A Practical New Yorker as an Impractical Guest! -With James "Murr" Murray

0:00The sun's shining, birds are singing, and all feels right in the world. Until the season changes and suddenly you lose your motivation to get out of bed. In fact, one in five people experience some form of depression no matter the season or time of year. At the American Psychiatric Association Foundation, our vision is to build a mentally healthy nation for all. Because we want you to live your best life and be your best you all year round. Please visit MentallyHealthyNation.org to learn more. Hello, everyone, and welcome to The New Yorkers, a podcast by New York City Cop. I'm your host, Kelly Copp.

0:35I'm a published photographer, New York City tour business owner, real estate content creator, podcaster, and above all else, a New Yorker. Ladies and gentlemen, the next Brooklyn Bell, Trace is now high. Stand clear of the closing doors, please.

1:06This is the Times Square. This is the Times Square. With me today, everyone, I have comedian James Murray right here, also known as Murr. on the hit TV show Impractical Jokers. He is also an executive TV and film producer as the president of Impractical Productions. He is a best-selling author of nine published titles and tours the world telling jokes to sold-out arenas. But unfortunately, he lives in New Jersey. I knew that was coming. What gives, Mer? Why Princeton? Why did I come on a New Yorker podcast when I live in Jersey now, man? So Mer, where are you from? Where were you born? Tell us the whole story.

2:00Like many people, I was born in a hospital that happened to be in Staten Island. So I grew up in Staten Island. We love Staten Island. Thank you. Come on by. I take the ferry there all the time. Do you? Yeah. Do you ever do anything on the island? You know what? I went and checked out Nona's. Nona's. Yes. Have you been there? From the movie that was just made about it. Right? Yeah. It's pretty amazing. The movie's pretty good. Yeah. That's a true story. What a crazy story that whole thing is. Right? Yeah. Everybody has to watch it too. Yeah. I haven't been there yet, but one day soon. It looks great on the Netflix movie or whatever it was.

2:29yeah i was on prime whatever it was anyway so i grew up in satan island then i moved to bay ridge uh i kind of reversed saturday night fevered it there yeah i lived there for many years and then moved to downtown manhattan yeah where i was like for 10 years or so what neighborhood in downtown manhattan i mean right here financial district oh nice down uh you know we have 10 blocks nice right across from city hall so you're familiar with where we are right now really well we well i'll tell you what on this corner uh-huh right here canal street and broadway is the shoe store where in Jokers in season one was birthed one of our famous catchphrases of us shouting, Larry!

3:03Larry, that was the shoe store on this corner. Really? Yeah. Wow, comes full circle here now. So it's an iconic corner. It really is. On beautiful Canal Street. Yeah, absolutely stunningly beautiful, clean, gorgeous Canal Street. If you're not from New York, come on by. Yeah, come on by. You can get, in the same store, you can get knockoff Gucci shoes and fireworks. You're right. It's a great 4th of July. So then, so you were downtown, you lived downtown for how long? I mean, 12 years. Wow. That's amazing. What years were you down here? Maybe 13 years, 2008 to COVID, to 2020. Wow. Then broke my lease and just stayed in Jersey.

3:44Nice. And so you're in Princeton? We're in Princeton now. My wife is from Philly. I'm from New York. So when we get married, we kind of moved halfway in between. and I kept the apartment in Manhattan at the beginning because we filmed so much. Right. I was like, well, you know, and I'm a tour, what have you. I was like, it'd be easy to have the place here too. And when COVID hit, I realized we're not filming in person anytime soon. Right. So I broke the lease and just stayed in Jersey. So how much of a break did you take with COVID from the show? Believe it or not, not much. Like most, a lot of TV shows were down for like a year or something like that.

4:15We were not. We started filming a new show called Dinner Party. we shot that from home right then we went back to work in jokers let's say the world shot down what march right 20 right we were back filming jokers by like july wow so only a few months we had to do we had to retool the show i was just gonna ask you because how do you shoot a hidden camera show where you're interacting with strangers when you can't interact with right right how did you do that then we uh we we had really clever ways to do it for an entire season like we would a lot of the things we do are like focus groups, things like that.

4:49Right. Right. So if it's a controlled situation like that, like a focus group, we can have people come in, test them. Cause that was the network requirement. You had to test. You have to wear masks. Well, then you're looking for the, if everybody's tested, everybody's negative, then you're hoping that you're going to get a percentage of people that are like, okay, I know we're in here is tested negative. Right. I'm willing to take my mask off. Right. The mask doesn't work for a hidden camera show. Right. Right. We did a whole season like that. Producing segments where we could somehow test people before they got on camera without them realizing they're about to be on a tv show it was tough man stop wow we pulled it off that's that's really interesting you know i mean i didn't really think you know i didn't think about asking about this but i'm glad you brought it up i mean oh and then we had we couldn't that whole season we couldn't even film in manhattan we usually film here in the city right right i go back to work in like two months two months filming but with COVID restrictions, the thing that kept us from filming in Manhattan was elevator restrictions in buildings.

5:49You couldn't have more than like two people in an elevator at a time. Well, how the hell do you get 60 crew members and equipment up into a building, two people at a time? Holy crap. So we filmed almost entirely of season nine in Jersey. That's rough. Where they didn't give a shit. Yeah. Put all the people in the elevator. Oh, that's hilarious. Wow, that's something I haven't thought about. And then you came back to normal with the show probably the next year, I'm guessing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. But I live in Jersey now, but I'm still a New Yorker at heart. Yeah. So how do you commute? Do the path train or?

6:21No, I just, I either drive or I have the TV, when I'm filming the TV show, they have a guy that takes us, you know? And so that's it. Yeah. I'm thinking, you know, you're a regular person like me or Jay who takes the subway every day, but you don't really have to. Not anymore. But when I lived in the city, I was on the subway every day. Yeah. I was, you know, I was, the guys would like bitch at me every day because they still live in Staten Island. Right. So they're fighting the BQE traffic every morning. It takes, sometimes they'll take them, like, let's say we're filming, uh, you know, Times Square.

6:53It takes them fricking an hour and a half from Staten Island to get to Times Square. Oh yeah. Right. Meanwhile, I was living here. I jump on the two, three train. I'm in Times Square in six minutes. Yeah. Express. Quick. And they're like, they're like F humor, you know? And then now, now the roles are reversed. Yep. now I'm bitching. We're filming in Queens. Yeah. Right. We filmed the Queens a few months ago and it took me like three fricking hours, man, from central Jersey. I was pulling my, what little hair I have left. And meanwhile, you know, Q's, uh, Q and seller flying in 25 minutes, no traffic.

7:26I'm like, that's hilarious. So do you miss the subway? Uh, I do miss, um, I do miss how easy it was to get around, man. Like we did a show. Um, We did Madison's, we performed Madison's Square Garden, right? 2017, we sold out the garden, right? Nice. And it was a huge night, right? Just because we did a live show in Manhattan, I mean, 16 years ago, right before the show, TV show got on the air and two people bought tickets to see us perform, right? They spent five bucks a ticket. We, so we, so they, we made$10 profit on the night. The theater cost us, the theater cost us$65 to rent. So we lost$55, right?

8:08it was this little shitty uh black box in um that's awesome in the west village right nice two people bought tickets and then like you know eight years later we sell at the garden it was huge right and for a new yorker it was a hugely emotional night right i hope my family was there and i was still alive it was unbelievable right but i took the subway to my own show at the garden that's pretty cool right so i'm in my suit like performing uh commuting up to the garden i come out of the the two three train on uh seventh avenue south i come out i see the garden and the whole side of the garden said impractical jokers sold out and literally tears are shirming down my face man you know but i'm in the subway commuting with fans of jokers right going to see my show at the garden which i think is such a people recognize you on the oh yeah yeah i think it's such a uniquely new york thing yeah like a new yorker what's the best way to get to the garden to be at your own show take the subway you know you know i mean that that's the epitaph you're the opinion you are a new yorker and so i mean you see tom hanks in the subway all the time yeah you know like there's no better way to get around assuming you don't get stabbed yeah you know but try not to yeah i try not to every day actually but which is funny but you know it's interesting though because uh you know i moved here it's about 13 years ago from florida and florida were you uh well i lived in orlando for a long time you did the flipping reverse of everything everybody says that that's so funny yeah yeah that i did it opposite yeah but i mean i knew i was a new yorker so to speak when i could fall asleep on the train and wake up at my subway stop you gotta be careful man you know i tell you why one of the one of the stupidest things you've ever done right so you know when you when you live in satin island you grew up in satin island yep you're uh and you don't have money you're not taking a car back to satin island it costs you 100 bucks right you're taking the ferry but the ferry from 12 30 p.m onward 12 30 a.m onward switches once every hour Correct.

10:00Right? It jumps from the half-hour schedule. It goes from 15 minutes to 20 minutes to half-hour to every hour, right? So between 12.30 a.m. and 5.30 a.m., if you miss that 12.30 ferry, you're waiting until 1.30 to get on the ferry, right? And sometimes you're out drinking in Manhattan, right, with friends. You get drunk. You get on the ferry. You miss it. Whatever. You're waiting, waiting. Then you have one option on Staten Island, the Staten Island Rapid Transit, which is the opposite of rapid, right? Oh, I don't know that one. It goes one direction, right? It's just one train goes to the end of the island and back.

10:34And I grew up on the far end of the island, the south shore, right? So I had no choice but to get on the train. So you wait in the ferry terminal for like a freaking hour. You finally get to Staten Island. You're drunk. The alcohol is setting it, right? Like you are effing drunk, right? So I can't tell you how many times I've fallen asleep on the Staten Island train. Right. You only got 40 minutes to get to the other end of the island. And you go all the way to the end of the island. You gotta pee. you know you know all the in the island but you're asleep yeah the train turns around and goes back to the ferry do you know how many times i've gotten on the train on satan island drunk and wound up back at the ferry an hour and a half later i was like whoa can i curse yeah i was like fuck come on man i did it again the worst man gosh you know what i've never taken the uh the staten island subway i guess it's not it's above ground i want to see what it what it's like you know it's And you live at the end, you said?

11:27You used to live at the end? I was at the end of the opposite. I want to take it to the rail line. Yeah, I want to check it out one day, just in general. Well, I'm a train guy. I'm a train buff, too. Yeah, I read that. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I brought a little gift for you, by the way. Oh, that's awesome. By the way, so I don't know if you know why. Well, thank you, too. My wife and I bought a house in Jersey to save one of America's oldest model railroad clubs. Yeah. So we live in Princeton, but 10 minutes away, it hit the Wall Street Journal like a year ago that this club called Pacific Southern Railway, who has been around for like 75 years, the club, the owner, the original owner of the house started building the model railroad in 1950.

12:01The club formed in 1964. And it's this club of people that are just passionate about model railroad trains, right? Pretty amazing. And building, and the club is in the basement of a real house in Jersey, in Rocky Hill, right? Wow. In New Jersey. And the club has grown and grown and grown, and the railroad's grown, and it's bigger than the house itself. It's in the basement. It's so big. It's 12 ,000 square feet of track. The house I live in, my house, is 4 ,600 square feet. The Model Railroad Club is 12 ,000 square feet, right? They knocked out a foundation wall of the house and kept going under the lawn.

12:36You got to see it, man. That's pretty amazing. It's all New Yorkers, people from New Jersey, Pennsylvania. And this is where again specifically? It's in Central Jersey, Rocky. Wow. Right? It's unbelievable, man. And so it hit the Wall Street Journal a year ago. That this club, the former owner of the house, sadly passed from cancer and the club was going to lose their home. And who in their right mind, if they buy the house, is going to be like, okay, your club of like 50, 60 people can still come in six, eight times a week to my home and work on your model trains. Right. And take up 12 ,000 square feet of the house and open the house up to the public every year.

13:13It'd be crazy. No one would do that, right? so the night before they were forced to sell the house my wife and i bought the house simply to save pacific southern rail that's pretty amazing i'm a huge model train buff right and i'm obsessed with trains right and uh and so uh so we bought the house save the club my wife moved to a candle company in there and if i have candles we'd run an alzheimer's charity out of there and now i'm a member of one of america's coolest longest running non-profit model railroad is pacific southern so I brought you, I brought you, we just released a brand new line of boxcars, Pacific Southern boxcars by, uh, Walther's, uh, trains, which is like the biggest hobby, um, uh, manufacturer in the country, in the world.

13:51And, uh, so, uh, I brought you one of our brand new, uh, Pacific Southern branded model, uh, collectible boxcars from the train. I love it. So it gives you the full history of the train club and where the newest owners of the train club. And that's for you if you'd like it. It's a pretty cool memorabilia, man. My friend is only a, you know, a thousand are made. so now you got one of them it's pretty cool yeah thank you time if you're into trains but you're into trains or you ever go on a silent rapid transit you know it's a based on there's a lot of parts of the layout that are new york based and new jersey based it's really cool man that's amazing my friend thank you you got it it's awful buddy um do you ever go to the grand central uh train show the christmas train show they have to the little train show it's unbelievable i love it one of my favorite things every year to go see yeah yeah yeah botanical gardens one what's that botanical gardens one yes i've been to that one as well and uh they have one over i think they it's down now but they have one at the um liberty science center too that was really incredible uh which is something to see but i mean come to pacific southern if you know that is awesome yeah we got to take a trip out there absolutely it's wild man you know it really is something well let's talk about let's jump back now real quick to you're born in staten island then what happens then you die then what happens uh yeah i went to college well you went to school there yeah so from what i understand you went to like an all-boys school is that correct all boys catholic uh high school and that's how i met the impractical joke yeah and that's how you met all your buddies right that's amazing can you tell us a little bit about that i mean we we did improv together in high school yeah our high school was mincea farrell uh it was a great school and uh We did performing arts there and theater and improv and loved doing comedy together.

15:39And then we went to different colleges. And after college, we came back and formed our comedy group and started performing live for many, many years and failed for many, many years. Right. And then along the way, I got a job in TV development. And my job was to like create and sell TV shows and page TV shows. And the guys and I were still doing comedy together. And so we created Impractical Jokers, the idea of it. and we shot a sales tape and i pitched it through my job at north south productions which is a new york company uh new york tv company based here in manhattan uh and uh and then sold it to true tv and that was uh 16 years ago wow we're about to hit 16 years of filming this show amazing in just a few weeks we started filming jokers march 2010 and so we're about to hit and we go back to work march uh coming up so 16 years we've been making this show that's amazing I read somewhere too that your your very first year I'm practical jokers did over 32 million views or something like that uh that sounds about right yeah yeah you get I mean right out the right out the gate you guys were cranking you know yeah we were we moved over to TBS now um you know uh true's kind of changed the program so we moved to the the big sister of true tv you know the TBS which is really cool to be on such a big cable channel um and uh it's been a wild ride man I I never thought it'd still be going this, this many years in, you know?

17:05Well, I mean, you're, you're. It's certainly not because of our looks. That's for damn sure. We look, we look like the kind of guys you settle for. You know what I'm saying? And I don't look famous. I look like an accountant, man. People look at me like, I look like a pharmacist. People like, they look at me like, you look familiar. Is my prescription ready? I would have never thought that stuff, but you're, you're a celebrity, my friend. You know, so, you know, you're, do you get recognized a lot? Yeah. I would assume you do. I should say, yeah. You know, I mean, it's a good thing. It's here right when you walked in.

17:36It's a cool thing, man. It's like, you never know. Well, I tell you what, it keeps us humble. Like you're saying like, Oh, we're famous. Yeah. It keeps us humble. Like, you know, we, I say we're like, you know, um, we're like Z, Z list. Right. Like, like I'll tell you there's still every day. Something keeps me humble. Okay. Right. So I, I came, uh, not too long ago, I was taking the subway here in Manhattan and I come out on 34th Street from the one train or whatever, right? And these two girls come up to me and they're with their two boyfriends, right? And they have thick Long Island accents, right?

18:13The girl's like, oh my god, Murr, Murr. I was like, can we take a photo? I was like, yeah, sure, we take a photo. And the boyfriends don't know who the hell I am, right? They're like, hey, who's this? Who's this? And one girl says to her boyfriend, she goes, babe, you don't know him? That's Murr, he's from the Impossible Pranksters. He's on Comedy Central on Wednesday nights. I was like, you got every detail wrong, man. I'm on Impractical Jokers Thursday nights on TBS. Every detail wrong. That's hilarious. So, you know, reality check. Impossible Pranksters on Wednesdays on Comedy Central. Jeez.

18:46That's funny, though. I mean, but, you know, you're a household name. All of you guys, you know. So, you know, I've watched you guys for years. and you know we feel like you know people feel like they know you yeah i think that's what's different about the show is that um we we i people we're not playing characters we're playing ourselves right you know and uh and you're real you're 100 real and people are like when they meet us like i feel like i already know you which i think is the biggest compliment and the other thing people say which i take uh i i take really uh uh as a matter of pride and i think it's um it means so much to me is they say that we're the one show like the family agrees on, you know, like the kids, the parents, the grandparents.

19:28And that's a huge compliment. Like it means we're, I think it means we're doing our job right. I can really agree. But you're making everybody laugh, you know, and you know, it's just nice to laugh today, every day, you know, go to a show and just, you know, you're going to laugh and enjoy yourself, you know. But there's some really, there's some skits that are really memorable to me you know and i i love the one too and i give you credit because you're you're strapped to a taxi cab you're reading your book yeah and you have like a stunt driver i assume cruising around this track yeah and the end is hilarious too you trick your friends but i mean there you you guys you were that was pretty scary in my opinion too for you sure it was stressful to watch well you're you're i i think you're what you're referring to is the greatest punishment ever on practical jokers in my mind yeah and it's i don't know if we'll ever top it right because there's iconic punishments like um me them throwing me up an airplane skydiving uh joe playing the genie genie does his wish crash set or captain fat belly on the road to island tram these are iconic things right but i faked my own death on television yeah i don't know if any prank show in history has gone that far for right it took me five years to pull this off if you haven't seen this at home you guys have to watch this i'm gonna i'm gonna paint the picture for you okay so outside of jokers i write thriller novels i've got nine books out in stores i love writing them my latest one is a serial killer thriller called you better watch out instead of christmas time it's really scary we're making into a movie this year actually anyway um so uh the publisher often has me do the audiobook for a book um so i didn't so uh the guys set up a punishment where i would read a chapter from the audiobook yeah for real if you buy the audiobook for you better watch out fromst martin's press i read the chapter right but they wanted to strap me to the hood of a race car with a professional driver racing around a track at like 100 miles an hour well i'm in a fire suit and a helmet on and i'm strapped down to the windshield reading a chapter in my book screaming my ass off presumably right yes this is the punishment idea what sal didn't know was that the whole thing was my secret idea i i had the other i had q and the writers pitch him the idea secretly but it was my idea right because at a certain point while i was riding on the windshield of the car after like 10 20 minutes right on the windshield screaming my ass off that guy's doing donuts and it's crazy at a certain point i was going to have the car go around the end of the track disappear for a split second while a duplicate gar dressed up the same way with a guy that looks just like me in the same hazmat suit same helmet holding the same book strapped to the windshield goes uh takes off at speed but that guy is a stunt guy right and as the car takes a turn too tight that stunt guy was would fly excuse me fly off the track hit the ground roll presumably get maimed injured killed who knows Sal would witness this and go running across the track so we rehearsed this punishment for hours before Sal arrived on set 60 crew members of Jokers right we trained again and again and again react now react react react practice okay now you scream now you scream now you go running and you go running all with the intention of tricking Sal to think something horrible happened.

22:54So he would also go running across the track. It worked like it. And I rehearsed 10 times. I mean, the details had to be the timing. I rehearsed 10 times getting cut off the car because I'm strapped down. Cut off the car, immediately stripped my clothes off to where I have the EMT outfit underneath, race shoeless across the field into the ambulance, then put my whole EMT outfit back on, put the boots on, the whole hat, fake hair. I had to get it in, I had like 20 seconds to achieve all this. So we kept rehearsing again, again, and again, getting faster and faster and faster because once Sal starts running across the track, the clock is ticking before he will see me get ripped off the car, you know?

23:33So I had like 30 seconds to make all this happen and we pulled it off and Sal fell for it hook, line, and sinker. He comes running across the track, sees what he believes to be my body and EMT workers working on it, trying to resuscitate me, calling for a helicopter. and he's full blown panics. At the key moment, I stand up for my own body, dress as an EMT worker, pull off my hat and fake hair and say, well, Sal, this was always your punch. And he almost shed his pants. He did. He did. It was the greatest punishment of all time. I thought he was going to have a heart attack. He, an hour later, we had real EMT workers on set, right?

24:11An hour later, and they took his blood pressure and his heart rate was still like a 150. Yeah. And it was until, it was on such an adrenaline high for me. Hours later, I go home. My wife and I are getting ready for bed, brushing our teeth. And I finally calmed down. And I, I take the two brush out of my mouth and I turned to my wife, Melissa. And I say, did I go too far? Because me faking my own debt took three real years off my friend's life. you, you, it was performed, if that's the right word, perfectly, the timing, everything. And when I was watching it and when, you know, cause you, the viewers too are watching it thinking that, you're hurt sure yeah and so i was thinking you know you kind of can in your own mind think oh well this is what he did or what they're doing but i had no idea what was happening like how how what is this happening right here and yeah and then the twist that i remember no idea you know when we first shot it uh i had the cut of it before it went on tv you know we we oversee the editing of the show and the editors sent me the cut of it and i got a group of my friends together months before it aired on TV.

25:15And I said, I want you to see something. And I played the punishment. And when the reverse happened, that I stand up and pull the wig off and reveal it was all a double cross. Literally, there's like 20 of my friends there. They all screamed out loud. I was like, it nailed it, man. They had no idea that was a twist. It was coming. I was like, I pulled it off. Like, I can't imagine what happened throughout homes in America when people saw the twist. right you know because i don't think they saw it coming man well it's really cool how you did show how your taxi came here and then the second one yeah just how fine-tuned it was when it's so funny like after that punishment aired i was like how do we top this i was like i legit got depressed i was like we can never come up with a better punishment than that you know um like we have to end the show but now we're two seasons later we're still going yeah well i'm sure you can top it i know you can I guess somebody is.

26:07You know, what cracks me up, too, is how you guys are so comfortable just almost being nude on the show. You know? And there's this one episode that, I mean, my stuff. Only me. I'm the only one who's naked, man. Well, that's kind of what I was getting to. But I was cracking up so hard this one episode. I mean, I had tears come out of my eyes because it's like a whodunit type, you know, like the handle. Yeah, like a murder mystery. The wrong rule of punishment. Yeah. I don't remember the specific name. Is that why you're, you were like laying on a couch with like a thong on or something? And you're, I mean, just, you know, they had to blur some of it out because it, you know, you're completely almost shown everything.

26:54I was laughing so hard and how you're just, just, you just do it. It was like one of these, uh, it was like one of these murder mystery nights in a mansion, you know, Rob Riggle's playing the host of this murder mystery night. A real group comes in to solve a crime, right? And they go into this, the library of this mansion. They're all dressed in period costumes, you know, from the 1920s, whatever. They're all sleuths. They got, you know, uh, they've got, you know, uh, you know, different testing kits. They've got magnifying glasses to look for clues. they walk into the library and there's the dead body there's always a dead body right i'm the dead body completely naked with a g-string on slumped ass up head down over the side of a couch and of course wriggles manhandling my butt cheeks then of course it ends with him ripping off the g-string and i'm there as a naked they they move my body onto like a they have like a a saw horse you know around and he's but i gotta play a dead body the whole time naked and he's bouncing me up and down on the wooden hobby horse it is hilarious it was mortifying well i mean to top it off at the end when i was just i was crying laughing because he takes your g-string like pulls it you know i mean that had to be it was painful it's funny man yeah i've been naked like a dozen times on this show the best one was uh just last year it aired we sal uh we filmed here in manhattan uh we told sal we want you to be a motivational speaker uh at a real company in midtown right He goes in.

28:22It's a real deal company, man. It's like they do real estate and what have you. And he goes into the conference room. There's 20 real employees of this company. They're dressed in suits, formal wear their work, you know? And he goes, well, what's the punishment? We said, Sal, you'll know when you know. 20 minutes into his presentation, one by one, all the real employees of this company started taking their clothes off until he was in a conference room in Midtown with 20 completely naked adult strangers. And he's such a germaphobe, he lost his mind, right? Like, and then he's, he's panicky. He's grossed out.

28:53Then at the end they said, Hey, it's our buddy Jim's birthday. We want to sing happy birthday tonight. And they wheeled out a giant birthday cake and I popped out of the cake also completely naked, but I had crazy glued on a prosthetic penis. That was like a foot long, man. We had to blow the whole thing out and it's swinging like this. And then they brought out hot dogs. So I'm eating a hot dog as my, my phallus is so, it was so funny, man. And he had to take it seriously in character. how do you come up with this? like how do you guys come up with this? like are you sitting around a round table and like let's do this let's do this or you're surprising each other though too yeah yeah so yeah I mean it's just it's just improv I'll tell you what like when we start go back to pre-production in a few weeks just don't go to the bathroom once you leave the room to go to the bathroom that's when you come back in five minutes later and the writer's like and he's like shit they just came up with something while I was out of the room to punish me yeah that's how it happens yeah yeah So it's just such a great show.

29:52It's such a great idea. Obviously, you know, it's been so successful for so long, you know, so now you have some shows coming up. Oh, yeah. I got a couple of local shows. You know, we I have four shows or five shows at the Stress Factory. I mean, right here. So I have far away in New Brunswick, February 20, 21st with Stress Factory. I do my live. I do a solo comedy show. Right. We do the Impractical Jokers Tour, but I do a lot of solo show as well. Right. And then March 6th, Friday, March 6th, I'm in Peekskill, New York. Nice. Up on the Hudson at a theater. A great town, beautiful town, performing live as well.

30:30It's a lot of fun. My solo show is wild, man. My voice is sore right now because I had four shows this weekend. I just got back last night. I was in, I was in, I don't know where the hell it was. I'm in Tacoma next weekend. You make me feel better about myself. I don't remember yesterday. Where the hell was I? man. We travel a lot. It's okay. I was, I was in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Oh, wow. I can see that. Yeah. Wait, was there this weekend next week, this coming weekend in Tacoma. I also saw, I don't, was there just an episode where you did the weather? Was that a few weeks ago? Was that a few weeks ago?

31:06Yeah. Dude, I've never done the weather before. Yeah. I didn't, I, there was a, where the hell we were, right? In the Midwest. Yeah. In the Midwest somewhere. Yeah. I can't remember. So they had me do the weather live and I'm like, well i don't know how to do weather nor do i know how to do a green screen right because it's the opposite of what you're seeing yeah right which is hard right right like i look at that camera i know left and right i can figure it out right right but the green screen when you're watching yourself on the monitor it's the opposite i don't know why they flip it but they do so and also i don't know what the goddamn symbols mean man like these they have a cold front coming through also the bit was like four minutes long yeah you know how hard it is to talk for four minutes straight about weather right so by the end it just derailed i was like go outside and fucking look man yeah yeah like you know open your window shades look you know live yeah you didn't do that stop asking me where the weather is look outside i think i forget how you ended it you said you know go out what the last days we have or something the final days you said something like that yeah the final days we have left on earth you know there's an asteroid hurtling toward us right now that's how you ended Go on and join the final days left on Earth.

32:15I know. I'm just, you know, it is like, I'm literally, I'm literally, I can show you a funny thing. Like, literally, I always joke that there's an asteroid hurtling toward Earth right now. Yeah. And I'm the only one that knows when and where it's going to end, right? Literally on my phone right now. What was I just watching before? In the bathroom? Here? Independence Day. When New York City gets destroyed by goddamn aliens. I love that show. I know, too. I love to watch, you know, disaster movies, especially when New York is getting, you know, it's always the target. It's always New York, man.

32:42You know, it's cool. It's kind of cool. It's the greatest thing in the world. That's why. Yeah, exactly. And then you think, what would I do if I was in this situation in Independence Day? But, um. Oh, so I do, as I was saying. So, yeah, I'm on tour. I got a couple of local shows coming up. How do people get tickets? You can get your tickets at MurrLive.com. M-U-R-R, MurrLive.com. My live show is wild. Because the whole second half of the show, I have no idea what's going to happen. I make it up as I go. So, first half of the show is like stand-up comedy, like a traditional stand-up comedy show.