Best of the Week - July 19, 2020 - Joe Rogan Experience

I was trying to get to know the crime element more than... So I knew all the lawyers and I went over to Bimini one day to get some real information about them because they couldn't. In the US they were scared to talk. So I located through a defense lawyer, a couple of some guys in Bimini. I went down there and I met with them. And they were talking because Bimini was another kind of world. The government was on the take there, I think. And they had a lot of speedboats going out of there every night at the hotel. towards... Bimini's very close to Miami. And I was doing coke at that time. When my wife, she was my cover. And I took... Hollywood screenwriter he wants to talk to, he did Midnight Express. They liked that, you know. They wanted to know about the business. But then in the middle of this, we're all coke up in the hotel. You know, the way conversation goes. And I drop a name just like that, you know, a guy I talked to. Well, he'd been a defense lawyer when I talked to him. But in the past, he'd been a prosecutor. Because prosecutors often flip to defense attorneys to make more money. So when I mentioned that name, two of these three guys got really uptight. And they walked... They excuse themselves. Went in the bathroom and I said, I fucked up. I knew I'd fucked up. And I didn't know what was going to come out of that bathroom, you know. If they thought I was some kind of cop, some kind of under... Right. Informer. Because they hated that prosecutor that put one of them away. So a few minutes went by there and it was pretty hairy. But I think I was paranoid. Because they came out and they didn't have guns in their hands. But they cut the meeting off. I went back to my room. They were staying in the same hotel. All night I was tense because I knew they could come and get me. It was their hotel. They owned the island. Right. But it was nerve-wracking. And I got out of there first thing in the morning. The whole point is you say the wrong word sometimes and you're dead. That's the kind of tension I wanted for this movie. I put it into the scene early in the picture where Mr. Pacino, Al, goes in to make a pickup, make a trade. And he senses something's off in this meeting. And he becomes that bloodbath with the dismemberment. You remember? Yes. And the chainsaw. The chainsaw. Yeah, I was going to bring that scene up. Yeah, there was a chainsaw's murder at one point. You know, there was two moments where I was like, this is a real opportunity for us to come together. And one of them was the moment the lockdown happened. It felt to me very similar to right after 9-11, where everybody was confronted with their own mortality. Like, holy shit. Like, we might be on the verge of a pandemic, like in a movie, where a lot of the people we know die. And here, we have to be kind to each other. We have to be nice. This is what's important. Family is important. And I remember thinking, I've never been closer to my family. Never been closer to my friends. We're calling each other all the time. We were, it was like, it was a, there was real hope in that. I was like, if we get through this, we're going to be tighter. We're going to know what means something, what counts. Fuck stand-up comedy. Fuck everything else, man. What's important is love and friendship. Then it started to get angry. It only took like three or four weeks, where people started getting, like they were scared. So people started getting shittier with each other online. And then I basically swore off Twitter. I was like, this is just too toxic and too hostile. The second moment where I thought we had the opportunity to come together was George Floyd. So George Floyd died. And all of a sudden, you have these Black Lives Matter protests. And I'm like, maybe we can finally make a dent on racism. Maybe we can finally make a dent in police brutality. Maybe this is a moment where we can come together and realize what's important, this community solidarity that we're all in this together. Like this is crazy. And then the cops need to be reformed. Like they can't live like, and maybe we should take into account PTSD. Maybe we should take into account the fact that these fucking guys are pulling up on people every day that might shoot them in the face. They might never be able to see their family and their kids. Let's rework this. Let's think this shit through. Nope. And then chaos. And then all of a sudden it became like what we saw yesterday, where they're breaking into Amazon Go in Seattle. Like that fucking guy owns the Washington Post. He owns the most left wing newspaper in America. And you're like, not good enough. Like you saw, they set up like a fake guillotine outside of Bezos' house in Washington, D.C. It's insane. It's just, it's madness. He's too rich. I totally agree with you, by the way. Like when COVID happened, I thought, I can't really see how we're going to split in partisan fashion over this thing. Right. Like everybody wants to live and everybody would also like to eventually get back to regular life. And the better we can live, the better we can get back to regular life. So it seems like, okay, we're on board. When it came to the lockdowns, the original lockdowns, I was like, okay, I'm on board. You know, I'm taking this thing really seriously. I've got parents in their 60s. I feel like, you know, I'm in good health. I'm fairly young. I'm 36. But for my parents, I want my parents getting this thing. And so we're still taking this thing real seriously. I mean, I'm still wearing a mask around to public places. And I think people should. I think that's a responsible thing to do. But it immediately turned into, who can we blame for this? Who can we blame? Who's doing it wrong? And it seems like there were only like a couple of things that you really can do that are obviously wrong. Like nobody has a good solution on this thing. Okay. It ravaged Italy. It ravaged Spain. It ravaged New York. Like there are a couple of things you shouldn't do. Don't take the old and send them back into the nursing homes with COVID. I mean, that's like an obvious one. But beyond that, like just staying away from each other and socially distancing. Like this is all kind of common sensical stuff that people have known since the flu pandemic event in 1918. Like nothing has really changed. And yet it immediately turned into, who can we blame? Who's to blame for all these dead people? Maybe it's Ron DeSantis or maybe it's Cuomo. Like who can we blame? So that was terrible. And then on the Floyd stuff, I had the same feelings. Like I don't know a single human being who watched that tape and didn't think, okay, that guy deserves to go to jail. Chauvin, the officer in that case and the George Floyd. Didn't think that. Yeah. Everyone I know, every single person was like, yeah, that's real bad. Like that's cops. Like I know tons of cops. I'm friendly with tons of cops. And not one of them was like, yeah, that's good police procedure. I'm glad he did that. Like no one thought that. And so when people are like, okay, we're going to look at police brutality. Maybe we'll take a look at qualified immunity. Maybe we'll take a look at police unions and the kind of restrictive covenants that they have with the cities and how we make sure that everybody knows who the bad cops are so they can't get hired at different places. Like all those are solutions. But they quickly turn from, well, we don't want to talk about solutions. Solutions are a bad idea. What we need to do is we need to shout about everything we can possibly imagine all at once. And you know what? Instead, let's have a conversation about like, was George Washington a bad guy? Let's have a conversation instead about like just completely defunding the police. We want to have like a responsible conversation about things that make sense. We'll talk about like what if we just got rid of the police? So the map is what we call semi malleable. It's not a rigid concrete hardwired map. So what makes you think that this upspeak is like damage? Well, so I asked Eddie about this. Eddie? Chang, my friend, this neurosurgeon who is kind of premier world, not kind of, he is the world expert on speech and language and the neural transformations and how it controls the pharynx, all that stuff. And I said, what's with the upspeak thing? He said, yeah, you know, we see that sometimes and I'm concerned about that. And when a neurosurgeon tells you they're concerned, you kind of go, OK, what are you concerned about? He goes, there's something wrong with the map. And this kind of, you know, well, he just thinks that the map which shows up kind of normally and I mean, most this is probably the first time in human history people have used this upspeak. It's also the first time in human history people have typed with their thumbs. I was listening to two guys at the airport back when you can go to the airport and these two guys at the airport were talking in upspeak. And it was like as clear as day to me, like they were letting each other know that they're in the tribe. And, you know, I remember Jamie had a tech problem once and he was on the phone with this lady who was doing upspeak when she was talking to him. And we both looked at each other like, eww, yuck. It does kind of create a kind of visceral, like, like nauseous. I can't trust those people. I can't trust someone who talks like that because I know you're unoriginal. Like you not not what not what most of us are clearly, at least mostly influenced by the people around us. But it's not just that. It's like you've changed how you talk to fit in with this. There's a tech world. There's tech language. That's tech speak. It's English, but it's tech speak English. It's letting you know. And there does seem to be a body response to, there's sort of a spinal extension. I don't trust them. I don't trust them. I think they're sneaky. Well, I'll try and get the data from, I'll try and get the data from Eddie. Being halfway joking here, if you're like an up speak person, like, Hey man, I've always loved your show. But then you said you don't trust people who talk like me joking, but also stop doing that. Stop fucking doing that. I know what you're doing. I think, um, I think Eddie would say that there's some distortion in the way they're using this map. But how did it start? I think it started with one really smart person who was probably a little autistic who talked like that because they were trying to keep it together. And then everyone else was like, I want to be as smart as John. And then they started talking like that. And then it became a thing. Yeah, I tend to, um, I like broken wingers. I like, uh, helping folks that, you know, I had, um, I grew up in Queens and Howard beach and it was, uh, for whatever reason, organized crime capital of the world. And this is going to sound crazy, but my neighbor was one of the big bosses. And one day when I was pre-teens, he said to me, you know, the best thing we could do on this earth. I said, well, he said, help people. This is a guy that killed people for a living. And, um, because that, that was his perspective was he, he was a protector, right? He would help people even though from the outside, we know what they really do. But, um, but it stuck with me. Got to help people. So this was one of those people I helped. Isn't it crazy that sometimes even people that are just, you would look at them, they're like, they're bad people. They have some good advice. Like even morons can occasionally say something like, huh, all right. I got that. You know, like every now and then. Like even, even a real fool will say something that makes a whole lot of sense. He changed my life. This guy, he, he, um, he said to me, he, my parents were going through a divorce. I'm 12 years old and he, he wants to help me. So he says, come over. You're going to clean our swimming pool for us. I don't pay you $35 a week. So, um, I come over on Saturday morning. He says, all right, the first lesson, he sent me down for lessons. First lesson is, uh, if you're going to come at 8 AM, you show up 7 45. Right. On time is late. Great lesson for life. Second lesson is, uh, if I'm paying you to clean the pool, I want you to straighten up the shed, straighten up all the lawn furniture, clean the windows, do whatever the fuck you have to do, but make it so that when I get home, I can't live without you, you are irreplaceable as far as a service provider. And number three, never ask for money. You'll get paid if you do a good job and just stuck with me for life. And it, and really, really good lessons from an un, like you say, like a most unlikely source of it.