The Joe Rogan Experience - #805 - Steve Hofstetter

Episode Date: June 2, 2016

Steve Hofstetter is a comedian and podcast host. He has a podcast "Major League" & he also has a YouTube channel with over 35 million views -- https://www.youtube.com/stevehofstetter

I was thinking of, you know, just being on Tinder the whole time. We're live. We're live. You can't talk about Tinder, dude. Shut it off. Don't swipe right. Steve Hofstetter, ladies and gentlemen. How are you? That was at the same time. I'm good. I'm excited to be here. I'm excited to have you, man. I love the video. There's a video I found out about Steve because it's a video of some fucking hecklers. Why do they still exist?

People out there, do you not know that when you come to a comedy show it's like going to the movies you shouldn't try to change the content ego and alcohol you're right that's that's the answer i asked a rhetorical question yeah and i got a definitive answer it's uh it's a fucking great video though because you handled it so well thank you i don't even remember the subject what was uh what was she uh heckling about uh it was about i was talking about how parents think they're special and they're not that's right and then she yelled out bullshit and then walked into two minutes of material that i already had written about the subject if i had written what she was supposed to say it wouldn't have been as good as what she actually

said yeah it was like a setup and sometimes those things happen and people accuse people doing plants I've never heard of anybody actually doing a plant though you other than Andy Kaufman No, like not even not one time but people some people times people look at the world and they go well This is too good. It can't be real Allow for some magic to happen sometimes a little comedy magic.. I mean, there's so many videos of hecklers you would think that they would learn. Like, is there ever a video of a heckler winning? I mean, there are definitely videos of people who are like, I own this heckler. And then you're like, nah, not, did you?

Did you? Looks kind of, no, not really. Sometimes, yeah. But that's not the heckler winning. That's the comedian losing. Right. There's a difference heckler winning. That's the comedian losing. Right. There's a difference. And there are times, I think, when there are comedians, you know this, there are comedians who can't ad lib, who are brilliant at material, but are just not ad libers.

That's weird, isn't it? Like the people that only want to do monologues, and if anything goes off the line, they ignore it, and they just keep going, and they hope that someone takes care of it well i don't i don't understand that like that that's part of people sometimes will be like why do you have so many heckler videos it's like because most of them start with me going what'd you say yeah because i don't i don't let it go because i don't want to lose control of the crowd i don't want other people to be like oh well he talked I can talk and also I you know I just I can't concentrate on This you know bit. I've done a thousand times if in the back of my head I was like wait what's happening right now in the back of the room yeah?

Well sometimes people just start commenting like they'll like be right in front of you, too Which is crazy like in the front row going that's not true. No you can't say that don't say that or row, going, no, that's not true. No. You can't say that. Don't say that. Or they even go, yes, that's true. Like, even when they agree with you, it still sucks. But what about, mm? Yeah. And they want to put their own spin on it, like it's a conversation.

It's confusing. Sometimes, like, I try to tell people, I'm just like, look, comedy's evocative. You're going to have a lot of thoughts, and that's okay. Have the thoughts. Yeah. Hold on to those thoughts. Yeah. Later, later after the show release the thoughts in the wild but for now it's okay to think of stuff and even if you see me out in the lobby and you want to have you got a question about some of the material let's talk yeah that's a time to talk absolutely not not why you're halfway into this setup yeah it is it's such i mean part of why I say it's ego is because if there's hundreds of people at this show,

and they're all quiet, and then one person thinks they're all doing it wrong. Yeah. Like they're just sitting there being like, wait, no, all these people are wrong. We should be interacting. I need to show them. It is kind of funny that alcohol is what they serve at comedy clubs. Because I guess for most people people it's a good thing for most people alcohol is a social lubricant it relaxes you you start laughing a little bit more but for some people the fucking the wheels come off and they just want to chime in and yell out well if you're an asshole alcohol just makes

you more of an asshole yeah absolutely so i think i've had this theory for a long time that a lot of people will blame being drunk oh i was so wasted but that's you you were still in there yeah there isn't some magical like you know jekyll and hyde thing that's going on you peed on someone's truck because you wanted to pee on someone's truck right alcohol just gave just gave you the excuse. There are people that are alcoholics, though, where a switch goes off. Do you know anybody like that? I don't. You know what? I can introduce you to a few people.

Fair. I was like, I have a feeling. I know some of the people you hang with. I guess I don't hang out at the store enough. The store is the grand old Opry for hecklers. Yeah. I mean, it really is. There's something about that place because there's no real doorman.

Everybody's a comic. It's comics working the gate or comics working the door, comics working the cover booth, comics working the room. It's only comics. Comics work in the back parking lot. It's all comedians. So when you're there, you're under the hands of people who really don't want to be doing what they're doing. They don't really pay attention. So you have to learn how to deal with hecklers.

Plus, it's a hangout. So there's people packed in that place from 8 p.m. till 2 a.m. And everybody's hanging around drinking. And so there's a lot of alcoholics. And so you just get used to those dudes that have shark eyes. Their eyes glass over, and they're gone. You look in there, you're get used to those dudes that have shark eyes. Their eyes glass over and they're gone. You look in there, you're like, oh, Bobby's not here anymore.

There's no Bobby. I didn't meet people like that until I was like 30. When I was 30, I started to meet real alcoholics where they'd have one drink and then they were gone. They were just off to the races. So do you think that they are a the races. So do you think that

they are a completely different person or do you think that the alcohol just allows who they are to come out? Completely speculative. Because I don't have that gene whatever that wacky gene is where you have a couple of drinks and you just go off the rails. I don't have that. I'm a happy drunk. Like when I get

drunk, I like to laugh and hug people. I don't understand the go blank make a Molotov Like, when I get drunk, I like to laugh and hug people. I don't understand the go blank, make a Molotov cocktail, throw it at the cops, wake up in jail. What the fuck? What happened? I did what? The weirdest drunk to me is the crying drunk. Like, the drunk that gets super upset. Because then it's like, why would you give yourself the ingredient that you need to cry in the corner?

Right. Like, if you know, if it's the first time it ever happened, I get it. Okay. But if you're someone like, I have a friend who every time he gets drunk, he gets like super sad. And I was like, stop drinking. Like, why are you drinking if you're this upset? I feel like with people like that, there's like patterns that are deeply carved into

their psyche from childhood. Like maybe their mom cried a lot or their dad cried a lot and they got used to it and it became a comforting pattern. But yeah, those things are, I mean, people say, oh, what are you going to do, man? The guy's sad. Well, how the fuck did he get sad? He's living in America.

He's got two feet. He doesn't have cancer. The fuck is he whining about? There could be a hundred things wrong. You're a young white person in America. Will you shut up? I actually don't drink anymore I've been sober 12 years damn and it was because it was really my first year on the road when I realized like how much a problem it could be oh so you did it wrong so you did as a

preventative measure I did it yeah it was something where I didn't go through a program and I found by the way that like people who have gone through the program or like you know really you know really sober that's hilarious and to me i'm just like you needed a program you have no willpower you know so it's a bit of a dichotomy there the idea that someone could tell you after 12 years of sobriety that you're not really this isn't even consistent yeah you don't you just choose not to drink and like yeah i do choose not to drink. That's hilarious. Yeah, I haven't had a drink in 12 years. It was one of these things where, I mean, you know this, it's free on the road.

You know, and everybody wants, everybody goes, oh, let me take a shot with you afterward. And you'd be like, there are 30 of you. I'm going to die. Right. You just do the math on that, and you're like, I'm going to die. And I started realizing, you know what? I don't have inhibition that alcohol changes. Like, that same year, I had done some show in Bloomington, Indiana,

and we went to a bar afterward, and there were a bunch of hot girls dancing on the bar, and I went up and I danced on the bar with them, and I wasn't drunk. I just wanted to dance with the hot girls. And there were all these drunk people below the bar, like all these loser guys just kind of like nursing their beer and looking up, be like, I wish I could do that. And be like, well, then get the fuck up on the bar. Why?

If you want to do it, do it. Can anybody just dance on a bar? Because that makes me reconsider all the times I've like touched a bar and then touched food and then put my phone up there and touched that and then touched food. The bottom of my shoes are not clean, Joe. Nobody's shoes are clean. How are you just allowed to, is that, that's got to violate health codes, right? The bottom of my shoes are not clean, Joe. Nobody's shoes are clean. That's got to violate health codes, right? I just figure there were enough hot girls that it was okay that I was there, too.

That's a good call. The ratio has to be, there have to still be enough hot girls. Now, did you hook up with one of those girls afterwards? Oh, no. I was a pathetic, sad loser. But the point is that I didn't need the alcohol to at least start the process of getting rejected. That's you. You have the unique personality trait that allows you to get crazy and dance on bars. That is a strange thing, though, about the people that are in those 12-step programs, because they really do get super attached to the idea that that's the only way to

be sober. Yeah. And it's not, it is a way. And if you need that, okay, more power to you, and I, you know, I do not, I don't want to take that away from anybody, but we're all different, and everybody's, you know, nerve endings connect differently, whatever the hell the biology is of it, and I didn't need a program, especially because I would freak out if they were like, and this is about Jesus, and I would be like, go fuck yourself, give me a beer. So, you know i wouldn't i wouldn't be able to be comfortable there did you did you um ever do a program thing did you like go to an alcoholics anonymous meeting or you just stop no i had uh so i had there were a couple times where i was like all right i need to i need to quit i need to quit and that never works and then there was one night where, so it's, it's the first real time I'm on the road. I was terrible with women in high school and college. And then suddenly I hit the road as a comic and they're everywhere and they're interested and life is different. And so there was a show, I was doing a show for a

sorority and usually the sororities that sponsor comedy shows are like the philanthropy sorority and they're all terrible uh no these girls were all hot just just dimes the whole chapter just full they had like one ugly friend as as the charity but they had just gorgeous girls and my opener goes up and bombs and then i go up to a standing room only crowd and crush and so now it's afterward we're hanging out there's like this after party thing that they put together for just them and the two of us one of which they hated because he bombed and like they're just these eight hot girls surrounding me one shouldered another one out of the way to sit next to me i was like this is this is i've like nothing i've ever experienced and then they took us to another party and i'm pretty sure someone put something in my drink.

Not in the way of like, I want to fuck this guy. In the way of like, this is a guy getting all the attention away from the other guys. And I think one of the other guys fucked with my drink. Really? Yeah. Because I got super violently ill very quickly. Like very, very quickly. And I spent the whole night.

I was supposed to stay at the sorority house. The plan was I was going to stay in the guest room. So I didn't even have to do the whole excuse of like, hey, can I use your bathroom? Can I come in for, like, I just, I was supposed to go back there with them. And I spent the entire night just vomiting. It was terrible. Wow, somebody spiked your drink. And then I lost a gig the next day.

And at the time, it's my first year on the road. I lost a $1,500 gig the next day. Because you were so sick? I couldn't do it. was we were driving it was the middle of winter but i was wearing like two pairs of pants like two sweatshirts and in a sleeping bag in the car with the heat on full blast and i was shivering the whole way like i was fucked up wow so i'm sure you didn't have like the flu or something that sounds like the flu it went away like six hours later so it could have been it could have been a a very flu, a well-timed flu. I don't know.

But that was the night where I was just like, I can't keep doing this. Have you ever heard of a drug that does that? Like a drug that makes you have the chills? I mean, me either. Probably. I mean, I might just be wussy. No, it doesn't sound like it. That sounds like you got something happened.

Yeah. It was just very, very bad. And so I realized that it was not only a chance at like a three, it was a chance at like a nine-some. So you're like, all right, I got it. I was like, I can't. No more drinking. Yeah, none of that.

Wow, that's a wake-up call. That's a wake-up call. The world hands you four aces and you just throw up on them. Yeah. What a hand on them. Yeah. What a hand of call. Yeah. You ever heard of the term dry drunk? No, what's that?

Dry drunk is what people like to say people who are alcoholics who aren't drinking but aren't in a program are. They're dry drunks. And so you still have all the mental issues that a drunk has. You're just waiting to go off. You don't really have the stability that a 12-step program provides. That sounds right. Yeah. I mean, for some people, for sure.

But a 12-step program is weird because doesn't it require belief in a higher power it does they there's a lot of god stuff in there yeah and like i believe that there's something but that something could be a life force it could be an energy i don't know what i believe it's very possible there's something yeah i don't i don't believe that there's a i don't believe that there's a bearded man and wings and all that bullshit. It'd be dope if there was, though. Imagine that if you got up to heaven and you realized that it was all true. You're like, what? That'd be amazing.

That's so crazy. How is it possible? I thought this was just a marketing thing. I had no idea. I just listened to Radiolab the other day about addiction, and they said that 95, or sorry, I'm going to start that over, of 100 people if they started at AA on January 1st, as of December 31st of that year,

only five would still be in the program. Basically saying like it doesn't work, but there's a lot of factors that could mean that or why that could happen because some people could start a different program. They could go to the meeting next door, but they're saying like only 5% of people will stay in the program through some certain statistics.

That's a shit retention rate. Yeah. It's pretty bad. But that Radiolab goes into this pill that can cure addiction, they think. Well, they've had Ibogaine forever. Ibogaine is a drug that is from the iboga plant. And it's supposed to be fantastic for people that have heroin addiction, alcohol addiction, even addictive personality disorders, gambling problems, things along those lines. It's supposed to be this ruthlessly introspective psychedelic experience that brutally breaks down your pathways, your thinking pathways, and shows you why you keep going into this self-sabotage mode.

And it's apparently unbelievably uncomfortable to go through. Psychologically, physically, it doesn't feel good. But when it's over, the rate of retention, the retention of sobriety, the rate of sobriety that people retain afterwards is staggering. It's like in the 80s the high 80% It's better than anything ruthlessly introspective. It sounds like a great name of a comedy album Yeah, the there's a there's a treatment center on the 101

Like because I passed by and it like it looked like a college campus almost and I was like what the hell is that? And I looked it up and there's like a it's like a treatment center like an inpatient and you like cut out everyone in your life kind of thing it's one of those it's one of those like yeah it's one of those like you know you're not gonna talk to people for six months but when i looked it up i found it on google and there were reviews and one of the reviews was of someone who was about to go into the treatment center and he gave it one star like he was reviewing his own life. Like he was that messed up. But he like reviewed his like, well, I'm about to take the journey,

the first step to the journey of sobriety and it was one star. Why one star? I think you may have misunderstood how this rating system works, buddy. You might be a dick. Yeah. How can you give something one star if you haven't even tried it? I love when, you ever just read Yelp reviews? Yeah, I do, unfortunately.

I get mad at myself. No, but I love when you learn more about the person than the restaurant. Yeah, of course, yeah. There was one I saw in New York where this girl, she opens the review. So, I'm back dating again. I'm like, that's not, tell me how the pasta is. I don't need to know, but, uses it as her own blog. It was fascinating. That's good, though, because then you get to know, should I listen to this moron?

Let me see what they have to say about dating. Why is it that men these days don't want to open up a car door, don't want to open up a door for a lady, get upset when you're expected to pay, and don't understand that you do want your own career? And as it turns out, the gnocchi was fantastic. Yeah. You're just annoying. Yeah yeah there's a lot of those i always go to someone's bad review i always go to their page and see what they think about other stuff yeah just so you can figure out it's also tough like using yelp sometimes in the middle of nowhere that's really tough because then you're like these motherfuckers don't know sushi like what do they know sushi in south dakota yeah exactly be like you know where you getting your fish man yeah yeah it's um yelp is tricky because it's it's like youtube

reviews and a lot of other things you're relying on random people you know like like if i call you up and i go hey steve what do you think about this well i know steve's an intelligent guy he's going to give me a really nuanced, thought-out opinion of whatever we're discussing. But if you don't know a person, you're just reading their type, their type could be, I mean, when they write things down, the printed word could be just as valid as some fucking psychopath's printed word.

I mean, you really don't know. You got to go deep deep deep into their their paragraphs and you got to really try to decipher like how fucking nuts is this person i have a theory i have a theory that the way we make online tolerable the way we make like you know online not be this you know just i, bastion for angry thought is everyone's not name, but everyone's job should be in parentheses. So we know what people do for a living. That would help. And like how many stars your coworkers give you? Yeah. You should get your own Yelp review. You get Yelped before you're allowed to Yelp. You know, that guy with one star,

I bet he gives out a half a star. I bet all the people that work with him, they give him a half a star and he puts one star in for the drug review place and one star for his mom. You fucked up mom. There was an app that came out that was like a Yelp for people and everyone got really upset. Well, it was a Yelp for dating. It was, oh, so it wasn't just, okay, because it was people you've dated. Cause I thought, I thoughtelp for dating. It was, oh, so it wasn't just, okay, because... It was people you've dated. Because I thought the idea, because there was, you know, the reviews of people and people getting upset, and I was like, the only people who would get upset at that are the people who know they're going to get two stars. Well, it's people who can just stalk you.

Someone who's like a shitty co-worker who has it against you, can write a bunch of mean shit about you, and then every time you pull up your name, you see this mean shit written against you. Yeah, you need to, I think for the way that to work, for the way for that to work is you can only review someone if you both agree to review each other. I was reading this thing about this guy who's getting stalked online by this other guy. And they found the person. And it was a 17-year-old kid that was the son of one of his friends. And had no real beef with him, but was just doing it for sport.

Just for the fun of it. Because he knew he could fuck with the guy and scare him. And he did all this Holocaust Jew stuff and all this anti-Semitic stuff. Jeez. Really, really crazy stuff. Like sent ashes to their house and left ashes at their front door. Just a total psychopath. A kid. year old kid and it apparently had haunted this guy for a long time and he was trying to figure out who it was then he hired someone it's pretty easy to find people

once you hire someone who's an expert they found the kid like instantly and they realized it was this fucking high school kid that was the son of one of his friends. And they all had a sit down and they printed up all the stuff that this kid had written for like a fucking year and handed it to him. And the kid started crying and I don't know why I did it. I got addicted to it. I couldn't stop. And like, whoa.

Addicted to it. Well, you're playing a game. Yeah. You know, and if you're not there when the person is reacting especially when you're 17 and your emotions maybe they're not so complex or they're not so rather formed they're not they're not mature yeah you know you're not maybe completely aware that every action has a reaction on the other end whether you see it or not there's a uh you know that movie the the button or whatever it was where like someone would

like press a button and someone would die in the world i heard about that yeah i never saw it i i didn't either but there was i think it was an snl sketch about it where they were like they explained the whole premise or like you press this button and somewhere someone in the world died and the guy just hits the button and they're like you didn't let us finish. Like, we would give you a million dollars, and then he just hits it again. Because we're that, like, inhuman and impersonal. Like, if you just tell me that someone somewhere else in the world died, like, that doesn't really affect you. Yeah, there's too many people anyway.

Yeah. Hit the button. Let's clear off the 405. Yeah, I guess it just depends on who. Yeah. If you don't feel it, that's the problem with drones, right? Yeah. I mean, they say that drone pilots, what is this?

Oh, is that the? They say that drone pilots suffer through a lot of like severe anxiety when they're done. And like, it's apparently incredibly psychologically stressful because you're doing this weird thing where you're sort of sending this robot and they're doing it from Nevada right and so the robots are in Afghanistan or Pakistan or Yemen or wherever the hell they are and they're launching missiles from these sky robots and it just feels so detached and creepy to the people that are doing it Well, it's the same. I guess the same psychology of like why you're able to get into such credit card debt But you wouldn't do that with cash

Because like you were you you see it as just some mythical thing right and then afterward you realize oh, this is real Like you would you be able to would you be able to kill someone if you knew that they were like a bad guy yeah and would you feel bad about it no that's what i think too yeah i don't think i would i mean if some like hitler character yeah i don't think it doesn't necessarily have to be you know quite that bad some rapist i mean you really went to the end of the scale immediately yeah that's how i like I like to go. I'm an extremist. I was going for, like, you know, just the idea of, like, someone is going to kill someone that you care about. Yeah. And you kill that person.

Yeah. Because there are all these, like, there's this trope in movies and TV about, you know, like, a cop shot someone that they had to shoot in the line of duty. It wasn't, you know, like, just killing some kid. It was, you know, shooting a bad guy, and then they have to go to therapy over it i feel like yeah no have you ever talked to uh soldiers about that i haven't the real ptsd with soldiers is things they can't control that's what really fucks with them like worried about being attacked worried about being blown up worried about driving over an ied the soldiers that are proactive like SEALs, guys who go in and hunt people down, they don't have that much PTSD.

They're different types of people. I mean, some of them have just been through crazy firefights and they wake up with horrible nightmares. But a shocking amount of them realize they're doing the right thing. They have to do this. This needs to be done. And they're the man to do it. Yeah. And they're trained the right thing. They have to do this. This needs to be done. And they're the man to do it. Yeah. And they're trained for it. This is their job and they're all together and they're like a family. It's, it's, they feel more superhero esque. Yeah.

So when you see like a guy, a cop in a movie that feels bad that he had to shoot a bad guy, that's like the writer. That's the writer. If the writer was a cop, yeah. You know, or maybe a cop that maybe shouldn't be a cop which there's definitely some of those out there or a writer who shouldn't be a writer or right yeah well you know i mean those movies like how many of these movies have like these like we're talking about the grooves that are carved in that uh some people have that get depressed very easily or behave really sad really easily. Those grooves, those psychic grooves that they think that they're supposed to behave like that, those are carved into tropes and storylines and plots.

There's so many plots. There's so many movies you watch. You didn't even write this. You knew what has already been written about these subjects, and you just sort of repeated it with different words Yeah Like this isn't really a story you wrote because this story has happened a fucking million times in movies well And it causes those stories existing then cause people to act like that yes like well Yeah, one of the most fascinating interviews I ever saw was you know they interviewed the guy who was you know all the gangster movies in the 40s that say huh say like all that yeah and they

said how did you get the accent so perfect and he said i made that accent up and then all the gangsters wanted to be like the gangsters in the movies and so then all the gangsters started talking like that because of that because of those movies like james cagney yeah wow like that was they just told the act like they just started doing it life imitates art right yeah and then it's you know it's uh and then people feel like oh well this is normal because that's what we're shown on television well that was the argument against gangster rap that the argument was that they were forcing kids by you know making this music really popular they're forcing kids to accept this type of behavior as being normal

and even exemplary like exemplary of a bad motherfucker you're shooting people and you ever go back and like listen to like the old nwa oh I actually grew up, so I grew up in Queens, New York, and I was a big fan of old school hip hop. Now, I didn't, like, I was never big into the NWA stuff. I preferred, you know, the, I preferred the lyrics about how great we are at rapping, not how many bitches we've killed. Like that was the, that's kind of the line in the sample. Who are your people?

Who'd you like? Tribe Called Quest. I was so sad when Phife died. Yeah, that sucked. Tribe. Those guys are awesome. Black Sheep. I loved Pete Rock and Seal Smooth.

Were you a De La Soul guy, too? Yeah, De La Soul's great. When I was 21, I think, I was in college during the Seinfeld send-off party. in college during the Seinfeld send-off party, and the place where, like the Tom's Diner, where Monks was based, the exterior shot, was like a block off my campus. So I

made up a fake press pass, and I went and I covered the party. And I got to meet Del Sol was there, and it was like, it was so great. That's nice. Yeah. You know what was a sad time for me, man? When MC Search got his own daytime talk show. Oh my God. Third base.

I used to love third base. That's the end of... Pop goes the weasel because the weasel goes pop. Mr. Grass, hold my eye. Someone hit my eye. But if you watch the MC Search daytime talk show, you're like, this can't be real. He's punking us. Yeah, this is...

This is a character he's playing. He's doing that Joaquin Phoenix thing that Joaquin Phoenix did for a year. It's that same sort of thing when all of a sudden all the adults were talking about the Facebook and I'm like, well, Facebook's done now. This isn't going to be fun anymore.

Well, MC Search is done because he had the most preposterous daytime talk show. Did you ever watch it? I know. I knew about it, but I never watched it. Oh. It was. Look at it. Search.

And, you know, I mean, he's like, I'm a dad now. But it's like, play the beginning of it because the beginning of the show, see if you can find it, because the beginning of it is so fucking preposterous when he explains how we're going to keep it real. We're keeping it real. Oh, there's no such thing as that. Like when people say we're keeping it real, that means they're just, they have no other words that they can think of. It's madness.

It's just, it's a dangerous way of talking. I was at a, I did a bunch of extra work when I started out. And which, that's so much fun. That's, oh my God, extra work is the best because you get to see just the worst in humanity right in front of you with extras a lot of them are crazy they're absolute just bat shit and there's this one woman right extras in between going back and forth from extra work to open mics that was my that was my day i would just go i would just go just watch like just watch people desperately need attention and do nothing of quality to get it

So there was this one woman they put out the craft services And this one woman goes up and she loads up like two plates and then putting stuff in her purse also And I just you she catches me looking at her and she just goes i'm just keeping it real And I go well, uh, if you want to know what's real they're gonna refill this table later So you can just come get seconds. You probably wanted food to take home, though. Well, in the purse, I understand. But just the idea of it was just, but it was like the start of like a 14-hour day.

I was just keeping it real. I'm like, that's not keeping it real. Just say like, hey, I'm really poor and I'm hungry right now. Like, but keeping it real. Hey, stop staring at me, dude. Yeah, also that. But, you know, it was something to stare at. It was very weird.

That's a minor infraction. When you think about the world of extras and open micers. In the paid furniture world. That's one of the keeping it real things about the comedy store. You're constantly around crazy people. Open micers, especially. They're always hanging around. You know, because it's kind of like a hangout on top of being a club.

What's the craziest open mic shit you've seen? Oh, God. I mean, open mics are madness. I mean, there's, because anybody can get on stage. And a lot of times, that's one of the things about stand-up is that a lot of people don't see themselves the way other people see them. Yeah. And that gets exposed when you get on stage because you realize, oh, this is how people see me. People see me as being an obnoxious, really annoying person that thinks they're funny.

I see myself as being this really funny person. And then they have to work that out over the, I mean, it's almost like a self-improvement course on communication skills. Yeah. Because you're brutally reminded of how poor your communication skills are when you don't get the laughs. And you're like, God, what is wrong with my thoughts? How come my friends think it's funny? Like, what is it that I... But that's only someone who knows what's going on.

Right. The crazy people are the ones that go, this crowd doesn't get me. This crowd sucks. Yeah. This crowd's bullshit. I mean, how many times have I heard that? Just like every crowd I've ever played to. They all suck. None of this crowd sucks yeah this crowd's bullshit i mean how many times i've heard that just like every crowd i've ever played to they all suck none of them understand me bro the worst thing we can have to one of those people is some one day they'll just catch that magic wave where you know there's this one crowd where almost anyone can do well yes

there's these weird crowds that are just so good and so hyped up that someone with like really shitty skills can get up there and just make it happen and they chase the ghosts of that performance forever here's a great story that i've told before unfortunately people have heard it but joey diaz was the early days of the comedy so there's one woman who was insane i mean completely insane it just there was nothing remotely funny about anything she ever had to say she was brutal and she would go up and every time she would go up, everybody would have to get out of the room. It was just like, what, what is happening here? How is she, how does she even get spots? It was during the nineties, um, when it was easier to get spots. And so Joey Diaz goes backstage behind the OR, there's a curtain and he goes backstage and takes

his pants off. And every time she hits a punch punch line he opens up the curtain and shows the crowd his balls he's got no pants on so every time she hits the punch lines he's doing this and she's killing i mean killing and you see the confident look in her face she has no idea what's going on behind You see the confident look in her face. She has no idea what's going on behind her. And the stride and her swagger. And she hits those same punchlines. And all of a sudden, Joey comes out with his balls, and everybody's crying, laughing.

And she never knew. She never knew. She had no idea. Did no one ever told her? I don't think so. If they did, she would have never believed it. Bullshit! I was killing!

Yeah. Like, she was just insane i tell i tell young comics um that the you don't you don't exist in the world how you see yourself you exist in the world as the sum total of how everyone else sees you that's that's who you are yeah and that's true on stage also you exist on that stage as the sum total of how the crowd sees you right your actions your what you wear how you stand how you speak those can all determine that but your total of how the crowd sees you. Right. Your actions, what you wear, how you stand, how you speak, those can all determine that. But your thoughts of how you want to be seen, the difference of how you see yourself and how everyone else sees you,

that chasm is delusion. Yeah. And so the shorter that chasm, the more self-aware you're going to be, the funnier you can be. The bigger that chasm, the more likely you're going to flip a table on a reality show. Yes. Like,

and that's the difference. That's a very good point. It's a very good, very good way of putting it. And it goes back to what we were talking about earlier. That stand up in a lot of ways is almost like a vehicle for introspective observation. Like you're,

you're almost forced to examine yourself in a way that very few people do because people like to put up blinders and that's why people like to drink you just kind of like to push it all away and ignore all the faults and press on and when you're doing stand-up I mean you really you can't do that because bombing is so unbelievably brutally painful that you you go okay that can't happen again if you know you bomb though like I that's right so the when I was first living out here I would hang out at there were shows at Westwood Bruco all the time I don't know if you ever did those Adam Hunter shows no no Adam very well they were

So I would hang out there all the time and there was one night where a bunch of comics had done a show in Long Beach on the Queen Mary and One by one they were all getting to Westwood and every one of them man that show was terrible the Queen Mary's a boat by the way for ya oh yeah I guess if people are unfamiliar be like they all performed on this one lady and she's a queen what's your queen of well it's on the it's not even like in a bar called the Queen Mary it's on the Queen Mary what are they talking about yeah they just standing on this lady named Mary and so one by one they would all show up and they'd be like there were like 12 people there and it was a nightmare and everyone is talking about how

shitty it was and how everybody bombed and the night was terrible then one comic gets there and doesn't know that everyone had already done that and the first thing he does yeah i just got back from long beach man i crushed that that was such a great show everybody was going nuts and just going on and on about how great it was. And the rest of us are just being like, oh, you've never killed. Because if you think that that was killing, you've never killed. You've never had a good show if you don't understand what that feels like. Or you just lie and tell everybody all the time you have good shows.

But it's terrible delusion. Yeah. Well, maybe he just doesn't understand himself. Yeah. I mean how many guys have you met like that that like are that amount around girls or around a job opportunity around any true they think that they're way more qualified for something there are like I'm gonna go get this vice president job

bro I'm gonna go get it I'm gonna run there's a lot of people are just completely crazy yeah well there's the I like to tell people you know follow your dreams unless your dreams unless your dreams are stupid yeah because good advice if you like if you quit your job to work at america like to audition for american idol and you've never ever been paid to sing anywhere you're fucking idiot well american idol is a really good example because if you watch that show the best part about that show is the beginning, where you're just watching mental illness. They should call it Mental Illness Hour.

Shreds of Talent. American Illness. For every one person that you get that gets through the entire... Who's the big name stars that have gone through American Idol? Kelly Clarkson, Carrie Underwood. Those two are huge.

And there's the guy who went a little crazy, the young country music gay guy. Clay Aiken. Yeah. What happened to him? I was actually in his True Hollywood Story. I'm glad you said True Hollywood Story, because if you said House the other night.

No, I was just. And he was the guy who got me violently ill. No. Clay Aiken drugged me. I was making fun of him to a producer on the show. Oh, boy. Like, she just told me that she was working on that show. Right.

And I was just like, it was a friend of mine. I was like, what are you up to? Just telling me she's working on the show. And she goes, yeah, you know, we're doing research on, he used to be a choir boy. And I just go, oh, so he started out with hymns and never quite made it to hers? And then she just goes, you want to be on the show? I was like, what? So then that line actually got cut by the lawyers.

What? Yeah, I had five jokes that were in the script, and three of the five of them got cut by the lawyers. Fucking lawyers, man. That's why lawyers, you can't have podcasts. No, you can't. You're not allowed, you fucks. Like a lawyer podcast?

They can't come on them. You can't have a lawyer telling you what you can and can't say about podcast Yeah, you just you know not allowed because this though. This is the last place the last bastion of free speech Yeah, as far as like just expressing yourself in conversation. There's no you keep this the only one left They're easily tricked though. I used to be I used to be a segment producer on a show and we would always put in Stuff we didn't want to use so that they could come in the room and be like no no you have to take that out you have to take that out and then leave in the thing that we thought they would take out well i'm sure you've seen the scene

in team america world police yeah they the sex scene between the two puppets they made like 10 minutes longer than they wanted it to be where he shits on her chest or she shits on his chest, they pee on each other. Why not both? They went nuts. And the reason why they did it was because they could cut some of it and it would still be preposterous, which it wound up being. But that's a common strategy.

We did that in the 90s with news radio. We had an episode of news radio where Phil Hartman said penis on the air on the radio show, then it was through the episode. He said penis like 20 times and They they were like you can't say penis more than eight times and it was like eight times. Yeah, who makes that? Yeah, it's fucking assholes assholes assholes who decide what America is willing to say assholes times. Yeah, I'm crazy Bro, I think it was four times. Yeah, I'm crazy. I'm a rebel, bro. I think it was four times. But they didn't air it.

So it didn't air. They didn't air the episode at all. No, it had to air in like season two or three. Like whatever season it was, maybe it was season two. I don't remember what season it was. But it had to air like the next season or the season later. And like we were told, hey, the penis episode's airing tonight and like we were told hey the penis episodes airing tonight we were like what it's still that never aired never ever i love so much that there's

something called the penis episode yeah by the way good bad name the penis episode yeah it's good bad name that would that would totally yeah play at the whiskey yeah like a fucking punk band the penis episode yeah so it's part of the patriarchy yeah uh yeah i i think that uh i used to call it a march of the penguins because all the suits would come down the hallway and try to ruin our art uh but the idea that someone goes well it says specifically eight times you can say penis it's so arbitrary it's totally arbitrary and there's no rules anywhere what happens on the ninth time like beetlejuice comes out? Yeah. Penis juice comes out?

Satan comes through the floor. There's a way to do art and it's definitely not by having a bunch of people that have money invested in it looking at it going, okay, how can we maximize this? How can we make this as sellable as possible? That's just the opposite of the kind of mentality that you need to make something good. And just like you were talking about with comedy,

where people don't see themselves. If you don't see yourself how other people see you, it's not going to work and it won't be funny. Well, that's kind of the same thing with art. If you produce a television show or whatever it is

and people don't enjoy it, well, it won't go anywhere. It'll fall off. And then it's not good anymore. But to have someone come in and say, oh, you got to do this and you got to do that because we know better because we're the ones with the money. That never works. But every time I think that, I remember that According to Jim had over 100 episodes.

Over 100 episodes. But there's a style of comedy. Jag had over 100 episodes. Over 100 episodes. But there's a style of comedy. Jag had over 100 episodes. I remember Jag. Jag was on while I was on news radio. We were always like, what in the fuck is going on? How is that a real show? If you ever watched that show, nobody watched that show.

And the people that did watch that show, it's like they were sedated. It's like it's a hum and under which subliminal messages were played in the background about Bush being a great president or something like it didn't make any fucking sense it didn't make any sense that it stayed on the air do you watch any of the csis or any of those or the no oh you know what the one i'm thinking of uh ncis no so i i saw an episode the other day i get transfixed with bad television like i never put never put it on on purpose, but if, like, someone, if I'm, like, in a hotel room or something, and I flip it on or whatever it is, like, it takes me a little to just shake it off, because I just want to be like, how is this made?

How is this possible, you know? And so I was watching it, and I was thinking, like, the comedy in it was so bad. Like, the jokes were so terrible that I almost wondered, you know how they hire people for punch-up? Yeah. Do they hire people for punch-down?. Do they hire people for punch down? Like, do they hire people to be like water down these good jokes? Well, that's that Chuck Lorre guy. He knows how to do them.

He knows how to do that drone, that one style of comedy, like two and a half men. Yeah. He did a bunch of those. The white noise machine. He just does those things like yeah no no that for people that are all just like exhausted from eating carbs and sugar all day and they're just sitting in the couch just melting and then the dumbest fucking humor plays out in front of them and it's just enough to keep them paying attention so they watch those toyota commercials i i was you know very

often i wonder about like how does this get made? How is this? Why does anybody like this, et cetera. And I was at like some truck stop in the middle of nowhere, just getting gas and getting food. And there's a, there's a TV playing, there's like a little lunch counter and there's a TV playing and there's a commercial and there's this guy running around. It's for blindss but this guy is running around he like tries to open his blinds it kind of has nothing to do with it and then he runs outside and he gets stinged by a bunch of stung by a bunch of bees and he's like fighting them off and i'm sitting there thinking like oh what the who the fuck would do i can write commercials like who

would do that and there's a dude sitting next to me just going he's he can't get away from the bees like just out loud to no one. To no one. Just be like, there are the bees all over him. The bees are all over him. And I'm just like, this is who it's for. I was at my friend's house once. And her friend and her mom was over.

And they were watching like some Spider-Man movie. And Spider-Man got bit by a spider. And she just goes, he got bit by a spider. I'll never forget that. I just never forget her going, he got bit by a spider. I got to get out of here. One of these things of like, do you think the rest of us didn't see that?

There's just something about, look, man, I just think, just like you can buy a Prius, or you can buy a Shelby GT500. One has 100 horsepower. One has 500 horsepower. Brains are like that, too. They just have to be.

There's just no doubt about it. And there's a lot of those little Prius brains out there, man. And if you put on a show for Prius brains, you will attract them like metal to a magnet. Just... They find it. The Duck Dynasty shows. You ever watch Duck Dynasty? I have thankfully not even seen a clip.

You should fucking watch it for sure, just to understand that there's people like that out there that look forward to it. I got the DVR set. You know, I heard what today they're going to do, shoot some ducks. You want to shoot some ducks? There's a duck show. There's a duck, and they shoot... They don't even shoot they hardly shoot ducks the show is more about like horrible people hanging out

doing really boring shit and then be all right like they're all down home they're down home they're country well that's that's why that's why the people who like when the people say like oh you know i voted for bush because i can you know he reminded me of me and i was like well then you're a fucking asshole also like you're also they like to think he reminded them of them yeah yeah was your dad a multi-millionaire did you grow up in maine and pretend you're from texas like what about him yeah what about it the fact you doubt was your dad in the cia too well you see you see that with trump now where people are like oh he reminds me of me and i'm just like he's the furthest thing from you.

I grew up in New York City. And so I remember, I was a kid when it happened. But I remember the Center Park jogger when Trump took out four full-page ads in different newspapers calling for the death penalty for these black kids who didn't even do it. And he was just inciting a riot, basically. He was just trying to race bait and get attention. And, like, that's the guy I remember. I don't relate to that guy. Yeah, he's a real tough guy to relate to.

I don't think people really do relate to him. I think what they relate to is the possibility that he may win, and they like to be on the camp of a winner. So, like, a football team that they can get behind, they don't really give a shit about the players. They just decide,'re gonna win. We're fucking winning. We're winning. We're Trump Trump's winning I'm Trump I'm winning Those dickheads yeah, they but they also say the things like you know like he speaks like I do like that

I don't want a president who speaks like I do fairly intelligent guy I want my president to be way smarter than me. I would like a really articulate Obama-type guy, but that didn't work out. The Obama-type guy was like what we were hoping for. When Bush was in office, Obama was like the fucking recipe, man. We want a black guy who's super articulate, really intelligent, and we're going to relax everybody with all this race bullshit. Look, clearly, it has nothing to do with race.

It's about culture and circumstances and where you're growing up. Look at this guy. He's black. He's smarter than all of us. We're good. Look, he's liberal. He's going to fix everything. He's going to relax everybody.

He doesn't want Guantanamo Bay. He wants to get us out of Iraq. We made it through this Bush thing. Civilization didn't collapse. And then he's in office and it's kind of the same shit. He talks better, but it's kind of the same shit is going on. I think the biggest problem is that he's too reasonable. Like, he's too reasonable.

And the people who disagree with him are being completely unreasonable. And you can't just be like, well, let's look at both sides. If one side is being a dick, you don't look at both.'s like cnn will do that where they're like well let's present both sides of this argument here's one person against pedophilia so let's talk to someone who's for pedophilia and it's like no don't give that guy airtime right don't ever talk to that guy yeah so so the people who you know who want to take rights away and and who want to convince poor people to vote against their own best interests. Like, don't give them equal time, but they do. Well, the problem is you're dealing with right and left.

And then, again, people get really tribal. Yeah. When they're on a team, they get super tribal. I told this before, but it always struck me as being really bizarre. I was with a buddy of mine who's a writer, and he was talking about the election. He's like, we have to win in Idaho. If we win in Idaho or Iowa, if we win in Iowa, we've got it wrapped up. I was like, what is this we? What is this we shit? It's like the Democrats. I'm like, okay, you're on a team, right? You're on a team. This is the Mariners. This is the Mariners versus the Raiders. You got this weird team mentality. And I think that's entirely one of the things that is real comfortable for people to fall into when it comes to elections.

And it's one of the reasons why I think we need way more parties. At least that way we'll have more teams. Because this two-team option is like, if every fucking year was theeltics versus the lakers in the nba finals wouldn't you be tired of that after a while well that's i think how america feels about the election that's why the ratings are down that's why people aren't really paying attention that much that's why people are so frustrated by the choices like you can't you can't have just two choices well i used to be you know i'm very politically minded and and active and i used to do a lot of like everybody should go out and vote and then i talked to more and more people and then i'm just like not

everybody yeah well it would be nice if we didn't have a representative government yeah it would be nice first of all if you didn't have like one like super delegates what is that what do you mean you don't have to vote for the people that your state votes for? Superdelegates were basically to keep Jesse Jackson out of office. Really? That's how they started. Really? Yeah, when Jesse Jackson was starting to get some heat, and I think it was 1980, suddenly there was 80 or 84, I forget, but it was suddenly superdelegates came out.

Good job, superdelegates. Kept that fucking demon out of the White House. Not only superdelegates, though, but even the delegates of the Electoral College, they don't have to vote the way their constituents do. In fact, there was a time when one of them, I think it was in Minnesota, accidentally wrote down the name of the vice president in both slots for president and vice president. So his vote didn't count. And that was like 30,000 people that he was representing. Whoa. And just that he was representing whoa and just because he was a fucking idiot and like you you can actually if you're now obviously people wouldn't do it for the most part because you'd think oh well then they'll lose the ability

to do it and that's all the little power they have in their life is to be a delegate at this convention but the fact of the matter is that like new york state can vote 100 for a democrat and then the electoral college can go and just vote for a Republican. It can just, they can do it if they want to, or vote for a different Democrat. They can write someone in if they want to. It's a ridiculous idea that was conceived back when you couldn't communicate with people easily. Yeah. It was that simple. It was the point of it was that like you, not everyone was qualified to vote because you didn't hear things yes and so they would be like well here's the representative government they'll you know learn from what their

people want and then they'll take that over there and it was a wonderful idea yeah now it's bullshit yeah it's ridiculous and it's time is gone i mean we if we this is the point that i always bring up if we didn't have a system of government in place, we had all these people, we all just woke up today, who would say we need one person to run it? No one. Who would say that we need one person to be a representative of the state because the people can't tell everybody? No, well, you have email now. We have Twitter.

We have Facebook. We have polls. There's ways to find out what people want and people don't want. Representative government in 2016 is like writing with feathers. It's like some old stupid shit that we don't need anymore We should make them right with feathers who should make them wear powdered wigs to those fucks Yeah, be like you want this office while it comes with a couple of things Yeah

I mean if you want to be like one of those people you should dress like one of those people that invented it then there'd Be no Hillary email scandal because it would just be like maybe she wrote on the wrong kind of parchment Yeah, she wrote on the actual animal skins. Yeah skins yeah and said we don't do that anymore hillary you're doing old school she's doing old school with her non-encrypted email right yeah have you talked about i assume you've talked about the gorilla already yeah we kind of talked about it a little did we i think we did yeah it's fucked up yeah it's fucked up for the zoo the zoo fucked up you shouldn't make it so goddamn easy to get in the gorilla tank. Yeah.

So on this one, I don't know exactly what happened on this one because I'm trying to kind of block it out. I saw the whole thing. So the kid- Kid fell in. Was it like a kid falling in where the parent was at fault or was it a kid doing something they shouldn't have done? Well, the kid was doing something it shouldn't have done, but the parents weren't watching the kid.

Yeah. Look, the zoo made it way too easy to get into the gorilla enclosure. The kid got through the fence, fell down into this water. The gorilla came in, scooped up the kid, arguably saved the kid. Yeah. But was handling it in a way that it could handle a gorilla baby. But a human baby, you just rip the arms off the kid. It could really hurt it.

And I just don't think a gorilla is even aware of how fragile a three-year-old human being is. Have you ever had a three-year-old chimp or a three-year-old gorilla near you? I can't say I've ever had that experience. I was on a TV show. It was on news radio, and they brought in a chimp for a scene.

And this two-year-old chimp with diaper on was like I was holding it. And it was beating on me. It was like hitting me in the back, like playing around with me. They're unbelievably strong. Yeah. And sinewy, like a little tiny bodybuilder. Like they don't feel like a baby. Like I have little kids.

And when you pick up a little kid, they're all soft. And they feel like little kids. They're mus this is just chimp was not mushy and i think this gorilla probably had no idea how to handle a baby softly you know probably or a toddler really didn't didn't know and they panicked and then they shot the gorilla but it seems to me that there's got to be a better way to do that. But I could see the parents being like, fuck that gorilla. Shoot it. Shoot it. I want my kid back.

Yeah, but I could see the gorilla being like, fuck those parents. Yeah, but I like people more than I like gorillas. I do. And I love your joke about team people. Yeah. It's, I mean, it's a bit I enjoy. But there was a, so there was a bit I used to do. There was a story in Chicago like 15 years ago where a woman was holding her baby over a gorilla pillow.

Oh, yeah, I remember that. Like holding it straight up and then drop the baby. And on that one, the gorilla saved the kid and picked it up and kept until the zookeeper could give it back to the mother. And the joke I used to do is be like, I'm sorry, give it back. Like at that point, a gorilla is a better parent than the person who, once you voluntarily dangle your baby over a wild animal, it's death you giving the baby away. Well, we've made it way too easy for people to survive.

People survive with very little adversity. We survive with easy access to food, easy access to employment. If you get fired, you get to sue. If you're incompetent completely you can claim that you were harassed at work there's there's so many loopholes and it's so we're so nerfed every sharp edge is covered with foam and everyone's wearing a helmet the nerfing of america and this is what we've got left we've got these fucking idiots we've got a bunch of really dumb people that are allowed to fuck and have kids. And you can't

stop people from having kids. Because then someone could try to stop you. Well, I don't like your belief, Steve Hofstadter. You're a crazy liberal. You think you should be able to have a nation that's not under God? And you're going to raise your children without God? That's child abuse! Were you at my show

the other day? No, I could have been. I've been to many shows. I just think And then you know where you my show the other day But this you know this is I just think There you human beings need a certain amount of adversity We need a certain amount of difficulty to overcome to learn those lessons to filter that experience down into your behavior And when you don't learn those lessons, and you just live this Muted nerfed up world then you're holding your fucking baby over the gorilla tank because you're getting a little thrill. I can't believe I'm doing this. I'm holding the baby.

I love the baby, but I love gorillas too. And whoops, I'm dumb. I drop the baby just like you drop your cell phone, just like you drop your keys in a fucking drainage ditch. You're a dummy. You drop shit. You're a stupid fuck. You're not supposed to be alive. You should have been eaten by wolves hundreds of years ago. If the world was safe,

you would have been the one who walked off the trail. I'm going to go find a better way to the castle. And the wolves would have eaten you and no one would have heard from you. And that's what it's supposed to happen to those kinds of people. It is. It's supposed to happen. Darwin, big fan. Big fan of Darwin. Big fan. He had some good ideas. Chris Bowers, I don't know if you know him. He's a comic out of, oh, you've worked Morty's. Yes. Yes. In Indianapolis? Yeah.

Chris and I are two of the owners. Oh, you guys own Morty's? Yeah. No shit. Yeah. What a great club. Thank you. That's awesome, man.

It's even better. We have a new location now. Oh, no shit. Yeah. You guys moved? Yeah. We have a balcony and everything now. It's great.

It looks like a small theater. Oh, that's terrific, man. That was a great club. Yeah. That was a fun one. Everybody loves that place. It's great. It's like a, it looks like a small theater. Oh, that's terrific, man. That was a great club. Yeah. That was a fun one. Everybody loves that place. That's cool though.

I didn't know you own that place. Yeah. Good for you. You fucking entrepreneur. Thank you. Well, so Bowers has a great theory where, you know,

the, the way to, I guess, prevent the stupid people in the overpopulation is if everyone is basically sterilized and you have to take something in order to be able to be pregnant but the only way you get that pill is you have to take that pill every day you don't take a pill to stop yourself from being pregnant you take a pill to get yourself pregnant so you have to take that pill

both partners would have to take that pill every day for six months because if you can't commit to taking a pill every day for six months you can't raise a kid yeah but it's so easy for people to just do that that's not that's not enough of a fucking task it's a start it should be like one of those crows have to get a crumb out of a tube and they have to use one tool to get the other tool to get the third tool in order to get the food that's how it should be it's too fucking easy to just take a pill. You should have to do a puzzle. Every day they should give you a puzzle.

And if you fail the puzzle, you don't get a pill. So you get six months of correct answers to puzzles to get your pills. That's the only way you should be able to get your pills. I think that's how Chipotle gave away a free burrito once on their annual anniversary. If they did it that way for people, the fucking 405 would be a breeze. Yeah. It would be nobody. It would just be a couple people waving at each other. We made it.

We made it. You ever watch period piece television where they run into people they know? Like on Mad Men, they would always run into people at the restaurant that they would know. And part of me is like, oh, well, that's convenient. And then I'm like, no, no, there are fewer people. There were way fewer people then. Way fewer. It seems possible.

It's definitely possible. It was possible in the 90s. When I moved here in 1994, there was half as many people. I wonder what the actual statistic was. But I'm pretty sure it was half as many people. Like when you would get on the highway, you'd get on the highway and the traffic would be bad, but it wouldn't be that bad. It would be no big deal. I remember

people talking about getting from Santa Monica to the Valley in 10 minutes. What? Exactly. 10 minutes. What did they drive, a DeLorean? Just drive around your car. Just get in your car and drive. This is back when cars were slow as shit and the brakes were terrible. There was no traffic. You just get around.

It's only nine miles no problem they just did it it's the same as uh you know planes i mean i've only been flying about 20 years but 20 years ago and now that's part of because they do this spoke garbage now where they you know you have to fly through cincinnati to go to denver or whatever it is but it's everything's full every single flight is full like the idea when someone doesn't have a seat next to you, it's a Christmas party. Oh yeah. Well,

how about when they say we've oversold this flight? We're looking for volunteers. Like what do you mean? You're selling some shit you don't even really have. They absolutely do that. But in fairness, we can do that with comedy clubs too. Cause there's always a percentage of no shows.

So there's, do we, do you do that at Morty's? We've done it, but it's not by a high percentage. It's like, because usually our no-show percentage will be like 10%, so we'll oversell by like 5%. Yeah, because people... So if you have 100 people, 10 people won't show up? It depends on the price of the ticket. It depends on the act.

Like with a celebrity, no-show percentage is virtually nothing. But with like a typical day, you know, and a typical like we call it a just funny. You know, someone who's good, but no one has heard of them. Right. You know, plenty of times someone will be like, oh, yeah, let's get four tickets to the club. And then they only have one friend. Like that happens all the time. Babysitter cancels.

That's true. You know, it's too rainy out. Someone doesn't want to go out. There are tons of reasons. But you can't fuck over the people that actually paid and actually showed up. We've never once. Okay. Not one time.

How do you do that? You have extra chairs? You can just shove them in places in case everybody shows up? If we have to, but what happens is, on the ticket it very specifically says, like, this is good until showtime. Oh, okay. And so what happens is, even if there's, even if the no-show rate is way less than it is,

even if there's weird anomaly where the no-show rate is, like, zero, there's still people who come late. Right. And you can't come late. Yeah. If you come late, like, you might get turned away.

And we tell everyone that. Even if you have a ticket. We tell everyone that. If you come late, you can get turned away. What if you get stuck in traffic? Well, you can call. You can call and say,

hey, you know, we're on our way and please hold a seat. That seems reasonable. I'll accept that. If you come late, you can get turned away. What if you get stuck in traffic? Well, you can call. You can call and say, hey, you know, we're on our way, and please hold a seat. That seems reasonable. I'll accept that. Think about it this way. With Broadway, I mean, with Broadway, the door is closed. Okay, first of all, fuck Broadway. Fuck all that nonsense. Fuck musicals and fuck plays.

Okay, we have movies now. I want special effects. I don't want you talking loud. I am with you. I want you mic'd up. I want you to be able to't want you talking loud. I am with you. I want you mic'd up. I want you to be able to whisper, and I want to hear it crystal clear. And I'm giving you no leeway. I'm giving you no leeway

because the costumes are nice. Yes. I want plot. I want writing. I want a fucking... I want new shit, too. Yeah. I want some old shit that doesn't apply anymore. I'm okay with musicals. I don't... You know, I can just suspend my disbelief and go, okay, everybody's singing fine. I'm okay with musicals. I don't, you know, I can just suspend my disbelief and go, okay, everybody's singing fine. I mean. But

it's got to be a good song. It's got to further the plot. It can't just be something that they know is going to sell well. Yeah. I went to a musical. Well, I should take that back because the Book of Mormon is fucking amazing. Yes. That's a musical. That's what I mean. But those guys are just, they do everything right. They just do

everything right. But that was also Bobby Lopez who did Avenue Q. I don't know who that is. I don't know what that is. You don't know Avenue Q? Nope. So Avenue Q is the other good Broadway show. Impossible. Of the two. Avenue Q was the one where they had songs, The Internet is for Porn, and Everyone's a Little Bit

Racist. Oh, okay. So it's a comedy. As long as it's a comedy. Wasn't it with puppets? Yeah, it was with puppets. You had a Broadway show with puppets? It was like Sesame Street on Broadway. Hey, whatever happened to the fucking Spider-Man Broadway show where people kept falling on their head? Did they abandon that? It- yeah, eventually, yes, Spider-Man turned off the dark, eventually turned on the dark. Because they were like- people were dying, right? didn't people get paralyzed and shit yeah people fell so my my uh my wife worked uh at uh audience awards which is like uh frequent flyer points for broadway and so she would go to all these shows and so she went to spider-man like during the

previews and she texted me and she goes one of the actors has been stuck for an hour. Like just on the rope. Oh my God. And she just said, yeah, he's been stuck for an hour. And I was like, I bet you know how he feels. It's just, it was terrible. She would go to all these shows and eventually, like I wouldn't have to go anymore. Because she took me to American Idiot.

Did you ever see that? The Green Day one? No. So I like Green Day. How dare you? I enjoy that song specifically. I wish Joey Diaz was here right now. He would murder me. He would be choking you.

Fucking Green Day! I like the song American Idiot because it caused people who it was about to enjoy it without knowing it was about them. I like the subversity of that. But the musical was, it was about them right i like the subversity of that but the musical was it was like what i was 30 seconds in before i was like oh fuck this show it was like watching the best painters in the world try to play football it was horrific because like that's a funny way of putting it well i know that i know that like

green day isn't like real you know punk punk but at the same time that's the movement it came out of and it's supposed to be anti-establishment and the whole point of the show i mean the the broadwaying of it basically made it like everybody's just jazz hands to fucking green it was ridiculous well it kind of showed what green day really is all about look at this green day was it's it's a manufactured outrage i was so disappointed because afterward i was like i can't believe they lent their name to this and then I looked it up and I go, oh no, they were in charge? It's like, that's it.

That's the end of it for me. Well, that's why everybody was correct and I think that's one of those things where like people Look at the look on that guy's face. Is that Jared from Subway? Like, who is that? No, it's Penn Gillette's younger brother. Doesn't it look like And that wasn't even a molestation joke.

How about the guy on the far right with the two-tone hair and the conveniently placed tattoos? I bet he's annoying. Yeah, I bet in his last play he played like a salesman. How about the guy with the flannel shirt? Is that a flannel shirt or a jacket? It's a blazer. It's a flannel blazer. He's the drummer for Green Day.

Oh, Christ. Take that picture off, Jamie. Take it off. Yeah, man, there's a lotzer. It's a flannel blazer. He's the drummer for Green Day. Oh, Christ. Take that picture off, Jamie. Take it off. Yeah. Yeah, man, there's a lot of that stuff. You know, it's like what we're talking about. We're talking about suits coming in and telling you what you can and can't say. I mean, they're being their own suits.

They're trying to formulate something that they think America's going to absorb, and then they're thinking about buying yachts. So Avenue Q is a great show, but the most fun part of watching it was watching the old Broadway people thinking that they're super naughty for going to the show. Just like these like 60, 70 year old women who like just couldn't believe like they said masturbation. Like just, yeah, that was kind of, I had fun watching people watch it. Well, if I was going to go to Broadway, that would be kind of why I would go.

I would go to people watch the really upper crust rich crowd of Manhattanites, the people that have homes in the Hamptons, like those people that go to all those Broadway shows, and that's their social life. That's what they do. They go to parties. They dress really well. They eat really well.

And they go to the finest restaurants in town. They always get a table at the finest restaurants and here they are. It's like, that's like their hobby is being rich and doing rich people things. And if you want to be cultured, you have to read the New York times. You have to read the New Yorker and you have to go to these musicals when they come out. You have to go to Broadway when it comes out. There's a new play. Are you going to be there? Yes, we are. We have season tickets to the Broadway.

Yeah. Whatever the fuck. Do they have season tickets to Broadway? Yeah. They can't. They do. They do? They're like multi-ticket packages.

Those people have to do everything they can to be cultured except actually talk to human beings. Well, they talk to a few human beings who are exactly like them. Yeah, but they don't talk to anyone who, you know, I mean, they might know their gardener's name. Well, there's a bunch of people that are like that, that are just completely locked up in consumption. And that's the only thing that they can discuss. I had this neighbor, I used to call him Bling Bling, because Bling Bling always had like,

everything was shiny. He always had like expensive watches and he always had like the nicest cars. I couldn't talk to the fucking guy about anything other than like cars and houses. You know, like I would say, hey man, how you doing? And he'd go, good, good, good. See what that guy did to his house? Looks like shit. What year is that car?

Like that's all he would talk about. All he was into was consumption. What was good for the property values? Where did you get the watch? Oh, nice, nice watch. Like that was all he was into, like acquiring items, moving items around, fixing items, making items better. But this was he was the American idiot. I mean, he was locked into that.

I mean, I knew this guy for years. I mean, literally, that is why I called him bling bling. We never had a conversation about anything other than objects that he wanted, or objects that he saw that he liked. I mean, it was really weird. But there's a lot of people like that out there, especially really rich people. Yeah, the when people make this argument about like, Oh, well, you know, we have to allow the rich to be able to spend their money because it's for the economy. And that's why they shouldn't, you know, we shouldn't have higher taxes on the rich. I'm just like, do you see how they how they spend it? Do you see the the ridiculousness that that is spent like it's the problem with higher taxes on the rich?

Is that like what? What is what's going on? What is capitalism? Like, what is it? Is it a game? Are we trying to, I mean, if one person works harder and they make more money and one person is more innovative,

they're more creative, they figure out a way to extract more money from the system, should they be penalized? I mean, aren't we all trying to do that? Are we all trying to acquire money in some way, shape, or form? And who is to say that one person, some Bill Gates-type guy, is

better at it, so they should be penalized? Like, it seems like you're trying to rig the game because someone is just way fucking better at it. Well, I think the problem is that it's not... I don't have a problem with the people who are better at it. I have a problem with the people who are the grandson of the person

who is better at it. Exactly. I was gonna get to that. Just the idea of like, oh is better at it exactly who was just just the idea of like oh you know my uh my father's father's sperm was real innovative the heinz account has always had good merit here yeah yeah that kind of stuff i inherent its money's uh that's a tricky one i think it's bad for the people too they get it yeah i look at the uh um i look at the people who there's that quote that i forget where it's from but that quote that america is a nation of temporarily embarrassed millionaires that like everyone thinks that they're a millionaire they're just going through hard times right now oh i get it yeah yeah yeah well that's one of the reasons why poor people vote for republicans yeah they

really think well you need business new business but i, who is more anti-poor people than Republicans? But how many poor people wind up being conservative? It's like. What I want to say to those people is like, I get, you know, we all want to be millionaires. We all want to be successful. And that's wonderful. And we need a path to get there. And that's fantastic.

But tell me this. When you were 55 and you were working at Applebee's, what the fuck is your path? Where from here to there? You tell me. You tell me what app you're going to invent. You tell me what, you know, you're going to win on American Idol as the old lady. Like you tell me how the fuck are you going to go from the lowest tax bracket to the highest one when you're already 55 and your dream has gone.

But it can happen. See, to say that is kind of silly because there's been a million stories about someone who writes a book in their 50s and they become rich. I mean, all that stuff has happened. It can. But you have to do it. Whatever it is, you have to do it. If you're actually just taking all your time and you're staying at Applebee's and then you're drinking and then you watch TV and then you're falling asleep. That's what I mean. And you just keep that pattern. Yeah. If that person said to me, well, I've been working on this novel for a very long time and I have a lot of faith in it and I've sent it to a lot of publishers and you know what?

I've been rejected a lot of times, but I'm not going to take no for an answer. I'm going to pound the pavement. I'm going to find it. Maybe I'll self-publish it. And I'll walk around and I'll go to libraries. You know what? And I'll get my book in libraries. And if they said all that, I would be like, you know what?

Don't pay taxes. Yes. Vote Republican. Yes. But, if they're just like, well, you know, my brother's got this idea, right? My brother's got this idea. Now, it... He just needs a little bit of seed money.

A little bit of seed money. That person, I'm just like, I don't understand why you're voting against your own best interest. Well, I don't think they think they are. They think the people are lazy. I work hard. These goddamn lazy people, they want that that welfare money they're gonna take that welfare and spend it on cigarettes yeah well the the uh i loved during during the uh debt you know the recession the collapse when everybody was talking about like i don't like how the government spends my money they're like the government spends money on things they can't afford i'm like you just lost your

house in your car because you bought something you couldn't afford. Yeah, but they thought they could afford it. Right. They're just stupid. The problem with those goddamn mortgages, man, that was the craziest Ponzi scheme ever. That you would have someone with an adjustable rate mortgage and all of a sudden the rate gets jacked up through the roof and you're paying three times as much. Like, what did I sign up for? Wait a minute, I was only paying $1,500 a month and now i'm paying fifteen thousand there is there is

a great deal of deception and fraud and and garbage that was done from the banks and from the people in charge but there was also a great deal of people just didn't want to do their homework and they just they heard something too good to be true and they didn't know the lesson of if it's too good to be true it's not true yeah definitely lesson of if it's too good to be true, it's not true. Yeah, definitely. It's the same people who like, they'll open up the email, they'll be like, what do you mean I got this email where all, I get all this money?

I just click on this link right here from this person I never met? Yeah. Like, how do you not know? The first time I saw that, I was like, this looks wrong. Well, you're a smart guy, Steve. But that's what I'm saying. A lot of people, they're dumb. It's so difficult.

It's so lonely at the top of Olympus. Well, one of the things we were talking about earlier about debt and about people with credit card debt, that they don't realize it. And if you had money, cash money, you wouldn't be so likely to go into debt with cash. Yeah. Well, I think that's the same thing with the environment i think the the environment is almost like credit because it's we're like throwing garbage out the window and no one's thinking about it we're just burning fossil fuels and fucking spraying hairspray into the sky no one's thinking about what that's doing

because we don't feel it instantly and immediately we don't't have like a vault we open up. Shit, I'm out of air. Yeah. You know? I'm running low. We're running low on water. There's no fish left. Yeah.

We don't feel it. So we continue to act in the exact same way because we're not really getting the feedback. You know, you watch an Inconvenient Truth, you go, well, that's kind of fucked up. Oh, got to go to work in the morning. Click. Shut it off. Go to bed. Yeah.

Beep, beep, beep. Oh, wake up to work in the morning click shut it off go to bed. Yeah Beep-beep-beep up wake up keep going and it that's a pattern that just kept Keeps getting repeated and repeated and we're not feeling the feedback of the negative actions I was I was flying and it was during that crazy winter with the polar vortex stuff Where it was like negative two degrees and a lot of places and it got down to like negative 20 in the midwest what year was that uh two years ago i think two three years ago yeah it was uh i know in la we're just like yeah it got all the way down to 55 it was terrible and so um i yeah i got woken up by the bells of the ice cream truck it was really a difficult winter but the um but so i'm i'm flying somewhere and there's this guy, you know, going through in front of me at TSA. And, you know, he's taking off his coat and all that stuff.

And TSA got a cold outside, didn't it? In one of these small airports where they all went to high school together. And the guy goes, so much for global warming. And I, I need to leave well enough alone. I need to learn how to do that. But I was just like, I was like, actually, you know, global warming also makes it colder in the winter. Oh, look, the Jews got an opinion. He knew right away.

And yeah, he just immediately, he just, his reaction actually was one of my favorite things anyone's ever said. He just goes, that's what they want you to believe. Like they do, because they're scientists. And they want you to believe them. Well, Sam Harris was talking about this yesterday yesterday that Trump is a global warming denier. Yeah.

A global warming denier is really close to being the president of the United States. He is not only is he a global warming denier, but the good news is if he felt he would make money off of it, he would believe in global warming. Oh, yeah, for sure. There's no platform he can't believe in. I wonder what the thought process behind that is. Just plow straight ahead and just do whatever is good for you and don't give a fuck? Or is there like... It's narcissism.

Scientists will figure it out. Yeah, for sure, right? That's really what it is. Answer my own question. I think it's a... Yeah, it's what you were saying. The idea of plowing ahead and not knowing... I have this thing where it bothers me when someone's unhappy.

Like, when I can see unhappiness, whether, like, someone's mad at me about something I did or just someone's sad, like, immediately I'm like, I have to fix this. You know, like, and I don't know what that's from. I don't know how I got that way. And I try to get over it to a degree. I like being compassionate, but I also don't want it to, like, totally ruin me. a degree i i like being compassionate but i also don't want it to like totally ruin me and i think that there are people who are wired in completely the other direction who they can walk by someone bleeding to death and just be like oh the sidewalk used to be so much nicer yeah yeah i guess that's probably like the type of person that you don't want in office. Yes. Right? Yes.

It's the exact type of person you don't want in office. But you also don't want the type of person in office that's constantly worried about people being sad. Because then you'll never get anything done. Yeah. Because there's 300 million people and at least 30 million of them are sad as fuck. Yeah. Right? At least. I can look at statistics being sad all day with no problem.

Oh, statistics don't fuck with you. It's actual humans. It's actually humans It's it's the interaction with humans about puppies. It's a shit. I'm a big dog rescue guy Oh me too, so I actually go to the fucking I can't go I'll take them all dude on this past on this past tour I did in ten days in ten days. I Stopped and got four strays. I didn't keep them But I like helped rescue force in ten days just driving around we found them on the street or strays. I didn't keep them but I like helped rescue four in ten days just driving around. We found them on the street? Four strays in ten days. How do you

know they were actually strays? How do you know people don't just like let their dogs out and the dogs come back? I used to have a dog like that. Well one of them was if it hadn't come back I mean if it was let out it had been a couple days like it was like matted up and everything. One of them was actually someone who like was someone who just keeps their door open and then their dog was just playing in traffic and but thankfully it and he comes out and he goes i've been looking for him and i just go where all right bathroom yeah taking a shit where's the dog uh The third one was one who was, I don't think she's ever been owned.

It was just on the streets of Louisville. And just walking around near the airport. And then the fourth one was actually one where this was the one that made me the most upset. Because leash and collar right outside of a dog grooming place. So I'm like, oh shit, one got out. And so this is in Phoenix. And I'm running around. It's 95 degree heat.

And this dog is fast. And I'm running around. It's 95 degree heat. And this dog is fast. And I'm like running around trying to chase it. And finally there's like this alcove in the shopping center where it goes in the alcove. And I'm like, great, it'll be cornered. I'll finally be able to get it. And so I go in there and there's like a woman with a stroller and I go, Hey, do you see a stray dog run by here? And then I see the dog in the corner and I go, Oh, it's right there. And she goes, that's my dog. I go, that's your dog. I've been chasing it for 20 minutes through a parking lot. It almost got hit by three different cars. And she goes, oh, did it?

I'm like, yeah, that's what happens when dogs run around parking lots. When people have strollers, they don't give a fuck about their dog. They're like, I'm concerned with this little baby. This dog can go fuck itself. I just think, like, how hard is it to take that leash and just tie it to the bench that you're sitting on?

It's hard for some people. Just like it's hard to not hold the baby over the gorilla enclosure. Yeah. It's very difficult. Something that compels you. The temptation is real. The struggle is real. Be like, you know, I really don't want to let this dog go.

One of my favorite dogs ever, I got a call from these people that I knew. They were dog watchers, and they found a dog in their neighborhood, and knew they were uh dog watchers and uh they found a dog in their neighborhood they knew that i had dogs and they knew i loved dogs and this dog had mange she had mange all over her body she was really sick and they were like we don't even know if if she's gonna be able to make it like she's like she's so fucked like open scabs because of it she was so beat up it was so sad and so they had washed

her up and they had fed her and she was a really sweet dog and i'm like look i i'll take a chance let's see what happens yeah within like a week her mange had grown back it was crazy she just needed food she needed to be cleaned and needed food within a week almost all of her hair was like it wasn't fully grown it was all growing back and It turned out to be the greatest dog of all time, but I Can't go around those dogs. I'll have a fucking house full of dogs. Yeah, I love a hundred dogs the one I have now I did not plan on having him I saw him in a shelter and he was just the cutest thing and and I I Fostered him and two days in like we were someone like messaged me because I made, an Instagram account for him so that, like, maybe we'd get popular and someone would adopt him.

And then someone messaged me. And immediately I got the message. And I was thinking, like, don't you take my dog. Like, already he was mine. So he's a Staffordshire Bull Terrier, which is basically like a mini pit. They look like a pit bull. Yeah, it's like a, I call it a pit bull face on a pig's body. It's like he's adorable.

Yeah, it's like a I call it a pit bull face on a pig's body. It's like he's adorable and he like What's crazy is so that breed if you were to buy one? there are $2,500 and That's one without training without anything like and he was just sitting in a shelter and so anytime someone's like oh well You know I got to go to a shelter because I need a really specific or sorry I got to go to a breeder because I need a really specific dog. I'm just like, but they're out there. Yeah, there's anything you want.

Every single kind of dog is out there. He's my mascot now. I take him with me to comedy clubs and everything. Really? Yeah, because he doesn't bark at all. I've heard him bark maybe like 10 times. Oh, that's awesome. And so I just he hangs out in the green room.

He like he'll find like whatever comic like left like a box of like merch Like sometimes someone like shit merch or something. He'll just find like the box of shirts and just like use it as a bed He's great He's smart. He knows they're useless. Yeah Yeah, man shelters are tough. It's tough. It's tough to go there. It's tough to see that it's just the People are so irresponsible. They're so irresponsible with pets They get them. We can't have this dog.

Dog shit in the house. Like, you got to teach them to not shit in the house. Next thing you know, they just give them up and leave them in a cage and out of sight, out of mind, go on with their life. What disturbed me is when I found out how many animals PETA kills every year. Oh, I got into it with the PETA spokesperson on Twitter. Did you? Oh, I fucked her up.

Good. I was pretty happy with that one. What was it about? So she followed me on Twitter and I just write back and I go, hey, I'm so honored for the follow. Since you're the PETA spokesperson, could you let me know why PETA has a 90% kill rate? And so she

starts doing, you know, the standard PR thing of like, well, you know, people bring dogs to us that, you know, don't really have much of a chance elsewhere. And so, you know, we're dogs to us that, you know, don't really have much of a chance elsewhere. And so, you know, we're kind of a last resort. And I go, oh, well, that's actually not true because I know of shelters that are like that and their kill rate is one tenth of yours. So if you could explain. And I just kept hammering her about it and hammering her about it.

Politely. Calmly. I wasn't like, shut up, bitch. Like, that gets you nowhere. Right. You know, I was just trying to outwit her. It was a lot of fun. And eventually then she's like, look, I don't speak for PETA. And I was like, well,

in your bio, on your Twitter, it says head of communications. So, you do. And now you're speaking to me. Is it a resource issue? Does PETA just not have the money to take care of them? It's actually a Batman issue. You know how, racial ghouls yeah You know you know how how the idea of like in in the first Christian Bale Batman

Racial ghoul was kind of like who's that okay? So the bad guy in Batman they were like we need to save the city by destroying it right like the humans are destroying themselves and Batman, they were like, we need to save the city by destroying it. Right. Like, the humans are destroying themselves, so we're gonna wipe this out, and so that'll prevent the problem. And that's what it is. PETA is basically like, there's a problem with,

like, we love these dogs, and so to stop them from overbreeding, we're just gonna murder a lot of them. Like, that's where they go with it. Well, the head of PETA, when you get to the top... Crazy person. It's, well, it's... Am I gonna be murdered Well, the head of PETA, when you get to the top... Crazy person. Am I going to be murdered for saying this?

No, you shouldn't be. If they do, they're rude. Animal Liberation Organization. At the very head of a lot of these really radical animal rights movements. And by the way, I love animals. So, I get it. I get the wanting pets to be taken care of. But they don't want pets to be taken care of.

They don't want pets. They think animals should be free. All animals should be free. All livestock, all pets. None of that should be real. All animals should just exist in some sort of a wild state. They also, she's gone on a record many, many times talking about how, you know, pit bulls should be eradicated. Yeah.

And, you know, and like things like that. Pit bulls, they are dangerous. I've had them. They just are. You know, they've thousands of years of breeding to fight each other. And if you're an irresponsible dog owner, pit bulls can be fucking dangerous. Yeah, but at the same time, they say that about my dog, about my Staffie. Yeah, but Staffordshire's Terrors, that about my dog, about my Staffie. Yeah, but Staffie Shires Terror, that's ignorance.

They're not the same breed. See, there's a genetic line. According to law, they are. Yeah, but that's not, it's not right. Yeah. The law is incorrect. There's just some stuff written down on paper. When you deal with the actual genetic lines of the dog, I've had dogs that were, their

line was from fighting dogs. And they were impossible. You couldn't take them to the dog park. Couldn't take them. It didn't matter how much I trained them. Didn't matter how much I was with them all the time. When dogs would bow up around them, he would get aggressive and he'd want to fight. Well, I, I agree with you on a lot of things, but this is, this is one where, where I have

a completely different line because like I have a dog who is chihuahua basset hound and i can't bring her near other dogs but that's an exception to the rule pit bulls are kind of the rule the problem with pit bulls is if you get it's a very dangerous dog they're super powerful they're really aggressive and they don't they don't respond to pain the way a lot of other dogs do because it's been bred out of them like if you follow the way they breed dogs for fighting when dogs fight if they back away if they cower they were killed that was the whole michael vick thing yeah is that they had killed all these dogs that quit in fights so when you have all of that reinforcement genetically and you're dealing with a breed that's been raised like this for hundreds

and hundreds of generations you're dealing with an incredibly aggressive draw dog with a really high kill drive and when these dogs with high prey drives are given to irresponsible people that's when you're getting all babies getting killed little kids getting killed dogs getting killed i mean it is breed specific. But, I mean, that's also the same train of thought that people, you know, if you can put on a powdered wig and say that about, quote unquote, the Negro. No, you couldn't. I mean, that was the same.

Because they weren't bred for fighting and killing. If you bred a bunch of people just for fighting and killing, yeah, you can make that distinction. But pit bulls were bred for fighting. I mean, that's what they were bred for. That's why they look that way. I mean, this is a thing that's been done. That's recent, though.

They used to be. Hundreds and hundreds of generations. It's not that recent. No, I mean, they used to be, you know, the pit bull was America's sweetheart. Yes, it was. During World War I. Yeah, you know, Petey from the Little Rascals had the pit bull, you know, whatever it was. It was almost America's mascot, by the way, before the eagle.

Yeah, and I think the problem is also is that if a dog looks like a pitbull, because pitbull actually isn't even a breed. It's, what is it, American something terrier is the actual breed that people are talking about. Well, it was an American bulldog mixed with a terrier. Yeah. Terriers are more aggressive. And then they made the new breed. Yeah. But if you get a bloodline from one that is a fighting dog, and this is not someone, I love pit bulls. I have friends that have pit bull. I love them. They're the sweetest, most friendly dog. If handled correctly. They still have a problem being aggressive with other dogs. A lot of them do.

Yeah. And they're really powerful dogs and in the hands of the wrong people. We're not talking about labs, okay? When you have a lab, labs are like universally loving and nice. You can get the exception to the rule, you get a bad lab, but overall Labrador Retrievers are really friendly, easygoing dogs. So when someone has a lab, you go, oh, he's got a lap. When someone has a pit bull, there's a fucking reason why people go, oh, great. He's got a pit bull. Yeah. Because a lot of them are fucking crazy. A lot. Well, there, and I think it, I think it boils down to who is handling the dog and the idea of if you, I like, I hate when someone is like, I'm thinking of getting a pit bull. It's like, well,

either you need to know everything about it, and you get one or you don't well You have to have a yard that can contain that dog for sure You have to be on top of it when it comes to training it you have to really be aware You have to read books on it. You should probably seek help with a professional the behavioral specialist with dogs But even then if some dog threatens your dog or growls around your dog, it's likely that your dog's going to clamp a hold of its neck and that dog's going to get fucked up. But that's also why I'm a huge proponent of leash laws. I think, by the way, if LA, fuck these parking tickets, leash laws, like you enforce leash laws and we will have more money

than any city in the world. Right. Yeah. Well, I guess. I mean, how many people really walk around with their dog without a leash? Is that really a problem? I couldn't. I don't know if I've ever walked my dog without running into someone who had an off-leash dog. Yeah. That's irresponsible. Unless you're on a trail or something like that. But even then, I had a...

So I was walking my dogs on this trail on a leash park in, I think it was Fryman. And these two huge dogs come bounding at us right and now look maybe they're playful one of mine's not one of mine is a fucking terror when it comes to other dogs and so immediately we pick them up and this lady starts lecturing us about how you're not socializing your dogs correctly and they'll never learn and i was like well if you want my dog to bite your dog, I can put her back down if you'd like. But like, that's why.

They'll never learn. Yeah. People whose lives are a mess always love correcting people. Yeah. You need to get your shit together. I call it, uh, incorrecting. Incorrecting. And it's like, thanks for incorrecting me.

Yeah. You need to socialize your dog. Well, first of all, it's a little dog that you can pick up and big dogs are running around. Yeah. You probably should pick them up. Yeah. Dogs like to bite little dogs. They do it all the time. Yeah. This dog looks like a rabbit. Yeah. Especially if it's the wrong kind of dog, you know, like Huskies. Huskies are Akitas, you know, like real aggressive dogs. There are so many people. There was one in my old neighborhood. We're walking our dogs and all of a sudden this

dog comes charging at us. And it was like a little dog. And so, you know, we pick our dogs, and my wife yells, leash your damn dog. And the guy goes, this is a public space. And I go, yeah, that's why you leash your dog. But where was this? Just this little lawn of an apartment complex. Oh, yeah. Like, just a place where people walk their dogs all the time.

Do you believe in leashing your dogs on trails and stuff too like when you're in parks? I mean if it is a non leash place Then that's fine If it's a leash place the problem is is that if someone's dog is leashed and someone's dog isn't leashed That's a bad way for them to meet right because one dog feels trapped and right so it's a bad expectation So if I know that they're gonna be non leash dogs there I'm fine because I know and I'm prepared and I'm ready, you know, and the dog is prepared and et cetera. But if like all of a sudden a dog just comes out of the woods, like that's not, that's not safe. Yeah, that's true. They're not robots.

Right. You know, they're not. Well, there's so much variety in the way dogs behave and the way dogs treat other dogs and other people. It's always like, what's this dog like? Here comes a dog. What are we dealing with? Yeah, exactly. They really don't know.

Yeah, I have no idea. And I know that even when I stop for them on the road, I know that's dangerous to do because you have no idea if that dog is going to try to bite you. Have you been bit? I haven't. Really? Yeah, I keep a slip lead in the car. You constantly keep a- I just have a slip lead in my trunk.

Wow. I've seen so many of them, and I can't tell you how many times where I'm like, I wish I had something to put around this dog. And when you capture them, then when you put them in your car, what do you do? You just bring them right to a shelter? Well, so far, I actually have not had that happen. Usually, it is either... Like, one time, there was someone else there that happened to work for rescue that also stopped.

You know, one time, there was was a like a pet store right nearby so i kind of like brought the dog into the pet store and like they were able to hold him while uh while you know the owner came huh so i actually haven't but oh no you know the one time yeah i brought it i brought a dog to in louisville i brought a dog to a shelter uh the one that uh this past week where like i you know put her in car. And then I had to be super careful and disinfect everything, because you never know what the dog has. And I have a dog, and so I just basically, I had my buddy, because I had my dog with me when I saw the other dog. So I had my buddy, we were like half a mile from the hotel, so he just walked back to the hotel with my dog. And then I just, you know, drove the other dog to the shelter. And then you just hope someone adopts it you just put it on social media

And you hope yeah if you pick up a dog that has fleas and the fleas get in the carpet of your car Yeah, well, but but that's the thing I've given up on flea prevention really like it's something where I give my dogs the medicine For it, but like California has such a fucking flea problem that there's nothing you can do like after a certain amount like every Every dog here has fleas. Really? Yeah. It's... Some react to it worse than others. My dogs don't have fleas.

But there's... Look, you live in a special place. You live in a magical cloud above Los Angeles. A magical cloud of flea-less dogs. Yeah. Yeah. The PETA killing thing is... It always fucks with me. It's amazing

to me that people will justify it also. There's video of them going to a porch and like leading someone's dog off their porch and taking it and killing it within a couple hours. Yeah, and why do they do that? Why do they lead it off the porch? Again, they want to eradicate it. They just don't want

pets. They just don't want pets. They just don't want pets Yeah So I think it's better to kill the pet than allow the pet to be with the person that they love and to lead a life of slavery so bizarre Just that kind of radical thinking but that's just the case with everything right? I mean you have your reasonable people and then you have your people that take that to the utmost and take it to the furthest people and then you have your people that take that to the utmost and take it to the furthest furthest point of rational thinking to the point where you're like you're killing all the dogs you

capture one of my favorite things that i've seen was uh john stewart showed a video of people merging to the i think it was like the holland tunnel or lincoln tunnel or something and it was like one car one car one car one car one like you're supposed to do with merge. And every now and then someone would drive up on the shoulder and go around all of them and just be like, fuck everybody but me, you know? Yeah. And that is who creates terrible policy. That is who shouts from the rooftops about that. Like that is who most of us will just drive one car, one car and understand that that's that that's what you do because that's what you want to have done to you. There's always that one guy that's late for work every day. Yeah.

It's like, fuck, I saw a guy do that the other day. He hit the breakdown lane near a light. A light was about to turn green and he got into the side lane where people park and just gunned it through the intersection. Yeah. Almost plowed into people and then you see him speeding up ahead because he was probably late for work it was early in the morning you know there's so many people that every day they barely make it to work on time and it's it's like there's adrenaline rush they're addicted to they don't even realize it they're supposed to leave at 7 10 but meanwhile at 7 15 7 20 fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck and they run out the door and it's that's the race that's the that's

where they're getting their chart they're not getting chased by saber-toothed tigers, but they are getting their adrenaline fix. Because that's the danger. Another thing that, another Chris Bowers story, another comic was asking him about, because he drives around at gigs all the time, and someone asked him about like, because he said, oh yeah, I never speed.

And he's like, what do you mean you never speed? How do you get there? And he's like, well, I'm in my my 40s now so i wake up 15 minutes earlier and then i still get there because that's all it is like at the same time it's it's hard not to speed because when you're like when you have these straightaways when there are no cars near you and it's like why the fuck is the speed limit 60 here are you kidding me i can go 100 safely easy but at the fuck is the speed limit 60 here? Are you kidding me? I can go 100 safely easy. But at the same time, the idea of like, well, I just, what are you gonna save?

Unless you're doing like a 10 hour drive. You're not saving anything significant. Right, but then there's the idea of the man telling you how fast you can go. Yeah. Fuck him. Man. Well, I think you should be able to unlock levels, like on your driver's license. That's a good idea. Like, I could get should be able to unlock levels, like on your driver's license. That's a good idea.

Like, I could get a 75 mile an hour speed limit. I could easily drive at 75 with no problem. Right, if you're like a race car driver. If you know how to really drive and you're super responsible with your choices of lane changing and things along those lines. Yeah. You should be able to drive faster. The problem is, how do you enforce it? You have to pull the person over and then maybe you get a sticker on your car or something.

Right. That's good. I'd even drive an ugly car. Like I would drive like, give me a purple fender. You know, give me something ridiculous that the cops can easily see and then go, okay, that's a 75 mile an hour guy. And if you text in your car, if you text while you're driving, when you're actually moving, I mean, how many times have I looked over and I saw this car acting weird and they're

texting? You should just, you should lose your license for a week. Here's the better question. Yeah, fuck. When do we pee on this show? Oh, you have to pee? Go ahead. Go should lose your license for a week. Here's the better question. When do we pee on this show? Oh, you have to pee? Go ahead. Go pee now. We're going to wrap this up soon anyway. I've got a boogie soon. Alright, I'll pee quick. Go ahead. Go pee. Steve Hofstetter, ladies and gentlemen. If you want to see that video,

you can find it on his YouTube channel. Actually, if you just look up Steve Hofstetter destroys a heckler, you'll find it. Easy to find, but he's... He's got a couple multi-million view heckler. You'll find it. Easy to find. But he's got a couple multimillion view heckler videos. Wow. Maybe it's him.

Maybe he baits these people. We don't need to watch them. But he's probably baiting these motherfuckers. Good dude, though. But crazy traveling around with fucking leashes. Yeah. Kidnapping dogs and yelling at PETA people. Young motherfucking. It happened to me one time when I was walking around Runyon.

I had my headphones on and a dog just came running up behind me. It scared me. Whatever, just a dog. And then I kind of like, get away dog, get away. Shoo, shoo, kind of thing. And then there was a girl behind me. But it came back like five minutes later and was jumping at me and barking.

And then I was like, get the... I kind of got pissed. You know what I mean? It was like she was taking her dog and picking it up and getting mad at me because barking. And then I was like, get the fuck... Get your fucking dog. I kind of got pissed, you know what I mean? It was like she was taking her dog and picking it up and getting mad at me because I got mad at the dog. Well, people get mad that you don't know their dog is cool. Yeah. Like, how do I know? Your dog could be a fucking maniac, crazy bitch.

I don't even know her. I'm talking to her, which is really hair. But what do I do? If I kick it and I'm an asshole now because your dog's going to bite me, I got to take a bite? Well, that's also the problem with running with headphones on. But running with headphones on is so much more inspirational than running without headphones on. I just found out, too, there's a cool thing on Spotify.

You can have it set to your pace, your beats per minute. It'll play like a symphonic movie, like action theme song stuff. Really? So you can make your running to a... You're the best around. Sort of like that. It'll play that kind of stuff. Really? Like, you're running to a... You're the best around. Sort of like that. It'll play that kind of stuff. Nothing's gonna ever keep you down.

We're talking about running with headphones on a dog, came up to him barking at him, and, you know, that is disturbing. It happens. Yeah, it can. If you're in the wrong place at the wrong time, and, you know, obviously people do get bit, you know? Fucking German Shepherds, man.

Those little fuckers. My dog got bit by a German Shep... little fuckers my dog got bit by german my daughter rather got bit by german german shepherd recently these people have this dog and i'm like this is not a regular dog you can't just have this fucking dog in your yard you need to teach this dog and they're like oh well she's a little rambunctious and it's like i go no this is a working dog this is a working dog do you understand like this is a really smart dog it's going to figure out a way out of your yard and when kids are fucking with it's gonna bite them yeah this is what's gonna happen unless you teach it like

you have to take this thing now when it's eight months old and you got to really train it because it's already fucking 70 pounds it's already a big-ass dog like you're gonna you have a responsibility when you have a dog like this this is not this is not like a bulldog that'll just sit there and is happy to just drink water and chill out this is a super active really aggressive dog yeah it needs to think it needs to and you need to give it puzzles yeah maybe you can get that you can get the birth control pill this is sort of the same thing along the same lines we're talking about with pit bulls like these animals are bred for a very specific activity in order to discourage that activity

boy you're gonna have to fucking throw a activity, boy, you're going to have to fucking throw a lot of tennis balls. You're going to have to get this dog a lot of exercise. You're going to have to give this dog a lot of activity, a lot of stuff that they can occupy their mind with. It's like humans being bred for office jobs. Yeah, exactly.

Dude, you just fucking nailed it. Steve Hofstadter, we've got to wrap this up. I've got to get out of here. If I knew knew that I would have held the pee for a little longer it's no big deal dude this is a casual show yeah so where can people see you where can they see you live where can they find your twitter is Steve Hofstetter

H-O-F-F-S-T-E no 1F H-O-F-S-T-E-T-T-E-R ok sorry that's ok it happens all the time My YouTube is just YouTube The Hofstetter But you can also just Google it And I do, I have a podcast called Major League Podcast

Which is where I interview baseball players Oh, you're a baseball fan? Yeah, huge baseball fan Oh, cool, cool, cool Yeah, I'm doing a thing now where I'm throwing out first pitches It's like a thing Oh, nice It's like my favorite thing to do

Well, listen, man You're a funny, funny dude Thank you I love the Heckler video. It's awesome. I love that it's blown up for you and you're getting all this attention and all this cool shit's happening for you. You're a part of that, man. And, you know, you tweeting out, life has changed for me from

six weeks ago. It's crazy. It's awesome. I love it. I love it. Congratulations. Thank you. And more success to you, sir. Thanks for having me on. Alright. My pleasure. My pleasure. Alright. Well, that's it for the week, you fucks. So, we'll see you soon. We'll be back next week and much love to you, sir. Thanks for having me on. All right. My pleasure. My pleasure. All right. Well, that's it for the week, you fucks. So we'll see you soon. We'll be back next week and much love to all.

Thank you. Bye.