E466 Anthony Jeselnik

33:49I wanted a brother so badly from the moment I have consciousness. And I got three sisters. Every two years I get another sister. And I just wanted one. And I finally got that brother. And I was like, oh, he can't do anything. He's useless until for a long time. And then by the time I went to college when I was 18, he was 11. So now we're very, very close. But I think it's just being closer in age. I think if he was two years younger than me, we'd be much, much closer. Is he a Steelers fan? Yes. Wow. In Pittsburgh, you have to be, yeah. Yeah. It's tough this year. It's been rocky, man. I wanted to buy in Pickett, right?

34:29Yeah. And I think part of you always cheers for the Steelers. I mean, because I'm a Saints fan, and they're black and gold. The Steelers are black and gold. And I love Steelers, you know. I'd always go up there. You'd hear all these crazy rumors about Cordell Stewart and Shenley Park. You'd hear all of this, you know, people just saying, You'd hear all of it. And so yeah, I always want them to do well. And then I saw him with that mustache. And I'm like, this means he's going to do well. Because you don't grow a mustache, I think, unless you're planning on doing something where I'm from. Yeah.

35:05You got to plan. And then he just hasn't been able to really put it together yet. I think he hasn't been that bad. I think it's everybody. Everyone's like, it's the coaching. I'm like, no. It's not just the players. It's everyone just kind of being a little bit off. And I think we'll pull it together. I think we'll be game over 500, maybe game under, maybe break Tomlin's streak. But I'm the kind of fan who I just want to support. I like the coaches. I like the players. If they get traded, I still like them. I'm just happy that the team is there. I don't get mad. I don't get mad about the Steelers anymore.

35:37I used to. And I kind of just realized, this is stupid. Why am I ruining relationships with people? There was a game once. I think I just moved to L.A. And the Steelers played the Patriots. It was the year that Brady won his first Super Bowl. When they had, like, beaten the Raiders, it was a miracle. And the Steelers were really heavily favored. And then we just got crushed. And all my friends were at my place. And they were all Patriots fans except for me. And I got hammered and, like, yelled at everybody. Like, it was such an embarrassing game. And I snapped that I was so embarrassed that I couldn't talk to my friends for, like, a week.

36:08And I was like, I'm never doing this again. I'm going to be on emotional lockdown for sporting events from now on. It's stupid. Stupid thing to get mad about. Yeah, you put a lot into it. Yeah. And you see people put their whole lives into it. And they cart their wife out there, and they'll paint their wife the colors of the team, and they'll do all of that. You know what got me? Remember when the Red Sox won their first World Series in like forever? You know, it was like early to mid-2000s or something. And I remember being pumped for them. I had a bunch of friends who were Red Sox fans, and I was rooting for them to win that year.

36:36And then after they won, I was happy. And then the next season, the fans were like the same assholes. It was like they were the guy from Memento who doesn't know he killed the dude. and he's just like, I got to kill this guy. And it's like, you killed him. You already won. And they didn't bring them that much joy that I don't want to be that kind of fan. I want to just always be happy for my team. Yeah, I think that's what I'm, I've struggled to have that. I realize it's like, am I a Fairweather fan? I was a diehard Saints fan growing up. Diehard. I remember when I didn't have any money, I made like Saints merchandise and I got there and sell bootleg merchandise, you know?

37:09And I loved them, you know? Yeah, I love the Saints. And it just, but at a certain point, I mean, it just, I don't know, also got a little bit older. I think you start to realize, like, I'm busy. Maybe my life, I got busier, too. I didn't have as much time to do fantasy. I don't know. I never done fantasy. I never wanted to. Really? I never want to root for anyone who's not a stealer. I never want to be like, oh, you know, Calvin Ridley just, you know, ran all over us, but he's on my fantasy team, so I'm happy about that. Like, I never wanted to do that. Wow, you're really pure, then. You're kind of a purist.

37:43And I also just don't want to, like, type in all that shit. I don't want to sit there for the draft. One of my best friends is like a big fantasy football guy, knows everything. If he ran your team, you would win. And I would never give a shit. Not my thing. I don't gamble. Do you gamble? Do you put money on sports? I do gamble sometimes. I've realized recently that I need to kind of chill out. Not a lot. I'll bet like a couple hundred dollars here and there on something. I've never bet$1 ,000 on something. but um i do realize it's like i'm getting a little like when i get like testy or bored i want to do something you know you need to misbehave i'm like that where i'm like yes like i'm like i don't i haven't had to drink in like a year and a half i don't consider myself so i don't consider myself sober but i've been drinking but i need something i need like a nicotine pouch or like some sort of like thing that's like this is my misbehaving yeah watch me misbehave where does that come from that That's something I've always had.

38:41You think that's just a, not a malady, but just a piece of humanity? Do you think it's just something that's in you, you know? Or do you think, sorry, I got bugs in here, because I think a lot of this stuff is outdated. We're in a Masonic temple, by the way. This isn't all new stuff? Is this, yeah, I think this is, this isn't the room my show is in, but I think I'm in this theater tomorrow. Yeah, you are. We're in there tonight. Okay, cool. So we're switching. Awesome. Yeah, Stavros Halkias. Have you ever seen this kid? I know who he is, but I haven't met him. Thicker kid. Nice kid. He's not Vietnamese.

39:19What is he? White. And he's performing in town, too, tonight. There's a real... I mean, comedy, it's everywhere. It's everywhere now. And I think we're in this phase. I think the second boom is over. I think it ended with the pandemic. But we're in this rock star phase where there's like, you know, 5 % of the stand-up comedians are just fucking rock stars. Yeah. And everyone else is like just kind of tolling away at clubs. But I'll ride this wave as long as it goes. I mean, the fact that there's three comedians in town this weekend performing at theaters is kind of crazy, you know? I mean, almost every weekend I'm out on the road, it's like there's someone that same night somewhere else.

39:58It's just, I think probably a lot of it's the pandemic. People are like itching to get out on the road. But also people are coming out to shows, man. Yeah, dude, I think it's, we're also, So you can't get fair news. I mean, the news seems to be, to me, really compromised these days, right? Like no matter what news you get. Like I learned last week that you can pay like some of these websites like Billboard or some of them. You can pay them money to come out and like take photos of you and put them on the Internet or write a story. You can just pay for it. Yeah. And it's like the news has been monetized.

40:32Right. It's not a service anymore. And now it's like, we just need to give you your news. And that's, there should be like, just at the end of the day, like here's, here's what really happened. Yeah. Right. There should be like some dude who sneaks over like, Hey bud, let me get five minutes of your time. This is what's going on. This is actually what happened. Whatever your politics are like, this is what went down black and white. Make your own decisions. So I think people are coming to see something live too. Cause they want to hear things that they, they want to hear something that's not, that doesn't maybe feel as bought and paid for.

41:02Do you think that's possible? I think the edges have been sanded off everything. Like every time Disney buys another company, I'm like, oh, my career has gotten shorter. If Disney owns everything, I'm never working again. Why is that? In television. Because they would never put someone like me on TV. It's like these companies that have to, they have all these responsibilities to just bad entertainment. It's like, we just don't want to make anyone mad. You know, it's not about like doing something great. So I think stand-up, it's like the one place where you can go and just see an unfiltered, not by, I don't think it's like, it's edgier, but I just think you have like fewer people worried about what's going to happen and then you just want to see an artist like doing their thing instead of like a hundred artists and a corporation combining to come up with a storyline for a season.

41:44You know, I think TV and movies have gotten bad. You were one of the first guys that I heard of that takes like breaks in their life and touring. I don't know if that's true. I would just hear this is like some of the Jeselnik lore that would go around. I mean, it was all kinds of things. There was the blood, you know, the drink, the plasma. know there was all that kind of shit but there was like there was um that yeah anthony takes like he'll take like a month or two off and just go somewhere and do something and spend time with him by himself or go travel you know but it would usually be a writing retreat like i would be going to write like i'm just gonna i gotta go away and lock myself in a cabin and write 100 jokes like i would be like in a week i gotta write 100 no matter when i do it but i gotta leave here with 100 jokes i remember the one time i did that i went up and got a place in ojai and i wrote 100 jokes in a week.

42:31I was writing on Fallon at the time and I couldn't write my own stuff. So I was like, I'm just going to take a week and go do this. And of all those jokes, of a hundred jokes, one of them made it into my act. And it was like a 30 second joke that I was like, this was probably a bad use of my time. But I was, I always feel like, I don't know if you feel about this, but you have to get the bad jokes out to get to the good jokes. You know, let's say like, but when you start doing comedy, you're going to write a million jokes in your life. Let's say 200 of them are going to be great, but you still need to write a million.

42:58You can't just write 200 and stop. That I'm always, I'm always trying to write just to get the bad ones out so that the good ones can come to me. But yeah, I would do that. You know, yeah, like, who was that? Oh, Louis C.K., I was talking with him, and he said, what did he say? He said, it's the ones you don't want to tell a lot of times. Like the ones that'll sit there that you're afraid to tell. He's like, for him anyway, he said, those are the ones that end up becoming his favorite. it so i love that he says things like that like i remember he did snl one year and he was like there was one sketch that i was like i hate this it's so stupid we have to do it like i want to do something where i'm like i have to blow a big horn and i feel stupid doing it because that's what snl is to me like i want to do this that the hat where he would talk about like opening with his closer and then being like how do i build i've got to go somewhere like i have to work it out on stage i thought that was like very brave and an intelligent way to do it when it comes to trying out jokes like that though I always say only try the ones you like and only keep the ones they like you know because if you try one you don't like and the audience loves it you're stuck with that fucking yeah that's true like I don't have I never have self-deprecating jokes but I had one in my act like a couple tours ago and at my openers would laugh because they were like you're just having fun all of a sudden you tell this joke and then you're like mad at the audience for laughing like the joke was on me and just annoyed me I hate it I hated self-deprecating comedy no thank you yeah i don't know if i like it or not i don't know i mean i think yeah i think i'm kind of fine with it i don't know i think for me a lot of times it feels like just survival like how do i survive through this hour with this group of people to get some high that i need or something that i need that i've always needed and i just how do we get to the end of this with me with it being a fair exchange that's my biggest thing I want it to be fair for their money that they spend and fair for what I give them you know and then I start to look deeper sometimes like why do people come to see things what do we look for in people that we go to watch or that we let entertain us like what I'm putting my own attention on you know that seems to be the biggest thing that I have that the thing I have the most of my own value seems to be like my attention like where do I let it sit what do I who do I give it to you know I find those like websites sometimes that I'll go to I'm like why am I giving this it doesn't even feel good it doesn't feel rewarding you know yeah like the tick tock and shit where you're just like an hour goes by and like what am I haven't learned anything or I just feel like I've burned an hour yeah yeah yeah it's something that I laugh and stuff but it's like Facebook you know I'll go and look and see if anybody's dead from high school you know and i hate to say that but it's like that's kind of it you know if there's like a good raffle that somebody's doing i'll do that but it's like i don't like what am i am i here just because i'm being lazy and then i start to look like at the algorithm it's like man they've got us really on the ropes as far as to us just becoming humans just becoming like trained completely trained fish oh dude it's gonna be like the fucking end to wall-e remember that movie it's like all the fat people in the the wheelchairs like and i think we're gonna i think you and i will be okay it's the younger kids that i'm like oh they're all fucked like they just their attention span is gone i don't even know what the world's gonna look like in 50 years yeah they're running it like i think about the people who are in tech you know they have kids now and they all have nannies and shit and their one rule is keep the kids off the tablets right they don't want them to have a phone an ipad anything and Everyone else is like, here you go.

46:43Like, see you when you're 18. And they're the ones making the shit. That's the thing. And that's so they know how dangerous it is. They know how bad it is. But it seems like a bad way to, you know, experience your childhood is to always have stuff. Like, remember, you'd run home from school, run home to catch the cartoons. You had to, like, sprint upstairs to the bathroom and come back down before the commercials were over to catch the second half of Dukes of Hazzard. Like, where you were mattered, and now everything is just at your fingertips. and I think it's bad for you. Oh, I think the value of most things, it's like, I think about this, like even with relationships and stuff, like the light in a woman's eyes, you got to see, it used to be, that was from your wife, you know, or that was from your partner, it was like, that's who you, you know, that was the one, but now it's like there's just constantly, you know, it's like you can find anything of somebody just completely giving everything they have to a screen somewhere and I just wonder what the effect of that is on like marriages and like like and if you go look on your phone all day and stuff's making you laugh and if you get home and your kid makes you laugh right I'm not saying that it your kids doesn't still make you laugh but does it like debilitates does it take away a little bit of that because your dopamine has been slowly released all day yeah that by the time you get home you're like oh I've seen 40 attractive women on social media.

48:04I've seen like some kid in, you know, Miami or some, you know, they find a kid in the dirt, like in Uganda or something, and he's happy or whatever. He's got a diamond or whatever, and he's all pleased. You know, it's like you've seen the happiest kid in the world for the day. So I just wonder, do we cannibalize, have we just cannibalized everything that used to have meaning, right? And not just like they hit a dopamine for your head, but like some meaning to you intrinsically like as a human you know I think it's taken away a little bit of community because you everyone has their own entertainment it's like just for them on demand so you don't like watch things together that's why like this summer going to see Barbie and Oppenheimer with like a theater full of people dressing up was like such a crazy thing that hasn't been happening for a while because people would just sit at their sit at home you everyone's watching the same videos but at different times on their phone by themselves so they might like pass them around but you don't just sit and like, you know, if people threw up 10 minutes of memes at the office every morning and they sat in an office and laughed at them and everything, great.

49:07But everyone's just kind of just in their own shit. Absorbing them, yeah, at their own time. And family, it's just like, I think that's a big part of it. And we've talked about that before. We had a guy on here named John Verveke and he's like a meaning specialist. So, or he's not like a specialist but he's like a professor and that's what man's quest for meaning, that's what a lot of his stuff is about. And he talks about like the Stoics and like Aristotle and like the past and how man has always searched for meaning kind of. But a lot of he talks about his shared experiences. That's one of the biggest things that we had as humans is that we share experiences.

49:40Yeah, we would all watch a show, then we would go out in the street if we watched In Living Color, and we would go in the street in our neighborhood and impersonate all the characters, dude. Like, oh God! Oh, I had my homie to clown down. Impersonate Damon Wayans, like, oh, homie to clown, homie to all. Yeah. And it was like, and if you could do it good in the street, But we'd all seen it and it was just so, yeah, if you'd seen a new episode, it'd come out, and you'd be like, when the commercial break came on, you'd be pissed and have to get back right before the commercial ended. Oh yeah, that Monday morning in school, that's all anyone's talking about.

50:14I was big into comedy as a kid. I remember when I got to college, remember Mr. Show with Bob and David? I've heard of it, I've never saw it. It was an HBO show, David Cross, Bob Odenkirk, and I loved it. It was edgy, hard comedy. It was on like midnight on a Friday. No one ever watched it. And I would make my friends come over. I'm like, I'm buying the beer. I've got the weed. Just come and just watch this thing with me. And they all hated it. And I was just sitting there just trying to make them like, you don't think this is funny. And it was so fucking funny to me. Ben, the Ben Stiller show when I was in like eighth grade, every Monday, I was like, did you guys watch this?

50:46It was so fucking funny. And no one, it wasn't like they didn't think it was funny. They didn't even know about it and weren't interested about it. Like I was always just extra into comedy because it was a way to bond with people. You know, you're doing the theater and 2 ,000 people are laughing at the same time. And it's like, this is awesome. This is great that I get to just see this. It's cool. Do you ever sometimes wish, sometimes I wish I was the guy in the audience having a good time. Do you ever wish that? Does that make any sense? I know exactly what you mean. And I feel like I'm like, I'm past it.

51:14Like I can't enjoy comedy the way that I used to. I would love to go back into the way that I would experience comedy back in the day. But now I just know too much about it. I see too much that I'm just like, oh, okay. Like I just, I watch it differently. Like I opened for Chris Rock in Europe a few years ago. Wow. He's my favorite. He's amazing. I mean, maybe the greatest ever do it. And a guy that I was like, I'm absolutely going to learn everything I can. I'm going to watch him every night, watch his whole set, watch everything. And after two shows, I was like, he's a fucking genius. Like what I'm not, I can't take anything from him on, on stage.

51:45There's nothing I can take that would be, that would like be okay to take. It's like, he's got this cadence, he's got these things he's worked on, but I just become obsessed with like, how does he prepare? What does he do right after he gets off stage? What did he do right before? What's his process like? Because it's like, I can learn from that. But he's just too great of a stand-up to take anything from him on stage. Yeah, I think sometimes watching certain guys, Fahim Anwar, when I watch him, I love, he's so funny. He's great. Everybody loves him. I don't think there's one type of person, like, he's so funny.

52:16Oh, he's just the nicest guy, too. I mean, so many comics, like, nice is a low bar in comedy. You know, it's like, he didn't actively assault me. He's like a nice guy. but as someone who actually you want to sit and talk to and can enjoy a conversation is few and far between and he's one of those guys. There was a comedian one night where at the comedy store some guy's backing out of the comedy store hits a woman with his car. Like a woman's car or a woman? Hit a woman, a human woman. Wow. Which I don't condone. No. Can't do it. Huh? Can't do it. Yeah. I mean, and the guy, so then he takes off into the building, right?

52:50A few minutes later, I just see it from the porch. I'm like, what? and it wasn't really hard but it was the lady fell down right and people were tripping out and the guy like seven or eight minutes later he i'm in the back other part of the comedy store he comes up to me he's like hey dude he has no idea i've seen it he's like do i look like i just hit a woman with my car and i'm like what what would that look like i don't know but i don't know if he was on drug or if somebody he was like hey man do i look like i just hit a woman with my car and i was like nah man you look totally chill yeah do you think he was gonna like walk out there and That can't be him.

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56:40Visit betterhelp.com slash theo today to get 10 % off your first month. That's betterhelp.com slash theo. But comments are strange, man. It's really crazy to think how many strange people get together in a building and how much like like I was thinking yesterday about how Brody Stevens took his life right like that's crazy because we so many of us had seen him that night and there's nothing about him that seemed very erroneous or you know like people knew that he was struggling you never kind of knew what level he was struggling at because I think he put so much of it also into his act so you were never sure how much was an act and how much wasn't no i mean people who are like the most depressed put on the best mask you know it's like if you ever see those memes it's like this isn't the face of depression someone being like crying it's like it's somebody's like like it's the smiles too big you know it's like no one's that fucking happy man what's going on then i'm not like brody was always a ball of sunshine but i mean i was shocked and gutted when that happened and most of the time i remember robin williams i was like this fucking guy this fucking guy who like everyone thinks is the funniest person of all time like i had to pull the plug like that was gutting that i i'm not uh i understand that everyone dies and deaths rarely bother me but suicide is always just devastates me like i got to take the afternoon to like process call the therapist and just like talk it out because it's always it's always brutal brody was a tough one yeah yeah i think he was so big too he was so much bigger than life.

58:14I, I think what scares me the most about it is that it's like, could that happen of something? Me, could that happen? You know, how do you go from seeming just like every other comedian at the store in a way? Not, I mean, of course you're individual, but just seeming like every other comedian to suddenly, you know, like does something, can something happen in your brain that just makes that happen? Yes. I mean, suicide. And I've read I read a book about this last year, I think, amazing book, which is like suicide's almost like a state of mind. Like it's just like something comes over you and you can't help yourself.

58:50Like you're not who you normally were. And a lot of times if a friend of mine or someone I know dies by suicide, I have to know the details. Like I need to know what happened. Was it financial? Was it like, I was reading a book where if people try to kill themselves by jumping off a bridge into water, if they do it over romantic entanglements if they do it over a woman or a guy they almost always if they don't die when they hit the water swim to the surface they're like what am i doing this is so stupid i and they swim out and they get saved if they're if they're jumping over financial shit they sink like a stone it's like thank god this is over like it's just these different things get into people's minds and just extinguish any sort of any sort of flame there's a book about that oh wow yeah yeah i just don't know i wonder if i have too much of an ego that's why i wouldn't like ego is so interesting because it's like kind of this shadow but it's like this i don't know do when you say ego do you mean like your your body saying like you know not today or do you mean like you're in your mind being like i'm not gonna let people read about me tomorrow that i took my own life that's what i think i will i or i don't want to die Yeah.

1:00:02You know, I don't want to die. This is all I'm doing is being alive. So if I die, that's probably going to be pretty boring, you know. At least if I'm alive, I can do any, you know, things are possible. I feel like death sounds great. It's just like you get to sleep. I unsleep that well. So the idea of just like you go to sleep forever sounds awesome. Suicide, I'm not going out like that. I'm not doing that to people who knew me. I'm not going to be, that's not going to be the end of my story. and I just like refused. I never even entertained it. But I am fascinated by it. Yeah. Yeah, I just don't, and I don't know how I would do it.

1:00:42I just don't know if I could do, I don't want to do it. I would do like the guy in the garage with the piping or whatever, probably something casual. Yeah, I used to think that I'd be like, okay, I'd be like a bathtub guy, you know, kind of thing or take some pills and go to sleep. And then I would read about it more and it was like, men don't do that. men pull out the shotgun men jump off a thing you know like women take the pills women go in the bathtub and i was like oh well this isn't for me you know i'm not going i'm not going out pansy style yeah you know i mean oh yeah look yeah i was raised by my mom so i used to wear that towel i would put it up around my chest sometimes you know i'm talking about like the bath towel yeah and then one day my buddy's like i was at my buddy's house he's like dude what the fuck are you doing yeah like you have the towel like above your breasts or whatever and or and i remember sometimes i would stand and i would talk like i remember if i was talking to somebody with my shirt off i would cover my chest like this like just the nipples like the whole yeah like the nipples and i just remember it's probably something that my mom did if she was like you know if we peeked in her room or something and she'd be like what do you know like i don't know it just seemed kind of it seemed like more of a feminine trait you know i remember when i was a kid like we do yard work at the house and I was helping always helping my dad you know because uh I was the oldest and it was just like it's hot out take your shirt off like take your shirt off we're out we're doing yard work and I was like great and one day I'm like playing football with my friends who are like eight or nine years old and it's really hot and I just take my shirt off to play and they all just like stop and look at me like what the fuck are you doing and I was like oh got it shirt back on like never again like I'm not a shirt off guy yeah in our neighborhood taking your shirt off was a sign of respect when I was growing up like if somebody did something you know we had people that couldn't real you know speak really well and very you know just damn limited you know and so people would take their shirt off as like a sign of like um like respect you know like we're with this guy you know I remember that like on like you're watching 9-11 you just like everybody take your shirts off no no it'd be something more localized It's like if you were watching like if somebody had started like a ditch fire or something and, you know, people were supporting him or whatever he was doing.

1:02:58He was burning like if it was a woman burning her husband's stuff or whatever or something. If you were in support of whoever was doing something, there was like a – it was almost like I don't know what to say, so I'm just going to say that I am showing myself here. It felt very primitive when I think back on it at the time. You take the shirt off and you're done. Or are you swinging it around? Or are you throwing the shirt away? Like, this shirt's done now. Shit, the shirt has nothing to do with it. I just saw something so cool. But you just hold it until. Yeah, you just hold it. You say, like, I'm here.

1:03:28And then this moment of respect is over. 10 minutes, 15 minutes. Put your shirt back on. Yeah, things will kind of dissipate or something. I think somebody, you know, the oldest kid will put their shirt back on. And then the rest of the kids will put their shirt back on. So it was like an age thing. I think it was like a. Yeah, it was something, but I just remember that if you didn't know what to do, you just took your shirt off. If you were around an adult, sometimes you took it just to show it was like a sign of respect somehow. I just remember people doing it a lot. I always think it's funny when you see fights online.

1:04:02I follow Twitter accounts and it's like, here's a fight. Oh, it's the worst. Just some random guy in the suburbs rips his shirt. They start arguing. He tears his shirt off and starts flexing. Always makes me laugh. Why do they allow these children? You ever see the fights of children beating up other children online? Why do they allow that to be on? It seems like we created a culture that is just imitating what they see, right? Because at a certain point, you just see the same. It's like the same exact video, just new people. And I'm like, shouldn't there be a block? That's where I get weird about free speech, kind of, I guess.

1:04:37It's like, shouldn't there be a block that lets us not see this? The kids fighting? Yeah, I just think it's like, because then some kid sees that. now 20 other kids are going to go make the video yeah like are we just perpetuating it you know i don't know i i mean there were plenty of fights before this started happening i don't know if anyone's fighting for the video you almost hope it's the kind of fight that doesn't like that isn't going to be online like i would gotten the last time i got in a real fist fight i think it was like a sophomore in high school and they filmed it they had a camcorder on a tripod what and filmed it and i won the fight was it comedy central what the uh like who was it a company that filmed the fight yeah when i was 16 years old oh i thought you said high school high school yeah oh sorry high school okay and uh just the the guy thought he was gonna beat me up and had his friends film it and i won the fight you did yeah and people passed the tape around i did one of the coolest things i've ever done before or since i was this guy's bigger than me and i'm not winning this fight in the beginning and we get to a point we've thrown a couple punches and he gets me from behind he's like got me in like a bear hug around my arms oh and he's trying he's trying to like throw me down and i just in this in this like five second span i remember a movie called bird on bird on wire with mel gibson bird on wire yeah bird on the wire goldie hawn yes with goldie hawn and mel gibson's thing in that movie his move and when you fight was to someone get him from behind and he would put his head forward and slam his head back and so i just let my all my body like I just went limp and I had my head dropped down and slammed it back and caught him right in the head.

1:06:16And he went down and you hear everyone scream. And I was like, and like, I think I knocked his teeth out. He had fake teeth in the first four and I hit him and the teeth came out and then he was like, this is over. I gotta fix my teeth. And that tape went around school for like three weeks. And I felt like a God. And then all of a sudden it disappeared. But I was like, if that was online, I don't know what my life would have been like. you know like you would have been somebody who's fights i probably that would have been my thing you'd have been like yeah i'm gonna get in a fight and hope this guy grabs me from behind and i'm gonna do my mel gibson head snap and this is my identity now oh you'd be doing a musical of it for sure i mean that's the kind of thing that happens it's like people yeah everything you have to take it to the stage now um have you been to uh have you done comedy mothership yet no i actually I was in Austin a few weeks ago and I had like three shows but then I went I remember Curtis from Comedy Store he's like running now he was like hey come yeah he's awesome Curtis Nelson yeah Curtis was like just come over after your show and like we'll be closed but I'll give you a tour and that's exactly what he did showed me all like the memorabilia on the walls and like showed me the stages and like it all seems you know pretty perfect it's cool yeah I think one thing that they're doing well one thing I noticed when I was there I just I think I'd done maybe two sets there right but it's nice I mean when you go there like you know if you do do a set there they you know they just surprise the audience with you so it's like you could just they're just amped you know so that always feels pretty nice I think and to be a place where a comedian opened a comedy club I think is kind of interesting and that they get paid better right that's one thing I think is really cool I like it that I mean is that the comedians get paid better I root for that place I root for there's no comedy club I root against, but it just seems like it's probably a little bit easier there.

1:08:09Oh, cause it's kind of like a built in, like this, like a lot of the audience that likes like, like a Rogan audience or a Hinchcliffe audience, like a home team. It's a built in approval. Like you, you're not Joe Rogan cannot bomb at that club. Right. You know what I mean? It's like they, right. Everybody coming is hoping they see him. Yes. And I've got jokes where it's like, I want the audience to be like, Oh fuck. You know, I don't want them to be like, yeah, if I say like you know let's talk about trans people and everyone's like fuck yeah do it then that's not my thing I want people to be like fuck and then I show them how I do it you know but that place and this is not it's just because it's new and people are excited about the club but it doesn't seem it seems like a little bit uh people will say come play in our sandbox I want to play on the beach uh I see what you're saying you know yeah well I think that it's a good point that I I think as you get, when people know you, yeah, a lot of times, even when I go on stage, I'm like, are they, am I good at this anymore?

1:09:07Or are people just being, you know, who are fans of mine or we have something in common? Are they just, you know, I don't doubt myself, but you did the setup changes. it's not where you went on stage for 14 years and they didn't know who you were so you knew you got to win them over yeah you knew there were so many pieces of feedback that you were getting that let you know you were genuinely you were doing well whereas now it's like yeah am i still and then because they they're there for you so it's like how do you know how do you find an audience then I mean, I guess you just pop on shows where people don't know you're going to be there.

1:09:53Maybe that's probably the best way. I mean, TV was my thing. TV and like I never was, I wasn't like I wasn't, I wasn't someone's opener and that's how I kind of made my bones. It was like, okay, got on TV, the roast kind of showcased what I did to stand up. Oh, that's right. And then it was like, you could go see me do that for an hour. You know, it was, it just worked out that I, my standup is very close to my roasting. So that's how I got everyone. And I kind of missed those days where I was so surprised to people because I don't have to earn it anymore. I just have to not let them down. If I don't let them down, they're going to come back.

1:10:22I'll get one tour where it's like greatest hits. And then after that, then no one's coming to see me again. It's got to be every time you come to see me, it's going to be all new and I've got it worked out. I'm not fucking around. I'm not like messing around, trying out stuff. It's like, here's the act. And I've kind of taught people. But a lot of times you just go up there and hang out. We've all seen famous comics go and just do the hangout set. Chappelle does that a lot, I feel like. you know and that's it seems unpleasant to me i don't want to waste everybody's time yeah i under i totally understand i don't want to waste everybody's time but i'll see like when i open for chris rock where i would see chris rock at the store coming working on stuff and he would just for like an hour just stand up on stage in the main room going like what else what else and i'm like i could never do that right i could never just be sitting and the audience is wrapped they're like we love this we'll sit here and watch you think all night i could never i would start sweating if i just like was like hmm what else we like i don't write on stage for that reason i've got to have it down wow i write on stage but i write like i'll be doing something that i know is working and it'll go a new little tributary will start off of it and it's always that whatever that new thing is if it does well then it's locked in it works good and do you record or do you remember it's like it kills so hard you're like okay i record all the audio and I'll listen back because sometimes you'll just get one new angle in like the beginning of something you're like oh this is this is monumental did you see those aliens those Mexican aliens the little tiny guy yeah yeah and what'd you think about it I didn't give a flying fuck like space outer space I don't care at all really I'm glad people are working on it I'm glad we're going to Mars and all that shit like go find out as much as you can about that star but I don't give a shit like I've never seen a picture and been like oh wow wow, that's what a black hole looks like.

1:12:14Like, I don't, it's got nothing to do with me. That, like, the aliens, I was like, I don't believe it. Like, yeah, I know you're talking to the government right now, but this would be a bigger deal. And if it was, I still probably wouldn't care. Yeah. Like, this is a legit little alien guy. It's like, so what? And it's like a Mexican government, which I'm not saying is not as legitimate as any other government. But I think it has, you know, there's definitely more of, like, people, you know, it's like, what's going on here? And they kind of did like an, they pulled it out of like a, they like moved, opened a box.

1:12:45It was like a little bit of a crypt. Like, yeah, I think the whole thing seemed a little, I don't, I wonder if I care about UFOs. I don't care. They could attack. And I'd be like, I don't, like, wake me up when I'm dead. Like, I just don't, it doesn't interest me. Do you think our government would let us know if they had been here or not? I don't, I don't know if they, I don't think they would do it to be like good. but I also don't think they would successfully cover it up. You know, like the government fucks up so much stuff. That's why I don't really believe in conspiracy theories because they would fuck it up.

1:13:18If they faked the moon landing, they would have fucked it up. Someone would have like talked, it would have been a thing and I'm going to see so many comments now about like, you're so dumb if you don't believe. I don't care. I don't want to waste my time thinking about that. Yeah. It's like when crypto was a big thing. It's like, I don't care. I like money, but I don't want to sit and think about money. I like to have it. I don't want to look at the stock market. I don't want to look at my crypto things and see if I've got to buy a different coin now. Fuck that. Yeah, I'm not a crazy investor really a lot of times because I just like to know what I have.

1:13:49I tell my business manager, like, am I doing anything wrong? Am I doing anything stupid? Let me know. Otherwise, like, just pay my taxes. Yeah. And we're cool. Yeah, dude. Well, look at that NFT market. That thing disappeared. I mean, what the fuck was that? It sounded dumb from the jump. I thought so too. And I would say it sounded dumb. People would be like, you don't get it. I'm like, I think I do. and now it's all like everything's been proven right like it's all it's all gone yeah and i don't well why the board ate was it wasn't good in the first place but you're gonna spend billions on this thing it was very very dumb and i think the person spending billions i think it's just one guy telling his buddy hey let's write an article that say you spent a billion yeah and then we'll get everybody else to buy bullshit yeah it's like the guy who said he spent a billion and never even spent a fucking billion.

1:14:35I think they spent five grand paying a website to make an article. And computer money isn't real. I don't believe that you have a billion dollars in crypto that's the same as having a billion dollars in real money. Yeah. I don't buy it. Do you think you could have been, like I've been watching Band of Brothers. Have you been watching it? I watched it when it first came out. God, how good was it? It was great. Do you remember when Jimmy Fallon shows up? He's in it? For like five seconds. It was clear. It was like everyone in Hollywood was getting into this and Fallon just left SNL and it's like they're about to go.

1:15:05It's the end of an episode, like episode six or something where things are about to get bad. Like we've got no backup. It's just us. We're each other's brothers and all of a sudden, they're like, we don't even have guns and all of a sudden, he's like, hey guys. And they turn around and it's Jimmy Fallon in the uniform. He's like immaculate and he's like, hey, I found some guns for you. And they're like, really? He's like, yeah, I'm just giving them out. And they like take the guns and they're like, thanks man. He's like, good luck guys and that's the end of the episode. It was like clear that he wanted to be a part of it.

1:15:30They were just like, well, we'll work in a cameo somewhere. Let's give him something good. Okay, he gives the guys guns at the end. It was so, so Hollywood cheese. Wow. Does it stand out so much from the episode? Yeah, because no one else is fucking famous. You have a couple guys who were younger actors, but then all of a sudden it's Jimmy fucking Fallon just post-SNL. It's hilarious to see him in a World War II situation. Wow, I might not be to the end of that episode yet. I'm watching this for the second time now. Dude, Jimmy Fallon, when he first was doing touring, before he got SNL, oh no, before he got The Tonight Show, he opened up for me in Miami.

1:16:11They had him, they were putting him on stage, I guess, to get his, I mean, I say opened up, they just put him in the middle spot. Like special guest spot, he could do as much as he wanted, if the crowd was good, he'd do 20, if it was bad, he'd do five. Nobody knew he was there. I didn't even know, until I got there, I go in the green room and he's in there. And it was cool, man. It was cool And then the last night I think he just kind of He was doing fine I think he just was Getting kind of over it You know Yeah It was a Sunday night show Yeah doing guest sets Like everyone's excited But it's like you're just doing I totally I would get bored Doing guest sets too I just couldn't believe it I was so scared To go in the green room And then I didn't know What to say When I was in there Green room gets small bro When you were just learning About being a comedian And you're in there With the headliner Because you don't know And the headliners Are fucking We're crazy we're crazy we're very specific in particular how we're used to things yeah and some people like that's their whole that's the only time they have any power they don't have power out on stage but like in the green they can be like get the fuck get out of here with that cheeseburger and you're like relax man but like now I know enough like have you ever just had some random person walk in your green room yeah like put their jacket down and you're like and they walk out and you're like what and they're like no they shouldn't have done that like oh I didn't know to tell someone like I once yelled at the comedy store's lawyer who was like eating dinner in the green room and I was like are you a comic?

1:17:26And he's like no get the fuck out of here. And then someone comes back and I'm like that's the lawyer. And I'm like well he still he shouldn't be back here. He sure the fuck shouldn't have been back there dude. Thankfully he's in heaven now that guy passed away. Oh he did? But yeah. But hey that's what he gets for fucking eating in the green room. Shouldn't have come in my green room bro. But you're not a comedian dude. Bro when you cross the dark art the fucking last son of Transylvania and you go to his green room and eat you're in for trouble. You're gonna die. You got about a year to live.

1:17:55Do you think you could have handled the draft or something like that? Sometimes I feel like we need another war. Do you think that's a crazy thought? Yes. Why? Because what the fuck did we get out of most of them? You can look at World War II and be like, okay, we were fighting for something. But now technology has gotten so crazy with everything that I don't know if anyone would do the draft. I don't know if anyone would have the nationality to just blindly follow the government. They don't want to do that. Yeah. If we got attacked, I bet everyone signs up the next day. But if it's just like, hey, we noticed something's going on in North Korea again, I'm like, we're not doing that.

1:18:34Get the fuck out of here, bro. I used to think I would have just gone into the draft. My dad was in the military. Certainly I have respect for it. Do I think I'd be a good soldier? Absolutely fucking not. No, you would be the worst. Yeah, I'm going to drag the rest of the troops down. Let's head to Canada and do my part over there. yeah that's what i i i think what i want is i want something to unify people i want something that makes us feel i miss the days where i think when we all felt like we're part of a country or it seemed to me like we felt like we were like i don't know how that all that just i don't know if i felt like i was part of the god if i was like if i love the government really if i just love the idea of our country you know you know i'm saying like when you're a kid like i mean no if you love the government you're fucking dumb like if you like i get loving the country if you're like this government the fucking irs is killer man i love him so much if you love politicians like people were like oh like fuck the joe biden it's like okay i'm i'm down fuck the president always if you're like fuck this guy the last guy was amazing like get the fuck out of here every politician fucking sucks i would never do that with my life there's some i like more than others but like politicians in general get the fuck out of here like why am i supposed to like this one no they're all they're all politicians it's insane yeah i think well if you ever i've always thought if you ever my mother always let us know if you ever think that the government is going to do something for your life then that's not how it's gonna work probably i i'll never get over the government saying every year pay your taxes figure it out pay your taxes and you try to do whatever matthew you send it to him and they go you got it wrong then fucking tell me what it is send me a bill don't make me do these gymnastics and then tell me i'm wrong like why are you making me do this and that's what i think about the government it's so passive aggressive that's very passive aggressive of them and also you know there used to be a box you check it you get from being blind right you get 1600 bucks right but you have to check the fucking box dude like how do they even like, I just don't understand.

1:20:42There should be a box that you don't check if you're blind. Yeah. If you can see, check this box. If not, you're going down. And they don't even tell you what it's for. It just says, if you can see, check this box. That would have been the best way to know if people are blind. You know what's always obsessed me about blind people? And I used to try to turn this into a joke and can never do it is, you know what Braille is, right? The little dots they read. It's like, think about how long it takes a blind person. Like, let's say you lost your vision today. how long do you think it would take you to learn braille like one dots a two is b this is c like i bet probably two months two months 60 days 62 days tops um you know what maybe to be for uh fluent i would say maybe six months six months okay how long then once you know how to read braille does it take you to find braille oh yeah if you're blind you can read the shit out of it how do you find it are you just always looking around like any bump you're just like oh thank i can read again like you go to the bank and it's like on the atm but like how do you find the atm like i don't know i don't know how they ever do it they should have made braille way bigger for blind people yeah they should have made it a huge they should have made it like speed bumps in a parking lot when you're pulling in you can hear yeah run your finger over and it's like yeah your tires go over it and you feel like oh it communicates to your car or something that communicates to you or you It makes a sound when you go over.

1:22:04But yeah, I mean the blind, they've been fucking shunned by society for so long. I feel like, or just, you know, nobody cared that much. It's like, yeah, we'll give you this little series of dogs. People don't trust blind people. Yeah, oh no. You don't trust deaf people, you don't trust blind people. You're like, you can see a little bit. You can see something. Yeah. You can hear loud noises. You're just playing this up. Oh yeah, I remember they had a dude in our town who, he was deaf, right? and he was doing this and people beat him up for doing bad magic. They thought he was doing like evil eye kind of shit.

1:22:39Yeah, just shit like this. And they thought he never pulled out a quarter or anything and people fucking lit into him. That's why you gotta carry a quarter. No matter how deaf you are, get that kid a quarter. What's an ailment do you think you could handle? I mean, I think you can handle whatever. Like right now I'm dealing with like back issues where like my back sucks and i'm like seeing a chiropractor doing exercises like all this stuff and i'm like i'm dealing with it like sometimes it's better than others but i'm dealing with it that anything that you think when you get sick you get the flu and you're like you feel like you've had the flu for your entire life and it's never going away and then one day you're like uh the cough's gone like it's over that i think i could handle whatever there's not i wouldn't want these things but if i lost a limb you know i think i could handle it i've always wanted to lose an eye i would love to wear an eye patch i would love to have just one eye like a black leather eye patch a cool one and that's my thing people say glass eyes the way to go i don't i disagree eye patch if it's like the scar going down and the eye patch oh yeah coming out the bottom of it you would be able to do that though i think there's a thing about being tall and handsome you get a you get there's there's so much stuff you get to do that you don't realize that other people don't get to do.

1:23:53Like a little guy with an eye patch is a fuck. That guy. Terrible. Well, it's just, nobody's gonna give a fuck. It's too much. It's, yeah. It's too much. Pick one. Yeah, be little, do an eye patch, but don't fucking come in here. Mm-hmm. You know. Yeah. Yeah, I think I always was fascinated. I remember when I was a kid, I met a kid that had a stutter, right? This kid named Douglas. And I'd never heard it before. And I was so jealous. I was like he sounds so unique like I want to be and I remember I would impersonate him a lot right like I was in I mean I loved it and my teacher got mad at me and I was like no you don't like I think it's cool I think it's cool awesome yeah like he sounds unique I'm a kid I made fun of someone with a stutter and the kid's mom was like don't do that if you if you make me draw attention to it I'll have it forever but if you just don't mention it he'll stop and I was like oh why is this my job wow like you guys deal with that at home in the real world we're talking about it we're talking about that stutter dude i can't believe i tried to put that on you that's crazy it's like i'm eight what a responsibility but that's what you get when you're tall dude when you're tall people i feel like you get fucking put everything gets put on you i feel like when you're tall how tall are you i'm just regular height i'm six foot okay and i was kind of tall for a little while but everybody just i didn't it didn't play out and um and then but i the tall kid always fucking remember when you got tall remember just like one four weeks you're like and your neck was long and your fucking chin was like my neck always hurt like there were like three years where i was always doing this like my neck it was like i'm growing i didn't know at the time my neck just like was always sore and i shot up like i was the tallest kid in my class like immediately and then I just stopped so then I thought I was like I thought I was big and I was just tall I wasn't big at all I was like a beanpole but people wanted to fight you yes you know I was like oh the tall guy I want to fight him I don't want him huh this 40 year old and you're like I'm 11 I'm 7 yeah I'm 11 yeah 9 um what else do you think about like your career do you feel like did you feel like success gave you a lot of the things you thought it would or were you surprised by any of that?

1:26:09I was surprised at how little I was able to enjoy it. Like, I didn't want to be famous. I wanted to be known. I wanted to be able to, like, comedians would know who I was. You know, if you're a comic and you don't know who I am, you're not a comic. Right, you wanted to be valid. Yes, but I could walk into a club and be like, oh, Anthony, you're here. That's pretty powerful too, isn't it? When you think about, like, that being able to happen. Oh yeah, walking into, like, a green room. I go to see Doug Stanhope and I'm like, I want to go backstage and maybe they'll let me back. And I walk back and they're like, oh, hey, come on back in.

1:26:37And you're like, oh, that's cool. It almost feels false, doesn't it? Or does it ever feel like that to you? Not that you don't deserve it. There's no doubt. But even when people welcome me, like I would go to the comedy cellar sometimes. Like the last one was there, like, do you want to get up? And I was like, not me. Like I don't just get up. you know like i you know if colin quinn comes in you know or if somebody like a new you know like sure but they're like i always say when it comes to that when like you want to drop in i'm like if you didn't buy a ticket to see me you don't want to see me i'm not a good dropping because it's like you're here to see whatever else and then it's like my dead baby bullshit for 15 minutes and they're just like what the fuck and i'm like yeah you're right like i should i'm ruining your good time so it's like i want people to know that i'm coming i'm not i'm not a good surprise um But I really hated, 2013 was when the Jaisalyn Offensive was on the air.

1:27:30It was right after the roasts and everything. I did my first special. For that year, I was famous. Then the show got canceled. I had a couple years off TV and it was like, it went away almost immediately. Where it was just like, the temperature got dialed down. But I didn't like people looking at you and being like, I know you from something. I don't know what it is, but like, I know you. That I hated. If it's like, I love your comedy. Thank you so much, great, I love that. but just I've seen you on something I hated. I really hated being famous. Yeah, I think it feels exhausting. It feels like a whole nother life you have to live.

1:28:06Yes, it's like you're not just doing the one show. You're doing shows all the time and you don't know when it's happening. You're walking through the airport and you get home and you see someone's been following you around taking pictures and posting them all and you're like, this is just weird and it gets in your head. I get people who wear sunglasses all the time. I get the hat and like the disguise and just like I don't want to be out in public like I stopped going to bars like it was just being around any drunk people was the worst thing in the world yeah that's one thing I love about not drinking is just not having to deal with that type of energy or like because it's already weird enough if somebody knows you but then I think if they're wasted it makes you just kind of scared it's just too risky oh yeah and then they want to come back it's like hey I just want to say I'm a huge fan like thank you can I get a picture five minutes later They're like, I just wanted to tell you this one joke.

1:28:51And you're like, this is my line. Yeah, my sister's here. Yeah, dude, my fucking, she loves you. She wants to FaceTime you. Yeah, and I get it. They're fans. Like, it's cool. But like, you know, they buy tickets. But when they're drunk, it is really tough to deal with. Yeah, one guy put me on the phone with his sister. And she's fighting with her husband. Like, having a fucking fist fight with her husband, right? In some house somewhere. And I'm like, and the guy's like, she loves you. He's so drunk, he doesn't realize I'm like a domestic dispute. or something he's like she loves you and i'm just like she's you know she's down two rounds to zero against stanley right here you know i'll never do the video i'll never take the phone like if they went like hey can i get a picture of course sign this like i've gotten to the airport today and these like three guys with like a stack of shit and i'm just like it's easier just to do this real quick and get out of here but i'm like this is all going on ebay this is dumb as shit but i'm it's easier just to do it but if like we do a video for my friend who couldn't make it no yeah i'm not i'm not doing that were you bummed when the roast kind of went away did that bum you out no i was i was uh i was happy to do three and then done perch for you yeah and i was i mean it was all i wanted to do i was like building my act towards getting on that the trump roast was like my big break my life was night and day after that then the sheen roast came like a couple months later it wasn't that long and that was even bigger and that i felt insane pressure because i I was like, well, that was my big break.

1:30:15And those were jokes that I'd been working on forever. Now I've got four months. This is my sophomore album that could tank. And I didn't want it to seem like, oh, I got lucky. So that was so stressful. And then it was like a year until the Roseanne was my last one. And that was a letdown. It wasn't to have the same hype to it that Trump and Sheen had. I remember I showed the next weekend. And the ticket sales were just normal. It wasn't like I didn't get the bump that I got after Sheen and Trump. And I was like, you know, I don't really want to do this anymore. It's like, it's just not fun telling the same kinds of jokes.

1:30:46And I didn't approach it like Jeff Ross, who was just like, Jeff Ross could do it forever. Right. To anyone. No one's getting mad. He's just perfect at it. My thing was like to like Darth Vader. Like I was coming to kill everyone there. And it just, I didn't want to do it again. The people ask me every now and again. I'm like, it would take, it would take a lot. It would, it would have to be money because I just feel like I've done it. And I feel like I did it perfectly. Right. To come back, it just, I feel the pressure. You know, I feel the pressure to perform. The audience might be there to see me, and they've loved my last four hours, but this fifth hour better measure up, or I feel terrible.

1:31:20So yeah, it's just hype. Yeah, and I guess once you do something and doing it well, then that's enough. Knowing when to not do something anymore is important. Do you think Comedy Central, how'd they mess up? I mean, they were the only comedy network. Viacom fucked it up for everybody. At a time when Disney was buying Marvel, at a time where Disney was buying, you know, like Warner Brothers, all this shit. Viacom was just like enriching themselves. They weren't investing. And then when streaming came along, it just wiped them all out. But like MTV's gone. And Comedy Central's still technically around, but it's like five people now.

1:31:53And they're not getting to stand up. Maybe things come back a little bit, but it was just, and I've talked to many, many people over there over the years about what happened. But it is. It's crazy though. Like you were the comedy network. You had comedy. Yeah, I remember it took them forever to get into social. They were so behind somehow. So behind. Yeah, just didn't really care that much, didn't have to. But they're figuring it out now. And they made some, they just didn't have that good a pay. They only had a few shows that really crushed it for them, I think. And they wouldn't pay, to get three seasons was almost impossible.

1:32:29Even two was like a stretch. I mean, it's like SNL. You see the people who auditioned for SNL and didn't get it got fired after a year. and their careers, how amazing it's been, like a Sarah Silverman or something. Comedy Central is the same way. It's like all these huge stars. People think Comedy Central let them go. It's like they couldn't afford them. What John Oliver's making on HBO versus what he made on Comedy Central is insane. Stephen Colbert had to leave Comedy Central. They just didn't have the money there. Yeah, Amy Schumer owed them another season, I think, of her show. I don't know if she ended up doing it or not.

1:33:05but I remember she had the what is this show called Inside Amy Schumer Inside Amy Schumer I think they contractually had one more season that she was supposed to do because then she just blew up so much that she just didn't and maybe they just did like a buyout of it or something I just remember she did it she did one for Paramount Plus oh she did oh maybe that was it then yeah maybe that was it I have friends who would like sign a deal get paid and then like hope the network forgets about it oh yeah remember Quibi oh yeah God, I wish I had taken a deal from them. There's free money deals? Oh, dude, yeah.

1:33:39They're like, here's 100 grand. Three weeks later, we're totally out of business. Like, what's the best job you've ever had in terms of that? Like, for me, it was judging roast battle, where it was just like every night I go, I show up. Oh, yeah. Like, they're paying you amazing, and you don't have to prepare anything. You just sit there, and then they do their bit, and then you think of a joke, and you say it, and then everything's great. And if you mess up, they edit it out. Like, it's so cool. Zero pressure. paid a ton and just so much fun I love that that was yeah one of the best jobs I ever had actually was a comedy central job it was called Reality Bites Back I watched I watched Reality Bites Back Amy had it all on like DVD and we watched it so good the show was so fucking funny I can't believe it didn't no one watched it but it was it was great I can't believe they didn't start to re-air things that they had that were great but I guess they don't have is that a fiscal maybe they have to have re-rent it from themselves.

1:34:35I don't know how that works. I think just no one watched it. No one was watching it if they would re-run it. They were just like, let's get rid of this. But it had like Schumers on it, Tiffany Haddish, Burke Chrysler. Like if they put it out now, it seemed like it would do fine. Yeah, you would think. You know? It's weird how comedy doesn't live that long. Even if it is all like the stars of yesterday, people just, they'd rather watch you now. But it's like, I can watch like Summer Heights High, right? Have you ever seen that? Oh yeah. And And it's still so ridiculous. It still gets me. But it's like, I mean, one of the best shows Comedy Central ever made was Strangers with Candy.

1:35:12And they never re-ran that, like ever. You had to find it on, I used to buy it on eBay. I'd buy a season on eBay of someone who burned the DVDs. That show was amazing. My favorite roast of all time was the roast of Chevy Chase. The one that was like a fiasco. But it's like Todd Berry, Andy Kindler, like Marc Maron of the Roasters, and it's so fucking awesome. but it tanked and they like Comedy Central were just like we threw it away like you can't if you can find it on YouTube go for it but we don't have a copy of it we'll never rerun it and we just got rid of it that's crazy it seems like if you put the roast of Chevy Chase on a network TV right now people would tune in like what do you think about like our Netflix specials like things we've done there's no physical media anymore like that can all go away and you're left with like nothing and that's wild to me that a corporation who knows what you get canceled for but they can just be like all your work is gone it's gone as if it never existed there's nothing you can do nothing oh it's very scary i think you know i went to the last blockbuster not long ago where's that it's in bend oregon yes and i have an ex-girlfriend that lives up there and it's a beautiful town and uh and i went in there and you know what's fascinating the most fascinating was how you used to see you saw so many titles you're over here it's like in bruges and here's like you know uh daddy daycare or whatever you know here's like you know uh llama town or whatever and it's like oh fuck i you don't know what to choose but you see so i mean you were here and then you were in and you'd walk through like i oh i forgot about this movie this is great i've never seen this but it was so different than when you go to a platform on your television and you see 10 titles it was another it felt like you actually here's what it felt like i'm realizing it felt like you actually had a choice in what you were choosing in the blockbuster right then as opposed to on the tv where it feels like this is what you we're serving today even though that's not it you It didn't register the same.

1:37:18No, and it's even annoying where Netflix, I don't know if they still do this, but if they know something's right up your alley, they have all your algorithm, whatever. There was a movie that came out a couple years ago, right before my last special came out. So I was talking to Netflix at the time. Have you ever seen The Night Comes for Us? Did you ever see The Raid or The Raid 2? It's kind of like a super violent martial arts movie where people are just fighting with machetes and shit, and it's awesome. And I see it, and I'm like, this is the best fucking thing I've ever seen. why wouldn't Netflix tell me hey good news we got this new movie for you and so they told me basically if they know you're gonna see it if they know like this is right up your alley they won't put it on your screen because they know you're gonna look for it and they want you to find other things on your way to it that's like you can't they know what you want but they're still gonna make you look for it and that makes me fucking crazy yeah it feels like privatized communism in a way does that make any sense am I thinking of things wrong I mean it's a funny way to say it like I get what you mean it feels like yeah it just because stuff like that it's like it's fine but in the end you're just I'm going to watch what you want me to watch and I won't be a soul and you know I'll just be like I'll be a firefly but you'll own the gasoline or the match you know it's like I'll just never I don't know stuff like that makes me feel kind of defeated sometimes It all makes me feel old.

1:38:45I'm just like, I'm not really in the mix. Maybe it's just an older thought of it, huh? I don't know. It could be because we're in the industry, so we kind of understand. And the way Netflix is secretive pisses me off. Again, I love Netflix. I'm glad I have the specials on there. Yeah, same. It's annoying that they're just like, they won't tell you. You don't know how good something did? They can say trending, not trending. You have no fucking clue. They'll be like, it's doing great. I remember my last special, they were like, in the first week, this many people watched it. And I was like, that's great.

1:39:15Give me something to compare it to. That number means nothing to me unless you say Ali Wong got this in two weeks. You know what I mean? I don't understand any of the stuff they say. And they could tell you, hey, most of your people watch you in Chicago. Most people do. That way you know where to tour and they won't tell you. Like they don't give you anything. And they'll be like, we know. I'm like, well, no one's ever quit and just been like, let me tell you what happened. I would love to go undercover boss to Netflix and just look up my shit and then peace out. Well, YouTube is interesting too because it's like you can't even talk to someone in the system.

1:39:50Like they took down an episode that we had and we couldn't even, you communicate kind of with like this medium, but there's no way to email. You don't even know who's in the, like who the levels, the boss, you don't even know who's making the choice. It's like, yes, it's this ambient sort of, you don't know. Because I've got a social media team. They're great. But they're like, we have a guy at Instagram. We'll get you verified right now. We have a guy at TikTok we talk to. All my shit gets taken down all the time. They're like, no, it should be okay because of this. But they have someone to deal with that I can't believe YouTube doesn't have that.

1:40:29There's so much money coming through YouTube that I can't believe Mr. Beast doesn't have a guy's number. I bet. Now, maybe at that level you do. But yeah, maybe at our level we don't we have a contact there but it's not there's never like you just get the verdict from the contact and that's the verdict it's very like ancient rome it feels like you know what was the reason they took it down oh rosanne had a joke she said i remember this yeah that the holocaust never happened right and it was she was being satirical right and you know she's also get it you know i think they didn't think she was or they didn't want to hear it you know and so they said that it gets taken down and um and nobody said anything at first and then there's like some of these like baiters online they put the clip out and they're like what about you know and that's when it built up stuff but the only way we can communicate it kind of is through our we have a contact there that works with youtube but they never there's never able to have a discussion that's the strange part sometimes and that's where i think you start to feel you know like you aren't being heard or you don't have somebody to communicate with i mean i stopped doing that with comedy where i used to be like here's why this joke is okay you know i mean like i know it's a thing it's about domestic violence but if you look at the wording no one's getting hit in this joke this is joke is like referencing it but it's for tension and it's always a losing battle i'd be arguing with censors or something and and now i just if you i can't do it i can't do it fuck it i'm not going to change it but i'll just get rid of it because i'm not going to sit and have the argument of why this is okay.

1:42:02And now I just hope that people understand. Like I've got a lot of topics that I talk about that would get people in trouble, but I've gotten away with it. I don't know if it's reputation or people just know now that, no, he did it in the right way. He got away with it. But like it goes back to what you're saying. There's a way to get away. Like what did you say in the beginning? You said - Art is getting away with it. Yeah.

1:42:27Yeah, I think there was something about get it. Yeah. I wanted to for me it was always I wanted to say what I wanted to say let me suffer the consequences you know but I want to say this was that the most trouble you've ever gotten was the Roseanne thing have you ever had like a on social media yeah and then all the like different sites said stuff about it and I never replied to any of it and within 48 hours yeah completely gone I remember asking Rogan about that once it was like remember when Joe Rogan was like I think I'd vote for Bernie Sanders and the fucking internet went crazy for like a week because it's like a guy said he was going to vote for.

1:43:01And I was like, how'd you handle that? He goes, I turned my phone off and hung out with my kids for a couple of days. And then I turn it on and everything's fine. I'm like, well, it's such a healthy way to do it. It's like, this is happening. It's not real. Just turn it off and come back. Yeah, it's not really real. That's what it seemed like. Yeah, that still made me mad. When you're younger, you're like, oh, I fucked up. This is over now because I had some of those earlier on. And now you're like, it's fine. Oh, yeah. I remember taking pills after something bad happened one time. I thought I was going to die.

1:43:27I thought my life was over. thought about moving back you know i thought everything was done um i still that still makes me mad what happened to bernie remember when they just his own party kind of railroaded him you know with bernie or with bernie sanders it was like just the fact that he would have a chance to run against i don't remember who i don't know if it was obama's second term and he was gonna try and run against him that must have been it i don't know if he ran he ran against obama's second term but i know he ran against hillary he ran the first time right he was trying to run against hillary and he didn't get the nominate.

1:43:59Like a lot of people thought, oh, he'll get a chance to go against Hillary to see who gets it. And his party just kind of said no. Yeah. It was like, what? I don't get the politics of it of like, hey, let's all just back this person. Why don't you just vote for what you want and then see how it plays out? Yeah. Not like let's talk beforehand. It's, I wish that, you know, in Congress, they would do one bill at a time. Like you can't just be like, here's a bill to try to get student aid and also homeless people. It's like, do one at a time and do what makes sense. it's all totally fucked and maybe it has to be that way I don't know that's the thing I don't know sometimes too it's like I don't know if that's just how the business it's like it's too much for me to know sometimes do you ever see I watch a documentary like what are the happiest countries in the world oh yeah with Rainn Wilson was in it no I don't know if I I didn't watch that much of it to see who but they had said the happiest country was like I want to say Denmark it was like somewhere in Scandinavia where they all live in like communal buildings and they eat their meals together and everyone's happy and the least happy is Japan because they work their fucking asses off and the only break they get is when they throw themselves in front of a bullet train or some shit.

1:45:04But it's fucking, it seems brutal. Just the culture of it. Maybe that's what American government has to be. I don't know what government is killing it out there. The government's like, our system is so dope. It's great, we kill it. That's the thing. It's like you start to wonder, is this just how capitalism tails off? Is this how America kind of starts to tail off where everything, where big corporations seem like they own everything and own all of our attention span. And then at some point somebody, you know, too many cities get like, there's too much crime and the scale tips and society starts to fucking, the fabric comes apart.

1:45:40I think, I mean, being, you know, almost 45 years old now, I feel like it's just a pendulum. It just, it's like, okay, we're going to get Obama and then it's just going to get real racist. And then we're going to get like another, and then it's going to like, it's just going to get progressive and then swing back. Yeah. Like Trump is a direct response to Obama, you know, that I think it's just going to keep going back and forth like that. Yeah, I think that's one thing. I mean, we had Robert Kennedy was on here and he's trying to he's a he's a Democrat and he's trying to I think he's going to run as an independent now.

1:46:10And you almost because you always heard that the independent, if they get a certain number of votes and they get a share of the pool, the money pool. Did you ever hear that? No. Like there's like an advertised, like there's an amount of money they can budget that is divided up between the two parties. But if a third one gets 5%, I think, then they get part of the pool as well. Like before the runoff, like if there's a, I don't know, I'm sounding like just a guy in a fucking bar. But if, I would love to see there be a third opportunity. Like I would just love for there to see something change up the status quo.

1:46:45Yeah. Yeah. I have an extra choice. like the you know tell us what your things are and we'll figure out which one it is but it's i don't know it feels like they got us so cornered though when there's only you know it just starts to feel like everything there's so many strings going on in the distance of everything you know yeah it's like it's not really a choice right it's like we need somebody to come through with the scissors man you always come through with the scissors man with your comedy dude i just want to thank you for being so entertaining man and and um thanks for just sitting and chat with me man yeah i'm happy this worked out we were in town at the same time it was fun to finally be on the podcast yeah man and to get to chat we even I've never really talked that much before this is the longest we've ever talked for sure it is cool man thanks Anthony thanks for having me now I'm just falling 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 ABC Wednesday Shifting Gears is back he has arisen Tim Allen and Kat Dennings return in television's number one new comedy what what with a star studded premiere including Jenna Elfman Nancy Travis and hey buddy a big home improvement reunion welcome oh boy that guy's a tool Shifting Gears, season premiere Wednesday, 8, 7 central on ABC and stream on Hulu.