Marrying A Trans Woman & Uncut Patrice O'Neal Stories | Jim Norton

We got Jim Norton on this week and it's wild, we're discussing" - He's LOVE of dirty talk - Getting caught - His start in Radio - Bill Burr's famous Philly rant - Stories of Patrice O'Neal - The Comedy Boom Now - Marrying a Norwegian bombshell with a piece and much, much more - ENJOY! Timestamps: 0:00 Casinos Targeting Gambling Comedians 2:45 Pregnant Pro in Grandma’s basement 7:50 Dirty talking + Talking about it EARLY 11:02 Not having friends and family there 12:39 Insane childhood stories 15:07 Cheating 17:46 Dirty texts getting printed + Organic 22:23 Radio, Parasocial & Freaky women 25:23 Paraphilias, Run out of things + Pee 31:49 Being YOUNG 32:56 Dealing with shame + Gotcha culture 35:24 Tickling, Calling hotlines + C**king 40:13 Mental stimulation, T&B + I love you 43:56 Shooting up the clubs + Breast milk 46:13 P**n is HARD to do + Honesty 48:39 The Radio show + Burr Rant in Philly 52:31 Getting fired from Radio + “S3x with Sam” 58:54 Being inspired + Private 1:02:17 Getting back on Radio + Howard Stern 1:04:10 Biggest moments, Livestreaming + Rich Vos 1:14:00 Tough Crowd, Culture + Jim Breuer 1:18:10 Keith Robinson + Bill Burr mocking 1:21:28 Patrice O’Neal, Feeling “irrelevant” + Intentional 1:29:52 Evolution of comedy + Dice getting canceled 1:34:51 Comedy boom now + Dane Cook hate was fake 1:38:04 Jim trashing Steve Martin + Success as an antidote 1:45:35 Apologizing to Dr Phil + Comments being WRONG 1:49:59 Boxed in, Performative Allies + Loyalty 1:55:22 Dave Attell + Comedy after 9/11 2:01:38 Audience turning + Real Death threats 2:05:28 Early on Trans + Theo Von “controversy” 2:11:09 She got that thang, His wife + Judgement 2:14:39 Transitioning, Obsessed with jargon + Stand-up 2:20:02 Women are all the same + Safety 2:21:20 Who ‘s the bottom? Changing behavior 2:24:51 Talking about it on stage + Holding back 2:26:24 Everyone is lecturing, All insincere + Trans in sports This episode is sponsored by Kalshi. This episode is sponsored by Sesh. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  I was in Vegas one time and I put $20 on one of those wheels.

• 0:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:04Speaker 00

  Or I put a dollar on the 20 and they spun it and it hit and I won 20. And I was like, fuck, I should have put 20 and won 400. And I'm like, ah. That's how, that's why guys lose their house. It's that.

• 0:16Speaker 01

  That feeling.

• 0:16Speaker 02

  There's a great story like, I don't know if it was Norm or Artie, but like, apparently they did the gig in Vegas and there was like the most money they had ever made on a gig. And on the flight home, they were down 10 grand.

• 0:27Speaker 00

  True. Yeah, of course.

• 0:28Speaker 02

  They spent the whole, I don't know if it was a hundred, I don't know if it was a million bucks. I don't know like what these guys were making, but like somehow they managed to lose the money.

• 0:35Speaker 00

  Yeah. I used to get texts and calls from Voss all the time. His Voss is a very bad gambler and he would call from Vegas. He'd be there for a day or two and he would have blown through his money and he would need people to send him money.

• 0:45Speaker 02

  I think that they booked acts like that on purpose.

• 0:49Speaker 00

  You, I think this is, and this is how smart Dice is. I toured with Dice for three years. I love Dice. And he was the first comic to work the Venetian in Vegas.

• 0:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:59Speaker 00

  So I remember we went to the Venetian before, it was just opening. They'd never done comedy and he went and gambled. And he had a duffel bag full of money and I think he was, he dropped 250,000 in cash at the Venetian.

• 1:12Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:12Speaker 00

  And after that, he got a two-year deal to perform in the Venetian because they're like, oh, this guy.

• 1:19Speaker 02

  He's gonna spend.

• 1:20Speaker 01

  He's gonna perform for free.

• 1:21Speaker 00

  And I always wondered, did Andrew do that on purpose? Like, he was a smart guy and he had worked every casino. So if they think that you're a high roller and you gamble, they're much more likely to give you a concert.

• 1:30Speaker 02

  So they book him four times a year. He never gambles again and then he just cleans up.

• 1:33Speaker 00

  Oh, no, he did.

• 1:36Speaker 01

  They were right then. That is clever. You drop 100K once and you get booked for four shows.

• 1:41Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And I always thought that might have been a strategy because he went in there. And he thought I was bad luck. He thought I was a mush. And he was probably right, so he made me leave the casino. I was so upset. Yeah. He was like, tell Norton he's gotta go. So I had to walk into another casino because he was fucking down like 120,000.

• 1:58Speaker 01

  I mean, what are you gonna do in Vegas? You know what I mean? You of all people.

• 2:01Speaker 00

  I know. There was one escort I used to see every time I went out there. I would go out at night early before the shows and I would always see this one girl, I forget her name. And there was one woman who would dress like a nurse and come over.

• 2:15Speaker 02

  Did you ask for this?

• 2:17Speaker 00

  No, she just did. Like her picture, she had like a little nurse's hat on.

• 2:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:21Speaker 00

  And she would come over and piss on me. That was a great trip, man.

• 2:28Speaker 02

  What's up everybody, welcome to Flank It. Today we're joined by comedy legend Jim Norton.

• 2:35Speaker 02

  So the sexual thing, first of all, I'm looking back into some of your stuff and like, there's just these amazing stories because you've been talking on air for like decades. So there's a lot, but the one that Sam Roberts hits me up with, he goes, you gotta ask him about when he had a pregnant prostitute in his grandma's basement.

• 2:54Speaker 00

  That was, you know, so it was something we look back on and we're not proud of him. That was, I had just gotten sober and my buddy and I went down to New Brunswick and picked up a pregnant prostitute because I would get them off it. And my grandmother used to live in the basement of my parents' house, but then she had a heart attack and she died, but the bed was still there. So I would bring, sometimes when you say these things, you're like, not a good time in life, but we had our little living room down there and her book on Kennedy and we brought back a pregnant prostitute and she sparked up a crack pipe. My parents were asleep upstairs and I think we had, I had just gotten blown or my buddy had just gotten blown and I just smelled, I don't know if you ever smelled crack, but

• 3:39Speaker 00

  it's a very distinctive smell. It's like a medicinal smell almost. And she was standing there about eight months pregnant, smoking a crack pipe in my grandmother's, my dead grandmother's basement while I kind of was like, wow, you're supposed to be a sober guy.

• 3:54Speaker 02

  You're just getting sober?

• 3:55Speaker 00

  Just getting sober. I was worried my parents were gonna smell the crack coming up into the, into their bedroom. So that was, that was kind of a story I wish I didn't have to remember.

• 4:08Speaker 02

  What would be the type of escorts you got when you were sober?

• 4:12Speaker 00

  I didn't do it when I was drinking.

• 4:14Speaker 02

  You got sober at 18, right?

• 4:15Speaker 00

  18, right. So I started getting, going down to New Brunswick when I was about 18 or 19 when I first started driving. I never did it before that. I would just drive down Commercial Avenue, Remsen Avenue, George Street, kind of where the Stress Factory is, and I would loop and loop and loop for hours.

• 4:31Speaker 02

  And find like, street walkers?

• 4:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, always, always street walkers.

• 4:34Speaker 02

  And how old were you when you started with the street walk?

• 4:36Speaker 00

  Eighteen or nineteen.

• 4:37Speaker 02

  And why, like, what happens at eighteen where you're like, I think I'm gonna fuck prostitutes?

• 4:41Speaker 00

  I don't, you know, you, you, you strike out enough times and then you just remember, I had drove, I would see that girl and I would drive by. And it's, it's literally, I can't, I don't know what a religious experience feels like, but the first time somebody gets in your car and sucks your dick and leaves, you're like, wow. I'm home.

• 5:02Speaker 00

  I am home. It just felt like it was the addiction, just kind of like, it was, it was like a dopamine shot. It was like.

• 5:08Speaker 02

  Same feeling from drugs?

• 5:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly. Same feeling.

• 5:11Speaker 02

  Okay, so you're freshly sober, now you get this like rush.

• 5:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 5:14Speaker 02

  And it doesn't feel like it's gonna be too detrimental.

• 5:17Speaker 00

  Right, cuz you don't know where it's gonna go or how much money you're gonna eventually spend or how much energy you're eventually gonna put into it.

• 5:23Speaker 02

  What, what were you spending?

• 5:25Speaker 00

  You know, back then, not much. I mean, it was twenty or thirty bucks, but as life goes on and you start doing better, you spend a lot of money. I remember when Charlie Sheen said he spent fifty thousand in a year and the whole country was shocked. And years later, I was like, what's the big deal?

• 5:43Speaker 02

  What do you think the most you spent is?

• 5:45Speaker 00

  I never, I was, I, the most I ever spent with one person was a thousand. I never went crazy with like the high-priced, you know, it was just, it was volume. I was a volume shopper.

• 5:55Speaker 01

  Fogo's.

• 5:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, a lot, four or five nights a week, sometimes.

• 5:59Speaker 02

  Really?

• 5:59Speaker 00

  Once a day, sometimes twice a day. Yeah, it was really bad. It was, it was just obsession.

• 6:03Speaker 01

  Did you ever have to deal with pimps?

• 6:06Speaker 00

  No, not really. I was very paranoid, like, I was very, uh, careful when I would ride around. It was like a ritual. It was like, it was literally like, I would ride around, I would only pick up a hooker if she came to the left side of my, my, my car. Like, it was bizarre how I would ritualize the whole thing. So sometimes I'd ride around for five hours and not get anybody. And I would just piss into a cup and keep dumping it out the window.

• 6:30Speaker 00

  That's my life.

• 6:33Speaker 01

  That's so funny. You're like, I don't do gambling, but I will find streetwalkers.

• 6:37Speaker 00

  A hundred percent. Yeah, I did that for years. But it was also like my favorite part of it. When I look back, I remember I used to love talking to them on the way back. Like I was like, I used to enjoy the conversations after. It was almost like I was lonely and I didn't know how to talk to girls. And then after we had like sex, I would chat with them. And I always loved hanging with them afterwards and having a conversation with them. Yeah. That was, I realized like, that was kind of my favorite part of it.

• 7:01Mark Gagnon?

  But was it like the talks like, oh, you don't have to do this. I can get you out of this. Like.

• 7:05Speaker 02

  Were you trying to save him?

• 7:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, you do go through that, that where I'm gonna rescue you and show you what a real relationship, which I wasn't. I had a girl say that to me. She's like, she's like, you're a nice looking guy. Why are you doing this? You don't have to do this. And it really affected me. That was, I was probably 20 when she said that. And I still look back and go like, that was a really impactful moment. Didn't slow me down at all, but it made me think.

• 7:28Speaker 02

  Did you ever date any of them? Like, did it ever become like a relationship?

• 7:31Speaker 00

  I, there was some that I would see after. There was one dominatrix who I saw for a year who became a long-term girlfriend. Yeah, I would fall in love quick. I loved, like, I never looked at sex workers like they were less than. I looked at them like, wow, she's actually spending time with me. And I loved them. I thought they were amazing. Yeah.

• 7:50Speaker 02

  So Sam, Sam said that, whoa, he said that you love, you love the chat, like you love the dirty talk. Like Sam was like.

• 8:00Speaker 00

  With him.

• 8:02Speaker 01

  Can you explain who Sam is for people?

• 8:03Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. Sam Roberts. Absolute legends. You guys probably know him from WWE, you know, from the Jim and Sam Show, you know, from Opie and Anthony. I think he was interning back then.

• 8:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, he would just send me voice notes about wrestling and I would jerk off.

• 8:15Speaker 02

  But he said, he said that like, he would see you, it could be seven in the morning, you guys are on the radio, but like, once you're engaged in the chat.

• 8:22Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 8:22Speaker 02

  Now, he also told me there's a story where you were driving somewhere with him.

• 8:27Speaker 00

  Oh, God, yeah. My road manager wasn't available, so Sam came to help me sell merchandise. And I think as we were driving back, I think I was voice talking, I think I was voice texting, if I remember correctly, with this one girl who I just, once you lock in. Man, it's kinda hard because they're they're talking and I can never tell someone like, all right, get back to you. I'm all lathered up, but I think he was in the passenger seat.

• 8:47Speaker 02

  Passenger seat, they're just ripping and saying dirty talk, voice notes.

• 8:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, sending dirty voice notes, but it felt like I was so comfortable with him, I didn't care. Like, I mean, I knew the guy for years. I'm like, sorry, this is the this is the this is the negative side of being friends with Jim Norton. It's once in a while, you're gonna have to hear how big is your clit while I'm driving doing 80 miles an hour down Route 78.

• 9:09Speaker 02

  Dude, that was a joke I remember from from your special, what was it, Monster, was it?

• 9:15Speaker 00

  Maybe it was Monster Rain.

• 9:16Speaker 02

  Monster Rain, the the I like a big pussy, looking like a basset hound, was it a?

• 9:22Speaker 00

  Oh, a basset hound might have been Monster Rain. Poorly packed luggage was one of the later ones.

• 9:30Speaker 00

  You can see through snow pants. Yeah, there was a lot of naughty references to large vaginas.

• 9:36Speaker 01

  When you were doing this, were you ever ashamed to tell your friends? Like, was there a period of like hiding? Or were you always open?

• 9:42Speaker 00

  Certain things I was quiet about for a long time, but like early on in stand up, like in 91, 92, and I would do, I was still doing open mics, and guys like Florentine, who was the got me my first pay gig, and Bobby Levy, they would come and they would always, like, we would all be on the same show, and they would laugh at the stuff that was honest and that was about my life. And I kinda realized like, wow, if the comedians think this is funny, you should talk about this. And it felt original and it was mine, so I didn't have to memorize it, I just knew it.

• 10:08Speaker 02

  So you were talking about this shit early on, open mics?

• 10:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, like, like, you know, again, in in New Jersey, when we would do, do like, this this hotel had an open mic. Funny, it's where I first met Ari Spears. He was a kid, his mom would bring him to open mics. He was underage at the time. He's been at it a long time, man. And he was funny, you could see he was doing RoboCop, you know, like, this fucking kid is great. But this is probably 91 or 92. So, yeah, I started talking about all this. But you limit your options when you're talking about that stuff.

• 10:36Speaker 02

  What do you mean?

• 10:37Speaker 00

  Like-

• 10:38Speaker 02

  Certain guys don't want you to open for them because you're dirty?

• 10:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, and, you know, you you understand you're not gonna have necessarily a TV route. You know what I mean? Like, there's no way to to make Big Clit Tonight Show clean.

• 10:53Speaker 00

  How do I say that in like euphemisms, where I can get that through on TV? So you realize early on, my path is not gonna be that.

• 11:00Mark Gagnon?

  And then what about like friends and family?

• 11:02Speaker 00

  Uh, my parents didn't see me for seven years. I didn't let them come because I never wanted. I, I saw, you ever seen the movie Fame? There was a, it was like, it's from 1980.

• 11:12Speaker 02

  David Bowie movie or something like that?

• 11:14Speaker 00

  No.

• 11:14Speaker 02

  What am I thinking about?

• 11:15Speaker 00

  Irene Caro is in this one. Uh, but there's a comedian named Ralph Garcia and he performed and he, he kills in front of his friends. And then he bombs when he's drunk and alone in front of an audience with no friends.

• 11:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:27Speaker 00

  And I always remember that. I'm like, never have your friends there because you're gonna get a fake reaction.

• 11:31Speaker 02

  Hmm. Dude, I was like terrified of having my friends there.

• 11:34Speaker 01

  Oh my goodness.

• 11:35Speaker 00

  It's embarrassing, certain things.

• 11:36Speaker 01

  I never understood these guys that are like.

• 11:37Speaker 02

  They wanna bring their friends.

• 11:38Speaker 01

  I walk into an open mic, there's 40 people. I'm like, why are there so many people here? And they're like, oh, so and so is doing his first open mic. I'm like, what?

• 11:44Speaker 02

  Never dude.

• 11:45Speaker 01

  He brought 40 people to see him bomb?

• 11:47Speaker 02

  To this day, if I see someone I know in like the front row or something like that. Like, I, if, if I could, I would just remove them and put them in another part of it.

• 11:57Speaker 00

  Uh, dude, I would rather have fucking Oswald in the front row than my friends. I hate seeing a recognizable face. My parents come, always in the back.

• 12:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:07Speaker 00

  I don't wanna see, I want just a, you know, blackout light and they're in the back and I don't see them. I don't wanna see, my buddy Sean came with his family one time to Caroline's. And they don't, the people just sat them and it was right up front, my buddy and his family.

• 12:21Speaker 02

  It's brutal.

• 12:22Speaker 00

  I was just, you know, it's humiliating because I know what I talk about.

• 12:26Speaker 00

  That's why I don't want your parents there. You're talking about the shit I'm talking about.

• 12:28Speaker 02

  What did they say after the show?

• 12:30Speaker 00

  Oh, you were wonderful. I got very, my parents are great. Like, they were just so happy. I stopped drinking and fucking, you know.

• 12:36Speaker 02

  Oh, so they were supportive and everything?

• 12:37Speaker 00

  Hundred percent with everything in my life.

• 12:39Speaker 02

  So where is this like, cause all of your childhood stories are kind of insane. Are you aware of how your childhood stories are insane or did you think it was normal? Cause that's what everybody was doing in the neighborhood?

• 12:48Speaker 00

  To me, they feel very, very, uh, run of the mill, um, and very uneventful.

• 12:54Speaker 02

  Even when you would talk about them and get these big reactions?

• 12:57Speaker 00

  The reactions I would get from people told me like, wow, I guess everybody didn't have this childhood. But I mean, it was all me. Like, my parents did the best they could. But, you know, we were in Edison. It was kind of, it was in the seventies. It was a different time.

• 13:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:10Speaker 00

  You weren't supposed to be monitored all the time. Time.

• 13:12Speaker 02

  Right.

• 13:13Speaker 00

  You know what I mean? If you and your friends snuck off and did whatever you did or.

• 13:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:16Speaker 00

  It was what it was.

• 13:17Speaker 02

  Just throw a couch on the highway or whatever.

• 13:18Speaker 00

  Oh, that's when I was a teenager. Yeah, yeah. This bodybuilder I knew used to come by. And he, me, me and his thirteen year old brother would hang out and we would do self, we would just do destructive things like, we tried to set the couch on fire and push it onto the highway. We were hoping a car would hit it. We were very bad people.

• 13:38Speaker 00

  We were very bad people, Stanley.

• 13:41Speaker 02

  But you did push it in, right?

• 13:42Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, it went onto the highway.

• 13:43Speaker 02

  And it just didn't end up hitting a car, but like someone could have died and horrible things could have happened.

• 13:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, but I was thirteen at the time. I mean, you didn't, you didn't care.

• 13:51Speaker 02

  What about the story with the, the ice cream on the furry seat?

• 13:54Speaker 00

  Same people. Yeah, we would ride around and we used to take motor oil and put it in, um, in these margarine dishes. And we would find people's open car windows and throw motor oil on their dashboards. It was just piece of shit. Like, it really was. It was like I was the living embodiment of Reddit when I was thirteen years old. I was a living message boy. That's what it was. That was our idea of trolling.

• 14:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:16Speaker 00

  And one time we found ice cream, a, a big thing of melted chocolate ice cream. We put it all over this seat and this guy had like this fur back, you know, the fur.

• 14:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 14:27Speaker 00

  Bushings. And we came back like five minutes later and we saw this like eighty year old woman wiping chocolate off her husband's back.

• 14:35Speaker 02

  So he just sat on it?

• 14:36Speaker 00

  He sat right in it and she was just wiping chocolate off this old man's back. And I, and it was, it was, it was victory. I felt.

• 14:47Speaker 00

  Cause it was harmless. It didn't hurt them.

• 14:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:50Speaker 00

  I mean, now I look back and I'm like, kinda like, oh, I was not nice to do. But you're thirteen.

• 14:54Speaker 02

  No, it's a great prank.

• 14:55Speaker 00

  Fucking, come on. People are shooting up schools now. All we did was.

• 15:01Speaker 00

  I mean, come on. That was fucking innocent.

• 15:04Speaker 02

  Did you always know that you were like, another funny thing about, about you that I've always appreciated is like, how inclined you are to cheat and how you haven't gotten better at it.

• 15:16Speaker 00

  Cheating with women? Yeah.

• 15:17Speaker 02

  Like, as long as I've known you.

• 15:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:19Speaker 02

  You've gotten caught cheating.

• 15:20Speaker 00

  I have, yeah. And I've also gotten away with it a lot. And the reason I don't, until, you know, while I, with my wife, I've been really surprisingly good. I mean, what am I gonna say?

• 15:31Speaker 02

  You've been good at not cheating.

• 15:33Speaker 00

  At not cheating?

• 15:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:36Speaker 00

  Learn what to do.

• 15:39Speaker 00

  I fucking, no, I haven't, but it was because I was, but when I met her, I was kind of at the end of my run. It doesn't mean it's easy, or that I'm not still a fucking pervert at heart, but it was like one of these things where I had done it for so many years so recklessly. And I, you know, I got busted by a couple of different girls who I really liked. Then I hurt people and I ended relationships. And I'm like, you gotta fucking stop.

• 16:01Speaker 02

  Guys, here's all of our dates in 30 seconds. June 5th and 6th, I'm gonna be in Virginia Beach. And then August 8th, I'm gonna be in Halifax, Nova Scotia with SNL's Cam Patterson, Lucas Zelnick, and Mark Gagnon, the Andrew Shels.com for those. And then also, we have the Life Paddle Classic Charity Tournament, June 4th. Shout out Neurogum for doing this with us. All the proceeds go to Baby Quest, which is the IVF charity that my wife and I work with, many other people work with, and just helping people start families. Very expensive process, so it's alleviating that pressure for them. And Neurogum has the Dad

• 16:43Speaker 02

  Bundle, the Andrew Shels Dad Bundle, that they're selling right now on their website. And if you buy that, or you just wanna donate, you don't have to just buy that, but the proceeds will be going to Baby Quest, so you can help support. Also, come out to the tournament, it'd be absolutely great. You can sign up, you can play. And yeah, we're just gonna raise a bunch of money for people trying to start families, playing the most fun sport that there is. Awesome. I hope to see you guys there, June 4th. Paddle House in Dumbo, New York. Love you guys. Mark, what you got?

• 17:11Speaker 01

  Great news, everybody. I'm going to many, many cities at the end of the year. I'm going to Plano, Texas, Chandler, Arizona, Pasadena, California, San Diego, Detroit, Michigan, and Salt Lake City, Utah. It'll be a wonderful time, and I can't wait to see you guys all there. Alex?

• 17:26Mark Gagnon?

  And I'm doing a lot of stuff in New York this summer. We have Cancelled Comedy, we have another Cancelled Comedy show. That is June 24th. Head over to cancelcomedyx.com. And then I have another one of my tennis series. That is on July 25th, and you can get that at theallloveclub.com. See you guys there. Peace.

• 17:46Speaker 04

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• 18:16Speaker 00

  He tells the story about when the dirty text got printed. Oh, my God. That was, and she's one of my best friends today. That was my girlfriend at the time, who was great. She was fucking dirty. She would do anything, but it didn't matter. It's like when you're in addiction, it's not about, you know what I mean? Like when you're a compulsive overeater, you have a stake. It doesn't mean that you're not gonna go home and fucking pig out on junk food. It doesn't mean anything. Yeah. So I was dirty texting with this woman, and it was really fucking good. And I saved it, and I saved it to my hard drive because I was gonna jerk off reading it later. Because that's the best part of intrigue, is the going back, the euphoric recall.

• 18:57Speaker 00

  I had a 12-step sponsor teach me that. Euphoric recall. I'm like, fuck it, that's exactly what it is. Fucking Tweedle my nipple on Rob when she said that.

• 19:07Speaker 01

  He's doing recall to the AA guy.

• 19:10Speaker 00

  Dude, it was such a good dirty talk session. And it was a Saturday morning, and I was doing radio five days a week. So it was like Saturday mornings I slept in. And I just, I heard, "Jim, Jim, get up." And I opened my eyes, and my girlfriend was standing in the bedroom doorway. And I just knew something was like bad, something bad had been discovered. Because she never would have woken me on a Saturday morning, knowing that that was my weekend. And her term, her tone of voice, I just knew I was fucking in trouble. She goes, "Get up." And I'm like, what? And she goes, I read your fucking conversation. I'm like, what do you mean? I'm like, I didn't do nothing.

• 19:51Speaker 00

  And then she, she mentioned the girls, uh, like the, the, the screen name or whatever. It might've been like an AIM chat, I don't know, whatever it was. But she mentioned something that I knew she had read it. And I'm like, um, she goes, you printed it. I had sent it to my printer by mistake. I meant to save it to a hard drive. But I had printed seven fucking pages of filthy text. And it went, and the reason she found it is because she was taking a college course and had printed out a paper to hand into her professor and fucking got it out of the thing. And she goes, thank God I looked through it before. Cause it was her paper and me going, can I smell it if you put it on my nose?

• 20:34Speaker 02

  No.

• 20:35Speaker 00

  Oh my God. It's one of, and, and I firmly believe that if she had handed that in, that she would have stabbed me in my sleep. Like she, cause she was, she had a temper and she was very, uh, let's say volatile at times. Um, and if she had also, and she also, uh, there was an email address I had, which I, is, is gone. I deleted it that day. Uh, but I just realized like, wow, man, I, she almost got the motherload. And, uh,

• 21:06Speaker 02

  What is the motherload?

• 21:08Speaker 00

  It was just, it was nothing, it was literally stuff. It was just a, a volume of dirty talking and perverted pictures. Just people sending me shit. Like, you know what I mean? It was, it was more intrigue than anything else.

• 21:19Speaker 02

  What is the dirty talk like? Like, what are you trying to get into? And is there a moment where you cross like the threshold of normalcy? Where you're like seeing how they're gonna respond?

• 21:29Speaker 00

  It has to be, it has to be something she's into talking about. It doesn't turn me on at all if it's me making her. Like I, I, that doesn't like, hey, pretend you're, uh, pretend you're this.

• 21:40Mark Gagnon?

  Yeah, now you're doing improv.

• 21:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 21:42Mark Gagnon?

  Yeah. Which sucks for everyone.

• 21:44Speaker 00

  Improv is never fun, especially when you're fucking trying to get off. I mean, I need organic.

• 21:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 21:50Speaker 00

  Because somebody's real perversion, I think is very sexy. It's like, I, I love that. There's a weird connection with somebody when you're being dirty and they're being dirty and they're like showing you things that people who have known them for a decade don't know.

• 22:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:05Mark Gagnon?

  So even, even if you're not into the things they're talking about, you just like the fact that they're into something?

• 22:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, certain things I probably wouldn't term, like, you know what I mean? Like there's, there's certain.

• 22:15Speaker 00

  Certain things I might not like doing, but I would never judge somebody. Like, I'm okay with you talking about anything you want, even though certain things wouldn't probably turn me on, but I would never shame somebody or scold them for being that way.

• 22:28Mark Gagnon?

  You're better than that.

• 22:30Speaker 00

  No, I'm in no position. But like, you know, the word sniff became like a great intrigue word. Like if a girl says she's gonna put her ass on my face, I'd go, alright, and she'd go, you're gonna sniff it, I'd go, oh, this is a, I'm onto something here. This is fucking, she's locked in. She gets, you know what I mean? She understands these weird trigger words.

• 22:53Speaker 02

  As you got famous, did people, did girls start like knowing that that's what you're into and start kind of curating their identity around that?

• 23:03Speaker 00

  I don't know, like, a lot of times you don't know them when they're coming in. Like, so you don't know who they are before they show up, so I don't know what their real mentality was before.

• 23:12Speaker 02

  Right.

• 23:12Speaker 00

  But you know how it is, like, when you're known, like, especially with radio, because it was 25 hours a week, it was, you know, people really know your life.

• 23:20Speaker 02

  And this is the heyday of radio. That's another thing that we gotta understand. So like, the show Opie and Anthony, and I wanna get into that a little bit too, but just like, radio's as big as it possibly can be, and this show was massive and also like a cult following.

• 23:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 23:35Speaker 02

  And also kind of like a rebellion against traditional radio.

• 23:39Speaker 01

  And also massive in New York City.

• 23:41Speaker 02

  And like Jersey, Philly, like, try stay area.

• 23:44Speaker 01

  You're walking around the city and people see you, like, you are existing within the space where it's being consumed.

• 23:47Speaker 00

  Boston, yeah, it was, it was, it was regular radio for a while. I was on regular, like, terrestrial radio for a couple of years.

• 23:55Speaker 02

  This was CBS?

• 23:56Speaker 00

  This was, yeah, CBS, it was originally Infinity Broadcasting, I think, but then it became CBS, kinda bought it, and Viacom bought the whole thing. And we eventually got, got fired, but we came back on satellite in 2004. You know, you're talking for, there's no, we had like literally four hour show at first, and there was no commercials at that point, so we would play Carlin bits just so we could stop talking.

• 24:20Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 24:20Speaker 00

  But your first break was an hour, hour and a half. So on slow news days, personal shit comes out, because you have, you know, August was a rough month, oh man, because everyone's on vacation, not much is happening, and you know what I mean? It's like, you know, it's August 11th, and you're like, yeah, what's going on?

• 24:36Speaker 02

  Read the text, Jim.

• 24:39Speaker 00

  I mean, my friends would jerk off together when I was seven. You just start spitting stuff out because you have to fill four and at some points, five hours.

• 24:47Speaker 02

  Right.

• 24:48Speaker 00

  People get to know you, they become very invested in you, in a good way and a bad way.

• 24:52Speaker 02

  So then these girls who are like maybe a little freakier like, okay, I got my guy who I can kind of really open up to and kind of explore this side of me.

• 24:59Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think so.

• 25:01Speaker 01

  Have you met someone, a woman with your level of freakiness?

• 25:03Speaker 00

  Oh yeah, I met way dirtier than, of course, yeah, yeah, yeah. Women are the same as we, they're not, they're just, they're not allowed to let it all hang out because the line would be out the door. So they have to be more selective as to who they show. Like if you're a guy and you're like, I'm a fucking pig, so what? But if you're a woman and you're like, I'm into fucking spanking and dirty, like, you know, there'd be too many, you'll be overrun with people willing to engage.

• 25:25Speaker 01

  Oh, that's interesting. So they hide it, but then when they meet someone that maybe they're a little more open with?

• 25:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 25:30Speaker 01

  Can reciprocate.

• 25:31Speaker 00

  I think so, yeah. They think they know they're not gonna be judged. I always thought women knew I was never gonna judge them either. Like, whatever you're gonna say to me, I'm never gonna think that you're a fucking piece of shit or you're less. At least I hope that's what it was.

• 25:41Speaker 02

  Was there anything that they said, dude? Was there a girl that went to a point where you felt uncomfortable?

• 25:47Speaker 00

  Not really, no, because it was all talk. Like, you know what I mean? It was, eh.

• 25:53Speaker 01

  Can I, can I pitch you a list of paraphilias and then you tell me if you have any experience with them? A paraphilia would be just like, uh, some type of different erotic fixation.

• 26:01Speaker 00

  Sure, okay.

• 26:01Speaker 01

  So like, uh, for example, uh, acrotomophilia, that's people with amputations.

• 26:07Speaker 00

  Not my thing. I heard a cop one time reference that he called them stump fuckers.

• 26:14Speaker 00

  Guys who are into that fetish.

• 26:19Speaker 02

  Wait, hadn't you done it?

• 26:21Speaker 00

  No, not my thing.

• 26:22Speaker 02

  What about wheelchair?

• 26:23Speaker 00

  Um, I never had, but I don't think I would be inclined not to. I don't, I don't know. To be real honest with you, I've never encountered that.

• 26:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:32Speaker 00

  But if I had been, it would depend on what our conversations had been up till then.

• 26:37Speaker 02

  Just throwing them legs around.

• 26:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, I don't know if I would like that or not though, you know what I mean? If I, you know, if you got fucking puppet legs and I gotta throw one over.

• 26:48Speaker 00

  I don't know, I've never encountered that, but I never talked about it either, so I can't, I don't know.

• 26:53Speaker 01

  What about potophilia? That would be a foot fetish.

• 26:56Speaker 00

  Oh yeah, you know, foot fetish stuff, I got into at one point, it's almost like you start to, it's like you run out of things. Like, you know what I mean? Like, how much ass worship can I do? The answer is a lot.

• 27:09Speaker 00

  A whole bunch. But then you start getting into other things, and someone says the right trigger word, and all of a sudden, it becomes a thing. It's very weird.

• 27:17Speaker 01

  You love the talking, like.

• 27:18Speaker 00

  The talking, I love.

• 27:19Speaker 01

  So if a woman just comes and wants to get straight into the sex, like, do you like that? Or you need the buildup?

• 27:25Speaker 00

  I need the buildup. I envy people who are tactile, and just like what's in front of them, what they feel is what they like. Like, you know those guys that can just climb on a woman and put their face in her neck and go, "Ohhhhh", just pump away. I envy that. What an easy life you have. To you, my friend. I've never been able to do that. Tweedle thee. What if you were getting fucked and he was better than me?

• 27:49Speaker 02

  So it's all mental for you?

• 27:52Speaker 00

  Well, almost all mental, yeah. The physical feels good, but it's almost all...

• 27:55Speaker 01

  What about a...

• 27:56Speaker 00

  Mental.

• 27:57Speaker 01

  Cerephilia, cerephilia. That's the soiling of pants. Like, peeing pants.

• 28:03Speaker 00

  Peeing pants could be nice. I wouldn't want somebody shitting their pants. That'd be a bit much. That'd be a rough go.

• 28:09Speaker 00

  That's a rough, that's a rough haul. So when he pulls down their pants, they're like, "Huh", and it's filled with pudding.

• 28:16Speaker 02

  But you like the pee stuff?

• 28:17Speaker 00

  I, yeah.

• 28:18Speaker 02

  What is, what is exciting about the pee?

• 28:20Speaker 00

  You sound like me in the mirror.

• 28:24Speaker 00

  With a piss on my shit.

• 28:28Speaker 01

  Who are we?

• 28:29Speaker 00

  What, what happened to you, Jim? I don't know. That's a great question. I, I first experienced it as a kid. I, I don't know. And I've told this story before, but like, there was this bully. I used to blow this kid, he was a bully. I was probably...

• 28:44Speaker 02

  Wait, hold on.

• 28:47Speaker 00

  This was in Edison, New Jersey. And I have a timeframe because of when I was, we moved from Edison to North Brunswick. My first day of school in North Brunswick was Halloween of 4th grade. So I know that anything in Edison that happened was before Halloween in 4th grade. So this bully I used to have oral sex with. And he would have happened first. I don't remember how it started, but I would blow him in the, like, the hallway in the apartment building. I was probably, yeah, I was young. It was like 1st grade, but he was like, he was like a year older than me. It wasn't like he was 51, he was 58.

• 29:26Speaker 02

  Wait, so were you gay back then?

• 29:27Speaker 00

  I mean, no, at that age, I mean, I certainly would have a hard time selling straight in court.

• 29:38Speaker 01

  Your honor, here's my bully. He was self-defended.

• 29:40Speaker 00

  Evidence is overwhelming.

• 29:43Speaker 01

  It's a crime of passion.

• 29:44Speaker 00

  That'd be a rough one to get across, but, no, but that was, again, it was, I definitely liked it, though. Like, you know what I mean? I enjoyed doing it. Like, so I, my therapist told me I was molested, but I don't see it. Like, I felt like, I showed up for it, you know what I mean? I enjoyed it.

• 30:01Speaker 01

  You arguing with your therapist.

• 30:03Speaker 02

  It's also funny, it's also funny that, like, he bullied you, but that wasn't the bullying.

• 30:08Speaker 01

  Like, I liked that part.

• 30:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, that was the bonding after the beat up. After the beat up, that was the apology. No, he would, but I was terrified of this kid. I remember being really scared of him, because I remember him and his friend came out of a building one time, and I was so scared, I ran, and I fell, and I fell, and I split my head open. So I have a photo of me with a bandage on my head from October of 73. So I know that by that time, we were already active, because I have a date stamp on a photo of when I fell and split my head open. But anyway, the pee thing, we were in the public pool, and I was at that age, where I didn't, like, I would go underwater, and I would suck his dick, and I didn't think anybody around the pool could see, like, I didn't know. Like, that's where you're at.

• 30:52Speaker 00

  So he peed in my mouth, and I didn't care for that, and I came up, and I'm like, "Don't do that again." And I went back down.

• 31:02Speaker 01

  Is this all real?

• 31:03Speaker 00

  It's all real. It's all real. No, this is real. I mean, trust me.

• 31:07Speaker 01

  You are blowing Alex's mind.

• 31:10Speaker 00

  This should be a weird bit to write. Public pool, 1974. But he peed in my mouth and I said, "Don't do that again." And he said he wouldn't, but I went back down. I went back down and he did it again. So I learned a real lesson about trust. That was so anyway, at that age, that's the first time I experienced that. But I was young because I didn't think that anyone above the water could see. Like, you know what I mean? Like when you're a kid, you hide, you're like, "No one can see me." So that's kind of these weird, vague, murky timestamps I have on when this stuff started happening.

• 31:45Speaker 01

  Do you look at that period of your life like with grief or like victimization? Do you feel that you were taken advantage of in that moment? Or were you just like, "Oh, I'm a kid being a kid"?

• 31:54Speaker 00

  Both. I don't know if it was taken advantage. I don't like to play victim in anything. Like, again, I enjoyed a lot of it. It felt good. Again, there's a lot of it's murky. I don't remember a lot of it. But the stuff I do remember, I felt good doing. So, you know, I always tell my therapist that I just kind of showed up for it.

• 32:11Mark Gagnon?

  Do you think anything happened before then? Because I'm like, first grade, I don't even think I knew about sucking dick.

• 32:19Speaker 00

  I can count 10 before 4th grade. Like, there was 10 different people in my neighborhood that we were sexual. But we were all sexual together. Then again, back then, there was very little parental supervision. You know, your parents were doing what they were doing. But yeah, I used to, oh my God, these two twins. You're asking about Peas Mill. These two twins. They weren't twins. No, they weren't twins. They were brother and sister. One was my age. The boy was my age and the sister was a year older. But for some reason, they both would wet their pants a lot. Like, I don't know what was going on in their house, but they were both pissing their pants a lot. So I would lay behind the bushes and I would get both of them to sit on my face at different times because I liked the way it smelled.

• 33:02Speaker 01

  What?

• 33:03Speaker 00

  I'll be appearing in Tampa.

• 33:07Mark Gagnon?

  See, this is why I say dudes in Jersey, bro, Jersey's different, bro.

• 33:11Speaker 02

  So, Al, you never had experience like that where like you were peeing on people or getting peed on?

• 33:16Mark Gagnon?

  It's weird enough being around y'all with the white boy fun and this is next level shit.

• 33:20Speaker 02

  This is the most extreme version.

• 33:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. The honesty is so admirable, but I'm also deeply uncomfortable hearing the stories.

• 33:26Speaker 02

  Were you never insecure about sharing it? That's what I've always been like shocked by you is that like you're around people, especially comedians, who will, and obviously you're fucking proficient at this too. Like if someone's gonna come at you, they better be ready. But like, you never felt like they would use any of this to belittle you or?

• 33:44Speaker 00

  It's, you know, people make fun of you for sure. I mean, but you, you, whenever you put something into the stratosphere, you understand that it's gonna be, uh, used to make fun of you, but I didn't care. I'm not sensitive about it. It's, it's, it's life experience. Like,

• 33:59Mark Gagnon?

  You were never sensitive?

• 34:00Speaker 00

  What's that?

• 34:00Mark Gagnon?

  Like you were never sensitive?

• 34:01Speaker 00

  Coming up, like, you know, you, you learn, you, you lose shame the more you talk about it. The more you own something, the more you talk about it, the less shame you have with it. Cause shame is the killer. Like, you know what I mean? It's, it's shame for things. It's self hatred. Which again, there was a lot of that mixed in as well. But, uh, talking about it and making it funny, uh, I mean, it was like, I don't care if they like it. You start to not care because I don't believe anybody. I know all of you have the dirty secret. Everyone has them. I don't care. If you have a totally regular marriage, there's something you like that you'd be humiliated if all of us knew. That's the same for every person.

• 34:40Speaker 00

  The more, the more school teachers I met that wanted to be spanked, the more people I realized were never what you think publicly. You lose shame because you're like, we're all, uh...

• 34:52Speaker 02

  And if anything, you're being more honest than everybody else is.

• 34:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, and I don't even think I'm doing anything great. Like, it's just, I just like to talk about it and be funny with it. And, uh, I don't judge other people for it.

• 35:03Speaker 02

  And weirdly, no one seems to judge you about it. That's the thing. And maybe it's your comfort with it. Like, when I say nobody, I mean like, especially in the comedy community. It's just like, oh yeah, Jim's into like weird shit. Anyway. Where there are certain people who like hide maybe their deviance.

• 35:16Mark Gagnon?

  Oh, yeah.

• 35:16Speaker 02

  And it feels like there's more judgment there because it's like, hey, you're lying.

• 35:21Speaker 00

  Well, we're a gotcha culture. We like to get people. We like to nail people. Gotcha, gotcha. But if you talk about it and you're not, you don't care if they know about it. There's no joy. It's more about people's desire to punish other people for stuff.

• 35:35Speaker 02

  It's not even the thing. It's the desire to punish. And the thing is just a tool that they're using.

• 35:39Speaker 00

  Hundred percent. That's all fake.

• 35:40Speaker 02

  So you're doing like the Eminem eight mile before Eminem eight mile. Like you're owning all these things about yourself. So it's like, say whatever you want about me. I already said it.

• 35:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, it was more, it was more Jim Norton, Yellow Brick Road.

• 35:54Speaker 01

  What about tickling?

• 35:57Speaker 00

  Interesting fetish. Never my thing. Um, I'm familiar with it as a fetish, but it's never done anything for me to do it. I might have met one woman who was into it. And I don't, again, I don't think it's crazy, but it's just, you know, it's just too childlike for me. Like, you know what I mean? Like, somebody being dirty, I like, but somebody, innocence, I don't think is sexy at all.

• 36:19Speaker 01

  Right.

• 36:20Speaker 00

  I like dirty. Like, you know what I mean? Like locked in a fucking perverted brain. But somebody being tickled and coochie cooing them.

• 36:28Speaker 01

  Would you ever do like hotlines? Like call up like there's a, there's a name for it. Telephonicophilia.

• 36:34Speaker 00

  Really?

• 36:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:35Speaker 00

  Oh, all right.

• 36:36Speaker 01

  But like I would see, I would see these things like 3am where it's like call for a sexy phone call or whatever.

• 36:42Speaker 00

  No, I remember though, there was, it used to be like in these, in like these magazines, this is only for the internet. They would advertise uh, these dirty phone lines. So I remember there was one where you sent in money. Like I mailed in cash and through the, the US mail. And I got a code with a bunch of phone numbers on it mailed back to me. And you would call any one of these phone numbers and one of the women would answer and you had 30 days and talk dirty to you. So I would call at all hours of the morning before. I used to work a day job, uh, probably late eighties. And you would call them and different women would answer and you could talk dirty. But a lot of times they were in California. So it was 4am when it was 7am for me. I remember some woman got really mad at me. She's like, you want to talk about that at this time of morning?

• 37:27Speaker 00

  And hung up on us. Fucking angry. I'm like, I paid $90. For this month, there's a lot of money back then now when you have no money, ninety bucks is a big nut for a month.

• 37:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:35Speaker 00

  Yeah, so I was never big on the nine hundred numbers though.

• 37:37Speaker 01

  Right.

• 37:38Speaker 00

  I did them, um, but I, it was never my thing necessarily because it was too much, oh, what are you doing, baby? And that performative shit never did anything for me.

• 37:46Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, because you need to be real.

• 37:48Speaker 02

  It needs to be real.

• 37:49Speaker 00

  It feel, yeah, it's more of a turn on if it's somebody's.

• 37:51Speaker 02

  But what about the prostitutes who you know, like they're, the goal is for them to not be real, I would imagine. Like, how do you lock into their deviance?

• 37:58Speaker 01

  That's why he liked the talking part after.

• 38:00Speaker 00

  That's why I like the talking part, but also I didn't do anything crazy with them, like I wasn't. It would, it would have to be something like if they were advertising like kind of fetish stuff or, or domination. Then I would assume that it was something that they, but anybody, I never wanted somebody going crazy and going like, oh, ah. Cause I'm like, look, I, I, I know the fuck I'm giving you, it's not worthy of that. You know what I mean? I'm giving you a five here, let's keep it at a five.

• 38:25Speaker 02

  And would you tell them stop if they were doing that?

• 38:27Speaker 00

  No, but I would indicate that I didn't need it, like somehow indicated or just talk normal to, like I, I, I didn't need porn star.

• 38:34Speaker 02

  Would you rather do the opposite? Would you rather than?

• 38:36Speaker 00

  I didn't want complete honesty. I mean, nobody wants, nobody wants that face.

• 38:43Speaker 02

  Some people like to be berated. They like to be like, ah, your fucking dick's short or some other guy fucks me, but you, you wouldn't.

• 38:50Speaker 00

  Oh, cuck stuff, oh.

• 38:51Speaker 02

  You're into the cuck stuff?

• 38:52Speaker 00

  Sure, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 38:53Speaker 02

  Have you ever watched?

• 38:54Speaker 00

  I have, yeah.

• 38:55Speaker 02

  Your girl?

• 38:56Speaker 00

  Only with one girlfriend I did, no, I did it with two girlfriends. Um, one girlfriend I just watched fool around with another girl.

• 39:04Speaker 02

  Oh, but that's not.

• 39:05Speaker 00

  But her boyfriend was there and we liked it.

• 39:07Speaker 01

  Wait, so the two of you as boyfriends were watching the two girlfriends?

• 39:11Speaker 00

  Two girls together and then we would each fool around with our, our own girl, like we didn't swap. But then with one girl, uh, she would, we got escorts twice. And I watched her, uh, blow this escort and it was really hot and dirty, but I wanted an escort. Because I didn't want anybody who would get attached, like I didn't, because it was in my house, so I didn't want somebody who knew where this woman was gonna be all the time.

• 39:37Speaker 00

  But that, it hurt the relationship in the end, like I realized like that stuff is so much better talked about. Because when you see it, real jealousies can creep, creep in.

• 39:45Speaker 02

  On your part?

• 39:46Speaker 00

  A little bit, I became insecure. The third time we tried it. Like the rule was whichever one of us wants to stop the experience can stop it without any hesitation. But I indicated I was kinda getting uncomfortable and she got a little annoyed at me. So that kind of blew up into more. But by then, I didn't, you know, first of all, I don't blame her for getting annoyed at me. I was cheating and she knew I was cheating. Like, you know what I mean? I was in no position to, to, to go like, hey, now you, you know, easy with that nine inch penis. Like, you know, I, I just, uh, but that, but it was the final nail in the coffin for a relationship that I was destroying anyway.

• 40:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:21Speaker 00

  I was ruining it.

• 40:22Speaker 01

  And so you never did it again because of that experience?

• 40:26Speaker 00

  Right. I've talked about it. I love to talk about it. I love the idea of it. Like, I love when a woman will talk about ex-lovers and guys she would rather be fucking. It's hot to me, but so many things in fantasy are okay in fantasy, but in real life, you know, that's when things get messy.

• 40:42Mark Gagnon?

  Yeah.

• 40:42Speaker 02

  It is interesting, the mental stimulation. Like, that's what they would say about, uh, like Stephen Hawking still being able to get a boner or whatever like that.

• 40:50Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 40:50Speaker 02

  It is, yeah, it's not just a purely physical thing. I don't even know if there are that many guys that exist like that, who could just like bury their face in a girl's neck and then fuck.

• 40:59Speaker 00

  There is enough of them to where I wish I was one of them. Like, you know, like, I wish I was one of them.

• 41:04Speaker 02

  Look, a new girl, a new girl, sure, but a girl you've been with forever.

• 41:09Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. You need something.

• 41:11Speaker 02

  You, you've been married for 20 years. You think you're just burying your fucking head in your wife's neck?

• 41:14Mark Gagnon?

  That's different.

• 41:15Speaker 02

  No, there needs to be something.

• 41:16Speaker 00

  Even with a new girl.

• 41:18Speaker 01

  I'm trying my best. I'm T and B right now, dude. Touch a bus.

• 41:24Speaker 00

  Really? Are you really?

• 41:26Speaker 01

  Serious? Yeah.

• 41:27Speaker 00

  Oh my God, you're so lucky.

• 41:29Speaker 01

  And I do consider myself lucky, to be honest with you.

• 41:31Speaker 00

  You really are. Those guys that were like, uh, oh, man, I'm too pumpy. I'll be like, oh, man, you should thank God every night for that. Your life is so...

• 41:40Mark Gagnon?

  But he's only been with one woman for his entire life.

• 41:44Speaker 01

  Very much other sexual stimulation, so it's easy for me.

• 41:46Speaker 00

  Only one girl? Oh, you married?

• 41:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:47Speaker 00

  Oh, you met a really young fellow, love him up. Ah, that's an interesting life, man. You, you haven't, and you still enjoy the sex?

• 41:54Speaker 01

  It's great.

• 41:54Mark Gagnon?

  It's an interesting life.

• 41:55Speaker 00

  That's a great way to be. Like, that's a healthy, like, that I envy.

• 42:00Speaker 01

  I think it's partially because I have no other frame of reference, really, like...

• 42:02Speaker 00

  That's exactly it. Like, if you're raised eating broccoli, that's all you're ever gonna have.

• 42:07Speaker 02

  It probably tastes sweet.

• 42:08Speaker 00

  Yeah. Broccoli is delicious, but the minute someone shoves a fucking, you know...

• 42:12Speaker 02

  Dick in your mouth.

• 42:16Speaker 00

  You're like, wow, broccoli has been lacking.

• 42:19Speaker 01

  I feel like an African tribesman, you know what I mean? Like, I don't need gushers. I don't think about Oreos.

• 42:24Speaker 00

  Never tried Pepsi.

• 42:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. I'm just eating elves.

• 42:27Speaker 00

  Can you say I love you when you have sex to somebody that you actually love?

• 42:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's the whole thing.

• 42:32Speaker 00

  Ah, it must be fun.

• 42:40Speaker 00

  You guys.

• 42:41Speaker 02

  Tell us, Tim, tell us.

• 42:43Speaker 01

  You just asked us, can you be honest with someone that you're honest with?

• 42:46Speaker 00

  Sure, but I can't say I love you because it breaks something. Like, if I love you, I want it to be dirty and you're talking about other guys you'd rather fuck. And if I just met you, I can say I love you.

• 42:58Speaker 02

  Because it's not real.

• 42:58Speaker 01

  Because it's not real.

• 42:59Speaker 00

  It's flipped.

• 43:00Speaker 01

  This is like the Madonna whore complex.

• 43:02Speaker 00

  100%.

• 43:03Speaker 02

  Explain this, explain this. So like, you're, you do love the person.

• 43:07Speaker 00

  Oh, very much.

• 43:07Speaker 02

  Obviously, you love your wife, you love your girlfriends even, but you're transporting yourself to this like dirty version when you're having sex, and that breaks the frame.

• 43:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, so whatever is the, like, you know, like, if I was with a sex worker, I didn't want to call her like, oh, yeah, you fucking whore. It wasn't like that. It was more like, I liked it to be kind of nice and like, oh, like, she's, she's kind of enjoying this and being dirty with me, like, and then there's been times where I said, I love you. Like, oh, man, there was one, one girl, we were having, we would kiss a lot, and we were gonna have sex, and I didn't, and before I put it in, she's like, I have condoms if you want. And when she said, if you want, I was like, uh-uh. And she was like, all right, if you're ready to be a daddy, and I just put it in, and I had sex with her without a condom. I think I told her I loved her. It was so fucking hot.

• 43:59Speaker 02

  And did you leave it in?

• 44:01Speaker 00

  Not with her, but I had with a couple of other ones, you know, yeah. I actually, I actually do like gambling.

• 44:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 44:12Speaker 02

  Really, you were shooting up the club with prostitutes?

• 44:14Speaker 00

  I shot inside, yeah, a couple of times, yeah.

• 44:17Speaker 02

  Immediate paranoia afterwards?

• 44:20Speaker 00

  The day, the next day, I think the last time I did that, it's so funny, was this, again, these weird frames of reference, was, I believe it was at the end of the year in 2011. Because I remember afterwards, she and I were sitting around talking, and she knew who Patrice was, and he was in the hospital at that point, he'd had a stroke, but he was still alive. So I think that was at the end of 2011 that I did that. And I saw her a year, 18 months later, you know what I mean? And she was very sexy, I remember, I had full unprotected sex with her, told her I loved her when I came inside of her. And then...

• 44:55Speaker 01

  Did she have a nine-month-old kid?

• 44:57Speaker 00

  Well, no, but she was pregnant when I saw her again.

• 44:59Speaker 01

  Oh, shit.

• 45:00Speaker 00

  She was pregnant when I saw her again, but it was like, it was a year and a half later. And we didn't have sex, we just fooled around a little bit. But she was so honest. She goes, "Yeah, it's a client." And she goes, "He got me pregnant, and I told him I'd get the abortion for this much money, but he didn't want to do it. And I know how much money he makes, and now he's gonna be paying X amount percent for the next 18 years." So I'm like, I realized, wow, I would have been in big trouble. But I was very happy she told me that. Like, she was very honest about how she got pregnant and with who.

• 45:29Speaker 02

  You were fooling around with her while she was pregnant?

• 45:32Speaker 00

  Only one time, but I don't think I knew she was when she came over, until she came over. But, you know, again, we had always kind of stayed in touch.

• 45:41Speaker 02

  But she came in her van, right?

• 45:42Speaker 00

  No, not the second time. I didn't have sex with her when she was pregnant.

• 45:44Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 45:45Speaker 00

  This was like, you know, and again, 2012, maybe I saw her. We just had oral sex. I didn't have sex with her. I would never been into pregnancy. Like, I mean, the idea of pregnancy, some guys fetishize it. I certainly didn't want it in my life, as is pretty obvious. I'm like, we're gonna avoid that at all costs. But I never liked, a lot of guys like pregnant women, they like lactating, and I just want, that's not my thing.

• 46:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, I knew a dude that would, like, find women on Craigslist and buy their breast milk. And he was like, that was my favorite thing. And he's like, if you paid like an extra like thousand bucks, they would let you rip it from the tab. And that was like his thing. He loved it.

• 46:20Speaker 00

  Jesus. What else did he enjoy doing? Like taking toys from kids? That's basically taking a kid's lunch. For all of my, my dirtiness, I've never wanted to steal a kid's fucking lunch.

• 46:31Speaker 00

  Hey, I'm gonna jerk off and eat those Lunchables.

• 46:35Speaker 00

  Kids screaming in the other room. Yeah, that's never been my thing.

• 46:38Speaker 01

  With your level of like profile, but also like being so public with certain levels of deviance, did you have people reaching out to you that maybe had some type of profile themselves that were like, hey, keep this between us, but like I would love to explore this thing with you?

• 46:52Speaker 00

  No, I wish I did.

• 46:54Speaker 01

  Really?

• 46:54Speaker 00

  No, man. No, no. Other people in public life, never. Uh, I mean, you know, there was women in porn who I got to know. And they, I literally liked me because I didn't talk about them like they were punchline. Like I, I like people in porn. I respect it. It's a fucking hard job, man. You know, guys use, I've been on porn sets and I've hosted the AVN Awards twice. And the first time I hosted was with, uh, it was two, uh, January of oh four with Jenna Jameson. And, uh, so I got to go to Jenna's shoot and I, it was like a fucking craft services. It was like any film set you're on. And then you go one level lower and it's like, there's a crew and there's a director, but you know, it's kind of lower budget. And then I went and saw like with that, just one guy with a camera filming a woman. And you see the different levels, but that's a fucking hard job, man.

• 47:39Speaker 00

  Porn, porn is really difficult. Like so to have sex in front of a room full of people with an unsexy atmosphere. You know what I mean? There's a director, uh, that's why you hear dumb music, but you don't hear the director. Come on, let's go. Look this way a little bit more. I'm gonna need the pop. I'm gonna need the pop. And you're like, I don't know how these guys stay hard or how these women stay into it. It's fucking crazy. So I've always respected people in that business. So they kind of, they tended to like me because I didn't think they were, you like, uh, like I didn't look at them like that.

• 48:06Speaker 01

  Right.

• 48:07Speaker 00

  And I always hate people who do because it's like, you jerk off looking at them, motherfucker.

• 48:11Speaker 01

  Yeah. So who are you?

• 48:12Speaker 00

  Who the fuck are you? You with your fucking dumpy spouse? Look at her. She's a whore. She married a fucking lady with skin tags on her neck. Don't fuck with her.

• 48:22Speaker 00

  I always hated that attitude about, you know what I mean? They always deserved a certain level of uh, respect that they didn't get, I thought.

• 48:29Speaker 02

  Right, right.

• 48:30Mark Gagnon?

  What about like, industry people? Do they feel comfortable opening up to you and telling, telling you about their stuff?

• 48:36Speaker 00

  Industry as in the business world?

• 48:37Mark Gagnon?

  Yeah.

• 48:38Speaker 00

  No, not at all.

• 48:39Mark Gagnon?

  That's surprising, huh?

• 48:40Speaker 00

  Nah.

• 48:40Speaker 02

  Really? There wasn't like, uh, more honesty around you because you're so open?

• 48:44Speaker 00

  Oh, maybe comedians, sure, maybe friends. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that type of stuff, sure. But I mean, like, as far as a- at large, no. I think it made people a little uncomfortable.

• 48:54Speaker 02

  You think you were making people uncomfortable?

• 48:56Speaker 00

  At a certain point, sure, like certain things.

• 48:57Speaker 02

  Early on?

• 48:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, or even when you're on the radio. Like, people in the business don't want to hear that shit. Like, you know what I mean? Every, it's weird to hear some of that stuff. You know what I mean? Like, I, to me, it's not weird. I, I, none of it's weird at all.

• 49:09Speaker 02

  Can we talk about how insane the radio run was?

• 49:11Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 49:11Speaker 02

  A little, because, I don't know, it's just, as I've like, been in the business for a while, there's like, these ebbs and flows with certain things. And like, when it's happening in the moment, it feels like the biggest thing that could ever exist.

• 49:22Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 49:23Speaker 02

  And it's interesting how like, five, 10 years could go away. And it's not that people forget that it happened.

• 49:30Speaker 00

  Right.

• 49:30Speaker 02

  But like, it doesn't have that same, you know, velocity. It doesn't have that same, like, illumination.

• 49:36Speaker 00

  Not at all, yeah.

• 49:36Speaker 02

  It, it is a kind of crazy experience, because I remember Opie and Anthony, especially like, in this part of America, having like, a stranglehold on culture.

• 49:45Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 49:46Speaker 02

  And like, just insane. Like, you even think about like, early things that pop certain guys, definitely you, but like, Bill Burr's thing in Philly. Do you know that thing where he like, was, that, that's an Opie and Anthony show.

• 49:57Speaker 00

  I was on that show.

• 49:57Speaker 02

  You were on the show?

• 49:58Speaker 00

  I remember it happened, yeah. And I remember it happened to him in Cleveland, too. And Bill, uh...

• 50:02Speaker 02

  Cause was Bill frequently on?

• 50:04Speaker 00

  This was right, we were the first show on, we were the first, like, show of our kind on satellite. It was October of 2004, whereas Stern came on satellite January 06. So we were there for about 14 months before. And this was only when XM and Sirius were separate. So we had a, we started small, we had to rebuild our audience from when we got fired, but it was a very kind of hardcore show early on. And Bill would be on the satellite show all the time. But then we started, we got this weird split deal, which is when we were doing five hours a day, where we would do the first three hours on regular radio and satellite together. And then the final two hours, we would walk down the street, we would broadcast walking down 57th Street,

• 50:48Speaker 00

  go back to the XM studios, do the final two hours on XM alone. So when the regular radio audience started to hear us, they knew me, they knew Opie and Anthony, they didn't know Bill, because Bill wasn't famous then, and only the satellite audience knew him. So a lot of these audiences in these traveling virus shows were from terrestrial radio, this new K-Rock show we were doing. Um, so they started booing Bill. They booed Don Marra, I think they booed like Jimmy Schubert, like real Philly guys. And Bill just did his legendary rant, um, and they eventually turned it around. He was incredible.

• 51:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:25Speaker 00

  So in Cleveland, they tried doing the same thing to him. And I remember he was having a meltdown, he was so fucking pissed off, uh, that they were just booing him. And I remember talking to him, and we were in his hotel room. And it was like, you did something amazing, and they're just trying to recreate it. Like, they don't hate you.

• 51:42Speaker 02

  They heard about the moment, and they want that to happen again.

• 51:45Speaker 00

  They wanted him to do it in Cleveland. Like, they understood that the moment was so great, what he had done organically.

• 51:51Speaker 02

  That's one of the first viral stand-up clips.

• 51:53Speaker 00

  It really is, yeah.

• 51:54Speaker 02

  It's like Russell Peters and Bill Burr.

• 51:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, that clip, I remember, it was shot like with not a very good camera.

• 52:01Speaker 02

  It looked like it was from the audience or something like that.

• 52:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, I believe it was.

• 52:04Speaker 05

  I think it's multiple phones.

• 52:05Speaker 00

  Oh, was it what?

• 52:06Speaker 05

  There's a part where there's no video. From what I remember, it's just audio. And then a couple of people splice together other angles from the crowd.

• 52:14Speaker 00

  Oh, they did, okay.

• 52:15Speaker 02

  Okay, so you guys get fired, so you're on regular radio.

• 52:19Speaker 00

  Yeah, like 20 markets, yeah.

• 52:21Speaker 02

  Okay, and would that be, 20 markets, would that be huge? Like, is that decent?

• 52:25Speaker 00

  New York, we were on New York, Boston.

• 52:27Speaker 02

  For radio standards, I'm saying, is that?

• 52:29Speaker 00

  It's good size for FM. For what we were doing. I mean, Rush Limbaugh was on probably two or three hundreds.

• 52:35Speaker 02

  And Howard was on what?

• 52:37Speaker 00

  Probably fifty or more. He was big. Howard was always bigger.

• 52:41Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 52:41Speaker 00

  Um, but ONA had a reputation. They had been fired in Boston. Um, you know what I mean? It was like.

• 52:48Speaker 02

  It seems like the radio guys that got this like escape velocity, because Charlamagne is the same thing. Like he got fired from a bunch of different markets, then finds a home that's going to support him.

• 52:57Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 52:58Speaker 02

  And see you later. Same thing with Howard. Same thing with you guys. So you guys get fired from regular radio.

• 53:04Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 53:04Speaker 02

  What happened?

• 53:06Speaker 00

  Well.

• 53:06Speaker 01

  Is that the sex with Sam thing?

• 53:08Speaker 00

  Sex for Sam. Yeah, it was, uh, the Sam, the Sam was Sam Adams beer. They sponsored this thing that ONA would do every year where people go around and have sex in all these weird places in New York. Um, and if you had sex, you would get points. And if you had anal, it was a two-point conversion. And they would have a spotter from, yes, they would have a spotter from the show go, whether it was a producer or a video guy, just to watch the couple and make sure they were having sex and not lying. And they would call in. Right now, we're, you know, we're in the fucking, we're in the dressing room in Macy's and he's having anal with her. Like it was that type of stuff. So.

• 53:41Speaker 02

  This is on regular radio.

• 53:42Speaker 00

  This terrestrial radio. Yeah.

• 53:43Speaker 02

  Just to put things in perspective, like.

• 53:45Speaker 01

  So crazy.

• 53:46Speaker 02

  The things that people get, and I hate the word like triggered or offended. It's just like so overused, but like,

• 53:53Speaker 02

  culturally now, I feel like there we would be way more sensitive to something. There's like no way this could happen. Yes, we can say certain words now, but actual action, like this hijinks, the hij, the radio hijinks happening back in the day, far more insane than anything happening right now.

• 54:07Speaker 00

  It was, it was crazy and they were having sex all over the city and I didn't.

• 54:10Speaker 02

  Sam Adams sponsored it.

• 54:11Speaker 00

  They sponsored it.

• 54:12Speaker 02

  A major beer company.

• 54:14Speaker 00

  It was sponsored. The guy, the head of the company would always come in. He was, because they were on, and ONA was massive in Boston too. So he was from Boston. So I didn't go out. I was not a spotter. I wouldn't go out and do it because I guess it was a, something 2001, maybe.

• 54:29Speaker 02

  Word you enjoy it.

• 54:30Speaker 00

  But we, we.

• 54:32Speaker 02

  Jim, Jim, you there?

• 54:33Speaker 00

  Get out of there, guys.

• 54:34Speaker 02

  Shut up.

• 54:35Speaker 00

  No, be more like, get out of there, guys.

• 54:39Speaker 00

  But no, me and I, we had been, Louis Black and I had been arrested for the radio show, probably a year before. We were on this bus called the, you know.

• 54:46Speaker 02

  What happened with the arrest?

• 54:47Speaker 00

  Well, there was a company that came in, this is, again, we were on WNEW in the afternoon, it was an afternoon show, and these people came in and they were driving around with a bus with giant windows and half naked girls, like topless girls, promoting this, the voyeur bus. So Louis Black, myself and a couple guys from the radio show get on the bus and we're just kind of going around with them as they drive through seasonal rush hour traffic in, in December of 2001. And-

• 55:16Speaker 01

  That's what the city needed.

• 55:17Speaker 00

  It was amazing. Giuliani was mayor. They needed a break. But there was all these naked girls just showing their tits to people.

• 55:27Speaker 00

  But we, so Louis and I were calling in the radio show, just kind of updating them with what was going on. And apparently Clinton was, was, he had a route that was mapped off, President Clinton, and we got too close to his route. So they, they pulled us over. Like CNN had gotten on the bus and done a live report. And, and we got, we went on to Sixth Avenue to go back to the studio. And there was probably like 12 cop cars, all these white shirt, like fucking cops, like, you know, high ranking cops. And they arrested us because we were getting too close to Clinton's marked route.

• 55:59Speaker 01

  They're afraid Clinton was gonna come on.

• 56:03Speaker 00

  They'll ruin every dress on the bus. So they arrested us and we went down to the tombs and spent 27 hours in jail.

• 56:11Speaker 02

  Just for being near his route?

• 56:12Speaker 00

  For being, no, no, for being on the bus. But they didn't know what to charge us with. They didn't know. So the prosecutor tried to charge us with promotion of the lewdness of a body. That was the charge. And the judge threw it out immediately. He said, you're wasting everybody's time to the prosecutor. But it was just a lesson and I don't ever want to get arrested again.

• 56:30Speaker 02

  Spend some time in the tombs, man. Tombs is real.

• 56:32Speaker 00

  27 hours, I had to shit. And one of the guys told me to fuck, he goes, you gotta take toilet paper and roll it up and shove it in your asshole to stop the shit from-

• 56:40Speaker 02

  To stop from shitting.

• 56:40Speaker 00

  And I, and I, I thank him very much.

• 56:44Speaker 02

  Transformative moment in their life.

• 56:45Speaker 01

  You're like, I'd do that anyway.

• 56:48Speaker 00

  But anyway, that taught me never to get arrested. So when they did sex for Sam, I didn't go out. So anyway, there was a couple, one of the locations they picked was St. Patrick Cathedral. And our producer at the time, or our associate producer was going, don't do it, don't fuck with, and he was right. Because there was a couple that had anal in one of the pews, or I forget where it was.

• 57:09Speaker 02

  Not the first time.

• 57:10Speaker 00

  Not, what's that?

• 57:14Speaker 01

  The church is gonna come for you, bro.

• 57:18Speaker 02

  Might be a little familiarity.

• 57:21Speaker 00

  It was, definitely not.

• 57:25Speaker 00

  It was, it was probably the first time that the person having it done wasn't lisping going, what's happening?

• 57:35Speaker 02

  There'll be no consensual anal in this church.

• 57:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, so anyway, there was an arrest made, and then the Catholic League, ba ba ba, came after the show.

• 57:45Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 57:46Speaker 00

  And.

• 57:47Speaker 02

  Got it, you had the religious institution come after the show. That's a little different than you have some like fledgling business that's busting around the city.

• 57:53Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, this was.

• 57:54Speaker 01

  You have the power of God.

• 57:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, they were very angry, and in fairness, we shouldn't have been fired, but they suspended the show. This was like, a few months into a three-year deal, and I was finally getting paid, and my salary was supposed to double. At the time, I was making fifty-two grand a year, like a grand a week, and it was just about to double to a hundred grand, and we got kicked off the air before.

• 58:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, you already spent that money too.

• 58:18Speaker 00

  I just moved into New York. I, dude, I was paying, I was living in New Jersey with Jim Florentine and his girlfriend. Three of us were splitting nine-hundred-dollar rent. We had fucking black mold on the walls. It was a shit hole. So we move into New York because the prices are a little lower now because of nine eleven. A lot of the prices went down after nine eleven. Um, so I got my own apartment, twenty four hundred bucks a month. I couldn't, I'm like, I'll be fine. Yeah. Were kicked off the air. Ooh. And I remember looking up at my, I'm gonna throw myself out the twenty second floor. And I was like, I was really, I was like, I'm done. My life is getting good. I'm starting to sell theaters. And it's fucking gone. I was so, I was suicidal. But anyway, we got kicked off. Opie and Anthony got paid for the whole time. Did you guys get paid?

• 59:02Speaker 00

  I got paid for six months and that was it. But they didn't have to pay me because I didn't, I hadn't, the contract hadn't been done yet. But they did the right thing. They did the right thing for me and they let me go on other shows. That's why I love Ron and Fez so much because they would always have me on back then. Got it, got it. All these shows would have me on to promote my shows because they knew I didn't, you know, they knew I was just the fucking, the third wheel. Yeah. Uh, guy. I didn't come up with this.

• 59:23Mark Gagnon?

  This is such a full circle moment. So I grew up on like Hot ninety seven, BLS, a little Z one hundred.

• 59:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, Star of the Wild.

• 59:30Mark Gagnon?

  Yeah, so I, I missed Opie and Anthony, but I remember this story. And that inspired a time in my life where I just started having sex in public in different places.

• 59:41Speaker 00

  Wow. Swear to God. Really? Oh.

• 59:44Speaker 01

  And they say never meet your heroes. Look at that. Isn't that beautiful?

• 59:47Speaker 00

  And I did it in a church. Did you really?

• 59:48Speaker 01

  Alex.

• 59:49Speaker 00

  Um. Sorry.

• 59:50Speaker 02

  Well, here goes the show.

• 59:51Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 59:53Speaker 00

  Now, the church, was it empty?

• 59:54Mark Gagnon?

  Yeah, it was.

• 59:55Speaker 00

  Oh, all right. Good for you.

• 59:56Mark Gagnon?

  Yeah.

• 59:57Speaker 00

  So happy. I'm so happy. That's so fun. This is six degrees. Jim wanted details. Yeah, exactly. How many people are in there? Yeah, but that's, that's six degrees of separation. Oh, nice.

• 1:00:08Speaker 01

  Were you ever a connoisseur of public sex?

• 1:00:10Speaker 00

  No.

• 1:00:10Speaker 01

  Never, never a bathroom stall, nothing like that?

• 1:00:13Speaker 00

  Occasionally the idea of it, but I liked private and dirty.

• 1:00:15Mark Gagnon?

  Yeah. But when you hooked up with the escorts, wasn't that like in the car?

• 1:00:18Speaker 00

  Brought them back. Yeah, but I was, I would find a desolate spot. Like, you know, I mean, I liked, again, I liked private and just one on one. I was never into group things or, that was never my thing.

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• 1:02:47Speaker 04

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• 1:03:17Speaker 02

  You guys get back on the air two years later. This is the Sirius XM deal.

• 1:03:21Speaker 00

  Two thousand four.

• 1:03:22Speaker 02

  Okay. Is this, does this begin like the heyday of Opie and Anthony?

• 1:03:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, they were big before, though. They were big before I came on board. I mean, before I came on, it was already, but it was only on in New York. Opie and Anthony was only on in New York, and eventually we got syndicated to Philly, but by then I was on the show.

• 1:03:42Speaker 02

  Is it true that Howard Stern said that you guys weren't allowed to talk about him?

• 1:03:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, at one point he did. It was, I always thought Howard handled Opie and Anthony wrong because he knew that they were a funny show, and he's like, he was accusing them of ripping him off, and they were definitely influenced by him.

• 1:03:59Speaker 02

  Everybody was.

• 1:04:00Speaker 00

  And they would say it. Opie would say it, Ant would say it. But I always thought he should have like, looked at those guys as, hey, these guys are funny, give them a shot, and they would have worshipped him. Like, they really respected Howard.

• 1:04:11Speaker 02

  Of course, yeah.

• 1:04:11Speaker 00

  Uh, but it just got so

• 1:04:13Speaker 02

  Combative.

• 1:04:14Speaker 00

  nasty and back and forth and, you know, our show, uh, and those guys were not afraid of any, any show at all. Like, it was brutal, and there was, no one was gonna say anything about Opie and Anthony without a horrible response.

• 1:04:28Speaker 02

  What do you, so what do you mean? So like, you guys are clocking every other radio show that's talking shit, and then you're immediately hammering back?

• 1:04:33Speaker 00

  You would get, you would get word, and if Howard talked about you, you would absolutely know, because he was the biggest.

• 1:04:37Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 1:04:38Speaker 00

  Uh, but yeah, at one point, they weren't even allowed to, I remember when Nicole and Nicole Smith had a show, and her lover was Howard K. Stern, and they couldn't even say his name, Howard K. Stern, because the guy down the hall, Al, would dump out, they had a dump button on live radio, in case you said one of the FCC violations. So he would dump out every time they would say it. So they had to reference, uh, around it. Um, but yeah, that was at the, at the end of the terrestrial run. Um, that, that, he said that they couldn't talk about him.

• 1:05:09Speaker 02

  Wow. What was the, what do you think was the event that catapulted the show?

• 1:05:15Speaker 00

  I mean Sex for Sam made it pretty legendary. Them getting fired in Boston before I even came on made it legendary.

• 1:05:24Speaker 02

  What about with you guys at the during the Sirius run?

• 1:05:26Speaker 00

  We had some funny moments at Sirius XM like the bit like with the with the cult following like John Valby, who's one of my favorite comics of all time, Dr. Dirty. He would play dirty piano. He was prolific and he was brutal, but we were in the building above the Steinway piano place. That was our building. We were on the fifth floor, I think, and Steinway was downstairs. So he went into the Steinway thing because he's an accomplished pianist and he played in this beautiful Steinway store. He started singing his fucking filthy songs at full volume, you know, eat her pussy, grab her tits. And they fucking and we played it live on the air and they threw him out of the store. But that type of stuff got fans like you don't know what's going to happen on this show and you don't know where it's

• 1:06:09Speaker 00

  going to happen. That began and cherry darts.

• 1:06:13Speaker 02

  Cherry darts?

• 1:06:14Speaker 00

  It was a bunch of girls would come in and they were they would like you would have a cherry and they would put whipped cream in their assholes and you would throw the cherry to see who could get closest to the asshole and whoever did would win whatever the prize was.

• 1:06:28Speaker 01

  Got to eat the cherry?

• 1:06:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, that was the winner. Yeah, but I think I ate all the cherries. Sweet boy. But like stuff like that, like all this stuff you couldn't do on regular radio, which we then did on XM.

• 1:06:43Speaker 01

  It's almost like I'm sure you see streaming now and how these streamers will go out into real life and like they'll interface with people. You guys are kind of doing like an early version of that where this guy's going into the Steinway store and interfacing with real employees that are now on the radio kicking him out.

• 1:06:58Speaker 00

  When we when we did the walkover, which was again, the technology then was so weird.

• 1:07:02Speaker 02

  How the fuck could you guys do it?

• 1:07:03Speaker 00

  Well, we had portable units and we would push a shopping cart with equipment in it.

• 1:07:07Speaker 02

  Hilarious.

• 1:07:08Speaker 00

  From 57th Street Hay Rock to 57th Street, the Steinway building. It was about a two block walk and the group of listeners would come and follow us and interact with us and meet with us. And Voss would do comedy. We would have Voss because Voss is fearless.

• 1:07:24Speaker 00

  Like he's the rottenest man in the business. He's a mean little bastard.

• 1:07:28Speaker 02

  He's also the sweetest.

• 1:07:29Speaker 00

  So, he's the nicest guy behind your back. This is Rick. He's a complete piece of shit when you're in the room and he's nice when you leave the room. He's like, he's really funny.

• 1:07:38Speaker 02

  He's the best.

• 1:07:38Speaker 00

  He's the epitome of, like, he-

• 1:07:41Speaker 02

  Also, he takes a joke well. This is something, there's a lot of guys who can dish it out. The second they start getting made fun of, they get all fucking sensitive.

• 1:07:47Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:07:47Speaker 02

  Voss likes it.

• 1:07:48Speaker 00

  Voss's, Voss's problem is, he's greedy. So he'll always punch himself out. And the key with Voss is to just cover up and take the beating. Cause when he's giving you a beating, it's relentless.

• 1:07:58Speaker 02

  Momentum, it's over.

• 1:07:59Speaker 00

  He gets momentum and his little legs start going downhill.

• 1:08:04Speaker 00

  And you're in deep trouble.

• 1:08:05Speaker 02

  Bro, there's a great clip of you guys. Colin's on, I wonder if it's Jim and Sam or your own opening, but Colin's on, he's wearing like a Purdue something shirt.

• 1:08:15Speaker 01

  A Boilermakers, yeah.

• 1:08:16Speaker 02

  Purdue Boilermakers shirt. And like, Colin starts going, and you guys know that Voss is coming on the show. And Colin's like, ah, Voss, I can't do, I can't do a Colin dance. He goes, how long do you think before Voss makes a joke about this shirt? How long? What do you think? He's like, yeah, something, you eat chicken? You eat a lot of chicken, whatever, like that. Like, you guys call out what's gonna happen. Voss walks in the room, and then what is the first-

• 1:08:41Speaker 01

  Immediately sits down and goes, are you doing colleges again?

• 1:08:46Speaker 02

  He hits one, he hits another, right? And then he does a third and it doesn't land. And then literally Colin goes, see, that's your problem, you're too greedy.

• 1:08:53Speaker 00

  You had us. You had us. Every time. They were on my podcast a couple, the people's favorite episodes of my podcast are when Anthony comes on, or when Voss and Colin rock.

• 1:09:01Speaker 02

  Bro, the one where Voss is on and Colin's on and you're there. And you, you go, my dad once said, and Voss just goes, less teeth. And you, it flew over your head. You missed it, I think, when he said it, right?

• 1:09:16Speaker 00

  I think, no, for a second I was like, I couldn't believe he had just said that. Because I'm hard to shock with a mean joke. And it's such a funny, I'm like, you can't not love that joke. It was one of the meanest things anybody's ever done. It was such a barbaric, rotten thing to say. So Voss is, yeah, Voss is like a guy who really, and he's fearless. Rich is fucking fearless. And he would go on and we would mic him and he would go into these places and do, I forget what we called it.

• 1:09:48Speaker 02

  Stand up in a diner, stand up on a bus.

• 1:09:50Speaker 00

  We just started. Yeah. Club Soda Kenny would go, ladies and gentlemen, Rich Voss. And he would just walk in and start working the crowd and people, you know, they didn't want to make it, but they hated it. And we would walk over and then finish our show at XM. But it was like that, the homeless shopping spree, the stuff like that, where they would get all these homeless people and just invade a mall. And a thousand listeners would show up. But they treated the homeless people well. They would buy them clothes, buy them shoes, and the homeless guys were like celebrities on the, on the show, yeah. They were loved, like we would joke with them, but they were really treated well and people would spend a lot of money on them. And then once XM and Sirius merged, they shut a lot of that down.

• 1:10:30Speaker 02

  The antics.

• 1:10:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, they wouldn't let any more nude girls in the fucking, oh wow, is there a video of Voss doing this?

• 1:10:36Speaker 02

  Oh wow.

• 1:10:37Speaker 06

  For Black Comic Standing, please welcome Richard Voss.

• 1:10:41Speaker 02

  Is that fun?

• 1:10:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:10:42Speaker 07

  Hey, how we doing? It's good to see you guys. We're gonna do a little show, because my career's like, oh, this is how pathetic my life is.

• 1:10:49Speaker 02

  He's got his headphones on.

• 1:10:50Speaker 07

  I owe my eight-year-old six dollars for Girl Scout cookies and I'm dodging her. She calls me and tries to disguise her voice, but I know it's her, to go, hello, is daddy home? Not bad, sure, I'm doing a show you can watch, give me a few minutes, alright? What's your name? Newman, are you two married? How, unfortunately, I got a car and I'm not like the black guys, I'll eat, well anyhow. Don't get upset, alright? Turn on BET Comic View and watch Black Comic Trains, white people for an hour, alright? White people crazy, they pay taxes, you know what I'm saying? Loosen up, we had the girl turn her back on me. What country are you guys from? Where are you guys from?

• 1:11:34Speaker 07

  Oklahoma, there's a nice little Oklahoma pub you might want to go to on 168th and Amsterdam. It's called Run, Why Do You Run? Uh, I'm killing, they're loving me.

• 1:11:48Mark Gagnon?

  Oh, that's so funny.

• 1:11:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, he's fearless. I mean, he was just going to start working the crowd, he didn't care.

• 1:11:52Mark Gagnon?

  Yeah, I mean, you've seen him go up, I think it was Comic View or Def Jam.

• 1:11:56Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:11:57Speaker 00

  I was at that taping. He was the first white guy on Def Jam.

• 1:11:59Mark Gagnon?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:00Speaker 02

  I was at that taping.

• 1:12:01Speaker 00

  You were at the taping? I was at that taping. Yeah, Vos and I have been friends since 1990.

• 1:12:04Speaker 02

  So, okay, when you're going, what are you thinking? Are you going like, this is gonna be hilarious? Or are you going like, I gotta support my boy?

• 1:12:11Speaker 00

  You're rooting for him. I wanted, because Rich was the white comic who could work all the black rooms and like, do really well and be funny.

• 1:12:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:12:17Speaker 00

  Um, and I think Steve Harvey was hosting that episode. Um, and Rich went up and he did great, like, he had a good set.

• 1:12:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:12:25Speaker 00

  Um, yeah, Vos was always, but he's the only comic, he's the first comic my parents met that they didn't like. They loved every comedian, but Vos makes the worst first impression. He's an awful first impression. They loved him after that, but the first time they met him, they were like, he's not a very nice person.

• 1:12:42Speaker 02

  Why, what did he say to your parents?

• 1:12:43Speaker 00

  I don't know, it was just him, he's just sarcastic, like, you know what I mean? He's lucky he's working, like, the first time I met him, I fucking didn't like him. I was doing a gig with him and Vinnie Brand, and it was, I was getting 50 bucks to emcee, and I used to love when shows would get canceled, because I was so scared to perform.

• 1:12:58Speaker 02

  Oh, wow.

• 1:12:59Speaker 00

  So when they got canceled, I was like, oh, good, I didn't have to do it, but I tried. And, uh, we all got, uh, paid 50 bucks, which is all I was supposed to make. And Vos goes, and don't think we don't know that you're getting full pay and we're not. And I was like, alright, fuck this guy, what a dick. He was just an asshole, and no one likes him when they first meet him.

• 1:13:16Speaker 02

  So, maybe I just knew what to expect. I've always loved Rich.

• 1:13:20Mark Gagnon?

  I remember, uh, Just For Lasts, I think that was the first place I met, uh...

• 1:13:23Speaker 02

  In Montreal?

• 1:13:24Mark Gagnon?

  Yeah, Montreal, yeah.

• 1:13:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, what was...

• 1:13:25Mark Gagnon?

  And then, like, I'm his, uh, full-time videographer at the time. I come in the green room and he just starts ripping on me. Like, before Hello and anything, I, I forgot the jokes, something watermelon, chicken something, whatever. He just gives me a big hug, what's up, bro? It's just hilarious. He had the whole green room just cracking up.

• 1:13:46Speaker 00

  It's hard to be mad at him, like, he's just, because he really is just like a little machine gun. A rotten little machine gun who just fires at everybody.

• 1:13:53Speaker 02

  And he's always clocking, like, uh, Mark got hit by a classic Vos line the other day.

• 1:13:58Mark Gagnon?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:13:59Speaker 02

  This is a classic.

• 1:14:00Speaker 00

  Which Mark?

• 1:14:00Speaker 02

  This is Mark.

• 1:14:01Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:14:04Speaker 01

  No, we were at the Cellar and like, he just like came around the table and just immediately on the energy, just like, "Oh, what you guys, uh, what you guys chatting about?" And then he's talking with someone and then I try to chime in the conversation. He goes, "Yeah, yeah, this conversation is for headlining."

• 1:14:19Speaker 02

  Did he take out the dollar and ask you to get him a coffee?

• 1:14:23Speaker 00

  How long you doing comedy? Four years? Get me a coffee. He rubs everyone the wrong way.

• 1:14:28Speaker 01

  But I, the reputation preceded him, so I already knew.

• 1:14:31Speaker 00

  That's the thing for me.

• 1:14:32Speaker 01

  So I was honored in a way. I was like, "Oh, I get the whole show. This is amazing."

• 1:14:37Speaker 00

  I'm like, "Who is this fucking reformed crackhead with a fucking ponytail?" He was awful. Like, I knew he was. We all knew Rich. He was headlining back, you know, even when I was new. But, uh, you know, he was a guy who would shit on you in person, but he was not a sneak. Like, he would always treat you well when it mattered behind your back. You know what I mean? Uh, so, yeah, I love Voss. He's one of my closest friends.

• 1:14:58Speaker 02

  There's a, okay, so during that break, like when you guys get fired, you guys create this show, which is the show that like, is my kind of like entire New York, uh, understanding of comedy and identity, which is like Tough Crowd, which is, to me, it felt always, and I imagine this was like the, the inspiration for it, but like the back table at the Cellar.

• 1:15:19Speaker 00

  Yes, that was it, yeah.

• 1:15:20Speaker 02

  That's the idea. It's like Colin Quinn is hosting it, you're on it, Patrice is on it, Voss is on it, and there's a bunch of other comic, and Keith is on it, Geraldo's killing on it, right?

• 1:15:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, he's great.

• 1:15:28Speaker 02

  And, uh, but like, to me, that was always the idea. Like, I grew up in East Village. I would go to the Cellar as a kid, like, and I was under, like, I understood you guys when I was getting into comedy, and the heyday for me, for New York comedy, was you guys at the back table. And I kind of was like at the tail end of it. So I kind of just came in observing it.

• 1:15:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:15:47Speaker 02

  You know, but like, watching you guys just absolutely beat on each other was like a true joy for a young comic. And like, I feel now, maybe people are like, a little bit separate.

• 1:15:59Speaker 02

  Maybe they're a little kinder in person, but I don't know what it was. But you guys, for whatever reason, it just felt like best friends in the back of the school bus, just ripping each other apart. And I don't know, something's changed. I don't know what it is.

• 1:16:12Speaker 00

  I think it's because like now, being wounded is a rung in the ladder to climb. Or we're pointing out when someone says something, that's not appropriate. That fucking shit scolding culture has become a way of climbing the ladder.

• 1:16:27Speaker 02

  Oh, you can get points for shitting on other comics.

• 1:16:29Speaker 00

  Or publicly, or for being like, if they say something really rotten to you, you go out and you go.

• 1:16:34Speaker 02

  He was so mean to me.

• 1:16:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:16:36Speaker 02

  You see that a lot of times, like comics, like talking about how another comedian was mean to them at a comedy club or something like that. And that was the culture that I kind of saw.

• 1:16:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:16:45Speaker 02

  And really admired and thought was the most awesome thing coming up.

• 1:16:48Speaker 00

  And just handle it with that person. Like, again, we're talking about just guys saying mean things, but you have to be friends too. Like, we were all friends.

• 1:16:55Speaker 02

  I think that's the difference. I think a lot of people now have like made it in different ways and they're all going to the cellar, but they didn't really come up together through open mics, through hell gigs, and build that camaraderie where you could just rip somebody apart and it's okay.

• 1:17:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:17:09Speaker 02

  It feels personal now, maybe.

• 1:17:10Speaker 00

  It does, and I think that everyone feels that there's more at stake with everything you say. Like, my first gig with Keith Robinson was a fucking, it was a place called KCO Tools in Wayne, New Jersey, and it was probably 1991. And I was opening, Keith was featuring, and Jim Brewer closed. And I think that was my first time meeting Brewer.

• 1:17:27Speaker 02

  Great storyteller, by the way, Jim.

• 1:17:29Speaker 00

  Jim Brewer is the, the fact that people will, there's certain people who don't like his political views. I don't care about them at all. Jim Brewer is a very, he's a great comic, and he's one of the best storytellers I've ever seen.

• 1:17:42Speaker 02

  If you just hang out with him, like, we did a show, like, it was in Europe or Iceland or something, we were randomly together.

• 1:17:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:17:48Speaker 02

  On this thing. And he was just like chopping it up backstage. And like him telling a story, he will act out each person in the story. His like face will transform into these different characters. Like it's unbelievable.

• 1:18:03Speaker 00

  He is, it's a gift and like people who think he's not a good comic because they're buy your cra- he's a-

• 1:18:08Speaker 02

  No, no, no, he's good.

• 1:18:09Speaker 00

  And he's amazing. He was, I've done radio with him for years and I would just sit there and watch him talk for an hour.

• 1:18:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:18:15Speaker 00

  But it was interesting.

• 1:18:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:18:16Speaker 00

  It was funny and it was, I mean, me, I'm a terrible and I've, I've talked about this, I'm just not a good storyteller. I'm just, I've never been a good, my jokes were fast and they, they just move different because no, I hold no one's interest. I really don't.

• 1:18:29Speaker 02

  He's done a pretty good job today, I just wanted to say.

• 1:18:32Speaker 00

  But, but Jim Brewer is, has a gift for storytelling. So anyway, Keith bombed, I bombed and Brewer fucking murdered in this horrible KCO Tools gig. But that's how long I know these guys.

• 1:18:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:18:43Speaker 00

  Me and Patrice, our first gig with Patrice was a fucking college where, um, for this guy Jamie Duke, it was a noon-er, an afternoon gig. And, uh, oh yeah, that's, that's probably, uh, 2007 maybe. We did this antisocial tour. It was, uh, I was hosting and we would either have, we'd have Bill, we would have-

• 1:19:05Speaker 02

  Attell.

• 1:19:05Speaker 00

  Attell and Brewer or Artie did them, Stan Hope did a couple.

• 1:19:09Speaker 02

  Sorry, I cut you off on a story about Patrice there.

• 1:19:11Speaker 00

  Oh, that's okay. I was saying the first gig I did for, with him was a, uh, it was a college and, uh, I bombed hosting. Patrice, I think Jamie Duke, it was bringing in from Boston. Uh, so he was like high on Patrice. Patrice bombed as a feature. I, I had a zero, I had a zero. Patrice might've had a two. And then this guy Dom Fig went on and completely bombed worse than both of us. And I had to drop Patrice back off in the city and he was just kind of shitting on me the whole time and my stage presence and the way I talked, I'm like, fuck you. I'm like, who is this cocksucker?

• 1:19:43Speaker 02

  You didn't know him at all, that was the first time you got-

• 1:19:45Speaker 00

  No, again, another awful first impression.

• 1:19:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:19:48Speaker 00

  Who likes this person? I'm like, you bombed too stupid. He's like, nah, he thought he actually did really well. So he was also delusional.

• 1:19:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:19:55Speaker 00

  When you come up like that and you, you know, you're comfortable being mean to each other, it's just, you're friends, you love each other.

• 1:20:01Speaker 02

  That's the relationship I've always had with my friends.

• 1:20:04Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:20:04Speaker 02

  And like the comedians that I kind of came up with. But again, it was, it was a different like rite of passage because I remember with you guys, anybody who sat down at the table, you're gonna get it.

• 1:20:14Speaker 00

  Yeah. There's no passive observers at the table back in the day at the Cellar. No. And that's the worst sound you could hear was Keith Robinson, whose laugh is just, it's very rare that a laugh makes you feel bad.

• 1:20:27Speaker 00

  But Keith has a laugh. Oh dude. It's just, you know, it's bad news. Like when you're walking in and I'll be sitting in here, ah, you're like, oh, I'm not ready. I know it's gonna be ugly. Do you remember some of the biggest slams that people had? Like I've heard lore. The biggest one and it is, was, I mean, we gave Bill Burr a savaging one time because we found out he was doing comedy on a bus for the World Series tickets. He was, I think it was a World Series, it might have been 2001. I don't remember. Uh, or maybe, no, it might have been one of the later Yankee runs. I just don't remember. But I don't remember what was said, but I remember it was probably a 45 minute savage beating of, of Bill and everybody was in on it. It was like. What were you guys saying?

• 1:21:10Speaker 00

  They were just mocking. I don't remember any of the jokes. I just remember the fact that it's weird to see Bill just sit there and have nothing to, because he, Bill's so Bill's good. Funny and fast and also very mean when he wants to be. Yeah. And there was just no defense. I mean, you know what I mean? There was no defense. It was onslaught. You're doing comedy on a bus. Yeah. And there's nothing you can say about it. Uh, but there was a guy named Eddie. Boss was like, what's the gig?

• 1:21:35Speaker 00

  And, and there was a guy named Eddie and him and Patrice were going back and forth and Patrice was destroying. Eddie who? Uh, it. Ifft? Yeah, yeah. And, and I like Eddie and I'm sure he was fired with this at that point. But you know, we all got a beating and it was Eddie's turn. Yeah. So, uh, it was so bad, it was such a bad beating that none of us even chimed in. There was a lot of guys there too. I was there, Voss was there, Bill might've been there. It was just a bunch of guys watching this beat, this, this, this mauling and really enjoying it. And I remember Eddie just got mad and he goes, yeah, well, fuck you. I do colleges. You don't do colleges. And Voss goes, yeah, you do colleges. You do PU because you stink.

• 1:22:14Speaker 00

  And that might be one of the purely most perfect things I've ever said, I've ever seen said to to level a guy. That was perfection. That was a perfect, a perfect line.

• 1:22:27Speaker 02

  What was your relationship like with Patrice?

• 1:22:29Speaker 00

  I loved him. I mean, he was my friend. He was just, you know, to me, he was just my, you know, everyone knew he was the funniest guy.

• 1:22:35Speaker 02

  He's the funniest.

• 1:22:36Speaker 00

  He was the funniest, meanest guy.

• 1:22:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:22:38Speaker 00

  But he also would laugh and he could take a joke and he could take a beating.

• 1:22:42Speaker 02

  Who gave him the best beatings?

• 1:22:45Speaker 00

  It's, it's hard to say. All of us, because he was, he told me, he gave me a good compliment one time. He came in, there was a big guy who came in and Patrice just started shitting on him because everybody was afraid of the guy.

• 1:22:56Speaker 02

  Can we say who it was?

• 1:22:57Speaker 00

  Oh, no, no, it was a stranger. It was a stranger. It wasn't a comedian. Yeah, like a guy who was mentally off.

• 1:23:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:23:04Speaker 00

  And, and I remember saying to him something about like, you just did that because you wanted that guy to think that you weren't afraid of him and that you were that. So I was just shitting on him a little bit. And he said, you, you, he was, you're the only one that picks out my phoniness. And it made me feel very good. He goes, you're the only one that spots my phoniness, uh, which I wasn't, by the way. Many of us saw it.

• 1:23:25Speaker 00

  But he could take it too. Like he knew he was the same as we are. Um, and I remember he called me one time. This was like, he was like 40 and he was really like, he was like, man, I'm irrelevant. Like he felt irrelevant. He felt like he's like,

• 1:23:36Speaker 02

  So interesting.

• 1:23:37Speaker 00

  I'm irrelevant. I'm off the grid. He just felt like, he wasn't relevant. Yeah, yeah.

• 1:23:41Speaker 02

  This is the fourth elephant in the room or after?

• 1:23:44Speaker 00

  Don't remember. I stopped into the taping of Elephant on the Room, but I didn't watch it. We had the same manager for many years.

• 1:23:49Speaker 02

  I watched it. I was there.

• 1:23:50Speaker 00

  Um, oh, you, you saw the whole taping?

• 1:23:51Speaker 02

  Yeah. I, I mean, like, I'm a huge Patrice fan. This is my number one. I think he's the greatest.

• 1:23:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, he was brilliant.

• 1:23:57Speaker 02

  Yeah. But, uh, okay. You were saying you topped him.

• 1:24:00Speaker 00

  Oh, just that he, he had these same feelings every comic. Like, I, I, I get a kick out of, um, and I'm sure he secretly enjoys this, if there is an afterlife, is the fact that people will torment all of us with, what would Patrice, I wish Patrice could see this. Like when you're being a douche or about my fucking married life, what would Patrice say? First of all, it wouldn't be kind.

• 1:24:24Speaker 00

  But he's still being used 15 years later to torture his friend. I'm sure he would enjoy that.

• 1:24:31Speaker 02

  You had the best description of Patrice, and I don't want to butcher it. But like, he lived his life as if his friend, as if a documentary was being made of it, and only his friends were gonna watch it. Do you remember saying something like that?

• 1:24:45Speaker 00

  I don't, but it sounds accurate.

• 1:24:46Speaker 02

  For like, the Patrice doc or something. I don't know, I saw this clip.

• 1:24:49Speaker 00

  Oh, I don't remember it. I mean, but he did, like, his whole thing was he kinda had to be who he was in front of everybody, like.

• 1:24:56Speaker 02

  At all times.

• 1:24:56Speaker 00

  We had an argument one time, like, it was at the Colin Quinn Show, which was before Tough Crowd. There was three episodes he did. It was live on the SNL stage on NBC.

• 1:25:06Speaker 02

  Oh, wow.

• 1:25:06Speaker 00

  It was 9:30 on Monday, I think, and it went out live. And Lauren produced it, and I think I did the final two episodes. And the precursor for Tough Crowd was this little thing, a segment he would have called the Town Hall, where there'd be like, four comedians just sitting on the stoop. But you were doing a bit from your act. Joey Vega did it, I did it, Gerardo.

• 1:25:25Speaker 02

  Kinda like Comics Unleashed-esque.

• 1:25:27Speaker 00

  In a way, yes. But it was without the pleasantness, like Byron Allen's, it's a different energy.

• 1:25:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a positive fun energy.

• 1:25:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:25:34Speaker 02

  Supportive, sweet energy.

• 1:25:34Speaker 00

  Like, where you don't call each other out, but where Tough Crowd was like, you just couldn't wait for someone to flop. But we would, we would do our, our, our little one-minute or two-minute bit to the camera. And I remember, I was going over some censor, was talking to Standards and Practices backstage at NBC, and Patrice was just taunting me, just taunting me a bit. And I'm like, I'm trying to get a bit through Standards and Practices, and I just fucking snapped at him. I'm like, will you shut the fuck up? I know you're a comic, and it just got like, real. So once in a while, you would get angry at each other.

• 1:26:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:26:05Speaker 00

  Um, and I think of all the people to mediate, it was Keith Robinson.

• 1:26:08Speaker 02

  No way.

• 1:26:09Speaker 00

  Which, when Keith has to come in and actually be the voice of Patrice, when that obnoxious Philly asshole has to come in, and you're like, wow, Keith is right. Um, but you know, once in a while, you would get frustrated with each other.

• 1:26:21Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:26:21Speaker 00

  But we were doing one of them, and it might have been the third episode, and I'm watching Patrice do his bit. And, you know, he would do this thing where he would act like he was just kinda coming.

• 1:26:30Speaker 02

  Thinking of it on the spot.

• 1:26:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Mr. Casual, you know, Mr. Brilliant just stopped in to be a conduit for funny.

• 1:26:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:26:39Speaker 00

  And I'm, I was watching him, and I'm just sitting right next to him, and I'm looking at him, and he's, he's going, and I'm like, "He forgot his joke."

• 1:26:47Speaker 02

  No!

• 1:26:48Speaker 00

  And I'm just, the joy, I'm like, "Oh, this fucking asshole forgot his joke on live television." I was so hap- but he did get it, he recovered it, and he found where he was going. But I remember just watching it, and watching him stumble, and going, "Oh, this is gonna be a wonderful moment." He forgot his thing on live television, but he recovered, and he, he found it. But again, he was, he was like all of it, he was flawed, he was the, he was just a con- he was our buddy.

• 1:27:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:27:13Speaker 00

  You know what I mean? Like, I love that he has this-

• 1:27:15Speaker 02

  He, he, we've mythologized him.

• 1:27:17Speaker 00

  And I'm okay with it, because he really was a very real guy, and a very real talker. And, you know, again, I did hours of radio with him, so I watched his brain work in real time, and he was brilliant. I mean, you know, you, he was a brilliant thinker, um, you know, so, I love that he's got this- And I've said many times, we did a lot more benefits for him than he would've done for any of us. I would've been lucky if I died of a stroke, if that fucking idiot showed up to the first-

• 1:27:44Speaker 02

  One show.

• 1:27:44Speaker 00

  He would've done one Jim Norton benefit, and then by year two, he would've been like, "He didn't have insurance?" Like, he would not- He would not have done a bunch of fucking-

• 1:27:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, every year they do the Patrice O'Neal benefit.

• 1:27:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think they stopped, I, I haven't done the last few years.

• 1:27:59Speaker 02

  They did it this year.

• 1:28:00Speaker 00

  They did do it, but I think, I think that that might've been the last one for a while. Uh, but yeah, I, I love that he has this, uh, this, this kind of aura. Whenever you die young, people look at it like that, but he was deserved of the respect.

• 1:28:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, he dies the same year that Elephant in the Room comes out.

• 1:28:15Speaker 00

  Oh, was it the same year? I didn't remember.

• 1:28:17Speaker 02

  Oh, sure?

• 1:28:18Speaker 01

  Uh, I'm pretty sure, that, uh-

• 1:28:20Speaker 02

  Elephant in the Room was-

• 1:28:21Speaker 01

  It comes out 2011.

• 1:28:23Speaker 00

  He died in 2011, he died in-

• 1:28:24Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:28:25Speaker 00

  I, I think it was, uh-

• 1:28:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, this comes out in February 2011.

• 1:28:28Speaker 02

  We watched that, like it was, uh, like a playoff game. Like we had a watch party.

• 1:28:33Speaker 00

  Oh, really? Yeah, he was, was that, that was the same year. So he was starting to get to Charlie Sheen roast, where he just went, kind of went off book. He was on late, then he just leaned in and kind of did his thing.

• 1:28:43Speaker 02

  He kind of roasted the roast in a lot of ways, yeah.

• 1:28:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, and he was really funny. I mean, he really was.

• 1:28:48Speaker 02

  And the stand-up was great. Like, the bits were great. He was a great writer and he had this like casual way of like talking through the audience. You know, it wasn't, like, the crowd wasn't involved, but it was always like him imposing his ideas on the crowd.

• 1:29:02Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:29:02Speaker 02

  It wasn't him like asking them what they think. It was, this is what I think, and you're gonna fucking agree eventually.

• 1:29:09Speaker 00

  And if you don't agree, you're still gonna listen to it.

• 1:29:11Speaker 02

  The entire time.

• 1:29:12Speaker 00

  You know, I was talking to Louis recently about like when you're doing stand-up, how a bit becomes stale sometimes.

• 1:29:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:29:18Speaker 00

  And he's like, he, we were just, we were, I was out with him for seven weeks on a tour recently. And he said, he goes, yeah, I was really thinking about everything I was saying tonight and making sure I was like, that's how you keep a bit alive. You think about what you're actually wanting to say to the audience. Not these are just words coming out while I think of something else. And but Chris would always do that. Like, everything he said, he wanted to say to the audience. You could tell he really wanted to say this thing about relationships, so it never felt stale.

• 1:29:43Speaker 02

  It didn't feel like an excuse to get a laugh.

• 1:29:44Speaker 00

  No.

• 1:29:45Speaker 02

  It felt like, even if he wasn't on stage, this is what he would be telling you about.

• 1:29:49Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:29:50Speaker 02

  Offstage.

• 1:29:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, he would talk about the same stuff onstage, offstage.

• 1:29:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:29:54Speaker 00

  I mean, it was, we would just go there, we would be at the Cellar till 2:30 in the morning playing chess. I would, I would be out with Dice. Again, this is between 97 and 2000, so I would fly home from Vegas, get to the Cellar at like 11:00 PM, midnight, do a late spot. I'd be overtired, I hadn't slept, and we would just play chess and just scream at each other in the street at 3:00 in the morning. It was great.

• 1:30:12Speaker 02

  And this is a time where like, the Cellar is starting to really pop off. But it's not what it is now, where there's, you know, four different rooms, multiple shows. There was a time where there would be, it was just the McDougal, and then there would be an early show, and the late show would have people that just stayed from the early show.

• 1:30:30Speaker 00

  He was a, yeah, or you would just do, I think at one point it was just, you would do one long show and you'd get food spots. I started there making money. I wouldn't get paid, I would just do food spots where you would do, like, the show started at 9:00 PM. And then like, I think after 11 or 12, you would do a 10-minute spot, not a 20-minute spot, and you got paid in a meal.

• 1:30:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:30:47Speaker 00

  So for the first couple of years there, I would just, I was just, you know, you'd get food.

• 1:30:50Speaker 02

  Also, there were so few comics in at the Cellar at the time. I would, I remembered when Mike DiStefano.

• 1:30:58Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:30:58Speaker 02

  Got passed.

• 1:30:59Speaker 00

  Wow, okay, that's gotta be 98 around there, right?

• 1:31:03Speaker 02

  I mean, this is, I don't know the exact, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

• 1:31:06Speaker 00

  Oh, is it 2000s?

• 1:31:07Speaker 02

  I think this is 2000s, because I remember he was working at Comedy Village, remember the Comedy Village?

• 1:31:11Speaker 00

  Yes, I don't think I did it, but I remember the name.

• 1:31:13Speaker 02

  Right, and it used to be, it was like on top of that Irish bar, it was like around the block from.

• 1:31:18Speaker 00

  Oh, that was the Boston Comedy Club.

• 1:31:19Speaker 02

  Well, it was Boston, and then it turned into Comedy Village when PJ Landers took it over. So it was the Boston early, and then went to Comedy Village. Anyway, but I remember Mike being there, and I remember Mike getting passed, but it was this, there were so few people that were working the cellar, because there were so few shows.

• 1:31:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:31:34Speaker 02

  That like, a new person getting passed there.

• 1:31:36Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:31:37Speaker 02

  Was like a big fucking deal.

• 1:31:38Speaker 00

  It was a big deal, and now there's so many people, I don't know, a lot of them I don't know, because I'm usually on the same.

• 1:31:42Speaker 02

  Sometimes I feel old, man.

• 1:31:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:31:44Speaker 02

  Like, I'll see somebody up, but like, I, I don't know, when we were coming, like, when I was coming up, I'm sure you feel the same way. It's like, I feel like I knew every single person doing comedy.

• 1:31:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, I knew who everybody was, and now I'll see clips, and somebody's got like 300,000 followers, I'm like, wow, I don't know that guy. It doesn't mean anything, like, that I don't know him, I'm just, I'm not on that late, and I don't watch stand-up, so. But there's a lot of funny, a lot of people have these weird clips going around, where they're like, yeah, comedy sucks now, and there's all these lousy comedians. Yeah, there's a lot of shit comics.

• 1:32:12Speaker 02

  There's good shit.

• 1:32:14Speaker 00

  There's a lot of really good comics.

• 1:32:15Speaker 02

  Yes, dude, there's a lot, I mean, I think that's what happens, when there's more, there's more good.

• 1:32:20Speaker 00

  Cause, well, yeah.

• 1:32:20Speaker 02

  There's also more shit.

• 1:32:21Speaker 00

  There's a lot of terrible comedians, and hacks, but there's also a lot of really funny guys.

• 1:32:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:32:26Speaker 00

  Um, you know, and, and there's not this exclusive club of just a few funny people who see it the way HBC.

• 1:32:33Speaker 02

  That was your guys' era.

• 1:32:35Speaker 00

  Well, we weren't ju, we were just judging people on whether or not they were funny. We didn't care about politics, we didn't care about your views on race, we didn't care about your views on, uh, gender shit, like, none of that matters.

• 1:32:44Speaker 02

  Comedy wasn't important back then.

• 1:32:46Speaker 00

  No.

• 1:32:46Speaker 02

  So the only thing you could really hang your hat on, was if you were funny.

• 1:32:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:32:49Speaker 02

  Now, kinda, I mean, important is the wrong word, but like, now comedy is so fucking popular, that like, you know, you're seeing this like, uh, intersection with all these other different things, and, uh, but back in the day, when nobody's really making that much money doing it. Being funny is the only currency. So he seemed to be the only thing everybody cared about.

• 1:33:07Speaker 00

  You could get busted, like Dice was one of the first ones to get canceled. I mean, Lenny Bruce, but I mean Dice got canceled in like the late eighties when they yanked Ford Fairlane out of the theaters. And I believe Andrew had a three picture deal at that point. And I've heard that my cousin Vinny was originally supposed to be Dice.

• 1:33:23Speaker 02

  Get the fuck out of Pesci's character?

• 1:33:24Speaker 00

  I think so, yeah.

• 1:33:25Speaker 02

  Oh, wow.

• 1:33:26Speaker 00

  Again, I believe that's true. Andrew, I'm sure will tell me if I'm wrong. But I mean Dice had three, and they fucked him. They paid him out just to shut him up because he was, he was getting so popular and doing arenas.

• 1:33:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:33:37Speaker 00

  And then they just, again, his gay jokes they didn't like. So that he was canceled before any of us were. So around then, they were, they were going after people in the early nineties. But back then, they called it political correctness.

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• 1:36:19Speaker 02

  Back to the show. This comedy boom now, does it feel much bigger than the comedy boom in the, when was it? The eighties?

• 1:36:28Speaker 00

  I missed the eighties. Um, I, I came in 1990.

• 1:36:30Speaker 02

  But you were still watching comedy.

• 1:36:31Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 1:36:32Speaker 02

  As a fan, like you're seeing the, the cultural relevance of comedy.

• 1:36:36Speaker 00

  I came in at a bottleneck, like, which was good though, because you had to be better to work, like, because all these places were shutting down, the clubs.

• 1:36:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:36:44Speaker 00

  So it was a little bit more competitive, but I missed the boom of the eighties. But I would see guys 10 years later, still doing the same jokes from the eighties because they were headlining, making 2,500 a week and they didn't want to let that go. But this boom is massive. This is, this is bigger, I believe. You're in part responsible for that. You know, it's funny, I just had Dane on my, and I, I've always.

• 1:37:03Speaker 02

  I saw clips from that.

• 1:37:04Speaker 00

  I've always credited Dane Cook because he did MySpace before any of us did social media, uh, and he captured, he took it the way the business couldn't control it. And the business, I think, eventually liked him and you did it on Instagram. You, you came in on my show with Sam or our show, Sam would want to say.

• 1:37:22Speaker 00

  But you were talking about getting people to the YouTube channel.

• 1:37:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:37:26Speaker 00

  For now clips. So you took what Dane started and revolutionized it in a different way. And that's a huge part of what's happening now. It's a good thing I waited, but I couldn't do a podcast because I had a.

• 1:37:41Speaker 02

  Like a restriction deal.

• 1:37:42Speaker 00

  I had a.

• 1:37:43Speaker 02

  Non-compete.

• 1:37:44Speaker 00

  I was not allowed to, yeah. Until I got, until I left, until they let me, they stopped negotiating with me.

• 1:37:49Speaker 02

  You know what I think Dane also did is I think he ushered in a new group of people that weren't stand-up fans.

• 1:37:54Speaker 00

  He did, yeah.

• 1:37:55Speaker 02

  In a similar way that like Matt Rife, I think is doing.

• 1:37:57Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:37:58Speaker 02

  Where it's just like, you see a lot of like young women going to comedy shows, even at The Cellar. And I think that that's a Rife effect. There are other people who also have these like young girl audiences. But you see them start to matriculate in the clubs and you're like, oh, this is downstream from these people who really weren't stand-up fans. Now making it part of their identity.

• 1:38:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I don't get the animosity. Towards Matt or towards Dane at the time. Because it's like.

• 1:38:24Speaker 02

  You guys are all making so much more money because that happened.

• 1:38:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're creating a bigger funnel to bring all these new people in. And then all these other people like at my level can eat off of it.

• 1:38:32Speaker 00

  It's also people who don't have the balls to attack other guys. Like it becomes a safe target. And Dane at one point was the target that you could hit and not suffer any real repercussions for. But it was all fake, like, you know, you don't have to like Dane's act. What was he doing? He was just out making money and doing it. I saw him shoot a special in front of 17,000 people. And I was like, this belongs in an arena. Like it was, you know, say what you want about it. He was in an arena.

• 1:38:58Speaker 02

  I remember like hearing people, this is when I'm like super young and right. But I was at, I'd be at The Cellar and people would be like talking shit about Dane. I remember Dane came to The Cellar once and all those same people were fucking.

• 1:39:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, of course.

• 1:39:10Speaker 02

  Kissing that fucking ass. And I was like, oh, it's all phony.

• 1:39:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:39:13Speaker 02

  You know what I mean? Like it's all bullshit. The second he walks in the room, everybody's trying to go on tour. Everybody's trying to hit the road, do whatever. Yeah, I think there was a little disappointment in it because I think in my head I was like, well, oh yeah, everybody's just gonna patrice it, right? They're gonna keep that same energy right now and say exactly how they feel. And I think a lot of times people are kind of loyal to their opportunities.

• 1:39:32Speaker 00

  100%. I'm also a backtracking phony.

• 1:39:34Speaker 02

  Wait, when? What happened?

• 1:39:37Speaker 00

  I wrote two books and the second one was I was angry-

• 1:39:42Speaker 02

  Monster Rain is one, right?

• 1:39:43Speaker 00

  No, no, no. Happy Endings was one.

• 1:39:45Speaker 02

  Sorry, Happy Endings.

• 1:39:46Speaker 00

  And then the second one was I Hit Your Guts. And I regret some of the things in that book because it was, I was angry because this was when people were like, I almost got fired. And I was just so fucking sick of people getting punished for jokes and things they were saying. So a lot of where I came from was kind of a shittier point of view. I think the book was funny, but I wish I had been. So I trashed Steve Martin in the book for doing The Pink Panther. But I was, because I was, it was a Peter Sellers role and I was just, I was just being a dick. That was unreasonable. Because I've always been a Steve Martin fan. I actually admire him. I think he's brilliant. Richard Pryor thought he was brilliant.

• 1:40:18Speaker 02

  By the way, his book, Born Standing Up, have you read it? I mean, like, really, the doldrums of comedy.

• 1:40:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:40:24Speaker 02

  You know, like, doing a fucking gig for four people at Knott's Berry Farm or whatever it was. Just like, very cool exploration into that.

• 1:40:32Speaker 00

  He was one of the, he was a real pioneer and he was original and brilliant, but I was just being a dick in this book. So anyway, I wrote the book. Couple of years later, I'm doing field pieces for The Tonight Show for Leno. And we were at the Grammys. And this dumb bit I was doing was I was handing people my CD, asking them if they would nominate, try to get me nominated, you know, whatever. And Steve Martin and his band came through.

• 1:40:54Speaker 02

  Boss told me you stole it from him.

• 1:40:56Speaker 00

  The CD. No, no, no. The seeing CDs sexually, that I stole.

• 1:41:05Speaker 00

  But the, so I handed Steve Martin my CD and he goes, Jim Norton.

• 1:41:11Speaker 00

  You said some unkind things about me in your book.

• 1:41:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:41:15Speaker 00

  And I was immediately the fucking, you're right, I'm sorry, I was being a dick.

• 1:41:23Speaker 02

  Good for you.

• 1:41:23Speaker 00

  But I, but I was like, I, I, I was being truthful. I'm like, I'm a fan. I was just being an asshole. And he was very kind. He's like, no, no, you're forgiven. And he talked and did the interview. But, but I don't think they heard that part. Uh, but he handled it really nicely. But that's why I hate anonymity so much, because I had to suffer through the embarrassment.

• 1:41:43Speaker 02

  Of doing it in person.

• 1:41:44Speaker 00

  Of doing it in person and getting called out like a, and I did exactly what everybody else does.

• 1:41:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:41:49Speaker 00

  Oh, pardon me. I, I mean, because I, I was being a dick and he's not a guy I hated. If it was a guy I hated, I'm okay with being confrontational. I'm not afraid of confrontation.

• 1:41:58Speaker 02

  We've seen it.

• 1:41:58Speaker 00

  I've had a lot of it. Yeah. I've had a lot of it on the air. I mean, you know, you can't have that many hours without a lot of back and forth.

• 1:42:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:42:04Speaker 00

  But he was a guy that I really did admire and I had no, I had no desire to.

• 1:42:11Speaker 02

  He's also a comic, Tim.

• 1:42:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:42:13Speaker 02

  He's felt the exact same way about other people.

• 1:42:16Speaker 00

  I'm sure he has, but he was too smart to put it in a book. I was just dumb.

• 1:42:22Speaker 02

  Or, or he got successful, because I think that's the other thing. It's like, once you get some success, a lot of those feelings kind of go away.

• 1:42:28Speaker 00

  Yes, and you're, it's, you're less angry because you have so many good things happening and so much going on for you.

• 1:42:33Speaker 02

  And then you don't care if somebody else is also successful. I think that sometimes it should, uh, exists in a vacuum where it's like, you're grinding, you're trying to get your opportunity and you're not getting it. And you see these people getting it. It's like, well, fuck them for getting it.

• 1:42:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:42:45Speaker 02

  And then you get your opportunity and it ends up working out and you're like, well, they weren't that bad.

• 1:42:48Speaker 00

  Yeah, they were okay.

• 1:42:50Speaker 02

  They were decent. They've always been nice to me.

• 1:42:51Speaker 00

  Even Patrice though, at the, at the end of his life, he started to feel bad about the way he had treated certain people.

• 1:42:56Speaker 02

  Cause he got some success, man.

• 1:42:57Speaker 00

  He got some success and he dealt with a guy on his set. He had a show he was doing. I don't remember. We were, we did a movie together called Furry Vengeance. Uh, which was, uh, let's, it's, it was with, it was about talking animals with Brendan Fraser and, and Brooke Shields. And I'm going to go on the record and say it was not the finest film, not the greatest of all films.

• 1:43:16Speaker 02

  I thought, different types of furries.

• 1:43:19Speaker 00

  And he was very difficult on this set. I can say to the director, Patrice was a, he was, he was a rough, it was a rough road for that director. But we were after, afterwards, he was telling me that time that he had done some show and there's a guy on the set who was being a fucking dick. And Patrice goes, I realize, am I that guy on other people's shit?

• 1:43:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:43:39Speaker 00

  And it really affected him.

• 1:43:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:43:41Speaker 00

  And I remember he started feeling like Lisa Lampanelli, he had been very unkind to and a few other comics. And I think Jeff Garland told a story where Patrice apologized to him. But Patrice started apologizing to people.

• 1:43:53Speaker 02

  Good for him.

• 1:43:54Speaker 00

  But it wasn't for, for career gain.

• 1:43:56Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:43:56Speaker 00

  It was just because he legitimately felt like, ah, like, you know, you, you, you grow out of certain things and you become older. I think even Lennon, at the end of his life, was doing an interview where he was going, like, he had changed at 40. Like, you're just not the same guy you were.

• 1:44:11Speaker 02

  Dude.

• 1:44:12Speaker 00

  Coming up. So, you know, he, he evolved as a person too and felt shitty about certain, not with us, not things you say just to be funny, but things that were actually mean.

• 1:44:21Speaker 02

  Pointed criticisms.

• 1:44:22Speaker 00

  You feel a little bad about, like, eh, they didn't attack me first. What was I doing?

• 1:44:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:44:27Speaker 00

  You know, I've been a dick to a lot of people verbally.

• 1:44:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:44:29Speaker 00

  And I got called out for it.

• 1:44:30Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah, it's a.

• 1:44:32Speaker 01

  That's an important lesson, I feel like, that I got to learn, just even doing this show, like, so young and, like, through you and just, like, watching other people and then also Craig Ferguson. He has, like, a great moment on his show where, like, Britney Spears is going through something. And she, I think she, like, shaved her head and fucking threw an umbrella at someone.

• 1:44:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:44:48Speaker 01

  And he was like, I'm not gonna make fun of her because she's going through a mental health thing right now. And I did make fun of someone a different time. And I ran into him in an event and he was like, yeah, dude, that really sucked when you said that.

• 1:44:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:44:59Speaker 01

  And Craig, like, pointed that out. And then I try to keep that in mind where, like, we talk about people all the time and I try not to. Basically, my litmus is like, if I wouldn't say this to him in person.

• 1:45:08Speaker 02

  Then I'm not gonna say it.

• 1:45:09Speaker 01

  Then I'm not gonna say it.

• 1:45:10Speaker 02

  Dude.

• 1:45:10Speaker 01

  And then a joke is a different thing. Like, I'll make a joke about whatever.

• 1:45:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, of course.

• 1:45:13Speaker 01

  If I'm gonna really take a stance, like, I wanna be able to make sure that if they were in the room, I would say the same thing.

• 1:45:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, if I'm gonna go in on somebody, like, for real, I wanna know that I would say that in front of that person. It's why I don't yell at old ladies when they drive poorly. Because I'm like, would I, if that, if that was Francis Nganu and then. Next car.

• 1:45:29Speaker 02

  I wouldn't say shit.

• 1:45:30Speaker 00

  When I scream, bitch. That's what the only, that's why I don't yell at old people because I wouldn't do it to somebody that could punch me through a fucking wall.

• 1:45:37Speaker 02

  I remember I was at a, I had said something like so stupid on Twitter. This is like years ago. We were in Miami and I was like, I think Pete was like Davidson was like hosting something, maybe a Jake Paul fight or something. I don't know. Something happened. I said something stupid and flippant. And I remember I bumped into him at like a WWE event.

• 1:45:54Speaker 00

  Who, Jake or Pete?

• 1:45:55Speaker 02

  Uh, Pete. And I was just like, dude, you know what? I said that, that this thing, I don't even know if you even remember or whatever like that. It was really stupid and I'm sorry for that. I said that.

• 1:46:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:46:04Speaker 02

  And it was so interesting. Like he was just like, hey man, I really appreciate you saying that. And, uh, yeah, no, who cares? Like we all say dumb stuff. I've said dumb stuff. And it was just like the easiest way of going through it.

• 1:46:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:46:16Speaker 02

  And it kind of like cleansed me a little bit.

• 1:46:18Speaker 00

  Yeah. Sometimes if you mean it, like there, there's the saccharine douchebag publicist apology. And I would like to say I apologize for anybody whose words. And then there's legit, hey man, I'm really sorry about that.

• 1:46:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:46:31Speaker 00

  And there's no shame in being sorry about something if you legitimately are.

• 1:46:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:46:34Speaker 00

  Or if you fucked up or you wronged a person or you're an asshole, like.

• 1:46:37Speaker 02

  It's liberating.

• 1:46:37Speaker 00

  It's okay.

• 1:46:38Speaker 02

  More of an asshole to hold on to it.

• 1:46:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:46:40Speaker 02

  For what? For your ego? For something like, I fucked up. It's fine.

• 1:46:42Speaker 00

  I fucked up. Whatever. I made a mistake. And, and an apology in a private setting like that is much different than, um, like I did.

• 1:46:49Speaker 02

  Fucking performative.

• 1:46:50Speaker 00

  Like when cameras were on. Did I say that to you?

• 1:46:55Speaker 02

  I love the ping pan.

• 1:46:57Speaker 00

  Yeah. I stand by Peter Sellers. That's his role, but I was really, uh.

• 1:47:00Speaker 02

  But the performative apology, I think is the one we don't believe.

• 1:47:03Speaker 00

  Yeah. I apologized to Dr. Phil because I was, I don't know Dr. Phil.

• 1:47:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:47:07Speaker 00

  We interviewed him one time. He was very nice.

• 1:47:10Speaker 02

  You were like, where the fuck were you when I was blowing kids?

• 1:47:12Speaker 00

  Exactly. I could have used your hand on the back of my head. Make me not feel like I was enjoying this so much for Pete's sake, Phil.

• 1:47:23Speaker 02

  What would you say to Donkey?

• 1:47:24Speaker 00

  I wrote, he was a chapter in my book and it was a shitty chapter. Um, and I was too critical. Making fun of somebody is one thing, but it came, like I said, I was in a bad place at that point.

• 1:47:34Speaker 02

  Came from a place of anger, not like, let's make jokes.

• 1:47:36Speaker 00

  Anger and funny, but the anger was more than it should have been.

• 1:47:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:47:39Speaker 00

  So I apologized to him and then he, and then he asked, what's the name of your book? And I'm like, oh boy, I wish I didn't.

• 1:47:43Speaker 02

  You did.

• 1:47:44Speaker 00

  But again, I just felt like I'm not an honest person.

• 1:47:47Speaker 02

  Good for you.

• 1:47:47Speaker 00

  Nancy Grace, there's a clip of Sam and I, it's one of our first shows, where she walks off our show. Um, because I had trashed her relentlessly for a long time. Cause I thought she was a phony and I thought she capitalized off dead kids. But she was in studio with us and I felt like I had to, I didn't attack her, but I said, just so you know, I had to say it because if I don't say it, then I'm just a fucking coward who's doing it behind a screen.

• 1:48:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:48:13Speaker 00

  Um, and I believe she knew who I was because she was very unpleasant.

• 1:48:17Speaker 02

  Or doing it for attention.

• 1:48:18Speaker 00

  For attention.

• 1:48:19Speaker 02

  Like if I don't really believe this, am I just doing it for attention?

• 1:48:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, but I believed it. I didn't like her.

• 1:48:23Speaker 02

  Um, yeah.

• 1:48:24Speaker 00

  And I didn't know she had suffered a personal tragedy, tragedy in her life.

• 1:48:28Speaker 02

  Ah.

• 1:48:29Speaker 00

  Uh, somebody I think that she loved was murdered.

• 1:48:31Speaker 02

  So that kind of motivates her worldview.

• 1:48:33Speaker 00

  In a way, yeah, but hashtag Totmom is still capitalizing on fucking.

• 1:48:37Speaker 02

  Well, that's the problem is a lot of people are capitalizing on shit.

• 1:48:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 1:48:41Speaker 02

  It's easy to call them out for it.

• 1:48:42Speaker 00

  Yeah. And it was fun to call her out and it felt good.

• 1:48:45Speaker 02

  And yeah, I don't know if that's the wrong one.

• 1:48:47Speaker 00

  No, I didn't feel terrible about that, but I feel like I have to say, I had to say something to her and just, you know, otherwise I'm a pussy.

• 1:48:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:48:56Speaker 00

  You know what I mean? You don't want to be, but, but again, you are, you have these moments. I'm sure you've had tense moments on this where it gets real with somebody and you're like, I'm not going to back off on this.

• 1:49:05Speaker 02

  For sure.

• 1:49:05Speaker 00

  I don't want to.

• 1:49:06Speaker 02

  It's almost like, those are the more interesting discussions. Like anytime I would go do like press or do podcasts, I almost like wanted, I'd almost rather start every, every interview with like, what do we, what do you think we disagree on?

• 1:49:17Speaker 00

  Ah, yeah.

• 1:49:18Speaker 02

  You know, like, cuz it's like, let's just get there. Sometimes it's pleasantries and all this other stuff and you can tell like they actually wanna get to something. But like, I'd rather talk about the thing you think we disagree on. Cuz one, you maybe like, feel like I have a certain worldview, which I don't. And if I do have that worldview, I would love to defend it.

• 1:49:34Speaker 00

  Yeah, of course.

• 1:49:35Speaker 02

  Right, like-

• 1:49:36Speaker 00

  Tell you why I feel the way I feel.

• 1:49:37Speaker 02

  Exactly. I don't mind being hated for the way I feel about the world.

• 1:49:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:49:41Speaker 02

  I'm just kind of like, one of the cool things about being a comedian.

• 1:49:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:49:44Speaker 02

  It's like, if we actually feel like some way, that's fine. I think maybe what can be like, grating is to be, to receive like, criticism for something that I don't actually believe.

• 1:49:54Speaker 00

  It's you realize when, when people start talking about you.

• 1:49:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:49:57Speaker 00

  Like, we were, you know, I was getting trashed on message boards in 2001. So it's like, you become-

• 1:50:02Speaker 02

  This is pre, this, the internet exists, but this is pre like Reddit and-

• 1:50:05Speaker 00

  Before any of that stuff, yeah. But you learn, you become very immune to it after a while. Where people are saying, "Oh no, what's he saying about me?"

• 1:50:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:50:12Speaker 00

  You learn not to give a fuck about that.

• 1:50:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:50:14Speaker 00

  A long time ago.

• 1:50:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:50:16Speaker 00

  Um, but I realized people were so wrong. Like, they would say things, they would think they know something that happened, or they would think they know my motivation for doing something.

• 1:50:24Speaker 02

  Right, right.

• 1:50:24Speaker 00

  And I'm like, "I'm the person, so I know the truth."

• 1:50:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:50:26Speaker 00

  And I'm like, "Wow, you really think you're right, but you're a, like, you couldn't be more wrong."

• 1:50:32Speaker 02

  So how'd you do with that?

• 1:50:33Speaker 00

  Uh, it made me angry, but it also changed how I viewed other people. And I became much more like, "Well," I meant, because I realized what an asshole you are if you always think you know the answers.

• 1:50:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:50:45Speaker 00

  Because so many people had said things that were incorrect.

• 1:50:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:50:48Speaker 00

  That I 100% knew were incorrect, that it changed the way, my worldview, to the point where I don't wanna be that stubborn douchebag. Like, whoever coined the phrase "identity politi-" whoever coined that phrase is fucking, but I think we talked about that.

• 1:51:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:51:01Speaker 00

  It's brilliant because people's identity becomes wrapped up in these things.

• 1:51:05Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:51:05Speaker 00

  And in proving you wrong.

• 1:51:07Speaker 02

  Well, once your identity is, is wrapped up in it, you have to defend it with everything.

• 1:51:10Speaker 00

  It has to be, yeah, and my identity is kind of wrapped up in just the things I've talked about and like, which is not always great.

• 1:51:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:51:18Speaker 00

  I mean, there's, I mean, we had, I was on Fight, I did Fallon one time, when it was still a late show, The Tonight Show, they did, they didn't want me.

• 1:51:25Speaker 02

  Like a, like a five-minute set, or as a guest? Appearance. Yeah, I remember seeing some.

• 1:51:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, I knew Jim. He was a nice guy. He's still a very nice guy, but his show is not interested in being in the Jim Norton business. But I told the story, a true story. I'd gone to like some transsexual bar the night before and left my wallet at the bar. So I had to go back and get my wallet from this fucking.

• 1:51:47Speaker 02

  Damn.

• 1:51:50Speaker 02

  Don't you hate when that happens? You gotta go twice?

• 1:51:53Speaker 00

  But no, I think I had already, I think I had already, you know, had already been relieved. So there was no desire to go back in. I was like, whew, get my wallet. Toilet paper stuck to my dick.

• 1:52:06Speaker 00

  But I think I told that story on his show and panel. And it was just like, that's not always a good identity to have. Like when that's your identity, because that's the type of stuff you talk about, because that's the life you lead.

• 1:52:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:52:16Speaker 00

  It's not always helpful.

• 1:52:17Speaker 02

  Helpful, meaning like the internet now can kind of like frame you in a specific way or box you in in a specific way?

• 1:52:23Speaker 00

  In a way, in the business itself, like the business is filled with fake allies. They're fucking fake.

• 1:52:29Speaker 02

  Oh, yes, they are.

• 1:52:30Speaker 00

  Fake allies. And I've come to like, like I watch all these comedians getting called Nazis and it's like, you know, you progressive fucking babbling fake allies, the guys who are called Nazis, they're the ones who have been nicest to me and my wife. Like they're the ones who have welcomed us and been nicest to us. So I've got a really strange view of this now that I've seen it.

• 1:52:54Speaker 02

  For the listeners, your wife is trans.

• 1:52:55Speaker 00

  Yes. But I've seen so many people who are like these fucking, these real public allies. And then you're like, hey, you want to come on the podcast? Ah, nah, dad loves to, but I'm bad. And it's like, you don't want to be close. You don't want to be helpful. And they're not obligated. Don't get me wrong. They have no obligation.

• 1:53:12Speaker 02

  No, but it's performative.

• 1:53:13Speaker 00

  It's all bullshit and they attack Rogan and.

• 1:53:17Speaker 02

  I hated that.

• 1:53:18Speaker 00

  It's annoying because like, I know these guys before they did podcasts and I see how they've, he's the same guy. It's the same fucking dude it was.

• 1:53:26Speaker 02

  Also, you know him. Like, just go talk to him.

• 1:53:28Speaker 00

  You know this person?

• 1:53:29Speaker 02

  Text him, call him.

• 1:53:30Speaker 00

  Go have a conversation with him.

• 1:53:31Speaker 02

  And also he just went on the pod every time that you asked him to go on the pod because it was good for you.

• 1:53:36Speaker 00

  Yeah. And all of a sudden you're like, whoa, hey.

• 1:53:38Speaker 02

  But this is a, this is a unique thing and that like, just talking to you over the last few weeks, it was interesting. It's like, you seem to be very grateful for the people that have helped you get to where you are. And I think there, I'm not saying that there are other people that aren't grateful, but I think that their North Star is opportunity. And it's not like this opportunity would not be possible without the people that helps you out.

• 1:53:59Speaker 00

  A hundred percent. And nobody, again, nobody owes, you know, to quote Rocky III, you know, friends don't owe, they do because they want, but nobody owes anybody anything. Like, you know, guys we had on the radio show, they helped our radio show. They were funny on the radio show. So it was, it was a two-way street.

• 1:54:14Speaker 02

  I feel like I owe so much to Charlamagne, so much to Rogan, so much to everybody.

• 1:54:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, and I owe a lot to Dice, and I owe a lot to Opie and Anthony, too. And I've always been very public about how much those guys did for me because they changed my life. I mean.

• 1:54:29Speaker 02

  Didn't you shout them out on your special?

• 1:54:31Speaker 00

  I used to bring Opie and Anthony to my specials and I would always insist on them standing up and me pointing them out.

• 1:54:35Speaker 02

  It was, I thought that was such a cool moment.

• 1:54:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, HBO wanted to cut that, but I really fought for it. They, they're like, ah, they're not national, and I'm like, I'm like.

• 1:54:45Speaker 02

  Sometimes the narcissism that allows you to be successful in the business of entertainment can kind of like frame your worldview like this was all supposed to happen. And there are so many lucky things that happen and so many incredibly generous people around you that allow that luck to proliferate.

• 1:55:01Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:55:02Speaker 02

  And, uh, yeah, if you, if you're not like a complete fucking narcissist, you can show gratitude to those people.

• 1:55:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:55:08Speaker 02

  And be loyal to them.

• 1:55:09Speaker 00

  And there are a lot of people where they're in a club and they just, they don't want touching you to risk the club they're in, or they're afraid that if they have you on or you have them on, that it will damage the club that they're a member of.

• 1:55:24Speaker 02

  Cause they don't really feel like they're in the club.

• 1:55:27Speaker 00

  Maybe not.

• 1:55:28Speaker 02

  They don't have the confidence that they're in. They don't have the confidence, what they think is that they're a guest. And they're like, if I ruffle one feather, it's not gonna happen. And like, one of the coolest things about the internet is like, you get to kind of create your club, man. You get to have your people that support you and fuck with you, and you're supposed to have the freedom to do whatever the fuck you want because of that.

• 1:55:45Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:55:46Speaker 02

  And otherwise, we're just back in that same system that we're all annoyed with, where we're like basically begging for an opportunity.

• 1:55:51Speaker 00

  Yeah. But now I'm in my 50s and I'm begging people to come on my podcast, so this is a good little incident.

• 1:55:57Speaker 02

  But you kind of like the humiliation, you know?

• 1:55:59Speaker 00

  I do, but it's funny. I wish I could jerk off to, no, I'd love to, but I'm busy. But I can't. For some reason, that just doesn't, that doesn't motivate my balls to move at all. I wish that would turn me on. Believe me, I would have a lot of great fodder.

• 1:56:13Speaker 00

  But you know, you know who is, who is a real person, like Dave Attell. I had said to Attell one time, I'm like, hey man, I would love to have you on. He goes, I can't, I'm on the road for the show. Then I saw him at the Cellar like a month later. He goes, oh hey man, I'm back. So if you wanna...

• 1:56:25Speaker 02

  The man.

• 1:56:25Speaker 00

  That's how you know a person is being real with you and genuine with you. Is they, they, it's, it's not you following up eight times with the same fuckhead. So yeah, you develop, yeah, I don't trash people because nobody owes me anything. So no one is wronging me. They're not wronging me. I'm not being wronged. I'm not a victim in that.

• 1:56:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:56:45Speaker 00

  But you just make a mental note like, oh, all right. I hope you die in a fire.

• 1:56:51Speaker 02

  Dave is such an interesting character because he's one of the few people whose mythology exists while he's alive.

• 1:56:57Speaker 00

  Yes, at a hundred percent deserved.

• 1:56:59Speaker 02

  A hundred percent deserved.

• 1:57:00Speaker 00

  He's also a really...

• 1:57:01Speaker 02

  Dave Attell we're talking about.

• 1:57:02Speaker 00

  Dave Attell, and he's a generous guy. He's good to every comedian around him. And I remember we did, we went to the Pentagon. It was with, it was with Bill and Jim.

• 1:57:11Speaker 02

  What?

• 1:57:11Speaker 00

  We were doing that tour, the, uh, the, uh, the anti-social tour.

• 1:57:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:57:16Speaker 00

  It was, it was, it was, this time was Bill, Jim, Dave and myself.

• 1:57:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:57:20Speaker 00

  And they had to go to the Pentagon to talk to wounded warriors. And none of us knew what to say to somebody who lost a limb.

• 1:57:26Speaker 02

  Oh, fuck.

• 1:57:27Speaker 00

  In a thing, we were just supposed to make them feel better. But Attell was great. He was walking right up to people. Wow, what happened to you, man? What the fuck is that from? And they were so happy.

• 1:57:36Speaker 02

  That someone was treating them normally and not like this.

• 1:57:38Speaker 00

  To talk to him. Oh, man, I was over in Desert Storm and like, he's such a real person. And it was so genuine. We were all like, Attell has been funny at some of the worst periods. Like when Manny from the Comedy Cellar got sick, Dave made me laugh in the hospital room. I was devastated. He made me laugh. Maybe, he made all of us laugh. When Patrice fucking died, we were trying to raise money. He was on the air and he goes, come on, people, chip in. We gotta pay for a purple suit and a giant coffin.

• 1:58:07Speaker 00

  He's the fucking funniest guy in the world. So he would always make me laugh in terrible fucking moments. Moments where I just was not, I was, you know, I was kind of personally devastated. But Dave has deserved, his legacy is deserved.

• 1:58:20Speaker 02

  Yeah. I'm curious, in that vein, like what was doing comedy in the city right after 9/11 like?

• 1:58:25Speaker 00

  Um, the cellar was closed. I was living in Jersey at the time. I was right over the bridge in Cliffside Park and you could smell it, like you could smell the, the burning, um, whatever for, for months after it. And I think below 14th Street Manhattan was closed to traffic. So the cellar was closed for a while. And I remember when we farted, I started going back and we didn't know how we're gonna talk about stuff. And on Opie and Anthony, like they, they kept those guys home on nine 11. So I just kinda called in and we were talking through what had happened in the morning. And the way that O N A started making nine 11 funny was people were writing these fucking melodramatic drippy shit songs about the

• 1:59:09Speaker 00

  towers and the pain. So we were getting copies of these songs and trying to guess what they were gonna do to rhyme, or how they were gonna ruin this and mocking these songs. So it was a way in.

• 1:59:22Speaker 02

  So you're not mocking nine 11. You're mocking the songs, these like performances.

• 1:59:25Speaker 00

  And then they were awful and it let people kind of step back into it. And on the stage, we were all at the cellar talking about our, our daydream. Like we all daydreamed, what would I have done if I was on one of those planes? All of us had stupid daydreams. I forget what Patrice's was, but the end of it was he would have then walked out and got into a cab and said, take me to Brooklyn. Like it was such an asshole. But none of us were kidding. We were all being legit. And Keith had one, uh, which was just childlike in its stupidity. So I remember I went on stage, Keith was hosting and I told his, uh, and that's not how every comic got back into it, but I just remember telling the audience how stupid, I just wanted you to know how stupid your host is. And I talked

• 2:00:09Speaker 00

  about what his fantasy was to stop nine 11. And guys were kinda working through it like that and talking through it like that, giving our own daydreams on stage and people related to it. Cause you weren't shitting on the victims. You were talking about what you thought you would do in that circumstance. And everyone thought, what would I do in that circumstance?

• 2:00:28Speaker 02

  Yes, I remember exactly that moment. Like what should we do? I was in high school.

• 2:00:32Speaker 00

  Yeah. How would I handle this?

• 2:00:33Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. We thought it was like an attack. So we were like.

• 2:00:37Speaker 01

  Well, it kinda, kinda was.

• 2:00:38Speaker 02

  No, meaning like we thought it was our, we thought it was an invasion. So we're like, do we get guns? Like what do we do? You know, you have this like hubris is like a 17 year old kid in New York. You're like, yeah, we gotta.

• 2:00:47Speaker 01

  Let's light a couch on fire, throw it at the town.

• 2:00:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly.

• 2:00:50Speaker 02

  That's how we're gonna stop terrorism.

• 2:00:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, let's get our mouths tangled in and go back for seconds.

• 2:00:56Speaker 02

  I remember being in high school, I was like, oh, they had razor blades? Like, we could have fought these guys.

• 2:01:05Speaker 00

  Well, they thought they had bombs, because they said they had bombs. And that was why they opened up their cockpit doors. Because they were told that they had fake bombs.

• 2:01:11Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 2:01:11Speaker 00

  So they, they, everyone thought they had an explosive device.

• 2:01:14Speaker 02

  They got a lead with that.

• 2:01:15Speaker 00

  Yeah, you, you have to open with the bombs. The razors were what you really had. But then their, the pilots were trained to open the door and negotiate. That's why they opened the door.

• 2:01:22Speaker 02

  Right, right.

• 2:01:23Speaker 00

  Bad, just so they trained them differently after.

• 2:01:25Speaker 05

  They also said they were gonna land. They had bombs, we'll land, we'll hostage you guys and get money.

• 2:01:29Speaker 00

  Yes, yeah, they didn't fly either, yeah.

• 2:01:31Speaker 01

  Wow, it's just such an interesting time, as far as like comedically in New York, like these tragedies and how comics come back from it. Like, I remember hearing stories about like Gilbert Gottfried doing something. I think he did like-

• 2:01:42Speaker 00

  On a roast, yeah.

• 2:01:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, he did a roast like a week later, or something like that, and he did a 9/11 joke.

• 2:01:47Speaker 00

  It might have been a month later, but it was, I think it was-

• 2:01:48Speaker 02

  It was one of the Comedy Central roasts, wasn't it?

• 2:01:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, he said-

• 2:01:51Speaker 01

  It was within a close timeframe.

• 2:01:52Speaker 00

  He's taking a flight, uh, but they're gonna make a stopover at the Empire State Building. It was a really, and everybody got mad and blood hurt, you know, all the fake, it's all fake. I can't even get mad at it anymore. The anger's all fake, it's all a perform, it's all pretend.

• 2:02:06Speaker 02

  And it's rewarded now, it's interesting, like, when you saw it on like a forum back in the day, maybe it was rewarded by the community, but I don't even know if there was like upvotes or anything in it. Like, now you have the most reward for the most performative, uh, response, or whatever it is.

• 2:02:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, like the outrage, it's all dopamine, everyone's chasing their own dopamine. And I know that, because I've seen people I didn't like getting in trouble. For like, for usually for language stuff.

• 2:02:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:02:31Speaker 00

  And I, I never contribute to it, but I've watched it and enjoyed it.

• 2:02:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:02:34Speaker 00

  I'm like, wow, I'm happy that's happening to that person.

• 2:02:36Speaker 02

  It is a weird thing, because it comes for everybody, and I think like before you're there, you don't think that it'll come for you.

• 2:02:43Speaker 00

  Sure, of course, it come for anybody. People like, you can't be canceled, anybody, because canceling is not, it's not a rational thing. It's not based on real things. It's arbitrary, and it's random, and it's based on the, the, the mood. The, the punishment is meted out according to the mood of the crowd. According to the, uh, their perception of the person to begin. So it's all fucking arbitrary and bullshit, so anyone can fall victim to it.

• 2:03:07Speaker 02

  You said an interesting thing, I think, I don't know if it was Opie or Anthony, but they said that eventually the audience will start entertaining themselves.

• 2:03:14Speaker 00

  Yes, and turn on us, and they did, and we kind of knew, I think it was Opie who actually said it.

• 2:03:18Speaker 02

  Can you explain what that was? Like you're saying in these forums it happened or?

• 2:03:21Speaker 00

  Well, we had the fans were very hardcore. Like they were really, they were great. I mean, they were animals. A lot of them are really funny. Like a lot of the people that hate me the most today, I know on some level, don't hate me.

• 2:03:33Speaker 02

  They've been following you for fucking three decades.

• 2:03:35Speaker 00

  And I'm still a part of their life. Like I'm still, I mean, they're, you know, you know, their, their screen name is still something that I said.

• 2:03:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:03:42Speaker 00

  And then they, even if they hate me now.

• 2:03:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:03:46Speaker 00

  But eventually you know that again, and, and people are not just going to be autistic in my favor. People are gonna somehow, you know, that can turn on you in a, in a dime. And, and then after a while, they're just making each other laugh. And a lot of them are really funny. Like, and what am I gonna do? Pretend that I'm above it? Like?

• 2:04:04Speaker 02

  No, you're a comedian also. Like you can appreciate the funny.

• 2:04:08Speaker 00

  Some of it, yeah. And some of it's mean and just shitty and it's not meant to be funny.

• 2:04:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:04:12Speaker 00

  But again, I've said a lot of fucking horrible things in my life. I mean, a lot of horrible things publicly about people, about tragedies and about deaths.

• 2:04:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:04:20Speaker 00

  Um, and about pedophilia and I've mocked it all. And I'm in no position to pretend that I am not completely fair game to be made fun of.

• 2:04:28Mark Gagnon?

  Yeah. Outside before the pod, you mentioned you used to get a bunch of death threats?

• 2:04:31Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:04:32Mark Gagnon?

  Why?

• 2:04:33Speaker 00

  Because of stuff we would say on the air.

• 2:04:35Speaker 02

  Like you have to use a fake name at the cellar.

• 2:04:37Speaker 00

  I started doing that because of guys calling in. And I remember a couple of guys, I would get emails all the time. Um, and I would have people say they're gonna kill me, but they would do it under their real name. And that's when I stopped responding. I used to go back and forth with emails. Fuck you. You, like I was, I didn't, you know. But then a few of them use their real name. And when they're threatening to shoot you and using their real name, I'm like, that's a guy who has a problem.

• 2:05:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:05:00Speaker 00

  Um, and then I told the, the Roy story. Um, when the guy who sued me, and I've told the story before, but I got sued by a guy who challenged me to a duel for defamation. A long story. He was a lawyer. Uh, challenged me to a duel. He said, we'll go to South America. We'll get guns. Uh, it was 2008. He sued me. It went away and then-

• 2:05:19Speaker 02

  One of the old fashioned duels, like you take ten paces, turn around?

• 2:05:22Speaker 00

  Yes, that's what he was suggesting. But during the pandemic, he dressed up like a FedEx worker and went to a judge's house and killed her adult son.

• 2:05:28Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 2:05:29Speaker 00

  Um, he was gonna shoot her. He wanted to kill Sonia Sotomayor from the Supreme Court. Like, he was a crazy, he had cancer, stage four cancer. So he shot, he was gonna go kill this judge. And he wound up shooting himself in the woods. So, like, that's a guy who I had a back and forth with. He put me in his manifesto. So you learn, like, there's real people that you're interacting with and listening to you. So you know what I mean? Like, I was always paranoid about the seller being hassled.

• 2:05:52Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 2:05:53Speaker 00

  And I didn't wanna just be there, um, randomly every night and have some fucking lunatic-

• 2:05:59Speaker 02

  Did you read the manifesto?

• 2:06:00Speaker 00

  Uh, yeah, he said I looked like Gollum. Um, and I, I-

• 2:06:04Speaker 02

  Oh, that's good.

• 2:06:04Speaker 00

  I know, I know.

• 2:06:05Speaker 02

  That's good.

• 2:06:05Speaker 00

  I know. And I've even said I had no defamation case.

• 2:06:10Speaker 00

  But, uh, yeah, he was a real piece of shit. And I, but I'm, I'm glad that his demise happened. But it's unfortunate that somebody innocent had to, to get it too.

• 2:06:17Speaker 02

  I mean, you know, a great stroke of irony is in that manifesto if he was like, "This guy used to blow me in a pool." "And then he just never talks to me again."

• 2:06:28Speaker 00

  "And he used teeth one time for like this to defend myself." "And then he mocked me." "He victimized me by making fun of me." Yeah, he was, uh, that was a, but you realize that there are people watching you who you don't know what they're thinking and you don't know who they are.

• 2:06:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:06:43Speaker 00

  So you have to, I mean, there's real life psychopaths out there.

• 2:06:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:06:46Speaker 00

  It wasn't me thinking I was important. It was me getting enough death threats from enough different places. And most of them are lies, almost always lies.

• 2:06:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:06:55Speaker 00

  But you're only worried about one person.

• 2:06:56Speaker 02

  Right. Did you get stuff for your wife being trans?

• 2:07:00Speaker 00

  Uh, it's been all positive. I can't believe-

• 2:07:02Speaker 02

  No, but like, like, like, did you have any, like, maybe more conservative leaning? That's the tricky thing because they've known this about you for decades. They've known about-

• 2:07:12Speaker 00

  Over 20 years.

• 2:07:14Speaker 02

  So it's not new information.

• 2:07:15Speaker 00

  You were early on it. Yeah, before was cool. Yeah, I, I really was a-

• 2:07:19Speaker 02

  You were there before the surgery got good.

• 2:07:21Speaker 00

  I, yes, I was. I mean, I was fucking-

• 2:07:23Speaker 02

  You were like those Russian astronauts.

• 2:07:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:07:27Speaker 00

  I was, I was back in the days where you would, you would tip the wig like a hat, "Good evening."

• 2:07:34Speaker 02

  How early did you find that you were into the trans stuff?

• 2:07:37Speaker 00

  Teen stuff, teen stuff, or maybe even before that, I saw, and the story I've told is it's truth, was it was a star, a woman named Sulka, she was a trans porn star, and I saw her when I was a teenager, my friend's porn, his dad's porn collection, or whatever it was, magazine, and it just hit me, I was like, oh, I don't know why, but it made sense, it just made sense. There's certain things that you can't say exactly why, but there was something about that, that I just was like, I understand this.

• 2:08:08Speaker 02

  Was there any point at that time where you were like, okay, am I gay?

• 2:08:12Speaker 00

  Of course, I mean, as I was getting dressed this morning, I was just saying that into my socks, but no, of course you wonder, but people, it's amazing how stupid people are, like, so many people will go, just come out of the closet, bro, I'm like, what closet?

• 2:08:29Speaker 02

  You're in a public fucking relationship.

• 2:08:31Speaker 00

  Closet, it's a fucking, it's a glass room, and fucking, penises and vaginas all over it, talking about, I'm not secretive about this stuff, and I'm not being dishonest, but I won't claim, yes, I'm a homosexual, and I'm not, like, I don't, and I mean this very genuinely, and I'll, but I'm definitely not straight, you, there's no way you're in a relationship with a partner who has a penis, and you're a heterosexual, that's where all that fucking jargon nonsense has to stop, because you're losing people, no one is taking you seriously, no one thinks that you're saying anything real, when you just throw fucking phrases and terms at people, you know, it's not, I don't know exactly how to describe it, and I'm okay not knowing the answer, but the idea, like, you three guys, and I'll say this, like, the idea of being sexual with any of you, and this is the truth, is as awful for me thinking it, as it is for you.

• 2:09:16Speaker 02

  Thank God.

• 2:09:17Speaker 00

  Like, yes, 100%.

• 2:09:18Speaker 01

  If you had to rank us, though.

• 2:09:19Speaker 00

  What's that?

• 2:09:20Speaker 01

  If you had to rank us.

• 2:09:21Speaker 00

  I, I, I would always go with the money.

• 2:09:29Speaker 00

  I mean, I'm not a fucking idiot. But the idea of being physical or sexual with my friend, like, it's repulsive to me. Like, you know what I mean? And people misinterpret sometimes my life with the way I view them, and it's just not that way. But do you like dudes that look like dudes? No, no, I've never liked masculine energy. I don't like masculine energy at all. I just, I don't think it's sexy at all. Um, you know, like with transgender, depends on the person, really. There's been plenty of trans people I've been with, and I hate when there's sometimes trans people get mad at me, like, "You're fetishizing." I'm like, "I fetishize every person in my life." "Who do you think I am?" Yeah, why is that like, uh, why is that a pejorative? I don't know, it's, it's just one of these things where- What's the difference between being attracted to something and then fetishizing it?

• 2:10:14Speaker 00

  I guess if you're only attracted to it in the dark, they consider it a fetish- But you're in the light. Oh, but are you kidding me? It's spotlight that I turned on. I didn't get caught. I fucking turned the light on, I'm like, "Hey!" Um, because again, I just, you know, I get sick of guys getting outed, who got caught with a trans person. Just admit it, you fucking pussy. Just shut up and admit it, admit who you like, especially if you're in your 50s or your 60s at this point. Yeah. Just come out and say it. That, that always annoyed me, but I would never, ever out a person. Right. But you've heard it, and you've heard the whispers, and maybe even trans girls in the community have said certain things. If you wanna know who fucks trans people, have sex with a trans sex worker, they'll tell you. Immediately. Oh, it's because they don't care, they're having a good time chatting, they don't mean it for public consumption. Of course.

• 2:10:59Speaker 00

  But I mean, and I also hate this fake thing from men, who are so, like, a lot of people, they're not attracted to it at all. Yeah. And I hate when people go, "You're transphobic if you don't like trans women." No, you're not. You're not transphobic if you don't want a penis in your face. Yeah. You know, that's not transphobia, that's just who you are, and that's your life. Yeah. But I also hate when straight men, like, I was on Theo's podcast, and I love Theo, and we were joking about something, and I showed him a picture of my wife's dick. Whoa. Well, yeah, but he had led into it, saying somebody had showed him a picture or something, but it was, she wouldn't, believe me, if she would care, I wouldn't do it. She doesn't. And he was, you know, he was funny with it. He was Theo. He was like, oh, yeah, yeah. And but all the comments of people like, dude, that's fucking disgusting. I'm like, shut the fuck up.

• 2:11:44Speaker 00

  You watch porn. What do you look for? Small dick porn? No, you don't. No, you don't. You're not that shocked by a penis.

• 2:11:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:11:53Speaker 00

  You stop pretending and role playing.

• 2:11:56Speaker 01

  What did they think was wrong with it?

• 2:11:57Speaker 00

  Uh, they just, they, they.

• 2:11:58Speaker 01

  They were just white knighting like virtue signaling.

• 2:12:00Speaker 00

  They were like, yeah, fuck that shit. No, that doesn't offend me, but it's the, it's the fake shock at a penis. Like, again, you don't have to like it. I believe that you don't like it. I think that you're straight. I think that you, it, it.

• 2:12:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:12:14Speaker 00

  The idea of doing something like that probably disgusts you and I'm fine with that.

• 2:12:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:12:18Speaker 00

  But it's this whole like, whoa, bro. It's like that. It's like, shut your face.

• 2:12:24Mark Gagnon?

  I thought the shock was showing nudes of your wife. Like that's.

• 2:12:29Speaker 02

  That's kind of what I thought.

• 2:12:31Speaker 00

  That's a fair point. But I know her well enough to know, believe me, she's fine with it. Uh, she would not be.

• 2:12:38Speaker 01

  Does it, does it work as well, the penis, when she's taking the hormones?

• 2:12:42Speaker 00

  I mean, I, I spent a lot of money on immigration, immigration lawyers. And you, you wouldn't do that if it didn't.

• 2:12:59Speaker 00

  You know.

• 2:13:00Speaker 01

  You gotta call up Trump like, we need to get her out of here. This is like it was in Norway.

• 2:13:04Speaker 00

  Hey, I. You know, we did it really legally. It was a frustrating process, but you learn a lot about immigration. We did it a hundred percent by the book.

• 2:13:12Speaker 01

  Weren't you living in like Montreal for like a year and nobody knew or something like that?

• 2:13:17Speaker 00

  Fifteen months I went up there during the pandemic. I heard that they were going to close the border, so I just drove up one day.

• 2:13:21Speaker 01

  It can't be without this.

• 2:13:22Speaker 00

  Safe. No, not at all, please. I'm addicted.

• 2:13:27Speaker 00

  Come on, folks. Get your tickets.

• 2:13:31Speaker 00

  But no, I had fallen in love with her. At first, it was just about, you know, sex. I was attracted to her.

• 2:13:36Speaker 02

  How'd you guys even meet? She's not from here, right?

• 2:13:37Speaker 00

  She sent me an email, because I had always talked about this stuff. It was like a Facebook message. Because I'd always talked about this stuff in interviews.

• 2:13:43Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:13:43Speaker 00

  And most, you know, I've got a lot of messages from girls. "Hey, I'm so happy you talked about this." "It was nice to hear somebody be honest." Um, and she sent me a message, and we just started talking. But then she wasn't allowed to come and visit, because they thought she was just gonna live here illegally, which she wouldn't have.

• 2:14:00Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:14:00Speaker 00

  But again, immigration can be tough sometimes if you're, you know, you're under a certain age. They think you're gonna... So we just had to talk every day, and we became very close over the next couple of eight months. And then I finally booked gigs overseas to meet her. But I kinda started falling in love with her through talking to her, like before we ever had any intercourse.

• 2:14:17Speaker 02

  Where'd she grow up?

• 2:14:18Speaker 00

  She's Norway, from Norway. Um, so getting to know each other, yeah, we definitely talked earlier. I mean, there was a lot of, a lot of Skype, uh, uh, sex talk. But it was also like, you just, it became a real relationship. And it wasn't just somebody who I was gonna have sex with, so I just fell in love with, with, with her, so...

• 2:14:37Speaker 02

  And did she embrace your deviancy? Was there judgment of any of this shit?

• 2:14:41Speaker 00

  She didn't judge it at all, no.

• 2:14:42Speaker 02

  She's still a wife at the end of the day, like, there's, there's a certain point in time where they're like, "We're not doing that anymore, we're married."

• 2:14:46Speaker 00

  There are certain differences, and there are certain complete similarities. Um, she's been very open, but my ex-girlfriend, uh, who was biologically a woman, was not at all thrown off by it. Like I said, the one who was a dominatrix, she didn't know. She knew all my secrets.

• 2:15:00Speaker 02

  But she's in the biz, though.

• 2:15:02Speaker 00

  She was when I met her, but then she got out, and then just changed her life completely.

• 2:15:05Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:15:06Speaker 00

  She got out and, uh...

• 2:15:07Speaker 02

  You said she went back to school or something like that?

• 2:15:08Speaker 00

  Went back to school, started making film, like, you know. And then, uh, she's a hustler, man. She works her ass off. She got into the restaurant business, like, she did so much with her life, like, you know what I mean, like... Uh, but no, she didn't judge any of it either. I couldn't have been with somebody who judged it. I, I, I'm bored with somebody who ju- I dated a woman once, uh, and I was so attracted to her. But there were certain things about my past, and she's like, "You can never tell me that again." And I remember in my mind going, "I will never be with this person again." I wasn't angry and I wasn't offended.

• 2:15:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:15:41Speaker 00

  But I'm like, "I'm not gonna shame to this shit."

• 2:15:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, you felt ashamed.

• 2:15:44Speaker 00

  No, I, like, I, she wanted me to.

• 2:15:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:15:46Speaker 00

  But I didn't feel ashamed. I was more annoyed. Like, "How fucking dare you? I know your dirt."

• 2:15:50Speaker 02

  Well, she feels discomfort about it.

• 2:15:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, she was very uncomfortable with it.

• 2:15:54Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:15:55Speaker 00

  Um, not that my wife is proud of my history. I mean, but again, we all have a history, right? No matter how nice a girl- you and your wife are a little bit different, but you guys are rare exceptions. You know what I mean?

• 2:16:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:16:04Speaker 00

  That's a rare exception.

• 2:16:05Speaker 01

  I'm curious, it's, do you ever, at, at what age did she transition?

• 2:16:10Speaker 00

  I think she was about fifteen she started. But in Norway, it's a different process. It's, you have to be diagnosed before they give you anything. And I think you have to live in that lifestyle as a year, dressing that way and living that way to see if it's legit for you, or if you're somebody who is just stumbling into it because you don't know who you, who you are. Like, that's, you know what I mean? Like, right now, when, you, you know, you see, cause whatever the, the, the personality of the day is, people will accidentally stumble into. Like, people in the, in, in the nineties, it was emo. And in the eighties, it was devil worship.

• 2:16:45Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:16:46Speaker 00

  And there were the people who legitimately are emo, and, but then there's people who weren't.

• 2:16:50Speaker 02

  We're so tribal that sometimes we can adopt certain trends that can have, you know, negative impacts long-term. So you have to give people a little bit to make sure.

• 2:16:57Speaker 01

  And there's a social contagion, even if there's a contingent of people that are legitimately a certain person.

• 2:17:01Speaker 00

  Hundred percent. And there are real trans people. I've known a lot of them, and I've known them for years, and I know who they are. And they're real. They're, you're a real transgender person. And then you have somebody else who comes in by no intention. And they think they are, but they're a little confused, and, "Oh yeah, that." And they think they fall under an umbrella in some weird way.

• 2:17:18Speaker 02

  Well, there's also like a social award for it. Like, you know, if you're like a straight white person in Hollywood and you go, "Well, I'm actually non-binary." It's like your way out of straight whiteness.

• 2:17:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:17:28Speaker 02

  Which might be like the bad guy in progressive ideology.

• 2:17:30Speaker 00

  I'll tell you what there's no reward in the business for, being a white guy who blinks a lot, who marries one. Oh.

• 2:17:38Speaker 00

  There is no Hollywood reward, but I knew there wouldn't be and I'm okay with it.

• 2:17:42Speaker 01

  Is it ever a strange feeling seeing photos from before the transition? I mean, granted, it's a little different because she was a kid.

• 2:17:49Speaker 02

  Do you guys have childhood pictures up in the apartment?

• 2:17:51Speaker 00

  I think she has one, yeah, and it's, it's very...

• 2:17:55Speaker 01

  What is it like feeling?

• 2:17:57Speaker 00

  Disconnect. I can't connect that to the person I'm married to. Not because I'm angry about it, but I just see...

• 2:18:03Speaker 02

  So you have a problem with her past too?

• 2:18:06Speaker 00

  I don't judge it. I'm just like, I really understand it. But it's never, it's never like a bad thing. It's just hard for me to, in my mind, marry those...

• 2:18:15Speaker 02

  Connect those two people.

• 2:18:16Speaker 00

  Because I didn't know her when she transitioned. I knew her after she transitioned. But she's very logical about this stuff and I respect her brain a lot. Like, I'm, she's more conservative about it than I am. And she's actually changed my opinions in certain ways.

• 2:18:30Speaker 02

  What do you mean by that?

• 2:18:31Speaker 00

  Meaning that she's like, again, people should be diagnosed and everybody who goes in for it is not exactly... She thinks that you should have to have a diagnosis because she did and to get on hormones and to have surgeries. There should be a certain age so you, and I think you should be a certain age too. Just so you've worked through maybe making a mistake.

• 2:18:52Speaker 02

  100%.

• 2:18:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, you know, I don't think it's irrational to say that.

• 2:18:55Speaker 02

  No.

• 2:18:56Speaker 00

  The problem is we just can't be shitty to people who say they are that. Like, that's another problem is like you force trans people into this position because you treat them fucking horribly. And you're cruel to them and then you wonder why they go, hey, fuck you if you don't honor my pronouns. So there's gotta be a balance there. Like, you gotta at least be respectful and treat people with dignity.

• 2:19:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:19:14Speaker 00

  If you want them to, to be logical and walk through this slowly.

• 2:19:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:19:19Speaker 00

  That's how I see it.

• 2:19:20Mark Gagnon?

  With all due respect, does she still have the peace?

• 2:19:22Speaker 00

  Oh, does she?

• 2:19:23Mark Gagnon?

  And now, is she, is she planning on cutting it off?

• 2:19:28Speaker 02

  Not with Jim's money.

• 2:19:29Speaker 00

  Not with my money. And if she does, hey, I'll miss her.

• 2:19:35Speaker 00

  I love her as she is. I don't want her to change anything.

• 2:19:38Speaker 02

  Oh, really?

• 2:19:38Speaker 00

  Yes. And some people, again, there's, there's trans people who say, "Oh, then you don't really love her if you..." No, that's just not true. If you, I love her as you are.

• 2:19:46Speaker 02

  Really love her what?

• 2:19:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, I love her who, how she is, is how I love her.

• 2:19:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:19:51Speaker 00

  So if you marry somebody and they have a vagina and they go, "I'm gonna transition and get a dick", you don't love them if you don't want that? I mean, come on, stop. People get so obsessed in the jargon, it's just, it's silly.

• 2:20:00Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 2:20:00Speaker 00

  So, yeah.

• 2:20:02Speaker 02

  Not because I'm like, "What if you're with someone and they gain some weight or whatever?" It's like...

• 2:20:06Speaker 00

  Same thing. Get by.

• 2:20:09Speaker 00

  Hit the road, fatso.

• 2:20:12Speaker 01

  There is a reversibility with that, whereas like some type of gender reassignment surgery is not.

• 2:20:16Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, that's right. But she doesn't want to do it. She likes how she is.

• 2:20:19Speaker 02

  Is there, is there like, uh, is there like a hierarchy or scrutiny within the community when people get like the full surgery or when they keep the part?

• 2:20:29Speaker 00

  Good question. I don't know. I mean, that I don't know the answer to because my interaction, I've, I've, I've known so many trans people over the years, but I've never gotten involved in activism. I, I, I just, and there's nothing wrong with it, but I just live my life. Like, my job, I've lost a lot of fans because of it.

• 2:20:45Speaker 02

  Really?

• 2:20:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'm okay with that. Like, uh, but I don't preach about it. Like, I don't know why they would go anywhere. Like, I've never messaged. I don't lecture. Like, people...

• 2:20:52Speaker 02

  Some of you talked about these stories for decades. It was never an issue. And the second you marry one, now it's like, "Oh..."

• 2:20:58Speaker 00

  "Oh, I thought he was kidding. No, you didn't. No, you didn't." And I don't, I might, and my, my material is still good. Like, I, I mean, I try to be funny. Um, and when I talk about it in my act, I don't, I don't lecture. My job is not to change your opinion.

• 2:21:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:21:11Speaker 00

  My job is to live my life and give you my, here's the report. Here's what's going on.

• 2:21:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:21:15Speaker 00

  Do whatever the fuck you want.

• 2:21:16Speaker 01

  And make them laugh.

• 2:21:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:21:17Speaker 00

  Make you laugh. Because if you're lecturing, then you're not doing stand-up.

• 2:21:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's awful.

• 2:21:21Speaker 00

  Who the fuck wants to get, who wants to go to laugh and hear some boar standing up there scolding them? I want you to laugh at like what I laugh at in my life.

• 2:21:29Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 2:21:30Speaker 01

  Right. It's, it's an interesting paradigm. Are there any things relationally with a trans woman that are different than a, like a biological woman outside of the obvious?

• 2:21:39Speaker 00

  No. The nagging, the fucking, "I didn't, I didn't go shopping this week. Can we just order food?" It's exactly the same.

• 2:21:48Speaker 01

  Can she pick a restaurant quickly?

• 2:21:49Speaker 00

  No. No, she can't. No, she can't. Um, no, it's, it really is, is the same.

• 2:21:57Speaker 00

  Personal relationship I've had with anyone I've dated. Any woman I've dated, and Nikki, there is no, I'm not like, whoa, this is a lot. Again, like you said, the obvious. And the challenges, and you have to worry about when you're gonna travel. You have to think about, can I go to this destination? Is this safe for her?

• 2:22:14Speaker 01

  Oh, really?

• 2:22:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, and when you're out in public, you're like, is somebody gonna say something? Am I gonna have to?

• 2:22:18Speaker 01

  Has that ever happened?

• 2:22:19Speaker 00

  No, not really. A couple of looks or comments, but very rarely. And I can't even think of a comment I've ever heard.

• 2:22:26Speaker 01

  Are there countries you've avoided?

• 2:22:27Speaker 00

  I won't go in the Middle East. But again, only with her I wouldn't. Because again, this wouldn't be good.

• 2:22:33Speaker 01

  Cause like, her passport still is male.

• 2:22:35Speaker 00

  No, it's female, cause she's from Norway. Norway uses female passport. Yeah, Norway is different, and she's got a female passport.

• 2:22:42Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, for a long time, so she's, she's good there. But even if they had to change it, I wouldn't like it, but, you know.

• 2:22:49Speaker 01

  And now, this is a little crazy, but, does she bend you over?

• 2:22:52Speaker 00

  No.

• 2:22:53Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 2:22:53Speaker 00

  No. And it's not out of masculinity. I'm like, I just, I'll wind up in the hospital.

• 2:23:00Speaker 00

  It's for safety.

• 2:23:03Speaker 02

  You gotta understand, you're blowing Alex's mind right now. Like, so, but he's probably just like, a little scared to ask questions, but you are with an absolute open book. He's probably one of the most unique individuals in comedy in that way, so you could probably ask him anything you want.

• 2:23:19Speaker 01

  Circumcised?

• 2:23:20Speaker 00

  Uh, no.

• 2:23:22Speaker 01

  Whoa.

• 2:23:22Speaker 00

  Unclipped.

• 2:23:23Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 2:23:23Speaker 00

  I am uncircumcised. That's right, European, yeah. Yeah, she's an unclipped gal, you know. The portfolio, the wife picket fence, the wife with an uncut dick, you know how it is.

• 2:23:33Speaker 01

  Well, I don't think women should get circumcised, so I'm with you.

• 2:23:35Speaker 00

  Yeah, I wish people didn't either.

• 2:23:37Speaker 01

  No, I just mean women specifically.

• 2:23:39Speaker 00

  Oh. No, no, but I'm actually trying to push for clear circumstances. I believe very strongly in that. I'm like, enough with this pleasure shit.

• 2:23:48Speaker 00

  I'm a big proponent of lopping that clit off and get to work.

• 2:23:53Speaker 01

  And now, is your relationship open?

• 2:23:55Speaker 00

  No.

• 2:23:56Speaker 01

  Oh, so you're not like still sexual addict?

• 2:23:59Speaker 00

  I mean, I am. I still watch porn and all that stuff, but I'm not sleeping with anybody.

• 2:24:02Speaker 02

  But you gotta fight it, right?

• 2:24:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, yes and no.

• 2:24:05Speaker 02

  What if like an ad comes up for like a, you know, some dating service or some shit?

• 2:24:11Speaker 00

  I mean, I look at the ad and I can get turned on by it. But again, I was kind of running out a lot of my behaviors when I first met her. Because I just, as they say, you run out your string, whatever. You just kind of like, after a while, you know what I mean? I still love dirty talk and I still love like watching porn and stuff like that. But as far as actively fucking people and all like, you do enough of it. You're like, I've done it.

• 2:24:33Speaker 02

  Do you miss vagina at all?

• 2:24:35Speaker 00

  Um, sometimes, sure. I loved, I loved it. I love vagina.

• 2:24:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:24:38Speaker 00

  But even, but you know, married guys, a lot of times will like say to me like, you don't have any, I like, yeah, but you guys are only up on me one nothing. I mean, that's how I look. Yeah, one more than I do.

• 2:24:48Speaker 01

  And we don't, we all, we all miss vagina.

• 2:24:51Speaker 00

  Of course. I mean, we all miss many vaginas. I have that in common with every married guy. I miss 99.9% of the pussies on earth. I miss them. I miss seeing them. I miss seeing the panties. Pictures. Are they big? Are they small? Does she have big lips and small lips? You know what I mean? It'd be funny if you guys were all just filed out and I was still talking. Is the clit big?

• 2:25:12Speaker 02

  And what about her? Like now she's got a public, you know, persona. Like do people hit up her?

• 2:25:17Speaker 00

  I'm sure sometimes, yeah. But she's pretty clear. She's not, you know, she's very fine being married. She's way more traditional than a lot of people would think. She's much more like just wants to be a married person. And I, it's funny how people will see our relationship. And because she hasn't been on the podcast for a while. We did one together because I was allowed to do it contractually. And then I started doing mine and she was getting a little shy publicly. But people will say like, ah, your wife is, and I'm like, no, she's home. She's doing good and everything's fine. Like, you're reading into the relationship wrong.

• 2:25:49Speaker 01

  Are there cultural elements that make things tricky? Like the fact she's from Norway? Does it add a ripple? Or does it make it easier in any way?

• 2:25:56Speaker 00

  No, it's because they're very much open over there. Like they don't care that much. I mean, the citizens are a little, I mean, they're conservative too, but yeah, no problem. We don't have that big of a cultural difference. Again, if she was like from Turkey or somewhere like, you know what I mean? Somewhere maybe a little more religiously or Islamic, like there might be a little more difficulty, but you know, she's from, it's just from a. Scandinavian country, so.

• 2:26:17Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:26:18Speaker 00

  No one cares.

• 2:26:19Speaker 01

  So interesting.

• 2:26:20Speaker 02

  Have you ever talked about it on stage and seen disbelief?

• 2:26:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, and I try to get into it like especially now where I'm not giving shocking information. So I'm not trying to go like, guess who I'm married to? I'm just, I have things to talk about with it, so I have to to let people know.

• 2:26:35Speaker 02

  Every time you're on stage, you kind of have to acknowledge.

• 2:26:38Speaker 00

  Yeah, you mentioned, I've done sets without mentioning it, but I have bits around it or jokes around it. Um, where I tie in the, and I'm, I'm, I'm working on the thing where it's, I'm talking about, I hate the, the no military because of it. They're all mentally ill argument, especially like when it comes from religious people. And I talk about the mental illness that is in religion.

• 2:26:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:26:58Speaker 00

  Um, and it annoys me a lot. So I'm trying to, so I have to set it up properly to get into that bit or that concept.

• 2:27:04Speaker 02

  Right. Is there ever a moment where like she's really acting up on something and you're like, well, maybe you guys are mentally ill?

• 2:27:10Speaker 00

  Nah, it's never been crazy like that. She's actually a better arguer than I am.

• 2:27:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. Uh, but I. You're better at cutting people's legs off.

• 2:27:17Speaker 00

  Yes, I am.

• 2:27:19Speaker 02

  Do you have to hold back? Cause it's your wife at the end of the day.

• 2:27:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, yes, you do. You have to watch what you say. We both said mean shit to each other. That you kind of, she's better at stopping the fight.

• 2:27:29Speaker 02

  Your level of mean is better than most.

• 2:27:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, but I've also, I, I've also, I've been, I, I've dated women who are good at it. Like my ex before that was good at it and she's good at it. My ex before that was talking about some guy being good looking and I was really mad at her. I'm like, you fucking bitch. And she's like, what? Did nobody ever tell you you're not an Abercrombie model?

• 2:27:52Speaker 00

  I was like, ah.

• 2:27:53Speaker 01

  Has the cultural conversation around transgenderism been helpful? That like maybe when you were doing jokes about this like 20 years ago, it's like, oh, you're a deviant, you're a weirdo. But now it's like, oh, I'm actually progressive.

• 2:28:03Speaker 00

  No, because it's become lectures. No one talks about it. Nobody wants to listen.

• 2:28:08Speaker 02

  It's not fun yet, huh?

• 2:28:09Speaker 00

  It's not fun. Everybody's lecturing.

• 2:28:10Speaker 02

  Now it's like.

• 2:28:11Speaker 01

  But when you do it, at least the audience is aware of what this is.

• 2:28:13Speaker 02

  No, this is so interesting. It's like initially, initially when you're doing it, it's so out there and provocative, right? That like it fills in your identity as this like deviant in a way, right? So they don't even take it seriously, probably, right? It's just like, oh, he's, it's just like a cartoonish backstory. The things that have happened in your life are like so insane that you can almost like separate them from reality. And then it becomes more open and progressive, but now people are white knighting about it. So it's like, it's hard to be funny about it without.

• 2:28:47Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 2:28:48Speaker 02

  Like the audi- the audience now feels like they should embrace it. But maybe they don't know where they are emotionally.

• 2:28:55Speaker 00

  I think people who are progressive like the fact that at least I talk about it and I'm in the real life with it. And I think the people who are conservative like the fact that I'm not trying to lecture them and tell them they have to feel any kind of way or scold them.

• 2:29:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:29:07Speaker 00

  For being who they are. I mean, that's just my take on it. It's, it's not my, my job to do that. It's not my job to, you know, but I, but I tell every audience and you do in Texas, you notice the reaction to the religious stuff is different in the city. They love it. It is what it is. But no, the conversation has not been helpful because it's not a real conversation. It's different people standing over a red line, lecturing each other and saying, this is what it is. And if you don't agree, this is what's wrong with you. Nobody is actually talking about it in a real way. And like being, okay, let me think about what you're saying. Let me hear, you know, is that transphobia or is that just logical pushback to where progressives became unreasonable and infuriating? Nobody is doing it like that.

• 2:29:48Speaker 02

  How long you think we live in this?

• 2:29:50Speaker 00

  Oh, it's never going to change. I mean, you know, we were talking about this since political correctness in the, me and Colin were talking about this in the early 2000s. It's going to change. It's going to swing back. It swung back a little.

• 2:29:59Speaker 02

  It did.

• 2:30:00Speaker 00

  Because the generation now is rebelling against their parents and their parents are fucking like, you know, are, are very.

• 2:30:07Speaker 02

  Delicate.

• 2:30:08Speaker 00

  Delicate with language and oh my God, you shouldn't do that. So these young kids are like, fuck it. Hey, let's get some Hitler videos and drink and laugh. It's a rebellion. It's also insincere. It's as insincere.

• 2:30:21Speaker 02

  As performative as the, yeah.

• 2:30:22Speaker 00

  All bullshit. This whole fucking fuck you, everyone's a Nazi and it's all bullshit.

• 2:30:27Speaker 02

  I thought we had a few years where it was like. I thought we were past it. There was like a couple year run where I was like, you know what? We're past it. Let's have some fun. Everything's good. And then it's almost like the pendulum swung too far.

• 2:30:37Speaker 00

  Nope. It's exactly it. But here's the problem. It's like saying we're past heroin. It's a drug. It's a drug. It's not a real thing. It's people getting high and getting stoned on punishing and on arguing. That will never go away.

• 2:30:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, because it's too seductive.

• 2:30:51Speaker 00

  Trans issues, racial issues, religious issues, it's all excuses to do what we really want to do, which is fucking get the dopamine of shaming and fighting. That's it. So these are all just peripheral things we grab onto as our sword, but it's all bullshit. It's about punishing people.

• 2:31:07Mark Gagnon?

  The trans issue, I still feel that pops up every once in a while. It's like, no trans in sports?

• 2:31:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's a rough one because there's a physical advantage to being born in a male body. It's not like you're lessed out as a person. You're not a morally inferior person, but there is a physical difference. I mean, I don't know how people can pretend they don't notice that.

• 2:31:25Mark Gagnon?

  Yeah, I'm curious. Where does your wife stand on that?

• 2:31:27Speaker 00

  She's against it.

• 2:31:28Mark Gagnon?

  Really?

• 2:31:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. She's against it.

• 2:31:31Mark Gagnon?

  So who's fighting for it?

• 2:31:33Speaker 00

  There are people who, because I think people are saying that, they're saying that if you're against it, you're transphobic, or you're not against trans people having rights. And it's just a biological thing. It's like, that's like saying that if you're a middleweight, you should be able to fight a bantamweight. There's no anger behind saying that they should. But I also want to see trans people be able to do sports. I also wish that there was either open divisions or another way to figure it out. Because I think that a lot of those people are genuine, and they just want to compete, and they're not trying to hurt girl. Like, they're just real people trying to compete, but we don't have an answer for it yet.

• 2:32:05Speaker 02

  Oh, what's that new Olympics where they can do steroids? Enhance Games.

• 2:32:08Mark Gagnon?

  Yeah.

• 2:32:08Speaker 00

  Oh, okay. Are you allowed to do steroids?

• 2:32:11Mark Gagnon?

  Yeah, it's encouraged under like medical supervision.

• 2:32:13Speaker 00

  Ah, there you go.

• 2:32:16Speaker 02

  Jim Norton, everybody. Thank you so much for being here. That was awesome.

• 2:32:20Speaker 00

  It was fun, man. That was great, brother.

• 2:32:21Speaker 02

  Thanks so much.