The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe - 224: Rick Bitzelberger—"I Didn't Get It!"

Episode Date: November 2, 2021

Mike has a very serious conversation with a very funny guest about a very serious topic that turns out to be very funny.

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work for you too. Post a job for free at ZipRecruiter.com slash row. And watch what happens. Odds are, you'll find a human resource that just happens to be a great fit for your company in 24 hours or less. ZipRecruiter.com slash row. ZipRecruiter.com.com. truter.com slash row. The smartest way to hire. Hey guys, it's the way I heard it. Episode number 224. This one's called I didn't get it.

I didn't get it. That's the punchline to a joke that you'll hear in about 10 minutes from now. You may or may not find it funny. It's also the title of this episode, which you also may or may not find funny because humor is a hard thing to explain. What I find funny, you might find offensive or stupid or childish or simply unfunny.

But even more interesting, I think, is the fact that we both might find the same thing funny, but for completely different reasons. The story I'm about to share, for instance, is not very funny, but that doesn't mean you won't laugh at some point along the way. The title, for instance, is a hot babe who liked it rough. Now, some people initially told me that this title, All Things Considered, was terribly, terribly clever. Others told me it was terribly, terribly sexist.

Obviously, those people didn't get it. They didn't laugh at the title of the story you're about to hear, but they might laugh after the story because my guest today is Ricky Bitzelberger, a screenwriter, dramaturge, actor, and very funny guy who I've known for the last 40 years or so, and who knows a thing or two about why some people laugh and some people don't. Full disclosure, Chuck has also known him for just as long,

so things get pretty familiar pretty quickly, which you may or may not find funny. Personally, I did. But then again, I'm the kind of guy who laughs when people fall down. Because that kind of thing is funny, unless, of course, it isn't, in which case you should feel free to say, I didn't get it. Which I think you'll agree. It is pretty daggone funny. Either way. This is the way I heard it.

Babe looked into the mirror and considered the handsome face that stared back. A strong jaw, a straight nose, an intelligent gaze, and a head full of naturally curly hair, luxurious hair, the kind of hair through which women yearned to run their fingers. Along with his trademark mustache, waxed to perfection, Babe knew he was a bit of a dandy, and that was a problem. Obviously, being handsome was not all bad. Every weekend down at the Triangle Ballroom, the girls stood in line for a chance to dance with Babe.

The waltz, the Foxtrot, the Charleston. Babe could do it all. So graceful was Babe on the dance floor, everyone assumed he would go pro. But deep down, Babe wasn't a dandy or a dancer. He was a fighter, just like his older brother. a fighter who was anxious to follow in his brother's footsteps, but apparently too handsome to do so. Moses and Samuel, on the other hand, looked like the brawlers they were.

Babe's older brothers were tough, no-nonsense men, with flat, leathery faces who gave as well as they got and had the scars to prove it. But when Babe's brothers partnered up with Lewis, another neighborhood kid who wasn't afraid to mix it up, Babe grew jealous. And when the Irish kingpin himself, Ted Healy, hired all three men to do his heavy lifting, Babe was beside himself. He pleaded to join their gang,

but they all laughed at the prospect. Forget it, said Moses. You're too pretty for this kind of work. Trust me, said Samuel. You don't want any part of Healy's action. Listen to your brothers, said Lewis. Stick with your dancing and enjoy the ladies. The boys weren't wrong. Like most bosses back in the 30s, Ted Healy's racket was held together by violence. But the profit distribution was all wrong. Healy paid his men a few hundred bucks for a night's work, while he pulled in thousands. Bab saw this injustice clearly. Why couldn't his brothers? Moses and Samuel had killed for Healy. More than once, so would Lewis. Why would they accept so much risk?

for so little reward. Babe, by to his time, watching from the shadows as Healy got rich, waiting for someone to snap. It could have been Lewis, or it could have been Moses. But it turned out to be Samuel. Early on a Saturday evening,

right before a major job, Healy showed up drunk and spoke to Samuel in a completely unprofessional way. While Samuel was in no mood, He pushed back verbally. Healy pushed back physically. And Sam lunged at Healy with murder in his eyes. But Moses held him back. Go ahead and try it, Healy slurred. You'll be finished in this town for good. Samuel considered his options. The hell with it. Life was too short to waste on men like Healy. Samuel walked away as Healy turned to Moses. Well, he said, what now? We're down a man. I'm not going out there with just a two of you. Moses looked over Healy's shoulder. What about Babe?

Right on cue, the handsome little brother walked out of the shadows and straight up to Healy, cracking his knuckles, trying to look the part. Healy roared with laughter. This one, he cackled, with his fancy hair and his fruity little mustache. It's not a chance. He won't last five minutes out there. Now it was Babe, who considered his options.

To hell with it, life was too short to waste on men like Healy. Babe pulled a razor from his back pocket and proceeded to show Ted Healy exactly what he was made of. He grabbed his victim by the hair and sliced again and again. He was relentless, remorseless, and when he was done, Moses and Lou could do nothing but stare and wonder at the carnage. in the most important audition of his life, Babe had killed. Good Lord, said Moses. You look like a dirty tennis ball.

The men regarded the pile of naturally curly hair, strewn about the backstage floor, and burst out laughing. Even Healy couldn't help but giggle. The transformation was unbelievable. Babes, once handsome head, really did look like a dirty tennis ball. A few minutes later, the mustache was also gone, and the makeover was complete. That night, Ted Healy told his usual jokes and sang his usual songs, but no one paid him much attention, because upstage, to the raucous delight of the vaudevillian crowd, Moses was beating the snod out of his little brother in the most hysterical ways imaginable, and when the violence reached a fever pitch, the ballroom dancer that could have gone pro,

did the funniest little jig anyone had ever seen. Not a waltz or a fox trot, not the Charleston or the Lindy, but a weird little two-step, followed by an elaborate flop to the ground, where he proceeded to spin himself in circles like a dreidel and spew out a litany of gibberish, not unlike that of a deranged eight-year-old.

The crowd went wild. And for the second time that evening, Babe killed. It must have been strange for Lou, the one they called Larry, as he played his violin in the midst of so much cartoonish brutality. Strange too for Samuel, the one they called Shemp, as he watched his little brother not only replace him on stage, but go on to appear in over 150 films.

Stranger still for Moses, the one they called Mo. He would spend the next 20 years beating the hell out of his own flesh and blood, the one he said was too pretty to get involved with the family business. But strangest of all, perhaps, for the handsome lad whose movie star good looks nearly kept him from becoming the great comedian he was destined to be. When Babe Horwitz finally realized the cost of fame was nothing less than the price of his own vanity, he chopped off all that luxurious hair, along with his cherished mustache. Only then did he become the most famous punching bag of all time, the one they called Curly.

As for the man who brought them all together, well, his name might be a bit more familiar if he hadn't gotten so greedy, which is why very few people today recall the first half of that once famous vaudeville act, originally known as Ted Healy and his three stooges. Anyway, that's the way I heard it. How are you, Rick? I'm doing fine. How are you? What I wanted to say was, I was up for the lead in the Broadway production of the gypsy lover.

What happened? What happened? I didn't get it. Thank you. Okay, that's funny. That's an ongoing gag on this stupid podcast, and it makes me laugh. Why is that funny? Explain why that's funny, and then explain why the Three Stooges are funny.

Well, it's funny because, It's a surprise. It's a twist. That's the way you do funny is you make a twist. You make a surprise. And I think a lot of that, if it's self-deprecating, it works even better. Because that guy doing that audition clearly is never going to get a part ever again. But he thinks he's pompous. He thinks he knows it, but he takes his own air out of himself. Yes, there's a twist and there's a surprise. But to me, the thing that makes it funny is he never backs off of the tone he would assume. Had he gotten it, right? Right.

In his mind, he's booking everything. In reality, he's booking nothing. So, do it again from the start. You ask me, how am I? Hey, how's it going? Ah, I was up for the lead of the Broadway production of the Gypsy Lover. That's good. What happened?

I didn't get it. Okay, right. So there's a... I stay confident. Do me. Do it with me. Chuck, how's it going? Pretty good.

I was up for the lead. lead role in the Broadway production of the gypsy lover. That's nice. What happened? I got it. Not funny. Funny. It's not as funny. Not funny. So, obviously, the three of us have been laughing together. I'm not exactly sure why, but for nearly a hundred years.

Yes. A hundred years of combined stupidity trying to figure out what it is that ultimately is funny. And we still don't have really any. idea and this Three Stooges episode was well received when it first dropped and people still seem to like it, but it always starts a conversation with, right? You're like, you're either a three Stooges person or you're not. And if you don't get it, it's the stupidest stuff ever. And if you do, it's the funniest thing ever. That I can't explain. You know what? There's also, there's a gender component to it as well because it's very rare to meet women who enjoy the Three Stooges for some

reason. And I think there's a level of humor that guys are more drawn to, you know, the farting, the burping, the bodily functions, all of that is funny to us. Whereas to the other side, it's more crass, which makes it funny. And I think there's different degrees of funny, especially in the world of film, you have all your subsets, you have slapstick, you have farce, you have satire, You have romantic comedy, you have character comedy. And within each of those genres, you can have the breakout stuff. So if you think about it, nobody does slapstick anymore. Hardly ever.

But at that time, when the Three Stooges were doing it, they literally saved Columbia Studios because of they were so popular. And the same thing can be said for Abbott and Costello. They saved Universal Studios because of their humor. And this was, you know, end of the 30s, beginning of World War II. People just love that slapstick humor. And then we kind of evolved away from that today. The humor that I think we all appreciate now is a bit more cerebral.

And it's a bit more character-based, like The Office or Ted Lasso. It's great characters put in a situation and seeing how they react. You almost anticipate how they're going to react, and that's funny for you as well, even though you already know, but when a character can surprise you, then it becomes even more funny and more engaging. So was it surprising back in the day, and I know you weren't born then? When you look at slapstick today, so much of it looks ridiculous and one-dimensional, but there must have been something about it when it landed when it did

that resonated in such a huge way. Well, you have to go back to silent movies, because that's really where Slapstick was born, And that was something that you can communicate and get a laugh without telling a joke. So if you took a pie in the face, exactly. If you took a pie in the face, you took a rake to the face, you fell down, a building fell on top of you, whatever. That was funny because it was happening and it was ridiculous and it was just crazy. And it was something you never see.

Because we tell jokes all the time in our personal lives, but we don't go up and slap each other as much as we would like to. We don't poke each other in the eye. run a saber saw over us. That's the kind of ridiculous that you just laugh thinking about it. There was a great... The claw hammer up the nose. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

You know the movie. It's a mad, mad, mad, mad world. Three Stooges. Three Stooges had a cameo in it, but they did nothing. All they were dressed as firemen. And it was a scene where it was an airport and things were going to crash and all that, and the camera

just panned across the three stooges without them saying a word. But we all are trained to say, oh, if the three stooges are there, it's going to be funny. And they didn't do anything. Right. But we still laugh because we knew it. We knew what to expect.

Right. It's like the Mel Brooks scene with Marcel Marceau. In silent movie, Marcel Marceau is, you know, a mime in real life. And he's the only one who speaks in the movie, which is exactly. Brilliant. Dool do, do do do do do do do. Dumb. Well, are you sick of it yet?

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Right. Mel Brooks, when he did his string of movies, Blazing Saddles, High Anxiety, Young Frankenstein, those would all be considered farcical, taking things to the extreme. Again, those kind of things aren't done today. The last probably successful, one was airplane or the scary movie series.

It's just outrageousness for the sake of outrageousness. Permission to put myself way, way outside of my lane for a moment. But when you said that slapstick was more or less gone, I wonder, did you see any of that in a little show called Dirty Jobs that your old buddy got on the air once upon a time? Because I've given it a lot of thought and the difference between a high-minded mission. Now, Dirty Jobs had a high-minded mission, right? But there was a lot of pies and a lot of faces. And the faces were typically mine. and the pies were usually made of crap or something worse.

Is that not slapsticky? It totally is. And what's interested about that is I would call that situational slapstick because it happened in the moment you didn't plan it. You walked in and if a cow crapped on your face, that's funny. And you just went with it. And it's like keep the cameras rolling. No matter what you do, do not cut.

And it's your reaction. It's your tape. Your slow burn or whatever. And that makes it funny. that's a happy accident. But when you think about classic slapstick, these are well-thought-out routines because you could really kill somebody.

Right, with a saw. With the Miss Polk. Yeah. They're sketched out impeccably. And one thing I think a lot of people don't know is Laurel and Hardy, again, great slapstick duo. But Laurel wrote most of those gags. And he plunded them out, and he directed them,

and he did all of that work. And Hardy, who ironically was also nicknamed Babe, would just show up and say, tell me what to do, and Laura would tell him and direct him. He was the real brains of the operation. But there's something about slapstick. It's just a release.

You don't want to see anybody hurt, right? Yeah, but isn't there a bit of it where while you don't like seeing someone hurt, there's comedy that comes from it. Like, Mike, when you mentioned dirty jobs and the slapsticky stuff there, the episode that comes to my mind, you are on some island in Michigan getting snakes. And you must have gotten bitten like a half a dozen.

Is that how many times? 39. Yep, we went back. Literally 39 times. Well, every time I saw you get bit, it made me laugh hysterically, even though there was a part of me that empathized with you. Because, you know, when I saw you go on a tall building, I would get scared because I'm afraid of heights. So every time you got bit, I was like, oh, but it would make me laugh. so hard and there was one time in particular where you got bit and your head went back and your hat fell off and it was the funniest thing it was like you couldn't have planned that but it reminds me so much of the three stooges like i wish you know ill mike but why would i laugh at that because it wasn't you exactly do you know what a shlameel and a shl mazal is hussonfeffer corporated it's close it's an old yiddish thing a shlameel is the waiter that spills a soup

a shomazzo is the guy who gets the soup spilled on him. Right. And we laugh at both. Right. Because we're not getting the soup spilled on us, and we're not going to get the heat for spilling the soup. But if we can watch somebody else get it spilled on him, we're going to laugh every single time.

And that's why your dirty job stuff, like I said, it's even funnier on a different level, because it's happening in the moment. You didn't plan it. That's what makes it a surprise, an element of comedy, and also just spontaneous. And for Chuck and I, there's a kind of a personal satisfaction in having pain seemed afflict upon you. Of course. Which adds another level of comedy, which is always that.

In the off chance, I don't make this clear in the preamble, people should know that from 1979, 1980, and 1981, the three of us, Mike, Chuck, and Ricky, were all at overly senior high school at the same time. Rick was the class of 79, Chuck was class of 81. I was class of 80. I was in between you guys. It's funny because all of us in our senior years, in our own way, became sort of some version of the big man on campus, right? Yeah. Right. Right. There was comedy in that, too, in a strange way, maybe only in hindsight, but when I just look back at the things that happened to us collectively in our various positions at overly. And then over time, right, it's such a kick to sit down and look at the two of you in my cheap

hotel room right now coming out of my computer going back 40 years. It's incredible. Did you ever do the morning announcements? I did. We all did. Yes, yes. And so for the uninitiated, every morning at school, there were the morning. announcements and the morning announcements was basically us telling the school what was coming up in

that day it was you know here's the bake sale and the tickets are on sale for the show and the JV sports they're playing or whatever and that was sort of us being sort of little DJs but for like two minutes at a time and I remember me and I guess you guys did the same thing we had to write the announcements you were given the bullet points and then you write them and so we would always try and do something funny, do funny voices, doing stuff, and had no idea what the reaction was, because we're in the room with the microphone. It's being broadcast to the whole school.

No clue whether or not anybody is saying anything. But didn't you get in trouble for a morning announcement, Chuck? Yes, I did, the baseball team. I would just slip in non-sequiters. At some point in high school, I discovered the non-sequitur and how that could be funny. And so I had sort of my DJ voice on, and I was saying Mr. King will be conducting a choral arrangement at 3 o'clock.

And for the overly baseball team, the world will end at 5.30. And I just said that. And I had no idea. I had never been to a baseball game or anything. But for the rest of the day, people were coming to me and saying, you better watch out because the baseball team is coming after you, because they had a game at 530 against our rivals, Kenwood High. And so they were really pissed.

See, not funny. You got to note, you got to read the room. Yeah, it's impossible to read the room when you're not in the room. You're in a little box in front of a microphone. The room is out there. I was going to say it's another thing which is interesting about comedy and movies and to a certain extent on TV show. What is funny is that you get an instant reaction when you're funny, when you're in front of an audience. You know right away it worked, as opposed to a drama, which you have no idea, if any,

buddy is affected by it or removed by it. But if you do a joke, if you do a bit, if you walk into a wall or whatever, you get a laugh, boom, you've got it. And I think that's why a lot of people want to do comedy, especially like on TikTok. It's flooded with people just doing funny stuff just because they know they will get that instant reaction. It's the same guys that are telling jokes at the bar and the VFWRO are now doing TikToks and telling the same kind of jokes and doing funny bits and all this kinds of stuff and big setups and just craziness. You don't get that same instant laugh, but you get the emoji laugh. Yeah.

And that's just as precious. Well, sure it is. I just talked to one of the executives over at Discovery the other day. We were just talking in general about the business and what's happening in the industry and the way everything is contracting. And she said, look, our biggest competition right now, we're not looking at the world the way we used to. it's TikTok. More people are spending more time watching the local prankster tell his joke or do her thing. Right. Then they are watching TV. So like the venue has changed in a way that's sort of democratized and given everybody a chance to be a nut.

And it's amazing. Are you on TikTok? I am on TikTok. And I don't make videos because I haven't gotten there yet. But I certainly watch a lot of them. And not only can you do something funny on TikTok and do something goofy, but now you can do a duet with someone who's already done something funny. And then you can comment on that in a split screen, and you're making jokes off of what they're doing. It's a lot of content. And it's also, in a way, it's content that can only last at the most for three minutes.

So if you can't score your laugh, like in the first minute, you're already scrolling by. You're not interesting enough in the first minute. That's kind of dangerous to me, I think, because it's shrinking our collective attention spans. And that doesn't allow for a different kind of comedy where you have to pay attention, where you just have to take it in. It's the rush to the punchline that is tragic. And I think a lot of people recently realized that when Norm MacDonald died. Right?

Right. Because that guy never rushed to a punchline. That guy could tell a shaggy dog story better than anybody, so good, in fact, that he actually was given permission to do it. You can't go on the Tonight Show and talk for 10 minutes and tell a story that really is going nowhere at all. It's the funniest stuff ever because for me, I look at the host and I see their eyes glaze over and they're scared to death that he's not going to land the plane.

And that's funny. Right. But of course he always does. That's a whole different art firm about funny is telling jokes because when you start to get into stand-up and comedians and that kind of stuff, there was a lot of comedians desperately wanted to transfer into sitcoms. That's where Tim Allen came from. Seinfeld. Those successes are very rare. But what it's based on is them creating a persona on stage that can be done.

in a sitcom world. Jerry Seinfeld was, what's with socks getting lost in the dryer? And he was able to bring that over to his character, the same thing. He was observing things, and things didn't work right for him. Tim Allen did his whole stick with the power tools for home improvement. Once you find that character as a comedian,

then you can carry it through and run with it. And it's also why you look at someone like Steve Carell, who went from being the news correspondent on The Daily Show, that was a persona, that he kind of tweaked a little bit to be Michael in the office. But now he's really successfully past that and has now gone into much more deeper kind of character, kind of dramatic stuff.

He's not the silly guy anymore. Yeah. It's a great transition for an actor. But it goes the other way, too, Rick. Like, what happened to the other guy? God, I'll never get on his show now, if I say this, but not Corell, but Colbert. Right.

So Colbert is hysterical as the goof lampooning Bill O'Reilly in the Colbert rapport, right? Right. But then he gets a shot at actual reality. Now he's got his own show. And he's doing, I guess, an impersonation of a late-night host. That transition for me went the other way. He was funnier, more incisive, and more. important at playing a version of a goof that was being lampooned.

Right. You know? That was a hard turn for him too because he was in essence the same person but he had to switch and now he's like now I'm the real guy and now what I'm saying to you is I'm purposely telling you a joke. I'm purposely doing a bit. Don't take it for real. I'm sure there were a lot of people that did the Colbert report that thought he was genuine and the real deal. But that's what made it funny for the people who were in on the joke. Right. Being in on the joke. Yeah.

Well, see, that's an interesting thing, too, is some jokes work best when the audience is in on them. Because we get to play along and we get to react off of what we anticipate is a reaction. There's also a part of comedy and being funny that you kind of have to do it for a reaction. If some guys walking down the street and does something, It doesn't matter, but it's the reaction to that silliness, that's the joke. Yeah. The classic is when Harry met Sally in the deli, and Sally does her fake orgasm. It's, I'll have what she's happening.

That's the big laugh. But it's based off the reaction of that. And it's also Billy Crystal squirming because they're out in public and she's doing this unabashedly. You're laughing because you feel embarrassed for him. It's really about reactions. That goes back to your dirty job stuff too, because when you get cow poo in the face, it helps when somebody reacts to that, whether they're cracking up laughing or it's Barski doing barsky. You kind of need a foil. You need to play off for comedy to work best. You need to play off with someone else. You know, you guys do that when you do your little comedy stuff. And for the listeners at home, I put comedy in air quotes. We're not discursionals. You kind of fall into that, the kind of straight man and kind of the idiot savant without the

savant part. And some of the stuff I've done on camera with you, Mike, is the same thing. Like when we went to the farm and you made me... You were naked in a cornfield. Right. And standing in a pile of cow poo. Right. Yeah.

Rick became sort of the avatar for the average disconnected American who had, no idea where their food came from. And to try and illustrate that graphically as quickly as possible, I suggested he get naked and slowly emerge from a cornfield. Just stick his big round, bald head out of the corn and say something. To this day, I think it's a very, very funny moment. What's really funny is I never signed a release and you were hearing from my lawyers. Listen, you can only be extremely funny when you let down your guard and you have to to stop caring about how you look. That's right.

That's right. You just, you can't. There aren't many pretty people who do a lot of comedy. Occasionally they can do stuff. There's a lot that they don't want to put themselves at risk of looking foolish. You know, ironically, when you make somebody laugh, it could be just a chakral, it could be a guffal, it could be whatever. It's such a great gift to just do that, just make somebody laugh and then walk away.

I don't know what it is, but it just, it changes your mood. It changes your whole attitude. And if you can do that on a regular basis, then you're kind of ahead of the game. And I think that's sort of how you make that connection, Mike, is because if you were to do dirty jobs earnestly, seriously, and cut out all the cow poo on your face, it wouldn't be real because that's what happens. And I think there's a genuineness to what that is that people appreciate. And it gives them a smile, and you can't go wrong with that.

Well, there's a lot of humor in things that aren't comedies. And unfortunately, not all comedies are funny. It just completely depends on what your expectations are. And back when Dirty Jobs started, there was no real reality TV, but there was the expression reality TV, which logical people would assume would be something real. That doesn't mean that anymore. But that was a really honest show, and people trusted us to show them the truth of the thing to your earlier point.

We never staged anything. We never really faked anything. It was not supposed to be a comedy, but because the central figure was constantly uncomfortable, it became a funny thing. What's doubly funny now is that people expect me to do that

for the rest of my life. Bite the testicles off sheep, get kicked in their head by a yak, all of these things. And I'm not complaining. It's just not funny anymore. By the way, Mad Bad World, the funniest moment in that whole movie was what?

You must choose. Wow, that's tough. The very end when Ethel Merman just flops right on her butt, after screaming everybody, right? Yeah, she's in the hospital ward, Spencer Tracy's in traction, all of them are laid up, and she comes in and starts yelling,

somebody throws a banana peel, and she slips on it. It's the classic, Of course. Slapstick gag. And she takes a Brody. She lands flat on her back, not her ass, right? She lays flat out on her back.

Yes, yes. And they start laughing. And when Spencer Tracy finally breaks down in tears, he's laughing so hard, that's funny. That's comedy. It took a while to get there because she spent the whole movie just haranguing and blah, blah, blah, blah. And you just, please, would you just shut up? Yeah, now I'm not going to go watch that movie. It's so good.

It's a Norm MacDonald kind of burn, right? It's almost like an anti-climax, which I love. But the best anti-climax in any movie, I think, is probably in The Shining. Right. When Scatman Cruthers starts to realize little Danny's in horrible trouble, horrible trouble, and he tries to call the Overlook Hotel and he can't get through, and he tries again and he can't get through, and he realizes the only way he's going to help us if he gets in his car,

so he drives all the way from Florida, all the way to Colorado, up in the mountains. Kubrick cuts back again and again and again and again. And he's driving through the snow and he gets out of his car, and that he gets in the snow cat, and he gets all the way up to the overlook. And now it's like he's built this up perfectly. And so whatever's going to happen

is going to be an unbelievable confrontation between Scott Man Crothers and Jack Nicholson. It's going to be a fight to end all fights. And what's he do? He takes an axe in the chest the second he walks in the door. Now, this is not funny, but if you look at it in terms of slapstick,

that's exactly what it is. That's a shaggy dog. That's a shaggy dog. That's it's an anti-climax. It's a shaggy dog. It's a slow burn. It's the darkest version of the three stooges. It's the gag that goes wrong.

And now the band saw actually does go through your head. And as a viewer, like that to me, It's one of my favorite moments in any movie because what Kubrick does in that moment is tell you that whatever happens next is completely out of your purview to imagine. Because if you didn't see that coming, what do you think's going to happen next?

And that was delicious, man. There was another movie, a shark movie, with Samuel Jackson called Deep Blue or something like that, where there was a movie, on a station and it's in the middle of the water and the sharks are coming, whatever. And he comes down and he gives this big speech to these people and it's like

in total Samuel I Jackson. It's like he could have gone from the set of pulp fiction to this character giving this speech. Inspiration. Standing by Yes, we're going to do this. We're going to take care of this. Throwing it all in there. And right at the end of the speech, the shark comes out of the water, grabs him and drags him back in. He's done

for the movie. He's done. You know, it's like, that's the movie I want to watch. But this is the thing I wanted to get at. I guess there's a pretty bright line between Mad, Mad, Bad, Bad World and The Shining, and deep blue and any of the Three Stooges episodes. But it's the violence, right? It's the violence in the Three Stooges, and it's the violence in the scenes that we just talked about that's really not so different. I mean, poor Ethel Merman, you could have broke her back. It's one of the funniest things I've ever seen.

Right, right. It's just so much depends. Before that, all of those guys were flung off a building and landed in a fountain and flung off of ladders and flung onto telephone wires. And they were just beat the crap out of it. And they're all in bodycast and they're all in pain. And we're laughing hysterically at it. Right. You know?

Right. Because there but for the grace of God. And they're alive. It's not funny if they die. No. No. It's not. And that's why going back to TikTok, or, you know,

even YouTube to a certain degree, you can Google in people falling on ice. And you're not supposed to laugh at that, but you do. Do do do do do do do do do dumb. My guest today, Tom Albanyce, is an American giant. And I'll tell you why. Tom understands on a fundamental level that the business of mining is a non-negotiable prerequisite of our civilization and our economic independence, just like the business of making things. American Giant knows this, which is why they committed themselves 16 years ago to make all their excellent clothing right here in this country.

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So that looks like this. And so maybe it's funny, too. Okay. I got to tell you this, guys. I don't know if you saw this episode, but during Dirty Jobs, we were up in the UP, Upper Peninsula of Michigan at the Sioux Locks, and it's snowing, and it's about zero degrees, and we're inside trying to get warm. And all of a sudden, this guy outside fires up the snowblower, and he starts doing work.

And on the show, you're not allowed to do, I'm the only one who's supposed to be, working. So I'm like, damn it, why is he doing, I need to be doing this job. So I run out of the warming hut and I start chasing this guy in the snowblower to catch up with him and say, hey, hey, no, look, come on, I got to do this. Well, Doug picks up his camera and he starts running after me and he's filming it. And Barski and Troy, they pick up their cameras and they start running after Doug. So immediately, this thing is a goat rodeo. But Doug is filming me and he's catching up and he's on ice. He's on snowy ice and he's taking these long, weird, like lizard steps. And thankfully, somebody had the whole shot in a big wide because Doug's feet flew out from under him and he hit

the deck just like Ethel Merman did, except he had a camera on his shoulder. So the camera shatters, all right? Lens explodes. It's one of the worst falls I've ever seen. And he was fine. Camera was totally destroyed. But in the edit, I just said to the editor, look, we have to use it. obviously, but the way we're using it right now, like the viewer might care too much about Doug's well-being, and I can't have that happen. So just put it in a loop and put in the Three Stooges' sounds and just start cutting it. Over and over and over. I still think to this day it's one of the funniest things I've ever seen on TV.

How many cameras have you broken on that show? A lot. I mean, I can think of six events off the top of my head that results. resulted in a totally destroyed camera. But the big moment, and another piece of absolutely unscriptable comedy, is working all day at the alligator farm all day long, okay? And we're going to release about 50 small alligators back to the wild. And we're in one of those airboats, and we're cruising along in the airboat.

And at the last minute, I get on the chase boat with Jerry, and I have my own camera. So I'm filming the two of us. Meanwhile, they've got this other boat with all the alligators on it, and it's overloaded. And the guys are standing four on each side, and it's important to keep the thing balanced. They're going around the corner, and we're right behind them. And Barski walks from left to right and changes the balance of the boat. Threw off the way. Yep.

And the front of that airboat just went under the water, and the whole thing flipped over. and in a second the Achiafalaya swamp is filled with my crew 50 live alligators swimming in every direction an upside down airboat and Jerry Savois with me on the chase by and this is his boat this is his life this is his career I'm the only one with a camera that's working and so same deal I said look we have to put it in the show but what we have to do next is just a quick hard cut to all of the ruined gear spread out on the sidewalk, like corpses. And we did. And see, it would have been funny with you making the phone call to the production

company go, yeah. It's another one gone. It's looking good. We got some great stuff. Let me ask you soon. Have you ever laughed so hard that you literally fell out of your seat? Yes. Yeah.

I did. Where? I actually wrote about it in the book with the same title of this podcast. I was watching Blazing Saddles. And it was 19, probably 73. It came out in the theater. I went with my cousin. And it was during the fart scene. It was during the fart scene around the campfire. And I was just a kid. I was 11 or 12, but I had just never ever seen adults behave like that. And I had never seen adults in a theater laugh at anything like that. And the whole thing, I became hysterical. I literally fell into the aisle. I was on my hands and knees in the

aisle with my fist beating the floor, laughing, just laughing out of my mind. Same thing happened to me, but with Amani Python meaning of life. When the guy exploded, I was down. I was down on the ground. What about you, Chuck? The biggest one for me was when I was living in New York going to school and my brother came to visit and we got tickets to noises off. Talking about slapstick, right? It's like the first act is you see the play and then the second act is you see what's happening backstage

and then the third act is somebody's drunk. I don't remember it. But there's like no dialogue and you're seeing backstage but you're just seeing the comedy of errors that occurs backstage and my brother and I were laughing so hard and we couldn't speak or breathe.

It was like I really thought I was going to choke to death. I thought I was just going to die of a lack of oxygen, but I couldn't stop laughing. And he was the same way in the whole audience. I'd never experienced anything like that where everybody in the audience, and this is a packed Broadway house of 500-plus people who are all laughing so hard. And there was just no consoling us. There was no comments. There were tears.

There was snot. My stomach hurt. I felt like I did 900 sit-ups when that thing was over with. That was the worst for me. Laughter is contagious. How good does it feel, though, when that's done? I mean, it is so cathartic. Yeah.

Yeah. There are certain plays that you can do, like the odd couple or anything, Neil Simon, whatever. Once you, that are almost guaranteed laughs, if you're really good, you can let the laugh play out. And you kind of tease the audience a little bit, whether it means you coming in on the next line, or however you want to play it, and you just let that roll over you. And that's a great feeling, and I know you both experience that to a certain degree

when you're in front of a live audience. And every audience is different, and we know there's too from doing theaters that the Friday night crowd is different from the Saturday night crowd, and you won't get the same laughs, and that throws off the whole rhythm of everything, and you're still trying to fight it,

but it's that wave of laughing. And you can also tell there's like early in a comedy play, there's the first laugh that you're supposed to get. And if it lands and you get a big laugh, you know, okay, they're with us. We're going to be good. If they miss the laugh, you're like, we're screwed. This is it going to be the worst show ever?

But what about Carol Burnett? What about Harvey Corman and Tim Conway? What about right now? Those skits are funny. They're straight up funny. But when they destroy each other, right, on stage. That is funny in a different way. And I just remember, that was the first time, I don't know if it knocked me on the floor, Rick.

It was the first time I felt like I was really in on the joke with the people. Right. Right. It was just so much fun to watch Tim Conway destroy Harvey Gorman in those skits. Well, because you get a treat, you get a look at the process. Because it's like you said, yes, they could just do the skits and they would still be funny. the sketches. But when they crack up, it makes them human.

Yeah. It makes them a little bit more fallible because we couldn't hold it because we're already laughing. And so if that professional is going to crack up laughing, then not only is it really funny, but you're right, it's genuine. That's why everybody, on some level, everybody loves bloopers for a show. Sure. Where you get to see your favorite actor is just cracking up in between takes just because it is genuine. It is kind of heartfelt.

It's also forbidden. You're not supposed to laugh at your own jokes, right? Right. When I first came to L.A. from New York, the very first play that I booked was an equity show downtown called Elizabeth, almost by chance a woman. It was supposed to be a comedy. It wasn't very funny at all. It was directed by an Italian guy who was a friend of Dario Foes. He had a gorgeous interpreter, this woman who would interpret for him, but he would direct like this.

He would come in and he would go, Ecula. I'm going to guardare. Alora. And he would give you line readings in Italian. It's very funny. But my character died in the second act, and so I'm lying dead on stage,

and I have to stay there for like 15 minutes. And one time I got that tickle in my throat, and it was like, oh my God, what the? Speaking of Italians, he's still there. Rico won't go away. He's a, he's a, Rico, say hi. Here.

He's like stepping in gum. Did Chuck pitch you my sitcom pilot for you, Rico? How did you come up with an idea like that? A 50-something man suddenly becomes a dad. Yeah, I don't know. It's like it's a crazy idea. I don't think people would believe it. Are you in?

Totally in. Are you out of breath from crawling across the floor to surprises? I've been working out. Oh, you were working out. Yeah. Oh, okay. All right. This is good.

That's comedy. Two years ago, we'd all meet. eating a bar, but... Right. Yeah. Now it's on the Zoom room. Hi, Ricky. Hi, Rico.

What's up? It's good to see you. Hey, I hear you were doing a project you can't talk about. Can't talk about it. But I can talk about the Christmas movie. I'm very excited about it. Which one of the women do you play again? All right.

This thing has gone straight to hell. I was going to come in and have some whiskey earlier, but Chuck said it was too early for that guy. gag. So I'm not going to do it. Well, it's six somewhere. Huh? Six o'clock somewhere.

Yes. But I'm sure me interrupting this is just like sent it spiraling like it. I was in the middle of those stories. Yeah, well, I know that story. We're discussing the essence of comedy. Yes. Didn't I teach you how to say that? You told me how to say that, but that's the only Italian that I know when I can imitate

the Italian director. Yeah, yeah. While we have Rico here, we were talking about doing comedy in front of a live audience. And you had your Just Shoot Me and Hope and Gloria. Two years, Hope of Gloria, seven years. What, who's counting? But it's when a joke doesn't land. Yeah, what happens?

That feeling. Yeah. This. I think every joke on Just Shoot Me landed well, but they wanted it all to be baffo. On many of those sitcoms, Enrico, were attested this, is that they'll write the script, They'll spend all week. This is it. It's perfect.

We got it. We're locked. Boom. We're going to go taping in front of an audience. They do the joke. It goes, eh. And then they stop everything. And all the writers huddle and start going, okay, quick, come up with the next joke.

What's better? What's better? What's better? Unless you have Spade just do a funny dance, which gets them all the time. The joke didn't land. He would just end it with a little elf dance. Had them all in stitches, moving on. That's how he rolled.

It's good. to have a ringer like David Spade on a show like that. Yeah, I agree with everything you're saying. It's a shame he's not here right now. Let's get David Spade on. Just to do a little elf dance. The listening ship on this podcast would just double just from that little elf dance. Is it listenership?

It's not viewership. It's listenership. Sure. No, it's not viewership. I don't believe there's a ship involved, honestly. I think it's just an audience. All right, guys, enjoy. Sorry to interrupt.

I'm sure you guys are talking. Gosh, Rico. Okay. No, no, no, no. It's going nowhere. No, I'm going to miss you. Goodbye. He says he's going to miss you.

Goodbye. He disappeared. Tell him I'll have a first draft in a week. He'll have a first draft in a week. And I know that's true. Remember when you wrote blockage for the two of us to do? That was in like two weeks. Yeah.

Why do you look like that? One best play in the Valley. He didn't do it, of course, but we did it without him. Right. That's why. Yeah. Rico's passed on a lot of project. We talked about that last week at length.

Right. He's only passed with the ones with me in it, but that was a good play. You know, speaking of that, I wish that you could show the veterinarian, the dog, the flea medicine spots that we did. Oh, right, right. Yeah. I can show those. Sure. Those were really funny.

And I thought they were very effective. And nobody had ever saw them. I never had a flea or tick after doing those. So, Chuck played my best friend in a series of ads that actually turned into a full-length sitcom. He dressed as a dog and assumed the identity of a Barney's Mountain Dog. We basically were the odd couple. I was Oster, the Dirty Slob, and he was Felix, the fastidious roommate who happened to be a dog who happened to get fleas and ticks and lost his mind. Hilarity ensued.

Ricky directed. There were a lot of funny moments in that, Rick. Yeah. Yeah, that was the thing. It's like Mr. Neat Freak gets the fleas, and he was embarrassed to tell you. Yeah, because it was like crabs. Right, right. Not quite as much shame companies fleas as crabs, but.

If you're a dog. Yes. It's very shameful. You, Ricky, made me laugh one time just talking about a thing that happened to you. And I laughed because you're a Star Trek fan. and my little company at the time was partnered with William Shatner and we hired you to direct

a very simple commercial, right? We wanted Bill Shatner to talk to John Luke Picard they were advertising the Star Conference and we were helping put all that together and you being a director we thought this will be great because I know you love William Shatner. How'd that go for you?

It went, listen, He's my captain and he will always be my captain But it was scary He is a very intimidating man And when you go in and you do like Basically the talking head where you have to light it And so we actually went to his office In the valley

And I had a camera guy who was also a light guy And you go in and you set up the lights You know and it's like And you want to make it look good because you know He's the captain Kurt And I'm never having done this before and you're also reserving because you want to be professional and you don't want to geek out you don't want to say listen in episode six when you had that phaser they went on you know

yeah but you did it try and become so we set up everything without him being in the seat and any time you need to have the person in the seat because there's always adjustments the light's too high it's too low and so we set everything up he was outside waiting patiently making calls, doing all the stuff, and we said, okay, we're ready for you, Mr. Shatner. And he comes in, sit in his chair, has the copy, and then we go just a second, just to light. And he went, I'm up, I'm out, let me know when you're ready.

And we're like, we kind of, and he was gone. So we just kind of had to guess and say, okay, well, we're ready now for you, Mr. Shadner. And he came in and he did it, and boom, and it was done, and he was out. And I didn't get the geek out once, which was, much to my sugar. But you didn't even get a second take.

Yeah, that story was a lot funnier when you told it in the old days. No. You were so in your head. You couldn't direct him. You didn't tell him how to do anything. Of course not. His performance was awful. He wasn't, I don't even sure he was looking in the right place half the time.

It was abysmal. Somebody needed to say, excuse me, Mr. Shatner, but come on. It wasn't going to be me. It wasn't going to be me. My understanding was, is that you did the wide shot. He did it once and said, okay, I think. that was pretty good, we're done, right? And you got up and left, and you were like, oh, but I don't have any cutaways. I don't have, that's the way I remember the story.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, listen, there's some people you can't direct, you know, and that's, and that's just it. No, there's some people you can't direct. Well, that too. And he's it. Yes, he's it. You can direct everybody. How many movies have you directed? I don't even know. It's dozens, though, isn't it, Ricky? Isn't it dozens? If he can't everything? Yeah, dozens. Like all those Lifetime movies? Yeah. How many Lifetime movies you do? I didn't direct any Lifetime movies, but I wrote two Lifetime movies, two Christmas

movies. One with starring Howard Hessman, who was Dr. Johnny Fever on WKRP in Cincinnati. I never got to meet the man. He's still around, but it's sort of like, I've got a great opening. If I ever run into him, it was like, hey, I'm the guy that gave you that movie, and they'd keep playing it every Christmas. What's it called? Which one is it? Crazy for Christmas.

Not to be confused with all she wants for Christmas, which was the second movie that I wrote for Lifetime. That's a good business to slide into. Just writing Christmas movies for Lifetime or Hallmark. You'll never go broke doing that, except, you know, when they don't take the movies. Shameless Plug!

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Soon may the noble men come to bring a bottle for everyone. One day when the waitin is done, we'll take a drink and go. One thing that I was thinking about, too, about the Three Stooges, going back to that, circling back, is what's age appropriate to watch the Three Stooges? do you think? We all grew up watching them and I don't remember a time when I wasn't watching them

and I remember my old man distinctly remember this you know one time he just sat me down in front of an Abbott and Costello movie and said this is funny and so I watch it and it's like okay and he was right that's what's funny

once I saw that then it started going well what else is funny show me everything else lead to the Lauren Hardy and then the Marx brothers and then the Three Stooges and everybody else. And it just opens up a whole world for you. But should kids watch the Three Stooges today? You wonder. Or at least I will wonder.

No, you can't. Well, look, there's no subtlety left. There's no context anymore. The Three Stooges would be rated R for violence. Right. Right. That would be it. And I'll tell you, the next thing,

would be cartoons. When is it appropriate to watch Bugs Bunny or Tom and Jerry? Right. By far, the most violent thing per minute was Tom and Jerry. Right. With any of the other Looney Tunes coming in a close second, it was a bloodbath, every one of them. The Three Stooges just was kind of the same thing,

except with real people, faking it. So I don't know what the answer. sort of that is. 10? 12? Like maybe two years ago, I showed Zachary, who's now seven, the scene with Curley

eating the clam chowder, which I don't know if you remember this, but there's a live clam in it. And so every time he goes to eat it, the clam squirts in his face. And it frustrates him. And so he gets a fish hook and he tries to get the clam,

and it becomes a whole huge thing. And he loved that. He thought it was hysterical. We watch it like every night. But then I backed off because I'm like, well, I don't know if I want to go full stooge on him yet because I will probably get in serious trouble with my wife. But also, I don't know if he can make the distinction.

But it's like we could. Do you know what I mean? I mean, we understood it was kind of fake. But I'm afraid now you hear about kids in elementary school playing squid games from Netflix. I don't want to get the call from the principal saying, listen, Zachary tried to poke some of his eyes out, you know, because Mo did it. I don't want to get that call. So, yeah, maybe 10 years old. Maybe we'll wait till then.

I have no idea. I just know that as a kid, watching Tom and Jerry made me laugh hysterically. The more violent it was, the harder I laughed. And part of the reason my mom was okay with it was because they were playing great classical music in the background. Right. So it's like, well, at least he's getting exposed to something with a little bit of culture. The Simpsons did that with itchy and scratchy. The cartoon show within the cartoon show where they took the Tom and Jerry concept and just went,

we're going to dismember him, we're going to put him through a wood chipper, and we're just going to go totally extreme. But yeah, you're right. Tom and Jerry and Bugs Bunny, think about it, duck season, rabbit season. That was all about blasting animals with shotguns. And they would recover and they would come back and they would get blasted again, and their face would be spun around. Is that appropriate to show now?

I don't know. But ironically, when Zachary was born, I bought the complete Looney Tunes collection. And I said, someday, someday we will watch the cartoons when you're old enough. When you're 40. When you're 40, I have it waiting for him. I think he's old enough now to understand the difference. First of all, it's cartoons, number one. It's not real.

And with the three stooges, though, maybe you have a talk to say, hey, by the way, You don't want to hit anybody with an anvil or a hammer. Take a claw hammer to the nose. Yeah. Yeah, but if you have to explain that, it's like explaining a joke. It's like if you can't see it for what it is, who knows? Wiley Coyote hovering in midair after he runs off the cliff, just hovering for a second, knowing he's about to fall. The roadrunner looks at him.

Their eyes meet. And he takes off and the coyote falls to his death. Now, he's immediately resurrected, and you know he's going to come back, so I guess that makes it okay. Right. But it's an endless assault. But kids appreciate slapstick, too. They love that because that's in even their cartoons today. Kids still like that.

You know, when you watch and play, they do slapsticky stuff. It's kind of ingrained. It's part of our DNA, I think. Or are they just being mean? What do you mean they do slapsticky stuff? I had a cousin. She used to hit me over their head. head with a wooden spoon. She just run circles around me and hit me in the head and everybody would

laugh. I look back on that. I kind of hate her for it. Child abuse. Listen, you're right. I remember playing Batman and Robin when I was a kid and my brother was, we made him be the Joker and he didn't want to be the Joker. And so he threw a pair of pinking cheers at my head and I got three stitches in the back of my head. Was that learned from the three students? or was that just him being a brother? I don't know. I don't know either, but you know my brother Scott,

who's like the kindest person ever. And you remember the old wooden bridge had led up to our house, right? And the long white gravel drive that went down to the wooden bridge, I was riding my bike as fast as I could down that hill approaching the bridge. and my brother Scott was standing on the side of the bridge where a crew had been working the day before and they had left some tools behind, including a sawhorse, right?

And when I was about 15 feet from the bridge, Scott ran out and put the sawhorse right in front of me and screamed, roadblock. And I hit the sawhorse at about 20 miles an hour and went right over the handlebar. and landed on my back on the bridge. And my brother laughed. And I'm just like, why would you do that? And he never really told me, but I'm pretty sure he saw it on a cartoon.

Yeah. Kids have that sense of being immortal, that they can do anything. They can jump off the house with a blanket for a parachute. They'll be fine. It's only when they get hurt, do they realize that's a problem. I think the generation that we are in

and probably a few years before, we have all of this stuff ingrained in us. Kids today are not watching Three Stooges. They're watching TikTok videos. And so their sense of humor is completely different than what we have. We can appreciate a fish called Wanda, whereas they may not get it.

And the same thing, even if you go back to Marks Brothers movies, which were less slapsticky, although they had that, but they were more just, cerebral jokes and just character stuff. Kids aren't doing that today. I mean, I can't think of a movie or a show today that's for teenagers that is supposed to be funny.

Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Because they're not watching Ted Lasso. Maybe they're watching reruns of friends or the office or something like that, but there's a whole subset of movies that we grew up watching that they're not watching. And so what will be the humor they will create going forward? It's like music. I can't imagine anything that passes for a hit today is going to be something that this generation

will be listening to in 40 years. I can't imagine anything out there today enduring. When we were kids, we would go to Lefty's Place and we would listen to Sinatra and we would listen to Tommy Dorsey and we would listen to these. We loved all that old stuff. I wonder if comedy like music. will endure, or what passes for comedy today, what passes for music today, is it going to hold up 20, 30, 40 years from now? I bet it doesn't. I bet you can't make Blazing Saddles today. I bet you can't

make a fish called Wanda today because Kevin Klein made fun of... Bit of a stutter, eh there, Ken? Right. And you won an Oscar for it. Yeah. Yes. He won an Oscar for making fun of somebody who stutters. And I say this is a kid who had a stammer. It's funny until it's not. And now it's not.

And now here we are. Right. Nobody is quite sure when their kids can watch a funny thing or a violent thing because we don't really agree on what's funny or violent. I think we can agree that me getting bit by a snake, funny. Doug Glover falling down with a camera. Funny. Yes.

You completely failing to direct William Shatner. Funny. Chuck and his brother laughing themselves sick during noises off. Funny. Rico coming in the middle of this conversation. Not funny. They ruined it. Yeah.

You'll cut that out. Well, you know, I was going to, but now I think I'm going to lead with it. I think that's going to be the video that we're going to make. Most experienced person in show business on this call walks in and completely just poops the bed. funny, how uncomfortably terrible that was. Now that I think about it, that was funny. I don't know that anybody else will get it. I don't know. Have you ever done one of your speeches that bombed? Yes, once. I completely failed in front of an audience one time. It was one of those I got hired to talk to a crowd of people not realizing that they had paid. It was a financial

conference and motivational speech, people showed up to talk very seriously to an audience of people who wanted to learn how to make money. Why I got hired to be a part of this, I don't know. But they paid my fee and I showed up and I started telling them dirty job stories. And they're all sitting there with pen and paper waiting to write down, like, wisdom, wisdom from me. So they could go out into the world and start making money. And I'm, I'm just telling stories from the sewer and whatnot. They just looked at it. me like a cow looking at a new gate. They just didn't understand why I was there. And 10 minutes in, I realized I shouldn't be there. So I just turned it over to questions. It just started

giving financial advice that I've qualified to give and it got off the stage. So you want to do well financially. Here's what you do. You get yourself on a hit show and. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Write a book, preferably a bestseller. Get yourself a podcast with a million unique listeners. create a viral video on TechTock. Get a sponsor. Yeah. Yeah. Why did you ask me that, Rick?

Well, sometimes you can turn a bomb into something funny. You got to take the audience along with you. Clearly, this was not the audience that you would go to. But if you hear any stand-up comedians talk about, you know, they learn more from bombing than from landing the joke. Because once they get a joke and it works, they got it. And it's in their arsenal and it's fine. But it's when they bomb.

can they come back? Can they bring the crowd back? Have you ever done stand-up, Chuck? One or twice, and I was terrible. Yeah. Ricky actually finally got us, Chuck, to an interesting place where saving yourself in front of an audience is great. And I won't tell the whole story now,

but the best example of that I've ever heard in my life, and I would encourage all of you to Google this and listen to it, because it is so uncomfortable, but ultimately so. liberating. It's Bill Burr. Bill Burr is in Philadelphia and it's one of those festivals and the audience is horrible and they're booing comics and all the comics are failing one after the next. Big comics, right? And they're like just walking off the stage. Well, Bill Burr goes out there and he's not having it. And he starts yelling at the audience. He starts cursing them. He starts making fun of the Eagles.

He starts making fun of all their sports teams. It is the most abusive thing I've ever heard anybody on stage. And the audience, they're screaming back at him, but he won't get off the stage. He finally beats him. He turns them. And it turns into something truly hysterical. He's so mean. He doesn't care.

It's right on the edge of violence. And it's freaking funny. He saved it. Pulled it out of his butt. I hope I'm never in that position. What can we do to save this, Chuck? Anything? I don't know.

I wish there were some bit of wisdom that we could pull from this conversation. Like, what's the big takeaway from this? The big takeaway is if you have a chance to make somebody laugh, take it. Even if it's at your own expense. Because that's the greatest gift you can give. Wow. What an impossibly earnest thing to say? say. All right. Oh, yeah. Well, screw you. All right. I don't know, Chuck, you're going to do some

editing with this one, I reckon. Nope, this is going live. We're streaming it right now on Facebook and Instagram and TikTok. Tick-Tac. Right. Put it all out there. Thank you, Ricky. No, thank you. Great to see your face, man. Say to your lovely wife and your little boy and expose him to the three stooges. Oh, no, he's going to get it. Don't worry. All right, everybody. There you. go. Some ruminations on that which is funny or violent or maybe a little of both or

maybe not enough of either. Whatever the case. We'll be back next week with more of whatever this is. Rick, keep your powder dry, my friend. Nice to see your face. Thank you. It's nice to be seen. That's funny. If you work in university maintenance,

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