transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:03] Kick this meal, Lee. What's happenin, you bad motherfuckers? It's The Church of What's Happening Now. What is it?

Speaker 2:
[00:09] New Testament.

Speaker 1:
[00:10] New Testament. It's Monday, 420, so if you got them, spark them, you know what I'm sayin? It's a beautiful day to be alive. We got my man Ari Shaffir, the world fuckin traveler.

Speaker 3:
[00:23] Buddy, I haven't seen you in so long.

Speaker 1:
[00:24] I know, we got little Kato, the Jewish fuckin bomb of debt. A what?

Speaker 2:
[00:29] The bomb of death. That's a new one.

Speaker 1:
[00:31] We're gonna do a new tour, bro. We're gonna call it Netanyahu's Hitmen.

Speaker 3:
[00:35] Ooh, I like it.

Speaker 1:
[00:36] All we're gonna get is, bro, that tour would sell.

Speaker 3:
[00:40] The Hitmen tour?

Speaker 1:
[00:41] I wanna do it, Netanyahu's Hitmen.

Speaker 3:
[00:44] We're gonna leave out one market, but.

Speaker 1:
[00:46] Me and three Jews.

Speaker 3:
[00:47] I like it, I like it. The protest will sell us tickets.

Speaker 1:
[00:50] It'll sell out, it'll sell out. We could do arenas.

Speaker 2:
[00:52] You would like to get protested?

Speaker 3:
[00:53] Yeah, then people know.

Speaker 1:
[00:54] As long as I'm makin money.

Speaker 3:
[00:55] As long as the word's out, Joey Diaz is at this place.

Speaker 1:
[00:58] Listen, all I know is this, and George was there with me. 81, whatever, 87, 88, Brian Bosworth was the most hated man in the world. And he got those fucking masks. When you went to a stadium, you bought $10 for this mask that said, I hate Bosworth or his face or whatever. One day, one of the announcers goes, look at these people. They all have the Bosworth, like we hate you, but Bosworth owned the company.

Speaker 2:
[01:28] Right, but the times were different, but that's really smart.

Speaker 1:
[01:31] No, the times are not different.

Speaker 3:
[01:32] They're selling tickets. They're making all the announcements on all the blogs, like Joey Diaz performing. We gotta get down there, where and when. 7:30 p.m. on Friday.

Speaker 2:
[01:39] You're organizing the protests?

Speaker 1:
[01:41] Yeah. Oh, Joey's in town.

Speaker 3:
[01:41] I didn't know that.

Speaker 1:
[01:42] We're gonna get bomb threats. We're gonna get, and that's exciting. Then we'll do the show in the park. That's right. The show's been canceled, fuck it. Refunds, but we're doing it in the park.

Speaker 3:
[01:53] And then one day a bomb will go off in the park.

Speaker 1:
[01:55] And then CBS talks in. Some lady from, I'm here with Netanyahu's Hitman. I don't know what that means. That's a fucking prize ad guy.

Speaker 2:
[02:04] That is a great name for a tour.

Speaker 1:
[02:05] That's a fucking great tour.

Speaker 3:
[02:06] Let them bomb the place and open the doors, free tickets.

Speaker 1:
[02:09] And there ain't no way we're gonna not sell tickets. We're not gonna get boycotted. It's freedom of speech. People can do whatever the fuck they want. It's the people that understand, the abortion people, those chubby ladies that already had three abortions, now they gotta move on to hating Jews and shit. You know what I'm saying?

Speaker 2:
[02:26] They go on from abortions to hating Jews?

Speaker 3:
[02:28] Well, we'll give out free abortions. We'll get them all.

Speaker 1:
[02:30] It's like last week, I saw that fucking thing in Austin. They hated everybody. Who? Who what? I saw this, I'm leaving Thompson, and you know you gotta walk up to the 6th Street and make a left, a right. And as I'm starting to walk, I got the edibles in me and shit, and I'm hearing, and I'm playing guitars, everything is off tune. Everything is off tune. And I look up and it's coming down that hill. Just fucking boom, boom, bump drums, bunch of dirty white people, 50, 60 of them at tops. They didn't even have that much support. But it was funny because they had a big banner, Israel must be bombed, stop the bombing in Iran. They're still talking about Palestine. They hate Cubans.

Speaker 3:
[03:17] Nobody gives a fuck about Ukraine anymore.

Speaker 1:
[03:19] It wasn't.

Speaker 3:
[03:21] Ukraine's done.

Speaker 1:
[03:22] It's so many things.

Speaker 3:
[03:23] It's not Ukraine. It's Ukraine. Handle it.

Speaker 1:
[03:26] It's just our society. We just go from week to week.

Speaker 3:
[03:30] What's popular?

Speaker 1:
[03:31] Week to week. You have not heard of that fucking cunt's mother. She's dead. All right? She was dead. I told you this six weeks ago on this fucking podcast.

Speaker 2:
[03:40] That country lady whose mother was missing.

Speaker 1:
[03:43] Dead and nobody gives a fuck. Every once in a while on world news, they get like an amazing whatever, on the Samantha Guthrie. They found like a paperback. Listen, she's dead. What the fuck are you waiting on? Can you imagine being at home with a picture of your mom now? Listen, somebody's got to come over and go, listen, it's over. Just pull the plug, go to Social Security, get your checks. She's done. Eight weeks, nine weeks, 10 weeks. But she's just gonna walk right back, oh, I missed the train. No. She's dead. Some Mexicans got to fucked her in the ass. She's probably in one of those brothels in Mexico. Like those, if you like 60 year olds, she's walking around all fucked up. They got like Stallone's daughter in fucking in Rambo, the final fucking countdown. What do you think, young guys don't go there for some old Mexican twat? Fucking thing is busted open, it looks like a fucking, one of those coconuts on, from those umbrella motherfuckers in LA. Yeah, what do you think they do with these old people? What do you think I fucking, I don't even want to go next.

Speaker 2:
[04:50] I never once thought they did that.

Speaker 1:
[04:51] What?

Speaker 2:
[04:52] I never thought they brought them to brothels.

Speaker 1:
[04:54] Old man brothels, like old people don't want to fuck a young girl.

Speaker 3:
[04:57] That's a young girl to them.

Speaker 1:
[04:58] That's superstitious. Yeah, there's fucking three year olds that are dying to fuck a 60 year old. That fucking side of salami opens up, it looks like a fucking missile from hitting a fucking snatch.

Speaker 3:
[05:10] There's no Epstein Island anymore, they gotta go to the black market.

Speaker 1:
[05:12] And the curtains drip, after 50 the curtains drip, that noodle drips. It's like they took the rod out of the fucking curtain, the fucking thing, like it don't work anymore. Yeah, so it's a whole different avenue here. All balls drop. What do you think happens to that pussy?

Speaker 3:
[05:27] I never thought about it.

Speaker 1:
[05:28] It drops like a ugly dragon.

Speaker 3:
[05:31] Like our balls drop.

Speaker 1:
[05:33] And it's cleaner than ever. Once they get to 50, that pussy's clean. There's no more condoms, no more Arab dick at the fuck in 7-Eleven, it's just straight up.

Speaker 2:
[05:42] Aren't condoms good? Aren't condoms good?

Speaker 1:
[05:45] No, because they leave film inside the monkey. They fuck a monkey up. You go down to the girl and it smells like a condom and you're like, where is she? Where the, what cologne does she have? You mean the condom? What the fuck is this shit? Oh my God. What else, what's going on? I know your storyteller show came out last week. Like a motherfucker.

Speaker 3:
[06:13] So I had to do it all my shit myself.

Speaker 1:
[06:15] Again, as always.

Speaker 3:
[06:16] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[06:16] Nothing changes.

Speaker 2:
[06:17] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[06:20] I don't know, back in America, just found out about this lady, Kathy Giffords' mom.

Speaker 1:
[06:25] Who?

Speaker 2:
[06:25] You just found out?

Speaker 3:
[06:26] Legitimately, right now.

Speaker 1:
[06:27] Good for you, it don't matter.

Speaker 3:
[06:29] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[06:29] She's dead.

Speaker 3:
[06:30] I was like, what?

Speaker 1:
[06:31] Dead.

Speaker 3:
[06:31] I didn't know she was alive.

Speaker 1:
[06:32] Nah, she's dead.

Speaker 3:
[06:33] I found out she was alive just as I'm finding out she's dead.

Speaker 1:
[06:36] We're all gonna find out in a year what really happened. Guthrie came home, she caught her sucking a dick, something happened. The old daughter stabbed her in the neck, and she's on TV with the picture of the old hag. Give me a fucking break.

Speaker 3:
[06:49] She got her locked up in the basement?

Speaker 1:
[06:51] Listen, I'm 63. I've told every story, and I've heard every story. So as soon as you hear it, you just, this is the same shit over.

Speaker 2:
[07:00] It's hard to disappear now. Like isn't it crazy, there's so many cameras.

Speaker 1:
[07:04] It's so crazy how people fucking disappear. This is what I've always thought about, because Ari's going to agree with me.

Speaker 3:
[07:10] Okay.

Speaker 1:
[07:11] And no disrespect to nobody in this fucking planet. Let's talk about the Italian mob. The biggest bunch of dummies you ever saw in your fucking life. Okay? All right? Because I know you hate this shit too, okay? They were burying bodies and nobody ever caught them. Until they started riding on each other. And it's right out here in the Sea Caucus, a little lie. You put them in there, you fucking bury them. I got a place in the Sea Caucus, I could drop ten motherfuckers off. And they're not going to find you because nobody goes in those bushes. If you go in those bushes to bring a body, you're going to get bit by something, a snake.

Speaker 3:
[07:45] It's like Law and Order. The first two minutes is like, they're in Central Park.

Speaker 1:
[07:49] Go further out! You're a fucking idiot if you leave the Central Park. But you killed them in Central Park. I can't see you putting up a stipple in your neck and walking to the Hudson River.

Speaker 3:
[08:00] But you think about that.

Speaker 1:
[08:02] And people get caught all the time now with stupid shit. Sammy the Bull, I don't know how many people he buried.

Speaker 3:
[08:08] Take your cell phone with you. Mistake.

Speaker 1:
[08:10] Take the cell phone out of his pocket. Bury him alive. You got to make sure they don't come out of that grave. That's why they shot that dude in Goodfellas. Ah, Jimmy, Jimmy, pow, pow, pow. They shot him like eight fucking times. Oh, they stabbed him too. Yeah, they put the Malook on him. They don't want to come back. And all you got to do is stab. Bro, this is why I love Narcos. Narcos blew it open with the violence. The episode in Mexico, episode two, when the fucking government goes after one of the families. And the two guys, the two little short guys on the show are like fucking, we're killing the government. And then he set up a fucking bash. That was brilliant. And the government came, he had a wedding, and the government came, and these two guys were there with guns out. The guy said, tell your fucking bulldogs. And the one guy pulled out a gun, and he's like, listen. He goes, today you tried to pull a move on me. You went to their house because the envelope was light, and you shot their family. Well, today we gave you another light envelope. Let me tell you what happened. Again, you sent your bulldogs, but this time we were ready for them. And he goes, specifically the guy that killed his family, he took them, dog, he fucking hit them in the stomach with a crowbar, shot them in the knee, and then threw them in a hole, and just started throwing dirt on them. And you stabbed them one lung, so they really got, oh, oh, that's it, and you just throw dirt, you bury them alive.

Speaker 3:
[09:41] The deep jungle.

Speaker 2:
[09:42] Why would you bury them alive? Why would you leave them alive?

Speaker 1:
[09:45] Because they ain't getting out of there if I shoot you in the knee. You're not crawling out of there.

Speaker 3:
[09:49] Oh, you mean why not just kill them?

Speaker 2:
[09:50] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[09:50] Make them suffer.

Speaker 1:
[09:51] Stabbing a lung with a pencil, you're not walking out of there either. You're gonna, huh, huh, huh, huh, huh, and that's it.

Speaker 3:
[09:57] You gotta be really mad at someone to bury them alive. Yeah. You gotta be extra mad.

Speaker 2:
[10:01] And you wouldn't be anxious at all, like, I'm wondering, because an ambulance drove by, like, when you're going.

Speaker 3:
[10:06] The guy needs to do more mushrooms.

Speaker 1:
[10:08] When you're going, you're going, okay? That's why I love a movie everybody should watch, at least once, if they're into filmmaking. Here's the Godfather. Because there were so many little things they got right. When Michael goes in that bathroom, he pulls the gun out. What do you hear? I can train. Well, let me tell you something. I was at George one day, right? And George told me where his neighbor lived, and I kicked the door down. When you kick a door down, all that's beautiful on TV. But when you kick a door down and you go in there, everything is heightened, bro. You go deaf. Your adrenaline gets so high that you go deaf. At one point, you just hear, bee! And your heart's just going. Your heart's just going. The adrenaline's got you. You go deaf. During all those things, you go, I mean, like, you have C fighters in the beginning. They don't hear the fucking audience.

Speaker 3:
[11:02] I couldn't run, I was playing basketball. I couldn't hear anything. They do chance for you, and you're like, I didn't know.

Speaker 1:
[11:06] I didn't know because your mind takes you somewhere. It's called a fight or flight, all right? But it's the same thing when you do a crime. If I got you in the trunk of my fucking car, and I gotta drive you to Sea Cork or stuff, that's gotta be anxiety like a motherfucker. And then I gotta pull over, pick up your chubby Jew ass. Now you added 100 pounds in water when you died, so it's me by myself pulling you. You land, I gotta dig you, and then I gotta leave you there, dig, because you don't want to take somebody because that's two dudes with a secret. So you gotta dig it. You gotta dig that fucking hole. You better dig them when they shot Spider. You better dig this fucking hole. So just think about it.

Speaker 2:
[11:51] You thought a lot about killing people.

Speaker 3:
[11:52] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[11:53] My God.

Speaker 2:
[11:54] You have a plan.

Speaker 1:
[11:55] I had an ex-wife, I had a stepdad that was a motherfucker, and I used to plan shit. I do cults.

Speaker 3:
[12:02] It's a good way to escape, how would I really do it? Let yourself believe it. How would I get rid of the body? How would I take them?

Speaker 1:
[12:09] That's the truth. I mean, it's just, listen, I don't think I could chop a body up.

Speaker 2:
[12:13] Okay.

Speaker 1:
[12:14] Like those animals in Brooklyn did, the DeMeo crew. I can't chop a body up.

Speaker 2:
[12:19] So what are your other options?

Speaker 3:
[12:21] Take them to the woods.

Speaker 1:
[12:22] Listen, man.

Speaker 3:
[12:22] Trunk.

Speaker 1:
[12:23] If somebody did something really bad to you.

Speaker 3:
[12:27] Cut you off and try it.

Speaker 1:
[12:27] They raped your sister.

Speaker 3:
[12:29] Worse.

Speaker 1:
[12:30] They touched your niece. Something that... The court's never gonna solve that problem. Yeah, they're gonna give the guy time, but the damage that that motherfucker did to your child, or your wife, or your cousin, and now what? Now what? So now you gotta time yourself. You gotta give yourself a three-year window and drive by his house once a year and throw a fire bomb just to remind him. And then one day on the way to work, just scoop him up, shoot him. And the guy was involved in a, all those people are involved in other shit. So you're not really gonna be looked for three years later.

Speaker 3:
[13:06] You think it'll be like someone else might have done it. They're all thinking like, could have been anybody.

Speaker 1:
[13:10] Anything could have happened.

Speaker 3:
[13:12] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[13:12] Anything could have happened. He was involved in drug dealing. Whatever the fuck he was involved in, you know. It's scary. And dog, I was at a point in my life where in 1994 to 95, my mom, I even had 93 of that. The tail end of 93, all of 94 and half of 95. I went to sleep thinking about murdering somebody. And that's not a good situation. And I remember one day I just broke down because of what I was carrying. I wanted to kill this bitch. I wanted to slice her tongue out. I was going to tie it to a tree and rub it with honey. Yeah, because the bears get you in Colorado. There's no fingerprints, there's no DNA. Like I said last night on stage, they leave an elbow and the elbow don't got a vent on it. So they just throw it back. They just throw it back nice and chewed. And I know there's people that relate to this. They got a boss that with them. Didn't they make a movie about an assistant beating up his agent? Remember he tied him up to fag.

Speaker 3:
[14:16] Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Kevin Spacey.

Speaker 1:
[14:19] Kevin Spacey and all that shit.

Speaker 3:
[14:20] Swimming with Sharks. Swimming with Sharks. Man, what a good movie that was. Well, people are...

Speaker 2:
[14:25] Oh, I have... I've had different dreams. Before we knew. Like, I have people I want to punch. But then there's people I want to... Like, let's say everything in your life that could possibly go wrong, go wrong, you're going to kill yourself. I have, like... Then on my way out, I'm getting a couple people.

Speaker 1:
[14:40] There's people I want to kill. And there's people I just want to maim so they live a fucked up life after I get my hands on them. There's one guy specific that I dream about catching him in the city and fucking piping him, shooting him in both kneecaps, shooting him in the hand like Jesus, so he can have a whistle, and then pull out a high caliber gun and just blow off his other fucking hand for being a fucking thief. I think about that motherfucker all the time. Yeah, it's blowing off his hand with a high caliber, putting it back, pulling out a fucking.32 or.45 and blasting holes in his kneecap, both his hands like Jesus, and then put the gun in his fucking eye and tell him, you miserable fuck, and you take him to a state of fucking Gandhi.

Speaker 2:
[15:30] Like a man on fire style?

Speaker 1:
[15:31] And then you spit on him and walk away. Live with it? And that motherfucker breaks down. You just break down as a human being. That's it, that was your spiritual, I'll never do that again.

Speaker 3:
[15:42] I wanna kill people's relatives to get back at them.

Speaker 1:
[15:44] That what?

Speaker 3:
[15:45] I wanna kill people's loved ones. You know?

Speaker 1:
[15:47] Loved ones?

Speaker 3:
[15:48] Yeah, take away what's closest to them. Kill their daughter in front of them, kill their wife in front of them. Shit like that really hurt them. And you do this and then push them off a cliff.

Speaker 1:
[16:00] When I wanted to kill my wife, he was a scenario if I broke into the house. I was gonna tie him up, stab him a little bit, cut him up a little bit so he could bleed. Not stab, but... Cut. And then while he's alive, just cut his fucking dick off. Right in front of him, put it in his fucking mouth. While the dick is still shaking, like Elena Bobbitt in 93 and shit like that.

Speaker 3:
[16:22] It's flopping around like a fish.

Speaker 1:
[16:23] That dick is still bopping around. You put it right in his fucking mouth, then shoot him in the head, then have a long talk with her. And you know where the next bullet goes. Right in her dirty snatch. And then right in her fucking head. Like a coup d'etat, whatever they call that. The coup de la, whatever. When I shoot somebody in the head.

Speaker 2:
[16:40] The coup de gras, there we go.

Speaker 1:
[16:41] Yeah, there's coup de gras, whatever the fuck it is.

Speaker 3:
[16:43] Coup de velle.

Speaker 1:
[16:44] And just walk out. That was my dream. But I didn't want to kill her in the house because I would have dropped DNA. I'm Cuban. I got the Cuban dust, the whole thing.

Speaker 2:
[16:52] You don't think DNA goes outside?

Speaker 1:
[16:54] So I wanted to grab her, it was Colorado. I wanted to grab her in Boulder or something like that. And listen, they never caught John Benet killers, John Benet, Ramsey's killer. They would have never caught me because Boulder's not prepared for that.

Speaker 3:
[17:06] You wait till they're on a hike.

Speaker 1:
[17:08] Even if they would have arrested me on a fucking, because they thought it was me, as long as my hands were clean and that weapon was done. And I had a guy in Colorado that was like, if I give him a gun, he ain't gonna ask no question. He knows exactly what to do with it. They knew exactly what to do with that gun. That gun goes home into a fucking Boulder River, and nobody ever sees it again or whatever the fuck. Take it on vacation with you, I don't give a fuck, and pull an OJ, put the gun in Chicago. When he got there, I don't give a fuck, whatever he did with the knife. You know, even him, they went right to him, but they couldn't put the pieces together. He had a high-powered attorney, so they destructed and they didn't catch the most important thing, the fingerprint. In the OJ trial, if you really look what happened, it happened over the weekend. And on Sunday night, they were there, and all of a sudden, it started raining. So the fingerprint they had, the rain, killed it. And then from there, you just go. And then he hired that A-Team, which cost him 55 million, probably.

Speaker 3:
[18:18] Got him his freedom, though.

Speaker 1:
[18:19] He had four gangsters. He had that white Jew. He had two Jews. No, he had the white gangster.

Speaker 3:
[18:26] Yeah, who was the other one?

Speaker 1:
[18:27] That we used to, I forget what type of attorney he was.

Speaker 3:
[18:30] He fucked one of them, too. He one of their wives. Yeah, that was one of the Kardashians, his OJ's kid.

Speaker 1:
[18:35] Yeah, they said that he's his kid. But no, it was a four-man dream team.

Speaker 3:
[18:39] Yeah, what?

Speaker 1:
[18:39] It was a black guy.

Speaker 3:
[18:42] No.

Speaker 1:
[18:42] Bailey and another white guy. Look it up. Every new Bailey.

Speaker 3:
[18:45] F. Lee Bailey? No.

Speaker 1:
[18:47] Yeah, F. Lee Bailey. F. Lee Bailey. And there was a white dude that is fucking brilliant. He's the one that saved the case. He argued. He's tough. He's rough, you know, like he's... No, I see. He's killed. Ronald Goldman.

Speaker 3:
[19:06] Yeah, that's the original Catching Strays. Not Ben Shapiro.

Speaker 1:
[19:12] I just told you it wasn't Shapiro. It's another white guy. They brought him in and that guy cost... I just told you.

Speaker 3:
[19:22] If a glove does not fit you must have quit.

Speaker 1:
[19:24] Well, that was the young.

Speaker 3:
[19:24] That was the black dude.

Speaker 1:
[19:25] I'm talking about...

Speaker 2:
[19:26] Alan Dershowitz.

Speaker 3:
[19:28] Dershowitz?

Speaker 1:
[19:28] No. No, he's a Jew, old Jew. He was on that team too.

Speaker 2:
[19:31] Barry Sheck, Peter Newfield.

Speaker 1:
[19:33] Barry Sheck. Barry Sheck. That dude, if you have him as your fucking attorney, he's just sitting there with a grin on your face, drawing pictures with Mickey Mouse, because you already know the outcome. He's gonna fuck them up.

Speaker 3:
[19:47] Imagine hiring that guy and you're like, hey dude, just so you know, I did it. And he's like, it's gonna cost you, but I'll get you off.

Speaker 2:
[19:54] Did you have a dream list of lawyers you wish you could have hired? It sounds like you really liked Sheck.

Speaker 3:
[20:00] No, he doesn't even want to get caught. He's not going to trial.

Speaker 2:
[20:02] Right.

Speaker 1:
[20:03] I like, but right away the fingers are gonna point at me in a situation like that.

Speaker 2:
[20:07] Right. So you gotta get a good lawyer.

Speaker 1:
[20:10] So, you know, you just gotta get, you can't get one lawyer. You need three minds. That's great.

Speaker 3:
[20:18] My day was just one lawyer. And you have a co-pilot sitting there.

Speaker 1:
[20:21] You wanna, listen, the Yankees won World Series to have a high budget. The DA and the city DA and the federal DA, they're never gonna match what I'm gonna pay these fucking animals. They're gonna outwit them. They're gonna outwit them. I got three of these animals and one of them's got the vitamins I need, okay? One of them has the vitamins you need. You have to, and I hate to say this because people are gonna start, you have to, I swear to God, you have to trust the judicial system. And sometimes it wins and sometimes it loses. With me, it fucking lost because they wanted to sentence me for the full term. I plea bargain down the secondary burglary. They gave me four years, but it was the state law 1200 which cuts the sentence in half for first time offenders. It was like stealing. Two years. So they cut it to two years. I had already done two months in county, which is four months. So 24 months minus four is 21 months. 18 months, you're eligible for a halfway house. At 16 months, you already go to a halfway house unless you're a fucking savage. So when I got there, I was ready for county, like 90-day work release. They wouldn't allow it. But I was still very happy because I went from 48 months with four months to 24 months with four months off. And then I had a month waiting to go to the system. That's two months. So when I got there, it was like stealing. And then on top of that, my point system. You'd be surprised how many criminals don't have driver's license. You'd be surprised how many don't have jobs at the time of the arrest. You'd be surprised on how many don't have a high school diploma. First thing I did after all those years, when I got arrested, I went and got my high school diploma.

Speaker 3:
[22:17] In prison?

Speaker 1:
[22:18] No, no, no. When they let me out, I'm back. George was there. I went and got my high school diploma. I threw the cocaine away and I started going to college like a student. Threw it away? I was still snotting. Okay. You know.

Speaker 3:
[22:29] Okay.

Speaker 1:
[22:31] You got rid of it.

Speaker 3:
[22:32] That's a different story.

Speaker 1:
[22:33] Throw it away. When you get down on top of that, you have to have a point system. So when you subtract, did you live with your family?

Speaker 3:
[22:42] Oh, right.

Speaker 1:
[22:43] Did you have a job at the time of your arrest? Do you have a driver's license? Did you have a high school diploma? That was like eight or nine questions. At the end, you got like a minus two or whatever. I was already eligible for a fucking halfway house. So I was against the grain, and it worked in my way. Now, if I get in trouble again, it's not gonna be that way. The law gave me a pass, which meant don't come back. I got the hint. We cut you a lot of grief, kid. Now, don't come fucking back. And that's the message I got from it.

Speaker 3:
[23:19] You never got close again?

Speaker 1:
[23:20] I got arrested again, but never got tossed in jail. After 88, I got arrested probably, I had arrested six times in Seattle in 18 months. We were running the crime syndicate up there. We were fucking.

Speaker 3:
[23:32] How did they not get you?

Speaker 1:
[23:34] We had Josh Wolf robbing safes and shit.

Speaker 2:
[23:37] So you didn't get the message right away.

Speaker 3:
[23:38] Yeah, he didn't get the message. That doesn't tell you to get the message at all.

Speaker 1:
[23:41] We. Listen, I still remember.

Speaker 2:
[23:45] 18 months.

Speaker 1:
[23:45] I still remember.

Speaker 3:
[23:46] That's a Colorado message, exactly.

Speaker 2:
[23:48] I still remember.

Speaker 1:
[23:49] You get to the halfway house. First of all, you have to wait by the gate at the prison. And then the bus comes and they take you to the halfway house. I had a car pick me up. I had my girlfriend pick me up, drive me to the halfway house. I pulled over, gave her a stabbing doggy style and this two door Mazda she had, the blue Mazda right on the highway. I'm like, I ain't waiting for this. I went to the halfway house and I go, sit tight. I went to the halfway house and you go in and all of a sudden I go, listen, you have three hours to go get your personal belongings. For me that meant you got three hours to get an eight ball and get back here. I was snorting the first night. I went to my friend's house and he told me, I'll leave an eight ball for you, but he left the bag over here open. I clipped an extra three and a half. I went for that and then I was weighing it. It got to the point I was in there weighing it, selling it, like by the first week. Listen to me, I'm in a seven man room and I don't know, you don't really know how the old packaging was, but the old packaging was a bindle. You open it, you open it, it's a triangle. In the middle, you snort your Coke and then you put it back, okay? When I went to get the Coke and I was gonna sell it, I had to scale on the top bunk. I'm on the top bunk of this fucking thing, okay? And I get up on the bunk and here I am, I'm taking the 8-ball of Coke and I'm putting it into whatever, and all of a sudden one of the guys come in and go, Joey, they're doing a security sweep. When I went to close the bindle, the bindle went backwards and all the Coke shot up into the air all over the carpet and it was a black carpet. So I had to get on my- Lee, wake up. I had to get on my hands and knees. It's 420, mother. I like the other two. I had to get on my hands and knees and pick up each rock. The dust I lost, but I picked up like eight rocks, was sitting in the room, they both walked in and they're like, what are these rocks on the floor? And the other guy goes, the ceiling. Something was wrong at that time. We really did have one of those ceilings that was back, you know, when they shoot it and it has like, like that, like that, like that wall right there. It was similar to that. And they just walked out and I was like, oh shit.

Speaker 3:
[26:04] You had so many close calls, so many like, uh oh, I could have gone.

Speaker 1:
[26:10] And don't, don't, don't, these are close calls when you're in the red zone. Remember, there's a close call, like I'm out, I went in there one night. Again, on Fridays, I would go walk in there with an eight ball quarter ounce because I knew they'd be waiting for me. On this one particular Friday night, girls were on the first floor and there was like six of them, but three of them were smoking. There was one that was like a high level Cosme thief, like a perfume thief. She just destroyed like Gimbals or Macy's. She took every thing. No, no, no, I'm not talking about, this bitch was taking back orders and getting them shipped to a different warehouse. No, no, she told me. She goes, no, no, I was, she had, even when she got out of prison, she had the.

Speaker 3:
[26:51] Just shoplifting?

Speaker 1:
[26:52] No, she was like, she was a manager at a place and she would take shipments to other warehouses and go sell the fucking whole shipment, shoes, whatever the fuck it was. But this bitch still, she goes, I got six years, but I managed to keep my wardrobe. This bitch was still banging. Tall, really pretty girl. But there was another chick that was crazy, that was dating a guy I was in the halfway house with. They were both in the system together. Okay, now we were friendly. We all had to go to group meetings and we'd talk. And one Friday night I walked in and you have to sign in when you walk in and they give you a folder. When I opened my folder, there was a note. You got a couple of messages there. And there was people saying, don't forget to stop in my room. Like Joey, bring me the chicken cutlet sandwich. Joey, do this. But what they wanted me to do was stop in their room to sell them coke. So I'll never forget. I walk in the building. They search you. I got the eight ball in my nut sack. And then I walk and I go to, let me go to Patrice Twinings first. Look, I walk down that alleyway. Now the office is there. And these are the girls' rooms. It's like a little cafeteria area. And then the last two rooms is a girls' room. And it's like three girls in the room. I knock on the door and Patrice opens the door with her big fake tits popping out like lingerie. And I go, what the fuck? She goes, I need a grand, but I ain't got no money. I go, fuck it. And I just went into the doorway like this. Our roommates were eating cereal on the couch and shit. And she's sucking my pipe. And I'm looking into the hallway because the cops are right over there.

Speaker 3:
[28:24] So they can see you not doing anything? They can just see this half your body?

Speaker 1:
[28:27] Yeah, they thought I was just talking. I had my hand on the thing, like to make believe I was just leaning on it talking, but it's the wrong fucking hand. Look at me, I'm supposed to lean this way. It was insane. And then after that, me and her had this little crazy affair. I would pop in some nights and she'd be banging. I'd just take her, and like I said, there was a little pantry where they had frozen foods and TV dinners. I took her in there one day, bent her over, no condom. I'm dying and just gave her a stab. The halfway house was fucking insane when I was there. I switched the air conditioners from the conference room to my room. I got put in from a six-man room to a three-man room. But you got to take the top bunk. I couldn't take it. So I took the guy under me and I loaded his cigarettes with fucking those things that when you light up the cigarette, you're supposed to light it up. I used to do those. I fucked him up.

Speaker 3:
[29:23] Freddie Soto, everybody. I'd wait till somebody borrowed a cigarette and I'm like, yeah, here, I haven't turned over already.

Speaker 1:
[29:29] That was my favorite one, the Magic Store.

Speaker 3:
[29:31] The Magic Store, yeah. On Hollywood, we got one with Freddie and me and Renaziz, we were in the back watching. We knew we had it. And he was on stage. He goes, I got to wear a front-end shirt.

Speaker 1:
[29:38] Perfect.

Speaker 3:
[29:39] Took him seven minutes to light it up. He kept doing this. He kept going like, actually, you know what? And just not lighting it. We're like, come on, fucking light it already. He keeps talking, doing whatever. And then he's like, you know, actually. And he just keeps not lighting it. 10 minutes in, finally, he lights it. And then another thing.

Speaker 1:
[29:54] Boom!

Speaker 2:
[29:55] I mean, is that loud? I didn't know what that meant.

Speaker 3:
[29:57] It just explodes.

Speaker 1:
[29:59] I'm a professional. I got a toothpick.

Speaker 3:
[30:00] Yeah, you take it way out.

Speaker 1:
[30:02] I bore it into the middle so they get comfortable with the cigarette and shit.

Speaker 3:
[30:04] Yeah, well, you had a couple hits. You had a couple hits first.

Speaker 1:
[30:07] Then it explodes. Some guys, you neutralize the cigarette. You put two in the middle, and then one in the beginning, so they just blow up together. That's priceless. Listen, you just fill up a pack of cigarettes and give people cigarettes and take your chances.

Speaker 3:
[30:22] Dude, they are. It throws people off because they're like, what the fuck? And then I see everybody laughing, and there's a moment of anger, like, what did you do? They either have to be cool with it or they'll just dorks.

Speaker 1:
[30:35] Oh my God, I used to love...

Speaker 3:
[30:36] You didn't even pay for the cigarette, I'm 60, I still got the money.

Speaker 1:
[30:38] I would die to stop.

Speaker 3:
[30:40] I gotta get those again.

Speaker 1:
[30:41] I would die to stop on the way home and get 10 tins of that shit.

Speaker 3:
[30:44] Cigarette loads.

Speaker 1:
[30:46] Oh my God.

Speaker 2:
[30:46] You want to just give them out in the city and just watch people blow themselves up?

Speaker 3:
[30:49] Dude, I'd get the homeless guys in Tompkins Square Park easily, easily. Hey, we're having fun today. Listen, you got a Cuban cigar. You're on this.

Speaker 1:
[30:57] You got a Cuban cigar and load like eight of them in the middle.

Speaker 3:
[30:59] Wow.

Speaker 1:
[31:00] And give it to somebody and they're like, yeah, I'm going to buy. They're talking Italian and shit. And that motherfucker blows.

Speaker 3:
[31:07] You know what, I'm going to do that to Bobby Kelly. We'll have a cigar soon. This will be out for, yeah, today's 420. He won't watch this.

Speaker 1:
[31:13] No, no.

Speaker 3:
[31:13] He's too much of a family man. I'll get him tomorrow.

Speaker 2:
[31:16] I'll get him tomorrow.

Speaker 3:
[31:18] Yeah, into a cigar. That's how it is in the old cartoon days. Just goes like that. It's like a Demi Gorgon head.

Speaker 1:
[31:25] I used to do some crazy shit, man, with those things. I don't even know how I discovered them. I just found them one day and I'm like, anything like that, devious, that's my world.

Speaker 3:
[31:35] Hollywood costume and magic. That's where they had them. Hollywood costume and magic.

Speaker 1:
[31:38] Oh, that was on Hollywood Boulevard. Then I had the one over the Weed Store in Studio City, the one on the second floor, and I would go up there and buy them. I bought them out. I bought them. I didn't live in Studio City then. I lived in Hollywood then. This is like 90. No, 90. This is like 2,000. I did it at the store one night. I did it to somebody at the store. I think it was Peter Chen. It's always Peter Chen.

Speaker 3:
[32:05] Peter Chen is wild.

Speaker 1:
[32:07] I hit him with the car and he never came back.

Speaker 3:
[32:11] This guy was just this awful Asian comic. Mitzi liked him because he had a funny accent. I mean, beyond awful. But he's been around 15 years. So he's like, I've been here longer than anyone. I should get spots. I'm like, yeah, I know, but this guy didn't get spots. He's great. He could be here 12 years. I'd be here 15 years. I should get spots over him.

Speaker 1:
[32:29] Ari. It was wild.

Speaker 3:
[32:31] Mitzi hated him. She just tortured him. He let everybody torture him. He was so cheap. He would have to move his car up. Can you move your car up? And he'd go, yeah. And he's from fucking rural China. He just opened the door and push it forward. Somebody must have sucked his dick once. Somebody must have sucked Peter Chen's dick one time. Otherwise, why would you keep coming back?

Speaker 1:
[32:54] La Mer.

Speaker 3:
[32:55] La Mer.

Speaker 1:
[32:57] No way. You know, Ari, yesterday somebody posted on the comedy store. They posted like a vignette.

Speaker 3:
[33:03] Okay.

Speaker 1:
[33:04] And the second vignette was a chick, a hot girl walking out of the OR, coming down to Sunset Boulevard. And when they opened the door, it's a picture of you young, young.

Speaker 3:
[33:18] Really?

Speaker 1:
[33:19] Young, Ari Shaffir.

Speaker 3:
[33:20] On the steps or something?

Speaker 1:
[33:21] On what?

Speaker 3:
[33:22] On the steps up to the belly room?

Speaker 1:
[33:24] No, no, no. This is coming out to Sunset. When you walk into the original room and you pay, and it was you, Ralphie.

Speaker 3:
[33:31] Oh, really?

Speaker 1:
[33:32] Oh, my God. Ralphie was the one one. He's like making a milkshake, whatever the fuck he's doing. What best?

Speaker 3:
[33:39] He was always making a milkshake in his head. Yeah. Rest in fat. He's somewhere eating two full pizza pies looking down on us.

Speaker 2:
[33:52] I hope if heaven exists that you get to eat whatever you want.

Speaker 3:
[33:55] Ralphie, there's this podcast now that does this, but Ralphie just did it in reality. It was one of each, please.

Speaker 2:
[34:00] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[34:01] He'd go to a restaurant and just go.

Speaker 1:
[34:03] Right here, but they cut you off. There's the hot chick. There's Ralphie.

Speaker 3:
[34:09] Oh, all the, oh, look at that picture. Look at that headshot.

Speaker 1:
[34:11] Yeah, Jimmy Schubert.

Speaker 3:
[34:13] That old headshot.

Speaker 1:
[34:13] I don't know who the fuck that is.

Speaker 3:
[34:15] What, in the middle?

Speaker 1:
[34:16] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[34:16] That's me.

Speaker 1:
[34:17] Is that you?

Speaker 3:
[34:18] That's me in the middle.

Speaker 1:
[34:22] Come on.

Speaker 3:
[34:23] Let me see.

Speaker 1:
[34:24] No, that's not you, dog. You better get your fucking glasses fixed.

Speaker 3:
[34:27] I'm trying.

Speaker 1:
[34:30] Come on.

Speaker 3:
[34:32] That's me, buddy. That's me reacting to Renazizi.

Speaker 1:
[34:35] Oh, shit.

Speaker 3:
[34:36] Renazizi, he looks young, too. He hasn't lost some fucking Inca hair.

Speaker 1:
[34:39] I fucking told you.

Speaker 3:
[34:40] The only one that looks worse there is, well, Rafi looks the same. But the rest of us, Renazizi looks close.

Speaker 1:
[34:47] You know, I was looking at that picture before you came in. And never mind all this shit that happened, New York City, the storyteller show, films, bullshit. Think of what we were doing at the store right now, 20 years ago.

Speaker 3:
[35:03] It was so wild. It was so wild. That's why the storyteller show came from. From the way we lived. We were like, well, we have them. We got these stories. It was just like, at any moment, if you were going on La Jolla Comedy Store, it was 50-50 if you went to Tijuana to fuck hookers. It was 50-50. All it took was your drink. Someone was like, should we go to TJ? You're like, damn it, why'd you say that? Yeah, let's go. Let's go. And even if you weren't, and then that was 50-50, you might fuck. We knew one guy who was like, well, I'm getting a fucking butter knife from the condo and taking it out. Like, dude, you're not taking a knife into Tijuana. Are you nuts? Dude, that, it was so fun. I mean, there were so many places to fuck. And even the kids who didn't fuck, like the young guys were like, I can't believe, I was an Orthodox Jew eight months earlier. There's all these like religious Christians, degenerate orphans all coming together. And so some of us are like, I don't know what this life is, but there'd be animals taking chicks to fuck in side rooms. And the young guys would be like, let's watch them. And so we'd have to try to sneak around to try to like get a glimpse of like Eddie Griffin fucking or something. We didn't know. You go to the back of the main room, main room was closed always. And you'd be like, he might be right there. Anybody might be right there. And you like slowly go in. Nope, that was in either the girl's bathroom, the main room bathroom upstairs. So you gotta slowly go in. And we'd look in like Scooby-Doo head over head over head trying to get.

Speaker 1:
[36:32] I never peeked on anybody.

Speaker 3:
[36:33] I peaked all the time.

Speaker 1:
[36:34] I never peeked.

Speaker 3:
[36:35] Over the bathroom stall, he was like, you never peeked because you were fucking.

Speaker 1:
[36:40] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[36:40] Yeah, I was a fucking dork. Yeah. The most we had is to watch you fucking. Dude, I've seen your ass fucking slamming before.

Speaker 1:
[36:48] 97.

Speaker 3:
[36:50] I've seen Joey work it, dude.

Speaker 1:
[36:52] I walked in there.

Speaker 3:
[36:53] I did the right thing. I was just quiet.

Speaker 1:
[36:54] I left.

Speaker 3:
[36:54] I didn't interrupt. I didn't interrupt. I'm not going to stop the game. I just want to be as, you know, get good seats.

Speaker 1:
[37:01] You know, it wasn't that.

Speaker 3:
[37:02] Like I stormed the field.

Speaker 1:
[37:03] It was, it was the Ralphie, the drugs thing, the drugs.

Speaker 3:
[37:10] Do we had a casino for like six months in the main room? None of the Thai bartenders were working. Ren and Zeezy got a felt with like an actual, like a felt that we put on a table. And they were like, some of the waitress come by like, there's no bartenders. And they're like, throw more hands, throw more hands. And then they're like, we need to make the drinks. They're like, no, no, I'm on a roll.

Speaker 2:
[37:31] But like a legit, like for real money casino?

Speaker 3:
[37:33] We played casino, no, no, for real. Yeah, money. It was great. We did whatever the fuck we wanted. She was gone. And so no one was running it.

Speaker 1:
[37:42] I would love to tell you that the best time period was probably for me because I was breaking my teeth. That's when you're in there every fucking night with you got a spot or not. You're in there hustling, whatever. I thought it was 97 to 2000. I think about it now, it was the whole thing. It was 97 to 2006, and then 2014 to 2020, whatever. I was always a regular. I didn't get banned. I didn't get thrown out of that. I just decided not to go in there, because I felt I was done. That's it, seven years. If you're at, how long are you going to sit at the stand before the managers go, listen, you've been lurking like a spider for seven years. It's time to do something. You got to do something. And that's at any club. If you get the Lexington, let's say you live in Nashville, and you do Lexington, Kentucky, you're going to go in there as a feature, another feature, another feature.

Speaker 3:
[38:41] You're going to be a 60-year-old feature.

Speaker 1:
[38:43] And they're going to co-headline you, because you're an hour away. For the holidays, Christmas, all of a sudden people request to see you, now they headline you. But they're not going to headline you. They're going to headline you on your 4th of July weekend. Good luck. Christmas weekend. You know, they give the good spots to me, but they'll give you Friday and Saturday after Thanksgiving.

Speaker 3:
[39:02] Yeah. January 3rd and 4th.

Speaker 1:
[39:04] And then another year, now you headline again, and this year you opened for Shane Gillis for New Year's.

Speaker 2:
[39:11] Right.

Speaker 1:
[39:12] What's your next step at that club?

Speaker 3:
[39:14] Gotta get out of there.

Speaker 1:
[39:15] What's your next step?

Speaker 2:
[39:16] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[39:17] You can't sit there.

Speaker 2:
[39:19] Well, but why not? If I was selling out a club every time I went to that city, and I'm sure theaters are great, but just for me right now, that the dream would be selling out theater week, not theater, club weekends. To think that that many people are like, that, I like weekends way more than one-nighters.

Speaker 1:
[39:39] I like them.

Speaker 2:
[39:40] One-nighters are a great time, I'm not complaining.

Speaker 1:
[39:42] Tell them, we used to go out Tuesday through Sunday. That's my favorite.

Speaker 3:
[39:46] Rumors in Winnipeg, they figure this out. They figure this out. Nobody's coming two weeks in a row to a comedy club, so they book you for two weeks to save on the flight. And then Monday and Tuesday, they'll just hang, do whatever.

Speaker 2:
[40:00] They have shows, I just did a couple years ago.

Speaker 3:
[40:01] You'll be there from Tuesday till the next Sunday.

Speaker 2:
[40:03] Yeah, and they have like two for one deals on Wednesdays.

Speaker 3:
[40:06] In Winnipeg.

Speaker 2:
[40:06] It's a great club.

Speaker 1:
[40:07] Tuesday through Sunday, that means you got on a plane, Monday morning, you came home, you fed the cat, you did laundry, and Tuesday, you're back at LAX.

Speaker 2:
[40:19] I still do that every weekend, but like once or twice a year?

Speaker 1:
[40:22] That's what it was. Once or twice a year. That's what it was.

Speaker 2:
[40:26] That's what every club had.

Speaker 1:
[40:27] They wouldn't hire you Thursday through whatever.

Speaker 3:
[40:29] Improv, DC Improv used to have, you wear a DC Improv t-shirt on Mondays, you get him free. And like Jake Johansson types, they'd be like, yeah, Monday to Sunday. I'm seven days.

Speaker 1:
[40:39] You have no idea. That was great, yeah, for me and for him with Rogan, but man, you come home for a fucking day.

Speaker 3:
[40:48] You can't pay your bills, you're always late payments. You're like, I got the money, I just, I didn't have time to open up the fucking envelopes.

Speaker 1:
[40:55] You get home on Monday, man, and you do that three weeks, and Rogan always works Sundays. And that's when I got off the boat and shit on Sundays.

Speaker 3:
[41:04] Where's Joey? He should be here by now. I'm like, guys, I got some bad news for you. What is it? Joey's in Los Angeles. Like, no, we saw him last night in Tampa. In Tampa, he's gone.

Speaker 1:
[41:15] I remember when he told that story on your story telling show that, you know, the hotel fire and I don't know if you were there that night.

Speaker 3:
[41:23] I wasn't there that night.

Speaker 1:
[41:24] It was Segura.

Speaker 3:
[41:25] Okay.

Speaker 1:
[41:25] And when I came down at the end with the suitcase and I took the elevator and I walked out.

Speaker 3:
[41:32] They're all running down the steps.

Speaker 1:
[41:34] And they're like, where the fuck have you been? And all of a sudden they're like, all right, the fire, like for 30 minutes they stood out there like fucking victims. I'm like, I don't know what you guys are standing here for. And they're like, why are you here with a suitcase? I go, I'm waiting for a cab. Yeah, I didn't even know what they were doing. And Rogan looked at me with sagura. They were like, where you going? We're gonna work tonight. Not after that. That's my sign. That's it.

Speaker 3:
[41:58] That's it, that's a bad omen.

Speaker 1:
[41:59] If you didn't get the sign from God, I did. God.

Speaker 3:
[42:03] The reason I started.

Speaker 2:
[42:05] So wait, you thought the hotel was on fire and you packed?

Speaker 1:
[42:08] Tell him.

Speaker 3:
[42:09] No, he was just like, I'm done with it.

Speaker 2:
[42:10] It fired, no fire. I'm not in a rush.

Speaker 3:
[42:13] Listen, fire alarm went off, I'm out.

Speaker 1:
[42:15] Think about going to your hotel room. We had a great two shows at Cobb's, sold out.

Speaker 3:
[42:20] We were going to do a half full Sunday.

Speaker 1:
[42:22] Remember we used to go up there and eat those chicken strips and the guy would say, we're all out of them. And then we went and told the owner and the owner came back because we would eat 30 orders of those.

Speaker 3:
[42:32] We just keep eating. Dude, it was free food, we needed it. We went to one time, we had the guy, Chinatown, in San Francisco, it's one of the legit Chinatowns. And Joey's like, hey, Tom, I want you to bring me somewhere legit. I want the real shit. Don't bring me to these white people's Chinese food. I want authentic. And he goes, I got the spot for you, I know it. And we went down there, and it's fucking great. These people are fucking, you know, Mao's nephews work in the back of them. And then we're eating and Joey's just pushing his food around, just like, pushing it around. And he's like, Joey, what's wrong? He's like, it's too authentic. What was it? Yeah, it's got the eyeballs in it still. You're like, I want less eyeballs.

Speaker 1:
[43:12] Yeah, it's real. The only thing I ate was the potato pancakes.

Speaker 3:
[43:16] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[43:16] They make their own scallion pancakes.

Speaker 2:
[43:18] Scallion pancakes are good.

Speaker 1:
[43:20] Scallion pancakes.

Speaker 3:
[43:20] That place is real.

Speaker 1:
[43:21] Yeah, San Francisco's a little too real.

Speaker 3:
[43:23] We had some good times on the road. The reason I started going, opening for Rogan, is because he was such a fuck-off. It was 50-50, he was seriously going to be there.

Speaker 2:
[43:32] Did you like antagonize him to get him to leave so he could do time?

Speaker 3:
[43:36] No, but we used to do this. We used to like, we didn't want to have to go out to a nightclub, because Rogan will take us there. You can't get a cab.

Speaker 1:
[43:42] You're stuck there forever.

Speaker 3:
[43:44] Yeah, in Vegas, we're like, there is no clothes. So, but we're like, if Joe gets drunk on stage, he's just going to want to go eat, which is all we wanted to do. And we're going to push him, like, steak, dude, steak. And so, he knows if people from the audience sent drinks to Rogan, he's doing shots. So Joey would just go to a waitress and be like, say it's from one of those tables, send it up. And then I'd go to another one, say it's from this area, send it up. And then the crowd got it, they sent two, three more. Then he's bombed it. We're like, we did it. No club tonight. No club tonight. Go out to get Brazilian steak.

Speaker 1:
[44:21] I tell, I tell.

Speaker 3:
[44:23] We get him so drunk, he's repeating jokes.

Speaker 1:
[44:25] Oh my God.

Speaker 3:
[44:25] He's repeating jokes.

Speaker 1:
[44:26] Oh my God, in Vegas, remember when they pulled him on the wheelchair? What?

Speaker 3:
[44:33] They had to take him out in a wheelchair.

Speaker 2:
[44:36] How many shots did he send him?

Speaker 1:
[44:38] All of them. All of them, Dom. It wasn't just me. It was not good.

Speaker 3:
[44:43] The crowd began to it too.

Speaker 1:
[44:46] Oh my God. That's right. You forget.

Speaker 3:
[44:48] You got the cheat code on a lot of people. You got the cheat code. You figured out how to work them. If somebody in the audience sent him up a drink, like, nice, that's cool. You're like, oh, he relates to that. Okay, so now I'm going to do it. That, you got the Slayton cheat code. You would always...

Speaker 1:
[45:04] Ralphie, I found out he fell through the stage in Houston.

Speaker 3:
[45:11] He was so fat, he fell through a reinforced stage.

Speaker 1:
[45:17] With Ralphie, it was a sly thing. You couldn't insult him openly, so you had to work it into something. So I would go, oh my God, where were you last night? I was home playing. I was tired, my feet were hurting, whatever the fuck, you know. And then he'd go, wow, what happened? And you say a name, that guy was on the store, he was at the store, he ate a bag of dicks, and all of a sudden you go, like you did at the Laugh Factory last Monday, player, I didn't bomb, motherfucker.

Speaker 3:
[45:50] You knew what you were talking about.

Speaker 1:
[45:51] And after that, you just get him going. I know where you get your information from, player, playboy, but I didn't bomb. And I just get those guys started. And what I'm doing is an emotion. And to get Rogan started, you gotta piss him off. For him to go, fucking Joey, I got him. When I broke the computers, remember when I slammed Bretman's computer? And then I threw it in the fucking wall, and Joe, what happened? This wouldn't turn the computer off, Joe.

Speaker 3:
[46:20] He's like, I'm done streaming, I'm done streaming, turn it off. He goes, let's just do a little, I said, I'm done. If they texted him, they texted Joey Diaz back then. He did not care for that technology.

Speaker 1:
[46:31] No.

Speaker 3:
[46:32] He did not care. And he also didn't know how to turn his fucking buzzer off, so it was just, bing bing, I told you not to bother me. He would answer the phone on stage in Kansas City, different time zone, and he'd just answer, he'd go, what the fuck do you think I am at 8 24 p.m.? And they're like, I'm at 6 24, don't you ever fucking call me on stage!

Speaker 1:
[46:55] And we had the value of going out with him, and then we'd go back to the store. That was our training.

Speaker 3:
[47:01] Sunday nights, or Monday was open, Mike, I would go right back to death. Go from these beautiful sold out 300 seaters, crazy audience, I could pause, I could take my time, back to the fucking battleground.

Speaker 1:
[47:14] OBS was the most interesting thing. We would sit by the ledge and watch the people in January. You always went up in January.

Speaker 3:
[47:21] Yeah, because you could see over the top.

Speaker 1:
[47:22] And it was fucking freezing. And you see people lining up all the way to the top. That's when it was me, Ari, Tate, Eddie, Red Band, and Duncan. Duncan with the fucking Momo, with the-

Speaker 3:
[47:37] Little hobo.

Speaker 1:
[47:38] Remember we stayed at the hotel on Fisherman's Wharf, that was like a ship?

Speaker 3:
[47:42] Uh-huh, they had the guy-

Speaker 1:
[47:44] I stayed there years later with my wife and kid, yeah.

Speaker 3:
[47:46] They had the taffy there, and they had the guy who hid behind bushes and scared people.

Speaker 1:
[47:49] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[47:50] Oh yeah. That guy ruled.

Speaker 1:
[47:53] That guy ruled.

Speaker 3:
[47:54] And you just see him, once he got you a couple of times, he's like, oh, I'm gonna hang out and watch. He's like, sure.

Speaker 1:
[47:58] You know, people have no idea how much I owe Joe. Because he introduced me to a complete different way to tour, a different way to look at things. Look, Friday nights were like nothing at the store in 1997. 120 people. He would work all day, rehearse, and shoot news radio. And he'd always come in after a 12-hour day on the set for $15. And I'd go, that's character, because people get on a show, they're not stand-up comics no more. I did that for a while, but now I'm a TV man. That dude.

Speaker 3:
[48:36] He'd battle too. He'd go right at crowds. And they didn't, yeah, news radio. Do you even know what that is?

Speaker 1:
[48:42] No.

Speaker 3:
[48:42] Yeah, okay. It was like the 25th rated show.

Speaker 1:
[48:46] It's fine.

Speaker 3:
[48:46] It was fine. It was funny. It was very funny.

Speaker 1:
[48:48] It was funny.

Speaker 3:
[48:49] But it wasn't like blowing up the charts or anything like that.

Speaker 1:
[48:51] Because they kept moving it. They kept, it never had a home.

Speaker 3:
[48:55] Dave Foley, the guy whose wife killed him.

Speaker 1:
[48:57] Yeah, the NBC.

Speaker 3:
[48:58] The heart man.

Speaker 1:
[48:59] But bro, I watched an episode last week where something was going. It sounded like a seven.

Speaker 3:
[49:03] Andy Dick.

Speaker 1:
[49:04] Andy Dick, Rogan, that chick.

Speaker 3:
[49:06] And the guy from the office space.

Speaker 1:
[49:09] Oh, that's right.

Speaker 3:
[49:12] That's my stambler.

Speaker 1:
[49:12] He played the radio chief.

Speaker 3:
[49:14] He was the boss.

Speaker 1:
[49:15] Phil Hartman. He was so good.

Speaker 3:
[49:17] And he'd get guest stars on, De Palo, people like that. But anyway, nobody really watches. He'd come into the store and it was a battle for him too. It wasn't like they were like, you're our guy, we'll do anything. Not like podcast time. He had to prove himself every time. And he went to battle. He'd see a couple commerce bomb and he'd be like, I don't want to do this. And he would just go. That's how I'd be in the cover booth just watching him. Like watching heavy hitters go down one after another. Joe would always just like, you'd see him just kind of go like, no. And then just, I'm getting you guys. It was pretty cool to watch. And then we'd see it on the road too. Yeah, there was a couple of times where they're like, I think you were there at some like Rhode Island, like boathouse.

Speaker 1:
[49:59] I was there.

Speaker 3:
[50:00] And they were like, listen, this is a very conservative audience. You probably want to not be too dirty. And I was like, I was too new. And I was like, okay. And then I like, I was like, let me try to, I didn't know how to say no. I know what I'm doing. And then I'd see him just be extra filthy.

Speaker 1:
[50:13] I'd be fine.

Speaker 3:
[50:15] And I'm like, that's, you just gotta stand up for yourself.

Speaker 1:
[50:17] You know, a lot of people like, oh, his fan love sucks now. Let me tell you something. What was the room Vince Vaughn had? Were you in LA? It was before J. Davies' room.

Speaker 3:
[50:29] Before Dublin's?

Speaker 1:
[50:30] Before Dublin's, this was 25 yards. And you walked down the stairs. It's still there. They've tried everything. That's where they had to, that's where they had to make it. That's, when I first moved to LA, it was a little corner. You walk deep in there, and that's how you got into the bar. But the first thing was a breakfast spot.

Speaker 3:
[50:53] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[50:54] And then it became naked sushi, where they put a blonde chick with a pussy out and they put sushi on her.

Speaker 3:
[51:01] What?

Speaker 1:
[51:01] You had to take pieces off her, sashimi, whatever. I never went there.

Speaker 3:
[51:05] That's my clip.

Speaker 1:
[51:06] I love to tell you I went there, but I didn't.

Speaker 3:
[51:08] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[51:09] But up that room, that belonged to Vince Vaughn. In 1997, Vince Vaughn was living with Ahmed Ahmed.

Speaker 3:
[51:18] Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[51:19] And the other guy, and this was Vince Vaughn's girlfriend, supposedly broke up, and Ahmed and her got this room. Ahmed couldn't book it, so somebody was booking it. And the guy that ran it was very handsome. He was one of those dudes with long hair, and the chicks would hang out with him and shit. Kind of like a dick, but not a bad guy. He gave a stage time. I saw Prime Rogan there one night. But I also saw Prime Nick DiPaolo in there. Prime, 97.

Speaker 3:
[51:51] That's when people were proving themselves.

Speaker 1:
[51:53] Oh my God.

Speaker 3:
[51:54] You'd go on stage to prove yourself. It wasn't because of your fame level. It'd be like, like Doublins too especially. You'd be like, I'm gonna show these people who I am. That's not, people went in to show, oh there's all these big heavy hitters? Let me show them up. To show that I belong. It was a different thing then. Every night, you're gonna prove yourself.

Speaker 1:
[52:13] The best set ever I saw, no, it's tied. I saw two brilliant sets. I saw Stan Hope in there one night, and I gotta remind me, and I saw Rogan in there. Rogan was on, it was like the perfect set. That's when he did, had a Nicole, and he still had that set before the first CD. This set was on fire. But one night, Stan Hope was headlining, and fucking not, Rogan was there. Now, this is before the weed, this is before anything. And I never forget, Stan Hope was buck fucking wild, drinking, and at one point, he said he saw his mother's pussy, and he stepped on it because it looked like a spider or some shit. Something to that effect. I mean, Stan Hope, delivery at that time was priceless. And all of a sudden, I get in the car with Rogan, the Supra, and I go, so what did you think tonight? What did you think? And he goes, I don't know about that Doug Stanhope guy. He goes, he drank 16 beers while he did 45 minutes on stage. He counted the beers. That's how he was in those days.

Speaker 3:
[53:19] He was straight out, he was still a fighter.

Speaker 1:
[53:21] He was a straight dog, and he'd watch it. Three or four drinks, I can't, I can't. He would watch it, let's go to a strip club. And he would go to the strip club and come back because me, Ralphie, and Ricky Cruz wouldn't go. What's the one on Sunset? Down the corner. The one fucking 50 yards.

Speaker 3:
[53:36] The one that burned down with Jewish lightning?

Speaker 1:
[53:38] Yeah, Jewish lightning. The couches were on fire.

Speaker 3:
[53:42] There was a bus stop out at the street, that melted. That's how Joey's like, fire doesn't burn like that.

Speaker 1:
[53:49] I remember I signed with an agency, they don't exist anymore, 20 years ago. Nice people. But every time I, it was right across from that strip club. And when I signed with them, I sent them, I called them, somebody referred me. I called them and he goes, yeah send me this. And then all of a sudden he called me, he goes, yeah, come in for an interview. And I went in there, the receptionist, as soon as I looked at him, I'm like, he got this bitch from across the street.

Speaker 3:
[54:17] Wow.

Speaker 1:
[54:17] She had like dirty blonde, like the blonde hair that Luridian chicks have. You get like the one-eyes. They have like that. They have like that fucking, that color, you know, that blonde.

Speaker 3:
[54:34] Yeah, the light blonde.

Speaker 1:
[54:36] What the fuck was I talking about? You got me all upset. Salud con you. The receptionist. So I signed with him after a few months. The guy who referred me one day called me, and he goes, are you going on an audition? I'm like, yeah. And in months, I don't know who's fucking up, the agent or that stripper? And I go, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. What fucking stripper? You talking to me? He goes, yeah, the girl on the front. He used to get lap dances from her at lunchtime. Made her look shit. And he needed the receptionist, and he trained her in the whole thing, but then she didn't fuck him. And then she ended up leaving and went to a top management company in the Valley. In fact, Salud. I was with her when you and I went to San Francisco for that first weekend. We negotiated.

Speaker 3:
[55:24] What do you mean?

Speaker 1:
[55:25] Oh, you were with her? You and I co-headlined Cobbs in the very beginning.

Speaker 3:
[55:29] Oh yeah, yeah we did some co-headlining gigs.

Speaker 1:
[55:31] Yeah, we did Buffalo, we had the shirts with the Del Castro. Come on, those things are vintage now.

Speaker 3:
[55:37] Those are vintage.

Speaker 1:
[55:38] You're gonna see those in 20 years.

Speaker 3:
[55:40] We did a co-headlining gig in Chicago, our agent figured out what a fucking Jew this non-Jew was. He figured out, he goes, you just gotta sell the story these guys sell out. So there was a House of Blues, that sounds like a real place in Chicago, 400 seats, like you guys can sell that out. And so like Duke co-headlined it, we sold it out. And then other clubs are like, why are you sold out the House of Blues? That's humongous. But the poster was like a card, like two kings, and you flip it upside down and it was his face or my face. And it would have, it's pretty cool. Yeah, that Fidel Castro, Joey Diaz smoking with the Jewish shit on it. Oh, I got to find out, wearing a yarmulke?

Speaker 1:
[56:19] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, we were overboard.

Speaker 3:
[56:22] Fidel Castro.

Speaker 1:
[56:22] And people loved it, those shirts went.

Speaker 3:
[56:24] Those shirts went.

Speaker 1:
[56:25] Those shirts.

Speaker 3:
[56:25] Those were good shirts.

Speaker 1:
[56:26] Fucking went, like, you know, it's, you know how people wear the fucking Che Guevara, they don't even know who's on his chair? Yeah. Even know who the fuck Che did and what he did. Hey, but I might as well put Fidel on with a yarmulke. You know what I'm saying? Why confuse the allies? In 200 years, we're gonna find out that's what it was anyway. All right, anyway, let's just drop that on these. You know what I'm saying? Who's really pulling the strings?

Speaker 3:
[56:54] Dude, I listen to the...

Speaker 2:
[56:55] Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

Speaker 3:
[56:58] We had some good fucking times. We had good times in the road.

Speaker 1:
[57:01] And just with the education of the comedy star, sometimes I do, sometimes I get...

Speaker 3:
[57:06] You would see human behavior in a way you've never seen before. You would see the way customers treated each other as couples. You would see how comics... It was just like... It was just the rawest form of life. And you would just get... Just get into stuff. Make midnight drives to Joshua Tree for five hours to do mushrooms and watch the sun come up. Just like on a whim. We were on top of the roof of the comedy store with the fucking rocket launcher launching fucking water balloons at the Sky Bar at the rich fucking, you know, all those fucking people in TMZ, all those hot whatevers. The 20-year-olds that run Hollywood. We're fucking launching balloons from across the street and down the block. And they explode next to their foot. They look around like, who was that? You don't know. It's down the block. That's hitting you. And we're just like, do another one. Dude, they... someone told on us. I don't know who it was. So the cops start running. I think Eleanor was like, get down! And so we had to like run down. The cops were coming up. We hid in Mitzi's little alcove. They went up, and then we snuck back out. We had so much fun.

Speaker 1:
[58:13] You know, right now, if I come to you face to face like a man, smoke a joint with you, give you some Medables, maybe a shot of whiskey, it's offering you up. And I say to you, as a comedian, look at it, in my world, where I came from, everything was an accomplishment.

Speaker 3:
[58:28] Everything what?

Speaker 1:
[58:29] Everything was an accomplishment. Everything was an accomplishment.

Speaker 3:
[58:33] Oh, I get it.

Speaker 1:
[58:34] Okay, because I don't measure the end. I always went by inches. Inches. Punch the ball. Inches. I hear you. Inches is what this life's about. Everybody goes for a touchdown. I knew it wasn't going to work for me that way. I tried it and it didn't work. So now it's a game of inches. You got to fucking fight for every motherfucking thing. But I think about anything I ever did, that people go, you should be proud of that. You should be proud of Longest Yard. All that shit was great, but nothing tops the education. I got in that place from 97 to 2006. There were nine fucking years of social and just like on stage. Human behavior. How people acted, how people would go crazy if they didn't get spots, how people acted around Mitzi. And again.

Speaker 3:
[59:25] Uh-huh, the kissing up, the early versions of like social climbers like, whoa.

Speaker 1:
[59:30] And you saw it. Oh, Mitzi, I made you a chocolate cake. Get the fuck out of here. Mitzi wanted a grandma blow. You don't want no chocolate fucking cake.

Speaker 3:
[59:38] And Mitzi was wild too. She was, so like they had Fat Tuesday, it was the Black Night on Tuesday. It was Fat Tuesday, the Comedy Store, PHAT. Yeah, and then they had the Black Night, then they had, well not Manic Mondays, what was the Mondays one at the flat factory? Chocolate Sundays at the factory.

Speaker 1:
[59:53] No, no. When I got to LA., this was the best line up ever.

Speaker 3:
[59:56] What?

Speaker 1:
[59:57] It was a great show at the fucking, when I got there it was Corey.

Speaker 3:
[60:03] Corey Holcomb?

Speaker 1:
[60:03] No, the original Corey. Princess. He had a name, he was big radio guy, and he got a developmental deal. He was a regular at the store, and Corey ran it on really good looking dude. He ran Mondays, and I forget what it was. That was the hottest show. It was three, six minute, one seven minute white act, then a good white act, like Bill Burr type white act, and then it was all black after that.

Speaker 3:
[60:33] Blacks would always have a couple new, really throw them into the wolves, white guys. That's how I started, that's how Jay started, in Philadelphia.

Speaker 1:
[60:42] And then on Mondays, you had Latino night. So if you were fucking tip top, because they put white people up there. It wasn't just about Spanish. They don't have enough. At that time, it was Jeff Garcia. They had thrown the fucking monkey out of there.

Speaker 3:
[60:58] The rest were still busy gardening.

Speaker 1:
[61:00] But he didn't want me in there, but the other guy, Gilbert Esquivel, was the host and he booked it. So he always told me, you got a 20 minute spot in my world. So he gave me 920 and 940. And then if you were a gangster, you ran to the comedy store for the open mic on Monday night. And I remember running to the store one night thinking I was gonna get on. And it was Bob Saget on the list, Dave Battelle. That was like the first time I ran. Like, oh, there ain't gonna be nobody there. And it was Bob. That's the first time I ever met Bob Saget. And we hung out on that porch in the front. It was Bob Saget, David Battelle and somebody else. And I remember going, holy shit. The things like, the education, I got in there. I remember me being with Missy on a Sunday, and David Battelle came in. And he was buck-fucking wild back then. And he went up there and said something. Oh, anybody read about the plane that went down in Columbia? It's always a shame. The real plane went down. He's like, it killed my pocket because I had 30 kilos on that motherfucker. And he just ran with it. He was just going ape shit. I saw a lot of fun shit in that man. And that's where you learn. And then the greatest, Paul Mooney, he flashed up on my YouTube today and I watched it.

Speaker 3:
[62:29] Really? He would come in. He would always go on late, late. 11.45 after the lineup. He'd do 30 minutes, but he wouldn't bump anybody because he was always at the end.

Speaker 1:
[62:37] I had to follow him.

Speaker 3:
[62:38] That was my boy. White people hated him.

Speaker 1:
[62:40] Hated him.

Speaker 3:
[62:41] Hated him. I heard one chick that was a red girl there, she was like, this guy is just racist. I'm like, yeah, I guess.

Speaker 1:
[62:50] But he really wasn't. His boyfriend was white.

Speaker 3:
[62:52] Yeah, is that true? He did love you.

Speaker 1:
[62:54] The whole time.

Speaker 3:
[62:55] Here goes the N word. I love it. I say it 10 times a day. It makes my teeth white.

Speaker 1:
[63:01] How you doing, guys? Uncle Joey here. Listen, if you like nicotine, you're gonna love Lucy. Lucy makes premium nicotine pouches and nicotine gum. Flavors like apple spice, espresso, berry citrus, tremendous, and don't forget my favorite, mango. You understand me? Set yourself up for a subscription so you never run out. Listen, Lucy's the only pouch that delivers long-lasting on-demand flavor. You're gonna get 20% off your first order when you buy online at lucy.co/church, C-H-U-R-C-H, baby. With promo code church, C-H-U-R-C-H. If you don't wanna wait, check out Lucy's store locator to find Lucy near you and grab it today. Listen, here comes the fine print, okay? Lucy products are only for adults of legal age, and every customer's gonna be age verified, so don't be cute. I'll go over there and I'll talk to your mother. This product contains nicotine, and nicotine is an addictive chemical, so choose wisely. Let's go with Lucy. Hey, Uncle Joey here. Listen, I ain't got a mother, but Mother's Day is Sunday, May 10th, and I know you bums all got mothers. So listen, 1-800-FLOWERS is here to make sure you don't forget. This is the best deal you'll ever get. Come on, who wants to go pick flowers and be romantic? Listen, just take the bouquet. I don't even know what it is, right? Every bouquet is picked fresh and carefully packaged and backed by a freshness guarantee. You don't have to get those roses you get on 42nd Street, and they die when they go on the war. It's not that type of party. So, when do you get flowers for people? Right now, when you order one dozen roses, that's right, 1-800-FLOWERS will double your bouquet up to two dozen roses for free. Who's better? That's for your mother, the mother-in-law. You know, she don't speak English, but flowers are nice. That's twice the flowers for your mother, all right? You got a mother-in-law, you got somebody, a grandmother. There you go. Who thinks about mothers like me? Uncle Joey. Why? Because she's dead. So, ha ha ha ha ha. Mother's Day is Sunday, May the 10th, and bouquets are selling out fast. Trust me, do not wait. As soon as you hear this, put the reefer down and call 1-800-FLOWERSCOM slash Joey to claim your double roses offer before they're gone. This is a great deal. Again, that's 1-800-FLOWERSCOM slash Joey. All right? 1-800-FLOWERSCOM slash Joey. Tell them Uncle Joey said, you're gonna love the roses. I'm getting some myself from my wife, and I'm gonna send some to some stranger. You know what I'm saying like that? Ha ha ha ha ha ha! I love you.

Speaker 3:
[66:00] He had so many good lines.

Speaker 1:
[66:01] No, but he had, there was a machine. When I got there in 97 and I saw him, I shit my pants. Because I had bought his album Race.

Speaker 3:
[66:09] Really? I didn't know him at all.

Speaker 1:
[66:11] I bought the album Race. There was no Wikipedia back then. I just knew that he wrote for Sanford and Son, and he wrote for Richard Pry. And I still remember being at the store and watching him come in and going, that's fucking boring. I had no idea he was a store guy. There was no Wikipedia.

Speaker 3:
[66:31] I remember, there was black scenes and white scenes and there was alt scenes and regular scenes then. They were separated. New York and LA separated. But like, I remember seeing in the back, it was Eddie Griffin and it was Hanging with Mr. Cooper.

Speaker 1:
[66:46] Oh, he was good in this day, too. He's still a good guy.

Speaker 3:
[66:50] I forget his name now.

Speaker 1:
[66:51] Mark Curry.

Speaker 3:
[66:52] Mark Curry. And one of them was there and watching Mooney, the other one comes up and goes, what you doing? And he just goes, watching the master. He goes, oh yeah. And they both just turned and watched this guy with the reference a guy had never heard of, Paul Mooney. I was like, oh, and he had, so he would, people would be leaving by the night over and over, as soon as you would get on the stage, before you even talk, people were like, whoa, who's this? They would just sit down.

Speaker 1:
[67:14] He'd walk him with like a hat and a robe.

Speaker 3:
[67:17] You couldn't talk to him unless you complimented him first.

Speaker 1:
[67:19] And then he had a run, he had a roll.

Speaker 3:
[67:23] Yeah, had a little tiny champagne.

Speaker 1:
[67:24] Tiny champagne, but he would have a roll about eight minutes. That was possibly one of the best eight minutes I ever saw at the store. And it was that one. I say the N-word 20 times, it keeps my teeth white. But he would always close with something that is such a well-written joke, that people would go, ha ha ha, and then they would stand up and go, what the fuck am I laughing at?

Speaker 3:
[67:50] Which one? Not the chopsticks.

Speaker 1:
[67:54] Look at this, a white lady, she just ran out. She's calling the police. There's a black man on stage that won't stop saying, won't stop what? There's an N-word on stage that won't stop saying the word, N-word. You know what that line was? This is a legendary line. There's a brother on stage that won't stop saying brother. And he goes, listen, white people, before you go on hating, if you shake your family tree, an N-word will fall out. And people go, ha ha. And then they think about that sister-in-law, the kid's got tanned, ha ha. And they never went to Jamaica, you know what I'm saying? Oh my God, they're right. They're right, it's fucking brilliant. So he would kill you and then pop that joke. And then they give you a breather, look at white people, they're leaving already. And then he'd go, I knew Madonna when she was mañana. That line used to always kill me.

Speaker 3:
[69:05] And we do this thing too of pretending to not know celebrities' names. I asked him about it once. He was like, and who's that fat bitch? And someone was like, Aretha Franklin. He's like, yeah, oh, don't get me started on Aretha Franklin. And I go, Mooney, I've seen you do that joke seven times. Why do you say who's that fat bitch? Like, why do you pretend to not know her name? He goes, yeah, yeah, yeah. He goes, I do it on purpose. One, it involves the crowd. And two, it makes me better than the person I'm about to shit on. Like, I can't even learn their name. Who, oh yeah, Aretha Franklin, thanks. I'm like, that's technique. He had what, so we got a letter. That's when people used to complain the hard way. They'd write something out. They'd get a stamp and they'd mail it in. It wasn't just a comment. These fucking weak bitches now just comment and move on. So they got a letter saying, hey, I saw this guy, it was Paul Mooney. He was on last Tuesday. He did this. He was very offensive. He angered my whole party. And I never see this, so I called Mitzi. I was like, hey, there's a letter. What should I do? She goes, all right, write him back. They leave a phone number. Yeah, I was like, I call them, tell them they get two free tickets to the show and tell them we're going to ban that guy. I was like, okay. Tell him he's banned for like a month. He can't come here. Like, okay. I'm like, you're banning Paul Mooney? And she goes, no, just tell them that. He goes, we need the customers. And then call Paul and tell, show him the letter. I don't want to see it.

Speaker 1:
[70:31] When I think about it, my heart skips a beat. And now it made me tie it with Paulie. Like, I'll talk to Paulie once a month on the most obscure call. Hey, dude, what are you doing? Paulie's. What? But I always take his call. Because he's a brother. He's a fellow Marine. He was in the trenches with us. We used to torture him back then. I would torture him every fucking time I saw him. And I loved him because of his mother. And then we had a little fucked up time for a while. And then now I saw him in Austin. And it's like seeing fucking your brother like that you haven't seen. I learned, you know, when I fucking started comedy, Paulie Shaw was fucking huge.

Speaker 3:
[71:13] Paulie was huge. In the 70s, it was prior. In the 80s, it was Kenneth Sand. In the 90s, it was me, bro.

Speaker 2:
[71:20] Was he big with stand up too or the movies mainly?

Speaker 3:
[71:23] Movies, but he did stand up.

Speaker 1:
[71:24] He did stand up.

Speaker 2:
[71:25] I know he did stand up.

Speaker 1:
[71:27] Yeah, movies.

Speaker 2:
[71:28] I love Paulie.

Speaker 1:
[71:29] He was on MTV.

Speaker 3:
[71:31] Yeah, he did a bunch of good shit. Dancing naked with the Cala Con Pops.

Speaker 1:
[71:34] He what?

Speaker 3:
[71:35] Dancing naked with the Cala Con Pops. That's all I remember from when I was little. I was like, what the fuck is this crazy person? He spoke to a generation. He spoke to Molly Attucks, the first ones to speak to people doing ecstasy. No one was speaking to them, and he did. He had a whole bit about like, they took to DMV in Spanish, English and dude. It was about that type of Southern California. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[72:02] You know, just sitting next to her some nights, Sundays and listening to her shit that came out of her mouth while comics were on stage, and she had no political correctness.

Speaker 3:
[72:14] None.

Speaker 1:
[72:14] And it was always, not loud, but enough that you heard it. Get this fucking schvotz off stage. Get this guy off stage. Don't let him up. But the night that he's talking about was the kid from Houston that walked in there and they're like, he's the next Bill Hicks, and the guy shit his pants. And she's like, get him off, get him off.

Speaker 3:
[72:37] Get him off. By the way, they had three minutes and after one, she's like, enough, enough. I know, yeah. Why? Why waste our time?

Speaker 1:
[72:44] The kennis and light would be buzzing. Get him off the stage, he's bad luck.

Speaker 3:
[72:47] That's what David Taylor says, like you know you're a bombing when you can hear the light go on. It was like nothing and then go, oh, just that a lot.

Speaker 1:
[72:56] And that's how I became friends with Joe.

Speaker 3:
[72:59] She had one time, she were in, I used to drive her around, she liked me. And I'd drive her home and we were in the comments of her van and Holtzman, she loved Holtzman, loved Holtzman, hated some people, loved Holtzman. And she goes, hold on, Holtzman's coming. And he goes, hey Mitzi, you want to go see a movie this week? She goes, okay, what do you want to see? And he goes, there's a new Planet of the Apes was just out. He goes, we can go see Planet of the Apes. And she goes, why? We can just come here on a Tuesday.

Speaker 1:
[73:24] Like she was off. And I was like, she was off.

Speaker 2:
[73:27] What?

Speaker 3:
[73:28] Boss?

Speaker 2:
[73:29] What?

Speaker 1:
[73:30] She was, she would say some shit. And then she got it with me with the fat baby. But bro, you know when somebody is insulting you? And you know when somebody is saying shit to you out of love? And that's what I grew up on. North Bergen, they didn't call you nothing growing up to make you feel good. They called you that to throw you a little off. So remind you of who the fuck you are. And that's what she did. Fat pain. Then she called up to me and plucked her stomach.

Speaker 3:
[74:00] She'd pop her stomach and go, pss. Like it was letting out air.

Speaker 1:
[74:05] And she'd go, ahhh. And she'd laugh by herself. I remember she kept saying, ahhh. You have to go on stage with a Fidel beard and a handcuff on.

Speaker 3:
[74:16] I'd see you would do it. She would say stuff to see you would do it.

Speaker 1:
[74:19] No, this is the deal. If you did it, you failed.

Speaker 3:
[74:22] You failed, exactly.

Speaker 1:
[74:22] She'd throw you out.

Speaker 3:
[74:23] You should go up with a bunch of balloons. Okay, I guess I have to go up with balloons. Like, oh, loser. Yeah, she's stupid. She'd say no.

Speaker 1:
[74:31] Anytime she told you an idea, you had to like look at her and like go, Mitzi, you want me to get you a tongue sandwich? Yeah. I gotta throw off. And that was her shit. The tongue sandwich.

Speaker 3:
[74:41] Tongue sandwich.

Speaker 1:
[74:41] You remember I took Freddie Solo's job and the other guy's job. I was the dude who went to the bank and made the deposit.

Speaker 3:
[74:48] You were the runner?

Speaker 1:
[74:49] For a long time.

Speaker 3:
[74:49] They trusted you with money?

Speaker 1:
[74:52] Dog, listen to me.

Speaker 3:
[74:54] You were skimming off the bottom, too.

Speaker 1:
[74:56] Bro, I respected the comedy store, but you gotta do what you gotta do on a Friday.

Speaker 3:
[75:04] They used to have a thing where they'd be like, listen, we're a failing business. Double mortgage the place, and so it's like, it's failing. So they're like, hey, comedians, if you wanna take two free tickets, like a two for zero, if you're playing golf with somebody, you're like, you wanna go to the comedy?

Speaker 1:
[75:18] Here's a free ticket.

Speaker 3:
[75:19] So two drink minimum, though, so they get some drinks off people that were never gonna go, you know? You're in a Hollywood and whatever, hey, here, I go, okay, great, they'll go in. And then they start going, if you pass out those tickets and people come in, on two drinks each, we're gonna make 50 bucks off them. So we'll give you two bucks per ticket that comes back. Okay, it's incentive, another 20 bucks for the week, you know, if you hand out 10 tickets, they come back. But that policy ended, because Joey would just wait until the entrance line of the comedy store. And he'd go, no, no, don't pay, here, take this. No, no, don't pay, take this, take this. He would cost them 20 bucks, $22 each, because they had to pay him. And then they'd go, we can't do it anymore.

Speaker 2:
[76:06] Would you give it out like two or three, or you'd just give it to everyone?

Speaker 3:
[76:08] You'd get the whole line.

Speaker 1:
[76:09] She made me a regular right off the bat, a month. I was a regular in a month after getting to LA. So right off the bat, I wanted to be part of the comedy store. So they made me a telemarketer with Enz Mitchell, The Chicken Vegas, my girl, crazy girl that's in Vegas. Used to date. And I didn't want to say his name. What the fuck's the matter with you? Shama, Shama, it was. And we all telemarketed like, hi, auto body. We're gonna give you 40 tickets. Thursday nights we're dead, and Wednesdays we're dead. That's all I had to do, was do that. That's how I started, and they broke up the department. Hens Mitchell opened up the club, and ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba. And then, what did I do? And then she gave me even a better job.

Speaker 3:
[77:00] I did every job there.

Speaker 1:
[77:02] Okay, yeah, you did everything.

Speaker 3:
[77:04] Phone, door, cover booth, built a website. When waitresses were late, I would take over that. Assistant talent coordinator to Duncan. I did everything except go on stage.

Speaker 2:
[77:18] She wouldn't let me out.

Speaker 1:
[77:20] She gave me a good job. She said, listen, be the door man from 7 to 10, and then come in and host. She would pay me to 25.

Speaker 3:
[77:31] And that's just, that's her way of saying, this guy needs money. I can't just give him the money. I need to pretend to make him earn it. That's why Gabriel does the same thing. Nobody needs 17 openers. That's Gabriel's way of saying, let me help you guys out. She would give you jobs to keep you going. It's just like, it's not a necessary thing.

Speaker 1:
[77:48] And for the record, there was one particular day that tested who I was as a man, a comic, and my character. And I will tell you this. I think I told it once on here. I had a car that an agent gave to Josh Wolf, and Josh Wolf lent it to me, but the registration ran out, and I kept getting tickets in it. It's a little like $50,000. They told the car. That's the story about my apartment got told. Ralphie always told us, apartment got told and all this shit. So at that time, it was fuckin insane. And we were snortin coke. That one crazy white dude was there from Florida, don't say his name. He sold the club when it was originally off the hook. This is 30 years ago. They sold that club and the guy came to the comedy store one night with 100 large, everybody was gettin free coke and he was stayin at the Sunset Motor Lounge across from Ralph's. We were there four nights a week with this guy. snortin. I mean we went through periods that you would not believe at that store. Cory Cuomo, I knew Cory Cuomo went gentry when we used to fuckin party in the building where Holtzman lived. With the chick with the AIDS.

Speaker 3:
[79:05] That's my building, my building.

Speaker 1:
[79:06] What's the chick that had the freckles? She was half black. So I found myself with that apartment all hours of the night. So I'll never forget on a Friday, you got your checks at like five. That means I'm there at 1.30. I wanna make sure the operation runs smooth.

Speaker 3:
[79:23] They run out of check money.

Speaker 1:
[79:24] Every Friday I'd be there at two. I'd just sit on the stairs and get sun and drink free sodas. That was my thing on Fridays. But one Friday I'd pull up, guys, and there's like four cases of Jack, another case of some fucking whiskey, and beer. And that liquor store, two blocks up from the store, right on sunset, before you hit the Chateau Marmont on the corner, there's a big time liquor store there. I go, if I walk in there with four cases of Jack Daniels on a Friday, you're going to load them. I'm picking some dough up. At that moment, I go, can't do it. Because the store. I'm going to end up just how I did my whole life. If I robbed this, they have a camera somewhere, they're going to see me putting in and my comedy career is going to shit the pants, just like every other career I've had in my life. Because the four cases of fucking Jack Daniels and two cases of Michelob Plus or whatever the fuck it was. And that's when I knew. I did everything I could out of that store. Dog, that was a time period.

Speaker 3:
[80:28] You did everything. When Joey hosted, that was your blow days. And you were so gacked, you would read the list of who's coming up next, but your other hand would just be like this.

Speaker 1:
[80:43] I wasn't doing Coke on stage. It was in my pocket, burning a hole in the.

Speaker 3:
[80:48] So that's where you're like, come on, I wanna get to it.

Speaker 1:
[80:50] When I got to that stage, at the end when I would, after, listen, I had a fucking genius plan. If I just put up the people on the list, I'm gonna be there all night till two in the morning. That 25 from making $8.50 an hour now becomes fucking $2.50 an hour. So I'm gonna do this correctly. I'm gonna call my friends. Andrew, Ari, Rogan, because the original list is hot garbage.

Speaker 3:
[81:17] Hot garbage. There's employees.

Speaker 1:
[81:18] No, no, no. This is the regulars at 10. That's what I hosted. And Mitchie would watch the first 15 minutes or whatever. And dog, there was nights I went up there, we'd lose the room. We'd go from the hot, because then they'd watch the open mic, the train wreck.

Speaker 3:
[81:33] Because you'd have Peter Chen going on. All the favors you did. This guy's gonna go on and let him go on. And that's the room he's hosting.

Speaker 1:
[81:39] I would call Eddie Griffin. Eddie, you feel like doing two hours? Come on down. And they'd all be there on the list. They'd have their people there, the agents with cameras and shit. It was that big night and all of a sudden, Eddie Griffin would pull up, Andrew would pull up, and Rogan would pull up. And dog, you never saw 20 broken hearts like that.

Speaker 3:
[81:59] And Joey's like, now I got three times in three hours that I gotta be back on stage.

Speaker 1:
[82:04] That gives me an hour. Back in between, the cop, pick up a victim, talk, and all this with Terry in the kitchen. So once, from 97.

Speaker 3:
[82:14] You were with Terry already then?

Speaker 1:
[82:16] Yeah, from 97 to 2000. I was a man on a fucking mission of that. I took showers in the mornings. When I was homeless, I'd get that 901, the little Mexican dude would open, shoot into the main room, fucking lay out, take a shower, drink some soda for breakfast. You gotta do what you gotta do, brother. You gotta do what you gotta do.

Speaker 3:
[82:35] He's free soda, you just use that soda thing.

Speaker 1:
[82:37] And then I would get that 6.30 and take another fucking shower in the main room. So I'm Tip Top Magoo. So the balls are prepared for the evening lurk. You know what I'm saying?

Speaker 3:
[82:46] I slept there a lot.

Speaker 1:
[82:47] Yeah, come on dog. That was a fucking, for me it was a cult. It was all I had.

Speaker 3:
[82:53] There was nowhere to go.

Speaker 1:
[82:54] There was nowhere to go. It was a bunch of lost people that just picked up on it.

Speaker 3:
[82:57] We had one time we were like, we saw some, we had this thing we were doing where, you ever been there, you ever been there? You've been there. George, this comedy store. So there's like this runner like thing on the outside, the eye on the outside that goes all the way back to the belly room. And you could sit on there. Anyway, we had to clean up glasses from there and stuff. And one time me and René Zese and probably Ingram, we started like fucking around. We're like, let's do this thing where we just take an actual bottle and smash it. And like in the movies, like, I'll fucking kill you. And then we just started setting it up. We're just like, hey, one of us is gonna bump the other as we're walking by and we're just like, we're friends but no one knows and it tells there. And he's just like talking, he didn't come much. And I think René Zese and I were like, he like bumped like, you got a fucking problem? I was like, do you got a fucking problem? I just said, come the fuck on. We had Ingram hold me back and it tells like, you guys are nuts. And he just took off. What the fuck is this? We had fun. So we figured out once you could take those bottles and where the trash can was in the corner, the dumpster, try to like launch them. And it was 60 feet and try to get it in there. And some would go in, some would just smash around until we had all the bottles. And somebody comes back from the back, the recycling, which is this much of bottles. We're like, let's go. We're just throwing them all. Oh, we had a good time there. No rules.

Speaker 1:
[84:18] No rules.

Speaker 2:
[84:20] I'm so jealous.

Speaker 3:
[84:21] It was the best. They called it a dark years.

Speaker 1:
[84:24] Fuck that. They called it a dark years.

Speaker 3:
[84:26] Because there was an audience. But then we got to do whatever we wanted. Bobby Lee was the biggest star in the world. Because he's making 5K a week on Matt TV.

Speaker 2:
[84:34] How many spots were you guaranteed a week?

Speaker 3:
[84:37] Me? Just my employee spot.

Speaker 1:
[84:38] I got four. Four to five.

Speaker 3:
[84:40] I'm guaranteed.

Speaker 1:
[84:41] I always got spots. In fact, I'm still in touch with my favorite fucking talent coordinator. Scott.

Speaker 3:
[84:48] Scott Day?

Speaker 1:
[84:49] Still in touch with him.

Speaker 3:
[84:50] He was before my time.

Speaker 1:
[84:51] Did you like him or no?

Speaker 3:
[84:52] He was before my time.

Speaker 1:
[84:54] When I got put on, bro, listen, here's the story. I got to LA. I got put on. And Latino nights were big. So I snuck in the improv, a Latino night, a Sunday night. The guy may wear a suit. When I'm on stage, I saw that they had the little top window and it would slide. I saw the window open and the dude watching me. Improv? The improv, 1997, the first Sunday in town. I got there fucking Tuesday. First thing I did, no, I got there Monday, went to Acapulco, got the All You Can Eat buffet for dinner. We were broke and we went to the comedy store. Your buddy, the dirty show upstairs, Ben, what's his name? Fuck. The fucking dude that does the opening for Kimmel.

Speaker 3:
[85:46] Oh, Barris.

Speaker 1:
[85:47] Barris, was hosting on Monday night. And I remember I got there and I'm like, hey, I'm Joey Diaz, who the fuck are you? But then James Stevens III walked in and I had opened from Seattle and he stopped and talked to me and Barris goes, you know him? And I remember going up on a Monday to four people and my heart was broken but at the same time, the comedy store's on Monday night.

Speaker 3:
[86:10] They're used to it because that wasn't one time only. You gotta go up to four people a lot.

Speaker 1:
[86:13] Yeah, and I went up there, I went home and I got up at six in the morning and went to the lap pack Tuesday. I did the whole system and he told me never to come back. That was it.

Speaker 3:
[86:23] Jamie?

Speaker 1:
[86:24] Yeah, he goes, you're a cabaret comic. Wow. Move to Las Vegas.

Speaker 3:
[86:27] Dude, there's a clean club in Hermosa Beach, Comedy and Magic Club. It was clean except when Rogan was there and they told the audience, because Rogan was like, we know there's a clean club, just so you know, everybody about Texas, just so you know this is a dirty show this week. So if you're here for our regular stuff, it's not that, they're like, okay. He warned him, he loved Rogan. And then probably the two, we went twice, you know, one one weekend, another weekend. And then the third one we went, they go, yeah, you can't bring Joey. And he's like, why? He's like, he's too dirty. He's like, but I thought you tell the crowd. He goes, I know, we do, but he's too dirty for me.

Speaker 1:
[87:05] He goes, but Rogan never took the gig again.

Speaker 3:
[87:07] Yeah, he was like, well, that's my last time then.

Speaker 1:
[87:10] Never took the gig, he stood by me. So these were the situations we were building already.

Speaker 3:
[87:15] We had to learn to be loyal.

Speaker 1:
[87:17] Yeah, we had the same attitude. We were all chasing the same fucking thing.

Speaker 3:
[87:21] And just a good set, could call back, learn how to do something. You're like, nice, well played joke there.

Speaker 1:
[87:26] there's nights I wouldn't need unless Rogan came. When Rogan came, I knew, cause I can always talk him into eating.

Speaker 3:
[87:34] Late night at the standards? Or Thai food?

Speaker 1:
[87:36] No, he would take me to the yellow spot, Pink Dot. We'd get the turkey and the swiss.

Speaker 3:
[87:42] Oh really, from there?

Speaker 1:
[87:43] Had the nice bread back then with the macaroon. They had a fucking great meatball sandwich.

Speaker 3:
[87:47] They got good sandwiches. I know you lived in that. It was right next to where I lived.

Speaker 1:
[87:50] They had liquor, they had condoms, everything. It was one stop shopping.

Speaker 3:
[87:54] ZZ Top used to come in. One of the guys from ZZ Top used to come in. He'd pay with $2 bills with stamps, eat pussy. He'd stamp, eat pussy on his $2 bills and pay every time with one $2 bill. It was crazy. With his long fucking beard, he was 170.

Speaker 1:
[88:11] It was like being in the Marines.

Speaker 3:
[88:13] Yeah, Joe was always good with money. No, Joe was great with money. He was like, you're broke, come on, just take the food.

Speaker 1:
[88:18] No, come on, eat something. And he would take it to the stand-in. I knew the menu. Whenever Joe would say, you hungry? Cause I would talk Joe into eating. And then he'd go, are you hungry? No, no, I ate already. But I know he's gonna go, come on, come with me to eat. Just sit with me. And he would get like a cheeseburger, a steak, a lobster tail, after one. And he would, they would make a mean blue cheeseburger. One of the best I ever had.

Speaker 3:
[88:43] You know what? I just realized Joe Rogan ordered like Ralphie May ordered.

Speaker 1:
[88:46] Yes.

Speaker 3:
[88:47] One of each, pretty much. He's like, just get it, just get them. I'll eat some.

Speaker 1:
[88:51] One of each.

Speaker 3:
[88:51] Ralphie would finish it, but Joe would eat some.

Speaker 1:
[88:54] You know, it's funny.

Speaker 3:
[88:55] They ordered the same.

Speaker 1:
[88:57] You know what the problem with Americans, and I want to break it down with you, because you'll understand. You know how people set all these seminars up, how to get rich, how to become successful, start your own business at home, you know? When people get involved in that, after you pay the guy the two grand or whatever, and the counselor tells you you have all it takes to make two million a year, you know, you do believe it and you don't believe it. In our religion, we saw it.

Speaker 3:
[89:31] So what?

Speaker 1:
[89:32] We saw people that had no money, and one day-

Speaker 3:
[89:37] Overnight.

Speaker 1:
[89:38] Overnight.

Speaker 3:
[89:39] Yeah, it was really overnight. But not overnight, it's like doing well to doing better.

Speaker 1:
[89:42] Ralphie May. Zero. Went from living in that fucking apartment.

Speaker 3:
[89:46] With roommates.

Speaker 1:
[89:47] To a fucking, you know, like a fucking place in Beverly Hills, the first apartment, did you ever go there?

Speaker 3:
[89:53] Where the barbecues were.

Speaker 1:
[89:54] It was a gated community, and he had the fucking pound of weed in the middle. He had the fucking table, and he had a pound of weed in the fucking thing. He would invite me over and I'd tell him, yeah, go get a soda. And I'd start taking buds out. I'd walk out of there, buds would be falling on the fucking floor. It was Doug, when he hit, when Josh Wolf hit. When he got his first development.

Speaker 3:
[90:15] I saw Josh Wolf open mics before, right before. Open mics at coffee shops, the unurban. On Pico and fucking right at the 405S. He's there and then all of a sudden he's like, got a development, here's a chunk of money. I saw Ralphie outside the Improv once, and it was like new to we, it wasn't legal, wasn't even in stores yet. He had a nug, I'm not lying, it was about this big. It was something to see. And he was like, all right, check this out.

Speaker 1:
[90:39] I was like, what the fuck?

Speaker 3:
[90:41] I wasn't even smoking, just a little bit. I mean, it was literally this big. I was like, that's the craziest nug I've ever seen. That's crazy. He goes, no, Kayla, that's for you. I was like, wait, what? This is gonna last me a year, dude.

Speaker 1:
[90:53] That motherfucker, when I lived in that apartment with my wife, we weren't even married, I wouldn't have weed. It was broke. I couldn't ask my wife to give me 20 bucks for a bag of weed. He would tell me he was gonna pick me up at three, I'd be at attention with his suit on. That motherfucker would pull up at seven, and we'd go to that weed store in the corner, and he would spend two grand.

Speaker 3:
[91:18] When he moved to Nashville, he said he said, I need breath strips, two to a pack breath strips, I think 50 each strips or 100 total maybe. I used to split them, but he goes, get me, I don't have my license anymore because I'm in Nashville. Get me as many as you can. And I was like, should I ask for a deal? And he goes, why do you think I asked you? Yes, get me a deal. Get me as many as you can. Oh yeah, I got a pay full price, Shaffir. Where's the weed? It's 420.

Speaker 1:
[91:50] You know, you just see the, I still remember George Lopez.

Speaker 3:
[91:54] He could treat me like this on 420?

Speaker 1:
[91:56] Oh my God. Oh, your weed?

Speaker 3:
[91:57] Where's our weed? Where are we smoking?

Speaker 1:
[92:00] We can't smoke on YouTube. They're-

Speaker 3:
[92:02] I can't sit over there?

Speaker 1:
[92:04] No, but then what are they gonna see? The smoke?

Speaker 3:
[92:06] What are we gonna see?

Speaker 1:
[92:08] And look at Lee, he can't even move. He hasn't set a fucking peep.

Speaker 3:
[92:12] I just saw that clip of Lee and me just going like... And then Lee's going, that wasn't even the strong ones.

Speaker 1:
[92:19] Did you see the one with me? As Jesus put my hand on his head. The Trump picture of somebody duplicating. But that's one thing I'm very proud of. What? Like I still remember becoming a regular.

Speaker 3:
[92:32] Yeah, that's the biggest one.

Speaker 1:
[92:33] And going on the road in 99 and walking into like the Indiana Fonny Bum. And they would give me like a hard time, like whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I was a regular at a comedy store. No, no, no, and I would just rip out the, because I would steal the resumes every night. The lineups off the wall. Oh, you're a young kid, that's you. You got Paul Mooney on that line up, you got Ari fucking Shapiro, whatever his fucking name is. You got, you got, you guys all got me all confused with that fucking Shapiro. You got all these names on the list that that's you.

Speaker 3:
[93:05] And you're on with them. So I was like, I want to get Shapiro on.

Speaker 1:
[93:07] That's you. This is me, motherfucker. I don't know what kind of game you're fucking running here, but I'm at the fucking comedy store, so you better recognize. Bartender, open up a tab on the fucking house.

Speaker 3:
[93:18] This is gonna be an education.

Speaker 1:
[93:20] You know what I'm saying? Like that, you get that. You don't feel that way. You don't talk that way.

Speaker 3:
[93:25] That's a feeling. You would go, you'd be like, I'm in LA Comic. I do a guest pause. Where do you perform?

Speaker 1:
[93:29] The comedy store.

Speaker 3:
[93:31] And they're like, oh, all right then. Yeah, you can do one.

Speaker 1:
[93:33] Listen, I just moved to LA and I knew the Tory brothers, dynamite people. In fact, he just called me about six months ago to make a video.

Speaker 3:
[93:44] Guy Tory?

Speaker 1:
[93:45] For his son-in-law. He goes, man, my son-in-law loves you. Can you call him cocksuck on a video? And he said it to me and I go, absolutely. Guy Tory was always.

Speaker 3:
[93:53] And you knew Guy Tory before he got American History X?

Speaker 1:
[93:56] Yes.

Speaker 3:
[93:56] That's before he got teeth? So this was Guy Tory. He was so fucking janky-toothed.

Speaker 1:
[94:01] That is the truth.

Speaker 3:
[94:02] Pre-toothed Guy Tory was a different man.

Speaker 1:
[94:04] I don't know if any of these guys know this or America knows this. Ed Norton came to Fat Tuesday to see Friday. The guy from Friday.

Speaker 3:
[94:20] Chris Tucker.

Speaker 1:
[94:20] Chris Tucker. He saw Joe Tory and gave it to him. That guy. On the other hand, Bruce Willis came to the comedy store to see Eddie Griffin, but he gave that role to Chris Tucker on the moon. Chris Tucker was on the moon with Bruce Willis, he was on the moon and shit. That happened when I was there. Like I saw these motherfuckers walk in, and all of a sudden they're in a big time movie and Ed Norton's coming to Fat Tuesday to watch them perform. So from the Laugh Factory they would recruit from Latino Night. The Big Brother, they're still in St. Louis running shows. I ask Guy Torrey or Joe whenever I see them, they're still in St. Louis running that Fat Tuesday. We gotta get a hookup for that, cause I love to go see those. They were very good to me in the beginning.

Speaker 3:
[95:09] That's Tuesday now?

Speaker 1:
[95:11] I think they run something equivalent to Fat Tuesday. But those guys took care of me to this. You ready for this motherfuckers?

Speaker 3:
[95:18] Yeah. You want to watch?

Speaker 1:
[95:21] They saw me. What are you getting? Watch. It's not over there. Oh, alright. It's, I did Latino Night on Monday, and the other guy with Guy Torre, the big guy saw me and goes, hey man, I would like to do Fat Tuesday. I mean, I'm in LA six or seven months. When he said Fat Tuesday, I worked upstairs in sales. Remember I told you that? And I would see the guest list for Fat Tuesday. It would change your life.

Speaker 3:
[95:54] Fuck it. Every high level black poet in Los Angeles was there.

Speaker 1:
[95:58] Every black director. The dude that made that movie with Tupac.

Speaker 3:
[96:01] It was the upscale Black Knight.

Speaker 1:
[96:02] All of them. That list was, like you look at it and go, what the fuck?

Speaker 3:
[96:07] They cater, it's interesting how each of the Black Knights cater to a different audience. Comedian Fattousi was the upscalist. It was like Singleton and like all these super high level artists. And like Shaq and like Lakers would come in. And then, until years later, I didn't go to the Improv Black Knight on Monday. And I went and there's metal detectors.

Speaker 1:
[96:30] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3:
[96:31] It was like, oh, this is hood black.

Speaker 1:
[96:33] Yeah, it's hood black on Mondays. They throw chicken wings at you if you're white and shit. It's not good. It's not good.

Speaker 3:
[96:42] They'd clear them first, but they would throw it.

Speaker 2:
[96:44] Yeah, they'd throw chicken bones.

Speaker 3:
[96:47] I never saw, I only saw one of those.

Speaker 1:
[96:49] I ate a bag of dicks at the Black Knight. I went the first time on a Monday night and did great. So they promoted me to a seven minute spot. Here's the clinker. It was all superstars. It was a superstar lineup that I walked into. It was like two comics and then they put on Doug Stanhope.

Speaker 3:
[97:08] Oh no, really?

Speaker 1:
[97:09] And I was going to follow Doug Stanhope. And I didn't care. I was following him at the store eating a bag of dicks. I knew how to follow him because I'd lead off with one of his most filthiest jokes. So if he ended with something filthy, I would zip into that, add a tag to that, thank Doug Stanhope and run with it. If I got him, there would be no thank Doug Stanhope. Because I knew I was never going to get him again. Why pause? Doug Stanhope goes in there, and he just wasn't getting them. He just wasn't getting them. So what does he do? He doubles down, and he tells a joke about it's easy to get away.

Speaker 3:
[97:51] Was like he was-

Speaker 1:
[97:52] But anyway, at the end of that joke, it was the N-word.

Speaker 3:
[97:56] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[97:56] And Chris-

Speaker 3:
[98:04] Because I know he's not getting a B-minus, whatever. He's almost pausing time and going, which way should I go with this now? I could get him back, I could take a chance, or I could punish them. And he'll hold his side every time.

Speaker 1:
[98:16] And he started saying that shit, and this sucker got up in the back. He goes, get that motherfucker, get that white boy off the stage. And people in conjunction, get him off the stage. My boy got up there, let's keep him going for Doug Stanhope. Crickets, coming to the stage, my Cuban homeboy. Joey Diaz, boom, hey, how you guys doing? Crickets. Crickets. Crickets. I could hear what the waitress was getting the order. Let me get a Bloody Mary and an order of chicken wings.

Speaker 3:
[98:47] You can hear the pencil.

Speaker 1:
[98:48] Doug, I walked out of there, and I went on the road.

Speaker 3:
[98:52] You can't see me again.

Speaker 1:
[98:53] Broke me that hard. But the funniest ever was at the store on a Tuesday night, waiting for that, holding on to the audience, because if there was no eight people, you wouldn't get paid at 11 o'clock.

Speaker 3:
[99:04] Oh yeah.

Speaker 1:
[99:04] And everybody would go to the two other bars, so the original room would be empty. Everybody knew on the strip, don't go to the comedy store on Tuesday night. It's black night. But it was fun.

Speaker 3:
[99:15] It was fun.

Speaker 1:
[99:15] Like they shot people there years before, like Tupac got into a shootout at the store.

Speaker 3:
[99:20] Yeah, the manager had his head down with his foot on his neck, and like, let's shoot him. And then somebody had, I think, Addy Griffin, I'd be like, he's cool, please don't shoot him. Yeah. Yeah, one time, Earthquake saved me.

Speaker 1:
[99:33] Oh yeah. From what?

Speaker 3:
[99:35] I was, you'd think Earthquake wouldn't save me in Los Angeles, but this is the man, not the event. I was, sometimes they'd play the music so loud in the front bar that you could hear it on stage. And it just bugs me. It's a pet peeve. Like you're messing up the show. The show should be untouched. So they're partying in the front, blasting some music. I'm like, what the fuck? So I come running down in a kind of a huff. And I was like, hey, turn this music down. Like it's coming through. And I guess two brothers were like, I had just been like, hey, turn this up. We like this song. And they just see some white guy going, hey, turn their music off. And they, I kind of half saw it after a second. Like, you know, when you realize like, oh, that just happened. I was walking back and they started coming at me. And then earthquake goes, no, no, no, he's cool. He's cool. And they were like, all right. And I was like, wait, what just happened almost?

Speaker 1:
[100:24] They were ready to fucking kill me, dude. It was my first time in Fat Tuesday. Lee, you're going to shit your pants. I'm doing comedy seven and a half years. I'm a regular at the store. I'm eating shit two nights a week. Regularly. You know, you got to follow Dom Herrera or H.H.Mau. And he invites me to do Fat Tuesday early, 8.15. I'm in and out of there. $35 cash. Fuckin, I walk in there and I'm in the green room and they're talking about a guy coming in with a wheelchair. Right? I'm like, who the fuck? Like, they're making room for a guy in a wheelchair. And finally the show started. I lost my thought. I was just focused on doing well. I had a 10-minute spot, Lee. Like, I was banking my life that one of these producers were gonna see me and put me in the next big black movie and shit. I go up there, Lee, and I'm rockin. I had done black movies before, and I didn't know how to deliver my material back then, but I knew how to chuck and jive. I went to prison. I knew the jokes would hit. I did well up to the 7-minute mark, and then I could feel that the chucking and jiving was enough. You gotta get them. But I look over in the main room to this Mitzi's chair. You know who the guy in the wheelchair was? It was Richard Pryor. Oh, shit. And my heart just dropped. And what? I had to stop the show. And I go, listen, man, the reason why I'm in here is because of, was it something I said? He was like, I fucked up already. And then when I got off, he shook my hand. I just walked out, and I was like, that was my Fat Tuesday story. Then he put me back on two or three other times in there.

Speaker 2:
[102:27] I'm just jealous of him, like, I don't feel, and this is nothing against where I perform, but I've never felt like I've had a home. Or like that I could be, like, no, but like, didn't have spots every night.

Speaker 3:
[102:37] No, it was a home. No other comic in LA really had it, except a few guys at the factory, you know, but really it was like, it was a home. You would go there on the way back, you drive back from San Diego, you get back at like 1 a.m. from doing spots. You get back when I'm like, let's go to the store. I'm not going to bed. Let's go to the store. There's to be somebody there. You know, and then you would and you stay till 3. Smoking, drinking, or neither. Just hanging out.

Speaker 1:
[103:06] I got a job selling screws and nuts on Ivar. I had to be there 4 in the morning because it was 7 in the morning in New Jersey, and I would sell to contractors in New Jersey. They bought breakfast. I would go in there coming down from a Coke fucking, like I would snort and stop at 2, and walk in there at 4 or 5, still twitching and shit, and I would send fax, and that's how I started going on the road. I would work 4 to 11, and after 9, I wouldn't do anything. I was just putting my schedule on, faxing to comedy clubs, whether I worked them or not. I just sent them from some book. Da, da, fax, hey, I found out the name of the manager, and every morning I would send out, and all of a sudden one day, I started getting fucking faxes back. Hey, are you available, Org? And I went to the comic strip in El Paso. That's where I learned all that shit. And from there I took off on the road, because I learned how to add feature weeks. And guess what? I'm at the comedy store. You got an MC week for me with a hotel? I'll take the $200. I'd rather have 200 and Coke anyway. 200 and Coke, 400, I'm gonna do Coke with it anyway. That was the mentality. I was gonna be the best comic I could, and that's what it taught you.

Speaker 3:
[104:20] Yeah, it taught you that. You also, I watched you, Joey, it was like, you were like the most, actually you and Paulie were like the most like yourselves on and off stage. There was like almost no real difference, and everyone else had a little bit of a, not to be too insulting, but like an act. You know, they put on some airs, and you were just like the same guy. You were talking, saying this shit, and then you'd be like, and you just continue the story up there. And you'd watch that with a young, as like a brand new comic, you'd be like, I think that's why she set it up. It was like, watch these guys, look who does stuff well, look who does stuff bad, learn from the bad ones and the good ones. And it was like, everyone did one thing better than anybody. You know, the way Barris would like get a late night crowd, just get them, you know, grandmothers and like hood people, and he would get them all together. He would go to like, legitimately, someone brought their grandmother one, she was like 70, and he goes, look at you dirty little slut.

Speaker 1:
[105:19] That was the craziest thing.

Speaker 3:
[105:20] He goes, you filthy little pig. And she was like, oh my God. And I'm like, what a chance you took. And he knew how to do it. Oshack had the best writing, and you were the most like yourself, and you'd watch these guys, and you're like, what the fuck?

Speaker 1:
[105:33] Let me tell you the education I got, okay? And I was trying to explain this to Lee. I hope I explain this again. And this is for anybody who does anything. How many Sunday nights did I host in front of her?

Speaker 3:
[105:46] A billion.

Speaker 1:
[105:47] And then she would catch me bombing the main room from time to time. I never really bombed the original room. But think about in your world, in your world, like the Arabs believe if they stab a Jew, they get 82 virgins, right? And that's their world. I'm never going to change that. But in my world at that time, I had no family, I had no kids, she fucking left. I was living on a floor, an apartment, all that I had was that comedy store in Mitzi Shore. The other day on the way home, my daughter was crying after a softball game. And I held her hand, I go, I remember still crying, leaving the comedy store thinking I'm never going to get another spot there again. I had to follow Rogan or Paul Mooney or some David Tell. And after sitting next to her, it was a confidence that I rose. You know what? I ain't got time to go headlining no more. I'm a fucking headliner, bitch. And don't worry, I'll fit the fucking 45 minutes. I don't know what I'm gonna say. I ain't fucking getting 400 a week from you no more. I lifted myself.

Speaker 3:
[107:00] Because she made you want to get out of that.

Speaker 1:
[107:03] Think about you having to perform in front of the president every week for 20 weeks. How much confidence do you have? Well, it's a bunch of roughnecks out there. Bitch, I perform for fucking the president and the other long-haired fucking vampire every week. I do what I want. Who the fuck are you to judge me? I got to that point. I dare you to come up to me and say something to me about material because I'm running this shit at the store in front of Mitchie Shorty. She ain't got a problem with it.

Speaker 3:
[107:34] Then you don't.

Speaker 1:
[107:34] You better not. And that's why I started accepting the dirty stuff. You know, if you're on the fence, you're not going to become a comic. Pick your fucking battles. If you're going to be clean, be clean.

Speaker 3:
[107:45] She never cared about dirty too.

Speaker 1:
[107:47] No. But I learned how to push the envelope in front of her.

Speaker 3:
[107:50] One way or the other, she didn't give a shit.

Speaker 1:
[107:51] She didn't give a fuck, as long as they laughed.

Speaker 3:
[107:53] Go do well. If she gave you a suggestion, she was pretty much her going, I don't know what's going wrong. Thumbs up, maybe, I don't know, wear a suit. But she's like, I don't know. It's just the reality is it's not working. Make it work. And if you made it work, she was fine. And it was just like, yeah, there was no pretense about clean, left wing, right wing, social, the family. Then none of it mattered. Just go be funny. And you go on after like super clean comics, super dirty comics. You just find your own lane.

Speaker 1:
[108:26] Then there's the idiot said, I have to leave early. I have to do another spot at the Improv. You get off stage, you got a drink, you get your dicks up there still talking to some girl in the hallway. They didn't want to follow you.

Speaker 3:
[108:36] They didn't want to follow you.

Speaker 1:
[108:36] That shit didn't work for the store. No. You got tortured. You got to do your time.

Speaker 3:
[108:40] You also couldn't get up early.

Speaker 1:
[108:41] You just weren't allowed. He's dirty and he talks to you.

Speaker 2:
[108:43] No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Speaker 1:
[108:45] You're going up son. Shoot to do your 10-30 at the Improv. But don't sit here and come, she told you the fucking mechanics of it, the fundamentals, the whole.

Speaker 3:
[108:55] She had once when I was working, Duncan was gone on vacation and I was doing the lineups with her. She had Tanya Lee Davis, she's a little person, comedian. Funny.

Speaker 1:
[109:03] I'm hit by the car, I told Lee. She rolled under, it went right over. Yeah. Poor Tanya Lee. But I got to become a friend on Facebook.

Speaker 3:
[109:15] Holtzman hated her. Holtzman hated following her. He just was like, he'd say it's a circus act, I hate it. They're laughing at physical stuff and not, I hate it. Anyway, so I'm making the lineup. She goes, okay, how about Argus at 9.15, then this guy, then this guy, all right, 10.30, Tanya Lee Davis, then something else, 10.45, then Holtzman. I was like, oh, I thought you like putting Holtzman after Tanya Lee Davis. She goes, what do you mean, why? I'm like, because he said he hates it. I thought you like, isn't that what you usually do? She goes, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, switch it. Once I was trying to get her to come down for showcases. She was sick now. She was getting old and sick. I don't know if I feel out of it. I go over there, she'd be watching the news all day at eight o'clock on Sunday. I'd be like, can we please just switch to The Simpsons if we're not gonna fucking go? Don't touch my TV. I'm going to the fucking kitchen then to watch. But anyway, she was like, I don't know if I feel like it. I'm like, Mitzi, come on, you'll feel better. Go down there, you'll crush some people's dreams and you'll come home. And she goes, yeah, let's do that. Yeah, she was like, that is good. One time we had a meeting when I was doing the web page and she was talking about the old days. She goes, they all get paid in checks now. In the old days, they got paid in cash and the Coke dealers would be there. They get paid in their cash and they go right to buy Coke. And I was like, oh yeah, she goes, yeah, now they just go home and watch TV. That was way worse than doing Blow.

Speaker 1:
[110:51] I still remember every time I did something and she would never get mad at me. She'd always ask me for my opinion on the matter. Like, can I talk? She would talk to me like I was off the hook, like nobody's gonna say nothing to me. And then she'd go, oh, you can't take your balls out of the stage no more, okay?

Speaker 3:
[111:12] That's another thing. People go, oh, well, you took your balls out. I am honoring my teacher, Joey Diaz. It is the way I pay tribute to the people that came before me. Joey would fucking go like this with a dirty towel that the Mexicans use in the back. he'd go get it, he'd go, dun, dun, dun, and he'd go like this, and he'd just shake his pants because they couldn't hold up over that belly, and they'd just plop out. The Cuban egg roll.

Speaker 1:
[111:37] The best thing I ever did wear was, Judy Canciati was on stage on a Tuesday night, and she's bombing, and I would take my clothes off behind the curtain, and every time she'd crack a joke, I'd go, and I'd close the curtain up, and she'd be looking around, I'd be balls-ass making back there. She ended up suing the store.

Speaker 3:
[111:57] She sued the store, wow.

Speaker 1:
[111:59] She sued the store because of the barris and all that shit. But still, the psychology.

Speaker 3:
[112:03] That's so funny.

Speaker 1:
[112:04] The following, I hated following Domarer and AJ Jamal, and she would put me behind them every Saturday night, and it was like driving to get shot. It was like I'd be on Sunset passing the hot dog stand, going, why am I going here?

Speaker 3:
[112:19] This isn't the right order, but she's like, yeah, this doesn't matter tonight. It's like we were talking about with softball, where it's like, if you're playing on your middle school team, take some chances. If you're playing in the away league, that's when you got to play your position. We'll play out of your position on a day that doesn't matter. She's like, these days don't matter. I'm going to put you on after someone tough. Sanchez said that. She made him follow Dice for a year. Dice in his, pretty kind of his prime. And he goes first, I was like, I guess I should like try to be extra dirty to follow that dirty. It didn't work. It was, and then I tried for another few months, let me try to be extra clean. Maybe that'll work. Didn't work. And then he finally goes, I just gotta be funny. And then he figured that out.

Speaker 1:
[112:57] You have to be you.

Speaker 3:
[112:58] Yeah. You gotta be you in three minutes.

Speaker 1:
[113:00] You have to be you. My assignment was Sundays, she would give me a spot Mondays maybe. Tuesdays, she tried to stay out of the store. I needed cocaine. And he had the front money. And maybe I'd find a cell phone. Wednesdays, she always gave me, always gave me Thursday. And then two spots, you know, the main and that room.

Speaker 3:
[113:23] She loved you.

Speaker 1:
[113:24] Oh, I loved her. I loved her because she got me.

Speaker 3:
[113:27] She didn't try to touch you, your personality at all. She didn't try to rein you in.

Speaker 1:
[113:31] And that was the deal. She came in one night late with Paul, I remember Paul Mooney walked in there one night with Sophia Loren or somebody, with, no, no, not Barbra Streisand, but the one that was with Sinatra, he told her to get a hanger when she was pregnant. Elizabeth Taylor, he walked in there with Elizabeth Taylor. And Luca came in with Sophia Loren, dog.

Speaker 3:
[113:53] Alaka?

Speaker 1:
[113:54] Yeah, she used to fucking go to that pizza place. They walked in, that's Italian beauty, dog. I was like, what? I saw a lot of late night freaks in there. But, what were we saying?

Speaker 3:
[114:06] She'd let you be you.

Speaker 1:
[114:07] She would make me go, how many nights are you gonna keep bombing after Paul Mooney? Wow. That's always like, I don't know, it, that's like my whoop watch. You run 11 miles, you get off, excellent job, but you could have ran 18. Go fuck yourself, go fuck you and your mother.

Speaker 3:
[114:23] I don't know, Metzi, how long, maybe switch it up?

Speaker 1:
[114:24] Yeah, how long? And it was so, it was like magic. I don't know what the fuck she was doing.

Speaker 3:
[114:32] Eventually figured it. Yeah, and even the people who didn't get it served a purpose. It's like the Indian uses every part of the buffalo. The people who were just garbage, and everyone knew it and got a lot of spots, were like, this guy's, that person would drive us. Like, this guy gets spots? This guy fucking sucks!

Speaker 1:
[114:51] Why can't I get a spot?

Speaker 3:
[114:53] And it would just make you like, I gotta get better. So that awful comic would make all of us raise our game. It was pretty wild. It was like, either he's gonna succeed or he's gonna make all these people succeed.

Speaker 1:
[115:04] I figured out following Paul Mooney, my material went out the window.

Speaker 3:
[115:08] Interesting.

Speaker 1:
[115:09] First off, it's 1215.

Speaker 3:
[115:10] It's late.

Speaker 1:
[115:11] Whatever nine or 13 people there, they've heard everything already. They were probably at a club trying to eat some pussy and they got turned down and that's why they crossed the street in shame and came in here. You don't know who's in there at 1130, 12. So I learned how to go up behind them with number one energy. You better show some fucking energy. You better get Jeff Scott to play the piano. You come up there dancing, crack a joke about Ricky Iglesias sucking dick or the other guy. Boom, now you got a different energy. Whatever joke you wrote that was brilliant at 830 at the coffee shop, that shit's not going to work at 1215 following Paul Moody. Why are you referring to that notebook? At 1215, take that notebook and shove it up your ass. Rip it in half, ain't nothing going to work in there. You're dealing with 80% of people or what at 1215? Hello, high, drunk, retarded. They're just sitting there with their girlfriend because she wants, this is fun. And the guys that they worked all day. So what are you doing at 1215 going up there trying to be Johnny Clausen, dog? This is when they need Joey Diaz on the corner outside of hash ways with eight motherfuckers in the middle and you're just dropping down. Look at this fat fuck getting off the bus. Look at this ugly fat motherfucker. That's what they wanted at 1215. And from there, you put together an act.

Speaker 3:
[116:41] Yeah, right. You maybe get a joke here, maybe say something on the spot that could turn into a joke, maybe.

Speaker 1:
[116:45] Morphed. What's going on, Lee?

Speaker 3:
[116:47] It's all over.

Speaker 1:
[116:48] Look at, man, yeah, you're in the head. He's all up.

Speaker 3:
[116:52] He's thinking about taking over the West Bank.

Speaker 1:
[116:54] And two things I want to drop. Number one, if you think what I'm talking about is bullshit, go to the comic store, we'll get you a meeting, and ask them to bust out the archives of the people who were regulars there since 19. And you're going to see, they all went into either stand-up comedy, Tom Hanks. What did he become? A pedophile? Okay, okay, okay, nah. Yeah. Tom Hanks.

Speaker 3:
[117:22] Coach, who was coach?

Speaker 1:
[117:23] Coach. Andy Garcia started as a phone guy, José O'Donnell was there.

Speaker 3:
[117:29] Who's the guy with the fucked up foot in Water, one of those Adam Sandler movies, he had the frozen foot that turned black?

Speaker 1:
[117:36] Not the Bob. The old man.

Speaker 3:
[117:39] Latino.

Speaker 1:
[117:40] That old dude that's in all of Adam Sandler's movies, that dude is from the fucking comedy store. The dude that's...

Speaker 3:
[117:48] They all worked there, they performed there.

Speaker 1:
[117:50] The son-in-law in the movie with Clint Eastwood that fucking, he hates Chinese people.

Speaker 3:
[117:55] Oh yeah.

Speaker 1:
[117:56] The one he torches, the little Chinese guy next door.

Speaker 3:
[117:58] Yeah, the Cambodians.

Speaker 1:
[117:59] That dude is straight. He's a comedy star dude. And then, let's talk about writers.

Speaker 3:
[118:04] Robin Williams and fucking all the Rick Hineson and all those people, Richard Pryor.

Speaker 1:
[118:09] It's a legacy.

Speaker 3:
[118:11] And you're on the same stage with them and they haven't even fucking cleaned it. So you're on there. And we're doing, guys, we're doing stuff. I mean, I've gotten my dick sucked on that stage during the show. It's not even a, it's a, it's crazy nights that happened. There was some porn star that was like, I'm going to, we had a big dick contest. She's like, let me, I'll, I'll judge. Bear's like, how are you going to judge? She goes, my mouth. Like, okay. It's eight people in the audience. They're like, this is standoff? We're like, not really. I don't know. No one's here to fire us. And you'd learned how you'd learn, get it. You just get a spine. You learn how to survive in those moments. And it wasn't about, it wasn't about your materials, about what you're going to do with it later. I saw Steve Simone once go on after Louis CK in about 2015. This is prime Louis. Nobody knows Steve Simone even now. He is in my storytelling show, The End. Get it right now at arishaffir.com. But he went on after Louis CK did 20 minutes, just crushed and then Steve gets on and I'm like, what's going to happen here? This is, this is the wolves. And he does this thing where he goes, oh my God, Louis CK everybody. I was like, okay. They all clap and he goes, isn't that crazy? And then he goes, I was in the back. I was like, I can't believe this going on. We all got to see that. And then the crowds, instead of like talking about what they just saw, he's like, oh, he's going to lead us to talk about what we just saw. And he goes, you didn't know that you were coming. Did you know you were coming out for that? No, it's great. Stuff happens, guys. Stuff happens when you just like go out and try. And then he like slowly moved into his material. He got him so hard, he got a standing ovation. After Louis CK, as a nobody, stood him up on his own, on talent alone.

Speaker 1:
[119:59] And then like three or four years later, I had to follow Dave Chappelle and his prime. And I was like, I'm doing that. And I'm like, can you believe it? And then like five minutes in, I'm making fun of the way he holds a cigarette, like a fucking first time smoker. And now they're, I've got him. And I'm like, I learned from Steve, like how do you follow these guys that they're just want to see him back? And it's like, oh, you got to be with the crowd for a minute. You just learn technique that'll help you. Marilyn Martinez said it the best. She goes, the order of a show on the road, it's the wrong order. Opening is the hardest. That should be the headliner. He's the most equipped. But they give it to the least equipped. Give it to some four-year comic. They can't even know how to handle that. And that's what it taught us. We had to, had to, had to rise to the top in tough moments.

Speaker 2:
[120:47] It was crazy.

Speaker 1:
[120:48] It was a crazy place. It's a crazy fucking place.

Speaker 2:
[120:53] I still remember waking up on a floor in Ralphie's apartment, hung over maybe a dollar 30 in your pocket.

Speaker 1:
[121:01] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[121:01] No money in the bank. Fucking, you know, when you wake up, you take a... You take like a moment and you open your eyes, and you thought about what really happened last night. Yeah, you have ketchup on your shirt and all that. You went to eat at four in the morning at that place. My point is, I wake up now, like when I was doing it on Ralphie's floor, I'd wake up and go, what the fuck am I living?

Speaker 1:
[121:31] What is this life?

Speaker 2:
[121:32] This can't go on. I don't know what this is. I gotta wake up now, get trashed, leave without Ralphie hearing me, try to clip a dollar from him, because in those days, there was no money. Hopefully Ralphie got a 10 and a dollar, he won't miss the dollar. And I could go to the gas station and get an orange juice and start my day from there. Maybe I go steal a pack of cigarettes at the gas station. And that was my day.

Speaker 1:
[121:56] You knew where all the deals were, you knew where the best. I moved to Poinsettia off Melrose, you're like, the walk, the walk, it's right there. They ask for the fucking meal deal, that'll last you three days.

Speaker 2:
[122:06] And during acting class, I took you to a place in Santa Monica on the corner. This is 98, 2000, 2001 Ari. I was going to a Vanna Chubbuck, and I would take the 10 to 12 class. And before you went to the county store, we would meet on the corner, and there was All You Could Eat. The All You Could Eat. Chinese store with Sleaf, wishes you could be at right now.

Speaker 1:
[122:30] Joey Diaz could make an All You Can Eat map of Los Angeles from memory.

Speaker 2:
[122:33] Oh my God, because we were poor. You got six dollars is, you have got to be.

Speaker 1:
[122:38] McDonald's had a 29 cent hamburger day and a 39 cent cheeseburger day, Sundays and Wednesdays. I forget which was which. Those were my days. Five cheeseburgers please. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[122:48] Wendy's, Bacon, no, no, no. The other cheeseburger they had, it was 50, 60 cents and a bowl of chili. That was my lunch.

Speaker 1:
[122:57] You spread the word.

Speaker 2:
[122:58] Because I could borrow two bucks.

Speaker 1:
[123:00] And you get all the Coca-Coles you could drink at the comedy store.

Speaker 2:
[123:02] You get a small Coke and then if you're thirsty, you walk to the comedy store.

Speaker 1:
[123:06] Those were calories.

Speaker 2:
[123:06] And you could sit there all day drinking ginger ale, cherries from the fucking thing. So this show that got released last week, what made you want to do this again, brother?

Speaker 1:
[123:18] Oh, my show.

Speaker 2:
[123:20] I think it's on HBO.

Speaker 1:
[123:21] I was like, what? I gotta get on this. I'm always looking for new recommendations. No, it was just Ari's storytelling show for a while, then I renamed it. This is not happening. You've done a ton of them. Then we did it on television. And then the fucking, this goddamn cunt of an industry fucking took it away from me. I sold a special Netflix Comedy Central to whatever, whatever, who gives a fuck anymore? But it didn't end the right way. You know how Breaking Bad ended the right way and Six Feet Under ended the right way? And other shows just kind of ended?

Speaker 2:
[123:53] Probably those ended the right way.

Speaker 1:
[123:55] Yeah, they did it on their terms. They wrote out the ending and he went to, because I don't want to be here for the end of this. Game of Thrones ended the wrong way. It just kept going. And I was like, I gotta end this the right way. So I was like, you know, enough is enough. Saguaro was like, I'll help you. I got a whole employee group that will help you. Because the show was big for him. The show was big for you. Ali, Miss Pat, you're a fucking Mount Rushmore storyteller comic. And there was that thing of like, so people would ask me too, they're like, I would go over the stories with comics when we were doing This Is Not Happening. This is a completely unrelated show at the end. It's available now at arishaffir.com. But I would go over to people. People are like, come see my story. I'm gonna run it on stage. I'm like, all right, I'll come down there. I'll work it with you. I'm not a producer, but I'm a comic and I'll help you. And we'd do it every month at the Improv. I would start. You did the first one we ever did.

Speaker 2:
[124:48] In the back.

Speaker 1:
[124:49] The back side room of the Improv.

Speaker 2:
[124:50] Oh, the Pink Floyd story.

Speaker 1:
[124:52] You, Mark Maron, Steve Agee, Madonna talking about getting fucked up on mushrooms and running down a fountain with no clothes on, getting arrested, Carboni. It was a great one. And then, because he was so wild with stories, there was no place for that on stage. On regular stage, there was no place, but eventually it became like a little bit more of a thing. And I would go work out with people, but people asked me like, well, do you go over Joey Diaz's stories with him?

Speaker 2:
[125:17] I go, no, he's proven.

Speaker 1:
[125:20] Also, when you did the Zoraida story, I think it was called something at a funeral. Yeah. I forget what they titled it. They didn't always title them right. They didn't fault me sometimes on titles. But the Zoraida story, you were like, I'm only gonna run the, I'm only gonna go over the first part. The second part I don't wanna, I'm not gonna go over. I don't wanna have ever said it before. Okay. But you're like, the first part I'm gonna run, the joke joke parts about what happens at a Cuban funeral, those are worked out like jokes part of the story, describing setting up a scene the way Pryor would or Cosby would, you know, setting up a scene. And then it got like serious and like, there was no place for that in the standup back then. To go serious and not in an intentional way, the way Edinburgh Hours do, like, let me go serious. You were like, you were going serious the way me and Big Jay and you even like do dirty. We're like, guys, I'm sorry. I don't wanna do this. It's just coming out. If you walk out, like, no, you're not wrong. You should probably leave. This is disgusting. I can't help it. And that's how that serious was. And that's the writer's story. And it was like, I had to go on after that. I was hosting. It was at Cheetahs. Couldn't even speak for a while. I was like crying. I was like teared up and crying. And I was like, Joey Diaz, one more time. And then I had to like wait for the applause to go up because I couldn't go.

Speaker 2:
[126:47] Now, let's be honest here.

Speaker 1:
[126:48] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[126:49] Men honest in hindsight.

Speaker 1:
[126:51] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[126:55] All my specials sucked because I had to showcase the material. Dog, again, we're going to go back to this movie.

Speaker 1:
[127:05] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[127:06] Because the guy did a tremendous job and I read on it for years why and how. I even read Jack Nicholson's video on it. He would not learn his lines until the day of. Wow. And he would read them once and he got fucking, they did skits about on Sinai Live. He would scotch tape the lines. Marlon Brando. So all those scenes in The Godfather, in whatever hotel the Regency, when all those guys are standing, they have footage, like not footage, but pictures of what it really looked like.

Speaker 1:
[127:44] The hotel in Cuba?

Speaker 2:
[127:45] No, no, no, when they went to the hotel in the city, you know, if anybody should hurt my son, oh wow, if he gets hit by a bolt of lightning, then I will blame some of the people in this room, and that I will not. That's a brilliant thing. He did that, looking at him, they're showing him, they shoot him looking like that with his arms folded. But meanwhile, when I'm reading, he's got the sign on him that says the lines of big fucking words like you have to do in Lee right now. Like just, ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. It's my boy. It's 420.

Speaker 1:
[128:23] Happy 420.

Speaker 2:
[128:24] So he would do that because it wanted to be organic, and I'm gonna be honest.

Speaker 1:
[128:29] You are organic, that's what I'm talking about.

Speaker 2:
[128:31] You are you. For that stories, for those stories, anybody can make you laugh. Let's see if I can make you cry and fuck with you a little bit.

Speaker 1:
[128:39] Well, so you challenge yourself. At first, you did just make him laugh. At first, you beating up a nun, shit like that. That's just funny. It's hilarious. You're a punk fifth grader or whatever.

Speaker 2:
[128:48] But now let's suck him in. Let's tell him the underbelly.

Speaker 1:
[128:51] But that's you going, I've done this enough. I wanna learn this part of my game. I wanna learn a different part. It'd be like Shaquille O'Neal going, you're gonna see me next year hitting threes. You'd be like, what the fuck are you talking about?

Speaker 2:
[129:01] I wanna say how organic it was. When I did, there was two stories that I have to look at myself and go, Joey, that was a therapy session. Because the time I talk about hitting the none, listen to what I say before that. I never even thought about that before I got on stage. I could swear to my daughter, I never talked about that pain. That had been in me since 1973. My dad had died, Bruce Lee had died, there was shit going on in my house, my mother had shit going on at the bar, and I was the only white kid in the all-black karate school. I get kicked in the stomach every other week. How do you think I fucking felt at that time in my life? How do you think I felt? And that came out. Dog, I said a line in the none story that when I think about it, I got a hole in my stomach. That was not on the agenda. That's when I go to the Puerto Rican kid, a little Roberto Clemente looking motherfucker. When I said that, look at the react, I was in shock they even knew who Roberto Clemente was. I was in shock, but there was so many. Sometimes before I go, I have to do a big show and I'm nervous. I'll put what's happening on. And I'll watch what happened, how I got them to suck in. I did that all subconsciously, man. I wish I could tell you I was prepared for those. I knew where the story started and I knew where it was going to end. Whatever came out in the middle.

Speaker 1:
[130:39] Well that was you being you. That wasn't the, I wouldn't call it shucking, but it was like, it was you just trusting yourself. It's not shucking. It was like, you could just trust it. People are like, how come you don't go, I'm like, dude, cause he's a master. So of course he does whatever the, he's proven it. So yeah, I don't.

Speaker 2:
[130:54] First of all, I lived the story. So it's not, I wrote this fucking thing. This is nothing, the script, there's no script. There's the beginning, the middle and the end.

Speaker 1:
[131:04] No, but it's also how you say it, what analogy you're making.

Speaker 2:
[131:08] When I take you and that's a ride a cemetery, you can see, I can't control myself. Towards the end, I'm living it.

Speaker 1:
[131:15] Well, cause also-

Speaker 2:
[131:16] When I go, you only need three motherfuckers to survive. Dog, I'm breaking down inside.

Speaker 1:
[131:21] But it was like, this is what was crazy about it. You start with this hilarious, like let me tell you about a Cuban funeral, how everybody's doing whatever and going nuts and overboard crying, giving out gifts, whatever. And then you say like how this lady took care of you. So you set up this like mom figure, really she became your mom. And then almost any other great comic, the story ends with Zoraida dying.

Speaker 2:
[131:46] No, I don't know if she died. I don't know if she died.

Speaker 1:
[131:50] But I'm saying that's what would be. What you did is you moved it to I'm a piece of shit. This lady took care of me and I'm a piece of shit. I abandoned her in her lowest moment after she took me in and I wasn't even her fucking kid. You made it somehow not about yourself, but like yeah, you weren't condoning any of your behavior. You were like that's bad. And you were like this level of regret that anyone can relate to on moments you just can't get back and you just have to live with failure and that's what life is. Just living with like I'm not gonna ever be able to correct that. It's not like I missed a shot in game seven, next year we'll be back, I'll get my chance. You'll never get another chance. We've all had those moments where you will never get another chance to correct it and it'll just make you a stronger person as it makes you a weaker person because you're like that sucked.

Speaker 2:
[132:41] By me telling that story, it made me really fucking strong because that's what happened. People want the truth, this is what fucking happened. I was so caught up in that Miami run in California, my uncle, that I was so ashamed to call her, to tell her what was, I couldn't lie to her to tell her what was really going on. That's why I didn't tell him the story. She came from my mother's cut of the street. I couldn't call her up and go, this is what's going on. It was not accepted so I waited till I got cleaned off Coke for maybe four weeks so I could call her honestly and that's what happened. She went off on me for not being there and I remember just dropping the phone because she wasn't lying to me.

Speaker 1:
[133:23] She was not lying.

Speaker 2:
[133:24] I fucked up and I can't bring it back and I'm broke. I'm living on people's fucking couches. So that's how the story ended. And every time I come up here and I have to drive downtown, I think about Zaraida on Sundays. When I go to get the O'Pinchot, I don't go there to fucking eat the piece of meat. I go there to fucking remember when I would meet Zaraida on that corner every Sunday. And I look at the bar and I remember us being outside and taking pictures and shit, you know. So I tried to honor her with this. Right. Tell them the story. Tell them what really fucking happened. She was a hell of a woman and it put me up there to knowing what a real woman is the rest of my life. We're not looking for the pretty one. Anybody can get a pretty girl. We're looking for the one that has got a gun next to you. She was one of those bitches. So, because anybody can be good to you when you're alive, but once you die, are they gonna come to your house and give you a kid a $500 bill on Christmas? No. Just another Hollywood icon that, it was a shame.

Speaker 1:
[134:28] It was a shame, yeah.

Speaker 2:
[134:29] What the did you do?

Speaker 1:
[134:30] Yeah, you didn't know him, you didn't know him.

Speaker 2:
[134:31] For years, you took money out of his fucking pocket with a storyteller's show, whatever the fuck, and now you can't take care of the kid, and that's how I feel about our friend. Do not mention his name. The big guy that, I would love to give back everything that he gave me coming up, because let's face it, if it wasn't for Rogan, Ralphie, it was like three guys, man. You, this friendship started over me borrowing $200, and you saying, I'm never gonna see that too lungily again.

Speaker 1:
[135:00] He was like, all right, come on, come on, about 200 bucks. I was like, I mean, it was like, I had these savings that were going down, and I didn't know how to say no to him. I've told you this before. I'm like, all right, for 200 bucks, I guess I'll never have to loan him more money. But I'm not, this guy is a criminal. And no one's, no one's helping me out here, saying, hey, don't do that. I'm just a kid. I'm like, okay. Yeah, and then the next day, here you go. I'm like, what?

Speaker 2:
[135:25] Here you go back? Oh, wow.

Speaker 1:
[135:27] How you doing, man?

Speaker 2:
[135:28] I'm Ari. And then he came tight, a Rogan thing, and then one day I'm like, hey man, I call you up and I'm like, hey man, I gotta borrow a buck 50 from you. Like, hey, come over. He goes, I'm auditioning for a commercial. In fact, there's a role here for you. You want me to call the Korean guy?

Speaker 1:
[135:46] Lawrence.

Speaker 2:
[135:46] And I go, yeah, yeah, he goes, come on down, I'll give you the money and audition. Boom, I nailed the role. That's how I got with Lawrence. Lawrence called me, he goes, you got representation? I've been trying to nail you for years.

Speaker 1:
[135:57] Wow.

Speaker 2:
[135:58] Boom.

Speaker 1:
[135:58] Did I have a joke in my Jew special? That's coming out, actually. They're putting it on Netflix, that Jew special. There's a joke of like, we're the second smartest race in the world. Jews are the second smartest race in the world. And then I realized the audience, like wondering who's first. I'm like, Korean. I'm thinking about Lawrence. I'm thinking about Lawrence R there. He was a fucking baller. But yeah, but seeing you on those shows, doing stories like that, you and Jay and Pat and Ali and Sean Patton, Bert and then everybody too. Every summer, guys had one great story, but like seeing these ma, these hall of famers doing it. And it was just like, I mean, it was my show, but also I was an audience member. I bring you up, then I watch. And so I'm telling you, I was crying after I brought you up. I was like, Joey, and then I couldn't talk. I couldn't talk, dude.

Speaker 2:
[136:45] You're gone.

Speaker 1:
[136:51] I wanted to do that again. I wanted to do it again. So it's like, fuck, I don't need Comedy Central anymore. I'll just pay for it. We'll just do it. And me and Eric Abrams, the ones who did the show before, Sigoura loaned us a little bit of extra money and helped us, and like, yeah, we did it.

Speaker 2:
[137:08] Sorry, I commit for the second season.

Speaker 1:
[137:10] You were trying, trying your best. Your knee fell off in the middle.

Speaker 2:
[137:14] I'm happy it's 420. It's a control 420. Guys, it's 420. Look at Lee, he's all 420'd up. He just nodded into the microphone and woke himself up. That's the best thing since the Twitch episode, when he fell asleep on the computer.

Speaker 1:
[137:28] I'm glad you won't be on camera.

Speaker 2:
[137:29] So you got no dates coming up.

Speaker 1:
[137:31] I'm doing a storytelling show at the Netflix Festival May 7th. That's it. That's fucking it. Until January. Well, also I'm on Legion of Skanks every Monday.

Speaker 2:
[137:42] Okay.

Speaker 1:
[137:43] Three for Life.

Speaker 2:
[137:44] And then you're leaving May and you come back.

Speaker 1:
[137:48] Come back right afterwards. We'll hang out.

Speaker 2:
[137:50] So you'll be in New York City after that?

Speaker 1:
[137:51] Yeah. Let's go to Yankee Game.

Speaker 2:
[137:52] I want to do a co-headlining show with you in a theater in Manhattan. Like a six week series. We could possibly do it at the Sony Theater at seats 500. We could pay two other comics to come up with us. You know, one of the girls, some of the guys that you know.

Speaker 1:
[138:10] Let's do an old school one on payment blow.

Speaker 2:
[138:12] No, we can't pay people on payment blow. What?

Speaker 1:
[138:15] I thought we were talking about the old days. You got me locked in.

Speaker 2:
[138:17] No, there's fentanyl going on out there. I ain't giving nobody fentanyl. I'm too old right now to go to prison. Because I gave some 20 year old some fucking powders in New York. Let's just keep it to the comedy.

Speaker 1:
[138:29] Yeah, I'm joking.

Speaker 2:
[138:29] Like a fucking McFlyers like we did. The Castro shirt with Daniel on the back. You know, let's go.

Speaker 1:
[138:36] I like that.

Speaker 2:
[138:37] Let's go. We gotta listen. My dream was to take over the boroughs. Like Castro did. He took over the provincias. Little by little.

Speaker 1:
[138:46] You wanna take over the main borough?

Speaker 2:
[138:47] Let's take over Jersey. And we took over Staten Island. We took over Brooklyn. Next is Queens. And after that, we head in to the city. By that time Ari will be back. My leg will be ready. And we could do something crazy, Ari. I don't give a fuck if I get arrested.

Speaker 1:
[139:05] Let's get arrested for words. Let's do Lenny Bruce. Let's go get arrested for words.

Speaker 2:
[139:08] Let's go fucking do it like an eight city tour. We'll take Lee, he's the fucking king of swing up front. We'll get three Jews and a kid.

Speaker 1:
[139:18] Fall asleep in front of us.

Speaker 2:
[139:19] Why is the aim to get arrested though? We gotta make a...

Speaker 1:
[139:22] Gotta aim for it.

Speaker 2:
[139:22] Because Lee, you wanna leave something behind for your kids to be proud of.

Speaker 1:
[139:26] That's the way you prove it. You wanna hit one over the fence.

Speaker 2:
[139:28] You don't wanna just do comedy. You wanna be fucking comedy, brother. Sometimes, if you gotta drive with a flat tire for three days, so be it.

Speaker 1:
[139:37] In there.

Speaker 2:
[139:37] It's a rental car. No fucks given. You signed the agreement. You know what I'm saying?

Speaker 1:
[139:42] Dog.

Speaker 2:
[139:43] That's what I'm talking. It's not comedy. It's a state of mind, Lee. It's a state of mind. Let me tell you something. All that confusion, you're gonna write some of the best material you've ever written in your life.

Speaker 1:
[139:56] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[139:56] There's no...

Speaker 1:
[139:57] Sink or swim.

Speaker 2:
[139:57] There's no nice hotels. There's super rates. You get the little towel and they smell like, you know what? That's what a tour is at the end. And call it the... That's it. If I make it out of this tour, I'm lucky. This is when you just hung a niche and go, I don't know.

Speaker 1:
[140:17] How about the Ayatollah Khomeini? The comedy. No, fuck him.

Speaker 2:
[140:21] He's been dead for 30 years.

Speaker 1:
[140:22] Who's this Ayatollah? He's not Ayatollah Khomeini?

Speaker 2:
[140:24] Yeah, I don't give a.

Speaker 1:
[140:25] The different one?

Speaker 2:
[140:26] I've kept him. With a missile.

Speaker 1:
[140:28] That's nice.

Speaker 2:
[140:29] And everybody holding one of a machine gun and Netanyahu whipping us while we shoot people.

Speaker 1:
[140:33] Look, I'll put out my little juke-urls.

Speaker 2:
[140:35] You make videos of us helping Netanyahu hold people. Do you want the cigarette? And you still doing a podcast now or you took a breather?

Speaker 1:
[140:45] No, a travel podcast. The one you did at your place the last time.

Speaker 2:
[140:48] That was very fun.

Speaker 1:
[140:48] You'd be tripping. That was fun.

Speaker 2:
[140:50] Doing a lot of them.

Speaker 1:
[140:51] That was fun. I recorded a year ahead of time before I went on vacation, before I went traveling. I got a year's worth ahead of time. So I was off in fucking Brazil, partying and carnival. My podcasts were still coming out. I was eating steaks in Buenos Aires. My podcasts were still coming out.

Speaker 2:
[141:07] This for you young comics at home, and Lee and everybody. Ari and I had a conversation about 10 years ago. Here we are with CAA, the world's number one agency. And me and Lee are like, what the fuck is going on? Nothing's going on. We just keep going on the road. And it was funny. At one point I go, you know, we always thought that when we got with a big agency, you could just sit back and smoke cigarettes. But no, you still got to hustle more now. Because now they put you in the A league for sure. You've been walking around in the A league mentally.

Speaker 1:
[141:42] And Johnny Menzel was fine in high school. When he got to the pros, it was game over. You got to try.

Speaker 2:
[141:46] You got to try. And it was really weird that we would say, we would sit behind those comedy store steps at two in the morning and devour your dreams for each other. Man, I can't wait. I'm never gonna get bumped by Eddie Griffin again. I can't wait to get with CIA. This shit is not gonna happen. And so you just learned a lesson. And guess what? You could be with two of the best agents in the world. You still got to hustle.

Speaker 1:
[142:16] Yeah, you got to make your own way.

Speaker 2:
[142:17] You got to make your own fucking way.

Speaker 1:
[142:19] We got lucky. Our agent was with somebody else. Then CIA lost half their agencies overnight one day. And then they asked our guy, do you want to be, and me and Joey were like, so what does that mean for us? And he goes, it means you're with CIA. We're like, what the fuck?

Speaker 2:
[142:31] We didn't even get side with them. What?

Speaker 1:
[142:34] We went from a-

Speaker 2:
[142:34] Pimpin, Hudson County style. Through the back door, through the back door, through the back door, just like that. And I kept my mouth shut. I hinted once or twice about the fucking theatrical. They shut me down. I'm like, you know what?

Speaker 1:
[142:48] Whatever, whatever.

Speaker 2:
[142:49] I don't give a fuck, Jack. I'll get to them. Because they're like the mafia, dog. You gotta show up every Friday.

Speaker 1:
[142:55] You gotta get a piece, yeah.

Speaker 2:
[142:56] And I sent it quick. When I land, that's the first check my right. They got the commission Tuesday. I don't want any problems with them.

Speaker 1:
[143:03] Keep them happy.

Speaker 2:
[143:04] I don't want any problems. Because when you owe them, it's not good. They're the Jews. They're the real deal. And that's why I'm with them. I love them to death. No complaints here. But it's funny that we were with the best agency. And we still got to get up every morning like your balls are on fire, even more than when you were 26 or 27. So if you're an open micer and you think you're working now, and, oh my God, I can't wait till it gets easier, bitch, at the 30-year mark, you're still waking up eating cereal going, what am I going to do? Am I going to end up on a ship or playing the ukulele in somebody's house?

Speaker 1:
[143:40] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[143:41] It's real. It's real. You know how fortunate we are to be here, talk about stories from 97 on the Sunset Strip, 2004, getting the longest yard, watching all of us grow. I still remember our boy, when he came to me one night, it was like a dead Thursday night, he was like, Joey, I just got my seventh producer session, and I can't book a TV show, and he had sadness. And I looked at him and I go, brother, if you booked, if you went to seven producer session, you're right there, you're in the machinery. You're not a civilian no more. You're in the machinery, they're talking about it. You're making people think. And two weeks later, you got that stupid show on FX, when it's easy.

Speaker 1:
[144:28] When it's easy, yeah.

Speaker 2:
[144:29] I still remember.

Speaker 1:
[144:30] Yeah, he was taking inner city kids on tours of the trees up on Laurel Canyon for nothing. The only way he made money was to steal the comedy store left and right. He would be like, one for me, one for you, one for me, one for you. And he paid his rent on that. And then one day he was just big. But right, he was in the mix. But like you said, well, you've seen these stories enough times, you're like, I know how this is going to go. I remember Tim Dillon going like, it's tough for me. I'm like, Tim, they're talking about you. I can hear them talking about you. Like you're about, now it's up to you how much that'll go. You get into drugs or women. Well, that wasn't going to be his problem. But if you get into drugs or her ass pussy, sure, that might like take you off your track. But they're talking about you're on this escalator right now. It's up to you how far you want to go. But like, trust me, you're going to be fine. I think six months later he got new faces in Montreal and then he was off to the races. And then like you said, cover the spread. Did the extra work. But like, you can just know like, dude, you're about to be fine. Colin Terrell on the end, on the storytelling show, he's like, dude, you're about to, you can see these guys getting frustrated. Like, you're about to get.

Speaker 2:
[145:41] Listen, I took a bunch of edibles too, but I'm in training. I have to cut this episode short before Lee falls off that couch. And then we're done, cause he'll sue everybody. I'll instruct him. I'll say, sue me, get 70, 30, whatever. I'm in for something.

Speaker 1:
[145:54] The insurance will take care of it. Yeah, split it up.

Speaker 2:
[145:56] I don't want you to fall, though. You almost fell before.

Speaker 1:
[145:58] You gotta pay. You gotta pay.

Speaker 2:
[145:59] Half-way slanted, like one of those junkies you talk about that you walk by in the city. You're making me nervous, Lee.

Speaker 1:
[146:06] He's got the lean? He's got the weed lean?

Speaker 2:
[146:07] We're back in training, dog.

Speaker 1:
[146:09] You gotta get in training. You all right, buddy?

Speaker 2:
[146:14] No, he's okay. I love you, brother. Thank you.

Speaker 1:
[146:17] Buddy, I love you, too. So great to see you. I missed you so much when I was gone. I know you don't have a passport because of your past crimes, but you would have loved a lot of these places that I went to.

Speaker 2:
[146:27] I know. I would have loved a lot of things if I was over there. But, you know, the Lord disagrees with you, me, and the fucking eight grand I've already spent on false promises.

Speaker 1:
[146:41] I got my 200 bucks, so I'm good.

Speaker 2:
[146:43] Someday a senator is going to hear this and fucking reach out and go, Joey, listen, I did the background.

Speaker 1:
[146:48] Okay, you're good.

Speaker 2:
[146:50] Let me just make the fucking call, shut it down, and then I'll make the call to the State Department. Where do you want to go? Everywhere, China, Hong Kong, London.

Speaker 1:
[147:01] If you just played Toronto, you would sell out the city.

Speaker 2:
[147:04] Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no I want to do those types of things. Listen, if we're going to walk around and look at churches, leave me at home. Leave me at home. I got a bum knee and a fungi toenail.

Speaker 1:
[147:29] I went to Cuba, you would have loved that.

Speaker 2:
[147:30] I know. I got 3,000 steps a day right now with this knee. After that, my knee starts to hurt. So I'm happy I'm having surgery next week. At this time next week, I'll be fucked up at the house, brother.

Speaker 1:
[147:43] You got that good opium?

Speaker 2:
[147:45] For the first two or three days, I'm going to go with the pain pills because what are you going to do? I'm getting all these cartridges. Some guy gave me like a recipe to kill pain at least by 40%. He said he got off the opiates in like eight days.

Speaker 1:
[147:58] Can I give you some advice? Every time you do a pain pill, do two shots of Jack Daniels and you are nice.

Speaker 2:
[148:04] That's okay, Ari. Take it or leave it.

Speaker 1:
[148:07] Hey, my advice, you take it or leave it.

Speaker 2:
[148:08] Listen, I give a lot of bad advice too. I love you motherfucker. Thank you. Lee, I love you brother.

Speaker 1:
[148:17] I love you.

Speaker 2:
[148:20] What did you say?

Speaker 1:
[148:21] I love you too, buddy.

Speaker 2:
[148:22] All right. I love you guys. See you in the same bad time, same bad channel. Yeah!