Episode 1306 - Roy Wood Jr

Episode 1306 • Released February 17, 2022 • Speakers detected

00:00:00Marc:all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fuck nicks roy wood jr is on the show he's a correspondent on the daily show with trevor noah which we talked i don't think we even mentioned it we maybe mentioned that

00:00:24Marc:He also hosts the podcast Roy's Job Fair.

00:00:27Marc:He has three stand-up specials, Father Figure, No One Loves You, and the most recent Imperfect Messenger, which is great, excellent.

00:00:38Marc:And I gotta be honest, man, I didn't really know this guy.

00:00:42Marc:His name came up, I talked to Brendan about it, and I dug in, and I was like, holy shit, this guy's one of the best.

00:00:50Marc:He's one of the best.

00:00:52Marc:He's not afraid of taking risks.

00:00:56Marc:He talks about real things.

00:00:58Marc:He's smart.

00:00:59Marc:He knows and understands policy, the subject of race from a personal point of view.

00:01:06Marc:He wrestles with things that we all wrestle with, but he's got a delivery and a long-form approach that is just so sharp and so funny and so deliberate.

00:01:16Marc:He's a real deal.

00:01:18Marc:He's a guy that can talk about real stuff

00:01:21Marc:in a way that's provocative and meaningful and funny.

00:01:26Marc:I was so thrilled to watch him.

00:01:28Marc:I don't see a lot of new standups.

00:01:30Marc:I think I've met him once before, twice before.

00:01:32Marc:I think we talk about that.

00:01:33Marc:But I never really sat down and took it in.

00:01:35Marc:And it was just such a fucking pleasure to watch Roy Wood Jr.

00:01:39Marc:work.

00:01:40Marc:Like in a way that I'm like, this is what it's supposed to be.

00:01:43Marc:This is what comedy is supposed to be.

00:01:46Marc:Just loved it.

00:01:47Marc:I was very excited to talk to him.

00:01:50Marc:I talked to him in New York in the fancy suite.

00:01:53Marc:When I was in the fancy suite, that's where I talked to him.

00:01:57Marc:Breathe it in, man.

00:01:58Marc:Breathe it in.

00:02:00Marc:Look, if there's nothing you can do about it, there's nothing you can do about it.

00:02:04Marc:You can only do what you can, and it's probably not enough.

00:02:08Marc:Know that.

00:02:10Marc:Feel that.

00:02:10Marc:Own it.

00:02:12Marc:Man, things are fucked up.

00:02:13Marc:What can I do?

00:02:15Marc:Very little.

00:02:20Marc:I'm sorry, man.

00:02:21Marc:I'm sorry.

00:02:23Marc:I'm suffering from a hope deficit.

00:02:25Marc:I just don't know what hope means anymore.

00:02:27Marc:I can feel good, but it's very hard to find encouragement or positive input.

00:02:34Marc:So I'm at a hope deficit.

00:02:36Marc:All I can think about is, in terms of hope, is that...

00:02:39Marc:Anybody who's dying, a week before they die, someone says, you're going to be all right, man.

00:02:45Marc:You're strong.

00:02:46Marc:You're going to kick it.

00:02:47Marc:You're going to be all right.

00:02:48Marc:You're going to be all right.

00:02:50Marc:A lot of people who are about to die hear that.

00:02:53Marc:It's going to be okay.

00:02:54Marc:What is that?

00:02:55Marc:I don't know if that even falls under the umbrella of hope, but you put it in someone's head.

00:03:01Marc:You want me to feel good, right?

00:03:02Marc:Everybody wants to feel good.

00:03:04Marc:That's what's interesting about doing comedy now in this time of havoc and darkness.

00:03:09Marc:Oh, my God.

00:03:12Marc:I'm chuckling.

00:03:13Marc:Got the chuckles.

00:03:16Marc:I talked to my friend about San Francisco.

00:03:18Marc:I'll be there tomorrow night.

00:03:19Marc:Oh, no, Saturday night.

00:03:20Marc:Tomorrow night in Napa.

00:03:22Marc:Go to WTF pod dot com slash tour.

00:03:25Marc:Because like I talked to my booking agent, a lot of sales are soft in San Francisco because a lot of people left.

00:03:31Marc:It's not really from what I understand, it hasn't really, you know, kind of bounced back a lot.

00:03:37Marc:Most people working from home downtown is kind of sparse.

00:03:42Marc:The tenderloin is out of control and terrifying with some chaos.

00:03:47Marc:I've lived up there.

00:03:48Marc:It was chaotic when things were going well in San Francisco.

00:03:51Marc:It always has an energy to it, man.

00:03:53Marc:There's something about San Francisco.

00:03:55Marc:It crackles with something.

00:03:57Marc:And it's never clear whether it's good or bad to me.

00:04:00Marc:That was one of the interesting things about living there.

00:04:01Marc:Like, what the fuck is going on here?

00:04:03Marc:There's an electricity to it.

00:04:05Marc:I don't know if that's gone out and it's just entered into some kind of sad spiral of people leaving.

00:04:10Marc:I don't know what's going on.

00:04:11Marc:All I know is my buddy said, yeah, you know, it's bouncing back.

00:04:13Marc:It's interesting.

00:04:14Marc:There's pockets sort of like the Lower East Side was in the 70s.

00:04:16Marc:I'm like, that wasn't good.

00:04:18Marc:I was in the Lower East Side in the 80s.

00:04:22Marc:Not great.

00:04:24Marc:But you like it.

00:04:25Marc:I guess you got to rationalize the grit.

00:04:28Marc:You know what I mean?

00:04:29Marc:Rationalize the pain.

00:04:31Marc:Rationalize the chaos somehow to get through it.

00:04:36Marc:Because what are you going to do?

00:04:37Marc:Hey, how can I help?

00:04:38Marc:There's nothing you can fucking do.

00:04:40Marc:Go feed some people.

00:04:42Marc:Give some money to the right place.

00:04:44Marc:Volunteer.

00:04:48Marc:Got to rationalize the chaos.

00:04:50Marc:It'll be all right.

00:04:52Marc:You're going to be fine.

00:04:54Marc:You're going to get through this.

00:04:57Marc:The comedy's been good.

00:04:58Marc:Looking forward to playing all the dates.

00:05:01Marc:We added a show at the Wilbur.

00:05:04Marc:What is that?

00:05:04Marc:That's on... Was that April 16th, I think?

00:05:08Marc:Put a second show in there.

00:05:13Marc:Because they're like...

00:05:15Marc:Let's add one.

00:05:16Marc:We sold out that one.

00:05:17Marc:Did you?

00:05:19Marc:There's still some tickets, I think, for the second show at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco on Saturday.

00:05:25Marc:Napa tomorrow.

00:05:26Marc:Maybe a couple tickets.

00:05:28Marc:I'm going to be at Largo March 3rd here in Los Angeles to dick around for an hour.

00:05:34Marc:San Luis Obispo on March 5th at the Fremont.

00:05:38Marc:That'll be at the Lobero in Santa Barbara on March 6th.

00:05:43Marc:And then I'm going to go to the East Coast where it's chilly.

00:05:45Marc:College Street in New Haven, Connecticut, March 9th.

00:05:48Marc:Get tickets.

00:05:49Marc:Music Hall in Troy, New York, March 10th.

00:05:52Marc:Get tickets.

00:05:54Marc:The Colonial Theater, Laconia, New Hampshire, March 11th.

00:05:58Marc:If you don't get tickets for that, I might cancel it.

00:06:02Marc:Flynn Center, Burlington, Vermont.

00:06:04Marc:You would think people would like me there.

00:06:05Marc:Buy some tickets.

00:06:07Marc:Flynn Center, Burlington, Vermont.

00:06:10Marc:March 12th.

00:06:12Marc:I don't want to cancel.

00:06:13Marc:Buckhead, Atlanta, Georgia.

00:06:15Marc:April 1st.

00:06:16Marc:Tarrytown Music Hall.

00:06:18Marc:Tarrytown, New York.

00:06:19Marc:April 14th.

00:06:21Marc:Columbus Theater in Providence, Rhode Island.

00:06:23Marc:April 15th.

00:06:24Marc:The Wilbur in Boston.

00:06:26Marc:Now two shows.

00:06:27Marc:Seven and 945 on April 16th.

00:06:30Marc:And I'm going up to the State Theater in Portland, Maine on April 17th.

00:06:34Marc:Buy tickets.

00:06:35Marc:I don't want to be disappointed or feel like it's fucking sad.

00:06:40Marc:Paramount Theater, Moon Tower Comedy Festival, April 22nd.

00:06:43Marc:That'll be good to go to that place and go to Opie's Barbecue.

00:06:48Marc:Be at the Barrymore Theater in Madison, Wisconsin on April 27th with Esther Pavitsky.

00:06:53Marc:I'll be at the Turner Hall Ballroom in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on April 28th with Esther Pavitsky.

00:06:59Marc:The Vic Theater, April 29th.

00:07:01Marc:In Chicago with Esther Pavitsky.

00:07:03Marc:In Minneapolis.

00:07:05Marc:At the Pantages.

00:07:06Marc:April 30th with Esther.

00:07:08Marc:Then I'm going to do a run at Dynasty Typewriter.

00:07:10Marc:Here in LA.

00:07:11Marc:May 2nd.

00:07:12Marc:May 3rd.

00:07:13Marc:And May 4th.

00:07:14Marc:All those with Esther.

00:07:16Marc:Carnegie Music Hall in Pittsburgh.

00:07:17Marc:May 12th.

00:07:19Marc:That's creepy.

00:07:20Marc:You got to drive up the hill to the creepy haunted venue.

00:07:24Marc:I'm doing it again though.

00:07:25Marc:Mimi Ohio Theater in Cleveland.

00:07:28Marc:May 13th, the Music Theater in Royal Oak, Michigan.

00:07:32Marc:Isn't that the Music Box Theater?

00:07:35Marc:May 14th, Kennedy Center, D.C., May 20th.

00:07:39Marc:Count Basie Theater, Red Bank, New Jersey, May 21st.

00:07:43Marc:Keswick, Philadelphia, PA, 730 on May 22nd.

00:07:49Marc:Go to wtfpod.com slash tour.

00:07:53Marc:Get tickets.

00:07:54Marc:I'm coming.

00:07:55Marc:This might be it.

00:07:57Marc:Not because I'm going to die.

00:07:58Marc:I just might be done.

00:08:00Marc:How long does one have to do this shit?

00:08:02Marc:What do you have to prove?

00:08:04Marc:What do you have to prove?

00:08:06Marc:I'm not greedy.

00:08:07Marc:I don't want power.

00:08:09Marc:I just want to keep creating and try to have a little fun before we all can't breathe at the same time.

00:08:17Marc:How are you?

00:08:17Marc:Everything all right?

00:08:18Marc:Roy Wood Jr., as I mentioned earlier, is one of the greats, and you should pay attention to his stand-up because it's top-notch, man.

00:08:27Marc:Seriously.

00:08:28Marc:Father figure, imperfect messenger.

00:08:31Marc:My faves.

00:08:32Marc:I got to talk to him.

00:08:34Marc:Didn't know him.

00:08:35Marc:And I don't watch The Daily Show.

00:08:37Marc:Don't even think we mentioned it.

00:08:38Marc:So don't get all weird about that.

00:08:40Marc:Wasn't out of disrespect.

00:08:42Marc:It was me talking to a stand-up comedian.

00:08:44Marc:I'm a stand-up comedian.

00:08:46Marc:Talking to another one, Roy Wood Jr., right now.

00:08:49Marc:¶¶

00:09:03Guest:The first nice hotel room.

00:09:04Guest:The first nice hotel room I ever stayed in in comedy was a Candlewood Suite in Charlotte, North Carolina.

00:09:12Guest:That was the first hotel with the hallway where the room didn't open up to a parking lot.

00:09:18Guest:Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:09:20Guest:And I remember it because it was a fallout.

00:09:23Guest:I don't know who was supposed to feature for Tommy Davidson, but shit happened.

00:09:27Guest:And I got the call like Friday morning in Tallahassee.

00:09:30Guest:Was that the break?

00:09:32Guest:Was that the big break?

00:09:33Guest:That was the break with the Comedy Zone, Shane, who booked at the time probably 60% of all the road work in the Southeast.

00:09:41Guest:Yeah.

00:09:41Guest:Like you couldn't be a road comic in the South and not work the Comedy Zone.

00:09:44Guest:Right.

00:09:45Guest:I feel like I've done one Comedy Zone.

00:09:47Guest:Yeah, I don't know.

00:09:49Guest:When doing what you were doing in the late 90s, early 2000s, you'd have gotten to a lot of fights in the South.

00:09:57Guest:Talking shit to rednecks and looking blue hairs.

00:10:01Marc:I didn't understand it until I did a gig in...

00:10:06Marc:i think i was in lexington they had me do a show there comedy off broadway i don't know i don't know which one it was but i i know that i was doing a lot of religious stuff and i know and then i'm driving around and i'm like holy shit there's a church on every fucking corner in this place and they never asked me back and it was dicey you know it felt uncomfortable it's like that old doug stanhope bit if you want to read the bible just drive down the freeway in the south

00:10:30Guest:and go get a billboard, one billboard at a time.

00:10:33Guest:Yeah.

00:10:33Guest:Yeah, but the South, though, that was starting in Birmingham and working a lot in Florida.

00:10:40Guest:You just had to be diverse enough.

00:10:43Guest:Because if you're going to get on stage every week, it's a different motherfucker.

00:10:46Guest:It's not like being a city comic.

00:10:48Guest:Right.

00:10:49Guest:this is your scene.

00:10:50Guest:It's like, no bitch.

00:10:51Guest:Monday, it's a casino.

00:10:53Guest:Then it's a fucking, it's a black room.

00:10:56Guest:Then it's mainstream.

00:10:57Guest:And then it's hillbillies that want to square dance and you're holding up.

00:11:00Marc:You never know.

00:11:01Marc:Yeah.

00:11:02Marc:I used to do my stuff.

00:11:03Marc:I started doing one nighters.

00:11:04Marc:so it wasn't even a thursday friday saturday thing it was like you're going to the ramada inn in worcester so it's it's not even a real comedy club no it's comedy night yeah exactly at a different yeah we do other shit but tonight yeah i remember there was like uh there was a menu of the the week's events at one place it was like country western night uh free food

00:11:28Marc:Comedy was a Wednesday.

00:11:29Guest:And then karaoke.

00:11:30Marc:Yeah, exactly.

00:11:30Marc:Karaoke's the big draw on the Thursday.

00:11:34Marc:Sometimes now that I'm older and I'm a little more sensitive about shit and I think about young me and some of those places, it hurts me.

00:11:43Guest:Do you wonder, I started thinking this more recently, just how much the scene you came up in influenced your writing style or if that's who you really were as a performer?

00:11:58Guest:Like in the sense that I feel like I had to figure out early on what is the joke and the angle that hits these four different demos so that every night I'm not restructuring my act.

00:12:12Guest:How do I get a dope boy, an old person and middle America to laugh at the same joke?

00:12:17Marc:You were thinking that early?

00:12:18Guest:I'd had no choice.

00:12:19Guest:It was either that or rework the material every fucking night because every night was a different demo.

00:12:23Marc:So I don't know if I was that much of a salesman.

00:12:26Marc:I think I was fueled by insane fear and a lot of anger.

00:12:33Marc:And I just was like, you know, I'm going to do it.

00:12:35Marc:This is what I do.

00:12:37Guest:This is my thing.

00:12:39Guest:Yeah.

00:12:39Guest:No, but see, I guess for me, it was always the fear of not being rebooked.

00:12:43Guest:So the older I've gotten, I didn't understand that initially.

00:12:47Yeah.

00:12:47Guest:i thought like you know like i'm here you know i never thought like this was a business no next year bitch yeah no no no i just i just never understood why i couldn't get more work it it became the sliding scale of the joke i want to do versus the joke that's going to get me ass back yeah that became an oscillation of those bits and then less and like once i got the daily show it gave me a little bit more freedom yeah to do what the fuck i want when i get to a city but up until that point no man you're on fucking pins and needles

00:13:16Marc:So when you started, well, I mean, you grew up in where, Birmingham?

00:13:20Marc:Yeah.

00:13:21Marc:And you don't live there anymore.

00:13:22Guest:You live here.

00:13:24Guest:No, no.

00:13:24Guest:I'm in New York now.

00:13:25Guest:New York is where I pay for.

00:13:26Guest:I shot a movie in Birmingham, a small movie.

00:13:28Guest:I know.

00:13:29Guest:Dude, we came in about three months after you.

00:13:32Guest:to do my Comedy Central pilot there.

00:13:36Guest:I fucking got Comedy Central to agree to shoot a scripted comedy pilot in fucking Alabama.

00:13:43Guest:It was called Jefferson County Probation.

00:13:44Guest:It's dead on the vine.

00:13:45Guest:It is?

00:13:46Guest:Between the merger and COVID, they're not fucking with scripted anymore.

00:13:49Guest:really over there so like they they killed i'll give them credit they killed everything and shit that was already on they sold off to hbo max so so what was that show about um so you know i got arrested when i was 19 i was yeah i stole some jeans and shit and so my first three years of stand-up i was on probation what compelled you to enter a life of crime money bro and adrenaline that's the other thing is that were you with some shitty guys

00:14:11Guest:No, this was all.

00:14:13Guest:Oh, you?

00:14:13Guest:I enterprise this.

00:14:15Guest:I was not around the wrong crowd.

00:14:17Guest:I was the wrong crowd.

00:14:19Guest:Yeah.

00:14:19Guest:And like that time on probation, like really informed a lot of like the choices I made the rest of my life.

00:14:26Guest:But I had a probation officer that let me travel, which is like against every fucking rule.

00:14:31Guest:You can like, you're not supposed to leave the state.

00:14:33Guest:Yeah.

00:14:34Guest:When you're on probation.

00:14:35Guest:Yeah.

00:14:35Guest:And he's like, no, for as long as you are going and doing something that's productive.

00:14:40Guest:Right.

00:14:40Guest:Yeah.

00:14:41Guest:As long as you're not going to steal more jeans.

00:14:44Guest:Yeah.

00:14:45Guest:Just don't go to Dillard's.

00:14:46Guest:You're banned.

00:14:48Guest:Don't go to Dillard's.

00:14:49Guest:Dillard's.

00:14:50Guest:Like little shit.

00:14:51Guest:Yeah.

00:14:52Guest:All right.

00:14:54Guest:To get a travel permit, you have to show proof that the event is happening that you're going to go to.

00:14:58Guest:Okay.

00:14:58Guest:And so you're doing open mic.

00:15:00Guest:Like I'm going to Good Nights in Raleigh.

00:15:03Guest:Oh, yeah.

00:15:03Guest:To do open mic.

00:15:04Marc:When it was Charlie Good Nights?

00:15:05Guest:Yeah, it was Charlie Good Nights.

00:15:06Guest:Tom Williams was stealing money.

00:15:08Guest:Tom Williams.

00:15:08Guest:Yeah.

00:15:09Guest:And so I would take the Greyhound from Tallahassee to Raleigh.

00:15:13Guest:Yeah.

00:15:13Guest:My probation officer would say something like, well, you have to I need to see a flyer that.

00:15:19Guest:That shows that you're fucking the open mic roster.

00:15:22Marc:Yeah.

00:15:23Guest:It's open mic.

00:15:23Guest:There's no fucking flyer.

00:15:25Guest:He goes, well, someone needs to make make a flyer.

00:15:29Guest:And that's how I learned graphic design.

00:15:32Guest:So it's, it was things like that that helped.

00:15:36Guest:And that's still to this day, that's a tool I still use.

00:15:38Guest:So there's an, there's a way graphic design.

00:15:41Guest:Yeah.

00:15:41Guest:I mean, just computer shit.

00:15:42Guest:I mean, my degree is in broadcast, but at the time I was with the campus newspaper.

00:15:46Guest:So I learned, I was learning camera shit and all of that stuff too.

00:15:50Guest:But,

00:15:51Guest:To be able to travel and do what I wanted to do, I had to gain skills.

00:15:55Guest:And so that when you look at criminal justice reform from a place of true reformation and not just a probation officer being some sort of fucking chaperone.

00:16:04Guest:Yeah.

00:16:04Guest:A fucking narc.

00:16:05Guest:I think we could really change the way we look at.

00:16:08Guest:There's more people on probation than in prison.

00:16:11Guest:So my point is, that's positive, isn't it?

00:16:13Guest:I don't know.

00:16:14Guest:Probation isn't necessarily freedom.

00:16:16Guest:It's just not prison.

00:16:17Guest:It's still a thousand levels of fuckery to keep you from getting employed because you you've been you've been arrested.

00:16:25Guest:But then the judge will turn around and send you to jail for violation of probation if you don't get a job.

00:16:29Guest:But how can I get a job if I've been if I got the scarlet letter on me, dog?

00:16:32Guest:So it's just this constant loop that so many people that are on probation go back to jail and all of that shit.

00:16:39Guest:So I just wanted a show that kind of kind of spoke to that shit.

00:16:42Guest:And Alabama is pretty disproportionate with blacks in prisons.

00:16:46Guest:But I wasn't trying to make the show like super woke or anything.

00:16:50Guest:If I could just tell the story of a probation officer that's trying to look at the system differently.

00:16:55Guest:yeah have a little heart yeah just have a little heart and so my point is the film and tv community is still growing in alabama and people like you come in there like it's the crew is there they just live in new orleans and atlanta because that's where the work is so they're all yeah just but they're close by bro we had a crew of 90 60 of them were alabama residents

00:17:19Marc:And the good people, they're so proud of the city.

00:17:23Marc:Yeah, Birmingham's a pretty nice little city.

00:17:25Marc:I'm a white Jew.

00:17:26Marc:I go to the South, and I just assume that no one's going to like me.

00:17:31Marc:White people and black people are going to have a problem with me somehow.

00:17:34Marc:Yeah.

00:17:35Marc:But Birmingham's one of those little kind of blue cities, which as many times, I play a lot of blue cities.

00:17:40Marc:But you start to realize blue cities are just frightened people that don't really talk to the people they work with.

00:17:45Marc:Correct.

00:17:45Guest:And they know they're surrounded by their overlords in the county.

00:17:48Marc:Yeah.

00:17:48Marc:That's right.

00:17:49Marc:They're like the brick and mortar store for the state, right?

00:17:54Marc:So the state, a bunch of backward idiots, but we're going to let the gay people live there because, you know, they got the clubs and the nice boutiques.

00:18:00Marc:Yeah, it's craft beer.

00:18:00Marc:Yeah, they're bringing money in.

00:18:02Marc:But I made sure to sort of appreciate where I was.

00:18:06Marc:I drove to Montgomery.

00:18:07Marc:I went to the museum.

00:18:10Marc:Yeah, the lynching.

00:18:11Marc:Oh, my God, dude.

00:18:12Guest:Equal Justice Initiative, EJI.

00:18:13Marc:But that memorial, it delivered the message.

00:18:18Guest:I can't go twice.

00:18:20Guest:Everyone should go, but I could never go again.

00:18:22Marc:As just a white dude going to that thing, it was like, okay, I can see it.

00:18:29Guest:When you see every single lynching that is known that happened in the last 200 years, just document it and prove it's overwhelming.

00:18:40Marc:And the weight of the visuals.

00:18:42Marc:That piece of public art is by far the most...

00:18:47Marc:intuitive, empathetic execution of something that heavy.

00:18:52Marc:And I've been to the dead Jew memorials, but this thing was something else.

00:18:56Guest:The only other thing I've been to that was close, and it's not comparing the two conflicts, of course, was the Vietnam Memorial in D.C.

00:19:04Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah, exactly.

00:19:05Guest:The somberness where no one's talking to each other.

00:19:07Marc:And it's not like some sort of spectacular thing.

00:19:11Marc:It's just this, whoa.

00:19:13Guest:Yeah, it's just, oh my God.

00:19:15Guest:The names.

00:19:16Guest:Bro, they talked about you.

00:19:18Guest:Tom Holland was in the region around the same time shooting something for Netflix.

00:19:22Guest:Aaron Eckert.

00:19:23Marc:Spider-Man?

00:19:24Guest:Yeah, but he was shooting some movie set in Ohio or something.

00:19:26Marc:Do they give tax incentives there in Alabama?

00:19:28Guest:No.

00:19:28Guest:It's decent.

00:19:29Guest:It ain't Georgia level, but you can get away with doing a lot of stuff for cheaper there.

00:19:33Guest:So if you play it right, the money kind of comes out even if your production doesn't get too good.

00:19:38Marc:I can't believe they're not going to make your show.

00:19:40Guest:That's politics, man.

00:19:41Guest:I mean, I got other irons in the fire now.

00:19:43Guest:It's a show that I would love to circle back to at some point since I never saw the light of day.

00:19:47Guest:It's still in play.

00:19:48Guest:But like that...

00:19:49Guest:That whole thing that that's the thing that really that I really learned about Alabama.

00:19:54Guest:You want to talk about politics.

00:19:55Guest:Yeah.

00:19:56Guest:Was the process of just getting the pieces in place to even get a pilot shot there just to get the incentives to talk to this person and that person.

00:20:05Guest:And then you realize, oh, fuck.

00:20:07Guest:We could never take business away from Georgia because we don't have the infrastructure to train crew.

00:20:12Guest:Well, we train crew.

00:20:13Guest:You have to make that a blue-collar job, which means you have to go with the AIDT training, which trains HVAC and welding and forklift.

00:20:21Guest:So you have to put all the crew shit under that and bury it because essentially I'm from Birmingham and I'm loved in my state.

00:20:29Guest:But at a political level, I'm a Hollywood liberal.

00:20:31Guest:That is how I'm perceived.

00:20:33Guest:So I can't come in and go, wouldn't it be fun to make movies?

00:20:36Guest:I have to go, jobs.

00:20:37Guest:Yeah.

00:20:38Guest:I got an idea for jobs.

00:20:40Guest:Don't you want some jobs?

00:20:42Guest:And they're with that shit.

00:20:43Guest:And that's how we were able to kind of get the ball rolling.

00:20:47Guest:The politics of that state.

00:20:49Guest:God bless anybody that has to deal with it, because even to get a school to teach the program for free, you can't give certain shit to a four year school that you don't give to a community college in the same county.

00:20:58Guest:Right.

00:20:59Guest:Community college is competing for bodies with the foot.

00:21:02Guest:So you have to play nice with everybody.

00:21:04Guest:And it's like five.

00:21:04Guest:And then COVID hit.

00:21:05Guest:And it's just like, all right, let's just not do it.

00:21:07Marc:Yeah, the Supreme Court just did yesterday.

00:21:09Marc:What?

00:21:09Marc:They just gerrymandering stands.

00:21:13Guest:Yeah.

00:21:13Guest:So they rewrote.

00:21:14Guest:The Republicans rewrote a bunch of the districts and midterms are going to be very interesting in the state.

00:21:19Guest:So, I mean, people just got bigger battles to fight, man.

00:21:22Guest:So in the meantime, hopefully I make something with Fox or NBC and then I can circle back around when I got more juice.

00:21:27Guest:i like the whole world though like i just i sold the show to fx about a social worker so we're gonna see see and that's perfect and that's also reform exactly that's the other side because everything when you look at crime on tv it's catch the criminal it's adjudicate the criminal or it's fucking the jail lock them up whatever and like that's the and then at the end you say like he did this and that and was in jail 10 years and whatever

00:21:52Guest:Yeah, reform is rarely on the books.

00:21:54Guest:Like I did the research on it.

00:21:55Guest:A&E had a reality show about clemency and probation officers like 15 years ago.

00:22:00Guest:There's been nothing else since.

00:22:02Guest:USA had a show about public defenders about 15 years ago.

00:22:07Marc:For me, it just seems like a way that the depth of the stories is so much more interesting.

00:22:13Guest:And it's like that level of selflessness I don't think is really highlighted enough.

00:22:19Guest:And I'll be honest, like I'm starting to look at my creative patterns and that's kind of –

00:22:23Guest:that's where I gravitate creatively.

00:22:25Guest:Like me and Dennis Leary, we just sold this joint to Fox about the national guard where we play a national guard unit.

00:22:31Guest:To me, the idea isn't even about the national guard as a unit.

00:22:35Guest:Yeah.

00:22:35Guest:They're the military and people treat them like shit and don't really know what they do.

00:22:39Guest:Yeah.

00:22:39Guest:But when you look at what the national guard does at a deeper level, they're just a bandaid for government malfeasance.

00:22:45Guest:It's not just the storm hit pass out the soup.

00:22:48Guest:It's,

00:22:49Guest:Oh, my God, this dam is about to break and flood the town.

00:22:52Guest:But this dam should have been fixed 20 years ago on a proposal that a bunch of fucking town folk fucking voted no on.

00:22:59Guest:So it's like it's things like that.

00:23:01Guest:Yeah.

00:23:01Guest:I mean, they're replacing school bus drivers in Boston right now because of COVID and shit like they're like temp service workers.

00:23:09Guest:Like the National Guard is such a Swiss Army knife of an occupation.

00:23:13Guest:And it's like that's another way to show how the system fails a lot of people.

00:23:18Guest:Because you don't see the National Guard in a lot of rich neighborhoods, bro.

00:23:21Guest:Unless it's a fucking hurricane or some shit.

00:23:23Guest:Interesting.

00:23:24Marc:Well, I noticed that.

00:23:25Marc:I think that's the depth of your comedy in general.

00:23:29Marc:I mean, you actually talk about policy.

00:23:32Marc:When you're talking about the issues of black people, you talk about policy.

00:23:37Marc:Yeah.

00:23:37Marc:I mean, the way you encapsulate the struggle or the experience, which is what you do in a lot of ways, is sophisticated and balanced and in depth.

00:23:50Marc:Like, you know, when you listen to your jokes, like I was just watching something in the news special, and it's fucking hilarious.

00:23:58Marc:Even the idea of Leonardo DiCaprio...

00:24:02Guest:Saying the N-word repeatedly.

00:24:04Marc:But the idea that he's got to lay low for a decade.

00:24:08Guest:Yeah.

00:24:09Guest:He called Jamie Foxx the N-word.

00:24:11Guest:To his face.

00:24:13Guest:And then he didn't do another black scene with a black person until Don't Look Up.

00:24:19Guest:He did every other minority.

00:24:21Guest:It's just such a stupid thing.

00:24:25Guest:It was fun researching that.

00:24:28Guest:I watched every Leo movie.

00:24:29Marc:But when you found out it was a decade, you were like, oh, yeah.

00:24:35Marc:I got the joke.

00:24:37Marc:But the other thing was also, can we get a law?

00:24:40Marc:Can we get a law?

00:24:41Guest:Just pass one of the things that black people have asked for.

00:24:44Marc:But that conversation, and certainly in comedy, and especially now when there's all this idea that people are controversial or whatever, I mean, the real controversial thing right now that anyone should be talking about is like, they're fucking banning books.

00:24:58Guest:Yeah.

00:24:58Marc:And it's just like, you know, but these people are hung up on whether they can say tranny or not.

00:25:02Marc:Like nobody has the guts to sort of just like explain.

00:25:06Marc:And it's a rare gift you have to be able to explain and remain funny.

00:25:11Marc:I think that most people not only are they stupid and don't know the shit, but they don't know how to explain it.

00:25:17Marc:Yeah, I'm not anti-murals.

00:25:19Marc:But just give us some laws.

00:25:22Marc:Right, right.

00:25:23Marc:But I don't think people think that deep.

00:25:24Marc:I think people's civic sensibility or what the government can do for them, it's either shallow or they're just reactively angry and dismissive.

00:25:34Marc:Fuck the government.

00:25:35Marc:what does that mean?

00:25:38Marc:We got to meet him halfway somewhere.

00:25:40Guest:You know what I learned though?

00:25:41Guest:Like I learned early on that anger just doesn't help my delivery or the conveyance of my message.

00:25:49Guest:Did you try it?

00:25:50Guest:Yeah, I went through, I call it my Stanhope phase.

00:25:53Marc:Well, let's back up then.

00:25:56Guest:Mooney.

00:25:57Guest:Oh, Mooney.

00:25:57Guest:I was mainlining Mooney and Stanhope for like three years.

00:26:01Guest:How old were you?

00:26:02Guest:26.

00:26:03Marc:Well, Stanhope is good because he's long form.

00:26:06Marc:And when you get down the rabbit hole, the way he illustrates a thing in order to fuck your brain up is a great story.

00:26:16Marc:He's a great explainer.

00:26:17Guest:Perverted analogy.

00:26:19Guest:Perfect perverted.

00:26:20Marc:Exactly.

00:26:21Marc:But like he has to build a case, you know.

00:26:24Marc:Correct.

00:26:24Marc:Yeah.

00:26:25Marc:With Mooney, you know, you just.

00:26:28Guest:The best part is watching Mooney just attack white people for two hours.

00:26:32Marc:Yeah.

00:26:33Guest:And then at the end, if there's a white couple that didn't walk out, he congratulates them.

00:26:38Guest:Yeah.

00:26:38Guest:on endurance and like the audience gives them a round of applause.

00:26:40Guest:You can see them, they're like smiling like, yeah, we fucking made it.

00:26:45Marc:The allies, as you call them.

00:26:46Guest:Yeah, I started, so when I was 19, I didn't have shit to talk about, bro.

00:26:50Guest:So I was just all, I had jokes about book buyback and your roommate eating your food.

00:26:57Guest:What were you going to college for?

00:26:58Guest:Journalism for broadcast.

00:27:00Guest:My dad was in broadcast.

00:27:02Guest:I had a bunch of brothers that did it too.

00:27:04Marc:So journalists, you come from journalists.

00:27:06Guest:Yeah.

00:27:07Marc:You grew up as a journalist.

00:27:08Marc:What'd your mom do?

00:27:09Guest:My mom's a college educator.

00:27:11Guest:She's been in higher ed for 30 years.

00:27:12Marc:So you grew up in a world where there was a premium on education.

00:27:16Guest:It was four degrees in the house before I got one.

00:27:18Marc:Yeah.

00:27:19Guest:And so my dad was not only just a journalist, he was a civil rights journalist.

00:27:23Guest:He goes all the way back to the 50s to the riots in South Africa, Civil War.

00:27:29Guest:He went to South Africa?

00:27:30Guest:Went to Rhodesia, covered the Civil War, got shot at by snipers.

00:27:33Guest:Embedded with black Vietnam platoons.

00:27:36Guest:Really?

00:27:37Guest:He was in Chicago working at the time, the first black, the first all black news station to be in and just fucking on a whim, just went to Chicago to embed with a Chicago platoon just to see what the fuck with all the wherever there was racism happening.

00:27:54Guest:My dad was like, yeah, let me go be in it.

00:27:56Guest:Like all of the most dangerous, horrible.

00:27:59Guest:That's why like now with The Daily Show, I'm like, Trevor's like, will you go cover the... Yeah, I'll go to CPAC.

00:28:08Marc:The least I can do to honor my dad's legacy is go to...

00:28:14Guest:Civil rights movement all that shit bro one of my first memories as a child when my father was being backstage in 84 when Jesse Jackson was running for president yeah and my dad interviewing Jesse Jackson yeah so yeah like it so I was in school for journalism

00:28:30Marc:What was the story of your dad?

00:28:32Marc:What was he telling you?

00:28:35Marc:I mean, what were you growing up in?

00:28:37Marc:He was angry.

00:28:38Guest:He was angry.

00:28:39Guest:He's one of the few people who I know who actively watch C-SPAN.

00:28:44Guest:My father had a TV in the house that was dedicated to C-SPAN, and he just pressed record.

00:28:47Marc:That's where you get the nuance of policy was put upon you as a young person.

00:28:53Marc:Maybe so.

00:28:54Marc:Maybe so.

00:28:55Guest:Sundays were 60 minutes.

00:28:57Guest:I could watch football.

00:28:58Guest:But when 60 Minutes came on, you have to sit.

00:29:01Guest:You can't leave this room.

00:29:03Guest:So he was angry.

00:29:04Guest:Yeah, but I mean, rightfully so.

00:29:06Guest:He's from an era where motherfuckers got kicked in the face and bricked and firebombed and death-threaded.

00:29:12Guest:And at a lot of radio jobs, he was the first black man through the doors of those stations.

00:29:18Guest:So imagine being the first integrator over and over again, station after station, and just dealing with the same shit, wash, rinse, repeat.

00:29:26Guest:He did news commentary too, you know?

00:29:30Guest:So I remember as a kid, you know, going to the radio station with my dad at like 5.30 in the morning and just sitting on the floor, like waiting for school to start.

00:29:40Guest:And I would just listen to him just do commentary all morning.

00:29:44Guest:I don't even want to call him radical, but he for sure wasn't liberal.

00:29:47Guest:He didn't fuck with politicians in general.

00:29:49Marc:How was he like at home?

00:29:51Marc:Did the anger manifest?

00:29:54Guest:No, I think I mean, good dad, bad husband.

00:29:57Guest:So he was in the streets a lot.

00:29:59Guest:So, you know, my dad might be home three nights out of four.

00:30:02Guest:Yeah.

00:30:03Guest:Yeah.

00:30:04Guest:When he's home, you know, the house better be clean.

00:30:06Guest:Your grades better be good or it's going to be a fucking problem.

00:30:09Guest:Right.

00:30:09Guest:You know, so.

00:30:10Guest:And they stayed together.

00:30:11Guest:Yeah, you know, for the better or for the worse of all of us, I don't know.

00:30:17Guest:How many are there?

00:30:18Guest:It's just I'm the only one by my mom, but I'm the ninth of 11 by my dad.

00:30:22Guest:Oh, yeah.

00:30:24Guest:In the streets.

00:30:25Guest:In the streets.

00:30:27Guest:But also, like, this life-changing figure when it comes to making sure that black news was heard and disseminated to the people.

00:30:41Guest:You know, WVOM was a very integral part of the 60s and 70s, you know, in terms of news getting out there to black folks.

00:30:50Guest:You know, my dad hired Don Cornelius.

00:30:52Guest:Like, that's...

00:30:53Guest:For what job?

00:30:54Guest:A little stupid little radio effect for media radio for to be a news reporter.

00:30:59Guest:And that was Don's first job in any for anything with a microphone as a broadcast.

00:31:03Marc:Yeah.

00:31:03Guest:As a block period.

00:31:04Guest:He was a cop before he met my father, pulled my father over and gave my father a ticket.

00:31:08Guest:My dad gave him this card.

00:31:11Guest:Call me for a job.

00:31:13Guest:It's like the last nice thing a black person's done for the police.

00:31:18Marc:So that was your world.

00:31:19Marc:I have to assume that going into the studio and seeing your dad do that must have wired your brain.

00:31:25Marc:Not then.

00:31:26Guest:It was just some preset.

00:31:28Guest:Yeah, it's subconscious, but it didn't get activated shit until I was in my early 20s, bro.

00:31:33Guest:I wasn't political.

00:31:35Guest:I went to journalism school because of Stuart Scott.

00:31:39Guest:My dad was so riled up, I just looked at him and I was like, I don't want... My nigga, when are you happy?

00:31:46Guest:Now, the answer is when he was in them streets.

00:31:49Guest:When he was happy.

00:31:50Guest:But...

00:31:51Guest:Yeah, there is a burden that comes with trying to change and better your people.

00:31:58Guest:There's a stress that comes with that.

00:32:00Guest:And he carried that.

00:32:01Guest:And I was like, Stuart Scott just talks hip and talks about sports.

00:32:04Guest:We do that at the lunch table.

00:32:06Guest:And we do that every I wrote the bench playing baseball.

00:32:08Guest:I crack jokes on it.

00:32:09Guest:And so like this.

00:32:10Guest:espn seems like the place where you can crack jokes and talk sports right so i'll major in journalism that's what the deal was that's what that because you don't want to live in you know an angry bitter life you just wanted to live your life yes which is probably selfish because there's a thanklessness that comes with being that type of person why i think i think it must be it's not a lot of glory and

00:32:33Marc:No, I know.

00:32:33Marc:But I think like, you know, because I've talked to Wyatt Sinek about this a bit, but there must be this weird kind of like if you're going to be a public person and be black, you have to make some choice as to how you're going to do it.

00:32:47Guest:Correct.

00:32:48Guest:And whether you like it or not, you can avoid the choice.

00:32:51Guest:But sooner or later, the game is going to force you to choose.

00:32:54Guest:And so that's what it came down to for me.

00:32:57Guest:And so I ended up going to school for journalism.

00:33:01Guest:I get arrested.

00:33:02Guest:I get suspended from school for a year, but I still got my financial aid check because of the arrest.

00:33:08Guest:Correct.

00:33:08Guest:Student misconduct or whatever.

00:33:10Guest:And so I still got my financial aid check.

00:33:13Guest:So I had I was 19.

00:33:14Guest:I had seven thousand dollars and no obligations for the next 10 months.

00:33:18Marc:Yeah.

00:33:19Guest:And I just hit the road.

00:33:20Marc:And you're on probation.

00:33:21Guest:And I'm on probation.

00:33:22Guest:And I just hit the road.

00:33:23Guest:I had no friends.

00:33:24Guest:Nobody was talking to me.

00:33:25Guest:Like once you get arrested, you're not cool anymore.

00:33:27Guest:You don't.

00:33:28Guest:Not to some people.

00:33:29Guest:Well, I'm the guy that sells clothes and I'm kind of out of business right now.

00:33:35Guest:Yeah, I'm the guy who steals clothes and sells them.

00:33:39Guest:I went out of business.

00:33:39Guest:You have no more purpose for me.

00:33:41Guest:So that taught me a lesson about people using you too.

00:33:44Guest:So I started doing stand-up.

00:33:46Marc:Who are your real friends?

00:33:47Marc:Well, that's a good thing about stand-up.

00:33:49Marc:You don't need too many.

00:33:51Marc:We all see each other here and there.

00:33:53Marc:We have an understanding.

00:33:56Guest:You know what, though?

00:33:56Guest:In a way, though, I kind of envy the city guys who had the beginnings in the city.

00:34:01Guest:And, yeah, we used to do spots.

00:34:04Guest:Like when you watch fucking Seinfeld and George Wallace.

00:34:08Marc:But I was here, you know, like, yeah, after all the clubs at 2.30 in the morning, I'd be sitting at an all-night diner over here, the Kiev, with Jeff Ross, Sarah Silverman, Louie.

00:34:20Marc:A couple other people eating fucking French fries and ice cream at 3 in the morning.

00:34:25Guest:Insane.

00:34:26Guest:And I have zero memories like that.

00:34:28Guest:Because when you're coming up on the road in the South, it's just homeschool.

00:34:32Guest:It's just you don't know who you're going to get this week.

00:34:34Guest:And you might work with another headliner the next week.

00:34:36Guest:But then as you get promoted.

00:34:37Marc:But you get to know Earthquake occasionally.

00:34:39Guest:Yeah.

00:34:39Guest:Every now and then.

00:34:40Guest:You eat Earthquake.

00:34:41Guest:Tommy Davis.

00:34:42Guest:People slip you in.

00:34:43Guest:But the problem with that is that.

00:34:45Guest:The advantage to coming up on the road that I feel like I had over guys like you is that you get a preview of every possible ending to your career.

00:34:57Marc:Well, you have to do the job.

00:34:59Marc:Like doing 15-minute sets for 12 people in the city or waiting for a scrap.

00:35:05Marc:When you're out on the road and even if you're doing the opening slot, even if you're doing 15 or 20 minutes, the premium is on doing the job, not on like, well, I'm going to try this or do that.

00:35:14Guest:No, if I don't do well, they're going to send a report back to Comedy Zone and I'm not going to get fucking rebooked.

00:35:22Guest:But I mean, I met the successful comics, the young up and comers who ended up leapfrogging me.

00:35:27Guest:I met alcoholics, guys that are gone now because of suicide and bad eating habits like.

00:35:35Guest:so when you get older like when you hit the 20 year when you hit that 15 year mile mark you start thinking well what do i really want you think back to all of those guys and go okay well i don't want that and i don't want that i knew a guy that wouldn't he didn't want to have his name in the paper or on the marquee because he was you know he owed child support yeah this tax yeah this guy's a performer under fucking they're just criminals yeah

00:35:58Guest:Yeah, I've I've watched headliners children because they were in the middle of a custody battle and they didn't want to miss the weekend with the child or the money.

00:36:08Guest:Because if they miss the weekend, then they some whatever court order they lose and you don't see the kid ever again.

00:36:13Guest:So I'm the fucking babysitter.

00:36:15Guest:I'm watching a six year old.

00:36:16Guest:Yeah.

00:36:17Marc:While the headliners on stage.

00:36:19Marc:Or how about those guys who were like, remember all those guys that just didn't know how the business work and they're like, yeah, they'll find me.

00:36:24Marc:Letterman will find me.

00:36:26Marc:I don't have to go up there.

00:36:28Marc:I didn't know either, but I remember there was a guy who really believed that eventually they'd come find him.

00:36:35Marc:You don't need to move to the coast.

00:36:36Guest:No, they'll come find me.

00:36:37Guest:In those days, you needed to, man.

00:36:39Guest:There was...

00:36:41Guest:It's just, you know, it really is a wild ride.

00:36:44Guest:I think the thing that I probably learned the most from the road was just about losing expectations and just doing the job.

00:36:54Guest:Just do the job and whatever happens, happens.

00:36:56Guest:Get to the coast when you can.

00:36:58Guest:Make connections and shit.

00:37:00Guest:I probably stayed in Alabama too long.

00:37:02Guest:Because when I graduated, I left Florida.

00:37:03Guest:I went back home.

00:37:04Guest:I started doing morning radio.

00:37:05Guest:I did mornings.

00:37:06Marc:Oh, you were in school in Florida.

00:37:07Guest:Yeah, I was in Tallahassee, Florida.

00:37:08Marc:So did you, like, what sparked the comedy thing, though?

00:37:12Marc:Was that in college?

00:37:13Guest:Yeah, that was after the arrest.

00:37:14Marc:Oh, that's right.

00:37:14Marc:Okay.

00:37:15Guest:It was like the depression of thinking you're going to go to prison instead of probation.

00:37:18Marc:But you never, but what, how'd you figure out, like, stand-ups a thing?

00:37:24Guest:That was early on.

00:37:26Guest:That was like 12, 13.

00:37:27Guest:When Comedy Central first signed on.

00:37:29Marc:You wanted to do it.

00:37:30Guest:They used to show Stand Up, Stand Up with Wally Collins.

00:37:33Marc:I know.

00:37:33Marc:I used to host Short Attentions Band Theater.

00:37:36Marc:The last Short Attentions Band Theater.

00:37:37Guest:It was you, it was Wally Collins, and it was A-List with A.J.

00:37:40Guest:Jamal.

00:37:41Guest:Those were like my three.

00:37:42Marc:Kightlinger.

00:37:43Guest:Yeah.

00:37:44Guest:She did it.

00:37:44Guest:Laurie.

00:37:44Guest:Yeah.

00:37:45Guest:Those were my staple shows.

00:37:47Guest:And then once a year when HBO would do the free preview.

00:37:50Guest:Yeah.

00:37:50Guest:And you could get everyone in the country had HBO for free for three days.

00:37:54Guest:And I would watch Carlin or Sinbad or whoever.

00:37:56Guest:Like Sinbad was kind of like patient zero.

00:37:59Guest:Oh, really?

00:37:59Guest:Sinbad was?

00:38:00Marc:Yeah.

00:38:00Guest:Did you ever work with Wally?

00:38:01Guest:I used to work with Wally.

00:38:02Guest:Just in New York doing spots.

00:38:04Guest:But it's mind blowing even now.

00:38:06Guest:Where's he at?

00:38:07Yeah.

00:38:07Guest:he's here he's here oh yeah he's still working man and it's like wow because you'll see like at some point comedy's that thing where like oh no you guys are you can go speak to him now you've earned the right you've been in the trenches long enough where you can go I wouldn't have fathomed in 1997 that I would ever bump into fucking Wiley Collins and now I'm like dude it's you look at you

00:38:29Guest:Yeah, that's what that was the thought.

00:38:32Guest:But, dude, you grew up in Birmingham on the black side of town.

00:38:36Guest:I didn't even know we had a comedy club.

00:38:38Marc:Is there one?

00:38:39Guest:Yeah.

00:38:40Guest:The Stardome.

00:38:41Guest:The Stardome has been there.

00:38:42Guest:It's legend.

00:38:42Guest:It's almost 30 years in the game.

00:38:45Guest:It books every every A-list market you can name.

00:38:47Guest:They book the same comics.

00:38:49Guest:Because Bruce Ayers, the owner, was good to a lot of people early on in the 80s when the road was still the road.

00:38:57Guest:It'd be Seinfeld opening for Steve Harvey.

00:38:59Guest:It was just insane fucking lineups.

00:39:02Guest:But the idea of open mic or comedy even existing, I didn't know.

00:39:07Guest:Because it's on TV and you're in Alabama.

00:39:09Guest:That's the world that you're not allowed to be a part of.

00:39:13Guest:Because you're black and you're from Alabama.

00:39:15Marc:But you knew there were black comics.

00:39:16Guest:Yeah.

00:39:16Guest:Yeah, you saw Def Jam.

00:39:18Guest:But again, that's over there.

00:39:19Guest:That's Hollywood.

00:39:20Guest:That's New York.

00:39:21Guest:Yeah.

00:39:22Guest:You just go to church, boy, and figure out your career.

00:39:24Guest:And what do you want to be when you grow up?

00:39:26Guest:Do that.

00:39:26Guest:But this idea of dreaming beyond the horizon.

00:39:30Guest:Wasn't there.

00:39:31Guest:And your parents don't give you that because they got beat so bad that they couldn't get an education.

00:39:35Guest:That's the only thing they want you to get is an education.

00:39:37Guest:Right.

00:39:38Guest:They're scared for you.

00:39:40Marc:Yeah.

00:39:41Marc:So you're in college in Tallahassee.

00:39:43Marc:So when do you first do it?

00:39:44Guest:um march of 99 i take a greyhound bus back to birmingham and i do an open mic how was it it was decent it was decent the only joke i remember is uh what do all these different colors on the weather map mean and how the fuck is purple colder than white

00:40:06Guest:who decided that purple was colder than white oh yeah prince did that's who yuck yuck yuck you knew how to tell you knew like i need to make a joke there was that and then my roommate eats some of my food but not all of it if you're gonna eat my food eat all of it i had a seven up he drank six of them now i'm sitting at home sipping a one up yeah yeah you're 19. yeah

00:40:33Guest:This is what I had.

00:40:35Guest:Right.

00:40:35Guest:Yeah.

00:40:38Guest:And then I started doing open mics around Tallahassee after that.

00:40:42Guest:And I got lucky because keep in mind, I'm still suspended during this time.

00:40:47Guest:The girl that ran to the people that ran the student activities board at Florida State is this woman named Meg was also from Birmingham.

00:40:55Guest:And I went over there to see Bobby Lee, Bobby Lee and Buzz Sutherland and Lavelle Crawford.

00:41:01Guest:All three of them were on the same show.

00:41:02Guest:So the girl at Florida State goes, if you want, I'll put you up and you can just pretend to be a Florida State student.

00:41:09Guest:So that's how I started opening for all of the monthly comics that came to do the NACA shows at Florida State.

00:41:15Guest:Oh, that's good.

00:41:16Guest:And then we formed a little comedy troupe around town.

00:41:19Guest:We did shows at dive bars and all of that shit.

00:41:22Marc:Producing like your own comedy shows.

00:41:24Marc:And that's how it goes.

00:41:24Guest:And I worked that up to House MC at the Comedy Zone in town, the little weekend room at the hotel.

00:41:29Marc:That's the best EMC spot.

00:41:31Marc:And you work shit out.

00:41:32Guest:And so then after that, I became Comedy Zone's Fallout guy for the Gulf Coast.

00:41:36Guest:So anytime someone canceled, you know, from Beaumont to Jack.

00:41:40Guest:Feature.

00:41:41Guest:Yeah, to I-10, Beaumont, whatever, MC feature, whatever.

00:41:44Guest:I'm the only guy geographically close enough to cover your fucked up situation.

00:41:49Guest:Like someone cancels at noon, the show's at eight.

00:41:53Guest:I'm the only person who could probably get there in time.

00:41:55Guest:Right.

00:41:56Guest:So that's how the road started kind of.

00:41:59Guest:Right.

00:42:00Guest:So you just built your time.

00:42:02Guest:Yeah.

00:42:02Guest:And then by the time I got back in school, I centered my two years left in college and I've loaded all of my classes full 15 credit hours into Tuesdays through Thursdays.

00:42:13Guest:Thursday night I take the Greyhound.

00:42:16Guest:And go fucking do sets all weekend, wherever the fuck.

00:42:18Guest:Get back in town Monday night, work at Golden Corral, wash, rinse, repeat.

00:42:21Guest:What's Golden Corral?

00:42:22Guest:Golden Corral, a little buffet restaurant.

00:42:24Guest:Oh, right.

00:42:24Guest:And so, trust me, it's not just Pete.

00:42:28Guest:You would walk in and go, who the fuck wants to stand food behind a sneeze guard?

00:42:33Guest:Kind of fucking savage.

00:42:35Marc:Yeah.

00:42:35Marc:No, I remember cafeteria style.

00:42:37Guest:Yeah.

00:42:38Marc:I always thought it was like, I love buffets, but I get nervous around them because I just...

00:42:43Marc:I actually have a panic thing with buffets.

00:42:45Marc:Yeah, it's a lot.

00:42:46Marc:Well, it's sort of like they can just still have the food.

00:42:49Guest:So my mom, I was riding a Greyhound for like a year and a half, and one of my mom's students saw me sleeping in the bus station and told my mom.

00:42:58Guest:and so my mom he's in trouble yeah my mom like they didn't know why i was like why the fuck is your son because my mom knows nothing yeah she knows none of this is nothing she knows none of this is happening and she put down on a car for me um she got me a ford focus the first model year it's a good car 2000 2001 i rode that bitch 300 000 miles right four years bro

00:43:21Guest:And that opened up everything.

00:43:24Guest:Because once I had the car, it just gives you more scheduling flexibility.

00:43:29Guest:You can go further and shit like that.

00:43:31Guest:And so that was probably the biggest help.

00:43:34Guest:And then once I graduated, I had already essentially, I couldn't get a job in journalism because I was on probation.

00:43:42Guest:And I didn't have any fucking internships.

00:43:44Guest:But I didn't have any internships because I was on the road every summer.

00:43:47Marc:Right.

00:43:48Guest:But when I came out of school, I was making about 25K on the road.

00:43:52Marc:Featuring?

00:43:53Guest:Yeah.

00:43:53Guest:I was like, well, this is about what a print job would pay.

00:43:57Guest:Maybe less in some markets.

00:44:00Guest:So I was like, all right, fuck it.

00:44:01Guest:I'll just do this and do morning radio and ended up at the same radio station that my dad used to take me to when I was five.

00:44:07Marc:Really?

00:44:09Marc:And you were the funny guy?

00:44:10Guest:Yeah.

00:44:11Guest:So I was the morning show chuckle guy.

00:44:13Guest:Who was it?

00:44:13Marc:You and who else?

00:44:15Guest:It was the Buckwild morning show.

00:44:16Guest:It was this guy Buckwild, not starring Buckwild, a different Buckwild.

00:44:20Guest:It was him, this woman named Africa, and this guy B-Money.

00:44:24Guest:And we were the morning show.

00:44:25Marc:I did morning radio for a couple years.

00:44:27Marc:I loved it.

00:44:27Guest:I didn't mind it.

00:44:28Guest:I had to do prank phone calls because that's what the market demanded.

00:44:32Guest:Yeah.

00:44:33Guest:And it wasn't something I was crazy about, but it was something I was able to turn into merch and monetize and be able to stretch my money a little bit.

00:44:41Marc:Did you get famous for the prank calls?

00:44:43Guest:Yeah.

00:44:44Guest:a little too famous that's why i pulled i think i remember something about that yeah that used to be like this is pre-youtube like this is back when going viral was over email you would go viral over an email attachment yeah and like people would go man there's an email going around with your voice and there's 600 names on the email and but the pranks what they did was open up

00:45:09Guest:The Midwest for me, because I would take the prank calls and I would offer them for free to other morning shows and other markets.

00:45:15Guest:And you owned them?

00:45:16Guest:Yeah.

00:45:17Guest:The station, they weren't paying me.

00:45:19Guest:Like the first two years I did radio, they didn't pay me.

00:45:21Guest:What was it, internship?

00:45:22Guest:Yeah.

00:45:23Guest:It's slavery.

00:45:24Guest:It's radio slavery.

00:45:25Guest:And then when they started paying me, they wouldn't give me over 29 hours so that they wouldn't have to give me benefits.

00:45:31Guest:So the least you could do is let me own these fucking prank phone calls.

00:45:35Guest:So they did.

00:45:35Guest:Yeah.

00:45:36Guest:And so I took the pranks.

00:45:38Guest:I gave them the other morning shows and markets where I wasn't booked.

00:45:41Guest:And then I would let them play for a couple of months.

00:45:43Guest:And then I would call the comedy club in that market and go, bitch, I'm on the radio.

00:45:46Guest:You should book me.

00:45:47Guest:And it worked.

00:45:48Guest:Yeah.

00:45:49Guest:And that's how you got the market.

00:45:51Guest:That's how I brought in the market before getting a lot.

00:45:54Guest:Because at the time I was getting comic view.

00:45:56Guest:I got comic view once or twice.

00:45:57Guest:I got premium blend.

00:45:59Guest:But it wasn't enough.

00:46:00Guest:Yeah.

00:46:00Guest:And I don't know.

00:46:01Guest:Yeah.

00:46:02Guest:But it wasn't enough for the bookers to respect me.

00:46:04Guest:Right.

00:46:04Guest:Because bookers, you know, black bookers didn't white bookers didn't respect comic view because every black comic did comic view.

00:46:10Guest:So that's base.

00:46:11Guest:You needed six minutes.

00:46:12Guest:They were booking 100 comics a year, literally.

00:46:15Guest:So it wasn't a respect.

00:46:17Guest:It wasn't a.

00:46:18Guest:exalted enough credit sure but then i did star search in 03 and i do um premium blend in 05 yeah that got me the okay maybe we'll okay you can feature maybe you can headline a little bit what was the balance between you know uh white rooms and black rooms in the beginning 50 50 later on 80 20 yeah now probably 70 30

00:46:45Guest:Came back up a little.

00:46:47Guest:Yeah.

00:46:47Guest:But then there's also less black rooms now just because of the finances of the industry.

00:46:56Guest:But I do black rooms.

00:46:58Guest:I enjoy them.

00:46:59Guest:I just don't get to go there as often as I want to.

00:47:02Marc:Well, I would imagine that.

00:47:04Guest:refining some of the stuff that you do in a broader audience it's probably better to do in the black rooms correct but not until the jokes are ready i go to a black don't want to go in half well what i figured out real quick is that when you're talking about black issues black people look at you to a degree whether you like it or not you're representing the race yes so if you're saying some shit that's sideways i gotta check you

00:47:30Guest:Because there's people who don't know anything about us and you're their first entry point into learning about us and our culture.

00:47:38Guest:So be careful with what you say and how you say it and how you motherfucking frame it or else we're going to fucking boo you and or worse heckle.

00:47:48Guest:heckle like when someone heckles your ideology i don't know what to do with that yeah and so what i figured out assess yeah yeah and so what i figured out that i was in st louis two weeks after ferguson first erupted like there was still smoke coming up in the air yeah and i was attempting to make a half-baked argument and

00:48:13Guest:about policing and i have two cops in my family right i saw that bit okay so when was ferguson 10 years ago i just now got that bit to a point where i felt comfortable doing that on stage because i tried it so long ago and whatever it was about the way i worded it or the way it came out it came across as y'all gotta give it up for the police ain't these police good i know two police

00:48:39Guest:And that's not what I was trying to say.

00:48:42Guest:It was simply saying I've had dialogue with cops that are near and dear to me.

00:48:47Guest:So there's a bit of a confliction.

00:48:49Guest:Michael Che does it better because his brother's a cop and he sees him a lot more often than I do.

00:48:54Guest:But.

00:48:55Guest:at the time when I did that bit there was no sense no sympathy no sympathy and nobody was trying to hear and it's not let me hear it out it's not let me build my case it's fuck that I don't want to hear shit about them yeah so shut the fuck so you just have to turn the page you have to turn the page and change topics because they're not wrong for feeling the way they feel right that's it but that's like an extreme example of

00:49:23Marc:you know, being checked culturally.

00:49:25Marc:I mean, what, like, because it seems to me that if you were in performing for a black audience and you get a boo or heckle, it's instinctive.

00:49:32Marc:It's not, it's not a ideologically, you know, deep, necessarily deep reaction.

00:49:38Marc:Like cops are cops, right?

00:49:40Marc:Correct.

00:49:40Marc:But what, what's smaller nuances that you feel you've had to sort of finesse?

00:49:45Guest:There's, so I did Finding Your Roots and.

00:49:50Guest:I did that too.

00:49:51Marc:I don't think we're related.

00:49:52Guest:Did you,

00:49:53Guest:Did you like it?

00:49:55Guest:Did you like the experience?

00:49:57Guest:I did.

00:49:58Guest:I liked some of it.

00:49:58Guest:Yeah.

00:50:00Guest:I, what I've been trying to process still is this idea that this idea that you find out these deep things about your family.

00:50:13Guest:Like there's a lot of things I found out on that show that in the moment I realized members of my family have been lying to me my entire life about.

00:50:19Guest:And they dug up and found the truth.

00:50:22Guest:And so.

00:50:23Marc:But is that just because of family mythology or the lying intentionally?

00:50:26Guest:I think it's protecting yourself from trauma or thinking I was too young to deal with the truth at the time.

00:50:31Guest:Okay.

00:50:32Guest:So, so the, the case I've been trying to build and it's, it's going to take some time, but just, this is just to your, this is an example of what I'm talking about.

00:50:43Guest:Um,

00:50:44Guest:When I was originally talking about this on stage, my father, because of, you know, there were a lot of women.

00:50:52Guest:Yeah.

00:50:52Guest:And we never talked about that.

00:50:54Guest:My dad died when I was 16.

00:50:55Guest:So there's a lot of questions.

00:50:56Guest:I just wasn't old enough to realize I needed to ask.

00:50:59Guest:Yeah.

00:51:00Guest:He had a bad he had a bad car accident.

00:51:02Guest:He was hit by a car as a pedestrian when he was a teenager and had to get hit replacement.

00:51:06Guest:He walked with a pronounced limp the rest of his life.

00:51:09Guest:The story is it was told to me on the show is that he got hit by a car going into the crosswalk to get to pick up a book for a girl who had just dissed him or, you know, he was still being a gentleman to a woman and he got hit by a car trying to be nice.

00:51:22Guest:So you can't tell me that doesn't inform to some degree how what he thought of women.

00:51:29Guest:the rest of his life from 13 years old till now.

00:51:33Guest:But that moment is boiled down in every conversation I'd had to I just got hit by a car.

00:51:39Guest:Like, no, there's way more there.

00:51:42Guest:And even my dad himself would just blow it off as I got hit by a car.

00:51:45Guest:And I think that our ancestors have a responsibility to share their traumas with their descendants.

00:51:54Guest:It would be helpful.

00:51:56Guest:Unfortunately, they do share them with no explanation.

00:51:59Guest:Or they just truncate it down to a sentence.

00:52:01Guest:Oh, that's your cousin from around the corner.

00:52:03Guest:No, it's not.

00:52:04Guest:That's his fucking brother.

00:52:05Guest:But you don't want to unpack the fact that granddaddy cheated.

00:52:08Guest:Right.

00:52:09Guest:Yeah.

00:52:09Guest:Because that's too much.

00:52:10Guest:So you don't share that shit.

00:52:12Marc:But what they do share on purpose is the ability to deny.

00:52:18Marc:Whatever...

00:52:19Marc:However you're brought up in the shadow of trauma or lies, you've got to unpack that shit for yourself because you're going to pick that up.

00:52:27Guest:Yeah, but I'm trying to fucking help my son.

00:52:29Guest:I got a five-year-old.

00:52:30Guest:I'm trying to make sure he's straight.

00:52:31Guest:So give me what you learned so I can know what to avoid, but they never do that.

00:52:37Guest:And so that was the original ideology.

00:52:39Guest:Offstage, black lady pulls me to the side and she goes, well, did you ever consider...

00:52:44Guest:all of the other outside trauma that they were dealing with as well.

00:52:47Guest:And she said they had baggage, but their bags were overpacked and they had no concept of therapy.

00:52:53Guest:At least you have that.

00:52:54Guest:At least you are aware of that.

00:52:55Guest:So you are in Baron Vaughn said this to me.

00:52:59Guest:This shit fucked me up.

00:52:59Guest:He said, we're the curse breakers.

00:53:02Guest:Anybody that's living now and is aware of therapy, you have the opportunity to break any type of issues and mental to start the process of unpacking as a lineage.

00:53:14Guest:And so make different choices on purpose.

00:53:16Guest:Correct.

00:53:17Guest:And so when that woman said that to me off stage, now I got to speak to that within a bit on stage.

00:53:21Guest:That helps me that piece of feedback.

00:53:24Guest:Right.

00:53:24Guest:You know what I'm saying?

00:53:25Guest:Sure.

00:53:25Guest:That type of shit.

00:53:26Guest:Yeah.

00:53:27Guest:Fucking helps.

00:53:28Guest:Yeah.

00:53:29Guest:So it's good in that regard.

00:53:31Guest:But for me, doing black rooms are important because at the end of the day, if black people ain't rocking with what I'm doing, then I'm kind of wasting my time up there.

00:53:40Marc:So you said that for a while you were going through a Stan Hope, uh, Stan Hope and Mooney.

00:53:46Guest:Oh yeah, that's right.

00:53:46Guest:Shout out to the homie, Henry Coleman.

00:53:48Guest:I didn't even know Stan Hope existed.

00:53:49Guest:There was this Google, Google used to have this comedy news group.

00:53:55Guest:I think it was called alt.comedy.standup.

00:53:57Guest:And it was the comedian's message.

00:53:59Guest:It was our Twitter.

00:54:00Guest:It was a personal Twitter, right?

00:54:01Guest:Just road comics.

00:54:03Guest:And I can, Henry Coleman sent me some Stan Hope on there.

00:54:07Guest:And I,

00:54:08Guest:just the way he builds his case, like a fucking, like he's cross examining a witness, but society is on the witness stand.

00:54:15Guest:Right.

00:54:17Guest:And I was like, Ooh, I like that.

00:54:18Guest:That helped.

00:54:19Guest:But my face is too round.

00:54:21Guest:Like I started getting into the psychology of like joke, like the human body and what we respond to in color and like, and having a round face elicits feelings of positivity.

00:54:33Guest:And so I,

00:54:34Guest:I can't be angry.

00:54:35Guest:No one's going to buy me angry no matter what I really feel.

00:54:39Guest:And you base this on your face shape?

00:54:41Guest:Yes.

00:54:42Guest:Yes.

00:54:42Guest:Like stupid shit.

00:54:44Guest:Like nodding yes while saying the mean thing.

00:54:47Guest:Smiling more.

00:54:48Guest:Like I learned that if I maintain a smile while saying wild shit, I could get away with it better.

00:54:55Guest:Whereas the opposite, if you look at someone like Stan Hope or Mooney especially, Mooney never smiles.

00:55:02Guest:Mooney might give you a smirk.

00:55:03Guest:Dick Gregory will just give you a head turn and a wink.

00:55:08Marc:It's funny you mention him because, you know, I listen to him.

00:55:10Marc:So I can't do what they do.

00:55:12Marc:Because people want you to make them feel good because of your face shape.

00:55:16Guest:Yeah.

00:55:17Guest:I mean, there's other shit, but yeah.

00:55:19Guest:No, I get it.

00:55:20Guest:I get it.

00:55:21Marc:The one thing I said to... I saw him chubby, too.

00:55:23Marc:So I think that's like a little... No, but I was talking to Brendan about it.

00:55:26Marc:I think that you present...

00:55:28Marc:Like, you know, your personal issues and your perception of the struggle and your perception of who you are as a black man in the world in a very earnest way, in a frank way.

00:55:39Marc:Like, I think that what you've arrived on, despite whether you're analyzing your face shape or whether you can or can't be angry, is I think that you are comfortable in yourself.

00:55:48Marc:You know, that's what I see on stage is that like I see a guy who even talking to you now, whether it was from talking on radio or whether it was from doing all these different gigs, you have a pace and a sense of groundedness that I think is authentic.

00:56:04Marc:So despite all the intellectualizing, you know, I don't think you could do it any other way.

00:56:08Marc:I'll take it.

00:56:08Marc:You know, I mean, you may be angry, but I don't think it's your nature to go pace the stage.

00:56:13Guest:No, I can't.

00:56:14Guest:That's why I grew the goatee.

00:56:15Guest:That was like my act of rebellion.

00:56:17Guest:I'm going to get a goatee.

00:56:19Guest:Now they'll know I mean business.

00:56:21Marc:Right.

00:56:21Marc:But I think that the material itself means business because it's provocative and you're not fronting in any way and you're not posturing.

00:56:29Marc:You're presenting this in a very funny way, and the timing's very funny, but you bring up Dick Gregory.

00:56:34Marc:I listened to him recently, and I'm like, I don't know if I gave that guy a fair shake.

00:56:38Marc:What don't I know about Dick Gregory in relation to Lenny or any of these other guys that I've sort of put some time into?

00:56:44Marc:And that fucker meant business.

00:56:47Marc:He was not fucking around on stage.

00:56:49Marc:Not at all.

00:56:50Guest:It just happened to be funny.

00:56:51Marc:But very deliberate, though, not unlike you.

00:56:53Marc:He's not putting bells and whistles on the shit.

00:56:56Marc:No.

00:56:57Marc:He's letting the ideas speak for themselves.

00:57:01Guest:There was a story at the end of this last special that I went back and forth about taking out.

00:57:06Guest:And I opted to leave in the one about my buddy that's in prison for murder.

00:57:11Guest:And how...

00:57:13Guest:I don't know.

00:57:13Guest:I just I find it fun to try to present a different point of view on something or trying to find a way into a topic that's more personal than just going here's what we need to do about jail.

00:57:29Guest:Oh, absolutely.

00:57:30Guest:Yeah.

00:57:30Guest:My childhood next door neighbors in prison for murder.

00:57:32Guest:He was the getaway driver in a robbery that turned into a murder.

00:57:36Guest:He didn't know that.

00:57:37Guest:Yeah.

00:57:37Guest:He was outside the building the whole time.

00:57:40Guest:And so I know the victim's family.

00:57:43Guest:And that's why, when you know.

00:57:44Guest:Both sides of the crime, you know, people on both sides of the crime and like trying to figure out, you know, on the one hand, it's fucked up that he's in prison for life, you know, per my opinion.

00:57:56Guest:But then you talk to the victim's family and then you have to still wonder, well, is that fucked up?

00:58:00Guest:I don't know.

00:58:01Guest:I'm just not trying to be heavy handed in anything, but I do think that there is a conversation to be had about there's a lot of people trying to take agency and being offended and being mad on people's behalves without looking at what the victims deal with.

00:58:16Guest:And there's sometimes a disregard.

00:58:17Guest:And in that instance.

00:58:19Guest:I was guilty of disregarding the victim's family because I was so gung-ho about trying to get his sentence short.

00:58:26Guest:He's been in jail 25, 20 years.

00:58:28Marc:Because for you, it's like, I know this guy, he didn't really do it.

00:58:31Marc:He just got caught up in a thing.

00:58:33Marc:His blood's not on his hands.

00:58:34Guest:Correct.

00:58:35Marc:So the empathy was relative to what you saw as an injustice.

00:58:38Guest:Correct.

00:58:39Guest:In terms of because when you talk about when you talk about real prison reform, it's also sentencing reform as well.

00:58:46Guest:Prison reform has been shaped into this nonviolent drug offender bullshit where it's just about marijuana and cannabis and I was locked up for weed.

00:58:55Guest:Yeah, but there's people who got 20 years who shouldn't have got five.

00:58:59Guest:There's people who got 40 years and shouldn't have got the 20.

00:59:01Guest:Right.

00:59:02Guest:That's part of the reform.

00:59:03Guest:Right.

00:59:04Guest:But they did mean things.

00:59:06Guest:So we don't we don't never talk about them because they're mean.

00:59:09Guest:But violent offenders, there has to be a conversation around their sentencing the same as people that are nonviolent offenders.

00:59:17Mm hmm.

00:59:17Guest:But is it my place to lead that conversation or is it the victims, the family of the victims?

00:59:22Guest:Yeah.

00:59:22Guest:And that's all I'm trying to like decipher.

00:59:24Guest:I don't know if I'm right on any of that shit.

00:59:26Marc:But if you put yourself at the center of it, at least you can, you know, and your process is what you're discussing, then it's relatable and it's provocative in a way where people like I'd never thought about it.

00:59:38Guest:And so when I present that bit, when I was developing the hour and I started running that bit in black rooms, you have to remember how much violence has, you know, torn apart the black community.

00:59:51Guest:And there are people in the audience who know that's my guy I've known since the third grade.

00:59:57Guest:And they went, fuck him.

00:59:58Guest:So that's a heckle on the ideology.

01:00:02Guest:You get what I'm saying?

01:00:04Marc:It's a heckle on your limited understanding of the situation.

01:00:08Guest:Or you have some kindred with the victim's family because you lost somebody to violence as well.

01:00:14Marc:Right, but that's the part of the equation that you weren't taken into consideration.

01:00:19Guest:Correct.

01:00:20Guest:And so it's respecting... You learn how to be respectful of things that are very delicate discussions.

01:00:31Guest:And then you have to take it and get on mainstream TV and see if this makes sense.

01:00:35Marc:I love it.

01:00:35Marc:I love your stuff.

01:00:36Marc:I love the way you execute.

01:00:39Marc:Because I don't know where it's necessarily going, but it creates a whole... There's a journalistic... You say the thing...

01:00:48Marc:And then you build up the back.

01:00:50Marc:You know what I mean?

01:00:51Guest:That's journal.

01:00:52Guest:Yeah, that's right.

01:00:54Guest:I would agree with that.

01:00:54Marc:All those bits are making me just as a as a as a comedy fan, as a comic, you'll rethink my own material and also like see things like I've never seen them before.

01:01:04Guest:Have you, I'll say this.

01:01:07Guest:I'm tired from a joke ideation standpoint.

01:01:12Guest:Like I did three specials in the last five years.

01:01:15Guest:Yeah.

01:01:16Guest:Which is probably a little.

01:01:19Guest:About right.

01:01:20Guest:A little much, but probably should have done two.

01:01:24Guest:But I'm a father.

01:01:25Guest:Fuck it.

01:01:25Guest:I'll take the money.

01:01:26Guest:I can come up with some more.

01:01:27Marc:Which one do you think is the weakest?

01:01:30Guest:The middle one.

01:01:31Guest:No one loves you.

01:01:31Guest:Yeah.

01:01:32Guest:The first one, Father Figure, that was the one.

01:01:34Marc:And this new one's great.

01:01:35Guest:The middle one was okay.

01:01:37Marc:I could tell the middle one how much time you took at the top.

01:01:40Guest:Yeah.

01:01:41Guest:Stretch that dope.

01:01:42Guest:Stretch it out, baby.

01:01:45Guest:It was fine, but also if you watch the middle special, you can see there's some continuations of bits from the first special, and that shit should have been in the first special.

01:01:55Guest:Yeah.

01:01:55Guest:um but now i kind of want to start this inward journey bro like all of this shit with my finding your roots really fucked me up man and just about the about your your dad or what they found out the the fucking name of the white people that own my people their descendants i know where they live physically today in this country i could go and knock on their front door what would you say i

01:02:20Guest:I don't know.

01:02:21Guest:And that's the journey.

01:02:22Guest:And then I have to get on stage and report it.

01:02:24Marc:He kind of addressed some of that in the ancestors versus the forefathers bit.

01:02:28Guest:Correct.

01:02:28Guest:Yeah.

01:02:29Guest:And so it's like this idea of someone's already done a special where they track down the white people.

01:02:36Guest:They own a people.

01:02:36Guest:I need to watch it, but I'm sure it's like one big like sitcom, very special episode hug moment.

01:02:43Marc:But you just have to have your experience.

01:02:44Marc:If you're going to go do it, you're going to go do it.

01:02:46Guest:There's that, you know, there's a woman, I think she's in Jamaica, I need to find.

01:02:52Guest:Why?

01:02:52Guest:Who I might be related to.

01:02:53Marc:Oh, really?

01:02:54Guest:Supposedly.

01:02:54Guest:So if I am, she needs to get that book.

01:02:57Guest:Now that's the cool thing about finding your roots.

01:02:59Guest:They give you that book with all of your fucking, the lineage of everything.

01:03:03Guest:He traced us all the way back to the slave ships.

01:03:04Guest:They found documents and everything.

01:03:06Guest:Like I know my, one of my, my four time removed grandfather was purchased for, I think $200.

01:03:17Guest:I have a hundred dollars in my backpack for an emergency in case I lose my wallet.

01:03:22Guest:Yeah.

01:03:23Guest:No matter where I am, a hundred dollars could get me somewhere to solve the problem.

01:03:26Guest:Right.

01:03:27Guest:So there's this inward journey of also imagine your father, imagine a parent dying.

01:03:34Guest:And then 20 years later, you have a redefined definition of what your relationship was with them because you had a child and having a child exposed all of the things that they didn't do, but you weren't thinking about those things and

01:03:44Guest:Because you never had to provide those things for the next living bloodline for yourself.

01:03:49Marc:Or you also find out how much you would like that parent.

01:03:51Bingo.

01:03:52Guest:Which is the worst part.

01:03:53Guest:And that's fucking scary.

01:03:54Marc:Yeah, I bet.

01:03:54Guest:It's fucking scary.

01:03:55Marc:That's why I never had them.

01:03:56Guest:And so now I have this child and I have to figure out how to help him avoid the pitfalls while figuring out at the same time what the fuck the pitfalls are.

01:04:05Guest:And that's interesting.

01:04:06Marc:I think that it's all, like I've been working on this bit about parenting is essentially gaslighting.

01:04:14Marc:It's out there.

01:04:16Marc:I'm telling you, it's out there, the danger.

01:04:19Marc:But also it's just sort of like you don't know them.

01:04:23Marc:How are you going to know your parents?

01:04:25Marc:You know, when they're bringing you up, you only know that relationship.

01:04:29Marc:Like you make these assumptions about your parents because you think you know them.

01:04:32Marc:But how the fuck are we going to know them?

01:04:34Marc:They have their whole lives.

01:04:34Marc:They're just supposed to be our parent.

01:04:36Guest:I just called my two.

01:04:37Guest:I have two younger half brothers.

01:04:39Guest:Yeah.

01:04:40Guest:And their mom was who my dad spent most of his time with.

01:04:44Guest:Yeah.

01:04:45Guest:Before, you know, those two people passed away.

01:04:47Guest:And I'm 43 and I just now for the first time call them and ask them, I just said, what was a night like at the house?

01:04:55Guest:what was it like just being around walk me through a regular evening with our father and what they described is some shit i've never experienced with that man and that's fucking mind-blowing and it's not even on some anger shit yeah at him it's okay knowing that what do i need to teach this boy

01:05:14Guest:Yeah.

01:05:15Guest:So he grows up.

01:05:16Guest:And what do I need to pass to other people?

01:05:18Guest:Because the cool thing about that show and learning your lineage and where you come from, there is something empowering in that.

01:05:25Guest:And I feel like everybody on my dad's side of the family deserves to have that same information.

01:05:30Marc:Huh?

01:05:31Guest:So I got to get it to him.

01:05:32Guest:So that's going to be my journey this year.

01:05:34Guest:I don't even think I'm going to do a lot of stand up this year, bro, because I don't feel inspired to just get on stage and bitch again about what critical race theory.

01:05:43Guest:That's the new thing.

01:05:43Guest:So I'll write some bits about critical race theory.

01:05:46Guest:If you want people to approve it, when you're adding shit to the history books, you don't call it critical race theory.

01:05:51Guest:You call it DVD extras.

01:05:53Guest:Everybody loves DVD and it gets a laugh.

01:05:56Guest:And, but in my head, I'm like, man,

01:05:58Guest:What's that got to do with me?

01:06:00Guest:I don't want to do the level of research required to do the joke at the level that I would want to.

01:06:05Guest:I would rather be doing something else right now.

01:06:07Marc:Well, I mean, I think the personal journey is it's interesting because my old man was leading a double life as well.

01:06:12Marc:Like he had bought the woman a house.

01:06:14Marc:He ended up with that woman, right?

01:06:17Marc:And now he's got dementia and we're all just so, no matter what my mother's feelings were about that woman or what my feelings were about him, now it's just sort of like, I just hope she carries him over the finish, right?

01:06:29Marc:I don't want to do that.

01:06:31Guest:Bro, I mean, I found out that my grandmother's father lived two blocks over.

01:06:35Guest:My grandmother was the was the byproduct of an affair and she ended up married.

01:06:41Guest:But, you know, how did that affect things?

01:06:43Guest:Also learned that my dad lost his dad when he was four and there was more than male head of household in his life.

01:06:48Guest:And then the leg shit happens and you ain't got no man in the house to give you confidence.

01:06:52Marc:What did that do?

01:06:54Marc:What happened?

01:06:55Marc:Yeah.

01:06:56Marc:What are the psychological repercussions?

01:06:57Marc:You know, how does this how does this define the guy?

01:07:00Guest:And I have to go and really dig.

01:07:05Guest:But you can't do that while working out 15 minute spots around New York trying to figure out what the next fucking COVID vaccine is.

01:07:12Guest:joke is you're gonna do when you get to Toledo.

01:07:15Guest:You're right.

01:07:15Guest:So you just don't go to Toledo.

01:07:17Marc:So what do you, do you write it?

01:07:19Marc:Are you a guy who writes shit down?

01:07:21Marc:Like, I mean, like this experience, your thoughts about this?

01:07:24Marc:I'm starting to.

01:07:25Guest:In like a long form way, you know, like journal this shit?

01:07:28Guest:Well, the special got done Halloween.

01:07:32Guest:And then I started working on network scripts.

01:07:35Guest:And now I'm just getting to a point where I'm done with all of that TV development shit.

01:07:40Guest:And now I can just sit and think.

01:07:41Guest:And, you know, thankfully, I got a podcast.

01:07:44Guest:So from a money standpoint, it covers stepping away from the road.

01:07:49Guest:So I still can provide.

01:07:50Guest:So I don't have the stress of, oh, shit, how do I feed the boy?

01:07:53Marc:What's the name of the podcast?

01:07:55Guest:It's Roy's Job Fair.

01:07:56Guest:And I do the Beyond the Scenes podcast for Daily Show.

01:07:58Guest:But my personal podcast, it's just employment and jokes.

01:08:00Guest:We just talk to people in careers and tell us what you stole.

01:08:04Guest:Tell us how this job is beneficial, you know, uplifting and demonic at the same time.

01:08:09Guest:But like, I don't know where to start.

01:08:11Guest:I just write down, OK, let me.

01:08:15Guest:I had the conversation with my brothers last night.

01:08:18Guest:I was on the phone with both of them.

01:08:19Marc:Just last night.

01:08:20Guest:Just last night.

01:08:20Guest:I had the conversation with both of them.

01:08:22Guest:It was like an hour each.

01:08:24Guest:And so now I can take what they told me and lay that up against my upbringing, which the only time we really sat and had dinner was Sunday breakfast when we all read the paper.

01:08:35Guest:And then we'll watch CBS Sunday mornings.

01:08:38Guest:As a family, the three of us, that's the only time we had what you might consider a regular family dynamic.

01:08:43Marc:And by talking to them, you realize they had a fun father kind of deal?

01:08:47Guest:They had a fun father.

01:08:48Guest:I can see on their Facebook, they'll post pictures of...

01:08:52Guest:This is from 1993 when my daddy took us to the pepper.

01:08:56Guest:And I can look at the date and tell you whether or not the fucking lights was on at our house.

01:09:00Guest:So like shit like that.

01:09:02Guest:But then I'm not mad because then when I also look back at his time with their mother, it's also the one time that I feel like I saw true love, like the idea of love and this selflessness for another person.

01:09:17Guest:And yeah,

01:09:18Guest:With the other woman.

01:09:19Guest:Correct.

01:09:21Guest:But I didn't comprehend that until a year ago.

01:09:23Marc:So now you got to battle how you were denied, but also empathetically be happy for him.

01:09:31Guest:It was beautiful.

01:09:31Guest:It was bad for my mom, who was still married to him, but it was beautiful.

01:09:34Guest:It was beautiful for him because he loved her and they loved each other.

01:09:38Guest:And that's not bad.

01:09:40Marc:How are you with your relationship?

01:09:42Guest:It's fine.

01:09:43Guest:You know, I think that that's kind of a different thing, too, because, you know, when you look at what love was then, it was you got to make it work and do whatever you can to make it work.

01:09:54Guest:Whereas now it's OK.

01:09:56Guest:You have your career.

01:09:57Guest:You have your thing.

01:09:58Guest:And together we're raising the child.

01:09:59Guest:And every now and then we check in and be together.

01:10:02Guest:And then we'll go and work our career like it's not as come home Sunday every night.

01:10:08Guest:yeah but it's not it's not that cut and dry no not in the least but i think that you still got to carry each other when the other one's like broken down yeah that part of it can be hard sometimes yeah you know like there's it's just an interesting thing though when you look at this idea of family and

01:10:29Guest:And what happiness is, because also the thing that really sucks when you're in a relation, when you're a child in a relationship with the dad is cheating, you're forced to kind of choose.

01:10:41Guest:Like I was old enough to have to choose sides.

01:10:44Guest:Like I was like 12, 13, you know what I'm saying?

01:10:46Guest:Where, all right, I'm with my mama.

01:10:48Guest:So you come home and mean to my mama.

01:10:50Guest:You mean to my mama.

01:10:51Guest:So the perception of his woman becomes that of a villain.

01:10:55Guest:Because you're coming between my daddy and my mama.

01:10:59Guest:So fuck her.

01:11:00Guest:And then you get old and realize, ah.

01:11:03Guest:He loves her.

01:11:04Guest:Them motherfuckers was just happy.

01:11:05Guest:They was just happy and it was some difficult, hard shit to fucking navigate.

01:11:10Marc:Yeah, I feel that with my father too.

01:11:12Guest:So, you know, you just have to make sure that.

01:11:16Guest:And in that, I feel like that's probably that my aunt JP and my aunt Rick, my uncle Rick, because they almost like fuck all that.

01:11:23Guest:They were like the couple.

01:11:24Guest:And my mom's side was always like a family function, sneaking off and fucking.

01:11:28Guest:True love from them.

01:11:31Guest:Passion.

01:11:33Marc:I think I learned passion.

01:11:34Marc:I think integrating all these stories and finding answers for yourself around the psychological ramifications of it generationally will fill you out.

01:11:45Marc:Fill your heart up a little more and you can figure out where to come from.

01:11:49Marc:It's a great story.

01:11:50Marc:You could do a whole show like that.

01:11:53Guest:Chris Rock and Neil Brennan.

01:11:56Guest:Yeah.

01:11:57Guest:Said something similar.

01:11:59Guest:Figuring out some sort of... And Birbiglia, too.

01:12:03Guest:Just some sort of one-man show or something.

01:12:04Marc:They're gonna get you over there at the Cherry Lane Theater?

01:12:06Guest:I don't know.

01:12:08Guest:I don't know.

01:12:09Guest:But Chris Rock will say some shit to you, and it's just so matter-of-fact that...

01:12:14Guest:Why haven't you done that already?

01:12:15Guest:Yeah, it makes me nervous.

01:12:16Marc:Every time I see him, just when he says, like, how you doing?

01:12:18Marc:I'm like, good.

01:12:20Marc:Keep moving.

01:12:21Marc:No, but he means it.

01:12:22Marc:I know, I know.

01:12:23Marc:He's very intense, that guy.

01:12:25Marc:I saw him the other night at the comedy store.

01:12:26Marc:It's always very difficult for me to know, like, how long to linger and talk with a certain level of person.

01:12:33Guest:I've never been a hanger.

01:12:34Guest:I will always nod and speak, but I never settle in.

01:12:39Guest:Even when I've seen guys at the cellar, if they're over there at the table, if there's somebody above my pay grade, I don't sit.

01:12:46Guest:Like George Wallace.

01:12:49Guest:I consider a legitimate great friend and I could call him anytime.

01:12:54Guest:He's always been.

01:12:54Guest:Yeah.

01:12:55Guest:But if he's sitting there with Seinfeld and fucking Larry David, I'm not going to sit down.

01:13:02Guest:How is it over there now?

01:13:03Guest:I heard it's like a little weird.

01:13:04Guest:What?

01:13:04Guest:The cellar?

01:13:05Guest:Yeah.

01:13:05Guest:Same.

01:13:06Guest:It's fine to me, but then I also don't really hang.

01:13:08Guest:I have more fun hanging with the young comics.

01:13:11Guest:Yeah.

01:13:11Guest:They fucking keep you abreast of what the fuck's going on.

01:13:14Guest:Yeah.

01:13:15Guest:I made that mistake for 10 years in the South, listening to the vets who all invested in shit that's going to be gone by the time.

01:13:20Guest:You need to get on Letterman, young blood.

01:13:23Guest:And then I did, but it was too late.

01:13:24Guest:And all it did was get me like three extra cities.

01:13:26Guest:I didn't get a sitcom from Letterman.

01:13:28Guest:I'm not shitting on it.

01:13:28Guest:It was just 2006, ain't 1996.

01:13:31Guest:No, I know.

01:13:32Marc:But you got to do Letterman.

01:13:33Marc:Of course.

01:13:34Guest:Yeah.

01:13:34Marc:Of course.

01:13:35Marc:And now, like, what are the younger guys saying?

01:13:37Marc:You gotta do TikTok.

01:13:37Marc:You're doing TikTok.

01:13:38Guest:Yeah, but in 06, I should have been chasing MySpace and YouTube.

01:13:41Guest:And I would have been fucking there.

01:13:42Guest:You see, you fucking, you scowl at that shit.

01:13:44Guest:But imagine being first to YouTube.

01:13:46Marc:I tried chasing MySpace.

01:13:47Marc:It was already too late.

01:13:49Guest:and youtube i don't know what the hell's going on you gotta put a whole production staff and dude my prank calls were rampant on youtube in the early aughts and i didn't even put them there right the streets put them there and i should have taken that as a hint that i should have been putting all my shit under one what do you do now with youtube not much yeah post the podcast here and there i might put like that's what i will do with stand up this year i'll post like a couple of just one-off clips and short three four minute club sets just on your own

01:14:14Guest:yeah i'm not in a rush to build another hour and i'm not in a rush to build five minutes for late night that is gonna get fucking i can't remember the last time i did five minutes in late night when did i do five 2014 i did seth seth had me on and you did stand up yeah he's had me on he's had me on for panel since i usually do panel it's fun it's more fun but it'd be kind of interesting just to challenge myself to figure out a five minute

01:14:39Guest:But you know what?

01:14:40Guest:Once I got older and I really understood the TV game, I don't take offense to anything anymore, man.

01:14:46Guest:Because I look at a guy like my dog, Tommy Johnigan.

01:14:49Marc:Yeah.

01:14:49Guest:Oh, yeah.

01:14:49Guest:And we did Letterman like the first year at the same time or something.

01:14:52Guest:And then he did it like consistently for like every eight months on some like Pete Holmes, Conan level fucking like Ryan Hamilton on Leno.

01:15:01Guest:Like just...

01:15:02Guest:And I look at this material and I go, oh, that works.

01:15:05Guest:It's the same reason I never got asked back for Chelsea lately, where I look back on it and I go.

01:15:10Guest:To sit at the table?

01:15:11Guest:Yeah, so I did Chelsea.

01:15:12Marc:I did that like twice and I'm like, I can't do this.

01:15:15Guest:But see, I did it.

01:15:17Guest:This is early before anybody blew up off Chelsea, but it was the it thing to do in L.A.

01:15:23Guest:Right.

01:15:24Guest:And I did it two or three times.

01:15:26Guest:And the third time I did it, and this goes back to the moony, angry Stanhope shit.

01:15:31Guest:My whole shtick at the time was trying to be gripey, grumpy, cantankerous.

01:15:38Guest:And I wasn't pulling it off.

01:15:39Guest:And I get on the show.

01:15:41Guest:I don't know.

01:15:41Guest:It must have been like the third time I did the show.

01:15:44Guest:And I specifically remember the story was about Sylvester Stallone getting silicone injections or steroids.

01:15:51Guest:Yeah.

01:15:52Guest:And I remember mumbling, who cares?

01:15:55Guest:But before I could get to the I don't know if it was how I said it.

01:15:59Marc:Hey, honest guy.

01:16:00Guest:Yeah, I don't know.

01:16:02Guest:But who cares?

01:16:04Guest:And Chelsea Handler turned to me and she said, I'll tell you who cares.

01:16:08Guest:The millions of people who watch this television program every night for fun stories like this.

01:16:14Guest:And she turned back around and I look at Lonnie Love and Lonnie looked at me like, oh, you fucked up.

01:16:21Guest:And

01:16:21Guest:and i was edited out of the episode never asked back and i was like a fucking and then like the next year everybody's on tour making millions from chelsea and i'm like oh god damn it roy you're fucked up but when i look back in hindsight the style of comedy for that show i just pulled the wrong tool out the tool belt if you're a producer you can't again and it's black guy angry face you can't be angry black

01:16:46Marc:Yeah, but also you got... For pop culture, it doesn't... But it's more of a lesson about... It's not about tools.

01:16:51Marc:It's a lesson about what you want to do and what you're good at in the sense that when you get those shows, you got to sit at home.

01:16:57Marc:They give you the stories.

01:16:59Marc:Yeah.

01:16:59Marc:So you got to sit there and go like, what's my angle on...

01:17:02Guest:What I'm saying is that I could do that now.

01:17:04Guest:It's like doing daytime television.

01:17:08Guest:You're going to ask me relationship questions and you're going to ask me about pets and food and shit.

01:17:13Guest:You're not going to ask me about critical race theory when I'm doing Tamron Hall.

01:17:17Guest:I know the game now.

01:17:20Guest:I didn't know the game.

01:17:21Marc:I get it, but you also know whether you want to play it or not.

01:17:24Marc:I turned out more shit than anything.

01:17:27Marc:I'm just like, do I need to do that?

01:17:29Marc:I don't need to do that.

01:17:30Marc:Because what's it going to get you?

01:17:32Guest:Now that I'm older and I understand, because you get mad as a comic when you don't get booked on something and someone else gets it.

01:17:38Guest:And I go, no, I know my style and I know what I want to do.

01:17:41Marc:I still get mad.

01:17:41Marc:It's like a phantom limb.

01:17:43Marc:There's still some part of me that's like, fuck that guy.

01:17:45Marc:I'm like, what do you mean?

01:17:46Marc:You've got everything you want.

01:17:47Marc:I'm like, yeah, but that guy.

01:17:49Guest:Yeah, it's like, no, you have to leave that alone.

01:17:51Marc:I know.

01:17:51Guest:So, yeah, it's a situation I played wrong, and it's like, okay.

01:17:55Guest:Good story, then.

01:17:56Guest:Yeah, I figured she looked me dead in the eyes, bro.

01:17:59Guest:She was not fucking around.

01:18:00Marc:She's scary, too.

01:18:01Guest:She was not fucking around.

01:18:03Guest:I've seen her since, and it's fine.

01:18:05Guest:I guess it isn't some beef story, but, like, on that day... Yeah.

01:18:10Guest:early on when she was still just building her brand you're not gonna come on my show and shit on the subjects yeah yeah they edited me it was me Lonnie Love and Juliana Rancic and they fucking they introduced the panel it's Roy and then you don't see me again till they go we'll be right back and they cut to the wide shot and you see me just clapping and I haven't said a fucking thing the whole time

01:18:39Marc:That's beautiful.

01:18:40Guest:That's the best.

01:18:43Guest:All right, buddy.

01:18:43Guest:Fuck it, man.

01:18:44Guest:Well, good, man.

01:18:45Marc:Thank you for having me, brother.

01:18:46Marc:It was great talking to you.

01:18:47Marc:Yeah, man.

01:18:48Marc:Let's do it again.

01:18:50Marc:Sure.

01:18:50Marc:What was that thing I read about, like, you got to, like, because I brought up Dick Gregory and you got to meet him.

01:18:55Guest:Right.

01:18:56Guest:Yeah.

01:18:57Guest:Selma at the bridge crossing, the bloody Sunday memorial that they do every year.

01:19:01Marc:Because I was like, because I interviewed him many years ago on Air America briefly, but I don't know that I had him in a context that would have enabled me to appreciate him at that time.

01:19:10Marc:But it sounds like, you know, from the little bit I read about your experience with him, that you were able to really kind of get some wisdom and

01:19:18Guest:Yeah, that I opened for him.

01:19:21Guest:I'm not really open.

01:19:22Guest:I just emceed a luncheon that he was speaking at.

01:19:25Guest:Yeah.

01:19:25Guest:He's the only comedian that I've seen just rip from a podium as if there's no podium.

01:19:32Guest:Yeah.

01:19:32Guest:Like podium laughs.

01:19:33Guest:He's 100 years old, right?

01:19:35Guest:Yeah, he was very frail.

01:19:37Guest:He was knocking 80 if not there at the time.

01:19:40Guest:And then he did the, this is vintage on you.

01:19:43Guest:He did the Vince Vaughn comedy festival.

01:19:45Guest:This is before it was the Nashville.

01:19:48Guest:Yeah.

01:19:48Guest:Whatever the Nashville festival is now was originally Vince Vaughn.

01:19:51Marc:Yeah.

01:19:51Guest:It was there.

01:19:52Guest:The Wild West.

01:19:52Guest:Yeah.

01:19:53Guest:Wild West festival.

01:19:53Guest:Yeah.

01:19:55Guest:And I opened for him at Zany's and just straight wisdom.

01:19:58Guest:Oh yeah.

01:19:59Guest:Just straight wisdom goes on stage with all these tattered notes and shit and shuffles through.

01:20:04Guest:And like, that's kind of, it's not even a set list.

01:20:06Guest:It's just, ah, yes, here's an article.

01:20:08Guest:Yeah.

01:20:08Guest:Let's talk about this.

01:20:09Guest:Yeah.

01:20:09Guest:Wait,

01:20:09Guest:It's just fucking iPod shuffle of just thoughts and perspectives on things.

01:20:14Guest:And funny.

01:20:15Guest:Yeah.

01:20:16Guest:They asked me, Dick, why are you always on the road?

01:20:22Guest:And I told him, because the struggle ain't at my house.

01:20:28Guest:Just remember it, man.

01:20:29Guest:Well, thank you, brother.

01:20:30Guest:Good talking to you.

01:20:31Guest:Yeah, man.

01:20:36Marc:There you go.

01:20:37Marc:That's the story.

01:20:38Marc:Roy Wood Jr.

01:20:39Marc:Great.

01:20:39Marc:Great guy.

01:20:40Marc:Great comic.

01:20:41Marc:The podcast.

01:20:42Marc:It's called Roy's Job Fair.

01:20:44Marc:He's got a few stand-up specials.

01:20:46Marc:Father figure.

01:20:47Marc:No one loves you.

01:20:48Marc:And his most recent is Imperfect Messenger.

01:20:51Marc:If you want to watch any of those specials, all three, they are on Paramount+.

01:20:56Marc:Catch them on The Daily Show.

01:20:58Marc:Weeknights at 11 on Comedy Central.

01:21:01Marc:One of my censors went silly the other night and the alarm went off at 4.30 in the morning.

01:21:06Marc:and i was up i was ready to go heard that alarm pulled out of a dream realized i was alone turned to somebody that wasn't there to say don't worry i got this then i had to say it to myself ran downstairs got right into it what's going on out there nobody out there it would have been very hard to get into that door i fixed it here's some guitar

01:21:36guitar solo

01:22:12Guest:Boomer lives.

01:22:33Guest:Monkey and La Fonda.

01:22:35Guest:Cat angels everywhere.

01:22:36Guest:Yeah, man.