WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 1538 - A. Whitney Brown

Episode Date: May 13, 2024

Before discovering comedy, A. Whitney Brown dropped out of the eighth grade, bounced around reform schools, had a criminal record, and spent time in jail. Now, after a career that saw him do standup on Carson, write for SNL during its late-‘80s renaissance, and help launch The Daily Show, Whitney says he’s happy to be out of show business. Marc caught up with Whitney at his home in Austin, Texas to talk about his life, his leisure and Mark Twain.  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.

Everyone knows therapy is great for solving problems, but getting therapy has its own problems too. Like finding the right therapist, fitting into their schedule, and of course, the cost. Well, BetterHelp can solve those problems. It's totally online and built around your schedule. It's surprisingly affordable too. Connect with a credentialed therapist by phone, video, or online chat, all from the comfort of your home. Visit BetterHelp.com to learn more and save 10% on your first month. That's BetterHelp H-E-L-P. became the strangers. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH AHHHHHHHHA AHHHHA AHHHHA A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A Hey folks, last year I took control of my eating habits and I built a better routine

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Alright, let's do this. How are you, what the fuckers? What the fuck buddies? What the fuck, Nicks? What's happening? I'm fucking sick. I guess it was only a matter of time. I mean, I can't I was like it was so weird because

Just a few days ago. I was like man these vitamins I'm taking must really be working because I haven't gotten sick in a while and then I got sick I got I was starting to feel it right before I left I was only home for a few days, then I went back out to do Pittsburgh I was only home for a few days, then I went back out to do Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Detroit. I started to feel scratchy on the Wednesday I left, but it kinda held off.

It held off and I was okay energy-wise through all the shows, but today I'm fucked. And I don't know what it is. It was a big trip, good shows, but today A. Whitney Brown is on the show. A. Whitney Brown is on the show. This talk is a doozy because he has become somewhat of a mythic idea, a concept, a mythic, not even presence, but sort of like, what happened to that guy? I was always sort of fascinated

with a Whitney Brown because I used to hear things over the years. Like I used to hear like he was a he was a writer on SNL from 1985 for a few years and he developed the weekend update segment, the big picture, if you remember that he was one of the original writers on The Daily Show. He worked with us at Air America briefly just at the launch in 2004, but he was a standup. He was from San Francisco and he was a standup. He lives in Austin. I knew he lived in Austin and I've known that for a while,

but he's one of those guys where people are like, what ever happened to A. Whitney Brown? Is he still alive? Where's A. Whitney Brown? I'd hear these bits and pieces of stories about insanity on SNL and drugs, and then I heard some story that he was a busker back in the 70s in San Francisco. It was just this this myth filling in, and I didn't have all the pieces.

And so I reached out to him in Austin. He came and picked me up. He's got long hair now, he's got a beard. He's got a nice little cowboy style hat He he lives with his wife who's an amazing blues guitarist whose name is Carolyn Wonderland She's great. So we just go over there and we're hanging out and it's like he's like living this kind of Austin Neo hippie ish cowboy ish blues neo hippie-ish cowboy-ish blues music-ish life and he lays out his story and I always thought he was brilliant but it was sort of just the perfect afternoon we listened to some of his wife's new demos that she was doing with Dave Alvin

listen to some blues talking about the comedy talking about his life starting out in like real juvenile delinquency, being sent to reform school, did some prison time at some point. I mean, it is not what you would think. Because you look at that guy, by the time he hit the mainstream, he did a sort of a clean cut-ish kind of thing. But this is a heavy cat, and it was a real honor to talk to the guy. Also, we lost a couple former WTF guests in the past week. Steve Albini,

the great record engineer, music producer, was on episode 650 back in 2015. He died on May 7th at age 61. Oh my God! 61! This is an example of the fleeting empathy of the self-centered, that being me. I'm like, I'm sad, it's so sad Steve died. But I'm 60, fuck! When is it gonna come for me, as my buddy Jerry says?

We all got something in the mail. Then filmmaker Roger Corman died. He was on episode 776 in 2017. He died on May 9th at age 98. And I assume that when word gets out, all the trolls will be like, it was the Vax. 98, one of the great film producers and directors, one of the great launching pads for some of

the most amazing actors of the 60s and 70s. He was a teacher to many and a great filmmaker of, I guess you could call him B movies, but he churned him out. He ran a machine over there. I'm at Largo in LA tomorrow night, May 14th. I'll still be doing my dates in Vancouver and Seattle in June. I'm in Vancouver on Friday, June 21st at the Vogue Theater. Then I'm in Seattle on Saturday, June 22nd at the Moore Theater.

For tickets to those shows plus my dates this fall and into the new year, you can get all the info on all the dates I rescheduled. Just go to wtfpod.com slash tour. So yeah, I'm a little sick and it was kind of like, when I go out on the road, you know, three, four days feels like a month because I'm flying out, I'm renting a car, I'm driving with my opener, Claire

O'Kane, and we're doing the shows, but you know, you spend the day, I got to Pittsburgh, I fucking love Pittsburgh. I've said this before, must have been a couple years ago, I go back and I'm like, yup, I still love Pittsburgh. I just feel like there's something about it, it's a very charming city. It's just beautiful. It's, and it feels livable and it doesn't feel broken. It maybe, maybe it took a slide for a while, but it feels pretty grounded.

There's a lot of art. There's a lot of bridges, a lot of water, a lot of beautiful, really fucking old houses. There's the Allegheny Cemetery. Oh my God. Have you been to the Allegheny Cemetery? You gotta go! We took pictures of there's some, there's all these mausoleums. It's huge! And there's a lot of these big-ass mausoleum structures. And there's one that I talked

about on stage, which I guess is a known thing. It's this giant Egyptian themed mausoleum, and there are these two sphinxes One on either side of the steps going up and it's not clear if they're they're obviously half animal half man and Half woman because this this mausoleum and these sphinxes have the most defined Boobs that I've ever seen on a statue, like female breasts, and they're detailed, they're nipples, and they're just there in the cemetery. And it's odd, and you cannot not see it, and you can't unsee it, because it's so specific.

Because you're kind of passive about that stuff. This is a grave, it's a mausoleum, it's a family plot in the form of a mausoleum, and they're these two sphinxes. These, uh, I guess they're theys, and uh, and they just have these perfectly shaped and very detailed bare boobs. And I can only assume that after the big guy died, the family was sitting around a table going, look, he wants them. He, it was his last wish. He wanted the boobs on the Sphinxes. And I think if that's what dad wants,

look, he drew pictures. We gotta do it. I know it seems a little weird, but we gotta do it. And so there they are. I don't remember the name on the mausoleum. I think it might be Winter. I don't know, but it's pretty eye catching. The show was great up there at the old Carnegie Homestead musical I don't know, but it's pretty eye-catching.

The show is great up there at the old Carnegie Homestead musical or whatever it is. It used to feel more haunted, but now it doesn't feel haunted anymore. Some of these places I've been to many times and my experience sort of evolves. Maybe I've gotten, maybe the ghosts know me there. Maybe that's what's happened. This episode is sponsored by Squarespace.

And Squarespace has been one of our trusted sponsors for years, but they also support the show in another big way by powering our website WTFpod.com and you can find out what it's like to have Squarespace in your corner right now whether you're just starting out or refreshing what you already have. Squarespace makes it easy to set yourself up with a beautiful website and get all the tools that will help you engage with your audience. They have a completely new design system called Squarespace Blueprint and that's where you'll get started. Build your online presence from the ground up with a

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WTF get started today. Oh Wait, oh God, I'm against these man. Just make it happen make it happen. Oh god, please Come on. It's not doing it. It's not doing it I'm just I mean oh, I've got I've got sneeze blue balls. I'm about to oh my god oh God just let it happen Nope, so then we get to

Cleveland I don't really understand Cleveland, but I remember I got a buddy over there, Andy. He's an archivist over at the Rock and Roll Hall, and he had invited me out. So we drove into Cleveland, I called him from the road, and we parked at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame right when we got there, and he brought us into the vaults. Brought us into the vaults. And we saw some shit, man. We saw, like, probably, like,

there's a little too much Bon Jovi stuff in there, but, you know, I get it. You know, they're putting something together. But, you know, I mean, you know, seeing the Bon Jovi hat and the Bon Jovi jacket, I wasn't like, oh, yeah. But then he pulls out a box, and in the box is, like, Buddy Holly's high school diploma, and I'm like, holy shit. That's pretty cool.

And then he pulls out the original handwritten lyrics of Highway to Hell by Bon Scott. Somehow that was like, yes, yes. And then he showed us some Otis Redding handwritten lyrics. He showed us some Jimi Hendrix outfits. And then he pulled out John Lennon's kind of a wood grain epiphone casino that you see him playing all the time in that Let It Be, he played it on Let It Be.

Oh, here comes the sneeze. Do it. Do it. God damn it. So, oh, fuck. Just let it, just sneeze. So the casino, we saw that guitar. It's crazy. It was kind of moving, but I'm still kind of hung up on the highway to hell lyrics. I look I don't know Maybe I'm fucked up, but then the Dino told me you got to see Gary Rosington's West Paul He's got 59 West Paul, but that was on display, but then I was like How about Alan Collins Explorer? He had Alan Collins Explorer, and you know I don't know who you are, but when I was a kid, those guys in Skinnerd were pretty fucking cool. So we saw that stuff. We saw the first Marshall amp that was ever in the United States.

It was a- and that was just like a little bit of it. Hendrix's- I mentioned Hendrix's clothes. That's cool. Some Stevie Wonder stuff, some Al Green's, it's just all kinds of stuff in these massive vaults and It's emotional. It is like these are real artifacts that are kind of moving, I got to admit. And then we get to Detroit and Detroit, you know, we didn't have a lot of time to do stuff during the day, but that night in Detroit at the show at the Royal Oak Music Hall, which I always thought the sound was a little bad or a little off and it was more of a rock club, but this was a good show.

And I'm up there for about five minutes and I start doing my Jew stuff. Every special I got to have a Jew chunk and I hear something yelled from the back And I'm like what I didn't hear that and then nothing the entire crowd quiets down and I'm like you said something Say it now you said it loud and Fairly angry and seemingly proud Say it again, and then this guy goes fuck you And it was during the juice stuff and me saying that I'm a Jew. So I always waited for this to happen, one way or the other.

And I guess this is probably the best way for it to happen, just a guy yelling fuck you. So I said, all right, well, I understand, and so what's gonna happen now is you're gonna be refunded your money and escorted out of the theater, all right? And then I just, after that, I just tore him a new one and had like some great sort of reactions

and thoughts on it and it was very funny. And the whole show was very funny. It was very engaged, I was at the end of my rope, I was a bit untethered, so it was a lively hour and a half or so. And then at some point I said, look, you know, I can really, what's great is that you are having a good time and that you're seeing a good show.

It's an engaged show, it's a funny show, and you're gonna go home thinking like, that was a great show, and I'm gonna leave this theater terrified and running to my car. But you know, that's the life of an entertainer, right? Did I mention this show is sponsored by BetterHelp? What do you do if you need to get something off your chest?

For me, I talk about it right here to all of you. I've been getting stuff off my chest at the beginning of this show for 15 years, but other times I get things off my chest with a therapist, and that's something all of us can do. We carry around a lot of things, big and small, and when some of those things weigh on us, it causes stress, especially when we keep things bottled up. Therapy is a safe space to get things off your chest and to figure out how to work through whatever's weighing you down. If you go back and listen to the early years of this show compared to now, you'll hear

that I've come a long way in terms of getting stuff off my chest, but that didn't happen by accident. It happened by working with people to learn positive coping skills and figure out ways to avoid blowing my top. If you're thinking of starting therapy, give BetterHelp a try. It's entirely online, designed to be convenient, flexible, and suited to your schedule. Just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist and switch therapists anytime for no additional charge. Get it off your chest with BetterHelp. Visit BetterHelp help comm slash WTF today to get 10% off your first month

That's better help Help.com slash WTF also Empathy is creeping in with the fuck you Jew thing because like the guy I found out had bought tickets To the show he bought good seats. How could he not know? What he was getting into how could he not know that there would be Jew stuff addressed? So I think something just triggered that guy. People are just getting triggered left and right, and they just lose their minds

on airplanes and parking lots. It's just people are fucking losing their minds and they're just looking for somewhere to dump that energy or he just hates Jews. See, that's the that's the weird empathy balance there. So look Whitney, A. Whitney Brown. This was really something and he's got nothing to plug. He's pretty much out of the game but he is uh he's got a great story and I think I got a lot of it. This is me talking to A. Whitney Brown at his home in Austin, Texas.

Everyone knows therapy is great for solving problems, but getting therapy has its own problems too, like finding the right therapist, fitting into their schedule, and of course, the cost. Well, better help can solve those problems. It's totally online and built around your schedule. It's surprisingly affordable too. Connect with a credentialed therapist by phone, video, or online chat, all from the comfort of your home. Visit BetterHelp.com to learn more and save 10% on your first month. That's BetterHelp H-E-L-P. From fleet management to flexible truck rentals

to technology solutions. At Enterprise Mobility, we help businesses find the right mobility solutions so they can find new opportunities. Because if your business is on the road, we want to make sure it's on the road to success. Enterprise Mobility, moving you moves the world. I'm glad you're alive. Me too, man. I love being alive. Being alive is the best. You're one of those guys that at some point you have a conversation, it's like, where is Whitney?

Is he alive? Oh yeah. Yeah. You're like a- Rumors of my demise. Many demises. Yes, I've had a lot of close calls, put it that way. I've had a lot of close calls. But managed to get out of it all.

I was talking to Colleen McGarra last night. Wow. She books the Moon Tower Festival. She's still around. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, dude. Yeah, she's telling me about a trip to Florida

you had that was pretty dicey. I don't even remember that. No, I don't even remember. Who is this woman again? She used to book the West Palm Beach Club. Oh, yeah, that's right. That's right. And she was with Hicks at the end. Oh yeah. And yeah, she said you

were down there, maybe during SNL and you were pretty dopesick and she had... Oh man, was I dopesick. God. Yeah. Well, I, you know, I did have to spend four years doing nothing except caffeine, nicotine and you know, I got, I, I beat it. Yeah. I was depressed for a few years. You know, it's hard. Yeah. Kicking dope. But yeah, a lot of guys, they like, you know, they, I know guys that they kick the dope, but they can't, they're not going to stay. They just need something. Yeah. But as long as you're not doing that.

I did nothing for four years and then one, I was in a restaurant and I was having sushi and that sake looked really good so I drank some sake. And I was like, man, why did I ever give this up? Right, yeah, yeah. So I got a buzz from those little tiny cups, I'm like, man, this is some great stuff. What was I thinking?

So, you know, I don't have any addiction problems anymore. I drink tequila. I love tequila. Yeah. Well, look, man, if you can just stay level, fuck it. I'm so glad I'm not in show business anymore. Yeah. Oh, man.

Why? Well, I like the work, you know? Yeah. And I love being around comedians. Oh man. Why? Well, I like the work, you know? Yeah. And I love being around comedians. Yeah. You know, in the writing rooms. I mean, some of the best times I've ever had

are with, you know, eight or nine guys, gang writing, and eight or nine guys and ladies who are pathologically driven to make their fellows laugh. Yeah, right. Those are great people to be around. Yeah, yeah. But most everybody that I know in show business has been thinking about being in show business

since they were kids. Yeah. It never even occurred to me until I was like five, already making a bunch of money at it. I never even thought about it. I finished the eighth grade, that's as far as I went. I think I'm the, probably the least formally educated where'd you go? Where'd you go? Where'd you grow up central, Michigan? Well, like in rural like city, Michigan

Rural small town actually for a while. I lived with my grandma in northern, Michigan. We had an outhouse. We had a wood stove. We had Kerosene lamps and you just quit at eighth grade? My family basically fell apart. One went to a mental institution, one was a drunk, tried to kill. Anyway, it was a rough childhood. I left with 35 cents. How old were you? 15. And where'd you go?

First place I went was Canada. There was a big rock festival there. What year was this? 1968? No shit. So you're 15 and 68. So a lot of shit's happening. The world is changing. World's changing. And I went to Woodstock. I just lived. Yeah. Oh yeah. You went to Canada for what rock show? Who'd you see?

Steppenwolf. Okay. And a lot of the same acts that were at Woodstock. Okay. Yeah. They're Sly, Sly. Oh my god, man, and it's prime. Yeah And did you live in Canada where were you living on the street? What did you do? Yeah, I basically lived in the park or you know, right wherever I do day jobs and you know make money or crash at people's houses Everybody's hippies, you know, it's real easy. I remember when I going to Toronto

Nighttime came and I was still hitchhiking. Yes 15 years old late. It was summertime. Yeah, lay down on was still hitchhiking. I was 15 years old, late summertime. Laid down in the field, go to sleep, wake up. And you just followed the rock? You went to Woodstock? I went to Woodstock, I went to Atlanta, I went to Dallas. What was Woodstock like? It was, of course, a lot of psychedelics.

And I used to trip a lot. In fact, LSD saved my life. How so? It really did. I was a very angry young man. Yeah, you know for whatever reason. Yeah and Sounds like there were plenty of reasons. Yeah, I know and I was I'm a criminal still but I was even more I was a violent criminal back then. Like what do you mean? You know robbing? Yeah Liquor stores. Yeah stealing cars and stuff. And I was headed for prison. I'd already been in reform school.

When in Michigan? Yeah. For what? I mean, my lifestyle. I had just gotten out of reform school, where I spent two years. That was the last formal schooling I had, was in reform school.

And so I was definitely headed for a bad life. And I started taking LSD. Yeah, like the real stuff, the Owsley stuff. Yeah, the Owsley stuff, orange barrels. And I took a lot of it. And I had some, it opened my eyes. It made me realize, man man the universe is Whitney neutral Yeah, you know not about you not about me man

And you know if it when the fears come and make you angry you you have to trust in the vibratory waves of love Yeah, and rest yourself in the arms of Whatever that love is whatever you want to call it. The big frequency. The big frequency, and it made me a witness to the beauty of this life. That's exactly what it was supposed to do. Yeah. It worked for you. I've been a witness ever since.

You got the good shit. Yeah, and I've never stopped taking acid, I still do it. Just for a tune up or? Yeah, yeah. Although, what happens when you get older your personality becomes a very stable. Yeah, you really know who you are, right? So it doesn't have the same effect of like shooting you off the planet, right? But it's still a good thing to do. Yeah, just to remind you of the the frequency. Yeah, exactly Yeah, so and that happened to Woodstock or before Oh

Before I was already an asset before I went to Woodstock. That's why I went but Yeah, but I I took so much. Oh my god, man. It was a quarter a hit 25 cents a hit Hey, look at that man. There's a you see that thing on my wall there. I better not say anything about that Okay, that is from the original electric kool-aid acid tests. Oh, it's a sheet. Yes. No. Why? It's very degraded. Yeah. But, uh, it's an art piece. Yeah. That's a crime. They used to have a have or to sell, but they used to have a gallery of acid water art in San Francisco. That's the real one. That's the, I know because I tested it, but, uh,

it's very degraded, but it's very degraded. It's an artifact. And it's a piece of art that is a felony to even have or to sell, which I like. Yeah. And so you're just bouncing around as a teenager? Yeah. And then I hooked up with this guy who later shot himself in front of me.

But I hooked up with him in California. What? How did you get out to California? You just hitchhiked? Yeah, I just hitchhiked out there to pick oranges with my uncle. And you were what, 16, 17? Yeah, 16, so we picked oranges in uh.

In the valley, central valley? Yeah, in Porterville. Yeah. Valencia's mostly, but I picked Naples too. Yeah. And um, and then I met this guy, I was hitchhiking, and I had just been dropped off at this spot by a female cop had picked me up

and I had a roach clip on me. She took me to jail for paraphernalia and then they tested it and there was no, it was brand new. So she drove me back to the spot where she arrested me. Yeah, that's nice. Yeah, it was very nice of her. So I'm waiting there and this 1939 Plymouth pulls up with the suicide doors and there's

two guys in there and they're celebrating one of the guys' birthdays out drinking. So like, come on man. And that was, there's moments in your life, and I don't know if this is true of everyone's life, but that some random chance event happens and your entire rest of your life can be traced back to that single event. Uh-huh. That was one of them. The guy getting in that car. Getting in that car. That car stopping and those doors opening. Yeah. The entire rest of my life. What happened? Show business, career, my daughter, everything. Where'd you go?

We went out to this place called the Jefferson Ranch near Pirates Cove and Avila Beach. He was building this gypsy wagon on the back of an old Bracero truck. Bracero Transport was a 23 foot van with a 235 Chevy and it was very underpowered. But anyway, he had been a physicist and a champion swimmer, and he was an accomplished classical composer. This is the guy that shot himself? Yeah. And he had become this. He had worked for one of these think tanks, Rand Corporation.

Yeah, Rand, yeah. And what freaked him out was that they were building computers that could build computers. That's what we're living in. Yeah. And that freaked him out was that they were building computers that could build computers. That's what we're living in. Yeah, and that freaked him out. He said, I don't want anything to do with this, so he dropped it off. He literally felt like it was evil.

Yeah, he didn't want any part of it. And he could see something coming. So he said, I'm just gonna go around and turn people onto themselves if I can. He was in a statuette too. So I had learned how to juggle in jail. One of my many stints in jail in Indiana, actually, Indianapolis. For what we in jail that time.

For drugs, of course. But there was a biker in there, Little Satan, from the Iron Horsemen on Indianapolis, and he taught me how to juggle. We unraveled our socks and made balls just to pass the time. So Little Satan taught me how to juggle. So I knew how to juggle. So he would play the accordion and then I would stand next to him and juggle and we would pass the hat. We went to Nepenthe and the Fisherman's Wharf and everything. It was a bit of a static act so we had this he had this little puppy dog Brownie he I had ended up having him for 23 years yeah and I have

always trained animals you know I've always ever since I was a kid I knew how to train dogs I started training him to do all these tricks with hand signals yeah and and made an act out of it and then he my friend killed himself and and what brought that on Depression yeah, you know he was depressed and I think he was gay also. Yeah, he in fact he was gay So he probably would have died in the in the first pandemic Second pandemic maybe but was he what he couldn't live with it or? Yeah, he just, you know, he was always depressed and also he drank a lot of sugar. Yeah.

Maybe that had something to do with it. Anyway, he couldn't take it. Yeah. It's something I felt bad about for a really long time. And you guys were in the act together with the dog. Yeah. And that was the most we in San Francisco or? Just up and down the coast.

We went to Oregon to the Shakespeare Festival and you know, traveling and that wagon, we built together, we finished building that wagon. He was out on this ranch and he's like, I wanna build this, I'll come out and do some welding and I know how to, I love building stuff. And we made a stage that folded down. And so then we worked up a little act and you know, and I had a stage that folded down, and so then we worked up a little act,

and I had never thought of show business, but hey, I'll juggle and whatever. It's more of a hippie thing, right? Yeah, yeah. Just kind of hang out. The first show was, the first show, I was taking acid and I went up, and I just felt like an idiot.

How can you juggle on acid? It's easy, yeah, but talking to people is hard. So I realized I gotta put together some kind of a, something to stick, to stay to people. So after he died, I went out, I was broke, I went out on the street and I juggled with some jokes with my train dog act and I made a bunch of money. So I kept doing that.

Just still driving up and down the coast? No, I was living in San Francisco. So you settled down there in what, what was that, 72? Yeah, 70, no that would have been 74 probably. Oh really? Yeah, and then my act just got better and better and then what happened was the San Francisco International Comedy Competition,

which was the first one. Yeah. It was started by Frank Kidder, rest in peace, a terrible comic and John Fox, who was started by Frank Kidder Rest in peace a terrible comic. Yeah, and John Fox who was the businessman? I know I did two of them. I came in second in 94. Yeah. Yeah awesome Well, I was in the first one the second one and then I became MC for a bunch of them So this John Fox was around then No, John Fox came in this third year and he bought into it. Yeah, Kidder promote it. John and Annie. John and Annie, yeah.

I worked for him for years. So this is crazy. So this is 74, you do the first one and you place? Yeah, I think the first one was actually by then it was more like 76 or 77. Okay. I had to spend a lot of time on the street first. So Kidder, Frank Kidder. Were you living on the street?

No, no, I had an apartment. I made a lot of money. We'd make 500 bucks a day. Like at a fisherman's wharf just doing the thing. Yeah. Oh, Harry Anderson was a magician there. On the wharf. On the wharf. And we had this, the cannery, we had it, we built a stage there. We got the owner of the cannery to build us a little stage. Yeah. And then we set up lights so we could work at night. And he was this Russian immigrant, the guy that owned the cannery. He was really awesome. Can't remember his name, but he had been, I think his, he had come here a long time ago

to the United States, he was in World War II. Yeah. Flew the, you know, Burma route. Uh-huh. Was one of the Flying Tigers, an amazing guy. So in San Francisco at this time, so when you finally settled down there, when did you really lock in in 72, 73?

Yeah, 74. So what was the scene? I mean, like you weren't at the first Kool-Aid asset, you weren't at the, at the asset. No, no, no. It was, it was, you know, Hey, Dashbury had already kind of crashed and yeah, I just lived in the sunset. Yeah. There was a lot going on, you know? Um, but I, I felt when I got there that this was a city that would allow me to become the best person I could be.

And I think that's, certainly comedically, that was my feeling too, because I moved there after New York, and this was already in the 90s, but there is a spirit of adventure, like there's freedom of mind. Yeah, yeah. Where you could kind of just find your way. freedom of mind. Yeah. Yeah.

Where you could kind of like, you know, kind of just find your way. I felt welcomed. Right. Or at least not unwelcome. Right, so you do the comedy festivals and it's mostly juggling still or? Well, there was no comedy festivals right then.

I was working at like- The comedy competition. Yeah, I was doing, you know, I was just working on the street and then I'd do some shopping center openings. And Harry Anderson was just a guy on the street and another kind of hippie magician. A magician, he was just working on the street and then I'd do some shopping center openings. And Harry Anderson was just a guy on the street, another kind of hippie magician. He was a magician.

And Bob Hartman, this great shadow puppeteer, and we would, the one thing that will draw a crowd faster than anything else is the sound of a crowd applauding. Right. So we would pass off our crowds. Right. And we would have huge crowds.

There was balconies, multilayered, we'd make hundreds of dollars every day. It was awesome. And you had a crime. I was long on to that, man. As it had saved me in the late 60s. So I was already a fairly decent guy. And now you're an entertainer.

So Frank Kidder comes down, and this is his first comedy competition. It's at the boarding house. It's like two nights. And he's afraid that he will not be able to keep the audience's attention for 10 comics, doing 15 minutes each. So he's like, hey, you guys got an act.

You draw hundreds of people. Would you come down and be in the competition? We'll put you like fourth. You can just say you're a contestant. And we were ringers. Me and my friend H.P. Lovecraft, another magician. So we got drawn in as ringers. And I started looking at what the comics were doing

and I had already become a little dissatisfied with Juggernaut even though I had a good comic act. Because I wanna talk to the audience. I wanna say something. This is not art, that's craft. The objects were getting in my way. So I said, I'm gonna become a stand-up. That's something I could, first of all,

I could do, well, I'm drunk. You can't juggle when you're drunk. But that wasn't't the main thing the main thing was I wanted to connect with the audience Yeah in a way that I couldn't with the props, right? And so I I started learning how to do it going to the Holy City Zoo did five So how but who was like who were those stand-ups in 76? Jack Marion. Yeah Who? Robin.

I remember I watched Robin work at a warehouse, communal warehouse for 25 bucks. Doing his routines, they weren't very good. But anyway. So they were all around those guys. It wasn't, Steve Martin was like a big comic then. He used to play the boarding house and sell it out, but it was coffee houses.

Yeah, it was not a huge, now Kidder had come from the Lenny Bruce era. Frank Kidder, the guy who started the comedy company. From the old, from down in North Beach. Yeah, yeah. So those guys were still coming in and out of town, like Mort Sahl and... That era was over as far as audiences were concerned.

They couldn't draw a crowd anymore. But Steve Martin was reviving. That was when he first would do the arrow through the head and all that. It was just kind of a different kind of comedy. But yeah, there wasn't much, but slowly people would come to see. Wasn't there a comedy troupe there?

Like, was it the committee or the... The committee, the improv troupe never got really popular. I'm telling you, the comedy competition, you could not get people to a show where there's, oh, you're gonna see 10 standups doing 10 minutes each. You wouldn't draw anybody. Make it a competition. Right.

And suddenly, we're gonna score them, we're gonna, you're gonna get a chance to judge. And it's human nature. At heart we're carnies. Everybody in show business is a carny. And that's one of the- And politics now. And politics, that's one of the first lessons I learned.

So anyway, watching these standups while I was being a ringer for the thing, I'm gonna do this. So I started trying to, I did five minutes, and if I had no idea how bad it was, I would have quit. But I didn't know how bad it was, so I kept doing it. And just constantly working on new material. So you're doing, like, where are the places

you can perform? Oh man, the other cafe. The zoo. The zoo. I didn't really work much at the zoo. The other cafe, I always wanted money, you know? I mean, if I'm not gonna make any money, I don't want to do it.

And the zoo didn't pay? No, they don't pay. It was like 12 people could sit in there. I was there at the end. Yeah, I always have done everything for the money. Yeah. But it's weird because everything I've ever done for money, I started out doing for fun.

And then, you know, and this is one of the reasons I'm not in show business anymore, once I get pretty good at something, I get bored with it, and I want to do something else. And have you ever experienced, like, you're doing the job that you're getting paid to do, right? And all you can think about is the thing that you're doing paid to do, right? And all you can think about is the thing that you're doing for fun on your time off.

And finally, you're just like, man, I can't fuck this. I can't work anymore. I'm working on this now, and you start a new project. That's me, man, with everything. But when you start working at the other cafe and the zoo and around, like what were the paid gigs? Sunnyvale, Rooster Teeth Feathers, did some old Waldorf, the punch line.

So this was in the late 70s, early 80s? Yeah, late 70s, early 80s. Yeah, 77, 78, 79, there was a whole circuit of clubs in Avado. So at that point. John Fox, actually, he was the guy who organized it. No, I know. I knew him. I worked for him.

And I think he's still around. Most of the gigs were from him. The clubs were just little clubs, 50 bucks, 100 bucks a night. Sure. But you're doing it. You're making the rounds. You're working the acts. And our format was usually opener, middle and headliner.

And Fox started relying on me to do, because I could do, I would MC and headline. So I would introduce it and you know, just basically run the show. And collect the money and then you know, so me and him had a pretty good working relationship. I worked all the time with him. And then he brought Wills in as a little boy, Jeff Wills, to, he's probably after you. Yeah, he's long after me, yeah. Yeah, Jeff Wills used to work for the Foxes

at the competitions in the 90s, and now he's like the guy at Live Nation. He started to. Wow. Well, I'm trying to think who was around with John. When was Alex Bennett? When did he show up? Yeah, he was always there. He was a great DJ.

And he'd do his show? Yeah, people would do his show. But Herb Cain, the columnist, would talk about people. And if you're getting Herb Cain with a good joke, man, you know. And then when did you feel it become a thing? Like people were like into the comedy. Oh man that, when they really, you know, hard laughter that hurts your stomach

is actually physically addicting. Yeah. So people started coming to the club, they didn't really even know. But I think it felt like San Francisco, like there was sort of an excitement around what's gonna happen. It was.

You're like not, you weren't a riff guy, were you? I mean, like, you know, it seems like that style that Robin created and that went through Pearl and Warren Thomas and troops. I never liked Robin's comedy, I'll be honest with you. It's disjointed, he's not making a point, you know. I remember one time, I was doing a show with him

at the Great American Music Hall. And he ended his show, he did all this, you know, alleged improv, all those, it's all pretty set stuff, you know. And then he ended it with like this, something anti-war thing on his knees, praying to God or something like that. Came off stage, I looked at him, I said,

Robin, how do you live with yourself? And he just looked at me that, Hey, it worked for Jolson. So Robin was a super nice guy. Smart guy though. Oh yeah. Very smart guy. Absolutely. And what were you doing? I was trying to do my hero was Mark Twain. Right now. Mark Twain was a standup comic. Yeah. Only they called it lecturing back then. Yeah. And man, if you a stand-up comic. Yeah. Only they called it lecturing back then. Yeah. And man, if you read his autobiography,

there's some deep stuff in there about stand-up. He compares side by side, two stories, one for print and one for speech. Yeah. Which is extremely educational for a writer. Yeah. Anyway, Mark Twain, W.C. Fields was, he made me laugh harder than anyone. I still use, used Twain, WC Fields was, he made me laugh harder than anyone.

I still use, he used to use one of his jokes. Oh yeah? Metaphors, they just come to me like, like something comes to something or other. Yeah. That's Fields, man. And he was a juggler, as you know. And that's how I juggle. I took his style, which is very small.

It's not like rings and, you know. It's like really small right in front of you with comic moves. It's a unique type of juggling that Fields kind of invented. And you can kind of do one liners in between. And also you're pretending the balls are trying to escape. It's all like right between your chin and your belly button. Right, like close up magic. Yeah, it's all like right between your chin and your belly button. Like close up magic.

Yeah, it's a great style and it requires a lot of practice. I used to practice 10 hours a day. But anyway, getting back to stand up comedy. Yeah, Twain, and then I went to see Richard Pryor, I think probably 79 at the Circle Star Theater in Santa Carlos, and it just blew me away. Really? Because the idea that you could take that kind of pain

and turn it into laughter, the kind, and the absolute, something that's always fascinated me is the casual brutality of life on earth. Yeah. The absolute casual brutality of it. Day to day for every creature alive. Yeah. And to respond to that with laughter.

Right. And to turn that into laughter. I did, you did a spit on the tonight show up, but kind of summarize that, but that to me, and that's what prior, it was about, it's a long Shaggy Dog story about a dog that got smashed. A literal Shaggy Dog story. Yeah, literally got smashed by some watermelon and this lady that was, anyway.

And you did that for Carson? Yeah, I did that for Carson. This was my first Carson show. Phyllis Diller sent me a telegram afterwards saying, that's a very high level comedy. That's what she said. Well, that's interesting to me that, like, because, you know, I kind of cite, you know, prior as being an inspiration

because of the humanity of where you're coming from. The ability to turn pain into laughter, to laugh at, you know, dignity. To be able to endure this life with dignity. You know, you're going to be brutalized. You're going to be oppressed. Just by time. By all of it, yes, by time, by disease,

by other people, depending on where you live. But you don't have to let it take your dignity. You can laugh at it. Look at Navalny, man, that's such a perfect example. Putin never took his dignity. He took his life, but not his dignity. And there's something very profound about that, something to strive for.

So the combination between the humanity of Pryor and the sort of kind of interesting, you know, moral universe that Twain occupied, like he was able to sort of see. Absolutely, yeah. Were you like a, were you a Menken guy? H.L. Menken? Not really.

Yeah. It's a little too urban for me, but. Yeah. But I uncovered little too urban for me but yeah but I uncovered something about Mark Twain I don't think anyone who even all the scholars have have figured out his first book Innocence Abroad. Yeah. It's a story of his trip around the Holy Land and to the Grand Tour. Yeah. The Mediterranean. Have you ever read Herodotus? I don't know.

Herodotus is called the father of history. Right. The Greeks know him as a comic father of history. Right. But most people don't know how humorous it is, but once you unlock his sense of humor, you can see that he's a humorist. And Twain knew that, and the first book,

Innocence Abroad, is basically a copy of Herodotus. Herodotus. Same places, does the same things. So I think that Twain got his style from Herodotus. Right. You know, I mean Herodotus, you don't recognize it as jokes when you're reading it.

Like, well I won't go into an example. Well sometimes jokes are relative to the time. Yeah, but some of them, oh man, that was 2500 years ago and he's talking about this rebel group in the island of Lydia and he says these rebels rebelled against the government so they were exiled. So this is the story of these guys. They went to Sparta to ask for aid.

That's the first joke. The Spartans were extremely stingy. So they go before the Spartan magistrates to ask for aid, and as Farrat puts it, they gave a lengthy speech as people who are in need of aid are liable to do. And you know the Spartans, the word laconic, laconia is where the Spartans live, means stingy with words. So they were laconians. So they considered the speech, the Spartan magistrates, and their reply to the

rebels was, your speech was so long that we forgot the first half. Therefore, the second half didn't make any sense. We are judging you to be insane as a result, and we're gonna put you to death tomorrow. So they go, wait, wait, wait, wait, let us try again, we'll give you a speech tomorrow. So they come back the next day, and they hold up an empty wheat bag, right?

An empty grain bag, and they say, the bag needs wheat. And then they sit down. The Spartans considered it and they said, there was no need for you to have said the bag. And they put them to death. So the book is full of stuff like that, that you don't really understand as a joke until you unlock that key.

And that's what Mark Twain did. And so I caught him, his influence, which was really satisfying. But anyway, yeah, Richard Pryor was the one who made me realize that stand up is an art. It can be, it's not just entertainment. It can be raised to the level of any of the highest arts. Whether it's painting or music, it's rare, of course. Most of the time it's just entertainment, but it has the potential to turn a pain

into something universally true. And also to change, you know, if you have a point of view about something that no one noticed before through a turn, it can change the way they perceive the world. Not just their pain, but the pain element of it is the foundation of making people feel less alone in their own pain.

Well, I don't know if it can do that. I mean, that can happen with anything. But the thing that the standup can do, there's a communication between the standup and the audience. Right. But that really is, when you think about it, the least of what's happening in that room. It's a very tiny part of the communication that's happening in that room.

It's a very tiny part of the communication that's happening in that room. Just the connection. Yeah, the real communication is the audience with each other. Yeah. That's what's really happening. Right, but that's a less alone business. Yeah, yeah, that's what's really happening. The audience is communicating with each other,

and they're learning every time you say something, oh we all think that was fun or none of us think that was funny or we all thought that was over the line or we all have thought that way or oh that's something that we all understand and that's the audience getting to know each other and that's what's really going on in a stand-up room. it's almost the person on stage is just Facilitating that yeah, but that's the real thing that's happening and once you understand It's not about you even though you're the guy on stage You know and I think a lot of comics never get that they never understand. It's not about you. It's about them and

But that's but that's the dichotomy though that you're talking about So either you're an entertainer or you're you're no you're commuting a communicator you you're there for a deeper purpose One of the things that's that I guess really boring about show businesses This is the show business syndrome and I see this so it's the idea that you know That if you can get enough strangers to applaud or love you Yeah that if you can get enough strangers to applaud or love you, that you'll fill that hole or whatever. And the flaw in that reasoning, of course, is that the one person that can make you feel a hole

is never in the audience. It's the one on stage. In you. Yeah, exactly. Good luck. I don't care how big your audiences get. That person that's gonna make you feel like you wanna feel is not in it.

So how long are you out there? Do you do on the road in the 80s? Yeah, I used to do five weeks out of six on the road and clubs. Clubs? Oh yeah, yeah, the cocaine days. I had this connecting Key West and he would send it to me wherever I was. Yeah, it was, yeah. So, okay, so then how do you get get when do you get your first tonight show break? Oh man it's a long story but okay so I wanted to do the tonight show and

because back then it made a difference yeah doesn't now but so I Robin had these managers Brezhner Shapiro no Bre No Brezhnev. Oh, yeah Rollins Rollins and job. Okay. Yeah, they're both dead now, but Larry Brezhnev was there underling. Yeah, David Steinberg Steinberg That's who I meant. It's time for David Steinberg. Yeah, but anyway He called me over to his house once because he had rats under his bed under his bed Steinberg yes. Yeah, can you imagine that kind of karma? You have to have to have a family of rats living under your bed. What his bed? Under the Steinberg. Yes. Can you imagine the kind of karma you have to have to have a family of rats living under your bed? What do you want from you? I'm a rat killer, man.

I said, block up all the doors, put towels under them so they can't escape, and I'm gonna flip that over, give me a stick, and I'll kill them all. You were a known rat killer at this time. You were just a go-to guy. Go-to guys, can you help me? Yeah, man, I'll kill those rats for you.

I have very fast reflexes when it comes to rats. So in return for the rat killing favor, you got you the Tonight Show? No. Actually, he tried to ban me from showbiz eventually. Why? Some shit that happened to Saturday Night Live. But anyway, the way I got the Rolls de Joffy to represent me, I had a really good, you know, by then I was really a pretty good comic.

I had some meaningful stuff, some geopolitics, and some good stuff. Some of it was family, you know, and just stories. Some of it was politics. So I had a tape of it and but they never look at tapes, you know. You try and get Jim McCauley to look at your tape and he's like, I got hundreds of these. That's what he told me. He said, I have hundreds of these on my desk. I'm not gonna get around. So I, how did I do that with Brezhner? I sent him a tape and then I called him when I knew he wasn't going to be in and said, okay, somehow I tricked him into watching it. I can't remember exactly how. By making him say he'd already watched it, and then when he hadn't, and then I'm coming down,

I don't remember how exactly I did it, but somehow I finigled him into watching the tape, and it blew him away, and he said, well, get on tonight's show right away. And so, went to the comedy store, and good omen, it bombed. Totally bombed, which is a great omen. McCauley was there, he's like, okay.

But it's good enough, so. He said it was good enough? Yeah, it was, well, Rollins and Jaffe had a lot of juice. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I went on, and it's great that it went at bombs the night before. But if you watch that first tonight, Joe, Johnny really backs off. He's like, here's a comic that...

Wasn't sure about you. Yeah, he doesn't attach himself to you. He doesn't endorse it. He's like, you're gonna go. He's very smart that way. And I killed, of course, and then he was like, this is his first network appearance. But he waited till after.

Yeah, and then after that, he spoke very highly of me. I think I did his show seven times. I could have done it more, but I don't think you should go on and do something unless you really have something to say. Just to go on and to go on, I think Steve Martin went on 100 times. You can't have that much to say.

So to me, it was like, if you kill, people remember you. If you just do OK, you might as well not have done it. But the intention was to get more road attention, to sell more tickets. No, the intention was they were going to try and do the Robin thing, get in movies, get in TV, and all that so Al Franken I did this thing about politics, you know about geopolitics. What happened was

Remember when Russia invaded Afghanistan this was what would not happen and Johnny Carson came out did a bit on it and his punchline was that he pulled his pants down and his On his underwear was written around the and on his underwear was written, around the back of his underwear was written, Russia sucks. And I was so embarrassed as an American by that. That it was truly offensive to me to think that that's what people see America,

that's the kind of thoughtful geopolitical, that's not us. And so I took some acid with that's not us, you know? And so I took some acid with Warren Spottswood, remember him? Anyway, great comic from Mobile, Alabama. And we worked out an intelligent geopolitical respond, comic with lots of jokes, but it was truthful.

And it was about the neighborhood that Russia lives in and what's going on around it, and Afghanistan. And I actually went on tonight's show and did it. And that to me was very satisfying, to see something on television, major show, be embarrassed by it, and be able to do a response and say this is another side of it. Did you present it like that?

Or you just did it? No, I just did it. Right. But in my mind, I mean, I'm able to have that forum. Yeah. I could actually correct people's impression. Yeah, they were very unsure about it. They were like, okay, and I was like,

no, this will work, believe me. And it did, it worked great. Okay. And that was my first entree. Before that, I'd just done stories about dogs and kids and stuff, because I thought that was more universal and more long-lasting. But it turns out current events is long-lasting.

It stands up. So Al Franken, this was in 1984, they were, Lauren was out, Lauren was just, they were trying to get him to come back into Saturday Night Live. It was a big risk for Lauren to come back. You know, they had lost, you know, he had been out for five years, and that year, Eddie Murphy had quit, Joe Piscopo, Billy Crystal, they were all gone. There was nobody left.

And they were going gonna cancel the show, unless Lorne would come back. But Lorne had had to show the new show, that had more or less kind of bombed. So it was a real. Which one was that? It was a show he made called The New Show, but it didn't work.

I don't even remember it. Yeah, of course, it failed. So for Lorne to come back and do Saturday Night Live, if he failed again, that would be bad. It was a big risk that Lauren took. Actually, I don't think people realize how big a risk Lauren took coming back to shepherd the show, because they were going to cancel it unless Lauren came

back. I think coming back, Lauren was a little apprehensive, I think, because a failure would be very bad for him. And I don't think he really knew what it was that had made the show a hit. You know, they're hiring him back to bring his magic touch, but he didn't know what the magic touch was. Understandable.

So he basically put Franken and Downey as front producers. If anything happened, it's on them. Head writers? No, they were producers. Okay, yeah. They were producers. So he set himself up to blame.

To be able to have some front. And Lauren is very loyal that way. He explained it to me like this. I'm the flag. You know, you don't let the flag touch the ground and the flag will take care of you. So yeah, I mean, you know, he'd hire them back at a higher salary if they failed,

they'd take the blame and he'd hire them back at a higher salary, anyway, so that's how, he's very loyal that way. And so Frank and they were looking around for new cast members and Frank and Sami and wanted me to become a writer. I had never written for television before, but he contacted Rollins and Jaffe.

I didn't even know about this. One day Steinberg comes in and says, oh, you know, Saturday Night Live wants you to come and be a writer, but we turned him down three times. And I'm like, what the fuck? I wanna be a writer, that's what I wanna do. I don't wanna be the fuck? I wanna be a writer, that's what I wanna do. I don't wanna be a performer, I wanna be a writer. And so over their objections, you know,

they were holding out for me to be a cast member, I can't fucking act, you know? So I wouldn't enjoy it, even if I could. So I got hired as, you know, Frank had hired me as a writer. And right from the very beginning, I had an act for it. You know, the first thing we did in August was start writing promos for the return of the show. And you know, I wrote some great ones.

And eventually I got in charge of writing all the promos for five years, because other writers, they had it in their contracts. We do not have to write promos. Yeah. But anyway, so after about three months there, they started asking me to go on camera, do an update thing.

Who was hosting update then? Dennis Miller. Yeah. And Dennis, anyway. What? Can't write a joke, doesn't, he doesn't really even recognize a good joke. Yeah.

Herb Sargent wrote most of those. Yeah. But you know, I like to, I don't want to bad mouth anybody. Although I do enjoy doing it. Yeah. But you know, if you look at, you can deconstruct comedy. Like, I met, what's his name, the guy that does, you're a redneck? Oh yeah, Foxworthy. Yeah, Foxworthy. I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, You might be a redneck. The joke to end his act. That's the joke.

Yeah. But when you deconstruct Miller's act, his whole act is basically about him trying to convince you that he's smarter than you. And so it's about him. Again, it's not about the audience. So you get the shot to do on camera? Yeah, they asked me to do it and I'm like, ah. So I didn't know what to do on camera? How's that? Yeah, they asked me to do it and I'm like, ah.

So I didn't know what to do. They said, write something about geopolitics. We really need that. And so I couldn't think of anything. Now Mark McKinney, kids in the hall, saw him last month. He's an awesome guy. He's been to Austin a couple times too.

Love that guy. His father, he's Canadian. His father was a Canadian diplomat. So he was steeped in world affairs. So me and him, one cold January afternoon, we took some acid in Central Park in the middle of the night and it was a fresh snowfall. God, that was a beautiful night.

And we came up with the big picture. You're big. Yeah. A context. Yeah. A context. Yeah, a context of when we wanted to name it something that sounded like you'd already heard it before. Yeah.

Not very original name, but something, oh yeah, that's where everyone goes, oh yeah, I know that. Yeah. And so I think I did about 70 of those. Yeah. Yeah. And that's what kind of defines you

on SNL and also culturally. Yeah, and everyone thought, you know, this guy's obviously some Harvard educated guy or professor. Eighth grade, buddy. Eighth grade, man. Yeah, absolutely. Eighth grade, Mark Twain and acid. And a little bit of prior. I know.

And it was like, you know, reviews were like, you know, this guy's whatever. Anyway, it was pretty funny. So how crazy was it at SNL during your years? Well, look, man, I would get to write my piece usually after my other duties were finished. Writing other stuff? Yeah, because I wrote a lot of liar sketches. Was Chris Farley on the show?

He was for the last couple of years I was there, yeah. You guys were friends? Yeah, yeah. I have some big regrets about that. In terms of how he ended up. Yeah, cuz you know, he he followed me and and GE Another guy on the show to to find his first heroin. Yeah, you know, yeah We used to go down on Alphabet City 9th Avenue. Yeah, there was a spot there. Yeah, we do it between dress and air couple of the people

But was that your first time with that shit? Yeah, I just took it to take the edge off. Yeah, I Couldn't have done Saturday life without the drugs. Yeah, I had too much anxiety. Yeah, you know mostly blow I just combo I got the pressure. Yeah, I couldn't have done it without the drugs. Yeah so yeah, they took their toll almost killed me but That's the price you pay and you feel a little bad about leading a little Chris a stray Yeah, but there's a supernatural story about Farley. Yeah, I think is it needs to be told He was this guy. Oh That's my neighbor. He he was this guy, oh that's my neighbor,

there was this guy in Wisconsin, not very well educated, overweight, no friends, and he decided that he would live his life as a copy of John Belushi. That was what he was gonna do. He was in this little town, with a bunch of buddies in his working class, and he did it, he did it. Now like one small part of his plan

was to become a star on Saturday Night Live. That's not easy. That's not an easy thing to do. And then he did it, he lived his whole entire life. That was all he, he couldn't think of anything it's almost supernatural because he couldn't He did it yeah, he actually did it and died did the whole thing

Yeah, lived the life that he saw that and he went I'll do that. Yeah, and he wasn't very smart He wasn't very competent. He wasn't He's funny, though He was funny Yeah, he was I know guy told me a story about far we once and they were partying and they were on mushrooms and it Was late at night and they were at this guy's apartment and farley just you know threw up on himself And he looked at the guy and goes I guess I'm full Yeah, but it is funny to us

but I went to you know, I'd go over to pick him up at his apartment sometimes and I mean he he he lived in this one room and yeah He'd never even turned his kitchen sink on he used his bathtub sink for everything. Yeah, he had like one t-shirt I mean he had he he was a husk of a human. Anyway the story is because he couldn't be anyone, he decided to be this guy. Yeah. And he did. It's a little sad. It's not just sad but it's also unbelievable that he did it. And so you were there with Sandler and all those guys Sandler last year shared a office with Chris Rock first his first two years

But my first cast was the 11th season Robert Downey jr. Randy Quaid Joan Cusack and that is the season although we got terrible reviews. We did have some hits. Yeah liar, which I wrote and John love us came up with the character and I wrote the scripts. Master Thespian, Lovitz basically saved the show for another 39 years. That was the hinge. That show, if we hadn't had a couple of hits on that show, there would be no, Saturday Night Live would have ended

right then. So what happened was, if we continue with the story about Lauren taking this big risk, and he stalked the cast with movie stars, hopefully Anthony Michael Hall, Ron McDonough Jr., and none of them were very good at sketches. But I think what he had,

Lovitz, who was great, he had... Hartmanitz, who was great. He had- Hartman or no? No. No. So at the end of that season, with the fire and everything, we also had great hosts, we had Madonna, we had Francis Ford Coppola as guest director,

and that show got panned, but it was, can you imagine staying up all night writing with Francis Ford Coppola? Yeah. That's something I got to do. But anyway, so at the end of that, almost everybody got fired except for me and Lovitz, and I think he kept Dennis, but it was the writers that saved that show, George Meyer.

All those Simpsons, he branded the Simpsons, all the best Simpsons are George Meyer. John Schwarzwelder, who a lot of people don't think is a real person. You say, I'm a myth. Schwarzwelder is really, there's a statue of him in the town of Springfield in the opening credits. Jedidiah Springfield, that's John Schwarzwelder.

That's how big an impact he had on that show. He lives in Roy Rogers' old house now and he's kind of a recluse, but he's a real person. Funny guy. An interesting guy, but a very precise comedy writer. But he's retired too, but we had Robert Smigel. We had Carol Leifer. We had Franken and Downey and Davis, Don Novello,

and Don Novello as a comedy writer, he would write something. I mean, imagine reading the cheeseburger sketch at read through and people are like, what? What's funny about that? And then it's a national hit. He wrote this very, very soft kind of comedy that was, that you couldn't see why it was funny,

but yet it worked. Jack Handy, I think, was there that year. I mean, we had an incredible group of writers that all have gone on to have great careers. So at the end of it, Lorne, I think, figured out that what made the show work performance wise, the magic that inhabited the first few seasons

was people who had worked together for a long time. You know, Harvard Lampoon, all that stuff. People who knew each other and worked together. That was part of it. So he went and he asked people, who do you want to work with? You know, Love it said Hartman, my friend Phil Hartman. And Dana had auditioned, I think, and I said, Dana, I came up with him at the other cafe. Nora Dunn came up with her at the other. We'd all worked together many, many times in standup situations.

In San Francisco. In San Francisco. And then they asked Dana, what do you want? And he goes, oh, my buddy Kevin Nealon from San Francisco. And then they asked Kevin, who do you want to work with? Oh, my girlfriend, Jane Hooks from San Francisco. So that was the cast that made the second Golden Age. Yeah. Because everyone knew each other.

Yeah, Lorne fired everybody. And just the people who had done well, he said, who do you want? Yeah. And that's how that happened. Wow. And we did really create the second golden age of that show. Yeah.

Man, the last show I saw was really good with... Gosling? Yeah, Gosling, it was great. It's funny. It was a good show. It was, yeah. So how did it end there for you? You know, addiction, you know,

I was not really competent anymore. I was like, you know, I was not really competent anymore. I was like, you know, I was a mess, you know, with the dope, with the dope. And yeah, I was like, what was the thing you wanted to clear up with Dana? Oh yeah. Okay. So I got to correct the record on this thing with Dana Carvey. Yeah. Cause Dana told the story about me and Paul McCartney, right?

And I, what was the story? I love the story was this. Okay. So I would go and stay with at Lauren's house for a month or so out in the Hamptons. Yeah during the summer yeah, and Sometimes Dana would come was mostly me and my my really good friend. Joe forest all who's Lauren Joe Yeah, we would go out there and be basically Lauren's houseboys Yeah, Lauren was produced these dinners that be Diane Sawyer Mick Jagger, and we'd all be sitting at the dinner table,

and Lorne at the head of the table, and he probably couldn't even find a plate in his own house. Me and Joe would do, you know, we could do shopping, and we'd run, you know, Lorne's a producer by instinct. He would produce it, you know, he'd have people like me. Anyway, I love Lorne for that. He's an instinctive producer.

So he produced these dinners, and we're part of the staff. But anyway, so I always had the good weed, still do. And Paul McCartney's pothead, as everyone knows. So he would come and stay with his wife's ancestral, Hampton's, I think they're out in Montauk, or South Fork, but the, you know, the family that she's from, you know, the photographic family. Oh, Eastman. Eastman, that's right. So anyway, he can't travel with the weed. He gets here and he's

like, where's the weed? Lauren goes, Whitney's got the weed, come on over. So Paul comes over, I give him the weed. Dana's not a big pothead, but Paul's in there smoking with someone else, I think, John Head maybe, anyway, one of Lauren's buddies. And I'm in the kitchen making some Italian potato salad for him or whatever. And Dana, Dana was there too.

And Paul, you can't understand, you gotta understand how much he looks up to Paul McCartney Dana. Yeah. Oh my god That's his guy. So Paul says to him. Hey, I just cut these Tracks, you know, I got the rough cut you want to hear them. Yeah, and Dana's like what? you know, and so he puts it on and I come in and According to Dana, I said to him, well anyway, I'll just tell you the story of what really happened. I come in and just to fuck with Paul, I say to him, oh this is great, who is this,

Christopher Cross? Yeah. And the funniest fucking part about this is that a month later, I see Paul at the Yankees game with Lauren and we're talking, I see Paul at the Yankees game with Lauren, and we're talking, I think Chevy Chase is there, and Paul comes up to me and goes, Whitney, do I sound like Christopher Cross still?

It really got under his skin. A month later, he's still thinking about it. It made me laugh so hard. It made me laugh so hard. Anyway, so, but when Dana told you that story, he made it sound really mean. Because he, instead of saying who I said, Christopher Cross, by the way, he's now a friend of mine,

so I told him that story, he thought it was hilarious. He's a great guy too, Chris Cross. But Dana said that I said, who is this? Julian Lennon, or Sean Lennon. And that would have been really mean. And so I want to correct that record. That's not who I said. I said Christopher Cross and that's funny.

Christopher Cross, I'm gonna run. Yeah, the God Rock. He's great. And that actually did kind of sound like him. But to say it was John Lennon's son would have just been cruel. I would never have done that. That's not ball busting, that's just being mean.

Oh good, well I'm glad we straightened that out. I wanted to straighten that out. It was all in fun. That day at the ball game, when Paul said that, we had so much fun. That's so funny. Me and Joe decided to, Chevy was there, right? And we're at the ball game, and Mike Tyson sitting like six rows in front of us. Yeah. And so, you know, and he's, he's being Mike Tyson and everyone's coming and paying their tribute. Yeah. And Chevy sitting

like six rows up and no one is paying attention to Chevy. Yeah. No, that's never good. Yeah. So he's getting more and more anxious about this. So finally he, he, he gets up and he walks down to Mike Tyson where everyone's, well he turns around, make sure everyone sees him, you know. That's for all their attentions. Then he comes back and sits down. And Joe and I are like, oh please, man.

So what we did was we went up in the stands and we got a guy, a kid, I think it was like an eight year old kid, and they said, we'll give you five bucks, I want you to go down there. You see Chevy Chase down there? And it was Paul Simon, year old kid, I said, we'll give you five bucks, I want you to go down there, you see Chevy Chase down there? And it was Paul Simon, Chevy Chase, and Lauren sitting together. I said, we want you to lean over Chevy and go,

hey, aren't you Lauren Michaels, creator of Saturday Night Live? Can I have your autograph? And totally ignore Chevy. So the kid goes, hell yeah, I'll do it. So he goes down, and he does that. Totally ignores Chevy. And Lauren is like, oh, yes, I am.

So we got the perfect mix of people. We got a kid, we got an elderly person, we got a pretty girl. So then we're going to tell. You're setting them all up to do that? All of them, yeah. And so Lauren had like three people come up at the game who were all like, you know,

just the people you'd wanna come up with. You want a kid, you want an old man, you want a pretty girl, you know, we had a nice mix. And we kept doing that all day. We were like walking around, I can't remember what we were doing, but we were around town, right? And we kept doing that all day.

And just in tears. And then we realized, what the fuck? We can never tell anybody about this because if we did, now this is 30 years ago, how bad would that hurt Lorne? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That would be a very cruel thing to have done to Lorne. It was originally a joke on Chevy,

but it turned, when we got so deep into it, it was like, whoa, if anyone ever found out about this Lauren would be very hurt Yeah, so so we we buried it but man that was a fun day. We laughed so hard that day Anyway, so that's the real story. Okay, or just ball-busting. How did Lauren handle your drugs problems? Lauren was he he was He handled it with a lot of compassion. Yeah. And Lauren is compassionate about letting people go. But, you know, he didn't really fire me.

He just made it clear that, you know. You gotta get help? That, something like that, yeah. Yeah. But I remember something that Lauren told me at the time time you know and I've never forgotten that we were talking about drugs I was doing them yeah I don't know about me he's like I have mixed feelings about this I don't know why should I let you do that yeah and you know because he'd seen what happened to John yeah and but I think he also knew people are gonna do what

they're gonna do and sometimes you got to it to get the show done, but anyway, he said to me, he said, you know, if the white Anglo-Saxon Protestants controlled the drug trade, it would be in every household. And that is exactly what happened with Purdue Pharma. That's just what happened. I've never forgotten it, because it was so prophetic. And he was right. He said corporate.

If the corporate world was in the drug trade, it'd be in every house. That's what he said, the corporate world. And it's exactly what happened. Wow. Yeah. Yeah, Lorne, he has. He's a smart guy.

He's great. Not only that, but his real talent, I think, or one of his many talents. I mean, you could stand next to him during dress rehearsal and listen to the notes he's giving and have a complete production education. But one thing that he really understood was context. He really has a knack for that.

We had this sketch that was, I think it was a downy sketch about Hercules as a middle-aged man, trying to lift a rock. And the main joke, of course, is the Italian dialogue turned into English, so it's lips are, that's the main joke. Oh, right, right. But the other joke is Hercules, the return of Hercules,

but he's like, he's got a bad back, and you know, it's all that. And it would've been pretty funny, but Loren just kept saying, no, don't do that. And then it was a trunk piece, you know? And then Bill Murray came back to host the show. And the day he arrived, Lauren said, hey, get that Hercules sketch out.

That's context. So now it's Bill Murray as Hercules coming back, he's got a bad back, his chops. Lauren, really, that's context to me. That's taking something and making it mean more than it would by surrounding it. That's great at that. That's great to me. That's taking something and making it mean more than it would by surrounding it. That's great at that. That's great.

Yeah. I really admire that. What was the journey after SNL? Oh, yeah. I recovered. I recovered. One of the things they told me was that if you you if you want to stay clean I went to hazel yeah, and And then they said

You know if you want to stay clean this you got to do all these things got to go to a meeting every day You got to do this and do that and get a sponsor so I did all those things But one of the things they told me I had to do was to get a Therapy yeah, so I got the psychiatrist on 57th Street in Manhattan, a great psychiatrist, Mark Gerald, really amazing guy. And he was a professor at Columbia, really heavy dude, and he had me, you know, anyway, he was great.

I learned a lot from him. You know what I learned from him? He had you what? I learned two things, him. You know what I learned from him? He had you what? I learned two things. That everything is intentional. That you do everything. Assume that is a very useful assumption.

Doesn't matter if it's true. If you assume that, you will start to understand why you do everything. Right. That's the main thing I learned from him. So anyway, I'm walking out of his office one day and I run into Jeff Stilson. Yeah. And Stilson goes, hey, what are you doing? He said, I got into comedy because I saw you

at a comedy club up in Oregon. You know, it's amazing, that's why I'm in comedy. Because you're like, oh cool, what are you doing? He says, I'm working at Comedy Central. Come on over, we'll pay you scale. I'm like, sure, I'll go over there. And this was when they were really in a, they were really in a they were they were

really in a state of didn't know what they wanted to do that was was it the HA network was a comedy channel or was it Comedy Central it was Comedy Central then but it was half owned by Viacom and half by HBO and half by HBO Time Warner so both of them wanted to buy it but neither would sell it yeah you know they would buy it for any amount, but wouldn't sell it at all. So they didn't know what they wanted to do. And we were just writing, it was terrible,

the writers room, they wanted to make it like a college dorm room, they were so lame. But anyway, we started writing interstitial programming for them. Who was there, was Gordetsky there? Yes, Gordetsky was there. Lis Winstead, Madeline Smithberg, another girl too, I'm trying to remember her name.

I have a picture in my head, I'm sorry to her. And Stillson, a few others. And through all these, we started writing interstitial programs, stuff to put in between their other programs, and then, I think it was, Madeleine came up with this, look, what we need is a flagship show. We need a flagship, like CBS has a CBS news.

And so, that's how The Daily Show came to be. Right, with Kilburn. With Kilburn, yeah. And so, we sat there and figured it all out and launched the show. Right with Kilbourne with Kilbourne. Yeah, and so we could you know We sat there and figured it all out and and and launched the show you're on the original staff and creator I probably hosted it eight or ten times. Wow Kilbourne was out first. How long did you stay sober? I'm still sober. No, but I mean like like I imagine you were real all clean for a while, right? Yeah all that time Yeah, I was I was totally clean.

But I was in huge trouble with the IRS. Robert Downey Jr. had recommended these accountants for me my first year. And one of them was a crook. One of them is like really famous now. But he's a big, you know, he's very wealthy and he's a big gay activist. But anyway, in Hollywood. But one of them was a crook and he was, you know,

stealing not that much money, a couple thousand bucks here and there. But in order to cover it up, he fucked up my taxes so bad that when I left Saturday Night Live, and I didn't work for about a year or two while I was recovering, I ended up owing them hundreds of thousands of dollars because I went from making a lot of money to making almost nothing.

And so the interest and penalties on my debt to them was going up way faster than the amount of money that I made. It was going up more than I made. And so that went on for like seven or eight years. I got checks from Comedy Central. And I hate doing paperwork, so I just couldn't deal with it.

I just let them do whatever they want. My checks were for zero dollars at Comedy Central. 100% withholding. And you know, actually I've always been able to make money otherwise. Yeah. But it taught me something about working without, there's been some great art done in by people who are not being paid. Yeah. Solzhenitsyn, Kafka. They lived in a country where the government

took all of their money, and yet they produced some really great stuff. Why? Because I'd always just done it for the money. Why? And why did they do that when they weren't even getting paid? And that was a very liberating. Why, because of purpose?

Because you can And only you can right if you don't do it. It won't be done right, yeah, you know if you don't make this thing that you know you can do and This beautiful thing that you want to that you know will be a beautiful thing. Yeah, if you don't do it it won't Exist. Yeah, and so you're driven to do it, it won't exist. And so you're driven to do it for that reason. So that was a lesson? A very big lesson, yeah.

That things are worth doing. You envision something, whether it's a, whatever it is, a script or a show or an act, and you see it and you want it to exist, but you're the only one that can make it exist. And that's right. So did you re-engage with standup at that point, or no? A little bit, but standup had changed a lot.

Back then I remember going to do a show after 9-11, and I had some jokes. It was in Princeton, a lot of people had died from there. The guy said, you can't do those jokes. They're not... We're over at the Catcher Rising Star? In Princeton? Yeah. Or no, we're at... I think it was a catch. Maybe it was an improv. But anyway, the guy like The you know, you can't talk about 9-eleven and I was talking about, you know

Arab racism that had come out of it. Yeah, that was my angle and I said well You can't tell me it's your stage, but you can't tell me but it's my act You can't tell me what I can say or not. You can say I can't go on your stage Yeah, and but you can't tell me what I'm gonna say when I go up there yeah so he said you can't go on my stage fair enough yeah you know I mean that's the division that I don't think a lot of people understand but anyway that that's that's what happened there if you the whole comedy scene had changed yeah sure we used to make a lot of money we used to make five grand a week.

But that all. So you're just kicking around doing writing projects. Discoing. Disbanded at all. Disco. Yeah, I've always been able to make a living. Oh, you know what I did? I had a motorcycle and I was riding a lot.

And there was a little shop, a little tiny, almost like the size of a two car garage, motorcycle shop. Went down to, you know, I needed some work done on my bike. Got to know the guy. In the city? No, in Greenwich, Connecticut. Okay. In the working class part of Greenwich.

So I went down there one day and I said, Carlos, this is my good friend Carlos Escudero, who still has a shop, by the way, a motorcycle shop in Greenwich, Solomodo. I went down and I said, I want to be your intern. And so I started working for him. And he said, I don't know what, sort these carburetor jets out for me. So I started working for him and after a little while he started paying me and then he started

paying me more and then I was kind of a sounding board for him so we you know we put together a plan got a much bigger shop which he still has yeah this is 30 years ago and you know and I work on bikes with him and and you know people would say to me oh you know how can you do can you just be a motorcycle mechanic after being on Saturday Night Live? Well, like, you know, it doesn't seem as exciting, but I think that's ridiculous because, not just that it's honest work, but the stakes.

You know, if you don't write a good joke, people don't laugh. If you fuck up somebody's motorcycle they can get killed Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's life or death. Yeah, so the stakes are it's a way more Important job sure You know why we pay singers a thousand times as much as we pay firemen that that's the the mystery of our culture But that's the way it is and how'd you get pulled into Air America? Because that's when I oh, yeah, that's that's when I kind of met. Oh,, but that's the way it is. And how'd you get pulled into Air America? Because that's when I kind of met you.

Oh yeah, that's right. Who did pull me? I think it was Liz, yeah, it was Liz. She's the one who hired me and she's the one who fired me. From Air America? Yes. Well the whole thing went south. Yeah, it was pretty bad.

Yeah. But there was, I love Liz Winsett, she's very creative. Kind of the classic New York liberal. Sure, and then when did you move here? Yeah. Well, I used to do this thing where I would say, what if you could close your eyes and then when you open them you would see

What your eyes are going to see ten years from now? You know just a glimpse. Yeah What would it be? You know, would you see anything and I did that and I realized that Nothing interesting was gonna come out of the life I was living. So I packed up everything, put all my bills on automatic and everything, so I was all ready to go. And Nezmith, Michael Nezmith, called me out. We had been friends since the 80s.

And he asked me, he had this thing called Video Ranch where it was like a, kind of like Second Life, but it was with music and he was trying to get it going and he asked me if I would DJ. I have like many thousands of jazz albums. So would I DJ a jazz program that's like a live show in this Video Ranch? And so.

He was out here? He was out here and I was in Connecticut. The great thing about his situation, the screen thing was that you can chat about the music without interrupting the music Right and you always want to talk about the music. Yeah, but it interrupts it So but by typing you could but anyway, I had fun doing that I did it for a few months and then he said hey I'm doing a show at this thing called South by Southwest in Austin, Texas Would you come down? It's five days, I got 20 bands, all the greatest bands in Austin, or some of them,

would you come down and MC it? I'm like, sure, I'll do that. Came down and it was fun. There was some great bands, Texas Tornado, that's where I met Floco Omanes, met Ray Benson, met some great people, but I met my wife there. Yeah. I'm standing outside smoking,

I see this pretty young girl carrying this giant red amp from her car. I'm like, shoot, that girl needs some help. And so we got to know each other a little bit, talked, and then she came to New York to work at Joe's Pub to do her show there. I think she had a five-piece band. What was the name of the band?

Carolyn Wonderland. It's always her name. It's always her. That's Carolyn Wonderland. She's a guitar wizard. She is a great songwriter a great Guitar player a great musician and a really great singer She's in the Austin Music Awards Hall of Fame great and that so you met her and that got you out here just finished her

13th album amazing For alligator which I really want you to hear some rough cuts after we're done with this yeah absolutely it's the best work I think she's ever done yeah I love my wife's to come to Texas oh well we hooked up in in New York yeah she yeah yeah I came to her show and and and and then the rest has, it's just been beautiful. I wish I'd come to Texas sooner. And of course the government's terrible, but the government here is not always, and doesn't always have to be,

look, LBJ, the greatest president in my lifetime, came from right here in the Hill Country. Molly Ivins, Anne and Cecile Richards, Barbara Jordan. We have a legacy of great politicians and we're gonna get it back again. We will eventually. I hope you're right and I'll mark your words on that. Yeah, in Texas, the people here

are not as dumb as our government is. I mean UT is one of the best educational systems in the world. MD Anderson, I mean we, the microchip was invented here. The microchip. The integrated circuit was invented here. We went to the moon from here. You know, I mean, we deserve better and we'll get it.

Great talking to you, man. Let's have some beans and rice. Yes, my friends. ["Wonderland"] There you go. I wanted to mention again that Whitney's wife, Carolyn Wonderland, plays regularly in Austin and is also on tour.

You can check out her gigs and more at carolynwonderland.com. Great guitar player, hang out for a minute. Folks, May 6th through May 12th is Mental Health Week, a time to raise awareness about mental health that's centered on the healing power of compassion. And during Mental Health Week, a time to raise awareness about mental health that's centered on the healing power of compassion. And during Mental Health Week, CAMH needs your support to build a future where no one is left behind. CAMH is the Center for Addiction and Mental Health and they're hard at work creating better treatments and interventions for anyone experiencing

addiction. Part of that work is about the understanding of the brain and CAMH is transforming patient care by knocking down the barriers that keep people from getting help. Imagine how lonely it can feel to be facing mental illness or addiction on your own. You don't have to surrender to hopelessness because CAMH is conducting groundbreaking research to fight addiction and get people the help they need.

In Canada, we lose 20 people to drug overdose every single day. Right now, you can partner with CAMH to help send those numbers in the other direction. Help change mental health care forever during Mental Health Week. Donate at camh.ca slash WTF to help CAMH treat addiction and build hope. That's camh.ca slash WTF. This Friday. I actually like this so much better than a motel. I bet the people who live here are really happy.

Witness how the strangers. Hello? Became the strangers. Ah! You have to get out of here. What the fuck are you doing? Why are you doing this to us? Because you're here.

The Strangers Chapter 1 only in theaters Friday. Hey folks, if you feel like going back into the WTF archives for some classics, it was six years ago tomorrow that we posted my talk with Josh Brolin. It's episode 915 and it's a good one. Love that guy. How long you been sober? Almost five years. That's great. Yeah.

But I had five years and then I had three and a half. That's what happens. And then five and then yeah. Are you able to identify why you decide that moment? To go back out? Yeah. Oh yeah, man, it was an absolutely fully conscious decision. As you know. You're like, I'm ready?

Yeah. Seriously. It wasn't like, yeah, yeah, it wasn't like, you know, you hear these guys in the rooms, they're like, I don't even know what happened. Like, before I knew it, I was in the bar, I was drinking, I get all the fucking, I don't know what happened. Like before I knew it, I was in the bar, I was drinking. I get all the fucking, I don't know what happened.

And you're like, how is that possible? I knew, I made an absolute conscious decision to go fuck it up even more. Because I appreciated the destructivity of it all more than I liked sobriety at that point. Now, it's very different. Yeah. It's very different.

What do you think changed? I don't know. And there was no major, like, the moment of clarity or anything. I saw my grandma, she was kind of, she was on her apparent deathbed, she didn't die until later. Yeah.

And I went in there after Halloween, and I had been kind of helming the whole taking care of grandma thing, and the family was around and all that. And my brother and I were been kind of helming the whole taking care of grandma thing and the family was around and all that and my brother and I were gonna go see her and this was like the 10th day or something. And then I went out and to have a nice Halloween with my wife and then that turned into all kinds of shit.

When you end up at Del Taco, you know something's wrong. You know what I mean? You know it's time to get sober. If it's late at night, yeah. Del Taco, not even paying attention to what's around you. No. You see the sign kind of through a brownout or a blackout, and you're like, what does that say?

Del? No. Taco. Fuck. And you know you're doomed. That's available for free in all podcast apps and at WTFPod.com and you can always get every episode of WTF ad free by signing up for WTF+. Just go to the link in the episode description or go to WTF pod.com and click on WTF plus. Before we go, this episode is sponsored by BetterHelp online therapy. Have something to get off your chest like work stress or relationship issues.

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Oh, I'll play guitar. So So So So So So Boomer lives, monkey and Lafond to cat angels everywhere.