How To Offend Everyone - Mark Normand

Mark Normand is a podcaster, an actor and a comedian. Whatever happened to the women who shouted at the black man in Central Park while walking her dog? What is life like if you grow up in a rundown New Orleans bed & breakfast with a cross-dressing manager? Why is having a pursuit you care about so important to leading a fulfilling life? Expect to learn the price that you pay for being a famous comedian, why Mark's life would fall apart if he didn't have a passion to care about, whatever happened to that lady who tweeted about AIDs, whether Cocaine Bear will be given the Oscar nomination it deserves, whether bombing on stage changes your personality and much more... Sponsors: Get the Whoop 4.0 for free and get your first month for free at http://join.whoop.com/modernwisdom (discount automatically applied) Get over 37% discount on all products site-wide from MyProtein at https://bit.ly/proteinwisdom (use code: MODERNWISDOM) Get 20% discount on House Of Macadamias’ nuts at https://houseofmacadamias.com/modernwisdom (use code MW20) Extra Stuff: Check out Mark's website - http://marknormandcomedy.com/ Get my free Reading List of 100 books to read before you die → https://chriswillx.com/books/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/modernwisdom #marknormand #comedy #cancelled - 00:00 Intro 02:13 Cancellations Through the Ages 10:08 Mark’s Home & Childhood 15:37 The Reasons People Visit New Orleans 23:47 Lessons from Failing On Stage 27:54 The Lifestyle of a Working Comedian 36:15 Applying Rules & Rigidity to Life 41:44 Covid Protests in China 44:42 Phrogging & Robberies 55:25 What’s Next for Mark 1:05:11 Where to Find Mark - Get access to every episode 10 hours before YouTube by subscribing for free on Spotify - https://spoti.fi/2LSimPn or Apple Podcasts - https://apple.co/2MNqIgw Get my free Reading List of 100 life-changing books here - https://chriswillx.com/books/ - Get in touch in the comments below or head to... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact/

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

• 0:00Mark Normand?

  Not only are we living in this shit box mansion in this horrific neighborhood where everybody hates us because we're the white family, but my nanny, or whatever you want to call him, housekeeper, is wearing a wig, big black guy wig, high heels, and a dress while mopping. He taught me how to drive a stick, he taught me how to fist fight, he taught me how to shave, he taught me how to put the seat up. So I learned how to be a man by this guy in a wig. Now I can't get an erection unless I see a picture of RuPaul.

• 0:26Chris Williamson?

  Mark Normand, welcome to the show.

• 0:28Mark Normand?

  Hey, hey, thanks for having me. Boy, these thighs are magical.

• 0:31Chris Williamson?

  I got them out for you.

• 0:32Mark Normand?

  I love them. I want to put honey on them and eat them. Look at this. And the guns, and the hairline. My god, the hairline. Look at that thing. It's perfection.

• 0:42Chris Williamson?

  What can I say? Speaking of honey, Cocaine Bear. Have you heard of Cocaine Bear?

• 0:47Mark Normand?

  I know. Is that gay porn?

• 0:49Chris Williamson?

  No.

• 0:51Chris Williamson?

  Hottest movie, trending on Twitter yesterday, based on a real story. In November 1985, a hunter discovered a dead 175-pound black bear in Chattahoochee National Forest. Nearby was a duffel bag that had originally contained roughly 75 pounds of cocaine. The unfortunate animal had apparently gotten into the blow and overdosed, later dubbed Pablo Esco Bear, or simply Cocaine Bear. And now they're making a movie about it.

• 1:18Mark Normand?

  Oh, I hope Pixar is all over this. By the way, that's 85 before fentanyl. You know, that bear would have been dead in two seconds, but at least he probably had a good run around the forest with that coke.

• 1:29Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I know. But yeah, that's the thing, dude. You've got to scrape the barrel. If you're not going to do more redones of Top Gun, bear's taking cocaine. That's what's happening next.

• 1:39Mark Normand?

  That's gold. I love it. And nobody gets hurt. You can't cancel anybody. It's fun. He's already a black bear. We're being inclusive. Sorry, what'd you say?

• 1:49Chris Williamson?

  The bear's not very happy.

• 1:51Mark Normand?

  No, no. But you get a bear, you know, he won't really do coke in the movie.

• 1:55Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, it'll be fake coke, and it'll also be a fake bear. Apparently he's on display, the guy. It's been, what's it called when you do it?

• 2:01Mark Normand?

  Taxidermy?

• 2:01Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, taxidermy cocaine bear.

• 2:03Mark Normand?

  Whoa.

• 2:04Chris Williamson?

  Serious shit. Still got the white stuff on his muzzle and everything.

• 2:08Mark Normand?

  Damn, that's awesome. Good for the bear.

• 2:10Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I think he had a good time. Another thing-

• 2:13Mark Normand?

  He went out happy. Like, he went out like Rick James.

• 2:16Chris Williamson?

  I remembered that tweet from that lady a few, it was about 10 years ago. Do you remember she, there was some lady that was flying to Africa?

• 2:23Mark Normand?

  Oh yeah, the AIDS lady.

• 2:25Chris Williamson?

  Fuck dude, that story came back up again.

• 2:27Mark Normand?

  What?

• 2:28Chris Williamson?

  I just, it resurfaced, someone was reflecting it, it's nearly 10 years since it happened. And that was still, that was like cancellation before cancellation was a thing, really. So for the people that don't know, this lady was flying to Africa, South Africa, I think, and tweeted, "Going to Africa, hope I don't get AIDS, just kidding, I'm white." And she got on the plane with a life and a career and got off the plane and it was all gone.

• 2:52Mark Normand?

  Yeah, poor gal. That's not a bad, that's not that bad. There's a lot of AIDS in Africa, and not really amongst the whites. I mean, if you go with the statistics, I'm with her. Hey, you know, it's a funny joke, but that should be a mini-series. Like HBO, you know, like Black Mirror and all that. How about all the true cancels throughout the last, you know, get Kramer in there, get the AIDS lady, get Roseanne, remember the Ambien tweet?

• 3:18Chris Williamson?

  Wow, that would be interesting. That would be good. Each one is a different character, each one is a different story. Cancellation through the ages.

• 3:25Mark Normand?

  Exactly. See what they had, then see what they lost. Roseanne had the biggest show on Netflix, that went away, you know, that, that's fun stuff.

• 3:32Chris Williamson?

  Hmm, it seems like, I mean, is there anyone, Trump gone, now back? There's no one really that's too big to topple, I don't think. Is there anyone that's outside of the cancellation verse?

• 3:42Mark Normand?

  Chappelle seems pretty invincible.

• 3:45Chris Williamson?

  Yes, he's quarantined somehow.

• 3:46Mark Normand?

  Yeah, I don't know how, I think he just doesn't care and he's a cool black guy and he sells out everywhere. If you have the capital, you can kind of beat it.

• 3:55Chris Williamson?

  I lied, J.K. Rowling.

• 3:56Mark Normand?

  Ah, there's another one, Capital, she's a bazillionaire.

• 3:59Chris Williamson?

  Yes, I think ability to earn people money is just a protective mechanism, right?

• 4:03Mark Normand?

  Huge.

• 4:04Chris Williamson?

  Why would you kill the golden goose?

• 4:05Mark Normand?

  Right, right, yeah, which is kind of fun because it shows how much bullshit a lot of this is. Because they're like, yes, that's horrible, oh wait, ching, ching, ching, you know?

• 4:14Chris Williamson?

  Let's not say it about her, let's not say it about him. Oh, he doesn't, how much is he net per year, 10 mil? No, yeah, we can get rid of him.

• 4:20Mark Normand?

  Exactly, yeah, Alec Baldwin's still working.

• 4:23Chris Williamson?

  Wow, fuck dude, that's insane.

• 4:26Mark Normand?

  Talk about a life-changing like that.

• 4:29Chris Williamson?

  Bro.

• 4:30Mark Normand?

  Brutal, poor guy.

• 4:32Chris Williamson?

  Well, he's back on filming the same movie.

• 4:36Mark Normand?

  Is he?

• 4:36Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 4:37Mark Normand?

  Oh, man.

• 4:38Chris Williamson?

  Imagine that one year, finally, we get back to set. Jesus Christ.

• 4:42Mark Normand?

  Yeah. Geez, I hope they got a new, um, prop guy. You know, that gun guy, whoever that was, or that lady. Ah.

• 4:50Chris Williamson?

  Fuck, dude. I mean, that's, that's one of the wildest, one of the wildest, and that's just gone. You know, that's just like in the past, and that, that feels like it was the same as the AIDS lady 10 years ago now.

• 5:00Mark Normand?

  Right.

• 5:00Chris Williamson?

  But it's not.

• 5:01Mark Normand?

  Yeah, there was a big one in New York, uh, Central Park. Right when BLM was really cooking, there was a lady who yelled at a black guy about a dog.

• 5:09Chris Williamson?

  Yes, I remember, I remember.

• 5:11Mark Normand?

  I saw, she was on a podcast, she's living in Sweden, somewhere super far away, and just had to start a whole new life. She had to quit her job, move out of her apartment. Her family got doxxed, you know, they got yelled at.

• 5:24Chris Williamson?

  Because of that one video.

• 5:25Mark Normand?

  The one video, the whole thing, and she's like, she explained her side of it, and you're kind of like, wow, we were really hard on that lady.

• 5:31Chris Williamson?

  What was her side of it?

• 5:32Mark Normand?

  Basically, that, uh, the black guy knew what he was doing by calling the cops and being, and saying what he was saying. And she's like, no, if you listen to the video, she's like, there's an African American here. Like, she's even calling him an African American. She's not like, there's a black guy, you know? And then she said, it's not my first run-in with that guy, and that guy had a lot of other people who hated him. So, he was like a menace to other people, but those people were too scared to chime in because they didn't want to get killed, you know, so. I'm not saying she's completely innocent, but I am saying there's more to the story. There's always more. Nuance is the new N-word, I always say, because we don't like, we don't like nuance. We go good guy, bad guy, that's it.

• 6:10Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 6:11Mark Normand?

  Like Martin Luther King hated gays. You know? Yeah, he's super religious, Southern Baptist.

• 6:16Chris Williamson?

  Okay. Yeah, I don't know, man. I think as soon as you've, you've got character limits on whatever you're gonna do on the internet, you're inevitably going to tamp down the resolution that you can look at shit through, right?

• 6:26Mark Normand?

  Totally.

• 6:27Chris Williamson?

  Like, you haven't got the spe- you literally do not have the physical space. But what that does is it creates a sort of a feedback loop of people not wanting to think in anything more descriptive than 240 characters.

• 6:39Mark Normand?

  Right.

• 6:39Chris Williamson?

  It's like, not only is that the platform, but it then sort of informs the style of thinking and the depth of thinking that people have.

• 6:44Mark Normand?

  Yeah, completely, and it's just written there. You can, you can take it from there and put it other places. Whereas a, a comedy set, sure, you're getting laughs and you're saying the same exact thing you might say on Twitter, but it's loosey-goosey, and there's people laughing, and it's a context. With Twitter, it's just... Right there, in the cement dried.

• 7:03Chris Williamson?

  Bro, everybody on the planet is probably eighty characters away from completely ending their life.

• 7:10Mark Normand?

  Completely.

• 7:11Chris Williamson?

  I wonder, I want to know, what is the fewest number of characters that it's taken for somebody to completely destroy themselves?

• 7:18Mark Normand?

  Well, I mean, the N word is five letters, right?

• 7:20Chris Williamson?

  That's pretty quick.

• 7:21Mark Normand?

  That's quick.

• 7:22Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 7:22Mark Normand?

  Maybe F A G is quicker, that's three.

• 7:25Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I don't know whether you, would you get full on cancelled for the F word, do you think?

• 7:29Mark Normand?

  Probably not. Probably not.

• 7:31Chris Williamson?

  It would have to be in a context.

• 7:33Mark Normand?

  Yeah, and you guys with the cigarettes, that might give you a little more leeway.

• 7:37Chris Williamson?

  Difficult, yeah, well, people still say that, like consistently in the UK.

• 7:40Mark Normand?

  Oh, really?

• 7:41Chris Williamson?

  I'm just gonna pop out, I'm from the north, so we'd say tab, pop out for a tab instead of, instead of that one.

• 7:47Mark Normand?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 7:49Chris Williamson?

  Nearly, nearly stumbled into it. Yeah, it's, um.

• 7:51Mark Normand?

  Retard, I think, is back.

• 7:53Chris Williamson?

  Dude, I had a fascinating conversation about the word retard.

• 7:56Mark Normand?

  Hmm.

• 7:56Chris Williamson?

  So, uh, moron, cretin, imbecile, uh, and idiot, all had previous medical connotations. Queen Mary the second, her two cousins were categorized as cretins at birth, kept in this special tower, no one attended the funeral, no one knew where they went. And the, it just happens to be that this one word, like, it's kind of arbitrary, like, why, why pick that word?

• 8:24Mark Normand?

  Yeah.

• 8:25Chris Williamson?

  What's the problem with that one? And it seems like the reason for the problem is that it became popular.

• 8:29Mark Normand?

  Yes.

• 8:30Chris Williamson?

  But you would hear, I don't know, like, cretin, or moron, or imbecile, is the sort of thing that, like, a slightly spicy news anchor would throw around as their, their form of being able to call, so, you know, Donald Trump's being such a cretin with the way that he's, but no one thinks about that, even though all of the words kind of came from the same place.

• 8:48Mark Normand?

  That is fascinating. I think you're right. And also, the short, the shortening of a word bothers people, you know, like, if you say, he's retard, he's mentally retarded, people go like, oh, okay, that's a little nicer, but if you go, he's a retard, you shorten it from all those to two syllables? Something about shortening a word, like, uh, I'm sure there's another example, like homosexual.

• 9:11Mark Normand?

  Totally fine. Homo. Bad. People don't like the shortening.

• 9:15Chris Williamson?

  I think that it's, it makes it feel like more of a pejorative.

• 9:18Mark Normand?

  Yes. That's what it is.

• 9:20Chris Williamson?

  You would use the shorter version. Maybe it's also indicative of the fact that you maybe throw the word around quite a lot.

• 9:26Mark Normand?

  Yeah.

• 9:26Chris Williamson?

  Like, I gotta, I gotta be efficient if I'm gonna say it a lot of the time.

• 9:29Mark Normand?

  Right, right. I guess so. But it's weird, because the opposite is with names. Like, you got Gregory, but you call him Greg. That's a nickname. So it's weird if you shorten a name, we love you. If you shorten a term, we hate you.

• 9:43Chris Williamson?

  Hmm. Yeah, I do wanna do, I wanna, I want someone to do a study where they look at what is the smallest number of characters that it's taken someone to cancel themselves on Twitter.

• 9:52Mark Normand?

  Yeah.

• 9:52Chris Williamson?

  That'd be great. And then you could have a chart. You could have like a leaderboard.

• 9:55Mark Normand?

  I love it.

• 9:56Chris Williamson?

  Like, this guy's currently running at 15 characters. How amazing. And then someone comes in with a 14, and the whole world loses its minds.

• 10:01Mark Normand?

  That's a fun time. That should be in the Olympics. That would spice it up a little more. The ratings aren't great.

• 10:07Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, man. So I'm pretty new in Austin, though, so it's, it's relatively, uh, getting used to everything here, getting used to the new terminology, and learning how to communicate with you guys despite the fact that it's the same language has been something that's been a little bit of a learning curve. That being said, Austin's kind of subsumed my personality now, so I play pickleball.

• 10:25Mark Normand?

  Oh, good for you.

• 10:27Chris Williamson?

  I have an iced, iced tub. You know, everything. I've gone full, full Austin. Do podcasts in shorts.

• 10:31Mark Normand?

  Yeah. Good for you. And, but you gotta remember, this is still Texas. Like, you go to New York, it'll be different. Or LA, it's different culture and conversations and words you can't say. This is still, yee-haw, no abortion.

• 10:45Chris Williamson?

  Speaking of that, the, uh, the Karen lady that you spoke about, I got shouted at on the pickleball court yesterday by a lady walking her dog for celebrating too loudly. She said that it was a park and it was supposed to be a peaceful place.

• 10:55Mark Normand?

  Oh.

• 10:56Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, the, the Karen thing's continuing. They can't really complain about them asking so much anymore, so perhaps they've Transmuted that onto something else. I don't know.

• 11:04Mark Normand?

  I love the irony of being a peaceful place, but she's combating with you. You know, like what a cunt. Get out of here. Also, the, the whole Karen thing and the, uh, kind of social justice thing are starting to kind of cross a little bit.

• 11:19Chris Williamson?

  How do you mean?

• 11:19Mark Normand?

  Well, the Karen people are like, hey, don't celebrate like that. And then, you know, some social justice people are like, hey, don't say that word. They're very similar. I, I would also say that a lot of, uh, social justice people are very similar police who they claim to hate. You know, they're policing, don't say that. You can't think that. You can't take a photo with that guy. Don't hang out with him. It's very police like.

• 11:40Chris Williamson?

  Hmm. Despite the fact that they're also trying to run that back.

• 11:43Mark Normand?

  Defund. Yeah. So that's, and they're also very Trumpy, very dictory. Like you see some lady with blue hair and she's like, hey, shut this down. This can't happen. And you're like, whoa, easy sister. We're just trying to have a good time. Very Trumpy.

• 11:56Chris Williamson?

  I do wonder why, whether it's someone trying to compensate for a lack of control in their own life. I don't know. It's strange. It's strange why someone would lean into that, that style of authoritarianism. I do get the sense that it's, uh, people that feel like they don't really have much control or don't want to lean into control.

• 12:12Mark Normand?

  Yes.

• 12:13Chris Williamson?

  So they try to control everybody else instead of taking control of themselves.

• 12:16Mark Normand?

  Yeah. And now they have this, this, uh, stance of like, well, I'm doing good. You know, like she's, she's saying, hey, quiet down. This is a peaceful place. In her mind, she's the, the winner. She's the, the morally superior.

• 12:28Chris Williamson?

  Hmm.

• 12:29Mark Normand?

  So they use that as this weird way to, to win.

• 12:33Chris Williamson?

  Hmm.

• 12:34Mark Normand?

  Even though they're just controlling.

• 12:35Chris Williamson?

  Where's home for you?

• 12:36Mark Normand?

  Oh, sorry. I'm, I'm boring you here.

• 12:38Chris Williamson?

  No, no, no.

• 12:39Mark Normand?

  Uh, um, New Orleans. I'm born, born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana. And then I'm, I've been in New York for like 15 years.

• 12:46Chris Williamson?

  Is that, uh, I can't pick up an American accent yet. So have you got, is that New Orleans, the accent?

• 12:51Mark Normand?

  I've been told I don't sound like, I got a weird voice, but I don't think I sound southern. Southern's like, how y'all doing? You know, a lot of southern, southerners in Texas, obviously. Uh, hi, hi, how is everybody? You know, but, uh, I don't know. I didn't, I think I never liked it growing up. So I maybe subconsciously. Skewed away.

• 13:10Chris Williamson?

  Why? What was childhood like?

• 13:12Mark Normand?

  Ah, it was fine. It was weird, but uh, I just hate the southern accent. It wouldn't work for me. But I grew up in a weird, I had a weird upbringing. I don't know if you really wanna dive into it there. Alright, so when I was about eight or seven or eight, my parents got a wild hair up their ass and bought an old mansion in a poor, black neighborhood. And I'm talking holes in the floor, you know, no windows, creaky

• 13:36Chris Williamson?

  Uh.

• 13:37Mark Normand?

  Termites, stray cats, and the neighborhood was horrific. It was like a third world neighborhood. And we fixed it up and they made the back half of it a bed and breakfast. Cause it was so big, this house was so big that we couldn't live in all of it and they needed income for, because they were fixing the place up. So we would like, you know, have traveling businessmen and bands come through and uh, random people coming to New Orleans. And then we got a housekeeper who is a transvestite. So not only are we living in this shit box mansion in this horrific neighborhood where everybody hates us because we're the white family. But we have people coming in and out who are rando people staying at the B and B.

• 14:21Mark Normand?

  And then my nanny, or whatever you wanna call them, housekeeper is wearing a wig, big black guy wig, high heels and a dress while mopping.

• 14:30Chris Williamson?

  Wow.

• 14:31Mark Normand?

  Yeah, don't worry. I've already pitched the show to eight networks and they all said no, but it was, it sounds weird, but that was normal to me.

• 14:38Chris Williamson?

  Um, were you working? Were you somehow, were you the maid? Were you cleaning in some capacity?

• 14:44Mark Normand?

  I was, I was so young. I was going to school and then I would come home and skateboard and, you know, play, play. I would play basketball in the parlor because it was so big. I'd put a hoop up on the wall. And then he was uh, he was, he taught me, my dad was a workaholic. So Enos was the guy's name. He taught me how to drive a stick. He taught me how to fist fight. He taught me how to shave. He taught me how to put the seat up, all the, so I learned how to be a man by this guy in a wig and uh, now I can't get an erection unless I see a picture of RuPaul. No, I'm joking, but um, yeah, true story.

• 15:17Chris Williamson?

  But that would have been, I'm gonna guess, not somebody identifying as a different gender.

• 15:23Mark Normand?

  No.

• 15:24Chris Williamson?

  That would have been, like, whatever, 80s to 90s cross-dressing.

• 15:28Mark Normand?

  Cross-dresser, that's what it was. And he would do burlesque at night with like a big boa, you know, and dancing and kicking and all that.

• 15:35Chris Williamson?

  Hmm. Cabaret's interesting, man. Cabaret's a group of people, like, some of the most sexually active men in the world. Like, I've been around a bunch of different cabaret acts.

• 15:44Mark Normand?

  Oh, yeah.

• 15:45Chris Williamson?

  Some of the guys that go up there and do that have got all of the outgoingness that you would expect with sort of a theatrical performer.

• 15:52Mark Normand?

  Yeah.

• 15:52Chris Williamson?

  They've got that whole thespian side, but then they've still got the super drive. A lot of them are gay.

• 15:56Mark Normand?

  Right.

• 15:57Chris Williamson?

  And they've got the superb drive of somebody that wants to have sex with a lot of other people as well.

• 16:02Mark Normand?

  Yeah, completely. I mean, who's more free than those people? I mean, we're sitting here doing push-ups and trying to get a dick pump going and drinking, you know, eating blue chew. Those guys are just comfortable. I'm jealous of their comfort.

• 16:15Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, it's, um, thinking about gay relationships and the fact that there's no gatekeeper. It's like just two protagonists, you know?

• 16:24Mark Normand?

  That's so true.

• 16:25Chris Williamson?

  It's just two people that, on average, want to say yes more than you would do in a normal heterosexual relationship.

• 16:32Mark Normand?

  Yeah. Man, that's the dream. I mean, if I was a lady, I would be so, I would be embarrassed by how hard it is to fuck me. You know what I mean? It's like silly. Women get horny. Obviously, women are super horned up and sexy and hot and they look great in bed, but it's so, you gotta like wine and dine and conversation. Where guys are like, you wanna go put your dick through this hole in the wall and I'll blow it? You know, like, it's just so much, it's like you said, it's like less gatekeeping. But I get it that women have, that men are scary, we're much more aggressive and all that. So they have to watch out for that, which I get, but... Come on ladies, the clock's ticking, you know, we could have skipped this whole movie and just eaten each other out.

• 17:18Chris Williamson?

  Ryan Long's got this bit in his new act where he says, "I had a Trump supporter, a gay Trump supporter in the front row," and it's strange, you know, because Trump supporter, he's also gay, so you don't always see that. He's the kind of guy that would like to build a wall, but then put a glory hole in.

• 17:32Mark Normand?

  That's a great joke.

• 17:33Chris Williamson?

  Fucking brilliant joke.

• 17:34Mark Normand?

  That's a great joke, I love it.

• 17:36Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 17:36Mark Normand?

  That's what's great about comedy, this weird thing happened and his weird brain got cooking and he made this cake of a joke.

• 17:43Chris Williamson?

  Is there a comedy scene in New Orleans?

• 17:46Mark Normand?

  There is, it's small and it's, there's not really a comedy club there. You need a club that'll really like be the base, you know, but the problem with comedy in New Orleans is it's, it's already such a party city and people go there to get fucked up, have a bachelor party, go to Mardi Gras Jazz Fest. So comedy, it's like, we don't want to sit and listen to a guy talk about anxiety, you know, like we want to go get shithoused. And comedy is, a lot of it is built through pain and all that, and I think people are there to live it up. And so they don't want to hear a non-famous person talk about comedy, or talk about Uber.

• 18:23Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, well, I suppose if you're walking down Bourbon Street and you've got loud music, loud music, loud music, sad story, loud music, it's like, the sad story, probably not that competitive.

• 18:31Mark Normand?

  Yeah, exactly. It's tits, you know, you're gonna go past the tit place to watch a guy go, "Oh, my aunt's a cunt," you know? So, it's hard to, it's hard for comedy to thrive there.

• 18:44Chris Williamson?

  There was one country music bar that I noticed on Bourbon Street in New Orleans, and I did notice that there was a significant difference in the sort of clientele between that and jazz bars on either side.

• 18:55Mark Normand?

  Yeah. Sure. You gotta have your, every place has their embassy, you know, black people are like, "We feel safe here," and then rednecks are like, "This is our spot," and then, you know, the rest of us.

• 19:06Chris Williamson?

  Bourbon Street and Ben Yez at that place, it's open 24 hours.

• 19:09Mark Normand?

  Cafe Dumont.

• 19:10Chris Williamson?

  That's it. Unbelievable.

• 19:12Mark Normand?

  Very good.

• 19:13Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 19:13Mark Normand?

  That powdered sugar all over you. You look like the cocaine bear.

• 19:16Chris Williamson?

  That's the cocaine. Maybe that's where he went. Maybe it was a plant for someone to put the 75 pounds of cocaine next to him and it was actually a bunch of Ben Yez and he'd just left it. Dude, I went to New Orleans a few years ago and it was just before, 2019, just before some sort of storm came through and there was a dude, a homeless guy, you know, the steps just up and down from Cafe Dumont.

• 19:37Mark Normand?

  Yeah.

• 19:38Chris Williamson?

  And you can kind of, people must jump in pretty regularly, I'm gonna guess, into the river.

• 19:41Mark Normand?

  Yeah.

• 19:41Chris Williamson?

  And this dude was jumping in. We were like, bloody hell, like this guy's kind of intense. He was sort of a homeless guy and he was talking slash verbally fighting with these kids that were kind of taking the piss out of him. Anyway, there was a news story that went viral two weeks later during a hurricane of crazy New Orleans man jumps into river in the middle of hurricane. And it was the same dude.

• 20:02Mark Normand?

  Wow.

• 20:03Chris Williamson?

  Couldn't believe it.

• 20:04Mark Normand?

  There you go.

• 20:05Chris Williamson?

  I was like, this guy.

• 20:06Mark Normand?

  Well, that's also what's great about the internet is like 20 years ago, that guy would just be a nut job.

• 20:10Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, now he's a star.

• 20:12Mark Normand?

  Now he's a star.

• 20:12Chris Williamson?

  Now he's got his own OnlyFans.

• 20:14Mark Normand?

  Exactly.

• 20:15Chris Williamson?

  Oh, speaking of that, you remember the Cash Me Outside girl?

• 20:18Mark Normand?

  Of course.

• 20:19Chris Williamson?

  And she's now one of the number one OnlyFans girls in the world, apparently.

• 20:22Mark Normand?

  Crazy.

• 20:23Chris Williamson?

  Dude.

• 20:24Mark Normand?

  That's a female privilege, but all right.

• 20:26Chris Williamson?

  The lady that was doing dog walking missed a pivot.

• 20:29Mark Normand?

  Ah.

• 20:31Chris Williamson?

  All of this traffic.

• 20:32Mark Normand?

  Good point.

• 20:33Chris Williamson?

  Could have monetized it.

• 20:34Mark Normand?

  Good point. Yeah, OnlyFans is a beautiful thing for that reason, you know, because these ladies can really, really have an empire.

• 20:42Chris Williamson?

  Maximize on one opportunity.

• 20:44Mark Normand?

  If I was the AIDS lady, I would do an OnlyFans.

• 20:47Chris Williamson?

  Right, okay, and do race play as well?

• 20:48Mark Normand?

  Yeah, like I'd do African, I'd fuck an African guy with AIDS, you know, fake it, but that would be fun.

• 20:54Chris Williamson?

  Have you seen, do you know Adam22? He does the No Jumper podcast.

• 20:57Mark Normand?

  Yeah, Big Dong.

• 20:58Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 20:59Mark Normand?

  Yeah.

• 20:59Chris Williamson?

  Have you seen his new thing that he does?

• 21:01Mark Normand?

  Mm-mm.

• 21:02Chris Williamson?

  So I'm pretty sure, I might be getting this wrong, I'm pretty sure he's got a podcast that's only on OnlyFans. So he's got No Jumper, which is his one that exists on the normal internet. And he has another one on OnlyFans where him and his wife or partner. Sit down and have a conversation with another girl.

• 21:17Mark Normand?

  Hmm.

• 21:17Chris Williamson?

  And then fuck her.

• 21:18Mark Normand?

  Whoa.

• 21:19Chris Williamson?

  That's, that's, that's the thing. That's it.

• 21:21Mark Normand?

  Right.

• 21:22Chris Williamson?

  So it kind of always finishes the same. It's kind of like, I don't know, like a really old version of Magnum P I or something. Or Scooby Doo.

• 21:28Mark Normand?

  Yeah.

• 21:28Chris Williamson?

  You knew it was that person all along. I know how it's gonna end.

• 21:31Mark Normand?

  Oh, that's fun.

• 21:32Chris Williamson?

  Uh, but that's the thing. So obviously this is what's intended to be done today as well.

• 21:38Mark Normand?

  All right, well, I haven't shaved back there, but that's a great idea. Boy, we live in a fa- I mean, look, these, these times we live in have horrific things too. You get yelled at on Twitter, you get doxxed, you get this and that, but there's also some beautiful stuff going on.

• 21:52Chris Williamson?

  Ingenuity.

• 21:53Mark Normand?

  Yes, with the good, it's like fire. You know, it could burn your house, but it could also warm your house.

• 21:58Chris Williamson?

  Why New York from New Orleans? Just for comedy?

• 22:02Mark Normand?

  Comedy, yeah. There's, you gotta, there's such a low ceiling in New Orleans for comedy, so I had to move to New York.

• 22:07Chris Williamson?

  Mm-hmm. And that's still center of America, do you think?

• 22:10Mark Normand?

  For comedy, yes, I think so. And it's just, I've always wanted to live there. It's the cool, it's the coolest place in, in the world, I think, and, uh, New York's kind of like a video game where you have to just keep going or you'll die. And I need that in life.

• 22:24Chris Williamson?

  What do you mean?

• 22:25Mark Normand?

  Well, like, I moved to New York, I got mugged three times in a year, my landlord died of AIDS, shout out to the lady, and then, uh, I, I got bedbugs. So it's like this city that's, it's almost like the ocean. It just keeps trying to push you out and you gotta learn how to live on, on an island.

• 22:42Chris Williamson?

  How's that, how, how does that help with anything? That sounds terrible.

• 22:45Mark Normand?

  It keeps me fra- I'm such a lazy, cum guzzlin' douche. I will sit down with my feet up and do a barrel of blow and mushrooms and watch Netflix and order in. So I need the treadmill to be on or, or else I'll just slip away.

• 23:01Chris Williamson?

  Ah, okay. So you need the world to inject some difficulty into the life or else you're just gonna continue to be comfortable?

• 23:07Mark Normand?

  Yeah, that's why I got married.

• 23:10Mark Normand?

  Totally uncomfortable. But, you know, you keep trying shit. You know, they, they always say discomfort is key.

• 23:16Chris Williamson?

  Mm hmm.

• 23:16Mark Normand?

  You get too comfortable, you just start to deteriorate.

• 23:19Chris Williamson?

  I think you're supposed to, like, kind of choose the discomfort, though. It's not supposed to be bedbugs and then

• 23:23Mark Normand?

  Yeah, but again.

• 23:24Chris Williamson?

  Landlord dying of a

• 23:25Mark Normand?

  I'm so lazy that I won't choose it. So I need the city to do it for me.

• 23:29Chris Williamson?

  I see, I see.

• 23:30Mark Normand?

  Also, it's kind of like an abusive relationship. You know, you meet these guys and they keep dating these psycho gals, or you keep meeting these women who keep dating these abusive men. You're like, what are you doing? It's a little like that with New York. I just can't get away from it.

• 23:42Chris Williamson?

  You keep coming back to it.

• 23:43Mark Normand?

  I'm Rihanna with Chris Brown. I keep going back.

• 23:46Chris Williamson?

  Talk to me, for someone that isn't, uh, how do you say, inducted into the world of performing on stage in front of a ton of people. What have you learned from bombing on stage in front of people? Because I've heard you say that you're an introvert.

• 23:59Mark Normand?

  Yes.

• 24:00Chris Williamson?

  As a compatriot introvert as well, the idea of not only being on stage, which I think I would, I've done before and I get past, but it really failing in a pretty sort of majestic way.

• 24:13Mark Normand?

  Yeah, it hurts.

• 24:15Chris Williamson?

  What does that do to you as a person in terms of learning about whatever, yourself or the world or insecurities?

• 24:21Mark Normand?

  Well, it's a great question because, but that's what's beautiful about comedy is it's, it's real. You know, it's, it's much like sports where if you don't throw the ball right, it won't go in the basket. It's the same with comedy. If it's not funny, they won't laugh. And if it is funny, they'll laugh. And there's something great about that reality. That's what I love. But also, I'm such a nut job and I have weird thoughts and maybe my childhood, I was outcasts a lot and a weirdo and all this. That I think stand up, you get to say your thoughts and if you package them the right way, it'll make a room full of people happy. And I think that's what keeps me going. And I get to go, how, how weird can I get? How, how fucked up can I get and have them stay with me? And then that's a thrilling thing. And the bombing, to answer your question on that.

• 25:05Mark Normand?

  I, you know, we're all insecure in our own way. And when you bomb, it validates every sick, twisted, dark thought you ever had. You're boring, no one likes you, you don't deserve love, you shouldn't be up here, they're right. Everything they're thinking is right and you just crumble. And so getting good at stand up is being able to beat that. And then you, you win.

• 25:28Chris Williamson?

  But when you're talking about trying to inject discomfort into your life. That seems like about as much discomfort as I could think of.

• 25:36Mark Normand?

  Totally.

• 25:36Chris Williamson?

  Shy of being set on fire.

• 25:37Mark Normand?

  Yeah, it's pretty bad. It's pretty bad. A bunch of strangers hate you. But you can beat it. And so you get better at stand-up, and it motivates you to get good at it.

• 25:46Chris Williamson?

  Hmm. I wonder, have you found that it's changed your personality? Do you take anything from outside of comedy? You know, as someone again, introverted, you go through these nightly for 15 years, 20 years, or whatever it is. You go through all of these challenges, and it's always this specter in the background. There's a dating show in the UK called Take Me Out, and it's where a guy comes down this lift, and all of the girls press their lights. And it's sort of the fear of every man that they would get a blackout, and that no girl would want them. And it's sort of that.

• 26:19Mark Normand?

  Oh, wow.

• 26:19Chris Williamson?

  Permanently, on repeat, every single, sometimes multiple times per night if you're doing spots.

• 26:24Mark Normand?

  Yes.

• 26:25Chris Williamson?

  That has to impact, I don't know, the way you see the world, the way that you act outside of comedy? Or does, how much of a crossover is there between your normal life and your stage life?

• 26:37Mark Normand?

  They're pretty similar. I think most comics are, we're just hardwired so young that we can't get out of this. That's probably why we're, we have a, every comic, you know, you got the fat guy, you got the black guy, you got the loud guy, you got the quiet guy, you got the dark guy, you got the clean comic. That's all imprinted in us pretty young, I think. So it doesn't really change your personality. The only way it has changed is it gives you some meaning. You know, like I was always a wandering through life guy. Should I be a waiter? Maybe I'll work at a hotel. Should I be a UPS guy? A mailman? That seems pretty good. So now with stand-up, I'm like, I have something to work towards. And then you, you do a special. And then you go, I need a new special. So then, you know, it keeps you rolling that ball up a hill. Otherwise, I would be rudderless.

• 27:22Mark Normand?

  I see these guys on heroin under the bridge. I'm like, I get it.

• 27:25Chris Williamson?

  That would have been me.

• 27:26Mark Normand?

  Yeah.

• 27:27Chris Williamson?

  If not for comedy, that would have been me.

• 27:28Mark Normand?

  Totally, totally. I mean, if anything, I'd be like working in a warehouse or something. You know, like just with a forklift. But I get the heroin guy. There's a lot of hours in the day. There's a lot of bad thoughts. Uh, you know, opioids are through the roof. It's like the number one killer in America. We're obsessed with every other thing except for that. I don't know why no one cares about the opioids, but it's just because, hey, I'm home. I'm sick of everything. Let me pop this pill.

• 27:54Chris Williamson?

  I was thinking about some of the prices that comedians have to pay. I'm fascinated by the, the sort of unseen price that people pay for the lifestyle that other people admire. So, you know, a working comedian who has got specials and platform and people care about what it is that you do and so on. And then this upcoming comedian, maybe even someone that doesn't understand the comedy world at all. I've seen enough of my close friends that are working comedians now and understood a good bit about the lifestyle to know that it's, it's not really. You have to be very, very disciplined, I think, to live the life of a comedian in a way that doesn't have a ton of potential externalities that are pretty negative. It seems like everybody in the green room is constantly drinking.

• 28:38Chris Williamson?

  You're doing late nights, you're on the road.

• 28:40Mark Normand?

  Yeah.

• 28:40Chris Williamson?

  Good bit of loneliness.

• 28:41Mark Normand?

  Yes.

• 28:42Chris Williamson?

  I mean, you're friends with Konstantin and Francis from the UK.

• 28:44Mark Normand?

  Oh, yeah.

• 28:45Chris Williamson?

  From Trigonometry. And I heard about, because the UK is sufficiently small that you can drive everywhere to do your shows, right? So they basically described this sort of nocturnal lifestyle, permanently in cars, driving to and from when they're on the, doing the circuit and maybe just a 10 to 30 minute little spot or whatever. They're not actually doing full shows. They're just bouncing around the country.

• 29:07Mark Normand?

  Yeah, same.

• 29:08Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 29:08Mark Normand?

  That's what I do. And isn't that the best? To me, that's the best job in the world. You get to just go places, pop in, do the thing you're the best at and then leave.

• 29:18Chris Williamson?

  Does it not get lonely?

• 29:19Mark Normand?

  I'm a loner. I like being alone. I'll, like, I have a great lady at home. She's the love of my life, yada, yada. But like, when I'm on the road, I'm like, ah, I'm sleeping till noon, I'm jerking off, I can eat ice cream and I need that. I like recharge and I come back and I'm whistling, walking in the door, hey, honey, good to be home. And she's the opposite. She's like, I was here all weekend alone. I wanted to kill myself. And I was like, oh, I love being alone. I love sitting in a diner. I got a podcast going, I'm eating eggs, looking out the window. That's the dream.

• 29:50Chris Williamson?

  Good. So, given the fact that it seems like you're striving to do excellent things, you want to be better at your craft and you want to do a better hour or a better 10 minutes or even just the individual joke, do you find that the lifestyle of maybe getting up a little bit later and the temptations to party and being around comedians who aren't exactly well-known for their discipline?

• 30:09Mark Normand?

  Sure.

• 30:10Chris Williamson?

  Does that, is that a tension of two different things there?

• 30:13Mark Normand?

  Yes, totally.

• 30:14Chris Williamson?

  Talk to me about that.

• 30:15Mark Normand?

  Well, first of all, I used to be a janitor, I was a waiter, I was a busboy, I was a construction worker. So to me, being able to do comedy, if making it or not making it, it's a gift. It's a privilege. I'm a lucky guy that I get to do this and I get to do it at this level. I'm doing these theaters now. It's mind-boggling. So, I am very, just I feel very grateful to be able to do comedy. Shit, I lost the question.

• 30:39Chris Williamson?

  Is it a difficulty?

• 30:41Mark Normand?

  Oh, yeah.

• 30:41Chris Williamson?

  Excellence versus...

• 30:42Mark Normand?

  So, the, obviously I don't want to go to the gym, but I'll go for comedy, you know, so I can keep doing comedy.

• 30:49Chris Williamson?

  Because it'll facilitate your performance?

• 30:51Mark Normand?

  It'll facilitate your performance, it'll make you healthier, it'll make you stronger, you can do, you can work longer, you know. So, yeah, sure, I want to get hammered, but if I get hammered, it'll hurt my show tomorrow, I'll be hungover. So I'll drink a little less. So, it's all, this is what I'm saying about, it gives you a goal, it gives you something to work towards, and I need that. So, I've been, you know, I don't eat bread, I drink less, I don't do blow anymore or anything. So like, I can really, I've really tamped down. I used to be an animal. So, and I'm, you know, 39, too.

• 31:23Chris Williamson?

  But this is in service of your craft?

• 31:25Mark Normand?

  Totally, totally. Like Seinfeld once said, he did the show Seinfeld, and he named it Seinfeld just so it would help him sell tickets on the road. It wasn't like, oh, it's my ego, I need my name on it. He's like, oh, if I put my name on it, they'll know my name, so when I go to that theater, they'll buy tickets. And that's how I feel. I'm like, I'm at the gym, I'm not like trying to get, I'm not trying to win Mr. Universe, I just want to be healthy so I can keep doing comedy.

• 31:47Chris Williamson?

  I've been thinking for a long time about people treating their chosen pursuit like an athlete does. So if you think about how hard athletes work.

• 31:56Mark Normand?

  Totally.

• 31:56Chris Williamson?

  Their sleep, their nutrition, the people that they spend their time with, their game tape that they watch, their mindset work, maybe they're doing breath work, or they're meditating.

• 32:04Mark Normand?

  Yes.

• 32:04Chris Williamson?

  They're considering their hydration, they've got a routine, they've got a warm-up procedure that they go through in advance of doing the thing that they care about.

• 32:10Mark Normand?

  Mm-hmm.

• 32:11Chris Williamson?

  And so few people... It seems treat their thing that ostensibly is their life's calling with that same degree of preparedness.

• 32:20Mark Normand?

  Hundred percent. I completely agree and that bothers me.

• 32:22Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 32:23Mark Normand?

  I mean, I don't want to be a dick, but I see these comics and they never write. They do the same jokes every time. They never try anything new. They they're drunk every time they go on and I'm like, what do you expect to get out of that? You're gonna get what you put in. So like, then they go, oh, it must be nice to have what you have. I'm like, yeah, bitch. I I wrote for three hours today. I worked this out. I've been slaving over this one joke for two years, you know, I'm I'm working on it. Where were you? I did three cities this weekend. What did you do? So I hate when people get all, uh, look, must be nice, because I'm like, no, no, this is, it's kind of like when a fat guy goes, hey, it must be nice to have big guns. And you're like, yeah, well, I do the curls. You know, you're eating pasta. So that that bugs me, but, uh,

• 33:04Mark Normand?

  yeah, so I I think, yeah, you gotta like, you hear these Kobe stories about how he's the last guy in there and the first guy in there and da, da, da, da. And Dave Chappelle once said, if you're gonna do stand up, take an acting class. And everybody's like, acting class, because it'll help your impressions, your voices, your act outs on stage. You know, always try to be a little better and what the things you're not good at go towards that and try to make those better. And then once you fix that, go to the next thing. So I'm all in on the, uh, the work hard at the thing.

• 33:32Chris Williamson?

  Think like an athlete is just a really, really good philosophy, I think. And here's the reason why I think most people don't, apart from the fact it's easy not to do it. But the line between your preparation, what you do in advance and all of that, and your performance is kind of wiggly, very messy. Like, if you are a power lifter, right? That is 300 kilos. It's always going to be 300 kilos. It's 300 kilos for that guy. It's 300 kilos on Tuesday. It's 300 kilos in fucking Zambia.

• 34:00Mark Normand?

  Yes, that is nice.

• 34:02Chris Williamson?

  So you have very objective metric of failure or success. It's like if you used to pick up that in training and then you didn't on game day, what did you do? Was it your sleep? Was it your hydration? Was it your mindset? Was it whatever it was, nutrition, anything? But when it comes to podcasting or comedy or pretty much anything except for sport and maybe like, like classical music players.

• 34:25Mark Normand?

  Right.

• 34:26Chris Williamson?

  I I really, really thought about this to try and find like who, who else is treating their pursuit with that level of, um,

• 34:33Mark Normand?

  Precision?

• 34:33Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, yeah. Um, and

• 34:37Chris Williamson?

  Very few people because of that messiness. And if you do underperform, you're a speech motivational speaker or whatever. And you get up on stage tomorrow and you just you sort of fumble your words a little bit and you forget your lines and it doesn't really go down so well. And you go, well, was it because I stayed up on my phone until four in the morning?

• 34:52Mark Normand?

  Right, right.

• 34:53Chris Williamson?

  Maybe, but maybe not. And the criteria, you can always, there's always get out of jail free card.

• 34:57Mark Normand?

  Yeah, because it's subjective.

• 34:59Chris Williamson?

  Yes.

• 34:59Mark Normand?

  Subjective things always will make you less tenacious, I think. Because Colin Quinn once said, a lot of comics don't like to write because writing proves you're not a genius. Because you have to work on it and it's not perfect. You crumple the paper, you throw it out. But if you go, I'll just, I'll figure it out on stage. It's just, it makes it, it makes you get out of jail free. It's like, well, it didn't work tonight, but I'm tweaking, I'm working on it. It's like, no, no, no, you gotta work on it. You're just trying to take a shortcut or not do anything. So I completely agree. And that's why it's even more important for a comic to be disciplined. Because you gotta do it for yourself. Because if you can't lift the weight, people go, alright, so you're, that's exactly how strong you are. You can lift that much.

• 35:40Mark Normand?

  With comedy, it's like, okay, I bombed the night, but I did well last night and I'm getting better and, you know, I'm going through a lot right now. And you're like, alright, shut up, you're out.

• 35:49Chris Williamson?

  Yes, no one cares about the last performance. You know, the one before this bad one. It's how well did you do this evening?

• 35:55Mark Normand?

  Exactly. That's why we love sports, you know? We love, okay, the, he got 200 points, he got 199. He won.

• 36:02Chris Williamson?

  Yes.

• 36:02Mark Normand?

  You know, that's why we love UFC. He's laying on the ground, he's still standing. It's easy, you know? And I think those things are getting more popular because we're getting in more of a emotional based world, I think we're living in.

• 36:15Chris Williamson?

  I like the idea of the complexity of the world becoming more simple when you put rules to it.

• 36:20Mark Normand?

  Yes.

• 36:21Chris Williamson?

  So within martial arts, within a UFC fight, even within that, which is ostensibly like a fucking street fight that's televised and made legal, there are still rules, you know? There's an amount of time that they're there for. There's a weight category, can't knee people when their head's on the ground. You know, there are certain things, you can't bite them or kick them in the dick. Like, there's certain stuff that you can and can't do. And there are also relatively, even that, there's a little bit of your judges' scorecard type thing. But for the most part, it's like, if the guy's on the ground and the other guy stood up and everything was legal, he won. Whereas for almost all of the rest of life, everything's super messy.

• 36:55Mark Normand?

  Yes.

• 36:55Chris Williamson?

  Like, how well did I do my morning routine? How good was my interaction with my kids this morning? How? Fantastic was my performance with my partner when we went out for dinner and how present was I with that like it's just fucking mess.

• 37:10Mark Normand?

  It is. That's why you need to have some rigidity in your life just for your own self-discipline, your own, uh, you know, self-worth even. I ran five miles today according to my GPS. Look at that or my step count, whatever. That's five miles. It's a hard, uh, hard number, right? You know, you need that, you know, it's, it's gets too wishy-washy with other stuff. I'm sure that guy liked me. Yeah, whatever. Like, well, maybe he hated you, but people give themselves too much leeway, I think, on a lot of things.

• 37:40Chris Williamson?

  Without that forcing function or whatever you want to call it, like the focus that you have that everything is being moved toward that's in service of, right? Without that, um, that's why I think you get listlessness. If you don't have a thing that you're moving toward, why do the hard stuff?

• 37:55Mark Normand?

  Exactly.

• 37:56Chris Williamson?

  And, and that's, that's kind of like a brutal realization because I think a lot of people have the capacity to do something or, or to, to put themselves through really difficult things. Like a man with a strong enough why can bear any how type scenario. If you have that why, if you have a why, if you have no why, I can guarantee that the how is probably not going to be done. There are very few people that can do a Goggins. I've, I've heard a rumor that he, for most of this summer was, uh, volunteering to fight fires in California, being dropped out of a helicopter. So he's like a Bushman firefighter, just psychopath, right? Like that's, that's him. Why? Because. That's rare, right?

• 38:38Chris Williamson?

  Most people need it to be in service of a thing, not just in service of being a hard motherfucker.

• 38:44Mark Normand?

  Yeah, yeah, completely, completely. Well, I don't you think there's a reason these type of guys are popping up? There was no Goggins in the eighties. I mean, you had like Mr. Universe or Jack LaLanne or guys like that, but you didn't have these Andrew Hubermans, these, uh, God, these Sam Harrises who are just almost autisctic, these are facts. This is reality. We need to live in this world. And people are clinging to these type of people because there's like, we need it. It's like you say, we're getting so, uh, loosey goosey with everything that that's why these guys are popular, I think.

• 39:16Chris Williamson?

  Oh, because they're creating order from the chaos.

• 39:19Mark Normand?

  Completely. And we, we, we go, oh, okay, I'm not crazy. I needed that, you know? You're just reading Twitter. You're like going, you're going schizophrenic reading that shit. There's so many opinions coming at once. The news is all horrific. Mass shooting, kids in cages, Jewish space laser, what the fuck's going on? And then you see Sam Harris, he goes, well, this is because of that, and that's why people do this. And Huberman's like, well, neurons in the brain fire. And you're like, oh, there's an answer. There's, there's reasoning here.

• 39:45Chris Williamson?

  Yes.

• 39:45Mark Normand?

  And we love it. And then Goggins is like, get your fat ass up, get off the beanbag chair. Go do a sit up, you cum guzzler. And we go, yeah, I need somebody to yell at me. I got a hard on.

• 39:57Mark Normand?

  We need it.

• 39:59Chris Williamson?

  I've heard you say that your biggest fear is an unlived life. And

• 40:03Mark Normand?

  Did I say that?

• 40:04Chris Williamson?

  You did say that. Although you may disagree with yourself. I do, I do that a lot. Even if you didn't say that, or even if you don't, no longer believe it, how, how do you try and construct a life to ensure? Because I've heard you talk about adventures, like adventures, like a drive for you and you want to do

• 40:19Mark Normand?

  Sure.

• 40:20Chris Williamson?

  Like a variety of things.

• 40:22Mark Normand?

  Life is for living.

• 40:23Chris Williamson?

  But how do you, how do you keep on doing that? How do you not be, you know, you can sit back, you've got the, the YouTube channel and the specials and people know you and you've, you know, got huge platforms on the biggest podcasts in the world. How do you not just sit back?

• 40:38Mark Normand?

  Well, that's all over. I gotta do that. What's the next thing? Yeah, I was on a plane today with two comics who are also coming here and they're getting dropped off at the hotel. They're like, where are you going? I'm like, I'm going to do a podcast. Like, what? Why would, let's go get a drink or let's get dinner. I'm like, ah, I like this guy. I want to do his podcast.

• 40:55Chris Williamson?

  Oh.

• 40:55Mark Normand?

  And they're like, oh, that's so crazy. I'm like, yeah, but you guys are gonna sit and eat a taco and talk about the, the bears. I'm gonna go talk about cocaine bear with a guy I've never met, you know, so. I don't know. Let's try new things. And that's the beauty of comedy is I can, I'm gone to, you know, Amsterdam and Mexico and Hawaii and all these places, China. I did comedy in China. I would never have gone there without comedy. So, yeah, let's live, baby. And, and there's so many people in the cubicle and the plus size wife and the kids they hate and the tiny house and their fucking Subaru. I don't know. I want to mix it up.

• 41:34Chris Williamson?

  I think far more people than realize it would be able to achieve something great if they just had something to work toward.

• 41:40Mark Normand?

  I agree. That's why I'm, again, thankful for comedy.

• 41:44Chris Williamson?

  Speaking of China, have you seen these videos that are coming out of people protesting against the lockdowns?

• 41:50Mark Normand?

  I have.

• 41:50Chris Williamson?

  Dude, this stuff's proper harrowing.

• 41:52Mark Normand?

  Really?

• 41:53Chris Williamson?

  It's genuinely, yeah, there's a really-

• 41:55Mark Normand?

  Good for them.

• 41:56Chris Williamson?

  Well, I suppose so, but the fact that it's got to this stage, people have been quarantined in, inside of their own flats for a hundred days, and they tied metal wire around the door handles from the outside.

• 42:07Mark Normand?

  What?

• 42:08Chris Williamson?

  So that people, people have literally been locked inside. They've got these drones that fly over the streets and disperse some chemicals in a desperate attempt to try and kill the virus. No idea if it works, no idea what the chemicals are. Little kids are breathing this in. They've got these totally arbitrary quarantine areas outside in parks that are just for bank barriers, and it's just a square with nothing in it and a sign on the outside. It's just the most insane arbitrary rules-

• 42:38Mark Normand?

  Wow.

• 42:39Chris Williamson?

  -run amok. It's crazy.

• 42:40Mark Normand?

  That is wild. That's movie shit. That's terrifying.

• 42:44Chris Williamson?

  Yes.

• 42:44Mark Normand?

  And good for them for protesting, because China is very obedient, you know, generalizing. But good for them, they're breaking free. And it's like we said before with the policing of words, like, is this really for good or justice, or is there something more behind this? And I feel the same way about this. Is this really for good? The chemicals and the hair, the shit on the handles and the doorknob, like, you've gone too far. You've gone so far good, you're bad again.

• 43:12Chris Williamson?

  Yep.

• 43:12Mark Normand?

  You know, so-

• 43:13Chris Williamson?

  Think about the price that those people need to pay to do that protest. You know, for all that there was-

• 43:19Mark Normand?

  Yeah.

• 43:19Chris Williamson?

  There was protests that happened in the US and in, and in the UK and in Australia, and people were unhappy about stuff. Like, you weren't being tracked by, they have this gate tracking, AI analysis from CCTV, even without seeing your face, with about a 95% accuracy, they can work out who you are just from the way you walk.

• 43:40Mark Normand?

  Oh, geez.

• 43:41Chris Williamson?

  Kind of like a biophysical fingerprint of some kind, right? And a- That's the price that they're paying.

• 43:48Mark Normand?

  Wow.

• 43:48Chris Williamson?

  For pushing back, you know, they're gonna have social credit score. They've got this digital health, what's it called, digital? Digital health system, digital health, some bullshit. And, uh, they're, yeah, that's it. They're chanting, give me freedom or give me death.

• 44:03Mark Normand?

  Whoa, good for them.

• 44:05Chris Williamson?

  Fucking serious, man.

• 44:06Mark Normand?

  Serious, that is serious shit, but they can't live like that. But I, I do feel bad for them because I think we talk about how harsh we are with police. I'm sure those police are just coming down with the hammer.

• 44:17Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, game over.

• 44:18Mark Normand?

  Yeah. So that is terrifying, but, you know, we can't live like this. We're losing our, literally losing our lives. And they're like, but you could die. I'm like, well, let me, let me take the risk. My body, my choice.

• 44:28Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 44:29Mark Normand?

  And I do think, look, I was a pan, you know, we had a pandemic and all that. And maybe we're still in one, but, and you wear the mask and you play ball and all that. But like, there's fucking limits here, folks. Let's not, let's not overdo it.

• 44:41Chris Williamson?

  Have you heard of frogging?

• 44:43Mark Normand?

  Mm hmm.

• 44:43Chris Williamson?

  Okay, so I, I got told about this the other day. It's a pretty fucking harrowing story. So, um, one of my friends was, uh, in a relationship with some like famous pop star chick. And he was staying at her house and, uh, he was sunbathing there. And this guy came through the hedge. It's like, that's fucking strange. It's a gated community, like super expensive house and stuff. This guy came through, but he was in khakis or whatever, and he looked like a normal person. And, uh, he was like, uh, can I help you? And this dude looked super shocked. He said, oh, is this not Scott's house? I'm looking for Scott. And he said, no, there's no Scott here. And he says, oh, uh, I, I came from next door. There's something must be, I'm sorry, I must have got confused or whatever. And my friend just had a bad feeling about it. He's like, there's something fucking, there's something up here, something really, really, really up.

• 45:25Chris Williamson?

  Anyway, they, uh, roll forward another couple of weeks and he's still got this feeling in the back of his mind. Apparently he's waking up in the middle of the night.

• 45:31Mark Normand?

  Wow.

• 45:31Chris Williamson?

  Like he felt like there was somebody in the room. And he's like, I'm being crazy. I'll go back to sleep anyway. And, um, air conditioning goes out. So they need to get a pest guy and a air conditioning guy up. So go upstairs into the, the attic and the, he says he'll never forget the body language.

• 45:49Mark Normand?

  Oh, God.

• 45:49Chris Williamson?

  Of the air conditioning guy. Guy opens the attic door up, goes up and apparently he just saw him go like. Like his whole body language just slumped.

• 45:57Mark Normand?

  Oh my god.

• 45:58Chris Williamson?

  As this dude looks. So they go up.

• 46:00Mark Normand?

  I'm getting chills.

• 46:01Chris Williamson?

  They go up into the attic. This dude, this story really fucking disturbed me. Go up into the attic and they look and he, the guy comes back down with his face just white and he goes, uh, are you sure that you've never been up there? Are you, is this a joke? Is this some sort of a joke? And he's like, no. And he's like, I think that you probably need to call the police. And I was like, okay. Went upstairs. What had happened was some like fans or whatever of this particular person had been living in the attic of the house, writing manifestos about how they were going to kill this person.

• 46:37Mark Normand?

  Oh.

• 46:39Chris Williamson?

  Creeping downstairs in the middle of the night, eating the food and then going back up.

• 46:47Chris Williamson?

  Dude.

• 46:50Mark Normand?

  Oh my god.

• 46:52Chris Williamson?

  Frogging.

• 46:53Mark Normand?

  I can't believe your friend was banging Madonna. No. Holy shit, is that right?

• 46:58Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 46:58Mark Normand?

  Well, we got robbed a lot when I was a kid and I, I would wake up with people downstairs and you just know you're getting robbed and it's a fucked up feeling. So I can, I walked in on a few robberies, you know, I'm like nine. I don't know what's going on. Yeah, it's this big guy with a TV and I'm like, can I help you? And he's like, oh, I'm looking for your dad. And I was like, oh, let me go get him. And then he would just run out the backyard with a TV.

• 47:19Chris Williamson?

  What about New York? New York's got some.

• 47:21Mark Normand?

  New York, I've been robbed in New York, got robbed. A guy went through my window in my apartment, up the fire escape, opened my window, uh, walked on my bed, opened a drawer, had all this cash in the drawer.

• 47:32Chris Williamson?

  Walked on your bed?

• 47:32Mark Normand?

  Yeah, cause my bed was in front of the window. So he opened it and walked on the bed. So I saw his footprints and dirt on the bed and then.

• 47:40Chris Williamson?

  Didn't wake you up?

• 47:41Mark Normand?

  No, I wasn't home.

• 47:42Chris Williamson?

  Oh, okay, okay, okay.

• 47:44Mark Normand?

  Crazy story. My girl was living with me at the time. She came home and she opened the door and it hit the coffee table. He had put the coffee table in front of the door. And she's like, hey, what, why'd you put the coffee table in front of the door? And I'm like, get the fuck out of there. I knew exactly what was going on and then. She's like, okay, she called the police, please come, the window is wide open. And I'm such an idiot, or a tard, or an imbecile, or a moron, that I had one drawer with like, six grand in it, a bunch of shrooms, fireworks, brass knuckles, all this dumb.

• 48:17Chris Williamson?

  All of my most prized possessions, I had it all in there.

• 48:20Mark Normand?

  Eighteen year old boy shit, you know, baseball cards and a Playboy.

• 48:24Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 48:24Mark Normand?

  And he just scooped all the cash and left.

• 48:27Chris Williamson?

  Fuck.

• 48:28Mark Normand?

  But then they caught the guy, they took one fingerprint and they caught him like six months later. Just an old crackhead guy.

• 48:33Chris Williamson?

  What, so let's say that, I'm going to New York next week, actually. What are the biggest do's and don'ts for me while I'm in New York? What should I, is there like a particular energy level that I need to be on, or are there some, some of the biggest mistakes that I should and shouldn't make?

• 48:47Mark Normand?

  Yeah, I will say the, it's all ticked up, the craziness has ticked up since the pandemic. Because the hobos ran the city, we all went indoors, so they just were running rampant. And now the city's back and they're still there. So there's a real clash of normies and hobo. And the violence is way up. So I would say, have you been before?

• 49:08Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, a bunch of times.

• 49:08Mark Normand?

  Okay, okay, I would just say, don't do the subway after midnight.

• 49:12Chris Williamson?

  Why?

• 49:12Mark Normand?

  Just because they, it gets cold and they go down there, and that's where the real action happens. That's like slashings and shootings and whatnot. Push you on the track.

• 49:21Chris Williamson?

  But I've heard that you've told stories before about how you needed to do that, because you were, was it Brooklyn you lived in for a while?

• 49:27Mark Normand?

  Yeah.

• 49:27Chris Williamson?

  And presumably that's the only way, I mean, you're not walking to fucking Brooklyn.

• 49:31Mark Normand?

  No, and I had no money for, to get a cab out there.

• 49:33Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 49:33Mark Normand?

  You know, a little more money.

• 49:34Chris Williamson?

  So what do you do if you have to go, just hope for the best?

• 49:36Mark Normand?

  Yeah.

• 49:37Chris Williamson?

  V for vendetta, right?

• 49:38Mark Normand?

  I got mugged once on the subway. And that was my fault, actually.

• 49:42Chris Williamson?

  How is it your fault?

• 49:43Mark Normand?

  Well, I was shithoused. I drank too much back then, I was blacked out, I fell asleep on the train. I woke up to a guy on his knees, doing the exacto knife around the pockets. And I was like, ah, I stood up and I hit my head on the pole. And I fell back down and kind of like knocked myself out. And he was super nice about it, he was like, he was so nonchalant, like, don't worry, the train will turn back around. I'd gone all the way to the end, which is like.

• 50:09Chris Williamson?

  Hang on, the guy that mugged you made you feel comforted that you missed your stop?

• 50:14Mark Normand?

  He was charming. He was like, don't worry, the train will turn around, you'll be all right. And then he walked away.

• 50:19Chris Williamson?

  Without your wallet?

• 50:19Mark Normand?

  Yeah, with all my shit, he had my keys and everything. He was just like, all right, don't worry, you'll be all right. And I was like, thank you.

• 50:27Chris Williamson?

  One of my friends who are at a wedding in Barcelona, Barcelona is the robbery capital of Europe. Ah. And the kids there that are playing in the street, they'll be playing football between them. And they've got a whole system there where they'll kick the ball towards you and you know that sort of Cruyff turn thing where they jump on the ball and spin. If you've ever seen players do that to turn around players, they'll do that and they'll be able to do that up against you and take your wallet at the same time. Wow. It's like some fucking Oliver Twist style shit. Yes, yes. Right? It's elaborate. And yeah, one of the guys doesn't usually drink and we were at this wedding and he, a big beard, sort of CrossFit-y guy, but big sort of beard and slick over hair. And he decided he just wanted to have a little nap in Barcelona train station.

• 51:10Chris Williamson?

  He woke up to find that his wallet, his phone and his shoes had been taken from him. So you now have this big bearded guy at seven in the morning, walking around Barcelona city centre. But the problem is, we were staying in an Airbnb, he had no idea what the specific address of that was. Obviously, there's no hotel name or anything you could go to. It's 1945 whatever, whatever, whatever street. Yeah. And so he's going up to people saying, can I please borrow your phone? But remember, we're in the robbery capital of Europe. Ah. So you have this bearded, non-native. Shoeless. With no shoes, walked holes in his Ralph Lauren socks, like in a wedding suit. Oh my god. Just like the quintessential homeless guy that you're not going to give your phone to. Yeah.

• 51:55Chris Williamson?

  Trying to fight against the exact dynamic that's just robbed him of all of his possessions. Oh man, that's wild. How do you, what happened? He eventually went to a CrossFit gym, asked one of the guys, he was like, I promise I'm the person that I say I am. This is, can you go on Instagram? That's me. And they're like, it does, I mean, you look like a disheveled version of this guy, but yeah, that is you. Yeah. They said, can I please just borrow? So interesting, like lesson or whatever there is, if you've got a little bit of whatever social capital, people are prepared to do all sorts of stuff for you. Sure. Without that, if you didn't have the online persona or wasn't well-known, like what do you do then? And why is it that people are prepared to give a help? It's like an assurance of some kind, do you know what I mean? That's totally true, 100%.

• 52:38Mark Normand?

  Man, good, good for your friend to have a, what do you have, a blue check?

• 52:41Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, something like that. Yeah, enough followers to, to quantify that he wasn't gonna run away with someone's, in no shoes, right? That wasn't who's gonna do.

• 52:48Mark Normand?

  And finally, something good came out of CrossFit. That's a first. But the blue check, I used to be on all the dating apps back when I was a single guy and the girls would be like, "You have a blue check? Why are you even talking to me?" And I was like, "I'm a fucking douche, I'm nobody." But they thought the blue check meant I was hot shit.

• 53:05Chris Williamson?

  You can buy it now. You can just buy it on Twitter.

• 53:06Mark Normand?

  I know. Yeah, the, the fun days are over, but you should have to earn it. But Elon's running out of money, so I think he's trying to figure something out.

• 53:13Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, he's gotta get something working. I've heard you say that an erection is basically an energy bar for a vampire.

• 53:19Mark Normand?

  Ah, yeah, it's an old tweet.

• 53:21Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. Uh, do you believe in ghosts?

• 53:23Mark Normand?

  No.

• 53:24Chris Williamson?

  No?

• 53:24Mark Normand?

  Not only do I not believe in it, but I get annoyed when people do.

• 53:27Chris Williamson?

  How so?

• 53:28Mark Normand?

  Well, I mean, come on, it's too convenient. Ghosts are too convenient. "Oh, there's a little girl living here." And you're like, "Well, wouldn't thousands of people lived here from all the people who, and why is it like always a little girl? It's never like, you know, an old, uh, an old guy, you know? It's just, "Oh, a little girl. Oh, I can feel her presence, but why wouldn't they be fucking with you more?" I don't know. It's all too, it's all too, um, easy.

• 53:53Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, the same friend that told me that frogging story also told me one about where he stayed at this place in Birmingham in the UK. And he'd asked to stay in a particular wing of this sort of stately home. And there's a hotel on one side that's supposed to be really, really nice. And he really wanted to stay in this other one. His manager had managed to sort him in this room. And all manner of fucking shit ended up happening to him while he was in this room. But it's like a thatched roof and stone walls.

• 54:18Mark Normand?

  Yeah.

• 54:19Chris Williamson?

  He go, "Well, it doesn't seem like the sort of place that would have artificially..." And they didn't want to let him stay. It was not, you're not supposed to stay there. They had to specifically bring a bed in just so he could do it. Anyway, the doors start smashing open and closed and the windows do. And then within the next week, uh, a ton of shit happened. Like, his whole life just fucking comes crashing down around him. And then he's walking through Hollywood when he gets back. And this gypsy lady comes up to him and says, "Sorry, I don't mean to disturb you. You should have a ton of kids with her." Uh, there's like a, you know, you've got a dark shadow that's following you. And she takes him in and does the thing. And I was like, "Fucking hell." And this guy is like, super, super rational. And, uh, yeah, again, for me, I'm very much like, if I can see it, if I can't see it, I won't believe it, but... Fuck, man, there's, I know, there's something that sort of

• 55:03Mark Normand?

  Sure.

• 55:04Chris Williamson?

  Really freaks me out to hear stuff like that.

• 55:06Mark Normand?

  I get it.

• 55:06Chris Williamson?

  Really freaks me out.

• 55:07Mark Normand?

  I believe in energies and vibes and all that stuff and, uh, you know, there's all kinds of things going on around. We're all connected, blah, blah, but I do think a lot of this is, we live on earth for so long, coinci- coincidences are gonna happen.

• 55:19Chris Williamson?

  Hmm.

• 55:20Mark Normand?

  But, but maybe I'm a, what do you call it, pessimist, cynical.

• 55:24Chris Williamson?

  Are you just continuing to focus on comedy moving forward then? That's the, the sole pursuit and everything gets funneled toward that?

• 55:30Mark Normand?

  Sure, I mean, I'd like to have a family one day, cause to me, that's like some kind of toe in the normal pool. You know, like, my whole life is just walking around going, act normal, do what a normal person would do right now. You know, I'm at a wedding, like, alright, don't make a pedophile joke, and just get a cup of, get a cup of coffee and eat some cake and shut the fuck up. So, yeah, I, I would like to have a family and not fuck that up and, uh, uh, make, but, but just continue making comedy, making good comedy and hopefully, hopefully people will come out and see me.

• 56:01Chris Williamson?

  I think that the, the idea of having, especially as a guy now, I don't think there's as many places that are firm for masculinity and men to kind of stand. It's like, what's, what's the role? You've outsourced resource acquisition to fucking Walmart and, and Whole Foods.

• 56:17Mark Normand?

  Sure.

• 56:17Chris Williamson?

  You've outsourced warfare and hunting to the police and the legal system, right?

• 56:21Mark Normand?

  Ah.

• 56:21Chris Williamson?

  Kind of the things primarily that we would have done ancestrally have kind of gone.

• 56:24Mark Normand?

  Sure.

• 56:25Chris Williamson?

  In part, and, uh, one of my friends, super successful guy, just in this relationship, he's completely smitten with this new girl of his. And, uh, he was saying, made a ton of money in his twenties, he's like, man, do you know what it is? I realized most of my twenties were spent making me into the kind of dad that I really wanted to be for my kids.

• 56:41Mark Normand?

  Ooh, that's nice.

• 56:43Chris Williamson?

  I was like, that's fucking great.

• 56:45Mark Normand?

  That's heavy.

• 56:46Chris Williamson?

  It's really, really cool to think that all of the fucking, ridding yourself of the juvenile ideas that you've got.

• 56:53Mark Normand?

  Yeah.

• 56:54Chris Williamson?

  Fucking bad habits and getting the cocaine out of the way.

• 56:57Mark Normand?

  Sure.

• 56:57Chris Williamson?

  You know, the casual whatever and the sense of ego and need and all that shit. And you're like, oh, yeah, and now I can actually be a good dad.

• 57:05Mark Normand?

  Yeah, but I think for a lot of people, and I'm not, this is not a, a knock, but I think kids are a lot of people's goal.

• 57:12Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 57:13Mark Normand?

  You know, we were saying, we need a thing to shoot for and strive for, for a lot of people, it's a, a reproductive thing.

• 57:19Chris Williamson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 57:19Mark Normand?

  That's, uh, they're trying to build up and that's good, there's nothing wrong with that.

• 57:23Chris Williamson?

  No, I think- The problem comes when people who don't see their kids necessarily as a worthwhile investment have the kids and don't have anything else because then you don't, there's just no push forward from the parents. And what do you create? You create an environment in which listless parents create listless kids.

• 57:41Mark Normand?

  Oh, totally.

• 57:42Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 57:43Mark Normand?

  Yeah, and I think now we live in this time where there's so much modernity, it's almost like the China thing where we've given, we have so much technology, everything's so easy. You got Uber Eats. You know, you used to have to go out and kill a thing and now you gotta, you can just, you don't have to go get it now. You don't have to go to McDonald's, they'll come to you. So I think that is really, as much as that helps us in life, I think it's hurt us too.

• 58:06Chris Williamson?

  One of my friends who I spent the weekend with had a, has got a newborn who's six months old and weighs 25 pounds and wears two-year-olds clothes. This kid is huge. It's very cute and very well behaved. And I very much was like, that's nice, that's weird. That's, at what point, something happens in men, and it's happened in me, where originally children are the things that your more mature male friends have that get in the way of you partying with them.

• 58:37Mark Normand?

  Yes.

• 58:38Chris Williamson?

  Kids are just this fucking annoying way that shakes the Etch A Sketch and stops the life that you used to have. My business partner can't go out and party with me because he's got to look after the kids, right? Like with his wife. And then something happens, I don't know, like, for me, it was probably 30 or 32, where I was like, it went from kids being annoying to me actually looking at them going like, oh.

• 59:01Mark Normand?

  Yeah.

• 59:02Chris Williamson?

  They're kind of nice.

• 59:03Mark Normand?

  I know.

• 59:04Chris Williamson?

  And I, it feels a bit, I don't know.

• 59:06Mark Normand?

  It breaks it up. Well, I was at Thanksgiving, I don't have kids, but my in-laws have kids and we're all at that age now, and they're running around and they're sword fighting and they got a fake cape on, you know? I'm super, and they're jumping off the couch and otherwise we'd be sitting there going, that's cold out. It's really unseasonably warm or whatever the fuck. You see that, the World Cup, oh, how about the China with the lockdown, you know? But they, they, they get some energy into the room. And that's kind of nice. And we did it. We had our turn. Now it's now it's their turn.

• 59:37Chris Williamson?

  They can interrupt Thanksgiving.

• 59:38Mark Normand?

  Yeah, we used to do that. We used to run around and, you know, scrape our knees and jump and climb a tree. And now they're doing it.

• 59:45Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, it's there's something strange about seeing that as a a guy and remembering what it used to be like to not be so fussed about kids.

• 59:53Mark Normand?

  Yes, yes.

• 59:54Chris Williamson?

  And to then see them be like, I actually kind of like, whoa, whoa, hey, like, who is that?

• 59:59Mark Normand?

  Yeah.

• 59:59Chris Williamson?

  Stop. But at the same at the same time, you're kind of like, I know the fatherhood fucking key gets turned a little bit more. And you go, I can't wait. I can't wait to be a dad, man. I really, really can't wait to be a dad. Same for you.

• 1:00:12Mark Normand?

  Dad. Yeah, I don't know if I can. It's not. I can't wait, but I think I think it's a good idea.

• 1:00:17Chris Williamson?

  Excited at the prospect?

• 1:00:18Mark Normand?

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I think it's like, oh, shit, I lost my train again. I had a good train going. Run a train. I can't remember, but I think it's, oh, yeah, I think it's weird that when people make fun of old people. You hear that a lot. Oh, it's like an old bag. And you're like, but don't you want to be an old bag? You know, like, we're gonna be that. It's weird to make fun of a thing you're gonna be. So I think it's the same with kids. Like, we all used to go, fuck kids, marriage is a stupid antiquated idea. Maybe it is. But I think you change. Like, didn't you have a nightclub at some point?

• 1:00:53Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:54Mark Normand?

  And when you were 14, you probably never thought I'd be running a business.

• 1:00:58Chris Williamson?

  Yep.

• 1:00:58Mark Normand?

  You know, and so you just you go through stages and it's you shouldn't sit around knocking stages that are up ahead because they're gonna come.

• 1:01:06Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, everybody can guarantee. There's two choices, right? Or there's two options. One of them is that you end up becoming the thing that you're currently taking the piss out of.

• 1:01:14Mark Normand?

  Yes.

• 1:01:14Chris Williamson?

  And the other one is that you die too soon to reach it.

• 1:01:16Mark Normand?

  Exactly.

• 1:01:17Chris Williamson?

  Neither of those feel like something that you should really be taking too lightly.

• 1:01:22Mark Normand?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:22Chris Williamson?

  There's a ageism.

• 1:01:25Mark Normand?

  Ageism is big.

• 1:01:26Chris Williamson?

  The one thing that nobody steps in for.

• 1:01:29Mark Normand?

  Not really, no.

• 1:01:30Chris Williamson?

  I don't ever see anyone, you know, even the most ridiculous ism of OBI are in the world, you know, there's someone out there that's gonna stand up.

• 1:01:37Mark Normand?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:38Chris Williamson?

  I mean, you know, I'm for all of the jokes that I think are funny, like Joe Biden gets like.

• 1:01:44Mark Normand?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:44Chris Williamson?

  Age is the primary issue that people are talking about and like. No one wants, no one's defending that. Even the people who are on the same side of him are like, "Come on, the guy's like fucking 100."

• 1:01:56Mark Normand?

  I know. I think it's because it's the same way you can shit on kids, "Oh, fucking kids, huh?" It's because we were kids and we will be old. So I think it takes a little of the sting out of it when you will be that thing. You're not gonna be black, you know, but you will be old.

• 1:02:10Chris Williamson?

  You couldn't say that about Michael Jackson, though.

• 1:02:11Mark Normand?

  Ah, Dolezol. Yeah, good point, good point. Well, gay?

• 1:02:17Chris Williamson?

  Also, actually, there's a lot of these that we can become. Maybe the world is free-flowing as we think it is.

• 1:02:22Mark Normand?

  Convert to Judaism.

• 1:02:24Chris Williamson?

  All of the, all of the above. Um, yeah, it's, it's strange to think about the, the whole like ageism and, and aging out thing. Speaking as well about sort of taking the piss out of it. Do you know why, or one of the evolutionary explanations for why we have menopause? Or why women go through menopause?

• 1:02:40Mark Normand?

  No, do tell.

• 1:02:41Chris Williamson?

  So it's called the grandmother hypothesis. So you could imagine women contribute kids after they get to a certain age, they'll contribute kids to the tribe and you need that because you need the tribe to keep on moving forward. You need to continue to fill them as people age out and die and get gored by a mammoth or whatever. But after a certain age, women, it turns out that it's very hard to raise kids. So you need to have parenting shared between a lot of the women and the men contribute sometimes as well. But if every woman continued to just add more mouths to feed, you would end up with more mouths than there are energy to be able to give to them. So what you actually need is for women who still have the maternal mothering impulse and they're invested in their daughters and then their daughters' daughters, but are not adding more mouths into that pool to be fed.

• 1:03:26Chris Williamson?

  So the grandmother would be able to contribute to caring and gathering and helping fucking sort shit, but doesn't continue to add more children in. It's called the grandmother hypothesis.

• 1:03:35Mark Normand?

  I like it. I think that's pretty good.

• 1:03:37Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:38Mark Normand?

  Now, what does that say for Viagra, though? Because we can, we, our dick stopped working eventually, you know, to a degree.

• 1:03:45Chris Williamson?

  And you artificially give it another bit of juice.

• 1:03:47Mark Normand?

  Is that, is that bad for the, uh, for the society?

• 1:03:52Chris Williamson?

  I didn't, well, I mean.

• 1:03:54Mark Normand?

  I guess you can wear a condom.

• 1:03:55Chris Williamson?

  Male sperm does decrease in terms of quality. It does decrease after, after a certain time. That being said, my friend who's got the, the baby who, who is very large and, and pretty cute, is in his sixties.

• 1:04:06Mark Normand?

  What?

• 1:04:07Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:08Mark Normand?

  Wow.

• 1:04:09Chris Williamson?

  Baby's perfect, super, super cute, amazing dad, amazing mom. You go, I don't know, man, like.

• 1:04:16Mark Normand?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:17Chris Williamson?

  Technology.

• 1:04:18Mark Normand?

  Yeah, I guess so. I mean, look at Nick Cannon.

• 1:04:20Chris Williamson?

  Who's that?

• 1:04:21Mark Normand?

  Oh, who's Nick Cannon? He's a, he's an entertainer, but he's one of these guys. He's all about procreating. And he, I think he has 15 kids or something.

• 1:04:29Chris Williamson?

  Wow. Well, Elon's got 10.

• 1:04:31Mark Normand?

  Elon's got 10. He's another one of these procreating guys. So I don't know. I think it's, at some point, it's kind of child abuse.

• 1:04:38Chris Williamson?

  What do you mean?

• 1:04:39Mark Normand?

  Well, maybe Elon's obviously a zillionaire, so he can afford it. But I think, you know, you want to be able to be around for the kids, see the kids, raise the kids, get to know the kids. But if you have that many and you work as hard as he does, it feels like it's tough to get to know them all.

• 1:04:54Chris Williamson?

  You're going to spread the resources a little bit too.

• 1:04:57Mark Normand?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:58Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:04:58Mark Normand?

  Yeah. And you're going to farm it out to mom or nanny or girlfriend or whoever.

• 1:05:02Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:03Mark Normand?

  So I don't know. I, I would like to have the amount of kids I can actually be there for.

• 1:05:08Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I think, I think that seems to make sense. Look dude, let's bring this one home. I really appreciate you. Thank you for seeing me before your show tonight.

• 1:05:14Mark Normand?

  Thank you for having me. And it's, it's cool. I've been watching on YouTube, so it's fun to talk to you.

• 1:05:18Chris Williamson?

  Thank you. Uh, where should people go? They want to check out the shit you do. Where should they go?

• 1:05:21Mark Normand?

  Uh, marknormandcomedy.com for dates. And I have a, I have two pods. We might be drunk. And Tuesdays with stories and I'll see you on the road. Praise Allah. Mr. President, my company told me of the explosion on our rig on October 2nd.

• 1:05:37Speaker 02

  Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all keep the blame on me. Tom Cruise is.

• 1:05:43Speaker 03

  Digger got us into this mess and Digger's gonna dig us out. From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.

• 1:05:49Speaker 04

  What would happen if I stopped drilling? You start, you freeze to death. That's what.

• 1:05:54Speaker 03

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 1:05:57Speaker 04

  I'm not the first then.

• 1:05:58Speaker 03

  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17. Not a minute without parent.