Joe Reflects on Crazy David Blaine Podcast

When you see David Blaine manipulate cards, you realize like, oh, okay, like there's levels to everything. Like David Blaine can do crazy shit with cards. Like he did shit with my daughter, like he like did these card tricks and I was watching everything he did and I have no idea how he did it. Like he did things where like cards would, he have a stack of cards and he'd keep tapping the stack and the stack would go smaller and smaller until there's like two cards. You have no idea how he did it. He just looking at him like, what are you doing? Like it's like he's got access to time travel and he's like pulling those cards out when you're not looking and then coming back to normal time. Like it didn't make, right? I know how to do a couple of minimal card tricks and I'm not very good at them, but like I have an idea of what's happening. Prove it. You need tricked ex and shit for the ones I know. I'm not like, it's not, I'm not good at them, but he was freaking me out. I was watching him do one. I swear I was like, I'm gonna catch him right now. I'm gonna fucking catch him. I was two feet from him and he did something. I don't even, it just disappeared. How about the ones where he did where the guys were holding his wrist. We had our security guys hold each of his, he asked them to do it. Hold each of his wrist. He rolled his sleeves up and he made these cards disappear. You know, like what is happening? Oh my God. What are you doing? What are you doing? The machines are crazy. The masks are more than just cards. It's like psychology and like, yeah, misdirection. He's mixing it all together at a level that we can't understand. He's so advanced. Yeah. I took one writing gig like six or seven years ago with Justin Wilman, who's a genius, great magician. He, he puts, he's the Netflix guy now. And, uh, um, I took the job because, uh, Robert Morton, who used to be the executive producer of Letterman was the EP of this. Anyway, I take the job just cause it's a short two, four week. We're making a pilot for this magician. I'm like, I like magic. Magic's cool. And Morty's the EP. So this will be a cool thing to work on. Right. Short job. So I show up day one and basically we're all in a big writer's room or whatever. And I go, yeah, you know, I'll, and they're like, we got Tony here. Cause he's a, you know, he's going to add some edge to the comedy on this show. Cause it was a comedy. It was comedy central's first ever magic comedy show, the pilot. And, and I go, yeah, you know, I'll punch up whatever you guys show me the tricks that you want to do and I'll write jokes around the trick. And that's when I, this is when I realized how cool this job was about to be. They go, the main guy goes, no, you write the trick and you write the jokes. And I'm like, so you'll be able to do whatever my imagination thinks would be a cool magic trick. And like him and like four other magicians, which was basically the rest of the creative staff at the same time were like, yup. And that's what excites them is cause they can't even think of things. You know what I mean? They can, but they want to hear what a different mind thinks would be impossible. And then they figure out how to do it. What's an example? Well, we ended up, because it was a pilot of a show, we ended up having to figure out a theme for just the pilot. So the, for example, the, that was a technology. So one of the things was him versus him versus a 3d printer, in making things appear. It was really funny because there was this kid, they went to this, we ended up finding this like nerdy smart school where this kid was excited about his 3d printer. And basically it was, it was just him making things appear out of absolutely nowhere. Making things appear out of absolutely nowhere. Well, one kid was still printing one thing with a 3d printer took forever and he ended up just pigeon, pigeon, pigeon, pigeon, car, car, car, car, car. Like it ended up being, you know, it's a comedy. So, but I'm trying to think of what other ones, there were some really crazy ones. I think it's a whole world where there's, there's things that they understand. They know where the average person, like you're looking at a deck of cards. You have an idea of what's possible with, with that deck of cards, but they have just 10 X times more options, how to hold them, how to move them, how to maneuver those cards, how to distract you with the other hand. Yeah. I mean, I'd like to hang around with David Blaine for a few months and watch him do tricks. It ended up being one of the most fun gigs I ever worked on. There was just, I'd get home after a day of work and I'd find like the seven of spades in my shoe. Like this guy forgot to finish that one. He stuffed a folded card under Jeff's watch band. Wow. And he's like, where's the card? And he just like, where'd it go? He goes, look at your wrist. He's like, what? And he like realized like it was folded and stuffed under his watch band. And he has a fucking G shock. Right? So it's not like a loose, crazy watch band. It's a tight buckle rubber strap watch band. He stuffs it in there and he's like, what the fuck? And I'm like, what the fuck? No one saw it. Jamie, you were filming some of it, right? Didn't you film some of it? Other people did. I was a big fan of his growing up because I was like a huge fan of Magic, David Copperfield. But like after I figured out all the fake that was, moved into street magic because it's a little harder to do, you know, and that's what he was big on. So I was waiting my whole life to watch him up close and he's got to be two feet from, like I said, and I wanted to just, I wanted to try to catch him and he was so good at it. He did like seven tricks in front of me. He's a really nice guy, really nice guy, like genuinely nice on camera, off camera with everybody with security guys, with my family, with everybody. Like you could tell, it's just really nice, friendly, genuine guy. But some of the stuff he does is fucking weird. Like he made me shove an ice pick through his bicep. Yeah. What was that like? I mean, are you, what, here's the thing. Yeah. It's not a trick, right? It's just pain. And I think pain is just a sensation, right? And if you could just tolerate the sensation, it's not deadly. And one time I hit a nerve and we had to back it out and do it again. I had to do it a second time because I got in there and he said, stop, stop, stop. Like it hit the nerve. So I had to back out and do it again. I think it was supposed to be more disturbing and impressive than I reacted to it. Because first of all, I'm used to pain. I've been doing martial arts most of all. Some always hurt. I've had a bunch of surgeries and also have butchered animals. Like I understand muscle tissue and I'm not, it's just like, why are we doing this? So it was more why we doing this then. Oh my God. I can't believe we're doing this. Like that one was not a good one for me because it's like, okay. Like I could do that too. Like if you want to shove that through my arm, I could just sit here. We shove that through my arm. I wouldn't like it though. Did he bleed? Yeah, he bled a little bit. Yeah. We had to stop and refilm because he had like a little bit of a hematoma, right Jamie? Wasn't it? Like a little... Building up. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And so the security guys had to put like a fucking bandaid on it and shit. Check it out. One of them's a medic. How do you think, do you think he went through the muscle? I pushed it through his fucking arm, dude. Like his muscle. A hundred percent. Not between the bone and the muscle. No. No, I shoved it through his muscle. One hundred percent. How, you couldn't do that though. How thick was it? The needle. It was an ice pick. But I'm telling you, you can do that. You know, there's guys, this is one of the things that we found out during the show that I didn't know. There's guys that would shove swords through their body. Their whole gig was shoving swords through their body. And we watched it live. I mean, not live. We watched videos of these guys shoving swords through this one guy's body who was famous for it. So it would take like a long thin sword and they'd shove it through his chest and come out the other end. And he'd just be standing there with his sword through. Yeah. So here's me. Did you see this? No. So here's me. Shoving. You showed up on it. What? Yeah. He's like showing me how to do it. But he pushed through here. Yeah. Just shove it through. No. Yeah. Poked it right through. One hundred percent real. But again, that's not the best one for me. Because if you're a person who's like, doesn't necessarily see a lot of muscle, necessarily see a lot of pain or you haven't used to like surgery or someone getting, like if you did that to a doctor, right, the doctor would be like, okay, I see what you're doing. Just pushing something through the muscle and it probably hurts, right? It's not a good joke or a trick. It's not an illusion. He's just doing something that hurts. Like, okay. Like, Steve-O could do that. Steve-O's probably done that a hundred times. He does things like that. Yeah. Even with the, didn't you go to clown college or something like that? I think. Yeah. Steve-O climbed in a fucking tree and had lions come chasing after him. Yeah. Like he's. He's the best. Yeah. He does a lot of shit. He did the frog thing too though. That was like another. That was a different thing. He swallowed a frog. He swallowed a shitload of water. So during the podcast, he probably drank. Look at you. Fifteen. He probably drank 15 bottles of water or something crazy. And then he swallowed this frog. And then the frog is in his stomach with all the water that he swallowed. And then he spit up the water slowly but surely in a bucket. We had an ice bucket on the table. And then he eventually got to the point where he felt the frog coming up. And he spit the frog out in my hand. Okay. Good Lord. Yeah. I mean, he knows how to do it. Episodes of the Joe Rogan Experience are now free on Spotify. That's right. They're free from September 1st to December 1st. They're going to be available everywhere. But after December 1st, they will only be available on Spotify. But they will be free. That includes the video. The video will also be there. It'll also be free. That's all we're asking. Go download Spotify. Much love. Bye-bye.