Tommy Chong Found the Secret to Living Forever | Joe Rogan

I'm fine man. I couldn't be better. I'll be 81 Friday. Wow. That's amazing. Does that sound crazy to say? Because I'm 51, that sounds crazy to say. When I say it, I'm like, Jesus, is that true? Fuck. I'm 30 years older than you. Wow. Wow. That's something. But I feel good, man. You know, all the systems are go again. You know, and that makes a big difference in the life. Yeah. That's what I found out the fountain of youth is the pussy. That's it? Yeah. That's all it is? Drink it of the fountain of youth and you'll live forever. Really? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. What about if you're gay? Well, I guess. Long pause. The fountain of youth. Yeah, I had to think about that one. Wow, I guess. It might be dick for that one. I guess it, no, I don't know. It has to be the fountain. It has to be the fountain. So even for gay folks, it's got to be pussy too? Well, how long, what's the longest living gay guy that you know? That's a good question. Huh. Like Bob Hope, man. Was he gay? No. At least one night I knew him. No, that's my fountain of youth. Yeah. You know, because it- Sure, romance. Well, what happens is your body, when it reaches a certain stage, it starts disintegrating because it's getting ready for the recall and the reboot. Yeah. And you get a new body and the way you go again. But if you keep this body healthy, it feels that there's no need to leave because you've obviously still got more shit to do. Yeah, you're still enjoying it. Yeah, you're still producing, you know. Are you exercising and everything? Oh, yeah. Yeah, what do you do? I got a trainer now. Yeah? But my main exercise is tango. Tango? Tango. Really? I will turn you on to tango. Tango is old folk sex. The whole thing about tango is it's so intricate. The original tango was a mating dance from Africa. Really? And what they would do, the tribes, the young kids would get together and dance and flirt with their feet. And so when the slaves got taken from Africa and put on the boats and that, they ended up crossing the foot dance with the Adagio French dance, the dance of the brothels. And so then they ended up with a music or a dance called tango, which was a combination. Tango itself is a word that means small drum. It's an African drum. It's like mambo. It's an African word that means storytelling. Really? Yeah. Dude, story time with Tommy Chong. Oh, yeah. Man, I was in jail. I had nothing but tango. And I wrote a whole paper on tango. So anyway, tango, like I go to Argentina with my wife a lot, and it's very tough dance to dance with your wife. You have to dance with a stranger. And she has to dance with a stranger. Why is that? I think you're too intimate, too personal. You know each other too well. If you're a stranger, then all you can respond to is the dance signals. Like the man has to lead, but he has to lead in such a way that you can't see him. He can't pull her around the... He suggests. Oh, okay. And so he'll suggest a certain move, and then the girl, her partner, will understand that move, and then she can do a couple of steps in a certain way. Like one is called the... Fuck, I can't remember the term. Ochos, which means back and forth. And out of those combinations, once the guy gets a girl going into the ochos, for instance, then he can move on to another... He'll stop her with his foot, and then he'll move on to another series of moves. And they're all designed, but the stranger... You know, the woman has to really listen to the moves if she's danced with a stranger or a teacher. And that's how... And then it has to be a close embrace, and the woman has to be cuddled up against the guy. Not always, but for the most part. So you're not looking at your feet at all, and it's all about feel. And so you have to feel the other person's body. And it can get so intimate, man, that you really felt... After a good dance with a good tango teacher, you really feel like I happened to have a cigarette, and relax him for a bit. Did you study this? Did you like to take classes? I got turned on to it in Paris. I was... Chish and I were finishing up the Corsican Brothers, and we got offered to do the Cisco Kid. And they sent me the script, and in the script it said, Tango Dancers. And so we... My wife and I... A girlfriend at the time, but the wife now... We used to drive by this place that said Tango in neon lights, and so we stopped and took our first tango lesson from this George and Rosie, a couple there. George was too old to get out of bed. He was in his 90s or something. He was in bed. Rosie came and met us, and she showed us the first little bit of tango. Well, my wife, Shelby, who was an excellent dancer, she's been studying dance ever since I can remember. And so she started doing salsa first, and then I found out about that, and I had to learn salsa. But then we started learning tango together, and then she went on to really learn how to dance, how to dance with the pros. Me, I'm still struggling to be a pro, and it's very hard. It's like MMA fighting. She's a pro, I'm an amateur. And so when we go down to Buenos Aires, like we went down for her birthday, I was the video operator because I didn't know how to dance that well. I take lessons almost 20 years now, but I still don't have the skills to be a professional like that. But yeah, so I went down and videotaped her, and then I came back and I made a vow. This is embarrassing, because people know me from years ago, and I still can't dance. So it's about time that I learned, so I gave up everything to learn tango. And now I go... Really? Like, what'd you give up? Golf, more than anything. Really? Yeah. There's a lot of guys right now that are going crazy. Why would you give up golf for a tango? Well, actually it worked out really well. I played a tournament golf last week, and I did the best I've ever done. If you lay off something, you forget all your bad habits. Oh, that's true too, and you're probably really enthusiastic about playing it. Oh, I loved it. I did good. I got about two pars. Incredible for me. I got about a 36 handicap, something like that. But I gave up golf because it's too much energy. It was taking too much energy. Sure. You got to walk around all the time? Yeah. I would also imagine that the tango dancing, all the movement and the footwork would actually probably make you more steady and stable, balanced better, so it'd probably make your golf game better. Oh, it did. Totally, totally. Totally. I noticed that with yoga. Yoga makes pool better. Yeah. In some weird way. It makes it stand stronger. Yeah. Yeah. So there's also a pause in comedy. Someone asked me about the secret of comedy. I said, it's a pause. And the tango is a pause too. The timing. The timing. Waiting. Yeah. And using that silence before you say something to give people a time to formulate their own thoughts about what you're doing or to concentrate on what you're going to say next. And that's the same thing with tango.