#685 - Joey Diaz

25:10Yeah. And medical benefits and all this shit that comes with it. And you can be a badass too. And now you're a badass. Yeah. You're 38 years old. You just lived a complete different life and you didn't even have to pull the trigger. Yeah. There was no war for you to get deployed to. Maybe they sent you for operations to Chicago like my nephew to learn about operations and fucking, you know, intelligence and shit like that. But think about it. how much time we blow as American. Then you're like, bro, that really happened eight years ago, Theo? And you're like, yeah, that happened eight years. And you're like, I could have done so much with my life in eight years.

25:44But that's the path we chose. And I'm happy I chose it now. Yeah, I think about that too, man. It's hard. Sometimes I chose, I think, like just be a social kind of screwing around. I love to be around people. So it's like sometimes I think like that was always like, well, I just don't want to commit to something. You know, I just want to be able to be free. but I think, yeah, I would have loved to have had that like, what's it called when you stick to something and you organization built into me, you know? If somebody would have led me there, you know? As you guys know, MoonPay is my go-to place to buy crypto.

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29:33When did your mother pass, actually? I can't even remember. When I was 16. When you were 16. And you found her, right? 15. 15, yeah. I found her. Holy shit. You bad motherfucker. Thank you. Wow, look at you, bro. I even got medals there. Hell yeah, dude. That's beautiful. Yeah, look at you. There you go, dude. Wow. What was something else that she liked to do? Gamble. She did? What kind of gambling now? Heavy. Like you talking dominoes and stuff? or no? Baseball. Really? A lot of baseball. She'd bet on games? Fuck yeah. And go to them. Wow. And then I got, once she sold her business, it got worse because now she was bored, so now she started picking horses.

30:19And that's not a good thing to do on this side of the country because you have a noon race and you know, like somewhere in Monmouth or you have like, so there's all these tracks that one ends and one picks up. So you might come here in the daytime down the shore to see afternoon camp which is great going to the track in the afternoon you put like 50 bucks in your pocket you get a clam chowder you're out in the sun watching degenerates laughing your asses off but my mom would go from that and then she'd go home cook dinner and then go to the metal lands at eight and catching at the metal lands if the metal lands wasn't good for her she'd get into another car and go to fucking yonkers now we were talking about addictions and what addictions make you do.

31:00Yeah. What would possess you to get in a fucking cab at 11 o 'clock at night to make it to Yonkers for the night racing till 2 in the morning. You don't get out of there till like 2 in the fucking morning. Was it dogs or just horses or what? It was horses, dogs, pigeons, whatever the fuck they did. So here she is bought the debt, going to games, gambling. At that point she invested in a jewelry company but she was buying the jewelry herself for her. She'd go in there every day. Oh I think I need this ring so what did we accomplish here? It was what she was going through with the divorce, you know, separating from my stepdad and all that.

31:33And then her health wasn't good. She kept drinking. And she came home one night and punched a ticket. Damn. And everything changes. You know, at one point, you're like, fuck, everything changed in my life, Theo. And then I didn't want to live for a long time, but I wasn't going to kill myself. Do you know what I'm saying? I didn't want to live, but I'm not going to cop out and jump off a bridge. I'll just do something fucked up and hopefully it'll shoot me. Yeah. And thank God that never happened. What do you think that is that part of us it's like, because I have, I have, I've had that man where it's like, I don't want to live, but I'm not going to kill myself.

32:08You know, I don't want to live, but I ain't going to kill myself. I can't do that. There must be something inside of me that does want to live then. Yeah. No, that's it. It's just, maybe it's an excuse, but I know that there's tons of people that walk around and be like, I don't want to live, but I don't want to jump off a bridge and embarrass my family or this or that. you know one foot in front of the other yeah that's what you got it's got to keep proving yourself even when your brain is like saying whatever i think that's what if you just can keep moving your feet you know just keep trying you know and a step is the easiest thing sometimes it's the smallest thing you can do you know did you feel like your mom like deserted you kind of or no did you ever think like was that feelings or she just had had enough no she had just she died of a broken heart it's what the chinese call a broken heart disguised as uh disguised as a heart attack and it was sad because sometimes i think that what her last feelings were as she was getting the heart attack and she was yelling for me but because she had a fucked up habit of waking me up at three in the morning cooking on that particular night i'm like i don't want to go downstairs and eat i don't want to go downstairs and hear this shit and then like 40 minutes later i woke up and i saw that she hadn't come up and i go let me go downstairs and see and she was on the floor dead is disco.

33:23And it's a fucking realization. I was just talking to a friend of mine and I kind of got upset. And I told him, I go, my mother's been gone for 47 years and there's not a day that I don't, at one point you're like, fuck. And he's got something going on with his mom. And I said, so if I was you, I'd go take care of that. Because she's at an age where she could tip tomorrow and now you have to live with that pain. And I go, let me just give you an example. I died on good terms with my mom, and I still have, like, this pain that just, you know. And I learned things about myself. I learned that when I was.

33:59And I remember, I'm not going to lie to anybody, part of the healing process for me beside the acid and the fucking, you know. I was a sophomore in high school, so I couldn't stop living my life. Right. And at that time, you're also really coming into your own life, and you're kind of obsessed with your own world at that age as a teenager. That's when my dad died. I had an option to move to California with my uncle. I had an option to move with my godmother in Harlem. But I was already set in North Bergen. I had already put this work in in North Bergen just to be somebody. Yeah. Just to try to be cool at parties and, you know, be funny or whatever the fuck I was thinking.

34:36But this is something I realized when I moved back here. Part of my healing process from my mother at that time, because I'd be out with you till four in the morning. like a year after she died. I'd be out with you, whatever, and also on the way home, I'd go drop me off over here. And you'd say to me, like, don't you live around the corner? Yeah, but I'm going to walk a little bit. And you go, all right, man, you good? Yeah. What I was doing is sneaking to my mother's house. I would just go to where we grew up and sit in the steps. Nobody was in the house yet. Wow. Just to see if maybe they made a mistake.

35:09Just maybe. Maybe she took the wrong bus home that night. Maybe she went to the wrong house. You lie to yourself. I was a 17-year-old kid. So it was whatever was maintaining me. But I remember thinking to myself one day, you know what, man? She went to Cuba, and she's going to come back. Yeah. And this is all going to get straightened out. I'm going to live my life until I get the call. That's the biggest lie I ever told myself. Wow. And do you know when I moved back here six years ago, the first year, I was struggling, and it was because of that, because she lied to me. I thought she was going to make a comeback like John Lennon, but she never fucking did.

35:49So it fucked me. I'm a man enough to say these things. Because she had said that? She had said she was going to move to Cuba and come back? No, she was dead. In my mind, I made up this lie as a coping mechanism. That part of you still believe. Yeah. You know what, bro? She went to Cuba for the weekend. And I'll get a message from her eventually. Maybe they arrest her in Cuba. So now when you came back, that thing never came to fruition. Like when I came back after two or three months, I'm sitting on my balcony one day and I'm like, she never fucking came back. And honestly, as grown of a man as I am and it's settled, it bothered me.

36:23Like she didn't come back. But then at the meantime, it's like, Joey, nobody dies and comes back. They might leave you a note, you know, like a little flower might fly out of the sky one day or something. But I had to deal with that. But it was from the lesson that I had learned when she died that I used that as a coping mechanism. telling myself that maybe she just right i remember one night i got so up i went to the grave and started digging it up in my hands bro wow like two months after she died i went to the grave one night in a coked up state and god knows what i was on and i just found sticks and shit and i you know after an hour and a half i only dug an inch yeah i just wanted to make sure or she was dead.

37:04Maybe I was seeing things right. Maybe the acid lasted a little too long. It was that unbelievable to me that she had died. But here we are, 47 years later, slinging dick. And at the end, that became what she wanted the most. She wanted to be a man. And in her world, a man wasn't a guy who slings dick. A man is somebody who provides, who is responsible. Because one of the last fights we got over, Like 10 days before she died, I had a curfew. I never had a curfew growing up. My curfew was, if you're not home by 11, call me and let me know what time you're going to come home. That's fair. And if you don't get to that point, if you tell me 1140, at 1139, I better hear from you again, telling me again what time you're going to come in.

37:55I don't want to know what you're doing. That was the deal we had at home. I never could figure that out. I thought it was a control mechanism. Right. And the last time I did that, I came home at night, she smacked me. I was 15 years old. She just took a fuck and smacked me in the face. And then I just walked in my room. And then the next morning when I woke up, she was there. And she goes, I smacked you in the face because someday you're going to have a wife. And you have to be responsible to your wife. She has to know where you're at all the time. And I thought, I'm not going to get married. You know, you're 15.

38:25I'm going to be a playboy. Yeah. But now I understand. I understand those things. So that's what I, you know, it's like me moving from L.A. to Jersey was to really see if I was a man. All right, I'm out there with my friends giggling and, you know, now let's see moving back into a neighborhood and a community and being part of that community and having a child in that community. And that's how I judge that stuff. You know, no drama, no arrests, no DUIs, no nothing. Just living my life and trying to be a little better every day. just a little bit just a little bit not much is there is there ever like moments where dude where you like where you have like a moment with your daughter and it almost feels like you're giving that moment to your mother does that make any sense in a weird way you know what i'm saying like is there absolutely and i'll tell you you can throw it brother thank you very much for being a gentleman a scholar you know i'm talking about like you kiss her on the head and it's almost like you kissing your mother on the head like is there ever because no no no i'm i took that question the wrong way.

39:26I'm sorry. It's like, well, there's more. When I was born, I also had a sister. When we came from Cuba, my sister wanted to stay to finish out the school year. She never got here. So part of my mother's pain and the sadness, that underlying what's deep in your veins, and she wouldn't realize it till what time? Two in the morning. Once you get home and the party's over and the cocktails start. All of a sudden those old feelings come back and she would get sad at night. She missed her daughter? She missed her daughter. She raised a child without a daughter, without a family. And she did everything.

40:03She fucking congressman. She fucking donated, bribed. And then I come. Anyway, not to even go there right now and confuse the audience. So that was always her underlying whatever. So she always wanted a child. And here I pop up with a daughter now. My daughter has the same kind of body as her. Sassy Cuban attitude. Yeah. So I see a lot of that in my daughter. When I kiss her, I'm kissing my daughter. Fuck my mother. She's dead. You know what I'm saying? I'm kissing my mother. I just meant like, is there some psychology there? Absolutely. I think somewhere along that, when I hug her, it's from my mother.

40:43Listen, I'm responsible to this little kid. Like, you know, I go to Austin and I just come back, not because I want to come back, but because she has softball games. I want to be a part of her life. So I try to be involved with her as much as I can. I drive her to practices. I take her to kind of stand-up shows with me because I want her to hear what men talk about in the green room. When I go in there, I sit her down and I go, deal with it. And they're talking about eating their ass and shooting heroin or whatever the fuck they're not. But I always wanted her to feel comfortable around men. So I've been dragging her to green room since she's 12, maybe 11.

41:17Just I took her down to Rogan, popped her in the fucking green room. Wow. Let her smell that marijuana smoke. You know, let her see what really goes on in life. So when she does get 18 and gets let out into the world, she's not in shock. Yeah. I wanted to see what men think about, what men talk about, what is important to men when you're sitting there. What's going on. What's going on. Yeah. Because I always wanted to feel comfortable around fucking men. and I wanted her to feel like she's got the situation under control. So every move I make is around that psychology. I'm raising her on a different tip, Jack.

41:50Yeah. Everybody wants a smart kid. I want a smart kid, but I want that kid to be street smart. And that's what these children are missing today. There's adults walking around that they wouldn't know what to do unless somebody told them, their wives or whatever. Yeah, there's motherfuckers running around that couldn't buy an eight ball if you gave them fucking four days. Yeah, and gave them the money and a straw. Yeah. Yeah, dude. Losing a parent, man. Like I remember my dad, like my dad was older, so I was embarrassed of him. And that's the thing. Like if I have like a regret when it comes to it, it was like I was embarrassed to how old he was.

42:24But it's like, so it kind of kept me away from him. But also I was at that age where like you're just kind of coming into your own and your parents, you're not even really super connected to your parents at like 14, 15, 16. You're doing your own shit. You think, you know, you're just kind of like, you know, Your nuts are just starting to fucking look around, peek over your dick and look around. It's like things are starting to get different. Maybe somebody's flirting with you. Maybe you're sneaking some chick in your room at night or whatever. It's little things. You're growing up. But yeah, dude, I was embarrassed of him.

42:57And sometimes, but that dude, my fucking dad, bro, he like, I think I told you he had bought like a Delta 88, an old Cutlass kind of car off of some brothers, right? And he couldn't hear. and so he had speakers in the trunk so he had fucking 22s in the trunk right he's driving this car and it would play like um paul harvey rush limbaugh you know just with bass dude it'd be like paul harvey good day you know and this motherfucking thing was just just fucking rattling he bought this car for like 800 bucks off a couple brothers around the corner so he would drive us around in that thing and the fucking doors wouldn't open dude two of the passenger side door so we'd always have to jump in the window everything in there was just a bunch of shit he like he like would he delivered candies for a little while and was putting candies in vending machines and shit so we'd always have fucking like like nine boxes of fucking melted chocolate in the back of his car bro so we'd have to sit in there till you fucking get out till you were half black you were mulatto by the time you got out of that motherfucker and they'd have like dogs come licking your arms and shit because you're just covered in fucking chocolate and you'd have to go to school dude so i was already embarrassed because we were poor and then i had to walk out of here with half a kitkat hanging off my neck you know and this is in the teachers looking at me like she doesn't even know where to start and then sometimes he would come to pick us up from school and he would fall asleep in the carpool line so now it was embarrassing because the teacher's like blowing the whistle and he's you know when there's fucking reesey cups fucking falling out of the moment it's just like this like dear god i just felt everything about it gave me like so much shame because i think there wasn't a conversation like hey we're gonna have some pride in this shit this is who we are you know but uh anyway i don't know why i told that story but bro that but that makes your life but it's so crazy how as kids we don't see that yeah listen my mom would go to met games and she'd act like a complaint in fact My mom spent so much money at the Met games, they wouldn't throw her out.

45:02But something happened with Rusty Staub. So she would sit in left field and throw chicken wings when he came back because he didn't make a catch one year and she lost$800. So she had it out for Rusty Staub and she would throw chicken bones at him. They had to move her to the other side of the stadium. They didn't throw her out because she'd go there bribe. We'd go there to games. We'd go to games. She had a guy that she'd give like$20 to and the guy would bring you to the first row and he'd look at the people's tickets and go, you're sitting in the wrong place. People with real tickets, he would throw them out and put them somewhere else and give my mom the tickets.

45:36This was insane. You know, this was fucking insane. And I would be so fucking embarrassed. And then she stole a church from the bell. My third, or my fourth. He stole a bell from church? Yeah, stole a church. And she'd take it to the Mets games and ring them for good luck. And then when the Mets lost the fucking playoffs to Cincinnati Reds in 73, She actually gave me the bell, and she goes, get that fucking voodoo shit out of my house. It made me lose. I go, they've been winning all season. You were having a good time with the bell. Now I got caught bringing the bell back to my own. She stole the bell from my school, not from some store.

46:11She went to a church on a Sunday for me to do whatever the fuck, sing in the school band, and she saw a little bell and took it in her purse. And now a year later, she's giving it back to me to bring it back because it's voodoo. I'm like, you're fucking, this is the house I lived in. So we're embarrassed about these things. But once like that sounds intense, where you go out to the car and your dad's asleep, that's fucking it. And that's when you just turn around and make believe he's not your dad. Yeah. Son, get in here, son. You know. I remember one time I was swimming at a pool. My mom told me, when you leave today, make sure you make your bed.

46:47People are coming on. I'm like, Mom, I'm not making my bed. And I'll never forget the conversation. I said, listen, why am I going to make my bed? I'm going to go back to sleep. And she looked me right in the face. She goes, why do you wipe your ass? You're going to shit two hours later, right? So I left and went to this pool party with some girls. I'm playing like a pimp. I got my gold chain on and shit. And also I hear, Jose Antonio. And that's my real name, Jose Antonio. Jose Antonio. She actually came to the fence and was yelling. And people are like, who is that lady? I'm like, I don't fucking know.

47:18Down 911. Get her out of here. My mom heard that. 911, I'm going to fucking kill you. Then I saw her starting to climb the fence. She threw the stick over and was trying to climb the fence and shit. And I just took off. And she chased me for like fucking 20 minutes, hit me with the fucking stick. And then when I put my hands up the block, she lost her mind. And she went and got a bounty roll and lit it on fire to burn my hands. Because you're not supposed to lift your hands to your moms. That's the world I came from. I came from a heavy-duty fucking world. I had something on Sunday. people came over and all these people are talking about shit and I looked at them and I go I don't know who raised you but in my house a kid couldn't talk at the table they look at you like you were Val Kilmer and E remember when Val Kilmer didn't say nothing that's how they looked at you like why are you speaking and in my house I got these people talking about shit I still remember going to a friend of mine's house and I couldn't believe how loose white people were at the table when he was Irish but at one of those conversations one night he told his dad He's like, you know what, dad?

48:21I don't even believe in fucking God. I think you're all fucked. That motherfucker got up and started punching him so many times in the face in front of me. I almost fucking died. Good. Just bouncing his own kid. Teeth were missing and shit. People talk too much shit at the dinner table. Shut the fuck up. Especially kids. What the fuck? Yeah. What the fuck are you talking about? They don't know shit. Dude, my mom always had like this air of like this odd superiority of like, Like, we would, like, she would, like, we would go to the McDonald's, you know, once we get the chores done on Saturday. The big thing was we would get to go to McDonald's, right?

48:58So she would make us listen to Bryan Adams and Leonard Cohen and shit. And, like, we fucking didn't even know what this shit was. And we're sitting there like, have I told you lately that I love you? I'm out there that's fucking nose deep in a toilet bowl fucking cleaning this bitch. Cleaning whites, bro. I was four years old doing fucking whites and coloreds, bro. and you know, cause those are the two that I knew just from that neighborhood we lived in. But those are, you know, those are the loads I was responsible for, dude. Then she would take us to McDonald's, bro. But we kind of had this like pattern where we got to order and then she would like kind of shush us a little bit and she would order a McFish.

49:35But like, it was like a, like it was on like a special menu. Like it was like, like an entree or something that they had there. You know, She kind of like, she always had this weird superiority. She's like, all right, now quiet down. And she's like, and I'll have a McFish. You know, like it was a fucking like, like these motherfuckers don't care. It's the same shit. It's just chicken that they fucking squirted some fish flavor on. It's fucking, but she always had like, I don't know, my mother always had this weird. You're still tight with mom, right? Yeah, it's gotten better over the years, you know?

50:07And like you're saying, it's like these days, I'm just, I pray, my gratitude is, I'm just grateful my mother made me, right? It's like, I don't know what was going on in her life, but somehow, whatever it was, she found enough energy or love or whatever happened to at least make me, you know? Like, and I got here and the rest of it, it's like, yeah, it wasn't up to me early, but it's up to me now, you know? And so I can try my best. It's not always great, but yeah, I got over some of like the old, like I'm gonna like hold stuff against you. Life was fucking tough. My mother, when she was growing up, like her dad was kind of crazy.

50:43Her father was crazy. He would, for months at a time, he would, he wouldn't even use the front door. It was her and my grandmother. They would do, they were cleaning. My grandmother was a cleaning lady. So they would go clean houses. My mom would go with her sometimes, but my grandfather would stay in his own room. And then he would go in and out through the window. He wouldn't use the front door. He made him slide his food under the door over there. So something was obviously wrong with them. So I imagine like a little girl thinking like, man, my dad doesn't even want to see me or something. Who knows?

51:12Who knows what happened? But yeah, when you hear about people's lives and shit, it's like, fuck. People are trying their best, you know? And we had some good times. My mom would date some strange guys sometimes or people were trying to come over and smash or whatever. I'm sorry to interrupt. How old were you when your dad passed? 16. Because we're in the same boat. We're nothing special. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? We ain't something special. And how long did it take your mom to date again? Oh, she fucking was probably dating about four years before he died. Oh, my God. So it didn't take her that long, you know?

51:43But it was like, yeah, they just, you know, like. But, dude, my dad was just fucking, dude. When I think back on it, bro, it was kind of. Bro, he'd pull up at the post office. There'd be no parking spots or whatever. And he couldn't see that good. So he'd ask us, is there any parking spots? I don't fucking know. You know, I'm a kid. I don't know what parking spot is, you know? So he'd be like, all right, you're getting pretty tall. you know and he'd be like i'm gonna run in here drive around the block doing this thing had no power steering i would fucking take this fucking thing i would have to extend my foot to get the gas through now like remember extend my foot like push it long dude i'd take this bitch around the block i'd hit four or five cars dude fucking boom boom and his car was so banged up you couldn't it'd hit 2 000 cars every car in town had been hit had been hit by his fucking car dude This motherfucker, bro.

52:31And I just keep going in a circle out there until he came out. How old were you? I was probably, I don't know, 12 probably. Weren't you the guy who told me that you used to sit on yellow pages? Was that you? When I was a kid, dude, we would - When you drive. I'm sorry. When you drove, you sat on yellow pages. I can't remember what we had in there. Somebody told me a story that the dad used to make them drive and sit on yellow pages. But now the stories are, you know, it's like, yeah. But some of this stuff, as tough as it is or whatever, and people have tougher stuff man i mean your life i can't even imagine that no but it's like the you know you just you you find these little things that make you a storyteller that make you curious that make you pay attention i think i was always paying attention you know like somebody there was a lady who would fucking come out in the evening by the at the other apartment and she would come out and fucking like she'd have like a daiquiri and she would be like she you know just lay on her fucking car and ask me how her body looked and shit and i'm out there i'm fucking I'm six years old, you know?

53:30Dude, we would put light shit in the ditch. Like, you know, she fucking just be out there. How does my body look, you know? And I don't fucking know. And I would get up real close to her leg and like look at it real close like that, you know? Like I didn't know what the fuck I was looking for. I didn't know. I would get right up by her neck and shit and look at it. And I'd be like, yeah, it looks fine. Look, I work out, okay? I'm in there. I'll be honest with you. I know my way around a barbell, okay? I know how to get to the second story of a stair master. But I'll be honest that sometimes it's easy to fall into a routine.

54:05The same four lifts every week, you just kind of get plateaued. And I'm on the road a lot too. And sometimes it's hard to find a good gym nearby. And sometimes even any gym at all. So I want to recommend this app called Ladder. They set me up with a real coach. His name's Brian. And he's on Team Vitality. and his whole approach is built for exactly my situation when I'm on the go. You got dumbbells, body weight stuff, mobility, conditioning, nothing that needs a gym. I've done his workouts before in green rooms, in the back of the bus, anywhere. Think of it like having a personal trainer in your headphones and it's less than a dollar a day.

54:46So if you're a guy who keeps telling yourself you'll get back into it once your schedule calms down, Look, I've been right there with you, and it doesn't calm down. Go to ladder.fit slash TPW and take the quiz. They'll match you with your own coach. You get a free seven-day trial, no credit card, and$10 off your first month if you join. That's ladder.fit slash TPW. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. If you could wake up tomorrow and do one thing better, what would that be? What would that be? Well, for me, it would be listening. I just want to sometimes I want to listen in a way that's, I don't know, I feel like you could master the art of it.

55:33I feel like it's a skill like anything else. I want to be able to absorb things in a way where I'm not trying to do anything. I'm just trying to listen. Then maybe the right question would just light up inside of me, like in my brain or even in my heart first. It would just spark up like a little pilot light. you know? Or sometimes it wouldn't be a question. Sometimes it wouldn't be a question at all. It would just be, hey, just stay listening, you know? So I think for me, that would be it. How could I listen better? And better is a feeling, you know, defined by you. And for BetterHelp, it's a Better Help therapist who really gets you.

56:12It's a focus on global emotional well-being with thousands of therapists and millions of members in over a hundred countries. It's progress. Sign up and get 10 % off at betterhelp.com slash theo that's better h-e-l-p.com slash t-h-e-o it's so funny when we look at our lives and we think that we grew up fucked up and in a way we grew up with action in our lives we shunned at that age like there was a lot of action in my house yeah we could go here for we could sit here right now and go hours about what was going out of my house at that age. And I dealt with it. It was something that was there. And I stayed away from some of it.

56:57I participated in some of it, but not in a bad way. Like my mom and stepdad were part of two different fucking bookmaking operations. So that added pressure to the house. After she trained him all those years, he decides to partner up with somebody else. So there were just so many things towards the end. And I just lived my life around them. You know, I moved out of my house when I was in the sixth grade, right? Did you? When I left Catholic school, when I got thrown out of Catholic school, I went home and there was just too much shit going on in my house. Dude. And I couldn't sleep at night. And I moved in with my friends in Union City and lived with them for the whole sixth grade year.

57:35Wow. I didn't like sleeping in my house. And you just made that choice yourself? Made it myself. My mom lived with it because my mom's bar was three blocks from where I was staying. So I would leave school at 3, go up north, go to karate or basketball practice, eat dinner at my mother's bar. On the way home, I'd get a bag of clothes, and I'd just fucking go there that night. I had some clothes there, take a shower, and walk to school from Union City instead of sleeping in North Bergen because I didn't like what was going on in my house. Yeah. And there was nothing bad going on. But first off, they both came in at 3 in the morning talking shit.

58:12Yeah. And then she'd cook an eight-course meal at 4 in the morning and wake you up. I got to get up at 7.30 in the fucking morning. Yeah, but I made steak, eggs, black beans, a lobster tail. It's fucking 3.30 in the fucking morning. So it was just so many of those things I couldn't fucking handle in my house. And again, now you look at it and go, Joey, that's exciting. It's exciting for a few nights. Right. Because you come downstairs. My uncles would be there half coked up. They'd each give me 20 bucks for school the next day. That was great. Yeah. But everything else, now I got to sit there and listen to these fucking why yous at four in the morning like it's two in the afternoon.

58:47Yeah. And they would cook while they were coked up. Why are you cooking? That's just. The food would land and everybody would be looking at themselves at six in the morning. I'm like, the fuck is wrong with you retards? But that's the house I grew up in. Yeah. That was the shit that was going on. And this is why I always, I'm very strong in my homes. Yeah. Me and my wife's got that southern, you know, Tennessee shit. and both, there's no alcohol in my house. I mean, listen, if you come over, you want to drink. I got beers downstairs. Right. But there's no real alcoholic parties at my house. I don't want to see alcohol on the fucking tables.

59:22That's just me. Yeah. Because that gives them the green light now to live like I did. Next thing you know, your daughter's 18 and she's drinking like Bert. No, I'm going to fucking, I'm going to fucking, you know, I don't want nothing in my house. I smoke pot outside the house. I do everything I do inside the house. And when I walk in the house, I check myself. when I walk in to make sure I got no bad spirits on me. You know what I'm saying? So I walk into the house and it's normal. We live like an American family, as crazy as that is. Right. People think I'm at home at night fucking watching porn.

59:52Nothing. I haven't watched porn since I was fucking 13. I go home and it's just a regular, normal, American fucking life. Wow. There's no butlers. There's no nannies. After all you've been through. Never had a nanny. Never nothing. I don't want nobody in my fucking house. Yeah. Nobody. At night when I go home, it's to relax. So there's never any pressure on my daughter. I wanted to make it a warm home for my daughter. I didn't grow up in a warm home. I grew up in a home when I get up to go to school, my mom would call him a fucking cunt in Spanish. I don't need that in my life. My daughter doesn't need that in my life.

1:00:30So that's why I strive so hard to have a clean home. I keep everything out of my home. I mean, I got weed there. I got pieces. I got shit, but it's a clean home. Yeah. You know? And I take pride in that. Amen. Yeah, I think creating what you couldn't have, too. That's what it is. Yeah. That's what it is, because you knew you loved your mom, and you knew they worked hard, but that was not how you chose to live anymore. I'd rather live a different fucking way, and that's exactly, you know, I didn't want alcohol. It used to bother me to get up, and there'd be beer bottles in my house. Nothing bothers me more than that.

1:01:06Oh, that's gross. And they put a cigarette in that beer bottle. And by mistake, you knock one of those beer bottles over and that shit goes into your furniture. You never get the stink out of nicotine beer out of your fucking shit. So I've always, as much of a Coke head as I was and all that shit, there were nights I did Coke and wouldn't drink. I would never drink. Yeah. Because I didn't want them to spill. I'd rather snort this bitch. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Yeah, dude. I remember my bike seat would always get fucking stolen or whatever. Some dude was using it for something or whatever.

1:01:35and uh so a lot of times i go out in the morning my bike seat would be gone so i'd still ride my bike but i have to ride standing up the whole way you know just little shit like that that was like but every time you just take it in your own head and just kind of move it along you know but i do four mile ride just fucking because i didn't want people seeing me get off of the bus with the like the real poor kids because it was like embarrassing to me and shit was already embarrassing enough i felt like so it was like but it's interesting the way you kind of like manage stuff as a kid once you start having to kind of manage shit that's when life kind of gets different i think for some kids when you they got to start kind of man when things are some sort of way where it's uncomfortable and they got to start managing a little too early that's when i feel like it's different but but yeah dude we had some fucking times man we uh oh dude did you ever take greyhound to go up to the shows or whatever how was it up here what do you mean graham graham bus yeah or peter paying you ever take one of them no just grab graham i used to take grounds when i was a feature actor yeah oh dude when early on i would be taking some greyhounds sometimes dude bro we had this one stop it was over by like hammond right and they had some dude he would always they call him the hammond slurper right this dude would get out and he was just a gay dude or he pretended like he wasn't gay or whatever but he was really being gay but he would be like you know hey guys if anybody wants it here in ham and he would just make an announcement i was like you know like I'm giving it out, you know, and everybody be sitting there like fucking who's going to get up, you know, who's like winning the gay lottery or whatever.

1:03:05And every now and then you'd see some dude like I'm going to step out to smoke or something. Somebody go follow him over there. And he was blowing dudes over there and Hammond over there, Hammond, Louisiana, where the blowjobs always wet, brother, because of the humidity anyway. You know, you fucking put your wiener in the air and you feel like something's sucking on it. Just that kind of area over there. but yeah greyhound i'm trying to think bring up anything on greyhound you got any crazy stuff some of the stuff that's happened on greyhound i used to get on greyhound twitter feed right this is what i used to do i would get on there because they have a bus help it's at it's at greyhound bus help or something and i would people would be like look we pulled over here off the li this motherfucker's on fire right somebody's calling somebody's four-year-old or whatever and i would be like i would just reply from my personal twitter i'd be like don't got don't you worry guys we'll be right there right these motherfuckers what do we have here we go here's one right here the dude on the the dude on the left is doing knife hits of meth on a Greyhound bus both both are arguing constantly oh yeah that's hound baby that's hound dude so that's that's the neighborhood where you would take the bus at oh man no this is just random people talking about stuff on Greyhound during reloading in Tallahassee the driver left me at the station and most of my luggage was in the bus number 86846 heading to Jacksonville.

1:04:28It passed now, then 24 hours I reported about it. No feedback still. Same shit here. My silver luggage was stolen on 822 from my way to Buffalo. I made a claim and they didn't do shit for me to wait for what? Yeah, you're done. You lose anything on gray on. There's no customer service. Bro, they motherfuckers, they won't give you a hug. They won't even give you a fucking hug. So that's a cold way to travel. But when you're making$400 for fucking 18 shows and you want to snort coke and have a good time, you got to cut back at some different divisions. Yeah. And that's why it's sure. I used to take the LA bus to El Paso, Texas.

1:05:05Nuh-uh. As a feature act. And then he started headlining. He didn't pay much. So I would take the fucking Monday night, Express, 1145. Got you to El Paso at 1 o 'clock the next day. Nuh-uh. You were on that bus overnight. Yeah. But the express only made a few stops. Oh, yeah. But fucking, I was on that thing one time, and the heat broke, and there was like 20 Asians going to Texas. And after about two hours, that bus started kicking. Not that the Asians were dirty, I'm not saying that. Yeah. But it was hot, and the body sweat. That whole bus smelled like a yin-yang fucking factory. Oh, yeah. I was on, and they had great coke and whatever.

1:05:45I have something my first time ever in El Paso. I'm about to leave Saturday night. I just got paid. And some guy's like, hey, man, you want to do a bump? And he gave me two. And I looked at him. He goes, you know, I could buy something. He goes, no, just take the rest out of this. It was like four grams of Coke he gave me. Wow. And I'll never forget the next day. I didn't do it all that night. I go, I'm going to save some to take back the money. How did you save some? Listen to the fucking story. Yes, sir. Something made me pass out. I woke up the next day, got the three grams, whatever was in there, I put it in my pocket, got on the bus, take off.

1:06:17I'm happy as shit. I go in the back of my pocket. I do two bumps. I'm ready to sit there for 11 hours doing little bumps. And all of a sudden, the bus gets pulled over by three fucking immigration cops. And with dogs and shit, I'm dead. So I did the best possible thing. I took the fucking grams out. And I snorted in one fucking swipe, grounded it up, threw it in the bathroom, washed my hands. He's like, get to your seat. My hands are washed. There was no coke on me. but now I had to deal with the fucking three-gram line I did. Also, I couldn't catch my wind and shit, and then I just started sweating.

1:06:51Bro, by the time they got there with the dog, the dog was barking at me from a distance, you know, because it was coming out immediately. I'm sitting there, 390 pounds, fucking sweating, cocaine juice, Malamalenka juice, and God knows what else was coming out of me. That was not a pleasant experience. Another time I was on one going to Buffalo, and I started a conversation with the girl. I didn't even say nothing. She started telling me how she's a stripper and she got an STD in Buffalo. So - It's not that girl who's pussing can hum up like a Christmas carol or whatever. Is that that girl? This is a chick on a greyhound.

1:07:27I never met her. And even if she did, how do you get to hum in a Christmas carol with your pussy? That's a complete different conversation. Usually that involves money and cocaine before you get to be that open. I didn't know if it was a different, same girl. No, no. and she's telling me that if you go to the doctor and they prescribe something, it goes on your stripping license or whatever so it goes on a report and they won't let you dance until you go back to the doctor and she's like, I got three kids, I gotta dance. So she was going from like Buffalo to Syracuse before the paperwork shot over just so she could get a couple wiggles and get paid before the fuck and everybody knew she had VD.

1:08:07This is the kind of people you meet on the bus, which makes it entertaining. All the best. And it's part of comedy. It's part of the fucking gig. Yeah. You know, think about it. You might go to a gig now and take a private plane. It's great. We've earned it. But at the same time, look at how we used to take a bus and be just fine and get there with a story. And as a comic, we base our lives on stories. Before I even go on my material, I took a bus here today. I got an hour of material of what I saw. people having sex. I saw this fat couple fucking in the back. He got stuck. They started yelling.

1:08:43Shit like that. Yeah, for safety or whatever. What makes you think getting on a Greyhound, you can fuck? I mean, where's your mentality? You want to fuck somebody, fuck them in first class or in the bathroom on a plane. I fucked on a Greyhound before, man. You did? Yeah. Oh, my God. I did. You're a hell of a Christian. You're a better Christian than I am. Look, dude. Yeah, dude. and I don't even know if I wanted to, but I think - You just met her? Huh? No. It was a girl I knew. Okay. We were riding - No condom, fuck it. Yeah. She's going from point A to point B. You're going off to two strangers.

1:09:18They didn't have any condoms on the bus. I remember even asking a driver and it was at night and he's like, I told him straight up. I was like, I'm trying to make out with my lady back here. And he's like, well, I'll drive real slow if you break me off an extra$40. So I fucking hooked him up. And he drove like, he probably drove 25 on the interstate. almost like a romantic sort of thing in a way. Because you don't get to go that slow in the interstate. I mean, this was back when Miles Proud was probably 55. But he put the flashing lights on and shit. I felt like a fucking, like a president or something.

1:09:48I felt like I was traveling to heaven. But yeah, she was like sitting on my lap or whatever, making love back there. But yeah, I remember that, dude. Greyhound, they'd always have something. It would be like some dude set his dick on fire or whatever. Or two dudes were looking for somebody's dick. Or it was always, the stuff that happened on there was crazy. one time I'm on there, a guy's like, he said, Hey, you want to see something? Right. And I thought it was going to be, um, his wiener or whatever. He opens his bag up and it's just a jewel. It's just a bag of jewelry, right? Like he just robbed a jewelry store.

1:10:21Then he picks the bag up and hands it to me to look in it. When he does that under the bag, got his wiener out. So I lost, you know, or he won or whatever. I don't know what it was, but, um, If you were to stop comedy tomorrow and just disappear, what would be the memories that you miss the most about doing comedy? Going up in the original room, for sure. Me too. And also bringing somebody up. There's something also special, fun about bringing somebody up. And I think also just watching comedy in the original room. Me too. That's one of the things I miss about getting high, sitting in the back.

1:11:05sitting in the back. And watching comedy. But I mean like, if I was your son and I came to you and said, Dad, I'm 21. I know you've earned money and you want me to go to Notre Dame. But Dad, I want to follow in your footsteps. You know, at first you'd be a little upset. You know, can we do this later? I don't want your mom to hear this shit. You know, and then eventually you got to deal with it. And in the process of dealing, you have to think of what you went through. The hotels, the buses, is the people not paying you and all this shit. And I got to be honest with you, including my jail sentence, the first 10 years of comedy, and everything else that's happened the last 40 years, I would do it all over again.

1:11:48I would do it all over again. It was well worth it. The ride, the education that I got at being a comic is world-renowned education. The shit we've seen on those trips, when they lose your luggage or plane rides or who's on the plane with you. And I think I miss the struggle. I miss struggling. That's who gets you a dick hard the next day. I still don't like it easy. I got to struggle a little bit. There's something that's out there that I want a piece of, and I'm going to do whatever I can to get it. I'm just making up an imaginary scenario here. But that's what I enjoyed about living in L.A., that every day I could hit the lottery.

1:12:30Yeah. You know, you try to motivate people and speak to people. they understand what you're saying but not really because they hadn't had it happen close to you. Proving myself, I think. That's one thing that I love. You know, I think about somebody like Ralphie May. I still remember me and Ralphie going to shop right and shoplifting turkeys and shoplifting co-cuts and doing all this crazy shit. And all of a sudden, one day later, he's living on Wilshire Boulevard in a fucking penthouse and he's got a coffee table with three pounds of weed on the coffee table of three different weeds. That's nice.

1:13:07See, when you see that, you go, okay, that's what I want for myself. And if he did it, I could do it. Okay, that's what it's opening the door for somebody else. Like I'm trying to get this guy on a podcast that I've been a fan of since I was in the eighth grade because he changed my whole life. He played for North Carolina, and he started as a freshman. White dude, Irish kid, 6 '7". And I still remember turning the TV on for the final game and them going from Jersey City, New Jersey, Michael Corrin and me going, that dude is a freshman. He started at North Carolina. He's doing it. And he's white.

1:13:47Wow. If he could do it, I have a chance to get the fuck out of here. Maybe not as a star like him, but it let me know that there's more beyond Jersey City in your neighborhoods or, you know, more than some of Louisiana. I'm not putting Louisiana down. I'm just saying in the back of your mind, you're like, there's something bigger out there. And if he went out there and got it, I'm going to go out there and get it. That hit home for me, and it still does. I think about Michael Coren once a month. Wow. Because I knew the door he opened for me mentally. He opened this door mentally without ever knowing.

1:14:20I want to get him on the podcast to thank him to his fucking face. Michael Coren? Michael Coren. They even did a write-up about his mother in Sport Magazine. because it was Rosie, her name, another Irish mom. And she was a waitress raising this single, you know, she was a single mom. Yeah. This motherfucker started as a fucking freshman. In the semifinals, he had 33 points, the final four. Yeah. He busted out 33 points. Then as a freshman, they ended up losing to Marquette. But that didn't matter to me. the fact that he was a kid from my fucking neighborhood that was doing something that was doing something just let me know i could fucking do this amen not being a millionaire not doing it being a big just doing something just doing something letting me know yeah you know look where you're from in louisiana it was there was a big time football player from there that's you oh yeah we had you had him and you had him so let you know that you have a fucking a little bit of a chance.

1:15:21Something's possible. Yeah, we had a Nilo Silvan was this dude who lived in a neighborhood right around from us. He lived over in the Ozone. And he was like, he had like the Letterman jacket and he played football. And I think he went to play at University of Tennessee. Look him up if you can. Nilo Silvan, American former professional football player. Oh, he played for the Buccaneers. That's who it was. And where was he from? Look, can you click on his wiki? from Covington, Louisiana, right there. That's who you're from? Covington. Yeah. And so, man, it just, yeah, and he played college at University of Tennessee, dude.

1:15:57So, yeah, there was something. When you saw him, it seemed like, oh, man, there's something possible. There's something possible out there. I could do something. I could do something. I could be a water boy. And Pistol Pete Maravich lived in our town. So that was like a big deal. Why you always got to get me started on Pistol Pete? Oh, fuck. You know, that's my idol. dog he lived over there off a janky oh dude i got a pair of socks i gotta send you some pistol pete socks i bought them years ago never took them out the package they're nice they're design like uh they're nice they're just like a nice pair oh he wore oh no he didn't sniff them if he wore my dog oh fuck it bro i let my wiener sleep in when i'm at night oh my god so how close did pistol p graduate from you oh i'm sorry no he grew but his two sons grew up in our town so he uh His ex-wife lived there.

1:16:48He had gotten a divorce or he passed away. Right, he passed away. But they had a half court and a bat and a top of their house. So I remember we'd walk around and they had this house and we just kind of ridiculously shaped. And he just, he was a different dude. He built a half court in his attic, but it was like a real half court. Like it was, the attic was just a unique looking house. And so things like that were always interesting. And then Lee Harvey Oswald went to our middle school. And so it was like shit like that. I could be a fuck, you know, I could. I could shoot the president. Yeah, something, bro.

1:17:20I mean, you just, but little things, it didn't even matter. I don't care if Dracula went to our fucking kindergarten. It was like something could have happened, right? And there was like a lure in the air. That was another thing. It put lure in the air. One of my favorite stories that I tell people all the time now about you that I just even learned like two years ago was when, was that James J. Braddock that y 'all used to go shovel snow in his driveway. Yeah, how crazy is that? Dude, that Cinderella man is my favorite. I remember when Poirier fought over there in Jersey, I went and prayed at the statue before I went over there, dude.

1:17:54Because I was like, this is it. Because he's kind of like, you know, he's my braddock. He's a lot of people's braddock in a way. But when you told me that story that he would break you guys off a couple bucks to shovel snow in his driveway. That's crazy. And he was just a regular guy in the neighborhood. Just a regular guy. And he had kids in the neighborhood. They became cops and shit like that. And it just went and went and went. Yeah. I didn't know about how big James J. Braddock was when I was growing up. It was too late. I was 10, maybe 11, 12. And they told me that he was a famous boxer and shit.

1:18:28Yeah. I told my mother. My mother said he was good, whatever the fuck. He was good. That was it. Yeah. He was good. She liked him and some shit. She saw him fight at some fucking thing. Because my mom would go to the garden to watch fights. She went to my mom and Ali Frazier at the garden. I still remember being fucking crying and shit. She left me with a babysitter. I was heartbroken, dog. I tried to get the babysitter to suck my dick for 20 bucks, and she took my 20 bucks and quarters and blew on my stomach. I was going to kill this bitch. I worked hard to get those$20 and quarters. Oh, at that age for sure, dude.

1:19:02How could you even? And then the next morning, my mom used to wake up with me and make me like this pseudo oatmeal, meal, and then she'd have to give me, yeah, we grew up in a Cuban house. I'd have to drink orange juice with not. The cortada in it or something? Cortada. This shit, what's it? Something oil seed. Something like fish oil. Like fish oil. Oh. I forget. It's still around. Now they got it in different flavors. It must taste worse. But for three years, my mom would give me that. Three or four years every morning. You puked it up. She didn't give a fuck. You're not going to school until you drink this.

1:19:42Because I was a sickly kid. Yeah. And I still remember her pouring the thing from, like, Ma, I got to talk to you. She had just woken up. She was probably hungover. And I'm like, Ma, I got to talk to you. Tita, I gave Tita 20 bucks to suck my dick last night. And she didn't suck my dick. And my mom's looking at me like, what the fuck are you talking about? Yeah, that's unfair. I gave her 20 bucks, Mom. And if I don't get my money back, I'm going to fucking kill her. I want my fucking money back, mom. I'm going to go in there and stab her right now. I was a kid, so$20 to me was a lot of money. I was pissed.

1:20:15That's a year's salary. I still remember being fucking pissed about it. I remember I got all fired up. I took a shower. Yeah. I put VO5 in my hair. I put a gold chain on. Yeah. And I just sat in my little room, my little dick on. I thought she was coming in to suck it. No. So I told my mom, I want my fucking money. So my mom goes, enough, enough, enough. I'll give you the$20. Just don't let this happen again. And she goes, can I ask you something? She goes, let me ask you something. Yeah. I have a bar. There's always a bunch of hookers there. You think they'd suck your little dick for$20 fucking dollars?

1:20:48It's usually$100. So when she told me, I'm like, what the fuck? $100 for a blowjob at my mom's bar. Oh, dude. My mom, I don't know if she was blowing people or not. I can't even remember. I'm trying to think. She dated, though, I remember, dude. and whoever she would date it, I'd always have, we'd have to be, if she dated one guy, uh, who gave us tickets to a football game, my brother and I went and a scalper fucking the dude, some undercover cops, you know, offer to buy them from us. And then they tried to arrest us for scalping our tickets. And they're like, you guys are trying to scalp, you know, sell to him.

1:21:24Like, but you're, we didn't know you asked to buy, you know, just fucking, we had another, my mom dated this guy, Donnie Ferrari. I used to, I worked as like a, um, they had to do this whole door-to-door Italian food. He had a little wagon. He'd go around and just sell it, sell an Italian. And I worked at his apprentice. My mom was kind of, I think they were dating in hindsight for a bit. Now this is after your dad passed. No, no, no. This is before. He was still alive. Because they'd been separated for a while. Right. Okay. So they got separated. But yeah, my mom was, she was. I thought your mom said, listen, honey, I love you, but the dick don't work no more.

1:21:54Oh, I think. I got to go out and get mine. You know what I'm saying? I got to go out and get mine. I've been a mom. I raised these motherfuckers. I got to go suck something. Dude, my mom dated My mom dated this one dude, and he would take us just to the continental breakfast at a motel, and we'd go sit in there and eat, dude, and we didn't even stay there, bro. You were over there eating an apple for breakfast. We'd get all dressed up and go eat there, dude. He wore like a cowboy hat. We didn't fucking know. He would take us in at a fucking Holiday Inn over there, and we'd sneak in off the side and just go fucking eat in there.

1:22:26But what else happened? And yeah, but she dated this guy, Donnie Ferrari. And he had like this, it was like that, you know, just Italian. I was his apprentice when I was probably nine or something. We were selling fucking strombolis door to door and shit. We had a little wagon. He had a little wagon and we'd pull up. And dude, he was, but he was trying to smash all these women. And I finally caught on like, this dude is supposed to be talking to my mother, but he's out here. And I'd be waiting there, fucking there. There was a couple of bunts and burners. I'm fucking there warming up a little tray of fucking, you know, manicottis or whatever.

1:22:58and he's in there massaging the lady's shoulders in the kitchen and shit. Like it was always some bullshit, you know? But that was pretty fun. That's back when they had like the Schwann's truck, the different food trucks would come through the neighborhood and you could buy the food directly off of some guy, you know? Wow. But yeah, we sold door-to-door Italian for a while. And I wasn't bad at it. It was just so fucking hot, dude. You're lugging 35 pounds of fucking manicotti down the street. Like a bike? No. Oh. Walking. We'd walk in the, put it in his van and then drive it. Fuck. How old were you when you left home?

1:23:33When I left home, I was 13, man. I went and lived with friends. Okay. And then how long till you left that area? How old were you when you left that area and said? I went and lived with my mom because then she moved out to Arizona. I went and lived with her for one semester out there. And then I moved back from my senior year of school. And that was fun, dude. That was so much fun. I was so lucky to be from Louisiana, bro. Just fun. People storytelling, bro. Dude, it's people telling stories. and there's weird shit happening, dude. I remember the first time I got a little bit of cocaine, you know.

1:24:00Cocaine. Oh, God. Down there? Yeah, and it's wet. It's always fucking wet, you know. The top half inch is fucking, you know. It's the only, it comes with a head on it, you know. It's like Mikey, it's like Icy Mike's head, dude. Yeah, it's like, yeah. Yeah, it comes with a fucking head on it, dude. But I bought some cocaine and I thought it was a performance enhancer, like a creatine or something. So I'm fucking snoring this shit. I ran eight miles out there on the railroad tracks, dude. And I didn't miss a fucking, you know, you go on railroad tracks. You're like, boom, those, the things going across the wooden.

1:24:34I didn't miss a one, boy. I fucking was cruising. How old were you the first time you did cocaine? Probably right then. It probably was about 14 or something. Oh, Jesus. You beat me by a fucking year and a half. Really? Fuck yeah. but like one i do this one i do it he would ride a bike to work and he would uh and i'd give him some of my tip money and he would do a little bit of cocaine he had two eyes when i met him and then when i re-met him he only had one uh the coke was good i mean something was good dude that shit was banging jack it was so good his eye left town with some of it you know that shit was fucking good but yeah it was i'm trying to think of something else oh from growing up dude we had like a job that one of my first jobs was, we had this one dude named Fozzie who had this fish finder service.

1:25:23And it was like, he had this thing, like a fish. You remember there was like 100 numbers you could call to get like a tarot reading or whatever, like Miss Cleo or whatever. Well, this dude had one and it was a fish finder. He would call, you could call this service and they would tell you where the fish in the state, where you could fish, right? So it was like, we got the bet, you know, like Lake Beauregard's got the fish, right? Or Chifuncta, you got them in a Chifuncta today. They got tarpon out there in South Lafourche or like, you know, they got brim off of Pecan Island or something like that.

1:25:55So people would call this number and pay a fee to talk to him and he would tell him where the good fishing was for that day. And so I worked over there at the little call center over there and you would just answer calls and you had to keep him on the line while he was waiting with the person he was already talking to because the guy lived in our area. So that was pretty crazy, dude. You would just bullshit with these motherfuckers who were trying to get like a hot reed on some bass or whatever, you know? So, but even just shit like that, you get into it. And then like life becomes like this sort of thing that's like, all right, you know, this is interesting.

1:26:28And then I think God just blesses you with different characters that come by. We had a guy at work. I've heard this story before, but he would deliver pizzas and we'd make up fake. He never watched any pop culture. He never watched movies or anything. He was like a born again Christian or like reborn again or whatever it's called unborn or whatever, fucking twice baked or whatever for Christ or whatever. He was just like a little potato skin for the Lord, this guy, you know? So he, he, but he, we would call, he was a manager at the pizza joint. So we, we'd make up fake pizza orders, you know, we'd make up a, you know, a pizza order for like, uh, you know, it could be anybody.

1:27:02It could be fucking Wesley Snipes, right? Like four miles away, wanted six pizzas. So we'd make the pizzas. He'd go take, he had no ID, never heard of Wesley Snipes. He never owned a television, anything like that. He was always at church. So he'd go deliver, he'd go out there. We'd get drunk while he was gone. This motherfucker would come back. He was always wearing like a Heathcliff t-shirt. Remember Heathcliff, that cartoon? He was always wearing, it said like Heathcliff loves Christ or whatever on it. And he was always wearing that bitch and he'd come back and we would fucking be leaning on the brooms, just bent out of our minds, bro.

1:27:34and but when he get back it was almost like he was bringing the pizzas back for us because we'd forgot he we'd even sent him out there we drink so much draft beer while he was going and the pizzas were still good enough you know to eat so we're like fuck yeah we got pizzas and we cheer him on when he got back well excited this motherfucker just whatever money were the business was gonna make for the day was just gone bro and these pizzas was wet in the middle bro and i'll say that till i die bro the pizzas that they sold were wet in the middle and that shit It was a turnoff to me. Interesting, you fuck.

1:28:06That's pretty interesting shit. It was just interesting shit, you know? It was entertaining enough, you know? I heard that you were going to be spending time down in Austin, man. So am I. I had to do it. I had to do it. Why? Just the mathematics is better for me. The stage time? The stage time. Yeah, same. Like I said to you, Central Jersey is very nice. I'm out of the city an hour. But where I live and my situation now, comedy's rough some nights, you know? And I find myself maintaining but not improving, okay? Yeah. I don't want to maintain. And for me, I know this from day one. For me to get anywhere, I got to do a couple spots multiple nights.

1:28:50Yeah. So I started going down there. You know, when the Austin boom came, that wasn't for me. I'm not that – I didn't need that that bad. But I had already purchased a house here, and I wanted to establish myself here. So Austin was nice. I always enjoyed myself there. But I wasn't going to just pick up and move because everybody else was doing it. Yeah. And bring my daughter. And then over the years, I started going twice a year. And I started going three times a year. And four times a year. You miss tacos. You go back down there again. And I noticed that ever since last November, I started going down there once a month.

1:29:28And it was always the same thing. Tuesday, leave Friday. Get there Tuesday morning. Do three spots Tuesday, three Wednesday, three Thursday, and get on a plane. But then I come back here for three weeks, and I do another one a week. So I was like, this is just. It's not enough. It wasn't enough. And I just started making friends. And then, you know, I've been friends with Carly for I don't know how long. And as a friend, she's like, have you ever considered playing GTA? And I'm like, no. But I never played a video game in my life. I was always too busy stealing. Yeah. I don't have time for fucking games.

1:30:01That's what the game is. That's what the game is about. You're streaming now? Yeah. I stream twice a week. Bro, I didn't even know that. GTA, Grand Theft Auto, whenever you want to come on, it'd be fucking, dog. It is a blast. It is a fucking blast. I'm an old man. I get it. I know. Don't you have a life? I do. I don't think so. No. Who cares? Who cares? The game wouldn't exist if you hadn't have lived your life. Yeah. No. You're right. Fuck him. You copyright. I'm over there running over people, robbing liquor stores, shooting people. Look, yeah, this is... I'm trying. I don't think you got ammo.

1:30:35Oh my God. I just started shooting motherfuckers.

1:30:44Bro, that's awesome. I just blew a guy up, bro. With the fucking... Can they do blowjob? Can you get a blowjob in this? I think you get a blowjob at the strip club, but then Twitch will ban you. Oh. Right? Twitch will ban you if you get a blowjob at a strip club. Listen, I didn't know what I was doing. These guys taught me how to do it from scratch. Yeah. And I go on there. Like, tonight I might go on there, but maybe not because Carly can't stream tonight. Maybe I'll go on there Sunday nights. The other night, I got out at 1 in the morning. I went out to do comedy and podcast, and I got back.

1:31:21Carly was streaming. We have another friend. We have three of us, Pedro. And we fucking go off on that, man. I eat a few edibles. I smoke some dope. I put my little earphones on. I got music. Everybody's sleeping. I got my little office in the back to play it. And if this is what I'm doing now, this is what I'm doing. Dude, it's how the times are. There's not, some people, there's not even a lot of jobs out there. You can't grow a crop. You grow a fucking, you grow a pumpkin or whatever. It's got medals in the middle of it and shit. Everything's got, you know, things are so messed up now. You got a cornfield, but half of the corn's got fucking Velcro on it growing out of it and shit.

1:32:01Like everything is just merged out. It's like, yeah, if you're an adult playing video games. I didn't do it as a kid. I didn't play any fucking games as a kid. Then you earned it, dude. Every kid should be able to play video games. That's what I tell people. I'm 63. I'll let you know what I want to do when I grow up as soon as I find out. I know. I don't know what I want to do when I grow up. I'm having a good time doing what I'm doing. And, you know, that having, I love seeing Joe once a month. Oh, yeah. Perfect for me. Two, three days of Joe talking some shit, smoking some dope in the green room.

1:32:34It's not even that. I like going to Sunset, hanging out with Red Band. Yeah. You know, I'm going to start going more to Creek in the Cave. I got to start going over there and torturing Rebecca. It's a nice little comedy community. And for guys like us, we're right there. You want to do another spot? Go to the Vulcan. Right. And beside that, how many open mics are there there? Oh, well, dude, you can go down there, and what would take you a year in another city, I think you can do in four months down there. Months down, yeah, comedy-wise. I really believe that. Even in L.A., if you're popping around, it's still extra popping around, you know?

1:33:06But there, you can manage it up and get it in, especially if you're really working on it. No, you could do three spots by nine, good spots, in front of good audiences, go to fucking Austin. The show started at seven. Some of them start at six. It just, mathematically, it just made sense. The more I kept going out there and seeing my hotel bills, seeing this, I'm like, I need a pad. Yeah. And then I went to Red Band's building. Have you gone to that building? Uh-uh. And that's why I picked an apartment. I'm in Red Band's building. I'm on the 44th fucking floor. Is it fancy? Oh, yeah. Fucking everything.

1:33:39Red light sauna downstairs. Cold plunge. Poker room. Fucking supermarket downstairs. If you need food, you can get the supermarket. They got everything. They do it all for you. Amazon returns. They'll return it for you? Oh, my God. Put it in a room and they. I have a bunch of shit I'd never wanted. And I just have it, dude. We started making ornaments out of some of it last year. We fucking hanging this shit on the tree of just Amazon returns. There was so many, you know, the people who come to our shows love us. And they bring us gifts. And I would just come home, put the gifts in the closet, open what I could.

1:34:15When I moved, I cleaned out that closet. it was six feet deep with shit all the way to the back. I opened up like two hours worth of packages. Guess what I found? I found$34 ,000 in cash that people would put money in cards to me. You just paid 30 to come see me. Why are you putting$100 bill? You're giving me more money than you paid for the fucking ticket. But that's the people we have coming to our shows. They're very grateful. So you got to take the fucking extra leap. They're going to be that cool. When I opened that up, thank God, there was books. People give me books. and I'd open them and in the middle it'd be 500 cash.

1:34:50I had like two books like that. Really? A couple guys put the money at the end of the book. Damn. It was fun. I got to look at some of them then. I've had some books. Yeah. Would you do a monthly show down there? Yeah, I got my dates already. You do? The first, third Thursday of the month, seven o 'clock, show in the big room. And that's October? October 15th, 16th. Oh man, I'll be down there. November something and December I got booked. And then what I'm doing is, So I'll do that room Thursday and then hang out Friday. And then Saturday, CA is going to get me something I can go do, like a casino or a theater.

1:35:23And then I come home on Sunday. November's interesting. December's interesting because I'm going to do Tulsa, Houston, and then I'm going right to Austin. I'm going to stay there until like the 18th. Finish out the year there. So when I come home, I'm home for Christmas. Got it. But my wife wants to go back down to the 26th of December. Does she like it down there? Yeah. And my daughter really fucking liked it. Really? Remember, I was going to get a one-bedroom, and I'm like, ooh, one-bedroom. I need some more fucking room. You need some room. There we go. Joey Diaz and Friends. Look at Joe Rogan.

1:35:52Look at the flyer. It looks like they made it from fucking papier-mâché. I got to talk to Adam. Oh, yeah. That's crazy. I'm doing that. Just one show a month covers my rent in the fucking blank thing. Yeah. And I get to see Friends. I get to eat Mexican food. That's the biggest thing. You get to watch and see people. That's the thing I start to notice, man. You know, I had to take some time. I'm like, thankfully I've had some time off. I was having, like, I tried to get on new meds. I tried to get off of my meds. And I was trying, like, different plant medicine stuff. Because I really wanted to get off meds.

1:36:22Right. You know, I've always wanted to. Because I got on them 23 years ago because I was going through a bad time in a relationship. And I've still been on them bitches. I went on one six years ago and I'm trying to get off it. Yeah. I don't even see it affecting me anymore. Like, I don't even see if you work out and do all the other shit.

1:36:42You get somebody watching Jaws. Is it affecting us or no? We're good. no.

1:36:51Yeah, that'd be, but it'll be so good down there, dude. And it's like, yeah, but yeah, I had to take a little. Listen, man, when I went, I told you what happened last time. I was headed down there Saturday at 10 in the morning. That night I get home from whatever I'm doing. I open up Instagram to see what's going on. And you made a pop. And I'm like, I didn't want to call you to tell you I was coming down. I want to give you a hug and surprise. you yeah so when i went down saturday that's all i was doing and i went to do a show on the other side of town and somebody goes theo's at the uh mothership right now all right mothership yeah and i said all right let me shoot over there when i got there they said you just missed the motherfucker oh and i stayed there for an hour and then they called back again they're like we're all at uh whatever betty becky i'm uh come on down you know yeah theo's down there and that's when i got on the bicycle with the five girls.

1:37:41One of them was my niece. One of them was Carly, my partner in love. And then there was Christina Mariani, who was - She's the best. She's the best. And little Orr. And I had a blast with those bitches. They took me to fucking the Betsy. We walked out of that at 4.30 in the morning. I haven't stayed out past one in 20 years. And here I am in Austin, Texas, 4.30 in the morning, not even sweating, not even - I had a couple cocktails in me. That was it. But I had the best time. And that's the other thing, man. I got to do a lot to find happiness in town. Because at my age, the biggest thing you want to have is communication in your day.

1:38:20It's great. You want to be alone? That's great. But you have to communicate with other people. That's why I go to gyms in the morning. Oh, isolation is bad. I go to boxing gyms. At this age, it's the biggest thing that'll get you. It's boredom and not having social. I'm 20 years old. The other dad's in my block. I get it. Right. I'm a fucking dinosaur compared to them. And when they talk, I don't know what they're talking about either. So the only people I have are a couple girls that are my friends, like moms. Yeah. That I met through softball and shit. They'll call me and say, we're meeting up here if you want to come by, have a drink.

1:38:51Beside that, there's no guys who call me. Wow. I got like three neighborhood girls. Dude, my friend, yeah, one of my friends ended up working with me. So now we're coworkers, which is nice. We're still friends, but it's work also. So there's part of that always in it. One of my good friends, he was playing football there. and now he graduated over there. He was playing at college and then some other friends have moved out of there. So yeah, Nashville's like, it's good, but I don't have as much of that. Like I got a good Bible study over there though, but I don't have some of that like day-to-day contact that I want.

1:39:21But, and AA's gotten better over there. Okay. So that's been good for me. How are you doing with the program? Let's talk about it before. Yeah, it was getting choppy, man. I'd had some tough times this summer, you know, but it's gotten better. Sorry. no worries it's gotten better man um yeah i don't know i think there was just like i don't know what was going on life just fucking got kind of crazy at certain points just like sometimes there's just a lot going on and it was just like you know i got away from my program you know i think there was a point too where i think over the years i was just touring too it was just too much you know and you don't like i guess you do know but i don't know some of you just learn them for the first time.

1:40:06You're like, I don't know what's going on here. You know, you make some money. You don't know what that's like, you know, popularity. Some of the, some things get scary. Um, but yeah, I, I just gotten away from my program, you know? And so I had to lock back in. And so now it's been good. Um, because most of the time I've had, it's been, has been sober time. You know, it's just when you, you know, it's just, I've had, yeah, more recently, it's just, it's been choppier than I would want. This is very much, you do the same shit every day to get you to where you're going. And for me, ever since I moved here, I'm not going to lie to you, six years ago, I was struggling with mental health.

1:40:49Signed up and spoke to a therapist, went on some type of medication. It was not good. I looked you in the face and tell you, I got dark when I left L.A. And then that shit where my mother started, she never showed up. So it was like a long 18 months. And therapy really helped me. I figured out what the trouble fucking spots are. And if I wake up at 3 in the morning and Theo's on my mind, there's a problem. I have to talk to Theo. I used to ignore those things. I would get up to piss at 3 in the morning and go, fuck, I'm thinking about this date I took and I shouldn't have and all that shit. And once you start getting a lot of those in my life, something's not right.

1:41:29So I had to eliminate those. Like something happened last week. I woke up two nights in a row thinking about something. I got up this week and cleaned that shit up instead of letting it ride. Right. Can't do that. Because I was so busy with comedy and being a dad and podcasting that you overlook a lot of things. And right now I'm about to do that again at the age of 63 with podcasting and stuff like that. so I just had to learn how to take care of my mental I started paying attention to a lot more anything that jolts me a little bit I'm done with yeah you know I was doing great in LA I was doing theaters two theaters every weekend two podcasts a week eight spots a fucking week I'm doing all these fucking things and now and I wasn't happy I just was not fucking happy wow I didn't like how things were being handled in my life.

1:42:23I didn't like the bullshit that was going with it. So I said, you know what? I switched agents. I stayed with CAA. Nothing with the other agent. I just didn't like how we were doing business. I didn't like, I shouldn't cringe when you call me. I shouldn't look at the phone and go, fuck, what's this motherfucker want? And that's what was happening. So I had to go back and clean all that up. And I decided I'm going to do comedy, but it's not corporate comedy. It's 63. I don't give a fuck if I get canceled. Yeah. I don't give a fuck about anything, as a matter of fact. There's only one thing I care about, is being funny and making sure those people have a great show.

1:42:57I don't have Netflix on my mind. I don't want to do a special. I don't want to do much. I got an audition for a voiceover. I'm going to do it. It's for Ghostbusters. That I'll do. But everything else, I'm not in the corporate mood anymore. I'm not in the mood where people are coming up to me with three people after the show. You're great. I'm not in the mood for that shit. Yeah, that's a bunch of fucking regalia. That's just a bunch of shit to take you off your game. So now this is why I incorporated Austin in my life, incorporated what I'm doing now. I'm just going to be funny at 63. And I have an 18-month window until I turn 65.

1:43:30And that goal is to give it all out, balls out, and try to be the best I can until I'm 65. Then I'll see what ticket sales are and everything else. And I'll reevaluate. I'm a lucky 63-year-old because right now I'm supposed to be on a ship. Meanwhile, I'm out here hand-picking gigs that are offered at me. casinos they pay well you know little residencies because oh yeah you can do something yeah there's a lot of possibilities so why am i stressing i was doing the road completely different before it was corporate and it was business i was only there to pick up a check on saturday yeah i was not happy till that check came in my hand i don't look at it like that no more i don't even want the check i want to have a good time yeah if i don't have a good time why have the check yeah i'm just So that's my outlook now with this window.

1:44:20Somebody asked me why five-year window. And I'm like, dog, I'm 63. I got one foot in the gray, one of the banana peel. Ain't no window. It's like a fucking flea window. It's a doggy door. Yeah, it's a doggy door. But then I said, no, you have to live with some type of purpose. And you have to have some type of purpose where you stand up. And this is what I'm doing. I'm happy to hear that, man. Yeah. I'm glad, dude. Because, yeah, and we need your energy there. And I need to hear that. Because, yeah, I'm getting back. It's like I take it some time off, you know, we got to put a special together.

1:44:50That's going to come out at some point soon. But yeah, I'm just taking some time off. I just started getting back on stage. I got up with Giannis Papas a couple of weeks ago, dude. Okay, bro. That was one of the, he's one of the funniest. He's a funny dude, Giannis Papas. He does not fuck around. Bro, his show right now is probably the fun. It's one of the funniest shows I've ever seen. Really? The tour he's doing now? It was so good, man. So you jumped on stage with Giannis and Austin that night. Right. Yeah. You went up before his set. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. He's a fun guy. He's a good guy. And I like Joe DeRosa.

1:45:22There's a lot of guys down there that I really think the world of. Like they're young comics. And they're young energy. If you're young and want to kill, you want to be a hustler, you want to be in it, they're down there, man. And that energy is really good for guys my age. We both have something to give each other. I have the wisdom of 30 years that if they ask me a question, I can put them at ease. Yeah. And they have the gift of making me feel young. Amen. Give me the opportunity to go up there and rock like I was 24. Like you're saying, being around people gives you energy, bro. Energy. Yeah.

1:45:53It's like I'll go hang out around like I'm a Vanderbilt football fan. Right. I see that. I like LSU because that's obviously where I'm from. But Vanderbilt's the city that I live in, right? They play out of Nashville. And so like last year, I went to like nine of their games last year. On the road, at home. I mean, they played 11 games. I went to nine. They played 12. I went to nine. And it just gave me so much life because you're just around energy. You're surrounded. It's a maximum amount of energy. And that's real. College football is real energy, Doc. Yeah. That's not fucking around. You know, I tell people, you don't know what life is until you go to a college football game.

1:46:26Oh, yeah. NFL's the NFL. Yeah. College, you feel the love in the air. Everybody's having a good time. Somebody's got their fucking tits out. Yeah. Always at those games. One girl isn't doing a somersault and she's fucking beautiful. Oh, you could throw your dick into the crowd and it'll land in some girl's ass. Yeah. You could feel something that's unlike pro football. Oh, yeah. It's something real. Which is real, you know? Pro football is turning into just more gambling and people just trying to, like, you know, people trying to just gamble and just probably lie to their spouse or whatever. But it's definitely, yeah, pro football is turning into a bit more of a racket.

1:47:02What I wanted to talk to you about before I left was our plan for the future. I love you a lot. You're like a stepson to me. And when I bumped into you in Austin, you said something to me that night that really made me think. And then I started counting for you. I started counting the days for you to give you as much support as I can give you. I'm not there all the time. Yeah. I'm not there all the time. And I really want you to do well with this now. I really want you to put your, because you have a whole world ahead of you that you don't know. And I'm going to explain it to you now. I did cocaine from 1979 to 2007.

1:47:40What's that? That's 21 years plus seven is 28 years. 28 years. 28 years I had that in my body. It was my thought, and it does affect you. It's not just one package once a week. Now you're doing five packages a week, and it starts becoming you. I ended up kidnapping somebody. I ended up paying my debts to society. And what did I do when I came out? I went right back to the bank. Oh, dude, I fucking, yeah. And I started comedy during the bag. I got married. I got divorced. I was dead broke. I went through hell for a lot of years now. And you were in the bag the whole time? Oh, fuck yeah. There was no stopping or nothing.

1:48:16There was always a bag. I got divorced. I don't talk to that daughter. It's been 20-something years since I've spoken to that daughter. Yeah. All because of that patch of life. But I want you to think of what I'm telling you. At 44, I made a decision to stop snorting coke. That was 19 years ago. This November will be 19 years. I want to tell you what I've accomplished in 19 years to what I accomplished in 44 years. It's not even close. Wow. Marriage, a child, a career, podcasting. I did all these things in that little fucking window. So every morning when I wake up, my regret is, I wish I had 15 more of those years to see what the damage I could have done, how high I could have worked if I would have ended up in arenas or whatever.

1:49:02I'm content with what God gave me. I'm grateful for what I don't have and for what I do have. Even if you have a cocktail one time, even if you decide to eat a 10 milligram edible, I'm talking about the shit that gets us down the most, the drug that has driven us down the most is what you have to get out of your system. And Jesus Christ, in 19 years, I became a dad. This ain't. Was it stuff you never thought you could do? Never. Wow. Never. and you get this superpower. You get to see who the real you was. Yeah. Once you uncover that thing, what's about to come out, if you stick to the program, what's working the program?

1:49:44I have to go to a meeting eight times a day. That's bullshit. Yeah. I want you to go to a meeting once a day. I want you to wake up every day with the intention that you're there to make someone's day, whether you give them$1 ,000 or open up a car door for them so their day is better. sobriety isn't just fighting off the devil it's us a morphing into the new us and figuring out what the fuck the drugs have covered what views have been covered by the drugs what part of our lives have been hidden oh yeah and that's when you're gonna a woman will pop into your life she gets knocked up in two months and she's gonna give you twins and they're beautiful two girls you know this is the things that i'm saying to you look you just brings at me yeah because your options are so much when you're sober from the shit that almost killed you.

1:50:34I mean, how long was I going to continue to do it, bro? How long was I going to go to prison again? Yeah. Put me in fucking prison. And I still went out the next week. That's the monster that addiction is. But once you cut that motherfucker's head off, the shit that comes out of you, man, it takes a while. But you'll start thinking things and going, I never thought like that before. oh yeah. I mean, the best times I've ever had, I think are the best that, yeah, the time I've operated the best in my life has been times when I've, when I've been sober, you know, and most of the time it's been that way, but it's like when it's gotten off where it hasn't been, it's definitely, it's been tough, you know?

1:51:15And then you start to get isolated too. That never helped me. Um, sometimes it was like over tour and that didn't help me. Um, but yeah, I've always going to meetings you know i just had there was just there was a time where yeah like in the past probably six months has been tough to keep a lot of time together you know but uh but now it's it's back on track and so that's been the best feeling but i appreciate that and i got you back man i got your fuck even though i'm 20 miles 2 000 miles without you i think about you three four times a week i don't like bothering you because i know you're on you're in different time zones every 15 fucking minutes you're in a different time zone.

1:51:53But I want you to know I have your back. I'm cheering for you because I really want you to get the happiness that you've been looking for for years. For years. It might not be a woman. It might not be a kid. It might not be a horse. You're going to feel. This is way better than a peptide. No peptide. No blowjob. Nothing can make you feel what you're about to feel once those fucking rocks start getting out of the way and the real you comes out. what did you notice for yourself like was there one kind of thing or two things that really was something right off the bat that i had forgotten in all my addiction the first thing i forgot was that i was a fucking man and there's a certain way to talk to me there's a certain way not to talk to me whether you're a talent agent a producer or director you're gonna talk to me a certain way and i'm gonna give you the same mutual respect and i remember one that And I flipped out on a fucking direct on a commercial shoot.

1:52:49And everybody loved it because the guy went on. He's one of those guys that comes up with the sleeves rolled up to show the tattoo. Oh, yeah. With the feather and the Chinese assistant. Some fake ass orphan or whatever. And I found myself sticking up for myself more. Not giving a fuck about. Because what I really gave a fuck wasn't ruining my career. It was ruining my little secret. But I might not be able. I'm not going to stick up for myself because I won't be able to snort coke three nights from now. Once I didn't have that no more, I became a fucking animal. That's it. You're going to treat me like a man, bitch.

1:53:21I'm not one of these motherfuckers in Studio City. Oh, my God. I brought you a cake. Nah. Yeah. I got talent, motherfucker. All right. I don't have to show up with nothing. Right. It was things like that that I started in LA. I started, you know, people call you. Hey, it's 3.40 in the afternoon. You want to go to this audition at 6 downtown? Can I ask you a question? Would you send your mother down there at 6? Yeah. Why are you sending me down there? Fuck you. Fuck you. Yeah. Sticking up for yourself. Not in a weird way. Nuh-uh. I'm very appreciative that you got me on an audition, but just the things at Hollywood gets you confused.

1:53:54Yeah. They start tripping your brain up a little bit. And when you see them, those guys are all the same. Yeah. They talk a big game until you say, how about I slap you in the mouth and watch what happens? The police get involved. This is not right. Yeah. But when you did it, it was right. When you walk around this set and embarrass people and talk to women. Just f***ing around. I heard that director tell a woman she was too fat. Yeah. I don't want you standing over that. He didn't say nothing about the lighting. He just blatantly, because he thought he could do that, tell this girl that was like 28, you're too fat.

1:54:25I can't have you stand there. When I heard that, I was like, wow. Yeah. And you take that shit because you think that's part of your career. You think it's part of it. Fuck you, motherfucker. Fuck you. A lot of these Hollywood dudes, they give bad. They give bad. They give a bad name to real cool gay dudes and regular f***s or whatever. they ruin them regular because they're you know what i'm saying because they ruin them because they're trying to be fucking that shit that shit was holding me back your original thoughts of how you feel whatever religion you're part of yeah there's something that you paid attention to younger now you feel stronger about it yeah there's so many things that you see that have been cut off from your life and you're like how did i forget that yeah how did i forget this so yeah some A disconnection.

1:55:11In a nutshell, I think it's hard, but I want to be on this planet when you start reaping the rewards from that because I want you to call me every three months and go, Joey, this is getting fucking crazy. Wow. This is getting fucking crazy. I'm not talking about you involving an orgy. Life is going to get crazy. Yeah. Numbers are going to start changing. People are going to start changing. It gets real, and this is what you were supposed to feel since day one. When I started coke and I do a show the next night, It would be great. I would kill, but I could feel the connection wasn't there. I'm connected now.

1:55:45I've been connected for 17 years now. Yeah. I know exactly what passes through my mouth and how it goes out. So if I could give anything to anybody, I want you to feel that, what I feel, because I know it's going to solve 89 % of your problems. Yeah. I could promise you that. I could gamble my life on that. If you stick to this program you're on right now, a couple of weights, You don't have to become Mr. N.A. and get a tattoo. Yeah, no, I don't need all of that. You don't need all of that. Just where your heart is, you're going to be a fucking killer. You're a killer now. I just need to keep my – yeah, I just got to keep building more time.

1:56:21And right now, I don't know, I clock you at 40, you're going to have the last 20 years of your life be how you intended to live them. And that's something I can't sell you. And that's something N.A. can't sell you. And I love those programs because those programs really help you. I didn't like the Hollywood N.A. I went to it a couple times when I stopped selling coke. It would drive me back to snort coke because they don't adhere to the program. Well, sometimes they'd have dudes in there selling coke. Yeah, they're selling coke. They'd go to a doctor that gives them replacement pills to get you high.

1:56:54They all come up with the date. I still remember being at that meeting. It was on, I think, off the—no. Off of Santa Monica Boulevard? Yes. I went to a couple of them there. Too many people had NA tattoos. Yeah. People have like a bag of Coke tattooed on them and shit like that. Have a fucking, they had a gay dude in there was always sucking on people. He had a fucking big gulp tattoo, that gay dude, that big black dude. They call him the vacuum or whatever that motherfucker, bro. Do not even take your wiener out around that guy. It'll end up in his mouth. But yeah, it was a trying time over there.

1:57:31Very trying. Yeah. But yeah, dude, thank you, bro. I appreciate it. That's my gift to you because I love you. You're the real deal. Holy fear. I've always loved you. It's easy. Love you too, bro. That's what I want you to really get in your life. I appreciate that, dude. Yeah, I feel better than ever that I'm. You look better than ever. Thanks, bro. I can see it. And this time, out of all the other times, I see a little bit more confident in your eyes. I watch your podcast, dog. I watch you. Whenever I see a video of you jumping up and down in Vanderbilt, I look at you and I make sure you out.

1:58:00Yeah, I was fucking gooning out there. You ate last night. Yeah, Lane Kiffin's got people out there. He's two losses away from probably getting busted for something. But TBD, that's his life, dude. That's it, brother. He keeps things exciting. What else? I'm trying to think if there's anything else we want to talk about. I mean, anything else you wanted to talk about, Joey? No, I'm pretty good. I got it out of my chest what I wanted for you and I love you, and that's it. Appreciate it, bro. We could promote some dates or whatever, but I don't give a fuck. I have nothing in September. I have the 30th and Brooklyn.

1:58:34Can you pull his dates out? And that's all I got, brother. Just happy to be here with you. I'm happy you came to New Jersey. Yeah, right there. We got Brooklyn, New York, September 30th. Chicago Theater, November 5th. I think for the Comedy Festival with Bert, I think I got Riverside Theater in Milwaukee on the 7th. Oh, that's going to be beautiful, dude. So that's where I'm at. but who gives a fuck about the dates? We'll put them up. Yeah, we'll figure this out, brother. Coco Diaz, bro. Love you, bro. Love you, brother. Thanks for thinking of me and have a great week and I'll see you in Austin.

1:59:11I'll see you in Austin. Next month. Now I'm just floating on the breeze and I feel I'm falling like these leaves. I must be cornerstone. Oh, but when I reach that ground, I'll share this peace of mind I found. I can feel it in my bones But it's gonna take a little bit