, oh, no, no.

Today we're doing 10 minutes of new shit. Get up there. Do it. Write. Grind. Keep going. And people that have a work ethic and an understanding of discipline from something else, like it transfers better into stand-up. Yeah, it does.

But the ego is strong. And sometimes I'll have 10 minutes I want to do that's new, and you get up there, and it's like, oh, shit, this sucks. And you find yourself doing a bit that's four years old and I know does well. I just don't see the negative of teaching kids a sport now if the kid doesn't like the sport or you're pushing them into something they don't like but i just had so much value came from for me it was tennis because my tennis was my family was a tennis family so that's the sport that i was thrown into and we lived in michigan where like there was courts you know it's not like now i live in brook Brooklyn there's like one court for eight million people but

uh you just you just learned so much problem solving disappointment that's a big thing yeah uh how to handle it it's not the end of the world it feels like it is but I just say put kids in sports and uh also we're talking now about public health. I mean, we have a public health crisis in the United States. Maybe we should be more active. Yeah. Well, you know, you don't want to blame people that are the victims of a disease, right? But the victims of the disease generally are people with health problems.

Yes. 2.6. Yeah, no. Two. Yeah yeah that's what it is 2.6 comorbidity factors is the average of the people that have died from covid the uh the amount of the amount of people that had covid only six percent of the people who died from covid had covid just covid okay only covid the the rest of the people that died had an average of 2.6 to like two and a half basically comorbidity factors so they had diabetes they had this they had that they had you know lung disease that i mean we have a real public health crisis. It's a public health crisis added with capitalism. Yeah.

And that is causing some serious issues because this is a capitalistic country. We value the dollar. We value business being open. I'm so impressed with how businesses have adapted. Comics have adapted through social media, learning new... I weirdly may get in trouble for this but i have a newfound appreciation for capitalism i see these small businesses in brooklyn and

they're building outdoor heaters and planters and like i'm like whoa this is fucking awesome like this is what capitalism is driving now also that love of capitalism is p is are making people say we can't shut the government we can't't shut things down. And you mix that with public health. I hope the end is near. I hope it's near. I'll take the vaccine. The light at the end of the tunnel. Yeah.

I think I said 2.6%. I think what I meant is 2.6. Okay. 2.6 factor. What you're trying to say is people are dying from other shit. Yeah. They're dying from a bunch of different things on top of having covid yeah yeah i i think that the real problem is these folks that are telling everyone what they can and can't do and it's not necessarily based on data it's based on they have

to figure out to do how to do something so like in Los Angeles, they're saying we've got to ban outdoor dining. Right. Well, there's no data that shows that there's an extreme risk of transmission from outdoor dining. Right. And you have these people that have spent thousands of dollars setting up this outdoor dining area. Did you see the video of the woman from the restaurant?

Yeah. And then across the street from her, she gets closed down, and literally across the parking lot, a movie studio has set up're outdoor donning and they're fine because of the unions that pay the politicians and it's insanity and that woman you know that's not pf chang's that's this one woman's is it's yeah it's her it's her savings account um i you know i've just kept in touch with a lot of the New York comedy clubs during this time because these are my friends and their business. And I say jokingly, do you have any savings left? And they're going, no.

First of all, what savings? We live in New York. No one has any fucking savings. But yeah. How are the comics getting by if they're not working? Some are doing zoom shows for 20 dollars and you know there's a few outdoor shows i don't know i don't know i i i have this insane protective bubble right now because the daily show has continued and so i'm receiving you know

thankfully a tv paycheck and i'm a stand-up comic but i'm not performing because it's i think it's too dangerous to perform and where i live i think we're gonna lose some comics you know how the fuck could you possibly stay afloat right now yeah well i mean just because they go and get a job and and here's the other thing what job what's available right what are you gonna go to wait tables where well it's like 30 unemployment out there. It's really crazy. I mean, I don't know what jobs are even possible. It's a grind, man, but what you said

really holds true, that the people that are creative that find solutions to keep their businesses afloat. And I think a lot of these comics are going to have to find solutions. I mean, some of them have done a brilliant job, like Andrew Schultz. What he's done is figured it out. He came up with these bits to do on Instagram, have done a brilliant job like andrew schultz what he's done yeah figured it out yeah he came up with these bits to do on instagram these like 15 minute rants he they he had already had a

studio he had everything set up before covid hit he's like fuck what do i do well we go to work we go to work and figure out how to make the show during quarantine yes that he created during quarantine yes and what's really hilarious is he talked about it at the beginning of quarantine. This is a time to create. Yeah. Just buckle down. Go to work. And now look, he sold this four episode series to Netflix.

Yep. And it's brilliant. Yep. I mean, it's really, really good. I think that's a great example of adapting to the times. Also, some people needed to maybe chill for a sec have dinner with their family whatever the case may be but cap i don't know how it was in china what in wuhan were all the businesses doing the same thing were they building little heaters

and like and potted plants so you could have outdoor dining or was this a capitalistic thing i think the government shut them the fuck down. I mean, they were bolting people inside their houses. With, like, the evidence tape across the door and shit. Yeah, it's not good. I mean, the way they handled it is scary. I don't think we should handle it the way they handled it. But even that didn't necessarily work. I mean, didn't they have another surge?

Like, one of the things they were pointing to, like, Japan, they were pointing to Japan as being a virus success story. Like, they just, social distancing, they wore their masks, went back to work, and everybody's fine. Not true. They have a huge surge there right now. The problem is this virus is weird. Yeah.

And I don't think there's a real way that you can contain it. Los Angeles contained it in terms of the strictness of their lockdowns more than anybody. They were stricter than anybody. They have the most cases now. They're fucked. I know you were saying that and it seems like it affects everybody differently. Yeah.

You ask a doctor a question, you know, they don't know the answer. Isn't our human brain trying to find patterns so we can go, okay, that's what this sickness is, but this thing seems to be all over the place. Yeah, it doesn't have good patterns. And it affects people very differently in terms of what it does to them. Some people, it's like a sinus infection.

Some people, it really knocks them for a loop. Some people don't recover and they die. There's no pattern that makes sense. Like the flu, we understand the flu is dangerous, kills people, really does. But we also understand what to do. Get a flu shot, boost your immune system. Here's some medication you can take. With this, this is so new and so scary that no one knows what to do.

I tried to find comfort in reading about the pandemic of 1918, the Spanish flu, because that was supposedly two years and i was like okay well how did we get through that did the economy recover you know i was trying to like use history as a way to predict the future but when you read about it at least the wikipedia page of the pandemic of 1918 we never really fixed it or it it like possibly is still around that that virus and it was i thought oh maybe a vaccine fixed it no it didn't i don't know what the fuck happened to the spanish flu was it herd immunity i don't know i don't probably yeah but you know you'll find it it's estimated that that's killed like 50 million

people yeah uh so i hope 100 years later we're better at this stuff. Never really ended. After affecting millions of people worldwide, the 1918 flu strain shifted and then stuck around. Oh, great. Well, there's a new version. That's December 11th. It's a software update. There's a new version of COVID that's hit London now.

It's 70% more transmittable. Yeah. Fuck. Fun times. that's hit london now yeah 70 percent more transmissible yeah fuck fun times what we know what we don't about the uk coronavirus variant and they think there might have been a similar variant or the same variant in brazil a few months ago crazy not good so do we live in fear do we yes yeah yeah we just shit our pants and hide yeah. Or you fucking take care of your immune system and you allow people to open up businesses. Here's the thing. These people that are making these decisions for us, like the mayor of LA and the governor

of California, right, which is the worst examples, they are not experts in the right thing to do or the wrong thing to do because what they've done has worked terribly. It's been the worst response. And I don't think you can do something and not have a consideration for the consequences, the negative consequences of what you're doing, like telling people they can't work and shut down their businesses. When the economy collapses because all these things are shut down, and yet you still don't have a significant decrease in the cases.

What you're showing is you have this one idea, you're sticking with it, and there's no indication that you have any respect for the negative consequences. Not only that, you don't have a plan. How are you going to bring everybody back up? How are you going to bring back these restaurants? What are you going to do about these comedy clubs that are dead? What are you going to do about these bars that are going under? What are you going to do about these comedy clubs that are dead? What are you going to do about these bars that are going under? What are you going to do about these mom and pop shops that are never going to be around anymore? I don't know how it is in your life, but in my life, numerous

friends of mine in what appeared to be healthy, strong relationships are fucking toast. Like, pandemic has divorced a lot of people. Domestic violence is up um suicides suicides are up so there is a different consequence to all this now i also find it entertaining that we elect these officials and then now they have to be in charge of a

health crisis i i would much rather we elect them off of popularity or whatever it is and then when a health crisis strikes we have a health minister who kind of comes in and just like drops the heat on us the problem with these health ministers is in a situation like this they don't even take into account the economic consequences and right that the economic consequences are also going to bring with them suicide drug addiction domestic violence child abuse all those things are going to bring with them suicide, drug addiction, domestic violence, child abuse. All those things are going to happen, and they don't take into account that. They take into account the health consequences. And here's the other thing. These governors and these mayors that shut everything down still get paid.

That's a real problem. They are not incentivized to keep businesses open. If their pay was in direct... If they were the CEO of a Like, if they were, like, the CEO of a company, where the more money the company makes, the more money they make, they would be incentivized

to make sure these businesses stay open and these people can keep paying taxes. These fucks keep getting paid, no matter what happens. But they have a term limit. They do. But, yeah. But, so, look,

by the time Newsom gets out, he will have destroyed that state. Right. And also destroyed people's faith in government. Because people are so frustrated with him. And then you see him at that French laundry place sitting around maskless right next to people indoors. Oh, it was outdoor dining. Bitch, there's a chandelier above your fucking head. Not stars.

There's not stars above your head. There's walls. Yeah, there's walls. Yeah, I your fucking head not stars there's not stars above your head there's walls yeah there's walls that's indoors i don't want to hear your bullshit yeah you are a hypocrite and this is nonsense you should not be getting paid yeah if you let your economy collapse due to these decisions that are not based on science like particularly outdoor dining that's not based on science there's data. They can't show we have overwhelming data that 50% of the transmissions are due to people eating outside. That's not the case. So we are fortunate in LA that you have very good weather.

So keep the fucking restaurants open that can open outside. Help them. Accommodate them. Give them some sort of a bridge to let them get through this so that on the other side, after the vaccines and after herd immunity or whatever happens, these people will still have businesses. In L.A., were they letting people set up out on the streets? Yes. Okay, that's good.

They did it in a lot of places. Venice was really good at it. Okay, I noticed that here, but I feel like that here is always the case. Here you could go inside. Right. I don't give a fuck. In New York, I mean, you were able to go on the street,

but the problem is everybody's such a dumbass there. I was afraid to eat on the street because the car's driving by. Everybody's texting and drunk. They're going to plow into people, dude. For sure. I mean, I'm terrified.

I'm eating. Is that a car? Is that a motorcycle? How about when the snow comes and then people start sliding sideways and plow into a cafe yeah and there's no heaters you know there was an there's an example of a of a restaurant owner who said i'm now more of a outdoor general contractor than a restaurant owner because all i spend my time doing is finding propane for the heaters asking someone to build potted plants we need more reflective lights on the out this is like general contractor shit yeah meanwhile not

like is the shrimp cooked or whatever do we have shrimp and i was like oh you got to adapt so hard in new york so quickly so anyway yeah it's not good it's not good it's not good but you know but some will adapt and hopefully i just don't understand how businesses bounce back because they've never had to before. And so many of these businesses are 30 years old. Their parents opened this restaurant. Now the sons are running it. There's a restaurant in Vegas called Gaitanos. It's in Henderson, Nevada.

It's outside of Vegas. And I used to go to the original restaurant that was in Calabasas. And now the son runs it. The father has passed on. And luckily, I got to see him before he passed on. I ate there a couple years back. And now the son is running it. And he's just doing all kinds of creative things to try to open it up and to try to have people.

They're reducing 25% indoor capacity now. They're selling a lot of to-go food and trying to help people out. But this is a business that I've been going to them personally for 23 years. And now all of a sudden, they're right about. They're barely hanging on. And they were a very successful business. It's a great restaurant. They were around for a long time. But now they're right about yeah they're barely hanging on and they were a very successful business it's a great restaurant yeah they were around for a long time yeah but now they're fucked the plastic all the to-go shit too yeah i mean how much fucking more plastic are we how many seals

are going to choke today i thought we were headed in the right direction on plastic yeah new york banned the plastic bag and now it's like Everything is plastic Well here's a solution for this It's never discussed but it really should be There is biodegradable plastic That's made out of hemp I feel like you've had somebody like this on the show Probably for sure

I have and also I've had Boyan Slot Who is a gentleman that is When he was 19 Created a device for removing plastic from the ocean. Is this that fucking floaty thing? Yes. I was like, all of humanity is hoping this works. I think he tried it in the San Francisco Bay, maybe.

Well, no, he's doing it now. He actually just sent me a message that he wants to send me a pair of sunglasses that are made out of the plastic that they pulled out of the ocean. So they're not just taking this plastic. What pair of sunglasses that are made out of the plastic that they pulled out of the ocean. So they're not just taking this plastic. I thought it was a pair of sunglasses he found in one of the oceans.

It's a really great pair of sunglasses. Recycle it. But they're legitimately recycling. So they're taking that plastic that was choking seals, and they're reconstituting it and then making products. And then the sales of that products will help fund this business to try to remove plastic from the ocean so it's actually a resource now that he's figured out a way to extract the pollution there he is

beautiful person i love this guy loving to death and there's his they're cool sunglasses yeah that's the functional and look at all the plastic they're pulling out they're pulling out these big huge chunks of plot but you know you're dealing with something that's bigger than the state of Texas that's floating around in the middle of the ocean. Is that true, that trash, gyre, or whatever they call it? Because you Google image it, I can never find it. But supposedly there's this, you know, there it is, maybe. Well, here's the reason why you can't find it. A lot of it is subsurface.

Some of it's 214,000 football fields. Wow. American football? Ocean cleaning funded of our goal of 500,000. This is American football. They're just talking about what he's been able to clean. So 214,000 football fields worth of cleaning. But it's the largest cleanup in history of the ocean. And the ocean, this garbage patch itself has been really well documented.

But you're not really going to find it with Google Earth very well. Because it's... A lot of it breaks down and it gets very small. And some of it's floating above the surface or just below the surface. But where is this trash originating from? All over the world. Okay. And people are just dumping trash in the ocean? Yes. A lot of people people do and then a lot of it just accidentally gets there in the ocean like

like here's a perfect example when it rains in la everything comes down the la river and the la river is filled with trash and it just goes right into the ocean and there's fucking la river is is the biggest saddest story of humanity. So disgusting. I mean, they fucking concreted it, the whole thing, in like 19-whatever it was. I don't know. Somebody died in a flood, and it is strange to me, the LA River. It symbolizes how fucked up LA is. Yes.

That that's the river. The river is this concrete, shitty structure. That's their solution. You go to the river here, and there's like paths and people biking and i'm like oh this is like an act and it's like those bats it's like this is an active nature drawn river yeah and then the la river it's like we loved concrete huh when concrete was invented we just went ham on concrete yeah especially in la but this is unbelievable and this is a solution but obviously the initially let's not throw this shit in the ocean in the first place well it's not just let's not throw it it's things get washed

in the ocean with the rain and things like assholes that throw their cigarettes out the window they still do that they still do as if it doesn't as if it's not littering either i have friends that i love to death that smoke and they smoke and they'll throw the cigarette on the ground and step on it yeah as if it's gone now if it's gone it's gone it's right there well why it's like the one thing that people don't have any problem littering with yeah it's not it doesn't count as littering are those things biodegradable the filters no so why can't they make that biodegradable well they probably can but it'll cost more money yeah you know the thing about hemp is that it's like large-scale production of hemp is totally possible, but

it hasn't really been implemented in terms of creating plastic in this country yet. But you can make plastic water bottles out of hemp that'll degrade in the ground. That'd be amazing. Yeah. I mean, they can do it. We have this idea, like every time you drink a water bottle, you're fucking up the world. And well, you kind of sort of are, but it doesn't have to be. There's a way to get around this.

It's totally possible to do as we sit here with all this water bottle. We need to do something about this. We have a machine, too, the filter. From now on, let's stop using water bottles. Let's use that filter thing. Get some glasses. Get some glasses that are made out of plastic so I don't break them. It seems like the company makes the product before, always, before the regulation can exist. Yeah.

So we get so far down the line with profit and success and Dasani and whoever. And then you have to, it's like Uber. Now they're trying to regulate it, but it's just, the business is too big now. And plastic is, plastic, water, fuck. Well, we just do a really bad job of garbage disposal. Yeah. We do a really poor job of making sure that the garbage is in a controlled environment. It's in an absolute container.

And a lot of people fucking litter. And it all takes is a fucking drives me insane drives me nuts we drive down the highway and see someone throw something out the window in la you would see these motherfuckers i'd drive my motorcycle down sunset sometimes and you you'd be you know you go in between the cars at a red light and people would just throw their stuff out the window not knowing i'm standing there or on my bike and it would hit you you know and it's like yeah beautiful you know beautiful street i've seen people throw full bags of like you know their fast food bag full bag out the window yeah people should be allowed to do something to them physically but some people are

gross yeah it just says their punishment is they have to be them what is this 157 000 shipping containers of u.s plastic wakes exported to countries with poor waste management in 2018 what well wasn't china supposedly yeah wasn't china supposedly taking our recyclables but then they stopped because i'm fully convinced that that recycle bin in new york city does not it just goes in the same fucking bin as the trash i mean there's i don't know you know 157 000 shipping containers there's a terrible video that i watched about them uh pouring garbage into a river in this uh poor country they literally back a truck up into the river and they were pouring everything into the river just garbage i mean just let's get rid of it here i i heard that americans have like on average two storage units.

So like their home isn't enough storage. So on average that most Americans own a separate storage facility somewhere for their stuff. Maybe New York City people do. Maybe. Texas certainly doesn't. New York City people kind of have to, right? They kind of have to. A lot of folks in New York have a storage unit where they take stuff that they don't use that often.

Bring the winter stuff in. Yeah. Because, yes. But we have stuff. We have too much stuff. Yeah. If you ever go camping and you got to take your trash out with you, that's a good lesson in learning how to minimize your trash. Yeah.

It's disgusting how much trash we have yeah there's just a lot of the what we have is just we're not you know we're not living efficiently no it's not it's not renewable and efficient but i mean right now in particular people are thinking well that's the least of our problems. Our problems are, you know, we're good at thinking about one thing at a time. Yeah, it is kind of frustrating that, yeah. I mean, aren't we seeing global warming reversing a little bit right now? Or like more birds are migrating and like you know because

there's less industry happening i don't know well they think air quality is improving but the problem with global warming is the human imprint on global warming we're accelerating it right with the you know carbon in the atmosphere but it's only one factor there's a lot of factors yeah there's so much debate on that stuff it's really interesting there's no debate whether or not human beings are having a negative influence. They're definitely having a negative influence. But when you go back and you look at when there was an ice age and most of North America was covered in a mile-high sheet of ice, and you see that there used to be dinosaurs in certain places that are now off. This is not stable like none of this is yeah this whole planet is like constantly in the state of change and these assholes that make houses and

put them right next to the ocean are silly right you're silly right like that that fucking shoreline varies wildly over into the next hundred years and yet you're just like here's my house and i'm gonna put it on stilts so the water can go underneath it but i'll be fine we're weird with that man like malibu the most expensive coastline in in america right those malibu houses and they're all on something that's just not gonna last yeah and i never understood malibu because i could never as a regular person, you can't really see Malibu.

It's just PCH, but it's all private beaches. Somehow they've privatized. It's not. It's not. No, they pretend it's private. Fuck. This is the thing. Bastards.

Oh, it's pretty gross. Not only is it gross, it's like a crazy situation. These people that own these houses on these beaches hire security to chase people off the beach because the beach is in front of their house. But they don't own the beach. They don't own the beach. Because you can own the beach. You can't own the beach, yeah.

It's literally like owning a chunk of ocean. It's not yours to buy. Yeah. You own the piece of land where your house is at. But these people pay like 20 million bucks for this little house that's right there. And they think, well, I shouldn't have people playing the drums right in front of my house. Well, no, they're allowed to. So are they saying that they're trespassed to get to the beach?

They're literally, there's court cases because people are hiring security guards to kick people off of the land in front of their house. But that land is public land. So there's lawsuits going on right now and there's all these uh these groups that are trying to make sure that these people don't get away with this right and that you know restore public access to the beach areas just like you have a certain amount of space between your house and the beach yeah or and you know like you get but it's not much it's like 10 feet or some shit but there must be a law in place that says you don't you can't privatize the ocean right yes this should be i'm i'm i'm

happy we came up with that law i hope there's i don't know yeah you know i was i was talking about water and dumping in the river i did this this piece on the daily show there's uh a company that gave lake erie uh a bill of rights they they declared lake erie to be a person to be a human being legally so now they can defend it by pollution because i guess all these defend it against pollution excuse me yes so so all these agricultural companies have been dumping in Lake Erie forever. They own all this land. It's privatized.

They dump, dump, dump. But they've actually... Because Lake Erie is all fucked up. I mean, it's like caught on fire in the 70s. It's like a lake that's like burning. Caught on fire? Yes, 1974 or 78. The lake caught on fire was so polluted.

Yes. Jesus Christ. So it's had this long history of... I know, like fire. It has a long history of i know like fire it has a long history of just being totally the worst great lake and totally fucked over but they declared lake erie a person so now they can defend it and it was it's still tied up in legal land but that'd be interesting you know what if a river is a person what if a mountain range is a person does it now have those rights and if we harm it can we defend it why do we have to river is a person? What if a mountain range is a person? Does it now have those rights?

And if we harm it, can we defend it? Why do we have to make it a person? Right. That's what's bizarre. Exactly. But that's how fucked up it's gotten, that they can't get any attention to this issue. Well, waste. Whenever people make things, it's going to be waste.

And whenever people don't have consequences for getting rid of that waste in a detrimental way, they do it. If they can make more profit by just dumping it off somewhere, they just dump it off somewhere. There's the Cleveland River fire. Oh, my God. Right. So is this the Cuyahoga River, maybe? Cuyahoga, yeah. Cuyahoga River.

Oh, my God. And this goes into Lake Erie. Bro, look how dark that is. Oh, dude. That's 1969? Oh, it was 69? Make that larger. Look how dark that smoke is.

How polluted is that? That's the water on fire. Yeah. Who would have ever imagined that it would make that much smoke? That is fucking insane. That picture is crazy. And I don't know, you know and i don't know you know i don't know the pollution i think it's agricultural you know but yeah it's and and midwesterners have a long history

of like taking the great lakes for granted and just kind of like dumping all their shit in there but it's like you know this is one-fifth of the world's freshwater you know those are glaciers they just melted yeah that's what they are glaciers that melted there's a bunch of areas that was post ice age too that was uh one of the things that uh there's a there's a time called the the younger dryas uh the younger dryas impact theory is that during this time period the earth was hit and it was during the Ice Age. The Earth was hit with asteroidal impacts, which caused a rapid melting of the glaciers. And there's all sorts of evidence that points to it

that this guy Randall Carlson can point out. And he's kind of spent his life. It's really a crazy story. He was on acid once, and he was overlooking this area and he had this vision he realized like he was looking at this incredible terrain this you know it's canyons and then he had this vision like oh my god this is from water like all this erosion came from water what would cause this much water and this much erosion and then he spends literally decades researching this decades obsessing about this and has been on the podcast multiple times discussing this and and it coincides

with the end of the ice age the end of the ice age and also coincides with this time where this comet is uh has like a cycle of passing by Earth and debris from this comet collided with the Earth. And there's all sorts of evidence in terms of soil, when they do soil samples, core samples, that there is what's called, I think it's called tritonite, and it's nuclear, it's literally nuclear glass. And it happens on impact sites of asteroids.

So when particles hit the earth, literally it's the same glass that's created when they did the Trinity test. Fuck. When they did the Trinity test and they detonated a nuke. So this stuff all exists in this time period that coincides with the end of the ice age. And that also coincides with these rapid melting of these glaciers. And then they pushed across the Earth and did this crazy shit to the surface of the Earth.

When I Google it, there's a video from NASA that pops up first now. Wow. That's almost confirming his theory. Yeah, see those... There was NASA satellites. This area of where these glaciers

rapidly thawed out and just tore through the landscape and moved these massive stones. It's really crazy. You'd have to listen to him talk about it. I'm doing a really shitty job of describing it. But it's a fascinating,

fascinating thing to talk about. But this is all, those glaciers are all remnants of those lakes, the Great Lakes. Yeah. Those are giant chunks of ice. The fucking, most of North America was covered with a mile high sheet of ice. And then, what's going to happen when the asteroid comes for us now? We're fucked. But we're going to know it's coming.

Yeah, but they can't do anything about it. It's not an Independence Day situation or whatever that movie, Armageddon. Yeah, they can't stop it. There's some people that think they can stop it. Oh, we'll just do this and we'll just do that. But when I talk to experts like Neil deGrasse Tyson and these type of people, we're more than a decade away from being able to do something about it. To change the trajectory of an asteroid.

They're not putting nearly enough resources into doing that either. Because some of these things, we don't see them coming until they're awake. There's not that many people watching the sky. And there's 900,000 near-Earth objects. If you look at the amount of objects that are circulating between Mars and Jupiter, the thing that saves us is Jupiter. Jupiter is like our security guard. No shit.

He's keeping everybody, all the assholes, from coming into the club. He's like, hang on, because Jupiter has this massive amount of gravity. Right. So a lot of things that would hit us get sucked into Jupiter. Is that why it has, like, seven moons or whatever? It's got a lot of shit. Yeah. And there was one impact.

Thanks, Jupiter. Right? There's one impact that happened in Jupiter that really changed our understanding of what an impact does. Because we had sort of this idea of what it would be like. And this one thing hit Jupiter and the explosion was literally the size of Earth. And we're like oh no and we realized oh something like that hit us that's a wrap and that you know obviously that's

what did the dinosaurs in and yeah the yucatan impact but that's gonna happen again it's just a matter of when it's it's always fun to have this type of conversation what is this movie that just came out about what you're talking about oh no shit like the last couple months called greenland oh the gladiator guy yeah he's in there well listen this is gonna happen yeah you know remember back in 2015 bill gates gave a ted talk about uh pandemics and i remember everybody was right everybody's like yeah it's not gonna happen well guess what fuck face we are. We're in the middle of a pandemic. We're very fortunate that this pandemic is killing less than 1% of the population, but it is a pandemic.

And 1% of the people that get it. But this is also going to happen. It's not a matter of if we get hit. It's when. You look at the surface of the moon. The surface of the moon looks like one of those steel plates at a gun range. Dude. It's so fucked.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yeah. That's because it gets hit because the moon doesn't have any atmosphere to protect it. There's going to be a third act to earth, you know,

and, and it's going to end. But are we a part of that? Well, how about this? Well, so why do I have to go to work then there's this all gonna happen this is earth two okay you know there was earth one we got hit by a planet okay

earth one existed we're in the sequel to earth yeah this is the second version of earth earth one they think that's how the moon got formed earth got hit by another planet think of that shit yeah yeah i mean when i look at the ocean and when i look at the sky i feel very insignificant and it actually gives me comfort right it makes me go like dude chill on this chill on that tuesday morning bothered you or whatever you know the commute don't read your mentions on twitter exactly like yo look at the ocean look at the sky and uh it's fascinating and you think about men you know hundreds of years ago that would look up there and say i want to go there or study or learn about that it's crazy and fuck well that's another thing that i think we've done it's a huge disservice unfortunately a consequence of civilization is light and light pollution dude yes it's ruined our view of the most amazing thing in the world which is the universe it's ruined our view of

the heavens i can sometimes see one star from my roof in new york i mean it is like it is just a giant glow. Yeah. And when you go camping or in LA, I used to love to go camping and you just get out and it was just like, whoa, what is all that? Yeah. Amazing. And then noise pollution is the other one.

Noise pollution is bad too, but at least that kind of dies down at night. True. The light pollution never dies down. I went to the Keck Observatory once in Hawaii, and it changed my life. Like, legitimately changed my life. Because you go up to the top, and I remember as we were driving up there, I thought we fucked up because there were so many clouds. I was like, damn, we picked it on a cloudy day.

But you actually drive through the clouds. Whoa. And you get above the clouds, and the view is insanity. It's so amazing. It's on the Big Island. The Big Island, the peak of the Big Island is very high. And you get up there and you see everything. You see the full Milky Way with all the stars.

And it's so overwhelming that it makes you feel so insignificant. You're like, holy shit. It's the most amazing view. And then you realize, oh, my my god this is how humans used to see the sky always always until like 100 years ago and then we started ruining it and now we literally have the most beautiful thing ever there and instead we look down at this fucking thing well we don't we've we've and i think it coincides with our lack of appreciation or understanding of where we stand.

You know, when you look at the mountains or when you look at the ocean, you do get humbled by the, just the magnitude of it. There's something comforting about it. And I think it's one of the reasons why, like beach towns are kind of chill. Totally. And people that live in mountain towns are pretty friendly. They're kind of cool. I think that live in mountain towns are pretty friendly they're kind of cool i think they're humbled by nature yeah well that was my that was that's my biggest

appreciation of la there's a lot of fake motherfuckers there but in general people are interacting with nature on a daily basis yeah uh that's not happening in new york but um i forgot what i was going to say about being humbled oh i also find look at wars and it's always cold people you know like the military it's always people that are freezing like caribbean countries and stuff they're always like we're not gonna waste our time with that shit isn't it yeah just being cold yeah soviet journey america it's always like there's no, it's not like some vast military history for like Trinidad. It's like, they're just like,

why would we go through all that trouble? Yeah, we're chilling. We're drinking coconuts, eating fish. Yeah, being humbled by nature, I think is important. Understand your perspective. And most civilizations in history modeled their cities, like the great civilizations, like Egypt and the your perspective, and most civilizations in history modeled their cities,

like the great civilizations like Egypt and the Mayans. The structures still baffle us today when we look at the Mayan structures. They modeled them after the cosmos. I mean, they were in alignment with these constellations. I mean, that was a huge part of the way they viewed the world. They looked at the sky like this. and it must have been amazing back then like every night you just saw all these stars and they didn't unders i mean maybe did they know what it was well they knew enough to know that it shifted and changed they knew enough to line up certain structures with like the sun and the

summer solstice and they they knew enough they they had a lot of understanding of it because you got to realize these people were observing and studying and writing this stuff down for thousands of years you know even though they don't have the kind of astronomy understanding that people have today they still had thousands of years of observation and they knew how to like make it so on the solstice it would line up correctly, which is insane. You know, speaking of Humble by Nature, Jordan Jonas, who you had on the Alone.

Yeah. One of the things that I was so drawn to with that season, or excuse me, season six of Alone alone i was always like okay i'm gonna see some bad asses like figure out how to survive in nature but the ones that really thrive or win have this humbleness to it all and that's what drove me to jordan and he's like killing the wolverine with his bare hands and shit but he's still somehow doing this like totally alpha uh nature predator thing but then he would still have this like you're you guys are in charge i'm just chilling here yeah and that that threw me i was like oh maybe this is probably why he's so good at this too because he's just like you're in

charge let me just be a guest well he's been in nature for so long that was nuts he understands it and he loves nature like it's like that guy's uh spent like a long time living with people in siberia i know i would the reindeer and oh my god his life is pretty incredible i'm gonna do his survival camp are you really yeah like in august he's i guess he's got some survival camp and i signed up to do it i don't know we're gonna go to idaho on the fucking horses and like i don't know i'm just trying to learn as much as i can i just think it'll be fun i mean i'm like i live in a city you know but uh i love nature but it's hard you got i gotta like commit to finding time to be in it from where i live you moved to brooklyn to do the show yeah do the daily show right i was living in la before. What was that transition like?

I had been to New York once before for a year to do a show on Fox with Regis Philbin, rest in peace. And, oh, that'd be a great guest, but he's no longer, you can't get him now. So I was a little more familiar with New York City. The first time I went there,

it just wiped me out. I couldn't figure it out. I thought everything anybody said to me, I took it personally. I didn't understand the pace. I didn't understand anything. The second time I went,

which is now, I was a little more confident in the rhythm. Is your wife from there? No, she's Canadian. So we were in LA. I got the job, moved to New York.

My parents were living in New York City at the time. So I actually got The Daily Show, moved to New York, and stayed with my parents. 38-year-old sleeping in my parents' house. My mom would lightly knock on the door and wake me up and ask me. Honey, time to go to work. Yeah, I'm going to go to work. Do you want coffee? Yeah, I'll take coffee.

That's hilarious. And then transitioned and moved everybody to Brooklyn. But have you spent time in New York? You never lived there, right? I lived in New Rochelle, which is outside of New York City. I lived there for a few years. That was like ground zero for COVID. Did you see that?

Westchester. Yes, that was crazy. They got crushed. So were you doing comedy out of New Rochelle? Yeah, I had a car, right? And I couldn't afford to live in the city right because if i lived in the city i would have to uh park i remember being ashamed to tell people that i lived in new rochelle right like oh you're one of those people living out there and you can't

you can't hang in the city right right i was like i can't i don't have any money like i couldn't afford what was spot pay then 10 bucks not much But the road was where the money was at. I lived in New York because I got signed by my manager. And the New York scene was great, but you would have to hop from gig to gig to gig, and everybody was doing like 15 minutes. Or you could go on the road, and you'd go to Connecticut and do an hour and make like $150. That's what I was doing. I was doing a lot of road gigs.

I needed a car, and there was no way I was going to have a car in new york city and pay like i don't remember what a spot was but it was as much as my rent was from my apartment that's how much a spot was to park your car yeah i don't know i'll i'll i'll do four shows a night, but in order to make it on time, I'll be taking $80 worth of Ubers or taxis. So how is this working? I don't know how, you know, I got into the New York scene later in comedy where, you know, I had road work I could rely on, but I just don't know how you survive

and live full-time as a New York City stand-up comic. I mean, there are people at the cellar that will tell you they pulled it off, but they haven't bought a new winter jacket in like 12 years. It's fucking brutal. There's almost an embracing of poverty. Like there's a, not just embracing, but there's a badge of honor to the poverty that you get

from choosing that path. I don't embrace that, yeah. Mark Norman drives a scooter. He rides a fucking moped around New York City. I go, is it dangerous? He's like, yeah, but I feel alive. I'm out there driving, risking my life. Yeah, I mean, I love biking through New York City.

Do you really? I love biking New York City. It is fun. It's similar to what Mark is saying. But I also fall back on the fact that I'm getting exercise when I do that. He's riding a scooter. Oh, yeah. Many a times I've changed in a green room at a comedy club with the helmet, and I'm

sweating. Jesus. But New York- Louis C.K. used to ride a motorcycle, and he told me he got hit by a car. Oh, fuck. Yeah. And when he got hit by a car, he was like, okay, that's it. Yeah.

And I was like, you were riding a motorcycle around New York City? I got my car hit once by a guy. I got out to talk to the the cab driver hit me he's like hey fuck you and he drove off yeah no that's like there was no consequences and i go what do you i go give me your license and registration he goes no let me just he's trouble that's new york i was like fuck it's it's a it's a pinball game manhattan's a pinball game and if when you're on a bike you feel like the ball sometimes but you get to where you're going it's fast it's fun uh and it's the best way to commute quickly in new york city but you're sweaty you're gross nothing was as simple and

as easy as popping in the car 10 minutes go to the comedy store get a great spot maybe do another spot up at the belly room two shows a night in you know through osmosis absorb other great comp that was the la world if you were in at the comedy store was was perfect for me but now that i'm in new york it's just you know it's a fight everything's a fight in new york do you do road gigs like in jersey yeah yeah that to me made more sense yeah because i need time to air my act out yeah because i'm not like one of the things that i found is that in new york city some of the best joke writers great crowd work guys but there's a consequence of the environment of those clubs the environment is you're very close to the audience the stage is

very small and because of that there's a lot of interaction with the crowd. And there's a lot of joke jokes. For sure. And you have short sets, so you don't have a chance to expand. So I need time. Because some of my bits, I want to talk about something that's fucked up. And I have to get you to trust me first. So I have to talk to you about kind of normal shit that you can agree with

and then go let me ask you about this what why are we doing this really i need a half hour i need 45 minutes i need i need time to get to the real i can't open up with a bit about old people fucking and dying i can't you know that i need time i have to do bits about living with my parents up top oh we like this guy he's humbled whatever now we can talk about me too yes but in new york it's like hey you got 14 minutes so then i would run up on stage start my first joke on me too and everyone hates me and i'm going oh wait i of course i know the rule why didn't i because because yeah but you're right so look some like comedy purists make fun of the road i i to me it's awesome way to get good at comedy that those were comedy purists that don't

exist anymore yeah yeah the ones who are successful don't make fun of the road those comedy that was a thing that was going on back in the day okay whereas like the people that lived in the city and they existed and survived in the city they would mock everybody who went on the road yeah but those people are dead they don't they don't exist anymore yeah because everybody does the road now and you realize like no it's your choice not only that this arrogance that only the people in new york city are the sophisticated people that are intelligent it's so dumb yeah really like yeah are there morons in jersey for sure yeah are there morons in manhattan yeah that too yeah especially if you do like carolines like if you do carolines you're doing tourists for sure it's

mostly tourists you know i think that was a that's a big mistake that by the way i love carolines no i'm not i understandines. I understand. No, but yeah, I understand. I'm from Ann Arbor, Michigan. Ann Arbor is this very educated, very, I will use the word pretentious, Michigan town. And people in New York hear I'm from Michigan and they always are like, oh, it's all like, you know, Michigan militia or Trump or whatever. And I'm like, I don't know about you, but all of my friend's parents were like phd doctors i'm not saying that's a good thing either but i'm saying you're

out of touch with what what is it existing in michigan and um yeah and so the road could do an hour now you can get hacky on the road if you are just chasing laughs and you're just chasing like you know i want to be popular for the moment you You can get hacky, and that's what you've got to fight against. Yeah, well, you know, you don't have that fear. You're never going to be that anyway. But there's some people that do give in to that. But as an argument against that, I would just use Hicks. Do you understand that Hicks cut his teeth in the south on the road?

Like that guy did all the places where the hacks went but he would come in and hit him with some shit that they never saw coming it's a crazy story that right yeah well he started here yeah this is where he started in austin okay yeah he started in austin and houston and houston is where you know they had first of all they had the laugh stop was originally here and then the laugh stops got sold and then became Cap City Comedy Club. Okay. And then they opened up the Laugh Stop in Houston. Okay.

And the Laugh Stop in Houston was the first place where I ever sold out. No shit. Yeah, it was the first place where I ever had a real crowd. People would come to see me. I did it a couple of times. Yeah. And they just loved wild comedy there. And then I was like, oh, of course, the people that,

like when I started at the last time, it was like 97, like Hicks and Kinison were in the 80s. Like those people were still, the remnants was still there, like the ripples of their impact on comedy. And plus, Houston does not get the respect that it deserves for being a diverse interesting intelligent city i have zero experience with houston houston's great is it really it's great it really is it's a great city it's so interesting there's so many different cultures there yeah it's like a massive melting pot but you think think Houston, oil, Texas, assholes, cowboy hats, big trucks, fuck that place.

It's not what Houston is. Houston is filled with great restaurants and interesting people, but there's so much intelligence there. It's a really unusual place. But what you're suggesting is that a comedy audience, a community, can be created through listening to good comedy yes and i would believe that too because you go to these clubs that have actually booked good comics and you see that that audience over the course of time gets smarter as well yes and gets more into comedy but so much of the road also is like hey we just turned this bar into a thing do you want to do comedy and you're like oh my god this is terrible but um yeah but even that though i feel like that's like cross-training

like it is yeah as a comic like you don't want to do those gigs every week but to do them every now and then is actually valuable for sure for sure doing the casino in dubuque iowa and you're i remember being on stage and i'm doing 20 minutes and it's going like, okay. And I'm going, why did I fly here to do an hour of okay? Why don't we dig into all the new stuff that's probably going to be okay? And that'll be a successful workout. So that's what you do. And you go, okay, great. This works. It doesn't work. It doesn't matter. It was fucking Dubuque, Iowa. Well, even Dubuque,owa like when people know who you are then you have your own audience i don't have that problem yeah well you can get that eventually you get there just was just starting like right before pandemic i was like starting to see ticket sales go up and sell out a couple

things and it's such a like it's so it's so motivating because you're like okay some of this shit is like working and then i'm not at all complaining at all but i'm saying like the ball was moving a little bit yeah and selling tickets is tough and don't forget that i'm sure you won't but it's like i don't forget you can't forget it because i know you spent years not but it is like and then they screw you too like you know you know you could right on the edge of that bonus but like i know we got 500 people there no it was showing 491 and then the agent says i'll dig into it but they never dig into it it's like it's a thousand bucks it's like that's good money dude i had a club i had a club that i know fucked me one year and tried to fuck me the next year listen how crazy this was uh i know it was sold out the place is packed of course you can fucking see it goes no it looks like it's

sold out but uh you know it's just the way we see people. And I remember we had this conversation when he was writing me the check. We're looking at him, and I know he's lying, and I can't do anything about it. Right. So I go, okay, fine. So I take it. And then I hear from other comics that he fucked them over. Fine.

Whatever. Great club. Good weekend. I let it go. The next time I'm there, it sells out in advance. The next time I'm there, it sells out in advance. The next time I'm there, it sells out in advance. And so as he's cutting me the check, he tells me, hey, I comped 150 tickets. I don't know what you want to do with that. I go, what are you talking about? What do you mean?

He goes, well, I mean, I wanted to fill the place, so I comped 150 tickets. I go, the show is sold out in advance. What are you telling me he's like i mean i mean we have a deal here's the deal if the show sells out we have a sellout deal you're supposed to give me an extra this amount of money right so you have to give me that money he goes yeah but i comped all these tickets i go give me the fucking money man yeah i'm like we're getting tense here but now this is two times in a row you're running security for yourself i was very frustrated you're running security for yourself. I was very frustrated. You're running agency for yourself.

You're running law for yourself. That's what is insane. But why would, I'm like, why would you do that when I sold out last time? Yeah. Like, why would you comp 150 tickets? Like, what are you doing? Like, this time you decided to give away 150 tickets? Like, bullshit. It's just, some people are just liars.

They're just. It's a dirt. The kind of comedy club vibe can be a little dirty yeah dirty people yeah is it different at the big theater though i don't yeah yeah it's way different because you're having guarantees yeah when the theater's sold out this is the amount of money you get this is how it goes yeah yeah it's different and also the agents are fucking murderers now. They're different. When you're dealing with a...

When I do an arena, the people that come in, those people are assassins. It's John Wick. Yeah, right. They all come in with bulletproof vests on. They're like, listen, we're getting paid. This is...

You bring in Live Nation. You don't have to worry about any of that shit. I handle everything. I used to love, when I would start out, there would always be this successful road comic that will go unnamed but he would always bring a buddy with him that has like the clicker I have to pay his buddy to like count the heads

what is all this why do you have to do that you have to yeah I don't know how legal the clicker is in a court of law but I know a guy who got fucked over by 200 tickets and he found that out by clicking they were telling him it was 300 but it was 500 people.

200 tickets. But that's how it goes. I always think, listen, I need those people. You need club owners. I don't want to be a club owner. Although I guess I'm going to be a club owner. You're going to be clicking. I don't want to be that guy. I don't want to do that.

That seems really frustrating. It's a lot of work. I wouldn't want to be that guy i don't i don't want to do that that seems like really frustrating it's a lot of work it's it's really and i wouldn't want to deal with some of these crazy comedians oh my god i mean like like look at any condo comedy condo the club there's always like some there was always you know you get to a club and there always used to be free drinks yeah and you're like well what happened this guy. It's always like one guy. And comics are a shit show. And that is also part of my complaint is like, hey, comics, I think in general, comic comedians are doing this,

but let's pick it up a little bit. Let's wash your shirt. Let's not be a total slob. Let's learn how to have a conversation with the green room staff. Let's tip. Let's approach this the way that any businessman or woman successful in their endeavor would approach their business. Now, it also leads to more comics being sober, more comics being, like, super networky, more comics climbing the ladder. sober more comics being like super networky more comics climbing the ladder and i feel like when i started comedy it was like this free-for-all fun smoke pot do drugs whatever and i feel like now

the younger guys and girls are more like professional but that's probably good yeah um there's those road dogs you know like they're always the fun guys to hang out with you always hear but but they're the guys who like you know do an upper decker and the fucking the bathroom the green room and they sell a t-shirt with like a lightning bolt on it it's a reference to some joke and you're like did you sell that to you know they're they hate the joke that they but they have to do it to sell the shirt i saw that a lot when i started michigan i saw the comics that were 10 years in front of me and i said i don't i don't want to be that the merch guys yeah yeah so it's a i mean i sell some merch but i try to you know that's where they make money sometimes when you're on the road

but you then you have to ship boxes and shirts and stuff to the yeah it's a lot of work to have the credit card machine oh no the fight the carbons the carbons the machine yeah it's a it's an interesting business you know because there's no one to teach you how to do it there's no only one way to do it it's not like you can go to classes at juilliard and learn how to do it correctly there's no way and you do it different than i i do it correctly. There's no way. And you do it different than I. I do it different than Tony. Everybody does it different. There's no way around that. Your personality will dictate what your comedy is. I remember Greg Proops telling me that when I was starting out.

He was like, anything I tell you is bullshit. Because your personality, your point of view is different. You can live here, go here, make this, do this, do this. And it's coming from the world of sport. Sport isn't like that. Right. Sport is like, hit the ball here to this fucking point 10,000 times. Can you do that under pressure?

That's like the big question that you have to answer. And in comedy or arts, it's wide open. Yeah. It's wide open. Yeah. I came from the world of martial arts which is very technical like there's there's ways to do it that you're gonna get hurt like you can't do it this way or you're in real trouble that is the ultimate that's the ultimate tennis if i make

a mental error or a technical personal error i lose the. Maybe my ball goes into the net, right? In your sport, you're fucking knocked out. Yeah, you get hit. If you get hit the first time, I don't remember the first time I fought, but I remember the first time I got hit really hard. I remember stars going in front of my eyes, like literally exceed like a bright flash. I remember my knees buckling. But you're still active in the fight. Yeah. While that's happening. While that's happening. Yeah. I think the first time I really got hurt was in the gym.

But yeah, I remember thinking like, Jesus, this is terrible. Like I've been hit in the body before. Body shots hurt a lot too. Yeah. But there's something about getting hit in the head where things shut off for a second. Yeah. They flash out like your legs start going rubber on you and then you try to like rebound from it so do you have you or any fighter when when the flash hits or the knees buckle is there some default of protection yes because okay i saw the

flash i've got to split second before i'm i'm dead well fortunately i've been hit a bunch of times and not hurt really bad before that so i knew how to protect myself sort of yeah you know but i remember that was the first time i got hurt i got really hit hard i was sparring i was probably like 15 or 16 i was sparring with a man right and he popped me in the face with a jab it was a it was a it was a strong punch and i remember he caught me as i was moving in. And it wasn't really his fault necessarily. He was just a bigger, stronger person. Right, right. But when he hit me, my legs buckled.

I saw the sparks. And I was like, oh, shit. And I was probably like 15. Yeah. And I remember thinking like, don't do that a lot. Right. Whatever the fuck that is. Learn from that.

We need to figure out how to avoid that shit. And luckily, it was in training the first time i got hit really hard so it was like he didn't try to kill me were you wearing the head no we weren't wearing shit okay i had a mouthpiece that's it i don't want to do the equivalent of oh you're a comedian tell me a joke but i'm so such a non-fighter i don't have any experience fighting but what is something i could take with me if I find myself in a first fight? What is like a must? It's nothing.

It's nothing. It's nothing. It's like... Protect my face? Like hit first? This is the equivalent of me taking someone who's never even done anything on stage and saying, they say to me, hey, I'm going to go do stand up tonight. What can I do?

I would say move the mic stand out of your way. I wouldn't even say that. You wouldn't say that. I would say you're fucked. You have to just experience it. It's like a language. Fighting is like a language, and most people can't string two words together. They literally don't know how.

Yeah. So there's so much to understand with distance and defense and offense and body mechanics and when you're vulnerable and when you're not. Yeah. It's complicated. Well, that's why, and this is good that I asked you that, because that's why I will continue to avoid fighting. Yeah.

Yeah. As best I can. Do you ever train any kind of martial art as exercise or boxing class or anything? I haven't. I've done like a bullshit boxing class once. It was very general, like free with the gym membership type thing. But I would love to. I think it would humble me, which would be good. But I just don't have that. I've never experienced that. Just like I've never been introduced to that. But I think, I mean, I feel too skinny and too lanky for that you're not actually it's actually for jujitsu it's a you have a very good frame I got a

good jujitsu frame yeah yeah why because of leverage leverage yeah and also like shorter people like myself I have shorter arms it's harder to get certain techniques like particularly triangles and things like that. Shit, man. Your legs are nice and long. You have all this room to close up chokes and do two things, and you have leverage for your techniques. Yeah. Some of the best jujitsu players are tall and long. No shit.

Yeah. Yeah. I would be afraid of getting hit, but maybe- You don't get hit in jujitsu. Okay. Good. Jujitsu is just grappling. Right.

Okay. All right. hit but maybe you don't get hit in jiu-jitsu okay jiu-jitsu is just just grappling right okay all right i bet you'd excel at it particularly because your your background with tennis being such a technical sport yeah you know tennis is extremely technical for sure and it's also very explosive right you have to jump back and forth and this and that like and in jiu-jitsu it's both very tactical and very explosive as well that's interesting to hear because that's kind of what i love about tennis is the the relationship between uh explosive power but then like very small fine technical adjustments yeah like the golf you know golfers spend like hours on their swing we have that and we have 10 swings in one point but it's interesting to hear the comparison to jujitsu maybe i'll

fucking start getting out there yeah man it'd be fun to do but it's a terrible thing to do during covid because you're literally on each other's face like you have people literally sweating in your mouth right and tennis is the best for social distance you're 78 feet away from your opponent and you're divided by a physical barrier people are talking about that actually is like there i saw an ad where they were actually encouraging people to play tennis, be social while socially distancing. Yeah. But so many people's knees are fucked. And like tennis seems like the worst sport if you're fucked up knees.

And for some reason in this country, we, all kids play on this like hard asphalt court. And in Europe, Scandinavian countries, they're playing on a soft clay in the summer and a soft carpet indoor in the winter. And this also creates longer-term tennis players. So, yeah, in the States, it's so much hardcore and it does fuck up your knees. It's a great, great sport. Yeah, the lack of cushioning on hard surfaces is terrible for your knees. Like playing anything on outside on concrete. Like,

uh, we have a little basketball net in my backyard and my knees are fucked and just playing with my kids. So what are your knees? Fuck around jujitsu, boxing, everything, everything impact on the floor or being hit.

Mostly being twisted yeah yeah my knees are just torn like this one is actually from I heard this one fairly recently

in a kicking competition with a friend of mine Jesus Christ yeah out of this machine at the old studio and it was it registered

like how are you hit yeah and this friend of mine who's a world champion kickboxer came in and he wanted to do like this kicking competition with me I'm like okay It registered how hard you hit. And this friend of mine who's a world champion kickboxer came in, and he wanted to do this kicking competition with me. I'm like, okay.

So with pants on, 52 years old, fucking slamming roundhouse kicks into this pad. And I tore one of my – part of my meniscus. Oh, fuck. Yeah. It's functional. I still kick really hard with it but it's afterwards it hurts a little bit it's not it's not the worst thing in the world but it's one of those things where meniscus is like they're really close to being able to figure out how to regenerate that tissue they're real close and some people bite the bullet and get knee replacements yeah and you can

do that now and you actually can do sports like it used to be you get your knees resurfaced you're done right but now you get your knees resurfaced and uh there's guys that are running their their exercise this one guy that won the highland games jamie i'm gonna send you this guy because it's kind of fucking crazy he won the highland games and apparently he was competing with uh out a uh an acl for a long time and uh really fucked up his knee and uh because he fucked up his knee he uh he got to a point where it was just there was no fixing it so he um Isn't the hip replacement like super easy now? The hip replacement is doable. Go to, his name is Matthew Vincent. It is, uh.

Here, I'll send it to you. Highland Games. Yeah. See if you can find it. Here, hold on a second, Jamie. I'll send you his, uh. I always forget how to do this on Instagram. Share profile.

Here it goes. Hold on a second. I always forget how to do this on Instagram. Share profile. Here it goes. Hold on a second. Yeah, I've been very lucky with knees and ankles and shoulders. But I'm also a comic now. I can sleep all day. You didn't fuck up your knees at all? No, knees not at all.

That's amazing. Yeah. You got him? Oh, yeah, that's him. Okay, so this gentleman, he's a gorilla. Look at the size of this motherfucker. And he won the Highland Games, and he had his knee replaced. Oh, shit. Go back to his profile.

So go back to his profile. Zoom in on his dick. Zoom in on his cock. Go down, and you can see him after he had his knee replaced. Go down. Go down and you can see him After he had his knee replaced Go down Go down That is some funny pictures Look at somebody's grin

So that's after he got his knee replaced So what they do is they Open up your knee And then they change the surface So where your cartilage is all torn up They put this intensely dense plastic on the top of your femur and on the top of your tibia uh and they they put those those together and uh and then you heal up and then afterwards i mean this guy's look at he's he's

doing this and but go back to his profile pics, because I want to show some of the shit that he can do now. Go scroll up a little bit. So this is after he's, right there. Look at this, the movement this guy can do. Whoa. He's got an artificial, so he's practicing. That's a fake knee. Yeah, he's got a fake, but it's not a fake knee.

It's just the surface is no longer cartilage. Now the surface is this insanely dense plastic. But I mean, go back to that again, please. Look at how this man moves. I mean, he's a fucking gorilla. But that right knee is what he's pivoting on. That right knee is totally resurfaced. It used to be you thought, well, you get your knee fixed.

I've seen people with artificial knees. They move like a robot like you're real stiff you can't do anything but he has all the original ligaments and tendons i'm sure those have been repaired as well because his acl was blown out which was one of the reasons why he had to uh do it in the first place but he can move now like an athlete wow it didn't used to be the case the body it's amazing isn't it yeah but they're not what we have we're real close to like being able to do it with biologics or being able to do it with surgery what was that you just okay is he moving around in that too go back to that because i think he was running okay so he's doing all kinds of different Highland Games shit with kettlebells and clubs and stuff. You can do things now with these resurfaced joints that you really couldn't do before.

So every year they're getting better and better at repairing and replacing. But the thing that's interesting to me is being able to biologically regenerate tissue so yeah they've done a lot of that with stem cells and they've been able to do a lot of like like i had a really fucked up shoulder at one point in time and i had a full length rotator cuff tear completely healed from stem cells completely where the doctor freaked out when we did a second mri he was like do you understand how crazy this is like you had a full length rotator cuff tear now you don't have any tear like it's gone and now i do everything with this arm i mean they were saying i was going to need surgery they're like we're going to probably have to repair that where'd you get this stem

cells from uh it was in uh vegas dr rodney mcgee shout out to dr rodney what up dr rod yeah and uh i did it with him and i also did it with um with – I did it in a place in L.A. I've done stem cells there too. That's in Santa Monica called Lifespan Medicine. Shout out to Dr. Ben Ruhi. So those guys helped me out tremendously. You can prolong the process. Like you can save yourself, can you can keep yourself active

but i you know i fucking torture my body i do a lot of shit yeah and it's all high impact explosive i see the sauna pics dude the sauna pics you're fucking sweating your ass i do that every day oh every day and now because texas actually gets really cold right so in the winter time like right now this morning i up, it was like 35 degrees. It was cold this morning. I went for a jog this morning, yeah. So I do a hot sauna for 25 minutes at 185 degrees, and then I do a cold shower for 10 minutes. But did you have this, the house had the sauna?

No, I installed it. You installed it. Yeah, I installed it. You got to miss that California hiking, no? I do a little bit, yeah. I enjoyed hiking with the dog. That was like my bonding time with the dog, but now I just hang out with him. Yeah.

I love that. You can hike here. Yeah, okay. I haven't done that. There's trails here. Yeah, this is the hill country. There's actual hiking trails here. I used to have it right outside my door.

Yeah. What's your take on Olympic athletes who have a new knee hip you know at what point do we start regulating that is that allowed are you you know like it doesn't offer a performance benefit unless it offers a performance benefit yeah there's no performance benefit and resurface knees and in fact it's very unlikely that you're ever going to be able to compete at the same level that someone would do before an injury like that. But it might be close. The resurfaced knee thing is fascinating to me because it seems like they've got it down to the point

where these things aren't failing. So these people are doing things like they're doing martial arts, they're running. And the doctors are saying it's okay to run on these things, which is like crazy. Wow. Because what they're doing is extremely dense plastic, and they're resurfacing the tops of people's knees with this insanely dense plastic.

And so you don't feel any pain anymore. It's crazy that it can live in our body, and our immune system doesn't attack it. Yeah. They figured it out. I don't feel any pain anymore. It's crazy that it can live in our body and our immune system doesn't attack it. Yeah. They figured it out. I don't know how. Your body actually binds to it. It's sort of your body actually grows into it.

It takes a while for it to heal, but your body accepts this plastic. It's crazy that we can discover that and then there's also the people that throw the full McDonald's bag out the window of civilization, though. I know. You know, and I find myself too often focusing on the McDonald's bag. Yeah. And instead focus on, like, the fact that we've got people that have figured that out or know. I mean, it's unbelievable. Well, how about the mRNA vaccine, right?

Somebody figured out a vaccine. They figured out a way to get a COVID vaccine, fast track it, you know it inside of seven, eight, nine months, whatever it took to do this. And they're going to be able to launch that. And some people are apprehensive about it. But the crazy thing is that they figured out how to do this. And for some people, these are human beings that coexist with the dumbest amongst us i know some people are so fucking smart they know how to engineer vaccines i i truly felt this like wave of emotion when i learned that this vaccines that they'd actually achieved and done this like it was so impressive to me

and there's so much 2020 sucks and capitalism kills everybody and blah blah i was like this is fucking awesome you're in brooklyn yeah i'm in brooklyn exactly that's true but uh i was very like taken by that that is unbelievable human feat it is but guess what you need capitalism to do that because those motherfuckers want to get paid pfizer dude pfizer has a long history like you can go back pfizer is a long history of getting in trouble they have a long history of doing some shady shit and they they've cut some corners i'm sure and yeah i could send you some some articles and didn't they refuse to they didn't want to be i can find them you can find them in my pocket yeah pfizer's done some shitty things but listen pfizer fine for hiking epilepsy drug

price 2600 in the pfizer had to pay 2.3 billion agrees to criminal plea oh fuck pfizer pleads guilty and drug fraud yeah there's they've done they've paid a lot of money because they've done, because they're capitalists. Yeah, correct. But that's also why they finance something like this. They want a windfall at the end of this. Yeah. Like, yeah, they want to help society, and yeah, we love everybody.

They want money. Yeah. Okay? And to help society, it has to be valuable to them, to these fucking crooks that make all these vaccines. These people that finance this stuff, they're not crooks. They're just capitalists. Yeah.

And people don't like that combination of those things that coexist together. But that's literally how human beings work. I said it before. I am impressed with capitalism from the standpoint of watching small businesses adapt and also this vaccine thing is crazy to me now i also think pfizer refused to be a part of operation warp speed because they didn't want like government to be looking at their shit which i think is why him and uh trump and them like had a disagreement about the the amount of vaccine but i also kind of like that pfizer was like hey fuck the government we'll do our own thing because we

want to do our own secret shit in the lab over here. So they went quick. Well, they know the amount of money that they're going to generate after selling 300 million vaccines or whatever the fuck they're going to sell. It's going to be insane. This is going to be a huge financial boon to those people. I mean, it's going to be fucking magnificent for their money. It's going to go through the roof.

Vaccines typically are not super profitable, but because like every fucking human on Earth is going to get this, yes, it is. Yeah, it's going to be nuts. Yeah, I mean,

and it's going to be fucking expensive. I wonder how Pfizer stocks do. It might be too late now. What is this? Likely end up selling close to $ billion dollars worth worldwide in 2021 wow and they also do 21 they also do viagra right yeah yeah they do all the

good stuff are you gonna take the vaccine i've already had it you think i think i already had it uh but of course they um they recommend you take it if you already had it. Yeah, I will. I'll take the vaccine. Yeah. I'm probably going to get shot up. Yeah. Yeah.

I'm wondering, though. You do it publicly? Because you know there'll be pressure on you to do that publicly. Will there be? By who? Who's going to be in that pressure? No, no. Nobody will put pressure on you, but people are doing it publicly.

Biden receives first dose bullshit. You know what there's in there? Steroids. They're hooking him up. They shot him up with Adderall just to keep him talking. I think. That's crazy. I think it's good to do it publicly because I think there are some people that are really

afraid and don't, or conspiracy, you know, and I think, I believe in it. I believe in it. Well, I certainly believe in vaccines. Yeah. But this is one of the things that I do believe. There's consequences to vaccines for a small percentage of the population always because of the biological variability of human beings. But people focus on that a little bit too much.

But I feel like there was a perception that a vaccine was 100% perfect all the time. And whoever's in charge of vaccinating us has not done a good job explaining to people what you just said, that there will be a small percentage that will have a difficulty with this vaccine. Well, this is the thing about COVID, right? If you look at the amount of people that get COVID,

it's a very small percentage of people who die from it, right? It's less than 1%. If you look at the amount of people who die from it right it's like less than one percent yeah if you look at the amount of people who get vaccinated it's a very small percentage of people that are going to have a but if we concentrate only on the small percentages in both cases we have a very distorted perception of what it is you know one of the things that's happened during this pandemic is the amount of people that have died from heart disease is fucking astronomical is that right it's more than half a million people or no excuse me i think it's in the 600,000

range it's normally the leading cause of american death right yeah it still is okay okay but there's no concern with stopping heart disease i was i was trying to turn this into a joke the outrage over covid and i'm like as i think it just passed heart disease this year or something i think it's heart disease it's 600 plus and then cancer at 500 plus i i had that fucked up in my head okay it's i think it's heart disease six cancer 500 and then covid but it's also covid plus 2.6 comorbidity factors yes the actual covid is only six percent i know so the actual covid is like 60 000 people from covid itself which is still significant still sucks yeah but it's not just covid it's poor health you know it's like we look we have a fucking soft existence and there's a lot of

people walking around out there like human water balloons just sloshy gooey just filled with cake and nonsense they just they don't take care of their their meat vehicle you go to europe you walk through every everywhere if you see from a distance like some large people you get closer to them they're always wearing like an ohio state t-shirt you know or fuck sorry auburn whatever whatever whatever you want to say as we get he gets you guys didn't even want to play this year oh that's right there was the covet thing there was the covet thing i'm from in aub, but I went to University of Illinois. Illinois will play everybody because they lose to everybody.

But it's always a big, baggy American university. Of course. Because it's just sloppy. We're sloppy, man. We have a lot of food here. And the food of a lot of it is really bad for you. You know, I mean, we're in Texas. There's a lot of food here that will fuck you up if you just eat it only dude this morning i i could not get a healthy thing of food okay like

i'm not even looking i have the hotel like it just has croissant ham cheese croissant it's just shit dude it's just like it's just i'm going to feel hungover after eating it. I'm not saying I don't dig that sometimes, but wake up morning, no. I had a workout and it's just tough. It's just tough. This is a good city for food. There's a lot of good healthy food here. You just have to look around. I need to know where I'm

going. It's one of those things. You've got to find the options. There's a lot of healthy people here. A lot of people exercising and fortunately, the gyms are open which i really appreciate yeah that's one of the things that drives me crazy the fact they close down gyms because first of all for mental health gyms are it's a real problem with people when they they have you know there's real consequences to people not being able to exercise they go crazy i know would go crazy. I would have to figure out some other way to do it. And some people just aren't that industrious.

They don't find a body weight video on YouTube, a body weight exercise video. They just sulk and get angry. And those body weight videos will get you. They'll fuck you up, man. They will get you. I never knew which weight my body had. When I'm like, it is those body weight.

Dude, I was hotel hotel workouts fireman workouts whatever you call it will get you um you know it's great those trx things you have a trx is that the band yeah yeah i've been doing orange theory has just been putting out a daily workout that's different every day shout out to them i appreciate them very much for doing that and you know it's you just feel better i just i every every problem if i go through a workout it just it seems more manageable after that right yeah um i say that so often people are mad at me oh okay so i said at this fuck up shut up about exercising meathead yeah it it it's been very true for me um what was i gonna fucking say about yeah body weight workouts you're talking about body weight workouts kicking your ass body weight

workouts are great it was i can't i can't remember fucking yoga dude you could find yoga videos on youtube all you need is like six square feet around you you know you don't even need a a large area and you can get an amazing workout i dread a yoga workout more than any other fucking hard dread i mean all day i'll go i told myself i promised i would do it but it is so beneficial i find as i get older everything needs to be unwound yeah untangled and yoga does that uh but fucking hate it. You know what it also does? It forces you to hold a pose and think. What the fuck? It forces you to deal with your own bullshit.

Right, right, right. Where it's like, one of the things that I love about kettlebells, right? The kettlebells are my favorite weights to lift because you're doing things, you're thinking about these things while you're doing it. It requires this coordination, but I don't have to concentrate too much on myself while I'm do I get lost in the movements you know clean press clean press squat I'm doing these things but with yoga when you're holding these poses you're like I really do need to clean my fucking office or I was to get my shit together why did i react that way to that person yes all those things it forces if there's a a mental cleansing yeah it's a it's an introspective

dousing like you're you're forced to like think about yourself when you're alone with your thoughts during these poses maybe that's why i hate it yeah also i i find my my willingness to quit disturbing you know like when i'm when i'm holding a pose and like i know i can hold it for another 10 seconds but i'm thinking about not right i'm thinking about quitting my hey pussy fucking you got 10 more seconds you can't hang in there for 10 more seconds wouldn't aren't you approaching it like the kettlebell guy because wouldn't a yogi say like let your mind stop doing it i'm like this like i'm gonna hold this fucking thing i said i'm gonna do it but it's like yo isn't it supposed to be like i don't know you know i i like beacons right which is uh i know beacons a scumbag but the type of documentary on that guy but there's a

few stories he seems like a very sketchy human. That's the super, super hot one. Yeah, but it's not him. Even the idea of doing it in heat, he might have brought it to America. But those poses have existed for thousands of years. The poses are what's amazing. And what I like about the heat is there's another element that forces your body to produce heat shock proteins. that forces your body to produce heat shock proteins.

And there's actually a study that's being done right now at Harvard showing the positive health benefits of yoga in the heat, and they think that it mimics the positive health benefits of sauna. So they've done this study in Norway that showed a 40% decrease in all-cause mortality from sauna use. I saw that. Incredible. Like if you go over 20 minutes... Yeah, 20 minutes, four days a week,

40% decrease in stroke, heart attack, cancer, everything. So I am all about that. I just, I know it's doing something. I fucking feel great after I get out of there. When I do 25 minutes in the sauna and then 10 minutes of a cold shower afterwards, I just feel like a new human. Like, if you could give someone that in a pill they would take it all day long it's amazing but they think there's a mimicking of that with hot yoga and they think that also with hot yoga

you know you get the exercise benefit as well and you know look these people i've seen people that are in these classes that are like in their 60s and 70s and they look great and they're addicted to it they're in there every day and fit and strong and i just think there's a real benefit to that not just physically but psychologically i remember so i was doing yoga like a lot and some guy rear-ended my car while he's on his phone and uh i wasn't even angry i got out i was like so peaceful right i was like what are you doing man he's like i'm sorry i didn't see and i'm like fuck he didn't have a he didn't have a driver's license he's from mexico it's illegal and uh i was like dude and i was like okay listen the cops are coming get the fuck out of here i just told

him to get out of there i just took off right i was like let's get out he's a young guy just i go why are you driving you don't have a license he goes i gotta work but he was it wasn't i was like let's get out he's a young guy just i go why are you driving you don't have a license he goes i gotta work but he was it wasn't i was like okay i get it hey here i am this guy who has this fucking nice car and this guy plowed into me his car was more fucked than mine i drove to the store my my rear end of my car was caved in when i got to the store i even made made it to my set but uh i was like i was so calm. And I think it had to be because of yoga. I was like, okay. I shook his hand. I was like, I'll see you later.

He was fucked. I mean, that's nice of you. Obviously, what are you going to do? I'm in a position where it's just money. My health was okay. He was okay. Nobody really got... I fucked up before.

Everybody's fucked up. If you drive, you fuck up. But it was one fuck i fucked up before everybody's fucked up if you drive you fuck up yeah but it was one of those things where i'm like god i was driving i was like that's gotta be yoga like it has to be because i'm so not concerned i was so relaxed about it was like a different feeling of uh you know if someone people can catch you at the wrong time in your life when you're all stressed out in the same exact situation can cause a really bad reaction. And I guess what I was thinking at the time is I got to strive to be the person I was when that guy rear-ended me as much as possible. You were in a state, almost a hypnotic state that you can probably put yourself in all the time with yoga i sometimes wonder if my workouts are too um explosive is the wrong word this don't picture

yeah exactly like if you know and then i get done and i do feel this jolt but like i want i want the guy to hit me so i can beat his ass or something you know even though i don't know how to fight so would it benefit me to be in a more chill state yeah and maybe that's why i dread yoga so much maybe but some people think that that would keep you from like getting things done during the day right because there's a certain just like you need capitalism for pfizer to be able to make a vaccine sometimes you need a little aggression to get shit done to be competitive yes you know like people don't like to hear that but there's a reason why there's this sort of there's this uh stereotype of the asshole businessman right you know but those asshole

businessmen get shit done i want that guy to start to work with me on my business yeah that's that's a fucking guy who's going crazy and getting cancer yeah because he's up till two o'clock in the morning he calls you up mike we fucking got him we're gonna bury these cunts he's like that's a fucking guy who's going crazy and getting cancer because he's up until 2 o'clock in the morning. He calls you up, Mike, we fucking got him. We're going to bury these cunts. He's like, that's my guy. That's the guy you want to be in business with. When I played tennis, if I was in super chill state mind, I always played okay, seemed happy, and lost.

Right? And when I was a little bit edgy and like, and, like, here we go, like, feet were moving. Things were, you know, I could win. Well, when I would fight, if I was really confident, I didn't fight well. I had to be scared. You had to be a little bit scared. I would be nervous. I remember fighting once in this tournament.

And I was winning a lot of tournaments, so I was, like, real relaxed, and I wasn't nervous. You were a taekwondo, right? Yeah. Okay. And when I went into this tournament i didn't fight well and i was i was like in the middle of it i was like god i gotta shake out of this i gotta shit i was in the middle of a fight i was like my reactions are slow because i wasn't nervous like you can't be too calm about it i was like i was fighting like shit right whereas like

when i'm scared like you're on an edge like and so much of that is fast twitch reaction you have to be at a hyper alertness you have to be nervous and but no one wants to be nervous it's a shitty feeling that feeling of like before i couldn't sleep and those would be like oh you know and you can't eat you're all fucking weirded out but that's the only way you perform at your best you have to be pressured i used to hate that with tennis if you couldn't eat it was so detrimental because you had nerves but you need that fuel yeah in comedy i like a little bit of nerves as well i think we all like a little bit of nerves but if i have to skip dinner i can perform fine i don't eat before i perform i can't i can't eat right but i remember with tennis it

was extra detrimental because if you're like, and I always think about this with these guys before they're playing Wimbledon finals or whatever, and I'm like, if they're anything like me, I was playing like a shitty minor league tournament and I couldn't sleep well because I'd be nervous about the match. They're getting ready to play for like 2 million euros, Wimbledon final. Are they just waking up and like crushing French toast? Like, no, they're probably nervous. Oh, they have to be.

Everything relies on, I just can't imagine making a living off of my tissue. Right. You know, like hoping all this stuff stays together. Yeah. You know? Yeah. Yeah. And then some of them are doing wild shit on top of that, like fucking skiing and all

kinds of other stuff. Like, God, you're putting yourself at risk all the time. And then they'll like hurt their shoulder moving their suitcase. Yeah. Yeah. yeah it's like you just wasted fucking 15 million dollars did you used to eat a specific amount of time before you would play i would try to be on a little bit of a schedule but where i was playing i was playing like minor league pro tournaments i was in weird places man you know it was always like a different cuisine i was in like kumamoto city japan then i

was in z wantonejo mexico and then i was in some small windmill town in the netherlands and it's like you know these aren't big tournaments with like catering and shit this is like i got to get myself to the courts i got to pay for the taxi i got to find a breakfast and like so lots of times your shit was messed up you know and i And I would like travel from the States, like with these tons of granola and like stuff, just so I knew I could have some fuel. I don't think the average sports fan at all ever thinks about the fuel that has to go into these athletes.

And like, I always wonder American football players at halftime, they must be eating. No? Oh, yeah. Like they must be, that locker room talkftime. They must be eating. No? Oh, yeah. They must be – locker room talk. Yeah, they're probably eating. Well, those fucking guys are gigantic. Fucking disgusting. They have to have food constantly.

Yeah, but the thing about football, too, is like, you know, that's a long-ass game. Dude. There's no way you're going to be exploding like that. But can you get by on just electrolyte drinks and some protein drinks and stuff like that and and more and more and more more and more now kind of league is caught caught they're saying but drinking a shot of pickle juice on the sideline like in a little liquor bottle is pickle juice bad no it's like electrolytes it's it's sodium i like pickle yeah pickle juice is so and so would they think he was drinking booze? They didn't know what it was, yeah. Oh, that's hilarious. It looks like alcohol from a...

Oh, that's hilarious. That's funny. He's drinking... But what alcohol is green like that? I don't know. Why would he be drinking alcohol in front of everybody? They thought he was getting drunk. Oh, God.

Nah, just make jokes. Are you allowed to? What? Are you allowed to have a shot of whiskey while you're on the sidelines? That's an interesting question. That's a good question. It's certainly not performance enhancing. No, not at all. Weightlifters do it, right? Yeah, a lot of weightlifters do. Isnelines? That's an interesting question. That's a good question. It's certainly not performance enhancing. No, not at all.

Weightlifters do it, right? Yeah, a lot of weightlifters do. Isn't that weird? Yeah, they drink. Why? I don't know. I don't know. I've never done it.

If you can do a breathing with smelling salts to get a little excitement. Well, I think those smelling salts though, they crack those salts like powerlifters do and they breathe that shit in

and they just and they fucking go ham but that's a lot of gay dudes like to do those before they get after it smelling salts yeah amyl nitrate yeah but i think that's different are those poppers yeah it's poppers okay i think that's different than smelling salts what if i just knew all about them right now yeah oh yeah right here are they like these this is what i used to buttfuck that these uh some right here are they like these uh-huh what i used to butt fuck that these uh a male nitrate is apparently like that stuff is terrible it gives you like almost instant brain damage it's really i was just about to say that i would actually try one of those just to see because

yeah but a friend of mine who's a doctor was telling me it was a significant issue in the gay community because not only is it really bad for your brain it also devastates your immune system oh it's really bad like apparently that stuff is like they they enjoy it some folks enjoy it because it makes them like wild and right right but it just your body's like fuck you what did you just do to it loosens up the doesn't loosen up their asshole allegedly okay allegedly is this homophobic i'm not sure we love gay people it's not it's not about that yeah uh we're just talking about bodies and chemicals i know that rugby players like to like to booze a little but um during the game do they yeah and and with with tennis you know some there's no clock in tennis so some of these matches pro matches are like can be four or five hours so

they definitely have refueling strategies during the match 100 bananas bananas like a safe bet yeah bananas a safe bet but i think now it's like these gels these like high fructose like bikers yes correct yeah yeah because you you got to man yeah you start making mental errors and body breaks down and i do a lot of fasted workouts but one thing i never did fast it was jiu-jitsu because you just get fucking strangled not so what would you eat oh i'd eat fruit mostly yeah yeah in the morning like say if i took like um like a 10 a.m class and i'm up at eight i'm eating like a lot of fruit okay it has to be something like that something that where

your body like i can eat fruit and then work out hard right afterwards yeah apples or something like that yeah your body's not working too hard to break it down you're not doing like chicken parm before your jujitsu workout but i've done it it's the worst worst is for whatever reason pasta is the worst yeah pasta with cheese and sauce you just it's like you ate a brick sometimes i'll get like food to go especially now because everything's to go and i'll be carrying it and it's just so heavy and i'm going this is all gonna be in me yeah you know like all of this weight and this density that i'm carrying is gonna be in my body and that's fucking gross well i don't work out nearly as much as i used to because i used to uh i mean i still work out a lot but when i was doing jujitsu a lot, I was working out an hour and a half, multiple days a week, and then lifting weights on those other days.

So I could basically eat whatever the fuck I wanted to. You're burning so much. But the problem is I'm a glutton. And I really enjoyed being able to eat whatever I wanted to whenever I wanted to. And then I tried to carry that on. And now I have to be careful because I eat so much. The volume of food I eat is so astonishing to me sometimes. And literally, it packs into my stomach.

And I look down. I'm like, you are so disgusting. Are you eating too fast? Or you just love the taste? No, I'm just a fucking glutton. This is the right state for you, man. Dude, I am done eating. I'm not hungry anymore.

And I'm still- Gross. I'm still eating eating that's a really gross thing about americans we we eat until we are full and we use this term full yes other cultures eat until they're no longer hungry i have to run out of the kitchen because if i don't i'll like start eating like we someone gave us a tin of this caramel popcorn don't even fucking start me on that shit i know you can just go like this i'm eating face fulls of this caramel popcorn. Dude, don't even fucking start me on that shit. Holy shit, is it good.

I know, you can just go like this. I'm eating facefuls of this. I'm like, how many calories is this? I'm looking at the volume of the popcorn I ate. I'm like, how much sugar is in that? That's so much food. Yeah. And I'm eating that after I ate dinner.

Because after you ate, if someone gives you something salty or sweet, you can keep going. Forever. That's like the trick that those competitive eaters do. As long as you have fries, you can keep going. Forever. That's like the trick that those competitive eaters do. As long as you have fries, you can keep eating. Because the sodium just doesn't send the signals or something? It's like your body's like, yeah, put more of that shit in here.

Let's keep going. I had heard a theory that genetically that's how we were with sugar because it was so hard to get this in our olden times that now it's like Skittles, it's this big, keep going. We need like load up on the sugar. You have this opportunity for sugar. Also, we've hijacked our system, right? Because our body has no idea why the sugar is alone. Why is the sugar not attached to fruit?

The fuck is it to get it in there? Let's get it all in there. Sugar is crazy. We did a story on sugar in florida and how the industry would start polluting the oceans and it was creating the red tide that was killing all the manatees and it was fucking like they've been dumping all of their nitrates that were a fertilizer for sugar in lake okachobee in the center of florida and it was hanging out at the bottom of the water and then eventually through a rainstorm it would come up and go to the ocean it was like killing

everything let's say the shutdown the beaches blah blah trying to investigate sugar and sugar companies watch out dude they're fucking on it they sugar is sugar scary like what happened we couldn't get anyone to talk on camera. We could not get an investigative journalist. We could not get a local journalist. We could not get a local person to go on camera and discuss their experiences with the sugar industry. Also, it's people in Florida.

Also, it's dumbasses in Florida. But it's fucked up. I always say, why are they doing this to make sugar cheaper? Just I'll pay a little more money if you take care of the environment, sugar companies, and I'll pay a little more for my sugar. But that's not the way things work. That's not capitalism. But yeah, this idea you have of like, oh, I'll just pay more.

Oh, great. We'll just charge you more. We'll do the right thing. And then someone else is going to call and be like, oh, yeah, fuck you. We're going to charge less, and we're going to undercut you, and we're going to get a hold of your distributors, and we're going to talk to the people that you're selling to, and we're going to look. I'll sell you this shit for half price, and I'm going to poison some alligators.

Yep. And our stock will shoot through the roof. Yes. Yes. Well, that's the problem with this idea that we have of corporations. When you have a CEO, that CEO is responsible every year for making sure they make more money every year.

Yeah. I mean, has to grow infinitely. When do you stop? Never. Never. And you blow up the world. That would be an interesting regulation if you could only grow your company

a certain amount each year because if you hit the jackpot and you have this amazing device and it's sold like crazy and then they go oh you're making too much money now well that's some kind of communism well like zoom like zoom like zoom is up right 775 this year you know is it really yeah like there's their stock and their earnings whatever but if you're zoom you're going okay this is the year we gotta like you know capitalize whatever and by the way good job to zoom i mean no one really used zoom that i was aware of and then this should happen and like my zoom always works works pretty good it works pretty good like skype has got to be like

hey guys yeah exactly what about us i've been kind of impressed by like more or less my zooms are always working uh but yeah when does it stop it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't end i think the funniest thing about zoom is the people that get a hold of zoom conference calls and that shit is funny they dive in they hack in fuck you they show people they're assholes you should do that with joey diaz's thing that's fucking crazy well, so many people got in trouble this year from doing things on Zoom calls where they thought that they were muted. Dude. They thought that that guy from the New Yorker got caught jerking off.

Yeah. In the middle of a conference call. Yeah. Like, how horny is that guy? You know what it is? It's like some people are just addicted. They are really addicted to jerking off. They're really addicted to porn.

And I don't think we realize it until you see a guy like that who's like a prominent journalist who's like you know he's not a fool did he the undoing of jeffrey tubin but he is good man of legal journalism lost his sweetest gig yeah oh he's good did he lose the gig oh yeah they fired him because he's jerking off on a zoom call yeah that's it it was a mistake though and i think he yeah it doesn't matter he apologized yeah but you can't jerk off and still be working for the new yorker i guess you have to not jerk off ever i mean we can't know about it right you definitely can't do it in front of the people that you work with i mean if he was naked by accident i don't know i think some people saw it and then and then it was wasn't

it like on a press call and someone from vulture like turned it over or something it was like i don't know it was some it was some journalists could have just been like okay we saw it no way but no that's no way they could sell with that if he was that's like the sugar companies trying to make less money no chance if he was having sex with his wife would he have by accident would he have lost his job? No. Maybe. Yeah.

Maybe? Yeah, if she came in the room and started blowing him, they'd be like, you're a psycho. I love that we're creating just total hypotheticals now. Jeffrey Toobin's wife is sucking his... He was seen lowering and raising his computer camera, exposing and touching his penis, and motioning an on-air kiss to someone other than his colleagues. Oh, so there was someone with him. having he was having zoom sex oh it wasn't a full-out sexual act but was much more than a second uh what is mx guessing set what is mx is that is that a new gender thing is that a new thing fuck off mx you sons of bitches mx so he wasn't what is that what is mx that latinx

mx i can't keep track not mr not mrs mx is that new oh my god it's a new thing gender neutral mx is used as a title for those who do not identify as being of a particular gender okay oh you fuck you fucking crazy already has a wikipedia page gender neutral honorific what is an honorific have you ever heard that expression no honorific for those who don't wish to be identified by gender oh christ everybody wants to be special i'm changing all my names to mx or mux mx mux i'm gonna call myself mux rogan mux rogan a mux a mux. Mux. I'm going to call myself Mux Rogan. Mux Rogan. Mux Rogan. A mux. A mux. Oh, wow.

So he probably was doing, like, he probably had a chat with, he probably had, he was probably addicted to, like, a porn chat room. A cam girl or some shit. Yeah, a cam girl. Yeah, well, that's what happens to these dorks. Like, guys who, like, don't know any girls like that in real life, and then they have, like, this online relationship with some gal, and they send her Bitcoin every day day and jerk off in front of her and these girls make a lot of money with these guys oh yeah they're also doing really well during this pandemic i'm sure yeah well unfortunately a lot of uh gals who would have done other things are now have now resorted to that

and you know the problem is that's gonna that could possibly haunt them and haunt their reputation as they move on. People taking screen grabs. Right, right. I mean, assume it's being recorded. And then what if you go on to do other things, and now you have a regular job. You're working for a law firm, and someone's like, that's funny, because she used to finger herself when I walked off in front of her. That is crazy about jeffrey tuba i thought it was just like like super embarrassing and you're an idiot but i didn't think

he lost his fuck i mean that's a tough job to get now it's gone and he apparently was very good he was very good at it i mean jesus christ just suspend the guy for a week just suspend him you know like the embarrassment of it alone. He's probably married. It's probably embarrassed. Yeah, it's kids, you know, all that shit. It's probably, yeah. Did he do his job well? He did.

He was good. So what the fuck? I know. Do you not appreciate the guy for what he's done? And an immediate apology. I think it was like an hour later, like, oh my God, I'm so sorry. Yeah. He didn't do it on purpose.

He legitimately made a mistake. Yeah. It's not like he's just being a creep. Like, you shouldn't get fired for a mistake like that. I agree. Everything he did was legal. He just didn't know. He was probably bored as fuck during these calls.

He's like, I know what I'll do. I'm going to mute my camera and beat one off real quick. It probably was much better. If he had done it and got away with it, he probably had done it many times before and gotten away with it. Yeah, probably. And he probably was way better on the calls. like yeah yeah um i'm i'm amicable that is a good idea uh i'm so relaxed we're up like 25 more meetings now people in the workplace are are reportedly having 25 more meetings now why because of fucking zoom everyone is just like feeling like let's connect let's do it so he's probably like this is the best way to get off these dumb meetings 25% more meetings now. Why? Because of fucking Zoom. Everyone is just like feeling like,

let's connect, let's do it. So he's probably like, this is the best way to get off these dumb meetings. It's a good idea. Yeah. But people do get addicted to those kind of chat,

chat gals. You know, they get addicted. Well, they're probably enticing, right? They're like, it's like a stripper.

You gotta, but you have like a one-on-one relationship with this person through the camera. This is crazy. Yeah. It's wild. But you pay them.-on-one relationship with this person through the camera. This is crazy. Yeah. It's wild.

But you pay them. Well, this is just the beginning. Wait till you get this augmented reality headsets. Right. And then you're in the room with them. And then you put this harness on your old cock and balls. Yeah. And next thing you know, you're in some suit, some fucking wet suit, haptic feedback suit.

And you literally can feel everything. And you're having sex with this person. You think you're having some suit some fucking wet suit haptic feedback suit and you literally can feel everything and you're having sex with this person you think you're having sex with them yeah that's gonna happen that's in our lifetime that's in our in our lifetime there'll be virtual sex that will be indistinguishable from from regular sex yeah in a matter of time as soon as elon musk comes up with this fucking neural link thing and they open up a quarter size hole in your skull and screw this thing in place. And these wires are going to go straight to your pleasure center. There was a woman that lived in the 1970s and she had some sort of a problem with pain medication, like an allergy to pain medication. So they hooked her up to this device and and it was a like literally put a wire into

her pleasure centers and it gave her a button and when she was feeling pain she would hit this button but this button was also causing her to orgasm so she was just hammering that button they said that she developed a blister on the finger that she used to hit the button. Whoa. And she also was constantly begging them to take it out and then fighting with them when they tried to take it out. And she also was trying to adjust the amplitude of the thing to jack it up, to make it higher. So she was trying to hack into this device that they gave her.

I mean, isn't this like the rat and cocaine thing where they'll stop eating and just go for it even though they know it's killing them? Even more so, rat and orgasms. They've actually done experiments on rats and given them the ability to have orgasms. It's sort of the same thing. They've adjusted these rats' pleasure centers and they stopped eating and they just were coming all the time. Rats just fucking zap. That's really sad that she's asking for it to take it out.

Oh yeah, she was begging them to take it out and then fighting them when they tried to take it out. Is this the thing? Oh, the orgasmatron. Is that it? The orgasmatron. Is that hers? I don't know if that's the exact one she had,

but there's a couple articles about this device that could be attached directly to your spinal cord. Jesus Christ. Yeah. I had a bit about it for a while, but I couldn't really figure out a way to make it work right. that could be attached directly to your spinal cord. Jesus Christ. Yeah. It's just a matter of time. I had a bit about it for a while, but I couldn't really figure out a way to make it work right. Well, this is just a matter of time before that's an app on your phone.

$25,000. Yeah. It's just a matter of time. Hey, what happens if I got to run to the restroom? Can I do that? Good, good, good. You guys pausing or what? Yeah, we're good.

We'll be right back, ladies and gentlemen, with more Michael K costa and coming how much time before there is an app like that where you can just press a button on your phone and nut in your pants i uh spoiler alert anyone listening for ready player two uh i don't want to give away too much of the plot but that is sort of where that that they take that oh in the in the movie there was a scene where they were like making out right like she was touching him yes but they wouldn't have been able to feel that they could experience it but not feel it oh the new book the new the next generation it's all feeling everything with no consequences in your real life drugs everything oh that. Oh, that's going to happen.

Sounds like I'm not going to ruin the story, but like, it sounds awesome because that just takes over everything that was going on in the Oasis. And now everyone's just living these experiences. You know, that's one of the things that McKenna predicted in terms of like worldwide or widespread psychedelic use is that they were going to figure out a way to

recreate the DMT experience in some sort of augmented or virtual reality. He was explaining. The last time I was listening to it, I wonder if that would work, though, because the way he explains how it works in the book, he was going to experience someone doing heroin, but without the addictive qualities of it. But if you don't have the addictive qualities of it, are you really experiencing what heroin is like?

Because if you're just experiencing the euphoria, but you're not getting that chase the dragon, you're not really experiencing it. Right. Maybe I don't fucking know that. There's also probably part of it where you know it's dangerous and bad for you. That's part of what the lure of a lot of these drugs is the self-destructive aspect there's no risk in this situation just talking about

shooting heroin i mean it must be good right has to be you know i never talked to hedberg about it but i remember uh before he died like they tried to get him to kick it and he was like no fucking way i'm okay to die from this he He had no desire to kick it. Yeah. Like he had gangrene at one point in time. Yeah. And, uh, you know,

they were, he was in the hospital and they were really worried that he was, he was going to, and he eventually wound up dying later of something similar, but he, uh, he wasn't interested in kicking it. He's like,

nope. I mean, it's, it's, it's crazy that we have created something that we want that badly to our own that will create our own death what's crazy is is how many artists used it you know and had amazing music amazing like in hedberg's case amazing comedy that's directly influenced by that do you think the heroine benefited his comedy or do you think his brain was just a great

comedy brain and he got addicted to heroin? That's a sober person conversation. Right. You know, I think they're connected. Yeah. You know, I don't know if he would have been the same guy without heroin. Yeah. You obviously had a brilliant brain.

But was that brilliant brain influenced by heroin? I don't know. There's a show that I'm watching, The Queen's Gambit. Have you seen that show? I watched it, yeah. Well, you know, she had a tranquilizer thing. I was so happy that they gave her some flaws. I thought at first it was going to be this beautiful woman who excels at chess and that's it.

Yeah. I was really happy with that. And what episode are you on? Two. I just finished two. Where is she right now? Where is she living right now? She was living with, I don't want to say, spoiler alert, but she'd been adopted.

Yeah. Okay. So I really love that that the the other female character the mother character yeah it's fucking great yeah yeah yeah also flawed and all realistic man like heavy duty shit makes you makes you first of all really appreciate the writing whoever wrote that fucking kudos yeah kudos to you fucking great writing and like nothing you don't see anything coming everything's just really interesting like really i i made an instagram post about it was like it used to be that films were the really interesting things but now films sort of pale in comparison

to these netflix type shows these streaming shows whether it's uh hulu or amazon has uh marvelous mrs mazel and a bunch of other great shows like those shows are the best entertainment because they're serial like you follow it over episode after episode you know hbo game of thrones scripted sopranos yeah i find that those streaming platforms with documentaries make six episodes and they should make two yeah and i'm like god stop stop stretching this fucking thing out the vow on hbo i'm like it was 10 episodes it was just this guy driving around la with voiceover what is the vow it's the it's the one about the sex call yeah it's but it's not

a sex i mean it is a sex call we find out at a different documentary on the stars network the hbo documentary is literally just this one guy i i don't recommend it the vow i recommend the stars version which i forget what that's called but on the other hand like wild wild country they needed a bunch of episodes for that which what was that the west virginians no that was the one no that's the wild the wonderful whites of west virginia that's fucking great but that's just a documentary. Right. The Wild Wild Country is the Oregon cult where they took over a town and they poisoned all the people.

Yes. That cult is wild. That needed episodes because you had to see like the beginning. I remember my friend Todd who's like super straight laced like a real great guy

but he watched the first episode. He goes, the first episode I was like, man, I want to live like them. They're all like living in this like hippie commune they're all like free love and sex and everybody's happy and chanting it seems like a great fun time right and then as it

goes on you realize that it gets really dark and it gets really crazy that's it but that's a wonderful job by the filmmakers because to get you to go hey i could join that thing that'd be fun oh there it is okay i haven't seen that it's really good oh my god you have to see it yeah it's really good because in the beginning you realize the appeal of this first of all this osho guy that's not him i was gonna say what is that that's fucking that looks like now the dude with the nose what's that dude owen wilson owen wilson yeah that guy the osho guy is a really interesting guy i actually bought his book i was reading one Dude with the nose. What's that dude? That's a parody of Owen Wilson. Owen Wilson. Yeah, that guy. Dude with the nose. The Osho guy is a really interesting guy.

I actually bought his book. I was reading one of his books that is like a philosophy book or a book of his perspective. Is that Owen Wilson? No. No, that's the actual Osho guy with someone's son who he didn't pay enough attention to when he was a boy. Yeah. But that cult, I mean, they were all doing drugs and having free sex and free love, and they bought a fucking town. And the guy who's that Osho guy had like eight Rolls Royces, had these diamond-encrusted Rolexes. He's balling out of control.

He was making shitloads of money, and they bought a fucking town, and everybody was working for him, and they were all living together. Where was his finances coming from? The donations from all the people. But, bro, they had Hollywood people that were donating. I don't want to tell you too much,

because it is... I'll check it out. First of all, I couldn't believe that I didn't know about this right because it was so crazy yeah and then i talked to some friends that live in oregon they're like oh jesus this is this yeah we knew about this this is nuts like they they bought a fucking town that's amazing yeah they bought a town and then in order to take over the town they bust in homeless people so they took in all these homeless people brought them into the community and then use these

homeless people so they could vote. As like, yeah, as you say, I don't even know if you can, can you create a jurisdiction for yourself? Well, what they did was they brought these homeless people in so that they overwhelmed the population. They had so many people that they can control the voting. But then they eventually got rid of all the homeless people the homeless people felt like really abandoned but it was kind of sad it was very sad because i mean i'm giving a lot of this away but it doesn't matter it's still amazing yeah the homeless people a lot of them just you know like many homeless people they they're missing community and love and they find

themselves alone now all of a sudden they got brought into this cult and they felt like they finally had something right like i'm here and i will live my life here this is these are my people these are my family i'll do anything for them and they were willing to do anything for them and then they just used them for voting and they'll get the fuck out of here it was terrible and the lady sheila who ran the show was the most ruthless bitch and she's still alive she's still alive she's in another country now she got extradited because she she got tried with attempted murder and like you know she tried to poison people and this is how long is this one this is one movie yeah okay well it's no it's several hours it's like four episodes and it's

worth it yes okay i want to watch it again I want to watch it again. Yeah. I might watch it again tomorrow. Yeah. I might watch it tonight after I'm talking to you. I'm all excited about it. Queen's Gambit is excellent. Costume designing is excellent. Yeah. It's really good.

I mean, her outfits, I felt like I was into female fashion. I'm like, oh, I like how the purse is going with the... I like that they're flawed. Yeah. I'm really happy now that we are creating female characters that aren't just like heroic they're also like super fucked up yeah you know at first it was like the the pendulum was swinging it was like female characters and they're all perfect and smarter than the man and like more athletic and now it's like hey can we like even this out and

make them flawed just like anyone else and i like like that they're doing that. Well, I love strong female characters when they make sense. What I don't love is like Star Wars. When they're making like Laura Dern and what's her name? They're making them the generals and you're like, what? And they're telling everybody what to do and it doesn't make sense. They don't have the right voice for that. Would you just force diversity down everybody's throat? I know what you did.

I know. Whereas like Alien is my my favorite version sigourney weaver was fucking amazing and she's the hero of the movie correct and you know my friend matt just told me this that they didn't have a gender in mind when they cast that amazing they just cast the best actress right and it turned out to be sigourney weavener they they tried men they tried everybody like that character ripley could have been anybody could have been a boy a girl didn't matter but she was perfect for it didn't matter whether or not she was a woman but she was so good they cast her and no one gave a fuck that she was a woman right because it was

just awesome yeah that's what i like i agree with on that. I went down a pathway with Queen's Gambit where I was like, is this a true story? Because if this is true that there was this beautiful, young, flawed woman, that's very interesting to me. It's not a true story. There's a lot of people on the internet who think that it is a true story. It's based off a book, but chess sales are through the froof you couldn't get a chess board when that thing came out really yeah isn't that hilarious like like chess sales were going crazy which chess is a beautiful sport and um much like long-form conversation we have here

long-form game yeah i mean months you could really play. They get into speed chess in that show. But you can play chess forever, man. Yeah, I'm scared of chess. I'm terrible at chess, and I don't want to get good at it because I think it's something that I would get absorbed with. I remember there was a time where Howard Stern got obsessed with chess, and he was taking chess lessons when he was talking about it on the show. Yeah, and I remember thinking, oh, he's an obsessive.

I think he eventually bailed and stopped stopped doing it but um i've had problems with video games i've had problems with pool i used to play pool competitively and i get i get real obsessed with games and chess seems to be like the most intense of all intellectual games it's gonna trigger the shit out of your intellectual what what kind of billiards would you play like nine ball yeah nine ball ten ball straight pool i played a lot of all those games but i played a lot of pool a lot i played a lot of tournaments yeah to the point where um i have i have a table in my old studio i have a table at home um i collect pool cues i have a bunch of pool cues. Pool cues are fucking cool. Oh, yeah. Especially when they unscrew and you take the fucking briefcase. The color of money.

The color of money. What's in the case? In here? Doom. That is such a good movie. My brother Todd got obsessed with pool, and we had a pool table in our basement. But it was like classic Midwest basement in and that it couldn't it wasn't fully unobstructed so we had this we had this like weight-bearing pole right here if you ever

had to go like in the in the uh the middles you know you had to do all this creative shit short stick we sawed one down yeah but todd got really in the pool my dad took us to the nine ball championships one year down in like west virginia and we're like you know these guys are like excellent at pool i mean they'll run racks after racks and it was like wild how the brain is not how my brain works but my brother's brain would be like one ball there two ball there is you're gonna move it off here and that's like geometry chess it's all like that yeah it is and it's also finesse and touch yeah and feel yeah and great sounds yeah it's also a sport that thrives on

drugs really like an adderall type situation yeah because they would gamble and they would play for hours 15 16 hours the thing about pool is that they would play until someone quit and so guys that was like the gentleman's rule you would never quit on somebody when you're ahead right it's like if you if you quit on someone when you're ahead people be mad at you right and they didn't like if you played like for two hours and you won like a thousand dollars and you like uh we'll play again tomorrow they'd be like fuck you stay and people get mad at you they would really get upset and you would have a hard time getting a game because right you'd be a guy so you have to wipe out your opponent until they say i can't do this anymore yeah it's like a it's like to the death to the

death yeah it's like amongst top players unless there was an agreement like you could make an agreement yeah you can make an agreement we will play two sets i'll play you two sets race to 20 right for x amount of dollars per set but we're gonna make an agreement right now with two sets right that's rare though right most of the time they would post up and they would play until guys went broke like the hustler yeah the hustler with jackie gleason and paul newman that was the theme of the movie is that paul is winning for like 15, 16 hours and then Jackie Gleason has character and Paul Newman is self-destructive

and eventually Jackie Gleason overcomes him I don't know if I've ever seen The Hustler but obviously that has helped Paul Newman get cast in Color of Money Oh, for sure That was the original Yeah, okay, that's what I wasn't sure The Color of Money was the sequel.

Okay. I didn't realize that. Yeah. They were both written by, I think, Walter Tevis is the guy who wrote it. But I've read the books, too. They're pretty similar. The character in the second movie is different. There's a lot of things in the Color of Money that are different.

They're made for Tom Cruise. they made for tom cruise and but in the hustler paul newman uh retires because like he's he makes a deal with this mob guy okay and at the end of it he quits playing okay so he's he's retired from pool and then he meets tom cruise many decades later i see so the hustlers takes the hustle takes place i think in i want to say, 63? Okay. Somewhere around then. That's when that movie came out. And so Color of Money is like 1984 or something like that.

I fucking loved Color of Money when it came out. That made pool go through the roof. People started playing pool like crazy. And people in the pool world have always said they need a movie like The Color of Money. And pool hall junkies some people liked but it never really had the same impact it wasn't that good it was okay like some people liked it but they couldn't really play right you could if a person who plays pool like i watch it would be very frustrating for me because like if you were watching someone play

tennis dude it's it fucking infuriates me any commercial with tennis they're holding the racket wrong it's like just get anyone that plays tennis to quickly advise you on the right grip and now i'm like but all i can focus on is that and i believe color of money i i remember reading about it that they like locked tom cruise yes in a room for three months and taught him how to focus his grip and every Cruise worked with Mike Siegel. Okay. And Mike Siegel is one of the greatest pool players that's ever lived. Right.

Multiple time world champion, like literally one of the all time greats. I've had the opportunity to play Mike Siegel. I played him. I hung out with him. He's a great guy. And he was also left-handed just like Tom Cruise. Tom Cruise is left-handed.

Yeah. And he taught Tom Cruise. And Tom Cruise looks like a guy who can play a little. Paul Newman in The Hustler does not really look like a guy who can play. He does a lot of goofy shit. But Jackie Gleason could play.

Jackie Gleason literally plays like a professional. You watch Jackie Gleason in The Hustler? He spent a lot of time playing pool when he was a kid. Look, Jackie Gleason was a guy who drank and smoked and hung out in pool halls. He was a man's man. He was a wild dude. And he could fucking play, like really play.

How did you get introduced to pool? I hurt my ACL. I tore my ACL ligament and I couldn't work out for a while. And when I couldn't work out, me and my friend John, he was a comic as well, started going to this pool hall in White Plains, New York. And I just stumbled upon one of the great pool halls in that area.

It's one of the reasons why I moved to New Rochelle, because I could be close to White Plains, because I was addicted to this pool shit. People get fucking addicted to pool. That's how my brother was, dude. What does this say? Yeah, the video game Doom got its name from what does it say yeah the video game doom got its name for the film yeah the video game doom got its name from tom cruise opening up that uh because they wanted to know that yeah because when he opened up the case and he goes what's in the case

he goes in here doom i remember that with his dumb accent yes he was he was excellent in that film that's what john yeah that's what they wanted to uh john carmack wanted to say to the video game world when they when they released doom what's in there doom is in there because this game is so crazy in comparison to everything else yeah so that's where i came up with i came up with the name yeah it's something like the the i forget the character's name in queen queen's gamb, but when she kind of lays in bed and looks up and watches the world, you kind of see pool players look at the table that way. Da-da, da-da, da-da.

This goes here, da-da, da-da. But with pool, there's execution, right? The difference is you could miss a shot where you're in perfect position, whereas with chess, you just move the thing. You don't have to think about your physical hand-eye coordination and skills. So nerves don't play a factor as much in terms of your ability to move your body. So with pool, the thing that excited me about it was it was about controlling yourself under pressure. And you're literally applying a certain amount of pressure to a ball

and you want to control the revolutions that the ball makes over a long period so it's all touch and feel and the more you play the more and you get in what they call dead punch or dead stroke where you understand exactly how much impact and exactly how hard to touch that cue exactly how much how much impact it has on the ball to just perfectly place that ball in position for the next shot it is uh it's a great game my brother had a book called how to hustle your friends at pool and used to read it and uh we'd have friends come over and they would always get mad that he was reading at the book but but he loved it. It's a great gambling sport. Yeah, it's great.

Well, it's a game where people get mad if you pretend you're not good. Right. And it turns out you are good. Yeah. Isn't that what the hustle is? Yeah. Yeah, right. But what's interesting about it is it's also a game where people lie about how good they are.

Like, men always want to pretend they're really good at pool. It's a weird thing like if guys don't know you play like i play pretty good like i'm a b player yeah which means like i'm not a pro but if i practice for six months and really dedicated myself you'd be excellent i can run racks yeah i've run out three four racks in a row i can play a little yeah and if i played a lot i could i could i could play on a very high level but most people can't like i played for years eight hours a day i played every day i always played i took a cue on the road with me everywhere i went when i when i would go

on the road and do do gigs i'd find pool halls and i play in pool all night long that's what i always did most men lie like they tell you like you say do you play pool oh yeah are you good yeah i'm pretty good like oh are you really like how good are you oh i'm good i always beat my friends pretty good you're like are you really good like have you ever played in tournaments they'll lie and then you play them and they suck they suck golf is like this what do you shoot i'll shoot about 100 you go out there and you're like you fucking lie or you cheat everybody cheats at golf everybody gets so surprised when they ask me if i'm good at golf

and i say i'm okay and they say what do you shoot and i say 110 they go no there's no chance i get out there and you really count my strokes and the time that i moved the ball and the time that it like followed the rules i shot a 110 but everybody lies is that a good number? No. No. What's a good number? Par is 72. But I guarantee you he's going to say he shoots in the 90s. And when we go out there and we actually play, he's going to shoot like 125, like a typical house. No, not a game.

Yeah, but like 90-ish is probably a good number. Yeah, 90 is a good number. I could get there, but. You would need a lot of time. You need some time. And you don't cheat. But everybody lies. Yeah, it's true. People lie time. You need some time. And you don't cheat. But everybody lies. It's true.

People lie about pool. Dude, the worst, if you're a single guy trying to pick up girls and you've got to play pool with them and they're fucking garbage. They beat you. They beat you. If a girl beats you at pool, good luck getting laid. Good luck. They don't want to fuck you if they can beat you at pool.

Everyone knows that. Well, it's another thing. When you play girls in tournaments, guys would panic when they would play girls in tournaments. Because they have to win. Because some girls are good. Right, right, right. You know, there's a lot of girls that are really fucking good and you play girls in tournaments, guys would panic when they would play girls in tournaments. Because they have to win. Because some girls are good. Right, right, right. You know, there's a lot of girls that are really fucking good, and you play them. Because pool doesn't require any physical strength.

Well, why wouldn't they be gender equal? I mean, why do we have a gender breakdown in pool? Is it because of the break? Well, no. It's weird, okay? And this is, I mean, I'm just going to be objective about this. There are some women that beat a lot of men at pool. But in the aggregate, when you look at the total of all the great pool players, the best pool players are all men. But the women are excellent.

And the women are capable of beating some of the best players some of the time but when it all averages out the best players in the world yeah are like there's a bunch like shane van boning there's uh dennis arculio there's a lot of filipinos a few american guys a few europeans they're all men but there's a few women yeah who's that like one of them was called the mosquito or something that woman oh the black widow black widow yeah sorry yeah she's good she's really good i always assume she was good because she's also hot right and that's of course the media yeah okay yeah the best woman ever at the time a woman who was winning and beating men at the time was this woman named jean belucas see if you look her up and she was playing men back when no men were like women

weren't really playing men right she was playing men and beating them and she was a fucking killer she was a straight up killer but it's just really really rare and it's not but it's not a physical strength thing because pool is not a physical why not on the i mean i mean that's where it gets weird it's okay it's a confusing thing it It's like a grasp of 3D space. It's like an understanding and a perception of angles. And it's also, there's a competitive- And men are just better at those things. There's a competitive drive.

We don't know why. Yeah. But it doesn't, look, there's women that are way better than me. It's not saying that all men are better than all women. There's women that play way better than me. But when it comes to the best players in the world, for whatever reason that we don't totally understand, it's men by a long shot.

She plays fifth when she was nine years old. Oh, she was a killer. Jean Belukas. Yeah, but see if you got any video of her when she was playing. Wow. When Jean was at the top of her game i mean she was literally as good as any man alive she was this is her right here she was well anybody can make that joe she was no it wasn't just that it was she never oh that's not gene belucas that's um

god damn it eva matthias eva matthias oh that's gene belucas versus eva matthias now even matthias Eva Mattia. That's Jean Lucas versus Eva Mattia. Now, Eva Mattia is another one. She was another killer, but she was fucking hot. And she became pretty famous because of the fact that she was hot. Stop. Fast forward. What are you doing? The Billiard Network? That's Jean.

Yeah, there was a Billiard Network at one point. But I think it's just an online thing. But Jean was, in her day, when she was competing and beating day when she was right when she was competing and beating everybody she was formidable like people were nervous playing her

right what's that English version with the huge table and the small balls excuse me I say snooker they say snooker snooker

that thing is I've never understood that one that's a very difficult sport and English snooker players who come over and play pool they excel at it they must think pool's easy as shit yeah because the balls are smaller the holes are smaller and the uh the table's bigger and also the mechanics are so precise like you have to have absolute precise mechanics to play snooker yeah and it's it's a really valuable game

like the guys who do it really well they make a of money, or they did at one point in time. I think its popularity has kind of dwindled a little bit. But I remember when I was in England, I was doing a gig over there, and I was in my hotel room, and I just turned on the TV, and I was watching Snooker on TV. I was like, this is crazy. Dude, they love their parlor games. Yeah.

Darts. Darts is the best. 520! So good. They love that pub best. 520. So good. They love that pub shit. They love the pub shit. I mean, their creation of tennis, you know, it's like this court that's super tall. You can hit off the walls.

What do you mean you can hit off the walls? There's like different origins of the sport of tennis. One of them is called this like, I forget what what it's called but it's a mix of racket ball and tennis and you could hit off the back ceiling and each court would be different but there'd be a net and you'd use this racket and a pressureless ball and eventually tennis evolved out of that but these courts these courts still exist in the deep of it in english country what's it called what do they call it over there i I'll find out. Jamie will find it. Jamie will find it.

And this was how long ago did tennis get invented? I would say 500 years ago, but Jamie can also find that out as well. I mean, initially, the scoring is complicated, right? That's what everyone always says. I don't get the scoring. The elites created tennis scoring to be difficult so the poor communities wouldn't learn it i mean how fucking dirty is that right and it still works like to this day people are like i don't want to do tennis the scoring is

too complicated and yeah it was like french and english royalty kind of uh took the game and they they both went their separate ways within different ways it might start with a s squash it's not squint no no it's like um ah shit i could find it but uh something rack if you google like old fucking english tennis origin, it's strange. Well, pool originated on a table with no holes. Yeah, well, isn't that snooker? No. That's billiard.

Three cushion billiards. Steak? Yes, yes, yes. With a weird E on the end. Yes. Sticky? Yes, that's it. Let me see what that shit looks like.

That's what that's called. It's really fucking strange See if we can find a video of that shit You can find current Current day videos Look at this shit dude In like old Old English town

This is part of the origination of tennis Oh like this It doesn't fucking look like Yeah but that's like super fucking nice But it's in a place Like racquetball oh like this it doesn't fucking look like yeah but that's like that's fucking nice super but it's in a place like racquetball oh shit but this is wild depending on the farmhouse that you live in this would be a different dimension like a baseball stadium has a different field you know or different um dimension so you can kind of do like a little racquetball deal oh this is wild

it's like a a bastardized racquetball versus tennis right wow this is wild you ever seen high lie yes that's fucking crazy but that's a corrupt game yeah that game is full of shit yes those guys drop the ball all the time whoops yeah that game is polluted by gambling my dad used to take us to those games in miami we'd bet yeah and it was you know it's like nobody there and my dad was like what are we doing here and people be smoking and we're betting on highlight but yeah that's like the origination of tennis which i found i i didn't know that i love the sport google uh three cushion billiards so the original

billiard pocket billiards i believe was started in america it was like a saloon game. We wanted to eat the ball. It was thought, maybe. I think for whatever reason, they put holes in the table. But when they first started doing it, billiards was like a gentleman's sport. And it was like a parlor game for the aristocrats. And it was a game where it was all about making a ball, hit one ball,

and then bounce off of three angles and hit the other ball. This shit is crazy to me, and my brother has played it. This is very difficult. It must be boring as fuck. I watch it. I've gotten into watching it lately quite a bit for whatever reason. You have to hit two balls and three rails or something? No, it's three cushions.

So you hit the first ball, and then you have to hit one, two, three cushions. One, two, three cushions and then he collides with the other ball down there. But what has to hit the three cushions? The cue ball? The ball after striking. So once you hit the

original ball, the cue ball has to hit three cushions before it hits the second ball. And there's a bunch of different versions of those two. There's like bulk line where you just have to collide the two balls together and try to stay within certain parameters. So this guy's going to hit this, and then he's going to go all the way around the table. So he's going to collide this, and he's going to go up table. One, two, three, and then collide with that second ball.

See that? But he's going to miss it. it see that's a very difficult game it's very difficult because you have to have a real understanding of like angles and how hard in the the harder you hit the sharper the angle will be because you're digging into the cushion so it's coming off shorter and and the reason that that's this next guy's shot is because he missed the second ball Exactly So he missed that ball So now this guy is trying to figure out So he's going to use this yellow ball

And he's going to do the same thing Oh you can fucking hit the yellow ball too? I think that's his ball I don't know I've never played this I mean I've banged around balls But look see how he does this Oh that was great

This guy's body type is perfect for pool isn't't it all fat and lazy is that what you're saying world record high run 40 so he he did 40 in a row like this right wow oh this is the world and this is 2020 so in other countries this game is still popular. There was a place that I used to go to in Vegas. There was this Italian guy who ran this pool hall. And he had a pool hall, and it had the best fucking Italian food in Vegas. This guy came from Rome, and he was a cook, and he was also a guy who loved pool. But he also had Italian billiards. And Italian billiards was really weird.

What the fuck? But he had a terrible business model. Like, nobody plays this fucking game. So Italian billiards have these little statues that you put. I've seen that fucking thing. I don't know. I never got it. I was in the pool.

I was like, explain this to me. And the guy kept trying to sell me his business. Go on, abide in my business. I said, I'm coming to you. I'm said, I'm not buying your business, bro. I'm not buying a pool hall in Vegas. But see those little statues? I don't know what those things do, those little pins. And you've got to knock them over or something?

I don't even know what it is. Isn't it interesting that every culture has some different form of like... Yeah. It's weird. When I would go to White Plains to executive billiards in white plains they had one billiard table that they had set up and all these mexican dudes would come in and play three cushion billiards they love three cushion billiards and they would gamble in it and we would just sit there billi pin billiards. Yeah. I never understood it. I was like, I don't, what are you doing? But a lot of the best pool players also play billiards because they have this extreme understanding of like the angles and which way the ball's going.

It's like you have to have this really weird perception of, you know, where the thing's going to, you got to really have a deep understanding of where the ball's going to go. I love any sport that you can excel and wear like a bow tie in, you know, for real. Like that guy's wearing like a vest with a bow tie. That's sick. Well, the snooker guys all dress real nice.

That's nice. They just slick. And the dark guys always got like a beer in their hand and they look like dark guys. It's great. It's, it's always fun watching someone's body type. Like did they morph into this

body type from being successful at their activity or other way around? Are they successful at this activity because of their body type? Well, I think if you are a person who plays that all the time, you're not doing a lot of weightlifting. You're not running a lot. You're just at that pool hall knocking balls around all the time. Some of the better american guys are pretty fit though because they've realized that there's a great value in keeping your body strong because yeah you can play longer and better and concentrate better and also maintain your vitality like later into your life i love whenever when tiger woods came on the scene they're like it's he's taking fitness seriously and i was like why did golf not realize that that was going to be

advantageous? Because of John Daly? Don't be a fat fuck and you can be better at this sport. But John Daly was a fat fuck and he was killing it. Tell it to Bert Kreischer. Right. Bert Kreischer apparently has a sick serve. Really? I know he likes tennis. He cornered me once

at the Irvine Improv and was like, we got to make a tennis show. And then he was gone. You know, I don't know. Tequila on his breath. I haven't seen Bert in ages, man. Bert's killing it on the road. I know, he's killing it. He does those drive-in movie shows.

I heard, but I also can't see him with his shirt off anymore. So if I'm scrolling and I see it, I just fucking scroll faster. So I don't know if you need to hear that, Bert. But if I'm feeling that way, maybe other people are faster so i don't know if you need to hear that burt but if i'm feeling that way maybe other people are too i don't know it's a thing now he's stuck with it it's like jeff dunham without the puppets right you can't do it is he talking about not having a shirt just takes his shirt off and he gets on stage oh okay the only place he wouldn't do it is the or he felt weird doing it in the or but it was too intimate right and also felt like it was a workout room just felt weird right but he would do it in the OR, but it was too intimate. Right. And also felt like it was a workout room.

Just felt weird. Right. But he would do it in the main room. So like every time he did a set in the main room, first of all, I would go on after him all the time and I would always have to hug him. Oh, right.

Sweaty body. Sweaty body. That's hilarious. I mean, that's his thing. He just wanted to take his shirt off before he goes on stage. Well, I don't know.

You can create your thing. Yeah. That's his thing. Yeah. Everybody has a thing. That's his thing. His thing is takes his, well before he goes on stage. Well, you can create your thing. Yeah, that's his thing. Everybody has a thing. Well, he's the life of the party. He's the party guy. He is, and I have only interacted with him five times. It's always super friendly, super fun.

One of the nicest guys I've ever lived. One of the nicest guys of all time. One of my favorite people. I love him to death. But yeah, he likes to party. He hasn't stopped or slowed down at all. there's a video of him on his tour bus drunk with a table covered in mcdonald's i mean they have like like he went to mcdonald's essentially they went to the drive-thru and ordered everything and all him and his opening acts were just eating crushing just just i don't buy that that this is still fun for him come on what way to get drunk and i mean getting drunk is fun but the recovery like for me

getting drunk has always been fun the recovery is just getting worse and worse and worse and worse and now i get like mental recovery i get like uh anxiety yeah he gets that too yeah and he just pushes through it over and over again at some some point he's got to stop with that. Well, everyone's different. Yep. And you know what? I'm not suggesting he does. I'm just saying if it were... What's happened to me at 41 is I go like, I really got away. Is it worth it? Well, it's funny.

We had a conversation about this because our friend Tom Segura hurt himself really bad. Yeah, what the fuck happened to him? Well, Bert and him were playing a basketball game, and Tom can dunk, right? On a 10-foot hoop? A 9-foot hoop.

Okay, God, you've got to say that. Okay, sorry. You've had this conversation before. Up to a certain point, and this was the point. So he blew out his patella tendon and then fell and snapped his arm in half. Right here. The big one. Yeah, the big one then fell and snapped his arm in half. Right here. The big one. Yeah, the big one. And then snapped his arm in half. Yeah, so he has

no left leg, no left arm. I saw the Instagram pictures. Oh my god. Horrific. So the leg's gone, the arm's gone, and you know, he's still in a rehab place. He's still, he's fucked. Yeah, his arm has a scar that goes from his elbow up to his

shoulder he got all that for trying to dunk on a nine foot rim yeah oh so tom look he's fucking he's a little overweight he's 46 years old but uh him and burt were doing this thing and you know he burt had a conversation with me he goes he goes i was always like uh because Bert would do all this exercise, and I'd be like, how are your knees? And he goes, my knees are fine. He goes, maybe Joe doesn't understand how knees work. And he goes, then I realized after seeing Tommy blow his knee out, like, oh, my God, that can happen at any moment. I've had three knee surgeries. I've had two ACL reconstructions.

I've had my meniscus scoped. I've gone through a lot. I understand vulnerability. familiar with yeah with their vulnerability they don't they've never done that before so like when someone thinks it's going to be okay to be 250 fucking pounds and try to dunk and i might be generous by saying 250 and try to to dunk and realize like oh you're you're risking everything like you could blow you're so overweight like doing all this activity explosive activity is exceedingly dangerous i mean just just overpacking a suitcase and carrying it to the car you feel that impact yeah and this is your knee that's now carrying this yeah but tom is in pretty good shape at the time apparently he had been

before the injury they're're playing against someone. Do they have video footage of the injury? That will be out on their Two Bears, One Cave live on New Year's Eve. Oh, they're actually... Who's he playing? Oh, that's that kid, that YouTube kid. That's really good. So they were recording this, obviously from multiple angles,

and Tom hurt himself. Yeah. Oh. Look at Bert trying to get that guy's ball. That kid is really good. He's just fucking with him. Oh, look at that. Tom blocked that ball.

I actually, look, based off- Look at Bert's belly. Jesus Christ. Oh, my God, dude. He's pregnant. But I would say both of them move better than I would have anticipated. He can't even fucking hold onto the ball. Oh, I see.

They're doing a two-on-one. Yeah, they're doing a two-on-one, and he's like 20 years old. Well, he's really good. He's got a bunch of videos of him going to basketball courts in neighborhoods and just schooling people. Schooling people. All these people talking trash, and he's really good. You know, Bobby Riggs is an interesting character, the guy who lost the Battle of the Sexes to

Billie Jean King. Oh. who lost the battle of the sexes to billy jean king he was a former world number one a former wimbledon champion uh when he he used to go to central park in new york as the world number one player and bet you for ten thousand dollars but you could handicap him and there's pictures of him holding 10 dogs on a leash playing somebody at central park somebody somebody would take three benches and put them on his side of the court and he would have to move around move around those and you know he was like a gambling addict and one of the one of the sides that they don't always talk about with the battle of the sexes with billy jing king beating him was that did he throw the

match like was he was he gambling this thing away now i would make the that, did he throw the match? Like, was he gambling this thing away? Now, I would make the argument he did not throw the match. I would make the argument that Billie Jean King was a much better tennis player than him at that time in his life. But fascinating character. And his first Wimbledon, he bet on himself to win Wimbledon singles, Wimbledon doubles, and Wimbledon mixed doubles, and he did. Whoa. And this was before it was a professional tournament.

So, like, that was how he made his living. He bet on himself to win the – and it's an amazing character. But anyways, watching Bert and Tom play hoops like backyard shit made me think of Bobby Riggs. One of the things about New York City that I always thought, like, I have these romantic ideas, like, romantic ideas like living in the mountains. That's one of them. Another one is being a chess hustler in

New York City. The Washington Square Park. I can't even play chess. But, like, watching those guys play and just knowing that you could just show up there and get a game at any time. And these literal grandmasters, like, these people play so good, like in Searching for Bobby Fischer. These guys are fucking killers,

and they all meet there every day and play chess. They set up their board, they got their coffee, and they read the paper, and when you sit down, and you know what? You can sit down and be shitty at chess. They won't sit with you very long. They'll defeat you but they'll they'll maybe help you a little bit but yeah it's pretty fucking cool that they do

that what's interesting there's a community like that yeah yeah that they have this place where they can go and play yeah i always thought that's amazing that's cool if there's something you were really into there was a place you knew you could go well that used to be the case with new york city with pool too new york city had a strong pool community, whereas the pool has kind of died out in a lot of the country. In Los Angeles, man, it was impossible to find a pool hall. There was like House of Billiards in Santa Monica. I was going to say, where the fuck would...

Yeah. House of Billiards in Santa Monica. There's Hard Times down in Bellflower, which is like world class. Okay. Hard Times, but COVID's killed them, killed everybody. I think Santa Monica's going under. I think they're going to sell. And then there's House of Billiards in Sherman Oaks, too, where I's killed them. Killed everybody. I think Santa Monica's going under. I think they're going to sell. And then there's House of Billiards in Sherman Oaks, too, where I used to play.

Okay. I mean, and you need space. You need space. Yeah, you need a lot of tables. Yeah. And it's not something like chess. We could just go to the park and set up. Yeah.

Yeah. You need tables. They need to be maintained. You need lights. There's always a little bit of... When you walk into a pool hall, you always feel like it's been put on like a grimy filter, you know? Oh, yeah.

Always. Yeah, dirty people. Yeah. And people on dates. Right. And dudes who don't know how to play that talk a lot of shit. Yeah. There's always a lot of that.

Yeah. It's a very American game, you know? I've been to the House of billiards there in Santa Monica with my brother a few times, but I just never could... The brain didn't click as much. Different sports, my brain clicking, oh, I got that.

But billiards, it was just never... I still hold it like this. I'm not supposed to do the... What is it, like that? Well, it depends on the shot. Okay, all right, got it. Open bridge or closed bridge. I would love to to have my own cue that would have been sick yeah screw it in you know doom it's for me it was probably a thing that i never would have gotten

into if i didn't get injured but when i got injured i had this you know when you tear an acl it's a long rehab yes months and months you know and i couldn't do any martial arts so i would play pool and so when i started playing pool i got really lucky that the place that i went to was Months and months. And I couldn't do any martial arts. So I would play pool. And so when I started playing pool, I got really lucky that the place that I went to was filled with hustlers. And filled with guys who were playing big money games. And it's a bachelor's thing. It totally is. These guys, most of them, they were the divorced or they're never going to get married or they're living in flop houses.

And all they did was play pool. And they would meet together and they would go to places and people would come to them and they would gamble. It was all about gambling. And I fell in love with it because I was like, wow, this is like a lost part of our society. Totally. And it was also a man thing.

It wasn't that there weren't women there there weren't women there there's women that really got into the game as well but these guys were they were smoking cigarettes yeah and they were talking shit yeah and they were gambling and and and you're like you don't have any fucking heart you want to bet some money motherfucker and they were doing it was this like total outlier of society thing this outcast thing and i just felt like look i always felt like an outcast as a person i never i always felt real uncomfortable around people that had like stable families yeah like yeah i was that's why i got into comedy like i felt like oh these people are all weirdos too and then with pool it's like oh these people are weirdos too it's like oh

these are all this is like this weird segment of society that did they just decided you know what fuck a job i'm just gonna like hustle pool i'm gonna play in tournaments i'm gonna travel on the road i'm gonna barely get by but i'm gonna be doing what i enjoy doing it it has much like comedy because when i entered the comedy community i remember thinking like oh this is great these people don't judge at all at all except for your set then they're all fucking judging yeah that's not fine they literally don't give a fuck what you do who you are what you look like it's beautiful yeah if you're a killer you're a killer if you're a killer you're a killer and uh i remember coming from my family was very

structured sports is very structured and when I entered the comedy world, it was like, holy fuck, anything goes. Yeah. Anything goes. And it was very freeing. And,

uh, it is true. When you walk into a pool hall, you see some boys in the corner smoking and they're talking shit. And it's like, it's a little bit of a ragtag group. Yeah. A lot of a ragtag group.

It was at the time when I first started playing pool, I realized that these were the people that just for whatever reason, nothing else clicked. Nothing else clicked. But they found this place where they were all doing drugs. What kind of drugs? All kinds of drugs pills a lot of guys did pills like like to focus on the game or just yeah and also just because

they were drunk junkies also because they were the drugs a lot of guys did coke a lot of guys smoked pot right it was uh just a wild community they're just different kinds of human beings you know they were they were wild people man they were really wild people and uh they just were outcast i met this one guy's name was international sal and international name yes that was his nickname everybody had a nickname but international sal uh was one of the first guys to ever uh run scams with credit cards you know those things we're talking about those credit card things yeah well he would take those credit card things? Yeah. Well, he would take those carbons and he would buy them from stores. Oh my God.

Like he had a guy in stores that would get them to him and then they would make a duplicate of that card and they would use those cards and they would like buy a bunch of shit and sell a bunch of shit. And so he was like a gangster. He would be at the pool hall and guys would come to him with paper bags

filled with money. It's always some shady shit going on there. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And he would lose it all. He was a loser. International Sal? Yeah.

He could play. He could play, too, but he would always choke. Yeah. And that was the knock on international Sal is that when it came down to the money ball, he would always fall apart. And he was always addicted to gambling. Right. So he was always trying to gamble, and he would come down to the money ball he would always fall apart and he was always like good for he was addicted to gambling right so he's always trying to gamble and he would come down to the money ball and always fall apart it was wild to see like that these people they lived this in this way that

was so outside the lines that's crazy i mean i'm thinking of the biathlon now when they when they fucking cross-country ski and then they lay down and they got to fire the gun. Yeah. And they fire in between. They can bring their heart rate down 40 beats a minute, meaning if it's at 160, they can bring it to 120. And so they can fire in between their heartbeats. It doesn't affect their gun. And I'm also thinking about pool and on the money

ball it's the pressure shot yeah and it's a fine movement like you were saying earlier and you do have to figure out how to execute that under pressure with such tiny motor skills you also have that's crazy you have to not think about missing the thing is about when you think about missing you miss so fuck it's really weird like you've got to achieve this zen state but you have as much time as you want on the shot right yeah yeah well no on some some matches they have they execute a shot clock okay but all right that's tv billions i've seen that yeah that's yeah but that's to try to make it more interesting yeah but most of the time in professional tournaments they don't have a shot clock and in hustler pool there's no shot clock no there's no fucking rules and that's one thing that people do that frustrates people is they'll overlook a shot like look at a shot over and over

and over again just to drive the guy crazy sitting there watching yes and people are like well we fucking shoot already and like i'll take my time i'll shoot when i want you can shoot when you want and they have these arguments and shit but it's uh there's so much psychology involved in in gambling yeah and and playing games and fucking with each other you know there's this guy his name was uh his nickname was water dog and he was addicted to heroin and he would go and he would go into the bathroom and uh he would uh he's also his other nickname is buffalo bill for some strange reason all right but he would go to the bat, because he looked like Buffalo Bill. He had this crazy mustache.

He would go to the bathroom and he would shoot heroin. And he would come out. Jesus Christ. He would come out and he would sit on a chair. He would sit on one of these pool stools like this. Getting the nods. Right. Just sit there for like a half an hour.

And then he'd come out of it and he'd be ready to play. And he had like dead eyes, like a gerbil, like a shark eyes. And he wouldn't miss. He would not fucking miss. it and he'd be ready to play and he had like dead eyes like a gerbil like a shark eyes and he wouldn't miss he would not fucking miss and he was a world-class player like a legitimate world-class professional player and when he shot heroin he couldn't fucking miss he played so good and uh i met him in new jersey or i met him in new york rather i played with him all over the east coast and then when I came to LA I went to Hard Times Billiards as well as I was on a television show I was on

news radio right and on the Sundays I would go play in the Hard Times tournament they had like this professional tournament down there and I would always lose but I would play and uh I went down there on Sunday. It'd be nine ball? Yeah and I went down there and this I mean it's like one of the some of the best players in the world will come down to the Hard Times Sunday play. And he was there, and he didn't have any money to get into the tournament. And so he was there, and I go, hey, man, what are you doing? He goes, what are you doing out here? I go, I live here now. And he was out of it.

He didn't understand. I was on television. He didn't understand anything. But he just knew me as Joe the Comedian, because I was Joe the Comedian. And I go, are you playing? He goes, I don't have any money to get in. I go, I'll he i go you playing he goes i don't have money to get in i go i'll put you in and uh he goes i gotta get a bag though and i go okay and he goes can you take me i go take you where to get a fucking bag take him to come i go dude if they

if we get arrested they take my car he goes we won't get arrested i go no no we could easily get arrested i go a white guy in a toy a Toyota Supra in Compton looking for heroin? Yeah, you might get arrested. Offering to pay for his game is nice. You don't have to take him to go get heroin. So I put him in the tournament with no heroin, and he played like shit. Not only did he play like shit, like on purpose. You could tell.

He was so frustrated that I wouldn't take him to get heroin. He was really mad. He was really mad at me for not taking it. He's like, you're not going to lose your car. I'm like, but I could. I go, I'm not going to fucking risk my risk my car i'm not gonna get arrested buying heroin yeah i'm not gonna drive you to compton by heroin man yeah strange sad and then he died a few years later it was not yeah what was the international where did that come from international sal yeah

because of his uh the amount of money that he made he made millions of dollars that was just his nickname international sal right uh it was american express cards he ran the scam with american express cards this is like i mean when i met him it was he had already gotten out of jail and it was 93 sish 93 ish 92 92 maybe yeah maybe even earlier nine yeah 92 so he had probably been in jail in the like 80s like like when they first invented credit cards and the first did the swiping thing right he figured out a way to to make extra credit cards and you know there was no computers back then so you could literally make a copy of someone's card and by the time they figured out yeah that wasn't you got the bill in the end of the's card. And by the time they figured out that it wasn't, you got the bill and then on the month, you're like, what the fuck is this?

I didn't buy a car. And then they would have to figure out a way to make money. Now your phone goes, did you just spend whatever, whatever. Exactly. Instantly you get a notification. Airplane tickets? Take my airplane ticket? Airplane ticket?

It's like hilarious. So for whatever reason, you know, they call them international sal. That's funny. There was all these different guys that had these crazy names. Some of them were real simple, like Ray the Fireman, who was just a guy who was a fireman. And then there was different people with different nicknames

based on where you came from, like Mount Vernon Tommy. He was from Mount Vernon. White Plains Charlie was this guy that I met. He was this old dude who was really really old and like really frail. Like he probably weighed about 90 pounds, but he was a killer pool player who just was addicted to gambling. He would play,

he would horse bet all day, bet the horses, you know, like off track betting. He would do that all day and they would come in and play pool and he would always lose. He would like win occasionally, but most of the time lose.

It's kind of a gambler's paradise as far as the sport's concerned right because each shot could be a fresh gamble yeah refresh bet i mean maybe that's why it attracts this type it was based on gambling see the game pool is not pool pool is a term for pooling money together to gamble the game is pocket billiards its foundation is gambling it's well it's a bunch of dirtbags a bunch of men at the like in the turn of the century in the 1900s in new york city there was a thousand pool halls a thousand a thousand wow that's how popular pool was wow and it was a lot of men that didn't want to get married right they didn't want to live this life that they had been sort of forced upon

and they had decided to just live like dirtbags and you know through the great depression these guys just made a living hustling wow yeah that's nuts how many pool tables a thousand yeah a thousand pool halls pool halls were everywhere and there's some amazing photographs from the early 1900s from new york city so when the hustler came out in 1963 pool was like probably on the downslide a little bit right like it probably wasn't what it used to be but it was still way more popular than it was you know today it's not popular at all it's gonna say man it's really fallen off And I haven't played in a long fucking time. In L.A., it's nonexistent. But in here, in Texas, there's still some pool halls.

There's some places you can go. But it's just one of those things. It takes a long time to learn. And video games are more exciting. A lot of kids that would have gone and played pool, they became addicted to video games instead. It may have a resurgence after the netflix series called the king's pocket yeah you know well if someone came up with a real

netflix series where they explained like the the the it would have to be like the queen's gambit it would have to be like one of those things where you had to you would have to explain the the love and the passion that these people have for the addiction yeah you know because for there's a great book uh called mcgurdy it's about uh i forget the the author but it's about this uh famous pool hustler that lived during the depression it's really kind of fucked up book. Sad, like talking about like almost starving to death and just living this life trying to hustle people. But there's this thing where this guy was in a game and they were talking

about Richard Nixon and he looks up at the screen and he goes, look at that guy, president of the world, a president of the United States and he can't make a ball. Like they didn't have any respect for him. He couldn't play. Like that's how pool players ball. They didn't have any respect for him. He couldn't play. That's how pool players were. They didn't give a fuck who you were.

If you couldn't play pool, who are you? Why are you alive? I always felt that handball was like this. But I don't know a first thing about handball. Now that I live in New York, I see the culture and the community of handball and it seems almost like a similar vibe. I have no idea. A lot of people play that in prison.

A lot of boxers would play handball. It's definitely a blue-collar vibe. As a tennis player, I always felt like I probably am too country club for handball. It's like a small ball to hit with your hand, right? I don't know enough things about it, but it's definitely new york city you know definitely got that vibe yeah it doesn't really exist anymore anywhere else venice beach has a couple do they yeah they got i would sometimes go and watch these guys two hands they always got jeans on you know what when i was a kid i worked at the boston athletic club when i was 19. I was a fitness trainer, teach people how to lift weights and shit.

Oh, cool. And they had racquetball courts there. And there was this kid, this fucking super handsome kid, who was really like girls loved him. And he was a racquetball champion, world champion. Wow. But he was fucked because no one gave a shit about racquetball. Racquetball is trash, man. He tried to transfer to tennis.

No. shit about racquetball racquetball is trash man he tried to transfer to tennis no i remember he was trying to transfer to tennis to try to figure out how to get good at tennis because he played racquetball and it just never worked out and so he was like teaching people and i remember thinking very very this is one of the reasons why i stopped fighting because i remember thinking because i was doing something that you couldn't get paid. There was no money in fighting. I had three kickboxing matches, but they were amateur kickboxing matches. And I got offered a professional fight,

but it was like for 500 bucks or something ridiculous like that. I'm like, oh my God. I'm like, I'm in a dead end thing. I got really good at something you can't make any money at. That's what I realized. And I remember thinking about this kid when I was 19, realizing at the time that I was kind of on the same road. I was like, I'm fucked.

Because you can't make any money off of Taekwondo, and this kid is not making any money. He was like this, he looked like a winner, man. Like I was around this kid. I was like, he's a winner. He has beautiful head of hair. All the girls loved him. I was like, hi, man.

Hi, man. He was so handsome. like and it was he was a winner he was a world champion at racquetball he became a world champion it's something that's stupid yeah and i remember thinking about that going oh you could get fucked you could get really good at something where there's no there's no end game there's no windfall it's just it's interesting that you made that observation at that age but also it's interesting when you talk about this podcast how when you started it it was like what you know where is this gonna go i'm just i like doing this i'm not gonna think about the

end game and then it kind of well i wasn't desperate when i started this podcast right when i started the podcast i was already doing uf doing stand-up. I was making plenty of money. So this was a bonus fun project. It was just for fun. Yeah. And it was a good excuse to get together with my comedian friends and just have a good time. But when I was 19, I was scared. Yeah.

I didn't have any money. Yeah. I was trying to scratch by and make a living and pay my rent and all that stuff. And I was like, huh. I'm good at Taekwondo. I was like, this is not good. I'm doing something that there's and then once i moved out of my parents house it was around the same time i

moved out of my parents house i remember thinking like fuck like and i was teaching too i was teaching at boston university um i had my own school and i was i was eking by but uh it was like this is uh i am in trouble i'm gonna and then when i found comedy i was like, this is, I am in trouble. And then when I found comedy, I was like, oh. Now I'm going to be really poor. But no, I was like, this I can make a living at. I knew guys in Boston that made a living. It wasn't that I was going to be, like, Greg Fitzsimmons and I started out together, like literally one week apart from each other.

And Chris McGuire, we all started out in the same group. And I remember thinking at the time, all we wanted to do was make a living. We looked at the local pros, like the Steve Sweeneys and the Don Gavins who made a living. And that was the dream, like one day to be able to make a living doing standup. There was never a thought of getting rich, but at least I thought I could make a living because I remember that racquetball champion that guy was fucked i'm surprised that he was that he was so good because you normally play racquetball against an older man who looks completely out of shape looks like he plays the billiards and he'll fucking smoke you because he knows the kill shot which is that

like front angle and i would always play these guys because i but i'm fit so i could i could run around but i don't know how to play racquetball like i just hit it against the wall and these fucking big fat guys would come in with their like goggles and they just crushed me but there's a little bit of that yeah there's a little bit of that um i remember coaching tennis at university of michigan and i was making 27 000 a year a year. And I was going to get a $3,000 bonus if I did camps, which camps were like three weeks in July, 16 hours a day, sucked, but I did it. So I made like 30 grand coaching tennis. And I remember thinking, if I leave now, I can probably make 20 grand doing comedy. I was first year you probably made like four i've been

like four grand but i remember but it motivated me that i was already poor and i was like you know i'm not like real poor but 30 000 a year poor is not great so i was saying i can switch professions now and probably get close to how old were you when you started i started when i was 24 that's a good time that was a good time i started 21 okay that's once you get like 37 it gets sketchy yeah like jesus christ what happened to your fucking life yeah but you have enough life perspective maybe you can pull it off if you're disciplined yeah but i mean i felt like at 24 i was still hungry enough to push but i yeah i mean some of these guys they get married and their wife doesn't even know them as a comic and then they try it's like you can't do it man that's that's ugly or when you have a kid you're

married and you have kids and you have a full-time job you tell your wife look I'm thinking about going on the road she's like what are you talking about we need money we need to keep a roof over our head you coach Tommy's baseball team when you're young and poor it's okay like you can you could that's the time to take those chances and take those risks. That's what I kind of knew when I was 19. I saw that racquetball player. Fucking racquetball player really affected you, man. It did.

Because he was such a winner. He was such a winner. He could have been a winner at anything. Right. And I knew that. Right. I knew winners when I was around this guy. Yeah.

And I was already kind of a winner at Taekwondo. I'd already won the US Open by then. Fuck. So I was sitting around looking at this guy yeah and i was i was already kind of a winner at taekwondo i'd already won the u.s open by then so i was sitting around looking at this guy i was thinking fuck this is um this this guy is he's not going anywhere he's stuck here u.s champ but yeah yeah i was fucked you're fucked i was i was working at a boston athletic club teaching people how to lift weights i met bobby or though i met bobby or there i used to help Bobby Orr get on the VersaClimber. Bobby Orr had... That's the other thing I realized, too. This was before I had hurt my knee.

I hurt my knee when I was 21. I realized when he was getting on this machine, I used to have to help him get on the VersaClimber. Because he had had so many knee surgeries. His legs, up and down the sides of both legs, were just giant scars. That's back when they would stitch you up with dental floss and staples.

They would just, whatever the fuck they could. No helmets? Never helmets. His knees were gone, man. They were gone. I mean, he could barely, he couldn't straighten his legs. Like, his leg went like this to this.

Fuck. Like, he had this range of motion. So he always walked with his knees slightly bent bent and he kind of like shuffled in. And the first time it was this thing? Yeah, that thing. So he would have to get on that thing too. Because you could kind of do that a little bit. It was no impact, right?

So if you wanted some sort of aerobic activity and he would play racquetball. And you're talking about one of the greatest hockey players that has ever lived. Yeah. And he would play racquetball and he would just fall down all the time. Because he couldn't move correctly because his knees were gone. Yeah, there's his knee. There's his Twitter account. What?

There's a Twitter account for his knee? Oh, his knee has a Twitter account? Bobby Orr's knee? Yeah. So when I was 19, I knew this guy. What is that knee over in the corner? That's resurfaced knees. Those are artificial knees.

What does it say? Bobby Orr back on great. What does that say? Click on that. Bobby Orr looks back on a great Canadian life. Oh, is that his knees now? He's got artificial knees now. I'm sure he has artificial knees now. Yeah, that's his knees now? He's got artificial knees now. I'm sure he has artificial knees now.

When I knew him, yeah, that's his knees. Look at his knees. When I knew him, his knees were like that. And that was 1986 when I was working at the Boston Athletic Club. That was also how I found out about Sam Kinison. It's a funny story, too. Found out about

that he's a comedian? I didn't know who Sam Kinison was. I hadn't even thought about doing stand-up yet. I just liked comedy. But there was a girl who worked there. There was a girl who worked there at the front desk. She was hilarious. She was this big volleyball player. She was this big athletic girl.

She was really bold and funny. And she was my friend. And I was working in the fitness thing. And she was working at the front desk and she was like oh my god you have to see this fucking comedian i saw last night on hbo and she tells me about this guy and then she does the bit where you know what sam kinnison was uh he did this bit about homosexual necrophiliacs paying money to spend a few hours undisturbed with the freshest male corpses you ever see the bit i don't know it's one of the great stand-up bits of all time

okay it's kinnison's bit where kinnison's like he goes imagine these guys they're lying down with the freshest male corpses. You ever see the bit? I don't know. It's one of the great stand-up bits of all time. Okay. It's Kinison's bit, where Kinison's like, he goes, imagine these guys, they're lying down, they're on the slab, they're like, well, I guess my life's over, and I'm gonna be with Jesus now, and he's like, hey, what is this? It feels like there's a dick in my ass. You mean life keeps fucking you in the ass even after you're dead? It never ends. It never ends.

Oh, oh! life keeps fucking in the ass even after you're dead it never ends it never ends oh oh this girl on the parking lot outside she does this this is the bit yeah this girl lies down oh my god on the parking lot and she's killing me i'm crying laughing and i remember thinking while she's doing this wow i gotta see this and then i got the videotape off of uh like blockbuster video or something that's this bit it's one of the greatest bits of all time and you got to see this. And then I got the videotape off of Blockbuster Video or something. That's his bit. It's one of the greatest bits of all time. And you got to realize in the time, in 1986, there was nothing like this ever. How did you even get the tape?

I got it off of Blockbuster Video. It's like you could rent it. So it had gone on HBO and then you get it on VHS. And then I remember watching it. I remember thinking, oh, my God. This is comedy, too? I didn't know. I thought comedy was like Jerry Seinfeld.

You roll the sleeves up. You talk about your socks. I thought it was something that I enjoyed, but my sense of humor was always very fucked up. I was a fighter. I dealt with a lot of psychopaths. My sense of humor was dark. And so when this girl, who, God, I wish I stayed in touch with her. She was so funny.

Maybe she listens. She was just a funny girl. I forgot her fucking name. I think it was Kim. But she was lying down on the, I'll never forget it. See, first of all, the commitment that she had. Yeah, I love that. To lie down on the asphalt.

She's like, oh, oh! You mean life keeps fucking in the ass even after you and she she knew the words too she said it right but i was crying laughing watching her do an impression of sam kinnison and that's how i found out about kinnison and when you first see comedy done it feels so dangerous especially if it's connecting with your like sick demented mind in whatever way it just feels like holy shit this exists yeah why haven't we all been talking about this all the time well i knew about prior you know and i knew there was like great comedy that was not like the tv stuff my parents took me to see live in the sunset strip when i was 15 and i was in the movie theater seeing this like i remember that too that was

another really important thing because i couldn't believe how funny he was just talking yeah i remember thinking i can't believe i'd seen all these funny movies but i'd never seen anything this funny yeah and all he's doing is talking there's nothing there's no special effects nothing yeah and i remember looking around in the middle of the movie and all these people are like ah like holding on to the chair hold on to their stomach they could and i remember that seed and then this girl doing the sam kinnison that's probably how i got into comedy but also that dude who was the really handsome racquetball player not not being able to make any fucking money. I knew he was fucked, and I knew he was trying to play tennis. It's much different.

God damn. But I was afraid, right? I was a fearful person then. Yeah. Because I was worried about being a loser. I was really worried about being a loser. You know, when you're 19, especially in New England,

they put a lot of pressure on you to get your act together. I had already taken a year off of school. When I went out of high school, I took a year off before i went to college so i was in this like this time in my life where i was like really insecure and not and even though i was really good at something i was really good at something nobody gave a fuck about other than people that were into taekwondo yeah and i remember you were at a it sounds like you're at a fork big time big time big time but that you can be at a fork when you're 19 is my point.

That's the time to get your fucking act in order. That's the time to figure out what you're going to do. And that girl lying on her stomach. That's funny. If she maybe didn't commit to that, you maybe, who knows? Who knows, man? There's so many little steps in your life. What was a step that led you to decide to do stand-up, to go on stage the first time?

Well, I remember you mentioned your parents took you to see Live at the Sunset Strip. I mean, that just says a lot about your family dynamic in some capacity. My mom took me at 10 or 11 to go see Dennis Miller. Live? Live at the Power Center in Ann Arbor. I mean, I still don't understand half the words Dennis Miller live live at the power center in Ann Arbor I mean I still don't understand half the words Dennis Miller uses today I mean he's kind of changed a lot since then but

the confidence the arrogance the I'm an expert uh love that 11 10 years old I was raised to be you know modest kind humble when I could see that someone could just like spread his feathers like that just seemed like whoa what the fuck you can't do you can't act like that um so he doesn't get to do he he deserves he doesn't right because he's because he's a right winger now is that why i mean once 9-11 happened he went into a panic he went to a panic i mean the off white album is just like it's phenomenal and um his rants his hbo show yeah i've always been a big fan of his but i give my parents credit and my mom credit for taking me to see a fucking stand-up comedy concert he was swearing and you were 11 i was 10 or 11 i was young so this shit affects kids right oh yeah what you do what you take them

to what you show them that you're enthusiastic about i'm sure my mom my mom isn't like that didn't probably dig dennis miller's act but she knew that i was into it she was there to take me that's that's cool the seeds that get planted and then you get but you were it was 13 years later before you actually got on stage for sure yeah and i thought it was you always had it in your head. I always wrote little funny ideas down. Who the fuck does that? 13, 14. I would, I would journal a lot.

I actually need to get back to journaling of something I've decided, but I would kind of go through my day in a journal. And then for whatever reason, I would usually write down one instance throughout the day that made me laugh. Uh, I don't know why. Maybe because I felt good then. So then I, high school, I kind of started having this collection of things that I laughed at. And that tells you so much about your personality and your sense of humor. Like you say you have a demented, fucked up sense of humor. There's probably a certain genre of things that make you laugh the hardest and same for me yeah so tennis took over my life and then joke writing became a little

bit of a reprieve from the pressures of of competition so if i had a match in a couple hours or i was waiting for a court to be done i would go sit in the locker room or wherever i was and write jokes something so unrelated to tennis, just to kind of help me diffuse because I put a lot of pressure on myself to play well. So eventually, while I was coaching at Michigan, University of Michigan, sorry, Jamie, I signed up for an open mic like everybody else,

and once you do it, you're fucked. Did you know after you did the first set that you'd wind up doing it yeah yeah i did i was my sister was there with me drunk she's now she's now sober 15 years uh i drove her to sobriety but uh yeah i just got off the stage and just i don't know if it was the same for you but everything just started to click oh all those teacher evaluations that said this oh all of the coaches that would say this about me oh i'm from a big family and i'm always trying to grab mom and dad's attention like oh this is all making sense now yeah and so everyone that knows me intimately says i became a

much easier person to hang around once i started doing comedy it's like i was getting what i needed whatever the fuck that was uh and i hate to think that i like i was getting what i needed whatever the fuck that was uh and i hate to think that i'm shallow enough that what i really need is like external validation but it might be i don't know if it's necessarily just external validation it's there's a the same challenge that you must have experienced in getting good at tennis and learning how to play and the challenge of trying to win there's a challenge in trying to get labs and trying to figure out how to construct a joke yeah it's problem solving at its most intense i mean maybe not most intense not like war but the feel of rejection is so strong that it's problem solving with real stakes in my in my opinion and i like that challenge

and also let's not forget it's great to make people feel a moment of reprieve i mean that is it and you enjoy it as a audience member as well yes but you were a fan of it yes yeah yes so i mean some of my favorite times at the store would be to perform and then hang in the back and watch yeah and every once in a while go i can't believe i got to just go fucking do that yeah while this guy who i love is performing i just did that too so i got i had gotten away from being a fan a little bit i don't know if it was just industry and just i don't know but i'm kind of back to it now and it's nice i like it better just enjoying comedy just michael shut the fuck up and watch this and laugh as an audience member

as an audience yeah it's also benefited me i remember when i was uh like early days in my early 20s like 21 22 when i was uh starting out there was a time where i was very jealous of people who were doing well, and I was hoping people did badly. Yeah. Like, I was working with other people. I was like, oh, I hope he bombs. And then I realized, like, oh, my God, what a bitch way to think.

And then I realized that I had not taken the same principles that I had applied to martial arts. Correct. And I had not applied them to comedy. I had thought this was a totally different thing and I had allowed my weaker instincts to take over. And then I remember being very embarrassed with myself and saying, okay, that's a very weak way to think.

And you should think about this the same way you think about martial arts where you should always look at the people that are good as inspirational. Yeah, and so did you execute that change just through willpower yeah really quickly yeah really really quick change yeah it was very quick and then i became a fan again of comedy and i and i and i i also realized that the way to get good is to have a bunch of other people around you that are also trying to get good and really the

funniest people surround yourself with them and work together yeah and then go on the road together don't don't take bad comics on the road with you go on the road with the best people you can oh it's the worst it's like dude do you have no fucking confidence in yourself that you're gonna bring this like shitty opener with you bring it's weird bring somebody who can who makes you go i better get on my shit right now exactly yeah it's weird when you see good comics do that. It says something about that. Yeah, it's not good. There's a website called Steve G Tennis.

It's this guy named Steve G who compiles the world's tennis results at every level. Okay? And as a minor league pro tennis player, I would lose. You always lose. And you could go on Steve G and just look at everyone's results. And you start to fucking go mad. You start to go like, that guy's not that good, but he won the tournament. This guy's won. Oh my God. He just won fucking Vancouver. Holy. And it would, it would, it would drive me mad. Right. And well, why am I doing this to myself? And it's exactly what you just said i found myself at times in comedy checking steve g tennis of comedy oh that guy's not fucking funny what the fuck's you know why does he have a billboard fucking you know

and that's what's so crazy about comedy some of these guys that you're competitive with you drive by their billboard you know what other profession is that the case yeah you know like if you're like trying to be the number one salesman of your team and then like so i had to kind of mature a little bit with that too and go hey man you see it as inspiration or you don't even have to see it at all and just focus on your process yes focus on what you enjoy use it as fuel yeah and also you got to realize that their success does not ever equal your failure it has no impact on you yeah they're they're a completely different human being correct but there was a

famine mentality in comedy for a long time because if like there was only like four networks right yeah that was it and if you got a sitcom and i didn't like fuck costa got it shit i could have got that i could have been living like a king now he is and that's how a lot of people thought and so comics were very backstabby with each other yeah and i don't think it was until the internet came around until like youtube and podcasts and they realized that this is bounty of opportunity yeah and then comics realized like oh you know what's the best thing is actually we hang around with each other and we get each other on each other's shows yeah and then everybody does well yeah that's definitely the right way to be it takes some maturity to do

that but if you're podcasting and you're hosting a show and you're you know writing a show and everyone's this yeah well that's one of the things you see now with comedy twitter the most bitter of all people where you see these like angry bitter people. One thing they have in common, they're all mediocre, and they're not doing well. And they're angry and frustrated, and it's so transparent, and they can't see it.

And they think that somehow by being mean to people that are being successful, or mean to this girl, or mean to this guy, that they're going to somehow or another stop this thing that's happening that's good for them, and stop the bad feeling that they're going to somehow or another stop this thing that's happening that's good for them and stop the bad feeling that they have, this disappointment of comparing themselves.

It's one thing that these people have all in common, the bitter comedy world of Twitter. They're just looking at it wrong. Occasionally I would respond to them as for using it as a fun thing, and then I was like, why am I even acknowledging this existence? Yeah. You know, it's such like,

did it ramp up when you got the daily show? It ramped up. Yeah. Yeah. And then sometimes when there's pieces that they'll post that will become popular, it's only, it's only when things become popular.

Yeah. If it's not really a popular piece, it's gone. Right. But as soon as it gets some like success, then, then people come out, but that's okay. You i didn't i i am not

doing this to be popular i'm doing it because i want to make people laugh and it makes me feel good and so let let me just make my group of people laugh well you can never be popular with everybody it's not humanly possible yeah it's not humanly possible like you love that my that tenant movie right jamie uh i was reading all these great reviews and then i ran or stumbled into this one review trash total piece of shit why this movie's awful right and then like this i'm like okay well this is just what i'm saying right like there's always going to be someone that thinks something that's amazing sucks you know like uh this just don't get around that there's there's certain people that just have this terrible mindset,

and they just always look for the worst in things. And I think that's, for whatever reason, well, for sure, that's been exacerbated by the pandemic, by people being forced to being at home, and also just being stuck in front of a screen all the time, and not having the input of other humans, and real interactions and hugs and you know a lot of people need that a lot of people in my life friends acquaintances

have experienced really fucked up things during the quarantine and as i tell this to other people they all go yeah me too divorce losing jobs we need to get out and interact the screen is not it's working like 10 as a as a substitute that's it and uh i'm hoping yeah i'm just trying to second what you're saying that the sitting in front of the screen all day is just is just exacerbating our our already deep down anxieties and fears yeah i mean even wearing a mask and being 10 feet away from people only gives you like 30 yeah you know yeah yeah we gotta be around like yeah we're so social aren't we yeah the socialist we're so we're so social you go to a fucking zoo you want you look good look at the

monkeys they're fucking like sleeping and hugging and they're so close they You go to a fucking zoo. You look at the monkeys. They're fucking like sleeping and hugging. And they're so close. They sleep like so close. I remember being like, holy fuck. Yeah. Yeah. The mental health implications of this, the impact of it, it's going to be fucking with people for years.

You think? Yeah. Yeah. I think there's a lot of people that got real low during this pandemic. It's going to be a long road back for them. Fuck. Yeah. Not good. And especially people that are more inclined to be depressed. Yeah. real low during this pandemic it's gonna it's gonna be a long road back for them fuck yeah not good and especially people that are more inclined yes to be depressed yeah yeah um

it yeah i i just been telling people like what you're feeling is exacerbated right now it's bigger than what it is but you know i hope i hope that that we're not doing long-term damage but i don't know i don't know how how i could even know the answer to that well i'm hoping we come out of it like the roaring 20s you know the roaring 20s that's what they came out of the pandemic of the spanish flu and then they went wild and they went crazy and they fought the world war like wild animals all right dude we're at three hours and 45 minutes are you fucking serious oh you have a fucking stand-up special yeah you didn't even promote it well how did you film this i filmed it before the pandemic how did you do that that was a year ago yeah i saw you i saw you at the

yeah the la version of this i don't know if you remember this uh i had i had fucked up the booking, and I needed to do some pickups, and you had an L.A. improv show on a Saturday late night, and I shot early, and I messaged you on Twitter or whatever, and you were like, dude, calm down, do the thing. So that was very nice. Oh, that's right. Yeah, I forgot about that. That's then?

Holy shit. When was that? It was a year ago. It was December. It was a year ago. I shot in Detroit, New York, and L.A. That's what it's titled When was that? It was a year ago. It was December. It was a year ago. Wow. I shot in Detroit, New York, and LA. That's what it's titled, and it's three sets around the country. Well, that's one thing that's really cool, because you were in Dead Punch back then.

You were doing a lot of stand-up. Dead Punch. I like that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's not like... That's a pool term.

I know. You mentioned it earlier, so it's nice. It's like there's a lot of people that are doing these specials, and they're weird. A few people have done socially distanced specials and like save the material yes hang on uh i people have been responding to this special with some nice like hey i felt really good to go to a comedy club again so that's cool look is that anything i expected when we shot it of course not did. Did you film it at the Improv? I filmed it at the Improv, the New York Comedy Club in the East Village,

and a Gem Theater in Detroit. And we bounce around those three. Oh, nice. When I'm in L.A., I make fun of L.A. When I'm in New York, I make fun of New York. And then when I'm in Michigan, I make fun of the coast. Beautiful. Yeah, it's really fun.

So I appreciate you having me on. My pleasure, brother. Listen, it was great seeing you and great spending some time with you i really really enjoyed it thanks thanks joe all right so tell people how they can see it if you just go to michael costa.com i have a i have a redirect there or it's on comedy central on demand and their website i appreciate your smile bang we got it yay one take thanks Michael Kosta, ladies and gentlemen. See ya!