Episode 54 - Vegas / Ron Shock
Guest 1:Lock the gates!
Guest 2:Are we doing this?
Guest 2:Really?
Guest 2:Wait for it.
Guest 2:Are we doing this?
Guest 2:Wait for it.
Guest 2:Pow!
Guest 2:What the fuck?
Guest 2:And it's also... Eh, what the fuck?
Guest 2:What's wrong with me?
Guest 2:It's time for WTF!
Guest 2:What the fuck?
Guest 2:With Mark Maron.
Marc:All right, let's do this.
Marc:How are you?
Marc:What the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck buddies?
Marc:What the fucking ears?
Marc:Whatever the fuck you want to call yourselves.
Marc:Welcome to the show.
Marc:I am standing.
Marc:No, sitting.
Marc:I'm sitting.
Marc:I'm sitting in a comfortable chair facing out a window 24 floors up at the Palms Hotel in Las Vegas.
Marc:You know, I take these gigs in Las Vegas, and I always wonder, after I've been there one night, why the fuck I do it.
Marc:I've been here twice.
Marc:I haven't been here that much, but I know that Vegas just kills my heart for some reason.
Marc:I cannot fucking take it.
Marc:I try to bend it into something that I'm going to have a great time, that I'm going to be able to appreciate from a distance, but there's something about it that just saddens me.
Marc:Outside of the whole...
Marc:extravaganza or the entire Disneyland element or the sheer massiveness of the spectacle of it.
Marc:There's something else that's been bothering me about it.
Marc:I've been here a couple times in the last few years.
Marc:Now, mind you, I have nothing against Vegas in the sense that I used to come here when I was a kid.
Marc:When I was like, I don't know, I must have been 11 or 12 years old.
Marc:I grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and
Marc:My grandparents lived in New Jersey, and they'd been coming to Vegas since the 50s, I think.
Marc:And they would meet us out here because it was close to New Mexico, and they liked coming out here.
Marc:So we would come out as a family and go meet my Grandpa Jack and my Grandma Goldie, who loved coming to Vegas.
Marc:They loved the shows.
Marc:My grandmother loved Buddy Hackett.
Marc:They loved to go see Wayne Newton.
Marc:They did all the things back in the day when there's only a few hotels and the Strip was still what it was.
Marc:Just talked to a cab driver a second ago just about when the Strip was the Strip.
Marc:And I remember when I was here when I was a kid, the first MGM Grand was only a few years old.
Marc:And it was pretty special.
Marc:There was something special about it.
Marc:I think one time when we met my grandparents out here when I was about 15...
Marc:My father, for some reason, actually had a fake mustache and he glued a fake mustache on me.
Marc:And I wore these sunglasses and I walked around the casino playing blackjack.
Marc:And I swear to God, I was 14 or 15 years old.
Marc:And there is no fucking way that that would happen now.
Marc:Never.
Marc:I mean, come on, 14 or 15 years old.
Marc:They had to know.
Marc:But they let me gamble.
Marc:It was pretty great, but I wish I had a picture of myself because God knows the mustache couldn't have looked real.
Marc:I mean, when someone's 14 or 15 years old, they look 14 or 15 years old.
Marc:There's no mustache that's going to hide that.
Marc:But I do remember sitting at dinner with my grandma Goldie at the MGM Grand in the fancy room.
Marc:There was something intimate about Vegas at that time.
Marc:There was something about the fact that my grandparents could come out every year to whatever hotel that they were loyal to.
Marc:And my grandpa had a guy.
Marc:There was a guy that he knew at the club.
Marc:There was a guy he knew at the bar.
Marc:There was a guy he knew that he could grease for shows.
Marc:He'd give everybody $20.
Marc:And they'd tear care of you.
Marc:They'd remember your name.
Marc:That would never fucking happen here now.
Marc:And I remember sitting with my grandma Goldie at dinner.
Marc:And, you know, talking about Vegas, and this was right when it was shifting over to corporate ownership of the entire town.
Marc:And she literally said, you know, Marky, it was nicer when the boys ran things.
Marc:There was just something special about it because there certainly isn't anything special about it now.
Marc:And the more I come here, which isn't that often, but every time I do, and I see this parade of humanity dressed poorly in clothes that they may have bought for the trip or clothes that they may have worn once, clothes that don't fit well, clothes that they think is glamorous.
Marc:I mean, certainly there's a lot of attractive people here, but there are just...
Marc:Hundreds of people here seemingly forcing themselves to have what is defined as a good time in Vegas.
Marc:And there's a sadness to the whole thing.
Marc:And I couldn't quite wrap my brain around what exactly it was, the feeling that I was getting.
Marc:And this morning, when I was getting a massage downstairs, which I don't do very often, but my brain was drifting, I started to think about my trip to Italy as...
Marc:When I was in Italy, every little town in Italy has a huge cathedral.
Marc:Even the smallest, poorest towns had these spectacular cathedrals.
Marc:I always had felt, every time I walked into one, the amount of money that was put into it, the amount of creativity.
Marc:They would hire artists.
Marc:They would have them design the cathedral.
Marc:Obviously, there was always a religious theme.
Marc:There was always crypts.
Marc:There was always dead wizards and popes around, encased in things.
Marc:But just the the the the Juomo themselves, the the the incredible space in the cathedral.
Marc:When I walked in, you know, as someone who's not religious or Catholic, you have that moment where you're like, oh, my God, this is beautiful.
Marc:But then after that, I started thinking that if I were a peasant or if I was somebody who believed or somebody that lived in a small town, perhaps in a fairly rudimentary living situation.
Marc:I'm not going to say a hut, but certainly a small house or whatever, whatever period in time that those places were erected.
Marc:And you walk into this place.
Marc:Just by the opulence and by the sheer nature of the space, you are going to be leveled.
Marc:You are going to find your humanity.
Marc:You are going to feel small and human in the face of this house of God that was designed to make you feel small and human.
Marc:And also, mind you, to fear God.
Marc:And I started to realize that I started to get the same feeling about some of these places in Vegas, the opulence and the glamour and the amount of money that went into the craftsmanship in the place.
Marc:I mean, fuck, if you go to the Bellagio, they've got Choluli glass all over the place.
Marc:They've got beautiful marble, mosaic tiles, millions and millions of dollars went into this.
Marc:They went into these places.
Marc:Even the place we're staying in now, which is a low-key one, is not as spectacular as, say, the Wynn.
Marc:or the Bellagio, which I went to the other night.
Marc:And just to look at the art and all the craftsmanship that went into making people feel that they were inside something spectacular, inside something glamorous, inside something classy, inside something that represented some sort of opulence and grandeur.
Marc:And maybe there was a time, briefly, where people went into those places and they were actually...
Marc:you know, acted appropriately and might have been classy in and of themselves.
Marc:But that certainly is not the case.
Marc:Just parades of people losing money.
Marc:There's just a sad humanity to the whole thing.
Marc:But I see all these people being incredibly vulnerable for some reason because they're all out of place.
Marc:And the God here is certainly money.
Marc:And the hope is that you will win some, that somehow or another, you're going to be the one that leaves with a pocket full of cash.
Marc:And they create these trappings to make you feel like it's some grand exercise, some beautiful, good time.
Marc:But I'll tell you, man, it is fucking draining, and I can't help but personalize it.
Marc:I don't gamble well.
Marc:I don't have good luck.
Marc:I like to think I don't have bad luck, but shit, I can't get fucking cards to save my life.
Marc:And every time I sit at a blackjack table, and I don't know if anybody has the same experience, but I will sit there.
Marc:I'll blow through $100, $200.
Marc:I don't like losing much over that or else I feel like an asshole.
Marc:But I'll just look at my cards and I'll look at the luck that I have at any one table and I'll somehow take it as being indicative of my whole fucking life.
Marc:And then that's when you start betting more.
Marc:Because you're like, no, I'm going to beat the odds.
Marc:I don't have this kind of luck.
Marc:I'm going to win.
Marc:And then you start putting more on the table out of spite.
Marc:And then you realize that you are acting exactly as they want you to act.
Marc:That is exactly what they want you to do is they want you to hold on to the hope of winning because this is the cathedral of greed.
Marc:This is exactly what America is right now.
Marc:And the more I walk around there, it seems like there's not a lot of people here.
Marc:It seems like that everybody who is here is forcing themselves to have a good time.
Marc:How can you just in this economy throw away money and feel good about yourself?
Marc:How can you look at this as a good time?
Marc:And then I started to look at the mosaics on the floor, and I started to realize this particular art form, mosaic, was definitely taken from ancient Greece or ancient Rome.
Marc:And then I started to picture all these huge hotels.
Marc:These palaces of greed and grandeur as being empty, as being the exact indication of the collapse of empire.
Marc:Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but I can't help myself because I don't drink.
Marc:I don't like to gamble.
Marc:I don't smoke.
Marc:I'm not going to go to strip clubs.
Marc:I'm not going to go to other shows.
Marc:And I just see this as the end of time here.
Marc:that this is the end of America.
Marc:Maybe I'm too heavy-hearted for this fucking monologue, but Jesus Christ, come day three in Las Vegas, I am drained.
Marc:My soul is taxed, and I feel bad for us all.
Marc:Is that wrong?
Marc:I'm going to go to the Liberace Museum because that's really the heart of it and see if that makes me feel any better.
Marc:But this is not the business I'm in.
Marc:This is not the business I wanted to be in.
Marc:And when I'm here, it makes me question, you know, what the fuck am I doing?
Marc:it works it works i just got out of the other part had to walk across the parking lot to go to the uh the costume part where they have all the costumes and uh i'm in i'm gonna do it i i think that i i've been misguided uh i've been on a empty path looking for a little personal truths celebrating my own you know neurotic insights and
Marc:my own frustration with life, presenting that to people in as raw a form as possible.
Marc:Those days are gone.
Marc:I'm fucking done with it.
Marc:I'm hiring a personal fashion designer.
Marc:I'm going to start doing costumes.
Marc:I'm going to start doing, I'm thinking a lot of feathers.
Marc:I'm thinking hats.
Marc:I'm thinking a lot of rhinestones.
Marc:And, you know, I may not have the talent to play piano or to be a song and dance man.
Marc:But if I just go up on stage wearing a multilayered cape, several different things,
Marc:Fabrics with several different shades of maybe violet or pinks or maybe ruby reds with a lot of rhinestones and embroidery and a bow tie, perhaps a hat.
Marc:and talked about my problems.
Marc:I think that would be something that no one is doing right now.
Marc:Just incredibly garish outfits.
Marc:Maybe I'd be lowered down on some sort of cable to big loud music, perhaps a full orchestra, lowered down onto the stage, and then just approach the mic with my hands out, people applauding the grand entrance, and then just do my act like I do now.
Marc:That would be interesting.
Marc:That would be just sort of like, you know, just open with like, what the fuck?
Marc:Am I right?
Marc:I don't know what we're going to do about this economy and shit.
Marc:Yeah, I think that would be an interesting juxtaposition.
Marc:I think it might be my ticket.
Marc:So I guess I learned something in Vegas that I'm going to take a different approach.
Marc:I'm going to be a showman.
Marc:And that's me standing outside of the Liberace Museum.
Marc:And this is me walking towards the 7-Eleven across the street.
Guest 1:I've got to find a designer or something.
Music
Marc:One of the comic legends that many of you probably don't know of my type of comedy.
Marc:Lives right here in Vegas and has been living here for several years.
Marc:And I've tracked him down, and he should be up here in the room any minute now.
Marc:Ron Schock.
Marc:If you've never heard that name, he was a fairly important Texas comic from the Comedy Workshop in Houston, which is where Sam Kennison, Bill Hicks, several other people that you may or may not know that I'll probably talk about with Ron...
Marc:in a minute came out of and and bill hicks actually thanked ron shock and they were very close and i'm hoping to talk to him about his life because he is a uh a an amazing raconteur has several albums out and was a great influence on a lot of people that you probably know and if you don't know ron uh i'm looking forward to this conversation with him and i'm hoping you get to know him as well
Marc:You have many lives, Ron Shaw.
Marc:You've lived many lives.
Marc:Boy, I have.
Marc:Which number life are you on?
Guest 3:I don't know.
Guest 3:Let me think.
Guest 3:All-American boy.
Guest 3:Stone Cold criminal.
Guest 3:Corporate hotshot comic.
Guest 3:Fourth.
Guest 3:Fourth.
Marc:Oh, good.
Marc:All right.
Marc:So if we're going to judge by the cat model, you've got a few more to go.
Marc:I've got a few more.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, that's good.
Guest 3:I'll be ready to expand.
Yeah.
Guest 3:Who knows what's going to happen next?
Guest 3:That's right.
Guest 3:You know, I mean, who would have thunk it?
Guest 3:You know, when I walked out, I did several stretches, but I did one in a maximum security penitentiary.
Guest 3:And as I walk out,
Guest 3:I'd made a conscious decision in there I was never going to be back in prison again.
Guest 3:Not to be back in prison meant that you don't do anything that will get you put in prison.
Guest 3:What were you in for?
Guest 3:Burglary.
Guest 3:They caught me coming out of a jewelry store.
Guest 3:I blew safes.
Guest 3:I'd worked for them.
Guest 3:I ended up in Orleans Parish Prison when I was a kid, runaway for stealing a car.
Guest 3:And while I'm there, I meet guys from the New Orleans mob who are impressed with my moxie, and they go, well, you get out, kid, you know.
Guest 3:You've got a job.
Guest 3:You've got a job, right?
Guest 3:And I worked as a, here I am, I'm like 17 years old, I'm in the streets of New Orleans, and
Guest 3:I'm a pitch man in front of a titty bar.
Guest 3:Yeah.
Guest 3:And right there on Bourbon Street.
Guest 3:And I stood out there and said, 48DD, biggest pair you'll ever see.
Guest 3:And they liked my moxie at that, so they made me part of a burglary ring.
Guest 3:Uh-huh.
Guest 3:And we burglarized department stores.
Guest 3:And what they would do is they'd put me up in the ceiling.
Guest 3:Yeah.
Guest 3:You know, we'd go in during the day, because they didn't have cameras like they do now, right?
Guest 1:Yeah.
Guest 3:You know, and when it's busy...
Guest 3:We'd meet in one of the restrooms, and these two guys would flip me up into the ceiling.
Guest 3:I'd wait until like 2 o'clock in the morning and drop down, and they'd talk me how to turn off the burglar alarm system.
Guest 3:Turn it off, and we'd just back a truck up to the loading dock.
Marc:And were you small?
Guest 3:Yeah, I was a little guy.
Guest 3:I was pretty old.
Guest 3:How old were you?
Guest 3:17.
Guest 3:Uh-huh.
Guest 3:And so then I joined the Army, because that judge gave me a choice.
Marc:Yeah, I think a lot of people deal with that choice.
Guest 3:Oh, absolutely.
Guest 3:You know, you give me a gun and drop the charges.
Guest 3:I'll take it.
Guest 3:Sounds good.
Guest 3:I can be a criminal for the state.
Guest 3:That's right.
Guest 3:You know, he wanted me to kill.
Guest 3:They take a known burglar.
Guest 3:Guess what they teach me?
Guest 3:Explosives.
Guest 3:Oh, good.
Guest 3:So now I know how to circumvent a burglar arm system, and I know how to blow shit up.
Guest 3:And so I moved higher and started taking on jewelry stores.
Marc:Thank you for the armed forces, for giving Ron the training necessary to continue his career choice.
Guest 3:That's right.
Guest 3:So they catch me coming out of a store.
Guest 3:It's really hard.
Guest 3:To say you didn't do it.
Marc:When you've got smoke coming off your hair.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:Your face is all blackened.
Guest 3:I've got the bag, you know.
Guest 3:There's a big hole in the bag.
Marc:Literally, they caught you holding the bag.
Guest 3:The hole in the bag.
Marc:Oh, this?
Marc:I don't know what this is.
Guest 3:I don't know how I got here.
Guest 3:so they nailed you and you go to the you go to prison real time real time real time hard time yeah not child time no no 18 months in solitary confinement while i was there why solitary what the hell did you do did you did you start some shit to get out of general population yes yes absolutely i was little i was pretty i was white i was from out of state i had no homies on the yard right yeah nobody would cover my back
Guest 3:And the only way that you can get respect, you know, is through extreme measures.
Guest 3:And so I did some extreme measures, and they decided I was too dangerous to be on the main line.
Guest 3:So they put me in segregation.
Guest 3:You're like, thank God.
Guest 3:I got some thinking to do.
Guest 3:Absolutely.
Guest 3:And so anyway, when I get out, I'm walking out, and the guard goes, you'll be back.
Guest 3:And I said, no, I won't.
Guest 3:He said, yeah, you will.
Guest 3:And I said, no, I won't.
Guest 3:I won't.
Guest 3:You know, he said, your type never changes.
Guest 3:And I said, well, you couldn't be more wrong.
Guest 3:And when I tell this story on stage, which I don't do very often, maybe once out of every hundred shows, I say that, you know, I wish or hope that 30 years later, you know, he's laying on his fat ass somewhere in some trailer watching The Tonight Show.
Guest 3:Yeah.
Guest 3:And there I am.
Guest 3:You know, that's a kid.
Guest 3:But that was the end of the criminal life right there, you know, when I walked out of that prison.
Guest 3:In a sense, you were rehabilitated.
Guest 3:I was rehabilitated.
Guest 3:So the prison, it works.
Guest 3:It did work.
Guest 3:And I owe a lot to a psychologist that was in there.
Guest 3:Oh, yeah?
Guest 3:Yeah.
Guest 3:Oh, absolutely.
Guest 3:Absolutely.
Guest 3:Credit where credit is due.
Marc:What was the message that you got that really changed it?
Marc:I mean, what changed the wiring?
Guest 3:He had me read something that I saw myself in, and it was called Rebel Without a Cause.
Guest 3:And it was not had anything to do with the movie.
Guest 3:I think the movie was a psychological study by a guy named, I think, Linder.
Guest 3:And it was about a middle-class kid, you know, that just became an outlaw.
Guest 3:And I'm reading this, and I'm going, that's me, man, you know.
Guest 3:That's me.
Guest 3:You know, he's rebelling, but he doesn't know exactly what he's rebelling against.
Guest 3:I was rebelling against all kinds of things.
Guest 3:But instead of striking out the things, I struck out...
Guest 3:At everybody, so to speak.
Marc:Yeah, I think that's a way that some of us define ourselves.
Marc:Whatever you come from parentally or whether you don't have parents, it becomes difficult if you don't have guidance that you can rely on and you're left to your own devices to invent yourself.
Marc:You're probably going to go the dark path.
Guest 3:Yeah, well, yeah.
Marc:You're angry, pissed off?
Guest 3:Yeah, I'm angry and pissed off at the hypocrisy of everybody, of every fucking body.
Guest 3:Right.
Guest 3:My parents, you know, my mother's a religious psychopath and my dad's not there.
Guest 3:Right.
Guest 3:You know, so they're lying to me.
Guest 3:The schools are lying to me because I could read.
Guest 1:Yeah.
Guest 3:You know, I'm going to Catholic schools and reading books.
Guest 3:Martin Luther and, you know, and then bringing these questions to class and they're telling me lies.
Guest 3:Yeah.
Guest 3:You know, and eventually, well, screw it.
Marc:So you found out early on the system is rigged.
Marc:It's all bullshit.
Marc:It's all bullshit.
Marc:And they're just trying to brainwash me into fitting into this fucking ridiculous charade.
Guest 3:In a way, I don't think I thought it through that deep.
Marc:That's my job.
Guest 3:I don't think I went any past, you know, this is all bullshit.
Guest 3:Yeah, fuck this.
Guest 3:Fuck this.
Guest 3:That was as deep as my thinking was at that time.
Guest 3:It got to, fuck this, man.
Marc:So you get out of prison that stretch, and then you're done with prison, and then what happens?
Guest 3:Well, I get lucky.
Guest 3:I can't get a job because, you know, there's not much jobs for, you know.
Guest 3:An ex-con.
Guest 3:An ex-con jewel thief.
Guest 3:You know, burglar.
Guest 3:Do how to blow shit up.
Guest 3:And I get a job.
Guest 3:I've had several jobs of no consequence, but I finally get a job selling encyclopedias door-to-door at night on commission.
Marc:Now, that's a job that definitely does not exist anymore, Ron.
Marc:I know.
Marc:I know.
Marc:It's gone.
Marc:An encyclopedia?
Marc:What's that?
Guest 3:Yeah, an encyclopedia.
Guest 3:That really happened, huh?
Guest 3:You sold door-to-door books.
Guest 3:I became vice president of Macmillan Publishing Company.
Guest 3:Holy shit.
Guest 3:Is that Texas?
Guest 3:Macmillan?
Guest 3:Yeah.
Guest 3:Fuck no.
Guest 3:Third largest in the world.
Guest 3:So they're in New York?
Guest 3:New York, yeah.
Guest 3:And I was in sales.
Guest 3:What happened was I was so good at doing what I did, because I can talk, so they'd make me a trainer.
Guest 3:To train salesmen?
Guest 3:To train salesmen.
Guest 3:Yeah.
Guest 3:I was real good at that.
Guest 3:Yeah, yeah.
Guest 3:So they had me train people to train people.
Guest 3:Yeah.
Guest 3:I was real good at that.
Marc:So it was almost like a pyramid thing.
Guest 3:Yeah.
Guest 3:So, you know, they gave me an office.
Guest 3:You know, I'm the number one office in the nation, so they gave me a district.
Guest 3:I'm the number one district, so they gave me a region.
Guest 3:You know, this all happens pretty rapidly.
Marc:And then you have an empire.
Guest 3:Then I have an empire.
Guest 3:Ah.
Guest 3:And they promote me up.
Guest 3:Then British printing hires me away.
Guest 3:I run British printing in the South Pacific for a little bit until they get ready to fuck me.
Guest 3:So I left them and started my own company in Sydney with Groyer and Walt Disney, distributed all their stuff.
Guest 2:In where?
Guest 3:South Australia.
Guest 3:You were in Australia?
Guest 3:Yeah, but I had offices in the Philippines and in Africa and New Zealand.
Guest 3:And you travel around to these offices?
Guest 3:Yeah.
Guest 3:Yeah, I built the whole thing from scratch.
Marc:Great American business.
Marc:Sales.
Guest 3:Door-to-door sales.
Guest 3:All of it.
Guest 3:All of the whole thing.
Guest 3:From mail order to door-to-door to corporate.
Marc:Now, how the fuck do you get from there to here?
Marc:How the fuck do you get from there to where we're sitting in Las Vegas?
Marc:Las Vegas still doing a podcast.
Marc:Yeah, let's go to...
Marc:That's a well-known comic.
Marc:And then you are, many people don't know this because a lot of people don't respect the current and contemporary history of comedy, but Ron Schock was one of the cornerstones of the Houston school, the outlaw school.
Marc:I think the original outlaws were yourself and Riley Barber and Bill Hicks and Steve Epstein.
Marc:And John Frenetti.
Marc:John Frenetti.
Marc:And Kenison came later.
Guest 3:No, Kenison was there before.
Guest 3:When I got hit at the scene, which was 82.
Marc:Okay, so this is 10 years after Sydney.
Marc:When did you decide to be a comic?
Marc:How did you get to Texas first?
Guest 3:when i came back i got disgusted with the publishing business too you know i was just lying i was stealing with a pencil right okay you know i'd work you stole with explosives with firearms with pencil you know and i i did some consulting for other companies and it just it was more of the same every sales talk and it contained lies every advertisement contained lies
Guest 3:They weren't necessarily overt.
Guest 3:They were sometimes covert.
Guest 3:They were sometimes just insinuating something that wasn't true, leading you in a different direction, blah, blah, blah.
Guest 3:So, fuck, man.
Guest 3:And so, just fuck it again.
Guest 3:And so, I...
Guest 3:My wife was the woman that I'd met in Australia, Heather.
Guest 3:So Heather's making good money.
Guest 3:I've set up a little firm that makes me money without me doing anything.
Guest 3:I love that.
Guest 3:And I decided to go to college.
Guest 3:I'm just approaching 40.
Guest 3:And I said, okay, well, you know, I've never been to college.
Guest 3:I take some courses that interest me.
Guest 3:One of them is theater.
Mm-hmm.
Guest 3:Hayden Rourke, who is the guy that played Colonel Bellows on I Dream of Jeannie, is a friend of my professor's.
Guest 3:And he comes to class one day, and he sees me perform a little skit, likes it, takes me out to lunch.
Guest 3:Over lunch, I tell him a story, right?
Guest 3:And he's just, you're funny.
Guest 3:You ought to be a stand-up comic.
Guest 3:And I've never even been in a comedy club.
Guest 3:Never been in a comedy club in my life.
Guest 3:I saw one comic.
Guest 3:I saw Buddy Hackett in a dinner theater one time.
Guest 3:But that was it.
Guest 3:Never thought about it.
Guest 3:He was funny.
Guest 3:Oh, he was really funny.
Marc:He was one of those guys that you couldn't help but be funny.
Guest 3:He was my mentor here.
Guest 3:I became very good friends with Buddy Hackett.
Guest 3:Did you really?
Guest 3:Yeah.
Guest 3:He liked what I did.
Guest 3:Of course, I liked what he did.
Guest 3:I knew his son, Sandy.
Guest 3:Buddy took me under his wing for a couple of years.
Guest 3:It was real interesting.
Guest 3:I'd sit backstage with him after one of his big shows.
Guest 3:We'd drink vodka.
Marc:I thought he was the best.
Marc:When I was a kid, I wrote to him and asked him for his autograph.
Marc:Is that right?
Guest 3:And he sent the picture.
Guest 3:Oh, he was a sweetheart of a guy.
Marc:Well, that's fairly recent history.
Guest 3:So Major Bellows says you ought to become a comic.
Guest 3:So I go down to the comedy workshop, and I walk in on a Tuesday.
Guest 3:As God is my witness, it was like a light shone on me and said, this is what you're supposed to do.
Guest 3:And I had changed my morals over the years.
Guest 3:I just couldn't lie for a living anymore.
Guest 3:If I hated the game, why am I playing in it?
Guest 2:Be true to yourself.
Guest 3:Be true to myself.
Guest 3:And so I'm looking for something.
Guest 3:I really am.
Guest 3:And it was boom.
Guest 3:And I go up on Sunday night and...
Guest 3:bomb horribly and on monday morning basically shut my business down you know said i'm a stand-up comic and right after the miserable bombing experience that a fight breaks up out in my set among the comics
Guest 3:My first night, my first night, I'm up at 1.30 in the morning, and there's only like, let's see, there's two people back, a little tiny club.
Marc:Were you ever in it?
Marc:No, I wasn't.
Marc:88 seats.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Tiny, man.
Marc:It's a mythic place.
Guest 3:Yeah, and there's two people back here on stools along the bar, and they're only here because they've been here during the entire show, and it was horrible, and they're going to fucking see it all, right?
Guest 3:There's four people down here to the left, and
Guest 3:And the only reason they're there is they're too drunk to get out.
Guest 3:There's my wife and the guy that's going to go up after me, the last act, who is going to play with balloons.
Guest 3:Do some animals.
Guest 3:I don't know what the fuck he was going to do.
Marc:He was pacing and panicking.
Marc:Right, pacing.
Marc:That's the amazing thing about that.
Marc:He's got his wife and mother with him.
Marc:So you've got about four people in the audience that are tied to the comedian, and yet when you're waiting to go on stage, you don't give a fuck.
Marc:You're just like, oh, just stay.
Marc:Just the two guys, the drunk, the one guy sleeping.
Marc:Just stay because I'm about to go on.
Guest 3:This kid wasn't even that smart.
Guest 3:He was stupid.
Guest 3:It was his one and only time in his show business.
Guest 3:Okay, so I'm up there, and it starts out as a fake fight, but it becomes real, and so punches are thrown, and they're at the bar, which is slightly to the right of the stage in the back, and...
Guest 3:It crashes into the club, right?
Guest 3:My wife is sitting in the way of this wave of fighting comics who crash into the table and knock the table over, and they land on the ground.
Guest 3:Jimmy Pineapple's on the bottom.
Guest 3:And Riley Barber's trying to punch him, and people are pulling Riley off.
Guest 3:And Jimmy's just laying... Riley's huge, too.
Guest 3:He's huge.
Guest 3:Yeah.
Guest 3:Fucking huge.
Guest 3:And they're all drunk.
Guest 3:Yeah.
Guest 3:And I've only been, like, two minutes into my set.
Guest 3:Yeah.
Guest 3:And I look at my wife, and I said, of all the things I expected...
Guest 3:This wasn't one of them.
Guest 3:And I leave the stage.
Guest 3:And as I leave the stage, Dan Merriman, who is the emcee, as he walks by me, he goes, it takes a lot of courage to do this.
Guest 3:And as we're leaving, Heather, who was gorgeous, and Pineapple's still laying on the ground.
Guest 3:And as we walk by, he looks up at Heather and goes, come back and see me again, babe.
Guest 3:Ha, ha, ha.
Guest 3:These are my kind of people.
Guest 3:This is where I want to be.
Guest 3:That sold it.
Guest 3:Beat this shit out of the corporate world right there.
Guest 3:Come back and see me again.
Guest 1:It was like you were home.
Guest 3:I was home.
Guest 3:Here's some guys that somewhere in their lives, they said, fuck it.
Guest 3:Let's go make people laugh.
Guest 3:That's the only worthwhile thing to do in America.
Guest 3:Make people laugh.
Marc:And also, you know, speak your own fucking truth, you know, and have complete control over your game and what you say.
Marc:Absolutely.
Marc:And how you present it.
Marc:I mean, that was what the amazing thing about about a few of the Houston comics, you know, especially you and Bill and Sam.
Marc:And is that, you know, you guys were pushing an envelope that, you know, you were doing stuff that, you know, people were doing now that a type of storytelling.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It wasn't like Buddy Hackett's storytelling.
Marc:It wasn't Catskill's storytelling.
Marc:It was like, this is what I lived through.
Marc:This is the life that I led.
Marc:And this is why it's resonant and funny and human.
Marc:And my experience is completely different than yours.
Marc:And the only thing that's going to keep you here is my ability to engage you with the story.
Guest 3:Engage you with the story, you know, and talk about subjects.
Guest 3:You know, we talked about, we were doing, I mean, Lenny Bruce did, you know, Religion Incorporated, you know, and opened that door.
Yeah.
Guest 3:We were doing stuff on religion that nobody else was doing at that time.
Guest 3:We're going after the preachers and saying, this is a lying motherfucker right here, and here's why, and make it funny.
Guest 3:We did those theme shows.
Guest 3:When we had the Texas Outlaw Comics, there was two groups.
Guest 3:There was the Outlaws of Comedy, which was Kenison, LeBeau,
Guest 3:Barber and Hicks, but that was only around for one show, and they did this show to get the money to move to L.A.
Guest 3:Right.
Guest 3:Okay.
Guest 3:Kinnison and LeBeau stay after about a year, and Barber and Hicks come back to Houston.
Guest 3:Beaten.
Guest 3:Yeah, which is about the time I show up.
Guest 3:Right.
Guest 3:So Kinnison's already gone.
Guest 3:Then in 84, I think is when we first started, we started this group called Texas Outlaw Comics.
Guest 3:And we did theme shows, you know, Texas Outlaw Comics.
Guest 3:At the workshop?
Guest 3:Well, yeah, we started at the workshop.
Marc:And that was you and Bill?
Guest 3:Me, Bill, Epstein, Barber, Pineapple, and Farnetti.
Guest 3:That was the original six.
Guest 3:Now, Bill was what, 12?
Guest 3:Just about.
Guest 3:First time I saw Bill...
Guest 3:I went home and told Heather, I said, I've just seen a genius.
Guest 3:Just seen a genius.
Guest 3:Everybody else should just quit doing stand-up because this guy, you know, he's already doing it.
Marc:Was he like 20?
Marc:22.
Guest 3:22, 23, something like that.
Guest 3:He was...
Guest 3:Yeah, he's 18 years.
Guest 3:He and Ellen, the woman I was with later, Heather.
Guest 3:Heather thought I'd gone crazy, and I thought she had gone crazy, and so I left her and then was with this woman named Ellen.
Marc:Well, at least you guys agreed to agree.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You're crazy.
Marc:I'm crazy.
Guest 3:What do you say we just split?
Guest 3:You take the house, I'll become a comic.
Guest 3:I don't give a fuck.
Guest 3:So I'll be able to work out.
Guest 3:But, yeah, he was 22 or 23.
Guest 3:He was the same age as Alan was.
Guest 3:And born in 60, I think.
Guest 3:You know, maybe 61.
Marc:And he just had, I guess the thing is, is that, you know, I knew him a bit later on.
Marc:We spent a few times together talking and working together.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It just seemed that was amazing about Bill, and it must have been there early on, even though he wasn't talking about the subjects he grew to talk about, was there was a clarity of mind.
Marc:Absolutely.
Marc:He was able to be very eloquent about things, very focused.
Marc:And what people don't really realize about Bill is that a lot of the stuff that he did that wasn't necessarily provocative on a political or cultural way, but was just mundane, was so well-crafted.
Marc:Yes.
Guest 3:The guy could write a joke.
Guest 3:He could write a joke.
Guest 3:Yeah.
Guest 3:His impressions of his mother and father that he did when he was starting out were so dead on, so funny, so everybody's dad.
Guest 3:You know what I mean?
Guest 3:They were just fucking beautiful.
Guest 3:And I was telling my wife, Rhonda, I've been through a lot of women.
Guest 3:Yeah.
Marc:Maybe I should be keeping this written down.
Guest 3:You remember them all.
Guest 3:Yeah.
Guest 3:I told Rhonda when we were talking about Bill, I said he never got enough credit for his stage craftsmanship as well.
Guest 3:He commanded that stage.
Guest 3:He worked that stage.
Guest 3:He knew how to work a microphone.
Guest 3:He knew how to pace, where to go.
Guest 3:I think he did it naturally, but it was perfect stagecraft.
Guest 3:And I think a lot of people, they're just so overwhelmed by his comedy in itself that
Guest 3:They don't see all those other things that are going on.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest 3:Well, he's doing that.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That was what was always amazing to me is that, you know, people know him as a as a political, you know, sort of profit type of comic.
Marc:But, you know, early on, he always had that clarity and that delivery and the command of the stage.
Marc:But he used to talk about mundane things.
Marc:But he did it like one of my favorite jokes is that thing he says about he's been dating this woman about a year and a half.
Marc:He figures it's time to pop the big question.
Marc:Why are we still going out?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Like there was such a clarity to it.
Guest 3:Such a clarity.
Guest 3:Yeah, he could write one-liners.
Guest 3:He could write one-liners.
Guest 3:He could write little things about going to school.
Guest 3:I mean, he was a kid when he started.
Guest 3:He was 15, riding his bicycle down to the comedy workshops.
Marc:Do you remember the point where, like, obviously, I think you might have had some influence in this.
Marc:I don't know, because I know that, you know, he thanks you on at least one of his records, if not all of them.
Guest 3:We were pretty close.
Guest 3:Yeah.
Guest 3:I wasn't as close as Frank.
Guest 3:I was like his uncle.
Guest 3:That's what I mean.
Marc:What do you think, you know, because of your experience as a person, that I have to assume that somebody like Hicks, you know, looked up to that and respected it.
Marc:But where did you see him?
Marc:Did you see the point where he turned into something bigger than just a comic?
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:What brought that on and how did it happen?
Guest 3:New York City brought it on.
Marc:That's where I met him in New York.
Guest 3:Once he got out of Houston.
Marc:He was only there for like 10 minutes in New York.
Marc:Only a couple years, I think.
Guest 3:Yeah, but when he got there, I think because of just the vibe of the city, he was able to turn loose totally, you know what I mean, and just stuff just poured out of him.
Guest 3:Just poured out.
Guest 3:I'd see him, you know, for a week, and then I'd come back four months later, I'd see him for a week.
Guest 3:He'd do an hour of stuff that he didn't have the other time.
Guest 3:So the freedom of mind just blew open.
Marc:Oh, man.
Marc:He got complete confidence in his craft.
Marc:And just let it go.
Guest 3:Right.
Guest 3:Let it go.
Guest 3:Let him be, you know, himself.
Guest 3:Yeah.
Guest 3:And, you know, that's a very difficult transition for all of us.
Guest 3:Yeah.
Guest 3:You know, when you come to that point where you just decide, fuck it.
Guest 3:I'm done being afraid.
Guest 3:Yeah, I'm done being afraid.
Guest 3:I'm going to go ahead and be me and let's see how this works out.
Guest 3:You know, and when Bill did it, when Bill did it, because he always knew, don't you know, he always knew he was born knowing he was going to be a stand-up comic.
Guest 3:He knew it from get-go, from get-go.
Guest 3:I mean, what a blessing to know who you are from the time you can first form a coherent thought in your mind.
Guest 3:You know, in little baby, I'm a stand-up comic.
Guest 3:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest 3:He knew.
Guest 3:He knew.
Marc:I think I knew when I was like 11.
Marc:I didn't think there was any other.
Guest 3:What a blessing you guys have.
Marc:Is it?
Marc:I guess that's one way to look at it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Depends on how the night goes.
Guest 3:Well, yeah, but you know what I mean, to know what you're going to do and know what's inside of you early on.
Guest 3:I spent all those years searching, man.
Marc:Yeah, but you've got good stories.
Marc:If you didn't spend all those years.
Marc:I've got good stories.
Marc:What would the act be if you had not?
Marc:Ha, ha, ha, ha.
Marc:And also you had a very tangible moment of like, you know, if I go on with what I'm doing, you know, I'm not going to come back from it.
Marc:That I may not ever know who I am.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Right.
Marc:You know, because, you know, money and all that stuff and being part of a power structure, I mean, and seeing the chain of command and then getting to the top of it to actually get there and go, this ain't it.
Guest 3:This ain't it, man.
Guest 3:These are slimy motherfuckers.
Guest 3:I told the head of ITT Financials to go fuck himself one day.
Guest 3:I'm doing consulting work for them.
Guest 3:It's just what a slimy group they are, them and GE.
Guest 3:I did some work for them, too.
Guest 3:It took me about a week to figure out their scam, and they were stealing from the poor.
Guest 3:Oh, man.
Guest 3:The worst.
Marc:They all do.
Marc:Oh, God.
Marc:They take their lives.
Guest 3:Yeah, they take everything, man.
Guest 3:If they take everything, they're going to take these people's property.
Marc:Yeah, and the thing about comedy is I read some interview I did.
Marc:I don't even know when I did.
Marc:It must have been 10 years ago.
Marc:And one of the reasons I said that I like being a comic and I like comics is that comics tell the truth even when they're lying.
Marc:Absolutely.
Guest 3:Absolutely.
Guest 3:That is very well put, Mark.
Guest 3:Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.
Guest 3:Even when they're lying, they're telling you the truth.
Guest 3:One time I said this.
Guest 3:I don't know who interviewed me.
Guest 3:I don't even remember where.
Guest 3:But he said, well, you know, how was Bill picking up stuff?
Guest 3:I said, let me tell you a story.
Guest 3:Bill and I go, he's over hanging out with me, and we're walking my great name around the block, okay, for his evening constitutional, me and Bill.
Guest 3:And during this walk, I...
Guest 3:go forth on the money system, you know, the gold standard and silver standards and Federal Reserve and how the banking system works, blah, blah, blah, because he wanted to know, you know, so he was just talking, blah, blah, blah.
Guest 3:The next night, the next night, he does like maybe 15 minutes of side-splitting comedy on it.
Guest 3:And I'm going, you know,
Guest 3:I know all this stuff.
Guest 3:I haven't thought of a single fucking funny thing yet on it.
Guest 3:Not a word, not a joke.
Guest 3:And he had minutes.
Guest 3:You know, he had an act on a subject, a very arcane subject, a very in-depth subject.
Guest 3:You know what I mean?
Guest 3:Not something that's
Marc:bandied about you know you know what i mean right well i think he was very good at at doing what what lenny bruce said you know set out you know set the rules to be which is like find the hot point find where the hypocrisy is and how are we being fucked yes and that he was able to probably put it all together and how this is an elaborate system designed to fuck us exactly right exactly and
Guest 3:You know, I mean, I knew it, but I couldn't get it down to the essence like he did.
Guest 3:You know what I mean?
Marc:Yeah, he could button it down, man.
Marc:It's funny that the myth of Hicks has so been ingrained in comics and people that appreciate this shit he did.
Marc:I mean, I was talking to some fairly low-level comics once in Texas about Bill, and one of them had decided that he was assassinated.
Marc:That's something that they designed some sort of satellite ray to give Bill pancreatic cancer.
Marc:I'm like, you know, he was good, but I don't know if they really were gunning for him that much.
Guest 3:I don't think he did that yet.
Guest 3:No.
Guest 3:But he never got a big following here.
Guest 3:No.
Guest 3:He never got a big following.
Marc:Now he has one.
Guest 3:Dead.
Guest 3:Yeah.
Guest 3:But even, you know.
Guest 3:It's big by what he had, but it's not.
Guest 3:Well, he created such a. Not Ron White's size.
Marc:But the interesting thing about the estate and the memory and the fact that, you know, Bill was fairly diligent about, you know, getting the shit on tape.
Guest 3:Yeah.
Marc:Like he knew enough.
Marc:Like he had enough confidence to know that this stuff needed to be documented.
Marc:So there's enough of it existing that has a timelessness to it that will always be.
Guest 3:Always be there.
Guest 3:Yes.
Guest 3:Absolutely.
Marc:Absolutely.
Marc:When he was sick, did you spend time with him?
Guest 3:I have an incredible story about the night Bill died.
Guest 3:Oh, really?
Guest 3:Yeah.
Guest 3:You want to hear a story?
Marc:I think he sat me down in Canada and told me this.
Guest 3:Yeah, do.
Guest 3:This is a heavy-duty story.
Guest 3:He calls me the night before he dies, and I'm in Lexington, Kentucky.
Guest 3:He dies on a Saturday.
Guest 3:And on Friday he calls me.
Guest 3:He goes, I'm going to die tomorrow.
Guest 3:I said, well, okay, but why do you think you're going to die tomorrow?
Guest 3:And he said, Sam came to me in a dream last night.
Guest 3:Kenison.
Guest 3:Kenison.
Guest 3:And I said, did Sam say, and then Mark, it was like Kenison possessed me.
Guest 3:I can't do people.
Guest 3:Whenever I try to do people, I sound like me trying to do somebody.
Guest 3:I don't sound anything lawlike, but I'm doing a perfect Kenison.
Guest 3:I'm screaming at him.
Guest 3:Don't be afraid, Hicks.
Guest 3:You're a pussy, Hicks.
Guest 3:Step through the veil, blah, blah, blah.
Guest 3:I don't even remember all the words.
Guest 3:But I go on this rant in Kenison's voice.
Guest 3:I come to, and I go, is that what he said?
Guest 3:He said, word for word, Ron.
Guest 2:Get out of here.
Guest 3:I said, then you're going to die tomorrow.
Guest 3:And he said, you know, well, then, you know, goodbye.
Guest 3:And I said, goodbye.
Guest 3:I love you.
Guest 3:I'll see you on the other side.
Guest 3:And so we hang up.
Guest 3:So I call Ellen, and I said, relay this story to her.
Guest 3:I said, so, you know, you're going to get a call sometime tomorrow.
Guest 3:You know, the bill died.
Guest 3:So when Kenny and I, Kenny Moore is with me.
Guest 3:Do you know Kenny?
Guest 3:I don't know if I know him.
Guest 3:Kenny is the guy who hit the heckler over the head.
Marc:Oh, yeah, sure.
Guest 3:Well, he used to be my sidekick.
Guest 3:He hit the guy in the head with the guitar.
Guest 3:That's him.
Guest 3:Kenny and I get back.
Guest 3:Phone's ringing.
Guest 3:It's Ellen.
Guest 3:Bill died.
Guest 3:Okay.
Okay.
Guest 3:We sit down in a very similar to the way you and I are right now, okay?
Guest 3:I'm on a long couch and it makes an L and I'm on the long part and Kenny was on the short part, okay?
Guest 3:In between us or in front of the long was a coffee table.
Guest 3:And sitting next to me on the couch is a pile of newspapers and a basketball on top of it with signatures from the University of Kentucky basketball team, okay?
Guest 3:The owner of the club is a big U.K.
Marc:fan.
Uh-huh.
Guest 3:We've got a bong.
Guest 3:And I said, well, let's smoke one to Bill and send him on the way.
Guest 3:So we take the bong between us, like you and I are right here, and we take a hit and we blow it out simultaneously and say, goodbye, Bill.
Guest 3:As we say that, this pile of papers and this basketball explode into flames.
Guest 3:Just a whoosh!
Guest 3:And it goes up, it catches the couch on fire, goes up, burns a hole in the ceiling.
Guest 3:I reach over and throw the cushion on the ground, which immediately burns a big hole in the rug.
Guest 3:And Kenny goes and gets some water to throw on it.
Guest 3:And I go, well, you know, this is foolish.
Guest 3:Let's drag this sub-bitch outside.
Guest 3:And I have to call the owner.
Guest 3:You know, it's 2 o'clock in the morning.
Guest 3:And I'm leaving the next morning.
Guest 3:And I go, you know, Jeff, I hate to wake you up, but Bill Hicks burned down part of your house tonight.
Guest 3:He goes, the ex died today.
Guest 3:I said, yeah, I know that.
Guest 3:It's a long story.
Guest 3:It's a long story, Jeff.
Guest 3:And I know you're not going to believe it, so I'll pay for everything.
Guest 3:But I've got to go.
Guest 3:So the next day, Kenny and I stay up all night.
Guest 3:I mean.
Marc:How are you not going to stay up all night and go, what the fuck?
Marc:Fuck.
Guest 3:Absolutely.
Guest 3:How are you not going to stay up all night?
Guest 3:How are you not going to be absolutely stunned by this?
Guest 3:And we talk and we talk and we talk.
Guest 3:And we've been on like a three-week run out there, and we've started in Indianapolis, and we've got a rental car.
Guest 3:I'm going to drive up there, and I'm going to turn the rental car in.
Guest 3:Kenny's truck's there.
Guest 3:He's going to drive home.
Guest 3:I'm going to get on a plane and fly home.
Guest 3:So we're driving up there.
Guest 3:It was in the wintertime.
Guest 3:And it snowed the night before, the night that Bill died.
Guest 3:It snowed.
Guest 3:And so when we're driving up southern Indiana, going up 65 there towards Indianapolis, the fields are virgin white, right?
Guest 3:And I'm driving.
Guest 3:Kenny's sitting in the passenger seat.
Guest 3:We've been talking about this.
Guest 3:And I look towards him, but he is looking away when I say this.
Guest 3:He's looking out the window.
Guest 3:I go, what do you think it all means?
Guest 3:As I say it, there's a sign out there, and it says John 3.16.
Guest 3:We keep going.
Guest 3:I said, do you see that?
Guest 3:Kenny goes, and the sign was blue.
Guest 3:I said, do you see that?
Guest 3:He goes, yeah, that red sign.
Guest 3:I said, well, no, it was a blue sign, but what does your red sign say?
Guest 3:He said, John 316.
Guest 3:We pull over.
Guest 3:We make a turnaround on the interstate.
Guest 3:We go back.
Guest 3:We come back up that road.
Guest 3:There was no sign.
Come on.
Guest 3:And what does John 3.16 say?
Guest 3:He who believeth in me has life everlasting, which is a misquote.
Guest 3:That's not what Jesus said.
Guest 3:In Greek, what it reads is Jesus said, he who believeth what I'm telling has life everlasting.
Guest 3:You know, if you understand this, you'll evolve.
Marc:Now, what do you make of that?
Marc:Are you a religious man?
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Guest 3:In a Jesus way?
Yeah.
Guest 3:Not in any way that you would recognize.
Guest 3:I think every minister and preacher I have ever heard has got it all wrong.
Guest 3:When I started going through moral change, I was in a seminary when I was younger.
Guest 3:I come from a very strict Roman Catholic family.
Guest 3:And Bill as well came from a very Baptist monk.
Guest 3:Right.
Guest 3:You know, we talk religion all the time.
Guest 3:I have actually read the New Testament in Greek, and it's totally different.
Guest 3:Yeah.
Guest 3:It's totally different than what we were told it said.
Guest 3:Just totally different.
Guest 3:And by my early 30s, I was really doing some serious studying, you know, and and came to my own beliefs.
Guest 3:They would not be similar to anything you would associate with Christianity, you know.
Marc:So does it does that mean that it's more about the teachings and the spiritual elements other than the deification of Jesus?
Guest 3:Yes.
Guest 3:Yes.
Guest 3:It's about the philosophical statements that he made.
Guest 3:And most of them, I don't want to get in a long discussion on this, but most time Christian ministers, when they quote anything out of the Bible, they never quote Jesus.
Guest 3:They quote Paul or somewhere in the Old Testament or blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Guest 3:They never want to actually talk about what he said, okay?
Guest 3:Because then, you know, well, they're going to start getting, you know, hypocritical.
Guest 1:Right, right.
Guest 3:You know, they never talk about the money changers in the temple.
Guest 3:Isn't that odd?
Guest 3:Right.
Guest 3:There are no ministers ever fucking talk about, geez, the only thing that ever made him mad was the money changers in the temple because that'd be a very bad sermon to give right before you pass the collection plate.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And, you know, Brett Butler always used to say that Bill Hicks was like Jesus in that scene.
Guest 3:That would be Bill.
Guest 3:That's right.
Guest 3:That would be Bill.
Guest 3:Righteous anger.
Guest 3:Right.
Guest 3:Righteous anger from a righteous man.
Marc:But he spiritually was sort of dead sure that this wasn't it.
Guest 3:Yeah.
Marc:But it didn't seem that from what I had listened to or what I've gleaned from what he has said that he was specific about his beliefs.
Guest 3:I would say...
Guest 3:Bill Hicks and I had more conversations about God and spirituality than any other subject that we ever discussed.
Guest 3:It was a running conversation.
Guest 3:And this conversation...
Guest 3:The fact of the matter was, I did most of the talking.
Guest 3:Bill would ask the questions and I would answer him, you know, and he'd go, well, what about this?
Guest 3:And I'd walk him through that, you know, and his grasp of things when it came to that was amazing, you know, was just amazing.
Yeah.
Marc:Where do you think he stood?
Marc:He believed that there was some sort of afterlife and some sort of crossing over.
Guest 3:I don't think he believed it at all.
Guest 3:No.
Guest 3:He knew it.
Guest 3:There's a real big difference.
Guest 3:We had some similar experiences in out-of-body experiences that were real.
Guest 3:I did it not on drugs.
Guest 3:Part of my studies, I did that because I had to fucking know.
Guest 3:I had to know.
Guest 3:I'm not going to take your word for it.
Guest 3:Right.
Marc:How did those studies look?
Marc:They left no doubt in my mind.
Guest 3:Like what's one of the experiences?
Guest 3:A combination of all of them.
Guest 3:Believing my body was the final proof that I needed that we were indeed a spirit inside of a physical body.
Marc:Just a vessel, a decaying vessel.
Guest 3:Yeah, a decaying vessel that we're here for a life lesson.
Guest 3:Right.
Guest 3:Okay.
Guest 3:And that I'm separate.
Guest 3:You know, and it happened to me on LSD.
Guest 3:I'd floated up outside my body and ran into my wife on the ceiling one time.
Guest 3:One time I flew with a hawk.
Marc:I had one experience leaving my body, and I guess this would be the difference between someone who's on a spiritual search versus somebody who is hopelessly earthbound.
Marc:Is that the only thing I know?
Marc:about leaving my body is right when it happened.
Marc:All I felt was panic that I wouldn't be able to get back.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Panic.
Marc:The very first one.
Guest 3:I didn't want to do any traveling.
Guest 3:Right.
Guest 3:Oh, no.
Guest 3:It's scary.
Guest 3:It's fucking scary.
Guest 3:Yeah.
Guest 3:You know, the first time.
Guest 3:It took me like eight weeks of this exercise that I had learned from Zen Buddhism, an outreach event, to be able to leave your body.
Guest 3:The first time I only got just a little bit out, and it scared me so bad.
Guest 3:I went right back in, and there's a real loud clap, almost like clapping your hands.
Guest 3:You know, when I'm back in.
Guest 3:And the next night, I was able to get up, walk across the room.
Guest 3:And I say walk because I felt like I was moving.
Guest 3:I could, like, feel the air go by me.
Guest 3:I had senses.
Guest 3:But my eyesight was much more panoramic.
Guest 3:Like a bird.
Guest 3:I don't know, but I could see the nose was gone.
Guest 3:You see all this stuff on your face.
Guest 3:You just don't pay any attention to it.
Guest 3:But I wasn't seeing it, right?
Guest 3:I get all the way across the room, and I turn around, and I see myself sitting in the chair.
Guest 3:And that scares me so much, I end up back in.
Guest 3:But I didn't need to know any more.
Marc:Did you have any moment where you're like, oh, look at that sad asshole just sitting there?
Marc:It was very strange to see yourself.
Marc:Like, the one thing I know about whether or not I'm going to cop to believing in anything is that there have been times on stage where I've left my body, and I was very happy that I was able to do that.
Marc:Where it's like, this isn't going well, and part of me goes, you know what?
Marc:Let's get out of here.
Marc:I'll be in back.
Marc:You know, you go ahead and do what you've got to do out here.
Guest 3:I think I've done that, too.
Marc:I'll meet you backstage.
Marc:I don't want to have to go through this with you.
Guest 3:I don't want to go through this with you.
Guest 3:I hate this kind of pain.
Marc:A little too much for me.
Guest 3:All the humiliation.
Guest 3:I'll be backstage getting stowed.
Guest 3:Hurry back.
Marc:Don't go over your time this time.
Guest 3:I want to get the fuck out of here.
Marc:Don't go long.
Marc:Okay, so now you're in Vegas.
Marc:Now we're in the present mode.
Marc:All right.
Marc:And you come out here to work?
Guest 3:First time?
Guest 3:Yeah.
Guest 3:Yeah, I moved here in late 89.
Guest 3:Actually, I moved here.
Guest 3:No, I guess it must be right at the beginning of 90.
Guest 3:I was out here for Christmas of 89, and a sentence made me move to Vegas.
Guest 3:I'm at a poker table.
Guest 3:And this old man sitting next to me, you know, just a perfect Vegas character, cranky, gnarly, old poker-playing dude.
Guest 3:And he goes, you know what I like best about Christmas in Vegas?
Guest 3:I go, no, sir, what?
Guest 3:And he goes, no fucking kids.
Guest 3:I said, that's a good point.
Guest 3:I said, let's move to Vegas, baby, because the workshop was closing, you know, and I came out here and lived here 90, 91, 92, part of 93, and then I was doing so much TV, you know, they wanted me to move to L.A., and an absolutely terrible decision, you know, I did.
Guest 3:If I'd stayed here, I'd own this place.
Guest 3:I was really, really popular.
Guest 3:Really popular.
Guest 3:What year?
Guest 3:The early 90s.
Guest 3:You know, I mean, everybody was on my bandwagon.
Guest 3:You know, I'm working 16, 18 weeks a year here at every club, you know.
Guest 3:I mean, just, you know, the newspaper's writing about me.
Guest 3:I'm on the TV, blah, blah, blah.
Guest 3:It was really going very well.
Guest 3:And then I went to L.A.
Guest 3:and disappeared.
Guest 3:It's easy to have.
Guest 3:It happens out there.
Guest 3:It's so easy for that to happen.
Guest 3:Get online.
Guest 3:I just.
Guest 3:Funny man.
Guest 3:Disappeared.
Guest 3:Yeah.
Guest 3:You know, I had all these wonderful reviews and, you know, highfalutin sounding stuff.
Guest 3:And, you know, I was real close.
Guest 3:You know, everybody was talking.
Guest 3:Buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz.
Guest 3:USA Today writes me up.
Guest 3:Buzz, buzz, buzz.
Guest 3:You know.
Marc:But the weird thing is with somebody like you who's like really a pure comic.
Marc:You know that unless they're going to throw you in clown shoes and put you at the center of a sitcom, what are you going to do?
Marc:Well, I turned some of them down.
Guest 3:They wanted me to be the stupid southerner next door.
Guest 3:And I don't want to move that stereotype along.
Guest 3:Yeah, I'm southern, but I'm not stupid.
Guest 3:And some of the brightest people I know are southern.
Guest 3:I don't like it.
Guest 3:Yeah, yeah.
Guest 3:One time they wanted me to be a dad and I've got to have six kids.
Guest 3:I said, shit, I don't even like my kids.
Marc:I can't pretend.
Guest 3:Yeah, I can't pretend.
Guest 3:Find something for me to do.
Guest 3:You know, you want me to be this other guy.
Guest 3:Shit, I've spent a lifetime becoming this guy.
Guest 3:Yeah.
Guest 3:But, you know, you knew about Ellen, right, the woman I lived with.
Guest 3:And, well, she was ejected from a car, and it broke her neck and crushed her skull and broke her back and blah, blah, blah.
Guest 3:And I quit working and took care of her for three years until she died.
Guest 3:And during those three years, comics supported me, Mark.
Guest 3:I mean, they, you know, I mean, it was miraculous.
Marc:Wait a minute.
Marc:I did.
Marc:I believe that I helped out because I'm sure you did.
Marc:Lee Arlith was spearheading a lot of that, wasn't she?
Marc:Yeah, she was.
Guest 3:All across, Sandy DiPerna was involved in it.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest 3:I do remember, yeah.
Guest 3:That's right.
Guest 3:Shrippa here in Vegas did it.
Guest 3:And so when Ellen finally died in 2000, I was down to just enough money to be able to rent a place here for me and my dogs.
Guest 3:I had like eight dogs, so I had to put up a huge deposit and had just enough left over
Guest 3:To sit down at a poker table.
Guest 3:And for six months, I supported me and my roommate until I got bookings and he found a job and, you know, blah, blah, blah.
Guest 3:And I've been here ever since.
Guest 3:Jesus, that's a deep, horrible story.
Guest 3:Yeah.
Guest 3:Well, it was... Tale 2 said it was the best of times and worst of times.
Guest 3:And it was.
Guest 3:It was the worst time of my life.
Guest 3:And it was the best time of my life.
Guest 3:It's the only time...
Guest 3:that I did something totally, completely for somebody else.
Guest 3:You know, I left Ellen before she had the wreck.
Guest 3:She'd become a heroin addict.
Guest 3:And she wouldn't kick it.
Guest 3:She wouldn't go into rehab.
Guest 3:I was working on the road.
Guest 3:She got involved in that scene there in Hollywood.
Guest 3:You know what I mean?
Guest 3:Now, she was hurt so bad, they told me she'll never walk or talk or know my name.
Guest 3:And I said, well, you're wrong.
Guest 3:And I took her out of the hospital and took her up at the farm, and I taught her to walk and to talk and to remember my name, you know.
Guest 3:And eight months to the day when they told me that, she walked into a restaurant and ordered a meal off the menu.
Guest 3:She couldn't say it.
Guest 3:Speech was really hard, but she could point to what she wanted.
Guest 3:And the next afternoon she had a stroke and went all the way back to square one
Guest 3:and we did it again but this time it took a year and a half and then she had another stroke and that killed her jesus you know but during that battle you're talking i mean it was we fought the good fight you know what i mean we fought the good fight and it was the best of times and worst of times
Marc:Well, yeah, it sounds like through that, that's one of those things where you really realize that life is what it is, and this is what you were dealing with, and you couldn't run from it, and your humanity and your humility and everything about you as a person hung in the balance of this action.
Guest 3:Absolutely.
Guest 3:Absolutely.
Guest 3:It was going to define me as a human being right here.
Guest 3:Mm-hmm.
Guest 3:And I couldn't walk away.
Guest 3:Couldn't walk away.
Guest 3:Well, God bless you.
Guest 3:You know, I mean, she would have done the same for me, even in her heroin stupor.
Guest 3:You know what I mean?
Guest 3:Because when I left, I really wanted it to, you know, work as a catalyst for it to go, Jesus, what, you know, we were perfect together.
Guest 3:You know, and I don't want to, you know, I'm married again.
Guest 3:I've been so lucky in that.
Guest 3:And Rhonda's a wonderful wife and loves me to death and I love her.
Guest 3:But Ellen and I were something special, you know what I mean?
Guest 3:Yeah.
Guest 3:And we were, it was, you know, anybody that knew us.
Guest 3:We were just peas out of the same pod, man.
Guest 3:You know, we were together 11 years and had one argument.
Guest 3:One.
Guest 3:That's just impossible.
Guest 3:What was it over?
Guest 3:Where to eat in Chattanooga.
Guest 3:We settled it by she going one place and I went another.
Guest 3:For some reason, it became a heated argument, but that was the only one we ever had.
Guest 3:You know, nobody can say that nowadays, so...
Marc:Well, I'll tell you, I think that you're here in Vegas, you're still doing stand-up.
Marc:And playing poker.
Marc:And playing poker.
Marc:And if people want to see what you're doing, the short film that was done about the story about being in prison is up at ronshock.com or you can look it up on YouTube.
Guest 3:Yeah, you can look at Rod Shock, Orleans Parish Prison, 1958.
Guest 3:It takes you right to it.
Marc:It's a sweet little piece.
Marc:I watched it the other day.
Guest 3:It's not funny, folks.
Guest 3:It's not a funny one.
Marc:And now what about, you got any CDs available up there, too?
Marc:Because I think a lot of people don't really realize...
Marc:You know, you're a very important voice, and you've been out there a long time, and you're a real stylist.
Marc:And certainly I have comics listening to this and a lot of other people that might not recognize you or your work.
Marc:And is there stuff available?
Guest 3:Oh, yeah.
Guest 3:I have five CDs, and I have three DVDs.
Guest 3:That's a lot.
Guest 3:Yeah.
Guest 3:You know, I'm getting ready to release some more.
Marc:Well, I tell you, it's great to see you.
Marc:Oh, thanks, Mark.
Marc:And it was a great conversation.
Guest 3:Thank you very much.
Guest 3:This was great fun.
Guest 3:This was great fun.
Marc:Ron Schock.
Bye.
Marc:I'm back in the garage.
Marc:It's raining here in Los Angeles.
Marc:I landed in Burbank about an hour ago.
Marc:I think I've got the flu, or maybe it's just the repercussions of being in Las Vegas for three days.
Marc:And I was thinking back on it after I got home about being there when I was a kid.
Marc:And when I was there with my grandma Goldie, because there was a time before I must have been out there when I was about seven or eight years old, I went to meet my grandparents.
Marc:And this is one of those things where I really credit her for sort of inspiring me to be a comedian because she was so affected by it.
Marc:My grandfather loved comedy so much, and they loved going to see the comedians.
Marc:And I remember one time, and I don't know how this didn't frighten me out of show business, to be honest with you, but I remember being there with my grandmother.
Marc:I must have been under 10.
Marc:And my grandfather used to love Jimmy Durante.
Marc:He always used to do the cha-cha-cha-cha, you know, inky-dinky-doo thing.
Marc:And I didn't know who he was, and they would show me him in movies, but it was out of my time realm.
Marc:But I definitely, you know, my grandfather just loved the guy.
Marc:And I met my grandmother in Vegas, and apparently Jimmy Durante was still working.
Marc:I mean, he must have been 100 years old, but he was staying at a hotel in Vegas.
Marc:And my grandmother had taken it upon herself to find out where he was staying and get his room number, which I do not understand, looking back on it.
Marc:And she was going to take me up to Jimmy Durante's room.
Marc:To meet him.
Marc:And I was excited, and she was excited, and I don't know how she worked the magic to actually get an entertainer's room number, but she did, and she's telling me we're going to meet the schnoz, and it's going to be very exciting.
Marc:Jimmy Durante, and I'm like, I can't wait.
Marc:And we go up to this hotel room, and my grandmother knocks on the door, and the door opens, and a troll answers the door.
Marc:He had no makeup on.
Marc:He had glasses on.
Marc:He had no hair.
Marc:He was like 90.
Marc:He was wearing a tank top T-shirt.
Marc:He's like, how are you?
Marc:And I'm like, ah, grandma.
Marc:You know, and of course, Goldie was like, you know, could you just do the cha-cha-cha-cha?
Marc:You know, he did it.
Marc:It was like cha-cha-cha, but it might as well be like blah.
Marc:And it had a profound effect on me, but not enough to not make me want to be in show business.
Marc:Because, boy, the illusion is powerful.
Marc:And I've got to say, if I learned anything from that, because I am very generous with my fans, and for him to do that for a kid, even though he scared me, was a very sweet thing to do.
Marc:Thank you for listening.
Marc:Please go to punchlinemagazine.com for all of your comedy information needs and justcoffee.coop, of course, and wtfpod.com for everything WTF-related.
Marc:You can donate.
Marc:You can buy T-shirts.
Marc:You can follow us on Twitter.
Marc:You can email the show.
Marc:I really appreciate you listening.
Marc:I hope this wasn't too sad.
Marc:I found that Vegas made me a little sad, but I'm okay now.
you