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[00:00:00]

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I want to say, hey, hey, hey, we got a message on our first episode from a guy that we have on the phone today, so why don't we can we replay that initial voicemail?

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Hey, I saw you in two thousand three at the bottom line, but I just got out of prison after 10 years for robbing a bank. And I came out to this fucking mess and now about two seconds away from another bank because I'm completely on my own advice. Thank you. So much to say, I don't know. No advice, I don't know. First, I would say don't do it. Don't rob another bank. I understand shit's bad.

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And I understand that. I don't understand. But first of all, don't rob another bank, you're you're terrible at it. Eric, I have myriad questions, I don't even I'm like, I'm paralyzed with where to start. I you know, we I heard your voice mail the other week and I just thought, oh, gosh, if there's any way we can, you know, talk to him in person digitally, I'd love that because I just I just have so many questions.

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I don't know where to start.

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And so you agreed to talk to me, and I'm I'm so excited.

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You know, first of all, we were both in the village. In the 90s and know some of this, you know, like same people and, you know, you're not one thing you're not. A criminal, but you but I will say that as a comedian, I know a lot of.

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People who are shysters, swindlers, you know, Colla, there are a lot of comics who in that world, there's a lot of overlap in that.

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And I could hear, even in your voice, a. Kind of a comedic, not as jokey, not jokey, but that kind of mind. And was interested in talking to you, so you've you've you've gotten in trouble, you've done time for myriad things, robbing people of the lighters, myriad lyrics, I use that rhyme.

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Yeah, state and federal New York, California and the federal prison system.

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I was just telling your one of your producers that I lived in Harlem for about five or six years until they threw me in prison in California for trafficking heroin. I used to go to Robert Downey Jr. is a meeting on Wednesdays in Santa Monica. Yeah. And then they ended up oddly enough, I ended up throwing me in the drug program in prison that he went to a Corcoran the same yard, the same prison, the same program that was back in 2007.

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Did you did did it work? Did the drug program work?

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Yeah, I've been to prison three times. One New York. In nineteen ninety seven for ongoing, the first degree again in California for trafficking heroin in 2007, and then when I got off parole, I moved to Miami and started robbing banks and caught a 10 year federal sentence for bank robbery in Miami. And I just got out nine weeks ago. I was released nine weeks. Do you?

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And here we are. And now I'm talking to you.

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Do you is there a comfort for you in prison? I mean, do you think there's any part of you? That feels like I get caught, I get to go to prison and not think about my life, realize it, but yeah, I mean, prison is a prison is easy prison. Your rent's paid your of your food security. You're never free. You're never pressed for time. You don't have to make choices, do laundry for you, all you got to do is avoid being stabbed in the liver.

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It's a pretty. It's a good tradeoff, really. Do you feel like I mean, prison is awful, prison is absolutely awful. Do not get me wrong. I would much rather have the death penalty than life in prison. And that's what I think a lot of pro death penalty people don't realize. Life in prison is a far more horrific punishment than the death penalty. And if they knew that, I think they wouldn't be talking to. Inject people.

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Oh, that's great, yeah, there and yeah, I think the first time in answer to your question, the first time I went to prison, I firmly believe I put myself there. I was so depressed and so strung out on drugs for a whole. All soap operas were the reason I won't get into right now, but, you know, I wanted to be locked away in. I wanted to get locked in a cell and have somebody throw away the cell.

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And that's exactly what I can relate.

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And on a level time and again.

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I was just going to say on a certain level, I can relate to that to a kind of depression where you felt I didn't fantasize about going to prison, but I would fantasize about being committed or being put in the hospital or some place where I didn't have to take care of myself, make choices, you know, just exist, you know, be an active part of my existence, you know, write.

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Now, I think everybody be willing to admit it or not, are able to relate that. It would probably take a lot of soul searching, but I think most people. Could probably relate to that on some level. Do you do you think that would make no mistake? Don't get me wrong, prison is fucking awful. It is the worst of the worst, especially in America. Just it's become. It's become just horrific, really, it's a mystery.

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It's an 80 billion dollar a year industry. Yes, exactly.

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Yeah, well, that's why there's so many things interesting about what you said, because, of course, prison is a terrible place and on top of it, especially in this country.

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And, of course, you you consciously don't want to go back to prison.

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But subconsciously, I do think just like any kind of abuse or anything that, you know, it's you you go back to what you know more than what is unknown.

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You tend to, you know, just the way someone might go into an abusive relationship over and over again, because it's what's familiar to them and it's what they know. And it isn't the terror of going into what is unknown.

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And also, just when you define yourself as criminal, you go, well, I guess I'll go to Miami and fucking rob banks. But what goes into that?

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You know, who like what is your family set up in terms of when you grew up on Kornelius Street?

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In New York City, did you have siblings? Did you have parents? What was the what was the setup there? I have one brother who is a lieutenant in the New York Fire Department, and we were both raised by a single mother. Very, very liberal, very progressive woman, staunchly in the women's right movement during the 70s and 80s. She worked for the New York Civil Liberties Union to work their ass off. She was clearly overwhelmed with two young boys on our own.

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We're growing up in Greenwich Village in the fucking 70s and 80s. I was just run wild like a just like a savage.

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And you can imagine. Yeah, I'm sure you can imagine. What about. Now, being Irish in New York, back then, you had basically three career options, you could be a cop, a fireman or a criminal.

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Everybody in my family is a cop or a fireman.

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And the way I looked at it, somebody had to fill out and someone was me, and it is interesting, though, because I feel like with relish, I jumped I jumped in feet first.

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That's not really true. I for a long time, I, I was a musician as an artist, and I stayed out of trouble until I was about twenty five.

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Twenty six. Wow. And then depression hit me pretty, pretty hard. Mental illness really as as as it does to most people in the late teens or early 20s. That's right. I was overwhelmed with depression, although at the time I didn't know it.

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Right. I now know that I had I suffered from severe depression and attention deficit disorder and I was treated for any of it.

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And I also I conveniently got my heart broken by women a couple of times, really, really heavy duty, broken heart crushed to fucking pieces. And I was destroyed over it. I turned to drugs. Yeah, because a lot of people do. I think a lot of that is is male. You know, how men are raised to is is that your heart got crushed and instead of being crushed and feeling heartbreak and feeling those things that tend to be associated with the feminine, you had to numb it.

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Is that anything like Fourchette lewdly, that's exactly what opiates provides, a respite from the pain. It's a pain killer, but not just the physical pain killer. It's a painkiller in every sense of word. It just. It is an escape, and that's that's what it did, I was self medicate. The irony there all is that. When I finally caught this 10 year prison sentence for bank robbery in 2010. During those 10 years, I mean, it probabilistically saved my life because there was that unbelievable opioid epidemic during the 10 years and I missed it completely.

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Wow. So I come out of prison in 20. In 20, 20. And I'm clean and everybody else is fucked up on heroin or pharmaceutical heroin, and it's just it's unbelievable. Twenty thousand people a year die of overdoses. I never.

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Came across fentanyl, thank God, and if I hadn't gone to prison, I did there's no doubt in my mind that I would have ended up dead under a highway overpass somewhere, you know, ended up in a potter's grief is that you know, it's interesting that, you know, like talking about your sibling and your brother's firefighter and and your mom.

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I could tell, by the way, that you were a liberal or a liberal raised just saying, you know, I spent the last 10 years in prison.

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I got out to this fucking shit storm and there was something like something about you that I was like, this guy is no stranger to, like an NPR.

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But I was just going to say, as well as a side note, it's interesting how siblings, we assume that they have the same childhood experience, but more often than not, they have such completely separate childhood experiences, you know?

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Yeah, exactly.

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It amazes me almost every day. He's my only sibling. And yet, you know, we couldn't have gone in more separate directions. And yet at the same time, a lot of our a lot of there was a lot of similarities in our upbringing. He he dabbled in Egypt and dabbled in depravity like I did. But, you know, ultimately he ended up, you know, taking the taking the path of least resistance and joining society and paying taxes and getting married, being miserable and getting divorced, being miserable.

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Right. Doing the things that we think we're supposed to do instead of asking ourselves what makes us happy.

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Right. I guess so. Odd. Like now I get married.

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Now I have kids. Now I. Why am I on.

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I was wondering that about you know, most people say. How did you not know that I was some crazy ex convict with swastikas tattooed on my neck?

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You know, I could I could tell from your vibe that I was NPR listening liberal.

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I could sense with that. Definitely roll the dice on that one.

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I could just tell from your vibe. Totally. Just from that like two sentences of your voicemail. But two, if you were a person with a swastika tattoo, I'd have a million questions for you. Do you know I mean, I don't know. I just yeah, I think people are interesting, you know, but I feel like I felt an instant not just an interest in your story or who you are, whatever, but I felt like this.

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It's funny that we had been at Luna Lounge together and stuff, because just from that short message, I felt this weird kinship with you.

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You know, like we're alive or, you know, like, oh, yeah, I know this guy, I know this person, you know what I mean? I mean, I'm not trying to get the, you know, bananas.

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You know, again, you remind me of a lot of comics.

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I mean I barely bought one, I barely remember leaving the message. I do remember the circumstances under which I left it. I was I was sick with covid at that time. What? And yeah, I just got in now and I was patient. I was homeless, living in a motel on Biscayne. And now I think I came across your tweet. And I said, well, let me call her, I barely even remember it, like you said, it was a really quick message, wasn't it?

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Was yeah. You said was going to say, oh, really? Remember from that night is that I was. I was actively planning. To commit another crime. Yes, you did. The next day you were at the end of your rope robbery, possibly know whatever now because desperation was was driving me to that point.

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And I don't know, I just I never expected to hear from you again. When I when I got email from your producer, I thought it was a joke. But then I realized nobody else even knew that I, I had made that call.

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So, yeah, you're the only one or certainly the first one and the only one that we've reached out to because.

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But so you had covid. Yeah. You were sounded you were at the end of your rope and you were like, fuck this. I mean I can't imagine coming out during a pandemic.

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Not only is our country at that dangling by a string of democracy like, you know, in its last breaths, but during a pandemic wildly mishandled, where were the one country that that has no movement and, you know, still in everything?

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And like, how do you get a job? How do you pick up life? I understand you're probably like, fuck this. I'm going to do what I know and also do what I know I'm shitty at and wind up in prison again where I don't have to make choices or deal with any of this shit. But I mean, my first reaction was don't rob another bank, don't rob a bank. You're you're not good at it.

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And, you know, even if you spent the past ten years trying to figure out if it's OK, I in my defense, I have never been caught red handed.

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All right. I went to I got away with the bank that I robbed it. I went to prison for my girlfriend, picked up the phone and called cops on me afterwards, which is a whole nother story. She was scorned.

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She was angry. She was on drugs. What made her tell on you? I was, uh, I was living in my we were living together in L.A. in North Hollywood. I come out of prison in California for a short little stay for trafficking heroin. Like I said, I was on the same yard that Robert Downey Jr. was in. Yeah, I was clean for, I don't know, about a year and a half, I guess. And because my girlfriend, who I was deeply, deeply in love with, she she suffers from severe mental illness.

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She has borderline personality disorder. She's just which is like bipolar disorder squared, just frickin awful.

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I fell back into drugs. We move to Miami, at least I did. She kicked me out, I moved to Miami, she I went back and got her. I was still using drugs. I was. Keeping my head above water, I was trading stocks day trading for a living, trying to make some money, and then that off legal crime of day trading, robbing banks.

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It's interesting. You know, now, bear in mind that was as a little side note, every time I've ever gotten released from prison, something horrific has happened to this country. The first time I came out of prison was two weeks before 9/11. The second time I came out of prison was about. A month after Bear Stearns went bankrupt and a few months before Lee Brothers went bankrupt. The whole time I was in prison for the this years, I warned everybody I spoke to short the market right before I get out and you're guaranteed to make money.

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And sure enough, sure.

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And I didn't think it was going to be this bad this time, but fuck. And they did not disappoint. I'm not saying that there's like a direct correlation even that, but there's definitely that it's not anyway.

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It's formed an official pattern of three. It has now this.

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Yeah, it definitely has. After three times. It definitely has.

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So I robbed a bank. Long story short, I brought a bank with a note. She found the note in the car. Looking through the car for evidence of some malfeasance on my part, and she had a complete breakdown and pick the phone and called the police on me. And that day. I got away. Have you have you ever seen a videogame Vice City Grand Theft Auto by City where it's set in Miami and the guys around doing all these crimes?

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It was almost exactly like that. I got away from 40 Miami P.D., about a dozen FBI agents, dogs in a helicopter. And I got away on foot that day. I was out for about a month with them actively searching for me. But I stayed in the area because I was still in love with a girl that called the cops on me. And I was still. Still strung out on heroin. Eventually, they ended up catching a month or so later and I got 10 years in prison for it.

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And here we are. That's Don. Well, my apology, it turns out you're fantastic at robbing banks. That was. Here's the key. It was pretty good. I know. Listen, I've never been caught.

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All the of all the robberies I've done, I've never been caught red handed. I've never you know, I never had a codefendant. I never did a crime with anybody else. I never conspired with anyone else to do to commit a crime. I always did in Brussels. And I have never been caught red handed, as it were. I was pretty good at my. My problem my problem is that I think ultimately I wanted to get caught.

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Yeah, but also I think yeah, because maybe you would have thrown away the note. If you didn't want to get cut, maybe you would think that's definitely a you wouldn't leave a note in your car that says, I have a gun, give me all your money. Well, a note next time.

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[00:30:46]

Sarah, are you in a relationship now? Do you have to have. No, no. No, not at all. I am. Radically single, I know, and I don't know if I'll ever be in another relationship again, because every one I've ever been in has been as just. Tragically, like a Mexican soap opera, just unbelieve, unimaginably tragic.

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Yeah, I stayed out of relationships for a pretty good run.

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Again, I've only been out two months. I caught covid off a prostitute when I got out. That's what the very first my first attempt at. Taking care of my family needs ended and me getting covid, at least I got it out of the way.

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I mean, usually when you ask a prostitute, she's better if she's been tested, it's it's not a covid test. But, you know. Yeah, herpes is forever, you know, covid, you got better at least who knows what the underlying what is it?

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Sometimes there's allow you to do this and there's no telling who I actually got herpes from Stephanie. In nineteen eleven, you know, Stephanie, this is. Oh, absolutely. And she got it, she got it from fucking John Casablanca, who was the original Jeffrey Epstein? She was 19, I was 17 and she gave me herpes. That's a fact.

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I'm not worried about liable ability or slander. That's OK. And stone cold fact.

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Well, also, conveniently, we're using a fear using a fake for you. That's incredible. Come on, Eric. That's incredible story, Eric.

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Oh, I love those detailed stories. Is. I mean, we used to I met her in Washington. I'm a musician originally as a musician for years, and we used to we used to play Beatles songs and Rolling Stones in Washington Square Park right in the middle in the late 80s. And I met her.

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Did you know I know so many comics from Washington Square started looking around. I would have been she was 19, but I went to medicine cabinet one time as people are want to do. And I came across Zovirax and I didn't know what the fuck Zovirax was, but I ended up with her roommate.

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I ended up I came to fame.

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Isn't that I was Stephanie that I dumped Stephanie for her roommate and ended up having a kid with her.

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My only son, I. And. You are like I remember looking through a medicine cabinet and she had XIFAXAN there, I didn't know what I had no what the hell it was about a year later, eight months to a year later, I realized what Zovirax was used for, the original herpes medication.

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Oh.

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Oh, my God. You you're fascinating and hilarious.

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And you remind me so much of my friend of mine, Mike Reynolds, when you worked in Washington and when you played in Washington Square Park, did you know any of the comics?

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Because that was the same time as like Charlie Barnett and Rick Velis.

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I knew Charlie Barnett well. I used to watch Charlie Barnetts back while he smoked crack at the end of my block on Canal Street when crack first hit the scene back in nineteen eighty three nineteen eighty four.

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Charlie Barnett knew my name. I knew his name. I believe me I yeah.

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I knew Charlie Barnett, God damn it.

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Yeah he used to. I remember his first bit, you know, like when he'd get on stage on the indoor comedy clubs he'd say Who's got a cigarette indoors.

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But he'd go who's going to or he'd say, that's probably in the park, who's got a cigarette for me? And someone would give them a cigarette.

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And because I left my cigarettes in the machine, I was just because he was so fucking funny. Yeah. Well, you know, the story that you didn't get famous is just what a tragedy.

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You know, the story about Charlie Barnett. He was hired on Saturday Night Live and he I heard he couldn't read or something.

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He couldn't. It's all cue cards there.

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And you know how to read which so many great comics. Don't know how to read that he did have that one movie, though, that she kept, and that was we were all very proud of him.

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But he and he but and he was replaced by a 19 year old, Eddie Murphy. That's not crazy how the world works. Look at us. Yeah, you remind me a lot of a lot of good friend of mine who this is terrible because he killed himself like six months ago.

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But that's not the part that reminds me of you. But he was like Reynolds was his name. Did I say it? Yeah.

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Oh, God. I know. I said his name. Yeah. Mike Reynolds. Was he from Long Island? Where is he's from Florida, I think, but but he lived in New York, I met him in New York and he was sober when I met him.

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And then we moved out to L.A. at the same time and he went back on drugs and he he was a gambling addict and a, you know, coke and alcohol.

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And he he had he had so many side hustles, like Swen, like he he got Writers Guild insurance and SAG insurance and then would just go to the doctor and file both of them and make money, make profits from the war.

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And then Viagra came out and he would get prescriptions for Viagra and then sell them for 50 bucks each to guys who were too embarrassed to get Viagra.

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And, you know, just tons of stuff like that. Got so many stories about him. He was so funny. I mean, he was the funniest, but he just got in his own goddamn way so much.

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And, you know, there's you and me with so many stories with them.

[00:37:36]

But but I love them.

[00:37:39]

And it's funny what you said about Stephanie looking in her medicine cabinet because another comedian friend who was a drug addict and he would do a brilliant thing.

[00:37:54]

I mean, it's so dark, but he would put on his, like, fanciest clothes and like yuppie clothes and he would go to open houses and then he'd go into the bathroom and steal all their prescription drugs.

[00:38:12]

Oh, yeah.

[00:38:13]

That's a that's an oldie but goodie. Yeah. That in hindsight, I probably should have been doing lessons like that here and there.

[00:38:21]

No, that's not the point. No, no, no. Never. What worse luck your bad luck might have saved you from.

[00:38:28]

You also remind me a lot of a a a brilliant writer producer named Larry Charles who did Seinfeld and Entourage and a million.

[00:38:41]

We did. We wrote two pilots together, but you remind me of him so much and he's the funniest person I know and brilliant and you know, grew up in the Trump projects and Brooklyn and, you know, became really successful. It could have gone any way. His best friend, Adam Leslie, when a different way with crack.

[00:39:03]

And but he was a brilliant comedian, but also ended up, you know, comics kill themselves like it's crazy.

[00:39:09]

But you were right. Mike Reynolds is from Queens.

[00:39:13]

Yeah, I, I think I know, and then if yeah, listen, I guarantee you, if you and I were to sit down for several hours and play the game, you know, the first night we're going to come across 20 people that we both know 100 percent.

[00:39:28]

He dated in. Listen, I know I'm not Chinese. I'm creepy. I always knew that our past would cross one day. I didn't think it was going to be like this. In the form of, you know, winning contests or something, winning a country radio caller, but, you know, Reynolds, I'm trying to think of like where you were like what the cross section was like.

[00:39:52]

He dated Patti Smith for a while, like, remember her from Scandal, the band, Roger nodding.

[00:40:04]

He worked at the comic strip him.

[00:40:07]

He and Colin Quinn and I were like a like a Three Musketeers for a for many years.

[00:40:14]

But yeah, I know we have there's no doubt we have like a million connecting points. But listen to me.

[00:40:23]

I would imagine we're the same exact age group running around New York at the same time.

[00:40:28]

It's crazy. Even like I bet we know some of the same like drug dealers, like I used to pass out flyers on the corner of MacDougal and 3rd, and there was like a guy named Shady who always had a red bandana on and a guy named English.

[00:40:43]

This like drug dealer.

[00:40:45]

He showed me all the places and in the East Village where he hid his knives case, I needed them.

[00:40:53]

And let's see, there's a drug dealer goes out that you were handing out flyers nineteen ninety one ninety to nineteen ninety one solidly I first and.

[00:41:08]

Yeah, I got drugs, eighty nine, ninety ninety one from a weed I would buy from this roster named Goldie and Jerry, they were to Rastus that was on St. Marks between.

[00:41:23]

First in a. And I made out with Jerry once and then he got shot and killed and Goldie got shot, but he lived. But anyway, I'm I'm like throwing things out in case you're like, oh, no, no.

[00:41:39]

Huh? Was it you that shot him? Was it was no know, a nice Jewish girl.

[00:41:47]

So you just you dropped a bomb. Can we go back to that? You have a son you've produced. I do. I had a he was born one week before my 20th birthday. Well, like I said, his mother.

[00:42:03]

Stephanie's roommate.

[00:42:05]

Oh, my God. He was at the time of Victoria's Secret model, you know, before. Victoria's Secret is like a big deal. Right. And, you know, he's probably the reason why I'm doing this, trying to do this anonymously ways because he's he's graduating from an Ivy League university in May and he's applying to the Kennedy School of MIT and Harvard.

[00:42:29]

Trying to go to graduate school next year. Unbelievable. And I'm trying to trying to keep from disgracing the good family name any further, I wouldn't be ashamed of you.

[00:42:44]

File is your kid. And like you, you must be so proud of them. I told them, I said, put this in this political climate, it might actually be an asset to have such a colossal fuck up as a father has been fed through the meat grinder of the justice system. So, yeah, really, your product, the system.

[00:43:08]

I'm not saying like nothing is your fault or ashamed to say, but the. You're a human person. He's not ashamed so far what I've done, because tomorrow is always a new day. What is he going to embarrass him all over again?

[00:43:25]

What is he studying? Political science, political science and public policy, you wants to be a politician who wants to be involved in campaigns or he himself wants to be a politician like father, like son.

[00:43:42]

I mean, is there such is there the biggest difference between crime and politics? Now, ideally, not ideally, ideally, this father, interestingly enough, his stepfather on his father's step father is pretty high up in the FBI. Wow, gotelli.

[00:44:03]

Yeah, yeah.

[00:44:06]

And do you do you have a relationship dichotomy to that in itself as a whole, you're sorry, you first of all, your existence is like just every movie and television show that I love is basically your life and.

[00:44:24]

But do you have a relationship with your baby mama and her husband and like. All right. Well, know her. Her husband is my cousin. I mean, you're dropping bombs like I can't even believe your lights go out. Listen, listen, I say to people, if I told people I said I wouldn't even fucking believe it. It doesn't even sound feasible. That was the first impetus that really sent me spiraling out of control and into drug addiction.

[00:45:00]

This was in the mid 90s, hooked up. After we had broken up and it just paralyzed me with grief and devastated me beyond all reckoning, and that's how I ended up with one foot in the grave and I'm going to prison is because my son's mother ended up with my cousin. Now, in hindsight, it all worked out the best because my son is like a fucking superhero and he came out fantastic. Everybody's alive and healthy and happy. But at the time, it was devastating, but no, she won't speak to me anymore.

[00:45:46]

But I do have a relationship with him, with my son. Such as it is, we were trying to repair the damage. I'm trying to not. Chain him to shame, keep him chained to my fuckin just endless fuck ups, but he's got he's got a thing going for him right now. And so if I was to die tonight, at least I got that out of the way. He's a fantastic human being, just an utterly brilliant, compassionate care, progressive human being.

[00:46:25]

Brilliant as the day is long and he wants to get involved in politics and make a difference. So I got that going for me. Listen to me. I'm not going to tell you anything you don't know in your bones, but I mean, you are a person of very high quality and you're smart, you're curious.

[00:46:52]

You fucking mull shit over your you're vulnerable. You've learned myriad things the hard way. You you know, your son part your part of your son. If you spent the rest of your life just being proud, outwardly proud of your son, to him, you'd be accomplishing a great mitzvah.

[00:47:18]

But you're so much more. And, you know, I mean, I see so many. I know people like you. I know you and.

[00:47:30]

I even know the like the second you're wronged or fucked over, it's an opportunity to use or to get yourself back into a safe hole and but you could use your 50, but your fucking opportunities, I think, are limitless.

[00:47:52]

You can figure out you can make a plan to do anything you want. I mean, the producers told me your idea for a podcast. That's fucking brilliant. And I'm sure you have a million great ideas and the whole thing is seeing it through.

[00:48:07]

But like, you could make that choice, like, you know, I mean, fuck me, I've had better luck in my life, you know?

[00:48:17]

And I know that I, I at least understand that I don't understand in a lot of ways, but a lot of ways I do. And I just.

[00:48:27]

I feel invested in you, you know, not in a condescending way, in a in a peer kind of way, because I on some level I can understand a lot of I feel we're the same and I don't know what my point is. And I didn't prepare the speech. And I'm still talking just in hopes that I come up with another smart thing to say or some way to end this sentence.

[00:48:51]

But I just I like you and I'm rooting for you.

[00:48:56]

And it's sometimes the bravest thing you can do is take goddamn care of yourself. And I know you can do that, but, you know, you have to just want to do it, you know, and it has to be more than talk and all that shit. But, you know, to be brave enough to like to explore the unknown.

[00:49:18]

Definitely. I appreciate all that. That's wild to hear you say that.

[00:49:24]

I mean, this is fucking surreal, you know, on certain levels. But, you know, and you try and do the right thing, and then sometimes the universe just fuckin conspire against you, like in this situation.

[00:49:41]

I've been clean ten years now. I'm in the best health of my life, both mentally and physically. I finally started getting treated for the depression in prison, the right antidepressants that work for me. And then you come out to this is fun nonsense, Trump and this panic in this economy. And I get a job, you know, like three weeks ago I was homeless and I got an apartment.

[00:50:09]

Now I got my own apartment in my name with, you know, all the utilities in my name. But I hustled to get a house. So not legally, but not exactly straight up. I can't get a job. But there is it's hard enough under the best circumstances coming out of prison, getting a job and all that. But in a situation with, you know, whatever it is this week, eight point six percent unemployment with this pandemic, it's coming out with a record like I have is virtually impossible.

[00:50:46]

It's very, very hard to get a job, how to keep a job. Right now, there's 20 other people. How do you that don't have an extensive violent criminal history? At least on paper, violent criminal history. Yeah, so it's rough when you make these connections in prison and you but, you know, it's so easy to make easy money. I could you know, I could make fucking a lot of money by this time next week.

[00:51:15]

By this time tomorrow. But at what cost? At what? You know, the next time I get caught spitting on the sidewalk, give me a thousand years.

[00:51:26]

Well, it is interesting to to to come out of prison, Don, playing with me.

[00:51:31]

To come on to come out of prison and then to be living in a country that is where the justice system and the fact that there's no baseline truth, the truth is out the window, justice is topsy turvy.

[00:51:48]

Well, I think you're really special. And I just feel like I know you. We have to go. But can we can I call you again? Can we can we have you on more?

[00:51:59]

Yes, sir. All right, sure. When whenever you feel. That's awesome, and I want to just stay in touch. All right, I want to see how this well, you know, to get in touch with me. The saga continues. Yes. Email.

[00:52:18]

Awesome. All right. Cool.

[00:52:21]

Well, thank you so much for having me. I wish you the most success with your podcast. I will be doing then.

[00:52:29]

Thank you. And I'll talk to you soon. I'm happy to know you. OK, great. Thank you so much. Take care, my. Yeah, you, too, I'm glad we finally met me to. Already, well, fuck. Um, this is goodbye, this is farewell, this is until we meet again subscribe rate review. Wherever you get your podcast and check us out on YouTube as well, you can see me visually, but yes, if you like the show, especially maybe even exclusively, if you're someone who likes the show, you should rate and review it and subscribe to it.

[00:53:19]

Boom. All right, Don. Hey, I got a total wine, has thousands of wines to savor and pairings for every flavor, spirits lined the shelves.

[00:53:33]

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[00:53:41]

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