Episode 1554 - Stavros Halkias
Guest:Lock the gates!
Marc:All right, let's do this.
Marc:How are you?
Marc:What the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck buddies?
Marc:What the fuck Canadians?
Marc:How's it going?
Marc:Where are we at?
Marc:I'm Mark Maron.
Marc:This is my podcast.
Marc:Welcome to it.
Marc:I'm I'm obviously you can tell I'm in Vancouver.
Marc:I was back in L.A.
Marc:for a bit.
Marc:Now I'm up here for a bit and I'll be back there for a bit.
Marc:Just going to be the way it's going to be.
Marc:And I know on some level, it may seem I've been a little ungrateful or a bit whiny or maybe a bit complainy in terms of me kind of reckoning or wrapping my head around the job of acting.
Marc:But there's been some breakthroughs, people.
Marc:And I know I know so many of you are so invested in how I handle my life or reconcile myself.
Marc:the choices I make with actually doing what those choices entail.
Marc:And there's just there's been some movement.
Marc:There's been a bit of movement up here in Canada all of a sudden.
Marc:And it's good.
Marc:And I think that talking it out with you and talking it out with other actors and talking to myself and to Kit, that I start to understand my tone a little more and sometimes move away.
Marc:or get distracted from a general sense of gratitude that on some level, I am not the luckiest man in the world, but I've definitely landed in a good place.
Marc:And there's some part of me that thinks, dude, you better shut up.
Marc:You better shut the fuck up.
Marc:But then what would I have to say?
Marc:It's completely contradictory to saying things, which is how I make my living.
Marc:But there are some things I should shut up about.
Marc:Look, today on the show, we have Stavros Halkius, who is a very funny guy who I didn't know and I just liked.
Marc:He's a comedian, obviously.
Marc:He hosts the podcast Stavvy's World.
Marc:He has a recent Netflix special out.
Marc:And I don't know what it is.
Marc:I'll tell you exactly what it was.
Marc:The new special is called Fat Rascal.
Marc:And a while back on TikTok, I did sort of a mock crowd work bit that made fun of crowd work comedians in general who may or may not be able to actually do the job of a comic.
Marc:But we live in an era where publicity is actually the content.
Marc:Publicity is actually the content.
Marc:thing you're working on that is what that's 50 of your job it seems for some comics and that's just the way it is that what do you do i'm a comedian but mostly i'm in publicity for myself fine but i made a little mock thing then somebody commented that it seemed like something stavros would do and then i started to go down a little bit of a stavros rabbit hole and i realized i like the guy and
Marc:And I thought he was funny, and I thought he was an authentic guy.
Marc:And then I watched his special, and I still enjoyed him.
Marc:I liked him, and I thought, like, I'd like to sit down and talk to this guy.
Marc:I don't know his whole story.
Marc:I didn't know it going in.
Marc:I know more now.
Marc:I didn't know the world of comics he comes from really a bit.
Marc:But I'm finding that I'm a bit out of the loop in general because I'm old.
Marc:I'm two or three generations away from these guys and gals.
Marc:And I can't keep up.
Marc:But lately, I've been, because the show has been moving, you know, we've done a lot of episodes and we've been going since 2009.
Marc:And a lot of the people I talked to then were just in their 20s, young comics.
Marc:So there's several generations that I haven't really talked to.
Marc:So I've been trying to sort of get on board or, you know, feel the pulse of the world or watch some new stuff.
Marc:And I found some people and it just seems to be happening.
Marc:I do...
Marc:I like talking to comics.
Marc:I just don't know a lot of them.
Marc:So Stavros was of that generation, and I got a couple other ones coming up that are just new comics.
Marc:And it's good for me to watch, get out there, and sort of see what's funny, who gets me going.
Marc:And this guy's one of them.
Marc:And we had a lovely chat.
Marc:Before I forget, I'll be in Tucson, Arizona at the Rialto Theater on Friday, September 30th.
Marc:I'm in Phoenix at the Orpheum Theater on Saturday, September 21st.
Marc:You can go to WTFpod.com for all the dates.
Marc:Some of them might have to be moved, but don't freak out.
Marc:If anything is ever rescheduled, I will make it a point to to redo it.
Marc:It's just life gets a little complicated and large and things come out of the woodwork that I have to do.
Marc:And that's just the way it is, the way it works.
Marc:The show business I'm in.
Marc:So I'm up here in Vancouver talking about breakthroughs and I'm trying to track the things that led up to wherever my head's at now, because all of a sudden my brain is on fire.
Marc:I'm generating a lot of thoughts and things and writing things down.
Marc:I know that I'm in sort of a creative zone.
Marc:If all of a sudden I have a lot of pieces of paper,
Marc:folded up script pages that I'm using as blank papers.
Marc:You know, never anything organized, never a notebook, never the notes thing on my phone.
Marc:None of that.
Marc:It's just scribbling.
Marc:I'm always very hyper aware that I need a pen constantly, even if I don't use it.
Marc:I always have a pen, fucked up a few shirts.
Marc:That's the downside of having a pen.
Marc:is that the old man didn't close it, didn't pull in the point.
Marc:And look, now look what you did.
Marc:You ruined another shirt.
Marc:But nonetheless, last week or so, last few days, really, a lot of fucking generating is going on.
Marc:A lot of things are happening in my head.
Marc:And it's exciting when it happens because you can't, I can't always make it happen.
Marc:And something has shifted in my attitude about what's going on in my life and about acting and about the work I'm doing because I'm doing a lot of jobs.
Marc:I do the podcast.
Marc:I do the stand-up.
Marc:I do this job acting.
Marc:But I don't know.
Marc:Something gave way.
Marc:Something about Canada.
Marc:Something about what I love about being up here in the past and why I've always found it a tremendous relief, the weight loss.
Marc:of the menace and psychic fucking malignancy of America is not here.
Marc:And I always recognized it and felt it in a way.
Marc:And I've talked about it with you.
Marc:It's just a load off.
Marc:But, you know, that was only coming up here for a few days.
Marc:But now that I'm spending real time here and I've kind of pushed myself out into the world, even though I'm alone, being alone for a weekend or a day or whatever in a strange town to do a road gig where you can just sort of go out and get something to eat, see a new thing, go to a museum or something.
Marc:That kind of comes and goes because you just go home.
Marc:But to really dig in and push myself out into the world here, it's starting to kind of get comfortable.
Marc:I don't love being alone for long periods of time.
Marc:It's hard to motivate to just go out and do stuff.
Marc:When you're alone, I find that, you know, usually as I've spoken about before, what happens is I'll, I'll end up at a whole foods or a supermarket or buying this and that and, or I'll end up, you know, chasing nicotine pouches, you know, food and nicotine.
Marc:That's the driving forces right now, but it's all in the process of waiting for, for something to catch my brain and, and, and run with it.
Marc:And that's sort of happening.
Marc:And yeah,
Marc:what happened with the acting recently, because I've talked about how long you have to wait to do your bit is I think I've finally shifted my perception about spending time alone, about what the process of putting a TV show or a movie together is my part in the process and also trying to use that time a bit.
Marc:And it just happened out of necessity.
Marc:So I didn't get myself all worked up into some kind of resentful state of this or that.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Of, of sort of like, uh,
Marc:lack of gratitude or just, you know, aggravation in terms of waiting.
Marc:And a couple of things happened that, you know, made me realize it.
Marc:It was sort of an unfolding of things.
Marc:You know, I was home for a few days, and I wasn't supposed to be on set last week, so...
Marc:I wanted to stay a couple more days in L.A.
Marc:because I wasn't working.
Marc:And then there was just this process of like they wouldn't release me because the weather is erratic up here through conversations.
Marc:It was like, well, look, we can't release you in under 24 hours.
Marc:So I just learned how to deal with that.
Marc:But the real revelation was really just that, look, you know, I'm being paid to do this job.
Marc:This is what the job is.
Marc:This is like the context of it.
Marc:You know, deal with it.
Marc:It's not some imposition, it's an opportunity.
Marc:Okay, so that was, I should have known that, and that was kind of piece one.
Marc:And then like when I do come back up here,
Marc:I came back up on Thursday to do one scene on Friday, and it was towards the end of the shoot day.
Marc:My pickup time was like 3.30, 4 in the afternoon.
Marc:I drove out to the set, and it was really just me exiting the RV in a situation.
Marc:It was really just a shot of me exiting the RV that is a big part of the show.
Marc:And there's a situation around that.
Marc:And it seemed like on the page that there was nothing really there other than they need this shot because I got to walk out.
Marc:It's part of the story.
Marc:But within the scene, which was literally probably 12 seconds, 15 seconds.
Marc:of screen time, I impulsively but deliberately made some choices of action.
Marc:And this is really talking about, you're talking about 15 seconds and my job is to act this thing and to be in this character and to do what this character does.
Marc:And then there's party that thinks like, oh, it's like 15 seconds.
Marc:I mean, what is there to do?
Marc:And I made some decisions about that 15 seconds.
Marc:And they were impulsive, but choices to sort of land this non-speaking 15-second moment of exiting a vehicle.
Marc:And it was a good choice.
Marc:Well, I don't want to spoil it for anybody.
Marc:It's not some big major thing that you'll notice, but I noticed it because there was business there.
Marc:There was business that was in character and it was subtle, but it was what was needed to land that little piece of this show.
Marc:And all of a sudden I realized, oh, that's it.
Marc:That's how you got to look at this.
Marc:You got to look at it as bits on some level.
Marc:Each of these scenes are their own little moments or minutes that have an arc and that have a landing place.
Marc:And your job is to figure out how to put that together within the character you're doing and to sort of land it.
Marc:And you can feel that.
Marc:And I realized, well, that's it then.
Marc:And I kind of knew it, but I know it more now that the job, even I guess whatever job you're doing, even if it's a small job, there's that moment where there's the arc of process.
Marc:And then all of a sudden there's that moment where there's where you land the fucking thing, even if it's 10 seconds.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:So that was kind of good because it shifted my disposition around even small bits and pieces to be like, well, dude, think of it as a bit.
Marc:Make the bit work.
Marc:And that was a big breakthrough.
Marc:I don't know if you give a shit, but that was a big breakthrough.
Marc:OK, so what happens?
Marc:There's this place, Stanley Park, down here.
Marc:It's a huge park.
Marc:And there's a walk around it, like just a walk.
Marc:It's like a six mile walk, a couple hours, two, two and a half hours.
Marc:And I just head out with the AirPods and listening to Bikini Kill.
Marc:Because I want to wrap my brain around Bikini Kill for reasons that are obvious.
Marc:And, you know, and I'm just thinking and my brain just sort of on it just it just opens up.
Marc:It unwinds.
Marc:I have these moments where I'm thinking about the script I'm working on with Lip Sight, you know, based on his book.
Marc:I'm thinking about the stand up.
Marc:I'm thinking about the acting choices.
Marc:I'm thinking about.
Marc:the guests I'm going to talk to, all this stuff.
Marc:And everything is just sort of brain is wide open.
Marc:And I have a moment where I'm turning a corner on the trail and I see these giant, you know, container ships.
Marc:And I have this weird kind of existential moment where I realize I really don't understand much of anything.
Marc:And that was brought on by the fact that, like, how do those things even float?
Marc:Seems heavy.
Marc:Look, that's an answerable question.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:It's got something to do with design and and the amount of air ratio against the water.
Marc:Like there are answers to that.
Marc:But I'm like, I really don't know.
Marc:It seems like a miracle.
Marc:And for some reason, that was humbling.
Marc:And I just finished a hike, and I'm just jamming.
Marc:My brain has got all these different things in it, all these different topics.
Marc:And I'm like, well, I'm going to this club tonight on Saturday, this Comedy Underground.
Marc:Maybe I'll just put out a little story on Instagram to see how many people I really sees those in Vancouver and just get a few fans down there.
Marc:So it sold out.
Marc:We had about 50 people down there, and it was a big show.
Marc:And I went out in the middle for about 15, 20.
Marc:But I was working new shit.
Marc:in a way that is not always, you know, it's hard to do in just a regular comedy club.
Marc:You need a workout space.
Marc:I usually do that kind of stuff at Dynasty Typewriter.
Marc:You know, just find the free zone where I can, like, kind of move through stuff.
Marc:And I did a lot of that, and I realized, like, well, this is, these audiences are great.
Marc:Here's the fucking thing about Canada and my observation about Canadians.
Marc:or just what I'm experiencing is that decency still exists here, culturally, in Canada.
Marc:For a lot of reasons, and I can try to explore it or speculate, but the people here, because of the tone of the culture, they're decent people, and they're polite people, and I'm not saying everybody, and there's certainly their problems, but there is sort of an openness
Marc:and a lack of aggressive entitlement and self-servingness and need to disrupt or be a fucking dick shamelessly, it's not up here.
Marc:Those are all sort of byproducts of the cultural condition of America, and it just isn't here.
Marc:So there was a moment where
Marc:You know, I can make judgments about people by their appearance in terms of like, oh, that guy looks like he's going to be difficult.
Marc:But I'm always wrong up here.
Marc:And there's just a space up here where it's they're engaged.
Marc:This was my experience.
Marc:And it's possible.
Marc:to sort of push through ideas and, and without the weight of the constant garbage that is, you know, particles of the air, like Reiki and Oregon, you know, there's just this unspecific thing in the fucking air in the States that just doesn't hear.
Marc:It just isn't here.
Marc:There's just something about it.
Marc:And I just say, I felt like, well, this is it, man.
Marc:You know, you weren't romanticizing, you know,
Marc:You know, this idea of Canada, this is culturally more.
Marc:I don't know if it's advanced, but more just down to earth and decent and tolerant.
Marc:And it was just like a major breakthrough.
Marc:It's very exciting.
Marc:So here are the beats.
Marc:I'm grateful for my job.
Marc:I have found a way to experience focus and joy within what I'm doing in my role.
Marc:And my appreciation for what really is my experience of Canada in terms of the people and the possibilities exploded.
Marc:And along all those lines, my brain was jamming for the last three days.
Marc:And I probably got about a good 20 minutes of ideas to kind of fuck around with on stage.
Marc:So if you're invested in my process or my progress, that's where we're at.
Marc:All right, here we go.
Marc:Stavros Halkius, great guy, funny guy.
Marc:Uh,
Marc:real dude, authentic guy.
Marc:His podcast, Avi's World, is available on all podcast platforms, and he has a members-only feed on Patreon.
Marc:His Netflix special is called Fat Rascal, and this is him and I hanging out.
Guest:Yeah, I've been off nicotine for like three years, and I'm like, I'll do it anyway.
Marc:Any way it comes, but not cigarettes anymore.
Marc:Look, I know about what drugs and addiction are, right?
Marc:So I got these and I put one in.
Marc:I'm like, oh, these are great.
Marc:They got a nice paste to them.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:You know, like I'll probably do like four or five a day.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:And the next thing you know, I'm stockpiling them because you can't get flavors here anymore.
Marc:So I go out of town, I'm bringing flavors home.
Marc:You gotta get flavors.
Marc:Here's how you know you're a fucking drug addict is you start finding the used ones just around, like, you know, under a pillow on the ground.
Guest:That's tough.
Marc:Well, you know, it's like, how are these?
Marc:He's getting, it's some version of just empty bottles around the house.
Guest:I fully understand.
Guest:I mean, I am a straight food addict.
Guest:That's my main thing.
Marc:Oh, I fucking love it.
Guest:I know the, like, easy slide into where it's like, oh, well, I can get bacon on this chicken.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:It's like, it's fine.
Guest:I have the calories.
Guest:I'm putting it in my fitness tracker app.
Guest:And then it just slowly, slowly goes and you're up to two pints of Ben and Jerry's a day and you're getting whole sandwiches as side dishes.
Guest:The mental gymnastics it takes to do like, hey, I'm going to actually get tenders instead of fries because they're both fried, so that cancels out.
Guest:Right.
Guest:white chicken breast.
Guest:That's healthy.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And then it's like, you know what I mean?
Guest:And then you don't think about a sauce.
Guest:It's, it's fucked up.
Guest:I'm trying to get my shit.
Guest:It's so hard to just, I'm trying to get, get on the, you know, on the, on the rails with my eating right now.
Guest:And so I'm like, you know, I get the addiction thing.
Guest:I truly do.
Marc:Well,
Marc:Oddly, and I don't know if you're going to believe me, but I have massive fucking food issues.
Marc:I can see that.
Marc:Just mentally.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But I go the other way.
Marc:I'm more like I'll go into total restriction and just crazy control freak shit.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But I used to do the, you know, the two pints.
Marc:My mother was like had eating disorder.
Guest:So I was brought up with it.
Guest:Right, right, right.
Marc:Like when most kids were, you know, learning how to read, you know, books, I was, you know, calorie counting.
Marc:I learned how to do.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Yeah, no, she, you know, she had, yeah, she, you know, I was that kid and my mom would be like, where's the husky section?
Marc:Interesting.
Marc:So.
Marc:Were you a fat kid or no?
Marc:Just a little chubby.
Guest:Just a little chubby.
Marc:But when you have an anorexic mother.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Like any bit of fat.
Guest:We had a kid growing up like that where it was like they would like,
Guest:It was fucked up where I think his mom was fat.
Marc:Yeah, that's what my mom was.
Guest:And then got super skinny.
Guest:Well, she married some guy who was just an abusive, fucking horrible piece of shit.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that spurred her on to lose weight.
Guest:And to her, that was like, oh, this is how you treat people now.
Guest:And so it was like, I was fat as shit.
Guest:It was great because I would go to their house.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And her like weird, you know, mom, like these kids, we'd be eating like Oreos and their mom would come in and they'd be like, fuck.
Guest:They'd start getting like scared, dude.
Guest:And I'd be like, what the fuck's the big deal?
Guest:And it was also because they did, I don't know, I had some perverse, because my mom was the best.
Guest:I mean, my mom, we have addiction issues on her side of the family from drinking.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And I don't think she put it together.
Guest:She thought, as long as you aren't drinking, you're fine.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so I think she has food issues.
Guest:And I think I definitely got those.
Guest:And my dad has his own stuff.
Guest:But my mom was just a super, like a caricature of an Eastern European, like loving mother.
Guest:Snacks, treats, bakes.
Guest:My friends would come over and she'd bake shit.
Guest:Oh, constantly.
Guest:So I never had any, I had the opposite of body issues.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But it was like my family.
Marc:So my mom used to hide my dad, you know, who's a fucking nut.
Marc:You know, he was allowed to eat cookies and ring dings or whatever.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Oh, interesting.
Marc:So she would hide them.
Marc:Like my mom was like, like there's a story that my cousin tells where he was out visiting us in Albuquerque where I grew up.
Marc:And there was a party the night before and there was half a chocolate cake left.
Marc:And the next day, he wanted to go have a slice of the chocolate cake, and my mother was just like shoving it into the garbage disposal.
Guest:Oh, no.
Guest:She would just eat and throw things away.
Guest:Well, I get that, too, because I know the feeling of throwing it away isn't doing anything.
Marc:Like, it's so weird with food.
Marc:I can't throw anything.
Marc:It has to smell pretty bad.
Marc:Because I, like, I try to cook, you know, for myself and cook healthy.
Marc:But here's the thing about the addiction part.
Marc:With the ice cream, because I used to do it.
Marc:Like, for me, with dairy, it's like it becomes about my heart now or whatever.
Guest:I'm totally vegan.
Guest:Oh, wow.
Marc:Which I used to do a bit about this, which I used to say it's an ideological eating disorder.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Absolutely.
Marc:Right?
Marc:So, you know, but the Ben and Jerry sing, I would do that.
Marc:I would plow through a pint or two pints.
Marc:But that feeling you get, because you know.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Like that whole fucking thing.
Marc:I did a bit on it years ago where, you know, you do the thing where I'm like, I'm just going to have a little bit and put it away.
Marc:Of course.
Guest:Come on.
Marc:But then you come back.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:And then at some point you just got to like just enjoy it.
Marc:You fuck.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:And that feeling of like keep going.
Marc:Totally.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And halfway in, you don't even want it anymore.
Guest:But it's like, what, I'm going to get up and put it away?
Guest:Yeah, but... At that point, it becomes... And then you trick yourself.
Guest:You're like, well, I don't want it.
Guest:I just don't want to put it back.
Guest:And so that gets you through.
Guest:That lets you push through to the next level.
Guest:So then you're like, oh, yeah.
Guest:Four spoonfuls in, I'm back in, baby.
Guest:I just needed that little boost to fucking get me through.
Marc:So, but, like, how...
Guest:Where are you with it now?
Guest:I'm just, I am just, I am tracking my eating just because I feel like I need to get kind of- What do you use to do that?
Guest:My fitness pal.
Marc:Oh yeah, I was using that.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:I love doing that.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I used to do fucking Weight Watchers back in the old days.
Guest:Me too, dude.
Guest:I was a Weight Watchers kid.
Guest:With the numbers?
Guest:With just the numbers?
Marc:With the numbers, the point system.
Marc:I don't even know what the fuck they're doing over there now.
Marc:I just like the math of it.
Marc:It's like an equation of control.
Marc:And then you figure out how many no-point foods you can eat.
Guest:And then you're just fucking eating.
Guest:Go crazy on grapes and shit like that.
Guest:I remember I was like the fat little mascot of, because I was a boy with my mom.
Guest:And that was like, my mom was just trying to, because I never got it from my mom, but the world...
Guest:you're going to get body image issues from the world.
Marc:So when did you start with the fat?
Marc:Oh, dude, there's never been.
Guest:I don't know any other reality.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I mean, I do think the, I trace it back to, I went to public school in Baltimore, and my mom would give me milk money in a very classic way.
Guest:But what she didn't realize is that there was, you could just, people were giving away milk.
Guest:Nobody fucking wanted milk.
Guest:yeah yeah yeah you know so there was a table that gave away milk yeah and there was like an old greek lady that was just selling unregulated pastries that was like her job she sold the children they just let her in she's not an educator no credentials street pastries yeah just like out of her fucking dirty tins from like the 40s probably this woman was ancient in the 90s right so and she's just selling
Guest:Little brownies that she made.
Guest:And that's how she's making ends meet.
Guest:It's kind of crazy that the school system just let this woman who was not affiliated with not a teacher.
Guest:Public school?
Guest:Public school.
Guest:And I would take my 25 cents and get a brownie every day.
Guest:And I never told my mom because the milk was free.
Guest:I could finesse my way into a milk.
Guest:Would she have had a problem with it?
Guest:I think she just wouldn't have given me.
Guest:She would have been like, it's for milk.
Guest:No quarter.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:No, she would have taken it back.
Guest:And it was more just like, well, you don't need that kind of thing.
Guest:She wouldn't, you know, she wouldn't.
Guest:But it was like, and then I just, that's probably, I'm talking first grade.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I got on a cupcake or brownie a day.
Guest:Fucking street brownie.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Straight up, you know.
Marc:You found the brownie dealer.
Guest:I mean, I was always a husky kid.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And then it was just like, you know.
Guest:And then I was, you know, and then I just been on the road so long.
Guest:And it's completely fucked my life up.
Marc:It can be bad out there.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, no.
Guest:I mean, it's great.
Guest:It's food.
Marc:I mean, I mean, like, cause like you can't like now I'm doing the vegan thing.
Marc:It's like, it's impossible because all these vegan places are like vegan junk food.
Marc:So they're trying to make hamburgers and fried shit.
Marc:But like, even if you try to eat healthy on the road, if you don't go to like that whole food salad bar and just fucking manage it, everything's just soaked.
Marc:I don't even know how it happens.
Marc:But you eat anything at a restaurant.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:It's like they inject calories.
Guest:You don't even know why.
Guest:Oil, butter.
Guest:The thing I like about tracking calories right now is because it just reminds me what a portion is.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Who the fuck knows?
Guest:I cooked a ribeye, and I was so pumped.
Guest:I'd been good for weeks.
Guest:I was like, let me grill a little steak.
Guest:And I measured it out, and I fucking started crying because it was like a third of the steak.
Guest:And I have my whole evening.
Guest:I'm like, let's go.
Guest:Like a bowl?
Guest:Boneless, but a nice big cut, you know, dry aged, the good shit.
Guest:And I fucking, and I was like, I measure out my potato and I'm like, this is great.
Guest:Now let me just get, I'm sure it's not going to be as big as I like.
Guest:It was one third of the steak that I would usually eat.
Guest:And to be fair, every time I would eat a steak like that, I'm in pain for, you know what I mean?
Guest:It's like you're sweating.
Guest:But you ate it all, right?
Guest:I actually did.
Guest:I'm good now.
Guest:I mean, you know.
Guest:Yeah?
Guest:Right now I'm in the zone.
Guest:What'd you do with the rest of the cooked steak?
Guest:It went in the fridge and I sliced it up.
Guest:For a sandwich?
Guest:And I had a little sandwich the next day.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:A little open face with a little avocado.
Guest:Oh, good.
Guest:You know, some fucking.
Guest:Healthy oils.
Guest:Yeah, some avocado oils.
Guest:With the pure fat.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:It's also very easy because I got fat as hell.
Guest:To just as long as you're not... Bigger than now?
Guest:Yeah, this is it.
Guest:I mean, you're seeing this is the top, right?
Guest:I mean, I'm down 20 pounds to what I was a couple months ago.
Guest:But that was the thing where I was like, Jesus fucking... And when you're so in the zone with...
Guest:I just got successful in a way I'd never expected to.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it was like my health and everything else in my life stopped mattering.
Guest:And I was like, let's see, I guess.
Guest:Let's push it.
Guest:I guess I can just be.
Guest:I got the money.
Guest:I truly could not believe I was doing theater.
Guest:I did a theater tour last year, and I was like,
Guest:I was confused the first, like, four months.
Guest:I was like, every time, I'm like, why are we doing these?
Guest:I'm asking my agent, I'm like, why am I not in a club?
Marc:But you're on stage going, are you sure you're in the right place?
Guest:Dude, and my fans are dirtbags, and they're in these chandeliers.
Guest:I'm a piece of shit.
Guest:We don't belong there.
Guest:And it was like, I just couldn't believe anything that was happening for so long.
Guest:So I was like, I guess I'll keep doing this.
Guest:And, you know, as soon as you get any success, you're like, well, I can't stop or...
Guest:i know i know like this is my window yeah exactly well i mean you gotta think about it like that i think you know and i i think unfortunately you do and so i guess my hope is and so i just got i just led into all my fucking all my vices i just let them ride because i needed to get through that like what what'd you do like what else you know buy a car eating what's that you buy a car i didn't buy no no i mean just like on while traveling with the food food i'm just getting nicer you know i'm staying in nice hotels fly first you know flying first yeah
Guest:Well, it started as a luxury, and then it became, if you don't put me in fucking, I'll kill myself.
Guest:Not just for me, for the guy next to me.
Guest:Like, there's no worse.
Guest:Sometimes, you know, certain weird cities, you've got to fly southwest.
Guest:And there's no funnier feeling that it's a full flight.
Guest:I'm in the back.
Guest:I got an aisle.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And the guy, the people that just, you watch them realize their fate.
Guest:When they see the empty seat next to me, then you see them fucking panic and look around.
Guest:They look behind them and, you know, you can't go.
Guest:People see and they just start sitting down and they're like, fuck.
Guest:It's me and him the whole time.
Guest:And I don't want to be, you know, if I could, people talk about like fat people should buy two seats.
Guest:I would love to buy two seats.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:There's no, you can't just go like two seats, please.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, that's not a fucking option on any website.
Marc:Do you have to ask for the special seatbelt thing?
Guest:I don't, I do a move where I just wear a loose sweater over top.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Leave enough plausible deniability that it's buckled.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They don't want to bring it up.
Guest:I don't want to bring it up.
Guest:I'm nice to them.
Guest:I strike up a rapport with them.
Guest:I'm not a dick.
Guest:So then if push comes to shove, and I've even seen them.
Guest:And here's what I've learned.
Guest:You can't make it obvious.
Guest:So if it's swinging on the side, you got to tuck it in.
Guest:You got to tuck it under your butt.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:You got to use your flaps to hold it in place so that the stewardess can't see it.
Guest:She knows it's not buckled.
Guest:She's aware how fat you are.
Guest:She knows the length of their seatbelts.
Guest:So I try and like, you know, I'm like, what is the seatbelt really going to do?
Guest:I'm jammed in here pretty good.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:If somebody doesn't need it, it's me, you know?
Guest:It's brutal asking for that.
Guest:Or when one, you get a real like new stickler that really wants to.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:That really wants to.
Marc:I'm sorry, sir, but we have to.
Marc:Come on, what are we doing?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:They got to walk down.
Marc:Now you're in the back of the plant.
Guest:You got to walk down the aisle with the strap.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The strap is brutal.
Guest:I just got to get out of the strap zone.
Guest:That's the first I have such, my health goals have gone from like be ripped to like, do not need extra material to fasten your airplane seatbelt.
Guest:It's that, it's I want to be able to go to Thailand with that, say I want to go to Thailand with everybody, assuming I'm a sex criminal.
Guest:Because you can't be a fat guy in a Hawaiian that says he wants to go to Thailand.
Guest:But it looks, the beaches look nice.
Guest:I hear it's beautiful.
Guest:You know?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So anyway, it's like very manageable, small stuff I'm trying to get to.
Marc:But like in this, like, well, I mean, you're the general, like there's part of me coming into this interview because like what got me involved with watching your shit was,
Marc:Was, because you're, I can't keep up.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:You're probably two generations behind me.
Marc:I mean, how old are you?
Marc:I'm 35.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So, like, you know, I like to know who's what and what's going on.
Marc:But, like, there was a time where I knew everybody.
Marc:You know, I knew the old guys that were before me.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And I knew my guys.
Marc:And then all of a sudden it's like, I've got to surrender the fact.
Marc:I get it.
Marc:That I'm an old fuck.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And I'm a little out of the loop.
Marc:Of course.
Marc:I mean, we're doing an audio podcast.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, no, it's crazy.
Guest:Like, I was like, oh, fucking no camera.
Guest:Nice.
Marc:Great.
Marc:Don't even have to worry about shit.
Marc:But I do need you to wear the seatbelt extended.
Marc:Yeah, I'm strapped in here tight.
Marc:But, like, oh, so I'd done some.
Marc:It wasn't even with any sort of bitterness.
Mm-hmm.
Marc:But because I don't do a lot of TikTok.
Marc:I have a guy doing it, putting the old clips up.
Marc:But like I, you know, it was like all you hear about these crowd work videos.
Guest:Right.
Marc:So I just did one.
Marc:I did a crowd work video to sort of like, you know, and it was like it was just an idea, a satire where I'm going to do I'm going to do pure crowd work.
Marc:I'm going to break it down to what it is.
Marc:And I just, like, I ask, you know, I ask someone in the front row, what's your name?
Marc:He says his name.
Marc:I go, that's fucking stupid.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's what it is.
Guest:See a guy with a shirt, say the shirt's too small, you're gay.
Guest:But it was just that.
Marc:You know, like, there was no nuance to it.
Marc:Of course, of course.
Marc:So I put that up, and it got a lot of fucking hits for me.
Marc:And then someone just sort of, like, Stavros.
Marc:It's like Stavros.
Marc:And I'm like, who the fuck is, you know, what is this guy?
Marc:I can't.
Marc:I kind of knew who you were.
Marc:Sure, sure, sure.
Marc:But they were literally saying, like, you know, he does this.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:But it was not like what you do.
Marc:But then so I watched your special.
Marc:The newest one is very funny.
Marc:Thanks, man.
Marc:Appreciate it.
Marc:And, you know, I like your disposition.
Marc:And I'm like, I'm going to talk to this guy and figure out what the fuck is happening.
Guest:Maybe you can help the old man.
Guest:I don't know either, is the thing.
Guest:Like, this is all a complete mistake.
Guest:But let's go back.
Guest:So you grew up where?
Guest:I grew up in Baltimore.
Guest:Baltimore?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like, how close to D.C.?
Guest:About an hour.
Guest:I mean, I was in Baltimore City, so southeast Baltimore.
Guest:And it was, you know...
Marc:I have no idea about that city.
Marc:The last time I talked about Baltimore in any real way was David Simon, and that's a deep conversation.
Guest:Of course, of course.
Marc:That's a very nuanced and multi-leveled, you know, he is the wire.
Guest:For sure.
Guest:I mean, my season two of The Wire is where I grew up.
Guest:Which season was that?
Guest:That's the Greeks, right?
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:So I grew up in Greektown in Baltimore.
Marc:So is that like one of the big Greek populations?
Marc:Because I lived in Astoria for years.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:You know, it's funny.
Guest:What?
Guest:I think I sublet the apartment you had.
Guest:I think you had like, there was eight subleases, and at the top was you.
Guest:Does that sound familiar?
Guest:Yeah, I was on 37th.
Guest:37th, that's the fucking one.
Guest:Dude, I got bed bugs in your old apartment.
Marc:Yeah, I mean, I had bed bugs in that apartment.
Guest:They've been around that long?
Guest:Well, how...
Guest:Who'd you sublease from?
Guest:Leo?
Guest:I think my friends were subleasing from Leo and I was renting a room for a month.
Guest:This is crazy.
Guest:From them.
Guest:This is 10 years ago, nine years ago.
Marc:That's crazy.
Marc:Was Carlos still the landlord?
Guest:I don't know.
Marc:You don't even know.
Marc:I never made contact with him.
Marc:No, it must have been after because I had it for years.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And I love that place.
Marc:I mean, when I got that place, it's a two bedroom with a fucking kitchen.
Marc:Yeah, it was nice.
Marc:In that little bedroom and then there's the big bedroom.
Guest:I was in the little bedroom.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:That's where, you know...
Marc:Yeah, I went through—well, what happened was—I'll give you the whole history of that fucking apartment.
Guest:Yeah, please.
Marc:Yeah, because I— So I got it from a guy who was a writer, and I got on the lease.
Marc:The guy, Carlos, used to be the landlord.
Marc:He was a Dominican dentist.
Guest:Oh, I think we had a Greek guy.
Marc:No, this is a Greek guy, but here's what happened.
Marc:So we had this Dominican dentist.
Marc:He was funny because Jody Lennon, did you know her?
Marc:She lives downstairs, Chicago.
Marc:She's still there.
Marc:Oh, okay.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:she was in Exit 57, improv sketch person.
Marc:But she said, Carlos came into her apartment because her oven wasn't working, and he said, if it was a mouth, I could fix it.
LAUGHTER
Marc:So he was... Poetic.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And so he was a Dominican dentist who, you know, he didn't go back to school in the States to get re... Gotcha.
Marc:So he had a little, like, he worked out too much.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:So I subleased it to a musician for a while.
Marc:I kept hold of it because I actually ended up needing it.
Marc:So I had it from, like, fucking 95 until...
Marc:Leo came in and I let him live there.
Marc:And then apparently Carlos sold the building and he came up to Leo and said, are you Mark?
Marc:And Leo's like, Mark's out of town.
Marc:He's like, well, no, you're the guy now.
Guest:Like that was it.
Guest:Like there was no negotiating.
Guest:I live in Astoria too.
Guest:So I sub least, and I've actually been in the same apartment.
Guest:I, since, since I left your place, I've been in the same apartment for nine years now.
Guest:So I love Astoria.
Guest:And that's how those landlords work.
Guest:I signed one lease one year, haven't even spoken about it since.
Guest:It's like that kind of handshake agreement.
Marc:Is it rent control or rent stabilized?
Guest:It is because I have a landlord who doesn't give a fuck.
Marc:Yeah, mine was stabilized.
Marc:It wasn't rent control, but they could only raise it incrementally.
Marc:They couldn't raise it...
Guest:He's never raised it.
Guest:It's insane.
Guest:It's fucking great.
Guest:He doesn't fix anything.
Guest:Greek guy?
Guest:No, I think he's Indian.
Marc:Oh, yeah?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:If it was a Greek guy, he would lower the rent every year for me.
Guest:Greek people fucking love Greek people, man.
Guest:Yeah?
Guest:Yeah, they'll hook you up.
Marc:Well, I mean, that apartment was crazy because I know they redid it and they cleaned it up.
Marc:Dude, when I was in that apartment.
Marc:That's crazy.
Marc:You had fucking bedbugs.
Marc:Well, that's the story.
Marc:I didn't have them for years.
Marc:And then I subleased it to this German photographer woman who was my roommate briefly, but that went the wrong way.
Marc:But she ended up staying there.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:And then she got, that's when they started, but that was during the bed bug craze.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:No, she didn't.
Marc:It wasn't her fault, but what happens is if they're in the fucking building, I went nuts.
Marc:I sealed everything, put everything in plastic, sealed up the fucking mattress.
Guest:It makes you crazy.
Guest:Literally for five years, I would wake up with itching something that wasn't there.
Marc:Did you see them ever?
Guest:i never saw that's the fucking thing so it i actually met people that lost their minds thinking they had yeah that's what happened to me i've thrown away beds when i was broke i just fucking threw them away because i was like i got them and then i got metal but for a while i just got i was like metal because they can't get on fucking metal they can get on wood you didn't wrap the mattress with the ceiling had the had the wrap but the thing is i never got one fucking bite they like women more than men they fucked me
Guest:me up oh they bit i remember because the my friends who i was subleasing to comics um we had moved kind of together they had moved ahead of me and and you know they were just they were doing better you know last comic standing somebody on the tonight show right so i was like oh they know what the fuck they're doing right meanwhile they were just getting fucked up not doing shit they were just kind of riding the wave but those things don't mean anything ultimately but when you're an open mic or you're like oh they're fine you know they know what the fuck they're doing they made six hundred dollars
Guest:They got to fly themselves to L.A.
Guest:to bomb in front of Roseanne.
Guest:But I remember, and I was like, and we would just be, you know, we're just doing open mics.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, sure.
Guest:Getting fucked at the creek, drinking tall boys.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I'm like...
Guest:I'm like, man, these mosquitoes at the creek backyard are fucking me up.
Guest:I'm like, this is crazy, because they had gotten all over me.
Guest:And I'm like, guys, are they fucking you up?
Guest:They're like, no, not really.
Guest:And I even floated, and I was like, do you guys think we have bedbugs?
Guest:They're like, no, no way.
Guest:And then after I had moved,
Guest:Thank God I had one two-week other bridge sublease where they were like, hey, man, we lifted the mattresses.
Guest:And they said it was fucking crawling.
Guest:It was atrocious with bedbugs.
Guest:At my old place?
Guest:At your old place.
Guest:It had gotten fucking bad.
Guest:And I had to fumigate everything.
Guest:And this is, again, I just moved to New York.
Guest:I'm living the place I was planning to live in.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:was a three-bedroom, where I still am now, three-bedroom that we turned into a four-bedroom because I just took the corner of the living room for $500 a month.
Guest:Like, I had convinced my friends.
Guest:We put a fake wall up, actually.
Guest:Pretty bougie, yeah.
Guest:It cost me another $700.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I moved there with, like, three grand in the bank.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And...
Guest:You know, I had to fumigate all my shit.
Guest:$750, it fucking destroyed.
Guest:I was like, this is it.
Guest:I'm ruined financially.
Guest:I got a shitty writing job soon after.
Guest:But it was like, those bed bugs, the same bed bugs that tormented you, fucked me up my first year in New York.
Guest:They were the bane of my existence.
Marc:Well, I mean, because if they don't do the whole fucking building.
Guest:No, they went apartment by apartment.
Marc:I remember I had some guy come over, some East Asian guy.
Marc:And with the fumigator, and he was wheezing like... And he was complaining how they couldn't use DDT anymore.
Marc:He said, that's what kills him.
Marc:This stuff...
Guest:I thought he was going to die in my fucking apartment.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's a man who loves the game.
Guest:He loves exterminating.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:But he's been doing it so long, he remembers DDT.
Guest:Right, right, right, right, right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And now he's like, he's hobbled.
Marc:It's like doctors in healthcare systems that can't treat people the way they want to because they're restricted.
Marc:This guy's like, it's not like it used to be.
Marc:Let's get this red tape out of the way.
Marc:I bet you if I gave him a few bucks, he'd go down in the truck.
Guest:He could find some DDT.
Guest:Get the DDT.
Marc:So Baltimore greets...
Guest:Is it as big a Greek community as Astoria?
Guest:It's not as big as Astoria.
Guest:In fact, when I was growing up, they would take us, my Greek school, like my church, that community, we would take field trips to New York and we would go to the Met and see like the Greek statues and then they would take us to Astoria.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They would like, fuck New York, fuck Central Park.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You don't need to go to Broadway.
Guest:It's like, we'll go see some Greek statues and then you'll go to Astoria and eat a fucking gyro.
Guest:Yeah, it was fucking ridiculous.
Marc:And try to understand how these people made those.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Marc:I used to do a joke about that.
Marc:You know, like, how did they get from, you know, creating, you know, the Parthenon to, like, do you want cheese?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We've been coasting on the marbles for a while.
Guest:You know?
Guest:Fuck it.
Guest:Who else got those motherfuckers?
Marc:Did you go to, like, Kequides?
Marc:yep i would go there a lot the greek seafood man is the fucking best it's awesome oh man i go to the one with i go to new york while i'm a vegan now which is this is the one great loss the kiklides octopus is the fucking best greek octopuses yeah and then just the the the beets with the garlic sure it's the fucking best and the horta horta yes you know what's the best thing in the world is a galactoborco oh
Guest:Oh, Galactoburco.
Guest:Dude, you're speaking my language here.
Guest:Literally, you're literally speaking my language.
Guest:But my mom was a Greek waitress at a Greek restaurant.
Guest:And so, so much of my formative child, another addiction where the addiction started.
Guest:Well, Galactoburco in itself.
Guest:Cream.
Guest:It's cream, honey, and phyllo.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And butter.
Marc:And a little, isn't it semolina flour in the custard?
Marc:You'll throw a little semolina to thicken it up.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:When I first had that dessert, I was like, what is this?
Guest:It's fucking incredible.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:It's the best.
Marc:Because I'm like a rice pudding guy.
Marc:Like I dine a rice pudding.
Guest:It's the best parts of rice pudding.
Marc:Yeah, in a phyllo dough with it.
Marc:Oh, shit.
Marc:It's so good.
Guest:But yeah, so it's big.
Marc:Your parents, they were first generation?
Guest:First generation.
Guest:They came here in the 80s.
Guest:They came here a couple years before I was born.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Why?
Marc:Do you know?
Guest:I mean, my mom's parents had emigrated here.
Guest:They'd gotten to America in the 70s, maybe, where my mom was.
Guest:And my mom had moved with them and then moved back as soon as she could because they moved when she was, like, 18.
Guest:Horrible time to have to move.
Guest:Like, as soon as you're about to be an adult, you have to just start a new city or a new country.
Guest:And so she moved back.
Guest:And I think it was just this thing of, like,
Guest:Well, we'll go visit your family.
Guest:We'll work for a year, bring money back.
Guest:And it was one of those.
Guest:They also wanted to have kids.
Guest:And I'm an in vitro kid.
Guest:I'm an IVF, test tube baby.
Guest:And this is the 80s, right?
Guest:So that technology straight up didn't exist in Greece at the time.
Guest:So I think it was like a combination of just-
Guest:So it was your dad's cum?
Guest:It was my mom's pussy, actually.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:To put it in scientific terms.
Guest:My dad's nut, A-OK.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so they just had to fucking stay and figure it out.
Guest:Were you the only kid?
Guest:I have two brothers after me.
Marc:All in vitro?
Guest:All in vitro.
Guest:Oh, it really worked.
Guest:It worked, bro, yeah.
Guest:And so they just kind of stuck around.
Guest:But it was never a plan.
Guest:So we don't have any of that American dream shit.
Guest:My father resents America.
Guest:What does he do?
Guest:He's a carpenter.
Marc:Yeah?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Was he Bill Tables?
Guest:He'll Bill Tables.
Guest:Yeah?
Guest:He's good.
Guest:He's an incredible, he's incredibly talented at carpentry, not the best businessman kind of vibe.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But yeah, my mom repaired rugs and was a waitress and, you know, worked at a dental lab.
Guest:And now he's just kind of- No restaurant.
Marc:Is that racist?
Guest:My dad built it.
Guest:That's the thing.
Guest:No restaurant, but we're the second.
Guest:It's not racist because the whole Greektown economy was built around restaurants.
Guest:So my dad is a carpenter who mostly made booths and fucking bars and all this kind of shit and chairs.
Guest:And my mom was a waitress at Icarus in Baltimore for years.
Marc:What do you know about that?
Marc:Why restaurants?
Marc:Because like, you know, on the East Coast, they run the best restaurants.
Marc:Like you could go to diners, which don't exist anywhere else.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Because in the East Coast, people eat at them.
Marc:So there's turnover.
Marc:Like, you know, you get the fresh fish, you know, but they know how to run a restaurant.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Where does that come from?
Guest:I do think – I did a little research into this.
Guest:I was kind of into – I wanted to do research about my neighborhood growing up when I was younger when I thought I went to school for like media, political science, history, all that kind of stuff.
Guest:And so I was trying to figure that out.
Guest:And I think it's just a matter of it was like the quickest way you could –
Guest:you could just become established.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was like, you could just start a business.
Guest:I don't know where that start.
Guest:I don't know why in Greece, if they, I don't know where that heritage comes from, but when, when Greeks got here, they started doing service industry stuff because there was no barriers to entry.
Guest:You don't, you don't have to work at somebody's laundromat.
Guest:You can just open your, you know what I mean?
Guest:Right.
Marc:So they start working a little bit at a restaurant and they're like, I can do this.
Guest:And yeah, exactly.
Guest:And you know, and there are a ton of restaurants in Greece that there's not, it's not about the high turnover.
Guest:So I'm sure it was just a simple, it's, they just went to the stuff that they could be small business owners from the jump.
Marc:It's so wild because it's not an easy racket restaurant.
Marc:Yeah, it's really not.
Marc:And like the diner thing, like they're almost all Greek and you know, you can't, the reason that shit exists on the East coast is because people go there.
Marc:You got to have the turnover.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know, you got to have the traffic or else the fish is going to go bad.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, I mean, so they got to be good restaurants.
Guest:I mean, I do think diners, it's tough to find a good one anymore.
Guest:And I think it's mostly breakfast stuff.
Guest:I won't even, I'm not getting fucking fish at a diner.
Guest:No?
Guest:I'm not getting, you know, I'm not, the same place I get like, you know, eggs and...
Guest:Really?
Marc:Like, I grew—I overcame that because I used to think diners were only for that.
Marc:But then, you know, if you spend enough time in Astoria, like, right there, like, across the street was the Marino Brothers fish.
Marc:Right, right, right.
Marc:So, like, I knew, unlike anywhere else, that, you know, that fish would come in that day.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Like, in, like, bluefish.
Marc:Who the fuck eats bluefish?
Marc:You do in Astoria because—
Marc:When bluefish is fresh, it's kind of oily, but it's great.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But you don't get it anywhere else because it's like pigeonfish.
Guest:No one gives a fuck.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:So I always felt that this shit was moving because of the old people, but maybe your generation, the old people are gone.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:I would never eat, and I'm a diner guy, but I would not eat.
Guest:Dinner?
Guest:I would not eat a, yeah, I'm not going to the fourth and fifth pages of the diner menu.
Guest:I'm staying up top.
Guest:I'm going breakfast.
Guest:That's more fat shit than anything.
Guest:That's when you're just like, I feel alive.
Guest:Getting a crab cake from a diner or getting a ribeye, getting a steak from a diner.
Marc:I won't get a steak, but I'll get fish in Astoria.
Marc:Interesting.
Marc:Just because I just feel like the fish comes in right there.
Marc:It's coming in off Long Island.
Marc:Yeah, I don't know.
Marc:I mean, yeah.
Marc:Just get all the Atlantic fish.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:Maybe I was eating fucking mackerel.
Marc:I didn't give a shit.
Marc:I'll eat a little mackerel, but.
Marc:Do you ever go to that Greek supermarket down there?
Marc:Titan.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, I love that place.
Marc:It's like 100 fetters.
Guest:Yeah, it's just incredible.
Guest:What the fuck is that?
Guest:I do feel at home there.
Guest:I love, and that is really why when I first moved to New York, my best friend growing up, she had moved like a little bit before.
Guest:She wanted to be, you know, New York, wanted to work in fashion, all this kind of stuff.
Guest:And the only place we knew was Astoria, and she moved there, and then I just moved in with her, and we got a place together, and now I've just kind of been there.
Guest:And it does feel at home.
Guest:I mean, there is something to, you know, hearing...
Guest:You'll still... It's not as Greek as it was.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:There's an elderly Greek couple arguing.
Guest:Reminds me of my grandparents.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Marc:Well, I think they owned a lot of the real estate.
Marc:I think, yeah, in terms of living, not unlike any immigrant group, they eventually move out into the island or wherever.
Marc:That's what always happens, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Yeah, because, like, over in Queens, like, from block to block, you're like, what is this?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I never thought that it could possibly get hip.
Marc:Did it get hip or did... It'll never get fully hip.
Guest:It won't, right?
Guest:Even though it's almost...
Guest:It was threatening to, and then it just— But Long Island City kind of went a little bit.
Guest:Well, that I see fucking stinks.
Guest:There's nothing there.
Guest:It's corporate.
Guest:It's like, you know, it's honestly a lot of rich, like rich Koreans live.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:Like, get right into— Yeah.
Guest:Into the new high-rises over there?
Guest:New high-rises.
Marc:Because there's like four blocks of old buildings there and that's it.
Guest:It's all new high rise.
Guest:I have a buddy who moved to LIC and it's literally, he's the only non-Asian person.
Guest:Oh, interesting.
Guest:And they don't like him.
Guest:And he'll catch, and it is like very Asian to the point where you want to talk about like your, the fat, the fat standards.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They're kind of like your mother's where it's like, he's caught a pudgy guy, a pudgy Chinese guy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:eating in the stairwell so that his wife won't catch him he's caught him six times to the point where my buddy's like i feel like if we started kissing it wouldn't be weird like i've caught him in like a i've caught him in like a forbidden situation so many times that it's like there's there's a cat there's something electricity in the air but it's it's like that in my buddy straight they're both ostensibly straight but even he's like i'm feeling something yeah
Guest:This is like, and then he caught him in the gym once and it's like, oh man, eating, eating while my buddy went to go get a workout.
Guest:And it's so this poor guy, but that's what LIC.
Marc:Well, there's that vulnerability of being caught, you know, in that moment where it's sort of like, Hey, I'm out here.
Marc:There's no, there's no, no limits anymore.
Guest:And if, and it look, it happens once.
Guest:That's kind of weird.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It happens twice.
Guest:You're like, huh?
Guest:Five times.
Guest:It's like, is he wanting to get caught by him?
Guest:Does he know?
Guest:Does he know when my buddy's coming?
Marc:Of course.
Marc:The shame is part of it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, shame is so powerful.
Guest:You could take that.
Guest:You could ride that anywhere.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:I mean, you know, they're hand in hand.
Marc:You know, you're riding that speedball of shame and satisfaction.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So you got older siblings?
Marc:I'm the oldest.
Marc:Oh, you're the oldest?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And so how do you get into the comedy racket?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:i just you know it i just it's very after college you finished college i i didn't actually i i so got an incomplete i started yeah so i have all my credits except my language credits and i'm fluent in greek yeah and i got to basically the point i only went to college because my mom wanted me to basically yeah i got a scholarship to a local umbc what were you studying
Guest:I was studying history, political science, media.
Guest:I got a public affairs scholarship.
Guest:At a high school?
Guest:At a high school.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And I was kind of a history dork, and I was interested in... Growing up in Baltimore City, I was like, I want to do... I want to change things.
Guest:And then I'm like, I'd rather just...
Guest:Talk about how little my dick is at a wing restaurant.
Guest:That's how I'd like to spend my 20s, actually.
Guest:Smaller than the wings?
Guest:Yeah, well, I guess it depends.
Guest:It depends what size wings and what state my penis is in, so...
Guest:Typically, no, I'd like to say, but... And so, you know, I just kind of... I started doing open mics in college, and I was like, this is the best thing.
Guest:I love doing this.
Guest:This rocks.
Guest:I knew I wanted to do comedy.
Guest:It was so clear.
Guest:This is the only thing I've ever liked.
Marc:Who are the guys?
Guest:Any of the guys that you were with keep going?
Guest:Um...
Guest:In the open mics?
Guest:In the open mic, the guys, I mean, there was a ton of people that were pretty funny.
Guest:I mean, I met Wardell when he was like 16.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And, you know, so I actually drove here with him when he, you know, I was like 20 or whatever.
Guest:Wardell?
Guest:Yeah, Brandon Wardell.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So he was like, you know, this little, this child that had like 15 nice minutes and-
Guest:And we were boys.
Guest:Still to this day, we're boys.
Guest:The guys, a lot of people that I came up with, I mean, Jamel Johnson is still out here.
Guest:He's hilarious.
Guest:But it was like a lot, the people kind of right in front of us, there was a, you know, I just missed like Rory Scovel, Aparna Nancherla, Hampton.
Marc:The guys I knew came out of there.
Marc:Two of them moved to San Francisco at the same time I did back in...
Marc:92, Blaine Kapatch, Patton Oswalt.
Marc:Yeah, I knew those guys, and it was cool.
Marc:I was like, oh, those guys.
Marc:And they used to mythologize this one guy from Baltimore that I don't know how much, how long the myth lasted, but some guy named Mark Voice.
Marc:I don't know.
Guest:Yes, he's that poor guy.
Guest:We have our own guy.
Guest:Lost.
Guest:lost the time yeah we've got our guy was he like kind of a yeah on the edge actually funny or not funny I heard he was funny I think he passed away but like he got out of the racket but he was one of those there's always that guy yeah that guy's a genius oh that oh so we we have a lot of like ironic
Guest:Oh, no.
Guest:Like out of their minds.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Don't know what's going on.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Baltimore was great for that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I miss that part of comedy.
Guest:It's not, it doesn't have.
Marc:Yeah, I think that's something the phone ruined.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Was people snapping.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:For real.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And mentally ill people that couldn't manage it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Like they were always around.
Guest:It was their only outlet.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They couldn't post about, you know, their chakras.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They couldn't go live and tell you about how alkaline water is killing you.
Marc:But also, the fact that people record now has changed the standards of comedy.
Marc:And also, no one's willing to lose their fucking mind anymore.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Because someone's going to get it.
Guest:Right, right, right.
Marc:And then you're going to be known for that.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:I mean, I do like that it was such an outlet.
Guest:And I like that there's zero barrier to entry.
Guest:I like that literally any bum off the street could do it.
Guest:If you could figure it out.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:You know, all you got to do is be funny and you're not getting paid at that level.
Marc:No.
Marc:So you got to get through three to five minutes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was awesome.
Guest:It was the best and you would get the most insane people.
Guest:I'm going to D.C.
Marc:and...
Marc:This week.
Marc:Oh, nice.
Marc:Saturday night at the Warner Theater.
Guest:Great.
Guest:That's awesome.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I did all right.
Marc:I've done better there, but I'll take it.
Guest:You'll do it.
Marc:You got a couple days.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, you know.
Marc:Well, you know, you get to a point like you're doing theaters now where you're like, I only saw 1,300.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's like the way it seats like 1800.
Guest:I know.
Guest:The sentences that have come out of my mouth where it was like, my goal, like everything feels like I'm playing with house money now.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Because I just wanted to headline C and B rooms across America.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like, I started McGooby's Joke House.
Guest:I wanted to play every McGooby's Joke House in every city in America.
Guest:I wanted to creak out a living at $70,000 before taxes.
Guest:Like, that was, to me, what I had no idea of podcasting.
Guest:I mean, honestly, your podcast, when I was starting, I listened to it.
Guest:I actually used to listen to The Sound of Young America with Jesse Thorne.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:I remember those guys were like, comment.
Guest:to get these mics.
Guest:I remember that, and he almost said, you should go check out our friend Mark Maron's podcast.
Guest:I was literally listening to some other podcast.
Guest:The first one you did was you and Patton on a computer, I feel like.
Guest:I liked your podcast as a, whoa, this is a cool insight into
Guest:Comedy?
Guest:What comedy was like.
Guest:Especially when you're starting and you just can't get enough of comedy.
Guest:It was timing-wise perfect.
Guest:And then eventually I just stopped listening to any comedy podcast because I don't want to be.
Guest:I got into the, like, I don't want anyone to influence me zone.
Guest:Right, sure.
Guest:You want to be pure.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:Pure Stavros.
Guest:Pure for my pussy-eating jokes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It is funny how serious I take it and I look at my own act and I'm like, I'm trying to write, I'm like, I got to write serious stuff.
Guest:And then everything is like, the topic is like a serious thing and then it inevitably just ends to getting my dick sucked.
Guest:And I'm like, that's the only way my stupid brain works.
Marc:But that was like, you know, when I was coming up...
Marc:There was definitely a line, you know, in terms of club comedy, like if you were blue or not blue.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And I was never a mainstream comic in that way.
Marc:Like, I was always dirty.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:But there was some sort of established idea, if you were of a certain comic, that you were going to close dirty.
Marc:Right.
Marc:You know, it was like the Hicks thing, you know, parachute on a dick joke island or whatever.
Guest:That's always how I feel.
Guest:Like, I still to this day, and I might on the next special try and just as a...
Guest:As a challenge to my—I say that now.
Guest:I have, you know, seven minutes of an hour written, maybe.
Guest:And I'm like, I could maybe go clean.
Guest:Six of the seven minutes are dirty.
Guest:I don't know what the fuck I'm talking about.
Guest:We don't have to go clean, but you wonder, like— Could I switch something up?
Guest:Could I just— Does it all have to end with your dick?
Guest:I think, unfortunately, it does.
Guest:Unfortunately, Mark, I've done the math, I've looked at all the charts, and it does seem like it will end.
Marc:But I've been trying to think about the evolution because I get sort of looked at as some, whether it's political or liberal or whatever it is, but like...
Marc:I've always been pretty dirty.
Marc:In a lot of the specials, there's always a bit in there.
Marc:And I used to close pretty dirty.
Marc:And my heroes were all pretty dirty.
Marc:Totally.
Marc:And then I guess you just kind of like...
Marc:As you grow up and you see who your audience is, because I started doing so many other things, I realized, like, you know, I'm 60.
Marc:How dirty do I need to be at 60 when I have middle-aged people in the room?
Marc:Right, right, right.
Marc:Like, I mean, they get it, but there comes a point.
Guest:They're not being prudes.
Guest:They're just like, all right, man.
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:Yeah, fine.
Guest:You get pussy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, lucky you.
Guest:You're 68 and your dick still works.
Guest:We're all happy.
Guest:Do you have anything intelligent to say?
Guest:Right, right, right.
Guest:And the thing is, I don't know that I ever will.
Guest:Even when I'm 60, I'm just trying to have a good time.
Guest:That is the hard thing is that I do think
Guest:I have, you know, I've been having a lot of these thoughts because it's like the first time I've ever slowed down.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And just, I've taken a little, this year I'm taking some time off.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's like, let me just catch my breath.
Marc:No comedy or just club comedy?
Guest:No, just, just take, no, no big tour.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:Sure, sure.
Guest:I want, I'm, you know, I'm doing some spots and I'm actually enjoying that again because it's like the energy of someone's killing ahead of you and you want to do good and you want to.
Guest:That's weird.
Marc:When someone's killing ahead of me, I just want to, I just, I'm going to like, I'm going to fucking tank it.
Yeah.
Marc:I never look at that as sort of like, all right.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:I'm like, yeah, I get that too.
Marc:Where you're just sort of like, they like him too much and I don't get it.
Guest:I sometimes will.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That'll, if I'm having a bad time on the road and you know, that's a classic, like if I'm feeling sick and I'm like, I just need things to go right.
Guest:And then the guy in front of you was just killing and shouting and just like, you know what I mean?
Guest:Like, you know, he's doing great at his act outs.
Guest:And like, I'm like, come on, man, stop.
Guest:I got the sniffles, brother.
Guest:Can't you just close it?
Marc:Well, those feature acts, it's karma for me because I think I was a pretty aggressive feature, but I didn't feature for long.
Marc:I kind of went because I started in Boston doing a long, you know, half hour opening gigs.
Marc:So I like, I was headlining fairly quickly, but like I was a feature that like would, you know, and I've had features before where they're going to close with the, they're just going to build up to the, it's going to be, they're all in.
Marc:I mean, I did that, too.
Guest:And I know headliners hated me.
Guest:They either loved me because they were like- Were you talking about your dick for 10 minutes?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:And some guys sitting there with a button-down shirt.
Guest:I know.
Guest:The best, though, though, I got to give credit.
Guest:I mean, Bobby Kelly and Tom Papa were the best to me.
Guest:Well, you're not going to out-filth Bobby Kelly.
Guest:but the Tom Papa thing that's the thing Tom loved like and he loved it and he was like and I opened for him I was 20 the first time I opened for him I was like 24 like in a little cart I was like alright I'm opening for Tom Papa I gotta wear a cardigan over my graphic t-shirt and with my pussy eating jokes and I'm like he's gonna hate me whatever he loved it his fans loved it one lady because I opened for Tom both of them for years and one lady complained once and Tom told her to go fuck herself it was awesome he's the man I mean Papa's the king oh yeah he's great yeah
Marc:Well, that's funny because we're talking about this very thing.
Marc:And, you know, I did that.
Marc:You know, I know Bobby Kelly for years and I know what Bobby Kelly is.
Marc:Of course.
Marc:And we're doing the comics come home thing.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know, and, you know, it's a big lineup.
Marc:It's Pescatelli and Pete Davidson's Lenny Clark.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know, a couple of people I didn't know Edelman for some reason because he comes from there.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:He's from Boston?
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:And then, you know, so Leary's reading the line up to me.
Marc:I'm like, when am I going on?
Marc:He's going through all these names.
Marc:And then he goes, all right, and then it's going to be Bobby Kelly, then you, and then Burr.
Marc:And I'm like, what the?
Marc:Why do I get a?
Guest:That's brutal.
Guest:In an arena.
Guest:The last three.
Marc:In his hometown.
Yeah.
Marc:He talks like them.
Marc:He sounds like them.
Guest:He is of them.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:And I'm not the guy that really do this, so I'm walking up to Kelly.
Marc:I'm like, what are you going to do with him?
Marc:And I'm like, I know what he's going to do.
Marc:And I thought I was coming full circle.
Guest:This will be great.
Marc:It's going to be fun.
Marc:It's 10 minutes.
Marc:I can't lose.
Marc:Bobby Kelly, then you.
Guest:Yeah, brutal.
Marc:And I do this bit on stage.
Marc:I talk about this story on stage.
Guest:No, but Bobby crushes.
Guest:Bobby's.
Marc:But it's also, it's like a symphony of filth.
Marc:Yeah, absolutely.
Marc:And I don't care.
Marc:I love what he does.
Guest:Of course.
Marc:But I got to go be thoughtful, which is whatever the fuck I do for 10 minutes.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:But I did all right because I'm a pro and I didn't let it crush me.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:But I did know going in there like this isn't going to be the victory.
Marc:No.
Marc:This is survival.
Guest:This is like, let's just get through this.
Guest:Let me be able to look everyone in the eye for the rest of the night.
Guest:That's exactly right.
Guest:That's all I need.
Marc:That's exactly right.
Marc:Because I fucking went up to Burr, and I'm like, why do I got to follow Kelly?
Marc:Why don't you follow Kelly?
Marc:He goes, I'm going to follow Kelly.
Marc:I'm like, God, fucking damn it.
Guest:How am I the buffer?
Guest:That makes so much sense.
Guest:Why not?
Guest:Bobby's from there.
Marc:They're both from there, but Burr, you can follow Burr.
Marc:Bobby can follow Burr.
Marc:He'll follow anybody.
Guest:They can both follow, but I get it, yeah.
Marc:Oh God, the, the, the, the closing bit, it was just like, it was more than I ever imagined.
Marc:Cause when I was told I was going to follow him, I'm like, Oh my God, this is like, I know exactly what's going to happen.
Guest:But boy, it was at a level that I couldn't even, I mean, you know, I mean, yeah, I get, I know.
Guest:I mean, I remember cause that's, I'm like, you know, I'm coming out of Baltimore and I, Bobby took me on the road and you know, I would like be, I like doing both alt and club stuff.
Guest:I was kind of doing both.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But to Bobby, I'm like, you know, the the oldest, you know, I'm a communist.
Guest:I'm like the most left.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, and he's like, you know, and I'm, you know, soft, all this stuff.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I'm like, yeah, I'm pretty good.
Guest:I can do.
Guest:And to just watch Bobby in a club.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Especially in Boston.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:There are times where I'm just like, oh, I'm not doing the same thing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'm not doing, like, I'm not even close.
Guest:And, you know, you're 25, so you think you're better than you are.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:So it was so great to just be on the road with him because I'm like, oh.
Guest:It reminded me, I'm like, my best set I've ever had, for three minutes, I've reached, like, Bobby at Cruising.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Speed, you know?
Guest:So it was like, it was great to just have to.
Guest:See a real killer.
Guest:And Papa, too, it was just like, it was good to see these guys crushing.
Guest:Totally different.
Guest:Totally, in totally different ways.
Guest:And they both, you would learn so much from both of them.
Marc:Well, that's like, those are the opposite ends of the craft spectrum.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:You know, because, you know, Papa is so meticulous in his timing and his structure.
Guest:And every bit has like a thesis.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And he's got bam, bam, bam, bam.
Guest:And then a conclusion.
Guest:I mean, literally watching.
Guest:And Bobby's just like, gag, gag, gag, gag, gag, gag, gag.
Guest:it was awesome oh my god so so when did you like so how long did you kick around baltimore i moved i moved right around that time when i started opening for those guys i was like because in my again you're like well now i'm a working comic you moved to where new york yeah to a story this is when i come to your bed bug ridden apartment right around then um and so yeah i i don't graduate i they let me walk
Guest:Because if you have less than eight credits, they assume you're going to finish in summer school.
Guest:And I just wanted my mom to get the picture of me in the gown.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:So I still, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, I have every credit except my language credits.
Marc:And that one you could breeze through if you told me.
Guest:I could take a test.
Guest:I could go take a test whenever.
Guest:But I think it's funny not to have your, to almost get it.
Marc:It was haunting to me.
Marc:I was undergrad for five years and I had an incomplete and I was like, oh my God.
Marc:It still gets to you?
Marc:Well, I mean, I finished it.
Guest:You did finish it?
Guest:Yeah, I finished it.
Guest:Oh, wow.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, I like not finishing it.
Guest:It makes me feel... Interesting.
Guest:I have a weird sense of superiority where it's like, I don't give a fuck.
Guest:I could do it right now.
Guest:I'm not going to.
Marc:I did life without it.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Yeah, look at me.
Guest:I lied when I needed to get day job.
Guest:I just said I graduated.
Guest:Nobody fucking checked.
Guest:Why not?
Guest:You just shown the picture.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Here's me shaking hands with the chancellor.
Guest:Would a non-graduate have access to this?
Guest:Do you have a diploma?
Marc:Look at the picture.
Guest:What is he handing me?
Guest:And yeah, and so I moved.
Guest:I moved when I'm, yeah, when I'm 25, 26 to New York.
Marc:So what's going on there?
Marc:So you're doing like, because like by the time I left New York,
Marc:Whatever alt scene that I was involved in was the original one, but then it became very established.
Marc:Like, I've never set foot in the Creek and the Cave.
Guest:Oh, wow, yeah.
Marc:It wasn't there.
Guest:I kind of caught it at the tail end, probably.
Guest:Of the alt thing?
Marc:Of that scene, because that was like... My scene, like, Eugene Merman still had the... What was it called?
Guest:He did the festival, right?
Guest:The Eugene Merman festival.
Marc:Well, he did, but there was a room they used to do... It doesn't matter, yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, I think I caught the tail end of a lot of that stuff.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was kind of weird.
Guest:I mean, you know, I did most of my—I would play, you know, the alt rooms in New York, but it was just like—it wasn't really an alt scene.
Guest:It was just like you had clubs, and then it was literally everything else, right?
Guest:Brooklyn and just anywhere.
Marc:But something morphed at some point.
Marc:Like it's weird because like all seemed to fragment, you know, into just these rooms.
Marc:But like, you know, the guys like, you know, look, I know, you know, Big J and I know Kurt and I, you know, and they were kind of the ones behind me.
Marc:And I love those guys.
Marc:But then at some point it became a little more tribal.
Marc:Like, you know, there was the skank fest guys.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:And then there were the women with, you know, the bangs doing, you know, the more quiet or thoughtful people.
Guest:So, right.
Marc:So, you know, definitely broke up somehow.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, I guess that's true.
Guest:Maybe I'm overthinking it.
Guest:I think you're overthinking it, because I always thought of it as—like, I moved at a time where everybody was kind of finding their footing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And the other thing is, a lot of those people all started at the same time.
Guest:A lot of them are still friends.
Guest:Like, I do—I mean, I like—I'll go to all those rooms, and I still—
Guest:I like doing that.
Guest:I like that maybe it's a little tribal, but I like that there's different types of rooms you can go to where different shit's working.
Marc:There was, like, not an agenda.
Marc:Like, when I was looking, you know, when I looked you up, like, you know, and I'm associated with politics on some level, but I didn't even know what the fuck the dirtbag left was until today.
Guest:Well, that's—I mean, so when I moved, after like a year or two, me and my buddies, Nick Mullen and Adam Freeland, we started Comptown, our podcast.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that's the first thing that popped.
Guest:I think I know Nick Mullen.
Guest:Nick's hilarious.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Super funny guy.
Guest:Oh, he's a funny guy.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Super funny.
Guest:Really, like—and we had an—I mean, that show was—
Guest:We got successful, again, by accident.
Guest:My whole career has felt like something that's an accident.
Marc:So when you get in, so you're doing these rooms in New York and podcasting is just a thing just starting?
Marc:It was literally, here's how I felt about it.
Marc:So it's come down to audio?
Guest:It was audio.
Guest:We were like, you know, video, no nothing.
Guest:And honestly, my thoughts were, I was like, podcasting's over.
Guest:I was like, Marin, comedy, bang, bang, This American Life.
Guest:That was it.
Guest:It's done.
Guest:And Mullen was fucking right.
Guest:And he was like, let's just do it.
Guest:I thought for sure we would do like seven episodes.
Guest:Because every comic was doing that at the time.
Guest:They would do 10 episodes.
Marc:They'd see nine people listen and they quit.
Guest:Yeah, exactly, exactly.
Guest:And then we just, I think the reason we even associated with the Dirtbag Left at all is because Nick was roommates with a couple people that were in Chapel Trap House.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so, I mean, we, and you know, I happen to have, I don't, I'm not really super political in my act or even, but if something comes up, I'll talk, I don't, I won't shy away from talking about it.
Guest:I just, I, my comedy is a lot more just like interpersonal.
Guest:It's so, I'm so personally driven that if you pay attention, you could probably see what my politics are.
Marc:Well, that's me too.
Marc:I know I can't talk from anywhere from my, but my own point of view.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so, you know, the whole political thing is very funny because I think just by having friends who are
Guest:Aligned.
Guest:Or political, that it's like we just got kind of, we were just friends with them.
Guest:And same thing, I have friends who are, that's their thing is being political.
Guest:Twitch streaming, political stuff like that.
Guest:But yeah, and so it's funny that our show ever got aligned with any politics, because if you listen to the show, the whole point is just like...
Guest:the dumbest having fun with your friends and it's like middle school when you would just say not even sex it's dumber than that I mean we talk about sex too but it would be like it's just shitting on each other you know stream of consciousness bits saying you know it's kind of what you're saying about being 60 and being dirty I kind of felt like
Guest:Well, in our 20s, being the Come Town guys was awesome, but it's like we're going to be 40 and being the Come Town guys.
Guest:Right, yeah.
Guest:So we're all doing our own shit now.
Guest:They got the Adam Friedland Show, which is really funny, and I did my own podcast that's a little more... It's advice.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's advice plus interview stuff.
Guest:You still do it?
Guest:I still do.
Guest:I still do Stabby's World, yeah.
Guest:And it's video, though?
Guest:Video, yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:You made the jump.
Guest:I made the jump, brother.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Because it really was just...
Guest:I wanted to make something that I could just do.
Guest:My issue with podcasting was that, well, when you're doing it with two other guys and everything is sort of like your dynamic, you can't really pre-record shit.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:And I wanted to go on the road.
Guest:We all wanted to kind of do our own shit.
Guest:And so it was like, we're doing five episodes in two days, but it's like the same guys talking about the same stuff.
Marc:You do it at a time and you do call-in?
Guest:I do a bunch at a time.
Guest:I have a guest.
Guest:I have a friend.
Guest:If you're ever in New York, you want to do the show, we'd love to have you.
Guest:And then people call in with their voicemails.
Guest:So we reply to their... And then we do a Patreon episode where they call in directly.
Guest:And that's really fun to be able to just talk to people.
Marc:That's interesting, though, what you said about...
Marc:you know, where you are personally politically and then what you do on stage.
Marc:Because for me, that's always been the mix that you got to pull off.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:Is that, you know, you're going to, if you're going to, for me, you don't seem to want to do it, which is fine.
Marc:But like, you know, I have politics, how they run through me.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:And what my interpretation is.
Marc:But I'd be careful.
Marc:I'm always sort of like, I always want to ground it in the fact that, you know, I'm an imperfect person with problems.
Guest:Sure, sure, sure.
Guest:sure yeah yeah oh yeah i do think about this totally totally yeah and i do and i do think on some level i guess i also like to think of it holistically of of like that is still a passion of mine and i still think inequality in this country is out of you know incredibly out of control and the stuff i went to school for public policy and i mostly was focusing on welfare policy but i just know that
Guest:That I spent—if I was really serious about those things, I would have fucking gone to, you know, studied more, gotten a job.
Marc:And had like a thankless civil service type of— Exactly.
Guest:I mean, I was a tutor in Baltimore City for a couple years when I was open-miking.
Guest:And when I quit, I was like, I have to quit because I'm not—
Guest:I'm not pouring my whole being into this.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And also when you have ego or you want to, you know, be recognized.
Marc:Totally.
Marc:Totally.
Marc:For what you're doing.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, that's a pretty thankless world.
Marc:Like I got pretty obsessed with social workers and like no one ever talks about them and they're kind of holding things together.
Marc:Barely.
Marc:It's crazy.
Marc:You know, it's an amazing.
Guest:You should literally triple what they make.
Guest:And teachers too.
Guest:Yeah, absolutely.
Guest:And so I, and so I guess the way I look at it is,
Guest:I poured myself into getting good at stand-up.
Guest:And I do think there will be kind of a later... Like, I'm even kind of thinking about... I got a place in Baltimore.
Guest:My family still lives there.
Guest:So I'm spending a little more time there this year just kind of hanging out with them, reconnecting with stuff.
Guest:And I was like, you know, I want to do some, you know, charity work in Baltimore.
Guest:I mean, the reason I do comedy is because I had...
Guest:a teacher in like second and third grade who was like, he was doing community theater.
Guest:They would put on these great things.
Guest:He let me host the talent show when I'm in third grade.
Guest:So I'm up there like riffing when I'm, it's like one of my positive memories.
Guest:So it's like, I want to go back and like help, you know, help out that way.
Guest:But I do think that's, to me right now, it's a little separate from my output.
Guest:You know, it's not, I don't think I can,
Guest:communicate the ideas that i'm passionate about in a way that's also funny because i am very staunchly on the like i'm a laughs per minute guy i'm a like and that's maybe why i want to do maybe a little acting or write something do a show because you can be a little more um
Guest:more complex ideas that way.
Guest:Whereas I think stand-up, I love it.
Guest:It's my favorite thing in the world.
Marc:Depends what your audience is.
Marc:And lately, I've been sort of... You know what I mean?
Marc:Because you do build... When you get an audience, you have manifested it.
Marc:So you're looking at a reflection of some kind.
Marc:And then you have to decide, like, is this who I am?
Marc:That guy?
Right.
Marc:right but oddly you know despite my uh you know lifelong attempt to self-sabotage myself yeah yeah yeah you know i've got i've got these you know grown-up you know smart kind of uh uh you know decent people right at my shows and like lately i've been like are you sure yeah
Marc:Like there's part of me that's sort of like, let me show you who I really am.
Guest:Let's get into it.
Guest:But I always have.
Marc:And they're still there.
Marc:And I think that not unlike anything else, you know, people hear what they want to hear.
Marc:They make judgments about it.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:But it all depends on how you tip it.
Marc:But I think that, you know, being honest and being base or being filthy, you know, is as much part of the human condition as anything else.
Marc:And the relief that you can get out of people and yourself by sort of, you know, sharing those things.
Marc:Those things, you know, it's genuine humanity.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Right?
Guest:That's true.
Guest:That's absolutely true.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it's the thing everybody does get.
Guest:Whether you want to say it.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:Somebody.
Guest:Farts are funny.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Farts.
Guest:You know.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:Sex.
Guest:All the stuff.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:All the, like, that's why these things just do hit the hardest when it comes to stand-up.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And now, like, unfortunately, you know, despite no one's best effort, you know, information technology has really successfully broken almost everyone's brain.
Marc:Yeah, absolutely.
Marc:It's fucked.
Marc:It's super fucked.
Marc:And, you know, our brains aren't meant to manage what we get out of that thing.
Marc:No.
Marc:You know, and it's like it's kind of crazy.
Marc:So you can have this experience with these people, but they go home and you don't know what they're doing.
Guest:Yeah, that's—you know what they're doing.
Guest:And you're right.
Guest:We kind of obsess over, you know, your act, what you're going to do, whatever.
Guest:But it's like, this is one—most people, even diehard fans will see you, what, four times in their life?
Guest:Right.
Guest:Diehards.
Guest:That's right.
Marc:They don't know what you're doing with the other— Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it's like, who knows what—
Guest:And then you said it too, where it's like, you don't know what they're taking out of the thing you might want to put out.
Guest:They don't even give a fuck about it.
Guest:There's just something they like about something intrinsic about you that they just like.
Guest:They want to hear you talk when it comes down to it.
Marc:But it's interesting to me though, because this is the other component that I'm starting to realize is that there's still some part of you that wants to write a show.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, like, it seems to me—well, here's my premise.
Guest:Movies may be more than shows, but yeah.
Marc:It seems to me you're of a generation where I start to realize, like, look, I don't have a YouTube presence.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So, like, when I do a special, you know, I want to be paid by, you know, a network or a platform.
Marc:I want them to give me the money, and then, you know, I don't need to know how many people watch it.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Absolutely.
Marc:But, like, because I know because I have no presence, if I did a special, I put it on YouTube, I'd be sitting there every day.
Marc:I'm like, how can only 100 people watch this?
Marc:So I'm in denial, and that's fine.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:But it seems to me that there's all these –
Marc:Everyone's building their own show business.
Marc:What mainstream show business is or what it was when I was coming up, you go pitch, you get a show, you do this or that.
Marc:People don't give a fuck anymore.
Guest:I guess that's true.
Guest:I guess what I meant was like something narrative that's not stand up, but not necessarily.
Marc:No, I was just asking in terms of like, how do you see show business?
Guest:Well, how I see show business is that, yeah, I think the self... That's exactly how I view it.
Guest:My YouTube channel, I view it as like my own network.
Guest:That's what I'm building, right?
Guest:And I like that I have control over it.
Guest:I mean, I am a little worried because...
Guest:YouTube was supposed to be this, oh, it's free from all these network restrictions, whatever.
Guest:But now they're getting every tech, every huge tech company, you know, they start to censor a little more.
Guest:And they want things a little cleaner because they make their money off advertising.
Guest:So inevitably, we will have to make an exodus from YouTube as well.
Guest:But that's not where we are now.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:At the end of the day, it is about having the ability to having your own fans so that even let's say you put something out with a network.
Guest:You put something out, you know, in theaters or whatever.
Guest:Basically, show business is one gigantic bringer.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that's it.
Guest:There's no pretense that it's not.
Guest:There's no.
Guest:Yeah, there's no way to.
Guest:And maybe you could.
Marc:As an entrepreneur, it's a bringer.
Marc:Yeah, if it's old school show business, it's just a numbers game.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And now they've had to adapt to sort of giving people opportunities who already have, you know, a following.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Just to meet their bottom line.
Marc:They don't give a fuck.
Marc:They might not even know you, but they look at the numbers and they're like, what do you want to do?
Guest:And it becomes a thing of like every relationship is like...
Guest:You just have to be getting something out of it where you have to build up the – you're never going to – the way I look at it is you're never going to develop through a network.
Guest:You're never going to get your opportunities there.
Guest:Anymore.
Guest:You have to create that yourself.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:And then it becomes a pure – it is pure business where it's like, can we do something here?
Guest:Like, you know, I loved – I was a little nervous when I put a special out on Netflix because you don't know anything about a huge –
Guest:With a network.
Guest:Was that the new one?
Guest:The new one, right?
Guest:What's it called again?
Guest:Fat Rascal on Netflix right now.
Guest:Because, you know, I had done my whole career was the internet.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:I did whatever the fuck I wanted.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And, but it's Netflix.
Guest:It's the biggest streamer.
Guest:And I want more people to see my shit.
Guest:It did great.
Guest:Did really well.
Guest:I was really happy with it.
Guest:They were happy with it.
Guest:And they didn't restrict me at all.
Guest:They
Guest:It tricked me probably less than YouTube would have.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And they were great to work with.
Guest:I was, you know, and it was like not that I didn't expect it, but it's like, you know, you just expect the man.
Guest:You're like, fuck.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:You know, fuck you.
Guest:You know, all your suits.
Guest:Right.
Marc:But my point is, is that in terms of something doing well, it's all relative to their fucking algorithm.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So you could get lost or you could not.
Marc:And you don't even know.
Marc:So, you know, really.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And yeah, that is true.
Guest:I mean, but I just think that putting something, it just goes to are you getting something with a lot of viewership or are you getting money?
Guest:You just have to make it worth your while one way or another.
Guest:But there's no – and then you have to always have –
Guest:uh, the, um, ability to walk away and be like, I'll just fucking do it myself.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that's also why, I mean, when I, when we, when we stopped Comptown, part of me was like, I don't really want to do a podcast.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But with just a couple months, I was like, it's so important to just have your own fans forever.
Guest:And a podcast is the best way to just kind of keep them weekly, giving them something, getting to interact with them.
Marc:But you don't, you're not crazy with the content.
Marc:I mean, do you feel like, like you're overwhelmed in terms of what you have to feed?
Guest:Yeah, I mean, a little bit.
Guest:I mean, I don't—the overhead is high.
Guest:I have buddies that I've, you know—I mean, it's cool because I've gotten to hire my friends.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But, you know, we have to put out a lot of fucking shit.
Guest:And it is like you're running a network, and you're not making that much money off it.
Guest:Everything goes to touring.
Guest:So it's just like a Jenga tower of, like—
Guest:Everything has to just support the touring business.
Marc:So they know where you are and when you're going to be there and they stay in their face.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then if I wanted to put something out, right, let's say I do want to write that show.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And either I go with a network because maybe they just give us a bigger budget that I can afford or have access to like.
Marc:Different type of ad support.
Guest:Yeah, whatever.
Guest:Whatever it is.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That way.
Guest:Or fuck it and we just make our own thing.
Guest:Then at the end of the day, if I go directly to those people, I know they exist.
Guest:I know someone's going to be interested.
Marc:And then breaking even is not terrible.
Guest:Not terrible.
Guest:Especially if you're making money on the road.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It's kind of what musicians have been up against since Napster, basically, where it's like,
Guest:Yeah, everything is your fucking touring business.
Marc:Right.
Guest:And I happen to like touring.
Guest:I mean, I'd like to do it in a way that's healthy for me and I'm figuring that out right now.
Guest:Yeah, you can do it.
Guest:But I do like it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so, and there is something to, going back to like, not to sound corny about phones and shit, but it's like, there still just is nothing like live performance and there is nothing like every show having its own energy and own connection.
Guest:to people and and to just then and that is at the end of the day the more i've taken i've taken a couple months and thought about it yeah i still just love stand-up comedy yeah just do in a club in a club the most the best yeah you know yeah i just did two sets of dry heat comedy club in albuquerque because i grew up there that's awesome
Marc:50 people, and I just dropped in.
Marc:But the weird thing is, is that because of, and you probably, you know, you work within this because you seem to record a lot of club sets, is that, you know, when you do a show, if I go do an hour, like, say, tomorrow in Montclair, New Jersey, or whatever, Thursday, and something happens, like, you know, I love it, and it's great, and it makes it worthwhile, and it's what I set out to do, but you walk off going like, no, it's gone.
Marc:No clip.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:But that's beautiful.
Guest:See,
Guest:I also philosophically have been thinking about this a lot because I also recognize like doing clips was an accident.
Guest:It was just I put out my own YouTube special and I didn't have much.
Guest:I had a small YouTube presence but nothing crazy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I had been trying to get a Comedy Central half hour.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I recorded every set to watch it.
Guest:And so I just had all these random moments that normally I'd be like are gone.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I never set out to be a crowd work clip guy.
Guest:But I just had a year's worth of them.
Marc:But we're...
Marc:Were there crowd work clip guys when you did that?
Marc:Or did you set a certain standard?
Guest:I think it was kind of starting.
Guest:Don't get me wrong.
Guest:I was like a material guy.
Guest:I was precious about my material.
Guest:And so I was like, fuck it.
Guest:I'll put out some stuff.
Guest:And within a couple days, I was out of material to put out.
Guest:Because I was like, well, the rest of it's got to go in the fucking hour.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:You don't burn it.
Guest:So I was like, all right, let's just do this.
Guest:And so it was kind of accidental.
Guest:But I do think there is, and it's helped me tremendously.
Guest:And I view these clips as like an advertisement.
Guest:I don't see them as my comedy.
Guest:I see them as like, it's either this or something bullshit.
Guest:It'll make people want to see you.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:But I think there is a toll you pay in putting enough of that out there.
Guest:Because that's also, you are, that does affect the live show.
Guest:Because if people had no idea
Guest:Or they just want that the whole time.
Guest:Well, it's not even just that.
Guest:That is not that big a deal.
Guest:It's not as big a deal as people think because usually it's one dickhead who really wants to be a part of it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And you could just destroy him.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it's fun for you.
Guest:It's fun for them.
Guest:And everybody else.
Guest:And they actually hate it.
Guest:Do it to a point where they're not having a good time.
Guest:That one guy.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And then he's the sacrificial lamb.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:But I just think there's, from a performance aspect, you're giving, you are giving away a lot of yourself.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And a lot of what is special about you as a performer.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And, but at the same time, because they are so ethereal.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And because I do like getting into it with the crowd.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because, like, you know, my, you know, I liked, I hope that my crowd work isn't, isn't like the, like, hey, nice shirt, you fucking bitch.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Like, it's a little...
Guest:No, of course not.
Guest:I actually like to ask questions and get into it.
Marc:If it happens organically, it's great because you don't know where it's going to go.
Marc:It keeps you on your feet and you might actually discover something.
Guest:Something really – but that's the thing is like now I'm at this point where I'm trying to write this hour and I'm like, wait, is that a clip or should I build on that?
Guest:Like I am having those problems to the point where I think I'm just not going to put out a lot of stuff.
Guest:Well, that's – I write on stage.
Marc:So I have to –
Marc:The things have to evolve.
Marc:And, you know, they keep adding to themselves.
Marc:Yeah, absolutely.
Marc:And I don't do the clips.
Marc:So I imagine that would be a big problem for me is sort of like, oh, that bit's so much better now.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:That's like a whole bit.
Guest:And I feel bad for comics who are – because, look, I at least was lucky in that –
Guest:I was overdue, I think, to put something out.
Guest:I had never put out anything but a five-minute thing before I did my first special.
Guest:And I'd been doing comedy for, I think, 11 or 12 years by the time it came out.
Guest:So, you know, I think I was at least formed to a certain degree.
Guest:I do feel bad for a lot of... Because I remember moments that I thought when I was younger were fucking hilarious.
Guest:That...
Guest:If I put them out, I would be fucking mortified.
Guest:And I see kids doing that now.
Guest:You're putting up open mic sets.
Guest:So I do feel bad.
Guest:And maybe this is just me being old.
Guest:Because everybody just does get old.
Guest:And maybe this is just the way shit is going to go.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:But I do feel like you should kind of toil in obscurity for a while and not do shit and bomb and maybe have magic moments.
Guest:But A, they're not as good as you think they are.
Guest:But let them exist in your head as like something to push you forward to really get to it.
Guest:Because, you know, I just do think you do just pay a toll.
Guest:There's no way putting out that much stuff doesn't affect quality in some way.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, maybe if you work hard enough, you can overcome it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But even I'm starting to feel it now after it's been a couple of years.
Guest:And if I were to look at the number of minutes that I've put out.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's just too many minutes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's too many fucking minutes.
Guest:It's like I've done two hour specials plus a five, 10 minute clips every 10 minute long clips every week.
Guest:Plus the short clips.
Guest:It's like, it's probably over like five hours, six hours.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Just too much output.
Guest:I'm not that good.
Guest:I'm not that talented, you know?
Guest:And so, you know, I'm thinking about that going forward and what I want to do.
Guest:But, hey, man, at the end of the day, fucking Clips got me, you know.
Guest:Playing theaters.
Guest:Yeah, I'm in the theater.
Guest:I bought a fucking, you know, got my mom a new dishwasher.
Guest:We're looking good, you know?
Guest:All right.
Guest:Things are going good.
Guest:It was great talking to you, man.
Guest:Great talking to you, man.
Guest:Thanks for having me.
Guest:Yep.
Marc:There you go.
Marc:Love that guy.
Marc:You can get his podcast, Davi's World, wherever you get your podcasts and at Patreon for exclusive members only content.
Marc:Hang out for a minute, folks.
Marc:Folks, it was five years ago on July 7th, 2019, we posted an amazing conversation with David Lee Roth.
Marc:It's episode 1034, and you can get it right now in all podcast feeds.
Guest:My first singing teacher had two numbers on his forearm.
Guest:One was his camp number, and the other was his orchestra number.
Guest:And as a punk kid, I once asked him in front of the class, I said, so what happened just if you didn't sing good?
Guest:And he was very explicit.
Guest:He said, if you didn't sing good, you went up the chimneys.
Guest:I think of that every single time I sing, every single time I get ready to sing, every time my inner child goes, fuck it, you don't need to sing.
Guest:Don't worry about it.
Guest:You'll sing fine.
Guest:I remember that.
Guest:And I remember, I think it was Ricky Weiss or whatever, Jesus, we were 13, 12 years old, saying to him, no, I remember him saying to me more than once, Mr. Roth.
Guest:if you can't find it within yourself, to sing on behalf of those who went up the chimneys with a song in their hearts.
Guest:Sing so you don't go up the chimneys.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:And that's where that fire for run with the devil.
Guest:How long are we going to dance?
Guest:We're going to dance the night away.
Guest:Hey, how about these words?
Guest:Let's jump, okay?
Guest:They're all verbs.
Guest:Think about that, all right?
Guest:We're going to run with the devil.
Guest:Are we talking about love?
Guest:No, we ain't talking about love.
Guest:And by the way, do you jog?
Guest:No, I run.
Guest:Who do you run with?
The devil.
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.
Marc:That's David Lee Roth on episode 1034.
Marc:To get all WTF episodes ad-free, sign up for WTF Plus.
Marc:Just go to the link in the episode description or go to wtfpod.com and click on WTF Plus.
Marc:And just a reminder before we go, this podcast is hosted by Acast.
Marc:Here's some old guitar.
Marc:Music Music
guitar solo
Thank you.
Thank you.
Marc:boomer lives and monkey and la fonda and the cat angels are coming down they're coming down they're coming down
Bye.