#2042 - Joe List
2023-09-30 02:37:39
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.
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What happened? Smooth, baby. Hey, what's up, Joe Blitz? What's happening, baby?
We're back. The two Joes.
What's going on, Joseph?
The Smokin' Joes.
That's us, dude. Last night was fun as fuck. It's been fun having you. Two nights in a row.
Yeah, thanks. Three nights. I was there for, well, I don't know if I'm allowed to say. Yeah, it was their Monday.
Yeah.
But, yeah, it's been awesome. I mean, obviously everyone tells you, everyone says it. It's one of those things, I wanted to be the guy that was like, I don't know, it's not so great. But, no, it's fucking awesome.
No, we did it right.
What an atmosphere. Yeah. Great green room. I mean, it's the only green room you can smoke cigars in. That's not true, there's some.
I was just in Nashville at Zaney's, and the manager was very nice. He was like, you can smoke a cigar if you want.
Oh, yeah, Zaney's is great.
I'm doing smoke a cigar in the green room numbers. You know what I mean? I'm like, yeah, add a couple shows before you're lighting a fucking stick in the green room, I think.
I think when we were in England, they told us that if you smoke inside, it's like a severe fine. Like something like really crazy. So you can't even smoke in the green room in England if you do shows.
Right. Yeah, mostly I don't like smoking indoors, because it just, you fucking stink, and the secondhand smoke can bother me. But your green room is like really well ventilated also.
Yeah, you see these big vents in the ceiling in that place when you go in there. We set it up on purpose so that people could smoke in there.
No, I like when you can just watch the smoke. just go straight out. You're like, this is nice.
Yeah, because so many of the comics smoke cigarettes and, you know, other stuff.
And, you know, you want to suck the air out. You don't want everybody to be subject to it.
It's a wet dream in there. Have you had anyone get too fucked up where you're like, dude, you got to. Because all I think about when I was drinking, if you just had whiskey and booze with like help yourself, there's got to be a few people that are going to be problematic at some point.
Everybody's been keeping it together so far.
Okay.
We'll see. We'll see as the crowd grows.
I'm interested. It feels like the kind of thing I come back in a year, and it's like there's a safe with all the booze in it, and they're like, yeah, fucking so-and-so came in and ruined everybody.
Nah, I don't think there's that many of those super off-the-rail guys left.
I think that's a good point. My wife and I talk about this a lot, but I think maybe because we're older, though. I'm sure there's a bunch of comics in their 20s that really get after it.
Yeah, I bet that's true. Yeah. We just probably don't know them. I'm thinking like established comics, because there was like established comics when I was coming up that were like national headliners that you just knew were off the rails.
Yeah, I actually think it's very difficult to sustain boozing that hard and be successful.
Most of it was Coke. When someone was like an off-the-rails guy, like completely out of control, it was booze, but it was a lot of Coke.
Right. Were you ever a Coke guy? No. No, me either. Yeah.
I was too afraid of snorting a thing. And then no one ever said good things about Coke to me, until later I heard every once in a while. But mostly people were like, ah, don't do Coke. It makes you crazy. Your heart's going to explode.
People didn't sell cocaine to me.
Well, it just didn't seem like the people that I saw doing Coke were going anywhere. It seemed like it was tripping up their life pretty bad.
Right, right.
I was very fortunate that when I was in high school, my friend, his cousin, was selling it. And his cousin got addicted to it. And I watched this guy go from being like a normal guy to being this person who just hung out in this attic apartment and lost all his weight and just did Coke and watched TV and sold. Coke. It's like you got bit by a vampire.
Yeah. Wow. I'm always afraid my heart is going to explode, even without doing Coke. Like I said, my heart will race. I'm just so paranoid about heart.
Does heart shit ever fuck you up, like mentally, the fact that your heart beats every second or whatever for 80 years, and if it stops, that's the end of it?
That's how it works, Joe Louis.
I know, but does that ever trip you out a little bit? I don't want to sound like it's fucking crazy, man, but I'm like, that's nuts.
It is nuts. Yeah, and if it stops, you're dead. And if you get a transplant, it's a motherfucker. They're trying to do pig transplants now. They did it on this one guy and one person.
I don't know if it was a guy or a gal or a non-binary folk, like a fisher folk, but they did it and the person stayed alive for a short amount of time. I think it was a couple weeks.
So they just jammed a pig heart in there?
It's a modified pig heart somehow or another. Pig parts and human parts apparently are super similar in some way.
I've fucked a few pigs. Hello, folks.
You son of a gun. What does it say here? How long did the man with the pig heart live? He lived for 61 days.
Hey, that's not bad.
That's not bad. Research into working on the new pig-to-human transplantation technique for over 30 years. If successful, harvesting hearts from genetically modified pigs whose genes have been altered so they can be safely transplanted to humans, may one day be a reality. Wow. I think.
on the way to that, though, I bet they're going to 3D print hearts.
Yeah, I think. so. As scary as AI is, I think all our problems are over, dude. We're going to be making hearts and brains and all kinds of shit.
We're going to be connected to the Matrix, eating steak, being an important person like Joey Pants.
Yeah, we're going to be great. I'm going to have perfect eyesight and a strong jawline by the end of the year, I think.
You're not going to stop there. You're going to look like He-Man.
I'm going to go buy a fucking big chest.
You're going to go Superman. You're going to go the Hulk. Why wouldn't you? What, do you want to be a fucking human when you could be a superhero? If you can genetically alter yourself to make yourself more masculine and thick, and bigger and stronger, why would you stop at three?
Why don't you go to 26??
Right. I don't think I could be more masculine, but I do feel like I would like some more girth.
If that could be done genetically, though, where would you stop? That's the question. People would get ridiculous. It's like when people don't eat. I'm sure you've seen those Instagram videos of people with fake butts walking on the beach.
They just went so far. It's like, what? This is great. You're going to die. That stuff can't be good for you.
What is that? Yeah, I see it all the time. You just look imbalanced. It doesn't look good.
It looks insane. It's an insane look. My point is, if they can do that with genetics, if it ever gets to a point where the mold of what we think of as the human physique has been completely thrown out the window, because now we're going to alter it from its very core to be a completely different structure. You're going to just change what a person looks like. People are going to be giants.
They're going to be dragons. It's going to be fucking real-life cosplay.
Right. Do you think anybody will be like, I'm sticking with this? I'm going long and thin.
Oh, there's going to be a few people that pretend for a little while. There's the same folks that say, I don't even have email. Fuck you. You got email now, bitch. In 2001, you might not have had email.
But I bet you have it now.
Yeah. Well, you have to have it now, I feel like.
Yeah, you kind of have to have it now.
I enjoy email. That's my take.
Well, it's certainly better than not having email. People are like, well, and the privacy, and they're hacking your email, and they're sending you these scams. And, yep, yep, that's what comes with this new thing.
Well, I just had a friend who works for some business that was getting, I don't know all the details, nor would I share them if I had them, but their company was getting sued or something, and then they just accessed his emails, and now they have 100% of his emails. So he was saying, like, don't ever email. a fucking joke like, hey, I'm going to kill that guy or anything, because they have it. Like, we should do all phone communication. Maybe they're listening to the phones, too.
I don't know.
Yeah, I'm sure they are. I think they didn't lock that down quick enough, and when Edward Snowden exposed the NSA's gigantic sweeping surveillance sort of thing, and it's all under the guise of stopping terrorism, which, by the way, you fucking never hear about anymore. What happened to terrorism?
We nailed it.
Climate change took the spot of terrorism.
Well, we stopped it. The Patriot Act worked, baby. It must have. We did it.
It must have, otherwise they'd be talking about it.
We done, did it.
Do you remember when, after 9-11, there would be a threat level, like our code? Yeah. Today's code is yellow.
It was like forest fires.
Okay, we're good. Yellow's good.
Right.
You know, I have to bring a bulletproof vest to Starbucks.
Yeah, it was scary as fuck. It was like they really got to us, but they nailed that terrorist attack. I mean, they knocked it out of the park.
It was certainly one of the all-time great terrorist attacks in terms of publicity, in terms of how it affected the world.
It's got to be number one, right?
Yeah, but it's just a crazy thing that an action like that changes your rights forever, changes everybody's rights forever.
But don't you think, someone was just debating this somewhere, doesn't it feel like COVID feels like it changed life more than 9-11?? Like 9-11, it's now like shoes, and you can't, at the airport, and you can't go to the gate. Right. But other than that, it doesn't really feel that different. Whereas COVID does feel different, where, like cities have emptied out, and people still wear masks, and six feet, it's just much more, life feels more different after this than it did 9-11 in my eyes.
Well, because COVID got everyone to comply. COVID got everyone to do things that whoever was on television was telling you to do. It became a different thing where there was an experimental medication, and you were encouraged to take it, and if you took it, you wanted other people to take it too. Right. This is a fucking thing that people do.
When they do something, they want you to do it too. And especially if they can connect what they did with doing the right thing, they want you to do it. Sure. People do that with everything. They do that with yoga class.
You don't think they do that with vaccines?
No. I think there's all the time in New York where you see people, one person starts crossing the street while the light is green, and literally the entire herd starts following them. And then a car comes like fucking, and then they have to jump back because they were just watching that one person.
Yeah. Happens all the time. People go, well, it's also cell phone brain too. Right. People are constantly checking, oh, we're walking now?
And they just will walk.
Yeah.
Did you know, I heard this recently, that gum sales have gone down, gum and candy, because people are looking at their phone in line at like CVS instead of just staring at, you know, they have the gum and candy underneath the register. Oh, interesting. Yeah, that's what I, I don't know if I read it or heard it, but like before, you'd be staring going, oh, man, I could go for a Milky Way. But now instead you're looking at, you know, a pigeon shitting on a guy.
That completely makes sense.
Yeah.
Yeah, that really makes sense. Of course. Yeah, people just want, that's a new distraction. I wonder if it's the same thing at the supermarket, when those stupid tabloids, when they're selling less.
I would imagine so.
Who's buying that now?
Well, they have tabloids built into the phone now.
Yeah. Also, like, the stories aren't outrageous enough.
Right.
Compared to what's like real online, it's mostly fluff pieces, because you have to get celebrities to agree to do them. Like, you know, us and people and all those.
Right. I'm blown away by, we were talking about this before you got here, like, I'm grateful I'm not into this dark web. My algorithm is all like baseball and Martin Scorsese. I didn't, like, Duncan Trussell last night was talking about some crazy shit he sees on the internet, like children shooting each other. And then I was on your mom's house, and they were like showing videos of dicks being peeled back and inserting cushions into dicks.
Cushions? I don't know.
Something where they put, do you know what it is? They had some guy had a big pad under his hand. They're putting, I don't even know what it is. Like, do you know what I'm talking about, James?
A pad under his hand?
Yeah. I don't know the terminology. Like, people put, like, horns on their dick. It's some kind of product that puts bumps in you. Oh, I see what you're saying.
Yeah. Body, what is it? Body modification.
Yeah. One guy had, like, it, looked like a spider on his palm or whatever the fuck this is.
Oh, yeah. They give themselves horns and shit.
Yeah.
Yeah, bumps all over their head.
I don't know what made me think of that. Oh, just that those videos exist. I wasn't getting those. I feel so naive. I'm like, did you see this?
Tommy Lasorda saying motherfucker video? And other people are looking at dicks being altered.
Yeah. If you can get in the wrong algorithm on Instagram, it can be quite disturbing. And I'm definitely in the wrong algorithm.
We've got to get you back.
I don't think I can get back. I think they have me now, because if they send it my way, I'm going to look at it, because it's all, there's so many murder videos.
Well, I feel like I just was saying this recently. Like, it took me a long time to really get got by the algorithm. Like, I was kind of like, I don't know what that is, but they finally figured me out. And it's, like, behind the scenes baseball, sports shit, people talking shit in the locker room.
That's right.
That and, like, and filmmakers breaking down, you know, Kubrick or whatever. You know John Boy, you know that guy on YouTube?
No, I don't.
Oh, he's awesome. Yeah? It's a great hole to go down. We were talking about it before. He lip reads all these baseball fights and arguments.
You know, when the umpire and manager are fighting each other, he's like a professional lip reader, and he's hilarious. And there's a million videos. You've got to see it. J-O-M, boy, you'll love it. Get in that algorithm because he's awesome.
But it's fucking hilarious. It's like my childhood prayers have been answered. You always watch the manager and umpire scream, and you're like, what the fuck are they saying?
Right. And they probably swear horrible shit at each other.
Oh, it's all cocksucker and motherfuckers. It's cocksucker and cocksucking. this. And horseshit is the other big one. A lot of horseshit and cocksucker.
And I've been trying to get those in my life more. Bring them back. Cocksucker's fun.
Cocksucker's fun. Joey Diaz always used it as a term of affection.
What's up, cocksucker?
Yeah, what's up, cocksucker? And when he said it, it was fun.
Well, you are bringing joy if you're sucking cock.
You are, but he's not saying it in that way. And so there's other ways, like words have different meanings. Like if you catch someone stealing your tire, what's up, cocksucker? Right. It's a different one.
Sure. But if Joey Diaz calls you out, what's up, cocksucker? You're like, what's up, Joey?
Yeah, it's very sweet. It's all a context. It's a different, yeah.
It's also the word, you know, the word can be a term of affection.
I'm not really a call, a guy stealing my tire, a cocksucker kind of guy. I'm a big 9-1-1.. I'd be like, 9-1-1, this guy.
You're just going to get your tire stolen.
Yeah.
You're going to wait for hours.
Well, I'd call the police and, you know, see what happens. Yeah. I mean, it depends on what kind of guy it is.
Right.
I might be able to fuck him up.
What if it's Duncan?
Drussel? Yeah. What, does he have? a tire iron? That's a good point.
Because that's a weapon.
That's a good point.
Yeah.
Well, where is the tire iron positioned? Because if the tire iron is positioned on the actual lug nut itself, you're at an advantage. Right.
I could probably take his back, as they say.
Yeah, you're going to smash him before he gets to that thing.
Now, let me ask you this. If you see a guy, he's crouched down, he's fucking with your car, and you're behind him, are you going blunt force to the head, or are you going to take his back and choke him out?
Depends on how big the guy is. Depends on the situation.
You hit someone with shoes on. It's really tricky, legally.
Hit someone with shoes on? Yeah. What do you mean? Them or you?
If you hit them with your shoes, it's kind of a weapon. Really? Yeah, I think they look at it differently. I think, even if you had these things on, like hokers, like running sneakers, I think it's still a weapon, which is ridiculous, because it's actually way softer than if I hit you with my bones.
You're going to take your shoes off to kick a guy?
No, no, but I'm saying whether I would hit him while they're doing that. I'd probably say something first and see how they react, but be ready to hit them.
Because it feels like if you fucking punch a guy or kick a guy as hard as you can, he might have a strong jaw, but I feel like choking a person...
Yeah, choking works most of the time, unless the guy knows how to fight. What if he has really good defense and you realize that immediately, and you forgot to put the second hook in because you were trying to stand up.
Right.
So he's spunting towards you, and you're like, oh my God, he's trained, and he gets an underhook, and then he trips you, now he's on top, and you're in fucking half guard on the concrete, and he's headbutting you.
And he's got a tie, iron. That was an old joke I tried doing about. my level of fighting, is if the person's cooperating, I can beat them.
Here it is. Any object made or adapted for the purposes of inflicting death or serious physical injury can be considered a deadly weapon. For example, a shoe or a shod foot used for kicking may be considered a dangerous weapon. That's dangerous or deadly, though, right? Because someone can...
We saw... What was that movie? Where...
Fuck.
What was the Curbstomp movie?
Oh, uh... American History X.
That's right, American History X. Right?
Yeah.
You can... That was like two weapons. The curb was a weapon, too, and then there was the boot.
That was unsettling. What is a shod foot, for those of us unfamiliar? I had to check. It. is a shoe or a foot with a shoe on it.
So what about flip-flops? What if you kick someone, you're wearing flip-flops. Is that a shod foot?
I don't know.
Because you're kind of at a disadvantage with flip-flops on.
We're going to have to go to the judges on that one. Or a slipper. I think it might be anything on your foot, because it goes back in the history of talking about people that were always barefoot. So that would be an unshod foot.
Yeah.
I don't know. I feel like it should be shooed fit. I feel like that was a shooed foot. I feel like that was a typo somewhere, and they just went with it. Shod?
Shod foot.
Is that a word? Shod? Yeah. It means with a shoe?
It means there's a shoe on your foot.
I mean, that should be shooed. I mean, this is easy. This is obvious.
Don't you think? It should be shooed. Why is it shod?
Do you know? the mound to home plate is 60 feet 6 inches? They did it with pencil, and the second one, it was supposed to be 60 feet even. But the zero looked like a six. That's why it remains 60 feet 6 inches.
Really? Yeah. It was not a typo, a fucking righto, whatever you call it. Right. I feel like that was shod.
I feel like they just left the E off. Shooed.
I think it's more like a proper English thou shalt, not thing.
That's gay.
You know what I'm saying?
Shod.
Your feet are shod.
Yeah. I get it. I like it. You know what I'm saying? I'm going to say shooed.
I think it's a proper thing.
Is it? Shod is middle English. See? Meaning. put shoes on or provide with a shoe.
Yeah, that stinks.
Shod sucks.
It's weird that we have English words in England that are spelled different than the way they're spelled in America.
Yeah, you see, there's old, O-L-D-E, town with an E.
Tires with a Y.
Oh, I don't know that one.
Color with a U. Yes. Color.
Flavor. There's a few of those.
But it's like the same language. Why are you guys fucking with the different words?
Yeah, I don't like it. I don't like it one bit.
What are you doing on the left side of the road, bitch? Yeah. We invented the car. Get the fuck over on the other side.
I heard it was from jousting. Is that something? Yeah. Does that make sense?
Yeah, it does, supposedly.
Have you ever driven out there?
I have not.
I've done it a few times. It's a thrill.
I would imagine it would be a little bit nerve-wracking to be on the wrong side of the road.
It is. I got great advice that the driver's always in the middle of the road. That's really helpful. It's like you're closer to the middle than the other end, which is the same here and there. You know what I mean?
No.
You're on the right side of the car, but the left side of the road. in England. If you look out the window, the middle of the road is right there. The line is next to you. Oh, okay.
In reverse, here in America, you're on the left side of the car, but the right side of the road. I see what you're saying. Yeah. I see what you're saying. That's helpful.
I've only ever done it with my wife in the car, because you need a second person to be like, don't forget, driving alone, I feel like I could fuck it up.
Yeah, you could fall back into the pattern and all of a sudden see yourself in the oncoming headlights.
Yeah. I think that's what happened to Matthew Broderick. Matthew Broderick. Yeah.
I don't know what happened. It's also just the shifting and everything. If you're operating a manual, shifting now with your left hand instead of your right, that would be bizarre.
No, I couldn't do that. I have a friend who's a big driver, and he said that was the one thing he couldn't do, because it was just too many things.
Yeah, because is the clutch still on the left-hand side? It is. So it's clutch, brake, accelerator, all in the same order, but now you're doing this. And then which side do you do it? Do you start far left or do you just start far right and move that way?
You don't do that, do you? That's what's weird, right?
Yeah.
If you're operating a manual transmission and you're in the English side, where's first gear? Is first gear up and to the left?
That is a great question. No, it's probably closer to you, up and to the right.
Yeah, like that?
Yeah.
Can I see that?
I think it's the same. I'm looking. Yeah, that's fucked up.
Yeah, I would imagine the thing they would have to do, that would be really hard to do, I think, for transmissions.
One of the hardest parts for me was I kept putting the windshield wipers on with the blinker, because you're used to the blinker being over here, so every single fucking time I would turn the windshield wipers on.
Yeah. I love a good windshield wiper stock. That's one thing that bums me out about my Tesla.
What's a stock?
A little stock. A little thing that does the windshield wipers. A little thing, you know, a little thing that sticks out of the steering wheel. A little thing that does the blinkers.
Oh, oh, oh. I'm thinking of the windshield wiper itself. The little...
That does the blinkers.
You don't have that? No, everything's... It's a button.
Everything's this.
Yeah, a button stick.
There's buttons on the steering wheel that change lanes. There's buttons for a horn.
No, it's fun to have the physical...
Yeah, I'm going left. Yeah. I'm going right. I'm going... You know, like, come on.
Sometimes I reach through and grab it over here. You can... You got options.
I like going like this.
I like getting that. It feels like you're doing, like, an alt comic. It's normal. Yeah.
But isn't it a normal feeling to, like, hit the blinkers and turn right?
Of course, it's satisfying.
But you do it. You do that thing before you turn. You don't press a button on your steering wheel. It feels odd. It feels...
Every time, like, don't fuck this up. I've had this car for two years. And every time I press... Sometimes I'll press the left button, when I meant to press the right button. Like, fuck.
I would love if you did exactly this on stage. And the crowd's like, what? What the fuck is wrong with you? Just the total crickets.
Like a really bad Seinfeld bit. Like a copy of a Seinfeld bit.
Great set last night, by the way. I went up to the balcony and watched it. Very funny. Thank you. I didn't know you knew that, but...
Thank you.
It was a fun night.
Yeah, it was awesome. It's so fun to run back and forth to the two rooms. And there's such different kinds of rooms.
Oh, yeah. That little room is magic.
And you've become... They're both great. Like a comedy pilgrimage. I ran into, like... First of all, I felt like a fucking celebrity out in Austin.
from those shows. I bumped into two guys from Calgary that came just to see the room. Then I sat next to another guy at a restaurant that was from Montreal, who came just to see the room. And then I met another guy who was from England. Just fucking walking around.
I was fucking around with the crowd last night. There's people from Australia. There are people from all over the place.
Yeah, it's a destination. Yeah. Comedy pilgrimages. People... They just want to see the room.
It's fun. I hope more people do things like this other places.
Did you ever go on any, like... When you... Before you started, like... I gotta go see... Or when you started.
I gotta go see fucking whoever. Did you go on a road trip to go see a comic? Like make a comedy fan trip?
Yeah, a couple of times. I mean, in the early days, I went to see a bunch of comics. But, Kennison. I went to see Kennison a couple of times.
Yeah.
Yeah, I was like...
Eighty... Eighty-nine? Eighty, eighty-nine. And the problem was, it was like, Kennison had already sort of deteriorated. So it was kind of a bummer.
It's like we were talking about. You can't go that hard. And keep being productive, it feels like.
Yeah, it was pretty evident that... It was not the same kind of insight that you had from his earlier work. His earlier work wasn't just wild. It was wild and like... That's a really good point.
Yeah, yeah.
It was wild and like... Wow. This is like great writing. This is like interesting subject matter. And you got this wild dude.
And then the stuff about marriage was so funny. It was so like... Obviously, the guy had been in fucking terrible agony and heartbreak. It was so obvious that people had broken his heart. Right.
And you bought into it hook, line, and sinker. But from that special, from... So he has his first thing, which is louder than hell, which is a cassette. And it's really fucking good. It's hard to get.
I got an album of it.
Okay.
I think you can get it some places. But I think... I don't know. There was some controversy with it. There's a lot of like, very homophobic stuff in there.
But then it goes from that to the HBO special. And I think that... Have You Seen Me Lately, it's called. And the HBO special is fucking amazing. I mean, it's amazing.
It's just so good. There's so many good bits of it. And then the one after that's not. It's just flat. It just feels fake.
It feels like he's a guy trying to imitate Sam Tennyson.
Yeah. I feel like that... I mean, I would never name names. But I feel like that happens sometimes with comics, where they have great material and a very unique way of doing it. And then they kind of start to lose the material and just have that unique way.
And the marriage of the two is what made it great.
Well, I think it's hard to write when you're partying all the time. Absolutely. And you're going to events. And you're the guy in the Bon Jovi video. And you're this and you're that.
And you're... You know, I mean, his whole life, he was this like weirdo and this preacher. And then he gets in a comedy and becomes one of the greatest of all time. And then all of a sudden, he's a fucking superstar in the rock and roll days of like Poison and Guns and Roses. And like, whoa, and he's the rock and roll comic.
Right. You know? So he's like singing on stage. now. He brings a guitar on stage.
Did you ever see some of that?
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, that song Wild Thing.
Yeah. I vaguely remember. I never was a huge Tennyson guy. I wasn't big into the screaming. I mean, I always find that comedy doesn't hold up great.
Most comedy, which is what makes comedy great to me. So I think by the time I saw it, I was like a kid and just like, didn't quite understand it. And then later I was like, I don't know. I mean, I respect Tennyson, obviously. He just wasn't one of my guys.
For me, it was like catching it in the actual context of the time of 1980, whatever it was, when he popped. Right. I want to say it was 86.. Was it 86?? Yeah.
So that's like right around the time when I had heard about... It's like he's partying with all these rock stars. He made music videos. But it just, it became a different thing, man. You know, with the, it was all the look and it was all like the, you know, being seen at the right places with the right people.
And oh, Sam's here, Sam's here. Right. And he's doing lines. But before that, when he was coming up, it was developing material. Like coming up with like really good unique bits that would make you this superstar.
And then, once he became a superstar, it was like poison for that.
Right. That's what's so hard about getting so big is that people are like, yeah, the guy. And so it's so hard to balance, I imagine. I'm not in that position. But I mean, you're pulling it off.
It's, I mean, you just can't, you can't buy into the bullshit. Right. You can't be fucking partying with Bon Jovi and rock and roll every night. It's like you're not going to get anything done.
Yeah, you need an amount of humility. It also feels like. that feels so removed from what makes stand-up great. is a guy standing there telling jokes. It's like now you have a guitar and a gang and women and drums and you're like, well, that's not really.
Like look at Chappelle. He's doing it the right way. A guy just gets on a plane and shows up in a studio, in a city somewhere and starts doing guest spots. Just starts going up, goes up at the end of shows, practices, fucks around. Right.
And the next night he'll fly to this place or that place. Yeah. Goes places and fucks around, writing, always working on new bits.
Yeah.
Always turning over material.
No, you got to do it. Now, do you still listen to sets? Do you record sets?
Yeah, I record all of them. Yeah. Yeah. I owe myself a few listens, though. I've been slacking off, especially the bottom of the barrel listens.
Those are the ones you really got to listen to.
Yeah, that's a really fun show. I'm like, it makes me uncomfortable, which is why it's fun to do. If the people don't know, I guess the audience writes down shit and you just pull them out.
Yeah, you have a barrel and the audience writes down suggestions for topics, and then you just reach in the barrel, pull it out and start riffing.
Yeah.
It's fun. It's fun.
It was super fun. Yeah, that's not, I don't do a lot of that, so it was fun to get in that spot. Yeah, that was great. That room fucking rules, the smaller room.
Yeah, that's an honest little room.
They were fucked up last night.
Super intimate. It's a super intimate room.
Yeah, it was great. They were, it felt like a 1 a.m. spot last night. The late show? No, it was the early one.
Oh, really? They were fucked up on the early show? Yeah, they were jacked up. Yeah, it was one of those ones where you say something and then they kind of break into conversation a little bit and I'm like, are you all right? What are you guys?
And they're like, oh, no, I'm in the way. But they were fucking great and it was really fun getting stuff out of them. Because a room that small, if people are kind of chatting or chuckling, you can deal with them more. It's like when you're in a massive room and somebody's yelling or talking from the back, you can't really deal with it.
Yeah, if you're in a theater and that's happening, it's a real problem.
Exactly.
But in a comedy club, you can pause and go, what are we doing?
Yeah, like a real dialogue with them.
But you don't want to. That's the thing. It's like we've got to train people to just not talk out loud. Just like you don't do in the movie theater, don't do it at a comedy club. And don't talk to the comedians either.
Don't just talk at them.
Well, do you think, I mean, what do you think about all these crowd work clips? Don't you think we're breeding this? 100%. I feel like it's a very bad situation.
It's not a bad situation, because it's just how they do it. Some people do it that way.
But it makes the audience want more of that. I was talking, my niece just went to college and she has a roommate who's like 18 years old. She's like essentially a high school kid. And she was like, what do you think of crowd work? And I'm like, it's so crazy that teenage kids are like, oh, crowd work.
Well, because those are the clips you could put online, because it doesn't burn your material.
Right.
Because it's a unique moment.
Right. But sometimes I feel like there's comics going up there just trying to get those moments. They definitely are. And it's annoying. And then the audience thinks like, oh, I'll be part of this.
Well, there's comics that'll trick you too. You go see their actual act. You know, the thing about crowd work is it's always funnier when you're there.
Of course.
But it's always funnier, because everyone knows it's happening live and you don't know what's going to happen, and neither does the comedian. They know it's completely improvised.
Well, that's why it works, because obviously comedy is about getting everybody to be like, oh, yeah. And if they're seeing it live,
it just happens.
Good point. But DePaulo used to always say that, you know, I worked with Nick for years and he'd be like, oh, you're funny off the cuff? Yeah, that's called a fucking being funny. That's easy. Write some material, you fuck.
Yeah, if you can do both, that's great.
Right.
But some people only do one or the other. Right. Yeah.
But there gets to be, yeah, there's tricks to it.
You definitely don't want to encourage people to interrupt people who don't do crowd work, though. That's where it becomes a problem when people are drunk and they think, I'm going to get on a video. Right. That kind of shit does happen.
Now, how do you feel about MCs in New York, which is the only city that does this, where the MC goes up and just asks everybody where they're from and does almost exclusively crowd work? They never did that in Boston when I was starting and they didn't do it here in Austin, really.
Why do they do that in New York?
I don't know. It's a New York thing. New York comics, they think that's what the MC does. I think part of it is to find out where everyone's from, because there's so many tourists. But most MCs in New York just do a lot of crowd work.
And I've heard people even be like, I don't like hosting because I don't do crowd work. And I'm like, well, you don't have to. Just fucking go up.
Does anybody not do crowd work? Does anybody just go up and say, hey, what's up, everybody? How you doing? Let me tell you about my day.
I don't think so. Really? When I hosted this years ago, when Artie Fuqua got in the accident, they needed hosts at the cellar, so I volunteered. And I hosted for like six weeks. And I felt like I was the only one that just went straight into material, which I think is better, because I find the audience, if they're settling in and ordering and getting their drinks and whatever, figuring out who's sitting where, if you look up and the comic is talking to somebody, they're going, okay, it hasn't really started yet.
He's talking to that lady. But if you look up and they're in the middle of a bit, you're like, shh, fucking quiet. The show started. That's how I always felt.
Yeah. The problem with someone talking to the audience is it does kind of encourage the audience to talk to some future comedians if they have a point that the person disagrees with, or if they're getting to a point and you cut them off because you can say something. You know how. sometimes guys will mislead you with a bit? Of course.
What is he saying? Oh, ha, ha, ha. But some people jump in in the middle of it.
Right. And fuck it up. Exactly.
And they think they can because someone's been talking to them in the audience.
Exactly, yes. And they're like, oh, this is a dialogue. I got it. Perfect.
Or it gives them an opportunity to be outraged. and now this is kind of encouraged to give feedback. It's encouraged to talk.
Right. I also think that the audience needs to hear the rhythm of a few jokes. But to me, it's like if you do crowd work for five minutes and then do ten minutes of jokes, but sometimes you have an MC where you're like, if you're going first, you're like, I'm now the first one telling a joke, which is no good. I think the audience needs to hear like, oh, okay, some bits.
Yeah. I think that definitely would set everybody else up for the rest of the night, and that's really what the MC should be doing.
But I remember Attell would get annoyed because Attell always wants to know where everyone's from. So he would ask me like, where are they from? And I was like, I don't know. And you could see that he was like, what? And there's nothing worse than upsetting Attell.
That's so, New York.
That's so, New York.
It's so weird.
I know.
That New York has this one thing where everybody goes and asks the fucking audience member where they're from.
It's very strange. They're like, I've never seen a comic. one time. It made me laugh so hard. The audience member made me laugh so hard because the person was like, what are you doing?
And they're like, I'm at a show. What do you mean? They're like, I'm on a date. I don't get it. I just never, to me, it's like, we're supposed to be doing a show.
I don't get why. I don't care what the audience is from or what they're doing.
I always felt like that style came out of the fact that the comedy clubs in New York when I was coming up, they were all very intimate. They were very small. Yeah. Like Boston Comedy was very small. Catch a Rising Star was small.
The Cellar's small. And because you're like right on top of people and they're packed in and there's not that many of them, I felt like it's more intimate. The stage is smaller and I think it sort of led comedians to want to kind of personalize everything.
Yeah, yeah. Which I feel in that small room at your club, what's it called? Little Boy. Little Boy, yeah. I do instinctively start being like, you ever had this?
Because it does feel like you're at a hang.
Yeah, you're hanging.
Right. Which is really nice.
if you're doing material because it's just like you're real intimate in that room. You're on top of those people.
Yeah, I feel like you could shoot a special in there, or maybe someone already has. I think somebody shot one in the big room.
David Lucas just shot a special in that little room.
Yeah. Yeah. That's a fucking killer. run. Brian, did he shoot something at your room?
He shot something in the big room.
Brian Simpson blew me away last night. Oh, he's hilarious. By the way, I always knew he was funny, but I like, it's so rare you get to sit and watch comedy and I sat in the balcony watching and I was like, this guy's, like next level.
The balcony's. the shit, isn't it?
It's unbelievable.
It's awesome. When we first were walking around the building, when it was bare bones and we're standing up there in the balcony, one of the first things we're thinking, you know how badass it's going to be to be just sitting up here chilling and like, watching Chappelle go on stage. and so, when it actually happened, when we were there, the week had opened and Dave came by and we're watching him. I'm standing on the balcony. I'm like, dude, I looked at Tony Hinchcliffe and I go, this is like exactly what we imagined.
It was the exact thing that we imagined.
That's an unbelievable feeling. I don't want to sound gay, but we're very lucky people that we've lived a life where it's like, I imagined this and then did it. Oh yeah.
Super, super lucky, but also, like, that's a good thing. Like, when I was thinking about doing it, I didn't want to do it. I'm like, this is too much work. I don't want to be involved in this. I always told comedians, be really nice to club owners because we need them and you don't want to beat them.
Right.
We need them. We need someone to own the club. Of course. We need a place to go. Who would want to deal with some of the maniacs that we knew?
Yeah, this is it.
Oh, wow.
That's the little boy. No, that's the big room. Yeah,
that's the balcony. Wow, that's killer.
Yeah, so that's before the concrete had been poured. It's, you know, those guys are standing on foam, so there's a foundation under that, and then they put these massive blocks of dense foam and then on top of the foam, then they lay more of that rebar and then pour concrete. It's crazy what they did, because it was basically set up like a movie theater, like tiered, you know, like stadium type seating, and we lifted the floor up and made it flat.
So how did it work? Did you like, I feel like I'm interviewing you now, but I mean, how did you just explain the vision to a?
whatever you call it? An amazing architect. Richard's an amazing architect, and one of the things about Richard is he's also a musician. He's an artist. He's like, he has an eye for things.
He sees things and he totally got the concept of it. and so when we, we had looked at another building. I told you about the place that was owned by a cult. So we had that place and then that one fell apart. and then when that fell apart, it was really hard to find another spot.
and this place wasn't for sale. It was only, they only wanted to lease it. and I was like, I'm not gonna do that. I need to be able to own it. Like, it doesn't make any sense.
And so,
fortunately, they changed their mind and they sold it to me. and when they sold it, and one of the things they liked was that, you know, Sixth Street, they're making a lot of like, apartment buildings and high rises, and they loved the fact that I was just gonna keep it a live entertainment venue.
Yeah.
And, because it's a 1927 theater. Yeah. Stevie Ray Vaughan played there in the 80s.
Yeah, I saw all the posters. Yeah. Killer, fucking bands. Now, did you, were you drawing sketches or were you just saying, this is what I'd like it to look like?
I didn't draw any of it. Richard did everything, but Richard Wise. Um, we, we went over it. We had a structure, right, because there was a, Alamo Drafthouse had been there before and we also had, we had a big advantage in that Richard had redesigned the Alamo Drafthouse. So, he was the one who was in charge of that project.
So, he knew the whole bones of the building. Because they converted it from like, I think it was a rock and roll club previous to that. And then they turned it into the Alamo Drafthouse. And so, they had to build a kitchen, they had to build these rooms, they had, to, you know, set it up for the movies and do everything. So, he knew exactly where everything was.
And so, we had two rooms in one building, which I really liked. Because I wanted a smaller, more intimate room and a bigger room.
Yeah.
And so, when we saw it, we just had to address like, okay, how do we do this? And we, we had a bunch of different ways of looking at it. We always agreed that the projection room would be the green room. Like, that makes the most sense. It's in the center of the two rooms and it gives you the option of just literally walking there and seeing one room or going this way to the balcony and seeing the other room.
So, that was like, that was a no-brainer. And then we blew the walls out. so it connects to the balcony and we set everything up and moved all the equipment out. We had old projectors in there and shit. And then we built everything out.
And then, in the process of building everything out, I had Louie come and look at it. And Louie had some amazing advice. He gave me some great advice about shrinking the size of the stage in the little room, lowering the ceiling even further. And the little room was like a low ceiling. He's like, can you get it lower?
I'm like, yeah, I think we can get it lower. maybe like a foot or two lower. You know, so we did that. And then, in the main room, the same thing. He said, lower the ceiling.
And so the ceiling drops. So you have, you know, the balcony, you can see how the ceiling drops when you look out the balcony. So you just see like the top of the stage.
I always thought it would be a great idea, I mean, it would cost billions of dollars, to have a comedy club that you could move the walls in depending on the crowd size. You know how there's like a curtain? But you wish you could just fucking physically move the wall to tighten it up. Because obviously, comedy just works tighter.
Yeah.
I mean, that's not, it's an impossibility. This is my fantasy. Oh. I mean, it's not an impossibility. Oh,
it is an impossibility. You'd just have to have walls that were on tracks. And you'd have the tracks built into some sort of an, some sort of an engine that moved them back and forth. But it'd probably be stupid. It would take up way too much room.
You know, how are the power, are they diesel generated or the electric?
No, manpower. Everyone gets behind, the audience. Oh, Jesus. Pushes the wall in.
Yeah, it would have to be that, because if it was some sort of a computer, it would malfunction and kill everyone. It would just compress the entire audience.
Like fucking Star Wars.
Yeah, exactly, like Star Wars. Imagine if you have a sold out show and someone hits the hundred seat button and people are just stacked up on top of each other in the middle of the fucking room.
That's a great episode, for like one of those, what do you call it, what's that fucking show? Black Mirror. Black Mirror. Or I was thinking of Twilight Zone. But yeah, same shit.
That's what I was wondering, though, if you could just explain to the architect what it looks like. Because this blew my mind a while ago. I was watching like some Springsteen behind the album thing. I don't know if it was the river or darkness or whatever. But I never knew, there's a scene where Bruce is talking to Clarence Clemens, and it's just like, it should sound like this.
And he's just like mouthing the sound of the saxophone, which, in my mind, it's like, Bruce is writing musical notes or something. Right. You don't picture a guy just being like, it should sound like this. And then the guy does it. It kind of was like, wow.
You know, it blew me away, but there's a lot of musicians who don't read music.
No, I think, like most, and it's funny, I took mandolin, not most, but many rock musicians, I took mandolin lessons years ago and it was fun, and I thought I wouldn't be able to read music because I'd always hear like Eddie Vedder can't read music and Bruce Springsteen. And it turns out it's not that hard. They just didn't feel like learning it. Like in my mind, I was like, these geniuses can't do it. And then the lady was like, no, they just didn't want to learn how to read music.
It's just, it looks like a weird alien language. when you see all the musical notes and everything. Like to me, they register as nothing. Of course. I've seen people with musical notes tattooed, you know, like they have, like a strip of like music line and like the musical notes around it.
I don't know. It could be Nazi stuff.
Of course. I don't know what it is. It's crazy. And I've seen, I have friends that are like world-class musicians and it's crazy to watch them just read a thing and play it. It's like a magic trick.
I hate to do this, but I just got an IV before this and I have to piss already.
Oh, piss. What do I do? Do I just...
You can be two or just hang out. We'll be right back.
No, I just feel like I'll be all fucking jacked up.
Jacked fucking up. You drink caffeine, though, right?
Yeah, I drink caffeine. I'm a green tea guy.
Are you a coffee guy ever or just a green tea guy?
No, I've never been a coffee guy. Really? I've had, I had one cup of coffee in my life and it was in Peru. I was on vacation in Peru and we're in like this coffee field and this guy was like, people fly from all over the world to have this coffee and I was like, well, I gotta have it. I'm in Peru and I was like, this is the worst thing I've ever drank in my life.
I'm just not a coffee guy, but as I get older it smells very good. so maybe I would like it, but I like green tea and you know.
Green tea's nice.
Very nice.
Coffee is one of those weird things that people call an acquired taste, and I don't know why anybody would ever want to acquire a taste.
But if my beer was like that, when you first had beer, were you like, nice. I was like, this is fucking shit.
I'm sure I didn't. When I was a kid, I was probably like, this is fucking gross.
That's how I felt. I like spit it out.
You're only drinking it to get fucked up.
Yeah, but then don't you, didn't you acquire a taste for it? Like an IPA, you're like, ooh, this is delightful.
I don't like IPAs as much. I like a cold ale. You know, like a cold ale on a hot day. You know, like fish and chips.
Of course. Beer has to be, beer and soda. to me, because I just needed them. ice, cold. Beer.
I would drink piss warm. Clearly,
nobody drinks soda tea, right, at tea temperatures.
Right, but I mean, you can get a warm soda and you're like furious, I mean.
I wonder what it would taste like if you microwaved your soda. Like if you had a Coca-Cola.
and you nuked it up to,
or if you put it in a teapot.
Does it boil? I'm sure it would boil.
It's liquid. If you just poured it in a teapot, it's mostly water, and heated it, to. the thing was going off, and then you poured it in your cups and just drank hot Coca-Cola.
I don't know. I mean, it's not, I assume it would lose its fizz,
right? of course it would, but imagine if we just invented something awesome and nobody thought to do it ever until just now.
We might have done it.
Has anybody done that before? There must be YouTube videos. So,
I'm reading right now A hot Dr. Pepper is a drink that straddles the line between the two. When heat is applied to a cool can of soda, it transforms into a light, refreshing, soft drink into a thick, sweet tea.
Odd as a hot soda might sound, it's really nothing different from a glass of hot cider. I think I did a bit. I don't remember the bit where I said I like to boil my soda, and I can't remember why I said it, but I had a bit like that.
Fuck. I don't remember why I said that.
That's a weird thing to say.
Yeah, I don't remember the bit.
Were you just being outrageous about other things? Like, was it a contrary thing?
No, I forget. Maybe it was about.
Like,
I like cold steak and boiled soda.
I can't even remember. God damn. Do you ever have those? You're like, I know I've said this sentence before and I don't know why.
It's the worst.
Yeah, I can't remember. I like to boil my soda. It was something about. I don't fucking know. I hear you.
I can't remember,
but It'll come back to you. It's like, that's one of those memories that you have to like. stop pushing the memory guy to find it. He's like, I can't find it. I can't find it.
You're like, okay, I'm gonna leave you alone. I'm gonna leave you alone. I'm gonna move on. if you find it, let me know.
Like, oh, just metaphor for life. And then you go,
yeah.
You gotta let go or it doesn't work.
Sometimes that spin, you're not getting any traction. It's like, when you get stuck in snow and you're like, hey, hey, hey, you're gonna blow out your transmission, settle down.
Right.
Let's, let's figure this out.
It was an Alan Watts. I found it. You're talking about a, you found that? Yeah. Sometimes I boil a Pepsi right before bed.
Yeah. I can't remember. I still don't remember. I don't know. I can't believe.
you found that. That's crazy.
That's funny.
Yeah. I don't, I don't remember.
It is weird how, like, there's some drinks that, like traditionally, are just warm or cold. That's it. But coffee, you can be both.
You can be both. Same with water. You can have an ice water. You can have a, well, you never had, I mean hot water, I guess you drink.
nobody drinks hot water unless it's got flavor in it.
I drank hot water last night at the club. By the way, I had a big moment at the club. I have a contribution to the club. You do. Because you have a tea kettle and there was no tea bags.
And then I was sarcastically shitting on the club to Curtis and then he ratted me out to you. But I just drank a hot water because it's, it is calming, even if there's nothing in it to drink warm water. And then somehow, I don't, it's a mystery. He left for like 10 minutes and came back with high-end tea.
Like sealed. There must be like a store nearby or something.
I guess. At 1030 at night on 6th Street.
I don't know. 6th Street's pretty wild.
It was a magic trick.
It was an unusual place, man. Have you been there on the weekends?
Oh yeah. I hate it.
It's the worst place on Earth to me. I mean, the club is great. But I'm not joking. We were talking about it before. I jog back to the hotel.
It's like a block and a half.
It's sketchy.
Yeah. But that's part.
of what I like about it.
It's, uh, yeah.
It also gives us an opportunity to hire a lot of cops.
I love it.
Yeah. We have a lot of cops that work there.
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