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My guest today is one of the best stand up comedians alive today, not one of the best to ever do it. I love him.

He is the former host of Tough Crowd and the author of a new book called Overstated A Coast-to-coast Roast of the 50 States. He is the great and powerful Colin Quinn.

Government bypassed the Joe Rogan experience, trained by Joe Rogan podcast by night all day.

When I moved to Texas to get you on this podcast, I tried forever to get you in L.A., you said no chance. Not true.

OK, I've every time we see each other, we just. Yeah, I was always like, I'll get out there one of those days. I'm glad I waited this long. It's kind of I can say I can appreciate it. I'm savoring it right now.

If I was on one of the first podcast, I'd be like, yeah, I was on Johs and I was on this one. This is like, you know, you're getting you're getting the respect you deserve. Now I see.

What is it like in the lockdown for you? You still living in New York?

Yeah, I live in New York is weird. Yeah.

I mean, I was telling everybody it's you know, it's it's very it's not like people like us, like New York in the 70s.

Now, the 70s was a whole different vibe. And but now it's all boarded up stores.

The store, my corner, like the corner bodega, basically just closed. And it was you know, it was around for a long time. And, you know, it's it's depressing. Like you on the subway. There's only a few people on and it's still smell. It smells. They've been cleaning it every day and still stinks. It doesn't even smell. But that's how ingrained it is.

And, you know, the the pigeons are homeless because Antifa took down all the statues so they have no place to live.

And, yeah, it's it's a very it's a very weird place.

You can't say like people that say it's like the 70s, like. No, the 70s. It was like it was the 50s in the 60s and the 70s, like it didn't change much.

It was seedy and weird and but it was always like that.

This is a drastic change from six months ago. You can't say it's like the 70s because it's not. It's like something's deteriorated. There's a collapse. Right. And then there's all this weirdness that comes along with that.

Well, the 70s was kind of a collapse, but it was a different type. So like in the 70s, all the stores at night would be locked up, but they were open during the day. So at night, if anybody is out after 9:00 at night, that was on them. But I mean, but it was not like now, which is twenty you walking that deserted streets is nobody out, you know what I mean? Have you always lived in New York.

Depressing. Yeah.

So so it was sketchy in the seventies. Oh my God. Yeah. I mean I did a whole, the whole show about it basically. But I mean it was basically like part one of the jokes for my own New York story was that it wasn't a joke, was if you walk down your block because there's no cell phone. So if you walk down the block from the train after 9:00 at night, people would lean out the window and be like, genuinely surprised, like, good for you.

You made it home. If you if you stayed out after night, like Times Square, people would go to Broadway shows by eleven o'clock.

It was deserted except for criminals, because people would leave Broadway show, they wouldn't go out for a drink or dinner. They would get in a car and get out immediately.

And Giuliani is the one to clean all that shit up. Giuliani cleaned it up. Yeah. And then amazingly, this guy gets no respect. No, no, I know.

You know, he went a little crazy, but he really he he did what no politician has ever done in any in history, which is he said, I'm going to transform this. And he did.

He turned it around. Yeah, he really did. He really did. Maybe a little too far. Like a certain may have been a little tough.

Times Square became like a mall. Yes. Times Square is very uninspiring. It became like a big Applebee's. But that's. Yeah, that's exactly that's exactly what it's like.

And. You know, even though, like now we look back and I'm like old taxi driver, New York, it was edgy, it was fun, but at the time it was no joke. People, you know, I glamorize it through rose colored glasses, but it was serious. Yeah.

That's the thing about crime and crime ridden areas. Like people always glamorize it after the fact. But if you're living there while it's going down, it's fucking terrible.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, most people love New York. Once he took over in the 90s, people forget that. Yeah. That everybody was just like, oh, I can go out at night or I can work. I can, you know. I mean, before that it was it was crazy. And I used a bartender around Times Square.

And I mean, the stuff you saw, you know, was just brutal.

And I mean, well, one of the things we're finding out from this lockdown is that it really is important who your mayor is. It's important.

He didn't really care. People didn't care who the mayor of L.A. was. Half the people didn't even know. That's right. And now they're like, who is this motherfucker that's keeping everything closed? Yeah.

Yeah. And the same thing with New York. Oh, yeah. Because last year from day one, a lot of people are gone and now everybody hates it.

But this is his second term. Yes. He got re-elected. Oh, he swept both elections. That's hilarious.

You know, and now we're finding out. Yeah. Oh he's he's a dipshit. Yeah. Just took it took something. Where is a crisis where you realize, like, this is not a leader.

And everybody hated Bloomberg for running a third term. They they wish they had him for fifth now. Yeah. Members like oh he's forced himself to run for third. Now what he misses, you know, a guy like him, could he go back?

Did he run again because he can't be president? I don't know.

But I don't know who's so terrible in the debate.

It's so funny because the thing about Bloomberg that disappointed me as president was when he was mayor, when he first got elected mayor, I was Darrell Hammond had to bail on some show.

He's was to do so at the last minute. They asked me to do a favor, do a guest shot at the show, which I go up, really didn't go that well.

But it was you know, I did what he was asked me what kind of show was a standup show, but it was a show for Bloomberg. Yeah.

Bloomberg was trying to get the the Olympics here or something, I think was the Olympics. So he asked me to you know, Dallas was showing you something else. So I ran over. Yeah, I lived in Midtown. I ran over, literally ran over, did the show in front of the Olympic Committee or whatever the committee was. I think it was an Olympics and, you know, thirty people in this uncomfortable room. And then afterwards, Bloomberg shook my hand and I knew he was already a billionaire.

And he goes, I owe you one. I go, Thanks, thanks. He goes, No, no, no, I don't. You say that I always pay my debts. I owe you one. So I was kind of hoping to be president and then I could call in my chit because I never did the whole time I was mayor. Well, she was busy. I let it slide.

But he still owes you, though, huh? Yeah. Got it on a ledger somewhere. No, but I just have my oral I believe in the oral history. Oh, yeah. I mean, I thought it came right out didn't it. Yeah. It's not like I got it.

Oh yeah. So maybe if he becomes can you become mayor again. How's that work. Can be president again to be mayor again.

I guess you can hear why not. He's probably a lawyer. Well Governor of California Jerry Brown guy. He became governor again. That's right. Yeah. So if he can be governor, you've got to be mayor.

He was governor in like the 90s. Like the early 90s, I think.

I think in the 80s, because I think Johnny Carson used to make those jokes over smoking crack, didn't he went again in D.C. for being mayor? Yep. Yeah. Barry. Yeah. Marion Barry. Yeah. There you go.

I wonder how many terms he did. I wonder if there's like a limit on how many terms he could be.

You're more politically minded than I am, do you? I don't know that kind of stuff, though. No, I mean terms. Can you be a mayor? Because someone like Bloomberg has got to come back in and clean New York City up because it's you're not going to get there with the social justice warrior to the de Blasio has.

It's just going to lead to more complete deterioration of that city.

Yeah, but it may it may be too late. You never know. Too late. You never know.

I mean, nobody likes to think in New York that way, but it's like a lot of people, so many people moved that I was shocked, moved to the suburbs, that I was like, wow, this is serious.

Like, I didn't really believe it just because I'm so New York. Like, I just I don't even think in terms of leaving New York, even even though, you know, it's irrevocably changed to me before any of this happened, but so many people moved out.

I was like, this is getting serious.

What did you think about that all teacher Jerry Seinfeld little feud about New York is dead. Fuck. You know, it's.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, look, you can argue either side of it and be right. You know what I mean? Like, I don't want it to be dead, but at the same time, I'm not going to pretend it's not in deep trouble. Yeah.

So I mean, I don't know how it gets out. That's what my worry is. I know.

Unless covid gets cured and then Ari Shapiro thinks artists are going to start moving in again. But that's he's one of those guys, right.

He's got that, you know, because it needs to be gritty or New York City needs to be gritty.

Right. And now those guys. Yeah. But ever been mugged. That's why I never really had the fuck beat out of them. Yeah.

You do need a couple of those in life. You need to know that it's possible. You need to be like, oh, what is gritty mean to you?

Let me tell you, it ain't a fuckin it's not Midnight Cowboy. That's a movie. Yeah. Real gritty as you get stabbed and then it gets infected. Yeah. And you're in the hospital for six months. Yeah.

You need to at least ever had had regretted laughing because you were holding your broken rib at least for six weeks in a row like this is ever going to get better.

Yeah, it's that gritty shit is like oh boy. Yeah I see what you're saying. I kind of. I know. Yeah. Some places that are gritty, they're fun. Yeah.

No, it's, it's fun.

And like I said, when I'm watching Taxi Driver, I'm like, yeah, I miss New York, but I mean I would walk I remember walking through Times Square. We don't have to ask what I was doing at 12:00 at night by myself.

Nineteen eighty, eighty one. And literally they had like thieves dens above the porno theaters. They had thieves dens.

So like they go they had a little turnstile. I went in one once with this kid. He was taking me there. I forget what we're trying to do, something shady I'm sure.

And he went, we went up and it was like fifty like thieves like like like Oliver.

Only New York really like a gang of people with illegal guns trading illegal guns right up on 40 seconds street. Wow, it was crazy. So you see gangs running down. If anybody was they've just swarmed somebody, take their stuff, leave them on the ground and just keep going.

The thing about it is, though, the the disrespect to the police right now. Right. It leads it to a very difficult situation of trying to bring it back. It's like that didn't that wasn't the case in the 80s and 90s. People respected the police. Like when they when Giuliani brought it back, there wasn't this overall nationwide resentment of the police force like we're having now, which is pretty unprecedented.

Well, I mean, there sort of was in New York actually at that time. There's a couple of incidents where, you know, but yes, not like this.

This is so different.

This is a luxury. That people are able to indulge themselves by by putting all, you know, lightning rod sort of, you know, I mean, like the police, to me, it's like a proxy war, you know? I mean, everybody knows cops. Everybody knows cops are nuts. We all had the friend that you grew up with. You like whatever happened to him? He became a cop.

He became a cop. But but, you know, no one denies that. Even cops know that. Yeah. About themselves. But that being said, it's easy for everybody to just go, OK, like as a proxy war.

So all the bottled up racial resentment in the country. And it's like the people that have to actually go and say, hey, listen, here's what has to happen.

They're going to be they're going to be the fall guy for that. And that's, you know, I mean, that's what this is in my opinion.

Well, you know what it is? It's like social media only captures the things that are viral. Right. With the things that you're going to watch are only going to be viral. And the ones that go viral are the ones that are really bad. Yeah. I mean, nobody wants to see there's no viral videos of a cop pulling a guy over and having a laugh with them. And so lissome going 63 and a 55. Just do me a favor.

Slow down. All right, sir, I'm a big fan of police. Thank you, sir. I appreciate you. Appreciate. Shake your hand. Bye. Take care. No. Instead, you have some asshole grabbing some black woman and pulling her out of the car and body slamming her. And these motherfuckers, they keep doing this.

But you could have millions of interactions with cops.

Yeah. And you're only going to see one. And you decide that all cops are pieces of shit. When there's these hundreds of thousands of cops that are great guys. They're just doing a really difficult job and trying to keep it together. But one or two a week.

Yeah. Is going to go bad. And that's all you need to know. And everybody thinks that the world is falling apart because you see those videos and those videos get two, three, four, five million downloads. And and everybody just thinks that all cops are terrible people.

And it's just it's not the case right now. Exactly. But try telling people that and they think you're a cop apologist.

They say, yeah, you're a white supremacist. Right. Right. Yeah. Stand down and stand by.

That's the truth. I tell the white supremacist to stand down and stand by.

And it's one of those moments where you like, you know, it's basically the like the one thing you want. It reminds me like not like Nero fiddling while Rome burns. I feel like it's when all the Roman Senate is going to. What are you gonna do now, NERO? And he starts taking the fiddle out of the case like, no, he's not going to fucking. Is he going to fiddle right now? This is he's really just kidding.

Right.

But you were saying earlier we were talking outside that he had just called the KKK. What did he just I didn't say that somebody else, but somebody else was out there saying that that he called them a terrorist group.

Right. Didn't he say that like. I don't know. Is that the case, Jamie? Someone out there was saying someone I forget who said it, he called the KKK a terrorist group like the week before or labeled them.

It is that truth I don't know about. Wording it that way is correct. I don't think he called them. Let's see what he said again. He didn't he didn't call them. The White House labeled the White House, label them a terrorist.

He didn't say it somewhere or whatever. Right. Yeah, but that opportunity, it was so funny.

Like he's telling Joe Biden, I want you to say law and order.

You can't even say. You can't even say. And he didn't say it, right? I mean, then he said, you know, I want you to denounce white supremacy. And then Chris Wallace is like, Mr. President, do you denounce white supremacy? I tell them to stand down and stand by, like, get people to wear it.

Like his is like, what the fuck? Yeah, he's like, you were you say dance bye.

He's like, whoa, hey, come on. I don't go there.

What about just I had to do was say yes, I denounce white supremacy. Of course all you had to say. See, but that's why you should be moderating this debate, because you could be physically grabbing both of them and saying, listen, here's what's going to happen now. Instead, Chris Wallace saying, excuse me, guys, what's up? I mean, he's that he need Alpha. You have to be able to physically walk up to the podium and put people.

Well, that's what I was saying.

Don't want Big John McCarthy. They need the UFC referee, Big John McCarthy, the fast, big, giant dude. He can handle that shit. He would tell people to sit the fuck down. He was a cop. Yeah. He knows how to like control. I would be laughin. The problem with me, I would be like, oh, my God, what a shit show. I would turn to the camera. I'd break the wall, ladies and gentlemen.

Yeah, you just got a real fucking problem.

Yeah. Folks, you may want to talk about it in this country. Yeah.

Like Jesus, Canada don't look so bad right now. Yeah, I know that Justin Trudeau is kind of a pussy, but they said a lot of.

What do you mean he was a boxer, was he. Yeah. Well anyway, so I played basketball a couple of times.

I don't call myself a basketball player.

Well, maybe he's a kind of boxer where they're like, hey, listen, that's the prime minister's son. So if he hit you just flinch. Don't hit.

Oh, one of those. I don't know. Yeah, there's a lot of that going on and I've seen that before.

No, I'm sure he actually did. He did have a boxing match. He's a little too handsome for my taste. Yeah. I don't like it either.

Beautiful man did blackface at least 30 or 40 times.

Right, didn't he. And candidates different. I think Indian people or something. Oh, that's a. Black like brown ish. Yes, it's indigenous face. It is kind of funny, like white patients, white faces, like no problem at all. Right.

Good luck. Yeah, well, you could be white face. No one cares.

Can you play a redhead if you're not a redhead? Is there any shame in that. Well, would you want to is the first question.

But second of all, if someone had like the Andrew Santino story, but I don't know, Andrew Santita is a guy we make very far.

Yeah, but Bill powers his baldness too bald because it's like it's hard to call him a redhead. Now, who would like Carrot Top? OK, Carrot Top.

Yeah, that's a that's the most famous like clearly. I mean, it's in his name, Carrot Top.

Yeah, right. Could you be is there any shame in that? No, no, no, why nobody ever owned Redhead's now did because there were a lot of Irish slaves, right? Yeah.

Back in Australia, the whole thing was Irish. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're the original redhead's. Well, it's probably from the Scandinavians.

The Vikings had a lot of redheads like Eric the Red. Oh, right. That's the only reason I think the Vikings had redheads. The guy's name is Eric the Red.

Mm. Probably a red beard and blond hair.

Probably covered in blood too, right?

Oh my God.

Those motherfuckers you ever go to, you see those people in Iceland that when those strong wind competitions. Yes, they're the remnants of the Vikings. They are a normal human beings that live in the frozen north where the Vikings lived.

The day is the word bezerk comes from them. Berserkers Yeah. They used to come down and go bezerk.

You know, what they used to do is take mushrooms. They did. Yeah. There was their big thing. They would take mushrooms and slaughter.

Oh wait a minute. Where they get mushrooms up there. I took mushrooms of South America.

No mushrooms are from all throughout Europe, mushrooms all throughout North America. They're native to a lot of different climates.

Well, they would preserve them, too. They would get them in the summertime and then they preserve them in the wintertime. But I'm 99 percent sure that was a part of the history of the Vikings, is that they would they would take a lot of mushrooms.

Well, when when I was growing up, I mean, I consider myself the early here we go.

Fly all Garik Mushroom. Yeah, that's the Amanita Muscaria. The first account of Vikings going berserk because they ate magic mushrooms was hypothesized in 1784 by a Christian priest named Aardman. He came to a conclusion that connected the Berserkers to the fly agaric mushroom because he read that Siberian shamans did the same thing when they were healing. Hmm. That that show Vikings. Yeah.

See that show? No fungo. They take mushrooms in that show, but the dead Vikings eat mushrooms.

Let's see that. See that that's connected to the Amanita muscaria, red and white mushroom. So that's not the same mushroom in the Viking movie or the Viking television show. It looks like they're taking psilocybin. Some scholars proposed that certain examples of the rage had been induced voluntarily by the consumption of drugs such as the hallucinogenic mushroom Amanita muscaria or massive amounts of alcohol.

But here's my problem is that when I was growing up, we had a lot of mescaline, which was basically mushrooms in or, you know, it was a chemical.

What's that sort of masculine is yabbie. Yeah, but masculine is that I think it's more it's in the stimulant category.

I think even more salt is going to prove my point. When you're eating mescaline, acid, any of this stuff, mushrooms, you don't tend to want to get violent. That's true.

But if you live in a completely violent world, right. And you took mushrooms, I don't think it would turn your peaceful.

No, and peaceful. But you might be like, I'm just going to stay in the forge. You know, these guys are going on this stupid trip. You're going to go on an 18 hour trip to go and rampage through some civilization, you know?

Here's why I disagree. It's become a thing with fighters to take mushrooms and fight. What yeah, yeah, it's it's actually really common and the thing is, they're not really testing for it. So there's certain fighters that are taking mushrooms and then competing in kickboxing, competing in May on mushroom, on mushrooms.

That's hilarious. That's one of the greatest things I've ever heard.

Well, they say it makes them way more effective and they almost can read things better. They're locked in better.

I could see locking in, but you also get trails and stuff like that. This goes on.

You know, maybe it's how much you take, like maybe just take a dose. That's also you've got to realize these people are like their adrenalin's through the roof, like the effects of the mushrooms. Probably very different if you're about to go into a fight.

My adrenaline was through the roof when I was 17. Now, listen, Doc Ellis, of course. Yes, it was a famous one. Yeah, but that's a good game. Oh, yeah. He's pitched a no hitter. He pitched no. Yeah. A no hitter on acid.

But this real there's real evidence that in some circumstances psychedelics can enhance your performance.

Well, I'll tell you I'll tell you a story when I I'll tell you, I'm probably the third time I took acid. Maybe I was 16. And this is a fight. It's got violence in it.

But it's not that I was so I was I was at a sweet 16 in Brooklyn.

It was a mob. It was a mob. One place, by the way.

So you sweet sixteen, this is a lot to do with my whole life when I really look back on it. So sixteen I was in love with this girl. She wasn't dating me, but she was at the party. But the way they set it up. So it's like he's a sweet sixteen, he's an office party. They're all in the same room. And then there's a stage down at the bottom and he has, you know, some guy that, you know, just got his you know, you retired from the, you know, job, whatever job then you have, you know, so it's like fifteen different events of two tables each at this place, Palm Club, it's called in Brooklyn.

So I'm at the party with my friends and this is girl I'm in love with, but I haven't dated.

Yeah, we ended up going out for a couple of years, but so you I'm tripping on acid and then.

The one of the other groups that was with our group because the girl, Sweet 16, had our other friend said to one of these guys, sold pot to the girl I loved.

Solo bag of weed, so she's like, you know, she's like looking at me, beat me on a sweetie, tell me like four joints when it was so me should knight in shining armor.

And I go to, I don't know, the long tables, two or three excuse me, tap on the shoulder, you know. Excuse me. She feels like you sure I'm not dating. I'm just you know, I'm in love with her. She shorted you on you showed or the sweet. So you know, you might want to give her a couple more joints because I know I didn't turns away.

Listen. Excuse me. You know, she feels you did you gave a for joints, whatever, in those days, you get like six joints for a big fat holiday maybe seven years ago. Yeah, kind of shorter. I'm still not sure to this day. Be shorter, by the way, I didn't you know, he was just being a white knight. I was just being a white knight.

So he goes, no, I didn't get, you know, just basically like he has to show his pride to this guy tapped on the shoulder a couple of times. He's with his friends. I'm with my little friends. And I go and he goes, get out of here.

Like, you know, just, you know, now I'm starting to annoy him, you know? And he's like, you had to do that.

So I was like, ha, but jump on him, start punching him in the middle of a giant event.

Oh, no jumping, punching him.

You know, a ruckus erupts. You know, it's like a whole place. So all tables going crazy screams, you know, fights. And the grandmother, my friend wrote a song about it, by the way, the next day.

And because the grandmother kicked me in the ear, my whole bunch, my whole it was cake with blood because I'm only a mother of the year.

The grandmother. You're scrambling on the ground.

On the ground I had my baby was cake with blood because, you know, I'm ruining my granddaughter's sixty. I don't blame you. And they're breaking up, but meanwhile.

Oh, so anyway, long story short, I'm trippin. So it's like this is like the third time of trip, maybe, maybe the second on acid.

I had done mescal and everything else, so I'm tripping.

So finally they drag me out. I'm picked up like bodily puts a mafia place downstairs in the basement.

These two guys, a couple of young the young mob guys, you know, I could tell they were like young, thin, you know, guys they didn't look like to me like my age and start punching me. And then they just looked at me. I could tell you, just like, look at this guy is so pathetically pussy whipped. They just tell him my eyes. I was just like, get him out of here and just toss me onto Emons.

Avenue is a big street in Sheepshead Bay. And then my friends drove by like I'm walking, you know, stumbling along like three minutes later, my friends drove by because they left, too. They had to leave and they just could not stop laughing.

I'm just standing.

But here's the weird part about the story, is that on stage was this old man who at that moment was doing stand up comedy. And to this day, any time I have, like, hecklers, I'm like, that's karma, because I was the guy that wound. And he's going, come on, fellas, calm down. I heard him say that. And at the time I noticed because I was well, these are all doing standup, but he's probably a guy, you know, doing it at that time.

And she said some about enjoying getting paid, getting paid.

And then an idiot ruins his whole show with a brawl over a five dollar bag, over a bag of weed, which may or may not have been shown.

And when you think about that, like, have you ever done gigs like that? Did you ever have to do like like a kid's party or anything like that?

Oh, my God. Yeah. I mean, did you were you mean gigs where you were? You just don't I mean. Sure.

I mean you have to have a bachelor party.

So I did a couple of shows, but bachelor parties, they suck. Yeah. But at least it's not like you have to do a gig where you don't when you first started out, where you're not you don't have enough clean material and you walk in, you go, I can't, I have to cut every chorus out and you have nothing left. You realize I have nothing to say to these people. Oh you. Cause my act is for nightclubs and this is not a nightclub.

It's a daytime club. Yeah, I've done a couple of shows, like just small events where you feel like it exposes every flaw in your comedy. It does.

It does so to small shows. It's small. So that's the beauty of small shows.

There are like a cleansing agent. Yes.

All the fat in your act, all the fat, all the cheap, all the momentum.

The show's based on them. All the horse, the curses just all right there. And these people are looking there. They dress nice. And I did a car show when I I think two years it was like an afternoon show, like 200 bucks, which in those days, like 200 bucks an afternoon show.

I went there and it was just maybe fifty.

And I was too new to know that I was walking. I didn't even really like. Now, if you walked in, he was like, OK, this is a nightmare. He said, I got to do it.

That was like a really smart thing that Chris Rock used to do a lot is he would show up at the store unannounced late so he would go there where there was the audience was down to like fifteen, twenty people.

And then he would go up with this shit that he was working on and he would find out what's good and what was bad. Yeah. Because when there's fifteen people and they're spread out, there's like three here too.

In front of five over there. Yes. You really know what the fuck is good and what's not.

If you're there in front of three hundred people, they're like, oh my God, it's Chris Rock. Everything he says amaze you with your date. Like, Wow, we got lucky tonight. Chris Rock's here. Yeah, but if you're there, there's fucking fifteen people.

It's 1:00 in the morning. Like then you find out how much of your material's nonsense. Oh my God.

Yeah. No, of course. I mean that's that's where you really are exposed and it's the best and you have your best sets. Yeah but but the negative side of it is that. You listen to the tape like a lot of that was free association tape, it wasn't that great. Well, that's the thing about comedy. Like I feel like comedy to really develop a good set. It's almost like it's like cross training, like you needed to lift a little weights.

But you also need to do some jogging, like you need to do a bunch of different things.

And you need to you have a big crowd. So you see if this is a set that's really worth filming or and then sometimes you have to have a little crowd where they're not impressed by you.

They're not there to see you. Absolutely.

And you see if they can if you can, if this stuff, it really can resonate with people that don't even know you. Absolutely. Absolutely.

I mean, that's the the beauty. The reason we're all still so obsessed with comedy is because of these little that it could still surprise you every time and still challenge you every time. Yeah, there's a million things that you like. I can't believe I know so much and I know so little after all these years of doing it, you know.

Well, the beautiful thing, too, is every time you do especially become a beginner again, because even though you know how to craft the material, the material you have is dog shit. And it's like it's on Bambi legs and you got to you got to figure out a way to get it moving again.

And that's why my new theory, which you're going to like this for the for the Austin Comedy Club, is that down south now? Because nobody can walk out of North once it gets to be winter. So it's going to be like baseball, how all the Dominicans begin it all.

The South is where all the great comes from here year round because the corvids going to hit New York City and shut everything down again once flu season kicks in.

Yeah, it's already it's never opened. Comedy clubs have an open, but they're open outside. Right. A few of outside. Yeah, but, you know, how are they doing out there on the street. Like, what are they doing there on the streets or some on the street.

Well, most of the work they've done comedy clubs on the street, but most of them are in like parks or in parking lots. It's a lot of.

Yeah. So how do you get people to pay to sit in a park? Yeah, I don't know.

I mean because otherwise I mean people could just walk up, I mean that's on the outside and listen they don't have to pay. Yeah.

And the parking lot is just the problem with you in a parking lot. As you know, you could be doing great. You know, there's some idiot outside the parking lot that could start screaming. Yeah.

Like when I was 16, I would have done, you know, look at your lawn.

Yes. Oh, my God.

Just play Andrew Dice Clay really loud in your car. Yeah. Just something to distract you. Give him a good idea.

Yeah, I did a gazebo a couple of weeks ago, benefit up in Connecticut and like a wedding gazebo.

Yeah, like an Apple store in New York or in. Is that a gazebo. Yeah. He's doing in Ohio. It's well it's like a wedding chapel outside wedding chapel. That's where he's doing to show. Yeah. I don't know.

It's, it's, it's in the town square. I was just doing a benefit and yeah.

A couple of kids drove by with the guy before me was on and just honked and screamed well you joke you know Burt Krischer you're you're Berts doing a lot of these driving shows. I know.

I know he is. Of course I go how what was the show like. It was it was great. It was 700 cars or 700 cars. Now it's a lot of cars. Yeah.

Like I just did it for HBO, Max. I did like a comedy outdoor special with a bunch of comedians from New York and. Thirty cars, and it was it went back far. How did he get seven? He's doing giant play. This was 30 cars and it was way back. Yeah. This must be like I mean, I can't imagine how far back it must go.

It goes far and they all light their lights and honking their horns and shit. Right.

That's what they were doing. Yes. Oh my God. 700 that I'd like to I'd like to see that. Yeah. Well, burts hammered too. Right. So he's like barely aware of what's happening when the lights are flashing and people are OK. It's having a great time.

Yeah. There you got video of it like this is by the way, this is I'm 99 percent sure. So I'm just going to say this. This is all his idea. Look how big this is. This huge.

Wow, wow. This is in Philly. And he did it all across the country, takes his shirt off every show because it's important.

Oh, my God. Yeah. And now he has to. Yeah, now he has. He's like Ellen dropped. Right. Right. Just to dance every show he's trapped. So this is how he did it, so he would go out and do these crazy shows where he's in the parking lot, they'd set up a stage with lights and everything. Look at that. He's been touring the Burgard that he's one of the only guys that threw this pandemic has been regularly touring in a pretty safe way.

Look at all those fucking cars. That's crazy.

Pretty safe. Well, that's kind of cool. It's actually really cool looking. He said he enjoyed it. He said it was great.

He enjoyed it. But, you know, it's the kind of guy that enjoys things like that. Yeah, yeah. You know what I mean? Like, I could see myself getting aggravated by this.

And the greatest, you know, he he'll be this is a real jump in their car, start making out with them.

I mean, like Grote enjoy stuff.

Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. I just I you know, I miss real comedy. Like Mark Norman said it best. He's like, this is all methadone. He knows we're all doing methadone because I want a real shot because I want the real hit right in the veins. You really want to take this methadone, these park shows, these outdoor shows and in the virtual shows, the worst like that.

Oh, my God. Yeah, that's crazy. I've watched good comics bomb on Zoom and I'm like, stop. Yeah, stop doing that. There's no one there. You can't do that.

No, it sounds like it sounds like pigeons like you don't hear left. You just hear this weirdo because I laugh what's going on.

So it's just not a bad it's a terrible way to do comedy. No. Yeah, it's but that's again what I love about it is that it makes us really like you realize a lot of people are going to fall by the wayside, too. Yeah. Because that money's going to go down. Thank God. Yeah. The money's going to go down the chain prepping people for low salaries and awesome comedy club.

The money is going to go down. You're going to design awesome comedy club for me.

I would love it, but I'd like to really in the room I like curate the audience. How are you gonna do that already? We had a conflict when I was telling you I don't want those drunks in the audience. Like I let them have a few drinks.

I'm like, no, Joe, you want to test them all to make sure they're not drunk? Yeah, because I don't like you. Like, well, some drunks don't heckle. I know. But then they sit there like this and you think they listen to me.

And there was once when I was in Cleveland, I was yelling at the whole crowd are drunk, which is horrible. And it was just beautiful. Couple up front guy and girl, blonde, dressed, expensive like I mean it just looked like models, movie stars. And I was like, these people people like this come to see your show pop up. I just yell at the crowd because like hecklers, like chill, you know?

And then I finished in like five minutes later, the couple got up to go to the bathroom to leave and they both face planted penstock.

They were so high, but they didn't know I was talking. They didn't know where they were.

We finally have a rapid test.

So here we got tested. We got the same test that the White House uses. So they have a machine do a nose swab and get a result in fifteen minutes. So you could conceivably have a show where people would show up, say, forty minutes early. Everybody gets in line, gets tested when you get cleaned and get inside and have a drink so you could do a comedy club and have everybody with no mask on. Yeah, you could, could see.

Yes. The thing is people like even if people get tested, wear a mask like everyone.

So mask conscious now like when we do the UFC, I can't do in-person interviews with the fighters. Right. But I'm tested and they're tested. Everybody's tested. I have to be tested. Even being the building, you have to be clean the day of to be in the building. But yet still, they want everybody to wear a mask like that. Doesn't make any fucking sense.

No, but it's also because when you live in a country that's built on lawsuits, everybody's like, whoa, that sounds like there's eighty people going, don't wear a mask.

I want to see what happens just so they can try to see you.

That's yeah. Well you have to sign a waiver. Well you're going to get to Austin Comedy Club. You have to sign a waiver.

Well it wasn't comedy club. I hate to say this. It sounds like I'm already abusing the system, but I think the emcee should have to do the testing.

They should have to be registered register. You have to be a nurse to be an emcee. You want to host. You got to be a nurse. You got to get there early, you know, saves a few bucks.

Yeah. You know, like hosts would have to, like, pitch chicken wings at some place, you know, try the wings in this place.

Well, well, I used to borton when I started comedy, I would bartended the comic strip and he would, they wouldn't let me on because they were like, no, it's a conflict of interest.

It was a big ethical problem, really. She had to quit your job as a bartender. I quit before I could audition. Yeah. Oh, that's ridiculous.

But the store's the opposite. The store, all the people that work there are comics, everyone, the dorm.

It's always but they actually like Ari. When I met him, he was a doorman. He was yeah.

Became and then there was the beautiful thing was you eventually filmed his first special at the store, his Comedy Central special. So it was was like, wow, what a full circle he made. Yeah.

He's he seems more like a comedian than a door man, if I may say.

Yes, man, here's a tip. I don't give a fuck where he should sit. Wherever this place is gritty, this place is crazy.

Yeah, but everybody, Tony Hinchcliffe, everybody that we're. There they they tell everybody that works there as a doorman is a comic, everybody that works the cover booth is a comic.

A lot of the people that work behind the bar comics, well, you guys, his crew really turn that place around because I was there in the early 90s and the Comedy Store, I was there working.

You know, I didn't work that much when I was in L.A., but it was a shithole while I was in Chicago.

Monday was considered gang night. And it wasn't like it was an inside joke. Like everybody knew gang night. The gangs knew it was gang night so they would have gangs. It was just this crazy atmosphere, like this tense atmosphere every Monday night was gang.

Yeah, it was not good when I got there in 94, I got there in 94, was pretty rough, but occasionally it was good. Like occasionally Damon Wayans would stop right.

Or Martin Lawrence would stop by like someone good would be there and you'd go, wow, OK. Now I could see a real comic, but a lot of it was like half empty, not even real. These are tough.

Yes. Lot of Botox. Oh, yeah, that's right. Yeah. A lot of guys that really just shouldn't have been there. And my theory was that like, Kinnison had left there somewhere around 86.

Right.

And when I got there in 94, eight years later, it was just still like because before that it was booming. Right. There was Kinnison Letterman and all these guys were there. And then when he left and he was banned from the store, I think he took everybody with them.

And I think when I got there in 94, it was like he was already dead.

And it was like the echoes of that, that his generation had already kind of died off.

Yeah, well, I was when I was in L.A., I was in L.A. in 89, I guess, of ninety or something. Eighty eight. Eighty nine. And the improv was the respectable club. It was what the store became and the store was already crazy, you know. Yeah.

And it was like that in 94. Yeah. The agents wouldn't go there because they couldn't get in for free. Right. Right, right. Because Mizzi was. I don't give a fuck where you work. Yeah.

I think if you if you were an agent and you wanted to get a table like pay Talum to pay, I don't believe because the whole town was an agent, you wouldn't have made a dime.

Yeah, yeah. And not only that, they didn't pay attention. She would say they would talk and they did.

I remember I went to see a showcase once and they for whatever reason, William Morris had a showcase at a nightclub. And there was the downstairs where they had people seated in the upstairs was like this little balcony where is a bar? And it was filled with agents and they were talking full blast while the show was going up.

And I said, I'm not going up. I tell my age, I'm not going up. There's no fucking way. And DePaulo was on stage and the pause on stage and he's yelling at these fucking people that are up in the balcony like he's he's talking shit about them. It was terrible.

It was the worst atmosphere for comedy. And the agents didn't give a fuck. It was agent's assistants. A lot of them. They were drinking and talking.

Yeah, they're just laughing. Yeah.

You're having a social time. They're having free drinks. You know, it's like this is their opportunity to chit chat.

So while the show was going on, I mean, full blown bar level talking.

Yeah. Yeah, terrible. So that was what Mincy tried to avoid. She's like, get me out of here now.

She had the right she had definitely the right spirit. And even though Kinnison was I remember Kinnison was there one night, which Jenny told me, you know, rest in peace to love that guy.

Yeah. Great guy. God, he was good, but he knew he knew Kinnison and kind of out of one hundred dollars. So he went by the Comedy Store to get paid. He was in town. He's like, you know, the guy's doing great now. He's making a lot of money and it's like 1988, 89. And he goes, I'm going to get paid. I'm going to go bar them. And he goes to the M.C. when kids tickets, all of them, I'll get 100 bucks.

He owes me a hundred bucks. He never paid me. He's rich. I'm just, you know, working the road. And then just then Chambless just screaming somebody and I can't you that.

But he used to do where he goes. I'm going to take this napkin. I want you to write down the names of all your all your loved ones, your dead grandmother that always treat you. Go to the hole, say to somebody, the audience, go right down. Your dead grandmother was always there for you. Write down your uncle that paid your way through, you know, and I want you to write them all down. And then I wish I had it back to me because I'm going to wipe my ass right.

And he said that he said the guy just exploded, attacked him. Sam's bodyguards just don't punch it, you know, turn into like a brawl at the Comedy Store. The guy was so mad, you know, and then the emcee goes to Jenny.

Maybe she's asking for fifty.

Yeah, he was I missed all that. I missed the kid. I saw him live a few times when I was an open mycar. When I was in Boston. I went to see him three times while he was alive. One time was at Great Woods and one time was down the cape. And then there was one at the time. And it was just it was just it was interesting to see because it was like he didn't have new material and he was trying to do some of the bits from the old stuff and people would call out the punch lines.

And so then he had he had to kind of write new shit while he was touring, you know, and the HBO special. Just come out because it was kind of a new thing back then, like there weren't a lot of HBO specials, it wasn't oh, no real common thing. No. And he developed that act over years and years and years. Yes. And then all of a sudden, he's this hugely famous comedian. They come to see him and he doesn't really have a lot of new material.

Yeah, no, that that definitely happened to a lot of guys back then where they'd just be like they weren't used to people knowing their act. Yeah. And people like I don't know. That's the thing about comedy musicians. People are calling out for their best hits. Yeah. If you do something new, they get mad. Yeah. Comedy is just the opposite.

I know it's crazy. It's such a hassle. But, you know, it's the way it is. And especially Sam's act because it was all built up. Yeah. And the big punch line. So there was no in between. Yeah. Yeah.

So I got to see like his B level material. I never got to see the material live, I got to see it on TV, but when I saw him live it was all kind of like half assed stuff. Yeah.

It wasn't really that good, but it was also because his crowd was so annoyingly like screaming at him that he ended up having like he almost couldn't develop.

Yeah. Because like you said, he could have been what Chris did go in when there's fifteen people. Yep.

She was on that. Well he was just touring. Right. He wasn't. Yeah. Like he developed his comedy by going up late at the store. Right. That was right. Thing like going up late.

He put that act together over years of struggle and then all of a sudden he was huge and now he's got to do these thousands of seats and it's not the same. You can't develop an eye. It's just you can. But it's a god damn. It's hard to develop and act in front of thousands and thousands of people. And I know. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know how you could do.

I mean, how about the fact that him and Pryor are both from Peoria? Crazy isn't wild weird. But he started using it. They said Sam used to be on him and Bill Hicks hold on to that.

And I said to him one time he, like, tied himself to the thing outside the annex because they they censored him with let him go up. Yeah. They those guys, they had developed a real scene down here in Texas. They really did. Hicks had a real scene in Austin Hicks, started out here and then eventually went to went to Houston.

Yeah. Yeah.

I maybe started in Houston and went to here eventually. That's right. I think he started in Houston, did Houston and Austin. And then he wound up when he came to die. Died out here. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. I used commonly used in comics that hate God.

What was odd because Texas is often thought of as being that's why they're so obsessed with it, you know.

But like I think Garoppolo came out here. I think she came back during that time to try it.

He had a bunch of but he could because it was like a scene like I remember hearing that she was coming out here because I knew her from Boston. I was like, wow, that's kind of why I like Texas.

Is that like it made me rethink what Texas is in my head.

Yeah. And Brett Butler was here. This was during the 80s and this is during the Kinnison era.

And that was when they had Ron shocked. You remember him? Yeah. Yeah, I do remember Andy Henton. Jimmy Pineapple. Yeah. I worked with Jimmy Pineapple one of the first times ever did the Houston Laff stop. I work with Jimmy Pineapple.

That's crazy. Yeah, those guys can have the laws of comedy.

And he used to a joke which, you know, is goes. So these girls have sex younger and younger these days. I overheard my sister's friends talking about they're they're fourteen and they're having she's having sex. I put it aside.

I said, first of all, what we did was wrong. Second of all, telling people about is not going to make it better, like today, you could cancel. Oh, my God, yeah, he'd be in Rio.

He's run deep in real trouble. All female comics should start Twitter threads about you. Yes, expose him.

But Andy hit him and Ron Shock once did as a teacher. And Shannon, you know him there, too. And he told me the story about Ron shocking at any one time. And, you know, one child was right. It just was like kind of Brigada. And he goes, there's and then Andy and goes, Ron, you're going to make it when they first of all, he goes, I know. And he goes, he was waiting for him to say it back to him, you know, to continue.

So you said back to each other, you're sure?

And he goes, and if you take your fingers, I'm going to make it to Honegger. Sure.

You are sure. They had a great open mic night back at that laff stop.

That was one thing about the lot. Did you work that place in Houston? Yeah, the last time, yeah.

It was a great club, but they had the bar area was an open mic night and then they had the main showroom area. And I remember I came in to do the show there. I did two shows and from the moment I got on stage, they had the open mic going. And then when I was by the time I was offstage, the open mic was still going. So the open mic would go to like two o'clock in the morning.

They had guys still going up like it was a real comedy community there. They worked on their craft. They didn't tolerate any hacks. No, no bullshit.

They were a serious thing. And it was a great place. Was a great, great scene.

Crazy. Mark Babbette ran it right that crazy fast. Yeah.

Yeah, he was he was a nut, but he really loved comedy, love comedy. Know, you got to have a nut you like like people think, well, you know, that guy wasn't the best business man. Like you're not going to get the best business man to run a goddamn comedy club.

You're going to get nutty people. Yeah. Yeah, I know. Exactly. It's Mizzi sure was a different kind of nutty person. Mark Babbitt was a different kind of nutty person, but all the great club owners were all crazy.

Well, the reason Boston was a good scene too was a great scene when I started. You know, I came in like eighty five, let's say, to Boston.

My first time ever was because Mike Leny clock and my clock, my clock, the money they paid in Boston was like three or four times more than any other place, three or four times like a gig in New York. Pay eighty to be the middle in Boston. It would pay to ninety or something because Lenny and Mike was not ripping people off, like, yeah, Mike's a great I'm still very good friends with them to this day.

I was texting with them yesterday, but I love that guy.

And he whatever his thing was, he was just this guy that was like, yeah, you should get paid. And it was like this Valhall, you know. Yep. And what was regulated, it was also the big four in it. I mean it was like the Mount Rushmore of Boston, Sweeney, Gavin Anderson and Rodgerson. Yeah. And and they were just, you know, they just set a tone. Everybody said, well, you know, he just and there were big guys too.

They were big. Lenny Clark's a fucking gorilla of a man. Yeah, he's big do. Yeah. Oh yeah. It was it was an interesting play because they were men like we thought of comedy as being like these.

Do we be like interest?

But those guys were doing coke and punch and people were wild fucks. All those guys were hammered all the time. They're all a bunch of wild people.

Oh my God, they were insane. They brought me up to be twenty one afternoon at Nick's and it was just in the back like this.

You know, you want to be Sweeneys and it was just him in the dark and just looking like this, you know, audience with the pope.

Were you there during the Coke days where they would try to pay and coke. Yes, well not me. I was already clean, but yeah, they tried it. They paid people in Coke all the time.

It was it was psychotic out there. The only way you get great comedy, I think it's like it doesn't last because it's not sustainable. That kind of a business model now and then. The comics never pay their taxes. They all wound up getting audited.

And you stop writing because. Coked up. Yes. White waiting for the Coke deal. Yeah. Yeah. When they had the guy in the I mean, they're dealing Coke in uniform and I was nuts. Yeah, well I was a famous homeshare. That's when I went up there and they pulled the old thing with Sweeney and Chance went on before me and just destroyed me, destroyed on a Friday second show.

And then I end up literally because I remember I'm from New York.

So I don't understand is nineteen eighty five or eighty six. So I don't understand the culture. So I see a bunch of guys in polo shirts with, with blond hair, deck shoes, white pants. I'm like, oh these must be some spoiled Kennedy guys.

Like they look like yuppies, like they look like their bank robbers from Chelsea. Yes, yes. But I'm looking at this one. It's full of these guys in pink IZOD shirts or, you know, and it's exact and it is badasses. They're savages. Yes.

So I'm like, oh, so I called Kirsten because I'm bombing. So, you know, we get into it. They're like, I'm like, oh, fuck you.

And just go go pick up the finger as he fucking asshole. Get to go back to, you know, Hyannis Port and go play touch football, you know, and these guys and I start to notice that.

And finally I start to notice. Wait a minute, some of these guys have tattoos back in the days when, you know, like I guess I'm like shamrock tattoos.

I may be misreading this because I don't know anything about Boston. As far as the neighborhoods. I don't know what's going on there. Yeah, I just saw pink guys IZOD shirts and, you know, Hedditch facial scars.

You seem like cookies, noses. These guys are pretty muscular, you know.

And then long story short, it got so ugly that Giannetti had to come on stage from the back of the room. They go up there, save it, because they're getting ready to rush the stage, beat the shit, me, the whole crowd.

But it almost felt like a joke. You know, he goes on stage and he goes, Folks, I'm from east. This is my friend, we're going offstage now, you leave us alone, we're going and you explain to them, I'm from east, he's from one of the neighborhoods. So, you know, I'm a legitimate person. And then we just had to hide in the kitchen until the whole crowd emptied out.

Well, if you were in New York, you already had three strikes against you going by the state. Yes, I knew none of that. But yeah, they set you up, too. They would.

I say seven of Billy Crystal. Well, I walked in after the fact.

I didn't actually see it, but I walked in after the fact. They were all bragging about it.

They set up Billy Crystal with like Sweeney knocks Gavin. Boom, boom, boom.

They just had a murderous assault of local humor. Yeah. You couldn't follow. You couldn't. They're talking about fucking Cape Cod going down the cape. Yeah, I haven't. Come on it. Talking the Boston accent. Everybody's dying. And then you would go up and like, I'm Billy Crystal.

Hey, how do you like the Emmys and the like, get the fuck out of here. They did it to everybody.

Well, guess what, it's funny you say that because the local references, the last thing I remembered before I went on stage, I mean, there is chance Sweeney Sweeney's got a mop in his head like dreadlocks, chances playing guitar. And they're singing a song called Come Back to Jamaica Plain.

That's where I lived. I lived in Jamaica Plain. Yeah. Yeah.

It was all local stuff. That was a real problem. When I started doing the road, I had so much local material because they loved the local material.

It was like a cheat code, like you guys, you can get a laugh you didn't deserve with local material.

Well, the same in New York. You do that subway stuff. You in North Carolina would just people be like, what is this? Somebody talking about the subway? We know what it is.

But but it's funny. You said the after I was there for the aftermath because I pictured the room when an aftermath when, you know, sometimes you go into one of these clubs in New York, too. But in Boston, Nicks and there was just broken shot glass just thrown around the room, just chairs turned over.

Hey, look, look what happened here. But it was just a crazy business model that they would set up these headliners for failure on purpose all the time. Yeah, all the time. Yeah.

And if you didn't know, like if you were a guy from New York that was doing The Tonight Show and you're starting to do movies and you thought you were the shit. Yeah.

And they would let you go on stage and they were like, oh yeah, we're going to have this guy headline. He's on The Tonight Show and they would set you up with four murderers. Yeah, it would go on in front of you.

I don't blame them. That's how you when you're making that much money locally, don't want a bunch of people come horning in on you making your then.

But by the way, I wasn't a headliner. I was just up there visiting. I was staying at Tony and Denis Leary's house. I wasn't a headline, but they just did it for whatever, for sport. No other place would do that.

If you went to Houston, they would give you like a local act to be an opener. It would be normal.

I mean, you have good comics, but they wouldn't have headline after headline after headline trying to blow you off the stage. Right. They did it on purpose.

Yes, he did. Oh, yeah, I know. They wanted you to eat shit. These guys were your best twenty minutes.

Just like a bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad.

That bad you would go on stage an hour and fifteen, an hour and 20 minutes into a show where the audience was beaten into a pole. Yes. And then these guys would born.

It happened to me. That's exactly what happened. And I was even the headliner. And here's what happened by the way. I just remembered it. I was the middle but chance goes. I'd like to get home early. Colin, would you mind if I went ahead of you? Oh, and I was like, OK, dirty trick because I first show had been fine.

Yeah. So I was like, yeah, fine, go ahead. I didn't know him.

I didn't know anybody was really dirty trick. They did it on purpose of course.

Well it was. But you know, do you really look, here's the way it is. You're in the city, you're making great money. You know, you're doing getting paid and coke, everything set up correctly.

Plus your Irish see, like these assholes think they're going to come in here and big shot that way around. It's the perfect Irish arrest to just go. We're going to show you what a fucking big shot you are.

The pleasure they got in their souls out of watching that week after week. Of course, they did it constantly. The only person I saw survived that.

That gauntlet was Dongmei Reira dongmei rare. I can say he murdered. He went up there and he was famous enough at the time that the the lot of the audience was there to see him. Yeah. And he was working so much he was cool as a cucumber. He would go on and his material was so goddamn so funny, so solid. Yeah. He went up there and he killed and I remember at the end of it he goes, he goes, ladies and gentlemen, I've been Demerara, I've been great.

You guys were OK. We weren't a bad audience, OK? Kids just had this casual confidence and just.

Yeah, he survived the gauntlet. He tried. I tried to take them out. I could see it. One of one of the other set people up.

I saw some crazy show. I saw Bill Hicks get set up there. Oh, wow.

Bill, he's got set up there, cleared the fucking room and never stopped. Never stopped swinging. It was me and Greg Fitzsimmons. We were open Mike at the time and we were sitting in the back of the room at next comedy stop. And Hicks started out with 300 people and he was down to maybe 40, maybe 35, 40. People at the end and everybody just gotten up and left and it was a row of comics in the back laugh in our fucking ass off it, just like he was looking up, he had to do some bit about someone taking a shit.

Right. So he's like grunting over a toilet bowl.

And he looks up and he goes, this usually clears the room and people are just getting up.

And and just the crazy thing about it was the calmness of his bombing was stunning always. He's like he's so relaxed while bombing. Yeah.

No, I never saw anybody who literally would just be like he had such a Zen like attitude about how could he get it since he was like 15 or whatever. Yeah. And Tyshawn speaking, they all knew him when he first began and they said his whole act was joke jokes, hilarious joke jokes, like he had all this material, but it was all like one liners when he's 16 and 15.

Yeah, there's a video of him when he was really young. Yeah. He was real smooth and the video is him before he's 18 and he's fucking smooth.

And then he was like, hey, guess what, I want to do this a different way.

And I mean, he was just so you know, and also when I caught him, when I saw him, I saw him live a few times. He'd already quit doing drugs. Yeah, he was already clean.

And he just saw this really strange, introspective, thought provoking act.

Right. And people didn't know what to make it.

He really changed comedy in a lot of ways because a lot of people imitated him because they they they would see him and they would go, you know, comedy can kind of be profound. It doesn't just have to be funny.

Like, this guy made me feel like what I was talking about was stupid, that I was done right, you know, and then and then. So a lot of like I remember in the back greenroom in the Atlanta punch line, right there was the green room, had a graffiti on the wall. And one of the things that said quit trying to be Hicks because there's so many guys that were trying to be hicks, just so common.

Yeah.

People would like tell the audience how dumb they were and how dumb America was. And I know when they were trying to be profound without doing all the work first. That's right. That's right. Yeah. I mean, how many people masquerade as, you know, freaking out the crowd with their brilliance when it's just that you're not that funny?

Yeah. You just I mean, you know, first be funny. Like doctors first do no harm. First be funny. And if you could be profound, that's great. That's another level. But don't be up there going, hey, you guys don't get it. I'm I'm I'm ruining your middle class bourgeois mentality. I know you're not stupid.

When Lenny Bruce did. Yes, that was shocking and it was groundbreaking. Don't be acting like you. I mean, so Lenny Bruce, I would have gone to see Hicks with a podcast.

God damn. He would have had a great podcast. Yeah, he would have had a really interesting podcast. Yeah, you're right.

He had some there were some real interesting interviews with him where, you know, he would do an interview and he wouldn't really try to be funny. Like that was the thing in these interviews, guys would be like half doing their act. And sure, he did a little bit of that. But for the most part, he would actually talk about shit.

Now, yeah, I'm going to do that for the second half of this. I went to my act.

I got some about that's what I'm getting to try to work you into that. But you have to be funny. What they used to they used to do they radio in the eighties, at least they go, listen, tell us what you set you up for.

Oh, yeah. To the eighties. I had someone try to do that to me in like twenty fourteen. I did the barmaid Tom Show back then. I was like what. Yeah. Talking about.

Yeah. What do you want to tape is 2005. But it was it was the two thousand. Yeah.

Four in the eighties. That was the normal thing. If you said no they'd be like oh my God, this guy's going to be terrible.

Bob and Tom's defense, they didn't care, but the producer was adamant that I need to have specific things to talk about to go into. Right. I was like, why? I don't I'm not just going to go that go have fun. These guys are fun. I'm fun. Just relax. Yeah, exactly. So you flew out here. How is your flight?

Oh, well, it was pretty good, but there was a guy right next to me. Yeah.

The morning radio thing. There was a lot of guys would do their act on morning radio because nobody was recording it because it was like, yes, no, there was no Internet back then and comedy was so new.

Yeah. People driving, driving go, hey, this guy's pretty funny. Let's get out there. I mean, it was it was there for a reason.

You know, the guys would do routines. Nice morning. Yeah. And it worked. Yeah.

That got people to come out the club and then they would hear the same jokes. Yeah. At the club. Yeah. That was the other thing too is that nobody wrote new material back then.

Nobody I know so many guys. It was so funny. And they rate maybe 40. And that was it, and they were funny as anybody, yeah, forever, forever, and then you fade away. But I mean, yeah, and they had fun and it was it wasn't that the material was dated. It was just once you stop writing that stuff, something about you becomes dated. Yeah.

Well, their act would get so polished it would be like a samurai sword.

They would hammer it down to a just a perfect sharpness and they would like Don Gavin is fuckin timing was so precise. Bing, bang, bang, bang, bang. And you'd be crying.

He was so confident and loose. Yeah.

But they never left. They never left Boston. They stayed. They had that 40 minutes and they were they were as good as any comic that is ever.

Does anybody ever. Yeah. And people didn't know.

But in New York to a bunch of guys in New York that were just great in the mid 80s when I started, like who? These guys. What. So funny.

I was I was I was afraid you going to say that well, like a guy like John Heyman, hilarious, he became a writer, but I'm saying he would get up and just so funny. And he just he was the guy that would just sit at the bar. Only the community's clever, witty guy. You I mean, he could have been one of the greats and everybody knew it.

New York had a different thing and that the clubs were smaller because space is more limited. Some people were on top of you. See, a lot of guys work in the crowd because they were so close to you. You almost felt like you had to.

Yeah, yeah. No. Yeah, well, I mean, yeah, most of the clubs in New York, it was a lot of it was a lot of crowd work. Yeah. Which was good and bad. It was good in the sense that, you know, it's funny to watch somebody be you know what I mean. It keeps it, but it's bad in the sense that you a lot of people just became great.

A crowd work. I mean, how many guys that just great crowd. It's fun and it's funny, but you got to discipline yourself if you're not right, when you're going to do a show and the stage is up there and you're talking to imaginary people, which a lot of people do, and you like that guy. And then after the show, when you start, you're like, hey, that guy wasn't fat.

Hey, she was her tits worn out.

Why is he saying she was dressed like a hooker? This is this fake crowd. Yeah. Yeah. There was a lot there's a lot of ways to do that.

Well, the crowd work is like it's like local material. It's a cheat code. Right. When people think that you're coming up with it on the spot, they think this guy is brilliant.

Yeah, well, the point I object to is when somebody does something every night spontaneous and then they pretend they stumble into it and they start laughing at themselves.

Oh, that's actually the fake laugh at yourself. Sometimes you will laugh. Yes, it happens. The audience knows when it's not real. Yeah, they know. They know unless they're retarded.

Some people some people don't know, but most people know. Yeah. And they my goal let you get away with it. But when you're laughing at the same the same joke for the 50000 time. Yeah.

No, it's great. It's, I mean it really is a a great thing about modern comedy is that everybody knows you got to keep putting out new hours.

That's the great thing about modern comedy. Yeah. With specials. Yes. Well, you've done an interesting thing where you've done these theme shows. Yeah.

Now what led you to want to start doing that, which is just you wanted to get ideas, you wanted to do that Walia One-Man Show. Yeah, I did.

I, I remember seeing one man shows when I first started. I saw Eric Bogosian. Do you know him. Yes, I remember him. He did his One-Man Show.

So I was like, oh my God, this guy is the coolest guy. He's being funny doing these characters. So I wanted to do like that kind of stuff. So I did this stuff in the early 90s.

Just one man shows on my on my free time, you know, and and then I and I watch Lily Tomlin do what Whoopi Goldberg did, a really good one back then.

And I'm watching this one person shows I was like, I want to do that. And I did this one called Irish Wake about growing up like that. But then I just went back to stand up. Stand up, as you know how it is. It's so it keeps you from being out of the loop mentally.

And so, yeah, that you can't because it's just, you know, I talked to Jerry about it all the time, and it's it's like going into the water and just getting hit by a wave because all the theoretical stuff like even now we are talking stand this and it's all theory. Once you're on stage with the project, are you surviving?

I mean, yeah. So it's like, yeah, I do this all my strategies, but now you got to it's a fight.

When you watch a guy like Jerry who's been doing it forever, he's such a polished pro and having a tough spot. Yeah. It's weird, it's weird to see be like yup. We're all still just comics, we're all still comics.

It's but that's the beauty of it is that the crowd is just like a wave.

They'll give you a couple minutes. Yeah. If you all the Conklin's here. Hey he's funny. I'll give you a couple of minutes after a while like you know.

Yeah. They're like the three guys I've never heard of him making us laugh. And the guy I know he's not what I paid money to laugh. Exactly.

And that's the beauty of it. Yeah. Because whatever you want to say, like our whatever you want to say, that's great. Yeah. But you still have to make them laugh or it's not definite by definition is not comedy. Right. You may be a philosopher, you may be the most brilliant TED talk as they say today, but it's not comedy.

That's the importance also of showcase clubs where there's a bunch of comics going up and they're not just there to see you because the people are just there to see you.

They'll laugh at things they if like they're just a giant fan of whoever it is. You know, Jim Gaffigan. Yeah. They go to see Jim Gaffigan. Jim Gaffigan is a very funny guy. Yeah.

But they will laugh. They will laugh at him. But Jim Gaffigan will go to these other clubs to work out, too, because you have to do that as well. You got to go to a place where they don't necessarily come to see you. They come to see a show and you're on the show, but you got to perform. Yeah. Yeah. No, exactly. There's no other art form like that. No, musicians don't have to do that.

No, there's no other art form where you need the audience to help you write it. Yeah. Yeah, you literally need that. That's why this coronavirus is so brutal.

Forgive me because without the audience you're going to ramble on and you know, I mean, yes, you'll go with your long set ups, with little punch lines and you want even know the audience will be like, no, no, no, get to the joke. Like, Oh, I forgot to end this thing. How can I do this for this many years and forget you need an ending.

Did you did you see Cosby at all before he wound up going to jail? Did you ever see him live? No, I never saw him life. I mean, I saw him live once when I worked at Great White.

I was actually working as a security guard when he was there live. But I didn't get to I wasn't a comic back then. I was nineteen. I didn't get to see the. All show are really paid attention to it, but he never worked out he and he talked about it. He said, I know what's funny. I know how to how to do funny. Like, I don't need to work out my material. So he would just kind of write and then he would go up and do these.

And from all accounts, like Chris Rock said it and Burset it, they went to see him.

They said it was fucking brilliant. Brilliant. Yeah. And he didn't work out like I would like to see what that was like.

I would like to see it, too. Yeah. Jerry Seinfeld and Chris Rock, they always said they went to see Bill Cosby and loved it, you know. I mean. Yeah, I mean, I wonder about that. It's a little hero worship, too, right?

Like you like how much of it is you're supposed to love it. How much of it you love it because it's great.

Yeah, I guess. I mean if they hear worshipped him. Yeah. Before he got.

Oh yeah. Arrested everybody hero worship him.

I didn't, he didn't, I didn't like to, I didn't like his act that much. I mean there was one time I, I did a big benefit big Carnegie Hall show.

It was after nine right after 9/11 and Cosby was on and it was it was it is an interesting night for Tooheys. But one of them is we he has to meet me after my set. He was here worshipping me, Joe, in my opinion. But wow, he brought me up because you wanted to meet me because I said so. I go up and I brought my girlfriend at the time very, you know, pretty and. I walked in with her and she had a certain look that I could, you know, look very exotic looking to and, you know, dressed up and Cosby was there in sweatpants smoking a cigar in Carnegie Hall, which, you know, only certain people get away with, and some dressing McManigal with a cigar.

And he's talked to me for 20 minutes. He looked at me for about eight seconds of the 20. He was literally looking, but he made a joke, but it was dead serious.

But he was looking at her while he was talking to me the whole time.

And we were all like laughing like he's in on the joke. But it was so like she thought it was so weird.

But the same night Tom Pop was there with his wife, Cynthia, and Bill Clinton was there, it was like a big you know, right after 9/11. And Clinton was shot. He walked in the room. He just he was so smart, you know, everything they say about him. But then he starts talking to Tom Papà.

He starts flirting with Cynthia right in front of everybody. And we're all laughing.

But he's like, hey, I love it was one of those nights.

Fascinating in retrospect, it was a ME2 benefit.

In retrospect, I remember I called Bill Cosby a douchebag on your show when I was on Tough Crowd because he was ahead of the time he was being interviewed by Wanda Sykes. Right. And Wanda was interviewing him and he starts chastising her for the way she's talking to. Right. And he had sunglasses on like, oh, that guy's a fucking douche bag. That's and that's great.

And I remember thinking, like, jeez, who the fuck am I to call Bill Cosby a douche bag? I mean, this is like. Yes, I mean, when was tough crowd?

What year am I talking about? 2003, 2004.

Yeah. And also, he's a fucking douche bag.

That's hilarious. I remember that when he was like, yeah, you guys were amazing. She was just having fun and talking to him. She was just trying to be funny. And he chastised her for the way she was speaking.

It was it was like it was real weird, like, who the fuck are you to tell her how to talk, especially on TV and especially why everybody loves Wanda.

Yeah, just walking around the crowd. Yeah, that and she's just working.

She's a common ass. And it wasn't nothing she did was offensive and it's just her talking. And I remember being on the show and then I remember leaving and she's called Bill Cosby a douche bag.

Like I probably shouldn't do that. I feel like a lot of people love the show saying something like that about the show.

That show would not be possible today. No. I mean, it really was like a podcast and a lot of.

Well, you know. Yeah, it really was. It was it was a fucking great show, though. Thanks. It was a great show. Thanks. It really was.

And you were the perfect host for it, too, because you were loose enough and light enough with everything that you can kind of keep the glue together.

Yeah. I mean, I took as much abuse as anybody on. Oh yeah.

But it was it was a rare moment where like in perfect name to tough crowd was a perfect name for it. Has there ever been a talk about bringing that back? Oh, God, yeah. Everybody talks about it. But I'm like, where, you know, I mean, what about as a podcast? People say that. I don't know.

I'm not I mean, because first of all, I resented at the time that I was I didn't want to, you know, I mean, like. Right. Who knows, I'm resigning.

I'm fighting against something that is not even part of the, I guess, world. And but then I was just like, I don't know. Then I'm going to, you know, I mean, getting everybody together and, you know, people's careers would fall left and right if we did it.

Oh, yeah. I mean, anybody on there, would they be able to really even speak honestly today?

Kinda like you got to have a career that's pretty locked in already or you got to be on the on the come up where you got nothing to lose. It's the guys that are on a television show that are fucked. Yeah. Like the guys who get a TV show or you're really worried about losing it.

Right.

Those guys can't they can't do a show like that. But back then you could. Oh, back then we did. But there it is. Colin Quinn, tough crowd. There it is. Look at that.

That is that Patrick Infantry's.

He was the star that fucking show. Well, Norton was great on that show. The was great on that show. Everybody was great in that Geraldo. There's Geraldo, Aldo.

And when Geraldo and Larry went at it, that was one of the great moments of that show.

Ten years old. Geraldo is dead two days ago. Yeah. I mean, Larry, that was that was a good point.

And Lenny Clarke was it was just a great setup, like the way you had it. It was just a great setup, Patrice.

Literally, it was basically his show. As you can see from that footage, I was a guest. He was the host, Little Chubby Jimmy. Look at Jimmy down the chubby like a fretful but.

This was a great fucking show, man. Yeah, but how many episodes did you guys wind up doing? Oh, 200, I think to 220 or something. I have no. Can we get you to do it as a podcast? I don't know, because usually guys like me, guys like established comics would do it and it would be wild. You could still do it. It could still be done as a podcast because like you have a guy like Joey Diaz on, he doesn't give a fuck.

Right. But you can have those guys and they will talk freely.

Yeah. And people would love it. Oh, my God. They would love it.

Yeah, it might. I don't know. I mean, over the years obviously people have brought it up to me and I was like, now because he could never.

Do you want the name be free to. No, but I got a better one.

The original name which everybody took me off of, which is the expression really more than tough crowd, tough room.

Oh, and I think I do want a name. Yeah. Anyway. Oh either way, tougher was better. Tough Room is a podcast.

Tough room. Why not. I don't know maybe how many guys in New York would do it a lot. Yes, easy. Yeah, Norton would do it for sure, 100 percent. Well, he wouldn't be invited on.

But, you know, you brought up the one name, someone that's not on the show.

There's plenty of comics that would do it. Joey Diaz is in Jersey now. Oh, yeah. A lot of police out there in the East Coast.

Yeah, you got the fuck out. Most people are leaving. L.A. is like a sinking ship. Yeah, but he's leaving. Yeah, it's sad, but it's also good things.

Move on. Like I said, comedy. I'm not even kidding. What if it becomes this, you know, he outdoor thing. Everyone's going to move down south.

It could be an outdoor thing. But I think more than anything, it could be a thing where you just I think they're going to have some sort of a treatment for covid sooner or later.

And it's just a matter of like, look, the reason why L.A. was L.A. was because everybody came out there do TV and movies. Right. And then they wound up doing comedy as well. And they did comedy while they were doing TV and movies. But it was always when I started in the 90s in L.A., it was a means to an end. Like when I came out there, I came out there to do a television show and there was a lot of people that were doing stand up hoping they would get a TV show.

That's why I came out there with a TV show hoping to get passed as a paid regular at the store. And then once I was there, I was like, this is weird because, like, I don't really want to. I was doing TV for money. And every time a new TV project came up, I was like, OK, but really I had this dream.

My dream was like, I would really love if I could just do standup, like I'm doing all this stuff so I can make a like standup said it best. It goes basically we're doing TV to make sure we have an audience so that we can do standup. Absolutely. But now that doesn't exist anymore. Nobody gives a fuck about TV. Nobody cares for a lot of comics. If you get a TV show, it's like, oh, poor guy, you got a show.

It's like now you're now you're you're right.

He's going to get less money. You can't say what you want. You can't talk wild and you never know when you're scared. You can't go on the road. Right. Right. And you have to deal with all these weird politics of of sets. Now it's like every set has to be diverse. You have to like the casting is weird. It's all fake. It's like you don't, you know, casting the best people. You have to make sure you have an Asian character of this character where where's your gay representation?

And it's just say, if it's a if it's an urban gang, they have to look like Greg Kinnear.

But it's just nowadays you don't need that Hollywood environment anymore. It's actually an impediment because it comes to the executives and it comes with agents and it comes with all these all these people that can get their greasy hands on the formula and fuck it up. They're going to tell you what to do and what not to do. They're going to pull your side. They're going to give you shitty advice that they're creative input is going to be your dog shit.

Well, a place like this, Colin Quinn, how here in Texas, you don't have that. No, I know. I love it. You're going to move here. I don't know.

I don't know. I'm such I mean, I do love it. I love the idea of moving here. And I love I love it. I'm trying to get everybody to move here, if you have. I know.

Have the goal of having people in this podcast. Yeah, well, I'd like to you know, if I move here, I'm going to do it. I'll be one of the I want to be one of the early ones. I don't want to be one of the guys that comes in like, oh, now he's jumping in the bandwagon. Fifth year right now. I don't want to, but I if I do it, it'll have to be in the next year because I can't be one of these guys.

It's, you know, coming in late. Well, you're going to help me design the club, right?

Maybe I come down as the designer slash manager of the club and or maybe I secretly book the club and people go to the practice book in this club. Right.

You never know. Like you leave your your have a purse.

Yeah.

You can't have a single person that people can call to get booked or I've always felt even as much as I love comedians and I, I love comedians.

So my favorite people, I always feel sorry for bookers because having to deal with us people don't understand the mental disorder. You have to have to be a successful community, which is you have to think, if I was up there right now, no matter who is up there, I do good, too. I'm as funny as anybody.

And if you don't think that you can't last, it's just the sad thing is people that think that or no one else thinks that the nomics. No, they're not good.

Yeah. And they're like, I don't get the respect I deserve.

Like, no, but you do. Here's the thing about comedy.

Everybody gets the respect they deserve. Yeah. They all did. Anybody who says, you know, I didn't you know, they they made it seem like I had to earn their respect. You do. Yeah. You do have to earn their respect. Yeah. And you get what you deserve in this.

This is a meritocracy. It's the closest thing to a meritocracy that can exist.

And I agree it is out of any job in the world. It's close to good meritocracy.

Whenever you see a comic saying, I'm not getting the respect I deserve, you're like, oh, no, that's not true. Yeah, you do get what you deserve. Yeah.

You know, it's all because when people are murderers, everybody everybody bows down. Everybody says that guy is fucking great or she's amazing. Right. Everybody does.

Well, unless they're real hacks is actually. Murder. Yeah, but as I said, I'll never follow right killers and I, I bow down to the fact that they can be that they can do that even though I hate them for it. But I'll say I give them a little bit of credit.

I know he's saying I know. Like they figured out a way to juke the system. Yes.

But in terms of like a great comic, a comic that the audience likes, that we all respect.

Who with the guy? Girl. Gay, straight. Absolutely. White. Black. Yeah. No one gives a fuck. Are you a killer?

Yeah. Are you a killer. That's right. Yeah. And if you're not a killer and you think you are, it's a rough road.

Yeah. Oh yeah. I don't get the respect I deserve from this club. But you do know.

Yeah but you do. Yes.

If you were laying it down every night they would all be like, goddamn, he's killing it.

But this is what I'm saying, bookers. Everybody thinks they should be at that place. Right. That everybody thinks should be on stage all the time. Yeah.

So to be a booker, you can't you're going to make a lot of enemies. Yeah. Yeah.

And then there's people that think that it should be like there should be a certain amount of women that should be more women on this lineup right now. They shouldn't know if they're funny.

They should be. Yeah, but look, I've always said and I still maintain this, I think it's a difficult road for a woman. I think there's women there's a lot of men that don't want to hear women talk about politics. There's a lot of men who don't want to hear women tell them things that maybe they don't know or say comedy in a way like they're explaining things to the men. There's a lot of men are sexist.

I think it's harder, sure. Harder for them to talk about sex they they like.

Christopher Hitchens had a whole article he wrote in Vanity Fair about this back in the day was very controversial. It was called Women Aren't Funny. And all these women got really upset at him.

But he was basically saying they were saying he was saying, if you want to be a woman and be comedy and be a comedian, you kind of have to adopt male characteristics. You have to act like a slut or act like a guy or be butch.

Well, I don't agree. Not true, but not true because he's not a comedian. No, no, it's not true.

But what is true is it's harder it's a harder path for a woman. You have to be. Yes, it is. Yeah. And you have to be undeniable.

A dying. You have to be a dominant personality. Yeah, I'm saying like a Roseanne. Like Roseanne came out and she was now playing. I'm going to you know, I mean, like you have to have that energy, I guess.

Or Sarah Silverman. Right. She's got her path through it. She was cute. But, you know, it was like she would shocked you with her takes on things. Well, it was like well crafted. Yes, it was.

She was almost like a different I'm totally different. But like Sam Kinison and the fact that you'd be like, oh, this person saying this. And then you're like, whoa, whoa, whoa.

You know, it was like a joke. Yeah. And she was pretty. So it was, oh, you throw you off. She was charming.

Yes. Yeah, yeah. And but Roseanne was interesting in the same way. Kinnison is interesting because she became that person after she had a brain injury. What. Yeah, she got hit by a car just like Kinnison.

I didn't know either one of them. Yeah. So they did stand up. Yeah. They their personalities changed. It's really interesting. They both got really hurt bad. And when you get really bad brain injuries, one of the things that happens is you become ridiculously impulsive and wild and oftentimes violent. Like that was the thing with Kinnison, like his brother wrote in the book, My brother Sam. Right. His brother Bill wrote a book about Sam and what Sam was like before the accident.

And then after the accident, he was hit by like I think he was hit by a pickup truck, but like really fucked up like brain injury. And then it became a different person, like he was like quiet and reserved and then just became wild and uncontrollable. Same thing with Roseanne. She went to a mental institute for nine months after she was hit by a car.

How funny is that, that people have to get hit by a truck? That's what does that say about us? What does it say? We're fucked. Yeah. What does it really say?

Yeah, because I believe in in the different vein, but the same psychologically, I believe you have to be in a place where you just it's almost like an existential crisis.

Yeah.

Well you like I don't care if I bomb. I don't care about I don't I don't place enough value in this planet that I give a shit.

I'm going up and I'm talking about what I want to talk about.

It's almost like a level of depression. It's not easy. It goes beyond where you just like I don't care. I really don't care because people care about this public speaking so much that there has to be something with us that's off. Well, we're like, I don't care.

Or you have to develop it over time. You have to develop that callousness about the way people feel about eventually. Yeah, yeah.

Or you got to get so good that you can, you know, that even though it's so terrifying to bomb, you could slip through those waters and ride the wave of success.

Well, what I always tell people starting when they when they ask, even when they don't ask, I tell anybody is you can do you can hate you, but they can never feel sorry for you. The one thing you're not allowed to have in comedy, in my opinion, is the one thing you're not allowed to indulge in is you can't ever be uncomfortable.

Right. You can be anything. You could be an asshole. You could be a psycho. You be offensive. You can never be uncomfortable. You're not allowed to bid.

Isn't that weird that you could feel it? Yeah, you feel it when someone's uncomfortable, you're not. If somebody if you paid somebody to come in right now and do a set for us three. They're not allowed to be like, well, it's a weird incident, they can't they can say this setup sucks, you pay me for this, they can attack us and we'll probably love. Right. But they can't be uncomfortable. Right. You're paid to not be uncomfortable, right?

No matter what. Yeah. You can't be ashamed and you can't be uncomfortable.

Anything else could be is such a strange art form. It's like they feel you they feel how you feel.

Even if the words come out perfect with the perfect timing, they feel how you feel and they won't laugh if you if you seem uncomfortable.

Yes. Yeah. It's, it's, it's like alchemical or something. It's just is it's and it's such a it's such a Yolŋu. I just always hate this even though it's true as people decide how they feel about you. The first ten seconds I was like, oh, what the fuck is that.

Yeah, just me. Ten seconds.

But the truth is, when somebody comes on stage and they they don't make eye contact, like with the like they like either looking down or looking above.

Yes. Right away the whole crowd knows and they're like, what's this party. Oh they uncomfortable you want. Then why are you being a comedian. Get off stage. Yeah. You have to be like I don't give a shit just like with a heckler. Like people had tried that I had a heckler. It's like, no, no, you we're living vicariously through you in the audience, the asshole at work that we can't say that to because we'll get a fight or get our ass kicked.

You have to say that, too.

Yeah. You know, yeah. Even if you don't say the greatest, most clever thing in the world, but it has to be basically fuck you, you fucking idiot around here, try to fucking ruin golf because people love it because they can live vicariously through that, you know.

Well, it's such a classic person too. Yes.

Hechler such a classic person, the person that thinks their opinion is more important than the entire audience. Yeah. To stand up and put a stop to it, that their ego allows them to literally yell out to the person with the microphone.

Yeah. Nice shirt. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, it's so yeah.

So that was another beautiful thing about the store that was terrible but also beautiful. There was no crowd control. Oh yeah.

No one, no one took care of the crowd. No. You had to develop the ability to handle shit. Yeah. When things are going sideways. No one stopped anybody knowing kicked anybody out. No.

And then eventually they did like in the you know, like the new version of the store like 2014 on when I came back they would fucking clean it out man. They wouldn't, they wouldn't let anybody, like, heckle anymore. And I said, this is interesting. It's like these young guys coming up, this is good, but it's also bad because, yes, you got to learn how to handle this chaos.

And if you would go somewhere else, one of the things you would go on the road and if you would go on the road and people would heckle you like, look, do you think I'm not used to this?

I get heckled every night. Yes, I it was it's so it's such a normal part of the experience. It has to be a normal part of the experience. I agree, because there's nothing even as a guy who's been in forever, when somebody when you watch a comedian, somebody heckles and you see their faces like, yeah, what I like their style are startled by it. Yes. Well you want to see is like, OK, asshole, No.

6000 in my life. Listen to me. You you don't when you want it to be like that. Outrageous, you want to just be like, oh you fucking like it's part of the thing you know.

Exactly. Is that great Bill Hicks that where he's doing that with him, you know, that recording remember where he's like yelling at the whole crowd like oh yeah.

Oh you just you read him the riot act. You just tell he's been doing it forever. Yeah.

There was a lady yelled at him and he goes, he goes, oh, I'm a cunt. He goes, I got a I got a pussy. So I get carte blanche.

I heard a recording of Lenny Bruce from 1959. There was this guy, how well-known, just died. And he he had all these old great recordings of music and everything.

But this Lenny Bruce recorded in 1959. And he just let me listen to it once. And it was Lenny Bruce at a club. Go and just listen to me. Here's what bothers me. They always put you people at that table to you because you always had that fucking for four, you know, four top and and you could tell there's a couple of couples. He goes, yeah, two couples at one time, you know, you think you're cool, you're drunk.

He goes, and after the show you're going to come up and go, we were helping you. And I was like, that was in 1959.

And that crazy because that is what they say. Yeah, we were helping. You were yielder if we didn't yell out, you wouldn't even have a show. Yeah. If you if you didn't show up tonight, I would have been screwed. I wouldn't have a show. It's funny that people actually do think that the.

It's a comedy, kind of like a form of hypnosis. That's what I always say, like when a guy's on stage killing, like if you're on stage and you're killing and I'm sitting there watching, even though I know I'm a comic.

Right. I let you think for me. You're thinking for me. So you're saying things and I'm just I'm empty. I'm on I'm on the ride with you. Right. Just let me think for me. Yeah.

And the whole audience does like it's such a weird art form where you were tapping into these states of mind that aren't really available to other people, the state of mind where there's a person on stage and they're they're they're crafting an experience and everyone else in the audience is sort of going along with it.

If it's going well. And you it it's accentuated by the people next to you who are also laughing.

I know. And speaking of covid, that's what makes you nervous like shit. People have to be next to you. Yeah. Really to really make it work for an hour. Yeah.

You know, I think we're going to look past this. I think they're going to come up with some sort of a treatment or something within two years. We're going to at the very least, have a real appreciation for what it's like to lose this.

Well, yes. And I think that Austin Comedy Club is I'm a little too big to just run one club.

So how many are you going to run? Well, I mean, a chain of seven clubs. OK, you know, where else? Where else? Nashville.

Yeah, I've watched probably fifty episodes of Borrasca like most people. So I understand what to do when I go into the place. I understand the culture.

Yeah. Not Nashville because they have zanies. That's the I respect a real institution like Zanies maybe could be comedy club rescue and come in with like you have to have a hook like a polka dot suit or something crazy.

Oh all right.

I was like I didn't like it then. I was like, yeah, I want to shelve it.

So how about a change of like where where the ceiling like in case covered or something comes back with a retractable ceiling so you can have a skylight, the sky like, oh OK, it's going to be expensive, but I'm sure it's a lot cheaper than I think outside only works in the sun.

The thing about their saying about being outside of the only good thing about outside outside is circulation. Like people aren't breathing in your face. Like the air is not trapped. Yeah, real. The way that outside works is like UV light and sun is supposed to kill covid.

Well, I'm going to say something that I don't care if people get sick from covid. I'm just I want to market it so people think they're safe. I don't really give a shit what they pay to cover.

How about a fan? This is a goddamn business. Blows all the bad air away, you know? What are you, the guy that's working for, you know, RJ Reynolds in 1950?

Hey, listen, cigarettes are bad. Do you think you would live outside of New York City ever?

No, seriously. I mean, you seem like you're inexorably tied to that city.

I mean, I feel like I am, but I'm like I said, I know a lot of my family is moving. A lot of people I know are moving to the suburbs in the past six months, seven months.

And sometimes I'm like, yeah, it's kind of there's something there's something not there in New York. Sometimes I'm like, it's not it's not how I used to feel about New York. Let's just put it that way. Maybe it's me, but I think it's a city.

How long you can go without someone. Stand up. How long did I go during the four months. Five months.

And then what was your first show? Was the. Was the yeah, the one with the cars at the parking lot, one that was the first HBO Maxima. The first one was a recording. Yeah, really, Chris DiStefano was on, if you know him and he goes, Yeah, this is great, we used to work our way out. Now I like working out on HBO. Max Wow.

So you didn't warm up for it at all. You just went up and did it? Yeah. Wow.

I didn't warm up, but like, you know, I listen to my tapes and. Yeah, you know, that's kind of crazy. It was crazy.

But it's you know, standup is after you were doing it for that long, you kind of you know, you can still bomb, but then it's a little different. Plus the crowds. You're not doing an hour. I was doing an hour. It's a different ballgame.

I did the Houston Improv. I did a weekend there after. I think I did it in July. So. Four months, five months, whatever it was, four months, and it was weird, me, Tony Hinchcliffe and Brian Moses, and it was so strange. It was, but it felt so good.

And doing an hour is a different ballgame. It was headlining. I mean, I was doing the realize what headlining. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, they pay to see you. It's a different.

I was lucky though that I actually had already worked out this hour over a year or so. So it was a real hour. I had recordings, I could listen to recordings. I had all my notes. I go over my notes the first shows like Can I do this? And then once I did it, I was like, I remember all the shit and the like. I might have fucked up a few taglines or something like that. But by the end of the weekend it was like a real show.

I was rolling.

So did you. How many times you listened? You said before you went, Oh, a lot. A lot. I always do, you know, play games. I yeah.

I don't either. I record all my sets and I listen to them usually I would listen to him, I would drive home from the store, I would listen to on the way home.

But this is the difference between people that really want to listen.

If you if you don't respect you have to respect it enough to go, hey, guess what? These people in Houston paid to say, yes, I'm going to do my best. It might not be perfect. It's going to be the best. I put all my effort in.

Yeah. Then you really you know, you're doing it.

You might be a little clumsy if you haven't done stand up in five months, but you're going to do the work that's required to get it done. Then they're going to know that you care. That's right. Yeah.

The worst is when someone pays to see you and you see the person on stage like a notebook and like, what else? What else? And they don't give a fuck what else. Oh, it's the worst. It's the worst. Because it's that feeling that you don't have a sense of urgency that these people are paid to hear you talk. Yeah. And a lot of people that it's like a little defense mechanism for them not to give fucks just to show like I always called the Joe DiMaggio principle, like when I saw this article once where Joe DiMaggio was, he's like forty years old or something.

He was already in the Hall of Fame and he slid into third base.

And there's this kid said, you know, you play so hard, like, why are you doing this? Like, you're already in the Hall of Fame and it's not. And he goes because somewhere out there, there's someone who hasn't seen Joe DiMaggio play and I don't want to let them down. Yeah, it's great. I remember reading that and going. That is a great way to look at it. That's a great way to look at it.

Like if people are paying to see you, they're putting money.

Do you feel like he used that line on Marilyn Monroe? First on it? He's probably like, I don't know, Marilyn, but, you know, if he is somebody, she's like, what a nice guy. Cut to an hour later.

Well, his thing was always kind of sad, right? Like she left him and she was and all these other guys. And they said that even after his after her death, he would always show up at her grave and leave flowers. That's sad shit. Yeah. Yeah.

But I was already treated like shit any like smacker or something. Did he. I could be making up some hard. I'm slandering the name of the great American hero. I'm calling Joe DiMaggio a wife beater based on something I may or may not have read.

I don't know, maybe I feel like it, but it does feel like he is Italian. I feel. Yeah, well, that's part of it.

And I feel like he beat her. And then Arthur Miller, emotionally abused in the Kennedys, killed her and Kennedy.

Well, yeah, that most likely that kind of stuff.

You do wonder, you know, I mean, like wonder, you know, if I had a hundred thousand dollars on a bet, yes or no, red or black, I'm going with they killer.

It certainly was a strange one, wasn't it? Well, she was apparently she had loose lips and she fucked both of them and she was drinking and like, I fuck this, I fucked Bobby and those that are most Jack. Yeah, but it was like, yeah, yeah.

But he doesn't understand if they killed her. They had the mob do it for him and somebody because but the mob hated them, so why would they do it?

Well, it doesn't necessarily have to be the mob. I mean, you think Hillary Clinton's using the mob to whack all those people?

No, but there is there's this people out there that will kill people for you calling. Yeah, I guess 100 percent. Yeah, they exist.

Yeah. And they don't have a problem with it because they've killed people before. It's not that hard. It's it's shockingly easy to get someone to kill somebody for you.

Yeah. I guess for you know, for money when and if you're president of the United States and you got some lady who won't shut the fuck up about blowing you in the Rose Garden.

Well, or whatever. Nowadays, though, it's a lot harder, you know what I mean? Because everything gets exposed and, you know, social media. But I mean, yeah, back in those days, you get away with it, I'm sure to Eppstein, I'm sure being killed that guy when he is in prison.

Yeah. Well in prison it's easier.

Well yeah. They turn off the camera, they turn off all the cameras but still.

But if that was in the street, 80 people have cameras.

Eppstein That's true. Maybe it's easier to kill in prison. I think it is.

Yeah, well, it's just one guy that he's dead. Yeah, I miss him. Everybody's like God.

Yeah. The God was this one was asleep and one was just. Yeah. And all the cameras were broken.

I don't know what happened. Weird. He broke his own neck. Strange.

Yes. It really feels bad about having sex with those 16 year olds, you know. Yeah.

But I mean the minute that list. Well what about Jane Maxwell? What's going to happen with her?

That's a good question, because she doesn't go to I don't think she goes to trial until I want to say next month. I think she goes to trial this month, now we're in October, Jamie. When is she supposed to go on trial? You don't hear a word about that right now.

She's getting the jack cheese and the Jack Ruby cell. I read a fascinating book next year.

Next year.

What the fuck are you waiting for? Yeah, I try to figure out, you know, what they're waiting for. That is crazy.

Next year. When? Next year. Next December. Yeah. When are they going to do it? Why would they wait? That's so they look they put Harvey Weinstein right into court, why why are they waiting for. That's so strange. Hmm. There was a report recently that Bill Clinton had an intimate dinner with her a couple of years back. Jane, we got to talk. Yeah, you know, there is there a ledger?

She's just denied bail recently. And current trial date is set for July 12, 20, 21.

That's a long time. That's a long time.

But it's the seventh month of July of 20 21. And here we are in October. Yeah, that's crazy. That's so much time to kill her.

Well, I mean, nowadays, if you put covid on the side of one of the services and wait for the benefit, not good enough.

What about something to kill her? What about you were saying about the Kennedy, a Jack Ruby? Oh, yeah.

There's a fascinating book called Chaos written by this guy, Tom O'Neil. I had him on the podcast, and it's all about the CIA and the CIA's. Well, it's about the Manson case. But how this guy, Tom O'Neil, who's actually Greg Fitzsimmons neighbor, it's an amazing book. He researched this book over 20 years. He started writing it. And then as he was writing it, he was writing it as an article and as he was writing the article, he kept uncovering more and more and more information.

And he connected the Manson family to the CIA operatives that would give people LSD and they would run these experiments on people. And they think that they used the Manson family to to discredit the hippie movement and to experiment with what they could do with LSD. And they did it with him when he was in prison. And the guy that was involved in this CIA LSD operation, this is all like heavily documented, was the same guy who went to visit Oswald excuse me, Jack Ruby when he was in jail after he killed Oswald and Jack Ruby, like from this guy visiting him in jail immediately went crazy, was hiding underneath the table, was saying that they're burning Jews in the streets and like, he had a meltdown.

And they think this guy dosed Jack Ruby while he was in jail and might have dosed him previous to that to get him to shoot Jack Ruby, to get him to shoot Oswald in the first place.

Wow, it's crazy.

They connect this CIA, MK, Ultra mind control, LSD experiments that they were doing with this guy.

What is his name? Jolli was in Jolli West. Jolli West. Who is this? This operative for the CIA. They ran a thing called midnight operation midnight climax where they would run brothel's with two way mirrors and they would hire these hookers to give these johns LSD and they would watch to see like how they would react to, you know, they would give him a drink. And inside the drink that would be acid. And these poor guys thought they were going, you know, have some sex with a lovely lady.

Poor guys, they get a they get sex and they get a free acid trip. He was so bad. It's not bad if you know you're going to have acid.

Well, what about the it's a great book, though. It's called Chaos.

Chaos, because, you know, Gabe Kaplan, you know, he was a comedian and poker player. Yeah. And he worked. He told me what, Tommy? Because, yeah, I worked for Jack Ruby. He worked for the Carousel Club. Whatever the name of the club was, he worked in the Dallas. Like, what was he like? He goes, he was a real thug. He goes he was just like, get out of here.

Like you just shove be, you know, just it was a real a mob mob Dallas mob. I mean, you read that book about the Dallas mob and Lyndon Johnson and his and the know.

What was that about? Oh, I have it on my phone, but I mean. The it was it was basically it was like the most compelling argument, I felt like, wow, like the Dallas mob being involved with whoever they were involved with to go out and to go out and really kill, you know, kill a guy.

You know, it completely makes sense here.

This Jaimie's guy out of here, betrayal in Dallas. Yes, that's it. Oh, good.

So, Jamot damn. Jamie. Jamie, you know what? Betrayal. And you get tested.

LBJ, the Pearl Street Mafia and the murder of President Kennedy. Yeah, good stuff.

Oh, my God. It's great because it connects the lieutenant governor, like who is not going to get re-elected. And it was all like LBJ stuff.

It was really going to take a picture that so that I can get it later. So I don't forget.

But but but the Manson thing is the Manson thing is crazy.

Tom O'Neil documents all the times they let Manson out of jail. They would arrest him while he was on parole. Right. We're clear parole violations. And one of them was that's the book right there.

I can't tell you enough good things about it, but they kept releasing him and one of one of the sheriffs said that it was above my pay grade. Like they told him the CIA came to them to let the guy go and they wanted him to go out and keep doing all this crazy shit. And one of the reasons why they wanted to do is because they wanted to discredit the anti-war movement like the CIA. And the government at the time was involved in a lot of like, really shady shit.

Right. And one of the reasons why they were doing that was because they were trying to stop what they thought was this subversive movement. Sure. To try to get us out of Vietnam. Right. Right.

And this was a part of it. I mean, the Kennedy thing was a part of it, too, I guess, really? Yeah, you know, for sure. I mean, they just happen to have the happier I mean, this book, I was told, was more like the Dallas Mafia, but I'm sure the CIA said, hey, it's going to help us.

You know, I mean, they weren't together in the Bay of Pigs, so we're going to be together.

Well, it's really crazy that the video of the Kennedy assassination, the Zapruder film was actually put on television by comedian Dick Gregory or Dick Gregory, brought that to Haraldur Rivera's TV show.

And I think it was 10 years after the murder, something might have been one, you know, like relevant TV shows like 74.

I remember. Yeah. And it was back when people had bellbottoms on a chair. And Dick Gregory brought that film. There it is.

Good Night, America 75. There it is. Wow. So say 75.

Yeah. Yeah. March six. Seventy five. Look how blurry it is.

Yeah.

Good night America. Yeah.

And so they played the Kennedy I mean because Dick Gregory was a fascinating guy. He was.

Yeah. Great fucking comic con. A lot of people don't even know how good he was. Well time life had this, they had purchased this, you know, after the assassination in 63. And they held on to it all these years and they played it on television.

And I remember Geraldo Rivera telling people that this is going to be very disturbing and you could see him getting shot and he had going back into the left and everybody was like, wait, what the fuck is going on? That's the first time. And seeing him grab his neck where he got shot in the front, in the neck. And they tried to in the autopsy, they they had two different versions of it in Dallas. They said it was an entry wound.

And then in Bethesda, Maryland, when they looked at them there, they said, oh, no, was a tracheotomy. They shot him in the neck, shot him in the back, shot him in the neck, shot him in the head. They were shooting at him from different angles. He was more than one person. Yeah.

Oh, yeah, I guarantee. Yeah.

I mean, I don't guarantee but a lot I don't think that's the weirdest argument when people think that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. That is one of the weirdest arguments that the weird mental gymnastics that people have to play with themselves to to get to the position where they think Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. Yeah, well, I'd like to see a movie.

I mean, JFK was good for what it was, but I'd like to see a movie about all the people that got killed in the aftermath.

Oh, a lot of people. But that would be a good movie.

There's a book called Best Evidence by this guy, David Lifton. And David Lifton was an accountant who was hired to do something with the Kennedy assassination. I forget what he was hired to do, but he went over the entire Warren Commission. And, you know, it's a huge many, you know, many, many, many, many pages. Right.

And he found all these inconsistencies and all these things wrong with it and all these things that don't make any sense. And he realized, like, they put this together to try to wrap it up tight and and make it seem like there was an obvious conclusion.

But it wasn't an examination, like an objective examination of the assassination, because in those days, the the mob and the CIA were as powerful as any and they were not planned.

They would just tell you, look, man, if you do this, don't do this. They wouldn't even have to tell you what was going to happen. You knew it was going to kill the uprising. Like, don't do this. If we kill them, you don't think we'll kill you.

And so many of the people that were witnesses wound up dead.

Well, so many of the people there's something I was thinking hitlist in-depth investigation to the Richard Belchers Belser. Balzar is a nut.

How funny is that? How funny. And he's a conspiracy guy.

Always so deep. But how funny is that title of his book, you know, because he lost a testicular cancer. This is a conspiracy book is called One Lone Nut.

It's pretty funny, it's pretty funny. He had another book called UFOs, Bigfoot and Flying Saucers, I think Elvis, Bigfoot and Flying Saucers, JFK, that's it. Thank you. That's another book that I read of his that is an all conspiracy theory book.

You know, he's all about conspiracy theories. I had a conversation with I only met him once, but we had a long conversation about UFOs and Bigfoot and aliens and he's up. That motherfucker believes everything, right? He's like he's all in.

Yes. Some people are just predisposed to be they love them.

I think they just, you know, is another one like that. Dan Aykroyd. Oh, really? Oh, my God. I had him on the podcast. He believes in everything. Ghosts, psychics, you name it.

Really. All that extraterrestrial, all of it. Everything is real. He probably thinks the crystal skulls, all of it, everything he's all in.

Well, I was like, really? It was it was a weird conversation. I was like like he didn't have any skepticism.

And it wasn't like, who fucking knows?

There was none of that. It was none of that. He was all in all in all in on psychics, all in, on Bigfoot, all in on UFOs.

And it was all in he was the he was the oldest 23 year. He was on SNL was 23. Was he really. Yes. He seemed like he was like 40.

Yes. But I like this guy though. I like this say. Yeah, but I like this idea of doing this.

All the people that got killed after JFK.

Yeah. You know, I mean, nothing I'm not discrediting Belchers book, but it doesn't look like the kind of thing I was envisioning. I want to go and buy some investigative reporter, not by a stand up.

They all got murdered, parked their cars on train tracks, jumped off a building on my days off in Austin comedy.

I'm going to drive to Dallas two days a week and start researching for the movie.

One thing you do, if you do drive around there, there's another thing that drove me crazy. I was like the scope on the rifle didn't even work.

Like, what are you talking about? How do you know it didn't work? But what does that mean? Because when they got it, it didn't work.

If you have a scope on a rifle, you just drop the rifle. That scope doesn't work.

Really have like a scope on a rifles of like if you fall and this happened to me once on a hunting trip. I fell and my rifle was off and we took it back to the ranger, was off by six inches at one hundred yards with a look on a rest where you just squeeze off rounds. It was it was when you knock a rifle, like if you fall down and the rifle drops, it's going to adjust the scope and you're shooting a bullet, you know, a couple hundred yards or 100 yards.

Any little wiggle like if it's a an eighth of an inch to the left or the right, you're going to be way off by the time it gets to the target.

So when all these people were saying, well, the scope on the rifle didn't even work well, like, what do you you don't know that like they found this thing sitting. He could have dropped it after he shot JFK. I think Lee Harvey Oswald was probably in on it.

I think he was probably you know, he's probably one of them. But I think they definitely like when he said he was a patsy. Yeah, I like.

Yeah, most likely. Yeah. Yeah, he's a patsy.

He came, by the way, what was a better description of the JFK assassination than Full Metal Jacket?

I was a great one. Yeah. Was outstanding.

Yeah. So yeah that was really beautiful. It was the way he said it was just like hey guess what. Yeah. Life is life is hard is what I say about this thing.

Also letting prepping these guys to be killers and that what you're rewarding is someone who's really good at killing even if he shot the fucking president.

Yeah. It's like I don't give a shit what happened. I'm just telling you, this guy, a Marine, what does this guy, Emery, Lee Emery, really every god damn he was good.

He was so good in that role.

Didn't they say he was there to advise? And then they just. I've seen play that. Let me hear that. Yeah. It's not working. Well, we got here. Is it no audio in the actual. So this is a professional show here that was on Spotify.

Yeah, but look, even the way they shot it like this clouds overhead. Yeah. Dreary, I bet you love the fact that it was dreary that day, too. You got it. I know who Charles Whitman was. None of your dumb ass is now a cowboy, sir. He was that guy who shot all those people from that tower in Austin, Texas. Sir, that's affirmative. Charles Whitman killed a brain tumor from a 28 storey observation tower at the University of Texas from distances of up to four hundred yards.

Anybody know who Lee Harvey Oswald was? Private Snowball. So he shot Kennedy, sir. That's right.

And do you know how far away he was?

So it was pretty far from that Brooks depository building, sir.

All right. Knock it off. Two hundred and fifty feet. It was two hundred and fifty feet away and shooting at a moving target as well. Got off three rounds with an old Italian bolt action rifle in only six seconds and scored two hits, including a hot shot. Only a few people know where these individuals learned how to shoot either. Jokers served in the Marines and the Marines outstanding. Those individuals showed what one motivated Marine and his rifle can do.

And before you ladies leave my island, it will be able to do the same thing. That's great dialogue.

Kubrick was so good. What more motivated is like? Does it matter what it means in the grand scheme of things? We're Marines. I'm just telling you something for here training you.

It's such a great scene, too, because Kubrick is really highlighting, like, what has to go on with taking a regular kid and turning him into a killer. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you're really brainwashing. That was brainwashing.

Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Yeah.

They also they say so could his movies were so goddamn good.

You know, he used to do like complex mathematics in his spare time. He did. Yes.

For fun. Well, I don't know. I think would completionist Mathis's. But one time I was in L.A., the Old MacDonald and we were in the elevator with these guys. You know, McDonald in the elevator is very you know, he'll just he will literally say the worst thing you can say about somebody and then leave.

And you left it with all the people. That's his thing, one of his things. But these two guys were talking about some complex mathematical things in the late 90s at 30 Rock. And they're saying these like we don't even understand what language it was. It was a really deep mathematic thing. And then Norm MacDonald, who would never brought up math or any anything like that to be in his life, goes there and starts speaking to them in this like what sounded like tongues.

And they're like, oh, you know, but and they start speaking the binary and he goes and he starts speaking this mathematic talk and then they leave.

And then he goes to be like, yeah, yeah, those guys are nerds or something like that.

And I was like, how do you know that? How did you know what they were talking about?

How did he know he's he's he's like, you know, he's a nerd to see, you know, something deep, like he knows these things sometimes.

A very smart guy, really smart. You know, these guys are just you know, he'll just pretend not to know something. Oh, yeah, that's right. And then you're like, well, anybody watching him when we just, you know, is what they're talking about, you know? Yeah.

He's a guy that really should have had a podcast a long fucking time ago. And I know he's doing something now. He's sent me a text message of the day that he's starting to do a podcast now. Hey, Joe, I'm doing a podcast doing that thing we talked about. He should have done a lot because he had that show on Netflix. But, yeah, kind of they muzzled them when he went on the Howard Stern Show and he was saying something and he didn't want to say retarded.

So he said you'd have to have Down syndrome.

I believe that he have have better thing to say.

But here's the thing about Norm. I'm not absolutely sure if he thought that would be a better thing to say. Right. Because he's so smart, he might have been doing it as a double troll.

Yeah, no, Norm is capable of the double trouble was like, yeah, I don't want to say retarded Down syndrome. A double triple. Exactly. Yes.

He's the master of that stuff. I randomly wound up sitting next to him on planes twice on two different occasions, just like go norm like out of nowhere. And he's sitting next to me and one time he's we're sitting there, we're talking, we're having a good old time. And then he's talking about, oh, I quit smoking. He's telling me how he quit smoking and fucking. Yeah, I finally quit smoking and he's telling me all these things.

Then when he lands, he literally, like, you can't stop him. So he runs into the airport store and buy cigarettes and he's lighting it as he's like, oh, I thought you quit. He was. I did. But all that talking about smoking makes me want one. And it's like before he even got out the door, he's lighting the cigarette. He just couldn't stop himself.

And but like he goes all the talk and he's the one talking about all that talk and he always puts it on you. That's what's great about it. But it was it's like this guy is talks about smoking. He got me back smoked. But it was so crazy because I was like, that's great, Norm. It's so great you quit. It's like, I want a cigarette. No, I always do like that. Yeah, I mean, I don't drink and I quit drinking and it was like, oh, really?

Do you drink? Well, yeah, I quit. I finally had to quit. You know, it's hard, but I did it like. Oh, because yeah. Because I got fucking wasted last night. I said I'm never going to drink again. I was drunk and people like you quit. Yeah, I quit as I'm saying, you know last night.

Yeah. It's I could elaborate like I said.

Yes exactly. Well the gambling too.

He fucking loves gambling. He loves it. Oh yeah. Yeah.

But that's a thing like a lot of these great comics are like really impulsive. Yeah.

It's like something about like the ability to say some of the crazy shit that he says.

Yeah, it's, you have to have this, this like Hotwire. Yeah. It's just like yeah. You just want to touch it. Oh yeah.

Oh no he's he's one for the books. Yeah.

The, the conspiracy theory thing is an interesting, it's an interesting little obsession that a lot of people have. Yeah. Like the wanting to uncover these secrets to wanting to, to know, get to the bottom of things, find out how it all works.

Who killed Epstein. Who killed Kennedy.

Right. Yeah. Because the Kennedy one is so it really what's so amazing to me is you see the country change because almost like subconsciously the whole country knew that this was something else that was kind of the beginning of the destruction and downfall.

Now, you know, maybe I'm 87 fuckin years ago, too. That's what's crazy. And there's still there's still mystery.

And it's like they got away with it. Whoever did it got away. Did it is long gone. Yeah. This idea that everybody gets credit for things like not not everything is an episode of Law and Order now.

And they took any time to interview those mob guys. You know, they all say that stuff, you know? I mean, they all say, yeah, well, I heard this. I heard that. I don't know. But this is what I heard. Yeah. You know, and I'm sure it's, you know, it's a badge of honor to go.

Yeah, I know it's happening. But still, you know.

Yeah, well, that was the other weird thing about New York for years and years and years. Right. Is that New York was essentially run by the mob. And Carney helped clean that up, too. Oh, yeah, he be busted. Well, I mean, he he helped clean it up in the 80s when he was there.

He took he did that commission case, you know, I mean, crazy how this one guy, Giuliani, was responsible for a lot of the improvement in New York City. Yeah, a lot. Oh, yeah.

Sometimes it takes one guy like that.

He's like the Buford Pusser of New York City.

The because the tall taking the taking the fish market down was I was everybody was going he's going to get killed really when he went in, when he became a when it's explain to people the whole well like the you know, the mob ran like, like Joe saying sanitation like even things like I was in the restaurant union so I didn't know, you know, I just paid my dues.

I'm like an idiot. And then but like all, they ran the restaurant. But then when you run the restaurant, you don't just run the ball tenders and the waiters, you run the linen supply like the mob was letting supply. And the liquor distributors, like all the mob, you know, mob kids when they weren't, you know, when they were just related, somebody would be driving the liquor trucks.

You know, it was all it was, you know, and the food, the meat, you know, remember, they had the famous thing with Frank Perdue and chicken and stuff.

So they really ran like, you know, they'd run an industry. But there's like 20 jobs that are close to that industry where they're involved, you know, and and a lot of guys had no show jobs and all those jobs in China.

But the job isn't exactly you just said it. I had a friend of mine who had a no show job at the Javits Center. Oh, yeah. I knew a few people. I worked over there. You have to look at Giuliani back then.

Right. Right. Yeah.

And they said the Mafia put an eight hundred thousand dollar bounty on his head. Sure. Amazing. They didn't kill him.

It's amazing that they didn't. Yeah, I guess I guess there was still a few of the old timers that, like, we don't you know, I mean, we still a thing about the United States, like we don't kill them doing their job, I guess, you know, I guess.

But it was interesting. We try they just couldn't get to maybe.

Yeah, but it was also that law that was a you know, that guy that it all came from that RICO law.

Yeah, that was some professor just came up with this law and somebody in the DA's office or somebody goes, that's a great we could use that law.

I figured out what would that was an interesting story. Racketeering. Yeah. Some guy that had this concept of a law, but he wasn't it was like upstate New York or something.

I mean, and that's how they got at the mall.

And that's how that ended up taken. I mean, they're still around, obviously, you know. But did you ever hear that guy, Michael Française?

You know, that is I've seen him be interviewed. It's fascinating. Charismatic guy.

What's fascinating that he's just out there running around. Yeah, but I guess he didn't rat anybody out or something. You know, just like I said, you know, that generation's gone, so they're probably just like it, you know.

What the fuck was the guy's name the hit man for? Forgot that. Oh, Sammy the Bull.

Sammy The Bull Gravano. But yeah, he's out to was inevitable.

You've have interviewed him, too, like long interviews, long form interviews. I said talk to him about, you know, I mean, he's a murderer just out there wandering around. Yeah. And even got arrested later in his life for selling ecstasy. Ecstasy. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, I was trying to get you know, he's trying to keep young. He said it was a hit man.

Sammy The Bull Gravano is now a social media star promoting his own podcast and showing off his cozy new family life in Arizona, 35 years after turning on the Gambino family and John Gotti. Wow, he's 75 and he's just starting.

He's like, no, he's just talking this new podcast. Look at them. They're two guys. It should have done one.

He looks great. He does look good. He looks great.

He's 75. He looks fucking great. Well, they always said about him was he would go to the gym, the other guys would go out. He wouldn't stay out late at night.

You know, that's kind of crazy. And he's doing a podcast just like Hillary Clinton, declamatory murderers doing podcast.

Hey, look how good he looks, though.

That's so weird, Joe. It doesn't look that good. I don't know why you keep saying go back to that. Go back to the picture. Come on. If I look that good at 75. Come on. Look at that, he looks fucking good there, you got to admit, for a 75 year old guy. Yeah, I mean, he he looks using the same microphones we use.

Jamie Coincidence? He looks 65. No, they're very good.

He looks good. Oh. Just goes to show a nice smile like that is about 60 to 62, 13 years younger than he really is.

That's what I say for that picture. Yeah. These podcasts. Any good. Yeah. Well, to be honest, I bet it's a I don't you know, I don't go on that many I like on if I guess how many of you mean. Plus what would he asked me. Let me ask, you know these mob guys are going to kill not the best of the best comedy maybe.

Yes, maybe no. Michael Frenchy's. You could tell stories. Well, well, it seems more like, you know, like he was like, you know. Yeah, more like a guy like the we would understand.

He is a very charismatic guy. Yes. Yeah. But who knows him. It might be, you know. I mean, he's got that straight. He's got that straight intelligence.

You know, how many guys are in jail for life from selling pot? They're watching these guys doing these podcasts. They've killed nine people.

Go, what the fuck kind of shit is this? Yeah. What kind of lawyer did I have?

The lawyers like, listen, where's the hundred million? The bad French is the one hundred million meson.

He's got 100 million birds somewhere. He's got to look nice. See, he looks like a former mob boss. I'll give you that nice suit he's wearing. Yes, really well dressed. And how did he how is he out? How much time did he have to do?

I don't know. But he did. I know he's in jail, but. But he wasn't in there for murder, he was in there for some kind of that amount of gasoline, there's a big gasoline thing in the 80s. I don't know how they did it, but it was one of those, you know, things that the Russian mob, that he was involved with them.

And so, yeah, he sold billions of gallons of gas. The family would collect the state and local gas taxes, but keep the money instead. At the same time, they were often selling the gas at lower prices than legitimate gas stations.

In the mid 1980s, Fortune magazine listed Francese as number 18 on its list of top 50, top 50 wealthiest and most powerful gangsters in the world.

That can't be good for you.

He made billions of dollars over the years, not only for himself but for the five families as well.

By 1984, his greatest net worth was a staggering twenty billion dollars, making him one of the richest commentators of all time.

Wait a minute. Nobody's worth shit. Nobody is worth 20 billion. Nobody is worth 20 billion dollars in 1984.

So he was Wikipedias line.

Yeah, even Bill Gates was more than that. Twenty dollars billion.

In 1985, Francese was indicted on 14 counts of racketeering, counterfeiting, counterfeiting and extortion, extortion and the gasoline bootleg racket. 1986, Francese pleaded guilty on two counts. He was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison with 14 million in restitution payments. The guy's worth 20 billion.

Ain't shit that's worth 100 billion. 100 million is. So what is he doing now?

First of all, he has 20 billion. Why is he? Why he's only 100 million buried. I would have buried ten good questions.

Keep scrolling down that page to find the 20 billion. What does it say at the bottom? I want to find out what that was me. What did he get out of? He's a motivational speaker now.

This is how you steal what he got out in eighty nine.

I got a sentence for violating his parole terms. What did he do to get arrested for tax fraud? And it looks back to Whoopsies.

He started making the balance of the court order restitution payments earlier that year. Prosecutors also said Francese was not considered by the government to be a cooperating witness. That's why he's alive. He was released in 94.

Wow. Wow. Yeah, interesting. Oh, yeah.

So he made an autobiography, which sounds like a fucking hustler, right?

It's been interviewed by Jim Brown is obviously a smart guy.

He persuaded New York Yankees players who owed money to the Colombo loan Sharks to fix baseball games for betting purposes. Holy shit.

2003, Francese published Blood Covenant and updated and expanded the life story.

He's out now because, I mean, he's out out there twenty five years, but I mean, he's out there doing things. I saw him being interviewed by somebody recently on YouTube.

Yeah, yeah. Because I'm sure, you know, like you said, he didn't if you didn't cooperate and most of those guys are dead anyway.

Wait a minute. They contacted me. Yeah. Really recently I got a request to have them on, bring them on.

Don't know if I want them to know where we are. Good point. Just in case you piss them off.

Yeah, there he is. OK, he's been you know, he's. Yeah, but that value tainment guy, that guy does a very good show.

He's on the on YouTube. Yes. He's, he's very.

Oh yeah. Yeah he's very good. He's got I've seen him. He's got. Yeah. He's got a bunch of you to show like confident and comfortable that he's out of jail looking good.

Nice little pocket scarf.

Yeah. Gentlemen like it looks like a real mobster.

Yeah. Or whatever is at the Palm Shows Club that night. I'll never know. When I was friends with Fitzsimmons, Fitzsimmons lived in Little Italy and he lived right above the social club where John Gotti and and all those guys used to go.

He lived right there. I went to visit him. I was like, Jesus, Greg. Like he was right there.

Oh, yeah. He like he he rented this place from, like this old Italian couple.

Oh, that's really. Yeah. He was right there, like.

Right. You see those guys walking down the street walking to the social club.

Oh my God. They probably had him checked out. Make sure it wasn't, you know, a guy like him could be a federal agent, you know.

But this is Simmons has that look, uh, if this guy's active. No, there's no way it's too funny.

It's also like the those days, like when the mob ran New York, it's like the mob in Vegas, like everybody has his romantic notions of those days. But again, it's just like gritty New York City as long as they weren't fucking you over. Exactly. Yeah.

It's all fine until you try to, you know, get paid, like take great Richard Pryor routine. Remember that one. What was that was. All right.

We're trying to get paid by the mob guys is laugh when he pulls a gun to the good old days. Yeah. Yeah, but I mean, but, yeah, of course, he missed New York, whatever flavor, you know, take, that's what you miss is whatever that other intangible thing was the madness.

But it did get, like you said, Times Square cleaned up. It was the worst. Times Square was horrible. I mean, I hated time. Everybody hated Times Square. And then it got cleaned up and right away were like at Disneyland.

It did get to be like a big Applebee's.

Like we were saying. It really did get worse.

It became like a like just real chain. Yes. A chain restaurant.

I feel like that was one of the downfalls was change. But they're the only ones that could you know, I mean, like small business owners weren't going to be in you know, they weren't able to afford the rents. Yeah.

And the small business owners were all porn stores before that.

Well, that was also when you got there, like Caroline's changed. Caroline's is right on Broadway.

Remember, Caroline's at one point Tom was like, you guys none of you people are from here. Like Caroline's became like this tourist trap. Right. You know. Yes.

Like if you like if you did Gotham, you got New York City people. Yeah. What if you did Caroline's.

You were kidding. Like all tourists. Yeah, it was weird.

They're all from Kansas and shit. Yeah. First time in New York.

Well people would say that if you want to be a good test of your act to see if it would work nationally was Caroline's. That's how it became. Yeah. Because like you said, it was really tourists. Yeah.

But it wasn't always like that. When I lived in New York, Caroline was like a real New York club. I know. Yeah. But because they cleaned up Times Square, they cleaned up Caroline's too.

Yeah. Because people didn't want to go to Times Square in the old days. I mean in the 80s. Nobody wants to go to Times Square unless you up to some devious behavior. There's no point to being there. Is Dangerfield's still open, he feels is exactly the same. How is it possible that it's still open up?

Well, maybe ask you, Doctor Fred Chaney, he's selling gas in the back.

Dated fields has not changed in 35 years. I was there like three years ago. I was laughing so hard.

I used to love that club. Now I love it, you know, because you do you really work out. Oh, nobody was there.

Nobody had thirty minutes. That's. Yeah. Do you remember Bobby the doorman. Of course. Bobby big old fucking Scottish guy. Power lifter.

Bobby I saw him pick a man up by his neck. Some guy was heckling. He grabbed the man. But Bobby was an enormous human being. Yeah. Grabbed the man by his neck and lifted him up in the air, carried him out like he had one hand on his belt, one hand his neck, because he was such a tank. He picked the guy up like the guy was an empty suitcase.

But even that's an old school technique for a bouncer by the belt. And the next thing is that the great.

Yeah, Bobby, Bobby, he he goes, you'd get offstage, even you killed. It goes, oh, you tricked him again with that bag of shite for an act. It was a great place because I knew I knew that Kinnison had performed there and Rodney Dangerfield did those Dangerfield specials there know.

I mean it was it was his spot. It was amazing. But you would go there and it was like, why is this place empty?

Yeah, I don't understand. Yeah, they made all the money and promises and I guess I did promise I was there.

I did didn't with Otto and George. Oh I don't want George and I did some shows. Those are fun. There were wild wild.

They never, they never rotated the show. They were just put in more people like.

And they told you to they told you never change your act because they wanted people to leave.

So was folks don't know prom shows are prom shows are you would get there and this is no bullshit. You might do a seven p.m. show and you might do five shows a night. So your last show might be like two o'clock in the morning. Yeah. And you would leave there. It would be light out. Yeah. I mean, it was crazy.

It was it really didn't make a 17 year old high school kids and they're leaving their prom and they would get them in there on limos and pop them into the club. And the kids were hammered and drunk. Yeah, yeah. I saw a kid go on stage, took the microphone away from Al Lubell and blew cigar smoking in his face like, Jesus, this is rough.

It's a rough show. It was wild.

And they were so dumb. These kids, they were so stupid. Otto and George was on. He was fucking hilarious.

This kid's like I could see his lips moving. His lips are moving. He was mad that you could see the vitriol lives.

Oh, he didn't even care that it was some of the funniest fucking material. So funny.

Do you remember when he had a Kennedy head? Did you ever see when Otto and George had a Kennedy? Yeah, he you know, George, the dummy he had rigged this thing up with George's head would flat back and it would like expose his brain. And he was working on this thing. We would have like a Kennedy had. And he said he goes, yeah, I want to get it. So it squirts blood so you blood to squirt out of his head, but.

I mean, it was really I mean, I guess it was like that, but he is such a sick relationship with that goddamned George.

Oh, it was weird. It was like an episode of The Twilight Zone. It really was. Yeah, it was. Yeah. A couple of people told stories about the time they'd be out and, you know, somebody would say something and I would just go crazy and attack them for you for verbally abusing the dummy.

Well, a Puerto Rican guy stabbed the dummy stage one, right? That's right. I don't remember where that was, but I remember the story. I remember the story. He was sometimes have to check on the dummy, like go like open the trunk. I got to check on George. Yeah, it's the girl. He was with the girl one time. I forget that story, but something with the girl.

And she said some of the dummy goes, he stays with me and he went crazy and she just ran out of the house like I really do. Do you remember that episode, The Twilight Zone, where the guys don't watch soccer, though?

Yes. Yes. Yeah.

There's something about dummy acts. Duncan Trussell used to have this dummy and someone stole his dummy was a little hobo and little hobo.

The act in the act, the dummy was his grandfather's dummy and his grandfather died. And his grandfather's dying wish was that Duncan would bring a little hobo on stage one last time before he buried him with with his grandpa so he'd have the dummy on stage. Then the dog would start talking to him. He's like, wait a minute, how the fuck are you talking?

It was like this crazy thing where the dummy would take him over and he would play Pink Floyd, he would sing along.

There it is in a little hobo. And people did. I took him with me to the UK and they did not know what to fucking expect. Wish you were here.

So he would play that song Pink Floyd song, wish you were here and him and the dummy would be singing at the same time. Two different voices because he had like it synched up. He had like a whole setup with recordings and everything.

It was amazing. That's great. Living in a fishbowl year after year and his eyes would roll back in his head and the dummy would be singing. It was amazing. And people it was amazing to believe it.

Oh, no, they would they would love it. It was so good. It was such a good routine.

And then someone fucking stole a little hobo, someone stole it. And so he had to get a new little hobo and then do a little hobo was even creepier. Oh, hasn't done it forever.

I would love for him to do that routine.

But would that be his closure. Yeah. Oh yeah. You couldn't follow a little hobo. Is it in there. Can you give me some volume. We got a problem with our system. I just thought if I have to meet like five different things, one last chance on stage and dedicate a song to my grandfather, is that OK with you guys? I did the. I wish you were here some oh oh oh, that was that was that was when someone was getting married, that fucking Saturnus with his name.

Stinton Levay.

Anton La. Yeah, I took a photo with that guy and Nuts Online are convinced that that's the evidence that I am a Satanist because the guy took it, he was doing like the devil watch it. And it was he was getting married and Duncan performed at his wedding. And I had to go because there's the craziest fucking shit ever. Duncan was there and they hired him to do his little hobo routine at this guy's satanic wedding.

So you couldn't you wish you were here. He had to use like, you know, we're more into this kind of like heavy metal. It's like, no, no. He did wish you were here. That was that was the program.

The because. Yeah, it's hard it's hard to take a Satana seriously when he does this. The Devil horns. Yeah. You know, but he was a father did go for that kind of stuff.

I think he was the grandson or the son of a fame of Anton Levay. I forget what it was grandson.

But but it's their idea of what Satanism is a little different. Like, you know, you think, oh, he worships the devil.

They're Satanism was like hedonism. Really, what it was like was like giving in to your carnal instincts and was living for the moment doing whatever you wanted to do. But I don't necessarily think now I sound like the Grinch.

So the grandson said the son of the grandson was Satan apologist.

They were trying to explain to me how much you believe in the devil you worship. The devil like what is this?

Well, they're just a it's like, you know, the grandfather probably was a real deal. I think it was just they're being silly. Yes. I think the Dylan versus Jacob, Dylan, Jacob, Dylan's talented. But, you know, Bob, is it just it's a different it's different kind of talent. Yeah. Jacobs Like Pop, he's he's got great songs. Yeah. Yeah.

But he's not like Anton Levay. What does that go. Where the fuck did Jacob Dylan go. I don't know. I met him back in the day when I was filming The Fear Factor as kids were like Fear Factor fans and they came to watch one of the episodes. I met Kenny G that way, too. You did? They came to the episode.

Yeah, they came to watch the film. But the episodes were like outside. Yeah. Yeah. They came to watch. Yeah.

They came to watch people eat dicks and stuff.

Wow. Yeah. There's Doug and what is this? It's the evolution of oh, yeah, that's two little hobos. It was a wild night.

Oh, OK. So he did some experimental work. I see that that was like that painter. I forget his name, but it's again, I see what he's doing.

He had different phases of his. Yeah. His career.

Well, that's the problem. When you have a closing like that, then you just you just can't really get inspired to keep working because you, like disclosers can change.

It was weird to follow I because I brought them with me on the road. Oh my God. You should have made him come back up and do it at the end. No, it was awesome. It was fun. It was fun. That's so funny.

So, Conklin, what happens with you now? Where do you go? Where do you go from here?

That's the question. Is needed to stand up again. Where do we all go from here? Well, maybe I don't know, like legitimately. I mean, where am I going to. I don't know. I mean, I write. You know, I'm writing. I write every day. I'm writing scripts or writing books.

I'm doing all right every day. Yeah. Do you sit down a specific time to do it or now?

I don't have that's discipline, you know, but I make sure I write, you know, but I'm like I'm sure like every time like I'll write like five days in a row and I'll be like, I'm a beast. I'm really disciplined person.

And then the next day I'll just be like, I just start eating and, you know, like any like any Niarchos offshoot show, any show that's related in any way to Northcoast is the greatest show to me on Netflix.

Why do you like Niarchos? I just love all those shows. I love foudre. Ever watch that one? What's the Israeli one? No foudre. That's another Netflix.

I only watch the first two seasons of Narcos once it wasn't Pablo Escobar anymore. I kind of lost.

Was that guy not the. Well, they did it in Mexico. It was great too. I heard nobody was as good as that guy to play in.

Pablo Escobar is incredible because most evil, like even what I expected to see, Pablo Escobar was like this guy, this Tigra, and he's just playing this other thing.

Doel Kind of banality of evil guy who's just like, look, and then just, oh, boy, was he an actor. I believed it, though.

He told us I mean, in all in when he confronts those cops on the ass on the bridge. Yes.

And there's like silver lead, it's your choice. And they're like, oh, take the silver.

Oh, shut the fuck.

Yeah, that's a it's a it's just again, like I out of a huge photo of Pablo Escobar in the old studio, huge of his mug shot was big smiling face. Yeah. And people would see it in the photos because I take pictures with the guests in front of the werewolf with this Pablo Escobar photo. And people get mad that like you're celebrating this guy like he was terrible to Colombia. Like for me as an outsider who love that narco shows like this chaos, this fucking guy who controlled Colombia for so many years made so much money selling Coke.

But for the people that had to deal with it, it's the same as like the romantic notions of Time Square.

Exactly. Yeah. It's like oil and even me, who knows better that photo. But that got that huge mug shot. We had like a five foot version of that at our podcast studio.

Well, that's funny because that shot and he probably loves that shot and probably hates that other shot was his fate as a house. That can't be his wife.

Yeah, that's not him. That's him. All those pictures are. So he let himself go fall apart.

Well, he's just doing coke and drinking. I mean, what a party that guy led until the end.

I mean, he never really got the hair under control, you know, all that much. You should wear a hat like that.

Yeah. How about that in front of the White House? Oh, wow. It's weird when you go by the White House how close it is to the street. Yeah, I know. It's confusing. It's crazy. Nobody fucking shot that place full of holes. No, they probably bedrooms probably in the back.

Well, even if it was still it's weird how close it is because back then, you know, you had muskets.

It was I'd like the bedroom up front, wouldn't you? So you can look out and say, hey, people don't realize the president's looking at James.

You live wild. You're on the edge. Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah. That's a live in the back of the White House.

That's why you're never going to be president. That's where will one of the reasons. Yeah. You might be able to be president. You know a lot about politics, probably more than any comic I know. I used to Dave Smith.

I feel like I feel like I would be a good president. But that's that's the first step. You have to be deluded, narcissistic enough. That's why I think that book you a good president.

Yeah. To think I could do this, I have to of that Naziism book if you want it.

Oh, I like the idea better that we save the green room just to watch the theory and then we film. I mean, Joe, I hope we can have some cameras in this thing. We filmed the anger in their faces when they say he gave this book to me.

I feel like you're honestly considering moving here. Yeah, well, I do love I do love the idea of it.

Do you really feel legitimately not all bullshit aside, you would move here? I don't know. Ron White lives here. I don't know if I would move here to, you know, Ron White. Sure. Yeah, but. I don't know I don't know Ron White well enough where it would influence my mom, I can introduce you to know I mean, I know him.

I don't think we don't know. It's Branwhite. Lifestyle in my lifestyle would not be.

Yeah, you could just hang out when he drinks. No, both of us.

I'd rather know. I'd rather do I'd rather watch you do it like like whatever violent stuff, you know, like throwing spears.

I don't know what you're doing on the ranch, but shit like that is more interesting to me. OK, you know, I mean, like all day I'm sure you got like archery.

I'm sure I do fun stuff to do.

My old studio, I had an inside range at a forty five yard Indorama. You did. Oh yeah. Yeah, I had a rubber elk. Let's shoot shoot arrows into. I can eat all kinds of stuff like that of course. Yeah.

100 percent. It's kind of cool. Yeah. Yeah, the next place where we have a studio, 100 percent have a range. Oh, I think you meant in the house. I have it in my house, too, right? Yeah, right. No, I have it at my house. But I mean, the next studio, I'll have a range I like to do it after shows.

It clears my mind. That's good. Have you ever practice archery? Yeah, really. I tried it. Fun was fun.

Just something about hitting a target by letting it go. Yeah.

It's like seeing that arrow hit its mark. Yes. Cleansing for the mind. I feel like that was I feel like there I feel like got the invention of guns. Took a lot of the purity out of war, you know what I mean. Right. Yeah.

In the old days.

But even auteur's really think about it you're fighting with. So you're used to a certain level and suddenly all these asshole orchard's that are thousands of yards back just, you know, release the archers, you know, and and all the crazy shit catapults, right?

Yeah. This is a launch, a ball covered flaming fly flying that that's how they took Constantinople.

I was watching this thing on that and I was like, man, those goddamn catapults, they didn't expect him, you know? And they just. Yeah, flaming. They just took it down. They were like, what is this?

So when I do open up a club out here, I'm going to I'm going to send out the signal. I'm going to let you know. But honestly, I would love it if you came by at least and worked. Of course I would. And I will test everybody now that we've got the rapid testing, we can get results of fifteen minutes. I think we could do a whole crowd in an hour.

I think if you let that I go and tell people to get there at seven. Yes. Two hundred people. You could do it inside an hour. Easy. Get a staff of nurses. Everybody's matched up until you get tested. Wouldn't be that hard to do. I mean.

Yeah, if even if you even have to by then. But I mean, I love the idea. Yeah. And people want to get there early.

Plus it'll get people literally nothing worse than a bunch of late comers. Exactly.

Then when they come inside they can have a drink once they pass. Yeah. You take your fucking mask off and live like a person. Yeah. You're inside. You have to worry. Everybody's been cleared. Everybody's been tested. I love it.

I love it too. I love the fact that right now I'm clear you're playing outside. Know it.

I know it feels great. It does feel great today I think was my what did I say. Thirty seven test. I think today's my thirty seven test.

Yeah. Yeah, I think it can be done. I just want them to come up with some sort of a treatment where we could just get but I am going to fucking appreciate things now. I mean, I do appreciate things, but I'm really going to appreciate stand up again when we get back to it.

You're going to savor it. Yeah, right. Because sometimes it gets to the point where you like I wanted you good. It's not that you don't enjoy it. You can't help but enjoy it if you're a stand up.

But you not say you're like trying to get to the goal. I want to kill it. Set of the whole journey of like like sometimes I'll do it now when I'm like I feel great afterwards. I want to feel great doing it too.

What if we lured you here by producing tough room producing and promoting tough room? I don't know when you think about it, I'll think about it for sure. I think it really will, because if you did it as a podcast, I think it would be fucking giant. I really think it'd be giant. I think if we take the time and really think about it and organize really good guests, like organized guys like Joey Diaz, guys like Greg Fitzsimmons, funny fucking people have them come in.

They're going to do standup at the place. Yes, they'll do stand up the place and do it just like you did. Tough crowd. We have subjects in the news. Do you bring it up and you have a table full of great comics talk and shit. Like a podcast. Yeah. I'll think about it for sure. I think about. Well, I will. All right. That's great. Listen, man, I'm glad you made it here.

Thank you. An honor. Honor. It was it was a pleasure. It was really. We do it again. We'll do it. Absolutely. OK, we'll do it again. And when the club opens, I want you to be there like one of the first weeks, please.

Great. I would love it. All right. Yeah, I love it. All right.

Do you have social media? Do you have all that jazz? Yeah, Twitter.

But I mean, my I haven't even promoted my book. Oh, tell everybody about your book.

My book is called Overstated. Just came out. It's a roast of the 50 states basically. So it's basically talking about the United States right now. And we've all been to I've been to 47.

I'm in a 50, maybe even a 50. I've been to 47. I haven't I've been to the Dakotas and Wyoming. I was just to say that I've been in Dakotas, Wyoming. Why? That's exactly what I'm going to say. I've been to Alaska and Hawaii.

There it is overstated. Coast to coast across the 50 states I haven't been to.

Oh, I guess I've been everywhere else. I kind of think. Nope, never been in New Mexico either.

Yeah, I think I drove through when I was a little kid, but that's it. I don't think I've been anywhere. Yeah, I did shows in New Mexico and we went to the hotel. I was I like it here in Albuquerque. I'm lying there in the room.

I'm like I like drive by next door.

And it was a nice hotel. I was Albuquerque's. That's a Wild West. That's Navajo country.

Yeah. Yeah. Tap, tap, tap. You remember Johnny Tapia? Yes, I do.

That fucking big ass. Was the the the mother. Virgin Mary.

Yeah. On his chest. A little bit loopy. That's right. Virgin of Guadalupe on his his is a great he was a bad motherfucker. Yeah. That was awesome. All right Carlgren, you're the best. I appreciate you, brother. Thank you so much. As soon as Austin Comedy Club opens up, you're in.

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