Andy Daly Returns

Hi, my name is Andy Daly.

Hi.

You have two ZS.

Zonam of Zezian.

Zonam of Zezian and Matt. There's no way to put a Z in your name. Okay, I guess, but you have to. Okay, that's fine.

Okay, I quit.

Please don't go, we're luring back with gold, gold. How's everybody doing okay?

Keep it zipping with a z. Oh, Matt, you're not getting it. I quit again.

No, it's the words that have an s, now have a Z. that's the whole thing.

That's not zuru.

Oh my God, I'm trapped in some sort of strange hell. It's not a terrible hell, but it's not a good one either. Would this be your hell? Us just doing an intro forever.

Hey, that's not bad.

Oh, I have some chips, but everyone needs salsa.

For all eternity.

And Hitler's like, I like it better over here, the whole S's and Z's thing. He can hear us, oh yeah, and he feels bad for us.

How do you mean?

It got real dark.

He's next door.

Well, I don't know. He's in the next cave, there are different caves, it's like a big hotel, you know what?

Hey, hey, hey, you know, we had to work quickly.

You threw this thing together. Heaven. They really put a lot of work into it, that's quality work. But no, no, Satan needed a lot of room fast.

Enough?

God damn it. I asked you, Do you want it done fast? or do you want it done right? You said, I need it now.

The podcast is called Bonanas.

Bonanas for Bonanza Well, I should have fixed that for you guys a while ago anyway. He's also appeared many times on my late night shows, and he's made cameos in just about every funny TV show. I can imagine the last 10, 15 years.

In that way, you're not at all like Johnny Appleseed.

I'm trying now, in the second half of my speech, to figure out how I'm like Johnny Appleseed. I have wandered this country looking for funny people. You sir, are one of the funniest. Wow, I love it.

I thought it was the other Andy Daly, you thought it was Andy Dick?

Yeah, exactly.

Did Johnny Appleseed wander the country looking for apples?

No, not looking for apples, he planted apples. So I just I started out with this whole wandering the country thing, which I haven't done that either. But let's just say I take the compliment.

That's what I'm going to do.

You're a very funny fellow and you are, you're ubiquitous. I mean, first of all, I first met you. You came on the Late Night show countless times and did all kinds of hilarious bits.

It could be counted, it could be we could count the number of times it was on.

It's 15.

Something like that, No, I don't know.

No, you're on as a guest, of course, but you did so many funny bits over the years. And I thought, God, this, this guy is very. It's just money in the bank. He's always funny. Then I remember coming across your monologues that had me crying. When I say monologues, I don't mean you were up there telling jokes, but you get up as a character.

Oh, uh-huh.

And you show up to the audience late and then you're supposed to be a motivational speaker who's like, up with people and then you tell, explain why you're late. Do you know where this is going? No. And he tells the most horrible story of his family being run off the road by bikers assaulted.

He's like a sing-along with Mitch Guy. Yeah, he's there to lead sing-alongs, good old fashioned sing-alongs. And then after all that, just kind of, so let's do a sing-along and leads the audience, yeah.

After we've heard the worst story, I mean, the darkest story. So you're just a very funny, you've got an amazing comic mind, and you're also a very nice fellow. And then you're one of those guys who I'm sure you get this all the time. Where people go, wait a minute.

I just had this yesterday that somebody was like, Hey, I know you. where do I know you from? and I was like, I don't know. But I am an actor, it might be.

Like, or one of 75 other things, yeah.

Yeah, so I had to tell him just, Buddy, I am DB me.

Yeah.

Look me up.

And here's a little card you have. This is I am DB.

Oh, I love that. I forget what that character's name was, but the premise was that he was, like, on the WB. lot was locked in a crate.

Yeah.

From And he was a game show host from like the 80s or whatever, yeah, and he had hosted a bunch of different game shows. And just had all these catchphrases and things rattling around in his mind.

And he had, I think he had had some kind of cerebral event.

Something like that. He was also covered in dust, which was.

So it was really funny because the conceit was we found this crate we didn't know, and it was. It was in like a storage section of the Warner Brothers lot when we were doing our show at the time. And we popped it open. And you come right out with one of those long, thin microphones.

Gene Rayburn Special Yeah, read Newport.

Read Newport.

Read Newport was his name. I wish I could remember the, you know, it was like, who's ready for a bing Bong singer? You know, just all these kind of things like, Oh, of the variety of big bucks, no whammies.

And then we end up putting you back into the box where you were sealed up, and it's. It's one of those. I love, those conceits where I think, well, that guy can be, that box can be unopened at any time. I love to just dream that. What's his name again?

What do you mean by football?

Were you what was? I mean, I'm guessing you seem to me like you're maybe someone who had the sponge period where you're just absorbing, Oh yeah.

Yes, the TV was always on in my house, I can remember my father making the argument to my mother and he had the numbers. For how much electricity the TV uses, as opposed to the dining room lights, like, we're not using any electricity by having the TV on all the time.

So I thought you were going to say you've been watching too much TV, so his argument was that you shouldn't be watching TV, but this was pro TV.

He had thought it through, like, why it made sense to always have the TV on Wow.

What a time to be alive. I never got that.

No, no, I didn't either. My father prohibited TV during if there was school the next day, no TV could be watched during the day. So we of course were like, Well, that's shit.'s not happening.

So you don't grab a book, grab the ice tray and just apply ice all around the TV. It's got to be a way to cool it off.

So anyway, I love that your dad was pro TV.

Duper Pro TV Yeah, I used to watch. we used to watch Abbott and Costello movies every Sunday, and I would watch it. Sesame Street, which is hilarious, Burton, Ernie are hilarious.

Oh, you can. And also there's so much great comedy timing you can learn from, like you say, Sesame Street's Muppets. The timing is really good. For me, it was Warner Brothers cartoons.

And it is crazy that in the 70s, when you would watch an hour of of Looney Tunes cartoons, so many of them were about war bonds.

Yeah, they're all made in the 40s. Inside jokes were, you know, a guy who I don't know looks like Eddie Cantor? would come in, and you'd be like, Who's what's an Eddie Cantor?

The chicken that looked like Bing Crosby. Yeah, you know, you needed an adult in your body. Go let me explain.

But I too, was. I was watching a lot of those and they were made in the 40s. And then I go to my parents and go. So we got to stop Hitler.

I mean, it's one of the most populous states in the nation as a matter of fact. CONAN Really, that's all I can say to brag about New Jersey. But it's so small, how could it be?

So it's just crowded.

It's a crowded state, yeah, densely populated, yeah.

People have to step outside to change your mind. You know what I'm saying? I mean, I don't know, I guess I'm a witty guy.

And 90 percent of it is pine barrens, which nobody lives in.

Yeah, so how is that possible? Because there's bodies in there.

That's what it is. Yeah, it's the bodies in the pine barrens.

That's something you don't mention a lot in the New Jersey Tourist Bureau.

What's that?

Come to the pine Barrens, you won't not find a body. Wait, what you described, I think. Once that as a kid, you saw a production of Peter Pan that kind of changed your life. Because there was a moment in this in the production of Peter Pan that sort of grabbed you.

This was the Peter Pan with Sandy Duncan in the 70s. It was on Broadway and she would fly out over the audience. And Captain Hook was played by James Hewitt. Who was Mr. Belvedere? Oh?

Well, trust me, all he does is go home with his flash cards. It's true. Yeah, it's like WKRP Jordan Jones.

Can I just say that? When that came up right now, every alarm in my head went off and said, Don't do this, don't do this.

It doesn't matter.

It's close enough.

But Captain Hook and Smee had a scene in front of the curtain. There must have been a scene change going on. They're talking and he just says, I'm going to get that Peter Pan, and a boy in the audience said, No, you're not.

You're editing the rest of it where he goes like, Oh, yes, I will, and the kid goes, Fuck you.

You can't say, fuck me.

I'm a little boy with one leg, one leg, eh? Well, you'll have no legs soon, you little fucking piece of shit.

Hold me back, Steve.

Hold Me Back. Tonight's production of Peter Pan Fuck You With a Steel Hook Tonight's production of Peter Pan will be cut short. Your tickets will be refunded in the audience.

And you can all suck my dick.

Jesus Christ.

I'm replacing Harvey Villages on Fantasy Island. You dickwads.

The little kid's like, I just want to go home. This is awful.

Second City or Improv Olympic?

All I knew about was Second City, so I wrote a letter to Second City. I did that too, and it was like, Dear sirs or madam, I wish to do this improv. My name is Conan O'Brien. I just completed my comedic studies at The Lampoon.

Yeah, well, can I just say my letter to Second City was so embarrassing because I had just graduated from college and I had read in Wired, the book about John Belushi that he did an impression of Mayor Daley that was so popular that the audience would chant Daley, Daley, and so I made some mention in my letter to perhaps one day the audience will be chanting that again.

Oh, that's sweet, and so you immediately got a job based on that quip.

No, but I did get my form letter said. Well, we have our annual audition coming up. You can come up here, and I somehow interpreted that as like a really like a personal invitation to come up and audition. All the indications were there that it was not, yeah.

Yeah.

Did not go well.

You had a suitcase with lots of stickers. St. Louis.

But no, they suggested that I should take classes. But I was living in New York and I stayed in New York, and then, yeah, it felt like Chicago came to me in 1996..

UCB showed up, yeah, and what an amazing group of people, and we were fortunate. I've mentioned this before, but Amy Poehler was with UCB and so we cast her as Andy's little sister.

I was in a bit of one of those bits as her boyfriend.

That's right, so tell me how that worked? Because her thing was always that she was pining for me and she would stand up and interrupt the show. And then Andy would always have to break it to her that, you know, this isn't appropriate or something, and she would suddenly turn.

Well, the amazing thing about those bits, too, is when you do a Conan bit. In those days, if you were on the stage, you could have cue cards, but if you were an audience plant, there weren't cue cards. Because they didn't want the studio audience to get ahead and read with you, so you had to memorize it, which is unreasonable, but so Amy had those speeches.

Memorized?

Completely memorized and committed to them, like 110. And that was very like, instructive and inspiring to me to watch that because I had comparatively very little to say. But the incredible things that she was doing. But so that bit was like she brought along her boyfriend to try to make you jealous. Yes, that's right. And then when it didn't work, she just, you know, throws me under the bus completely.

So we also benefited by having you and then you, I think did on my last late night show, which is three years ago. Today, I don't know when this airs. Actually, this isn't ever going to air. Oh no, no, this is just you got a very bad diagnosis to cheer me up.

This is like a make a wish thing.

Yeah, and even you're not aware that you're ill, but that would be a better way to do it. Yeah, now your wife just asked, You know? So anyway, you came on and you did something, I think, on the last show.

Yeah.

And I remember just stopping you, I wouldn't let you leave. I was like, ladies and gentlemen, this guy, Andy Daly, is the funniest person walking the earth.

And yes, and I was as uncomfortable then as I am now.

I don't really mean it.

Oh, that helps, that's helpful, yeah.

I say that to everyone, OK, we just had J-Lo here. I said, You're the funniest person to ever walk the earth. She just glared at me angrily.

Well, it's an Irish storyteller, he tells stories about Leprechauns.

He tells stories about Leprechauns and God. It's so dark, but you just go into it with such full commitment and you never wink, you never break.

Yeah.

And anyone who disagrees can leave. I love that, I think that's the way you have to go, yeah.

I always felt annoyed when the host of the show after I left, would go Andy Daly. Ladies and gentlemen, I was like, No, leave them thinking it's Patty O'Hurley.

What was the gag with Patty O'Hurley? I remember it was really funny. He's an Irish storyteller who talks about leprechauns, yes, but he gets sidetracked, doesn't he?

But I think the one on the album is that he's. He's won a Blarney contest, so this is like, whoever can tell the most fantastical stories about Leprechauns and Harpies and whatever wins the Blarney contest. And he's a wonderful storyteller, and so he tells the audience what his story is. Something like, I showed up for Christmas lunch and I was full and I couldn't eat a bite.

And she says, No, I don't have it.

I don't have it and I says, Well, you know what I'll do? Then I'm going to kill your cat and put it in a stew and eat that right in front of you. And that's what I did.

And then I remember him going like he does a transitional thing, where he goes like, so I don't know what it is like the equivalent of. So, anyway, I forget what it was, but it was really funny, yeah.

Right?

Every story begins.

Well, it seems one day something like, Really hilarious. How do people get those? How can you hear all those monologues? Are they available?

Well, they're all collected on an album called Nine Sweaters and that I think is on your streaming things like you can find it on your Spotify.

If you really want to laugh, these are such great monologues, they're so funny. Nine sweaters. Yeah, find that.

I'd like you to, I'd like you to memorize them.

I'm going to memorize them, you guys had to memorize stuff for me all those years. Yeah, exactly, I had two cards.

Yeah, right, you never ventured into the audience.

Those awful people, I'm not going to go in there. Every now and then. People would say, Kona, why don't you drift into the audience and talk to them?

The filthy weirdos who come to this show.

Who would come to this show if they didn't have to? They're just here for free sandwiches, I suppose.

That's right, yeah.

Which is basically, and you get to play a character you played on my show several times. DALTON WILCOX Yes, who's kind of a poet of the West, yeah.

Well, he's the poet laureate of the West, as a matter of fact, the cowboy poet, and is a big fan of Bonanza. And yeah, it's a rewatch, it's like a rewatch show of Bonanza.

Yeah.

Except that I, Andy Daly have no particular interest in Bonanza, right? But the character of Dalton Wilcox really does so. I'm in this bizarre position in life, where now I do a podcast about Bonanza because a character I play would.

Yeah, so now we are watching every episode of Bonanza, you guys watch every episode. 431 episodes of Bonanza.

There's only 431, unfortunately, I know.

It's too bad and we've only got 300 some left.

Yeah, we're about to do number 61, so we're racing through them.

Dark Days. So a couple of questions Has Adam left the show yet? No, oh no.

He's still in, he doesn't leave until after season five.

We did skip ahead to one episode where Haas has a run in with a bunch of leprechauns. That's true.

We did.

You know what's so funny? I know a lot about the show Bonanza, because my brother Neil, who is a TV aficionado, especially of the 50s, 60s and early 70s, his go-to is Bonanza. He's watched them all, wow, he's watched many of them several times.

We have a theory about that that for a long time, they were just collecting unaired pilots and tailoring them to bonanza. Because often, a lot of the characters aren't even in it, they'll just be two brothers and a father.

Well, you know what's so funny, though? It's like you'll watch an episode and it's really dark. It's like an old Confederate general who won't accept that the civil war is over. Comes to town and he captures Little Joe and whips him and keeps him in a cave and is going to kill him and the other family members. Get him out just in time. And it's harrowing. And they end up beating the guy to death who has tried to whip little Joe. And it ends. And you're like, Oh my god, that was rough.

The music throughout one of those comical episodes.

And then they'll cut to the donkey and wah wah, wah, wah wah. And it's all very silly. And you're like, Oh my god, OK? And then you watch the next one. Adam's been kidnapped.

Oh, you should.

You absolutely must.

I definitely want to be on it.

Strangely enough, Robert Altman directed eight or nine episodes of Bonanza, and so Pat Noswalt has been our guest for every one of those his choice.

That was his choice.

And I'd like to come on and discuss every Robert Altman-directed episode of Bonanza.

You should tell them about our quest to buy a bonanza steakhouse.

Oh yeah, well, so there are no Bonanza or Ponderosa steakhouses.

Anymore.

No, but there are none west of, like Missouri or something like that, and there's only a few in the northeast.

But there's a bunch internationally, strangely, like in Dubai or something.

And what's really weird is there are four on Staten Island, and it's each corner of an intersection.

They had a hard time in Covid, to be fair, because it's mostly salad bar and nobody was in the mood for that. Sneeze guard didn't seem like enough, and mostly old people and old people.

We did call him in character.

Okay, I sense a problem here. You called him, so do the phone call.

Hello, is this fellow from fat brands? My name is Dalton Wilcox. Who Dalton Wilcox. I'm the poet laureate of the West.

I don't want to do this, sir.

Well, hang on, just a second before you hang up, I just want to talk to you about. Open to Ponderosa Bonanza Steakhouse. We got an abandoned Pier. 1 import.

No, please now we keep the bead curtains.

He didn't fall for it for one second. It is true. Like, right from the very beginning of the call, he was like, Well, you're clearly media, and let me refer you to our media person.

He said You're clearly doing an improv based character. My guess is you've had Second City. But I'm going to say UCB training. This is probably for an audio medium, probably a podcast.

We also, I think we stupidly asked him if he would consent to being recorded or something like that, so right from that point he was like, No.

But we did use the transcript and had a voice reenactor replay it on the podcast so you can listen on the Patreon. I believe, right?

Yes, but that implies that we did record him, even after he said, No, no, we did. we just did it by memory.

We did it by memory.

Legally, we did it by memory.

Good save, says the lawyer.

I'm so glad you mentioned this.

Thank you, and it's k-n-o-t a problem, not a problem. Tell us about this store.

So one thing I really enjoy doing around the house is untangling things headphones, marionette, strings.

Which do you have more of headphones or marionettes? Mostly marionettes?

And you know what, when you're working your marionette and you're using your headphones at the same time, it's a fucking mess.

Forget it. And if the marionette has headphones, it didn't even get me started.

Yeah, sometimes members of my family will wash clothes and they won't realize that. They've got multiple pairs of headphones and marionettes in their pockets. And so when that comes out of the dryer, that's my day.

To keep you on track, the business you want to open is called not a problem.

Oh, I'm fully on track, I'm entirely on track.

You know what I'm doing right now, I'm untangling this conversation.

I've not left the topic at all. So, yes, I would like to open a store where people bring in their difficult-to-untangle things. And I'll just sit there and I'll untangle it for them while they wait, I'll do it while you wait. And it's a pay-what-you-think-is-right kind of situation.

What are we bringing this year? Nothing.

I think my busy season will be Christmastime. people bring out the lights, you know, the Christmas tree lights. That's going to be a huge busy time for me.

Is this something you really are good at?

I think I am good at it.

Yes.

I am, I'm good at detangling things, yeah.

Like jewelry.

Jewelry's a tough one, I'm not sure about jewelry. oh, okay, I have tried that and the result is broken jewelry. But maybe you would just make that clear.

My wife sometimes has, like, tangled jewelry, and I say, I'll do it, and I take it to the garage. And I use a wire cutter to cut it all apart and then I crudely tape it back together. And when she's the least bit upset, I say, You asked for my help and I did it.

Yeah.

Yeah, kind of works.

As long as, yeah. So I might put up an advisory. Like a sign that says, I'm happy to try your jewelry. The result will be broken jewelry and I'll be drunk something like that and angry at you.

Now does your mind ever quiet down? I'm trying to think of Andy Daly at night, trying to go to sleep. Are there characters bouncing around in your head? Are you able to quiet that mind of yours?

Yeah, I do get to sleep eventually most nights. Yeah, I try to listen to something boring.

Like this podcast, Okay, that's just, Oh, burn, that's a sickness, that's a terrible thing to say.

Oh, I'm only teasing.

No, no, no, no, that came from the heart.

The BBC World news is what I listen to to get to sleep, I have to listen to that, and then I absorb bad news from around the world.

It doesn't give you bad dreams or bad thoughts.

But they say it in that clipped British way, that's very calming. Yeah, exactly, you know, a heat dome across the globe, destroying all humankind.

Total armageddon, Good night.

Good night.

And they leave you with a light story, usually, Oh, do they?

About a chimney sweep that got.

Four gobstoppers found at the tube.

The bones of a chimney sweep were found.

Another unfortunate accident at the Willy Wonka Factory.

Augustus Gloop tells his story exclusively.

Has anyone ever done a thing? Where Osha visits the Willy Wonka factory? I always felt like that would be a it just seems to be like that. I mean, I don't know if someone's done that sketch, but just Osha walking around, going this chocolate river.

I know that'll work.

There's no fencing.

Yeah.

There's no barricade.

Well, the idea that, like the Chocolate River, is perfectly sanitary, unless someone falls into it, that's not that can't be. It's an open-air....

Chocolate River, right, and also when a kid falls in it, they panic and wet themselves, right, that goes into the chocolate.

Well, they do, and who knows what the oompa loompa are doing in that thing after hours?

Oh yeah, good point.

What?

They live there on premises.

Don't sully the name of the Oompa Loompa. Well, there's a lot of them, they clearly what?

Like?

ORGy Well, I'm just saying, it's possible. You know, there's a lot of sugar around, which is, don't be a greedy little boy and go to the chocolate fountain. It would have been fine if he wasn't such a like....

Oh yeah, Timothée Chalamet.

The Timothée Chalamet One Timothée chalamet I just my reference is the Gene Wilder.

No, it's true. They also atomize people, and, you know, not that happens, though.

Okay, no, we do that here. Okay, we've had several kids atomized here.

Walk out with a child in your pocket.

It just happens, it happens.

Little TB, Tom Mike TV, Mike TV.

Christopher Hewitt.

He gets really small. Tb tom, tb Tom.

I read an early draft of the book.

We're just talking about a lot of nothing here, yeah, but I also think we're laughing, we're enjoying and we're communicating. Yes, isn't that what it's all about?

Yeah, I want you to be intimidated, if at all possible.

I was going to fight you and now I'm not.

See that it worked. How would you like me to sit? This is better.

I like it when someone is open, like, open heart, okay, you got it. How long have you and Matt Gorley been working together?

We started doing a podcast together in 2014.

That was the Andy Daly podcast, and then you came on Super Ego. That would have been like 2011..

Uh-huh, yeah.

That's when I first met you.

So however many years that is between then and now, 13 years could be.

So intimidated by math 2014? Whatever that could be, I guess we'll never know. Well, I don't know. It's 2024 now, so I think it's a pretty round number.

Never been done.

Here's some paper.

There's not a man alive who can calculate the distance between 2014 and 2024.

Wasn't there some puzzle at, like, C.I.A. headquarters or something like that that you would sit and you would try to solve this puzzle? And then it turned out to have been printed wrong? There was no solution, really.

I believe so. I think Dan Brown wrote a book about that after the Da Vinci Code, yeah.

All right, all of my information is from Dan Brown Books.

So you're not widely read, but you're very deeply read, you're narrowly read. If Dan Brown wrote it, you know all about it.

I know all about it. Yes, opus dei, you know what that is?

Oh, because I'm Catholic, exactly how were you raised in? what religious state?

Yeah, same Catholic.

Were you raised Catholic?

Yeah, but we were allowed to stop after first communion.

Allowed to stop.

What age were you at first communion?

And you can stop now.

Eight when you're eight?

And so, right, then you said, I'm out.

Yeah, they were like, you can keep going to the confirmation thing, which is like, at that point, six years away, or you can stop. And I said, Oh, that stopping sounds great, let me stop being a Catholic at the age of eight.

Have you been tempted by another religion?

No, not at all.

Oh, come on, what?

You want to sell me on one?

Yeah, sure, I think you'd be a Buddhist.

Oh, okay, yeah. What does that entail?

Just you're very calm. Yeah, that's it. yeah, centered. rub your belly a lot, that's not it.

No, you can't do that.

That's going to be the next me, too, because it's going to be that. If I see someone with a big old belly, I'm talking about a fella, a fella with a big old belly. I always lean over and I give it a little rub, I'm just going to give you a you got a big old belly, I'm going to give you a little rub.

They love it, right?

No, they always get very angry. Oh, interesting, and I say, Hey chubs, can you take it down a notch? I don't know why they get so mad, strange.

I don't recall him saying that.

What?

I don't recall him saying that.

I didn't get that impression at all. I was really bummed out because I was looking at your comedy heroes here. Oh, John Belushi, Steve Martin, George Carlin Martin, Short period. What?

No, there's so many more than that. Conan O'Brien, for instance, would be on there.

You fucked up big time coming in here.

There should have been a period there.

You were watching me as a child when I was on in the 50s and 60s. Sure, I was.

Yes, yes, no, no, no.

How old would you have been in 1993 when I come on the scene?

22 years old Yes, I can well remember sitting around with friends and watching your show. We were that excited about a new host at 1235 and gathered around to watch it.

Did you say to yourself I'm going to one day be his good friend?

I would never would have dreamed of it. No, but I do remember watching that first show with John Goodman and Felix, you know?

Tony Randall Tony Randall.

Tony Randall and saying This show cannot be this good a second time.

I really was like, it can't be that good again. Is that fantastic?

No, no, no, no, no, no, I'm serious. I was like, that is so above and beyond what a late night comedy talk show wants to try to be.

It's unsustainable. We were swinging for the fences on the first one and actually the first couple, and then we started to get really. We started to realize, Oh wait, we have to do thousands of these. I know, but I can't have like a.

But the idea of doing scripted sketches, scripted bits, in the context of people, weren't really doing that quite. To have somebody come in, like John Glaser and all those hilarious people.

And one of them was your roommate Andy Blitz.

Yeah, Andy Blitz.

Andy Blitz used to be the channing guy in the audience, he had a couple of characters.

I don't think he was there from the very beginning.

He was not there from the beginning.

Andy Blitz and I went to high school together and have been friends ever since we did comedy together in high school. And then he wrote For you for many years.

Many, many years, and he hasn't changed at all. Every time I see Andy Blitz, he hasn't changed the way he dresses. He still dresses like a 22 year old comedy writer, you know, by my calculations, now he's 81..

Again, that math, it's just about impossible, it can't be done.

Math is a Bermuda triangle. They'll never figure out how to add or subtract, really.

No, no way, yeah, but I watched your show every single night until I was on it. And then I saw, like, Oh, once you get this close to it, it's not that great.

Also, you met the true monster, you saw Conan O'Brien, the real Conan O'Brien. I said, Listen, Daly, you're going to come through today, or you're a dead man, see?

No, it's so strange.

We had some good times.

I'm sure you've had this. It's like a show that you've seen on television so many times, and then you're actually in it, you're there. It's really, really weird, it's bizarre.

Yeah, that's kind of the magic of that studio, which I inherited from David Letterman. He did his show from. I want to say 82 to 93 there, and we did ours 93 to 2009, and it's a small studio it really is.

Yeah, the weird thing is that when you cut from one camera to the other camera, the distance between those two things you're seeing could be anything to the viewer.

You know what I mean, right?

They don't know how far away the stage is from the desk. Turns out, they're not far at all.

So you're saying people that watch TV are stupid. Is that what you're saying?

So dumb.

Very judgmental guy.

Absolutely propelled by hatred.

What are you working on these days?

Podcasting We're putting out a podcast every week and I have no assistance whatsoever with all the minutia of it.

Yeah, this guy does it all, I do it all, he runs the whole Patreon, everything.

And I love it.

He does all the research for all the actors on every episode, and he comes with all these notes, it's amazing.

Yes, I do it, every piece of it.

I want to come on the podcast because I think you'll be disturbed by how much I know about Bonanza.

I'm already a little bit.

You'll be concerned.

It's frankly disappointing.

You'll be concerned, it's not my doing. It's my brother Neil, who, to this day, whenever he's watching Bonanza, will take a picture of the screen and send it to my phone. And instead of him saying, Oh, yeah, I'm here, I'm here with dad.

Exciting people pop up on episodes of Bonanza. It's Wild.

Sounds like we should have your brother on, I know.

You should have me.

I was thinking the same thing.

Maybe we could get Neil to do it, that would be fantastic, but the other thing that's everyone's, I mean, notice this before. But whenever on bonanza. Whenever one of the three sons takes a fancy to a woman and they're going to get married. You know that she will be dead in 40 minutes. Yes, because it's like Gilligan's Island.

If there's a woman in the show, that's the first thing, and then if there is, she's a dead woman.

If there is, she's a dead woman.

It's funny how often there are episodes where it's like there wasn't even a woman in the background.

Not even a mention of a woman nowhere in town.

Yeah, but the other thing, too. A recurring thing on the show is that there'll be somebody who is one of the characters best friend. Yes, like this guy, I've known him forever, he's my best.

Also, and I know we're going down a little rabbit hole here about the show Bonanza, and if you haven't watched the show Bonanza, this is a total waste of your time. But it was on for 14 years. Yeah, started in 1959..

73.

My brother Neil might make an argument that they shot one that aired in 74.

They had some TV movies.

Don't talk back to me.

Oh, I beg your pardon.

And if you want to speak, you raise a closed fist and then I have to nod. Really. We have all kinds of codes here.

We should have told you that before.

Yeah, I don't know why we're bringing up the rules now. Yeah, if you have a question, you do this.

I have no questions.

Okay, I can see that because you're not doing this, because you're a rule follower, I know that. Wait.

They're in the Nevada territory.

But all these shows that were predicated on. And it's the same thing I would say with Yellowstone today. The show Yellowstone is all about how this one family owns eight billion acres and bonanza, it's all about they own half of Nevada, yeah.

It takes multiple days to traverse their property.

To traverse their property. And it's a guy with three sons who occasionally date and their girlfriends get killed, that's it. And the same thing with the other show was The Big Valley. It was about a family, the Barclays that had....

And in bonanza, especially because the more the show goes on, the more you realize. They're kind of like a mob family, where they're taking from people. And they seem really nice on the surface, but over time you realize that, yeah, they're just kind of usurped this land.