#2538 - Joe DeRosa

Joe DeRosa is a comedian, actor, musician, restaurateur, and host of the "Vile and Horrendous" podcast. His latest special, "I Never Promised You a Rose Garden," is now streaming on Netflix. www.youtube.com/@joederosacomedywww.joederosa.com Perplexity: Download the app or ask Perplexity anything at https://pplx.ai/rogan. Get a free welcome kit with your first subscription of AG1 at https://drinkag1.com/joerogan Great Coffee, Great Mission – Black Rifle Coffee is America’s Coffee. Visit blackriflecoffee.com/joerogan today to get 30% off your next order. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

• 0:01Speaker 00

  The Joe Rogan Experience.

• 0:18Speaker 01

  Um, I went through a whole, um, like a series of different coffee machines that I tried out. I tried out one of them that was like this little thing that's like a tea dipper almost like for an individual cup of coffee. You put the grounds in this little thing. It's a little tiny press.

• 0:35Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 0:35Speaker 01

  And you boil the water, put it in the coffee cup, and then you sit in there like it's tea, and then you press it.

• 0:42Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 0:43Speaker 01

  And it makes like a French press. Eh.

• 0:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 0:45Speaker 01

  Eh.

• 0:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 0:46Speaker 01

  So then I went to an AeroPress. I like that one a lot.

• 0:49Speaker 02

  What's an AeroPress?

• 0:50Speaker 01

  I use that every day. So with an AeroPress, I boil the water, grind the beans, and then I pour it into this glass tube. And the glass tube has a filter at the bottom of it, like in a, like a mesh, like a steel or an aluminum, it's some kind of metal mesh. And then, that's what it looks like.

• 1:09Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 1:10Speaker 01

  And so you press down and it makes a cup of coffee real quick. And it's one cup. And so that's what I like. Cause I was making coffee, like I was doing French press for a while. I had a coffee machine, but the issue is that you're not supposed to really be drinking out of hot plastic. All that shit's plastic. There's plastic, the water goes into plastic, there's plastic here and plastic there. I'm trying to eliminate as much plastic in my life as possibly, as I possibly can.

• 1:37Speaker 02

  Well, I'll tell you too, I a couple times in my adult life splurged on, you know, some fucking...

• 1:46Speaker 01

  One of them Italian espresso machines?

• 1:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:48Speaker 01

  Did you ever have those?

• 1:48Speaker 02

  It grinds the beans every time you're gonna wait. Those fucking things go sideways on you in a year, and then you're like, I gotta get it fixed. And they're like, yeah, um, there's a shop, it's 90 minutes north of you, you drive the machine up there. You're just like, fuck this shit, man. So I went back, I just, I have an espresso and you put the fucking pot in and whatever, but...

• 2:09Speaker 01

  There's a company that makes one, I should shout them out, that makes one that's all steel. I think it's called Simply Good Coffee. Um, I follow them on Instagram, I haven't used their machine, but that's all steel. It's an all steel coffee machine.

• 2:23Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 2:23Speaker 01

  Which is what you want. But, uh, I've got it down to the AeroPress. The AeroPress to me, very simple, the minimal amount of like parts, it's just a tube, the grind, the grinds, the coffee tastes pure. It's simple, I make one cup of coffee a day.

• 2:38Speaker 02

  Here, here is, here is what I miss, cause I, I will drink a lot of coffee if I'm able to. Here's what I miss about like a traditional Mr. Coffee pot of coffee.

• 2:48Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:50Speaker 02

  You set it, it starts doing it in the morning, you wake up, it's already going, you know?

• 2:54Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:55Speaker 02

  I get two cups hot in the morning, I put it in the fridge, and then in the afternoon, when I start feeling sluggish, I got two cold cups. And it's just a nice, it's...

• 3:05Speaker 01

  So you just want volume?

• 3:07Speaker 02

  I love volume.

• 3:08Speaker 01

  Then make a French press. It'll taste better. This right here?

• 3:11Speaker 02

  But then you gotta make it every time. You gotta do one cup every time.

• 3:15Speaker 01

  You don't have a job.

• 3:18Speaker 01

  You lazy motherfucker. You don't even have a job. You literally talk shit for a living, and you're like, oh, making coffee's so hard. Someone had a skin of fucking buffalo just to stay warm in the winter.

• 3:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:35Speaker 01

  Just to stay alive. They had to shred the skin off of it with a stone knife.

• 3:40Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 3:40Speaker 01

  And they had to pull it and stretch it and tan it and put animal brains on it to make sure that it softened up and salted down.

• 3:48Speaker 02

  And guess what? If you would've said to that guy, hey, we got this thing called Mr. Buffalo, it'll just do it real fast. He would've been like, okay, this sucks.

• 3:58Speaker 01

  Mr. Buffalo.

• 4:01Speaker 01

  He would be fucking sitting in his teepee, going, bro, Mr. Buffalo's the shit.

• 4:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:06Speaker 01

  He'd get fat and lazy.

• 4:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:08Speaker 01

  So true.

• 4:09Speaker 02

  The, uh, but yeah, it's, I just, I like to make more than one cup at one. So that thing, that AeroPress...

• 4:14Speaker 01

  French press is so easy. You talk about making it hard. This right here, this is an all metal French press, no plastic parts at all. It's the fucking easiest thing in the world, dude.

• 4:24Speaker 02

  So this can make a full pot, though?

• 4:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:26Speaker 02

  Okay, well then that's, I would do that.

• 4:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, look at this. This is, and this is not expensive, it's just a steel French press. This is the best tasting coffee you're ever gonna get because it's got all the oils from the beans, man. You get like the, like the real coffee dorks, you know, the filter, there's something happens in the filter.

• 4:43Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 4:44Speaker 01

  So in the filter, yes, you remove the grinds, yes, but also you remove some of the flavor.

• 4:50Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 4:50Speaker 01

  Just a touch.

• 4:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's funny, man. When I, back when I was, when I, when I was still involved with the, with the sandwich shop, one of the things I learned that I never knew, cause you had to take a test to get a food handler's license and all this shit, was, um, I didn't know that food started breaking down the moment you cut it. I didn't know that. Because I was getting into at the time, meal prep and shit, like if I cut, if I cut up, if I chop the tomatoes now, if I chop the carrots now, the cucumbers now, it'll be way easier to just throw a salad together every day. It'll make me eat the, the good thing, cause I'll be, it'll be fast. And then I learned, no, as soon as you cut something, it starts to break down.

• 5:29Speaker 01

  Is this just vegetables?

• 5:31Speaker 02

  I think it's mainly vegetables. I don't think it, raw meat is fine or whatever, but the vegetables.

• 5:36Speaker 01

  That makes sense, cause the inside's exposed to the air.

• 5:38Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm. But it's gotta be the same principle with coffee beans, I would think, right? Like, once they're ground?

• 5:44Speaker 01

  Well, that's a good question. Yeah, I think people like to grind them, uh, right before they, I always grind them right before I make the coffee, um, which is easy. Yeah, I have a grinder.

• 5:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:55Speaker 01

  It's a one step, one button. I press it, it take, it takes 13 seconds. I count it, it goes, nah. 13 seconds is the exact amount of beans that I want for one strong, I like a strong cup of coffee, one strong cup of coffee, with that AeroPress thing. But it's the same thing with a French press. You take it, you just get a determined amount, and you can dial the knob, the knob on the grinder. It's so easy. Grinders are so simple. So listen, all you do is you take that ground coffee after it comes into the little cup, you pour it into the bottom of the fucking French press, and then you pour the hot water in. Done.

• 6:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:29Speaker 01

  That's it. And then you wait one minute, and then you push this fucking plunger down, and you drink the best coffee in the world. And it doesn't have any plastic, and it doesn't have any bullshit, and there's no moving parts.

• 6:38Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 6:39Speaker 01

  There's nothing. It's just that thing. And if the grinder breaks, you get another fucking grinder. Okay? And grinders don't break. I've never had a grinder break.

• 6:46Speaker 02

  But you gotta boil the water first, correct?

• 6:48Speaker 01

  Oh my god, are you okay? Are you gonna be okay? You gotta turn the knob on the stove, you gonna be okay? What the fuck is wrong with this guy? I hit a button on the, on the boiler, on the water boiler that you bought. He's so ridiculous. He's like, whoa, I can't be the water, I gotta boil it.

• 7:05Speaker 02

  Dude, I get out of bed...

• 7:07Speaker 01

  Get an automatic kettle. You get a kettle, there's, there's literally, I have one that has a setting that says French press on it. It's a steel kettle.

• 7:15Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 7:15Speaker 01

  And it works all electronically, so it's temper, regulated temperature, and it beeps when it's done. Press 200 degrees, and then I press start, and it goes, dee, dee, dee. And when that happens, I pour the water onto the beans.

• 7:30Speaker 02

  Well, now we're talking.

• 7:31Speaker 01

  Now we're talking.

• 7:32Speaker 02

  An electric kettle. I'm thinking I gotta put a fucking pot on the stove.

• 7:35Speaker 01

  That's even easier, you fucking lazy bitch.

• 7:38Speaker 02

  It takes too long.

• 7:40Speaker 01

  Dude, I get out of... You're such a lazy bitch.

• 7:42Speaker 02

  It's not laziness.

• 7:43Speaker 01

  You're so lazy.

• 7:46Speaker 02

  I swear it's not laziness. I wake up with the dread of humanity in my fucking brain. I'm just like, I need a cup of coffee immediately to just start the day and just clear the head. And the longer that takes, the longer I gotta sit in that wake up anxiety.

• 8:02Speaker 01

  I understand.

• 8:03Speaker 02

  Ugh. So, but, now we're talking. You know what I'm gonna get? I'm gonna get a boiling pot that you can set a timer on.

• 8:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're easy. They're electronic kettles. They sell them online. And they have like settings for tea, settings for this, settings for hot cocoa, you know, it's like five or six different settings or something like that, depending on the model.

• 8:20Speaker 02

  All right.

• 8:21Speaker 01

  They're fucking so easy, dude.

• 8:22Speaker 02

  You sold me.

• 8:23Speaker 01

  My little, yeah. And it's the best coffee. It tastes, and I don't have to think, I had a whole, one of these really nice machines, and it can make an espresso, can make a coffee, can make a latte. It's got a little fucking foam thing that I've never used once, never, never even thought about using it, never even thought about steaming milk in my fucking house.

• 8:41Speaker 02

  Never.

• 8:41Speaker 01

  But I always was, was thinking, I'm just, it's all plastic. Every time I filled up the water thing, I'm like, this is all plastic, everything's plastic.

• 8:49Speaker 02

  Do you know, do you know what I saw, though, that made me wanna get the thing again with the, the cream steamer? Cause I don't put cream in, so I don't have any use for it.

• 8:56Speaker 01

  Black coffee, right?

• 8:57Speaker 02

  Black coffee, always.

• 8:58Speaker 01

  Fucking man.

• 8:58Speaker 02

  Always, yeah, yeah.

• 8:59Speaker 01

  Me too.

• 9:00Speaker 02

  Yeah. Tony shits on it.

• 9:01Speaker 01

  Of course he does. Tony needs a fucking umbrella in his coffee.

• 9:07Speaker 02

  He's got a

• 9:08Speaker 01

  He needs an umbrella and a pineapple.

• 9:09Speaker 02

  A cookie with it.

• 9:10Speaker 01

  And he holds it with one pinky out. When he drinks his coffee.

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• 10:10Speaker 01

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• 11:39Speaker 01

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• 11:45Speaker 02

  I go, I drink it black. He goes, ah, you fucking hate condiments. I was like, what are you talking about?

• 11:50Speaker 01

  I like the taste of coffee.

• 11:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:52Speaker 01

  I do, I genuine, genuinely like black coffee.

• 11:55Speaker 02

  You know what I saw though that made me want to get the, the foam steamer was not for foam. I, you know, Alton Brown?

• 12:02Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm, yeah.

• 12:03Speaker 02

  I love Alton Brown. He did a thing, he did a video where he made this thing with eggs and he used the foam steamer to like foam the eggs up. And I was like, this looks fu, I want to get it just for that, just to do the thing with the eggs.

• 12:19Speaker 01

  Interesting.

• 12:20Speaker 02

  But then you gotta

• 12:20Speaker 01

  So you're lazy when it comes to making coffee, but you go way out of the way for some foamy eggs.

• 12:25Speaker 02

  I'll cook, I'll cook.

• 12:26Speaker 01

  You'll use a steamer?

• 12:28Speaker 02

  I like to cook. I'll cook.

• 12:30Speaker 01

  There it is right here.

• 12:31Speaker 02

  Oh, wow.

• 12:32Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 12:36Speaker 02

  He said this is like apparently incredible. He, he, it's like two eggs, a little cheese.

• 12:41Speaker 01

  Interesting. Interesting. And so you, you whisk it up like that and then you add the foam and the foam cooks it? Is that how he's cooking it with the foam?

• 12:54Speaker 02

  It cooks the eggs with the foam.

• 12:55Speaker 01

  Oh, so what is in the foamer? Is it just hot water?

• 13:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:02Speaker 01

  That's it?

• 13:02Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 13:02Speaker 01

  Okay, so this hot water from the steam is cooking his eggs.

• 13:06Speaker 02

  Look at the egg cooking. Look at that.

• 13:08Speaker 01

  Pretty fucking dope.

• 13:10Speaker 02

  Look at that.

• 13:10Speaker 01

  He's eating.

• 13:13Speaker 01

  Or you just eat eggs. What's wrong with you? Just crack some fucking eggs. Fry some eggs. What's the problem?

• 13:20Speaker 02

  You don't think that looks good?

• 13:21Speaker 01

  It doesn't look as good as sunny side up eggs. I was looking at it and I was like, fuck those foamy eggs. I want, I want a real egg.

• 13:27Speaker 02

  Could you imagine Dunkin' Toasting those foamy eggs? Come on.

• 13:30Speaker 01

  No, because I don't even eat toast.

• 13:31Speaker 02

  Come on. Toast once in a while.

• 13:34Speaker 01

  Occasionally.

• 13:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:35Speaker 01

  You know what I get it? With steak tartare. I like those little toast points.

• 13:40Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 13:41Speaker 01

  You ever get some steak tartare with the toast points at J Carver? You ever go to J Carver?

• 13:45Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. Of course. Yeah, yeah. What's your favorite spot in Austin to get a meal? Like, is it?

• 13:52Speaker 01

  It's impossible to say. There's so many good spots. There's so many good spots. Austin is crazy with the amount of great restaurants, like really high-end restaurants. I've eaten steak at every fucking restaurant in town and I gotta think the best one is Jeffries. Jeffries is

• 14:10Speaker 02

  I still haven't gone. I gotta go.

• 14:12Speaker 01

  It's perfection. It's perfect, they're all great. Like I've never had a bad steak at J Carver's. I've never had a bad steak at Eddie V's. They're all great. But there's something about whatever Jeffries is doing, I think they got rated like the number two steakhouse in the country. Something crazy like that.

• 14:29Speaker 02

  I gotta go to Jeffries. I've been dragging my ass. I love J Carver.

• 14:33Speaker 01

  J Carver's amazing.

• 14:34Speaker 02

  You know.

• 14:34Speaker 01

  Amazing. Their steak is different. Jeffrey's Steak, you know, like J Carver's Steak is, he's, he's using one of those Argentine grills, so it's all live fire over wood, delicious flavor.

• 14:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 14:46Speaker 01

  But man, there's like another, another level. Like whatever Jeffrey's doing, like fuck.

• 14:51Speaker 02

  I go, I love Gary, the bartender at Eddie V's and he makes killer martinis. I love to go in and get a martini.

• 14:59Speaker 01

  It's a great bar.

• 14:59Speaker 02

  Shrimp cocktail.

• 15:00Speaker 01

  Beautiful bar.

• 15:00Speaker 02

  Yeah. And, and some steak. But I love, I gotta tell you, it's the same owners as J Carver. I actually think I like the steak at Red Ash a little bit better than J Carver.

• 15:13Speaker 01

  How?

• 15:14Speaker 02

  There's just something different about, I don't, I don't know what the difference in the prep is, but just the steak and then also having the option of all the Italian foods that you can get with the steak.

• 15:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, Red Ash is phenomenal too.

• 15:24Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 15:25Speaker 01

  They have another place called the Kimberly. That's, that place is phenomenal too.

• 15:28Speaker 02

  Kimberly's very good.

• 15:29Speaker 01

  There's, there's too many good restaurants. You have a, an abundance of choices here.

• 15:35Speaker 02

  It took, it took a minute because when I first moved back, because I was here in 2000 for a year. When I first moved back, you know, I was in New York for so long, I forgot like Austin is more of a destination city. You have to kind of find the places. And Tommy Pope was like, dude, give me your phone. And he went into my Google Maps and he bookmarked 10 spots. And was like, get this here, get this there, get this here. And every spot I was like, okay, now, now we're, now we're rocking and rolling. It was great.

• 16:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, imagine back in the day before the internet, you couldn't just Google like what's the best steakhouse in Austin. You couldn't, I mean, that's kind of an amazing thing now.

• 16:18Speaker 02

  Right.

• 16:18Speaker 01

  You had to be told about a restaurant.

• 16:20Speaker 02

  Right.

• 16:20Speaker 01

  You know?

• 16:21Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. What's, what's, I, I do that in cities. Um, when I'm on the road, I'll, I'll look up what's the best Italian sandwich in the city. Sometimes it's right. Sometimes it's like, you know, restaurant.

• 16:35Speaker 01

  The most popular touristy place.

• 16:36Speaker 02

  Exactly. Sometimes it's just a place that paid for publicity, so they're getting on these lists. And it's not accurate, but when you find it, it's great. The internet is a great tool to help find these places. Like you said, it used to just be word of mouth. You used to say what's good. And now you're depending on some guy's opinion, which is not always the best, but.

• 16:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, but there's some certain places. It's like people are your own little Siskel and Ebert for movies, but for restaurants. Like you gotta find a fat guy who loves food. That guy's gonna tell you where the best spots are.

• 17:11Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, you know who knows everything?

• 17:14Speaker 01

  There's like east coast places though, that you're just never gonna get anywhere else other than the east coast. There's certain like kind of small Italian restaurants in particular. There's this place I used to go to when I lived in New Rochelle, Frank and John's. I think it was Frankie and Johnny's. I think that's what it was called.

• 17:30Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 17:30Speaker 01

  In New Rochelle, this Italian place, it was so fucking insane. It was so insane. It was so good.

• 17:36Speaker 02

  A movie about that. Well, there was a movie called Frankie and Johnny with Al Pacino. And I think it's about that restaurant. I think he works at that restaurant.

• 17:44Speaker 01

  Really?

• 17:44Speaker 02

  Yeah. I, I think so. It, yeah, it's, it's gotta be.

• 17:48Speaker 01

  There's a lot of restaurants.

• 17:49Speaker 02

  Right? But it's called

• 17:49Speaker 01

  I'm 90% sure it was in New Rochelle, because that's where I lived. I lived in New Rochelle. If it wasn't in New Rochelle, it was in the surrounding areas, like maybe Mount Vernon or something like that. But, oh my God, dude, it was so good. When I got my first development deal, um, my manager thought that I had a gambling problem, but it was really just because I was eating steak and lobster every night.

• 18:12Speaker 02

  Go, where's all your money going?

• 18:13Speaker 01

  He's like, what are you doing? You're spending so much money. Do you have a gambling problem? And I was like, no, I'm eating steak and lobster every night, dude. I've been poor my whole life. I'm fucking eating like a king. Until this shit runs out, I don't even know if it's gonna last, but I'm riding this bitch right into the rocks.

• 18:29Speaker 02

  My favorite thing about when I finally got to a point of some financial stability with this crazy career that you go through for a long time without knowing what's next. But my favorite thing was when I could go, I can eat whatever I want now. Like, that was, that was a huge moment to me.

• 18:50Speaker 01

  That's one of the biggest. Brian Callen said that to me once. He goes, the most, he goes, other than obviously taking care of your family and mortgage and all that stuff, the, after like life necessity, the big change, the big change is being able to go to a restaurant and order whatever you want and not think about it. Not worry about the bill.

• 19:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:11Speaker 01

  And if you can do that, like, you have real freedom. Like, that's like the, the big, the first big leap. And then everything after that is like these little things. It's great, oh, look, I live in a nice apartment. Oh, look, I have a nice car. Oh, look, I got the shoes that I wanted. Oh, look, that's all fine.

• 19:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:28Speaker 01

  It's nice. But the, the weight that's lifted off of you, when you don't have to worry about your bills, that's number one.

• 19:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:34Speaker 01

  That's the big one.

• 19:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:35Speaker 01

  That's the giant leap, that's the, between the two buildings. Like, I don't know if this is gonna work out, to wee, bump.

• 19:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:42Speaker 01

  Okay, I'm gonna be okay.

• 19:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:43Speaker 01

  Now, it's just about how hard do I work and what kind of success do I have? But I can feed myself now with no fears.

• 19:50Speaker 02

  Dude, um, I, I actually might have said this to you the last time I was here, I don't remember, but it's the, the, the, the most profound moment for me in practicing gratitude for, for my life. I swear to God, it's the supermarket. When I check out at the supermarket, I try to remind myself, you just pulled whatever you wanted off the shelf to fill your cart, and you didn't have to worry about, can I pay for this or not? You're checking out, and you're paying for your groceries, and it, it costs what it costs, and it worked. I was like, people, there are people that don't have this, man, remember this.

• 20:26Speaker 01

  A ton of people.

• 20:28Speaker 02

  It's, yeah.

• 20:28Speaker 01

  Here's the question, though. Do you think that there's value in not having that when you're young, and then developing that sort of drive and ambition and desire to earn money and get something, because you know what it's like to be poor?

• 20:43Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 20:44Speaker 01

  Or do you think the world would be a far better place if instead of people having to concentrate on necessities like food and shelter, society reaches a point where that is a given? And no one ever has to worry about food and shelter? And now, it's all about, what do you wanna pursue and how much energy you put into it? Or do you think that you have to have that struggle?

• 21:12Speaker 02

  I think, look, I, I don't think that that struggle and the transition out of that struggle is ever bad for anybody. I think it's a, I think it's a, it, it builds your spirit, and it builds your, who you are. That said, the other version of it, I, I don't know, because it's just not a thing that we have here.

• 21:32Speaker 01

  It's not a thing that people have ever experienced here. And I don't even know if they really experience it anywhere else. I mean, I think there's like forms of socialism, but they all involve oppression. There's, they all involve government overreach, they all, any, any real socialist system always involves like serious restrictions on what you can and can't do. Take your training to the next level with AG1's new product, AG1 Pro. It's back, and it's already sold out once, so get it now. AG1 Pro takes the original next-gen formula, the vitamins, minerals, adaptogens, pre and probiotics and more, and packs in even more support for physical performance.

• 22:11Speaker 01

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• 22:50Speaker 02

  I will tell you this, and this might be a byproduct of the culture we live in, because we don't have it, I will say, I, there is a noticeable difference to me between people I am friendly with that grew up with money and people that I, that I know that grew up that didn't have it.

• 23:07Speaker 01

  Right, but is that because of our society?

• 23:09Speaker 02

  That's my question.

• 23:10Speaker 01

  This, this is the question that I have. Like, is it necessary that that has to be your struggle in order to develop the kind of discipline that you need to be successful in life? Or is it just, our society is fucked up, and that desperation that we're putting into people, you're just making the motivation different? Like, you're enforcing the idea of greed, because people become selfish, because no one was looking out for them, and they have a chip on their shoulder, all that shit. But you don't necessarily have to have that to have interest in pursuing something to the best of your abilities.

• 23:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's a tough thing to, to define. It's, it really is. I think, um, I think there's bonuses to both. But I also think too, in, in, in, in the socialist society thing, hey, isn't it great if you can go, hey, man, um, I'm a waiter, and I'm able to live a normal life and buy a house and, and, and be nor, you know, whatever?

• 24:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, but that's not socialist, that's just a, we, we're fucked in terms of like the amount people earn versus what you can buy.

• 24:12Speaker 02

  Right.

• 24:12Speaker 01

  Versus like the 1950s. The 1950s, you, you know, the, the way a person can make a living and feed an entire family off of one paycheck, it was, it was way easier.

• 24:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:25Speaker 01

  It was a lot easier.

• 24:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, it always makes me laugh, because one of my favorite, uh, TV shows of all time is All in the Family.

• 24:32Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 24:32Speaker 02

  Right? And the whole thing with All in the Family was supposed to be that they were kinda struggling. Like, Archie was a cab driver, and they didn't have a lot of money, whatever. You look at that fucking house they lived in, you're like, that house would be $10.3 million now. They're living pretty fucking good.

• 24:50Speaker 01

  It's a nice house. Right, it's all clean and nice inside.

• 24:53Speaker 02

  It's got two floors.

• 24:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, and the guy's a cab driver.

• 24:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, so, it's a tough, uh, it's a tough thing. But, uh, as far as the society we live in personally, I think it's better to have known what nothing is, and then go to appreciating what you do have.

• 25:09Speaker 01

  I don't know, because I've never, I've never grown up any other way. But I wonder, if you have a con, if you have conscientious parents, and you're a young kid, and, you know, your dad just sits you down and tells you, hey, buddy, you can be whatever you want, but you're gonna have to fucking put in the work. Like, there's, there's only one way out of this thing.

• 25:30Speaker 02

  Right.

• 25:30Speaker 01

  And nobody, nobody rides for free.

• 25:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:32Speaker 01

  And if you do ride for free, you're gonna be depressed.

• 25:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:34Speaker 01

  If somebody gives you everything that you have, those are the people that are the most aimless. The rich kids?

• 25:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:39Speaker 01

  That I've met, that have no, like, they've had money their entire life, like, they, their parents just give them a trust fund, so they don't have to work, and they're worth like a ton of money, they're all sad.

• 25:49Speaker 02

  Right.

• 25:50Speaker 01

  They're all sad, then, then they have, they're all super insecure, they're all, they all act real weird.

• 25:55Speaker 02

  Yeah. I know one or two people that had trust funds, grew up like that, but still worked their asses off?

• 26:02Speaker 01

  That's great.

• 26:02Speaker 02

  Because again, you're saying it's what the parents, what, you know?

• 26:05Speaker 01

  I think a big part of that, right, is what the parents are telling you.

• 26:08Speaker 02

  There's all this talk now of nepo babies and all that stuff. I was good friends years ago, uh, with, uh, Eden, Eden Brolin. Um, she's Josh Brolin's daughter. And she was very close with her dad. I remember, I remember she was in my house one day in LA, and she's like, I'm not supposed to tell anybody, my dad's gonna be Thanos in the Marvel movies. And I was like, that's fucking crazy, right? So, like, so like, but she, dude, she worked for every fucking thing she, I became friends with her, because she was a hostess at the Stand in New York. Like, she always had regular jobs, she plays in a band now, she does some acting, but she is not in a situation where her dad put her wherever, and I think it's because, they're

• 26:53Speaker 02

  very close, but I think it was because she was just raised in a way where he's like, you're gonna earn your shit, and, you know, and, and you're gonna do your thing, and, and she's an amazing person. Like, there was none of that, none of that, my dad's famous and I'm comfortable arrogance.

• 27:06Speaker 01

  But he's a cool guy. He's a very normal guy.

• 27:09Speaker 02

  I never met him.

• 27:10Speaker 01

  He's a very nice guy.

• 27:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:11Speaker 01

  Very, very smart and very normal. Like, you, you can hang out with, talk him jokes around. He's like, he's very present.

• 27:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:18Speaker 01

  And there's, there's a lot of people like that, that you think of, you know, you think of actors as all being these fucking aloof weirdos, and who live in this bizarre liberal, like, progressive leftist bubble, and a lot of them are. There's, there's a giant number that are. But man, there's a ton of like really solid, cool people that are actors.

• 27:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:39Speaker 01

  Like Billy Bob Thornton.

• 27:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:41Speaker 01

  Cool as fuck, man.

• 27:42Speaker 02

  He seems awesome.

• 27:43Speaker 01

  So cool. He got, actually got me this short shirt, shout out to him.

• 27:46Speaker 02

  That's awesome.

• 27:47Speaker 01

  I said, nice shirt, man, and so he hooked it up.

• 27:49Speaker 02

  I'd love to meet him.

• 27:51Speaker 01

  He's great.

• 27:52Speaker 02

  I'd love to meet him.

• 27:52Speaker 01

  He's great. There's a lot of those guys that are really great. Woody Harrelson's fucking great.

• 27:56Speaker 02

  I was just gonna say.

• 27:57Speaker 01

  Matt McConaughey's great.

• 27:58Speaker 02

  I became friendly with Woody and his wife through Tony.

• 28:02Speaker 01

  He's so nice.

• 28:04Speaker 02

  He's the fucking bad, they're both amazing.

• 28:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:07Speaker 02

  They're, like, he's, he's so fucking cool, man.

• 28:10Speaker 01

  So normal.

• 28:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, like.

• 28:12Speaker 01

  So, so cool and present, has zero ego. He's just always chill and hanging out, always like super friendly and nice to everybody. Woody's so nice.

• 28:21Speaker 02

  He, he, he said a thing to me, it, the first time I ever hung out with him, he came to kill Tony, and, and, and we were drinking after the show, and we had a great time. And at the end of the night, he just goes, and Tony had plugged my special at the beginning of the show, or whatever. And at the end of the night, and I mean, we'd had a few, we were in Mitzi's, we were all kinda just getting into that, swaying around. You know? And, uh, I was like, it was great to meet you, man. And he goes, he goes, yeah, man, it was fun tonight. And he goes, I'm gonna watch your special. And I go, thanks, man. And he goes, I never promised you a rose garden. And I was like, yeah, that's the name.

• 29:03Speaker 02

  And he's like, I'm gonna wa, I'm like, this fucking guy remembered the name of my special from a plug five hours ago. And I was like, that's fucking awesome, man.

• 29:15Speaker 01

  That's very cool.

• 29:15Speaker 02

  Like, what a fucking.

• 29:17Speaker 01

  He's just a good dude.

• 29:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, what an awesome dude.

• 29:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, they exist, man, you know? There's a lot of them out there. You'd be shocked. Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, very cool guys. Like, talk to them on and off air. I've, I've talked to Matt before. I actually randomly ran into Matt Damon a few years back in Italy at a restaurant, where he was seated under a picture of him.

• 29:42Speaker 01

  So I'd already met him before at the UFC. And then we were in Italy. I was with my family and he was with his family. And he sat down, we were already sitting down and we were right across. I go, oh, look at that picture of Matt Damon. And then literally Matt Damon walks in and sits right under the picture of Matt Damon. And I go, hey, Matt? And he's like, hey, what are you doing here? Gave me a big hug and I was like, but this is so meta.

• 30:07Speaker 02

  Did you ever see?

• 30:08Speaker 01

  So strange to like, look at a photo of a guy on the wall and go, oh, I know him. That's Matt Damon. And then he comes in and sits right there, right after you say it?

• 30:17Speaker 02

  That's so funny.

• 30:18Speaker 01

  What are the odds?

• 30:18Speaker 02

  That's so funny.

• 30:19Speaker 01

  What are the odds?

• 30:20Speaker 02

  Did you ever see, uh, did you ever see autofocus, the Bob Crane movie?

• 30:24Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 30:24Speaker 02

  With Greg Kinnear?

• 30:25Speaker 01

  What a crazy movie, man.

• 30:26Speaker 02

  I love that movie.

• 30:27Speaker 01

  That movie's crazy. Do you think the guy killed him, his buddy?

• 30:30Speaker 02

  Yes, I do, I do.

• 30:31Speaker 01

  It seems like it, right?

• 30:32Speaker 02

  I do, I think so. But that's, when they show how he would get laid on the road.

• 30:38Speaker 01

  Crazy. He would wait for the reruns of Hogan's Heroes to be on TV and then he'd sit in front of the television?

• 30:43Speaker 02

  He knew when they were on. And there's that scene, there's that scene where he tells the bartender and he goes, could you put it on channel 22, whatever? She puts it on and he's sitting under it and then this hot chick comes up and she goes, oh my God, is that you? And he goes, oh, how embarrassing.

• 31:01Speaker 01

  Well, back then, you gotta think Hogan's Heroes, first of all, how much has society changed? And how much more sensitive have people gotten? When you think that Hogan's Heroes was a show about a Nazi concentration camp? And it was a comedy?

• 31:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 31:18Speaker 01

  It was a comedy.

• 31:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:19Speaker 01

  It was a comedy about prisoners of war that were captured by the Nazis.

• 31:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. And they made, like, they had like lovable Nazis.

• 31:27Speaker 01

  Lovable Nazis that were like bumbling buddies?

• 31:33Speaker 01

  Nobody died. The show was on for like five years. Nobody died.

• 31:37Speaker 02

  Nope.

• 31:37Speaker 01

  Did anybody, how many seasons did Hogan's Heroes go?

• 31:40Speaker 03

  168 episodes, six seasons.

• 31:41Speaker 02

  God damn.

• 31:43Speaker 01

  168 episodes, six seasons, and no one died?

• 31:47Speaker 02

  It's

• 31:48Speaker 01

  They didn't kill anybody? How many people died on Hogan's Heroes? Run that through our AI sponsor, Perplexity.

• 31:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:55Speaker 01

  How many people died during World War II in a Nazi prison?

• 32:02Speaker 02

  Not a one, not a one. Nobody got tortured?

• 32:04Speaker 01

  In six years and 148 episodes?

• 32:06Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's so insane. Do you think, they, they get into a little bit of this in the movie, but they, they, they play it down. But do you think there was a lot of pushback? Do you think there was like the, that they were like, what are you fucking crazy? We can't make this show. This is nuts. Or was it just, eh?

• 32:23Speaker 01

  In the movie, was there pushback? I don't remember.

• 32:25Speaker 02

  There's a little bit where he's like, it's kinda crazy.

• 32:29Speaker 01

  Almost nobody dies on screen or as a plot event in Hogan's Heroes. It was a broad comedy and the regular heroes, Hogan, Klink, heroes. Klink, Colonel Klink, Schultz, the fucking Nazi guard, he's a hero. And the prisoners survived the series. The notable fictional death of Major Wolfgang Hochschild, who's reportedly killed during an Allied bombing raid and the commandant dies at dawn. The title's misleading. Colonel Klink is not killed. So the practical answer is one named reoccurring character with occasional unnamed wartime casualties implied rather than shown.

• 33:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:07Speaker 01

  Nobody died, obviously.

• 33:09Speaker 02

  That's

• 33:10Speaker 01

  Klink was like, remember, I see nothing? He saw nothing. He was always like, I gotta get out of here. I see nothing. Like they're all plotting fucking devious things to try to get back at the guards. And he was like, I see nothing?

• 33:23Speaker 02

  It's like having a show where the Klan naps people. And then the Klan is like kinda funny.

• 33:29Speaker 01

  The, the, the black guys are like breakdancing, the Klan's having a good time with them.

• 33:33Speaker 02

  Yeah. The closest I've ever seen to it is Tarantino in Django when he makes the Klan scene funny. When they're all kinda dumb. Do you remember that scene?

• 33:41Speaker 01

  I don't remember that scene, unfortunately.

• 33:43Speaker 02

  There's a scene with the Klan and they're, I think Jonah Hill has a cameo in it and they're all kinda dumb. And it's like funny dialogue with the Klan. You're like, I don't know how he just pulled this off, but he did.

• 33:55Speaker 03

  It's the scene with the bag where they're trying to talk about the, like, my wife made mine.

• 34:00Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, okay.

• 34:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 34:04Speaker 01

  Well, my point was that if you go back to that year, like what year was Hogan's Heroes? Was it the seventies?

• 34:11Speaker 03

  Sixty-five to seventy-one is when it aired.

• 34:13Speaker 01

  Sixty-five to seventy-one, okay. Being on television was a very new thing.

• 34:18Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 34:19Speaker 01

  Very new thing. A sitcom star was a very new thing. It was only at the most, what, two decades old? How old is The Honeymooners? What year was that?

• 34:31Speaker 02

  Honeymooners are the early fifties, I believe, right? I think. And it was a spinoff of the Gleason Variety Hour, whatever the fuck that was called. It was a sketch they did.

• 34:43Speaker 01

  Fifty-five?

• 34:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's only on TV for a year.

• 34:45Speaker 01

  What?

• 34:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:47Speaker 01

  What year did it start?

• 34:48Speaker 03

  It says it originally aired from fifty-five to fifty-six.

• 34:51Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 34:52Speaker 02

  That's the thing.

• 34:53Speaker 01

  The Honeymooners, there's only one season?

• 34:55Speaker 02

  So I have both Honeymooners box sets, cause I love the show.

• 34:58Speaker 03

  Thirty-nine episodes.

• 34:59Speaker 01

  Thirty-nine episodes in one season? That's a lot.

• 35:01Speaker 02

  The main box set is called the Classic Thirty-nine because that's all the episodes that weren't sketches on the show or anything like that. He did thirty-nine episodes and he was like, we did it, it's done. It's like, nobody does that now.

• 35:15Speaker 01

  Right.

• 35:15Speaker 02

  You know, Seinfeld did it and Ricky Gervais does it. He does three seasons and he goes, that's it. They did thirty-nine and it was a massive success. And they were like, you have to do more of these. And he's like, nope, we did it. We're good. We have nothing left to say.

• 35:30Speaker 01

  Really?

• 35:31Speaker 02

  Yeah. And then they did reunion shows and shit, but like that was it. That's wild. That's wild.

• 35:36Speaker 01

  He went on to do all kinds of other shit, though. He went, he was in The Hustler in sixty-two. He played a serious role.

• 35:43Speaker 02

  Minnesota fat.

• 35:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:45Speaker 01

  You know, he was, he was like the only guy that's ever been in a movie about a pool player that was a real pool player. Like he could fucking play. Like when you watch him play in the movie, you're like, oh, okay. That's a real pool player. Like the way he strokes the ball, he strokes the ball like a pro. Guy, he could run like, I think he ran like seventy-five balls in straight pool. It might be a hundred. But like the hundred balls is like the number. If you could run a hundred balls in straight pool, people are like, that guy's legit. He's, he can run a hundred balls.

• 36:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:17Speaker 01

  You know, and he could do that.

• 36:19Speaker 02

  Gleason was an incredible guy.

• 36:21Speaker 03

  It's kinda interesting about the show, the, the sketches were over thirty-five minutes or more. And the writers felt restricted by the half hour format.

• 36:31Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 36:32Speaker 03

  So that partially had something, also he had a contract issue too.

• 36:36Speaker 01

  So they were, they felt restricted but because they didn't have enough?

• 36:39Speaker 03

  They had one more time to, it said it was too slapstick and fast paced, according to TV Guide.

• 36:45Speaker 02

  Huh. Look at this. He had seven million dollars left on his contract in nineteen fifty-six, which is crazy money. The excellence of the material could not be maintained. I had too much fondness for the show to cheapen it. I mean, that is baller shit back then. Like that is not something people were doing back then.

• 37:04Speaker 01

  Or he's, he just got lazy because he had so much money. He was like

• 37:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, he had an, CBS was gonna give him a three-year contract for what would have been a hundred and thirty-two million dollars today. He was gonna get close to like a million dollars an episode.

• 37:16Speaker 01

  Jesus Christ. A million an episode back then?

• 37:20Speaker 03

  It was close to that. No, no, no, no, no. Like what today's money was. I forget where it was on here, but.

• 37:25Speaker 01

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• 38:49Speaker 01

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• 38:57Speaker 02

  But even that's like kind of unheard of when Seinfeld, when it was announced they were all gonna get a million an episode. I remember that was like groundbreaking. It was like, this has never been done before and whatever. This guy was offered the equivalent of that back in fifty-six and said, nah, I'm good.

• 39:13Speaker 01

  Well, he probably already had so much money and he was drunk all the time.

• 39:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:17Speaker 01

  That guy drank all the time.

• 39:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:19Speaker 01

  He was so fun.

• 39:20Speaker 02

  Did you ever watch his final interview?

• 39:22Speaker 01

  Yes, yes.

• 39:23Speaker 02

  Yeah. He's in the tracksuit, just chain smoking.

• 39:26Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. He didn't give a fuck.

• 39:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:29Speaker 01

  Tracksuit, trainsuit, wow, he's making eight hundred and thirty-nine thousand dollars now, the equivalent.

• 39:35Speaker 03

  But he had to pay for production costs, it says.

• 39:37Speaker 01

  Oh, that's different.

• 39:39Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 39:39Speaker 02

  Oh, okay.

• 39:41Speaker 01

  Art Carney, Carney received three thousand five hundred dollars a week, which is forty-two thousand dollars a week now. Audrey Meadows, two thousand dollars a week. Wow, women got fucked over back then.

• 39:51Speaker 03

  No, but Jackie Gleason Enterprises was running the show, so I mean.

• 39:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, he fucked her over is what I'm saying.

• 39:59Speaker 01

  Art Carney got fucking almost twice as much as her.

• 40:03Speaker 02

  God damn.

• 40:04Speaker 01

  She was his wife.

• 40:06Speaker 03

  Only one person got residuals.

• 40:07Speaker 01

  What?

• 40:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, reportedly only, only cast member to receive residuals when the, when they were rebroadcast.

• 40:13Speaker 01

  Oh, because they had to change that shit later. Yeah, they, you know, that's where those strikes and the Writers Union and the SAG, all that stuff, it plays a part. Cause you get, I got residuals for news radio and they're not what you think they are. Like people think it's, it's, it's gonna like change your life, you never have to work again. That's only for the people like Jerry Seinfeld that own the show.

• 40:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:37Speaker 01

  The regular people that get residuals, it's nice, it's a good thing. But it's, it makes sense. They're showing the fucking show over and over and over again. It's still your work.

• 40:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:47Speaker 01

  You know, it does make sense. You're reselling it, so it's not the original deal that you had to put it on NBC for one. Now it's like a thing where you're gonna sell it again. And so all the actors get paid again. It makes sense.

• 41:00Speaker 02

  Dude, I've told you this before, I'm gonna tell you again, so it's documented. And I know you're not that interested, but you, you need to fucking keep acting, dude. You're fucking great on that show. That is not easy. I, in my opinion, multi cam sitcom, despite it being the easiest job in show business as far as payment time versus reward. It is the hardest type of acting because it is an acting where you have to land jokes and gags and you have to make it convincing. That is very, very, very hard to do. You are so fucking good on that show. I, I, I'm, and I watch news radio all the time still. I told you last time I was here, it got me through, was one of the things that got me through COVID was doing news radio front to back.

• 41:46Speaker 02

  You need to, you need to keep.

• 41:47Speaker 01

  That's very nice of you. Thank you very much. But I think your idea of what's very hard to do and my idea of what's very hard to do are two totally different things.

• 41:54Speaker 02

  Well.

• 41:55Speaker 01

  Cause acting on a sitcom is easy as fuck.

• 41:57Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 41:58Speaker 01

  It's so.

• 41:59Speaker 03

  It's boiling water.

• 42:03Speaker 01

  You know what? You know what? This is, this is Joe DeRosa in the green room of the mothership. You know what?

• 42:11Speaker 01

  How many times do you have to say that?

• 42:15Speaker 02

  I go to that green room. You're all fucking.

• 42:18Speaker 01

  I'll go after you, dude.

• 42:19Speaker 02

  You walk funny. You, you look diseased. It's just not, not stuff.

• 42:24Speaker 01

  It's fucking easy. If you're a comic, it's easy. If you're used to doing stand up in front of a live audience, that's a lot harder. And then the, the acting, they, like, they give you, especially if you're working with great people. You know, I was doing scenes with Dave Foley and Maury Tierney and all those, they were amazing. The cast was incredible. Kathy, uh, uh, excuse me, Vicky Lewis, Andy Dick, Candy Alexander.

• 42:50Speaker 02

  But I will say that.

• 42:51Speaker 01

  Steven Root. They were incredible.

• 42:52Speaker 02

  I will say this to you, though. The fact that what you just said, it's easy, is why I think you should be doing it. I think you are a natural fucking actor and I think you're, you.

• 43:04Speaker 01

  Let's just pretend, dude. It doesn't.

• 43:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:06Speaker 01

  Listen, it's not Daniel, I've never done Daniel Day Lewis acting. That's like the real acting. Val Kilmer acting.

• 43:11Speaker 02

  Right.

• 43:11Speaker 01

  In, in Tombstone. That's real acting.

• 43:13Speaker 02

  I think you could.

• 43:14Speaker 01

  I don't wanna do it. I'm not interested.

• 43:17Speaker 02

  That's why I said, yeah.

• 43:18Speaker 01

  If I had another life, if I had another life, I love movies. I fucking love movies. You know what's a great show?

• 43:22Speaker 02

  What's that?

• 43:23Speaker 01

  A great show. It's called Lucky. It's on Apple. It's about, what is that lady's name with the big eyes?

• 43:30Speaker 03

  First episode.

• 43:30Speaker 01

  She's really beautiful, but very unusual looking. What is her name again? Anna Taylor Joy, is that her name?

• 43:36Speaker 03

  I think so.

• 43:37Speaker 01

  She was in The Queen's Gambit. She fucking killed it in The Queen's Gambit.

• 43:41Speaker 03

  Anya.

• 43:41Speaker 01

  Anya. Anya Taylor Joy.

• 43:43Speaker 02

  From The Witch, right?

• 43:45Speaker 01

  Is she in that too?

• 43:45Speaker 02

  She's, I think that was her first movie was The Witch.

• 43:47Speaker 01

  I didn't watch The Witch. No one in my family will watch it with me. I wanna watch it. I try, I'm a right, giant Robert Eggers fan. I think he fucking murdered Nosferatu. I think it was the best vampire movie by far of all time.

• 43:58Speaker 02

  Nosferatu was dope. The Lighthouse was dope.

• 44:01Speaker 01

  Have you seen The Werewolf? The Werewolf trailer that's coming out?

• 44:04Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 44:05Speaker 01

  Don't you okay me, you son of a bitch.

• 44:07Speaker 02

  I have, I have.

• 44:08Speaker 01

  Don't you okay me, you son of a bitch.

• 44:11Speaker 02

  Here's what I will say.

• 44:12Speaker 01

  What the fuck are you gonna say?

• 44:13Speaker 02

  I love Robert Eggers. I'm not knocking it. But it's the fourth movie he's released. Where in the trailer, I see black and white footage and a lot of people twitching.

• 44:22Speaker 01

  Yeah. That's what you need. That's what I'm looking for.

• 44:26Speaker 02

  I'm like, alright, I, I just.

• 44:29Speaker 01

  Come on, bro.

• 44:29Speaker 02

  I don't know if it's gonna be different.

• 44:30Speaker 01

  This looks phenomenal.

• 44:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's, it's.

• 44:33Speaker 01

  Phenomenal. Of course he's twitching. He's turning into a werewolf. What the fuck is wrong with you, DeRosa?

• 44:38Speaker 02

  There's no world where it'll be a bad movie.

• 44:41Speaker 01

  No world. Doesn't exist. That guy knocks it out of the park, A plus every movie.

• 44:46Speaker 02

  The Witch?

• 44:47Speaker 01

  The Northman? Have you seen that?

• 44:49Speaker 02

  I did.

• 44:50Speaker 01

  Fuck. You didn't love that?

• 44:52Speaker 02

  I didn't love it.

• 44:52Speaker 01

  Get out of this room.

• 44:53Speaker 02

  I didn't, no.

• 44:54Speaker 01

  Go home.

• 44:54Speaker 02

  You, you stop.

• 44:55Speaker 01

  Go home. I'll tell everybody about your special after you leave. You son of a bitch. How could you not like The Northman?

• 45:01Speaker 02

  I want it more battles. I want it more like.

• 45:03Speaker 01

  It was perfection. A plus.

• 45:06Speaker 02

  You know what took me out of the?

• 45:06Speaker 01

  He might be my favorite director of all time.

• 45:08Speaker 02

  You know what took me out of The Northman?

• 45:09Speaker 01

  What? Uh. You being a pussy?

• 45:12Speaker 02

  No. Take it easy. Fucking, uh, no. I'll tell you what took me out of it. Nicole Kidman having full plastic surgery in 1650 or whatever. It was taking me out of it. It was fucking me up.

• 45:25Speaker 01

  Let me see what she looks like back then.

• 45:26Speaker 03

  Anya Taylor Joy's in this movie too.

• 45:27Speaker 01

  Is she? She's in The Northman? Of course she is. She rules. She rules.

• 45:30Speaker 02

  But I love, I think Eggers does great work. Or Eggers, excuse me, does great work.

• 45:34Speaker 01

  Oh dude, he's the best. I think he's my favorite director of all time, next to Tarantino. Tarantino's always gonna be number one. But this guy's, cause I feel like there's like levels.

• 45:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:44Speaker 01

  To movies and I think Tarantino is, he's the undeniable peak of the mountain. And then everything else is pretty dope.

• 45:52Speaker 02

  The, uh.

• 45:53Speaker 01

  Scorsese's got some murder, he's got some killers.

• 45:55Speaker 02

  Scorsese's.

• 45:56Speaker 01

  But a bunch of those guys have a few lemons. You know what I mean?

• 45:59Speaker 02

  You're gonna, you're gonna have some lemons when you, when, I mean, Scorsese's output is incredibly high. And it's like, of course you're gonna have a few duds.

• 46:07Speaker 01

  Well, this is one of the reasons why Tarantino's the goat. It's cause he figured out how to have no lemons. Other than death proof, which Tony loves, we argue about it all the time. So we're, I don't see plastic surgery Nicole Kidman there.

• 46:18Speaker 02

  They showed her for a second.

• 46:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, she looked good.

• 46:20Speaker 02

  I don't think she's in the trailer a lot. That was nuts.

• 46:24Speaker 01

  Let me see Nicole Kidman. And that was a long movie. That was a long time ago, this movie, right? What year was this?

• 46:32Speaker 02

  It's probably.

• 46:33Speaker 01

  The Northman?

• 46:34Speaker 02

  Pre-COVID, I think.

• 46:35Speaker 01

  I think so. I think it's like 2017 or 18? Does it say, Jamie?

• 46:42Speaker 02

  I'm amazed with Robert Eggers that he gets wide release theatrical releases with the types of movies he does.

• 46:50Speaker 01

  I think it's cause they sell.

• 46:52Speaker 02

  Right.

• 46:53Speaker 01

  They fucking sell, dude. I mean, they're so good. They're so good. People love them and they go to see them. I mean, that's, it's really that simple.

• 47:00Speaker 02

  It's wild.

• 47:00Speaker 01

  What year was it, Jamie?

• 47:01Speaker 03

  Four years ago.

• 47:02Speaker 01

  Oh, really? That was only four years ago?

• 47:04Speaker 03

  Twenty twenty two.

• 47:05Speaker 02

  Oh shit, it was post COVID, okay.

• 47:07Speaker 01

  Crazy. Um, see if you can find a photo of Nicole Kidman from that.

• 47:12Speaker 02

  And I'm obviously not saying the movie's bad because Nicole Kidman had plastic surgery, but it did, it does take me out of it when I see somebody doing a period piece with.

• 47:20Speaker 01

  See, that doesn't look like plastic surgery to me. She looks totally normal.

• 47:23Speaker 02

  Maybe it's just cause I remember.

• 47:25Speaker 01

  Maybe you just want her to have plastic surgery because you're a hater.

• 47:27Speaker 02

  I'm not shitting on Nicole Kidman, by the way.

• 47:29Speaker 01

  She seems to be a little bit of a hater. She looks perfect.

• 47:31Speaker 02

  She's got, you know.

• 47:33Speaker 01

  What are you saying?

• 47:34Speaker 02

  A little work. Come on. A little work, a little work there.

• 47:36Speaker 01

  I don't see work, dude. I see a beautiful face. You son of a bitch. Fuck is wrong with you?

• 47:41Speaker 02

  Don't you go.

• 47:42Speaker 01

  So down there, when she's with Anya Taylor Joy, right there, that's her right there. So that, that looks a little fillery, unfortunately. That look I think has gone away though. I think ladies are realizing that nobody likes it.

• 47:55Speaker 02

  No.

• 47:56Speaker 01

  The, the filler face.

• 47:57Speaker 03

  Did you see the trailer for this thing, The Neuromancer?

• 48:00Speaker 01

  No.

• 48:00Speaker 03

  Uh, so.

• 48:02Speaker 01

  What's this?

• 48:02Speaker 03

  Nerds are super pumped. This is like the story where like.

• 48:04Speaker 01

  Oh, I've heard of this. Yeah.

• 48:06Speaker 03

  Shit came out of this. So I, it's gonna be a TV show, actually. It's not even a movie.

• 48:11Speaker 02

  Wait, how do you mean The Matrix came out of it?

• 48:13Speaker 03

  Like the ideas of like the jacking in and stuff like that.

• 48:17Speaker 01

  Yes. Who wrote that book?

• 48:18Speaker 03

  Uh, off the top of my head, from 1984, William.

• 48:23Speaker 01

  William Gibson. Yeah, this is supposed to be a movie that people were concerned was like impossible to tra, or a, a book rather, that people were concerned was impossible to translate into a film correctly.

• 48:36Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 48:36Speaker 01

  I don't know why, cause I haven't read the book, but I, I read that argument, like, there's no way you're ever gonna really nail this.

• 48:41Speaker 03

  Just jacked in and now he's like in some new space, which I don't, again, I haven't read it either. I don't, it's no spoiler alert or anything. I don't know much about it, but people are very pumped that they attempted this and it looks cool.

• 48:53Speaker 02

  But, but wait a second. So did The Matrix just take all of its ideas from this?

• 48:57Speaker 03

  No, here, I'll, I'll find out what, I mean, when I said that.

• 49:00Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 49:01Speaker 01

  Lucky. Watch this so lucky. It's on Apple TV. It's only has, uh, seven episodes and it's only gonna be one season, I think.

• 49:09Speaker 02

  I just started watching The Shards, which I'm feeling.

• 49:12Speaker 03

  The, the term cyberspace came out of that book and then like, there you go, a consensual, yeah.

• 49:18Speaker 01

  Consensual hallucination experience daily by billions of authorized.

• 49:22Speaker 03

  The Matrix actually itself, I think, came out of there.

• 49:24Speaker 01

  Ooh. Well, um, that's common, alright?

• 49:29Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 49:29Speaker 01

  That's common. He's, he was ahead of his time. He figured it out.

• 49:34Speaker 02

  So, now this is a weird thing, okay? And this is a thing you notice with, with these directors that break through and do an amazing first movie and then it's kind of followed by a lot of ho-hum stuff.

• 49:47Speaker 01

  You mean The Matrix?

• 49:48Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, the Wachowskis, The Matrix was this cultural phenomenon. It changed everything and blah, blah, blah, blah. Their movies after that, except for maybe V for Vendetta, none of them really ever lived up to that. So now we're seeing this and I'm like, well, did they just get all the great ideas for The Matrix from this other thing and then they made a great movie and then that's why they were never able to kind of hit that again? Every Matrix sequel is terrible.

• 50:12Speaker 01

  They're literally jacking in the same exact way, through the back of the head.

• 50:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:17Speaker 01

  It's the same thing.

• 50:18Speaker 02

  And they're saying the term The Matrix came out of the, this.

• 50:21Speaker 01

  That's crazy.

• 50:21Speaker 02

  I'm like, I thought they made that up.

• 50:23Speaker 01

  You know, they got sued too, cause some lady wrote, um, I think it was a graphic novel. It might've been an, a, a short story or graphic novel. I forget what it was. But she wrote a, a story and brought it to them, apparently.

• 50:37Speaker 03

  Well, she also said she wrote The Terminator for both, both.

• 50:41Speaker 01

  So is she just a kook?

• 50:42Speaker 02

  That's a kook.

• 50:43Speaker 03

  She had a manuscript titled The Third Eye from 1980s and. She, yeah, I saw the story. I remember when.

• 50:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:52Speaker 02

  Let me, let me tell you why she's a kook.

• 50:54Speaker 01

  You know the story?

• 50:55Speaker 02

  Well, uh, cause he mentioned the Terminator. Harlan Ellison wrote an episode of The Outer Limits called Demon, it was called Demon with the Glass Hand. Harlan Ellison sued James Cameron when the Terminator came out. And he goes, that's my fucking story. I did it on the Outer Limits in the sixties. And Harlan Ellison got paid. And they were like, yeah, it's actually kind of the same thing.

• 51:17Speaker 01

  Huh.

• 51:17Speaker 02

  So this lady did not write the Terminator in the eighties.

• 51:22Speaker 01

  Well, it could be multiple influences.

• 51:25Speaker 02

  But.

• 51:25Speaker 01

  It could be. Multiple inspirations, right? It could be.

• 51:30Speaker 02

  The worst one is, and I'm a fan of the guy.

• 51:33Speaker 01

  Let's just, not, we're not accusing anyone of plagiarizing.

• 51:36Speaker 02

  No.

• 51:36Speaker 01

  But we're saying if someone was gonna plagiarize, why wouldn't they plagiarize from multiple sources? You can't just say, just because he stole a giant chunk of it from that one episode of a show. That doesn't mean that he didn't steal a bunch of other stuff. And I'm not saying anybody stole anything.

• 51:51Speaker 02

  Right, right.

• 51:52Speaker 01

  I don't think James Cameron stole a goddamn thing.

• 51:54Speaker 02

  I don't think he stole anything. I think he saw it.

• 51:55Speaker 01

  I think it, he might not have even seen it. There's a lot of parallel thinking when it comes to this concept of AI and robots being like people. And they go, it's in Battlestar Galactica.

• 52:05Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 52:06Speaker 01

  You know, I mean, it's like, there's a lot of that where people become robots. It's in the original Alien movie in nineteen seventy-nine, remember?

• 52:14Speaker 02

  Right.

• 52:14Speaker 01

  There's a fucking, an artificial intelligence that is their guy.

• 52:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:18Speaker 01

  That they don't know is a robot until it, it has a, I think they beat it to death. I think, how'd they find out that it's a robot?

• 52:26Speaker 02

  It's, um.

• 52:27Speaker 01

  I think they, they kill it. They'd not, knock its head off. And that's how they find out it's a robot.

• 52:32Speaker 02

  Blanking on the act, it's, it's, um, oh god.

• 52:35Speaker 01

  The guy's a great actor.

• 52:36Speaker 02

  He's one of my favorites and I'm blanking on his name.

• 52:38Speaker 01

  So this is seventy-nine that they did that, right? So that's the Terminator. Like, these concepts have been around for a long time. The concepts of artificial intelligence taking over.

• 52:49Speaker 02

  I think it was more the plot line of this, this robot comes back.

• 52:53Speaker 01

  Oh, in time?

• 52:54Speaker 02

  It was something like that, yeah.

• 52:55Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 52:56Speaker 02

  And I don't, I don't think James Cameron stole it because there's no other evidence of him ever swiping something. I, but I do think like we all do this thing where we see something, we don't remember. It, it goes into the subconscious and maybe you go, I got a great idea and you're not realizing, oh, actually that's a thing I saw when I was ten.

• 53:13Speaker 01

  He's pretty intensely creative, like, uh, uh, and original. I don't, I don't imagine that he would do that.

• 53:19Speaker 02

  I would, I would hope not.

• 53:21Speaker 01

  I don't think so.

• 53:21Speaker 02

  But Harlan Ellison did win the, the case.

• 53:25Speaker 01

  Interesting. I wonder how much he got.

• 53:30Speaker 01

  How much did Harlan Ellison get for that, the lawsuit? Did they disclose it? Or did they pay him just to shut the fuck up?

• 53:38Speaker 02

  Well, Ellison is, I mean, he is everybody's, everybody that loves sci-fi, he's their favorite sci-fi guy.

• 53:45Speaker 01

  Really?

• 53:45Speaker 02

  Like, he is the guy.

• 53:46Speaker 01

  Bold statement.

• 53:47Speaker 02

  He's the guy. Ellison is the guy. You'd love, you should read up on Harlan Ellison. You would love.

• 53:52Speaker 01

  I probably should. There's not enough time to consume all the things.

• 53:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:57Speaker 01

  There's so many things to consume.

• 54:00Speaker 01

  Dispute ended out of court settlement. There you go. Rather than a court ruling on what, so they just paid him, shut the fuck up. So they probably gave him a fact check.

• 54:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, there it is. Soldier and Demon with the Glass Hand.

• 54:12Speaker 01

  Involved combatants from a future war arriving in the present, including a relentless futuristic soldier sent to kill. Ellison argued that the Terminator borrowed this core setup. Commentators often mention his Outer Limits episode, Demon with the Glass Hand, but Ellison himself reportedly, uh, said his principal claim concerns soldier, not that episode. So it seemed like it wasn't, maybe there was more than one thing.

• 54:38Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 54:39Speaker 01

  Either way. Um. You could, you know, it's like, every werewolf movie is a guy gets bit by a werewolf.

• 54:47Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 54:48Speaker 01

  You know what I mean?

• 54:49Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 54:49Speaker 01

  You could say, no one can make a werewolf movie anymore because of the wolf man. Cause you're, you're all stealing from the wolf man.

• 54:55Speaker 02

  Well, I think the difference is that's werewolf mythology.

• 55:00Speaker 01

  Right.

• 55:00Speaker 02

  Overall.

• 55:01Speaker 01

  That's true.

• 55:01Speaker 02

  Versus, you know what I mean?

• 55:03Speaker 01

  That's true. Yeah, of course. Yeah, I mean, that's, yeah.

• 55:06Speaker 02

  But.

• 55:06Speaker 01

  Bad example.

• 55:07Speaker 02

  The, uh.

• 55:08Speaker 01

  It's not an original story.

• 55:09Speaker 02

  But you would love Harlan Ellison, cause he was just.

• 55:12Speaker 01

  I'm sure.

• 55:13Speaker 02

  My favorite story of his is he, he talked about when he was in college and he goes, my, my literary professor said I had no talent, so I got expelled because I punched him in the throat.

• 55:24Speaker 02

  He's a maniac. Maniac.

• 55:27Speaker 01

  How many bad teachers have ruined a kid's future by telling them they have no talent?

• 55:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, right?

• 55:33Speaker 01

  How many?

• 55:34Speaker 02

  It's nuts.

• 55:34Speaker 01

  So many. There's so many stories like that. So many stories of some shitty teacher.

• 55:39Speaker 02

  It's nuts. Did you have, when you were getting into, well, well, how old were you when you said, I'm gonna go do comedy, I'm not gonna do any of the shit that I studied in school, I'm gonna actually?

• 55:50Speaker 01

  Well, I barely studied in school. I only went to school because I didn't want to be a loser. Literally. I went to UMass Boston. Like the continuing education program, so I didn't have to take my SATs. And I only went for three years. I was wasting my time. And the whole time I was doing it, I was fighting. And that was my primary concern. That was what I was thinking about. And I was teaching at Boston University.

• 56:10Speaker 02

  Oh, you mean like, like MMA fighting? Okay, okay, gotcha.

• 56:13Speaker 01

  Kickboxing and Taekwondo.

• 56:15Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 56:16Speaker 01

  Um, and, uh, that was my concern. I really was, the, the, the, but you tell people, you know, oh, what do you do? Oh, I'm a Taekwondo fighter. Fucking loser. You fucking loser. I'm totally, I would not tell people what I did. I'm going to school. I'm going to UMass Boston. That was literally, that's what I was doing.

• 56:38Speaker 02

  Oh my god, that's so fucking funny, dude.

• 56:40Speaker 01

  Four-time state Taekwondo champion, had fought all over the country.

• 56:44Speaker 02

  I didn't know that.

• 56:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:45Speaker 02

  I knew you've had fighting in your background. I didn't know you were champion stuff.

• 56:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was really good when I was young at Taekwondo. I was really good.

• 56:52Speaker 02

  What made you switch gears from that to go into comedy?

• 56:55Speaker 01

  Well, first of all, there's no future in it. There was no future. I tried out for the Olympics in eighty-eight. I made it to the nationals. I won the states and I went, made to nationals. I made to the third fight in the nationals and I lost. That was in Miami in eighty-eight. And then I realized like, I wasn't as enthusiastic about it anymore. Oh yeah, you got extra cigarettes?

• 57:15Speaker 02

  Thank you. Look at that, here.

• 57:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:17Speaker 02

  I know, I knew you might.

• 57:19Speaker 01

  Leave them there for, for everybody.

• 57:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 57:21Speaker 01

  Um, and then, um, I was also getting brain damage and I was very aware of that. I would lie in bed at night after sparring and my head would be ringing, just throbbing, just boom, boom, boom, boom.

• 57:36Speaker 02

  Jesus Christ.

• 57:37Speaker 01

  And I was like, I'm doing this for free. There's no money in this. I'm not making any money.

• 57:41Speaker 02

  Holy shit.

• 57:42Speaker 01

  Yeah. I, I was sparring a lot, especially kickboxing sparring. I was getting hit a lot. It was a lot of like, kickboxing wars and it was just not worth it. It was just not, and I was realizing like, I gotta get out before I become that guy at the gym. Because there were some guys that I had met and then I'd watch them deteriorate a little. During the time that I knew them and I was training with them, I watched their personalities change. I watched them get, get like slower. Like, I could see their movement was compromised. Cause they had gotten brain damage. They'd been knocked out a few times. And I, I was realizing like, oh, this is a real problem. And no one seems to be thinking about it. Everyone's like pretending it doesn't exist because they just want to be a tough guy.

• 58:26Speaker 01

  And they just want to fight and win and. It becomes the thing you do. And the thing you do is the, the only thing you know. And if that thing is bowling, then you bowl every night. You know, if that thing is golf, then you golf every day. If that thing is fighting, you're fighting all the time.

• 58:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 58:40Speaker 01

  And it was, uh, by the time I was, and I was also realizing, there's no future in this. I'm not gonna ever have any money. I'm always gonna be poor. I'm always gonna be like wondering where my next paycheck's coming from. This is, there's no money in this. And there was no UFC back then. And, um, I got talked into doing stand-up by my friends. That's literally how it started. This episode is brought to you by Black Rifle Coffee, the only coffee we drink here at the JRE Studios. America's two-hundred-and-fiftieth birthday celebration may be over for some brands, but not for Black Rifle Coffee. They've celebrated America since their founding in twenty-fourteen and continue supporting the communities that make America strong. Last year, they eliminated thirty-four million dollars in veterans' medical debt. That's real relief to families who served our nation.

• 59:24Speaker 01

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• 1:00:00Speaker 02

  And then that was it. I mean, you moved fairly fast, right? Through stand-up.

• 1:00:04Speaker 01

  Well, um, see, I did Half Hour Comedy Hour, MTV Half Hour Comedy Hour. I was like.

• 1:00:13Speaker 01

  Five years in, five years in the stand up. And then I got on the television show Hardball, the show I did with Jim Brewer.

• 1:00:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:00:22Speaker 01

  Did that, flew out here, or flew out to California, rather. And that got canceled after six episodes, and then I got news radio right away. So I only auditioned for two shows ever.

• 1:00:33Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:00:33Speaker 01

  Hardball and news radio, and I got both of them. It was the luckiest streak of all time. No acting, I took a couple of acting classes that I had to take. When Disney gave me the money, the first development deal, they said, do you know how to act? I'm like, I don't know. Why are you guys giving me money? It made no sense.

• 1:00:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:00:51Speaker 01

  They just wanted to put me on a sitcom. And, you know, this was in the nineties when sitcoms was like Roseanne and Seinfeld. It was a goldmine. If you could find a personality that you thought was someone who would click on a sitcom that people would want to watch, you know, every Tuesday night or whatever it was. They were, they were willing to pay you a lot of money. And then all of a sudden, I was out in LA, but it was never a desire of mine. So because it wasn't a desire of mine, I didn't get nervous. Like, I didn't get nervous during auditions. It was not, it was not a thing where I'm like, this could change my life, this could be it. It was like, what am I doing here?

• 1:01:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:27Speaker 01

  What is this? What am I doing here?

• 1:01:30Speaker 02

  It's, I'm, it's, you're, you're good at it. That's what you were fucking doing there, man.

• 1:01:35Speaker 01

  It's not, it's not hard, dude. It's, again, it's not real acting. It's not, you know, Marlon Brando. It's, it's just, you're just pretending that this thing is happening in the, the newsroom. It's not hard. It's fucking easy. I mean, the meantime, I'm doing jujitsu. I was still sparring back then, so I'd go to the Jet Center and kickbox and spar. And so I'd go to work, I'm like, this is so easy. This is so easy compared to stand up and kickboxing and.

• 1:02:05Speaker 02

  Did you notice, when you said you were, you were noticing damage happening because of your head throbbing and ringing, whatever? Did you notice any other effects or did you cut it off before any effects could actually? You know, like, like actual things that were affecting you?

• 1:02:20Speaker 01

  No, I didn't notice anything like I was compromised or I couldn't think well or I was forgetting things. It wasn't like that. I, I think I cut it off before I got that bad, but I definitely got some brain damage. 100%. And I think it, it plays a part of my impulsiveness and my, I, I, you know, I like scary things. I like, I like things that are, make me nervous. I like things that are really hard to do. And I think that might be part of that.

• 1:02:46Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:02:47Speaker 01

  Is that I got rattled a bunch of times in my formative years.

• 1:02:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02:52Speaker 01

  Because from 15 to 21, who knows how many times I got hit in the head?

• 1:02:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02:57Speaker 01

  A lot.

• 1:02:58Speaker 02

  You're, you're, we're, we're very different in that way. You're, you're, you're a guy that I think like, very much likes a, a challenge, the conquering the challenge, you know, you know?

• 1:03:08Speaker 01

  Well, it keeps me sane. That's what keeps me sane. I think you make your, the voluntary things that you engage in that are way more difficult than the rest of your life. It makes the rest of your life easier. Because these hard things that you do voluntarily, voluntary adversity, you force yourself to do hard things all the time. So then when other things that are seemingly hard come up, you're like, oh, this ain't shit compared to a cold plunge.

• 1:03:36Speaker 01

  This ain't shit. I just did a workout, a hypoxia workout. And so it's at, I have a box in my studio that goes to, it takes all the air out. So it puts you at the equivalent of 15,000 feet above sea level. And you do this interval training. So you do sprints on the aerodyne machine, you get off of that and you do these kettlebell cleans and presses or swings, and you get off of that and then you do the sled and you push the sled or you do backwards on the sled and it's got varying resistance and you do them in these 50 second, 40 second, and then 30 second sprints. So like, everything else is easy.

• 1:04:16Speaker 02

  God damn, dude. I'm just, I, I can't. I admire it. I admire the shit out of it.

• 1:04:22Speaker 01

  Well, it's just, for me, I think everybody should do something hard. It keeps, it keeps me sane. For me, I need it. I don't know, you know, I'm not other people. I don't, I don't pretend to know how they feel. But I know how I feel. If I don't exercise regularly, I have more anxiety, I don't feel comfortable, I don't feel good, I'm more irritable. I don't like it. I don't like that feeling. When I am like, when I work out really hard and I do the things that I'm supposed to do, I feel great. I feel friendly, I feel happy, I feel light, I feel like life is easy.

• 1:04:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's, it's a thing, I'm not, I'm not blowing smoke. It's a thing I've noticed about you. You're, you're a very, I would even say happy-go-lucky kind of guy. Like, you're, you're very friendly, you're always in a very good mood. I've very rarely seen you, and I see you frequently now at the club, very rarely seen you come in where you're like, eh, fuck. Like, I don't think ever, to be honest with you. And it's, I guess, everything you're saying, like it puts you in.

• 1:05:25Speaker 01

  It's a choice. It's a choice to feel like that. That, that don't do you any good. Unless you're trying to do something with that, fuck this. Unless, unless you've got some shit you have to get done that's hard and you want to have this attitude where you're gonna attack it, like, fuck this. Like, regular life? Like, why, why, why, why upset? Why? Why? You're not in Gaza.

• 1:05:45Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:05:45Speaker 01

  What are you doing? You're not, you're not in Ukraine hiding in a fucking bunker? Like, what are you talking about?

• 1:05:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:05:49Speaker 01

  What are you bitching about?

• 1:05:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:05:51Speaker 01

  You, you're living an easy life in America and you're rich.

• 1:05:54Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:05:55Speaker 01

  Like, what, how dare I be upset?

• 1:05:57Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 1:05:58Speaker 01

  How dare I?

• 1:05:59Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 1:05:59Speaker 01

  Imagine?

• 1:06:00Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 1:06:00Speaker 01

  With the, the fortune, the luck that I've had in this life, me being pissed off at things? That's why it doesn't bother me when people talk shit about me either. I'm like, okay. Like, talk that shit. Have fun.

• 1:06:14Speaker 02

  You could, you could teach, remember when YouTube was doing those master classes? Where like a guy would sit down, like Steve Martin would be like, I'm gonna teach you how to do, write comedy or whatever. And David Mamet did one on writing or whatever. You could do a master class on YouTube in how to let the shit roll off your back. Because I am astounded at how much it does not bother you when people are releasing clips and talking this and, and it's all bullshit, whatever. And you're just like, yeah, whatever, man.

• 1:06:45Speaker 01

  Have fun, knock yourself out. It doesn't, you, you can't stop people from having an opinion. There's always gonna be people that have an opinion. And then in this market of hot takes, there's always gonna be people and their opinion is, negative opinions are more valuable in terms of the commodity of attention. Attacking someone, being, you know, calling someone out. It's more valuable in this commodity.

• 1:07:09Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:07:09Speaker 01

  And then there's people that have legitimate differing opinions of me. And they, you know, they don't like this and they don't like that, and the guy said this, or they don't like this person that I had on. What am I supposed to do? Address all of it? Even think about it? I police myself as much as I can. Believe me, if I fuck something up, I, I'm mad at me more than anybody's mad at me.

• 1:07:30Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:07:30Speaker 01

  So that way, I get it out on my own. I don't need a lot of external validation. I don't need any. I'm not interested in that. I'm interested in doing the best that I can and I hope people like it and that's it.

• 1:07:43Speaker 02

  I, the little shit gets me, man.

• 1:07:46Speaker 01

  I know it does.

• 1:07:47Speaker 02

  I get like.

• 1:07:48Speaker 01

  You need, you need an outlet, Joe DeRosa. You need a physical outlet to calm your mind.

• 1:07:54Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:07:54Speaker 01

  That's what you need. You need to get a trainer, just hire a trainer. We talked about this.

• 1:07:58Speaker 02

  We have been talking about it.

• 1:07:59Speaker 01

  Get a trainer.

• 1:07:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:08:00Speaker 01

  Get, get, because you're not gonna do it on your own. Get someone who you show up three times a week and they put you through the paces and a smart trainer will do it nice and slow. So the first few workouts, it won't even be that hard. You leave there, you'll feel like energized, you won't feel exhausted, you'll feel like, ah, all right, I did a little something. Feel good. And, and then he's like, okay, we're, this is a process. You know, we're gonna, we're gonna keep ramping this up slowly but surely, but you're never gonna be like, oh my God, I can't fucking move. I went to my fucking trainer, he's killing me, my back is killing, I can't get off the couch. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. A good trainer's gonna look at you, ask you how, what have you been doing? When was the last time you worked out? How often you do? Okay, let's start here. And they'll start you off with some simple body weight stuff, they'll put you through

• 1:08:45Speaker 01

  some different mobility exercises, different stuff to just get the, get the joints lubed up, get everything moving, and then build your body up nice and slow. Nice and slow.

• 1:08:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, my, my boy Chuck, you know Chuck, Mexican OT's dad Chuck?

• 1:09:00Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:09:01Speaker 02

  He, Chuck, right when you and I talked about, when you were like, you should get a trainer, Chuck said to me. Unprompted, he goes, Joe, let me train with you.

• 1:09:11Speaker 01

  Dude, take him up on it.

• 1:09:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, and he goes, he goes, I'll come to your apartment. Let's just go, I'll come to your apartment.

• 1:09:17Speaker 01

  Dude, that guy's jacked.

• 1:09:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:09:18Speaker 01

  Take him up on it, he knows what he's doing.

• 1:09:20Speaker 02

  And he said everything you just said, he goes, we're gonna go slow, it's not gonna be this overwhelming thing. Cause I get overwhelmed easily, obviously. Uh, and I was like Chuck, it's gonna be too much, and I'm gonna start, and he goes, we're not gonna do that. We're gonna take it really slow, let me just come to your place, whatever. And so I think I'm gonna start doing it with him, cause I just need to.

• 1:09:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, if you go to the wrong trainer, there's some trainers out there that are meatheads, or they don't really know what they're doing. And they'll beat you down, and they're like, we're gonna fucking push it today. Like, no, no, no, no, no, no. You can't push it when someone doesn't work out. When someone doesn't work out, you go nice and slow, nice and easy. And then you slowly build up to the point where you can push it, right? You don't take a fucking Prius and you drive it around the racetrack sideways.

• 1:10:04Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:10:04Speaker 01

  It's not designed for that. The, the suspension's gonna fall off, the wheels are gonna, there's no traction, you got no tires.

• 1:10:11Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:10:12Speaker 01

  You're gonna have to build up everything.

• 1:10:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:10:14Speaker 01

  And then, once it gets built up, then you can push it. So, once you're getting, look at Jelly Roll. Jelly Roll lost literally almost 300 pounds. Which is crazy.

• 1:10:25Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:10:25Speaker 01

  Now, he's running on the treadmill, he did six miles when we came in to do a podcast. We were all working out together.

• 1:10:32Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:10:32Speaker 01

  And he's fucking running on the treadmill while we're talking, we're talking. He's saying, like, he can breathe, he can talk, and he's running a good clip. Got in the sauna with me, did the whole thing. When I first met him, he was 500 pounds.

• 1:10:43Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:10:44Speaker 01

  Could barely make it up to the stairs to the comedy club. He couldn't, couldn't walk up the stairs. Now, he's fit. Now, he's healthy, he runs all the time.

• 1:10:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:10:53Speaker 01

  So, it's just a process of building to get to that place. Like, he did that show, uh, McConaughey has this benefit every year, and we went to the benefit. And, um, he performed at the benefit. And he's on the stage, and we were backstage watching it. And so, we're, like, in the, me and Tony and his girl, my wife, we're in the corner watching this. Jelly gets offstage, and there's a railing, like a ramp to get off. He grabs the railing and hops over it, and lands on the other side. I go, dude, do you know what you just did?

• 1:11:24Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:11:25Speaker 01

  I go, you used to be 500 pounds.

• 1:11:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:11:28Speaker 01

  And now you just jumped over that railing like a cat.

• 1:11:30Speaker 02

  That's wild.

• 1:11:31Speaker 01

  It was amazing.

• 1:11:32Speaker 02

  That's wild.

• 1:11:32Speaker 01

  He was so happy, he's like, isn't this crazy? I'm like, it's crazy, look what you've done.

• 1:11:38Speaker 02

  That's wild.

• 1:11:39Speaker 01

  And that's what you have to do, you have to, and it took him years. And that's how you have to do it. You have, it has to be slowly, but sure, but along the way, you'll feel better every step of the way. It's not a ma, it's not about breaking your body down. It's about slowly introducing movement and some physical exercise, and then building upon that. 10 pushups in a day, then the next day, you try 12. And then, a week later, you're doing 15. And then, two weeks after that, maybe you can do 20 in a row, or three weeks, a month, two months, whatever it is. You, everybody's got their own timing. Bodyweight squats, very simple. Start with 10, no big deal. Get to 90 degrees, pack up, just, just enough, just to get the blood moving. Walking is fucking great. You know what's really great?

• 1:12:24Speaker 01

  Walking with a weighted vest, not that hard to do. Put a 20-pound vest on, 25-pound vest on, walk around the block.

• 1:12:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:12:31Speaker 01

  It's fucking great for you.

• 1:12:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:12:32Speaker 01

  There's a lot of different things that you could do that don't crush you. And then, you're just gonna feel a little better. You'll have a little bit of more, you know, vitality, more blood flow. And then, you build upon that, that's the key.

• 1:12:45Speaker 02

  I was building slow, I was doing three days a week, and it was getting better and better and better. And then, and end of the summer hit, August hit, I started going on the road again. And all of a sudden, it starts to taper off. Cause you're like, now I gotta fly on this day when I'm usually doing my thing, and then, and I got lazy. And I gotta get back into it, I gotta get back into it. But, the good thing is this, with what you're saying with the slow build, when I start again, I'm able to start where I stopped. I'm able to start there again. You know what I mean?

• 1:13:16Speaker 01

  Right, rather than where you began.

• 1:13:18Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 1:13:18Speaker 01

  That's great.

• 1:13:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:13:19Speaker 01

  That's, listen, man, it's all about momentum. Discipline is very important, but really, momentum makes discipline a lot easier. You know, it's like, you say, oh, you've got really good discipline, like, mm, sorta. I got, I got started. And once you get started, it's more about momentum than it is about discipline.

• 1:13:39Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:13:39Speaker 01

  And then, it's also about writing things down. If you just write it down, you have to do it.

• 1:13:44Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:13:44Speaker 01

  You write it down and make a check. That way, instead of like, keeping this thing in my head, oh, I'm just gonna figure out my own workout, I'll do this, I'll do that. No, I have a whiteboard, I write down on the whiteboard, this is what we're doing, and then you just do it.

• 1:13:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, I had a list in my phone, these are your exercise, 20 reps of each of these. And I just kept adding.

• 1:14:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:02Speaker 02

  Exercises to it.

• 1:14:03Speaker 01

  I don't know a good app, but I'm sure there's some out there that are like, a really good workout app, that'll vary your workout every day, based upon your level, based upon like, you know, how much experience you have.

• 1:14:13Speaker 02

  I try, it's, they're, the apps get confusing, I tried a couple of them, and.

• 1:14:19Speaker 01

  There's gotta be a good one out there, I just don't know what they are.

• 1:14:21Speaker 02

  It's a lot of questions that I'm like, I don't fucking know, man.

• 1:14:25Speaker 01

  Well, that's, cause they're trying to make it good. They're gonna, trying to make a, an app that, you know, gives you what you need.

• 1:14:32Speaker 02

  But, yeah, exercise apps, again, there's, there's good ones, I'm sure, but exercise apps kinda became like dating apps, where there's a million that are all saying, we're gonna change your life in three days, and you're like, no, you're not.

• 1:14:44Speaker 01

  I think most important is, a real good trainer is more important. Cause he can correct your form in real time, tell you why, don't do it like that, you're gonna hurt your back, don't do it like this, you're putting too much pressure on this and that, and you're not balanced, whatever it is. He can get you to do it correctly, which is more important than anything.

• 1:15:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:15:00Speaker 01

  When, especially once you start actually lifting weights, you know? Pavel Tatsulin, who's the, um, he's the guy who really brought kettlebells to popularity in America, it's Russian cat. And, uh, great system of training, and, but, one of the things that he said that really stuck with me, he said, strength is a skill. And you just think of strength as a skill.

• 1:15:21Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:15:21Speaker 01

  So, like, when you're working on your skills, like, like kettlebell cleans and presses, you shouldn't be exhausted. You should do, he does, instead of doing it to failure, you know, like, a lot of people like to work to fail, like, imagine, you can clean and press 50 pounds 10 times, until you're like, really exhausted. And on the 10th time, you're like, kinda cooked. Don't do 10, you do 5.

• 1:15:42Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:15:43Speaker 01

  Just do 5, and then wait a long time, wait like, 5 minutes. Rest up completely, and then do another 5.

• 1:15:48Speaker 02

  Ah.

• 1:15:49Speaker 01

  Do it that way.

• 1:15:50Speaker 02

  That's interesting.

• 1:15:51Speaker 01

  Cause that way, you're always fresh, and you're, you're working on skill. You're still getting the same amount of repetitions, but you're not torturing your tissue, you're not taxing your system. You're learning, and you're not taking any shortcuts. You're not moving weird, you know, like, leaning into something in a weird way, you're gonna hurt yourself, cause you're all out of line. You're doing everything with correct form, cause you're not exhausted.

• 1:16:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:16:11Speaker 01

  But you're still getting the same amount of work in.

• 1:16:13Speaker 04

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• 1:17:42Speaker 02

  The rest time is interesting, cause I, I always thought, well, it, like, I was, I was doing two different types of pushups. I was doing the fucking 45 finger spread, down, hold, up, whatever.

• 1:17:55Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:17:56Speaker 02

  And I could get through 20 of those. Initially, I couldn't, and then, when I was able to get through 20, I was like, holy shit. And then, I was doing a different pushup with the arms back like this. And those, when I got to that, I'd, I'd, I'd hit 10, and I'd be like, fuck. And then I'd sit for a minute and then I, a minute would go by and I'd be like, you gotta do the other 10. Cause if you, if you wait too long, I always thought waiting too long was a bad thing. But you're saying, no, actually rest five minutes, take, take a breath.

• 1:18:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's nothing wrong with it. As long as you have the time to do the same amount of reps. You just wanna get enough work in so that your body forces adaptation. It doesn't have to be all to failure. Now again, it depends on what we're trying to do, right? If you're trying to build up muscular endurance, then yeah, you go to failure. It depends on what you're trying to do. If you're just trying to get stronger, that's a different thing. And then, you know, obviously I do different kinds of workouts, like the workout I did today. This, it's all exhaustion stuff. It's all sprinting. It's not like the kettlebell stuff. This is all high altitude and it's all like maximum intensity on the air dyn bike. Maximum intensity on the sled, maximum intensity on the kettlebell cleans.

• 1:19:05Speaker 01

  You're beating yourself up because you're only doing it for 50 seconds and then, or 60 seconds, 40 seconds and then 30 seconds. So it's like, I do a bunch of different kinds of exercises, but when I do like strength stuff, I've, I don't ever do it to failure.

• 1:19:21Speaker 02

  Can you do, is there a thing, like, like some people go the 100 pushups a day, whatever, that's their thing. I always wondered, well, is it the same if you do 100 pushups just throughout the day?

• 1:19:33Speaker 01

  A hundred percent.

• 1:19:34Speaker 02

  Get 100 in. Doesn't matter if you start at nine and finish at three.

• 1:19:38Speaker 01

  Farmers don't lift hay to failure, right? They pick up a bale of hay, they chuck it under the pile, they go back to get another one. They pick up a bale of hay, they chuck it on the pile, they go back to get another one. They push a wheelbarrow. They fucking hammer a post down. They do a bunch of different things. They do it all throughout the day. But they're never doing anything where they're just, very rarely at least, where they're lying flat on their back, breathing. Like they, they think they're gonna have a fucking heart attack.

• 1:20:02Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:20:03Speaker 01

  They never have that. They never get to the point where they're dropping the bale of hay because their arms are shaking. And they're like, one more rep, uh. But yet they get ridiculously fucking strong, right? Why? Because of all the work. It doesn't have to be work to failure. And in our mind, we think, oh, you have to go to failure in order to get stronger.

• 1:20:22Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:20:23Speaker 01

  And again, we're talking about very specific things, getting stronger, using kettlebells especially. But you could do dumbbells and other things as well. If you're now, if you're doing something else, like if you're trying to get maximum amount of a bench press. If you're trying to like win a competition or maximum amount of chin ups you can do, then it's a different thing. We're talking about a different thing. But if you're just talking about overall building strength for your body, the most important thing is volume, I think.

• 1:20:53Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:20:53Speaker 01

  And, and it's, if you can, like I said, I think this principle that Pavel Tatseline has is a really good one. That instead of doing 10, if you do 10 to failure, do five, wait a while, do five again. And I think it lessens the opportunity to get injured. You're, you're much less likely to get injured doing it that way. I'm very rarely injured from working out, very rare, from just kettlebell stuff, like very rarely.

• 1:21:19Speaker 02

  Right. Alright, alright. You're inspiring me to, to hop back in and, and, and start doing it again. I gotta, I've really.

• 1:21:27Speaker 01

  You just gotta get somebody to, to help you. You know, get Mexican OT's dad.

• 1:21:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:21:32Speaker 01

  Get him to help you.

• 1:21:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:21:33Speaker 01

  He knows what he's doing.

• 1:21:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. No, that dude's fucking jacked.

• 1:21:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's, that's a perfect guy. And he's, the way, what he said is the right, like, he knows what he's doing. That's why he's the, the guy to get you, do it nice and slow and just build you up. And also he's fun. He's cool to hang out with.

• 1:21:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:21:49Speaker 01

  That, you like that too. You don't wanna be an annoying trainer. It's always asking you to post about him on Instagram. Fuck off. You know what I mean? Hey, do you think you post, I got an energy drink I'm trying to promote?

• 1:22:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You get those DMs from guys.

• 1:22:02Speaker 01

  Exhausting. Yeah.

• 1:22:07Speaker 02

  Alright, I'm back.

• 1:22:08Speaker 01

  There you go, you're back.

• 1:22:09Speaker 02

  I'm back in, baby.

• 1:22:10Speaker 01

  Bro, I read the craziest thing today and I need to find out if it's true. I sent you the thing that where Nick Fuentes was talking about, Jamie. So apparently there was this plot where Iran was trying to kill Trump. Remember when, uh, he was supposed to get in the Air Force One that Carter gave him? And then instead he flew in the old Air Force One?

• 1:22:32Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:22:32Speaker 01

  Well, they're saying that he actually didn't even go in the old Air Force One, that they snuck him out on a truck.

• 1:22:40Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:22:40Speaker 01

  Like some fucking cargo truck.

• 1:22:44Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:22:44Speaker 01

  And then put him in another kinda plane and flew him out of there. And then they put the press in Air Force One. Because they were, think, they were apparently worried they were gonna target Air Force One as well. So imagine, Trump put the press on Air Force One. And they were thinking about possibly targeting them.

• 1:23:03Speaker 02

  Holy shit.

• 1:23:04Speaker 01

  He hid in an airport catering container and was taken to a military jet for a secret flight out of the country after the NATO summit last month. And this is being reported by the New York Times. The thing is though, I think they put the press on Air Force One.

• 1:23:18Speaker 01

  So if they flew him out, it was because they were worried they were gonna try to take down Air Force One. And they, they took the press.

• 1:23:25Speaker 03

  If you take the press off, then, then they know that. Gotta let them, gotta let them know that.

• 1:23:30Speaker 01

  You're right, Jamie.

• 1:23:31Speaker 03

  We're not playing games. Just everything's normal.

• 1:23:33Speaker 01

  Exactly. And if the press dies, so sad.

• 1:23:37Speaker 02

  Oh my.

• 1:23:37Speaker 01

  But you just get more press.

• 1:23:39Speaker 02

  That's fucking wild.

• 1:23:41Speaker 01

  If that's true, that is so wild that he didn't even tell them, hey guys, uh, we're not really gonna get on this plane. No one's getting on this plane. You guys get out of here. Go take American Airlines home. No, he's like, hop on, it's safe.

• 1:23:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:23:54Speaker 01

  It's Air Force One.

• 1:23:55Speaker 02

  Guys, my gift to you, take Air Force One. Enjoy it. There's food up there, sandwiches on there. Enjoy yourself.

• 1:24:02Speaker 01

  Is that absolutely what happened?

• 1:24:04Speaker 03

  It says reporters on the older plane were not told that Mr. Trump had not flown with them from Turkey to an airbase in Britain. Making them unwitting participants in the ruse and leaving them along with some White House staff members to serve as unknowing decoys.

• 1:24:20Speaker 02

  Holy shit.

• 1:24:20Speaker 03

  After they arrived in Britain, he was secretly moved back to the older version of Air Force One.

• 1:24:24Speaker 02

  Bro, Jesus Christ.

• 1:24:27Speaker 01

  Those press people were signing up for something. They didn't know. They didn't know what they were signing up for. And they didn't tell them at all, that when you wanna know like who's more important, you or the president, that's when you find out.

• 1:24:40Speaker 02

  Oh yeah.

• 1:24:41Speaker 01

  They just throw you on Air Force One. Shrimp cocktail.

• 1:24:46Speaker 01

  It's like.

• 1:24:46Speaker 03

  Boom. All of a sudden you turn into fucking protons.

• 1:24:50Speaker 02

  It's like fucking Goodfellas. When he's telling Karen to go, go, no, go down and get the dresses.

• 1:24:55Speaker 01

  Go ahead, go ahead.

• 1:24:56Speaker 02

  There's dresses.

• 1:24:57Speaker 01

  No, I'm okay.

• 1:25:02Speaker 01

  Karen, why?

• 1:25:03Speaker 02

  Holy shit. That is fucking wild.

• 1:25:06Speaker 01

  Isn't that crazy?

• 1:25:07Speaker 02

  That is fucking wild. Yeah.

• 1:25:08Speaker 01

  Crazy.

• 1:25:09Speaker 02

  Yeah. Are they, are they, is there, has there been backlash? Are they, are they, have they, or Jamie, are they saying anything?

• 1:25:16Speaker 03

  Who, who's saying anything?

• 1:25:17Speaker 02

  The press.

• 1:25:19Speaker 01

  I would imagine they're a little perturbed. That would perturb me. Jesus Christ. That's so crazy.

• 1:25:29Speaker 02

  Holy shit.

• 1:25:29Speaker 01

  Imagine if it blew up. It's like, I should've been there. I wanted to be there with them when they died.

• 1:25:35Speaker 02

  They're heroes.

• 1:25:38Speaker 01

  He would probably talk shit about them.

• 1:25:39Speaker 02

  Oh my God, that is fucking.

• 1:25:41Speaker 01

  Maybe they had written nicer things about me, I would've told them.

• 1:25:44Speaker 02

  Oh my God. Did you, I, I just watched, um, I just watched, uh, Michael, the Michael Jackson movie.

• 1:25:51Speaker 01

  How was it?

• 1:25:53Speaker 02

  It, look, it's the first part of his life up till bad. They don't get into any of the crazy shit. They're saying they're making a sequel that they might get into the, some of the crazy shit, but it was, it was fun. I'm a big Michael Jackson fan. It was fun to watch, but I, I started reading up on Michael Jackson afterwards because I was like, it just, it was very nostalgic to watch. Did you know this? When he died, he was pronounced dead at Neverland Ranch. And they lied to the press and said that he was at a hospital already and pronounced dead because they had to get the body out of Neverland Ranch. And they knew if he, they pronounced him dead at Neverland Ranch, they wouldn't be able to get the fucking body out of the goddamn house.

• 1:26:33Speaker 01

  Why?

• 1:26:33Speaker 02

  Because they said the press would leak it and the clamoring of fans and whatever else would literally have blocked them from getting the fuck, from transporting the body. So they had to lie and say, he's dead already, but he's at this hospital. And it was a decoy because that's how fucking famous he was. They were like, we can't drive his dead body from this location to another, or we're never gonna get it there.

• 1:26:57Speaker 01

  People would steal the body. I wanna get a finger.

• 1:26:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, something.

• 1:27:00Speaker 01

  I wanna get a finger. People have garden clippers.

• 1:27:03Speaker 02

  Something.

• 1:27:03Speaker 01

  Try to steal.

• 1:27:04Speaker 02

  And here's another crazy thing. Cause I, I know you've talked about the Michael Jackson, like the conspiracies around his death, death on the show before. This is another crazy thing I didn't know. He owned, you know, he had that vast music catalog that he bought.

• 1:27:19Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:27:20Speaker 02

  Of move, music publishing.

• 1:27:21Speaker 01

  Right. He owned the Beatles.

• 1:27:22Speaker 02

  Beatles, Eminem. He bought Eminem.

• 1:27:25Speaker 01

  He bought Eminem?

• 1:27:26Speaker 02

  Eminem made fun of him in a video and he bought Eminem's fucking catalog. He's a fuck you.

• 1:27:33Speaker 02

  The most pimp move ever. I'm gonna buy all your fucking music.

• 1:27:37Speaker 01

  Gangster.

• 1:27:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, right?

• 1:27:40Speaker 01

  So.

• 1:27:42Speaker 02

  He owns his catalog, right? It's, it's, it's, I think he, he might have owned Dylan. It was crazy that the, the rights to the music that he owned was nuts, right? He's with Sony. Sony wants the publishing back on all these artists and he owns it. And when he did his last album, he had to take out a loan against the record company

• 1:28:04Speaker 02

  of $200 million to do the album because he didn't have a lot of money left. And they said, you gotta put up collateral.

• 1:28:11Speaker 02

  And he goes, alright, I'm gonna, I'll put up a portion of the catalog as collateral. And then he, before he died, he goes, they're not promoting my album. And because they're not promoting my album, it's not selling. And then everybody close to him said, it was a ruse. They didn't promote the album on purpose so that he would lose the fucking catalog because he wouldn't be able to pay the loan back. And then right after that, he died. Really fucked up.

• 1:28:38Speaker 01

  That's the business he was in.

• 1:28:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:28:40Speaker 01

  You buy people shit, they fuck you over. That's how it works.

• 1:28:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:28:44Speaker 01

  Come on, man.

• 1:28:45Speaker 02

  Well, it's dark.

• 1:28:45Speaker 01

  You're playing war.

• 1:28:48Speaker 01

  You're playing war. If they blow up Air Force One, you gotta go, hey, maybe we shouldn't have fucking killed the leader during Ramadan. This is how it works. This is the game we're in.

• 1:28:59Speaker 02

  This is the business we chose.

• 1:29:01Speaker 01

  Listen, he's in the business of fucking over his enemies. They decided he was their enemy, they fucked him over.

• 1:29:07Speaker 02

  The doctor that administered the drug that killed him is out of jail already. Two years. And they're like, no, this guy was just a fall guy.

• 1:29:17Speaker 01

  Well, the thing about the doctor is, he was asking the doctor to do that. The doctor shouldn't have done that. It's not like the doctor killed him on purpose. Like, he wanted to get anesthetized. I think he was so crazy that he couldn't sleep. And he was so out of his fucking mind. And he was probably on a bunch of stuff. He probably wasn't just on propofol. If you're willing to take propofol to go to sleep, what else are you taking?

• 1:29:39Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:29:40Speaker 01

  You're taking some other things.

• 1:29:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:29:41Speaker 01

  Right? The doctor, the one thing that he said that I found very fascinating was that he said that Michael had been chemically castrated when he was young to maintain his voice.

• 1:29:52Speaker 02

  I've heard that.

• 1:29:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it makes sense. It completely makes sense. If you look at his body, it makes sense. His body looks like it's devoid of testosterone.

• 1:30:01Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:30:02Speaker 01

  It has no testosterone. He's very thin. If you look at his brothers, they're all thick. They're all like big dudes.

• 1:30:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:30:08Speaker 01

  Jermaine, they're all like men. They look like men, like thick men.

• 1:30:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:30:12Speaker 01

  He looks thin and, he looks very different than them. That's not normal.

• 1:30:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:30:17Speaker 01

  That's not normal. That is, that's not even normal if you don't work out. And he was a dancer, so he was incredibly athletic, right? So, and all the working out that he did, he should have been supple. I mean, he was, obviously, he could move so good. I mean, he was, his movement was incredible. Did you ever see that Bob Fosse movie that apparently he got all those moves from?

• 1:30:38Speaker 02

  The one, well, okay, so which, the, the mini-series that Sam Rockwell was in? Or All That Jazz?

• 1:30:45Speaker 01

  There was a movie, no, before that, a long earlier. And it's Bob Fosse doing all the dance moves that Michael Jackson did.

• 1:30:55Speaker 02

  I know what movie you're talking about. It's him and like a little kid and he's in the desert and doing.

• 1:30:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:30:59Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:30:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:31:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:31:00Speaker 01

  I mean, it's literally all of Michael Jackson's signature dance moves come from this one movie. Watch this. Watch how he moves.

• 1:31:09Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:31:10Speaker 01

  So there's this, he's doing this, but then he also moonwalks. Like, look at this.

• 1:31:17Speaker 01

  Like, all this, this is Michael Jackson.

• 1:31:19Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:31:20Speaker 01

  I mean, 100%.

• 1:31:22Speaker 02

  Yo, wow.

• 1:31:23Speaker 01

  Look at this. The, the kick and the point with the toes and putting it down, the movement.

• 1:31:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:31:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:31:33Speaker 01

  I mean, that's, it's literally every movie does. Look at that, that, that point with the kick and the toes.

• 1:31:39Speaker 02

  Even the outfit.

• 1:31:40Speaker 01

  It's a 1974 movie, The Little Prince.

• 1:31:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:31:43Speaker 01

  Little Prince, rather.

• 1:31:44Speaker 02

  Even the outfit with the fedora?

• 1:31:46Speaker 01

  Bro. I mean, literally, he, he mirrored his movements.

• 1:31:52Speaker 02

  It is incredible that Bob Fosse had the stamina and ability to keep dancing like that for his entire life until he dropped dead. Because if you watch the Sam Rockwell mini-series, Fosse and Veerden, which is an amazing mini-series, that guy, bro, he was, I mean, it was intake, that's all it was. He'd wake up, he's popping fucking pills, speed, boom, boom, boom, coke, booze, cigarettes, all day long, chain smoking, chain smoking, chain smoking. Drunk through the whole fucking day, popping pills, doing coke. And the fact that he could still stand, and not just stand, choreograph Broadway shows

• 1:32:34Speaker 02

  for hours and be that agile and whatever is, that's insane to me.

• 1:32:39Speaker 01

  It's because he loved it.

• 1:32:40Speaker 02

  It's insane.

• 1:32:41Speaker 01

  That's the thing. Find the thing you love. Find that thing and you will have the energy to pursue it. It's really it.

• 1:32:49Speaker 02

  But, but aren't you, aren't you a little amazed that, that his intake of substance could not, would not hinder it in any way?

• 1:32:56Speaker 01

  It's kinda crazy.

• 1:32:57Speaker 02

  You know?

• 1:32:57Speaker 01

  But, I mean, we've seen that before. You know?

• 1:33:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, there's, yeah, yeah, I, I hear you.

• 1:33:04Speaker 01

  There's, there's people that have unreal tolerances, like Shane with, with booze. It's unreal. When you see him pound 16 Bud Lights and not a slur, not a stammer.

• 1:33:18Speaker 02

  It's wild.

• 1:33:19Speaker 01

  Nothing, doesn't miss a beat, puts the sunglasses on, starts getting crazy. Like, we do protect our parks and he'll have a stack of empties at the end. And you're like, that is insane. You should be dead. You should literally be dead.

• 1:33:33Speaker 02

  My favorite Shane story, ever, ever. I don't mean to tell his story, but this is my favorite Shane story ever. And I was, the other day, I go, dude, you have to do that on tires. It's so funny. He said he ate chicken fingers. Then he felt sick.

• 1:33:50Speaker 02

  And he goes to the doctor, because he's like, I think I have food poisoning or something. It's like something's wrong, right? So he goes, he goes, the doctor goes, uh, you know, he's asking all the questions. Well, how much do you do this, whatever? And he goes, how many drinks do you have in a week? And Shane said he took a beat and he's like, I'm gonna be honest for once. And he goes, 80.

• 1:34:14Speaker 01

  And he's so crazy. Oh, that's so crazy.

• 1:34:18Speaker 02

  He said the doctor starts laughing and he goes, no, come on, man, seriously. And he goes, 80. And the doctor goes, it's not the chicken fingers, man.

• 1:34:27Speaker 02

  You drink 80 drinks a week, right? And I go, what happened? And he goes, I went home, I threw up, I was fine the next day. It was the chicken fingers.

• 1:34:42Speaker 02

  We were at, we were at Chappelle's, uh, summer camp thing, the ranch thing. And we're, we're hanging out and, uh, I'm, I'm about to go on. Shane goes, come on, man, have a drink, have a drink. I go, dude, I, I already had two, man. Like, I, I gotta go on, dude. I gotta be cool, I gotta be careful. Like, he goes, have another drink, dude, you'll be fine. I go, Shane, I don't wanna, I, I don't wanna be tipsy. He goes, what, what number drink is that for you? I go, three. He goes, I've had 17 Bud Lights. Have another fucking drink.

• 1:35:12Speaker 01

  He doesn't wanna be alone in drunk land. He wants you to be there with him in happy drunk land. He's a happy drunk, though.

• 1:35:19Speaker 02

  The best.

• 1:35:19Speaker 01

  I'd love him. He's so fun. He's such a fun dude. He's such, such a unique person. He's very different than anybody I've ever met. He's like, you would think by, by, you know, you, you hear him, you'd think like he's similar to someone you know, but he's not.

• 1:35:34Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:35:35Speaker 01

  Different dude, fucking smart as shit, too. Knows a fuckload about history. This episode is brought to you by Chime. And I know people don't usually get excited about banking, but Chime is doing something different and it's worth paying attention to. In a recent survey, they ranked the number one choice for new checking accounts in America. That means real people, millions of them, are choosing this over traditional banks. That's because banking at Chime is fee-free. No monthly fees, no overdraft fees and thousands of fee-free ATMs. But here's the real kicker. If you get their Chime card, it gives you 5% cash back on a category you actually pick yourself. Your savings rate, crazy high. It's nine times the national average.

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• 1:37:03Speaker 01

  Personally, I got a bunch of their stuff and I love it. I really love the fleece pullover hoodie and the flowknit breeze performance tees. They're, they have really simple, smooth designs, perfect for recording sessions or my workouts. I, I like wearing them on stage. It's just great quality clothing and it's cool how Quince still gives you luxury quality, but without the insane markup. Find your new fall favorites at Quince. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers or go to quince.com/rogan. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK, too. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E.com/rogan.

• 1:37:48Speaker 02

  Loves history.

• 1:37:49Speaker 01

  Loves it, man.

• 1:37:49Speaker 02

  Loves history and, and, yeah, he's a very unique specimen. He's, uh, and, and as you said, a very fun drunk. I was just down at the beach with him and, uh, he was on the beach all day and I was at the house. I, I called it early and I was just kinda chilling out inside with McCusker, uh, and Tommy, watching a movie. We were just chilling. And Shane came back from the beach and he was all fucking tuned up from White Claws or whatever he was drinking. And, uh, I was laying on the, on this love seat in, in the room, watching the movie, and he just kept coming up to me and he's kept tickling me. He's going, come on, dog, come on, dog, come on, dog. Like, you're awesome, you're fun. It's just, he's so fun, man.

• 1:38:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's, he's life of the party. Him and Joey Diaz in a room together with everybody else is like, oh my god, you got two enormous personalities, life's at the party, in the room together.

• 1:38:44Speaker 02

  Diaz kills me.

• 1:38:46Speaker 01

  He's the best, man. He's, he's out here all the time now.

• 1:38:48Speaker 02

  I know.

• 1:38:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, he's getting a place here at the end of the month, and he's gonna do a residency. So he's gonna do like, two weeks a month, he's gonna be here.

• 1:38:56Speaker 02

  That's awesome.

• 1:38:56Speaker 01

  Oh, it's fucking incredible. So incredible.

• 1:38:59Speaker 02

  He's the best, man. He's the fucking best. It's, it's so fun having him around. I was do- the last time he was here, I was doing my monthly, um, my and friend show at, at the mothership. And, uh, and he was,

• 1:39:15Speaker 02

  the first two, the first comic was on or whatever, and he goes, he's like, Joe, could I go up on your show? And I go, of course. And he went up, and it was just seeing the pop from the audience, and just, I was like, man, this is fucking great, dude. It's fucking fun having him around.

• 1:39:30Speaker 01

  We're very lucky. We're very lucky. We got an amazing group of people around us all the time. It's a lot of fun.

• 1:39:35Speaker 02

  And he said the funniest fucking thing.

• 1:39:39Speaker 02

  We were talking about like diet and exercise and lifestyle change, you know, and ah, covid, I was doing too much of this or that or whatever.

• 1:39:49Speaker 02

  And I go, when was your big change, man? And he goes, he goes, Joe, you know what fucking day it was? It was the day of fucking resurrection. And we go, what? And he goes, fucking January 6th, the fucking resurrection. And we go, do you mean the insurrection?

• 1:40:09Speaker 02

  He goes, whatever the fuck it was called, I don't give a fuck.

• 1:40:16Speaker 01

  He used to call Khabib Nurmagomedov Kalavib.

• 1:40:20Speaker 01

  The fucking Kalavib guy.

• 1:40:23Speaker 01

  You know, it's, it's part of his charm, fucking up people's names.

• 1:40:26Speaker 02

  Oh my god, he's so funny. The best dude, man. He, he lives right near where my parents live in Jersey, and, uh, I was like, oh dude, man, when I go see my folks, I'm gonna, I'm gonna get in the car and drive up and hang out with you for a night, cause it'll be such a great break from just being with my mom and dad. And he's just, he's the best, man. He's just got a truly big-hearted dude, man.

• 1:40:48Speaker 01

  I was really worried, once he moved to New Jersey, we'd never get him out here. Because, uh, I went with him, we went out to eat in New Jersey, and he's the king of New Jersey. I'm like, fuck. Everywhere we'd go, Joey! People cheering, yelling his name, went to the restaurant, everybody knows him. It's like, immediately, everybody's like, running over to take care of us, Joey's here, Joey's here. And I'm like, oh, he's the king of New Jersey. He's never gonna leave. He's never gonna leave. He loves it here. But, there wasn't enough comedy there for him.

• 1:41:18Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:41:19Speaker 01

  Wasn't enough comics. And one of the things that I always say, is that we don't exist in a vacuum. We always exist with each other. Comics in particular. You, you can't really do comedy by yourself. You can, but you can't do it to your best. You need other people doing it around you. You need to see it, you need to be around it, the hang. The talking about bits in the green room is so huge. Like, Hassan has given me two killer taglines, after like, seeing, seeing a bit, and saying, what about this? I'm like, oh my god, that's perfect. Like, those things, like, we're always like, tuning each other's shit up, or reminding each other of a bit.

• 1:41:59Speaker 01

  I remember, like, I remember Tony's bits better than Tony does sometimes. Like, I had to tell him how a bit goes. He's like, oh my god, I forgot that. I'm like, dude, go do that. Go do that right now. And he went up and did it right then and murdered.

• 1:42:11Speaker 02

  That's great.

• 1:42:12Speaker 01

  And I'm like, you forgot? You forgot the bit?

• 1:42:14Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's a, it's a very, it's a very, um,

• 1:42:20Speaker 02

  it's a very individualized sport in the sense of, of golf. Where you're playing, like, you're always playing against yourself, but it's a very communal sport in the sense that you're not playing necessarily in a literal sense with the team, like, like a sketch group would. But you're playing with the team. You know what I mean? The team is, is in the green room. The team, you're playing with the team in the sense that your buddy is on before you. Your buddy is on after you.

• 1:42:45Speaker 01

  You're all doing sets together.

• 1:42:46Speaker 02

  And, and the game is, I gotta play my best game, because I've gotta follow the guy that just had a good game. And I need the guy after me to have a good game, so I can't fuck up his game. And it's, it's a very interesting dynamic of team versus individual play.

• 1:43:03Speaker 01

  There's also, just the atmosphere elevates you. And I noticed that for sure about the Comedy Store in the glory days. In the glory days, like, 2014 to 2019, when we left, like, phew, there was so much activity there. There were so many guys that were going up. There was so much good comedy. That you would just get elevated, just being around it. Like, it raised your own personal bar, like, what your high watermark was. And it just, you know, you're around, like, guys that are really tight acts. And it just, it really helps. It helps everybody. It just, it's so important to be around other great comics. You know, and that's why these hubs, like, New York is so great for that, LA,

• 1:43:44Speaker 01

  and now Austin, it's like, these hubs are so important, because you really, we go on the road on the weekends, right? That was the thing about the store. But on Tuesday and Wednesday were some of the best nights. Because on Tuesday and Wednesday, it would be Jesselneck, Diaz, fucking, uh, Greg Fitzsimmons, Dom Irrera, it was over and over. Murderers Row. There's so much. Burr would pop in. And maybe Chris Rock was in town. It was like, god damn, these nights were insane. They were so good.

• 1:44:14Speaker 02

  I'll tell, I'll tell you,

• 1:44:18Speaker 02

  the, the reason I moved to Austin, and the thing that continues to be the greatest challenge for me here, in a, in a, in a good way, in a constructive way. Because people say all the time to me online and shit, they'll be like, oh, you, you moved to Austin to, to, for Kill Tony. I'm like, I didn't fucking move to Austin for that. I knew, Tony and I were friends, and I had done the show. I didn't become kind of a part of that show until after I lived here. Because Tony started to put me on, and we started to have fun, and then it grew from there. You and I were, were buddies, but like, we're much tighter as pals now than we were.

• 1:44:57Speaker 01

  Well, we're around together all the time now.

• 1:44:59Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 1:45:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:45:01Speaker 02

  So I moved here primarily for, well, number one, I love Austin, and I always, and I used to live here, and I always wanted to go back. And once you could do comedy here, it was like, a reason to go back, right? And you could work. The other reason was, I was, I was like, I did New York, I did LA, I won a new challenge, and, and there's a new scene now and all that stuff. But the thing that puts me on my toes the most, uh, and still does, is this is the best place for young comics to be able to pursue comedy, because they can actually live here. They can afford it. New York has become unaffordable. LA has become unaffordable. A young comic can come here, can live

• 1:45:43Speaker 02

  like a human being, and pursue their dream. And those are the guys that keep me on my, because you're like, dude, it doesn't matter if I'm the only guy on this lineup that has done TV or whatever. You got five people going up that are fucking swinging for the fences. Because when you're young, you really are like, I gotta fucking prove myself. So you're following, even if it's four unknown people, they're doing their A shit. They are trying to kill as hard as humanly possible. And you're like, alright, I guess this, I gotta, I gotta fucking bring it. You know what I mean?

• 1:46:21Speaker 01

  It's that, and it's also their enthusiasm for it. You know, and, and the thing about Austin is, we have a real system at the club that actually develops talent. Like, we have two nights of open mic nights, and we have a real talent coordinator. Adam really watches everyone. He watches the open mic nights. He gives people advice. He gets them spots. He helps them. He gets them on showcase nights. He puts them on, he gives them sets. Gives them feedback. And then they get to work all around town. There's five other fucking clubs on the same street, man.

• 1:46:53Speaker 02

  It's crazy, dude. You can walk from your place to Sunset, to the Creek, to

• 1:47:02Speaker 01

  Vulcan.

• 1:47:03Speaker 02

  Black Rabbit, to Vulcan. And then, if you don't mind walking 20 minutes, you can be at Roscoe's, East Austin. It's fucking nuts, man.

• 1:47:14Speaker 01

  It's crazy. And then there's also Cap City, which is on the other side of town, which is fucking awesome. It's amazing here.

• 1:47:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:47:22Speaker 01

  And, you know, there's so many young people that have moved here now. And then the Kill Tony thing. The Kill Tony thing is so huge, because it's, first of all, you have one minute. You, you have no room for virtue signaling, no room for fucking clapter. Shut the fuck up. Just, where's the jokes? Come, come with the jokes. And then no one takes in anybody, no one's taking themselves seriously. Everybody's getting cracked on. Everyone's cracking on everybody. It's very fun. It's a fun environment, and it's just emphasizing funny. What is funny? What makes people laugh? And there's a bunch of different styles that do it. You know, there's a bunch of different weirdos that go up every week, and most of them have no chance.

• 1:48:04Speaker 01

  But there's some gems. And that's the thing about having like, a true meritocracy, where all that matters is if you're funny. It's it. Doesn't matter what you look like. It doesn't matter what your background is. There's, I mean, Kill Tony is like, one of the most diverse lineups you're ever gonna see. For all the people that think that Tony's a Nazi, it's kind of hilarious. Cause it's trans people, disabled people, you know, uh, people from all walks of life, homeless, literal homeless people who've gone on stage, started a career because of Kill Tony. Literally homeless while they're doing it, sleeping in a car, and the next thing you know, they have a career.

• 1:48:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. Uh, it's, it's, it's a truly amazing thing. Um, it's, it's, you know, we just did, uh, he just did MSG, and I was there and did the show, and then, and then panelled with Jimmy Carr and Atel.

• 1:48:52Speaker 01

  Do you know how crazy that is, that Kill Tony sells out Madison Square Garden two nights in a row?

• 1:48:59Speaker 02

  It's crazy.

• 1:48:59Speaker 01

  When I first did it with him, we did it in the fucking, the Belly Room at the store, and the only people in the audience were like, comics. There was nobody in the audience. There was like, 10 other people, maybe.

• 1:49:11Speaker 02

  Dude, I remember, excuse me. I was down here to do South, it was when I still lived in New York. I was down here to do South by Southwest.

• 1:49:20Speaker 02

  And Tony hit me up and he goes, buddy, are you in town Monday? I go, yeah.

• 1:49:24Speaker 01

  Okay, did his voice.

• 1:49:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, he goes, buddy. He goes, he goes, come do Kill Tony, right? I go, okay. I hadn't seen him in years, you know? And the last I saw him, I did it in the Belly Room, maybe the main room, I don't, you know, whatever, but it was at the Comedy Store. Dude, I walked into the fucking Vulcan, because it was before mothership opened. I walked into the Vulcan.

• 1:49:48Speaker 02

  It was like fucking thunderdome, dude. It was two levels, people, like, you could feel the excitement. Dude, I walked in the green room. Tony goes, there he is. I go, what the fuck is going on? What is going on? I go, is it like this every week? He goes, it sells out in one minute. I was like, what?

• 1:50:15Speaker 02

  I go, did these people fly in? He's like, yeah. I was like,

• 1:50:17Speaker 01

  Dude, it's broken our ticket, our ticket service multiple times. Where it just, the overwhelming demand, the people that are trying to get tickets versus the tickets that are available, is so crazy, it crashes the system.

• 1:50:31Speaker 02

  That's nuts.

• 1:50:31Speaker 01

  We had to like revamp the system multiple times, just to deal with the Kill Tony sales.

• 1:50:36Speaker 02

  That's fucking nuts.

• 1:50:38Speaker 01

  It's nuts. Well, it's just because it's so good. It's that simple. And if you've gone, you want to go again. It's so fun.

• 1:50:45Speaker 02

  It's, it's, that moment, it was like in, remember in Casino, when Pesci goes out to Vegas for the first time and De Niro goes, and this is whatever Sharon Stone's character's name is. And then Pesci looks at Sharon Stone and he goes, holy shit Ace, what the fuck you been doing out here? It was that. It was like, I saw that, that crowd was Sharon Stone.

• 1:51:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:51:07Speaker 02

  And Tony was De Niro and I go, what the fuck you been doing out here?

• 1:51:10Speaker 01

  Well, the Vulcan really opened up our eyes to the fact that we needed a club. And what happened was, no one had done any standup at all for months. And then Tony and I did the Houston Improv, which was great. It was a lot of fun. We did a weekend. It was in the middle of the COVID. It was in July and everyone was scared. And I did it and it was a lot of fun. I hadn't done standup in months. It was so much fun. But then I started thinking, what if I get COVID and then give it to one of my fucking guests and kill him? It was back when people were really worried.

• 1:51:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, sure.

• 1:51:44Speaker 01

  I was like, oh no, because I have like these people that come in, some of them are older. You know, and I had this lady on who was a scientist and she was older. And I was like, what if I gave her COVID and killed her?

• 1:51:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:51:54Speaker 01

  Because that was back in the day, that was also, but people were really convinced that you could be asymptomatic and still spread it. Which turned out, really what was going on was there was a lot of false positives for the PCR tests. Eighty plus percent false positives.

• 1:52:08Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:52:09Speaker 01

  And so, I said, let me just take time off. I don't want to do that. I don't, it feels totally irresponsible just because I would want to get my comedy fix. Let me just ride this out. And then we wound up moving to Texas. And by the time we moved to Texas, it was around November. And Dave and I were doing these outdoor shows.

• 1:52:32Speaker 02

  I remember that Stubbs, right?

• 1:52:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, we were doing shows at Stubbs, which was a lot of fun. But everybody had to be tested, people had to wait in line, you know, it was like, it was a big deal. And a few people tested positive, we had to kick them out.

• 1:52:43Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:52:45Speaker 01

  Um, then, the Vulcan just started doing shows. Fuck your tests. Let's just go back to where it was. And this is in November. And Ron White went up and he hadn't gone up in like eight months. He hadn't done any standup in eight months. And he went on stage and the audience went fucking berserk. They went berserk. Like people were standing up, yeah. And he murdered. I mean, Ron White just laid it down for 15 minutes.

• 1:53:11Speaker 02

  I'm sure.

• 1:53:12Speaker 01

  And then he grabs me by the shoulders offstage. He goes, whatever the fuck we have to do, we're gonna keep doing this. He goes, you gotta open up that club. And I was like, alright, okay, we're gonna open up a club. And that was when I decided, I'm like, that's it, we're gonna open up a club. And then I immediately started looking at real estate, immediately tried to find a place.

• 1:53:28Speaker 02

  Wow, I didn't know that. I didn't know that that's how the whole.

• 1:53:31Speaker 01

  That was it, Ron White grabbing me. Because Ron White is why I moved here in the first place. So, I knew Ron moved here in 2018. And, you know, me and Ron were talking on the phone. He was like, I fucking love it here. And, you know, he's telling me how great Austin was and everything else was locked down. I was like, look, if I moved to Austin, if no one's doing standup again, ever, at least I can hang out with Ron. Like, at least it'll be a comic that I can hang out with and, and live in a place where it's like more relaxed and it's easier to get around.

• 1:54:00Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 1:54:01Speaker 01

  You don't have to wear a mask everywhere. It was like, it was, at least it was more chill here.

• 1:54:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:54:05Speaker 01

  Even if we never do standup again. And so him doing that and just grabbing me and saying, we're gonna, we gotta fucking do this, whatever the fuck we have to do. That's what he said. Like, he was just on fire, coming offstage, just on fire and just grabbed my shoulders. And I was like, okay, we're doing it.

• 1:54:22Speaker 02

  That's fucking great.

• 1:54:23Speaker 01

  And that's when I, because I was, we were talking about it. We should open up a club, where, and I looked at a bunch of different places, but they kind of sucked. And they were trying to fuck me. They were asking way too much money for these places. Like during the, in the beginning stages of the pandemic, when everyone was moving here from California, everyone got crazy with real estate. They got really nutty.

• 1:54:40Speaker 02

  Oh, it was, it was batshit.

• 1:54:42Speaker 01

  They got really delusional. The prices went up like a hundred percent in a lot of places.

• 1:54:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm going through it now because I bought a condo here and I'm trying to sell the condo and buy a house. And it's very tricky now because the market has shifted so much and values.

• 1:54:58Speaker 01

  There's way too many condos for sale.

• 1:55:00Speaker 02

  Way too many.

• 1:55:01Speaker 01

  Way too many.

• 1:55:01Speaker 02

  I'm worried that I'm gonna end up buying this house and not be able to get rid of this goddamn condo.

• 1:55:05Speaker 01

  You're gonna have to keep the condo.

• 1:55:08Speaker 02

  I don't have any need for it. I'm like, I don't know what I would do with it, you know? But I also don't want to live in this condo anymore because originally.

• 1:55:14Speaker 01

  That's where you take sketchy women. Women that think they're gonna, that you think might rob you? Because I know you, you date a lot of sketchy gal.

• 1:55:24Speaker 01

  Take them to the condo. Have a house where it's like calm and peaceful, a little bit off the track. Get a little yard, you know, get some peace and quiet.

• 1:55:33Speaker 02

  And take her to the condo. She goes, why is there only an air mattress in here?

• 1:55:37Speaker 01

  How come you only have four pairs of underwear?

• 1:55:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's not a bad, it's not a bad point you make. I've had a few people in my condo where I'm like,

• 1:55:48Speaker 01

  You don't want them coming to your house.

• 1:55:49Speaker 02

  This was a mistake. Give this address away.

• 1:55:52Speaker 01

  Once you got people showing up at your house, like, oh no.

• 1:55:55Speaker 02

  It's, um, it's, oh, wait, you were just, ooh, you were, you were talking about starting the club. Oh, oh, what's so weird is, it's, it's, it's an odd, like, kind of full circle moment. But when I lived here in 2000, your club was the original Alamo.

• 1:56:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:56:15Speaker 02

  And the Alamo Drafthouse, at that time, was the only movie theater ever in the country that served food and alcohol during a movie. And I remember that being a place that I went to frequently because I thought it was so amazing that you could get food during a movie. And the kinds of movies they played, I loved. And then on top of it, I was, I always saw that as the reason that I loved Austin. It was sort of just a, it was just sort of a, a symbol of why I loved Austin, the concept of it all. And it's so weird now that I've moved back after all these years, that that's where the mothership is. And now that's

• 1:56:58Speaker 02

  my symbol for living in Austin and, and being a part of this club and, and, and that club begetting all these other places that we get to perform in this scene and all that stuff. It's a very weird, like, kind of full circle thing. I didn't realize until right now as we were talking about.

• 1:57:11Speaker 01

  We need to have a birthday party for the building. The building turns a hundred next year.

• 1:57:17Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:57:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, we have to have a birthday party for the building.

• 1:57:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, you absolutely should.

• 1:57:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:57:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:57:23Speaker 01

  We should do something.

• 1:57:24Speaker 02

  Lot of history in that building. Lot of cool shit.

• 1:57:27Speaker 01

  You could feel it. I felt it when, when, you never got to be here when it was bare bones. But when it was bare bones, when it was just the movie theater, before we did all the renovations and raised the ceiling or lowered the ceiling and raised the floor and changed it and made the tunnel and all the, the, the structure that we put in place. When we first got in there, like, you could feel it. You could feel it, like, baked into the walls. I mean, Stevie Ray Vaughan performed there.

• 1:57:53Speaker 02

  What was it before the Alamo?

• 1:57:55Speaker 01

  It was a bunch of different things. So at one point in time, it was like a punk rock club.

• 1:58:01Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:58:01Speaker 01

  So like, Black Flag performed there. Like, who's this?

• 1:58:05Speaker 02

  Chili Peppers in 86.

• 1:58:06Speaker 01

  Chili Peppers, 86.

• 1:58:08Speaker 02

  So, so that's why all of those punk flyers are in the green room?

• 1:58:13Speaker 01

  The green room is all flyers from people that performed at the club. Their shows.

• 1:58:19Speaker 02

  I didn't know that. I thought it was just a cool, like, decor thing. I was like, oh, that's pretty cool.

• 1:58:24Speaker 01

  Too, but it's also, look at, he's got the sock over his cock. Raw butthole, right on our stage.

• 1:58:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, there you go.

• 1:58:30Speaker 01

  Um, yeah, all those things on the wall, all those different people. Willie Nelson, all those different people performed there. That was their, their flyer for the show that they did when they were at the club.

• 1:58:42Speaker 02

  There's so many bands on that wall where I'm like, I love that band, I love that band.

• 1:58:47Speaker 01

  Butthole surfers. Yeah, it's tons. So it was a punk rock band, it was a punk rock club, it was a rock and roll club, it was a pool hall for a while. Uh, it was a nudie movie theater.

• 1:59:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:59:00Speaker 02

  Amazing.

• 1:59:01Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then, obviously, it became the Alamo. And then the Alamo went under. I think before the pandemic, it went under. And, and then it was available, you know, like a year, and I looked at it and I was like, eh. It's like too much work and, and then, that was, from what year? Seventy-four. Wow.

• 1:59:22Speaker 02

  So that's Fat Man?

• 1:59:23Speaker 01

  Yep, that's what it used to look like.

• 1:59:26Speaker 02

  Fuck, man. I mean, it looks different, obviously, but it doesn't look that diff, like, you can kind of.

• 1:59:31Speaker 01

  More narrow.

• 1:59:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:59:33Speaker 01

  What I don't understand, like, what, what happened? I wonder if it was two rooms back then?

• 1:59:42Speaker 02

  I don't know.

• 1:59:42Speaker 01

  It looks different. It looks very different in terms of the, like, that looks more like it.

• 1:59:47Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:59:47Speaker 03

  Uh, this is not the same one.

• 1:59:49Speaker 01

  Oh, different one. Um, yeah, the middle one looks like it.

• 1:59:55Speaker 03

  There's also multiple derits, as I was.

• 1:59:57Speaker 01

  Hmm, but the middle one looks more like it. Go back to that again? Yeah, that looks more like the dimensions.

• 2:00:04Speaker 02

  Fuck, man.

• 2:00:06Speaker 01

  We fit two hundred and fifty people in the, the big room, but I think we could fit a lot more if we have seating like the Comedy Works in Denver, which I think is the best seat. That's what it looked like when we first got there. When we first got there, it looked like that, and we walked in and we were like, holy shit. The stage was really high, obviously, because it was like movie theater.

• 2:00:26Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 2:00:27Speaker 01

  And the seating was, uh, at an angle, a very sharp angle, like a movie theater. And so we had to raise the, the floor up, um, so it was flat in the center, and there's just a slight raise in the back. And then we kept those two balconies. Go back up to that picture, right there. Those two balconies that we have, obviously, we have the green room balcony and then the VIP balcony, which is such a dope thing to have.

• 2:00:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:00:52Speaker 01

  Because it's always, there's always friends that come by that wanna, wanna come by and see the show, and you, you always have forty seats. You know, you could always get forty people up there. So there's always plenty of room.

• 2:01:03Speaker 02

  Those balconies fit forty people total? Holy shit. That's crazy.

• 2:01:06Speaker 01

  We always can stuff plenty of people back, back up in there.

• 2:01:09Speaker 02

  That's fucking, wow. I had no idea the building was as old as you just said it was. And I had no idea all that other shit was.

• 2:01:15Speaker 01

  Nineteen twenty-seven.

• 2:01:17Speaker 02

  Is this still the main room or is this Little Boy?

• 2:01:19Speaker 03

  That's also Kansas City, so.

• 2:01:21Speaker 02

  Oh, okay, sorry.

• 2:01:22Speaker 01

  Similarly looking, but, you know, we, we tried to figure out how to do it. Do we do it just like, like initially we thought, well, maybe we should do it just like this, like have seating, like movie theater seating? And then we're like, no, we should probably, like, raise the floor up and make it flat in the front. It would make more sense, you know? And then we had to figure out, like, what to do with the stage, and then Louis gave me some really good advice. We were gonna keep the ceiling the way it was, and Louis was like, how, can you lower it? And I was like, I think we can lower it, like, and still get some view out of the balcony. So we had to figure out how to lower the ceiling just enough, so, and it made a difference. And then he said, lower the ceiling in the Little Boy, too, and we did that.

• 2:02:05Speaker 01

  And then we also made the stage smaller in the Little Boy. This is all Louis's advice, and he was dead on. I was like, tell me what you think. I, I left, listened to everybody. Everybody had got a say in what to do, you know, what to have. Like, Brian Simpson, it was his idea to have the, the lights in the green room. The light that shows you, someone's got the light in the big room, someone's got a lot, the light in the little room. And then I think it was Tony's idea to put the timers, one or the other. Maybe it was Tony for the lights, Brian for the timer, I forget. But everybody had a little piece of the, like, I think it was, uh, Brian's idea to have monitors. It's like, everybody got a say in how it's done. That's what it looked like when you, when we first walked in. Now, what does it look like now? I never go in through the front.

• 2:02:47Speaker 02

  It, it looks, it looks.

• 2:02:49Speaker 03

  The breaking mothership, I'm dropping from the ceiling and.

• 2:02:51Speaker 01

  I know, go to, go to what it looks like now. See if you can find an image of the mothership.

• 2:02:55Speaker 02

  Similar, and it's been redone, obviously, but it looks similar enough that you can see.

• 2:02:59Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, you can see the bones.

• 2:03:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:03:01Speaker 01

  I mean, it's essentially, it was set up perfectly for two, um, rooms.

• 2:03:08Speaker 01

  There's no pictures of the, the UFO? That's kinda crazy. So we have a big UFO as you walk in.

• 2:03:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:03:15Speaker 01

  There it is. That's the UFO, and it has a projector. So the UFO is a projector, and up on the screen, it projects all the people that are coming soon.

• 2:03:24Speaker 02

  That's fucking cool, man.

• 2:03:26Speaker 01

  We've, we've been open for three years now, and it's, uh, been the most fun thing that I've ever been a part of.

• 2:03:33Speaker 02

  It's hilarious, dude. I've walked under that projector a thousand times and I never, or realized, or the UFO, I mean, and I never realized it was projecting shit.

• 2:03:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a projector.

• 2:03:42Speaker 02

  That's so funny.

• 2:03:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, we just wanted to, wanted to make it cool. And it's also, I think it's a fire extinguisher. I think the center of it is a fire, I think we had to have one, so we put it in the center of the UFO.

• 2:03:54Speaker 02

  That same, that same time I was talking about during South by Southwest, and, um, and when, when I did Kill Tony, the, it was me and Adam Ray were on panel, and, and the next day Eric invited us over to see the club. It wasn't done yet, you know, but he walked us in. I remember him walking me through Little Boy.

• 2:04:12Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 2:04:12Speaker 02

  And being like, we're gonna do this, we're gonna do this, we're gonna do this, we're gonna do this. And I remember he goes, you gonna play here? And I go, I fucking hope so. I hope so. Uh, but yeah, it was, it was wild seeing it, like, you know, in the construction phase and, and, and whatever, and then seeing the final product and remembering like, oh, I remember he told me they were gonna change that.

• 2:04:35Speaker 01

  It's been really fun.

• 2:04:36Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah, I mean, and, you know, it's, it's, you know, it's, it's, I think few people are in a position to have created a club that can operate the way a club ideally should operate, and you're one of those people and you made it work, which is.

• 2:04:51Speaker 01

  Well, you have to do it not to make money. You have to, like, my goal in the beginning was just break even. That was the goal. Like, let's just break even. So the idea is that everybody gets paid what they're supposed to get paid, particularly the comics get, that's what everybody's here to see. They're not there to buy drinks in an empty room. They're there to see the comics, so the comics should get the most money. And that's, you know, what I used to always think when I'd go to other clubs, I'd be like, this is crazy, like. But I would always tell comedians, be nice to club owners, because you don't wanna be one. Like, you don't, you don't wanna be.

• 2:05:24Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:05:25Speaker 01

  The guy that has to run these fucking.

• 2:05:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:05:27Speaker 01

  Places and deal with these maniacs that come in, and especially some of the nuttier ones on the road. You know, like, can you imagine if you had to run the Funny Bone in Columbus, Ohio? Fucking animals that show up and miss their flights, and they're fucking, they do ecstasy the night before, they can't read.

• 2:05:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, it's eight thirty, the headliner's not there yet. Like, what the fuck?

• 2:05:50Speaker 01

  He's trying to score coke.

• 2:05:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's, it's, I, I, I always, I, I always said that, too. I was like, I was like, I would never wanna be in a position where I have to deal with comics from that side of it.

• 2:06:04Speaker 01

  Especially comics coming up. There's, like, most established comedians, once you've been doing it a long time, you, you have a career, you're, you're like, you're reliable, you know? You know what I'm saying? Like, if, if you book, you know, fill in the blank.

• 2:06:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:06:22Speaker 01

  You know, whoever it is, is like, national headliner, they're gonna show up, you know?

• 2:06:27Speaker 02

  Well, also, too, like, the, the profile, and, and correct me if I'm wrong, but the profile that you were able to bring to the club probably helped you circumvent some of the horse shit that club owners in Idaho have to deal with, with agents and all that shit, where it's like, hey, man, sorry, there's an improv there, so we can't take our guy out of the improv or whatever. And now you're, there's a whole other battle now that you have to do.

• 2:06:55Speaker 01

  Well, there's that, and if you pay people more, they'll go to your place.

• 2:06:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:07:00Speaker 01

  That's what they got found out.

• 2:07:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:07:01Speaker 01

  And it pisses off the other clubs, but look, that's not my fault. Like, I, this is, I am a comedian. I, I made a living doing this for a long time, and I know the value of the comedian. I know the value of the comic. The comic should be getting most of the money.

• 2:07:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:07:17Speaker 01

  You know, I don't deserve most of the money. We can make money. We're gonna make money on twenty percent of the ticket sales and the liquor and all that jazz. We'll make plenty of money.

• 2:07:25Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:07:26Speaker 01

  Like, let's not be greedy. Let's just make an awesome environment.

• 2:07:29Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:07:29Speaker 01

  And that's what we wanted to do. So the goal was never to make money. So most people, when they start a business, their goal is to try to make money.

• 2:07:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:07:35Speaker 01

  And this was a conscious decision to just not lose money.

• 2:07:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:07:40Speaker 01

  Just make it cool.

• 2:07:41Speaker 02

  It's, it's, again, you're, you're, yeah, you're, you were, you were in a, in a very, uh, um, uh, advantageous, uh, position to, to make it the right way.

• 2:07:50Speaker 01

  It was also like, I kinda had to do it that way, because I had the resources, and it's like, look, you're supposed to do the right thing. This is, this is the thing you should do. What would you like someone in with, that has your kinda money to do? I would like someone to make an awesome club for comics.

• 2:08:06Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:08:06Speaker 01

  Like, you're, you're a comic, you know how important it is. Make, make, make the fucking, the best creative environment, welcoming everybody, pump everybody up.

• 2:08:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:08:16Speaker 01

  That's what you should do.

• 2:08:16Speaker 02

  Dude, it's, it's, it's funny, because I always say, if you're, if, and, and you did this as a comic, right? I always say with a, with a movie star, right, somebody who's got, you know, real movie star, bank. I'm just like, man, why the fuck don't more of these guys that have endless cash start creating film situations that they wanna be a part of? Not, I don't mean like, we're gonna do the next blockbuster thing, or, or we've got a franchise, whatever. It's like, why don't you take ten million bucks and make the fucking art fucking movie with all of your friends that you always wanted to make?

• 2:09:01Speaker 02

  Because who cares? You will break even. You will break even, at, at the, at the very least. I never, ever, ever understood why more people in that position don't do it. I don't get it, because rock stars do it all the time. Rock stars start a little label, and they start putting on other bands that they love, and they do passion projects to, because they wanna work with their friends. I've never, maybe not never, but it's very rare that you ever see a movie star do that, and I'm like, why not do it? For, for years, American Psycho was the big one, the Bret Easton Ellis novel. Why haven't they made an accurate adaptation? Well, the studios don't wanna touch it because it's too violent, it's too, it's like,

• 2:09:43Speaker 02

  somebody with five hundred million dollars, who's a movie star, fucking go, I'm gonna do it, and I'm gonna do it the way it's supposed to be done, and it's gonna work, because that's what people wanna see, and fuck it, man. Like, I just, I don't get it.

• 2:09:58Speaker 01

  Do you think that the, uh, Christian Bale version was not accurate?

• 2:10:02Speaker 02

  I like the Christian Bale version a lot, but it is not the book. The book is fucking dark. It's brutal.

• 2:10:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:10:11Speaker 02

  They're shitting that book.

• 2:10:13Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:10:14Speaker 02

  I was reading that book, and I was like, Bret Easton Ellis has murdered somebody.

• 2:10:20Speaker 02

  There are details in here where I was like, I don't understand how you would know this. Like.

• 2:10:25Speaker 01

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• 2:12:32Speaker 01

  code JRE, or go to lifelock.com/jre for 30% off. Terms apply. Is one of the darkest scenes in that book is when he goes to get rid of the body, and the real estate guy sees him in the room, because they're selling the apartment. And so he realizes the real estate guy's already gotten rid of the body.

• 2:12:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:12:55Speaker 01

  And they look at each other, and he just leaves.

• 2:12:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:12:57Speaker 01

  And you're like, oh, God.

• 2:12:59Speaker 02

  Yeah. And there was, by the way, I was just joking about Bret Easton Ellis. I don't think he's murdered somebody. I feel like we have to say that.

• 2:13:06Speaker 01

  It's very important to clarify.

• 2:13:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, I was just joking.

• 2:13:08Speaker 01

  Just humor.

• 2:13:09Speaker 02

  But, but the thing the book did, and they cut a, they cut a major scene out of the movie. It's the one extra scene on the Blu-ray. And I don't understand why they deleted it. But there's a scene in the movie where his friend says, they're at the club at the beginning, and his friend goes, "I'm out of here." And the guy climbs up, like these rafters or whatever, and crawls into like a fan vent in the club, and you never see him ever again. And that's the part in the book that makes you go, is this all in this fucking guy's head? What he just described happening is nuts.

• 2:13:47Speaker 01

  Oh, right.

• 2:13:48Speaker 02

  And this guy is now gone, and nobody knows where he is. And I'm like, is it, that's such a key scene, and they cut it out of the movie. And so, whatever, they're remaking it now again.

• 2:13:58Speaker 01

  Oh, they are?

• 2:13:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:14:00Speaker 01

  Who's gonna be American Psycho?

• 2:14:01Speaker 02

  I think maybe Adam Driver is connected to it, I think, maybe?

• 2:14:07Speaker 01

  Oh, he'd be good at that. He's got a lot of psycho behind his eyes.

• 2:14:11Speaker 02

  But The Shards is the new Bret Easton Ellis adaptation on Fox.

• 2:14:15Speaker 01

  What is it?

• 2:14:16Speaker 02

  It's his last novel, and it's a, it's, it's a fictional autobiography where he, the main character is him as a teenager, and there's a serial killer loose. And all these murders are happening. They're targeting teenagers, these brutal fucking murders. And there's a cult happening that's reminiscent of the Manson cult. And then he's also coming of age and realizing he's gay, and like, as he's trying to deal with the fact that this murder thing is happening, and he thinks he knows who it is. And it's a wild story. But they're, and he's, he co-created it with Ryan Murphy, the TV show, the adaptation. It's really fucking good, so far. Really good.

• 2:15:00Speaker 01

  Oh, so it's a period piece?

• 2:15:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, it takes place in like 83 or 84.

• 2:15:04Speaker 01

  You know how I could tell? The Ferrari.

• 2:15:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:15:07Speaker 01

  Old Ferrari. Oh, wow.

• 2:15:12Speaker 02

  But it's one of the adaptations where I was like, I feel like they're really capturing a lot of what's actually in the book. Because Less Than Zero was a cool movie, but it's not the book. Rules of Attraction's a great movie. And that's, he said that was the closest thing that anybody had gotten to.

• 2:15:28Speaker 01

  The books are, it's, American Psycho would be very hard to capture the darkness of it, because you also are capturing this guy's internal dialogue, you know, which is some of it.

• 2:15:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:15:39Speaker 01

  It's dark. So what would you do? Would you have a guy narrate the internal dialogue? You're missing something.

• 2:15:44Speaker 02

  Well, they did that with Bale. He narrates the entire thing.

• 2:15:48Speaker 01

  I know, but you're missing something there.

• 2:15:49Speaker 02

  It's very funny. How do you mean?

• 2:15:52Speaker 01

  Because I think, instead of hearing it, when you're reading the internal dialogue, you understand that there's no, you don't hear the voices.

• 2:16:01Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:16:02Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? Like, this guy's got some fucking creepy shit going on in his head. I mean, he's a fucking sociopath, psychopathic murderer.

• 2:16:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:16:12Speaker 01

  It's like, you get into his head in this way that I don't think you ever do in a movie. Like, you're in his head when you're reading it, because you're imagining it all happening in his head. You're imagining how he's viewing, like, the real estate scene. Like, he's locking eyes, this real estate guy. There's this creepiness to it that's like, ooh.

• 2:16:31Speaker 02

  He plays, the best scene acting-wise, in my opinion, in that movie is when, when they're comparing the business cards. And they're like, they're like one-upping each other. Look at mine, man. It's bone white and whatever. And Christian Bale starts sweating. And he gets like hoarse, and he's like, it's nice, it's nice. Because it's this fucking pissing contest where he has the best business card.

• 2:16:57Speaker 01

  And he's so upset that he doesn't have the best business card.

• 2:16:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:17:00Speaker 01

  That he wants to kill that guy.

• 2:17:01Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

• 2:17:06Speaker 01

  I'm listening to this podcast about Luigi, the guy who murdered the healthcare executive. It's a very, very interesting podcast. You know, it details how they caught him, the whole deal. But one of the things they brought up is one of the first things they thought of after that guy got assassinated was, was probably somebody he worked with.

• 2:17:26Speaker 02

  Really?

• 2:17:27Speaker 01

  Yeah. They had to find out whether or not someone had some sort of a grudge, someone got recently fired. When, you know, because when people get murdered like that, you oftentimes think it could be a coworker.

• 2:17:39Speaker 02

  I have a-

• 2:17:40Speaker 01

  Or a former coworker.

• 2:17:42Speaker 02

  I have a question for you about Luigi. I'm glad you brought it up. I'm so sorry, I have to pee really bad.

• 2:17:48Speaker 01

  Why don't you go pee really bad?

• 2:17:49Speaker 02

  I'm gonna pee really fast. I'll be fast.

• 2:17:51Speaker 01

  Question about Luigi.

• 2:17:54Speaker 02

  My fucking manager does it. It's, everybody does it. It's really fucking annoying.

• 2:17:58Speaker 01

  Sorry, Joe. Is it more annoying than boiling your own coffee?

• 2:18:01Speaker 02

  No, not, no, nothing's more annoying than that. The-

• 2:18:05Speaker 01

  Turning on the stove, filling the pot. When does it end? When does it end? What were we, Luigi, Luigi?

• 2:18:15Speaker 02

  This is what I wanted to ask you, because there-

• 2:18:18Speaker 01

  Jamie has a theory.

• 2:18:19Speaker 02

  Well, there were all the-

• 2:18:20Speaker 01

  Okay, not publicly.

• 2:18:22Speaker 02

  There were all the people, you know, Luigi sparked that whole debate about justified violence or whatever, which I thought was bullshit. But everybody that was rah-rahing Luigi, going, "He's a hero, and how many people has this healthcare guy killed," and all that bullshit. I wonder now what everybody's saying about the fact that Luigi is doing the insanity plea. And it's like, well, he didn't really stick to his fucking, I mean, if that was his thing, and he was gonna be the big crusader for him to now go-

• 2:18:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, but he's just playing the legal system. I mean, that's the smart move. Play the insanity.

• 2:18:57Speaker 02

  Well, it's the smart move if you're not-

• 2:18:59Speaker 01

  It also might be accurate.

• 2:19:01Speaker 02

  But also, is it the smart move if you're trying to, I know it's the smart move. I'm saying, if you're gonna go out there and go, "I did this because it was justice and whatever," and then go, "Oh, wait, actually, actually, I was a little crazy."

• 2:19:12Speaker 01

  But here's the point. If you did shoot a man who had nothing to do with you because you thought it was justice, because he was a healthcare executive. I don't know how he picked that guy. I don't know the details of what that guy's done. Was he particularly bad, the guy he killed?

• 2:19:28Speaker 02

  I think he was a CEO. No? He was, he was, it was, it was definitely targeted that this man is, this man is responsible for decisions made that killed people.

• 2:19:36Speaker 01

  Was he the CEO, Jamie?

• 2:19:39Speaker 01

  Of United Healthcare, is that what he was? So, um, if you think that you should go murder somebody like that, that you should, you're probably mentally ill. If you think that that, that kind of violence is justified. The problem that a lot of young people are having right now, and a lot of people that agree with, you know, what Luigi did and they celebrated it, is because everyone knows that the system is rigged and no one is doing anything to change it. And this is what drives people fucking crazy. If you get health insurance and their whole business model is to deny as many claims as possible, even if they know that your claims are justified, because they want to make money.

• 2:20:23Speaker 01

  So they're really in the making money business and they're pretending they're in the, we're gonna take care of you and give you insurance business.

• 2:20:31Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:20:32Speaker 01

  So they're not really in that business.

• 2:20:33Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:20:33Speaker 01

  They're in the business of making the most amount of money. If they can fuck 10% of the people over, or 20% of the people over, that's 20% more money. And that's how they look at it, and that drives everyone nuts and rightly so. And if they don't fucking correct that, people don't have a whole lot of options.

• 2:20:52Speaker 02

  I agree.

• 2:20:53Speaker 01

  As to how to lash out and how to get back. And especially if like, let's say it's your wife. Let's say your wife gets injured or, or gets a disease or something, and they can treat her and they deny the claim. Or maybe she needs a surgery, some crazy surgery, and they deny the claim and it bankrupts you and, and she dies. You want to murder somebody. And, and it makes sense because you're paying for this fucking insurance all this time, thinking that you're insured if something goes wrong. It's the whole reason why you give them money. You don't give them money for freebies. It's not, it's not for no reason. It's not because you, you like them. You want United Healthcare to have a yacht.

• 2:21:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:21:29Speaker 01

  No. You, you give them the money because it's supposed to be an agreement.

• 2:21:32Speaker 02

  I agree with that completely. I have no beef with the concept behind his, his motivations for hatred of, of a healthcare CEO. I have no problem with that. My question is, is it, is it, does it take away from, does it take away from the people that were rah rah-ing him for him to now go, oh, I was just crazy, sorry?

• 2:21:56Speaker 01

  I don't think it does.

• 2:21:57Speaker 02

  Do you know what I mean?

• 2:21:57Speaker 01

  I don't think it does.

• 2:21:58Speaker 02

  No?

• 2:21:58Speaker 01

  It's trying to not go to jail. And a lot of those people think you shouldn't go to jail.

• 2:22:02Speaker 02

  That's interesting.

• 2:22:02Speaker 01

  I think you should go to jail. I don't think you should be able to be walking up to people on the fucking street and murdering them.

• 2:22:07Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:22:08Speaker 01

  But I can understand where your anger comes from. I get it. I really do. And, and there's, there's a thing about capitalism, right? There's a thing about corporations in particular that are, you're, you're beholden to your shareholders. You have to make more money every quarter. That alone, that motivation alone, it motivates sociopathic behavior. The people that are gonna be the most successful are the ones who are gonna be the most ruthless, and they're gonna squeeze the most money possible without, without crushing the company's reputation. And that's their goal. And in the healthcare market, the problem is like, what are your options?

• 2:22:50Speaker 01

  There's no one amazing option where they always take care of everybody and they're real, it's ethical capitalism. They're just trying to, look, we make plenty of money giving people real insurance and really taking care of them and really paying for, and so let's make less money, but let's make everybody healthier. Nobody does that.

• 2:23:06Speaker 02

  No.

• 2:23:07Speaker 01

  Nobody. So your options, if you have to get insurance, are very limited. You're just giving money to psychos. So which psycho gets my money? Which psycho that doesn't give a fuck about me, or my family, or anybody that I love, if they get hurt or, or sick?

• 2:23:22Speaker 02

  Every year, every year that I don't do a writing gig on a TV show, which is not every year, I don't do it frequently, I do it sometimes. But every year I don't do a writing gig on a TV show, or I don't act enough to clear SAG insurance, I have to make a decision. Is this worth $600 a month for fucking health insurance? Is it? I don't know. I don't know that it is, especially now with-

• 2:23:50Speaker 01

  Just imagine how angry you would be if you paid all that money and then you broke your ankle or something like that and they denied you.

• 2:23:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:23:56Speaker 01

  You're like, what?

• 2:23:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:23:58Speaker 01

  And this is why people cheer about this Luigi guy. There are a ton of stories of people who had treatable illnesses and they were denied coverage. They had surgeries that could have been done to save them. They were denied coverage. There's a ton of stories like that.

• 2:24:15Speaker 02

  It's a dirty fucking game. It's a dirty fucking game.

• 2:24:19Speaker 01

  It's not, it's not the game they're pretending it is. They're pretending the game is, we're gonna help care, take care of you. You're gonna have a safety net. So you pay a little bit of money and hopefully nothing happens, you never need us. And that's our gamble. Our gamble is, if you do need us, you're gonna get more value out of it than you put into it.

• 2:24:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:24:37Speaker 01

  And they don't want that.

• 2:24:38Speaker 02

  Health insurance has become like the, uh, the protection plan at Best Buy when you buy a TV. You want the two-year protection plan in case any, no. I don't fucking, no, because, no.

• 2:24:49Speaker 01

  Well, some places have a good protection plan though. They just give you a new TV. Healthcare's not even that. It's not even that.

• 2:24:58Speaker 01

  It's worse. It's worse than Best Buy.

• 2:25:01Speaker 02

  I don't know why they're making, you just went, well, some places have a good protection plan.

• 2:25:05Speaker 01

  They do. Some places, you just bring them the computer, they give you a brand new one. This thing sucks, it broke.

• 2:25:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:25:10Speaker 01

  I go, okay, hold on. File out this, fill out this form, we'll go get you another one.

• 2:25:15Speaker 02

  Every time I've tried to utilize it, I bring it in and they go, oh, well, actually.

• 2:25:20Speaker 01

  Oh, really?

• 2:25:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, this doesn't, yeah, the screen's cracked. That's not really part of it.

• 2:25:23Speaker 01

  Well, you probably broke it.

• 2:25:24Speaker 02

  What the fuck?

• 2:25:25Speaker 01

  Probably did something stupid. What'd you do? It's probably your fault.

• 2:25:28Speaker 02

  They make it, I probably threw it across the room in a fit of rage because I had to boil water in the morning. Uh, but you know, it's, it's, um, it's, it's, it's a dire, you know, when, when, when the Neiman Mark, when the Neiman Marcus gang thing was happening, where these kids were running into Neiman Marcus and stealing shit, which again, I don't think is, is an okay thing to do, but, you know, like my mom, I remember was being like, can you believe these kids are, I go, mom, they just told an entire generation of kids they'll never own land.

• 2:25:57Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:25:57Speaker 02

  They're, they're fucking hopeless.

• 2:25:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:26:00Speaker 02

  They're hopeless. Like what do you, what, where does your head even go? Where's your, I have a, in, in my act, I have a line, it's, it's, it's not even a joke. I just go, where are the Gen Z's? And they clap. And I go, you'll never own land. And it gets a huge laugh because it's so true.

• 2:26:16Speaker 01

  Isn't that crazy?

• 2:26:17Speaker 02

  And it's like, it's fucked up.

• 2:26:19Speaker 01

  And then they hear that private equity companies are buying up houses so that could lease them out and so they'll own all the houses. Like fucking what?

• 2:26:28Speaker 02

  And the parking lots.

• 2:26:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:26:29Speaker 02

  They're buying up all the fucking parking lots. You can't park anywhere for free or for cheap, you know? It's fucking crazy, man. It's, we, we are living in a rent-to-live culture anymore.

• 2:26:42Speaker 01

  Well, it's just about, it's again, what we were talking about, about maximizing the amount of money you could squeeze out of people. And that's their business. And it doesn't have to be like that, but it does have to be like that if you're public. It's almost like we're better off with a bunch of private corporations. And if you're private, you could do whatever you want. Like there's private, like, look, you could decide, I'm gonna do, you know, I'm gonna give X amount of my profits to this, I'm gonna give Y to that, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do whatever I want because it's my money. But as soon as you have shareholders, as soon as you, you take that IPO money, ooh, baby, that's a big windfall though. You got all this money, all this stock, all this capital's been invested in your business, your business is gonna grow, and the business does grow. So do your fucking problems.

• 2:27:26Speaker 02

  Yes. They've ruined, shareholders have ruined, and I'm not saying shareholders inherently are evil, but the board of directors and shareholders and all that shit, they have ruined everything. They've ruined everything. It's like, everybody goes, why do the last three Star Wars movies suck? Kathleen Kennedy came out and said, we were met with demands by the shareholders to rush the fucking sequels out and we couldn't make the movies we wanted to make. So that's, that's how-

• 2:27:51Speaker 01

  Imagine if they did that to Jim Cameron. You can't do that. You can't rush that guy. Imagine you rushed Avatar. Fuck you. Fuck you. That movie takes it forever to make. That's why it's awesome. There's, there's certain things that you can't do just for money. And healthcare should be one of them. It should be one of them.

• 2:28:14Speaker 02

  Well, you know what? And I don't say this, uh, to ball wash you in any way, but you just said it 10 minutes ago about the club.

• 2:28:26Speaker 02

  And for all the criticisms that people can level at you, whatever the fuck they want to say, whatever. It's like, hey, man, here's a guy I know that has a lot of money that started something that helps other people in the industry he works in. And said, I'm not worried about making money. I'm worried about breaking even and I want the people that I'm working at my club to benefit. You actually did it. You actually did the thing that we're complaining that other people don't do. You actually did the thing where you said, I am not going to try to turn massive profits off of this club. What I'm gonna try to do is create an environment where people can make what they deserve to make. That's fucking pretty awesome and pretty crazy.

• 2:29:04Speaker 01

  Well, the thing is, anybody can do that that's successful already.

• 2:29:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:29:09Speaker 01

  You could all, you could all choose to run a business that way. And a lot of people do. I'm not unique in that way. There's a lot of like really ethical, like moral, happy people.

• 2:29:18Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 2:29:18Speaker 01

  And you make a happier environment, too. That's the other thing. Like, the environment, the club is very happy. Everybody gets paid really well. Everybody's making money. The waitresses, waiters are all making money. Everybody's happy.

• 2:29:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:29:29Speaker 01

  That's beautiful. You go to a place where people are happy to be there. That's, that's what you want. You don't want to go to a place where you're making maximum profits and everybody is in hell. And that's a lot of people that work in corporations, right? You're, you're working way more hours than you should. You never see your kids. You're constantly fucking stressed out. Your cortisol's through the roof. You're about to have a fucking heart attack. But you bought a house in the Hamptons.

• 2:29:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:29:53Speaker 01

  Look at that. I got a $15 million house overlooking the bay. How about that?

• 2:29:58Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:29:58Speaker 01

  You fucking win. I got the new Ferrari. You wanna see it?

• 2:30:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:30:01Speaker 01

  And meanwhile, you're dying.

• 2:30:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:30:03Speaker 01

  Right? But that's, that's the environment of just chasing money. I think you can make plenty of money. I mean, obviously, I'm in an unusual situation. But I think most business owners that do well, once you're doing well, what is enough? Like, it's, make it, just make it better for everybody. What's enough? What's enough money? What's enough, you know, if you're running a corporation, is it really good to cut back on the ingredients and fuck people over? Like, I was seeing this thing about powdered sugar. Some guy went to a grocery store and he took all these bags of two-pound bags of powdered sugar and he weighed them. They're like 1.3 pounds, 1.2 pounds, 1.27.

• 2:30:47Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 2:30:47Speaker 01

  They're just fucking you. You telling me that's not on purpose? Your, your machines are so off that it doesn't know what two pounds are?

• 2:30:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:30:55Speaker 01

  But this is this mentality of just squeeze the most.

• 2:30:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:30:59Speaker 01

  Squeeze the most. I don't think you have to do that. I think if your business is successful, just, it should be, like, you're good. You're good. Let's like, keep it, keep the ball rolling.

• 2:31:11Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 2:31:11Speaker 01

  Keep it, don't try to just keep making the most money possible every quarter. And that's what they do in corporations, because they have to. If you don't, you're a bad CEO. You'll get kicked out.

• 2:31:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:31:23Speaker 01

  Like, hey, good news, guys. We made the same amount of money this month as we did last month. Like, what? This guy sucks.

• 2:31:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:31:30Speaker 01

  This guy fucking sucks. Where's my return?

• 2:31:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:31:33Speaker 01

  You know, I'll be fucking, we're gonna vote him out.

• 2:31:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:31:35Speaker 01

  And then you get a board meeting together and people complain and...

• 2:31:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:31:39Speaker 01

  You have to do that. That's their job.

• 2:31:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, ideally, what should happen is you say, hey, guys, we made more money this month than we did last month. But the reason we made more money is because we made a better product that brought in even more customers and it was beneficial to everybody.

• 2:31:55Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:31:56Speaker 02

  And it's not that.

• 2:31:57Speaker 01

  Not we squeezed the same amount of customers out of more money.

• 2:32:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:32:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:32:02Speaker 02

  It's the fucking potato chip thing.

• 2:32:03Speaker 01

  Well, it's the other thing that, you know, this avocado oil scandal that's going on right now? So all these people that are buying things made with avocado oil that they think, oh, this is gonna be super healthy. Turns out, a lot of these corporations are fucking you over and they're using seed oils and fucking safflower oil and rape seed oil. All these different oils and they're pretending that it's coconut, or it's avocado oil.

• 2:32:29Speaker 02

  I watched a thing about food where they talked about, by the way, what I meant by the potato chip thing was, when you, we were just talking about this in the lobby before we started recording. When you buy a bag of potato chips now and it's half full and it's all air. And of course, the excuse is, well, no, that's so it protects your chips and just get the fuck out of here.

• 2:32:50Speaker 01

  Fuck off protecting my chips.

• 2:32:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:32:52Speaker 01

  Don't crush the chips, you fucking idiot.

• 2:32:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, maybe pack the chips and ship them properly. No, no, we can't do that.

• 2:33:00Speaker 01

  Have you ever had those Vandy chips?

• 2:33:02Speaker 02

  No, what's Vandy?

• 2:33:03Speaker 01

  Oh, they're chips made with beef tallow.

• 2:33:06Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 2:33:07Speaker 01

  They're just cooked in beef tallow. It's just beef tallow and salt and potato chips. They're the best potato chips you've ever eaten in your fucking life.

• 2:33:14Speaker 02

  Where do you get them?

• 2:33:15Speaker 01

  You can buy them online. I buy them online.

• 2:33:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, a lot of these-

• 2:33:18Speaker 01

  They're so legit, dude. If I want potato chips, oh, they're so good. And you don't overeat them. It's crazy. Like, when it's real food, you eat enough.

• 2:33:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:33:27Speaker 01

  You know, especially they're like soaked in beef tallow. They're so rich and fat.

• 2:33:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:33:33Speaker 01

  It's actually probably good for you.

• 2:33:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. That's, that's the thing. Most of these quality food products that we wanna buy and, and enjoy now, you have to buy them online. You can't get them in fucking stores.

• 2:33:43Speaker 01

  Well, you can get them in some stores, but the problem is they get bought out. You know, so say a company comes along and you're making something that has like really healthy ingredients and people really get into it. And then Pepsi buys you or something.

• 2:33:54Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 2:33:55Speaker 01

  Some, some fucking Kellogg's buys you and they, they turn it into something that's just close enough. They change the ingredients, make it cheaper. Did, did that happen with, is it Rao's, R-A-O's pasta sauce, Rao's?

• 2:34:09Speaker 02

  Rao's, yeah, yeah. Rao's got bought by, I think, like, whoever makes ragu or whatever, Nabisco or some shit.

• 2:34:16Speaker 01

  Rao's made a great sauce. They, is it still legit or is it, they fuck with the ingredients now?

• 2:34:21Speaker 02

  I don't, I never thought there was any jarred sauce that was awesome, like, you know.

• 2:34:26Speaker 01

  Did you ever have Steve Sharippa's when he had his?

• 2:34:29Speaker 02

  No.

• 2:34:29Speaker 01

  You know Steve Sharippa from The Sopranos? Do you know Steve?

• 2:34:32Speaker 02

  I don't know him personally. No.

• 2:34:34Speaker 01

  I worked for him when he was the booker at the Riviera in Vegas.

• 2:34:38Speaker 02

  I remember that.

• 2:34:39Speaker 01

  Before he got on The Sopranos, before he ever did any acting.

• 2:34:42Speaker 02

  That's hilarious.

• 2:34:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was friends with him a long fucking time ago. He's the best. I love that guy. He is the best. So he had an amazing sauce. It was, I forget the name of it, but it was all organic. And it was, you know, like, really super top shelf ingredients. It was fucking delicious.

• 2:35:01Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 2:35:01Speaker 01

  Such a good sauce. But it was too much of a pain in the ass for him to keep the business rolling and he got rid of it. I'm like, god damn, dude. That's, that sucks. So I think he had a problem keeping up with demand, too, because it was, he came on the podcast and talked about it and then he eventually just bailed on the business.

• 2:35:17Speaker 02

  Look, man, it's one of the reasons I left my, my sandwich shop was because I, I felt like operating in New York was too hard of a thing. And we had to keep, the four years, five years, whatever that I did it, we had to keep kinda upping prices and, and whatever. And it wasn't, it was not out of greed. It was out of, there is no way that we stand a chance to turn a profit unless you keep up with what the demand and the economy of New York City is. And I just got to a point where I was like, you know, man, it's just not what I thought it could be.

• 2:35:56Speaker 01

  He wanted it to be fun. He wanted it just to be fun.

• 2:35:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, and, and that was it. And it was, I wished them well, but they're still going. But it was, it just for me, I was like, I just can't, like, this isn't, you know, so that what happens is with a lot of these companies that get bought up, it's this Steve Sharippa thing where it's like, hey, man, I'd love to keep doing this at the quality I'm doing it and at the, at the, you know, the tick that, which we're moving at or whatever. And then somebody comes along like Pepsi and goes, we'll, we'll buy you out for 50 million. And you probably go, you know what, my ship just came in. Take the fucking, I don't know.

• 2:36:33Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:36:33Speaker 02

  You know, I, I can't, you know. So I don't blame people for selling to a big corporation. It's kind of the position you're left in. You know, this mom and pop thing is, is going away, you know.

• 2:36:45Speaker 01

  Well, COVID put a big dent in that.

• 2:36:47Speaker 02

  Oh, destroyed it. Destroyed it.

• 2:36:50Speaker 01

  Destroyed it in, in terms of like small restaurants. I know so many of them that went under in LA. I think at one point in time, LA lost 70% of its restaurants.

• 2:36:59Speaker 02

  It's that, it's the meat monopoly thing is brutal, you know, what like what happened with prices of meats and because they saw like, oh, actually, we can say that there's a demand and low, uh, low product availability and all this and just charge everybody this much.

• 2:37:16Speaker 01

  But there also is a demand and there also is low product. I mean, there's also the, the reality of the marketplace.

• 2:37:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, that, what I think it is, is there's the reality of the problem and then, and some people are affected by that very genuinely, but then there's a lot of people that go, this is a chance for us to capitalize and squeeze.

• 2:37:36Speaker 01

  Squeeze.

• 2:37:37Speaker 02

  And that sucks. That sucks.

• 2:37:39Speaker 01

  Yep. That's the thing. And, you know, once you escape the world of need and you're in a world of decisions based on what you enjoy doing, then you could choose to do a business where you do it however you want to do it and don't worry about it.

• 2:37:52Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:37:53Speaker 01

  You know, because you're not doing it for money, you're doing it because it's a cool thing.

• 2:37:56Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:37:57Speaker 01

  And ideally, that's what we would all like to do.

• 2:37:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:38:00Speaker 01

  Ideally. It's not, obviously, it's difficult to achieve, but if you can get there, that's the way to do it. It's just that everybody has this thing about chasing the fucking, whatever number it is, whether it's a number in your bank account or the address that you're living in or the car that you're driving. Everyone's always chasing the new thing. This is a new thing to justify why you're pumping all of your energy into a business, you know?

• 2:38:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's, uh, it's, it's the unfortunate, uh, other side of, of capitalism.

• 2:38:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, this is why it's capitalism fucking great. It's way better than everything else.

• 2:38:39Speaker 02

  Well, that, that I agree with, but we're just talking about.

• 2:38:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's got flaws and the flaws are human nature. That's the flaws.

• 2:38:46Speaker 02

  Is there a way, do you think, is there a way to have the free market with capitalism, but actually have some sort of regulation so these problems that we're talking about can occur? Or is it just you have to take the good with the bad and that's all there is to it?

• 2:39:00Speaker 01

  I mean, there should be, definitely be regulations, without a doubt. Uh, but I think too much regulations, then you stifle business and that's what California has. If over, overregulated, because the government is just too huge of a business there. I think at one point in time, California, during the pandemic, they lost a bunch of people, like a bunch of people moved out, but they doubled the size of government. They just keep adding more government and more, like, that's where they create jobs. They create jobs through government and just keep adding programs, adding government, and then you just keep siphoning off tax money and it's a slush fund.

• 2:39:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:39:37Speaker 01

  And there's a whole economy based on it and those people are the people that are in charge of running the city and they don't want to let it go.

• 2:39:42Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:39:43Speaker 01

  Because that's how everybody's getting paid.

• 2:39:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:39:45Speaker 01

  And nothing's getting done and the fucking homeless crisis never gets any better and the streets never get clean, the schools never get fucking funded correctly, but yet they keep growing their fucking business, the business of being a fucking person in government.

• 2:39:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's, I, I, I, one of the things I learned when I worked for the, because when I lived here in 2000, I worked for the Senate, uh, during the legislative session. It was the 76th legislative session, I think. I was a media reporter for the, for the Senate Media Department. But one of the things I learned was how low a senator's salary is versus what they actually make in a year because of donations and whatever the fuck else.

• 2:40:27Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:40:28Speaker 02

  And I was like, of course, these people don't want to ever step down from this seat. This is the fucking, this is a, this is a fucking joyride right now.

• 2:40:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:40:38Speaker 02

  And once you're in that position, now you got a problem. Because now it's like, well, who's actually in there to do something?

• 2:40:43Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 2:40:44Speaker 02

  Versus who's in there to keep the job? And if you want to keep the job, keep the constituents happy. Well, how do you do that? Well, then you start compromising things and ca-

• 2:40:52Speaker 01

  And you learn how to be a good bullshit artist.

• 2:40:54Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:40:55Speaker 01

  You learn how to say the things they want you to say. That's why people support ridiculous positions, because they fucking lick their finger and find out which way the wind's blowing. And that's the way my constituents want, so that's how I feel.

• 2:41:05Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 2:41:06Speaker 01

  You know, I think God's non-binary, like whatever. They just start talking.

• 2:41:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:41:10Speaker 01

  They start saying things. You're like, what are, why are you saying this? This makes no sense.

• 2:41:13Speaker 02

  [laughing]

• 2:41:14Speaker 01

  They're saying it because they think it's going to help them and get them to win. It's kooky stuff, man.

• 2:41:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, man.

• 2:41:22Speaker 01

  And nobody wants the job. That's the other thing. Well, no, but no really successful person who would really be good at it wants the job. It's too much work. It's, it's a hassle. You're also dealing with insane corruption. Once you get in there, try untangling all the fucking webs that have been spun for decades, where they've been moving money to this and moving money to that, and you gotta pay a little of this and you gotta pay a little of that.

• 2:41:45Speaker 02

  Yeah. Did you ever see Charlie Wilson's War, Tom Hanks movie?

• 2:41:49Speaker 01

  No.

• 2:41:50Speaker 02

  It's great. You'd love it. Mike Nichols directed it. Char-, uh, Tom Hanks and Philip Seymour Hoffman. It's my favorite Philip Seymour Hoffman.

• 2:41:57Speaker 01

  Really?

• 2:41:58Speaker 02

  Performance ever. It's a fucking awesome movie. Uh, but it's about how when, uh, we were sending arms and funding the Afghans when Russia was attacking Afghanistan. And he's in there to do a good thing. He's like, these people are getting fucking taken over. The Russians are coming in, blah, blah, blah, blah. And he does all this good thing. He gets all this funding to them. He helps them. There's, the, the Afghans start shooting the Russian copters out of the fucking air and all this shit. And he's like, this is great. And then all of a sudden, the powers that be are like, we're cutting the funding. And he's like, what are you talking about? We just helped these people liberate themselves. We, we can't cut the funding now. We have to rebuild. And they're like, yeah, we're

• 2:42:41Speaker 02

  not rebuilding. That's, we're not spending any more money in this. And the end of the movie is Philip Seymour Hoffman telling Tom Hanks that, he doesn't say the name, but he says, "The fucking loonies are in the hen house." He's talking about Bin Laden is now taking over Afghanistan and this is going to go real fucking sideways on us. And it's just such a great encapsulation of, that's how it works. That's how it works. You do a good thing and then all of a sudden it creates an even bigger fucking problem than they've ever anticipated because of funding. It's a, it's-

• 2:43:14Speaker 01

  Also, why were they doing it in the first place? Why the fuck are they funding the Mujahideen? And that's how Bin Laden turned against us.

• 2:43:21Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:43:22Speaker 01

  That's what, what it was all about. He realized how dirty our fucking politics are and what we're doing, we're doing regime change in other countries and proxy wars and all, all the insane shit that we've been involved with forever.

• 2:43:34Speaker 02

  It's fucked up. The way it's portrayed, the way it's portrayed in the movie is the Russians are attacking these people. It's going to be this genocide. It's blah, blah, blah, blah. That's how it's framed in the movie. In real life, you know, I know there's always multiple sides.

• 2:43:48Speaker 01

  It's both sides. I mean, there's probably a lot to that, too.

• 2:43:51Speaker 02

  But it's, it's just one of those things where I, I brought it up because you said, who would ever want this job? And I watched that movie and thought that. I was like, who would want the fucking job of this guy?

• 2:44:01Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:44:02Speaker 02

  That he thinks he's doing the right thing and then it just blows up in their face.

• 2:44:05Speaker 01

  You just hope that good people come along and want the job. That's what you hope. But for the most part, they're swimming in a sea of psychos.

• 2:44:13Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:44:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:44:15Speaker 02

  Well, the question is, is, is if a good person does come along, can they stay, can they stay pure? Or is the system just built in a way where it's like, no, there's no way to do this, you know? It's, I always equate it to the Hollywood thing. It's like, it's like, in my opinion, there's no way to become, or it's a very hard thing to become a massive movie star and maintain your morality and your ethics and whatever. You're, you're playing in a system that is so fucking foul and so dirty and whatever. That's why we're like, it's so rare to meet a Woody Harrelson or something like that.

• 2:44:48Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:44:49Speaker 02

  Who's a genuine person. And nine out of 10 of those guys, they don't fucking live there.

• 2:44:53Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:44:54Speaker 02

  They're out, they go somewhere else and they dip in, they do it, they get the fuck out again. Um, so I always wonder, like, is there, we always say, like, if only a decent man would come along and, and lead us or, or, or take this seat in this office or whatever. Is it possible to even remain pure at that point? I don't know. Or is it just, hey, this is how it works. This is all there is to it and you either play this game or you will be phased out and that's it. You know?

• 2:45:21Speaker 01

  Well, the Hollywood game is interesting because you have to have the same political opinions of them.

• 2:45:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:45:27Speaker 01

  If you don't, if you, any variation whatsoever, if you're like, hey, maybe we shouldn't take this weird experimental vaccine.

• 2:45:36Speaker 01

  You're cast out of the kingdom. Like, you have to be full compliance. Full compliance to whatever ideology that they have. Cause they're completely in control. They get to choose whether or not you work. The beautiful thing about comedy. Um, is, and music is another version of that, but less so, I think. Is that you just make what you make. And if people like it, they come see you. Real simple, real simple. You get a chance, everybody gets a chance. Everybody gets a chance to open mic nights. Everybody gets a chance. If someone says, hey, Joe, you're really funny. We, you, you wanna open for me on the road? Also, oh my God, I'm on the road.

• 2:46:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:46:12Speaker 01

  Everybody gets a chance.

• 2:46:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:46:13Speaker 01

  And the thing about the movie business is it's not that way. Like, you could be a really talented actor and you never get cast in something. You know, maybe they don't align with the way you think. Maybe you didn't kiss their ass enough when you went in for the audition. Maybe you don't have a good agent, whatever it is.

• 2:46:30Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:46:30Speaker 01

  You, you might not ever work.

• 2:46:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, I, there's, there's a great, um. Oh, what is it called? It's the document, I think it's just called Frank. It's the documentary about Frank Stallone. Sylvester Stallone's brother.

• 2:46:44Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 2:46:44Speaker 02

  And Frank Stallone is an immensely talented guy. And he sort of got reduced to, he does stuff, he works. And he seems like a happy guy. But there was a big part of Frank Stallone where he kinda got reduced to the punchline of like.

• 2:46:59Speaker 01

  Sly's brother.

• 2:47:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly.

• 2:47:00Speaker 01

  Well, you know, that was Charlie Murphy, always used to say that about Eddie.

• 2:47:03Speaker 02

  They talk in the documentary about Frank Stallone, they go, everybody's like, how did this guy not become bigger? He's so fucking talented. He was a musician, he's a great actor, he's this, he's that. And they say in the middle, they go, dude, it doesn't just happen. You have to have a team of people operating around you that make it fucking happen. It's not just dumb luck. It's not just, oh, he's good. If you don't have the people strategically, let's put it that, buying you through the system, right? It doesn't fucking happen. It just doesn't happen. It's like, look at when people get nominated. That the process of getting nominated for an Emmy. It's like, you, you, you get the consideration vote.

• 2:47:47Speaker 02

  And then I would see it when I was living in LA. And then people would do these PR campaigns just based on the consideration.

• 2:47:54Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, those billboards for your consideration.

• 2:47:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:47:57Speaker 01

  You'd see them everywhere.

• 2:47:58Speaker 02

  Then you get nominated. And then, yeah, that's a whole other thing. That's why I thought it was such bullshit when, um, and I'm a big fan, I'm not knocking the guy. But like, when the, the whole thing happened with like Brendan, the, the year that Brendan Fraser won for The Whale was the same year the kid that played short round one. For Everything Everywhere All at Once. Do you remember that year at the Oscars? And they both, it was like, it's the year of the comebacks at the Oscars. And they're up there going, I thought I was done and here I am. It's like, you fucking had a campaign. Like, this costs millions of dollars to get you here. This is not some underdog story. This is, this was, this was orchestrated. That's, that's how it works. It's crazy. It's crazy.

• 2:48:43Speaker 02

  Nobody's, they're like, oh, yeah, I was driving a cab, then all of a sudden I got nominated, I won. That's not how it fucking works.

• 2:48:51Speaker 02

  That's batshit.

• 2:48:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, it's a batshit business.

• 2:48:54Speaker 02

  It's, it's, it's, it's the worst and best business of all time. It's the best that we, it gets us to get to do what we wanna do.

• 2:49:02Speaker 01

  Sorry, but it doesn't. Stand-up is the better now. It's like, stand-up and podcasts is such an easier pathway.

• 2:49:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:49:09Speaker 01

  Than that. That was the old pathway. You had to be a part of that.

• 2:49:12Speaker 02

  I was, I was talking to Tony about it after MSG, we were at the after-party. And he, you know, Tony, it, I love, this is what, one of the things I love about, he gets, you have a few drinks and it's a real love fest. And he's like, buddy, we're doing it, man, we're doing it. They told us no and we're fucking doing it. And I go, Tony, here's what's wild. I go, the mainstream of entertainment could become the, for lack of a better term. Wokest, whatever, that whole thing could come back of PC culture and whatever. And they could tell any one of us or all of us, you guys are out. There's no way you're gonna get anything on streamers or anything anymore. And we'd all still be fine.

• 2:49:56Speaker 02

  Because we all said, we found another lane, so fuck it, it doesn't matter.

• 2:50:00Speaker 01

  It's a bigger lane, too.

• 2:50:02Speaker 02

  Way bigger.

• 2:50:03Speaker 01

  It's way bigger.

• 2:50:04Speaker 02

  Way bigger.

• 2:50:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, because it's authentic.

• 2:50:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:50:07Speaker 01

  It's real and it, it's not curated.

• 2:50:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:50:09Speaker 01

  It's real, it's simple, people, that's what people want.

• 2:50:12Speaker 02

  If Hollywood could send a missile to destroy YouTube, they would.

• 2:50:18Speaker 01

  Meanwhile, it's come up with some of the fucking greatest talents, like that guy who made Obsession.

• 2:50:23Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:50:23Speaker 01

  Came straight out of YouTube.

• 2:50:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:50:26Speaker 01

  Dude, I gotta wrap this up.

• 2:50:27Speaker 02

  Oh, okay.

• 2:50:27Speaker 01

  Uh, your special.

• 2:50:29Speaker 02

  Speaking of which, yeah.

• 2:50:30Speaker 01

  Joe DeRosa, I Never Promised You a Rose Garden, available right now on Netflix.

• 2:50:36Speaker 02

  On Netflix, uh.

• 2:50:37Speaker 01

  Where'd you film it?

• 2:50:38Speaker 02

  We shot this in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania. It was on my YouTube. Netflix scooped it up. It's still on my YouTube, but please go watch it on Netflix and, and, uh, I hope you all enjoy it. And then, and then my, my podcast, Viol and Horrendous, is, is now out. YMH Network.

• 2:50:56Speaker 01

  Nice.

• 2:50:56Speaker 02

  And at Joe DeRosa Comedy on, uh, YouTube, uh, is where you can find it. So please listen and I hope you watch the special and enjoy it. Thank you for having me, dude.

• 2:51:05Speaker 01

  My pleasure, brother, I love you.

• 2:51:06Speaker 02

  Love you, bud.

• 2:51:07Speaker 01

  All right.

• 2:51:07Speaker 02

  Bye, everybody.