WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 1339 - Greg Proops

Episode Date: June 13, 2022

Marc has a very direct question for his old friend Greg Proops: “Did we lose?” In the fight for the heart and soul of comedy, there is real uncertainty about the current trajectory. What legacy did the alternative comedy movement leave, if any? Did the Obama years create a false sense of security for popular comedians that made them drop the ball? Will a there be a counterforce to the dominant strain of reactionary backlash comedy? Marc and Greg interrogate these questions and their own roles in the past three decades of comedy. Sign up here for WTF+ to get the full show archives and weekly bonus material! https://plus.acast.com/s/wtf-with-marc-maron-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly, host of Under the Influence. Recently, we created an episode on cannabis marketing. With cannabis legalization, it's a brand new challenging marketing category. And I want to let you know we've produced a special bonus podcast episode where I talk to an actual cannabis producer. I wanted to know how a producer becomes licensed, how a cannabis company competes with big corporations, how a cannabis company markets its products in such a highly regulated category, and what the term dignified consumption actually means. I think you'll find the answers interesting and surprising. Hear it now on Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly. This bonus do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies

what the fuck nicks what's happening i'm markon. This is my podcast. Welcome to it. If you haven't been here before, it's nice to have you. Just hang out, sit down with the rest of them. Try not to be too chatty until you get the hang of things. you relate to uh you know don't uh don't don't have expectations don't read into much just hang out man we're gonna hang out greg proofs is here today we're gonna hang out with greg proofs does that mean anything to you it should he's a smart fella i've known him for years have not seen him in a long time when i moved to san francisco back in the day. Fuck, when was that? 92 or something? There was this crew of us that somehow ended up in San Francisco at the same time as me and Patton Oswalt, Blaine Kapach. And a lot of their scene had sort of gone to L.A. But Proops was around.

Proops was a, he was a solid dug in up there in the Bay Area. I'd met him once before and I didn't even bring this up to him because I was kind of dickish to him the first time I met him. It was actually, it was in New York City. It must have been in the late 80s. Could have been early, early 90s. All I know is that the old improv up on 44th Street, I was at the Westway Diner where we used to hang out, me and Vitaly, maybe a tell whoever was around. But I remember it was me and Vitaly who just passed away. Rest in peace. And Proops was in town and somehow ended up there and somehow

ended up at our table at our booth. And this is before I'd gone to San Francisco's before I knew anything about him other than I believed that he was dressing like Tom Kenny. Like that would fucking matter to anybody with the buddy Holly glasses and the pompadour. And and I was just such a dick. I was just sort of like, yeah, you know, you know, Tom Kenny, because I knew Tom Kenny was in in in San Francisco and he'd moved out there. Bobcat Tomcat were buddies from upstate new york tom kenney of course went on to be the voice of uh uh spongebob but he was just a comic but he had that look he had that kind of pompadour horn rim look and i was like so uh basically i was like

you're doing the tom kenney thing huh is that what you're up to? No idea what kind of comedy, did nothing. Just looked at him and busted his balls over the way he looked because I was a cock. How you guys doing? But Proops is here. Me and Proops talk about, we talk about some shit. There was a coyote in my yard yesterday, sleeping. What does that mean?

It's weird how people think about stuff like that coyote in my yard just hanging out was here a couple days ago i think he's eyeballing buster and sammy uh in the catio trying to figure out whether or not he can get in there maybe but then yesterday he was just sleeping on my yard cleaned I cleaned up his shit the day before yesterday. I think it's a female coyote just hanging out. I posted an Instagram video of it. Hundreds of people with big ideas. Everyone's a goddamn detective. Everyone's a goddamn animal biologist.

Everybody's a veterinarian. Everybody understands what's going on. Everybody knows. It's sick, man. It has to be sick. Watch out. There's a distemper going around up here in Northern California. Don't touch it. You'll fucking give it to your cats. Very contagious. There's something wrong with it. It's a sign, man. It could be a good sign. It could be a bad sign. Usually it's good. It means there's going to be big change in your life. Watch out. It's the trickster. there's going to be big change in your life. Watch out. It's the trickster.

You may not know what wisdom it imparts or what it means because the coyote is the trickster. But it does mean something. Dude, that's so cool. You got a coyote in your yard. Be careful. It shouldn't be there. Jesus Christ. Everyone's got the answers.

It's a fucking big problem, isn't it? So me and Proops get into it, you know, it's get into it on a few levels. You know, we talk about what I've been talking about here a lot, you know. Just what is happening to comedy. And, you know, Greg and I deal with it personally politically implications of uh societal implications on the culture a lot of what i've been talking about this sort of tribalization of comedy this idea the co-opting of the philosopher king comedian model or the rebel truth-telling comedian model that was once uh only applied to maybe four comics you know who they are there was a generation of comics in the 50s and some in the

60s you can count them on one hand you know you're talking lenny bruce you're talking you know prior in a different way you're talking people like like Godfrey Cambridge, Dick Gregory. Talking people like Carlin later. But still, Hicks, handful. But the right and the, you know, quote unquote free thinker crowd, the people with dumpster fires in their brains with all the answers and a lot of labels. Woke, commie, socialist, big pharma, a lot of labels for people. Minimizers. Freethinkers will all think the same thing and have leaders and some of them are comics and

some comics present themselves as revolutionary voices. But they're truly hack cowards. There's no vulnerability in it. Lack of respect for marginalized voices. For people already under the pressure. The goal should be to bring us all together. I can't say that I can do it. And I can't say that I necessarily even joke in that way.

But the world is on fire things are at risk while we're running around hurting people and I don't know the more I think about it like you know what happened to alternative comedy was there a point of view there was there some sort of momentum that I use that word momentum a lot was there some sort of uh collective community that was obviously more embracing in a way but did it have a point of view but i just wanted to engage uh somebody who's thinking about things in the area that i am not in the area of people that collect bullshit that justifies their own victimization

through their deep well of grievances that probably are attached to something that they refuse to resolve or see in themselves and then join forces with other people with similar backpacks full of bullshit, sometimes ammunition, sometimes AR-15s, and sort of justify themselves as victims, cultural victims, political victims, based on nothing but the need to feel aggrieved. But make no mistake, that way of thinking once it you know somebody decides

or once it's enabled can lead to genocidal movements it's happened before so how are some comedians getting those people focused. Anyway, this is me and Greg talking. He's got a new album out, Greg Proops in the City. You can get it at gregproops.com or wherever you get music. And it was great to see you. It's winter and you can get anything you need delivered with Uber Eats. Well, almost, almost anything. So no, you can anything you need delivered with Uber Eats. Well, almost, almost anything.

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I know, right? Yeah, I quit drinking like in July last year because I was, during the plague, I was really getting it on, you know. Really? You know. That's how you went well uh yeah uh I was uh frustrated and sad and you know scared the scared come into it yeah and uh and no gigs you know so no outlet for my shallowness and uh worry that no one would ever like me every 30 seconds again and wow yeah it comes that quickly huh oh dude and so i was doing a podcast at the crib you know we're doing zoom shows and yeah yeah yeah which is like watching uh it's sex through a glass yeah yeah it's just horrible just worst yeah and i put away a good

amount yeah i got up the next day to clean the house with jennifer and i just said to her you know i think i'm done like yeah but the weed her, you know, I think I'm done. Yeah. But the weed was like, you know, that was just sort of like vegetables. Oh, no, right. It's how I lived. You know, it's not... I can't really... I don't know. I just...

Once it was legalized, you lost interest. It's like gay marriage from my old from the old gay people from San Francisco like once it became un-clandestine it wasn't cool anymore yeah no I just you know I don't know

how did it feel for the was there a fog lifted or did it change not really I mean you know I function fairly well on weed I know you're always one of those guys I never quite understood it like if there's any example you're like the Keith Richards of weed yeah right i mean i still smoke it sometimes i didn't like cut it out altogether right yeah i'm on the road with the who's line guys and uh you know for before the plague yeah i was getting high pretty much before

every show and then when we came back from the play, I didn't. And I felt like a lot, you know, cool. I didn't know if I felt funnier, but it reminds me of a story that, who was it, Artie Shaw, the old band leader. Yeah. He said there was a couple horn players in his band and they were always smoking weed

or what do they call it in those days? Gage or whatever, muggles. And he says, why don't you guys get high before the show? And they go, well, we really like to blow, you know, Artie, like a creative, it frees us up.

Sure. And he goes, all right, all right, like tonight at the break, I want to get high with you, you know? And they're like, what? And he's like, no, come on.

So he goes, we go outside and this is the 40s, we smoke a couple bombs. Yeah. And he goes, I go on stage after the break

and he goes, I'm blowing my brains out, right? And they come up to me after the show, the two horn players, and they goes, I'm blowing my brains out, right? Yeah. And they come up to me after the show, the two horn players, and they go, you were right. It didn't make you any better.

So, not that that story resonated with me, but I just thought, I'm having a lot more fun now on stage because of it. I mean,

you know, when I did the album. More present maybe? Huh? More present? Yeah, yeah. I mean, maybe? More present? Yeah. I mean, I remember before I quit, it was just sort of a daily thing.

I went to visit a dying aunt, an old aunt who was near death and had that sort of strange fragility and almost mind-read-y type of perception. And she said, what's wrong with Mark? He looks haunted. And I'm like

not trying to pull back on the weed yeah things that crawled in yeah i was wide open and you know you you get detached i would just get you don't know you're if you're high or not and i i don't guess that matters to some people but it kind of matters yeah you know i found myself like someone's a a doctor said to me once, it's like an old friend. You can't cut it loose, you know? And then now I found that I've mostly cut it loose, that I don't miss it all the time. I do miss it sometimes, but also,

as the older I get, the less I want to be high when I'm driving or something like that. Whereas in my teens and 20s, I didn't care. Yeah, because you're like, I could pull it off. Right, I'm driving or something like that. Whereas in my teens and twenties, I didn't care. Yeah, because you're like, you know, I could pull it off. Right, I'm immortal. And it's not so much that mortality is looming as much as, I don't know. I don't go to meetings or anything like that and I wouldn't proselytize,

but everybody knows me as someone who is an inebriate. So I might as well come clean and say that I'm not inebriating as much. And yeah, and you seem chipper. You don't seem... Do you find... Let's see, were you getting angry? You know, the frustration and the pain and trying to booze it away wasn't really happening for me. I was much more concerned about the booze

because the drink does nothing for your personality. Like, you think you're what was the towns van zandt line i went to the party and i bubbled you know like yeah i'm not actually as charming as i thought i was whose wine is that is it like uh the uh when you do cocaine you do it off a mirror so you can see what an asshole you are yeah no kidding was it jimmy tingle i can't remember fortunately for me i was never very cokie, as you know. It was always booze and pot for me. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The rudiments of the Bay Area, you know.

I mean, because booze and pot were everything and where I grew up in San Carlos. Where is that? It's about 30 miles south of San Francisco, turned left at 1990. And it's the widest place on earth. It's in between San Mateo and River City, if that helps

orient you at all which it doesn't uh and uh i grew up there in uh um and then the peninsula yeah and by the time i get to high school there it was really a thing to this is the 70s you know we're reasonably close to the same age you're a little older i'm 58 yeah were you 62 yeah and uh so yeah like i graduated in 77. So the class before me was the bicentennial class and they had a horrible red, white and blue tassels on there. Yeah. Which even then I thought was lame.

Like what? The what? The bicentennial? Buying into it. Yeah. But it was a big deal to get high and in those days, you know, beer. Yeah. Right.

And there was some speed around. Oh, yeah. No. Well, right. Obviously, there was methamphetamine in those days was we call. Yes. Yes. Thank you.

That yellow, crumbly biker crank. Yes. And it smelled like produce from the bottom of a, you know, like one of those. When you'd open up a lettuce crate when you worked in a restaurant, that's what it always smelled like. And it made your eyes burn and your head explode and your nose run. But have you been to San Francisco lately? New Year's was the last time I was there. It looks like the bottom fell out.

Oh, I know, right? Dude, it's like, it's crazy. Yeah. I mean, it really, like, it feels like an anchorless, chaotic shit show up there. It's pretty wild. I mean, like, you know, the amount of poverty in a place that wealthy really goes to that medieval thing, you know, where you know that, oh, my God, they're building these giant stadiums and they're doing this. And there's Apple and Facebook and blah, blah, blah. giant stadiums and they're doing this and there's apple and facebook and blah blah blah and then there's like literally block after block of calcutta like hideousness i mean i guess it's

scary but it definitely feels like new york must have felt in the 70s just sort of right almost like bombed out what is uh what is alexander was it william blake the dog starved at the master's gate predicts the ruin of the state. That's all I can think of. You let people starve in the street and you're saying that you don't care anymore as a society. You've thrown in the towel.

And then all these people who give money to these giant charities, which I'm always suspicious of giant charities because to me they seem like money laundering operations. Or at least their operating budgets's a lot of wiggle room. To be generous, I mean, you know, I've been to charities, and I'm sure you have too, where you're flown on like a jet or something, or you're put up at a big hotel, or you're given all this treatment. Whose jet is this? This money could have gone to the thing that we're doing, and you could have put me in a wagon.

Yeah, but this is Mr. Rido jet yeah yeah exactly start coughing um yeah so that part is uh dastardly i still love the bay area and i love san francisco and i you know i jennifer and i have a soft spot for white people have in marin you know yeah where west marin especially it's so beautiful and it's like a fantasy land yeah so i really i love that i haven't been up there in a long time i'm fixing to go up again but i've been on holiday because um since the uh you know since we've been able to go on the road again like in the autumn yeah i've been on the road yeah me too yeah i've just been hammering since i got that uh the first uh the second shot. Yeah. I think that's when it was like, let's go. Exactly.

And then everyone got COVID. Yeah. And then everyone got COVID. Have you had it? I haven't had it. I got the- I'm not supposed to knock wood. My friend told me not to knock wood.

Oh, I got it. Yeah. I got it after my third shot. I got- Oh, no. And I got COVID. Yeah. I had the fourth one in Minneapolis.

Is it better there? Huh? Is it better there? I thought so. I thought that it was funkier and there was kind of a million lakes. How many lakes do they have? A lot. I know.

Are you doing solo stand-up, or is this with the- No, it's with the group. I haven't done stand-up in ages, and not because I don't want to. It's because- When was this album recorded? New Year's. I did the punchline at New Year in years and it's still the same. You know, the air conditioning sporadic.

But I think, you know, like with you, I mean, we like to think of this late ass point. I think I get mostly people who want to see me, particularly on New Year's Eve, because it's an occasion. But yeah. And do you like but isn't it interesting? Like I've seen I found myself leveling off now. Fortunately, that my audience is, you know, primarily kind of aggravated middle-aged women and, uh, you know, people that are roughly in my age group and the young people that like me are the exact same kind of young people

that I would have liked me, you know, like the, the kind of like, you know, a little smart, a little sensitive, a little aggravated, probably creative and don't really fit in. There's a few of them, but I'm grateful for all of them. Oh, sure. But I mean, I don't know. Like I, there's part of me that I know I'm still discoverable, but I don't know who I got to reach. Right. Who, who goes out and does this shit anymore. And right. And where, where do you go? You've, you've covered social media. You've had a giant successful podcast for a hundred years I mean there's what other ways are you supposed to well since 2009

but like what over the pandemic here's what I'm trying to figure out and maybe you know maybe you can help me figure it out on some level is that did whatever we represented in comedy like is I consider us on the same spectrum I do too that were my our generation but also

point of view why yes did we lose I don't know I say I think so I think there's a certain maybe we lost a lot of yardage let me put it that way we're not on the in the red we're're not in the 10-yard line. But can you track it back? Because, like, right now, you know, I understand comics. And it seems like that a lot of the spirit of the people that we respected has been co-opted by, you know, dum-dums who stand for very little that is progressive. Yep. who stand for very little that is progressive.

Yep. So the entire sort of against cancel culture and pro-freedom of speech thing is very limited, and it has been taken from the progressive agenda and sort of reframed by a bunch of comics who have a fan base that are not necessarily comedy fans, but they need to know what to do with their hands. And they need a leader. So now you have this weird momentum of a group of comedy fans, in quotes, comics who are easily co-opted by right-wing momentum.

Then they may not know that, but that's what's happening. So what happened to us? That's a good question i'd like to think that we're still fighting the good fight and that there's lots of people who still respond to us and it takes me back to something that when i first started going out with my wife in 1948 we she said to me it's hard for me to get anyone cool to come see you because of the way they think of stand-up comedy and this is when the early 80s when we were sure getting going and because if you remember when we started in the early 80s uh there was a lot of douchebag male comics i started legit in the later 80s so like because when i started i would say you know i won that contest in 88 and that's when i started working in comedy you know

i probably started doing it in 86 and a little bit in college here and there. But so you're talking about the beginning of that boom. Oh, yeah. You know, or even the middle of it that you always heard about. By the time I started, it was over. Right. Yeah. You mean when there was a thousand rooms every night and you could play everywhere?

Right. But there was nobody in the rooms. It's just a club owner going like, yeah, it's not what it used to be. Yeah. You mean when there was a thousand rooms every night and you can play everywhere? Right. But there was nobody in the rooms. It's just a club owner going like, yeah, it's not what it used to be. Yeah. We're going to talk about the 80s boom and maybe what that did to culture and the culture of comedy. But I think that in thinking about it, there was a failure of what became known as alternative comedy in that, you know, the point of view was shallow.

The agenda was shallow, and Obama created sort of an umbrella for people to sort of be like, we can just do what we want. And then we lost the ball. Yep. But go back to your point about culture. I don't think I could have put it any better. The culture of comedy was always this male, horrible, racist,

sexist, my girlfriend's so fat, Asian drivers suck, don't leave a dollar on the table when black people are in the front row. That 80s thing, that was really prevalent when I started. Then it started to get hipper. And then, of course, like you say, the alternative boom that was, what, 20 years ago? Late 90s?

But back in the 80s, we had people, and you knew people, that were doing something different and doing fine. You know, like Jake Johansson. i don't know what he does now but he was like the biggest act in the world yeah and said very little uh uh degenerous kevin meanie uh there and like san francisco was sort of a hotbed where people went i remember when bob kept moved from boston and brought the whole group and ken and Dana and Kevin Meaney. Right. They all eventually ended up in San Francisco where you could embrace, you know, whatever it is. But still there was and this is the other problem is there's very there were very few people who were doing point of view comedy,

like political comedy or taking any real chances. I agree in all that in the male dominated thing. There was still guys we liked no i just i think you're right it was a haven in those days and we were considered and of course we i think lorded it over everybody everybody was a transplant from somewhere else mostly i was from the bay area but like you came and patten came and dana came uh gould and uh he came earlier you know we were we were the patent blaine and me showed up in weeks of each other Yeah in no no, dude. Oh, no. No, dude. That was like 92 or was it really? Oh, yeah, it was golly by the time, you know me and Blaine and Patton got there

You know the Dana was already gigantic. Yeah, he would already arced and he was already in Los Angeles Oh, wow, they'd all left and the scene scene in San Francisco had been vacated because everyone moved to LA. So it was you were around. Johnny Steele was around. Johnny Steele. Carlos Alzaraki was around. But that generation of old timers was gone. The live audience at the Bennett show was three guys.

One of them wearing a star trek t-shirt you know it was we were operating in the the sort of fumes yeah well i but i still think like you say we had a point of view and i think the big deal in san francisco in those days was that you had to have some kind of point of view or some sort of intellect or challenge the audience in some way whether it was intellectually maybe not politically but at least intellectually sure yeah but it was they indulged it right and a lot of san francisco comics go on the road not do as well on the road because comics weren't ready for concept audience weren't ready for concepts elsewhere they were used to joke joke joke and the la thing we used to that was a big complaint from san francisco comics that la crowds were shallow and wanted this and that yeah and then i tended to go

to england a lot more and then i found that going to england i was considered slick and and professional which was looked down upon because i did joke joke joke set up set up punchline tag tag you need to tell stories that go nowhere right you. You needed to go. Exactly. You needed to be shambly and say things were shite a lot. And so then. But like you say about losing the ball, I really feel like the giant thrust of comedy right now with the really, really popular guys, mostly that are embracing this. I'm being canceled. I'm a victim thing is completely reactive and completely reactionary. And I don't find it amusing. And I don't find it amusing.

I don't think it's very instructive comedically. The comics that I always worshipped growing up were Carlin Pryor, Lily Tomlin, Robin. The people who literally were trying to give voice to other people's concerns, maybe actually understand the world a little bit. And when you start to say that you're a victim when you've got six million listeners and you're making all this money and you're doing Netflix specials and people warning everything's pouring in on right but somehow you're being silenced yeah to me that sounds exactly like a right-wing Republican saying that I'm whoa you know the woke culture is

what's wrong with the world yeah what culture is nothing to me it was always a matter of manners like are you going to be a bully and stomp on homeless people and gay people? Or are you going to try to understand that maybe with your white privilege center, you should kind of try to give a little bit of lift to the other voices? Sure, but the age of sort of doubling down on bullshit

and standing for nothing, what I usually say is that you know once tolerance is removed from the equation you know democracy doesn't have a chance because if you don't buy into the idea that like well most people want this i guess we got to suck it up yeah uh that's how the the progress is made in democracy yeah it's if it's most people want this well fuck them yeah you know i'm not gonna put up with that shit right so then you know the fight is on for the heart of the nation yeah which is what it is and amplified by well you know we're talking about 30 40 years ago in our lives yeah there wasn't the kind of

constant flow of misinformation and the grinding screaming noise brain fucking it's like it's not even like it's not even just misinformation or a noise machine. It's literally reconfiguring people's perception. Because who the fuck said that the brain can handle this? No, nobody. You pick up your phone in the morning. Within 10 minutes, you've dumped more shit into your brain that was ever designed to deal with. And you've got to fight for the difference between that and your perception of the world and what is really your point of view it's very easy to erase any sense of identity

with this fucking thing i agree it's a vortex and also i find myself getting angry i get on the phone and then i'm all mad because i saw somebody said something i didn't like and it's like well how come that opinion's so important to me all of a sudden when i wouldn't have known about it if i hadn't have looked at my phone. But that's the problem is like, we're all, you know, kind of insecure, ego driven fuckers.

Yeah. And it's sort of the idea that we're, you, as soon as you get away from that, you're sort of like, do I even exist? Am I relevant? Right.

Am I in the conversation? Yeah. Right. Because if you don't and you aren't, or you take a break. Yeah. It just goes away, drives away.

You missed the bus. Yeah. But I think like what i'm trying to understand as well and i think i do understand it is that in conversations i've had with people that give a shit about whatever the fuck i'm talking about you know primarily me and my producer brendan around trying to assess the it seems that there that what became known as alternative comedy was built on the back of a few guys, right? You're one of them.

I think Dane is one of them. I think Patton is of a generation. I think Patton invented himself out of part of you. He scraped some of your skin and grew it and then put it on his ear. And that's part of his head now. But the culture of alternative comedy was really built by a few club comics. And it was happening in LA.

And it was happening a little later in New York. But most of us had paid our dues in comedy clubs. But then after that, this sort of comic produced mics and alternate comedy kind of morphed into what seemed to be a fairly significant cultural movement in Los Angeles around Chris Hardwick was sort of the leader. But nonetheless, there's nothing to show for it. Why did that happen? Did they stand for nothing? Do you ever think about that?

Or am I introducing this idea to you right now? The alternative comedy scene tanked? Well, I think it was a time and a place and things move on and hideously or maybe reflectively of what's going on in the larger world. Comedy doesn't stand alone any more than sports do or show business or anything like that.

And Obama cast, like you say, a fairytale Paul on a lot of white people and particularly the comedy world. And I had people say to me things like i thought i swear to you yeah i thought prejudice went away because he was president and you know kind of oblique statements like that that look in the face of 400 years of american history and absolutely deny it because you liked someone yeah that got elected twice yeah that also while we were being elected twice you didn't notice that the rising tide of fascism was being fomented harder than it had. This reminds me of when I was a little, little kid in the 60s, how ugly America was. and Martin Luther King and RFK, and the insane racism and white backlash that there was,

and the revolution that happened in the 60s when I was little, between young people and old people, between World War II people and Vietnam people, between black and white people, and then we were promised in the early 70s there was going to be gay rights, black rights, Native American rights, La Raza. Everything came to the fore and everybody was being heard.

And then that Reagan thing of, oh, no, we didn't need any of that. What we needed was to think about ourselves a little more, old boy. Think about yourself a little more. And then I feel like that happened again after the alternative revolution with Janine and David and everybody that was so Dana and Dana that was such a light. And I would go do all these sets everywhere in New York and in Los Angeles and Chicago, San Francisco. That was the first wave, not the Kumail. Right.

And then there was the after the comedy bang bang wave. Then there was the whole Kumail wave and the nerd melt over here in Los Angeles and all that, which I participated in. Yeah, me too. But it never felt right. It wasn't my, you know, it was, I was a guest in their awesome generation or whatever. But that's weird. But like, it wasn't generational. It was really a very specific audience, you know, that, you know, because if I think about

like the groove of, you know, but I get off on this history, you know, like, you know because if i think about like the the groove of you know but i get off on this history you know like you know robin uh pearl and you know you know warren thomas he's you know forgotten you know several forgotten heroes of of of riff style uh you know wine hold yeah naughty yeah but by the time that nerd melt happens, I was like, I resented that that audience was so homogenous. Yeah, it was weird. It is weird. And I think I don't disagree at all. I felt like the narrowness of their point of view kind of rubbed me the wrong way.

And also, like you say, like, for instance, and this is just completely anecdotal and shallow, but I have really no other, uh, you know, redoubt. Um, I did a, a show at the nerd mount where I used to do the podcast. Right. Like I did the smartest man in the world. Right. For a lot.

I did it live for years and years and years. Now, Jennifer and I do it at the crib because of the plague sort of force. Yeah. Right. Right. The last live one I did was in San Francisco and I love doing it all over America and Europe and all over the literally all

over the world and then I would do it at the nerd mouth and it was my least favorite audience and I'm not just blaming the nerd mouth I'm saying like um a cat named Rod Temperton died and Rod Temperton wrote um Thriller and Off the Wall and all these great disco songs he was in a group called Heat Wave he's a white guy from England yeah he wrote all this disco yeah and it happened to be the night he passed away and I often play a lot of records on my show. Sure. Sorry, records. Music. Yeah.

And vinyl, no. Anyway, I was playing a bunch of disco songs, and the crowd literally didn't know any of them. And I started to become furious with myself and the crowd, like, you really don't know any of these dance records from the last 30 years that this guy wrote, who is a giant of dance music. And everything is built on this that we do now.

And I thought, so what? Your phone and your computer and that's what's important to you. And this weird advantage that you see happening to you in this crappy life you built for yourself. And I don't know, like you say, it was difficult to find something to say that you didn't feel like you were one, shooting over their their head or two just saying shit they didn't understand at all because you were some uncle grandpa on the mountain.

So you're the old guy. Yeah. But now they're all old and none of them do it anymore. They're like, that's that's the thing is that their entire context was was manufactured in this kind of little. I mean, I guess it was a bubble but what but but what i was talking to brendan about today was that you know for for as long as this fascism has been percolating in america you know like when in the 60s you you can marginalize it a bit because it was the birchers or whoever the fuck it was the king of the clan yeah but they were really held off yeah

they were margins yeah because most people were you know, we're all sort of, you know, kind of hovering around the same information oasis and we could all sort of like look across the water and go like, I know we don't agree,

but this is what's happening and we've agreed that we don't want this. But now, alongside of that, they were furious that they had no broader cultural identity.

That the culture belonged to us. The Jews that the culture belonged to us, the Jews, the progressives, the gay people, the blacks. It really did. Now, obviously, there are other ethnicities that were pushed aside by the ethnicities and had a small part of it, and now that sort of opened up a bit.

But it seems that there's a big push, along with the push to disregard truth in general, to sort of hijack the culture. That the right is spearheading this movement with people who have really sunk their teeth into this anti-woke position, which is hackneyed, and to this fear of cancellation. And that's how

they're riding into taking over the cultural um yep the arts in a way yeah it's super male too like i don't get that uh that that's some sort of big across the board message that everyone embraces it's just everybody's like i know right yeah it's you know no one's sort of like yeah but it's sort of like that's happening it's all over the like, I know. Right? No one's sort of like, yeah. But it's sort of like, that's happening. It's all over the place. You go to comedy clubs. But the one thing that bothers me is that we need to make sure we know the difference between a comedy show and a comedy rally. And I guess in a way, we took a lot for granted.

And a lot of us weren't, you know, a lot of the generation above us. I also think that, you know, the Jews gave up the mantle a long time ago. I don't know if it was voluntary. Right. It might be for a good reason. I always thought that once, you know, they introduced antidepressants, you know, anyone on stage complaining in a certain way, sort of like you can't. Right. That's over.

Yeah. Maybe you ought to get help. The neuroses got kicked out of comedy right there's medicine but it did it did and neuroses is driving comedy no i think in a lot of ways things are so much better than they could ever be and i remember saying this years ago to some in venue in montreal and and the montreal the person i was saying to got was really reactionary got mad at me they said what's the biggest difference between comedy when you started in the biggest difference now?

And I said, there's women's stars, there's Asian stars, there's black stars, and there's people from the middle East that are stars. And that was not happening in 1982. I assure you. And they were like,

Oh, this is the kind of bullshit we have to stand for from liberal comics like San Francisco, like Greg proofs. And it was like, it's not, I'm not making it up. You can look at the books.

I mean, Comedy Central got so desperate to have viewers at one point that they put two Jewish women on in a comedy show. Then they put a black guy on. Like, I mean, you know, Comedy Central is like frat city. I mean, the idea that they would even break down and do that after, which looks in the eye of their college demo of dudes who are drinking Coronas and wearing baseball hats. Yeah, whatever the fuck their demo was. But they seem to be around.

Here's the weird thing is that like all that you're saying is true. But but it's it's and and the way show business operates now is that you know, none of that matters. You know, people are building their own, you know, show business. You know, no, that's it hasn are building their own show business. Oh, no. It hasn't mattered in ages. Segura, who's one of the good ones, has built his own show business. Yeah.

And all these people, women, women of color, people of color, gay people, if you can just get your people, then you go and you deal with your people. Now, I think that's good. I guess we're up against this idea that as any sort of precedent or barometer of actual truth starts to be, you know, dismantled. You know, how is that not leaving the entire culture vulnerable to authoritarianism? I mean, that's the plan, isn't it?

Yes. The plan is to make objective reality and not a shared thing anymore. That the reality that you're fed is the reality that you believe. Like, for instance, you know, to go back to being political. Yeah. There was some idiotic thing I saw on Twitter today, of course, on ABC News that said a lot of people don't believe as much as they used to that Trump put January 6th together and that it was a seditious coup. Right. And it's like, well, what does that mean

that a lot of people don't believe as much as they did a few months ago? Or yesterday. What measure are we using here? Whether there's any measure at all, that fucking piece of clickbait will go into the head and then reconfigure out

whatever synapses were built around it. Nobody knows what happened yesterday. Jesus Christ, when Will slapped Chris, they were talking about it like it was the Tower's falling. Yeah. Like, will we ever recover? Yeah. We will.

The worst that could happen is we'll never have to sit through another Oscars. Which I've never understood anyway. And the idea that you're supposed to hip up the Oscars and do all these weird things to it. Well, yeah, if they're going to make it look like a nightclub, get better bouncers. Right? Also,

I loved all the dancing and singing, but then when they did the tribute to the poor people who passed away, and there was a bunch of people that really deserved a tribute, including Ed Asner,

who was skipped over completely, who was actually one of the most decent, wonderful, kind human beings that was ever in show business. Sure. And then they didn't get it. Got a little dicey with the inside job thing with the inside job thing but outside of that sometimes

yeah but i mean like uh they had the dancing and the singing over that and it was like see this is a moment when you might take just two seconds to calm down and let it be quiet yeah or stop trying to get people excited that's the thing it's like, I went to a ball game the other week in Canada. You're a big ball game guy. Yeah, I went to the ball game in Canada just to see a game, and it was fun. And the music was so loud between every batter that I had to, I was with our tour manager, I couldn't talk to him. I had to wait till the music stopped and then go blah, blah, blah, blah.

So you're supposed to be talking about stuff at a ball game, whether it baseball or your life or whatever it's a relaxing afternoon right and it says yeah like i didn't come to a baseball game to get hyped out of my mind if i wanted to take crank and and get wild i would do that on my own like baseball supposed to be at its best boring punctuated by moments of excitement yeah It's not a video game. The whole world isn't a fucking, like as much as I love Keanu Reeves or whatever, and I think he's a nice person and a fun star, the John Wick movies to me are like watching

one of those video games where people keep getting shot in the eye and stabbed in the face. Amusement park ride. A thousand times in a minute and a thousand times in a minute and a thousand times in a minute it's like so then they they tarted up by having lawrence fishburne and and ian mcshane and holly berry whatever they threw in every character actor in the world and give it a

little bit of gravity and a little bit of art direction and whatnot and then they go right back to shooting people in the eye every two seconds sure and you're like well this movie could have plot and character and you could actually and i feel like that's what they've done with everything, with comedy, with politics, with news. There's no, if we don't agree that there's an objective reality. January 6th happened. The man who led a violent coup and he did everything he could to organize it, including getting to the point where they were going to try to order armed troops to gather up the ballots and stop the count. And all of this happened. It really didn't not happen. I'm not a conspiracy theorist. I don't live in a van. I don't think John Lennon ordered Bigfoot. This is actually the truth, which is fundamentally and spectacularly more interesting

than a conspiracy theory. Yes. And whether you believe it or not, whether ABC News wants to report that less people believe it than they did, alters the facts of it not one jot yeah he threatened to kill his vice president and have him hung we know that because we know it was reported that he said it there were people there that were going to kill pelosi yep and kill pence yes and mark short who's pence's chief of staff said on the day the day before that they were ready for action and you know if that Pence said on the day when they hustled

him into the car that he was worried about the actual Secret Service agents that hustled him into the car and he was like which ones are you?

Yeah. Are you the ones who are going to give me the ride? The mafia ride? Yeah, yeah. Or are you actually going to protect me

and do your job? Because we know the Secret Service was completely infiltrated by right wing lunatics. Yeah. This isn't seven days in May with Kirk. And I went back for a reference that's so fucking old, no one will even get it. It's a movie about the government being taken over by the military.

But so what we're saying is that in retrospect, even with the January 6th commission, the panel investigating this thoroughly, that most of the country has moved on. The apathetic people have moved on. The people that didn't give a shit of the country has moved on the apathetic people have moved on the people that didn't give a shit to begin with have moved on the right has been spinning this every way they can to sort of take away any teeth out of it but the truth is the truth but you know it now that is such a small piece of the pie yeah that you know it'll just become yesterday's news rather quickly it doesn't matter to anybody and all politics political discourse has just been uh you know wrestling promos yeah that's and trolling that's that's what an entire

political party that is what they are now they are nothing but the republican party exists to be an autocratic party that will take over the government and do whatever they like with it at the behest of all of their crappy masters whether they're billionairesaires or Russia or whoever you want to think is calling the shots on this. And they really don't have another goal. I mean, people like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Bieber and Paul Gozar and Matt Gaetz and all them, they don't exist as politicians.

They're- Trolls. Yeah, they're not there to enact legislation. But then having said that, neither are Mitch McConnell and all the big lights of the party, the leading leaders of the party, Kevin McCarthy, them, Grassley, whoever you want to say, Graham, Cruz, whatnot. They're not there to enact policy either. They're there to obstruct policy. policy. It's horrible to come back and think that the book that I read in eighth grade, 1984, contained so many profound truths and that Orwell knew everything about fascism, having fought against the fascists in Spain and then watched England go from what he perceived at the beginning of the war as an anti-fascist nation to a nation that completely embraced fascism and had identity

cards and were stopping people on the street by the late 40s. And now there is sort of an element of actual horrible fear to it in that, you know, somebody in a militia, you know, hogtied a fucking judge. Yes. In what, Wisconsin, was it? Yeah. And executed him. Yeah. And he had a list. And and and executed him. Yeah. And he had a list. And with all this, you know, the sort of gun violence is that, you know, I had somebody, you know, I'm doing this new joke that like I sort of showcase to sort of, you know, to maybe get Christians to look at it differently.

And I think abortion clinic is, you know, it's medical, it's scary. But if we call them angel factories. And I brought that up on the podcast the other day just because I want to make sure that I have it and I'll burn it out because I'm so excited about saying it. But some woman just tweets as sort of, I wouldn't do that. You remember what happened to Kathy Griffin.

So now there's this, I think that's- Oh, right. You're supposed to be afraid to- Right, man. The fear of you saying your truth is going to get you banned or put on a no-fly list or someone's going to physically threaten you. Well, yeah, but the right specifically, like, you know, like you can get, you know, in trouble anyway if you, you know, if you do something inappropriate.

And, you know, if you use language that offends people, there will be consequences. You can use it. You know, most of the people that get canceled, you know, it's usually for sexual impropriety. It's not because they said something. Oh, no. It's never because they said something. You something you know i mean they might get some flack yeah and that passes exactly it makes you more famous sure and and most of us are just sort of like we just want to do our little thing yeah you know we you know what i mean and and i think that a lot of what we're talking about in that alt comedy world in that all comedy space which is this sort of elevating goofiness and pushes the the limits of sketch um you know it represents

some sort of creative freedom but it is not this idea of comedy speaking truth to anything no and it's not the i and that was always only a few people but the problem is isn't the the other comics the guy they've co-opted that entire model as as you know you got to look to the comics to guide us through no you you do yeah no they never have even the ones that you're referring to didn't guide anyone anywhere no i always think of peter cook's line when someone said can comedy change people's thoughts politically and he said yeah look what the weimar cabaret did in stopping naz Germany. Well, that's the other thing that scares me about how, you know, when you get the truth untethered and that so much of how they're characterizing trans culture and a lapse in morals is how the Nazis characterized what was happening in Germany. No question.

It's absolutely analogous. I was saying to Jennifer today, you know, they're starting to demonize starting. They're as bad as they were at any point in american history and that's the other thing that i think you're our little progressive friends need to understand yeah it's not worse now than it ever was it's the same as it was in the yes it's out it's the same as it was in the 30s it's the same as it was in the late 50s and early 60s it's the same as it was in the late 50s and early 60s. It's the same as it was in the late 40s and early 50s when they were chasing people down for being communist. It's just the obverse of that instead of, oh, my God, you're on Russia's side.

Now Russia's the side that's calling those shots, that's pointing fingers at everyone. Right. You're a groomer because you're a liberal. You're a pedophile because you're a liberal. You want to what is it? Transfer blood to children and you have a chip in your head yeah and you don't believe that china invented a a virus that to make everyone you know all these oh yeah sure they've mainstreamed crazy conspiracy theories but america has always been a crazy conspiracy theory if you were alive in any other century than this. And you weren't a white guy. And I think it's a real return to like that awesome 19th century robber baron.

Like we get to sexually assault anyone we want. We get to enslave anyone we want. We get to own everything we want. We get to threaten everyone with guns all the time and limit everyone else's use of guns. Which is what the 19th century was and had how many slave owner presidents who absolutely were staunch advocates of that. This is who we are.

The whole thing about saying- That's what it was built on. Yeah, this isn't who we are. It is who we are. It's realizing that objective truth is an important thing and that comics who push the whole, I'm being pushed to the side, how come I can't get my opinion thing,

seem to me be ludicrous. I always say on stage, when will white guys be heard from? That's what I want to know. When finally in America will white guys be given a voice to say what we believe? How come we're always shunted to the side?

The idea that white guys haven't had the mic for 450 years is ludicrous. And that's why when you're talking about all these guys who, you're supposed to bring that libertarian thing and that's supposed to you're talking about all these guys who you're supposed to bring that libertarian thing and that's supposed to be the cause that we're all supposed to rally behind because they're getting down with the truth and they're really letting you know what's what is absolute and complete complete fucking yeah but also but challenging everything with with nothing yes so and that to me is the the bigger crime of it is that if your point of view, when somebody

tells you something is like, no, no, dude. Yeah. Like that, all that does is create this pervasive doubt. And when, when you do have valid sort of information, you're like, that sounds crazy to me. And so you've got a bunch of guys that couldn't think that well anyways, who think that now they're on the pulse of the secret information and that they're look there's a lot of bullshit out there and there always has been but i think i guess what i'm coming around to right now is that the one thing we did have was some sort of common sense

of country which is like that's completely broken i feel like that the tribalization of stand-up which is sort of happening you know obviously all of us can get our little audiences and we can do what we want to do. But there is some sort of... We all have our little kingdoms and duchies. Something very weird and servicing of this current authoritarian momentum is happening. Well, and this will also make me sound like the most parochial, self-absorbed comic that i've always been um but you said things yeah i've always tried to have some content in my act and that yeah the thing is i found like i thought after two years of being trapped in home like everyone else and all the comics were too mostly although as pointed out to me by several

people um covid really only existed on the west coast and in new york um covid didn't exist in the midwest or in texas or anywhere else because they didn't allow it to exist florida's denied definitely not in florida like i was in winnipeg of all places a couple days ago and it's on the prairie and it's a lovely place and the people are really nice it's a little beat it's a little that weather's a little rough on win uh they told us that last winter there were six foot tall snow banks on the side of the road and that it was the worst winter they'd ever had and i thought well never mind uh keep on electing conservatives because they're gonna really help you out here yeah the last premier they had in uh manitoba had to resign and um he took he took off and they put in another conservative

pm his name was uh palister he resigned and uh he manitoba which has no people had the second highest covid rate in all of canada yeah the people that they did have yeah and so and he said the the the the biggest moment of his life i'm only using this illustratively, that that put him on the road to politics. And his point of view was that he met a guy and the guy didn't have a job and was on government assistance. And the guy said, what are you going to do for me? And he went, I'm going to kick your ass and make you go to work. And it's like that is the oldest, saddest, most bullshit story. One, it never happened to if it did happen who cares and three stop using that it's like saying the good guy with the gun we have all these lies that keep floating around

that people will not stop giving air time to yeah and you know the the general media that we're not on and this is why i always loved the freedom of podcasts and having her Dutchie is like what you said years ago at Montreal. I don't need you anymore. Uh, they, they, the,

the mainstream media, whatever, uh, uh, business. And it is, yeah. They're not run by people who were thinking,

I really need to serve the public good as much as an oil company or an arms company or anything, profit and growth. Profit and growth are driving what's the narrative. Yeah, even the ones that were there to serve the public good, like PBS or better yet,

like local access. Yeah. That's what it looks like when you give the... It totally does. There's a guy with a fruit basket on his head. It's beautiful, but you know, yeah.

Well, you know yeah well i i well you know after two years of watching uh uh the george floyd case and watching police for what they are which is an extension of the slave patrols of the 19th century and i've been doing a joke for years that's never got a laugh but i keep doing it because i like it and i'll go about guns and i've been talking about guns since the 90s. I've been talking about abortions. Yeah. All these topics since I didn't really need to talk about them.

And then now, of course, oh my God, they're so salient. And the joke was men invented guns to shoot people they're afraid of and to have the police shoot the poor at the behest of the rich. And crowds always go, oh. Yeah. And it's like, I know it's not a particularly funny joke. I could have rephrased it. Or as Jennifer always says,

when you're trying to sell that kind of fucking crank, do a funny voice. Yeah, do a funny voice or give one more tag. There's gotta be one more tag. One more tag. But it's the truth. The police exist kind of to keep everybody down. And now we've seen what they really want, which is to be an independent entity that doesn't answer to anyone at any point.

And not just do they don't answer to people. They specifically don't answer to the public that they're interested to serve. That is really in their craw right now. They don't want to help the public because they don't perceive the public as someone that needs helping they perceive them as someone who's trying to keep them from doing what they need to do whatever that is which is whatever that is right and you know like people are going to get on me and go like oh my god you're blaming the police for everything i'm not blaming the police for everything the police are another cog in the gigantic wheel that's been rolling for a million years the country was built this way the country was never built to be a fair democracy the country was determined to not be

but what has happened as you said was after obama yeah the idea of a black president and then literally after biden who by the way got more votes than anyone ever got except maybe obama yeah and then hillary got the second most votes so the idea that we're all nazis is ludicrous yeah and this is by the way the only the third of the people that vote yeah so it was 80 million everybody yeah yeah that really didn't want a nazi in the white house so a black president followed by a black woman vice president that is progress that is identifiable quantitative measurable progress. The people that are like, how come they're not doing more for me?

How come my student loan isn't- Why is he so sleepy? Yeah. How come everything in the world didn't get fixed in two seconds? Well, you're talking about a quarter of the presidents of the United States owned other human beings. So to shake that takes a little bit longer than one black president who was really articulate who i'm almost certain was threatened his life was threatened every single day maybe 20 times a day of his administration why didn't michelle obama want to run for office i don't get

it maybe she didn't want to be threatened every second of the goddamn day they probably had to have an entire office just fielding the validity of threats uh-huh had to the validity of threats meaning the overwhelming wash of threats yeah ten percent of them maybe were or whatever percentage we gotta be worried about this one look into this one but that's the other obstacle to what we're talking about as well is the fear of of of being terrorized yes which is also an authoritarian tool that seems to be happening reflexively because so many of these young men who have nothing to show for themselves and are furious, but really good at computers have been co-opted to sort of troll ideologically and misogynistically and keep the terror fucking going. and terror is a giant tool it's not

a group of guys uh who are muslims plotting in a room somewhere uh we've managed to cast terror 20 years ago as this very specific item and you know not to go through all the seven million states of terror but state-sponsored terror is a giant thing but also white supremacist terror But state sponsored terror is a giant thing. But also white supremacist terror is probably the biggest threat and has been ever always in this history of the country. There really wasn't another threat that was ever bigger than white supremacist terror. And if you can go to Weaver Ridge, whatever, I think you'll find the Civil War was basically white supremacist terror sure they didn't want the country to have you know any kind of equality whatsoever and they were willing to burn the place to the ground and then after reconstruction when they went back to it willing to burn it to the ground again again and like i say by the 60s when i was little and lyndon johnson who i think and biden and obama of course uh the most significant presidents of our lifetime. Obama was hamstrung because he couldn't do everything that he wanted to do.

And if he had done, the media would have shit on it immediately and the Republicans would have stuffed him. For instance, when we knew that Trump was being supported by the Russians, Obama went to McConnell and said, I'd like to talk about this to the public. And McConnell said, if you do, I'll politicize this and make it seem like you're being mean to me. Whatever civil rights gains there were in the mid 60s, which took forever to get to and required an asshole strong man like Johnson to ram through. Let's be honest. He had the Senate. He had the Congress. He had the courts at that point. that point yeah for a brief shining moment the court was actually thinking about everybody yeah so when everybody goes oh my god i can't believe the court's so right wing the court was never not right wing the idea that there are three women on it and that there's going to be a black woman a jew and and a latin woman on the court is unbelievably cool i don't want people to look at the dark side of everything.

I refuse to be completely gloomy about everything all the time. Well, you're, unlike Obama, an incrementalist. I'm absolutely an incrementalist, and I never sell gloom. On my podcast, I've never sold it. Things are as shit as they can be, obviously. I don't sell gloom. I sell dread. Well, obviously, Mark. I've known you for far too long. as shit as they can be obviously i do i don't sell gloom i sell dread well obviously mark i've

known you for far too long dread and and the fear of what could be going wrong yeah but again that's a jewish point of view it's not so much a matter of everything that's going right it's what could fucking happen yeah the big butt yeah you know yeah so i like to look at the um they've put a black woman on the supreme court that wasn't going to happen when I was little. There's a black woman vice president. That wasn't going to happen when I was little. We've had a black president for eight years who not only was articulate, intelligent, won a Nobel Prize and was wildly popular. Yeah.

One, two overwhelming victories. Doesn't that mean anything to anyone? Everybody stop. Look at the backlash. Right. Doesn't that mean anything to anyone? Everybody stop with the fucking- Look at the backlash. Right?

The backlash was what happened after the 60s when all of a sudden the absolute selfishness and centering while I was watching the Beatles movie on the plane the other day, Hard Day's Night. And there's a hilarious scene. If you've seen, I don't know if you're younger listeners, Hard Day's Night is hilarious. Right when the Beatles were Beatlemania.

So now they're gigantic. And so it's literally almost a, it's a comedy movie and it was written, but it's literally kind of a mockumentary about what their lives were like over the course of a couple of days. They're being chased from gig to gig. They don't have a moment to themselves. The media misconstrues everything they say. They're misunderstood by everybody in the movie. All they want to do't have a moment to themselves. The media misconstrues everything they say. They're misunderstood by everybody in the movie.

All they want to do is have fun and be themselves. And they can't because, oh my God, they've got to... Everyone's all over. There's a deadline

and there's a thing and a thing and a thing. And George wanders into an advertising thing in the TV studio and there's a sexy girl there and they mistake him for a teenager

and they bring him into the room and the ad guy goes, I'd like your opinion on some things, right? And he doesn't know he's a beetle and the guy behind him actually says which i'd never noticed in the movie before mouths to him that's george harrison like that and the guy ignores that completely shows him a bunch of shirts talks about this girl they've got on tv and she goes he's a trendsetter and george goes she's a drag she's a well-known drag and he goes listen uh ducky i'll tell you what's what the new thing is to care passionately and be right wing and that's a joke

from 1964 wow yeah yeah yeah now is the is it not the new the thing is to be passionate care passionately and be right wing they would never characterize it that way but like right wing people think they're really fighting the power. Like somehow there's this ultimate other power that's keeping them down. That's George. Again, another code word for Jews, George Soros. Of course. Who I've met, who escaped the Nazis, by the way.

Not that I've met him and like we're buddies or anything. He didn't like write me after or anything. I sent him a mezuzah. Did he? No. But like it's never not been there. No. Yeah, obviously.

Yeah. And I just feel like everything goes in a big cycle. Obama being elected was- Not the environment. No, no. The environment is headed for absolute screeching. But as Jennifer said to me last night, if you remember that awesome Carlin routine

where he talked about plastic bags, and he goes, maybe we're a little ego mad. I'm paraphrasing madly. We as humans have this gigantic focus on ourselves. Maybe we were sent here to create plastic bags. So the paradigm wasn't people. The paradigm was people create plastic bags so the paradigm wasn't people the paradigm was people with plastic bags yeah and that the plastic bags are meant to be part of this whole and she's like um maybe the whole global warming thing was like the earth and the universe didn't give a shit whether we were

here or not sure the dinosaurs were here way longer than we were and they got wiped out repeatedly yeah and no one like goes, Oh shit. Yeah. How's that happen? I feel bad. Like, and no one's going to mourn us when we're gone. I mean,

maybe there'll be like a movie about it on planet Zantar or whatever. Yeah. On planet Bezos. Our egos. But I mean, you know, Biden got elected and kind of a landslide. Let's be honest the media

would never call it that having a black woman vice president is the biggest thing in american history it really is i mean objectively and it's like it's completely marginalized by the media by everybody and everybody oh she does this she does that she smiles too much she laughs too much she's too smart she's too pretty whatever the problem is it literally is the biggest moment you could possibly think of no woman's ever been in the executive office ever yeah in 250 years and there's never been a woman there and for it to be a black woman from san francisco yeah who was the should be nothing but celebrated in a way but it's been completely just sort of shot upon by both sides yeah by both and and that to me like so there's some of the objective reality that and

i know everyone's going to come in like well greg you like her but i don't like her because she's a cop she wasn't a cop she was an attorney a district attorney and all of a sudden these people that were you know once placated by by ceremony uh are obsessed with nuance and none of it's positive thank you yeah and if you are upset with police which I am, look at the law breaking that went on for four years before. If there was anything you really required of the government now, it would be maybe to enforce some laws to keep, oh, I don't know, Jared Kushner and Steve Bannon. Turns out norms, handshakes don't hold. Right? Yeah, yeah.

We built the government so that it was a gentleman's agreement that they wouldn't do these things. No good. Yeah. But so anyways, I think what we have figured out is that- I was really glad you brought up the comedy

because I was afraid it was going to go that way thinking about before I came over. And then you did go that way and I'm really appreciative that you did, Mark, because I know we both have a really strong opinion about the state of comedy. Yeah. Because it really really does you and i care about comedy yeah and we care about having a voice in comedy and to see it get co-opted and to be this reactive thing yeah that's a male thing and the victimization that comes with being a man which is disgusting to me yeah and doesn't promote

comedy at all yeah and i'm not saying that all the comics of the past were better or any of that bullshit. I think that there's been massive improvement. You go to a club now, like I tried to not work with anyone but women for the last three or four years in clubs. And I said to my management, I don't want two guys on the bill

with me talking about pornography for half an hour before I get up. I want women. And it almost always worked. And then still clubs still clubs still clubs would go in a big city Yeah, we couldn't find two women for the bill this week Yeah, like there's not any women in every big city to be well Yeah I you know I also think what what we're talking about too on in in some ways is positive is that you know with a

multitude of voices You know it it creates you know so many different points of view what i'm taking from this is that uh that there is uh amazing things happening and that uh you know not that they're going to save us but but let's not let's not um disregard that i wouldn't at all i i would say the what the thing to do is fight, fight, fight. Not every moment you have to take a breath and obviously I get depressed as anyone else.

I have enough Semitic heritage to understand that the depression is the normal state of mankind. Unless you're going to get up and do something, whining about shit on social media is not really the most constructive.

This is the culture of yammering and grievance. And I do it as much as anyone else. But I also try to organize. I take my little who's lying group. And we're all right guys and gals for the most part. And we do little benefits for different states. We're doing one on the 12th for Michigan. The Democratic Party. And we did one a month ago for Wisconsin.

And then I do like Sister District, which is the down ballot things with a bunch of comics. I did one a couple months ago with Hofstadter and Glebe. And like, as a comic, what can you do? I can't. It's annoying for comics to get up and proselytize. Sure. But to do a comedy benefit. Yeah. It seems to

me a constructive way to kind of stem the tide of fascism and also get people who like we're not going to talk about politics for an hour we're going to jerk around and sometimes talk about it they'll be politicians on the show yeah and then they'll have to be fun too and you can talk about but i mean you've got to kind of feed people, you know, candy syrup. Sure. And also do that. And just raise some sort of interest. Yeah.

Everyone gets sort of, you know, there's a tsunami of fucking bullshit that comes out of the thing in your hand that kind of annihilates anyone's sense of what taking real action is. You know, myself. Voting is real action.

It really is. I did it. Yeah. And I do it. But it's so funny, the difference between me and you during the pandemic is when during the downtime,

like I felt a sort of relaxation, like, you know, no one was doing comedy. And I realized like, you know, like I don't miss it. And then there's the next thought was like, maybe I'm all better. Yeah.

That's true. I mean, the thing i loved was spending a load of time with my wife yeah because i mean we do anyway but i mean i've been on the road for 125 years and that's the nature of our relationship she knew it going in yeah and uh how is she she's quite well thank you she says hi by the way uh i didn't want her to sit outside so i would have brought her back and i said i bet mark wouldn't have made you sit outside. He would have let you be in the studio. You say hi back. Yeah, I will.

No, Jennifer asked for you. And by the way, so did Lee, my manager. Oh, how's that guy doing? He's quite well. One of the real menches in- Old school Brillstein Gray. Absolutely. What was his company called?

I can't remember. Now his new one is uh wasn't he at brillstein great yeah he was at brillstein for ages and then he was someplace before that i can't remember where he was before that i hooked up with him like oh my god like 2006 so we've been together a long time but he's an honest guy which is really uh like diogenes you can search the world with a lamp looking for a manager in show business that literally won't lie to you. I mean, not that he hasn't, of course, to save my feelings, but that's just politics, isn't it? Yeah.

And yeah, like I didn't, I enjoyed spending time with my wife during it. And I did a bunch of Zoom shows. Wow. I didn't do any of those. Yeah. And then, but of course, once we got back on the road, then like- Feels good, right? One, and two, you know when you're in your 30s,

you're like, it's all going to last forever and all this. And I'm not getting into a philosophical thing here, but I really try to slow time down a little bit when I'm on stage now. Oh, yeah. At least when the show's over and they're applauding. And now I'm in a group, so we sing and we dance. There's no politics.

There's some light-ass politics. In the riffs. Yeah, because it's improv. Yeah. You can't stop the show and go, fascism needs to be destroyed, because that's not funny in an improv show. Instead, you're going to go, my knob, it's going inside you like a donut or whatever, and those are the hilarious.

Sure. Because you know how improv is. It's so lifting and illuminating. Yeah. Yeah. As British people say, why not prepare for something funny? Yeah. And so, but at the end of the show, you know, we sing and we dance.

And we lay on top of each other. We literally lay on top of each other and do vaudeville. Yeah. And there's something freeing in that. Kind of like playing for kids. Yeah. Like when I was on a kid's show for a couple of years, people were like, didn't it feel like weird to be in a kid's show? No, because we performed in front of of like playing for kids. Yeah. Like when I was on a kid's show for a couple years, people were like, didn't it feel weird to be in a kid's show? No, because we performed in front of a live audience for kids.

Yeah. And five-year-olds don't bullshit you. Yeah. Five-year-olds don't go, oh, listen, Greg, that was really terrific. Really great point of view. Really interesting stuff. Kids go, boo, you suck. Yeah.

And then I remember we'd do like a physical gag on the show and kids would go, oh my God. And you'd be like, I got you. You're six and I got you. I made you laugh by falling over. Yeah. And I feel like that's a, like you, when we were little and you'd see the stooges or. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you can do that with grownups, I'm sure.

Yes. Yeah. So when we do the improv show, when we take our bow at the end and sometimes they stand and it's really nice, I try to be in the moment and think, this is what we're doing. Everything in comedy isn't to elevate discourse to the highest level. Clowning is really important too, because people, and having said that,

the horrible point I was going to make about during the preg, all these people went through the greatest social upheaval of our lifetime. Mass death and a complete reckoning about race again for the billionth time in America. And they came out of it talking about their careers yeah people can go back to stand up went right back to the same crappy shit that they were doing two years before right and to me i was like really that was where we got with this then of course i made an album

and there's an epic bit about zz top on it, which I played for my producer and Jennifer and they laughed at it. And then I'm like, all right, it can go on the album. Because I thought I'm being the most self-indulgent piece of shit that ever walked the face of the earth. But I think there was a trauma pocket too, that there still is this sense culturally, I don't think anyone,

it's going to take a long time to reckon with that, that there is a PTSD to it all. And that to be terrified that you're going to die from an airborne thing that there's no cure for for over a year, day to day. I mean, it's, you know, but anyways, it was good talking to you. Yeah, it was really nice to be on. Thank you for having me on, man. I really appreciate it.

We haven't talked in a long time. I know. I love you, buddy. Me too, buddy. I love you. Greg Proops. what a pleasure that we i think we covered some stuff didn't we we got into it greg's new album greg proops in the city is out now you can get it at gregproops.com or wherever you get music go to wtfpodpod.com slash tour to check out the dates. Here's a little guitar.

Just another take on the same old shit. Enjoy. Thank you. Thank you. Boomer lives. Monkey and La Fonda. Cat angels everywhere. Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly, host of Under the Influence. Recently, we created an episode on cannabis marketing. With cannabis legalization, it's a brand new challenging marketing category. And I want to let you know we've produced a special bonus podcast episode where I talk to an actual cannabis producer.

I wanted to know how a producer becomes licensed, how a cannabis company competes with big corporations, how a cannabis company markets its products in such a highly regulated category, and what the term dignified consumption actually means. I think you'll find the answers interesting and surprising. Hear it now on Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly. This bonus episode is brought to you by the Ontario Cannabis Store and ACAS Creative.

It's a night for the whole family. Be a part of Kids Night when the Toronto Rock take on the Colorado Mammoth at a special 5 p.m. start time on Saturday, March 9th at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton. The first 5,000 fans in attendance will get a Dan Dawson bobblehead courtesy of Backley Construction. Punch your ticket to Kids Night on Saturday, March 9th at 5 p.m. in Rock City at torontorock.com.