#1981 - Pauly Shore
2023-05-03 02:39:50
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.
Joe Rogan Podcast Check it out the Joe Rogan Experience Stream by day. Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.
No, you're fine dude. It's okay. Come on, man, you don't have a child. Oh my god.
He wears them. You can adjust it too.
I feel like I'm going up to the mothership with these things.
Dude, you fucking killed it. The mothership that was the funniest I've ever seen. You were so loose and so silly. It was fun to see, man. First of all, you could tell you've been doing stand-up.
You looked super comfortable, but you were so loose.
Stand-up, as you know, is a rhythm. You just kind of figure it out when you're on stage and you never know what the fuck's going to happen.
That night, David was nice enough to let me on his show. And after I put my finger under his boob sweat, I went like this. I like to do that a lot and then he's got sweaty brows. And I did it like that and it got me excited.
For a moment.
And then I went, and then I saw Montgomery and he had his hair over, and then I punched Hans in the stomach and then I got on stage. It was all happening.
Perfect sequence of events.
What you said up there, it's in my veins, it's really in my veins. Just the second I walked in that room, I just felt this focus, and that's what I said to you. I just really feel like there's a focus there.
Well, that club was a rock and roll club. Yeah, you see the picture that's in the tunnel when you walk onto the stage.
Yeah.
You see the big picture of Steve Ray Vaughan, that's him performing on that stage in 1983..
That's the old Alamo drafthouse.
It was only the Alamo Drafthouse from the 2007 on. Before that, it had been a bunch of things. It was a pool hall. at one point in time, it was a nudie movie theater.
At one point in time, it was a punk rock club. All the posters that you see that are in the green room, those are all posters of people performing at the Ritz.
So it was the Ritz before the Alamo, yes.
Oh, it's been the Ritz since 1927.
It has to stay the Ritz, no matter what it is, that sign, the Ritz always exists because it's a historical landmark.
Right, yeah, I know you gutted it out, though. Are you allowed to say how much money he spent on it?
Yeah, well, I'm allowed to say it.
Oh, you don't say it okay? Well, you spent a lot of money on it. Yeah, you had to spend money.
You have to pay construction people.
Yeah, no, I get it.
They did a great job, they fucking nailed it.
Were there two stages before? yes.
They had converted it when they converted it to the movie theater, I think that's when they turned it into two rooms, huh? Yeah, I don't know how they did it, but we have the same architect, fortunately, so he knew exactly all the bones.
The beams and all that stuff.
Yeah, all that stuff.
Yeah, so you know, there's this thing that's happening and obviously I've been in it my whole life, you know, since I was four and you know.
First of all, I'm so proud of you, thank you. I see you sometimes and we give each other hugs. I say I love you, but I don't get to say how proud I am of you. I've seen you, my whole, you know, for years.
And, you know, on behalf of my mom too, you know, because I know how much you love her and I know how much she means to you. And I know how far you've come, I know how far you've come. Because I remember when you first stepped at the store, and I remember seeing you in Boston. And I remember because we're the same age and we came up at the same time. Yeah, and I'm so proud of you, dude. And when I saw you on that stage at MGM when you worked with Chappelle, I was like, This guy's fucking funny, you know? like, really funny dude.
And I'm not just saying that because, you know, you've become this, you know, this massive business, and you're just this.
I'm saying that from comic to comic, I'm really proud of you.
Thank you very much, I appreciate it, man.
Yeah, and you're funny dude, you know? Well, no, for real, because I've seen it all, I've seen the best. You know, I see you on stage.
I see Kennison, you know, I've seen Kennison, I've seen Pryor, I've seen Eddie, I've seen all these guys at their best. And then when I saw you at MGM, I'm like, Fuck, dude.
You're really like, in the pocket, thank you, you're not pushing it, you know what I mean, and it's great.
I've been doing a lot of sets and moving out to here. It kind of changed everything because, first of all, I realized how important the store was. Like, I knew I was going to live out here. But that having a community and having a place where you get to see people do sets all the time. And you work with killers, like all the time on the road. The thing is, you don't really work with other people that much. You work with the two people that you bring with you, or one person that you bring with you. And you're not, like, in the mix with all the killers. And I think that that's very critical to what we do.
Well, that's what you've done out here.
Yeah, that was the thing to do, it was like the thing to do. There were so many comics that had decided to move here and a lot of them knew that. I tried to do it at another place and it didn't work out, so that was like a big delay.
That took like an extra year, it took a long-ass time.
Yeah, I mean.
Hans Montgomery, David Lucas, working with Tony and just seeing these guys grow and now they're fucking headlining shows, I mean, it's fucking dope.
Derek Poston Those guys are killing it, they're so much tighter and they're doing so many sets. Because we're doing two shows a night in both rooms, so there's two shows in each room a night, so they're getting all the stage time.
There's open mic nights, two nights a week, just like the store.
I talked to Lucas at the store, who works at the bar, and I'm like, Dude, you gotta just move out to Austin because this is happening out here.
Lucas Earle He's a funny dude.
Yeah, he's very funny and he's a nice guy and he cares. And you know, like you just said, your guys are becoming monsters on stage. And a lot of it has to do with the platform that you gave them. And I love the fact that you put the phones in the purses, you know, they put the phones in the the underbacks.
I think every comedy club should do that. That is a definite sense of freedom.
It also keeps people from being distracted, like people are just so addicted to their fucking phones. It makes the show better.
I wanted to put this in a yonder here and it's off, I just want to fucking throw it.
One of the things I've learned from doing this podcast is that. It's really the only time during the day where I get to sit for a few hours and not look at my phone, where I'm always just checking my email, checking my text message, responding to text messages I haven't responded to yet, trying to keep up with email.
It's overwhelming, yeah. I just did a five-day, pretty intense group therapy that I've been involved with since I was 19 years old, and it deals with a lot of trauma. Different things like that, and I'm actually a staff, I kind of help people out with the stuff they go through.
In return, when you help people out, you get help too, for instance for me.
I've been doing it since I was 19.
And it's a five-day program. And it just helped me deal with the trauma, my parents passing and just different things that have happened personally in my life. Because, you know, I know when I was on here last time, I was talking about the career. And this and that and all these different things. And a lot of those things that happen to us as people and people listening aren't who we are.
It's kind of things that have happened to us, that we become angry or become sad, or we become depressed. But it's not who we are, because who we are. We start off as innocent babies. We go into the world and all these fucked up things happen to us. The stuff with my family and the store and my mom. You know, I'm not just a whatever guy, I'm not Donald Trump.
Even though probably underneath it, he's probably fucked up.
You're not a turtle shell.
Yeah, I have this emotion, I got that from my mom and my dad, and it's hard, you know what I mean, It's hard.
So I feel pretty good and it's difficult. But I want to look into the future, my next 30 years, and I just want to try to be joyful.
My thing is half full. You know, a lot of us in life, we always look at other people and we're always going, you know? Oh, I can look at Adam Sandler, I can look at all these guys that are just, you know, or I can look at the fact of what I have.
And I'm not the only one. I think everyone should think about that, because, especially, like you said, with social media, everyone compares themselves. How many people are watching, how many people like us and all that shit.
Yeah, that's so fucked up for kids. Because they're just constantly comparing each other's likes and you know who's got more followers and they're all competing against each other. Then you hear about these kids that are like YouTube stars that are 14, 15 years old and they've got millions of followers. Like, what's the youngest YouTube star that has like a giant following?
These kids are essentially getting like.
In the TikTok.
Oh, yeah, that guy, that's insane. yeah, that guy, that's insane. That little kid probably can't go anywhere. Imagine him trying to go to the park.
All the little kids probably freak out, Where's the toys, bitch? What'd you do with the extra toys?
But what about you? I mean, you're, you've really like, I mean.
I've seen it, everyone has seen it. You've just really, I mean, how do people get to you? It's difficult, no, but you know what I'm saying.
Like, for instance, like, you don't have a booker on this show.
Well, I do, but I don't like I choose.
Yeah, you're the booker.
Yeah, but it's not like someone like picks the lineup and then I go over it with them, No?
So, like, for instance, like Nicolas Cage is my next-door neighbor in Las Vegas, like he's a friend. I've known him for many years, like, how would he get to you if he wanted to be on the show?
Oh, I'd love to have him on, I'd love that guy.
Yeah, he's awesome.
I saw a video they did about his house in Vegas.
Oh yeah, 60 minutes, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, he's awesome. I love that guy. I met him once a long time ago at a boxing gym, He was there with his son.
His son was taking lessons at this, uh, boxing gym that I used to work out in in Hollywood. Super nice guy. But it was a weird one, you know? It was like, Whoa, that's Nicolas Cage just hanging out in the boxing gym with his kid.
So how do people like that get to you to get on your show like this?
He texts you, You text me, Hey, what's up? nice to meet you.
He would be great on your show.
Yeah, yeah, he'd be awesome, he's a fun dude.
With that Nicolas Cage movie, what was it?
What was it?
I don't want to fuck the title, but him and Pedro Pascal. Oh my god, that movie's good.
He's fantastic.
Terrible weight on massive talent.
Yeah, so good, because Marc Maron I see at the store all the time and he's always like, You know, Nicolas Cage, your next door neighbor, you know? I wanted to see the podcast and I text Nick.
I'm like, Yo, my friend Marc Maron wants to be on the podcast and he didn't text me back.
So I mean not to diss Marc Maron, but I don't know, maybe he was just too busy, maybe he went on a retreat. A what?
A retreat? Maybe? He put his phone down for a week. Yeah, he did one of those things.
Could be, yeah, so I think he'd be great on this if I know any people that I think that you would like.
I'll pass them to you. Yeah, definitely, please do.
It's a weird thing to have this sort of a show.
Yeah.
But I got to keep doing it the way I've always done it. This is the way I've always done it.
This is when you started in the basement with Redband, right?
Well, we were in a.
You were on your couch, right?
On my couch, and then we moved to.
I had a spare bedroom that I'd converted into an office. So then we converted my office into the podcast studio. Yeah, so it was half my office, half of it was the podcast studio.
It was like, so rudimentary.
It was so.
Dude, it was so like Wayne and Garth, you know right? just like in the basement.
You know what it was, it was the response to I always wanted. I loved the hang of being on those morning talk shows, but I knew that nobody would ever give me one, and I probably wasn't good at it anyway.
Podcasting was like anything else. I think I think you get better at it the more you do it. If you go back and listen to my early ones, I was terrible, you get better at it. And I think that what we missed was like, the Opie and Anthony Hang.
You do the Opie and Anthony show. It was a bunch of comics, just sitting around talking shit about things, it was so fun.
So do you ever prepare for your interviews? Oh, yeah, for sure.
Depending on who they are.
So did you prepare for this?
No, you're my friend, I don't have to prepare for you, I have to prepare for things like....
Oh, like scientists and things like that.
If someone's coming on to discuss something really crazy, I really have to pay attention to what the questions are that I can ask. Like, we had Michio Kaku was on yesterday.
Michio Kaku.
I heard about him.
He's a scientist, right?
Yes, he's a quantum physicist, he was on discussing quantum computing. It's so above my head.
I can't even open my laptop.
It's so above my head, it's so hard to. He's like, he's so smart, it's like he's hanging out with toddlers.
When he was 17 years old, he made a particle collider in his garage.
I don't know what a particle collider is.
It's miles and miles of copper tubing, and it sends something through it. And he photographed antimatter in his garage with this device when he was 17.
That's a different kind of human. 17. You were hanging out at the store? 17,.
I was in Newton, Massachusetts. Being a moron. This guy was making a particle collider in his basement or in his garage. It's crazy. There's people that are just there's so much smarter than you in different ways.
I don't think he probably wouldn't be a great comic. There's so...
So you had to do a little research for.
What's it called Michio Kaku?
Michio Kaku Some even more than that. It depends on whatever the subject is. Some people I want to read their book first and then have them on to have questions.
As far as living out here now, being in Austin, Austin is very. I don't want to use the word liberal, but there's a lot of hipsters and people with skinny jeans and that stuff. Is it weird being?...?
I don't want to say you're red or you're not red, because I don't fucking know. Most people think you're red, you're red. Living in a blue city, in a red state.
That is.
But I'm not really red.
That's what I don't think either.
I've never voted Republican in my life. I think that the both systems suck, and I think that what I'm pushing back against is the crazy ideologies. It has nothing to do with universal basic income, it has nothing to do with welfare, it has nothing to do with funding community programs and cleaning up cities.
I'm all for all that stuff. I'm even for higher taxes, if I believe the government was competent with your money, I'm not if it's higher taxes. And it proves that we have less crime and the world's a safer place. That would be great, but that doesn't seem like they know how to do that.
What it seems like when you give a lot of money to the government, they create a lot of government jobs, and those government jobs make those people a lot of money. We looked into the homeless situation in L..A. My friend told me about this because he's a lawyer. And he went to San Francisco. And he was talking to someone and he was like, why haven't they fixed the homeless thing? Is it a funding issue? And the guy was like, No, it's the opposite.
They make so much money, the people that are in charge of dealing with the homeless situation. Some of them are making more than $200,000 a year, like $240,000 a year, and the homeless thing just keeps getting worse.
So what do you think? It is your opinion?
It's mental health, it's people that are addicted to drugs. There's a lot of soldiers, unfortunately, there's a lot of vets. They came back and their experiences were very traumatic for them and they never recovered.
Maybe they got on drugs as well. There's a lot of people with mental illness.
They need group therapy.
It all started during the Reagan administration, I believe. Check if this is true. I think during the Reagan administration, they changed what they can do in terms of mental health institutes. They decided to let people out. There's certain people that have to be cared for.
They're so compromised that in a good, just society, you would care for those people. And there would be a dedicated place, just like there's a dedicated place for people who have bad knees, you go in and get surgery, they don't go just fucking walk it off, pussy, hobble around.
No, they have a place that's dedicated.
No, it's similar to AA, right? I mean, AA is pretty much a place for. We all have friends that are in AA and they go there and they have. What is it? The 10 step rules 12. What not to do when you physically walk in a bar?
So here it is. 1981 President Ronald Reagan, who had made major efforts during his governorship to reduce funding and enlistment for California. Mental institutions, pushed a political effort through the U.S. Congress to repeal most of MHSA. The MHSA was considered landmark legislation in mental health care policy. So I think what happened was when that MHSA Act got passed in 1980. What happened was they just started letting people out in the streets. When I was a boy, I remember a marked increase in homeless people in Boston when this happened.
And I remember people talking about it and they're like, Damn, they're just letting them on the street now. That's not caring for someone, that's not being kind, that's insane.
And you would see people just having screaming matches with themselves. They're clearly mentally ill and clearly not on medication. Just screaming at people that aren't there and fighting demons and shit.
You see it on the streets. So if you were president in a serious, serious, because obviously you could probably run and probably win if you wanted to, I know you don't want to.
I'm not running for anything.
I know, but I'm just saying, if you decided, and one of your.
Arms was mental health. What would you do if you were talking to say Tony Hinchcliffe was in charge of the mental health? what would you tell him to do?
That's the last person I'd put in charge, he'd have them all killed.
That's true.
Tony Hinchcliffe would tell them, Hey guys, keep backing up, we're going to take a picture, maybe the edge of a fucking cliff.
Tony Hinchcliffe's Ruthless.
What would you say to them?
It wouldn't be me. But if somebody was president, if they were going to fix this, what they would do is reinstitute something like that, change what that was. And go back not just to the old way, but even better, go back to a way where if you have someone who's mentally compromised, you know that they could be cared for. And we would be willing to pay for that in taxes, I'm sure we would, I'm sure we would.
If they knocked homelessness down to a tiny, tiny fraction of what it is now, and our tax dollars paid for mental health institutes, who knows? If that wasn't more profitable for the overall society, it probably would be it would probably be more profitable if there was less break-ins, less crime, less people having overdoses in the streets, less assaults, who knows what horrific things go on in those encampments? They basically there's like these chaos shantytowns in the middle of one of the biggest cities, in the greatest country in the world, and everyone's just tolerating it.
But meanwhile, if you jaywalk on sunset, they'll fucking arrest you, or at least they used to before.
So back to the A.A situation, because my father, Sammy Sammy Shore, rest in peace. He was an alcoholic, so he had to drink, so it wasn't like one drink, but he had to keep going. So that's what he did. He had to stop and go to AA. So do you think there's something like that for people, for mental health besides AA?
Because there's some people that are addicted to pills, or, you know what I mean?
Well, I think, if anything, we should open up all possible options and make them legal, and that would include psychedelic therapies. Because I know personally many people who have done Ibogaine. Ibogaine is not a fun one. Apparently. I haven't experienced it myself, but it's a 24 hour experience. That just rips you down to the core of your being and explains to you, in some strange way, all the different moments in your life that have shaped you.
And all the different things that have become a problem. People quit cigarettes like that. after they do it, they quit heroin like that. It also does something strange to remap the mind.
Can you put up? is it ibocent ibogaine? can you put that up? So we can just stare at it for a sec?
Ibogaine Yeah, and it comes from the iboga tree, I think it's.
From Africa? Is it part of the ayahuasca thing? No, it's different.
It's a different type of psychedelic.
And you think, if you take that, or there's been studies, if you take that, then you can get rid of these things.
Yeah, many, many, many people have gone and sought ibogaine therapy to get rid of pills, addiction to pills.
So then if you were president, which you're not? But you would tell your guy to say, go get some ibogaine and give it to the people in jail or something.
What I would say to anybody who was going to be president, like, maybe a Tulsi Gabbard. That would be something to do. If we could institute ibogaine, if we had ibogaine centers in this country where people could go and have these experiences, I think we could create better people, we'd have less people that are addicted to pills. I mean, is it going to be a one-size-fits-all for everybody? No, nothing is.
Therapy isn't, psychedelics aren't, exercise isn't, there's not a one-size-fits-all for anybody to fix your life. But if there's anything that has been shown to be very effective, I think we should explore that. If one of those things is illegal, that doesn't make any fucking sense, and one of those things that is illegal is ibogaine.
My mom, when she started to get sick with Parkinson's, we took her to the Bahamas and she got fetal cells injected in her and that was something that she.
Believed very strongly. She was like, put some baby cells in me.
Dude, it was fucking insane. It was like me and Bob Wheeler, the comedy store accountant. Over there, we flew down to the Bahamas because you couldn't do it here.
How did you get the baby tissue?
I don't know, dude. I remember it like it was yesterday, so we drove the doctor. My mom paid like $20,000 or $10,000, or $15,000, whatever it was. Within that, the package deal is the flight, the hotel and then the baby fetuses.
So we went down there and a car picked us up, it had a sign, Mitzi Shore, and we went in there. And then we drove her. The next morning and we put her in a room with the doctor and they injected her with fetal cells. But I personally, because she had Parkinson's for a while, I personally think it actually helped her, I think it prolonged.
Because if you put.
The baby cells in there, they're obviously baby cells. Why is that so funny?
It's just so fucked up to think of.
She did it a couple times.
They've been shown with stem cells, all kinds of stem cells.
Put the baby in me, What are you doing? Stop fucking around.
Put it in me, let's go.
You know what I mean, that's your mom.
Your mom was the best. I tell everybody that your mom was the number one, most important person in comedy. that wasn't a comedian. your mom 100, she was number one.
Everything lined up, yeah.
They don't use baby cells anymore, but the baby thing maybe they do.
What are you talking about? They're great, they really prolonged my life.
That is the reason why it took so long for stem cells to get use and funding in America. Especially. People on the right thought that stem cells had to be like aborted fetuses. Everyone connected.
What's going on?
I remember when the really religious right wing people were talking about that, I was like, Oh, no, this is crazy, they're killing babies for stem cells. When I looked into it, I was like, there's a bunch of different....
You get stem cells from bone marrow, you get stem cells from adipose tissue.
I need some for my penis.
Imagine if they figured out a way to make your dick bigger?
That's what I'm saying, but more harder all the time.
It would just be like girls with giant tits, guys would just completely overdo it, they'd have a useless dick.
There would be a lot of Instagram pictures.
Of guys with useless dicks.
Eat nothing.
I think there should be something like that. They take the fat off your butt and they put it in into your dick. yeah, into your dick.
I don't think you should let them do that.
I did have a bladder surgery. Yeah, yeah, I did.
What happened to your bladder?
I was just peeing a lot.
Was it leaky or something?
No, it wasn't leaky. What happened was I would go pee at night and then my bladder wouldn't empty. So I'd go pee. And then I'd lie back down and I'd be like, Fuck, I still have more pee. And I'd do that four or five times in the middle of the night, and then I finally went.
To my doctor, and he sent me up with a urologist at Cedars and he was this gay dude, and imagine that a gay urologist. And this isn't a joke, this is real. And he's like, let me see your dick, I'm like, dude, that's not fucking cool.
Come on, let me see it the fuck. And so I showed him my dick, He's like, Ooh, I'm like, what the fuck?
So I did a procedure called resume, so if you don't believe me.
Why would I not believe you?
Because it doesn't sound real.
It doesn't sound like you met an alien.
But it's resume. I said, I go, what does this do? He goes well. Once you do the procedure, then you resume how you used to pee before you had a pee problem. So you wake up and they steam your prostate, steam it.
Yeah, they steam it right there.
Resume procedure uses sterile water vapor steam that is injected into the enlarged portions of the prostate. The steam causes the prostate cells that are responsible for the enlargement to die. Which then leads to shrinkage of the prostate, which, in turn, creates a more open urinary pathway. Oh, that's interesting.
That's pretty cool. It was a pretty easy procedure. Science.
Fix Paul's dick.
Don't do it.
I don't want to see someone's dick get steamed.
So you wake up in the morning or you wake up after the procedure, it's only like a 15 minute procedure, you wake up. And I had a catheter in my dick and then I had a piss bag right here connected to it. So I said, How long do I have to wear this?
He goes for a week, I'm like, Dude, that's fucked up, so for a week, bro, I'm like, saying high five to my friend. I might have even seen you with a piss bag. I had a piss bag, yeah.
Do you tape it to your body?
No, you do a velcro to your leg right here, whoa? And so I had it for a whole weekend, it was the best week of my life. I'd be going to dinner with friends, just be pissing and fucking talking at the same time.
And they're like, What are you doing? I'm like, don't worry, go on. It's a great story, it's fantastic. And then I drove from, I remember driving from L.A. to Las Vegas, and it's a four hour drive.
I didn't have to stop once, but when I got to Vegas, I had a huge piss tumor connected to my leg. Because you just keep peeing and then.
At what point in time does it become disgusting like you're charting around?
Yeah, after a week, then it's like a wreck.
What's the longest you've gone without changing it?
Oh, no, you never change it.
You just dump it out.
Every couple hours, you dump it out.
You never walked around four or five hours with a bag of piss.
No, no, no, that's what I thought you were saying.
Isn't that what you thought? He was saying? Yeah, we got confused. So you have to change the actual physical bag itself.
Yeah, you had to change it.
Otherwise, it probably smells.
But it worked good. So if there's any of your listeners that pee a lot in the middle of the night, check out Razoom.
Did you eat any asparagus? I was just talking about that.
Oh, did you see my pee was green or something?
No, no, no, because asparagus makes your pee smell.
Oh.
So I was wondering, could you smell it through the bag? That would be interesting because if we all went to dinner. I'm like, Pauly, have some asparagus, if I knew that you had the piss bag on, and then if I just smell asparagus pee, I'm like, you motherfucker, just sitting there peeing.
Would you be upset?
You know what that is when you smell it? I think I'll probably let everybody know I was peeing. if that was going on, I'm like, Hey guys, I'm about to pee just to let you know.
I don't have to go anywhere.
Yeah, it was great.
It's tough to sell, like, hey, that's actually. Science has shown that. It's actually the best way to pee, because you just pee whenever you want, and holding your pee is actually very bad for you.
Really bad for you.
So we're just going to give this everyone just start walking around with a piss bag slapped.
Yeah, they need one for shit, I think, Don't you think you know what I mean? Well, the dumbest thing we do for shit.
Is just smear it with toilet paper, like once I got one of them, toilets that squirts water at your butt.
Oh, wow.
You never had one?
No, I've seen it, but I never had one.
PAULY You gotta get one of those, there's a whole bunch of them.
That's a bidet, right?
Well, it's not a bidet, because it's like a toilet, it's a toilet seat bidet.
Oh, yeah, you have one in the other room. Yeah, your guy showed me around your place.
Go try it out.
So you got the sauna and you got the cold plunge in the back. Yeah, that's dope.
Have you done that?
I've done it. Yeah, every time I see you talk about the cold plunge and the sauna, I'm like, Yeah, that's my guy, cold plunge is the best.
Both of them reset your brain so well.
Yeah, I usually go to the Russian bathhouse in New York and L.
A.
And then also the Korean spa.
Yeah, Pauly loves that Russian bathhouse in New York, so he's always going to those. Yeah, it's the best, it's so good for your body.
It really is, yeah, it's great.
Wait, are you living in Vegas still?
No, I kept a place there, but I moved back to L.
A How is it? It's cool.
Everything's good.
Yeah, everything's awesome. I don't want to tell you where my house is. There's people listening. No, I'm very happy there, that's where I was born and raised, so I feel good there.
But I like to leave. I like it here, dude, I fucking love it here. this is really cool here. what you're doing is great.
Thank you.
Well, that was the whole.
It worked out better than I thought it could, but that was kind of the idea.
And I think it was kind of cool that, I mean, not kind of cool, but I think just obviously everything is up to this guy upstairs. But I think the two-year kind of building up to it got your guys better, got everyone better. Working at the vulcan and working around town, it was this pimple that everyone was developing and developing, and then finally boom, the mothership came, and then boom, everyone's like, boom, and now it's just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.
And it's this thing, yeah.
Well, and also that everybody had kind of shared my sentiments about getting out. Tom Segura was one of the first, Tony Hinchcliffe was one of the first, I think Tony came out first. Ron White was actually already here before the pandemic. And it was also one of the reasons why I loved it. Because he was always telling me he was like, it's the best fucking city.
You ain't gotta deal with all the bullshit you deal with in Hollywood. He would always talk so great about this town.
Well, I think what you're doing for comedy is great. I mean, you're creating this Emerald City for New York and L..A. And people to come out here. And you got all these stages and it's great. And then also Red Band started a club, too.
Yeah, right, down the street.
That's cool.
Yeah, well, it was a club that already exists and he bought into it as an investor. And they have a really nice room, I think it's like 500 seats right down the street.
Yeah, and I think it's great because I remember coming back. I'm coming to Austin in the 90s when I was touring, and everyone remembers Austin 6th Street Music, Austin 6th Street Music. And now it's slowly starting to be comedy as the first thing, and then music as the second thing, and it's great. Well, that one little spot.
You have the creek and the cave that's on 7th, and then you have the vulcan, which is on 6th, and we're on 6th. And then next to the Mothership is the Sunset Strip Club. They're all in the same area, so guys are walking from club to club and doing sets in town. And guys are doing four or five sets a night sometimes, especially when they're doing two shows in certain places.
And then there's other rooms outside, it's like people are starting their own rooms, which always happens. Open mic'ers It's one of the things open mic'ers have always done. They'll get a Wednesday at some place and they start having people come in. They work a deal with the door. Really. business-minded open mic'ers have done that forever.
No, it's great, it's great, and you're the leader.
Well, I just did it because I could. It was one of those things where if someone could, they should, and you can. So why aren't you, well, you should? I had a talk with myself about it. God damn, do you really want to take on this?
Because I would always tell people, be nice to comedy club owners because you don't want to be one, you don't want to be some person. Hoping that this guy shows up and he wasn't doing coke last night, and he isn't on a two-day bender. Or he didn't miss his flight, or he didn't sleep in.
There's so many factors dealing with your livelihood if you're a club owner.
People get too drunk, they're crazy, they do this, they do that, they wreck their hotel room.
You're constantly putting out fires. If you can make a harmonious relationship with a club owner, do it. Try to be as nice to them as possible. You work together, you don't want to be them.
You don't want to open a comedy club, it's too much work, but now I wound up doing it.
What's it like being an owner? You're 100 owner. What's it like?
It's easy because the people that are running it are great. If it wasn't for Curtis and Adam and Eric and Jody and all the people that we knew from the store, if it wasn't for them, they wouldn't be able to work like this. They have such a long experience in running clubs, that helps a lot.
That's a big, big factor for comics that are listening that want to get in at your club. What's the process?
I'm not going to put that out there. They can figure it out. The best way to do it is to go to open mic nights.
Adam Egott is the talent coordinator. If you're an established comedian, reach out to him. He's been reaching out to everybody anyway. It's nice, it's been very smooth from the opening jump.
Mostly, the small room is the developmental room.
Chappelle did that room, he broke it in the first night. It's a fun room to do sets because it's very intimate, it's 120 seats.
I love that room tonight, I'm doing your other room. I did kill Tony last night and that was great. Tonight's the first night that I'm going to do a spot here. You'll love it.
The sound is amazing.
We spent a lot of time making sure that everything was dialed in. I brought in Louis C.K. who helped a lot. Louis CK had me change a couple things about the small room. He had me make the stage smaller and lower the ceiling even more. The ceiling was already low.
Can you lower it more? There were all these discussions. It actually delayed the opening by a few weeks. From his suggestions, they were all awesome, they were all perfect suggestions.
Everybody else suggested things, too, Tony had some suggestions, David Lucas had some suggestions. Comics have been coming to visit this for the last year and a half, we've been talking.
Do you think we should do this? I get everybody together. Should we have screens where you could watch the comics in the green room? what about if we have a clock over the screen? Everybody has a different idea.
What about if we had stars? I think it might have been Bryan Simpson that had that idea.
The light in the OR, we have a blue light and a green light. We have the blue one for the big room and the green one for the little room. When it goes off in that room, they go off also inside the green room. You could be sitting there and go, Oh, he's got the light.
You just walk right on stage.
When the customer walks in, explain, I know we've seen the video, but they walk in, they go upstairs.
The bigger room is on the second floor, and then the smaller room is on the third floor.
Yes, that's exactly what it is. It's horrible. I don't even think of it as having that many floors, but I guess it does.
Also, I know when I was backstage with you and we were kicking it. You looked at your curtains and you said, Oh, we've got to change the curtain in the big room so it looks like the smaller curtain.
Yes, the smaller room curtain is a better curtain. It's weird to be just thinking about those things.
Should we tell Curtis to do that, too? No, it's already done.
It should be this week.
Holy shit, it's going to match.
I was going to ask you, for the last couple of years, I've been doing a one-man show about my childhood. It's kind of like my version of Undisputed Truth, which is the Mike Tyson play. It's called stick with the dancing, it's called stick with the dancing. Because that's what my mom said to me after she saw me perform for the first time.
That's hilarious. Why don't you come out and do a weekend?
That's why I wanted to talk to you. Do you have screens on the bigger room? Yes, if I perform, there's things....
We have a projector in the ceiling, it comes down. It'll take a little extra coordination with whoever is doing it so they know what the files are. You can go over them with him.
It's a pretty cool show, I can't wait to see it, it's fun.
You got Babysitted by Sam Kinison. It's one of the funniest fucking stories of all time. What a crazy thing your mom did. She left you as a little child, as one of the most maniacal comedians that's ever existed.
It wasn't exactly like that, it was more like I was 14 years old. I was a shorter order cook at the Comedy Center in Westwood. My mom would put Sam on last because all he would do was scream.
There would be six people left in the room in Westwood and he'd throw his stool at the audience members. They'd scamper off. He'd smoke weed in the parking lot, and then he would I'd feed him hamburgers. I was always taking care of comedians.
What year was this?
This was probably 84 85.
I was in high school.
He really hit in 86.
Yes.
Did I ever tell you my story? How I found out about him?
It was probably Boston with Parento or something.
No, a girl that I worked with at the Boston Athletic Club. I can't remember her fucking name. She was really cool, though, she was this big volleyball player girl, big athletic girl.
She goes to me, she goes, Have you seen Sam Kennison? whatever his name was? I go, No, I haven't. She acts out in the parking lot. The whole bit about him....
The homosexual necrophiliac.
Oh God, she acted it out in the parking lot. Life keeps fucking me in the ass even after you're dead. Me laughing at her, acting it out in the parking lot. Made me go get the VHS tape. I got a VHS tape of his HBO special.
I was like, Holy shit. I found out about it from a girl acting out the bit. She's on her stomach in the parking lot, going, Oh, oh, feels like something's in my ass.
You can't believe it. That angle was genius, it's such a hilarious bit, genius point of view. That night was 1987, and that was at the Roxy on sunset.
My mom had an after party for him at the house at the Doheny House that night. Afterwards, Sam came to the house with everyone and I was so excited because I wanted to show him my Saltwater fish tank. As a kid, I had a saltwater fish tank and I brought him up to my room and I said, Sam, look at my tank. He wasn't impressed at all.
He told me to take the top off the saltwater fish tank. it was a big black top, I took it down. He dumped all this coke on it.
He started chopping up lines and he says, Have fun. Me and my friend Dave, we snorted Sam's coke that night. I felt so cool.
No, for real. I was like, Fuck this guy, then I just followed him around as far as him, babysitting me, it was....
That was just the way everyone described you.
Yeah, I mean, Lois Bromfield babysitting me, Jackson Perdue babysat me, Mike Binder, Argus Hamilton, all those guys.
You were essentially his young protege.
Yeah, it was like the Michael Jordan commercial. The kid wanted to be like Mike, and I wanted to be like Sam, look at you.
What year was that?
I was probably 11.
Wow, what a fucking crazy place to grow up, yeah, back then.
Oh my god.
I mean, there's so many stories, dude. I mean, I'm there now and it's great. Obviously it's the store, but when mom was there, it was just like you never knew what the fuck was going to happen.
You never knew who was going to pull in the fucking lot, you never knew who was going to come up. It was just like someone shooting guns, not literally, but just as far as the energy boom, boom, boom.
Eddie Murphy used to show up with like, Six Rolls Royces, like for real dude, and then Richard would show up and all these guys would just roll. This is around when you got there.
You got there in 94.
That was probably before.
When I got there.
Yeah, I saw the calendar you had from my mom where she put your name. I thought that was really cool. Yeah, it's very cool. Yeah, so that was that time, you know, I'm really proud of this artist.
Look at this right here. What year is that?
That was last year.
Yeah, Pauly Shore bringing up Eddie Murphy. When did Eddie retire? So he retired? in what year he stopped doing stand-up when?
I don't know. I was at his house probably five years ago and I was just like, Dude, what are you doing? You're the best dude, let's go, he's literally the best.
I think he should come out here and do it, he'd be great because you put the phones in the pouches.
He could do that anywhere if he wanted to. I think the hard part would be doing it, just getting going. I think if he did it once, then he'd want to do it all the time, you know? But it's like you get locked up in that movie world.
But he's also in case in his house. That's the same thing with Dr. Dre, Dr. Dre. He would be great on the show.
I'd love to have him on.
Okay, Dre, what's up? I'm going to put you on the show so we could text him right now. When my mom died, he was one of the two or three people that really reached out to me because he knew how close I was with my mom.
He sent me flowers, it was really beautiful, it was great, but I went to his house. These guys are so big and so wealthy.
They enclose themselves. So I saw him at I reconnected with him at Dave Chappelle's show at the Hollywood Bowl. And he's like, Yo hit me up, I hit him up, I go to his house and it's like, Fucking El Chapo, bro.
It's like, you know what I mean? I don't want to reveal all the shit, but it's like, you know, it's pretty heavy. But I go in there. It's the same fucking guy that he was 20, 30 years ago.
Most people are, they do deteriorate psychologically, though in isolation.
Yeah, he says, Yo, man, you want to see me? you come here? So it was pretty cool.
That's also a nice thing about having this club that I'm hanging around with comics all the time.
It's just you're not isolated as a comic, one of the things that does happen when you tour. We were talking about. You bring an opening act, you maybe hang out with them and that's it. That's the whole weekend, it's kind of isolating, and if you're not with that person, then you go and you use local opening acts.
I mean, maybe it's great and you meet a great friend, and that's how I met Segura, or maybe it's terrible. And you have a shitty weekend with people you don't like.
So what do you think of these guys? I mean, I'm a fan of you, of Tom, of Bert and all these guys. Do you ever pinch yourself and see what you've? Really? I'm not saying you're the holier-than-thou person that did this.
Their talent speaks for themselves, but you have a lot to do with these guys careers.
Well, they have a lot to do with mine too, though. That's part of the appeal of this show. Part of the appeal of this show is like, having those guys on is great for me too, it's great for everybody.
But I'm just saying, because again, I've seen it, I've seen the slow build.
Yeah, but they're huge because they're great, that's what it is. You have to do the work and put it in. Everybody should have a chance to do it, giving someone a chance to excel, you shouldn't get any credit for that.
The people that excel, they get the credit, what they're doing is what's exceptional. They put in the work, guys like Bert put in the work. He's selling out fucking arenas.
I know it's fucking.
It's insane, but he puts the work in. No one can deny that, man.
He's the fucking machine, bro.
He's a selfless promoter, he's always making these great videos, He's always like, fucking full-on, raw, raw Bert with his big gut hanging out. He's a wild man, he's killing it.
His new movie's hilarious. This machine movie's gonna crush it, it's gonna crush it. I watched one of the previews that he showed us. Did he show us other things other than the previews?
No, right.
Have you seen my movie Guesthouse? I have not. It's on Netflix. Eric Griffin's in it, Bobby Lee's in it, Steve-O's in it. When was this?
A couple years ago.
Oh, no shit. During the pandemic, you guys made a movie.
No, right before, but it came out in the pandemic.
Oh, that's good.
It's on Netflix, it's great.
Okay, that's great to have something come out when everybody's definitely watching TV.
Yeah, it did well. It's called guesthouse, I play a guy that lives in the guesthouse that won't leave, so it's R-rated.
It's the first R-rated comedy I've ever done. Oh, wow, oh, that's nice. Yeah, it was cool, it was pretty raw.
I'll check it out. Yeah, it's cool, I think you'll like it.
It's amazing the shows that popped off. Do you think Tiger King would have become as big?
Probably not.
There's like a timing of the universe. It was like a perfect door opened where everybody's at home and then everybody's kind of freaking out. What better way to stop freaking out than to look at some people that are way more fucked up than you?
Right, at least you're not that guy.
You know, with his fucking outside brace on, carrying a pistol everywhere and fucking all these straight guys, this is wild and this guy he owns tigers.
Yeah.
And how about the one person that got?
I don't know if this person decided they were a boy or a girl, did they change genders? whatever, the person got their fucking arm bitten off by a tiger.
Yes.
Instead of going through a bunch of operations, he said, No, just cut it off.
That was his boy, yeah.
I don't want to go through five operations. Just take this fucking arm off, yeah, bro.
Yeah, I know.
What the fuck, man, I mean? And then goes right back to working with Tigers.
Tiger in he she they them's lap wild.
What do you think about the whole?
I don't want to say the word....
By the way, free Joe exotic.
Free Joe Exotic, Free Joe exotic, Free Joe Exotic. let's go do your mobile podcast with Joe I wish.
Give him a day off.
So what do you think about the whole?
I don't want to use the word tranjectory, because that's not a real word, trajectory, trajectory. Thank you, of what?
Of just from the last 30 years of the entertainment business, how it started off with movies, TV. And then real world came, and then what was it? Amazing race and all these things. And then all of a sudden the internet came. And now everyone's got their own show. And then when you watch a movie with great actors like Pacino or whoever you think is great, you're staring at your phone and you're looking at your. What do you think about that?
Because growing up, I never thought that this would ever happen. I thought everything was always going to be like the 70s, 80s, 90s, early 2000s. I mean, you talk about when I was your age. This is really a big shift. Everyone's famous now, what do you think about that?
Well, it's a big shift, but they're still making movies, they're still making television shows. Matt Damon made a video where he was explaining why people aren't making movies anymore, why they're not making good movies, and how hard it is to make a movie now. And he explained it as a person who's on the inside and it's much more daunting than I thought. And then there's the television show thing.
There's a lot of television shows now, there's television shows that are on Netflix and television shows that are on regular networks. But reality shows are very cheap, very easy and very compelling. And they found that out through Fear Factor and through Survivor, and through all those other shows. That kind of shifted the landscape away from the sitcom, and the sitcom was our holy grail.
When we first came to Hollywood, not when you did, but when my generation came to Hollywood in like 94. When we came out here, everybody wanted a sitcom. I remember when you had your sitcom on Fox, I remember I came out to the premiere. It was like, Holy shit, you got a show, that was it.
That's what everybody wanted, everybody wanted the golden...
That was her rhythm.
That was the times, that was what it was back then. Nowadays, if you're trying to get a sitcom other than Miss Pat, who's pulled it off, Miss Pat's show is fucking hilarious. It's really good dude, but it's on Bet+.
It's not on a network, so she can swear, she can say whatever the fuck she wants. That show's really good, but other than that, how many comics do you know that have a sitcom, a multi-cam sitcom?
You know, Whitney had one for a while, a lot of people had them. Tom Rhodes had a show back when I was on Newsradio, he had a show.
There was a lot of fucking people at shows.
But now?
Now.
Greg Giraldo had a show, he was right next to us when we were filming Fear Factors or filming Newsradio as well.
It's the same thing with the talk show format as well. Everyone's got a talk show. I mean, not everyone's got a talk show, but there's the three talk shows. But then there's guys like you that trump the talk show.
Well, they're just playing with an outdated system, so they're involved in a system that has to stop every few minutes. For commercials, it only airs at a specific time, meaning you have to be there to watch it, or you have to set your DVR to watch it later. It takes a lot of additional steps, there's a lot going on that makes those things unappealing.
The other thing is, a person goes on, they only talk for five minutes. If you're a person that wants to explain something very complicated, like the younger Dryas impact theory. Or if Bob Lazar wants to go on a show and talk about how he was hired by the government to back-engineer flying saucers....
That's not a five clip on Jimmy Kimmel, right?
Yeah, you're not going to be able to do it literally. They're completely handicapped by the system that they operate in, you can't do it. When I saw Tom Green's show, he had this show that he did in his house, that he set up. Like a talk show set in his house. He had all these cables that ran from the talk show set up to a server room.
His house had been converted into a television studio. I thought, this is amazing. It was in 2007, that was when I was like, Okay, that's probably the way to do it. This talk show way. They're never going to give me one of those things.
If they do, I'll fuck it up, I'll say something stupid.
So when you saw Tom Green's show, that's when you and Red Band sat on the couch.
Well, we did it. A couple of years later, we started doing things like we would do videos that we would do after shows or during....
Hook a brother up, please, dude. We're just hanging out, we're having coffee.
Yeah, we're chilling, brother.
Cheers.
So we started doing that in 2007 or 2008.
We started doing green room shows with a webcam, just fucking around.
Then, in 2009, we started doing a podcast and just fucking around.
Yeah, because when you and I talked and we talked about me coming on your show here, I was so excited. It was the same enthusiasm I got when I used to get Letterman, because I was on Letterman a lot, his show. I felt like it was a big deal, it was cool.
So you're a big deal now with this. I mean, it's pretty fucking cool because your show trumps Colbert, it trumps Jimmy Fallon, and it trumps Jimmy Kimmel's show. Meaning it's a bigger deal for a guest to book. Oh, I'm on fucking Joe Rogan, why are you laughing?
What the fuck, dude, come on, it's a big deal. So I got super excited when I was going to be on this, like I did back in the day when I got on Letterman because I was so excited to get on Letterman, I was excited to come see you.
Well, I'm excited to have you here. You're a good dude, Pauly, you really are. You're a very nice guy. Remember when we did that show at the MGM, and afterwards we hung out and talked?
You're a good dude, man, I've known you a long time. It's nice to see you happy. Like I said, it was really nice to see you killing on stage because you were having fun. You were so loose.
We were all howling, there was a bunch of comics in the back laughing, and that reminded me of the old days. It reminded me of the O.R. Like when Joey Diaz would go on stage, we'd all sit in the back.
Yeah, Mooney. Yes, when Mooney would go on, we'd all sit down.
Oh my God, everyone would sit down.
I threw everyone under the bus that show.
You threw everyone under the bus.
Well, yeah, you know, Nick, and I was having fun with some of your local people here. Oh oh oh, I was just fucking around with people.
Oh yeah, no, that was funny.
Nick from the Vulcan Yeah, he's a sweetheart.
He's a sweetheart. Yeah, that environment of the back booth, of sitting in the back seat of the comic. You would walk in. You'd always look and say, Oh, Eric Griffin, what's up?
That's how Holtzman is now. When I see him. Yeah, I saw him a couple weeks ago, he was really fucking nuts.
Oh, he's out of his mind, he's so funny, though he's always got the absolute wrong take on whatever the fuck is happening in the news.
Yeah, in the most brutal way possible. Everyone goes left, he goes right.
He goes hard.
Remember when Susan Smith drowned her kids?
Oh yeah.
He was on stage. Like, a day later, I heard those bad kids, I heard they sat that close to the TV. They never put away their blocks, they always spilt their milk. Those kids will not be missed. It was just so crazy watching him do that.
We were howling Holtzman's a funny motherfucker.
He's a funny motherfucker. I was wearing my Brody shirt today. Oh wow, I got a Brody positive push shirt.
He was a funny motherfucker man, he was a fun guy to watch at the end of the night. There's a special moment that I only experience at the store, and that moment is when the show is old and someone kills. The store gives you this thing where you get a chance to see when the show is old and someone goes up and kills. When there's 25 people left and it's late at night and someone just goes up and is coming in hot.
And they're killing for 25, 30 people.
Rick Ingram has done really well, too. Oh yeah, I'm really proud of him.
Yeah, he's opening up for Chris Rock.
That's amazing. That's how Chris found him at the store. Yeah, he just saw him. He's like, Fuck, let's roll.
And he went out there and then he took pictures with Paul McCartney. That's pretty cool, Rick.
Think about all the comics that have come from that place that your mother built. What an amazing thing. So many comics over so long, so long, you know. It's like so many years.
Yeah, Don Barris is doing great over there, too, he does this ding-dong show. Nice, yeah, he's cool.
The thing about places like the store, too, is that it used to be C.
R.
O.
'S It used to be another nightclub, it used to have D. Martin and Jerry Lewis perform there, and all these celebrities. There's experiences baked into the walls of that place.
Do you know how the whole store started right with my father and stuff?
Yeah.
Do you know a lot about my father?
Not too much. He was never around when I was around.
Yeah, but I'm talking about no one was around when he was around.
He was never around when I was there.
Yeah.
v1.0.0.260408-1-a910ba6_os