Episode 161 - Joe Rogan
Guest:are we doing this really wait for it are we doing this wait for it pow what the fuck and it's also what the fuck what's wrong with me it's time for wtf what the fuck with mark maron
Marc:Okay, let's do this.
Marc:How are you, what the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck buddies?
Marc:What the fuckineers?
Marc:What the fuck agents?
Marc:I just made that one up.
Marc:A lot of them are coming in.
Marc:I can't keep up with them.
Marc:That's it.
Marc:I'm only doing three.
Marc:I am Marc Maron.
Marc:This is WTF.
Marc:Welcome to the show.
Marc:I'm glad you're listening.
Marc:Today on the show, Joe Rogan will be here in the garage in a little bit.
Marc:Looking forward to talking to Joe.
Marc:Got some things I want to talk to Joe about.
Marc:All right, let's get into a little riff here before I get Rogan in here.
Marc:I've been thinking about irony again.
Marc:I've been thinking about Charlie Sheen.
Marc:I've been thinking about myself.
Marc:I've been thinking about integrity.
Marc:I've been thinking about this idea of ironic detachment, how much that word gets thrown around.
Marc:It sort of annoys me.
Marc:The thing that kind of threw me for a loop or that got me thinking about this, I was in Atlanta.
Marc:And when you're in Atlanta, you know, there's all this.
Marc:Everyone wants you to go to this Claremont lounge.
Marc:Now, I didn't go because of my assumptions.
Marc:That's fine.
Marc:I wasn't condescending.
Marc:I just didn't want to deal with that.
Marc:I don't like dealing with crowds.
Marc:I don't drink.
Marc:And there was part of me that did not want to see these beat up old strippers doing their thing.
Marc:Now, someone said to me on Twitter or in person, I can't remember, is there a difference anymore, folks?
Marc:Is there?
Marc:Someone said to me, it's ironic.
Marc:Now, what does that mean?
Marc:What does it mean that it's ironic?
Marc:Is it ironic?
Marc:Is the place ironic?
Marc:Is your being there ironic?
Marc:Are you looking at it ironically?
Marc:What does ironic mean?
Marc:Does that mean that you're using the word ironic to detach from something?
Marc:that is pathetic and mock it or condescend it or laugh at it?
Marc:Is that what ironic mean?
Marc:Is that your disposition?
Marc:Is that your excuse for not committing to your emotional reaction to it?
Marc:Is an ironic disposition another form of cowardice that just enables you to repress your emotions or not have them or do whatever you think the rest of the people are doing?
Marc:I'm sick of this fucking irony shit.
Marc:I'll tell you, man, because in a situation like that, if you're saying it's ironic, does that mean the strippers are in on it?
Marc:Are they all old and backstage and beat up and saying to each other, hey, isn't this great?
Marc:We're really turning stripping in on itself.
Marc:We're deconstructing it.
Marc:We're presenting it in a different way.
Marc:Our very existence is mocking the reality of what people expect from strippers in the day and age we live in now.
Marc:I'm so glad we are so clever.
Marc:Do you think that's really the conversation going on backstage?
Marc:Are they just happy that people are coming and throwing money at them for whatever reason they may be throwing money at them?
Marc:I tell you, man, in some situations, if you think you have ironic detachment, you're actually more depraved than the guys who are going there to actually get some prurient detachment.
Marc:excitement, some sexual satisfaction.
Marc:If you're there to say like, oh man, this is so fucked up.
Marc:Oh dude, look at her.
Marc:She's so old.
Marc:Oh, this is so fucking sad, man.
Marc:This is excellent.
Marc:Hey, get me a shot of Jaeger.
Marc:You're more depraved than the guy going, oh yeah.
Marc:Come here, bring those wrinkly old things over here.
Marc:I just love it.
Marc:I just love it.
Marc:You're more depraved than that guy because you are disingenuous.
Marc:You are dishonest.
Marc:Your ironic detachment makes you half a person, makes you lack of self, makes you a coward.
Marc:I mean, I just think about this because there was a time and I think I've talked about some of this before where, you know, the great philosophical question used to be, you know, what is the meaning of life?
Marc:And now the great philosophical question is how am I being used and am I okay with that?
Marc:What am I willing to sacrifice my sense of self for, my sense of well-being, my sense of integrity?
Marc:How much money is that worth?
Marc:I mean, is it ironic to be at a job that you know you hate, but because you're overqualified or you have no choice and that you're very aware that you could be doing better things or bigger things, that as you sit with that feeling that you are taking an ironic job
Marc:position and that makes you feel better is that is that real irony or is that just sad how long does that go on for before you realize like this isn't worth it you know i'm compromising my integrity i'm killing part of my soul here that's not ironic that's tragic i'm not an ironic person i'm a tragic person because i'm not willing to take the steps necessary to fulfill the dreams that i have to to make myself a person of integrity look i've i've everybody has sold out a bit
Marc:at some point in their life everyone's taken chances everyone's uh done what they had to do you got to do what you have to do but either you live with that and you honestly own it that this is what i'm doing or you sit there for your whole life thinking like well i could be doing anything i could be doing something better i could be doing something more creative you know i'm better than this job it's just like you know i'm getting paid good now when was that when did that become not selling out when did that not become a compromise
Marc:When did the cleverness and creativity of the commercial transcend the fact that it is a commercial?
Marc:When did that happen?
Marc:When did everything become a level playing field in terms of what has integrity and what doesn't?
Marc:But everybody's got these problems, and at some point, you've got to make a stand for yourself.
Marc:At some point, you got to realize, like, I did compromise my integrity.
Marc:Do I want it back or do I live with this?
Marc:It's just interesting.
Marc:I've been thinking a little bit more about the Charlie Sheen thing for reasons that I'll get to, you know, I'll talk about later.
Marc:But just in terms of the fact that no matter what level of success you are at, when one snaps for whatever reason, you know, there's a freedom in that snapping.
Marc:There's an explosive expression of poetry and rage and insanity that is probably the most honest anyone's going to be in their life.
Marc:When are you going to have your explosive rage and poetry about just the condition of your life?
Marc:Where is that moment of freedom for you?
Marc:And do you have it?
Marc:Do you think about it?
Marc:Do you fantasize about it?
Marc:And can you ever transcend whatever compromises you made in your life to compress your soul into the coal that it is?
Marc:But look, man, I hosted a game show.
Marc:I did.
Marc:Some of you know about it.
Marc:It was the worst fucking time of my life.
Marc:I was broke.
Marc:I had somehow bent it in my mind as something that I could make my own.
Marc:But I've never been very good at hiding the fact that I'm filled with hate.
Marc:It was the American version of Nevermind the Buzzcocks.
Marc:Maybe I've talked about it before.
Marc:But thank God it didn't take off.
Marc:I had no idea how the flow of the game went or what it was about.
Marc:I didn't care.
Marc:But I needed the money.
Marc:So I did that, and I felt fucking disgusting for it.
Marc:I got sick.
Marc:I got skinny.
Marc:I felt like I'd compromised everything that I'd worked for, and I made $75,000.
Marc:I got out of the hole.
Marc:I got through the first divorce, and the thing didn't take off.
Marc:Thank fucking God I got lucky.
Marc:I don't know what I would have been had I been hosting that thing or whether or not that explosion of rage and honesty and poetry in order to regain my freedom after I took it up the ass that hard for money would have saved me.
Marc:Thank God I did not have to deal with that.
Marc:I got lucky.
Marc:Now I'm in my garage exploding twice a week for you.
Marc:I mean, the enemy of irony is having the courage to love something or like something or trust your own opinion and not be part of the united front of condescension, of fear, of actually having feelings about something that may be tragic or pathetic or dated or not your thing.
Marc:Go find your thing.
Marc:Don't go back in time or go into sorted little holes where you can sit there and pretend like you're above it all, like you're pompous.
Marc:like you are better than, like you are representatives of the empire.
Marc:Did you read that article by Brett Easton Ellis about Charlie Sheen on post-empire, the difference between empire and post-empire and cultural thinking?
Marc:It's a fascinating little essay.
Marc:It's very interesting.
Marc:I don't know where it's leading.
Marc:I don't know what this post-empire culture world that we're living in on an entertainment level is going to be, what it's going to mean to civilization, but
Marc:But man, we want it all on the table.
Marc:The more menacing the truth, the better it feels to witness.
Marc:You know, you build something about somebody in your head.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And then nine times out of ten, you know, you see them and you're like, oh, hey, what's up, man?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Brian Callan, a good friend of mine, just recently ran into Mencia.
Guest:And Mencia was like, because a lot of people think Brian and I are brothers.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:On IMDB.
Guest:And for whatever reason, we decided not to change it.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And he was like, how's your brother?
Guest:Haven't seen him since that whole thing went down.
Guest:Tell him I said hi.
Guest:Like, what?
Marc:that's what carlos said yeah like what like yeah he's an interesting guy yeah but like the thing you were talking about with my wife is that i as much as i hate her or i don't hate her but as angry as i was if i saw her again there would be part of me to be like we okay we good yeah you want to give your baby back to that guy that you had it with and come back and live with me
Marc:Joe Rogan, it's happening, is in the garage here at the Cat Ranch.
Marc:It was weird that you tweeted something, and you said, we've known each other for years, but we've never had a conversation.
Marc:Never really have.
Marc:It's weird, right?
Marc:Yeah, it's really weird.
Marc:I mean, I've had a relationship with you in my mind.
Marc:I mean, I've known, I mean, I remember when you started doing comedy, I think.
Marc:I remember very much when I started doing comedy.
Guest:Was it 88, 87?
Guest:88, August 27th.
Marc:Really?
Marc:You know the date?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:I remember you showed up at Stitches.
Guest:Are you going to say something nice about me?
Guest:Yeah, I was going to say that you, I had been doing comedy maybe five or six months.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And you were already an established professional comedian, and you came up to me at the Comedy Connection, and you gave me some really nice advice and a compliment, and it fired me up, and I was really excited.
Guest:Do you remember what I said?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I would have to be paraphrasing, but you were saying something along the lines of you're doing really great stuff, keep with it, stay original, keep writing, just keep doing it.
Marc:I wonder if that's one of those things, because I remember when I first saw you, I had this problem with guys who were...
Marc:you know, athletically oriented or had some sort of athletic nature about them before they came into comedy.
Marc:And I remember that you and Kevin Flynn, he was like a soccer guy.
Marc:And you were a kickboxing champion.
Marc:And there was part of me that was like, this is not for them.
Marc:This is not their world.
Marc:Why are they here?
Marc:Why don't they stay in their competitive world?
Marc:Oh, that's silly.
Marc:Well, of course it's silly.
Guest:But you were sort of a cocky fuck then, weren't you?
Guest:Well, I was definitely a lot different than I am now, but it was literally not even removed from fighting.
Guest:I was still competing.
Guest:And, you know, when you're fighting, I mean, I had three fights, three kickboxing matches while I was still doing comedy before I stopped doing it, before I realized I had to pick one road or the other.
Guest:But, you know, it's such a fucked up mindset when you're entering into a competition, you're agreeing to meet at a certain time, and you're going to...
Guest:get into a ring and literally throw your bones at each other and try to hurt each other it's a it's a really up mindset and if you're not trying to do it for a living if that's not your career it's it's something that you get wrapped up in and it becomes you did you bring that to comedy though was i sensing something i don't think so i mean i just had it all about me i'm sure
Guest:You know, I mean, I was still competing.
Guest:You're guaranteed to be fucked up if you're doing that.
Guest:You're always.
Marc:Were you always like that, though?
Marc:I mean, I mean, I mean, so I guess we're all competitive, but I tend to not in my life.
Marc:I wish I was driven towards sports so it had some sense of healthy competition, because with me, it's always life threatening and it's going to get personal.
Marc:It doesn't matter what it is, whether it's Trivial Pursuit or a softball game.
Marc:At some point, I will be so upset that I will have to quit.
Guest:Do you get upset at ping pong games or playing pool or something?
Marc:I know I can do it.
Marc:I'm one of those guys that for the first game, I'm focused, I'm in it, and I can play well.
Marc:But by the second game, I'm like, I can't follow through with this competition thing, and you're an asshole.
Guest:Well, I was always very competitive because I had a fucked up childhood and winning at things was one of the few things that gave me some sort of a sense of self-esteem.
Guest:What, did your dad beat the shit out of you?
Guest:Didn't beat the shit out of me, but beat the shit out of my mother.
Guest:And my parents were divorced when I was about five and my mom remarried when I was seven and we traveled all over the country.
Guest:My stepdad, he was a computer programmer and he became an architect.
Marc:Better guy?
Guest:Much better guy.
Guest:Very nice guy.
Marc:Someone told me that if someone, like if your brother's the one getting beat up or your mother or something like that, that it has more of an effect on you than you getting your ass kicked.
Guest:I'm sure it does.
Guest:I don't know, you know, because he never beat me.
Guest:No one ever beat me up when I was a kid.
Guest:I was lucky in that regard, but watching it happen,
Guest:You know, it's still, it's one of the most profound memories of my childhood.
Guest:I don't know necessarily if what I'm seeing in my brain, I mean, your entire body recycles itself every seven years except for your neurons.
Marc:We really don't even know.
Marc:I wanted to learn from Joe.
Marc:Because I know he's doing the big work.
Marc:I do.
Guest:Doing a lot of weird shit.
Guest:But, you know, we don't know what our memories really are.
Guest:You know, you don't exactly know if what you mean.
Guest:How many times have you thought you remembered something and then went and saw the place where you grew up and like, wow, this is so small.
Marc:Don't you also build a myth kind of that?
Marc:Don't you construct a memory that sort of functions to hold it as an emotional thing in your life?
Marc:Like, I find as I get older, they're diminishing.
Marc:So you're saying that much of that stuff, if you don't reframe it every seven years somehow, it'll just go away?
Guest:I don't even think it's a reframing issue.
Guest:We don't know where the memories are stored.
Guest:I mean, there's a lot of people that believe that memories are actually non-local.
Marc:They're stored in these photographs right here.
Marc:That's how they sell those to us.
Marc:It definitely helps.
Marc:That's a memory of my second wife when I liked her.
Marc:Right there.
Marc:I still have it up.
Marc:It's pathetic.
Marc:Is that Dr. Katz?
Marc:That's a Dr. Katz cartoon.
Guest:He was the host of the very first open mic night I ever did.
Marc:I remember when Johnny's in.
Guest:Nothing Katz.
Marc:I remember you at Stitches, but let's get back to this thing, this framing of memories.
Guest:So, anyway, that's my big memory from my childhood is my mother coming home with hamburger meat and my father being upset that it was hamburger that she had brought home for dinner, and he beat the shit out of her.
Guest:And that was the last time we left.
Guest:It's hard for me to even hear that.
Guest:I mean, like you left in the middle of the night kind of left?
Guest:I don't really totally remember.
Guest:I just remember all of a sudden we were staying at my grandfather's.
Guest:How old were you?
Guest:Maybe five, four or five, not sure.
Marc:And do you think that somehow or another that put that fight in you?
Guest:Yeah, unquestionably, yeah.
Guest:You know, the desire to defend yourself, you know?
Guest:And I was always small, too.
Marc:And defend your mom?
Guest:Yeah, that too.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, my stepdad came along really quickly.
Guest:Luckily, you know, we moved to a new apartment and she met this guy and he's a really great guy.
Guest:But, you know, there's that feeling that you can't trust anybody.
Guest:Like I thought my dad was this great guy.
Guest:You know, when you're a kid, your dad's your hero.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And then all of a sudden I realized when I was five years old, very clearly that my dad was a douchebag.
Marc:Was he a drunk?
Guest:No, he's just a big, scary guy.
Guest:Just a really violent guy.
Marc:It's interesting because I think some people at some points in your life would have thought that about you, that you were a pretty scary, tough little guy.
Guest:Maybe, but I didn't do anything to anybody.
Guest:Maybe if you looked at me or something, but not from dealing with me.
Guest:I'm a pretty nice guy.
Marc:Yeah, I'm finding that in the last few times I've met you.
Guest:Well, we don't know each other.
Guest:That's the weirdest thing.
Guest:That you're a pretty nice guy.
Guest:And I've tried to always be nice to you because in my mind, you were this guy that really said something really nice to me when I was, you know, basically a total beginner.
Marc:Well, I will tell you how that all evolved in a second, but I'm still a little curious about the, do you talk to your real father?
Guest:No, I don't know him.
Guest:I haven't seen him since I was six and haven't spoken to him since I was seven.
Guest:He's never reached out?
Guest:No, and his name is Joe Rogan, too.
Guest:And he was a martial arts guy, which is really crazy.
Guest:So he must know who I am.
Guest:How did you find that shit out about him?
Guest:Well, I knew about him when I was young.
Guest:I mean, he was doing karate when I was a little kid.
Guest:When you were five?
Guest:Yeah, he was always doing it.
Guest:And you chose to do that?
Guest:Well, I chose to do it because I was getting picked on.
Guest:I was always small, and I didn't have friends because I was moving from place to place.
Guest:I lived in New Jersey until I was seven, and then we moved to San Francisco, lived there from seven to 11, and then Florida from 11 to 13, and Boston from 13 to 24.
Guest:So it was like I never had a group of friends.
Guest:I was always the new kid in school, and I was little, so people fucked with me, and I didn't like it.
Guest:And so I tried to figure out how I could do something about that, and so I started doing martial arts.
Marc:It's just interesting to me that this guy that, you know, you hated because he destroyed you emotionally by doing that to your mom, then you sort of, you know, became a warrior in the same field.
Guest:Sort of.
Guest:You know, he wasn't never as dedicated as I was.
Guest:So you really did some research.
Guest:Well, I just know from my mom.
Guest:Oh, really?
Marc:From talking to her when I was younger.
Marc:She says he was never that good.
Guest:No, he just didn't do it that often.
Guest:He was a cop, and he was doing it sort of along with being a cop.
Guest:This story gets deeper and deeper.
Guest:A cop in New Jersey.
Marc:A New Jersey cop.
Marc:Did you find out anything else about him?
Guest:No.
Guest:Well, I ran into his friends once when I did a show in Florida.
Guest:Recently?
Guest:It was really bizarre.
Guest:Yeah, maybe three, four years ago.
Guest:They came up to you and said... Yeah, and said, you know, hey, we're cops from... You're Joe Rogan's kid.
Guest:I go, yeah.
Guest:And he goes, so, you know... He asked me a couple questions.
Guest:I go, I don't know him.
Guest:I haven't seen him since I was seven.
Marc:But that means he knows who you are very well.
Guest:Oh, I'm sure he does.
Guest:His daughters.
Guest:He has daughters that tried to contact me.
Guest:And they were like my half-sisters, I guess.
Guest:And they were really trying.
Guest:And they even tried to contact me when I was on Stern.
Guest:They were calling in and they were trying to get in there with me.
Guest:And they were trying to arrange.
Guest:And I was like, fuck that.
Guest:I don't need any weird people that I'm connected to through just genetics.
Marc:Are you curious as to whether or not he went on being a domestic abuse person?
Guest:Actually, he had to be.
Guest:I mean, he was so over the top.
Guest:I mean, unless he had some massive mushroom trip, I don't see how he could have ever seen himself in a different way.
Guest:I mean, he was just a really what I remember of him.
Guest:You know, again, it's just weird memories.
Guest:He was I remember two very violent moments from him.
Guest:One when he beat up my mom and one when he beat up one of my cousins, like a 16, 17 year old cousin.
Guest:I don't remember exactly what that was about.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:The cousin had accidentally hurt somebody or something, and he picked him up by his hair, like literally in the air by his hair.
Guest:It was terrifying.
Guest:God damn it.
Guest:Yeah, terrifying.
Guest:And so growing up around violence and seeing that kind of shit, I didn't want anybody to be able to do that to me.
Guest:I wanted to be able to defend myself.
Marc:So it's a control and protection thing.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, just fear.
Marc:No one's gonna fuck with you.
Guest:Yeah, it's just like, I don't want to be fucked with.
Guest:It's like, what are the options?
Guest:Do I carry a gun?
Guest:What do I do?
Guest:Do I bring weapons with me everywhere?
Guest:Do I learn how to fight and defend myself?
Marc:Did you ever have to engage it?
Marc:In a fight?
Guest:No, honestly.
Guest:One time in high school, but it was really quick.
Guest:It was nothing.
Guest:Are you disappointed about that?
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:That's the first thing that goes away when you actually learn how to fight is you don't really want to.
Marc:You're like, I can really hurt somebody.
Guest:Well, it's that.
Guest:And it's also you realize how fucking stupid it is.
Guest:And most of the time it's all about some weird sort of a social positioning thing.
Guest:Someone's trying to push you down to build themselves up.
Guest:It's it's a it's usually best avoided.
Marc:Well, the thing like I guess the thing that I responded to, too, because I know this in my own self and it probably is some reflection on me is that.
Marc:When I first met you, you were very focused.
Marc:You were very together.
Marc:You come from this competitive environment and this competitive mindset.
Marc:You were a professional or at least a champion of what you did.
Marc:And there was a certain element to you that was... You were sort of like... You definitely had this idea of who you were.
Marc:You had this confidence.
Marc:And no one was going to fuck with that.
Marc:And I think that it became a little...
Marc:I think that you were a little... I remember you were very clean.
Marc:You judged people that weren't doing... That did drugs or drank.
Marc:That you definitely... I judged them, really?
Guest:What do you remember of that?
Marc:Well, I just remember that there was definitely a line drawn between people who were fuck-ups and people weren't.
Marc:I mean, is there a point... Am I misreading that?
Marc:Was there a point where you were like, if you're going to fuck up your life... You seemed to have that control thing going.
Guest:I definitely did.
Guest:But I don't think I was too judgmental about it.
Guest:I had a lot of friends that did drugs or didn't drink.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I had a couple friends that died from it.
Guest:One of my best friends, when I was in my 20s, he died of, they don't know if it was heroin or coke.
Guest:He had a lot of issues with drugs.
Guest:And I had grown up with a buddy of mine whose cousin sold coke.
Guest:And when we were in high school, I watched him deteriorate.
Guest:I watched him completely fall apart.
Guest:Right.
Guest:going from this guy who was like this really fun, happy guy, to being like a waif.
Guest:He was like really skinny, and him and his girlfriend would just sit in, they had a basement apartment, and they would just sit in the apartment, or an attic apartment actually, and they would just sit in the apartment and just fucking watch TV and do coke.
Guest:I mean, they never left the house, and it was spooky.
Guest:It was like watching somebody who got poisoned, or watching somebody who got, you know.
Marc:Because they don't know that it's happening, and they think they're having a good time.
Guest:Well, it's like he became something different.
Guest:He got changed.
Marc:You saw him, you knew him when he was a kid, and then he changed into that.
Guest:I was always terrified of being a loser.
Guest:I was always terrified of being a failure or not worth something.
Guest:And like I said, most of my self-esteem had come from getting good at things.
Guest:And initially it was from art.
Guest:I was into drawing.
Guest:I wanted to be a comic book illustrator.
Guest:And then as I got older, when I started doing martial arts, then it became that.
Guest:And then it became...
Guest:anything that would any you know doing drugs or fucking up your life would ruin my chances of being good at that it would ruin the only thing that didn't make me feel like a loser so when you got how old were you when you got the gig on news radio i mean you had been doing comedy what six years seven years six years yeah i think i was about 27 how did that come about you because did how long did you live in boston did you move there for comedy or was your mother there
Guest:No, I moved to Boston because my father went to the architectural, whatever the architect's called.
Guest:Your stepfather.
Guest:Stepfather.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that was when we were 13, when I was 13.
Guest:What part of Boston?
Guest:We lived in Jamaica Plain at first.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And then we moved to Newton.
Guest:We lived in Newton.
Guest:That's nice.
Guest:Newton was nice.
Guest:No one's going to fuck with you in Newton.
Guest:Well, they do.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Some tough Jews?
Guest:People fuck with you everywhere.
Guest:Some tough Jews in Newton?
Guest:I lived in Newton Upper Falls, which was like the blue collar area of Newton.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:I wonder where Louie lived.
Guest:Did that know where Louie lived?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I think he went to, you think he was on the other side.
Marc:Ah.
Guest:In a different place.
Marc:So you were always because you're short.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Because I'm short, I was little, you know, and I didn't have friends, you know, all those things.
Marc:But how come I always pictured you as this fucking, like, you know, balls to the wall, black Irish fuck?
Guest:That was just capable of kicking ass.
Guest:Mostly Italian, actually.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah, I only have a little Irish in me.
Guest:It's just my last name.
Marc:Yeah, that's enough.
Guest:But I don't know.
Guest:First of all, if you're not around someone like that and all of a sudden you're around some guy and you hear this guy's a martial arts champion and now he's doing comedy, I would probably feel the same thing.
Guest:There's this fucking guy invading our spot and ruining our vibe.
Marc:And getting all these opportunities six years in.
Marc:That was just dumb luck.
Marc:I just have to admit to a little jealousy, but that doesn't surprise you, does it?
Guest:No.
Guest:That's the dark element of comedy and anything artistic is seeing somebody else get something.
Guest:And for some reason or another, you feel like they're taking from you.
Guest:It's just like, why isn't that me?
Guest:And why is that happening to them?
Guest:It's like, I've experienced it for sure.
Marc:Like with who?
Yeah.
Guest:like when you were starting out who were you jealous of I mean who did you emulate you know before okay I could tell you this when I first started doing stand-up you know was the Boston comedy riot sure and I did that yeah I forget his name Brendan something or another one it he was a nice guy and I remember I remember that
Marc:guy he was a really nice guy very nice guy like i i came in second in 88 so that you were just that you just moved there you just started started yeah and he was like a very sweet guy super sweet and somehow they stopped doing comedy but i remember uh he's smart yeah maybe maybe he just realized like this is the wrong life
Guest:I ran into him years later in New York when I was doing Caroline's.
Guest:I wish I remember that guy's last name.
Guest:I wish I do, too, because he was a really cool guy.
Guest:But I remember he started getting professional gigs right after that.
Guest:He won the riot.
Guest:He won the comedy riot.
Guest:And then he started working.
Guest:And I remember going, fuck.
Guest:this fucking guy's working already.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like he's actually getting paid to do comedy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Cause that was like the ultimate dreams to actually be able to pay your bills from standup.
Guest:And I was at the time I was delivering newspapers and driving limos.
Guest:That's what I was doing.
Guest:And still fighting.
Guest:By that time I think I'd stopped.
Guest:I stopped six months in.
Guest:I did, like I said, I had three fights and I won two.
Guest:And the last one I got knocked out.
Guest:I fought in this tournament in Rhode Island and I fought two times that night.
Guest:Three times, rather, that night.
Guest:I won the first two, and then I lost the third one.
Guest:And I realized that I'm like, what am I doing with my time?
Guest:I mean, there's no money in this.
Guest:I drove to Rhode Island to get punched in the face.
Guest:And really, I was doing it on momentum.
Guest:But you knew that was going to happen.
Guest:What is it about that?
Marc:What is it about getting the shit beaten out of you and beating the shit out of other people?
Marc:Even if it's in context, that is such a rush.
Guest:Well, it's not that.
Guest:It's the accomplishing of something very, very difficult.
Guest:Martial arts develops your human potential.
Guest:When you get through something really, really difficult,
Guest:And there is nothing more difficult outside of war than agreeing to step into a closed area with another guy who's a fucking trained killer.
Guest:And you're going to impose your skills on his.
Guest:You're going to impose your dedication on his.
Guest:You're going to impose your willpower, your mental fortitude, your ability to assess a situation and make the correct decisions in a split-second moment.
Guest:Isn't this interesting?
Marc:This is exactly how you do comedy.
Marc:I don't know about it.
Marc:If you think about how you do comedy, that is the ring.
Marc:It's just not you and another opponent.
Marc:It's not you and one guy.
Marc:It's you and the audience.
Marc:There's your ring.
Marc:I've seen you fucking attack.
Marc:I've seen your focus.
Marc:There's not a whole lot of things that, you know, you think things through.
Marc:You're going for the juggler.
Marc:You take on that audience, right?
Marc:Right.
Guest:Boy, I don't think about it that way.
Guest:Really?
Marc:If you were just explaining to me your comedic style, it would make perfect sense.
Guest:That's funny.
Guest:You never thought that?
Guest:No, no.
Guest:I think of it as how am I going to get these bits through as effectively as possible.
Marc:It's the same thing.
Marc:It's just interesting to me that you're a single guy in the ring of the stage and that you're thinking the same way.
Guest:But I never think about it as a competition with the audience or somehow or another I'm trying to beat them.
Marc:All I think about it is trying to... I've seen you beat an audience pretty hard.
Guest:only if it was a heckler.
Guest:I mean, maybe that.
Marc:But I just think that when you have a free-thinking sensibility, which you do and which I do, even though I don't do it quite the way you do it, but I have done closer to the style that you do, which is aggressive and pushing things into people's brains, that you may not be thinking them as an opponent per se, but not unlike kickboxing or martial arts, you respect them for their position.
Marc:But you're still trying to get through.
Guest:To conquer.
Guest:Yeah, you're trying to conquer them.
Guest:I've seen that with you.
Guest:I've seen you maybe raise your voice in an unnatural way and really focus on something because you want to tell the audience.
Guest:And I know as a comic, you're like,
Guest:this is what I'm saying.
Guest:Here it is.
Guest:And all of a sudden they go, oh, okay.
Guest:That's not a funny tone.
Guest:I guess we ought to listen differently.
Guest:And then, boom, and then you say the joke.
Guest:And then you go into the material and then it almost, it's like, you know, it's the dance of the rhythm that we do when we're on stage.
Marc:But sometimes it feels like, it almost feels like a parental role.
Marc:You know, sort of like, can we focus a little bit here?
Marc:People are drunk and you're not.
Marc:That often is the case, right?
Marc:But the idea, though, like still, because I know you do a lot of work with the, what is it, ultimate fighting or extreme fighting?
Guest:Yeah, ultimate fighting.
Guest:I'm sorry, I don't.
Marc:It's all the same thing.
Marc:I'm not geared towards watching any sort of competitive thing.
Guest:Nothing at all?
Guest:Nothing?
Marc:I don't, you know, but like, okay, help me out.
Marc:All right, so you're saying that martial arts...
Marc:It's a discipline that is not only about concentration and about physical prowess.
Marc:It's about spirituality.
Marc:It's about a philosophy of life.
Guest:Well, it's also about dealing with the reality of our biology.
Guest:We have the same bodies that people had 10,000 years ago when you had to fucking throw spears at woolly mammoths.
Guest:This is the reality of the situation.
Guest:And there's a certain amount of stress and a certain amount of distortion that comes from your biology, just from nerves and from this just a buildup of energy that doesn't get released.
Guest:Cortisol, adrenaline.
Guest:Everything, all the above.
Guest:Fight and flight.
Guest:That and just the fact that our reality is sitting down all day.
Guest:I mean, why do you think so many people have fucking road rage?
Guest:I mean, there's some sort of unused energy.
Marc:You know, I think that, you know, there are there's also the pressures of modern life, personal frustration, maybe some mental imbalance.
Marc:I mean, I don't think it's always simple as biology.
Guest:No, the biology is an element.
Guest:I'm definitely not saying it's simple, but I'm saying that it is an element that you can control.
Guest:That element, by calming the biology, by really working out, you don't even have to do martial, but to hit a bag is the best form of just releasing stress.
Guest:I mean, it's amazing how much clearer you can see things.
Guest:Oftentimes, something's bothering me, or there's a decision I have to make, or I'm teetering one way or another.
Guest:I'll just have a really hard workout and then sit down.
Guest:And it's like, okay, now I'm completely uninfluenced by my body.
Guest:Now my body is completely relaxed, and all those other factors are just more manageable.
Marc:Yeah, see, I tend to use all of that energy and just fuel it into rage and self-assessment.
Marc:And then that's how I make my magic.
Guest:Well, I'm a big fan of self-assessment.
Marc:But, I mean, you don't have any fear or anger in your spirit?
Marc:I don't know what that means.
Guest:What do you mean?
Guest:Fear or anger in your spirit is pretty vague.
Guest:Is it?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, I mean, you're talking about- Your spirit is a, what does that even mean?
Marc:Well, I'm talking about the thing on top of your biology.
Marc:Outside of all this thrust of what you're seeing is the history of mankind and our genetics propelling us forward and our reactions being evolved and animal-like and similar to what we were 10,000 years ago.
Marc:I mean, you still come from what you come from.
Marc:You still do what you do.
Marc:You fight, you do comedy, you think about shit.
Marc:And I know as a comic that a lot of what I do up there is fueled by a certain rage.
Marc:That's what I'm asking you.
Marc:Outside of the biology of it, do you experience fear or do you experience anger?
Guest:Of course.
Guest:I mean, how could you not as a human being, depending on what situations arise in your life?
Marc:But none of that fuels your creativity?
Guest:Well, I try not to let it overcome me.
Guest:Whether or not it fuels your creativity, I try to keep as balanced as possible.
Guest:I try to look at things.
Guest:Has it overcome you before?
Guest:I'm sure, yeah.
Guest:I'm sure it has.
Guest:I'm sure all of you have.
Guest:You've lost your shit?
Guest:On stage, in life.
Guest:Yeah, everybody has.
Guest:If you're a human being, if you haven't, then you're not experiencing something that is beyond your level of comfort.
Marc:No, I know, but I'm just trying to picture you in moments as being the angry asshole that I thought you were.
Guest:Well, I definitely am not who I am at 43 who I was at 21.
Guest:I'm not.
Marc:What do you think the big differences are?
Guest:Everything.
Guest:Just being older, more experienced, thinking about things and correcting mistakes and just evolving.
Guest:Then psychedelic experiences, isolation tanks, a lot of meditation.
Marc:I did an isolation tank once when I was in high school after I saw Altered States.
Guest:Yeah, me too.
Marc:There was a guy in Albuquerque, New Mexico who had two tanks and we had read about it.
Marc:and me and my buddy got wasted, and we went over to this hippie's house where he had the tank, and we paid him money, and we both got into different tanks.
Guest:I have one in my basement.
Marc:I hear this.
Marc:I don't listen to your show a lot, but I know you have one.
Marc:Someone told me that.
Guest:Next time, if you get a chance to do my podcast, you come over to my house early, you go in the tank for a couple hours, and then do the podcast.
Marc:But will I transform into primordial man and then matter and anti-man?
Marc:Yeah, break into a zoo and eat a zebra.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:The only thing that happened to me was I heard a high-pitched tone in my head.
Marc:And this has happened two times in somewhat, I don't know if they're elevated states, but the two times that I've actually found myself leaving my body or having some sort of out-of-body experience because of either drugs or the isolation tank, I hear a whistle in my brain.
Marc:It's almost like a, just like, eeeeee.
Marc:But I never got over the hump into wherever it is that you're supposed to go outside of relaxed.
Guest:That takes a long time.
Marc:But what about these mistakes, dude?
Marc:What do you think were the biggest, you know, when you look back, because you are obviously a changed man.
Marc:And obviously things happen to do that.
Marc:You know, you've got financial success.
Marc:You have your physical disposition is still intact.
Marc:You're healthy.
Marc:You know, you're at the top of the world on some level.
Marc:But, you know, at some point you weren't happy with that and something changed.
Guest:Well, I mean, it's just a gradual evolution, you know, it's just getting through life, you know, bombing on stage, doing well, not having good, good life experiences, having bad relationships, trying to figure out, was that me?
Guest:Was it her?
Guest:Was it my choices?
Guest:What is it that does?
Marc:What do you see as a self-aware person outside of evolution?
Marc:What do you think were your primary problems?
Guest:Oh, well, it's always insecurity and anger.
Guest:I mean, I think with everybody, you know, especially anybody who's really fueled.
Guest:I mean, I've had many of these conversations with my friends because it seems like everybody that I know that's interesting has had some sort of a fucked up childhood.
Guest:It's like almost impossible to create some exceptional person without some sort of a deficit early in their life that they're trying to make up for.
Guest:You know, I mean, I think I don't know anybody that had like a really happy, balanced childhood that was this really fascinating person.
Guest:I'm sure they're out there.
Guest:I mean, I'm not discounting the possibility.
Marc:You know, I understand the insecurity, but there were moments in my life, you know, when I think about my relationships with women, when I think about my marriages, when I think about how isolated and angry I got at friends or how resentful I could get and things I still fight with now.
Marc:I mean, I know what some of my key areas of fucked upness are.
Marc:One of them is envy.
Marc:That comes from my own fear, my own inability to execute what I want to do because I'm afraid of doing that.
Marc:And it sort of cycles in on itself.
Marc:The other comes from intimacy.
Marc:If I get too close to somebody, it becomes very difficult to trust them and becomes almost impossible not to become paranoid.
Marc:that I'm being fucked with somehow.
Guest:Whoa, that's heavy.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:What do you got?
Guest:Man, I don't think I have that.
Guest:I definitely, especially young, as I was a young person, was very afraid of being connected to someone because of my childhood, because of my parents being broken up.
Guest:And my stepfather was a great guy, but the reality of my childhood was my stepfather was working all day and my mom was working all day and really nobody raised me.
Marc:What did you think was going to happen if you got connected to somebody?
Guest:They were going to hurt you.
Guest:Break your heart, leave you, make you feel like shit, or somehow or another wrap you up in your life.
Guest:So you're paranoid too.
Guest:It's being intelligent too, right?
Guest:You can call it paranoid, but it's also the variables that you've already dealt with.
Marc:But also like you know saying that now you realize that you know, you're gonna get hurt You know all those things are going to happen.
Marc:You can't avoid them.
Marc:You can't stop them from happy You can't have that much control if you open your heart, right?
Guest:I think it's life I talk about it the same way when I talk about dealing with haters online that in a one way It's good and having shitty things that happen to you in life is the same thing that it's like getting bit by a snake like if you get bit by a rattlesnake and you've never been
Guest:you've never been introduced to the venom, you're going to get fucked up.
Guest:But if you just get a little venom in your system every now and then, you build up an immunity to it.
Guest:And then after a while, you can deal with it.
Guest:It doesn't affect you the way it did when you were younger.
Guest:I mean, I remember my first girlfriend who broke up with me when I was in high school.
Guest:It was fucking completely devastated.
Marc:What did you do?
Marc:Did you stalk her?
Marc:Did you cry?
Guest:No, she moved to another part of the state.
Guest:Did you write her love letters?
Guest:I don't think I did, but I definitely left some really disgusting voicemails that if she saved... She got angry.
Guest:No, no, no, no.
Guest:Pathetic.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah, just weak.
Guest:Like what?
Guest:We should be together, and we should have children, and I know I love you.
Guest:God, you should find those and digitize them.
Guest:I'm sure she doesn't have them anymore.
Guest:She probably deleted it right away, going, what a fucking loser.
Guest:How did I let him fuck me?
You know?
Guest:You know, it's just one of those, I mean, especially because I think I was just graduating high school, and she was just moving to another part of the state, so I didn't know what I was going to do with my future, and I really had no idea what I was going to do with my life, and very, very scared about the future, and then all of a sudden, she breaks up with me, and, you know, just fucking lost.
Guest:Holy fuck, I just remembered something.
Marc:What?
Marc:I just remembered that we dated the same chick.
Marc:Who?
Marc:Dorothea.
Guest:Yeah, well sort of I only did I'm we went on a few dates.
Guest:She was really cool though.
Guest:She really nice, but I just like it just Wow, I didn't know that you dated her.
Marc:That's crazy briefly Yeah, but I remember that you know there was that moment where I'm like so what you know I don't like me maybe
Marc:She goes, Rogan.
Marc:I'm like, you fucking dated Rogan?
Marc:Did you fuck Rogan?
Marc:Yeah, and then there's, you know, but that happens.
Marc:Oh, the doll just came back to me.
Marc:That's funny.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:I don't think I had any spite over that.
Marc:I mean, you weren't with her at the time.
Marc:You must have.
Marc:How could you not?
Guest:When you're young, I always feel weird about some guy who fucked a girl that I dated.
Marc:Yeah, but I got her after you.
Marc:So, like, there wasn't a thing where, like, it wasn't, like, if I was a guy before, then I'd be like, that guy now?
Marc:Oh, right, right, right.
Marc:Yeah, so I think it's different.
Marc:You know, I won that one.
Yeah.
Marc:And I guess I gotta cop to a couple things in building up to this conversation so we don't disappoint people.
Marc:But before we get to that, so when was the turning point where all of a sudden you decided, because I had a conversation with Andy Dick recently
Marc:And I know you did too.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But he was talking about being on news radio and feeling very intimidated and threatened by you and that you had marginalized him and that he was fuck up and everything else.
Marc:And I imagine he talked to you about that.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Andy has an incredibly distorted perception of the past.
Marc:Of everything, really.
Guest:He was a huge fuck up when he was on the show.
Guest:Right.
Guest:At the point where he halted production and he was always stoned and he couldn't read his lines.
Guest:And he's crazy.
Guest:I love him.
Guest:He's incredibly talented.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I love the guy.
Guest:But, you know, when he tells me...
Guest:You're so angry at me.
Guest:Why were you so angry?
Guest:You're fucking crazy.
Guest:You pulled your dick out in front of my girlfriend and tried to hop in our trailer.
Guest:I mean, he was nuts.
Guest:He was crazy.
Guest:And he was like, you know, I had him on the podcast.
Guest:He was telling me how attracted he was to me when we were working together and, you know, how it was such a strain.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, he's nuts, you know.
Guest:And so when he says I was angry to him, I was angry because he was a fucking pain in the ass.
Guest:And I'd be like, dude, leave me the fuck alone.
Guest:Stop being so crazy.
Guest:It wasn't like I'm this angry person just looking to fuck with Andy.
Guest:But that's how Andy sees the world through this egotistical point of view is that everyone is fucking with Andy.
Guest:The reason why Andy's been arrested a thousand times Is because the world's fucking with Andy He doesn't see it I try to talk to him about he's sober now And I'm like that's fantastic That's good you've moved on to a new stage in your life You're done with all that bullshit He goes well I wouldn't say I'm done with it You're not done with it I'm done with it for now
Marc:No, no, he's very, you know, he doesn't want to take responsibility.
Marc:Yeah, he's crazy.
Guest:But that's why he's so good.
Guest:That self-indulgent thought process that he has is what allows him to be fucking hilarious in, you know, in a sitcom.
Marc:Absolutely.
Marc:And I know that you have some love for him, and it's hard not to like the guy.
Marc:It's just that, you know, when somebody doesn't take responsibility for the chaos they're causing,
Marc:uh they become dangerous to themselves and others and it's sad yeah and and you get concerned and and they become hard to trust because you don't know what the they're going to do well but there's two kinds of crazy dude i mean there's that kind of crazy but there's also the kind of crazy that that makes you a hyper controlling you know very you know heavily fortified person you know that's inverted crazy and outverted crazy you know what i mean well yeah that's two of many types of crazy right sure yeah
Marc:But I mean, I feel that I can go both ways.
Marc:I can either explode and be chaos or I can be very well fortified.
Guest:Well, I have a real issue with obsession with games.
Guest:I have an issue with game obsession because of the fact that as I was a child, the only thing that ever gave me any real feeling of self-esteem was accomplishing things and being good at things, that I get obsessed at being really good at things.
Guest:I have a real issue.
Guest:I can't play video games.
Guest:I used to play Quake online.
Guest:And it absorbed me like a junkie where I would be fucking playing eight, 10 hours a day every day.
Guest:I just couldn't stop.
Marc:Did you masturbate a lot?
Marc:Because it seems that my problem, like if I get involved with something like that, I get to a certain level and I realize, you know, I don't want to fucking take the time.
Marc:This is getting too hard.
Marc:I'm just going to jerk off.
Marc:So I think all my competitive nature and the feeling of accomplishing things just went into jerking off.
Marc:Like I can be done with this in 10 minutes.
Guest:yeah and i win i mean we're all we're all gonna win that way hopefully that's the saddest thing when you can't win there you know i'm and i've been there before too i've definitely been obsessed with beating off in the past you know sure i've uh i got to the point when i was in my early 20s where i would jerk off and get blisters on my dick from jerking off yeah and i would just find another way to hold my dick yeah yeah just fucking pathetic and i'd be sitting there you know my dick would hurt in my underwear i'm like what is wrong with me yeah
Marc:When I found lotion and then later spit, I was like, this is genius.
Marc:Why didn't anyone tell me that I didn't have to just rub the fuck out of myself dry?
Marc:It's a weird thing, man.
Marc:But that was a big transition from dry to lube and then to sort of level off with spit.
Marc:Now, I guess the transition I'm trying to make here is when did you become this kind of dry and brittle controlling dude into the dude who tries drugs?
Guest:Um, well, it was a slow progress and a lot of it had to do with, you know, just understanding myself more from martial arts, understanding myself, understanding life more from reading things and watching documentaries and just thinking about life.
Guest:And then when I was, uh, I really didn't do any drugs at all until I was 30.
Guest:And when I was 30, I'd always thought of drugs as for losers.
Guest:I always thought of my friend, uh, my friend's cousin who did, you know, so coke, fucked his life up.
Guest:Those were the people who died and,
Marc:So 30, that means you're what?
Marc:You're past news radio.
Guest:You're done.
Marc:You've made your fortune on some level.
Marc:Are you doing Fear Factor yet?
Guest:Not yet.
Guest:It was right before I did Fear Factor.
Guest:It's probably one of the reasons why I decided to do Fear Factor.
Guest:That and money.
Guest:That and money.
Guest:But there was no money in it at first.
Guest:At first it was just...
Guest:something funny to do.
Guest:I thought it was hilarious.
Guest:I thought it was the most ridiculous show ever.
Guest:When they first brought me into this office and they told me they're gonna have this show where they're gonna stick dogs on people, I remember almost feeling like I was being punked.
Guest:I was like, this is gonna be on NBC.
Marc:Right, so your angle on it was that it sounded fun and trippy.
Guest:It sounded like chaos.
Guest:It wasn't that way when I got into it.
Guest:I mean, sometimes it was, but it was definitely much more watered down than I thought it was going to be.
Marc:Well, we can talk about that in a minute.
Marc:So, okay, so before you go do Fear Factor, you're a guy that, like, is afraid of drugs, basically.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Because you've seen it ruin a lot of people, and you saw your body as a different situation.
Marc:So what did you start with?
Guest:Two things.
Guest:One, I got drunk once, and I did ecstasy with a bunch of friends in Dallas.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:A buddy of mine lived there.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He was really into partying, and he convinced me that it was a good thing to try, and it's not going to hurt you.
Guest:It's not addictive.
Guest:So I tried ecstasy.
Guest:And I remember, first of all, the feeling that you get, like, God, why can't people be like this all the time?
Guest:Sure.
Marc:That's what all drugs do.
Guest:people say well yeah right but but ecstasy in particular is a very friendly and loving and you know it's just a really warm drug it's a it's a weird feeling when you know you'll I like I was did it with a bunch of buddies and we were fucking holding hands when guys holding hands together naked or not well closed but it was like this weird thing like it's like why why would I be insecure about this and any other time we should do this all the time
Guest:It seems so strange.
Guest:It's like you realize how much insecurity really defines your behavior.
Guest:How much fear.
Guest:Yeah, fear.
Guest:And that if we were assured that everyone thought and felt the same way and that we were all really kind to each other, then you realize this is just like a simple change of the neurochemistry of your mind.
Marc:Sure, it's fear and social acceptance and what has been culturally acceptable and how you want to be seen.
Guest:Yeah, so that was a real, I would never do it again because I felt like shit the next day.
Marc:Yeah, I got in under the wire on that.
Marc:I tried it right when it came out.
Marc:It must have been, it was probably earlier than you, but I remember I just twirled around a pole with my hand on the pole for like half hour.
Marc:And it felt awesome, right?
Marc:Oh yeah, yeah, because I could feel all of the pole and I became part of the pole and I was loose.
Guest:Well, the next day I couldn't read.
Guest:I went to a coffee shop and I got a magazine.
Guest:I was trying to read some article and I couldn't fucking read.
Guest:I couldn't concentrate on the sentence.
Marc:So that must have been scary.
Guest:Terrible.
Guest:I just realized how bad this is for your brain.
Guest:I think for a minute that you're like, is it going to come back?
Guest:Yeah, for sure.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I thought maybe I fucked my brain up for life.
Guest:I was talking to people.
Guest:It seemed normal.
Guest:They didn't know that I was fucked up.
Guest:Hey, can I get a small coffee?
Guest:Thank you.
Marc:What did people who knew you say about you when they saw you high like that?
Guest:Well, my friend who turned me on to it was, you know, he was sort of like, see, I told you, man, it's going to be amazing.
Guest:But then I was like, God, this is fucking terrible for your brain, dude.
Guest:I feel like shit the next day.
Marc:Didn't they say it drained your spinal fluid or something?
Marc:You didn't do the research on it?
Guest:I think it's a dopamine issue.
Guest:I think, you know, there's a thing called 5-HTP that you're supposed to take afterwards to re-up your serotonin levels and shit.
Marc:What happens is, you know, you just... It's post-self-medication medication.
Marc:Like, you know, you're going to get... Okay, yeah.
Guest:to charge yourself back up to normal levels.
Guest:So I decided I would never do that again, but I also decided that I learned a lot from that.
Guest:I learned a lot from that experience.
Guest:And then there's a guy that I did jiu-jitsu with, my friend Eddie, who is a musician, and he's really into smoking pot.
Guest:And he was always like, oh, I don't even think about writing music unless I get high.
Guest:It really tunes me into the music.
Guest:I'm like, really?
Guest:This just makes you fucking lazy.
Guest:And he's like, when was the last time you got high?
Guest:I'm like, man, it's been a long, long time.
Guest:And I had always tried it.
Guest:I tried it a few times, maybe a handful over the course of my life.
Guest:And it was always, I had a couple of beers or something.
Guest:And people were passing around a joint.
Guest:I said, OK.
Guest:And I took a hit.
Guest:And I was probably already drunk, so I don't even know what the effects were.
Guest:So, you know, I listened to him, and he's a bright, creative guy, and he seemed so together in all these other ways, and I was like, well, how could it possibly be that this guy's telling me that marijuana actually aids him?
Guest:So he got me high, and then I realized it, and I was like, wow, this is incredible.
Guest:This is not what I thought it was at all.
Guest:This is...
Guest:This is a different thing.
Marc:It relaxed part of your brain.
Guest:Relaxed part of your brain.
Guest:It makes you very insecure.
Guest:It makes you, not insecure, I shouldn't say.
Guest:It makes you very hyper-aware and sensitive.
Guest:Vulnerable.
Guest:Vulnerable, yeah.
Guest:Vulnerable is the word.
Marc:Wide open.
Guest:Yeah, and it allows you to evolve much faster, I think, socially.
Guest:Evolve.
Guest:Evolve your your your consciousness of all the way you feel about things It makes you more self-aware it makes you because it makes you more vulnerable It makes you kind of assess things more and on a on a quicker pace I think so maybe you weren't so you know defensive or guarded and
Guest:Yeah, and just, you know, makes you realize we're all in this fucking crazy thing, whatever it is, together.
Marc:Yeah, if you're not looking at somebody going, are they looking at me?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:They know I'm high.
Marc:Yeah, they know I'm high.
Marc:Yeah, oh God, is my head the right shape?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:But all right, so then you sort of made it your lifestyle now, right?
Marc:I mean, you're sort of built around pot at this point, or at least cannabis products.
Guest:I think it's also important that when you learn something, you tell other people that are listening to you.
Guest:And I don't tell people you should all do pot.
Guest:I mean, everybody's got their own different weird biochemistry, and some people it doesn't jive with, and some people, they just can't do anything.
Guest:I have a friend who says he would love to do pot, but he knows that if he smokes a joint, he'll go and buy Coke, and next thing you know, he'll wake up three days later.
Guest:I mean, that's just how he is.
Guest:He knows.
Marc:But do you think you could have gotten to that place?
Marc:Because it seems to me that what you're talking about in terms of vulnerability and part of your...
Guest:sort of uh your wiring your defensive wiring relaxes I mean you can do that without pot yeah I mean do you feel that you are capable of doing that when you're not high yeah sure absolutely but um I definitely think I was evolving without it you know but I think uh that the added element of
Guest:I don't know how I would describe it, but just the ability to tune into another state of consciousness and sort of assess yourself more objectively than you can, just while you're always protected by your ego and sort of your predetermined patterns of behavior and looking at life.
Guest:The path that we get on, the track that you're on as far as how you react to things on a normal basis, it sort of becomes ingrained in your thinking.
Marc:Yeah, well, you were pretty sort of, you know, kind of like ambitious, well-guarded, you know, controlling dude.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And you were able to sort of soften up a little bit.
Guest:Well, you know, yeah, just able also to just see everything just a little better, you know?
Marc:Yeah, I like the way you sort of, like, there's no distinction between personal evolution and some broader sense of the animal evolving.
Marc:That you seem to have educated yourself to a degree that you're able to frame any personal evolution along the lines of perfecting the being that I am.
Guest:It's not even perfecting the being.
Guest:It's getting over the being.
Guest:Getting over the being and relaxing.
Guest:Getting over what the being is trying to do, you know, just biologically, just socially.
Marc:And that changed your entire perception of everything.
Marc:yeah absolutely and and you were able to be more magnanimous and empathetic and connected to other people definitely more friendly more more loving more yes i just you're married right yeah you got two kids yeah and you like them i have a stepdaughter too and a stepdaughter so you got three yeah and you like them love them and you get along everybody gets along yeah daddy has some tank time and you come out of the tank helps a lot you wash the salt off you and yeah okay i'm ready for dinner
Marc:No, it's mostly when everyone's asleep.
Marc:Oh, yeah?
Marc:You don't sleep?
Guest:I do, but different hours.
Guest:I can't write unless everyone's asleep.
Guest:Everyone goes to bed fairly early.
Marc:The shift in your comedy, if I'm going to cop to whatever issues I have with you that I refuse to accept are based completely in my jealousy or intimidation about your sports background or the fact that we shared a woman briefly.
Marc:that there was a point where you got a job on a network television show.
Marc:You were on the show for six years, seven years?
Guest:Five years.
Guest:Five years.
Marc:You made a killing, and it was good.
Marc:It was a good show.
Marc:It was great to do.
Marc:You played a guy that was very not you.
Marc:You played sort of a thick dude, not that bright, correct?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And then you started doing comedy again.
Marc:I don't remember you doing a lot of comedy during news radio.
Marc:Am I wrong?
Guest:No, I did comedy.
Guest:I did have a big lapse, though.
Guest:When I was on news radio, I wasn't writing any.
Guest:And it's one of the reasons why I kind of re-energized my comedy, my ambition to do comedy.
Guest:When I was doing news radio, I wasn't writing any jokes.
Guest:I was performing.
Guest:I'd do a set on the weekend at the Laugh Stop or at the Laugh Factory and one at the comedy store.
Guest:But I wasn't writing any new material.
Marc:But you weren't... This was pre-enlightenment, Joe.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:And then, like, in my mind... Because, like, honestly, you know, when you said today, we've never had a conversation.
Marc:So I was really assessing you as a cultural...
Marc:um, icon that, you know, I knew you when he started, you know, I saw where your career went, but before, because we never saw each other really, except once in a while, you were the guy that I knew who started as a comic, then did the sitcom for six years and then did fear factor for how long?
Guest:Five years, five years, six years, fear factor.
Marc:And then what happened in my mind is that, you know, you come out of Fear Factor and then you're sort of, you know, this enlightened comic, you know, who is, you know, pursuing the truth, you know, and aggressive in spirit.
Marc:And I'll use that word spirit again and following the path of rebellious comics who were who were seeking to enlighten people and taking a higher road intellectually than than your career had implied previous.
Marc:And there was part of me that thought, I know you don't want to talk about this and we don't need to talk about it, but in light of the Mencia thing, before I knew the full facts and before I talked to you and after I talked to Carlos in knowing it, that there was part of me that thought,
Marc:This is was the fundamental problem.
Marc:And I've been public about it a little bit before is that in my mind, I didn't quite understand how somebody, you know, who is who is doing comedy that he insists has integrity could could really work on a show like Fear Factor for as long as you did, which in my mind, you know, ushered in the the.
Marc:the the the whole the uh the takeover of reality television which you know in a sense you put more comics out of work who were writers because you know sitcoms cost too much so in my mind on some sort of level that your television career you know not news radio particularly but fear factor was was antithetical to you know what who you are now and that i thought it was it was hard for me to accept that you were able to stand in a position of judgment
Marc:of what comedy is or isn't, you know, having done Fear Factor and the impact it had on the comedy business and television.
Guest:That's an interesting angle, and I kind of think that that angle's got to be coming from some weird animosity that you might have had to me already before this.
Guest:Because, first of all, I mean, how many sitcom writers are really comics?
Guest:It's very few.
Marc:A lot of them started as comics.
Marc:I'm just saying in comedy in general.
Marc:Who...
Guest:You can't say that that's taking away jobs because it's an economic issue.
Guest:And if I wasn't hosting it, someone else would have hosted it.
Guest:And the real issue was there's a lot of shitty fucking sitcoms.
Guest:There was sex in the city and there was fucking the single guy and all these terrible.
Guest:This is when I was on NBC, these terrible, terrible sitcoms.
Guest:And they weren't they weren't getting good ratings.
Guest:And all of a sudden you'd put something like Survivor on, which is far cheaper to do.
Guest:And economically, it was way better for the networks.
Guest:And they made a lot of money because they got great ratings.
Guest:So I so I did the show I did the pilot or whatever the fuck we did I think actually I had signed up for like eight or nine episodes clearly thinking this is going to be eight or nine episodes just get some money and move on to something else I was I had a development deal before that was trying to write a sitcom on my own and I just got what was that about
Guest:uh i think it was just about uh i was really in a playing pool at the time and i was trying to um uh make some sort of a sitcom like a cheer sort of a thing about a pool hall a bunch of people that were regulars that hung out in this place all the time uh that didn't work out and so then the fear factor thing came up and it was just it was you know it was a real random sort of a thing i get a call from my agent nbc wants you to do this game show they're really interested would you go and meet with them
Guest:I went and met with them, and I thought it was really funny, and the people were really fun, like Matt Kunitz and the producers.
Guest:They were nice guys.
Guest:We were all laughing about stuff.
Guest:I said, it'd be cool to work with these guys.
Guest:Fuck it.
Guest:Let's do this crazy game show.
Guest:Didn't know what it was going to be.
Guest:It was great financially, and sometimes it was fun to do.
Guest:The people that I did it with were a lot of fun.
Guest:But there was a lot of times where I didn't enjoy it at all.
Guest:You know, and a lot of times were really, really felt like work, you know, which is, you know, like you can't complain because, you know, there's people that have real jobs.
Marc:But on a business level, I mean, you know, you know, Jeff Zucker, the head of NBC, loved you and and you were doing something for his vision of the network that was working.
Guest:Fear Factor was, yeah.
Guest:I mean, altogether, I had something to do with it, but if it wasn't me, it would have been someone else.
Guest:No, I understand that.
Marc:I'm just trying to figure out in terms of where your heart is now.
Marc:Integrity, you mean?
Marc:Well, I mean, it's not even just integrity.
Marc:I'm not going to be that broad about it.
Marc:I mean, I stated my intellectual argument, but obviously from where you're sitting, a job's a job.
Marc:It was presented to you in a certain way.
Marc:You had no idea it was going to become a cultural phenomenon.
Marc:That would eventually really be about getting people to eat balls.
Marc:It was as close to that TV show in RoboCop.
Marc:I'd buy that for a dollar.
Marc:It was as close to as moronic as you can get in television.
Marc:and while i was doing it i was making fun of it i mean i know i know but still like and that must have you know at least released some of this team because i have to assume being the type of person you are and being in on the path you were at i know you were making millions of dollars but there had to be something that was sticking in your craw i mean it had to hurt somewhere it didn't feel good yeah no i didn't because my question is is that if you if bill hicks were alive who was a you know a hero of yours how would he have said what do you think he would have said about feel fear factor as a reality
Guest:Oh, I'm sure you would have made fun of it, as I would if I wasn't of on it.
Guest:If I wasn't on it, I would have made fun of it, for sure.
Guest:But there's something that you can't really... Financial freedom, like real true financial freedom, is a really underappreciated thing.
Guest:Absolutely.
Marc:The ability to never worry.
Marc:There is a price for it.
Guest:Yeah, but the price was a few years of work.
Guest:And while I was doing that work, I was only working three days a week, and I was still able to do stand-up and do a bunch of other things.
Guest:And I did stand-up while I was on Fear Factor.
Guest:And it was kind of screwy, though, because a lot of the people would come expecting to see the guy from Fear Factor, expecting to see Squeaky Clean.
Marc:Well, that was the burden of your Faustian bargain.
Guest:Yeah, and doing jokes about drugs in the Middle East and all this crazy shit and evolution.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was a weird transition.
Guest:But in the end, it all sorted itself out.
Marc:Because, well, I mean, but that exactly what you're saying is that, right, yeah.
Marc:I mean, obviously the financial freedom in a real sense to where you or your family does not have to worry for the rest of your lives and maybe even into your kid's life, however responsible those kids turn out to be, is certainly something that people strive for.
Marc:And it is freedom in a capitalist system.
Marc:And there's no doubt about that.
Marc:I understand that.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But that is also the very essence of the Faustian deal of selling out, that you get that, but in the aftermath of that, you're gonna have to wrestle with what you seem to have wrestled with, which is that, I know I did that, but I'm not that guy, and that guy that did that was just doing that for money, now I'm this guy.
Guest:I think I'm the same guy.
Guest:I think you just, as long as you're saying while you're doing it that you're doing it for money and just keep pushing forward, there's certainly a price you pay as far as perception goes.
Guest:Do you feel like you contributed to the dumbing down of the culture?
Guest:No.
Guest:No.
Guest:Really?
Guest:No.
Guest:No doubt about it.
Guest:It would have dumbed down without me.
Guest:There's no stopping it.
Guest:But isn't that a cop-out in a way?
Guest:No.
Guest:The show was hot dogs.
Guest:Are hot dogs bad for you?
Guest:Yeah, well, sort of.
Guest:You shouldn't eat them every day, all day.
Guest:But sometimes I want a steak and sometimes I want a fucking hot dog.
Guest:And sometimes I come home from a hard day at work, I want to watch some fuckheads eat...
Guest:animal dicks on TV.
Guest:You know, why is that bad?
Guest:It is what it is.
Marc:You tell me, why is that bad?
Guest:I don't think it is.
Guest:I don't think it is.
Guest:I think it's a choice.
Guest:I think it's a choice in a broad spectrum of choices and you can choose to, you know, watch the Discovery Channel on some new fucking show on Hypernovas or you can choose to watch Fear
Marc:factor it's up to you right you know but what it is is mindless entertainment yeah but what do you but in general different from that than a sitcom that's mindless entertainment too it's just fun sometimes but i mean but i mean in sense that you know as somebody who who is uh a critic of culture and somebody who is enlightened what do you think of those people that choose to watch fear factor over and over again
Guest:Well, you know, I watched it too.
Guest:And I also watched Survivor.
Guest:Yeah, but I watched Survivor.
Guest:I wasn't in that.
Guest:I've watched a lot of dumb shows that I'm not in.
Guest:I think you could definitely say that shows like that and anything that's broadcast in front of millions and millions of people is going to contribute to the way they think about things.
Guest:And if you show dumb shit on TV and you lower the standards, you're definitely going to get dumb people.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But that doesn't necessarily mean they have to be that they could also tune into different channels They could also read books.
Guest:There's a wide variety of choices that you could do with your life You know you don't necessarily watch fear factor and become dumb I know a lot of smart people that used to watch for your fact and thought it was ridiculous right and they enjoyed it Well, they were watching it for the wrong reason there was the right reason for them
Guest:Look, I'm not discounting in any way, shape, or form the idea that doing a show like that is quote-unquote selling out in an artistic way.
Guest:But I never stopped doing what I was doing on the side.
Guest:I never stopped doing comedy.
Guest:I never stopped writing.
Guest:I never stopped performing.
Guest:So the way I looked at it was just an opportunity to make a shitload of money, and it made it an uncomfortable situation where there was this weird sort of, you know, there's two different perceptions of me, you know, what I was doing on stage and what I was doing on the television show.
Guest:So there's a price, yeah.
Guest:I mean, would I do it again?
Guest:I think I would, you know, for two reasons.
Guest:One, also because I think with a lot of comics, a lot of comics take themselves very seriously.
Guest:You know, they take their ideas and what they're projecting very seriously.
Guest:You take yourself pretty seriously.
Guest:Yeah, nothing takes you out of that more than being the fucking host of Fear Factor.
Guest:No matter what you say, you're never going to start a cult.
Marc:I understand that.
Marc:And that might be detrimental to your cult.
Marc:And I know a lot of people would say there was a time where the idea of selling out had more resonance.
Marc:Now it seems that people are like, hey, man, do what you got to do.
Marc:If you can keep your personality, it's cool.
Marc:Do whatever commercial you want as long as you...
Marc:rise above the commercial.
Marc:But I guess my big question, and he seemed to address it a bit, is that being somebody who is as passionately involved with the evolution of the human community and the idea that we are all operating on a series of wavelengths and share a lot of common possibilities for growth and
Marc:and really taking this thing to the next level.
Marc:And that is where your comedy comes from.
Marc:It's calling out morons and being proactive about what our biology enables us to do that you couldn't have carried, that it must have been a fairly weighty cross to bear.
Guest:It definitely was at many points in time.
Guest:Yeah, especially the days where I thought it was really stupid.
Guest:There was days where the stunts were really just dumb and the people, especially the people.
Guest:If the group was cool, it was a crapshoot every week.
Guest:You get eight new people or whatever it was, depending on the show, six new people sometimes.
Guest:Sometimes they were really cool and sometimes they were just insufferably douchey.
Guest:They were just impossibly douchey.
Marc:But did it go on too long?
Marc:Was there points where all you could think about was the payday and that it was all going to be worth it?
Guest:Well, what happened was I started smoking pot right before I started doing it.
Guest:Had you gotten the deal?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:The first season I did sober.
Guest:The first season is Fear Factor.
Guest:The second through six seasons, every single episode I was high as fuck.
Guest:Every single episode, I would have a pot lollipop and sit in my trailer and wait for us to do it and then go do it.
Guest:And it would be much easier to do.
Guest:I'd be fascinated.
Guest:Then I would look at it like, you know, like, how weird is this fucking show?
Guest:How crazy is this?
Guest:Is this real?
Guest:Right.
Guest:It became sort of a fun thing to do.
Marc:What's the difference between that and getting high to get through your job?
Guest:There's no difference.
Guest:That is what it is.
Guest:Well, it was that too, but it was also when I'm high, if I was working on Fear Factor, that's when I would come up with a lot of great ideas for bits.
Marc:Right, but was there a part of it that was sort of like, I've got a conscience about this.
Guest:In what way?
Marc:In that, I don't want to fucking be doing this.
Marc:This is fucking breaking my heart.
Marc:I need to get high to fucking keep my heart open so I don't destroy myself inside.
Guest:No, no.
Guest:I never took it that seriously.
Guest:I think it was more like, fuck, this is dumb.
Guest:I don't want to do this because I don't want to be here right now.
Guest:I'd rather be, you know, hanging out with my friends or doing whatever, playing this or doing that.
Guest:Writing bits about people who watch Fear Factor.
Guest:Or do Fear Factor, yeah.
Guest:Um...
Guest:Yeah, writing bits about me if I wasn't me, for sure.
Guest:I think it was, you know, I just didn't enjoy it sometimes.
Guest:Sometimes I did, though.
Guest:Sometimes it was fun.
Marc:So four or five years of that, you know, you had to self-medicate to get through your job.
Guest:Well, I started self-medicating after the first year.
Guest:I did once.
Guest:What happened was I showed up.
Guest:I got high during the afternoon with a buddy of mine.
Guest:We had, like, a late night shoot.
Guest:And I showed up, and I was still high.
Guest:And I had a fucking great time.
Guest:And I was like, wow, why don't I do this all the time?
Guest:Like, I would really enjoy this show if I was high all the time.
Guest:So I think like maybe 90% of the time I did it, I was stoned.
Marc:So now let's talk about the other thing that you seem to be sort of obsessively.
Marc:Now, what is your daily routine now exercise-wise?
Guest:It all depends.
Guest:Most of the time I'm doing jujitsu probably three or four nights a week.
Guest:And then I lift weights maybe one day a week.
Guest:But it's more to kind of keep from getting injured and stuff like that.
Marc:What's your supplement regimen?
Guest:A lot of fish oil.
Guest:I take ridiculous amounts of that stuff.
Guest:I take almost every sort of multivitamin or type of vitamin.
Guest:I'll show you what I'm taking.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Cool.
Marc:My dad's into it.
Marc:Yeah?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And I've been on some stuff for the head and you probably know about it.
Marc:You probably know more about it than I do.
Marc:What about creatine, steroids, human growth hormone?
Guest:I don't take creatine.
Guest:I take human growth hormone.
Guest:I take testosterone in a cream form.
Guest:I go to what's called a hormone replacement therapist, a doctor.
Guest:Do you need more testosterone, Joe?
Guest:It's not a matter of need.
Guest:It's a matter of maintaining your body to state where it is as a young person, where you can recover quicker from things.
Marc:It's not about juice?
Guest:It's not about juice.
Guest:It's very, very low doses if you do it correctly.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And what does human growth hormone do?
Guest:What it does is replaces all the stuff that starts to go away as you get older.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I mean, what you're doing as you're getting older is your hair turns gray and your body aches more as your body's not producing as much hormones.
Guest:Are you afraid of dying?
Guest:No, I just like my body to work well.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:I mean, I think, you know, people say, well, hey, man, you're worried about what that's going to do to you?
Guest:Yeah, you can think about it that way.
Guest:I definitely do.
Guest:That is a concern.
Guest:But you know what else is a concern?
Guest:Your body breaking down and you dying, which is absolutely definitely going to happen.
Marc:Now, when I saw you recently, I hadn't seen you in a while, and I saw you at the UCB, and I definitely felt that there was something different about it.
Marc:Now, does human growth hormone do something to your head?
Marc:Did your head get bigger?
Marc:No.
Guest:All right.
Guest:No.
Guest:I mean, your head gets bigger as you get older, depending on what nationality you are.
Guest:My head's very big.
Guest:Look at fucking Val Kilmer.
Guest:He's on all the growth in the world.
Guest:His head's enormous.
Marc:I know, but he's also, I think, a distended alcoholic guy, so his body's sort of shriveled, and he's probably got that weird belly in his head.
Guest:I was talking to a buddy of mine about that who got really fat, and he lost weight, but he doesn't want to lose too much weight because he said his head grew when he got fat.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, and he was just crazy.
Guest:He's like, I don't want to be one of those skinny guys with a big, giant, fat person's head.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:But if you lift weights, you know, if you lift a lot of weights especially, I got into, like, really heavy weightlifting a few years back, like back in early... You were roided up for a while, weren't you?
Guest:No, no.
Guest:Never?
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:The only stuff that I'd ever taken, the stuff that was like anabolic, was actually legal stuff.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:The stuff that used to be able to buy GNC.
Guest:The strongest stuff I ever took was that.
Marc:I mean, I remember you were kind of like, yeah, and when you do the weight thing, if you don't do it right, it can really fuck you.
Guest:You can definitely get too big in certain ways.
Guest:You can unbalance your body.
Guest:I did creatine for a while.
Guest:Creatine makes you gain a lot of water weight, too, and it makes you puffy a little bit.
Marc:Yeah, and so what you generally do, kind of flexibility stuff, too?
Guest:I do a lot of that.
Guest:I still do a lot of kickboxing workout.
Guest:I have a bag set up in my garage, and it's padded out there, and so I work out doing that, too, and sometimes I work out with kickboxing trainers.
Marc:Now, I get the sense that, you know, when you do the, it's ultimate fighting, right?
Marc:I already asked you.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:That, you know, for some reason when I hear, like, I don't watch it, but every once in a while I'll pass it and I'll watch you and I'll see you, you know, doing the play by playing.
Marc:Like, it seems to me that you fucking love that.
Marc:It seems to me like there's some part of me when I see you doing that, I'm like, that's got to make Joe happy.
Guest:It's a lot of fun.
Guest:I enjoy it.
Guest:It's definitely not like doing Fear Factor.
Guest:What I'm doing now, between doing the UFC and doing stand-up comedy, everything I do is fun.
Guest:I enjoy all of it.
Guest:Nothing feels like work, which to me is a much better existence than when I was doing Fear Factor.
Marc:And do you feel like you have exercised that part of your conscience that was compromised doing Fear Factor?
Marc:I mean, do you feel like the journey from that guy and the judgments around that guy, like the judgments that I had, which may be only me, and certainly I'm talking to you and I'm being honest with you,
Marc:Do you feel like you were able to move beyond that with your audiences?
Guest:I think I moved beyond it when I stopped doing it, and then slowly the audience from Fear Factor kind of disappeared, and the audience from stand-up, my stand-up audience, increased a lot more.
Guest:How long did that take?
Guest:I think when my first good CD was released, I think that had a big impact.
Guest:My first CD that I really feel like represented me, which was like 2006, that was Shiny Happy Jihad.
Guest:And that was the first one that I ever did where I went, wow, I just put out a CD that really was like me being on stage.
Guest:Whereas all the other ones, I was like,
Guest:awkward or my comedy wasn't ready or whatever it was you know so that that helped a lot so then I started developing fans from just from my stand-up and then I did the Showtime special in 2006 as well and then my last one which was 2009 that that really that started you know and then I got fans from comedy
Marc:That's great.
Marc:It took you a while to come on this show because you were mad at me on some level for talking to Carlos.
Marc:No, not at all.
Guest:Okay, not mad.
Guest:I was mad at you, what you said about me.
Guest:You said it was two bullies arguing over bullshit and that you said that you thought that the whole situation should have been handled by the community.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And that it shouldn't have been aired publicly, which I thought was ridiculous because you had him on your show for two fucking hours and you exposed him-
Guest:Because the first hour I couldn't use.
Guest:You exposed him way more than I ever did in the 10 minutes of that show.
Marc:No, my show did not get around as much as that video.
Marc:You really think so?
Marc:Oh, not a chance.
Guest:You think as far as volume of humans that saw it, maybe.
Guest:But as far as in-depth exposure of the human being?
Marc:Right, but let me tell you something.
Marc:The one thing that happened because of that, and the one thing I'll admit in retrospect...
Marc:is that, you know, I'm not sure you're not, you know, in that situation, both, you know, were kind of button heads and I didn't have an idea of your personal history with him.
Marc:And also I hadn't been in that world.
Marc:I don't, you know, I don't live in the world of the comedy store and I hadn't been.
Marc:So my knowledge and the reason why I did that second episode was specifically was because I could not post the episode that I did initially because I didn't know it was really going on.
Marc:in retrospect and what I said about you I felt was true and in what I watched and then you and I exchanged some emails and I understand that you know the the problem was a lot bigger than it than what I knew and that the community had tried to deal with him but I think what happened on that second episode is despite whatever you think of that guy there was no way you couldn't see him as a person well I saw him as a person from the beginning
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, I was friends with him.
Guest:I was friends with him when I first moved to California.
Guest:You know, what I knew of him was that he had some sort of a pathology.
Marc:That's what I saw.
Marc:And now, because of that second episode of my show, everyone saw that.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:There's no question about that.
Marc:And there's no reason to talk about, you know, anything that you know about the guy.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But the one thing I didn't realize, not unlike Fear Factor, in retrospect, is that video.
Marc:Because the way it got around was really, on some level, you and Carlos' wedding video.
Marc:I mean, how many years, not unlike Fear Factor, has it taken you to distance yourself from that situation?
Guest:Yeah, no, it still comes up.
Guest:People will still yell it out places.
Guest:I'm connected to him forever because of that video.
Guest:And how do you feel about that?
Guest:Well, if I had a chance to do it all over again, I probably wouldn't have for a bunch of reasons because even if you're right, when you put out a lot of negative energy like that, you're going to get a lot of negative energy from people unsolicited in return.
Guest:It's just unavoidable.
Guest:It's just this weird backlash sort of a thing.
Guest:The wave comes in and it goes out.
Guest:When you're arguing with someone and yelling with someone, it's very difficult to distinguish between you and them.
Guest:You're connected to this.
Guest:this shitty person and you're yelling the shitty person that shitty person's yelling at you and it's just a big emotional mess and you know there's a you you open yourself up for all these people to make these decisions on on who you are based on that for me it was the the whole thing was completely unplanned out and i think i'd explain this to you when i when i saw you recently when we did the um the green room thing with paul provenza
Guest:what happened was he he went on stage after me and he wasn't supposed to be there kurt fox was up and he went up and took the microphone from kurt fox and uh said uh you know something about me and i didn't have the balls to say any of that shit to his face and and you know and i was still in the room so i went back i'm on stage like what are you talking about like what are you saying and then all of a sudden we're in this argument and it
Guest:Just so happened my friend Brian was in the back of the room filming it.
Guest:It was just random He didn't find out about it until it had already started someone yelled him.
Guest:Hey Joe and bra and Carlos are on stage together So he went filmed it and none of it was planned out and if I had a chance to do it all again, I certainly wouldn't have Approached it the same way.
Guest:I certainly wouldn't have been angry with him.
Marc:I sure do you think that in retrospect is
Marc:it served the point that you were trying to make, that whether the video, if it was a difference between the video being out there or not, do you think that he learned his lesson?
Guest:He certainly did.
Guest:He had to.
Guest:There's no way.
Guest:He's a totally different person now.
Guest:The way he deals with people, the way he deals with clubs, the way he doesn't run the light anymore.
Guest:And he's been exposed for what he was doing.
Guest:What he was doing was horrible, man.
Guest:It wasn't like an issue of, you know, you have a bit on Kmart and I have a bit on Kmart and you think that maybe I saw your bit and copied it and changed some shit around.
Guest:It was a situation where a guy was going on before people and doing their best bits on purpose.
Marc:I think it was his way of literally annihilating other people.
Guest:Yes, and it was also his way of overcoming some horrible shit that happened to him.
Marc:Yeah, we're not adjusted to talk about that.
Guest:And what it was is a sick person.
Guest:It was a sick person who people were making money off of.
Guest:These clubs and the networks that were hiring him, they knew his history, especially the clubs.
Guest:They all knew exactly what was going on.
Guest:And they didn't have a problem with it because they were making money.
Guest:Right, and no one was willing to stop it.
Guest:And we put that video out going, good, fuck this guy.
Guest:That was my attitude in whatever it was, 2006 or 2007 or whenever it happened.
Guest:It was like, fuck this guy.
Guest:Now people are going to get to see this.
Guest:Because it was gross, man.
Guest:It was a real problem where he would come into the room and people would flash the light so that we knew that he was on stage.
Guest:And it was way more than I'd ever seen before.
Guest:I'd seen guys who were questionable before, and there'd been guys that...
Guest:You know, there's always parallel thinking and there's, you know, there's people that sound like other people.
Marc:And do versions of other people.
Guest:Yeah, but this was a different thing.
Guest:This was a guy who was a sick person.
Marc:Well, that's the one thing I found in talking to him that second time that, you know...
Marc:The one thing that happens, it seems, when I talk to somebody for an hour, and I think that the way that the two things complemented each other was that it's very easy in our business.
Marc:We know each other at least a bit.
Marc:You know what was going on with him, but everybody out in the world that just sees him on television or just sees that video, it's very easy to make him a villain and just hate on this one dimension of this guy.
Marc:And the one thing that I learned with him sitting there is that he's troubled beyond anything I understand.
Guest:Yeah, he's a victim as much as he is a villain, no doubt about it.
Marc:And did that come to you after?
Marc:I mean, like, after that video, did you have empathy for the guy?
Guest:I had empathy for him that night.
Guest:What you saw in that video is 10 minutes of what happened over 40 minutes on stage.
Guest:40 minutes on stage.
Guest:And also how many years of friendship?
Guest:By that point, it was 2007.
Guest:More than a decade.
Guest:More than a decade of knowing him.
Guest:More than a decade of seeing him do Jeff Foxworthy bits right off of a CD, Richard Pryor bits.
Marc:In the evolution of your friendship with him, because it seems to me that you guys were genuinely friends at some time.
Marc:Well, not close.
Marc:We barely knew each other.
Marc:But you were there every night with him, and you guys, because you're both fairly competitive dudes, I'm sure there was some cockfighting going on.
Guest:No, initially, no.
Guest:Initially, I didn't have any friends in L.A.
Guest:I moved here, and him and his cousin were nice guys, and they invited me to go hang out with him a couple times, and we went and played pool.
Guest:How many times did you talk to him about this problem once you acknowledged it?
Guest:Twice.
Guest:Twice.
Guest:Two long conversations early where I pulled him aside, and I said, hey, man, you're doing this, and you're doing that.
Guest:What's going on?
Guest:It was just me and him, I pulled him aside.
Guest:I was just trying to tell him, maybe you fell asleep with a TV on, you didn't realize it.
Guest:I didn't know what the depth of the issue was.
Guest:And it was just denial and weird squirrely behavior and just the way he was talking, a crazy person talking.
Guest:It was all total denial.
Guest:And I just distanced myself from him, I stopped hanging out with him.
Marc:So now after this video's been out there now, how do you distance yourself from that?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:It is what it is.
Guest:There's nothing I could do.
Guest:I mean, I guess talking about it like this sort of kind of clarifies where I was when it happened and what it was.
Guest:But like I said, I don't think I would have done it again, but it was a good thing that it happened.
Guest:It was a good thing certainly for stand-up.
Guest:It was a good thing for people also realizing, young people that are coming up, you can't do that.
Guest:And there's a lot of people that are still doing that, man.
Guest:There's a real issue with guys that were opening up for him.
Marc:I know.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And it's always happened, but not in that degree.
Marc:I mean, you know, this is an evolution of an art form, you know, where there was a period in standups history before standups were standups where everyone did the same fucking joke.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:But once people took ownership of their points of view.
Guest:I had an issue with Buddy Hackett.
Guest:I was hosting Last Comic Standing.
Guest:It wasn't my fault.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I was hosting one of the judges on Last Comic Standing, me, Monique, and Buddy Hackett.
Guest:And there's a guy who goes up, and there's a guy, Ant, you know who he is?
Guest:And he's fucking doing jokes from movies, man.
Guest:He's doing, like, from the movie Boiler Room, doing a punchline about, you know, they should put you people on an island.
Guest:They did.
Guest:It's called Manhattan.
Guest:That's from Boiler Room.
Guest:He's doing this and killing.
Marc:I think it might have originally been from Larry Ambrose's act.
Guest:I think it was from... Jim David.
Guest:Jim David, yes.
Guest:So they stole it from him.
Guest:And he stole it from the movie.
Guest:And so, anyway, I compliment the guy and say, you know, you've got great stage presence.
Guest:Your delivery's awesome.
Guest:You're really dynamic.
Guest:But I've heard those jokes before.
Guest:I've heard a lot of them before.
Guest:And I start, you know, naming where I've heard them.
Guest:Like, you know, you can't just fucking do this on TV.
Guest:And Buddy Hackett goes crazy.
Guest:Buddy Hackett goes...
Guest:Fuck you, you fucking asshole.
Guest:Who are you to tell him?
Guest:I never heard those jokes before.
Guest:And he's going crazy, screaming at me.
Guest:And he's wearing gloves.
Guest:He's a weird guy at this point.
Guest:He wore gloves on his hands.
Guest:And I think, should I yell back at this guy?
Guest:What the fuck do I do here?
Guest:So I say nothing.
Guest:I decide to just say nothing.
Guest:I decide to just look at him and just say, all right, what you're saying is what you're saying.
Guest:I'm not even going to react to you.
Guest:And he died two weeks later.
Guest:And I was thinking, fuck, what if I yelled at him?
Guest:What if I said, fuck you, you old douchebag?
Guest:And then it escalated and he had a heart attack on the spot.
Guest:I made that mistake with Gallagher.
Guest:That's right, you did.
Guest:You fucking did, too, man, because for sure that kicked things up a notch.
Marc:For the same reason, really.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:So you was better off to take the high road.
Marc:Well, I just, you know, I made a choice.
Marc:Well, it's good talking to you, Joe.
Guest:Good talking to you, too.
Marc:I'm glad we did this.
Marc:I think we had a good conversation.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And I think we know each other better now.
Guest:Absolutely.
Marc:All right, man.
Marc:Thanks.
Marc:Okay, that's our show.
Marc:See that?
Marc:Me and Joe are friends.
Marc:We just need to talk about a few things.
Marc:Wasn't even that tense at all.
Marc:He was rather sweet.
Marc:I'm finding that these days.
Marc:People come on my show and they act a little more low-key, a little more human than they do in their own worlds.
Marc:I guess that's what I'm doing here.
Marc:Just a reminder.
Marc:You can get that second show we did at the Bell House in Brooklyn with Bill Hader, Fred Armisen, Chuck Klosterman, Sarah Vowell, and Eric Drysdale right now on any of the apps.
Marc:The apps for iPhone, iPod, iPod Touch.
Marc:You can get the WTF premium.
Marc:If you go to a WTF pod, select get the podcast, go to the non iTunes option and load up on that premium.
Marc:And you can listen to that right now.
Marc:It will be up for everyone on April 7th.
Marc:And as I said before, April 4th, the Conan O'Brien episode will occur.
Marc:Looking forward to that?
Marc:What else can I tell you?
Marc:Justcoffee.coop.
Marc:As always, awesome.
Marc:Get the WTF blend.
Marc:I get a little kickback on that.
Marc:You can go to WTF pod, kicking a few shekels.
Marc:Keep me alive and living and moving forward and enjoying life and doing this show.
Marc:Well, let's not go crazy with the enjoying life thing.
Marc:But you know what I mean.
Marc:PunchwineMagazine.com for all your up-to-date comedy news.
Marc:i think that's about it is it not i know i'm forgetting something oh i remember madison wisconsin at the comedy club on state street thursday the 31st through the second the comedy club on state street in madison wisconsin i'll be there come on down
Thank you.